Articles of William Q

I do not remember having said it was wrong to kill a water bug: hence there is no conclusion to be made from that to the question of feeding on animals, so far as I am concerned.

The questions of right and wrong are somewhat mixed on this subject. If one says it is morally wrong to kill a water bug, then it follows that it is wrong to live at all, inasmuch as in the air we breathe and the water imbibed there are many millions of animals in structure more complicated than bugs. Though these are called infusoria and animalculae, yet they are living, moving beings as much as are bugs. We draw them in and at once they are destroyed, slain to the last one. Shall we therefore stop living? The whole of life is a battle, a destruction and a compromise as long as we are on the material plane. As human beings we have to keep on living, while in our destructive path millions of beings are hourly put to death. Even by living and earning a living each one of us is preventing some one else from doing the same, who, if we were dead, might step into our shoes. But if we abandoned the fight - were we, indeed, able to so do - then the ends of evolution could not be attained. Hence we have to stay and endure what Karma falls from the necessary deaths we occasion.

So the true position seems to me to be this, that in certain environments, at certain stages of evolution, we have to do an amount of injury to others that we cannot avoid. So while we thus live we must eat, some of flesh and others of the vegetable. Neither class is wholly right or wrong. It becomes a wrong when we deliberately without actual need destroy the lives of animals or insects. So the man who was born in a family and generation of meat-eaters and eats the meat of slaughtered animals does less wrong than the woman who, though a vegetarian, wears the feathers of slaughtered birds in her hats, since it was not necessary to her life that such decoration should be indulged in. So the epicure who tickles his palate with many dishes of meats not necessary for sustentation is in the same case as the woman who wears bird's feathers. Again as to shoes, saddles, bridles, pocketbooks, and what not, of leather. These are all procured from the skins of slain animals. Shall they be abolished? Are the users of them in the wrong? Any one can answer. Or did we live near the north pole we would be compelled to live on bears' and wolves' meat and fat. Man, like all material beings, lives at the expense of some others. Even our death is brought about by the defeat of one party of microbes who are devoured by the others, who then themselves turn round and devour each other.

But the real man is a spirit-mind, not destructible nor destroying; and the kingdom of heaven is not of meat nor of drink: it cometh not from eating nor refraining- it cometh of itself. - ED

Path, March, 1892

ABOUT "SPIRIT" MATERIALIZATIONS

SOME EVIDENCE FROM SPIRITUALISM

An examination of the records of the past forty years of what is known as the spiritualistic movement discloses a strange state of things, revealing a blindness on the part of that unorganized body of people to the just and logical conclusion to be drawn from the vast mass of facts in their possession. They have been carried away wholly by the pleasures of wonder-seeking and ghost-hunting to such an extent that nearly all of them wish for and seek out only that which they are pleased to call the spirits of the departed. In a former article in this magazine this has been called "the worship of the dead"; and that it justly is.

It is not the worship of those who have died, such as the Hindu and other eastern nations have in their ceremonies for the spirits of the fathers, but it is the running after that which is really dead to all intents and purposes - corpses in fact. For these people stand on the brink of the grave and call for those who have passed away, who are still living in other states, who do not return; and in response to the cry the seekers are rewarded by the hosts, the ghouls, the vampires, the senseless, wavering shapes, the useless images and reflections of human thoughts and acts of which the vast reservoir of the astral light is full. This and this alone is their worship. It is the seeking after dead images, senseless and conscienceless, moved by force alone and attracted solely by our passions and desires that give them a faint and fleeting vitality.

Yet from the remotest days of the past down to the present time the loudest and clearest warnings have been given against such practices. It is what we called necromancy in the old time, prohibited in the Christian Bible and the pagan mysteries alike.

Moses, educated among the Egyptians, told his people that they must not run after these things, and the Hindus, warned by centuries of sorrow, long ago declared against it, so that today these so-called "spirits" are known to them as devils. The literature of the Theosophical Society is full of these warnings from the very first book issued by H. P. Blavatsky to this present article. But the spiritualists and their leaders, if they have any, persistently ignore not only the experience of the past but also the cautions now and then given by their own "spirits." For, as is well know to the thoughtful theosophist, mediums, being passive and open to any and every influence that may come their way, often do give out the knowledge in the possession of living men on these subjects.

Many times have learned living occultists entered into the sphere of mediums and compelled them to tell the truth, which has been sometimes recorded and preserved so that it may be inspected afterwards when found in the mass of their history as printed in their journals. To some of this I purpose to refer, for no spiritualists can say with propriety that the evidence given through their own mediums and purporting to come from the "spirit land" is not to be relied upon. If they reject any such testimony from mediums who have not been shown to be frauds, they must reject all. Enough has been given out by those who say they are controlled by spirits to prove the case made by the theosophists, or, at the least, to throw doubt upon the assertions of spiritualists about the summer-land and the returning of spirits.

In October, 1877, beginning on the 13th, The Religio-Philosophical Journal began a series of interviews with a medium in Chicago in which questions were put to the control by the reporter of that paper. This "control" was called Jim Nolan, and the medium was Mrs. M. J. Hollis-Billing. Her reputation has never been assailed, nor has she been ever accused of lying or fraudulent practice. The place where the interviews took place was 24 Ogden Avenue.

The first question was whether Nolan understood the process of spirit materialization. He, replying from the "spirit world," said he did, and proceeded in substance thus:

The electrical particles in a dark room are in a quiet condition; they are collected by us and laid upon one another until we have made an electrical form (still unseen). We then take magnetism from the medium or from the sitters in the circle and with it coat this electrical form. After that the form is used by the "spirit," who steps into it and uses it as a form.

This of course proves from the side of the spirits that no materialized form is the form of any spirit whatever, for certainly electrical and magnetic particles are not spiritual. Nolan the proceeds:

Another way is this: We gather these particles to which I have referred and, going into the astral light, we reflect upon them the face of some spirit and thus a reflected image of a spirit is seen. Or, again, we collect these particles into a sheet or plane surface, take chemicals from the atmosphere with which to coat them over, and then (at the request of the sitters) reflect upon this surface a face, and you see the features of the deceased or other person.

From this it follows inevitably that no real face of any spirit is seen, and as the images are taken from the astral light the whole thing is full of deception. At the request of the sitter the operating "spirit" finds the in astral light any desired face, and then goes through the form of reflecting it upon the prepared surface. Now all of this on the part of Jim Nolan is very scientific, much more so than the mass of nonsense usually hear from "spirits," yet it has passed unnoticed because it is a deathblow out of their own camp to the claims of spiritualists that the dead return or that spirits can materialize, and raises up the horrid suspicion that they do not know, never can know, who or what it is that speaks and masquerades at their s&#233ances and behind the forms said to be materializations of spirits. It at once opens the door to the possibility that perhaps the theory of the theosophists is right, that these spirits are only shells of dead people and that nothing is heard from them except what may be found on the earth and in the earthly lives and thoughts of living people. But the second question was in regard to the identity of "spirits" among many materialized forms, and the replay was:

"It is very rarely in cases of materialization that over two or three forms are used for the whole number of reporting spirits. Really, what would be the use in building house after house for every one who wishes to go into it for some special purpose?" What use, truly, except to prove that spirits do come back in the way claimed by spiritualists? But what he says upsets the identity of any materialization. If two forms have been used by five or more spirits to show themselves in, it of course results that none of them have shown themselves at all; but that some force or intelligence outside the circle or inside the medium has done all the talking by means of access to the astral light where all the pictures and all the images are forever stored up.

Nolan. - The materialized form shown never belonged to the physical part of that spirit. It consists of chemical, electrical, and magnetic particles or elements from the atmosphere.

At the sitting of October 27th in the same year he said:

The Astral Light spoken of by the ancient men is what we call magnetic light. All the acts of life are photographed in the astral light of each individual; the astral light retains all those peculiar things which occur to you from day to day.

And again, on the 12th of January, in reply to the sixth question, the same "spirit" said:

We gather these electrical particles together and with them form a house, as it were, into which we step; they are no more a part of the spirit than the chair on which you sit.

Nothing could be plainer than this. Out of the mouth of the "spirit" who has never been charged with being untruthful it is proved that the astral light exists, that it contains all images of all our acts and of ourselves, and that these images are reflected from that other side to this, and are mistakenly taken by the ghost hunter for the faces, the bodies, the acts, the speech of those who have gone the great journey. So, then, just as we have always contended, all these sittings with mediums and these materializations prove only the existence, powers, and functions of the astral light. As the frequenters of s&#233ances are not behind the scenes, they cannot say who it is or what it may be that operates to produce the phenomena exhibited. It may be good spirit or devil; more likely the latter. And therefore the great Roman Catholic Church has always insisted that its members should not run after these "spirits," accounting them devilish and asserting that all these powers and forces are under the charge of the fallen angels.

It is seldom, perhaps not once in a century of materializations, that a spirit such as that called Jim Nolan would be so foolish as to give out correct information as he has done in the sittings referred to; for the nature and habit of the elements who work at the most of these s&#233ances is to bring about and continue delusion. But going a step farther, I say that in the case of Jim Nolan it was no "spirit" of dead man and no elemental that spoke and acted, but the spirit, soul and intelligence of a living man who chose to take the name of Nolan as being as good as any other, in order that the evidence might be recorded for the benefit of the spiritualists in their own camp and in their special investigations, of the truth of the matter, as an offset to the mass of stuff gathered by the elementals from the brains and confused thoughts of mediums and sitters alike. This evidence cannot be razed from the record, although so far it remains unnoticed. It must stand with all the rest. But while the rest will fall as not being in accord with reason, this will remain because it is the truth as far as it goes.

William Q. Judge

Path, July, 1891

THE ADEPTS

SOME OBJECTIONS AND ANSWERS TO THEM

In this I purpose to give but the condensed form of some objections made to the theory of the existence of the Adepts, and of the answers which might be made. The objections are variously founded, applying as well to the names Masters and Mahatmas as to other designations.

"MASTERS" IS OBJECTIONABLE because contrary to Republicanism or Democracy or Individualism.

But master comes from magister, who is a teacher, an expounder as well as applier of the law; hence magistrate. Every one, in fact, has a master, whether it be physically, mentally, or morally; and this objection is but the old and foolish exhibition of contempt for regulations of a government from which America escaped long ago.

THE OBJECTOR HAS NEVER SEEN AN ADEPT. This would apply equally to the assertion of the existence of Napoleon or any other character one has not seen, and with more force. For there was but one Napoleon, while there have been and are many Adepts. The ancients all relate histories of Adepts; the Hindus of today do the same; many of the writers of the middle ages and the traditions of the same period speak of them as accepted facts; the traditions of all countries not so new as this give similar testimony; the Chinese, Tibetans, Burmese, and other Oriental people tell of such personages, while Chinese, Buddhist, and Hindu literature teems with testimony. Hence to support the doctrine there is a mass of human testimony lager than that which declares that Buonaparte once dominated Europe. Lastly, several reputable Europeans and Americans, members of the Theosophical Society, affirm on their own knowledge the existence of these Adepts.

THE MODERN CRITIC SAYS: First, why do not these Adepts come out to satisfy curiosity if they are men? This question is out of the same spirit that creates the sensational, vulgar, and prying newspaper which spreads before the public, because it is called for by the public, the private details of everyone's existence. Second, why not appear and destroy evil if they have great powers? The Adepts have replied that there is no power to destroy the evil man has produced but in the efforts he himself makes for purification. Thirdly, why not come and wipe out abuses? Fourthly, why not multiply food in famine time?

Other replies to these may be thus tabulated:

(a) The nature of humanity at present is the product of evolution, and only evolution conducted in an orderly manner can alter by perfecting, refining, and purging.

(b) It is ridiculous for the Western nations to demand that the Adepts shall multiply food when every one knows there is at all times enough food in hand, either unused or locked up by the men of greed, to feed all the hungry.

(c) If food were multiplied thus in the western world, those who did it would be imprisoned and classed as criminal, for inevitably either the food would be said to be stolen or else the charge of interfering with trade would follow. In Berlin in 1892 the starving people took bread from the shops and were punished for theft. The moral and conclusion are obviously against the objector.

(d) No one can disprove the claim made that Adepts have multiplied food in famine times in Eastern lands where condemnation and persecution do not follow the act.

(e) Admitting that the Adepts have great powers, they have disclaimed the power to alter human nature in any other way than through the processes of evolution and always strictly under a rigid law of justice.

(f) The Adepts do not yet appear publicly and proclaim themselves to the world for reasons found in the above replies, and also because the cycle must run its course, since, if they proclaimed themselves out of time, a wrong result would be produced, just as a note, good in itself, is a producer of discord when sounded out of time, place, or tune. This reason is the reason deduced from the law of cycles.

WHAT, THEN, ARE THE ADEPTS DOING? Not possibly could all their work be stated. But, for a part:

(a) Assisting all good movements by acting on men from behind the scenes through mental influence.

(b) Preparing as many men and women who are fit for it so that they may, in their next incarnation, appear in the world as active devotees to the good of the Human Family.

(c) Spreading now, through impulses given in many places which must not be mentioned, a philosophy of life which will gradually affect the race mind, and in particular the active, conquering Western peoples, thus preparing the whole people to change and evolve yet further and further until evils disappear and better days and people reappear.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, January, 1893

THE ADEPTS AND MODERN SCIENCE

Modern science is a bugbear for many a good Theosophist, causing him to hide his real opinions for fear they should conflict with science. But the latter is an unstable quantity, always shifting its ground, although never devoid of an overbearing assurance, even when it takes back what it had previously asserted. The views of scientific men have frequently been brought forward as a strong objection to the possibility of the existence of Adepts, Masters, Mahatmas, perfected men who have a complete knowledge of all that modern science is endeavoring to discover. Many trembling members of the Society, who do not doubt the Masters and their powers, would fain have those beings make their peace with science, so that the views of nature and man put forward by the Mahatmas might coincide with the ideas of modern investigators. It will be profitable to try to discover what is the attitude of the Adepts towards modern science.

The question was raised quite early in the history of the Society in the correspondence which Mr. Sinnett had with the Adept K. H. in India, and there is in the answers published by Mr. Sinnett in the Occult World enough to indicate clearly what is the attitude of such beings to modern science. That book will often have to be referred to in future years, because the letters given in its pages are valuable in more senses than has been thought; they ought to be studied by every member of the Society, and the ideas contained therein made a part of our mental furniture.

It is evident from the remarks made in the Occult World that the persons to whom the letters were written had a high respect for modern science; that they would have liked to see science convinced of the machinery of the occult Cosmos, with all that that implies; that they thought if modern scientific men could be convinced by extraordinary phenomena or otherwise about the Masters and Theosophy, very beneficial results to the Society would follow. There can be no doubt that if such a convincing were possible the results would have followed, but the hope of convincing our scientists seemed vain, because no way exists to alter the attitude of materialistic modern science except by a complete reform in its methods and theories. This would be a bringing back of ancient thought, and not agreeable to modern men. To pander in any way to science would be impossible to the Masters. They hold the position that if the rules and conclusions of nineteenth century science differ from those of the Lodge of the Brothers, then so much the worse for modern conclusions, as they must all be revised in the future. The radical difference between occult and modern materialistic science is that the former has philanthropy as its basis, whereas the latter has no such basis. Let us now see what can be discovered from the letters written by K.H. to Mr. Sinnett and another.

Mr. Sinnett writes,

The idea I had especially in my mind when I wrote the letter above referred to was that, of all tests of phenomena one could wish for, the best would be the production in our presence in India of a copy of the London Times of that day's date. With such a piece of evidence in my hand, I argued, I would undertake to convert everybody in Simla who was capable of linking two ideas together, to a belief in the possibility of obtaining by occult agency physical results which were beyond the control of modern science.

To this he received a reply from K.H., who said:

Precisely because the test of the London newspaper would close the mouths of the sceptics it is inadmissible. See it in what light you will, the world is yet in its first stage of disenthralment, hence unprepared. . . . But as on the one hand science would find itself unable in its present state to account for the wonders given in its name, and on the other the ignorant masses would still be left to view the phenomenon in the light of a miracle, every one who would be thus made a witness to the occurrence would be thrown off his balance and the result would be deplorable.

In this is the first indication of the philanthropic basis, although later it is definitely stated. For here we see that the Adepts would not do that which might result in the mental confusion of so many persons as are included in "ignorant masses." He then goes on to say:

Were we to accede to your desires, know you really what consequence would follow in the trail of success? The inexorable shadow which follows all human innovations moves on, yet few are they who are ever conscious of its approach and dangers. What are they then to expect who would offer to the world an innovation which, owing to human ignorance, if believed in will surely be attributed to those dark agencies that two-thirds of humanity believe in and dread as yet?

Here again we see that Adepts will not do that which, however agreeable to science, extraordinary and interesting in itself, might result in causing the masses once more to consider that they had proof of the agency of devils or other dreaded unseen beings. The object of the Adepts being to increase the knowledge of the greater number and to destroy dogmatism with superstition, they will not do that which would in any way tend to defeat what they have in view. In the letter quoted from, the Adept then goes on to show that the number of persons free from ignorant prejudice and religious bigotry is still very small. It is very true that such an extraordinary thing as the production of the Times in India across several thousand miles of ocean might convince even hundreds of scientific men of the possibility of this being done by a knowledge of law, but their belief would have but little effect on the immense masses of uneducated persons in the West who are still bound up in religious bigotry and prejudice. The Adept hints that "the inexorable shadow that follows all human innovations" would be a sudden blazing forth again of ignorant superstition among the masses, which, gaining force, and sweeping all other men along in the immense current thus generated, the very purpose of the phenomenon would then be negatived. On this the Adept writes a little further on,

As for human nature in general, it is the same now as it was a million years ago, prejudice based upon selfishness, a general unwillingness to give up an established order of things for new modes of life and thought - and occult study requires all that and much more - proud and stubborn resistance to truth if it but upsets the previous notion of things: such are the characteristics of the age. However successful, the danger would be growing proportionately with success,

that is, the danger would grow in proportion to the success of the phenomenon produced.

No choice would soon remain but to go on, ever crescendo, or to fall, in this endless struggle with prejudice and ignorance, killed by your own weapons. Test after test would be required and would have to be furnished; every subsequent phenomenon expected to be more marvelous than the preceding one. Your daily remark is that one cannot be expected to believe unless he becomes an eye-witness. Would the lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy the whole world of skeptics? . . . In common with many you blame us for our great secrecy. Yet we know something of human nature, for the experience of long centuries, aye of ages, has taught us. And we know that so long as science has anything to learn, and a shadow of religious dogmatism lingers in the hearts of the multitudes, the world's prejudices have to be conquered step by step, not at a rush.

These simple remarks are philosophical, historically accurate, and perfectly true. All spiritualistic mediums know that their visitors require test after test. Even the dabbler in psychic matters is aware that his audience or his friends require a constant increase of phenomena and results, and every earnest student of occultism is aware of the fact that in his own circle there are fifty unbelievers to one believer, and that the believers require that they shall see the same thing over again that others report.

Proceeding with this matter to another letter, the Adept says:

We will be at cross purposes in our correspondence until it has been made entirely plain that occult science has its own methods of research as fixed and arbitrary as the methods of its antithesis, physical science, are in their way. If the latter has its dicta, so also has the former.

He then goes on to show that the person desiring to know their science must abide by their rules, and taking his correspondent as an illustration, he says:

You seek all this, and yet, as you say yourself, hitherto you have not found sufficient reasons to even give up your modes of life, directly hostile to such communication.

This means of course that scientific men as well as other inquirers must conform to the rules of occult science if they wish to know it, and must themselves change their modes of thought and action. He then goes on to analyze the motives of his correspondent, and these motives would be the same as those impelling science to investigate. They are described to be the desire to have positive proofs of forces in nature unknown to science, the hope to appropriate them, the wish to demonstrate their existence to some others in the West, the ability to contemplate future life as an objective reality built upon knowledge and not faith, and to learn the truth about the Lodge and the Brothers. These motives, he says, are selfish from the standpoint of the Adepts, and this again emphasizes the philanthropy behind occult science. The motives are selfish because, as he says:

The highest aspiration for the welfare of humanity become tainted with selfishness if in the mind of the philanthropist there lurks a shadow of a desire for self-benefit, or a tendency to do injustice, even where these exist unconsciously to himself. Yet you have ever discussed but to put down the idea of a universal brotherhood, questioned its usefulness, and advised to remodel the Theosophical Society on the principle of a college for the special study of occultism.

The Adept makes it very clear that such a proposition could not be entertained, showing once more that the Brotherhood, and not the study of secret laws of nature, is the real object the inner Lodge has in view. Brotherhood as an object is the highest philanthropy, and especially so when connected with science.

In another letter, written after consultation with much higher Adepts, who have never been mentioned and who are utterly unknown even to Theosophists, being too high to be encountered, he takes up the same subject, saying,

In conformity with exact science you define but one cosmic energy, and see no difference between the energy expended by the traveller who pushes aside the bush that obstructs his path and the scientific experimenter who expends an equal amount of energy in setting the pendulum in motion. We do; for we know there is a world of difference between the two. The one uselessly dissipates and scatters force; the other concentrates and stores it; and here please understand that I do not refer to the relative utility of the two, as one might imagine, but only to the fact that in the one case there is brute force flung out without any transmutation of that brute energy into the higher potential form of spiritual dynamics, and in the other there is just that. . . . Now for us poor unknown philanthropists no fact of either of these sciences is interesting except in the degree of its potentiality for moral results, and in the ratio of its usefulness to mankind. And what, in its proud isolation, can be more utterly indifferent to every one and everything, or more bound to nothing but the selfish requisites for its advancement, than this materialistic science of fact? May I ask, then, what have the laws of Faraday, Tyndall, or others to do with philanthropy in their abstract relations with humanity, viewed as an intelligent whole? What care they for man as an isolated atom of this great and harmonious whole, even though they may be sometimes of practical use to him? Cosmic energy is something eternal and incessant; matter is indestructible: and there stand the scientific facts. Doubt them and you are an ignoramus; deny them, a dangerous lunatic, a bigot: pretend to improve upon the theories, an impertinent charlatan. And yet even these scientific facts never suggested any proof to the world of experimenters that nature consciously prefers that matter should be indestructible under organic rather than inorganic forms, and that she works slowly but incessantly towards the realization of this object - the evolution of conscious life out of unconscious material. . . . Still less does exact science perceive that while the building ant, the busy bee, the nidifacient bird, accumulates each in its own humble way as much cosmic energy in its potential form as a Hayden, a Plato, or a ploughman turning his furrow. . . . The hunter who kills game for his pleasure or profit, the positivist who applies his intellect to proving that plus multiplied by plus equals minus, are wasting and scattering energy no less than the tiger which springs upon its prey. They all rob nature instead of enriching her, and will all in the degree of their intelligence find themselves accountable. . . . Exact experimental science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, philanthropy - therefore can make no claim upon our help until it blends itself with metaphysics. Being a cold classification of facts outside of man, and existing before and after him, her domain of usefulness ceases for us at the outer boundary of these facts; and whatever the inferences and results for humanity from the materials acquired by her method, she little cares. Therefore as our sphere lies entirely outside of hers, - as far as the path of Uranus is outside the earth's, - we distinctly refuse to be broken on any wheel of her construction. . . . The truths and mysteries of Occultism constitute, indeed, a body of the highest spiritual importance, at once profound and practical for the world at-large, yet it is not as an addition to the tangled mass of theory or speculation that they are being given to you, but for their practical bearing on the interests of mankind.

We have in these extracts a clear outline of the exact position of the Adepts towards modern science, together with the statement of the reasons why they do not come forth by astounding phenomena to convince the world of their existence. The reason for the refusal is that the world is not ready, but is in such a condition that the end would be obstructed and damage be the result. Their attitude to modern science is that they accept the facts of science wherever they prove the truths of Occultism, but they consider modern science to be materialistic and also devoid of philanthropy. This we must admit to be the case, and as the student who has had experience in these matters knows for himself that the Adepts have the truth and possess a knowledge of nature's laws, he approves of their refusing to come down to science and of their demand that science must rise to them. He also knows that in the course of the cycles the mass of men will have been educated and developed to such a position that a new school, at once religious and scientific, will have possession of the earth and rule among all men who possess civilization.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, August, 1893

ADEPTS AND POLITICS

The communication in your December number from Chhabigram Dolatram, headed as above, is a piece of special pleading, directed against the adepts, and flowing from as source not friendly to either the cause of Theosophy or to the Masters. Personally, I do not believe Mr. Dolatram wrote the article; he simply allowed his name to be appended to it. It is, to my thinking, the emanation of a European Christian and royalist mind.

It is quite true, as you say, in your comment that I referred in my article to adepts in general. But my own unsupported opinion was and is that the American revolution was a just one, started to accomplish a beneficial end, and that the Hindu or Tibetan Mahatmas would not be disgraced by any connection with it, notwithstanding the royalist and anti-republican feelings of the real authors of Mr. Dolatram's paper. That revolution was not degraded, in the American side, by the shedding of blood except in lawful battle for human rights.

Allow me to point to a historical fact in connection with the Count St. Germain, which will shed some light on the question of what, if any, connection do some adepts have with justifiable revolutions.

One of the well-known generals who fought with Washington, in the Continental army against the British, was General Fred. Wm. Von Stueben, a Prussian. In 1777 he was in Paris, and at the same time the Count St. Germain was Minister of War there. They were well acquainted with each other, and the Count induced Von Steuben to come over to America and offer his sword to Genl. Washington. He did so, was gladly received, and did splendid service in the cause of liberty. Everybody knows that St. Germain was an Adept, and the fact above detailed is set forth in many publications and letters of authentic force.

Mr. Dolatram picks up the expression "brother Franklin." I never heard, nor ever said, that Franklin was a Theosophist. He was a Freemason, and therefore a "brother," so was Washington and Jefferson. A sincere mason will be a just man who reveres liberty and abhors a tyrant.

As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita of himself, we may hear the Adept saying: "I am manifested in every age for the purpose of restoring duty and destroying evil doing."

EX ASIATIC

Theosophist, June, 1884

THE ADEPTS IN AMERICA IN 1776

BY AN EX-ASIATIC

The following suggestions and statements are made entirely upon the personal responsibility of the writer, and without the knowledge or consent - as far as he knows - of the adepts who are in general terms therein referred to.

The reflecting mind is filled with astonishment upon reviewing the history of the rise of the United States of N. America, when it perceives that dogmatic theology has no foundation in any part of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution for the structure which it fain would raise and has so often since tried to erect within and upon the government. We are astonished because those documents were formulated and that government established at a time when dogmatism of one kind or another had supreme sway. Although the Puritans and others had come to America for religious freedom, they were still very dogmatic and tenacious of their own peculiar theories and creed; so that if we found in this fundamental law much about religion and religious establishments, we would not be surprised. But in vain do we look for it, in vain did the supporters of the iron church attempt to lay the needed corner stone, and today America rejoices at it, and has thereby found it possible to grow with the marvellous growth that has been the wonder of Europe.

The nullification of these efforts made by bigotry in 1776 was due to the adepts who now look over and give the countenance of their great name to the Theosophical Society.

They oversaw the drafting of the Declaration and the drawing of the Constitution, and that is why no foothold is to be found for these blatant Christians who desire to inject God into the constitution.

In the declaration, from which freedom sprang, "nature and nature's god" are referred to. In the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs the natural rights of man are specified, such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The king is spoken of as being unworthy to be "the head of a civilized nation," nothing being said as to whether he was the head, or worthy to be, of a Christian one.

In appealing to their British brethren, the declaration says the appeal is "made to their native justice and magnanimity." All reference to religion and Christianity or God's commands are left out. This was for the very good reason that for 1700 years religion had battled against progress, against justice, against magnanimity, against the rights of man. And in the concluding sentence the signers mutually pledge each other to its support ignoring all appeals to God.

In the constitution of 1787 the preamble declares that the instrument was made for union, for justice, for tranquillity and defence, the general good and liberty. Art. VI says no religious test as a qualification for office shall ever be required, and the 1st Amendment prohibits an establishment of religion or restraint of its free exercise.

The great Theosophical Adepts in looking around the world for a mind through which they could produce in America the reaction which was then needed, found in England, Thomas Paine. In 1774 they influenced him, through the help of that worthy Brother Benjamin Franklin, to come to America. He came here and was the main instigator of the separation of the Colonies from the British Crown. At the suggestion of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and other Freemasons, whose minds through the teachings of the symbolic degrees of masonry were fitted to reason correctly, and to reject theological conservation, he wrote "Common Sense," which was the torch to the pile whose blaze burned away the bonds between England and America. For "Common Sense" he was often publicly thanked. George Washington wrote September 10th, 1783, to Paine: "I shall be exceedingly happy to see you. Your presence may remind Congress of your past services to this country, and if it is in my power to impress them, command my best exertions with freedom, as they will be rendered cheerfully by one who entertains a lively sense of the importance of your works." And again in June 1784, in a letter to Madison, Washington says: "Can nothing be done in our assembly for poor Paine? Must the merits and services of 'Common Sense' continue to glide down the stream of time unrewarded by this country? His writings certainly have had a powerful effect upon the public mind. Ought they not then to meet an adequate return?" (1)

In the "Age of Reason" which he wrote in Paris several years after, Paine says: "I saw, or at least I thought I saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of America; and it appeared to me that unless the Americans changed the plan they were then pursuing and declared themselves independent, they would not only involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their means." Further on he says: "There are two distinct classes of thoughts; those produced by reflection, and those that bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always made it a rule to treat these voluntary visitors with civility, and it is from them I have acquired all the knowledge that I have."

These "voluntary visitors" were injected into his brain by the Adepts, Theosophists. Seeing that a new order of ages was about to commence and that there was a new chance for freedom and the brotherhood of man, they laid before the eye of Thomas Paine - who they knew could be trusted to stand almost alone with the lamp of truth in his hand amidst others who in "times that tried men's souls" quaked with fear, - a "vast scene opening itself to Mankind in the affairs of America." The result was the Declaration, the Constitution for America. And as if to give point to these words and to his declaration that he saw this vast scene opening itself, this new order of ages, the design of the reverse side of the U.S. great seal is a pyramid whose capstone is removed with the blazing eye in a triangle over it dazzling the sight, above it are the words "the heavens approve," while underneath appears the startling sentence "a new order of ages."

That he had in his mind's eye a new order of ages we cannot doubt upon reading in his "Rights of Man," Part 2, Chap. 2, "no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. She (America) made a stand not for herself alone, but for the world, and looked beyond the advantage she could receive." In Chap. 4, "The case and circumstances of America present themselves as in the beginning of a world...there is a morning of reason rising upon man, on the subject of Government, that has not appeared before."

The design "of the seal" was not an accident, but was actually intended to symbolize the building and firm founding of a new order of ages. It was putting into form the idea which by means of a "voluntary visitor" was presented to the mind of Thomas Paine, of a vast scene opening itself, the beginning in America of "a new order of ages." That side of the seal has never been cut or used, and at this day the side in use has not the sanction of law. In the spring of 1841, when Daniel Webster was Secretary of State, a new seal was cut, and instead of the eagle holding in his sinister claw 13 arrows as intended, he holds only six. Not only was this change unauthorized, but the cause for it is unknown.(2) When the other side is cut and used, will not the new order of ages have actually been established?

More then is claimed for the Theosophical Adepts than the changing of baser metal into gold, or the possession of such a merely material thing as the elixir of life. They watch the progress of man and help him on in his halting flight up the steep plane of progress. They hovered over Washington, Jefferson, and all the other brave freemasons who dared to found a free Government in the West, which could be pure from the dross of dogmatism, they cleared their minds, inspired their pens and left upon the great seal of this mighty nation the memorial of their presence.

Theosophist, October, 1883

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES IN LIFE

That view of one's Karma which leads to a bewailing of the unkind fate which has kept advantages in life away from us, is a mistaken estimate of what is good and what is not good for the soul. It is quite true that we may often find persons surrounded with great advantages but who make no corresponding use of them or pay but little regard to them. But this very fact in itself goes to show that the so-called advantageous position in life is really not good nor fortunate in the true and inner meaning of those words. The fortunate one has money and teachers, ability, and means to travel and fill the surroundings with works of art, with music and with ease. But these are like the tropical airs that enervate the body; these enervate the character instead of building it up. They do not in themselves tend to the acquirement of any virtue whatever but rather to the opposite by reason of the constant steeping of the senses in the subtle essences of the sensuous world. They are like sweet things which, being swallowed in quantities, turn to acids in the inside of the body. Thus they can be seen to be the opposite of good Karma.

What then is good Karma and what bad? The all embracing and sufficient answer is this:

Good Karma is that kind which the Ego desires and requires; bad, that which the Ego neither desires nor requires.

And in this the Ego, being guided and controlled by law, by justice, by the necessities of upward evolution, and not by fancy or selfishness or revenge or ambition, is sure to choose the earthly habitation that is most likely, out of all possible of selection, to give a Karma for the real advantage in the end. In this light then, even the lazy, indifferent life of one born rich as well as that of one born low and wicked is right.

When we, from this plane, inquire into the matter, we see that the "advantages" which one would seek were he looking for the strengthening of character, the unloosing of soul force and energy, would be called by the selfish and personal world "disadvantages." Struggle is needed for the gaining of strength; buffeting adverse eras is for the gaining of depth; meagre opportunities may be used for acquiring fortitude; poverty should breed generosity.

The middle ground in all this, and not the extreme, is what we speak of. To be born with the disadvantage of drunken, diseased parents, in the criminal portion of the community, is a punishment which constitutes a wait on the road of evolution. It is a necessity generally because the Ego has drawn about itself in a former life some tendencies which cannot be eliminated in any other way. But we should not forget that sometimes, often in the grand total, a pure, powerful Ego incarnates in just such awful surroundings, remaining good and pure all the time, and staying there for the purpose of uplifting and helping others.

But to be born in extreme poverty is not a disadvantage. Jesus said well when, repeating what many a sage had said before, he described the difficulty experienced by the rich man in entering heaven. If we look at life from the narrow point of view of those who say there is but one earth and after it either eternal heaven or hell, then poverty will be regarded as a great disadvantage and something to be avoided. But seeing that we have many lives to live, and that they will give us all needed opportunity for building up character, we must admit that poverty is not, in itself, necessarily bad Karma. Poverty has no natural tendency to engender selfishness, but wealth requires it.

A sojourn for everyone in a body born to all the pains, deprivations and miseries of modern poverty, is good and just. Inasmuch as the present state of civilization with all its horrors of poverty, of crime, of disease, of wrong relations almost everywhere, has grown out of the past, in which we were workers, it is just that we should experience it all at some point in our career. If some person who now pays no heed to the misery of men and women should next life be plunged into one of the slums of our cities for rebirth, it would imprint on the soul the misery of such a situation. This would lead later on to compassion and care for others. For, unless we experience the effects of a state of life we cannot understand or appreciate it from a mere description. The personal part involved in this may not like it as a future prospect, but if the Ego decides that the next personality shall be there then all will be an advantage and not a disadvantage.

If we look at the field of operation in us of the so-called advantages of opportunity, money, travel and teachers we see at once that it all has to do with the brain and nothing else. Languages, archæology, music, satiating sight with beauty, eating the finest food, wearing the best clothes, traveling to many places and thus infinitely varying impressions on ear and eye; all these begin and end in the brain and not in the soul or character. As the brain is a portion of the unstable, fleeting body the whole phantasmagoria disappears from view and use when the note of death sends its awful vibration through the physical form and drives out the inhabitant. The wonderful central master-ganglion disintegrates, and nothing at all is left but some faint aromas here and there depending on the actual love within for any one pursuit or image or sensation. Nothing left of it all but a few tendencies-- skandhas , not of the very best. The advantages then turn out in the end to be disadvantages altogether. But imagine the same brain and body not in places of ease, struggling for a good part of life, doing their duty and not in a position to please the senses: this experience will burn in, stamp upon, carve into the character, more energy, more power and more fortitude. It is thus through the ages that great characters are made. The other mode is the mode of the humdrum average which is nothing after all, as yet, but an animal.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path , July, 1895

AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS

In the path of January a discussion on the subjects of "Mind Cure" and the like was begun. Since then we have had some letters from and conversations with those who think that the article is not right, or that it takes a wrong view, or that it does not state all the views of all the schools, and when we referred the enquirers to publications of "professors" of these schools we were told that they do not represent the thing properly, and so on. In this article it is purposed to refer to some of these published utterances of the said professors, so that they may be examined.

In a journal called Christian Science for the month of January, published in Boston apparently under the auspices of a college of the cult, is the following from an article entitled "My Healing Message," by Minna Peckham:

I now declare all pain, sickness, or death to be nothing - nothing. There is no sickness. I deny that there ever was any sickness. I do not believe in poverty; I know there is no poverty; there never was any poverty; There never will be any poverty. We have great stores of wealth; every man, woman, and child is rich. They want for nothing. I do not believe in storms. I know there are no storms. There never were any storms; there never will be any. I deny the reality of storms henceforth and forevermore. I do not believe in accidents, I know there never were any accidents and there never never shall be any.

And all this raving is uttered in serious earnest, winding through many more paragraphs, and ending as follows: "I am a messenger of God's love and a bearer of good tidings of what is true."

But we are told by some that this sort of thing "is not the Simon pure straight; it is not representative." The difficulty is that the different "metaphysicians" say the same of each other, and when they are cornered by something like this they say "O that is not the proper thing." But a still greater difficulty is that the folly just quoted is the exact outcome of the other systems, for they all have a system of affirming and denying that must, if carried to its logical conclusion, lead to just what Miss Peckham says. She is evidently not afraid to boldly go to the end and reduce herself and all other things and beings on this plane to nothing. Indeed, it is quite proper to go still further than her "message" in order to carry out the line of argument laid down, in the way: "There is nothing; I do not think, I never did, I never will, and the thoughts I have just uttered have no existence, and therefore all that I have said is nothing, and hence all that I have denied is just the opposite." This is quite logical and proper, and reduces the whole matter to its right position. The whole set of affirmations and denials reminds one of the passages in the writings of the great Seer Swedenborg, where he describes those souls who affirm and deny anything at all and reduce any statement to the very opposite of what may have been said. We are not joking, but are in sober earnest and call on all forms of argument and all schools of real literature to support our position. Of course some will not agree, but we are willing to rest the case with those who have been educated to understand the true course of an argument. There are rules of logic which must be followed unless we are come upon an age when all these things have passed away. And the "Healing Message" has been taken up now because the publication appeals to theosophists and advertises theosophical books.

RELATIVITY

As soon as the Absolute began to manifest itself, or, if you like, immediately that Almighty God created things and beings, relativity begins, and all minds are caught in its net and are obliged to look at things relatively. And so it comes about that we have to say "good" and "evil," as well as all the other words that connote these relative things and ideas. If there were no evil there would be no good. It is therefore wrong in logic and common sense to say there is no evil. It is only the desire of the optimist, who will not look at things as they are, that causes people to affirm that all is good or that there is no evil. It is all relative, and there is both evil and good, just as light and darkness exist. For if there were not the one we would never know anything about the other, since these ideas arise from contrasts.

In the so-called metaphysical arts or "sciences" the relativity of things and ideas is constantly ignored from the desire to have everything right and just as we want it. But how can these optimists know they are right when they sweep away relativity? and how shall any of us say that sorrow and poverty do not exist? Poverty is a fact - the fact of being without means or the things that can be bought with means, and this is so whether the general wants of the nation you live in are small or large. It is in no sense a sentiment or due to imagination. Hence poverty here will be riches for the man in India, and so on, but all the time there is poverty in any land, no matter how the relativity in respect to that sort of poverty alters in another.

So it is against the experience of all to say there is no poverty, and it is also contrary to logic. But it is not wrong to say that the effect on your mind may alter as you look at the matter; and so you may be poor yet at the same time be contented. This, though spiritual or moral richness, is none the less actual poverty. But proper contentment does not come from violations of logic and fact, but from a right view of this universe of relativity. And such right view will never be attained by denials that con not be sustained.

Many of the objections made to the views in the January article were wide of the mark, for they took the ground that the writer held, as they said other members of the Society do, the opinion that we should go on thinking we are sick when we are not, and that we are miserable when it is only a result of morbidity of mind. Such is not the position at all. Much of our misery is due to discontent and to selfishness, and will disappear as we grow contented and whole-souled. Many of our bodily complaints fade away when we have restored the mind to normal action. But this normal action is not secured by bad logic and worse statistics. It is done by recognizing the fact that "the mind is its own place, and can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell." As we see that one set of circumstances make one man happy and another the very opposite, we know that much depends on the way in which we look at our surroundings; but this is an old idea, one always held by the most ancient of the ancients. What right have the "metaphysicians" to arrogate it to themselves? All good physicians have said that much depends on the mind of the patient, but that does not do away with the necessity for good physicians; it only calls for more sense on the part of the patients.

Let us suppose a nation imbued from birth to death with the absurd denials and affirmations we have quoted, and try to imagine what would be the effect on the next incarnation of such a people. Probably Miss Peckham does not believe in reincarnation, but, if she did, might say the effect would be good. But would all the poverty and the storms and earthquakes have come to an end? Hardly, since in the case of the natural throes of mother Earth what thoughts may cause them are beyond our purview and unaffected by our denials. Would the contrasts that really constitute poverty, no matter what the sphere of being, cease to have existence? We think not, unless everything by the remarkable process outlined in the paper quoted from had been reduced to one dead level. But we know at least this, that evolution is the law of nature in all departments and that no dead level is possible, and under the law of evolution there must be these contrasts, no matter how high we go or how long continue in the great stream. Hence if these affirmations and denials should have the effect of removing us from this sphere to another, there the deniers and affirmers would have to begin the weary process over again of plunging themselves into a sea of illusionary thought devoid of logic and merely optimistic. If this picture be correct, is it wise to continue the system or in any way to give it moral support?

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, March, 1892

THE ALLEGORICAL UMBRELLA

In the Buddhist stories there are numerous references to umbrellas. When Buddha is said to have granted to his disciples the power of seeing what they called "Buddha Fields," they saw myriads of Buddhas sitting under trees and jewelled umbrellas. There are not wanting in the Hindu books and monuments references to and representations of umbrellas being held over personages. In a very curious and extremely old stone relievo at the Seven Pagodas in India, showing the conflict between Durga and the demons, the umbrella is figured over the heads of the Chiefs. It is not our intention to exalt this common and useful article to a high place in occultism, but we wish to present an idea in connection with it that has some value for the true student.

In the Upanishads we read the invocation: "Reveal, O Pushan, that face of the true sun which is now hidden by a golden lid." This has reference to the belief of all genuine occultists, from the earliest times to the present day, that there is a "true sun," and that the sun we see is a secondary one; or, to put it in plainer language, that there is an influence or power in the sun which may be used, if obtained by the mystic, for beneficent purposes, and which, if not guarded, hidden or obscured by a cover, would work destruction to those who might succeed in drawing it out. This was well known in ancient Chaldea, and also to the old Chinese astronomers: The latter had certain instruments which they used for the purpose of concentrating particular rays of sunlight as yet unknown to modern science and now forgotten by the flowery land philosophers. So much for that sun we see, whose probable death is calculated by some aspiring scientists who deal in absurdities. But there is the true centre of which the sun in heaven is a symbol and partial reflection. This centre let us place for the time with the Dhyan Chohans or planetary spirits. It is all knowing, and so intensely powerful that, were a struggling disciple to be suddenly introduced to its presence unprepared, he would be consumed, both body and soul. And this is the goal we are all striving after, and many of us asking to see even at the opening of the race. But for our protection a cover, or umbrella, has been placed beneath IT. The ribs are the Rishees, or Adepts, or Mahatmas; the Elder Brothers of the race. The handle is in every man's hand. And although each man is, or is to be, connected with some particular one of those Adepts, he can also receive the influence from the true centre coming down through the handle.

The light, life, knowledge, and power falling upon this cover permeate in innumerable streams the whole mass of men beneath, whether they be students or not. As the disciple strives upward, he begins to separate himself from the great mass of human beings, and becomes in a more or less definite manner connected with the ribs. Just as the streams of water flow down from the points of the ribs of our umbrellas, so the spiritual influences pour out from the adepts who form the frame of the protecting cover, without which poor humanity would be destroyed by the blaze from the spiritual world.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, February, 1890

AN ALLEGORY

Walking within the garden of his heart, the pupil suddenly came upon the Master, and was glad, for he had but just finished a task in His service which he hastened to lay at His feet.

"See, Master," said he, "this is done; now give me other teaching to do."

The Master looked upon him sadly yet indulgently, as one might upon a child which can not understand.

"There are already many to teach intellectual conceptions of the Truth," he replied. "Thinkest thou to serve best by adding thyself to their number?"

The pupil was perplexed.

"Ought we not to proclaim the Truth from the very housetops, until the whole world shall have heard?" he asked.

"And then-"

"Then the whole world will surely accept it."

"Nay," replied the Master, "the Truth is not of the intellect, but of the heart. See!"

The pupil looked, and saw the Truth as though it were a White Light, flooding the whole earth; yet none reaching the green and living plants which so sorely needed its rays, because of dense layers of clouds intervening.

"The clouds are the human intellect," said the Master. "Look again."

Intently gazing, the pupil saw here and there faint rifts in the clouds, through which the Light struggled in broken, feeble beams. Each rift was caused by a little vortex of vibrations, and looking down through the openings thus made the pupil perceived that each vortex had its origin in a human heart.

Only by adding to and enlarging the rifts will the Light ever reach the earth," said the Master. "Is it best, then, to pour out more Light upon the clouds, or to establish a vortex of heart force? The latter thou must accomplish unseen and unnoticed, and even unthanked. The former will bring thee praise and notice among men. Both are necessary: both are Our work; but - the rifts are so few! Art strong enough to forego the praise and make of thyself a heart center of pure impersonal force?"

The pupil sighed, for it was a sore question.

HIERONYMUM

Path, October, 1893

AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?

-Genesis IV, 9

Many students, in their search for light, find divers problems presented to them for solution; questions so puzzling from the contradictory aspects which they present, that the true course is difficult of attainment for those who seek Right Living.

One of these questions, Is it our duty to interfere if we see a wrong being done? arises.

The question of duty is one that can be decided fully only by each individual himself. No code of laws or table of rules unchanging and inflexible will be given, under which all must act, or find duty.

We are so ignorant or so newly acquainted with a portion of the Divine Will that generally we are poorly fitted to declare decisively what is wrong, or evil.

Each man is the law unto himself - the law as to right and wrong, good and evil. No other individual may violate the law of that man, any more than any other law, without producing the inevitable result, the penalty of an infracted law.

I dare not declare that any one thing or course is evil in another. For me it may be evil. I am not wise enough to know what it is for another. Only the Supreme knows, for He only can read the heart, the mind, the soul of each. "Thou shalt not judge," saith the sacred writing.

My duty is clear in many places, but in the performing of it I may neither act as a judge or hold animosity, anger, or disgust.

Were a man to abuse an animal, surely I must interfere to prevent suffering to the helpless, dumb and weak, for so we are ajoined. This done, my duty lies in helping my brother, for he knew not what he did.

My aim is to find Wisdom, and my duty, to do away with ignorance wherever it is encountered. His act was caused by ignorance. Were a man to abuse wife or child through unwise use of wine or drug truly it is my duty to prevent suffering or sorrow for either wife or child, and also to prevent greater misery - perhaps murder. They are human beings, my fellows. This done, my duty lies toward the man, not in condemnation, but seeking the cause that makes him unwise, strive to alleviate - if not free him from it. He also is my brother.

If men steal, lie, cheat, betray the innocent or are betrayed by the knowing , my duty lies in preventing for others, if I may, sorrow and anguish, pain and want, misery, suicide or bloodshed, which may be, for others the result of these acts.

My duty lies in preventing effects such as these from love for and a desire to help all men, not because men's actions seem to me wrong or their courses evil. I know not the causes of their actions, nor all the reasons why they are permitted. How then may I say this or that man is evil, this or that thing is wrong? The effects may to me seem evil, inasmuch as such appears to be the result for others. Here my duty is to prevent evil to other mortals in the way that seems most wise.

     Finally this is better that one do
	 His own task as he may even though he fail,
     Than take tasks not his own, though they seem good.
                   -Song Celestial (Bhagavat-Gita)

He who seeks "the small old path" has many duties to perform. His duty to mankind, his family - nature - himself and his creator, but duty here means something very different from that which is conveyed by the time and lip-worn word, Duty. Our comprehension of the term is generally based upon society's or man's selfish interpretation. It is quite generally thought that duty means the performance of a series of acts which others think I ought to perform, whereas, it more truly means the performance of actions by me which I know are good for others, or the wisest at the moment.

It would be quite dangerous for me to take upon myself the duty of another, either because he told me it was good, or that it was duty. It would be dangerous for him and me if I assumed that which he felt it was good to do, for that is his duty, and cannot be mine. That which is given him to do I cannot do for him. That which is given me to do no living thing can do for me. If I attempt to do another's duty then I assume that which belongs not to me, was not given me. I am a thief, taking that which does not belong to me. My brother consenting thereto becomes an idler, fails to comprehend the lesson, shifts the responsibility, and between us we accomplish nothing.

We are instructed to do good. That is duty. In doing good all that we do is covered, that for which we are here is being accomplished and that is - duty. We are enjoined to do good where it is safe. Not safe for ourselves, but safe for the objects toward which our duty points. Often we behold beings suffering great wrong. Our emotions prompt us to rush forward and in some way prevent the continuance of it. Still the wise man knows it is not safe. Were he to do so his efforts would only arouse the antagonism and passions of superior numbers, whose unrestrained and ungoverned wills would culminate in the perpetration of greater wrongs upon the one who already suffers. It is safe to do good, or my duty, after I find how to do it in the way that will not create evil, harm others or beget greater evils.

For him who seeks the upward way there is no duty - for nothing is a duty. He has learned that the word conveys an erroneous meaning when applied to the doings of the Seeker. It implies the performance of that which savors of a task, or a certain required or demanded act necessary before progress is made or other deeds be performed. Of duty, there is none such as this.

He learns to do good and that which appears the wisest at the time, forgetting self so fully that he only knows his doing good to others - forgetting self so far that he forgets to think whether he is doing his duty or not - entering Nirvana to this extent that he does not remember that he is doing his duty. That for him is duty.

"Resist not evil," saith one of the Wise. He who said this knew full well his duty, and desired to convey to us knowledge. That he did not mean men to sit idly by while ignorance let slip the dogs of pain, anguish, suffering, want and murder, is surely true. That he did not mean men to kneel in puerile simulation of holiness by the roadside, while their fellow men suffer torture, wrong or abuse, is still more true. That he did not intend a man to sit silently a looker-on while that which is called evil worked its will upon others when by the lifting of a finger, perhaps, its intentions might be thwarted and annulled - is truth itself. These all would be neglect of a portion of the whole duty of man. He who taught that men should "resist not evil" desired them only to forget themselves. Men think that all things which are disagreeable to them, are evil. By resistance he meant complaint, anger and objection to or against the inevitable, disagreeable or sorrowful things of life, that come to self, and he did not mean man to go forth in the guise of a martyr, hugging these same penalties to his bosom while he proclaims himself thereby the possessor of the magic pass word (which he will never own and which is never uttered in that way): I have Suffered.

If men revile, persecute or wrong one, why resist? Perhaps it is evil, but so long as it affects one's-self only, it is no great matter. If want, sorrow or pain come to one why resist or cry out? In the resistance or war against them we create greater evils. Coming to one's-self, they should have little weight, while at the same time they carry invaluable lessons in their hands. Rightly studied they cause one to forget himself in the desire to assist others when similarly placed, and the Lotus of duty - or love for man - to bloom out of the Nile mire of life. Resist not evil, for it is inseparable from life. It is our duty to live, and accept uncomplainingly, all of life. Resist not evil, but rather learn of it all the good which in reality it only veils.

Seek in it, as well as in the gleaming good, for the Mystery, and there will come forth from both the self-same form upon whose forehead is written "Duty," which being interpreted, meaneth efforts for the good of all other men, and over whose heart is written: "I am my brother's keeper."

AN ANCIENT TELEPHONE

It has been the custom of many people to belittle the ancients by assuming that they knew but little of mechanics, certainly not so much as we do. The builders of the pyramids have been described by modern guessers as making their calculations and carrying on the most wonderful engineering operations with the aid of pools of water for obtaining levels and star angles: they could not, it was assumed, have instruments except the most crude. So also the old Chinese were mere rude workmen, although it is well known that they discovered the precession of the equinoxes over 2,000 years ago. Of late, evidence has been slowly coming out that tends to show the ancients as perhaps having as much, if not more, than we have. So the following from the New York Evening Sun, an influential daily paper, will be of interest. It says, on May 31, 1894:

An English officer by the name of Harrington has discovered in India a working telephone between two native temples which stand over a mile apart. The testimony of the Hindus, which, it is said, is backed up by documentary proof, shows that the system has been in operation for over 2,000 years. Scientists engaged in excavating the ruins of ancient Egyptian temples have repeatedly found unmistakable evidence of wire communication between some of the temples of the earlier Egyptian dynasties.

It will probably be found, in the course of time, that the oft-repeated statements of H. P. Blavatsky that the ancients had all of our arts and mechanical devices were true. She asserted that they had flying machines. In Buddhist books is a story of Buddha which refers to a flying machine or mechanical bird used in a former life of the Lord, and Indian tradition speaks also of air walking machines. Reading this item in the newspaper reminds me too of a conversation I had with H. P. Blavatsky in New York before the phonograph came out, in which she said that some Indian friends of hers had a machine by which they spoke with each other over distances of miles with great ease. Perhaps when the great West is convinced that the old Aryans had mechanical contrivances equaling our own, it will be ready to lead a readier ear than now to the philosophies the East has so long held in keeping.

William Q. Judge

Path, July, 1894

ANOTHER THEOSOPHICAL PROPHECY

IN the first number of THE PATH was inserted a prophecy made from certain books in India called Nadigrandhams, respecting the Society.

This called forth from the N.Y. Sun, that model of journalism, a long tirade about the superficial knowledge which it claims pervades the Society on the subject of oriental philosophy. Unfortunately for the learned editorial writer in that paper, he never before heard of Nadigrandhams, which are almost as common in India as the Sun is here, nor does he appear to know what a Nadi may be, nor a Grandham, either.

But without trying to drag the daily press of this country into the path of oriental knowledge, we will proceed to record another prophecy or two.

The first will seem rather bold, but is placed far enough in the future to give it some value as a test. It is this:--The Sanscrit language will one day be again the language used by man upon this earth, first in science and in metaphysics, and later on in common life. Even in the lifetime of the Sun's witty writer, he will see the terms now preserved in that noblest of languages creeping into the literature and the press of the day, cropping up in reviews, appearing in various books and treatises, until even such men as he will begin perhaps to feel that they all along had been ignorantly talking of "thought" when they meant "cerebration," and of "philosophy" when they meant "philology," and that they had been airing a superficial knowledge gained from cyclopædias of the mere lower powers of intellect, when in fact they were totally ignorant of what is really elementary knowledge. So this new language cannot be English, not even the English acquired by the reporter of daily papers who ascends fortuitously to the editorial rooms--but will be one which is scientific in all that makes a language, and has been enriched by ages of study of metaphysics and the true science.

The secondary prophecy is nearer our day, and may be interesting.--It is based upon cyclic changes. This is a period of such a change, and we refer to the columns of the N. Y. Sun of the time when the famous brilliant sunsets were chronicled and discussed not long ago for the same prognostication. No matter about dates; they are not to be given; but facts may be. This glorious country, free as it is, will not long be calm:

Unrest is the word for this cycle. The people will rise. For what, who can tell? The statesman who can see for what the uprising will be might take measures to counteract. But all your measures can not turn back the iron will of fate. And even the City of New York will not be able to point its finger at Cincinnati and St. Louis. Let those whose ears can hear the whispers, and the noise of the gathering clouds, of the future, take notice; let them read, if they know how, the physiognomy of the United States, whereon the mighty hand of nature has traced the furrows to indicate the character of the moral storms that will pursue their course no matter what the legislation may be. But enough. Theosophists can go on unmoved, for they know that as Krishna said to Arjuna, these bodies are not the real man, and that "no one has ever been non-existent nor shall any of us ever cease to exist."

Path, May, 1886

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONERS

The notice published last month, that questions might be asked, addressed to"Zadok," has elicited several queries, from which we select the following. Hereafter "Zadok" will continue his answers, but they will be given through the Path's columns, except where their private nature may call for personal correspondence.

From C.-(I) Is celibacy necessary to the highest spiritual life and attainment? Is this your idea of true occultism?
Answer- By no single way is the highest spiritual life attained. The highest Adept and the true occult student, have at some time been wedded to woman. The highest attainment is never reached until a man has passed through this experience. Under certain conditions and at a certain time celibacy is a great aid, but if the student is wedded then it is his duty to continue in that condition, and instead of proving a barrier it will be an assistance to his progress if he rightly comprehends its significance. All the lessons which are taught the true occult student are given in daily life and through nature's laws. The celibate loses some of these lessons - lessons which he must inevitably learn - because he violates a great law of nature.

The result of celibacy is that the student works by intellect alone. It is necessary for true occult work that the heart be used also. One of the greater of the "mysteries" can never be learned by the celibate, for he never stands as hand in hand with God a controller of a creative force.

(2) Is a purely vegetable diet indispensable to a high and serene spiritual life?
Answer - One might eat grass, grain and turnips, a million years, but that of itself would not produce a high or serene spiritual life. All these things are aids, not necessities.

If the physical condition is such that animal food can be dispensed with, or without disturbing other people or neglecting the labor given, then it is wise to do away with it. The physical is thereby purified, making it less gross, material and animal like. But "one man's meat is another's poison." Use that which seems the wisest to you. "It is not that which goeth into the mouth but that which cometh out that defileth a man." The right thought, the proper motive, the true Will have more to do with true Occultism than any exterior acts or practices.

From T. - (I) Am I the result of a series of existences or a series of co-existences?
Answer - That which is known as you is the result of continuous existence of an entity. Your present body and your soul (or the personality) are the results of a series of existences. Your Karma is a result of co-existence. The individuality, or spirit, is the cause of the soul and personality, or what is called "you." You are the manifestation of an entity and are the result of many appearences of that entity upon this stage of action in various personalities.

(2) May one walk for any distance along the Path without being able to see into the Astral Light, or without recognizing anything extraordinary?
Answer - One may journey an entire life time on "The Path" and not see into the Astral Light consciously. All men see into it, for all who dream are looking there, the body being asleep and not receptive.

One may journey a long distance and not see, for all do not work in the same manner. Some may hear "ages before they see," or may feel a long time before either seeing or hearing. The tool most efficient at a certain period is the one used.

We may journey the entire way without recognizing anything extraordinary or encountering phenomena. The most extraordinary things are found in the most ordinary, and are overlooked because of their seeming familiarity. When the understanding is directed to the natural, one finds the supra-natural or supra-human things.

All questions are vital so long as they remain unsolved but all will be answered. It requires patience in ourselves, for many times the answers do not come until years after the question has been propounded. If I can be of further use to you please consider me at your service.

From J.V. - "There are two ways to ascend and descend, the direct and indirect." Tea Table, Oct. Path. (I) What are these ways?
Answer - The thistle down is blown hither and thither with every breath of wind: The arrow speeds straight to the mark from the powerful bow.

The indirect way is that of the thistle down; the Astral going out when the body is asleep, does so in a diffused condition - a passive state - with no adequate force to control it or master unseen forces. It floats at the mercy of every current in the Astral, gleaning here and there as a butterfly but taking the good and bad indiscriminately. It may reach high spheres, but is more likely to remain in those nearest to the physical. This way is travelled by all when asleep, and there dreams are made. It is the passive state where desire is the ruler, and sometimes travelled in the waking conscious state, but is uncontrollable and unreliable.

The direct way is that of the arrow from the bow. The Astral speeds directly to the sphere which holds the knowledge it is to receive. It does so in obedience to an irresistible force - the Will: Will in accordance with divine law. It is concrete going and returning in obedience to this force, bringing little with it from intermediate spheres other than that for which it is seeking. This occurs in dreamless slumber and the knowledge acquired is not communicated in a dream. This way is travelled in the conscious state for it is the way of the student of the Occult. Unless the man's thought and motive are pure, he is incapable of using the true will, and his Astral goes where other wills or forces drive it. It pauses when other forces interfere - learns from the place it happens to be in, and brings back a horrible jumble sometimes.

(2) Where do these ways lead?
One way leads to Theosophia - Illumination - when traveled awake or asleep.

The other to consideration of self - ordinary living with its erroneous conceptions - as an Occult way, to love of phenomena and spiritism.

They lead to spheres within the astral, for the astral body passes not beyond astral limits. Only when the soul is freed from the astral and material bodies does it pass to higher spheres. These ways also leæd to planets, stars, and other worlds, for all these may be within the astral of this globe.

Zadok
Path, November, 1887

From C.H.V. - Apollonius is said to have worn a mantle of wool to aid in insulating himself from the astral currents. Has wool in itself any such property as is seemingly ascribed to it? The question has the value, perhaps, whether the occult laws which govern the merely physical regulation of the toiler toward adept-ship, may not be of great value from a sanitary point of view and form, if properly understood, a useful medical creed.
Answer - Wool in itself has no especial occult power. It is a nonabsorbent to the exhalations of the human body; is lighter, cooler in hot and warmer in cold weather than any other fabric. The late discoveries of a German scientist prove it the best of all materials from a sanitary point of view. It is a conductor for electricity and other unseen forces. Apollonius, as well as other occult students, knew its value and uses. Being a student of nature's laws he was well aware of nature's requirements. Upon the knowledge gained by occult students touching the human body are founded all the schools of medicine. Bathing is essential, a woolen dress where permissible, as little animal food as possible, as sparing diet at best - a high ideal - an exalted motive and strong will, a total forgetting of self otherwise, and neither elementals or human beings will oppress one.

From J.C.V. - What is true Will? Is it a faculty of the soul? How is it one with the Divine Will and how may we make our will at one with the Divine? Is it something which now we know not, or may we perceive its germ in our own Will, or is it an instinctive movement of the soul?
Answer - (I) The will as known to man is that force which he exerts for the accomplishment of his aims - he uses it blindly and ignorantly - and self is always the one for which he uses it. It is used as a brute force. As ordinarily used it has little tendency to lift the personality farther than the attainment of material results. It has for its source, the lower elements of the soul. The true will is a concentrated force working steadily yet gently, dominating both soul and person, having its source in the spirit and highest elements of the soul. It is never used for the gratification of self, is inspired by the highest of motives, is never interposed to violate a law, but works in harmony with the unseen as well as the seen. It is manifested through the human will for things visible

(2) It is more that a faculty of the soul, for it is the soul at work. The spirit is unmanifest except through the soul. The soul manifesting the spirit is the true will. The human will is the lowest form of this manifestation.

(3) As the true will is the manifestation of the spirit through the soul, it must be at one with the divine, inasmuch as the spirit is the divine in man. It is the God in man, a portion of the all-pervading. Asserting itself through the soul, the true will is brought forth and in truth we say, "It is the will of God." We may make our finite wills at one with the divine by elevating our aim, using it for good or in the search for God, in striving to find how to use it in harmony with the laws of God. By proper use in the right direction the human will becomes purified, elevated, and being exerted only in conformity with our highest ideal, eventually becomes at one with the highest in man.

In our ordinary material state we know only the human will. Through the human will we reach the divine will. We become aware of the true will through the ordinary will just as we become aware of the soul through the body. It is not instinctive of the soul. The soul is father of the human will - the spirit is father of the true will.

From E.L.T. - "A great deal depends on purity of thought and motive," Oct. Path, p. 220.
Please explain what should be the actuating motive in developing psychic capacities.
Answer - The desire to find God, the desire to know one's self, our possibilities and capabilities, that we may be of true use to the world, these are the motives. The thought should be unselfish, undisturbed by material affairs - free from wonder-seeking curiosity, concentrated, and in entire accord with the motive, the search for God.

Is Sinnett's explanation of the origin and extinction of "Intermediate Forms," accepted as being clear and satisfactory by the majority of students who are beginning the study of Buddhism?
Answer - By the majority who are beginning yes - but not by those who are advanced.

Sinnett claims that Kama Loka is (like earth) a condition of unsatisfied longings, progressive idealization. It might be the "ne plus ultra" at the time of entrance, but how after a period of years?
Answer - All these states may be entered into while in the body. The condition of unsatisfied longing does not cease except in Nirvana. Beyond a certain point the intellect is useless. Up to and at that point the intellect is increased in its powers. It is never decayed or paralyzed. It is useless because a better tool is used.

Do advanced students contemplate "Rupa Loka" and "Arupa Loka" as at present desirable conditions? If desirable then in what sense: absolutely or comparatively as regards earth life? Is Sinnett's statement of the entire satisfaction of the soul's longings, to be regarded as "Ex Catherdra," or is it only Sinnett's personal conception?
Answer - All states and conditions above the ordinary material are desirable. In the absolute sense, any "conditioned" existence is undesirable. "Advanced students" try to be free from desires. "Rupaloka" means place of form; "Arupaloka," place of no form. There are many Lokas

His statements are his personal interpretation of the teachings he has received. Read Nov. Path, p. 252.

Are we to understand that he "medium" who provokes a representation of phenomena from departed spirits is thereby riveting the chains by which the said "spirit" is held fast to low conditions?
Answer - Yes - as you use those words - but I do not call them "spirits."

Is Sinnett's use of the word "spirituality" to be used as synonymous with our word conscientiousness?
Answer - No.

Does he not rather use it in the sense of imaginative or intuitional capacity?
Answer - No.

How do Buddhists regard this faculty as compared with conscientiousness, self-sacrifice and integrity?
Answer - It is not a faculty. Conscientiousness, self-sacrifice, integrity, duty, are all portions of the whole, which is spirituality.

Do they not accord respect and honor to preponderance of intellect over purity of heart?
Answer - No, they honor intellect when governed by purity of heart.

How can I cultivate thought reading? The impressions received are involuntary.
Answer - By continual exercise of the power. By concentrated thought in obedience to the will. By purifying the thoughts as well as the body. But your aim must be higher than the mere acquirement of a wonder-working power, or you will fail. With all the power you possess concentrate your thought upon the object you desire, and receive that which is given by what is termed intuition.

From M.E.C. - What steps must I take to open the heart so as to exercise the Will for governing the Astral body?
Answer - There is but one way to open the heart. That is by living the life. It is a simple matter to govern the will, but this is not the true will. The governing of the Astral body is the smallest of the tasks of the true will. The will should be used to obtain wisdom, and when so used it will control the Astral body without effort. We should exert psychic powers only to benefit others, never to free ourselves from the disagreeable. Let you aim be to find God; your motive, to know yourself for the sake of Theo-Sophia and humanity: you desire, to help humanity, and the True Will will be developed, the heart opened and you will not only control the Astral body but all in the Astral. You must seek beyond the Astral for powers, but it is not wise to desire the acquisition of powers. Let your aim be beyond that, and the powers will grow of themselves. If the strong-willed or sick depress you, seek to aid each in some way, forget that you are depressed, forget your self, and they will not affect you. The life of the Occult student is full of sorrow, anguish and depressing influences. These go to make him a student in the Occult. A portion of his training is to become aware of these only in so far as they affect others. As to their affecting his own personality, he does not know they exist. If you desire to help humanity, then you possess the true motive. If you use your will in this cause, wisdom, peace and all the powers will be given.

Zadok
Path, December, 1887

From Walter B. - (I) Is it well to cultivate the intellect at the expense of the heart? Do we not pay too much attention to intellectual progress, and in so doing allow the Heart-Mind to wander where it may?
Answer - It is not wise to cultivate either at the expense of the other. Each alone will end at the same place - The Threshold. Both are excellent means for the manifestation of that which is higher that either, when cultivated to their highest in unison. Both are useless after a certain point, except as tools for truth. Metaphysics, logic and emotion all end at a dead wall.

(2) Do not the words and teachings of Jesus, taken in their esoteric sense, point one (the) way to the Theosophic Path?
Answer - Taken in the sense he intended the people to take them, they lead to the way. Taken in the sense in which he desired his Disciples to receive them, they are teachings upon the way. Taken in their esoteric sense - as he knew them - they are the way. Were the wisdom of Egypt and India today blotted out from both the seen and unseen worlds - the true seeker would find in his teachings, when rightly studied, all the teachings of Isis and Buddha. As he received his instruction from Egypt, heired from India¸ it is more than probable that esoterically his teachings are identical with both.

From F.F. - Will the Devachanic period form an interruption to the work for humanity in the case of one devoted to this during earth life? Is Devachan then a rejuvenating, strengthening period necessary for us while in the bonds of flesh, and is the Elixir of Life the only escape from this egoistic period? May an answer be given to this?
Answer - As the Devachanic period is a result of work for humanity - the true and pure devachanic state being only thus obtained - it should form no interruption to such work. It only does become such when the soul is selfish enough to prefer Devachan to a continuance of work for other men, and even then to a certain extent the soul continues its work. There is rest in Devachan, but not idleness. As this state is frequently entered and passed through while yet in the body, it should be an aid, not a hindrance, to true work. In truth it is a state of reward, but in that state no rewards are received. There is no state up to Nirvana that can be an obstacle to work for humanity for those who are devoted to that work. The Elixir of Life is the only means by which we can pass beyond both Devachan and the thoughts of it; the Magnum Opus is the only thing that entitles us to it.

From M.E.S - (I) Are the Astral and the lowest plane of mental life synonymous terms?
Answer - They are not. The impulses for all mental life originate beyond the Astral. The outer man with his mind interprets these as he conceives they should be. The lowest as well as the highest mental life may receive knowledge from the Astral, but it is not the Astral. All that all forms of mental life produce is indelibly impressed upon the Astral.

(2) Is the "rising above the Astral" in effect rising above the stings and probation of public opinion?
Answer - For us, there is no public opinion. We know neither sting nor approbation. Rising above public opinion is merely rising above the material. Until men forget the material, they can not rise above self. Until they forget self, they can not rise above the Astral: All things that please as well as those that distress men are in and through the Astral. Rise above both.

From M.J.G. - Whence come the visions seen just before dropping to sleep? They are uncontrollable - sometimes unpleasant, and have increased since childhood, and since beginning the study of Occultism.
Answer - When we enter that condition called sleep, we open wide the doors and windows of the body or this house we live in, and the soul goes forth as a bird freed from its cage. In partial unconsciousness or falling into sleep, the body has, to a great extent, ceased to act, but the brain is still sensitive or receptive to the pictures or impressions of the Astral. Of the lower principles the Astral is the last to cease action either in sleep or death. The brain is its instrument. In the partial somnolent condition, the pictures of the Astral are conveyed to the brain; through that the outer man realizes and beholds the visions. If he were fully asleep these visions would be dreams. Precisely, as dreams, they may be either pleasant or the reverse. Like dreams they are uncontrollable by the ordinary every day mortal. The Occultist being master of himself beholds only that which he desires, either in vision, or dream, or neither. As one makes himself more sensitive to impressions from the Astral when and after he begins the study of Occultism, visions and dreams will increase in frequency for a time.

Zadok
Path, January, 1888

From Adelphi - A most perplexed individual is writing to you. I have been for three years endeavoring to study Theosophy. I have heard lectures, have read an immense amount of literature devoted to that cult, from the sages of old down to the Sinnetts, Olcotts, and Blavatskys of the present day. I have conned the Yoga Philosophy and I read The Path. Light on the Path aids me not, nor does Bhagavad Gita, and why? Because I am yet without the first steps towards practice. (Surely Theosophy - like other sciences - must have something practical about it?) Guide me with your friendly hints. Imagine me alone in a room. How to commence? Show me the first step upon the practical ladder! All I have heard and read seemeth to me so elaborately unintelligible that I lay it aside and beg you to instruct me in my Theosophical A B C, Astral Light! Is it a figurative light, i.e. Revelation? or is it a light, as electricity - the Heavens - coal - gives light? If abstract (into insensibility) is necessary, can you instruct me upon Hypnotism (self mesmerism)? "A shining object" is advised to stare at! A mirror is a shining object, for instance. But of what avail to stare at a mirror and see reflected ugliness!
Answer - You say that for three years you have been endeavoring to study Theosophy. Such being the case, you will meet with but little success. Divine Wisdom can not be a subject for study, but it may be an object of search. With the love for this same wisdom uppermost in our hearts, we ask you if it would not be wiser to lay aside the study of so called Theosophy and study yourself. Knowing yourself you know all men, the worlds seen and occult, and find Theo-Sophia. One cannot absorb Theosophy as a sponge does water, to be expelled at the slightest touch. Our conception of Theosophy is apt to be based upon the idea that it is an especial line of teaching - a larger, wider, and great doctrine than others perhaps, but still a doctrine, and therefore limited. We must bear in mind that the true Theosophist belongs to no cult or sect, yet belongs to each and all; that he can find the true object of his search equally as well in the Hebrew bible as in the Yoga philosophy, in the New Testament equally as well as in the Bhagavad-Gita.

You say you have "conned the Yoga philosophy." This is not enough; merely to "con" it is not to know it. It is in fact a most practical system (if you refer to that of Patanjali), and one that will meet all requirements you have in the way of difficulty; for it is one of the most difficult. It is not possible for you to judge its merits without practice: and it gives full directions. If for three years you study and practice it - aye for one year -, you will find that you need no other. In these matters there is no child's play nor the usual English and American method of mere book-learning, - we must absorb and work into the practice and the theory laid down, for they are not written merely for the intellect, but for the whole spiritual nature. There must be within the man something which he already knows, that leaps up and out when he scans the books of wisdom; a thing already existing, which only takes an added life or confirmation from books. True Theosophy has all that is practical, but many forget this; there is no greater system of practice than that required by it.

Desire wisdom; love all men; do your duty; forget yourself; let each thought and act of your life have for its aim the finding of divine wisdom; strive to apply that wisdom for he good of other men. If you search in every direction, Light must come to you. Let the place in which you now are be the lonely room you speak of, and seek to find in everything the meaning. Strive to know what they are, and by what governed or caused. This the first step. Live your life with this ever before you. Purify your thought as well as your body. Reason all you can, feel all with your heart you may, and when intellect and heart fail you, seek for something higher. This is the A.B.C.; it is enough for the present.

It is not Theosophy that is a science, but its application. It is not a "cult," for it covers and includes all.

The Astral Light is an actuality. It is not revelation, but a means through which that which causes revelation acts. Electricity, the heavens, all lower fires, are but the shadows of the Astral Light, just as the Astral Light is but the darkness of the Ineffable Light.

Abstraction into insensibility is not intended. If it had been so intended it would be unnecessary for us to be in these bodies. If you can forget yourself sufficiently - forget that you exist as a human body, you will not need to stare at a mirror; but so long as you realize, when staring into a glass, whether you be pretty or ugly, you can not reach Celestial sensibility or terrestrial insensibility.

Hypnotism is the controlling of other personalities. Under this you would be but a puppet for the thought of another. Your outer self had better become a puppet for you own thought.

We seek to make the body alive, not to kill it.

Zadok
Path, February, 1888

To Zadok - Suppose persons have reason to believe they have found the beginning of the Way, and then find they do not care to investigate the mysteries of Occultism; that they are content to remain without knowledge on these subjects, though they found Truth through Theosophy, and that they are happy because they feel that whatever God orders in their lives must be right, whether it is pleasure or pain.

Suppose also that such persons, though having put themselves in a spiritually receptive condition, feel no weight of Karma, though willing to suffer to whatever extent is needed from it. Do you not think such persons may be deceiving themselves in thinking they are Theosophists, when they have lived many weeks in this condition? Do you think it harder for women to attain spirituality than men? and if so, still should they not strive all the more to obtain it? I know we should not avoid anything merely because it is irksome or uninteresting.

Do not Theosophists allow themselves to feel happy if happiness comes to them without their desiring it? Also why do Theosophists wish to avoid feeling pain or pleasure, if God orders the circumstances which produce them, after we have subjected our will to His?

Please answer in your next issue of The Path. L.
Answer - Men attach an erroneous meaning to Occultism. If one has found the beginning of the Way he has found some of the mysteries of Occultism, for none find the Way until they find something of the Unseen. It is impossible for one to put himself in a spiritually receptive condition without "investigation" of or being under the sway of Occultism or Occult conditions; and it is through these same conditions that he knows that pain and pleasure are one and all wise. Karma does not always manifest itself as suffering, by any means; it is quite as likely to produce joy as sorrow, and Karma is not always weighty. Such persons of whom you speak may be trying to become Theosophists, but are not Theosophists. A seeker for Divine wisdom seeks in all directions and refuses none.

(2) It is as hard for man as for woman to enter the mysteries. Man works through the intellect, woman through the emotions or heart. Both are equally useless after a time, and of the two the heart is the better tool. But woman becomes engrossed or overwhelmed by her emotions, and passes no farther. The greatest Teachers have been those who have had most of the womanly in their natures. It is more difficult to master the body as a woman than as a man. This can be answered only partial in print.

(3) The True Theosophist allows himself, or is taught to feel, both pain and pleasure, happiness and sorrow, for he knows them all to be wise. Men long for and desire; they fight for happiness and do not find it. We have given to us peace, which is far beyond happiness. Happiness is of this world and is a mockery of the True; yet as all other men we feel it, for we feel all things, for in all these things lie the lessons to be learned as men. I dare not speak for other men, but were I to wish to avoid either pleasure or pain, knowing them to be God's will, then would I utterly fail. Once having subjected my will - my human will - to His, then I avoid nothing that is His will.

To Zadok - (I) Why, since the Deity chose of His own divine will to make the descent into matter, or - as some put it - by this process alone came to Him a realizing sense of His being, in the manifestation through and by matter, why should this be considered a "fall," or, indeed, an evil at all, since, being the work and choice of the Deity, it must necessarily have been both wisdom and goodness which dictated the "descent"; and, as Theosophy teaches the inner Light and in dwelling Emanuel (God with us) to be ever present in all forms of life, wherein consisted the evil of this divine descent, and why must this experience be necessarily associated with evil at all?

(2) I met an F.T.S. the other day who believes he has arrived at "Saintship" and cannot therefore err. He cannot bear the slightest contradiction , believing that he has arrived at such a state of "enlightenment" that he is infallible, whereas we less gifted mortals feel that he often makes grave mistakes. Of course this assumption is untenable in this case, but are sainthood and consequent infallibility likely to result from the humdrum every-day life of an ordinary nineteenth century man?
Answer - For the Deity there is no fall. He can not fall. In the so-called descent into matter, He must manifest through something. Never does the Ineffable stand unveiled before mortal man. When the All Wise deemed it good to manifest Himself as individualities, He did so through the soul. After creating the human man with the soul that all things possess, "He breathed into his nostrils and man became a living soul," or the Deity manifested Himself through the soul in the man. Nothing below man is immortal. Man is not immortal; his soul is not immortal; but the breath of God, which is God's life or God himself, is forever. Man was to have lived as the angels, "for they also were made"; but, although by the grosser elements of matter or nature, by its lusts and desires, its seductive beauties and deceptive pleasures, realized most fully through the senses of the human body, the soul was drawn down instead of upward, into ignorance of the true instead of toward the wisdom of God, holding and binding thus the spirit in the meshes of the grossest part of nature, and so fell. God did not fall, - the spirit; nor did man as the human man; but the soul, being a free agent, did so, causing the spirit to be limited, and entailing pain and anguish upon the human man. Man with the Divine manifest in him was to know only the good, or wisdom; but, not content, he must eat of the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, or the misapplication of the good, and fell into ignorance. There can be no greater evil than losing the wisdom of a God for the ignorance of a man. Herein consists the only evil of the fall after the descent into matter.

(2) How do your know that he makes grave mistakes? I may not say that anyone errs or makes mistakes, other than my own self. Neither you nor I may say another is saint or devil from our own standpoint of what makes either. Both you and I have been taught, however, that one who has arrived at the state of "Saintship" never lays claim to it or to "enlightenment."

Saintship and a certain measure of infallibility will result from humdrum ever-day life in the nineteenth century, and in no other way, if rightly comprehended. Otherwise one would not be here at all, or would have lived in some other time, before time was. To become a saint one must know what sinners are and what sin is. The best way to arrive at this knowledge is through the nineteenth century or the time in which we live, through life and all it tells us. Believing that one cannot err and in one's infallibility is however not characteristic of saintship.

Zadok
Path, March, 1888

From G.M. - (I) During sleep I have a feeling that I can fly by an intense act of will. I then do float in dream over the ground, my body seeming rigid. The force exhausts, then I have to descend. What is your explanation of this?
Answer - It is part of the effort of your inner man to demonstrate to your outer self the existence and action of unrecognized and unfamiliar forces, which every man has in him the latent power to use. Dreamless slumber is better.

(2) In Theosophical books I find occult or magical phenomena referred to. I am disposed to reject these and consider their publication of a very questionable character in light of matter for the improvement of intelligent seekers after truth. Still I do not deny them, and hold myself open for conviction in any direction.
Answer - Why then bother yourself with the phenomena of your dream state? The dream of flying is as much a phenomena as any other that Theosophical literature contains. The proper attitude for true theosophists is not to be ready or anxious to bring conviction as to any phenomena to inquirers. Hence we cannot enter into proofs. We know personally that phenomena of a most extraordinary character have taken place, and are still occurring; we also agree with you that the constant publication of accounts of phenomena is unwise. Still it must sometimes be done, as some minds have to advance through the aid of these things.

We also know that the Masters who are behind the Theosophical Society have, in writing, condemned the thirst for phenomena made so often degrading, and stated that the Society ought to progress through its moral worth. One phenomenon can be seen by but a limited number of people, some of whom even will always doubt, and each one hearing of it afterwards will want a repetition for himself. Further than that, it would be certain to bring on a thirst for mere sight-seeing, resulting in a total forgetfulness of spirit. But, on the other hand, there are laws that cannot be guessed at without phenomena. And in each human being is a complete universe in which daily occur phenomena that should be studied. This is the proper realm for each student to investigate, for therein - and nowhere else - is placed the gate through which each one must advance.

Zadok

From G.B. - Why does the Baron in Mr. Sinnett's "Karma" advise Mrs. Lakesby not to communicate with the "astral specters" she saw about the Professor?
Answer - The answer to this will not yet be well understood. The English language has not acquired the needed words. The Baron's reply was that thereby the real ego of the deceased would be retarded in its advancement, and Mrs. Lakesby might lay herself open to influences from the astral world that would prey upon her unexpectedly.

This answer opens fire at once upon the whole "philosophy" of spiritualism, and contains a challenge of the ignorance of most seers and nearly every student of psychical laws. The ordinary spiritualist sees complete proof for the returning of deceased friends in the phenomena of the séroom, and nearly every seer is fascinated with his or her own pictures in the astral light and the absolute truth of what is seen.

Mrs. Lakesby did not see the spirit of any person, but only the reliquae. The spirit is never seen, and the soul is engaged in experiencing a certain portion of its deserts in other states. These states are unnameable and incomprehensible to English speaking people. But for a period there is a magnetic connection between that soul and the reliquae seen at séand by seers. By means of that connection the soul is prevented - against its will, except when it is extremely wicked - from passing through its purification preparatory to entering into devachan. This purification, or preparatory state anterior to devachan, has not been explained by theosophical writers. It is, nevertheless, a fact of the highest importance.

The second portion of the Baron's reply is also valuable. When a seer or medium perceives these shades of the departed and desires to communicate with them, a crowd of nature spirits, of no moral character but solely moved by magnetic impulse, rush into the shade of the deceased and give it a temporary life. They too are then able, on their part, to see the seer or medium, and may and do often transfer themselves from the shade to the medium, whose lower, baser nature they occupy and vivify. By thus incorporating themselves with the relilquae of dead persons, these elementals stop the process of disintegration of the atoms of matter composing the shade, which would have gone on to completion if left to nature. As soon as this disintegrating process is inhibited, the soul itself is held, so to say, in a vise which it is powerless to open, and unaware as well from whence comes the disturbance. Thus, then, these who run after their deceased friends' shades or reappearances are each day condemning their loved ones to a longer and more painful stay in a state that closely corresponds to the Christian hell.

I know my words will sweep unheeded over the forest in which our spiritualistic friends are wandering, but some sincere students will believe me.

Hadji
Path, April, 1888

From M.C.D. - I am told that an Adept has said "that one can help or cure another if his Karma does not prevent it." Am I to understand that when suffering is before me I am not to relieve it if in my power to do so, on the ground that the suffering person's Karma has brought him there and I must not interfere? Some Theosophists have enunciated this rule.
Answer - If an Adept said this it is not incorrect. But no Adept ever drew the conclusion you give. Some Theosophists have, we are sorry to say, declared that they may not help for the reason stated. It is not theosophical to take such a position. The sufferer's Karma truly produced the suffering, but your Karma offers the opportunity for a kind deed that my relieve him; it may be his Karma to be relieved by you. It is your duty to do this kind act, of whatever nature it be. The meaning of the declaration attributed to the Adept is that you are to try to relieve suffering, which effort will have a beneficial effect unless the Karma of the sufferer prevents: but you know nothing of his Karma and must not judge it; your duty lies in the act presented to you for performance, and not with its result nor with the possible hindrances resulting from the Karma. The wrong view given by you in your question arises from the conceited attitude of persons who, having slight knowledge, presume to be the judges of others and of the great and hidden causes springing from Karma. Knowledge of these causes and of their operation in any particular case comes only to those who have reached Adeptship; for, in order to rightly judge how to rightly act, you must know absolutely the other's Karma, together with your own, in order not to fall into the awful error of deliberately sinning.

It would be wiser for all students to seek to do their duty and to act as true brothers on every occasion than to run about endeavoring to imitate Sages and Adepts.

Moulvie

From B.J. - What can your tell me about the Mind Cure and Christian Science? Are they true, are they theosophical? Ought I to study them so as to be mens sana in corpore sano, as it were?
Answer - As we have not made a thorough study of these, we could not assume to tell you much about them, and hence cannot say if they are true or theosophical. Many earnest theosophists are believers and followers of both. We, however, have been trained in the Eastern theosophical school. Following the teaching of the latter, our advice is to have a healthy body by paying regard to rules for health, so that your mind, whether it be healthy or not, may exhibit its workings untrammeled. And the teacher has ever said, as taught by the Sages of old, that the body must not be the object of the student's care. The same teacher also warned us that, as the body is a material thing, the proper remedies needed to counteract extreme discordant vibrations are also of a material nature. Our work lies not with your body, but with your mind and heart. See to it that the latter is right. The quantity and quality of mind that are yours may be little or poor, but even if great and good, the heart and soul are greater, and mind has its limits beyond which it passes not.

Moulvie
Path, June, 1888

A change of circumstances having made it necessary for Zadok to remove to another sphere of action, no more answers to queries will appear from his pen. Queries, however, will be answered to the best of the ability of one or two others who have agreed to undertake the work, and they may be addressed to the Path as usual.

From F.N.W. - (I) What is the difference between the Esoteric Society of Boston and the Theosophic Society, and is that difference very serious?
Answer - The last clause of the question shows that the questioner probably means "disagreement" instead of "difference." There can be no disagreement, inasmuch as the Boston Society is no part of the Theosophical Society. By reading the objects of the Theosophical body and those of the Boston Society, any difference which may exist may be discovered. I cannot say if there be any, as I know nothing of the latter.

William Q. Judge
General Secretary, T.S.

(2) Do members of the T.S. practice the method of regeneration propounded by Hiram E. Butler?
Answer - I cannot say. The T.S. imposes no "method of regeneration" on its members; it only asks them to cultivate and exemplify Universal Brotherhood. As to a method of regeneration, it would seem that there can be but one regeneration.

(3) Do members of the T.S. accept "Solar Biology" as a real science?
Answer - There may be some who do. The term "Solar Biology" is an example of the ability of the American mind to strain English terms out of their usual meaning. Ordinarily it would mean some biological effect produced by the sun of our system, or, as equally, biologizing the sun himself. Since, however, acceptance of a particular dogma or system is not required of members of the Theosophical Society, one should not waste any time in trying to find out whether persons who are members believe in certain isms or sciences. The same amount of time devoted to a careful, cold, and passionless scrutiny of our own outer and inner nature will lead us nearer to compliance with the old direction, "Man, know Thyself." This is the only science worth knowing, for, as the old sacred books say, "In the heart of man are all things, sun, moon, and stars, all is contained within it."

Moulvie

From L.C. - What are the "peace" and the "voice of the silence" spoken of in the Light on the Path? Are they easy to attain to?
Answer - The peace is that period succeeding a storm set up in your nature by any attempt to conquer the lower self. It follows each such conflict if the battle has been waged to victory for the higher. But few modern men can wage the battle with more than one thing at a time. Hence, we have many such storms. Each peculiarity, passion, or propensity has to be attacked singly and overcome. When that happens, a period of inner silence arrives in which the soul grows and attempts to instruct us. This is the voice. And, as Light on the Path says (Rule 21 part I), "It cannot be described by any metaphor." The silence has its counterpart in nature when, after storms or cataclysms, silence occurs. The silence after a storm is due to the effect of water falling through the air upon earth, vegetation, insects, and animals, and to the peculiar results of loud reverberations of thunder. All these combine to produce a silence quite appreciable by any one accustomed to nature. And when a cataclysm takes place, such as the falling of a tremendous avalanche of snow, another sort of silence is brought about, during which many things in the astral and natural world not at other times evident can be perceived. Each of these silences comes to an end because the ordinary normal operations of nature reassert themselves. So it is with ourselves. Storms of disappointment, or terrible upheavals from tremendous sorrows, or the effect of our own intense will, bring about those silences in which the voice of the soul has perchance a better opportunity of being heard.

Moulvie
Path, July, 1888

A.C.R. asks if a long definition of Karma given in the letter is in harmony with the Asiatic definition.
Answer - We do not think that the definition of A.C.R. is good, for the reason that it is not clear what is meant. One thing is certain, and that is that Karma is the governor of all our circumstances, and is also in part a cause of acts, and is again the act and the circumstance also. The Universe itself is the Karma of the Supreme. Karma means work or action, and, as action is performed in more ways than by the bodily organs, the field of Karma must not be limited to the body. As A.C.R. says, the most important thing to consider is how we think and what is the motive with which we do any act.

On the subject of Karma the sect of Visishadwaitas of India say:

Karma is the cause of connection of Jivatma - or the particular spirit - with matter in the shape of Karanasarira, as well as the cause of misery or happiness. Karma is the producing cause of birth, death, rebirth, and every kind of body. Karma is the result of the conscious action of Jivatma, whether good or bad. Good Karma is that which results in pleasing, and bad Karma is that which results in displeasing, Ishwara. [He is held to be the particular spirit in each body - our Higher-Self.] The action of Jiva produces Karma through ignorance, and this ignorance is of two sorts: one the confounding of the attributes of one thing with those of another; and the second the confounding of one thing with another. Thus, the Jivatma first confounds the body with itself, and then such attributes as birth, death, and so on, with the attributes which really belong to Jivatma only; then certain actions are done, and they lead to other karma composed of ignorance and of habit. Thus Karma works without any definite beginning, and the causes of Karma mentioned above remain latent during a pralaya or night of Brahma, and when a new evolution begins they again become active and produce results as before.

Karma even works in Swarga or heaven, for, as soon as the causes that take us there are exhausted, we are brought back to rebirth under the operation of Karma; thus it is seen to be stronger than the blissful state of Heaven. This going to and returning from Swarga goes on until salvation is obtained, - one who attains that state is called Jivanmukta. This condition is defined as "an entire separation of Jiva from all connection with matter, and complete destruction of Karma whether good or bad." The word Moksha literally means "release from bondage."

Narayan Nilakant
Path, November, 1888

From L. - (I) What plan of life should a theosophist adopt? Take one who does not aspire to chelaship, but who is anxious to live rightly. Should he give up literature, or music, or art; and ought he to give up thoughts of marriage?
Answer - The plan of life should be that which shall appear to the student the best one under his lights; any sort of life may have as a plan under it the good of the race. It is not required that literature or art should be given up: theosophy seeks to round men out and not to produce moral skeletons. As to marriage, we have nothing to say.

(2) Is Light on the Path written for chelas alone or for all?
Answer - It was written for all who strive to understand the meaning under the language; its real sense is not that conveyed by the mere words in it.

(3) Why do so many warn against rashly attempting chelaship? If it is right, why not for all? Will it be easier in some future life, or will it be always a struggle? If the necessity for leaders makes it right for some to essay this, how is one to tell which is his duty, to try or not?
Answer - The reason for the warning has been given over and over again. A chela calls upon himself awful possibilities of disaster, and voluntarily exposes himself to the most pitiless foes the race has, - those within the mind's plane and in the astral world. These are not figments, and every one who forces himself must meet the consequences, for the kingdom of heaven is surrounded by monsters, and the way to it is enveloped with the black cloud of the soul's despair at a place where knowledge, power, and faith are needed and where sentiment plays no part.

The road winds up hill all the way even to the very end; but in this life we may prepare ourselves to be ready to make a farther advance in our next reincarnation.

Any one who is to be a leader will easily find that out. We are not to try and discover that we are leaders, but to do our every duty; if they are performed, the Law of Karma will find those who are the real leaders, and all sham captains will disappear.

A Student

From "An Outsider" - in England - If I write to you sometimes anonymously, will you answer? There must be many like myself, lonely and ignorant, who need help and might find it in the Path. My health is poor; how can I regain it? I have not the "superb audacity" you speak of.
Answer - Those who answer questions for us will attempt replies to all reasonable questions, but we are not an oracle. As to health we cannot say; each case is special, but cheerfulness and faith in the implicit justice of Karma and in the Great Souls who help all earnest students may give better health. All diseases begin within, but the way to health is not found by brooding on disease; some diseases proceed from causes generated in other lives, and may have a given period during which they run and cannot be stayed. But we cannot go into personal questions relating to the physical body's ailments.

Maggie Crawford writes stating that she judges the truth of theosophic doctrine by the characters of those who promulgate it, and that she finds Mme. Blavatsky an objection to the truth of theosophy. Charges are brought against other prominent persons who are named by her A, B, and C; we cannot notice these, as they are anonymous, or rather straw defendants, But as to H.P. Blavatsky, we desire to say to the questioner that we have known her many, many years and think her character is not ungoverned nor uncontrolled; we also know her to be generous and just, as well as wise and farseeing. But truth must never be judged by any personal standard; and we advise our friend to pursue truth for its own sake, and not because any person says it is true.

Jasper Niemand, Wm. Brehon, Eusebio Urban
Path, February, 1889

From Hadji - What is the meaning of newspaper references to Mme. Blavatsky thus: "Theosophy, too, despite the exposure of Mme. Blavatsky's impudent impostures is still flourishing."?
Answer - In 1885 the London Psychic Research Society took upon itself to investigate the alleged letters from Adepts received by Mr. Sinnett and others in India, and sent out a young man named Hodgson to inquire into facts that had happened months and years before. He reported that they were all frauds by Mme. Blavatsky, and that she had a tremendous combination of conspirators ramifying all over India. His report was published by the P. R. Society. It is so preposterous however, that no well-informed Theosophist believes it. The newspapers and superficial thinkers often refer to it. Mr. Hodgson, in addition to inventing the great conspiracy theory, was full of prejudice which he has since displayed in various cities of the United States by declaiming against H. P. Blavatsky although he says she is not worth pursuing.

Path, May, 1889

From C. N. (I) Is there a "Parent" Theosophical Society?
Answer - Strictly there is not. Such a term would imply a separate parent body which gave out Charters or Diplomas. The Society is composed of its members who are, for administrative purposes, in Branches or unattached; the latter are called "members-at-large," but all are fellows of the T.S. The government is in the General Council, which now meets in India, in which all sections of the Society have a voice, and which issues charters and diplomas. But aside from Branch members and those at-large, there is no parent Society; The term "parent" should be abandoned, as it implies separation.

(2) Is there an Esoteric Section of the Society in America different from that governed by H.P. Blavatsky?
Answer - There is not, and there never was. In the first establishment of the T.S. other degrees than that of a mere diplomaed member were recognized, but no one save H. P. Blavatsky has had the authority to confer those degrees. She has now fully announced the first of those, although during all these 14 years they have existed and included certain members who were also fellows of the T.S.

Some misguided persons may have pretended to confer those degrees, but such a thing was improper on their part, and absolutely worthless to the recipient. These real degrees in occultism may not be trifled with, and yet they protect themselves because pretenders and triflers can make neither entry nor progress.

In 1875 H.P. Blavatsky directed a certain fellow of the Society to attend to the needs of all the members of the T.S., who were then called "entered apprentices" by her, and her letter of that date is still extant in which the present Esoteric Section was plainly referred to.

(3) Why has H.P. Blavatsky waited until now to so publicly proclaim the Esoteric Section?
Answer - As a matter of fact she has not so waited. In 1875 and since many knew of its existence and have been in it, and she has frequently spoken of it; but until now there have not been enough members interested in the realities of theosophy to justify her in a definitive statement and organization. These efforts have to proceed slowly; people must first be waked up and directed towards theosophical doctrines before it is wise to open up that which is plain to those who know how to use their intuition. But the Western mind, for all its boasted progressiveness, is generally unable to know what is behind a wall unless a hole is cut through it; others, however, can guess what is hidden when they perceive signs and sounds that are quite plain and made on purpose.

But for the first 14 years of a theosophical effort - periodically made in every century - the work of such persons as H.P. Blavatsky is always directed to preparing the ground, and then more open invitation is extended. It is so done in the last 25 years of each century.

Hadji

From R.L.R.- (I) What is a Nirmanakaya?
Answer - Such is one of the appellations given to an Adept who, in order to devote himself to mankind, has consciously given up his right to pass into Nirvana. He has no material body, but possesses all the other principles; and for such an one space is no obstacle. There are many of them, and they perform various works; some take full possession of great reformers, or statesmen who carry on a beneficial policy; others overshadow sometimes several persons, causing them to act, speak, and write in such a way as to produce needed changes in their fellow men. These Nirmanakayas pass through the haunts of men unseen and unknown; only the effects of their influence and presence are perceived, and these results are attributed to the genius of the individual or to chance alone.

(2) Has a Nirmanakaya any sex?
Answer - No. The pronoun "He" has been used because it has a general application just as "man" or "men" has. In such a development as that of a Nirmanakaya the distinctions of sex have disappeared, because in the spiritual plane there is no sex.

Moulvie

From T.D. - If there be any defect in the Mind Cure system, what would you say it is?
Answer - I should say the constant assertion that there is no evil or badness is that prime defect. For if one so asserts, he should also admit that there is no good. These two opportunities stand or fall together; and they cannot disappear until all has passed to that plane which is above all good and all evil. Yet those who say that there is no evil are on the plane of consciousness where they perceive these two opposites. It appears to me that here in the Western world the old Hindu doctrine that all is illusion because impermanent is half-used. The illusionary quality is attributed only to so-called "evil," whereas the good is equally illusionary, since it as well as evil is so judged to be from some human standard. As in a community in which death is a blessing disease will be called "good," since it hastens death's advent; or, in another where insanity is supposed to be due to the presence of some god, such a condition is not esteemed to be evil.

Nilakant
Path, June, 1889

ARE THERE NEW SOULS? WHY REINCARNATION?

M.E.A - We all know that the population of the earth is increasing yearly, and that in time this globe will not be able to support its population unless the future inhabitants can get along on air. Does Theosophy teach us that new souls are created? Each one of these future unfortunates must have a soul. Will the Path please explain?
Answer - There are some assumptions in this inquiry about which no one has positive information. It is not settled that the population "is increasing yearly." For the apparent increase may be only a more accurate knowledge of the number of inhabitants, following from a more accurate knowledge of the globe on which we live. For instance: we have only lately acquired information of vast quantities of people in Africa previously unheard of.

Nor does it follow that the earth will not be able to support its population in time. A great many well-informed persons think exactly the opposite. Not very long ago several millions of people were destroyed in China, Japan, and elsewhere in a single week; this would leave a good deal of room for a population - in the United States for instance - to expand. Hence the question is narrowed down to the single one - "Does Theosophy teach us that new souls are created?" Mme. Blavatsky answers this in the Secret Doctrine by stating that from now until the end of this period of manifestation there will be no new Monads (which will answer to the word "souls" of the questioner), but the old ones will be reincarnated on this globe. If her view is the correct one, then the reincarnations from now onwards will be incarnations of Monads who have been here many times before. That is to say, we will all be worked over many times. This opinion of Mme. Blavatsky's is held by many Theosophists.

If we started as spirit and therefore perfect, why need we these reincarnations of suffering, only to finally attain what we started with?
Answer - This is the old question, the old inquiry, "What has the Absolute in view, and why is there anything?" The question contains its own answer, for if we started as "spirit," and therefore "perfect," we must still be and so remain forever perfect. But in the Upanishads it is said that "These radiations from the Great All are like sparks from a central fire, which emanate from it and return again for its own purposes." Furthermore, there is nothing more distinctly and frequently taught in Theosophical literature than this, that it is the personal, the illusory, the lower "I," who asks such questions as these, and that the real person within, the spirit, sees no such thing as suffering but rejoices forever in immeasurable bliss. "We" did not start perfect, but imperfect, and "our" progress to union with spirit is the perfection of the lower "we" and "our."

Path, April, 1890

APHORISMS ON KARMA

(1) There is no Karma unless there is a being to make it or feel its effects.

(2) Karma is the adjustment of effects flowing from causes, during which the being upon whom and through whom that adjustment is effected experiences pain or pleasure.

(3) Karma is an undeviating and unerring tendency in the Universe to restore equilibrium, and it operates incessantly.

(4) The apparent stoppage of this restoration to equilibrium is due to the necessary adjustment of disturbance at some other spot, place, or focus which is visible only to the Yogi, to the Sage, or the perfect Seer: there is therefore no stoppage, but only a hiding from view.

(5) Karma operates on all things and beings from the minutest conceivable atom to Brahma. Proceeding in the three worlds men, gods, and the elemental beings, no spot in the manifested universe is exempt from its sway.

(6) Karma is not subject to time, and therefore he who knows what is the ultimate division of time in this Universe knows Karma.

(7) For all other men Karma is in its essential nature unknown and unknowable.

(8) But its action may be known by calculation from cause to effect; and this calculation is possible because the effect is wrapped up in and is not succedent to the cause.

(9) The Karma of this earth is the combination of the acts and thoughts of all beings of every grade which were concerned in the preceding Manvantara or evolutionary stream from which ours flows.

(10) And as those beings include Lords of Power and Holy Men, as well as weak and wicked ones, the period of the earth's duration is greater than that of any entity or race upon it.

(11) Because the Karma of this earth and its races began in a past too far back for human minds to reach, an inquiry into its beginning is useless and profitless.

(12) Karmic causes already set in motion must be allowed to sweep on until exhausted, but this permits no man to refuse to help his fellows and every sentient being.

(13) The effects may be counteracted or mitigated by the thoughts and acts of oneself or of another, and then the resulting effects represent the combination and interaction of the whole number of causes involved in producing the effects.

(14) In the life of worlds, races, nations, and individuals, Karma cannot act unless there is an appropriate instrument provided for its action.

(15) And until such appropriate instrument is found, that Karma related to it remains unexpended.

(16) While a man is experiencing Karma in the instrument provided, his other unexpended Karma is not exhausted through other beings or means, but is held reserved for future operation; and lapse of time during which no operation of that Karma is felt causes no deterioration in its force or change in its nature.

(17) The appropriateness of an instrument for the operation of Karma consists in the exact connection and relation of the Karma with the body, mind, intellectual and psychical nature acquired for use by the Ego in any life.

(18) Every instrument used by any Ego in any life is appropriate to the Karma operating through it.

(19) Changes may occur in the instrument during one life so as to make it appropriate for a new class of Karma, and this may take place in two ways: (a) through intensity of thought and the power of a vow, and (b) through natural alterations due to complete exhaustion of old causes.

(20) As body and mind and soul have each a power of independent action, any one of these may exhaust, independently of the others, some Karmic causes more remote from or nearer to the time of their inception than those operating through other channels.

(21) Karma is both merciful and just. Mercy and Justice are only opposite poles of a single whole; and Mercy without Justice is not possible in the operations of Karma. That which man calls Mercy and Justice is defective, errant, and impure.

(22) Karma may be of three sorts: (a) presently operative in this life through the appropriate instruments; (b) that which is being made or stored up to be exhausted in the future; Karma held over from past life or lives and not operating yet because inhibited by inappropriateness of the instrument in use by the Ego, or by the force of Karma now operating.

(23) Three fields of operation are used in each being by Karma: (a) the body and the circumstances; (b) the mind and intellect; the psychic and astral planes.

(24) Held-over Karma or present Karma may each, or both at once, operate in all of the three fields of Karmic operation at once, or in either of those fields a different class of Karma from that using the others may operate at the same time.

(25) Birth into any sort of body and to obtain the fruits of any sort of Karma is due to the preponderance of the line of Karmic tendency.

(26) The sway of Karmic tendency will influence the incarnation of an Ego, or any family of Egos, for three lives at least, when measures of repression, elimination, or counteraction are not adopted.

(27) Measures taken by an Ego to repress tendency, eliminate defects, and to counteract by setting up different causes, will alter the sway of Karmic tendency and shorten its influence in accordance with the strength or weakness of the efforts expended in carrying out the measures adopted.

(28) No man but a sage or true seer can judge another's Karma. Hence while each receives his deserts, appearances may deceive, and birth into Poverty or heavy trial may not be punishment for bad Karma, for Egos continually incarnate into poor surroundings where they experience difficulties and trials which are for the discipline of the Ego and result in strength, fortitude, and sympathy.

(29) Race-Karma influences each unit in the race through the law of Distribution. National Karma operates on the members of the nation by the same law more concentrated. Family Karma governs only with a nation where families have been kept pure and distinct; for in any nation where there is a mixture of family - as obtains in each Kaliyuga period - family Karma is in general distributed over a nation. But even at such periods some families remain coherent for long periods, and then the members feel the sway of family Karma. The word "family" may include several smaller families.

(30) Karma operates to produce cataclysms of nature by concatenation through the mental and astral planes of being. A cataclysm may be traced to an immediate physical cause such as internal fire and atmospheric disturbance, but these have been brought on by the disturbance created through the dynamic power of human thought.

(31) Egos who have no Karmic connection with a portion of the globe where a cataclysm is coming on are kept without the latter's operation in two ways: (a) by repulsion acting on their inner nature, and (b) by being called and warned by those who watch the progress of the world.

Path, March, 1893

THE APPLICATION OF THEOSOPHICAL THEORIES

The mistake is being made by a great many persons, among them being Theosophists, of applying several of the doctrines current in Theosophical literature, to only one or two phases of a question or to only one thing at a time, limiting rules which have universal application to a few cases, when in fact all those doctrines which have been current in the East for so long a time should be universally applied. For instance, take the law of Karma. Some people say, "yes, we believe in that," but they only apply it to human beings. They consider it only in its relation to their own acts or to the acts of all men. Sometimes they fail to see that it has its effect not only on themselves and their fellows, but as well on the greatest of Mahatmas. Those great Beings are not exempt from it; in fact they are, so to say, more bound by it than we are. Although they are said to be above Karma, this is only to be taken to mean that, having escaped from the wheel of Samsara (which means the wheel of life and death, or rebirths), and in that sense are above Karma, at the same time we will find them often unable to act in a given case. Why? If they have transcended Karma, how can it be possible that in any instance they may not break the law, or perform certain acts which to us seem to be proper at just that juncture? Why can they not, say in the case of a chela who has worked for them and for the cause, for years with the most exalted unselfishness, interfere and save him from suddenly falling or being overwhelmed by horrible misfortune; or interfere to help or direct a movement? It is because they have become part of the great law of Karma itself. It would be impossible for them to lift a finger.

Again, we know that at a certain period of progress, far above this sublunary world, the adept reaches a point when he may, if he so chooses, formulate a wish that he might be one of the Devas, one of that bright host of beings of whose pleasure, glory and power we can have no idea. The mere formulation of the wish is enough. At that moment he becomes one of the Devas. He then for a period of time which in its extent is incalculable, enjoys that condition--then what? Then he has to begin again low down in the scale, in a mode and for a purpose which it would be useless to detail here, because it could not be understood, and also because I am not able to put it in any language with which I am conversant. In this, then, is not this particular adept who thus fell, subject to the law of Karma?

There is in the Hindoo books a pretty story which illustrates this. A certain man heard that every day a most beautiful woman rose up out of the sea, and combed her hair. He resolved that he would go to see her. He went, and she rose up as usual. He sprang into the sea behind her, and with her went down to her abode. There he lived with her for a vast length of time. One day she said she had to go away and stated that he must not touch a picture which was on the wall, and then departed. In a few days, fired by curiosity, he went to look at the picture; saw that it was an enameled one of a most ravishingly beautiful person, and he put out his hand to touch it. At that moment the foot of the figure suddenly enlarged, flew out from the frame, and sent him back to the scenes of earth, where he met with only sorrow and trouble.

The law of Karma must be applied to everything. Nothing is exempt from it. It rules the vital molecule from plant up to Brahma himself. Apply it then to the vegetable, animal and human kingdom alike.

Another law is that of Reincarnation. This is not to be confined only to the souls and bodies of men. Why not use it for every branch of nature to which it may be applicable? Not only are we, men and women, reincarnated; but also every molecule of which our bodies are composed. In what way, then, can we connect this rule with all of our thoughts? Does it apply there? It seems to me that it does, and with as much force as anywhere. Each thought is of definite length. It does not last for over what we may call an instant, but the time of its duration is in fact much shorter. It springs into life and then it dies; but it is at once reborn in the form of another thought. And thus the process goes on from moment to moment, from hour to hour, from day to day. And each one of these reincarnated thoughts lives its life, some good, some bad, some so terrible in their nature that if we could see them we would shrink back in affright. Further than that, a number of these thoughts form themselves into a certain idea, and it dies to be reincarnated in its time. Thus on rolls this vast flood. Will it overwhelm us? It may; it often does. Let us then make our thoughts pure. Our thoughts are the matrix, the mine, the fountain, the source of all that we are and of all that we may be.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

The Occult Word, May, 1886

ARE THE "ARABIAN NIGHTS" ALL FICTION?

For many years it has been customary to regard that collection of interesting stories called "The Arabian Nights," as pure fiction arising out of Oriental brains at a time when every ruler had his story-teller to amuse him or put him to sleep. But many a man who has down in his heart believed in the stories he heard in his youth about fairies and ghosts, has felt a revival of his young fancies upon perusing these tales of prodigies and magic. Others, however, have laughed at them as pure fables, and the entire scientific world does nothing but preserve contemptuous silence.

The question here to be answered by men of science is how did such ideas arise? Taking them on their own ground, one must believe that with so much smoke there must at one time have been some fire. Just as the prevalence of a myth - such as the Devil or Serpent myth - over large numbers of people or vast periods of time points to the fact that there must have been something, whatever it was, that gave rise to the idea.

In this enquiry our minds range over that portion of the world which is near the Red Sea, Arabia and Persia, and we are brought very close to places, now covered with water, that once formed part of ancient Lemuria. The name Red Sea may have arisen from the fact that it was believed really to cover hell: and its lower entrance at the island of Perim is call "Babel Mandeb," or "the Gate of Hell." This Red Sea plays a prominent part in the Arabian Nights tales and has some significance. We should also recollect that Arabia once had her men of science, the mark of whose minds has not yet been effaced from our own age. These men were many of them magicians, and they learned their lore either from the Lemurian adepts, or from the Black Magicians of the other famous land of Atlantis.

We may safely conclude that the Arabian Nights stories are not all pure fiction, but are the faint reverberations of a louder echo which reached their authors from the times of Lemuria and Atlantis.

Solomon is now and then mentioned in them, and Solomon, wherever he was, has always been reckoned as a great adept. The Jewish Cabala and Talmud speak of Solomon with great reverence. His power and the power of his seal - the interlaced triangles - constantly crop up among the other magical processes adverted to in these tales. And in nearly all cases where is represented as dealing with wicked genii, he buried them in the Red Sea. Now if Solomon was a Jewish King far away in Palestine, how did he get down to the Red Sea, and where is there any mention made of his travelling at all? These genii were elemental spirits, and Solomon is merely a name standing for the vast knowledge of magic arts possessed by adepts at a time buried in the darkness of the past. In one tale, a fisherman hauls up a heavy load, which turns out to be a large iron pot, with a metal cover, on which was engraved Solomon's Seal. The unlucky man opened the pot, when at once a vapour rose out of it that spread itself over the whole heavens at first, and then condensed again into a monstrous form who addressed the fisherman saying, that ages before he had been confined there by Solomon; that after two hundred years he swore he would make rich the man lucky enough to let him out; after five hundred years that he would reward his liberator with power; but after one thousand years of captivity he would kill the one who should free him. Then he ordered the man to prepare for death. The fisherman, however, said he doubted that the genii had really been in the pot as he was too large. To prove that he had been, the spirit immediately assumed the vaporous condition and slowly with spiral motion sank into the iron pot again, when at once the fisherman clapped on the cover and was about to cast him back into the sea. The djin then begged for mercy and agreed to serve the man and not to kill him, whereupon he was released.

Many persons will laugh at this story. But no one who has seen the wonders of sþiritualism, or who knows that at this day there are many persons in India, as well as elsewhere who have dealings with elemental spirits that bring them objects instantaneously, &c., will laugh before reflecting on the circumstances.

Observe that the pot in which he was confined was made of metal, and that the talismanic seal was on the cover. The metal prevented him from making magnetic connection for the purpose of escaping, and the seal on the cover barred that way, There were no marks on the sides of the pot. His spreading himself into a vast vapour shows that he was one of the elementals of the airy kingdom - the most powerful and malignant; and his malignancy is show in the mean, ungrateful oath he took to destroy whomsoever should be his liberator. His spreading into vapour, instead of at once springing out of the pot, refers to his invisibility, for we see that in order to enter it he was compelled to assume his vaporous state, in which he again put himself into the pot.

In another story we see a young man visiting an elemental of the nature of a Succubus, who permits him now and then to go out and perform wonders. But the entrance to her retreat is unseen and kept invisible to others. In India there are those who are foolish enough to make magnetic connection with elementals of this class, by means of precesses which we will not detail here. The elemental will then at your wish instantaneously produce any article which the operator may have touched, no matter how far away it may be or how tightly locked up. The consequences of this uncanny partnership are very injurious to the human partner. The records of spiritualism in America will give other cases of almost like character, sufficient to show that a compact can be entered into between a human being and an intelligence or force outside of our sensuous perceptions.

In other stories various people have power over men and animals and the forces of nature. They change men into animals and do other wonders. When they wish to cause the metamorphosis, they dash a handful of water into the unfortunate's face, crying; "Quit that form of man and assume the form of a dog." The terrible Maugraby is a Black Magician, such as can now be found in Bhootan, who had changed many persons, and the story of his destruction shows that his life and power as well as his death lay in the nasty practices of Black Magic. When the figure and the talisman were destroyed he was also. The white magician has no talisman but his Atman, and as that cannot be destroyed, he is beyond all fear.

But this paper is already too long. We are not forcing a conclusion when we say that these admirable and amusing tales are not all fiction. There is much nonsense in them, but they have come to us from the very land - now bleak and desolate - where at one time the fourth race men held sway and dabbled in both White and Black Magic.

W.Q.J.

Theosophist, October, 1884

ARE WE DESERTED?

FOLLOWING on the departure of H.P.B. from the scene of action, some weak voices in the Society have asked, "Have the Adepts deserted us?" This question has also come from those who are not weak in character, but who certainly do not understand very clearly what the Adepts are or how They work. And in the use of the term "Adept" are included also "Mahatmas," "Brothers," "Masters."

That these beings exist we have no manner of doubt, since for those who have studied in the right way plenty of proof has been offered; for others the proofs exist within themselves. The former class has had tangible evidence in the way of letters and appearances of the Adepts before their eyes; the latter long ago concluded that the Masters are necessities of evolution. Those who received proof palpable were those whose karma and past work entitled them to it; the others, having in previous lives gone through the experience and the argument, now quickly decided that, inasmuch as there are grades of intelligence and wisdom and power below ourselves, so there must beyond us be still other grades, all leading up, ex necessitate rei, to the Adept or Master of whatever degree.

Now in the Society's ranks there have always been three mental positions held in respect to the question whether or not the Adepts - once admitted as existing - have anything in particular to do with the Theosophical Society. These are, first, that they have; second, that they have not; third, sometimes doubt about it, at others surety that they have, - in fact, wavering.

Those who think that the T.S. movement is merely a natural development of thought cannot be affected by the present discussion; the first and third classes are interested in the matter. To those it should at once occur that in the West the idea of the existence of the Adepts and of Their connection with our movement was first brought forward in this century and in our Society by H.P. Blavatsky, who, consistently throughout her career, has declared that the Adepts - whom she was pleased to call her Masters - directed her to engage in this work and have always helped and directed her throughout. That They should so direct her and then desert the Society she founded merely because her body came to its dissolution seems so illogical as to be unthinkable. Many persons have affirmed to the reception of messages in writing from the same Masters, in which They said that some of Their efforts were for the benefit of the T.S. Among these persons we may mention Mr. A.P. Sinnett, who has never abandoned that position, and who today possesses a great number of such letters. Why should the unseen founders withdraw Their help when the work of the Society has but just begun to have its due effect upon the age? There seems to be no reasonable reply.

Once that we admit the existence of the Adepts and that They have adopted the T.S. as one of Their agents in this century for disseminating the truth about man and nature, we are bound to suppose that ordinary common-sense rules would govern as to the continuance of help or its withdrawal. Now one of the most obvious conclusions is that the Society should not be deserted until it had accomplished its mission or had utterly failed. Sixteen years of steady work show an enormous effect produced upon the thought of America, Europe, and Asia; but that portion of the work has been in the line of fighting against odds and breaking down of opposition, with a beginning in this sixteenth year of an interest in the doctrines brought to the attention of the West by the efforts of our members. From that we must, as reasonable and foresighted beings, deduce the necessity for continuance of assistance. It is plain that our work of clear promulgation and wise building-up is still before us. Why then should the Adepts desert us? Still no reasonable reply can be found.

But considering what we know of the motives and methods held and pursued by the Adepts, we cannot for a moment suppose our real founders and constant helpers could yet leave us to fight alone. In letters and messages from Them we read that Their motive is to help the moral - and hence external - progress of humanity, and Their methods to work from behind the scenes by means of agents suited for the work. Those letters and messages also say that the agency is not restricted to one person, but that all sincere lovers of truth are used to that end, whether they know of it or not. The departure of H.P.B. does not remove the other sincere lovers of truth from the scene, nor does it prevent the Adepts from sending messages if needed. Such messages have been received before H.P.B.'s departure by persons in no way connected with her, and have since that sad event also come to encourage those who are entitled to such encouragement. The contents of these are not for the public, nor indeed for any one save those to whom they have come.

Yet even if no such messages had been received, there is ample evidence, for those who are not blind, of the help of the Masters. For, as They said long ago that the work would be helped, so it has been; no other reason can be given for the increase of the work in America, since their personal effort put forth by the members will not account for the spreading of the movement. And now let it stand as a prophecy made in the messages spoken of, that in the kingdom of Great Britain and in Europe there will in five years be seen a similar spreading of Theosophy. Let no one of us, then, be in any way cast down. As the Masters exist, so They help us; and as we deserve, so will they repay.

W.Q.J.

Path, August, 1891

ARGUMENT FOR REINCARNATION

IT has been suggested to the PATH that theosophists jot down as they occur any arguments hit upon to support the doctrine of reincarnation. One furnishes this: That the persistency of individual character and attitude of mind seems a strong argument; and adduces the fact that when he was a youth thirty years ago he wrote a letter to himself upon questions about God, nature, and the inner man, and finds now upon re-reading it that it almost exactly expresses his present attitude. Also he thinks that the inner character of each shows itself in early youth, persisting through life; and as each character is different there must have been reincarnation to account for the differences. And that the assertion that differences in character are due to heredity seems to be disposed of by the persistency of essential character, even if, as we know to be the case, scientists did not begin to deny the sufficiency of heredity to account for our differences.

Another writes: If heredity would account for that which, existing in our life, makes us feel that we have lived here before, then the breeding of dogs and horses would show similar great differences as are observed in men. But a high-bred slut will bring forth a litter of pups by a father of equal breed, all exhibiting one character, whereas in the very highest bred families among men it is well known that the children will differ from each other so much that we cannot rely upon the result. Then again, considering the objections raised on ground of heredity, it should not be forgotten that but small attention has been paid to those cases where heredity will not give the explanation.

Inherent differences of character. The great differences in capacity seem to call for reincarnation as the explanation. Notice that the savages have the same brains and bodies as ours, yet not the same character or intelligence; they seem to be unprogressed egos who are unable to make the machine of brain to respond to its highest limit.

Path, August. 1891

ASTRAL INTOXICATION

    THERE is such a thing as being intoxicated in the course of an unwise pursuit of what we erroneously imagine is spirituality. In the Christian Bible it is very wisely directed to "prove all" and to hold only to that which is good; this advice is just as important to the student of occultism who thinks that he has separated himself from those "inferior" people engaged either in following a dogma or in tipping tables for messages from deceased relatives - or enemies - as it is to spiritists who believe in the "summerland" and "returning spirits."

    The placid surface of the sea of spirit is the only mirror in which can be caught undisturbed the reflections of spiritual things. When a student starts upon the path and begins to see spots of light flash out now and then, or balls of golden fire roll past him, it does not mean that he is beginning to see the real Self - pure spirit. A moment of deepest peace or wonderful revealings given to the student, is not the awful moment when one is about to see his spiritual guide, much less his own soul. Nor are psychical splashes of blue flame, nor visions of things that afterwards come to pass, nor sights of small sections of the astral light with its wonderful photographs of past or future, nor the sudden ringing of distant fairy-like bells, any proof that you are cultivating spirituality. These things, and still more curious things, will occur when you have passed a little distance on the way, but they are only the mere outposts of a new land which is itself wholly material, and only one remove from the plane of gross physical consciousness.

    The liability to be carried off and intoxicated by these phenomena is to be guarded against. We should watch, note and discriminate in all these cases; place them down for future reference, to be related to some law, or for comparison with other circumstances of a like sort. The power that Nature has of deluding us is endless, and if we stop at these matters she will let us go no further. It is not that any person or power in nature has declared that if we do so and so we must stop, but when one is carried off by what Boehme calls "God's wonders," the result is an intoxication that produces confusion of the intellect. Were one, for instance, to regard every picture seen in the astral light as a spiritual experience, he might truly after a while brook no contradiction upon the subject, but that would be merely because he was drunk with this kind of wine. While he proceeded with his indulgence and neglected his true progress, which is always dependent upon his purity of motive and conquest of his known or ascertain-able defects, nature went on accumulating the store of illusory appearances with which he satiated himself.

    It is certain that any student who devotes himself to these astral happenings will see them increase. But were our whole life devoted to and rewarded by an enormous succession of phenomena, it is also equally certain that the casting off of the body would be the end of all that sort of experience, without our having added really anything to our stock of true knowledge.

The astral plane, which is the same as that of our psychic senses, is as full of strange sights and sounds as an untrodden South American forest, and has to be well understood before the student can stay there long without danger. While we can overcome the dangers of a forest by the use of human inventions, whose entire object is the physical destruction of the noxious things encountered there, we have no such aids when treading the astral labyrinth. We may be physically brave and say that no fear can enter into us, but no untrained or merely curious seeker is able to say just what effect will result to his outer senses from the attack or influence encountered by the psychical senses.

And the person who revolves selfishly around himself as a center is in greater danger of delusion than any one else, for he has not the assistance that comes from being united in thought with all other sincere seekers. One may stand in a dark house where none of the objects can be distinguished and quite plainly see all that is illuminated outside; in the same way we can see from out of the blackness of our own house our hearts - the objects now and then illuminated outside by the astral light; but we gain nothing. We must first dispel the inner darkness before trying to see into the darkness without; we must know ourselves before knowing things extraneous to ourselves.

This is not the road that seems easiest to students. Most of them find it far pleasanter and, as they think, faster work, to look on all these outside allurements, and to cultivate all psychic senses, to the exclusion of real spiritual work.

The true road is plain and easy to find, it is so easy that very many would - be students miss it because they cannot believe it to be so simple.

                                        "The way lies through the heart";
                                         Ask there and wander not;
                                         Knock loud, nor hesitate
                                         Because at first the sounds
                                         Reverberating, seem to mock thee.
                                         Nor, when the door swings wide,
                                         Revealing shadows black as night,
                                         Must thou recoil.
                                         Within, the Master's messengers
                                         Have waited patiently:
                                         That Master is Thyself!

Path, October, 1887

ASTROLOGICAL

Over the ambitious signature of "Magus" a correspondent asks in your July issue, "What is planetary influence and how does it act on man? " "Nemo" in his reply answers other questions but fails to answer this one.

Not being myself a Magus I will not assume to fully describe planetary influence, since to do so would lead us into realms quite beyond our comprehension. But we will get a better idea of the subject by recollecting that the ancients always considered the "ambient" - or entire heaven - at birth, as being that which affected man, and that planets were only the pointers or indices showing when and where the influence of the "ambient" would be felt. The modern astrologers, following those great leaders, but unable to grasp the enormous subject, reduced the scheme to the influences of planets. They have thus come to leave out, to a great extent, influences cast by powerful stars, which often produce effects not to be sought for under planets: "When such stars have rule nor wise nor fool can stay their influence." The planets were held, rightly as I think, to be only foci for "the influence of the whole ambient," having however a power of their own of a secondary nature exercisable when the ambient influence was weak.

When London was burnt a mighty star - not a planet - had rule, and Napoleon was prefigured by a star also, his fall being due in fact to the aspect of the heavens as a whole, and not to the ruling of Wellington's significator. A slight accident might have thrown the power of the latter out of the horary field. Similarly, the cyclic vicissitudes of this globe will not be show by any planetary scheme, but by certain stars that fix the destiny of poor Earth. When they have their day and term the wise man will be unable to rule his own stars or any others.

William Q. Judge

Lucifer, September, 1888

ASTROLOGY VERIFIED

WRITING in the Theosophist upon the subject of Astrology, C.C.Massey says that he thinks at present we are not fully acquainted with the science, and that, as now practiced, it is not always reliable.

His remarks as to its unreliability are justly applicable to that branch of it which relates to nativities alone, and so far I agree with him, because I have encountered numerous cases where judgments upon nativities have been most erroneous. That department of the science is very abstruse and beset with difficulties requiring constant years of study to master. Can we wonder then at the mistakes made by the professional astrologer? He cannot afford these years of patient toil, for even with but one foot upon the threshold of the hoary art he begins to dispense his judgments and prognostications.

The three first divisions of the science: Genethliacal Astrology, or telling what shall be the individual's fate; Mundane Astrology, or foretelling the circumstances of nations, the occurrence of wars and pestilence; and Atmospherical Astrology, or indicating the weather from certain aspects of the planets, are by no means easy to understand or practice, as they require not only a close application for several years, but a good education too. But here is another branch of the subject called Horary Astrology, or the answering of questions put to the Astrologer at any time upon any subject whatever about which the questioner is anxious. This can be soon learned by close attention, and its practice will be found to reward the student with answers having in them as much of certainty as we can hope for in this illusionary world. Nor, need one wait for years before trusting himself to make replies to questions or to solve problems, excepting always Elections, or the determining of days and times for beginning or doing anything.

Zadkiel, who was a well-educated man, an ex-officer of the English Navy, in writing on this subject, says that any one of average intelligence can soon learn by Horary Astrology, whom to do business with, what things to avoid, and what will be the result of any particular business engaged in or proposed. That Zadkiel was right I have had for some years abundant proof. And we have Lilly who preceded Zadkiel, saying the same as his follower. In Lilly's Introduction to Astrology there are given hundreds of instances where Horary Astrology has furnished correct answers to questions then put. Lilly was the astrologer who predicted the great fire which in 1666 burnt down London, and also the plague that took off a vast number of her inhabitants. No matter how much the so-called scientific world may sneer at this, it remains a fact quite susceptible of proof.

In my experience with Horary Astrology I have found that some persons have not naturally the proper cast of mind for giving a correct reply to a question, which, by another reader of the figure, would be justly answered, and, again, that one who will always be correct in Horary questions may be quite unable to do well with a nativity.

It is permissible to name those professors who are dead, because then we cannot be accused of advertising them. In the city of New York there resided, up to within a short time ago, one Dr. Charles Winterburn who practiced medicine and incidentally Horary Astrology. I consulted him may times for which he would take no pay, and I cannot remember a case in which he made a wrong answer. His mind was peculiarly fitted to give a sound reply to any question astrologically put, and it was with a sincere sorrow that I heard of his death. From among the many questions answered by him I have taken a few as well as some upon which judgments were given by other astrologers, by myself and some other amateurs.

Two years ago, at exactly 3 p.m., I signed a contract relating to the use of the electric light. The conditions were favourable, and every one interested thought much money would be made. I sent Dr. Winterburn and three other astrologers - each being unaware that the others had the question and one living in a distant city - this question: "At 3 p.m. today I signed a contract; what will come of it?" No other data were given. With starling unanimity, they all replied that nothing would come of it, but that it would be abandoned. Dr. Winterburn said that I might get from it a small sum, but expenses would eat that up, and one of the others said that the opposite parties to the contract were disagreeing amongst themselves and had no funds. This I afterwards found to be true. Eleven weeks was the length of time given by astrology for it to last. Within eleven weeks the whole matter was abandoned, and I made nothing whatever from it.

Subsequently, I entered into a matter having some connection with the Government and a certain manufactured article. For the sake of collecting evidence for, or against, Astrology, I obtained judgments on the affair laying them away without paying enough attention to them to even read them. The business went forward with apparently good prospects, but at last it began to assume an unfavourable turn, and then I looked into the replies I had received. With one accord, as before, they declared I had better not go on; all stating that there appeared to be evidence of some money, but also of a greater amount of expense. Dr. Winterburn, in reply to a letter written on this point, said: "On the 20th of this month you will get some return from it, but then you should drop it. However, I see that you will give it up, and it will slip away from your neighbourhood in toto." On the 20th I received the only money ever paid in the case, and from that day to this have had no more to do with it than if I had never heard of it.

In the year 1879, I contemplated a removal of my offices, and asked Dr. Winterburn for an astrological judgment. He replied: "Do not move yet, the place offered is not good, and you will have great annoyance and loss there; wait." Soon after a room, apparently no better in another building, was offered. Dr. Winterburn and others with the same unanimity said; "Move; the new offer is good, it will be pleasant in ever way." As the new place was good and cheap I moved, and not because Astrology said so. But, singular as it may appear, in eight months afterwards the place against which they advised me - and the location and description of which they were perfectly unaware of - was invaded by masons and carpenters, the wall torn down in midwinter by order of the Municipal Government, and the whole place exposed for half a year to weather and dirt. Had I been there the expense would have been great, and the annoyance immeasurable. Let me say further that when their replies were given, neither the landlord nor the Government had these alterations in contemplation.

When President Garfield was shot, some friends and myself erected different astrological figures on the event, and construing by the rules, we all said he would die. I placed his death about a week off. Our mistakes were of time and were not the mistakes of the art.

Previous to my father's death, Dr. Winterburn, having no acquaintance with him and never having seen him, said: "All the indications are bad; I think the direction I have named will be fatal. He will die in a few days, but his death will be easy and calm." He died in fifteen days as calmly and sweetly as a child would drop to sleep. The only datum given to the astrologer was the question: - "My father is sick; what will come of it?"

Such are a few of many instances I have had of the preciseness and truth of this ancient art. I could give hundreds.

These experiences lead me to the conclusion that Horary Astrology is a correct mode of divination. Those ancient men, who, with minds unfettered by the shackles of bigotry or theology, but having an overflowing desire to benefit that "great orphan Humanity," were wont in the part of India and Egypt to inquire into all of Nature's works, found that Nature is one vast machine whose wheels work one within the other. Calculate the motion and know the mode of motion of one, and you have a key for all. So they took the planets with the heavenly road in which they travel, and erected a scheme based on experience and the universal reign of law, which enabled them and will enable us to guide the faltering steps of man through the dark and rugged valley of this life. Anxiety is one of man's greatest and most insidious foes. It fetters his energy and defeats his ends. If Astrology will relieve one at any crisis from anxiety, is it not well to foster its pursuit and spread its fame? It has relieved me often from anxiety which, without it, I would have felt for months. It will do the same for any one.

Let the light then shine from the East where Astrology began: let those whose forefathers gave to Claudius Ptolemy the materials for his Tetrabiblos, give to us what aid they can for the great understanding and development of this most ancient art.

William Q. Judge

Theosophist, April, 1882

AUM!

THE most sacred mystic syllable of the Vedas is Aum. It is the first letter of the Sanskrit alphabet, and by some it is thought to be the sound made by a new born child when the breath is first drawn into the lungs. The daily prayers of the Hindu Brahmin are begun and ended with it, and the ancient sacred books say that with that syllable the gods themselves address the most Holy One.

In the Chandogya Upanishad ¹ its praises are sung in these words:

Let a man meditate on the syllable OM, called the udgitha,² ...it is the best of all essences, the highest, deserving the highest place, the eighth.

It is then commanded to meditate on this syllable as the breath, of two kinds, in the body - the vital breath and the mere breath in the mouth or lungs, for by this meditation come knowledge and proper performance of sacrifice. In verse 10 is found:

Now, therefore, it would seem to follow that both he who knows the true meaning of OM, and he who does not, perform the same sacrifice. But this is not so, for knowledge and ignorance are different. The sacrifice which a man performs with knowledge, faith, and the Upanishad is more powerful.

Outwardly the same sacrifice is performed by both, but that performed by him who has knowledge and has meditated on the secret meaning of OM partakes of the qualities inhering in OM, which need just that knowledge and faith as the medium through which they may become visible and active. If a jeweler and a mere ploughman sell a precious stone, the knowledge of the former bears better fruit than the ignorance of the latter.

Shankaracharya in his Sharir Bhashya dwells largely on OM, and in the Vayu Purana a whole chapter is devoted to it. Now as Vayu is air, we can see in what direction the minds of those who were concerned with that purana were tending. They were analyzing sound, which will lead to discoveries of interest regarding the human spiritual and physical constitution. In sound is tone, and tone is one of the most important and deep reaching of all natural things. By tone, the natural man and the child express the feelings, just as animals in their tones make known their nature. The tone of the voice of the tiger is quite different from that of the dove, as different as their natures are from each other, and if the sights, sounds, and objects in the natural world mean anything, or point the way to any laws underlying these differences, then there is nothing puerile in considering the meaning of tone.

The Padma Purana says:

"The syllable OM is the leader of all prayers; let it therefore be employed in the beginning of all prayers," and Manu in his laws ordains: "A Brahmin, at the beginning and end of a lesson on the Vedas, must always pronounce the syllable OM, for unless OM precede, his learning will slip away from him, and unless it follows, nothing will be long retained."

The celebrated Hindoo Raja, Ramohun Roy, in a treatise on this letter says:

"OM, when considered as one letter, uttered by the help of one articulation, is the symbol of the supreme Spirit. 'One letter (OM) is the emblem of the Most High, Manu II, 83.' But when considered as a triliteral word consisting of (a), (u), (m), it implies the three Vedas, the three states of human nature, there three divisions of the universe, and the three deities - Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, agents in the creation, preservation, and destruction of this world; or, properly speaking, the three principal attributes of the Supreme Being personified in those three deities. In this sense it implies, in fact, the universe controlled by the Supreme Spirit."

Now we may consider that there is pervading the whole universe a single homogeneous resonance, sound, or tone which acts, so to speak, as the awakener or vivifying power, stirring all the molecules into action. This is what is represented in all languages by the vowel a, which takes precedence of all others. This is the word, the verbum, the Logos of St. John of the Christians, who says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the word was God."³ This is creation, for without this resonance or motion among the quiescent particles, there would be no visible universe. That is to say, upon sound, or, as the Aryans called it, Nada Brahma (divine resonance), depends the evolution of the visible from the invisible.

But this sound a, being produced, at once alters itself into au, so that the second sound u is that one made by the first in continuing its existence. The vowel u, which in itself is a compound one, therefore represents preservation. And the idea of preservation is contained also in creation, or evolution, for there could not be anything to preserve, unless it had first come into existence.

If these two sounds, so compounded into one, were to proceed indefinitely, there would be of course no destruction of them. But it is not possible to continue the utterance further than the breath, and whether the lips are compressed or the tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth, or the organs behind that used, there will be in the finishing of the utterance the closure or m sound, which among the Aryans had the meaning of stoppage. In this last letter there is found the destruction of the whole word or letter. To reproduce it a slight experiment will show that by no possibility can it be begun with m, but that au invariably commences even the utterance of m itself. Without fear of successful contradiction, it can be asserted that all speech begins with au, and the ending, or destruction of speech, is in m.

The word "tone" is derived from the Latin and Greek words meaning sound and tone. In the Greek the word "tonos" means a "stretching" or "straining." As to the character of the sound, the word "tone" is used to express all varieties, such as high, low, grave, acute, sweet, and harsh sounds. In music it gives the peculiar quality of the sound produced, and also distinguishes one instrument from another; as rich tone. reedy tone, and so on. In medicine, it designates the state of the body, but is there used more in the signification of strength, and refers to strength or tension. It is not difficult to connect the use of the word in medicine with the divine resonance of which we spoke, because we may consider tension to be the vibration, or quantity of vibration, by which sound is apprehended by the ear; and if the whole system gradually goes down so that its tone is lowered without stoppage, the result will at last be dissolution for that collection of molecules. In painting, the tone also shows the general drift of the picture, just as it indicates the same thing in morals and manners. We say, "a low tone of morals, an elevated tone of sentiment, a courtly tone of manners," so that tone has a signification which is applied universally to either good or bad, high or low. And the only letter which we can use to express it, or symbolize it, is the a sound, in its various changes, long, short, and medium. And just as the tone of manners, of morals, of painting, of music, means the real character of each, in the same way the tones of the various creatures, including man himself, mean or express the real character; and all together joined in the deep murmur of nature go to swell the Nada Brahma, or Divine resonance, which at last is heard as the music of the spheres.

Meditation on tone, as expressed in this Sanskrit word OM, will lead us to a knowledge of the secret Doctrine. We find expressed in the merely mortal music the seven divisions of the divine essence, for as the microcosm is the little copy of the macrocosm, even the halting measures of man contain the little copy of the whole, in the seven tones of the octave. From what we are led to the seven colors, and so forward and upward to the Divine radiance which is the Aum. For the Divine Resonance, spoken of above, is not the Divine Light itself. The Resonance is only the outbreathing of the first sound of the entire Aum. This goes on during what the Hindoos call a Day of Brahma, which, according to them, last a thousand ages.⁴ It manifests itself not only as the power which stirs up and animates the particles of Universe, but also in the evolution and dissolution of man, of the animal and mineral kingdoms, and of solar systems. Among the Aryans it was represented in the planetary system by Mercury, who has always been said to govern the intellectual faculties and to be the universal stimulator. Some old writers have said that it is shown through Mercury, amongst mankind, by the universal talking of women.

And wherever this Divine Resonance is closed or stopped by death or other change, the Aum has been uttered there. These utterances of Aum are only the numerous microcosmic enunciations of the Word, which is uttered or completely ended, to use the Hermetic or mystical style of language, only when the great Brahm stops the outbreathing, closes the vocalization, by the m sound, and thus causes the universal dissolution. This universal dissolution is known in the Sanskrit and in the secret Doctrine as the Maha Pralaya, Maha being "the great," and Pralaya "dissolution." And so, after thus arguing, the ancient Rishees of India said: "Nothing is begun or ended; everything is changed, and that which we call death is only a transformation." In thus speaking they wished to be understood as referring to the manifested universe, the so-called death of a sentient creature being only a transformation of energy, or a change of the mode and place of manifestation of the Divine Resonance. Thus early in the history of the race the doctrine of conservation of energy was known and applied. The Divine Resonance, or the au sound, is the universal energy, which is conserved during each Day of Brahma, and at the coming on of the great Night is absorbed again into the whole. Continually appearing and disappearing it transforms itself again and again, covered from time to time by a veil of matter called its visible manifestation, and never lost, but always changing itself from one form to another. And herein can be seen the use and beauty of the Sanskrit. Nada Brahma is Divine Resonance; that is, after saying Nada, if we stopped with Brahm, logically we must infer that the m sound at the end of Brahm signified the Pralaya, thus confuting the position that the Divine Resonance existed, for if it had stopped it could not be resounding. So they added an a at the end of the Brahm, making it possible to understand that as Brahma the sound was still manifesting itself. But time would not suffice to go into this subject as it deserves, and these remarks are only intended as a feeble attempt to point out the real meaning and purpose of Aum.

For the above reasons, and out of the great respect we entertain for the wisdom of the Aryans, was the symbol adopted and placed upon the cover of this magazine and at the head of the text.

With us OM has signification. It represents the constant undercurrent of meditation, which ought to be carried on by every man, even while engaged in the necessary duties of this life. There is for every conditioned being a target at which the aim is constantly directed. Even the very animal kingdom we do not except, for it, below us, awaits its evolution into a higher state; it unconsciously perhaps, but nevertheless actually, aims at the same target.

"Having taken the bow, the great weapon, let him place on it the arrow, sharpened by devotion. Then, having drawn it with a thought directed to that which is, hit the mark, O friend, - the Indestructible. OM is the bow, the Self is the arrow, Brahman is called its aim. It is to be hit by a man who is not thoughtless; and then as the arrow becomes one with the target, he will become one with Brahman. Know him alone as the Self, and leave off other words. He is the bridge of the Immortal. Meditate on the Self as OM. Hail to you that you may cross beyond the sea of darkness."⁵

AUM!

Hadji-Erinn

Path, April, 1886

¹Khandogya Upanishad, 1st Khanda. See Vol. 1, Sacred Books of the East. M&#252ller.

²Hymn of Praise to Brahm.

³St.John, Ch. I, v. I.

⁴See Bagavad-Gita

⁵ Mundaka Upanishad, II, Kh. 2, (Müller's Tr.)

AUTHORITY

We have received the following from California:

In the July PATH is an article entitled - "Shall We Know Our Friends in Heaven?" I would like to ask if the Swedish Seer Swedenborg, has not answered that question to the satisfaction of theosophists. If he is accepted as an authority I should think his answer complete and satisfactory.

Yours,

E.W.F.

Inasmuch as theosophists are of all shades of belief, and as Swedenborg was of one sort in regard to the matter referred to, his answer cannot be satisfactory to all theosophists, nor can it be authoritative. The Society, as such, has no authorities. It was founded with the object of breaking down that reliance upon "authority" which has been the bane of man for ages, and it would be strange now if we could admit authority for theosophists. It is true that sometimes the impression has been conveyed by individuals, that the final arbiters in matters of belief are the Mahatmas, but at no time has any Mahatma given out such an idea. We are engaged in trying to develop a truer appreciation of the Light of Life which is hidden in every man, and so the "final authority" is the man himself.

It makes very little difference whether Swedenborg or Mr. Chas. Johnston is right as to the question of meeting our friends in heaven; their beliefs will not alter the fact whatever it may turn out to be; but even if it is not a matter of highest importance, we cannot even in that permit any "theosophical authority."

Each of us is the master of his own destiny; each one can read Swedenborg or Luther as to these matters; but from all such thinkers it can be gathered that the ancient Bhagavad-Gita is true where it says, that "whatever nature a man thinks on when he abandons the body at last, to that only does he go, having been always conformed to that nature," and such is the doctrine of Swedenborg.

Path, November, 1887

AUTHORSHIP OF SECRET DOCTRINE

A good deal has been said about the writing of Isis Unveiled, and later of the Secret Doctrine, both by H. P. Blavatsky. A writer in the spiritualistic journals took great pains to show how many books the first work seems to quote from, and the conclusion to be arrived at after reading his diatribes is that H.P.B. had an enormous library at her disposal, and of course in her house, for she never went out, or that she had agents at great expense copying books, or, lastly, that by some process or power not known to the world was able to read books at a distance, as, for instance, in the Vatican at Rome and the British Museum. The last is the fact. She lived in a small flat when writing the first book and had very few works on hand, all she had being of the ordinary common sort. She herself very often told how she gained her information as to modern books. No secret was made of it, for those who were with her saw day after day that she could gaze with ease into the astral light and glean whatever she wanted. But in the early days she did not say precisely to the public that she was in fact helped in that work by the Masters, who gave from time to time certain facts she could not get otherwise. The Secret Doctrine, however, makes no disguise of the real help, and she asserts, as also many of us believe, that the Masters had a hand in that great production. The letters sent to Mr. Sinnett formed the ground for Esoteric Buddhism, as was intended, but as time went on it was seen that some more of the veil had to be lifted and certain misconceptions cleared up; hence the Secret Doctrine was written, and mostly by the Masters themselves, except that she did the arranging of it.

For some time it was too much the custom of those who had received at the hands of H.P.B. words and letters from her Masters to please themselves with the imagination that she was no more in touch with the original fount, and that, forsooth, these people could decide for themselves what was from her brain and what from the Masters. But it is now time to give out a certificate given when the Secret Doctrine was being written, a certificate signed by the Masters who have given out all that is new in our theosophical books. It was sent to one who had then a few doubts, and at the same time copies were given from the same source to others for use in the future, which is now. The first certificate runs thus:

I wonder if this note of mine is worthy of occupying a select spot with the documents reproduced, and which of the peculiarities of the "Blavatskian" style of writing it will be found to most resemble? The present is simply to satisfy the Doctor that "the more proof given the less believed." Let him take my advice and not make these two documents public. It is for his own satisfaction the undersigned is happy to assure him that the Secret Doctrine, when ready, will be the triple production of [here are the names of one of the Masters and of H.P.B.] and _______ most humble servant, [signed by the other.]

On the back of this was the following, signed by the Master who is mentioned in the above:

If this can be of any use or help to _____, though I doubt it, I, the humble undersigned Faquir, certify that the Secret Doctrine is dictated to [name of H.P.B.], partly by myself and partly by my brother ______.

A year after this, certain doubts having arisen in the minds of individuals, another letter from one of the signers of the foregoing was sent and reads as follows. As the prophecy in it has come true, it is now the time to publish it for the benefit of those who know something of how to take and understand such letters. For the outside it will all be so much nonsense.

The certificate given last year saying the Secret Doctrine would be when finished the triple production of [H.P.B.'s name], ________, and myself was and is correct, although some have doubted not only the facts given in it but also the authenticity of the message in which it was contained. Copy this and also keep the copy of the aforesaid certificate. You will find them both of use on the day when you shall, as will happen without your asking, receive from the hands of the very person to whom the certificate was given, the original for the purpose of allowing you to copy it; and then you can verify the correctness of this presently forwarded copy. And it may then be well to indicate to those wishing to know what portions in the Secret Doctrine have been copied by the pen of [H.P.B.'s name] into its pages, though without quotation marks, from my own manuscript and perhaps from ______, though the last is more difficult from the rarity of his known writing and greater ignorance of his style. All this and more will be found necessary as time goes on, but for which you are well qualified to wait.

ONE OF THE STAFF

Path, April, 1893

BEFORE AMERICAN SPIRITUALISM

SO many persons have come to suppose that Spiritualism took its rise through the rappings at Rochester under the mediumship of the Fox sisters, it may be profitable to reprint a few descriptions of spiritualistic séances which had place a hundred years ago in France, Germany, and other European countries. At that time there were very many inquiring minds looking for the truth. They lived at a time when the Church had complete power, except perhaps in France, as in the latter country the Revolution was in the air. Much of the inquiry was tinctured with prevailing religious thought, and at the same time séances were held very privately. But enough leaked out and was recorded in various ways to indicate that much more of the same kind must have gone on. These extracts are taken from the Theosophical Correspondence between Count Saint Martin and Baron Liebistorf, beginning in 1792.

Nevertheless, as I believe I speak to a man of moderation, calm and discreet, I will not withhold from you that in the school through which I passed, more than twenty-five years ago, communications of all kinds were numerous and frequent, in which I had my share, like many others; and that, in this share, every sign indicative of the Repairer was present. Now you know the Repairer, and active Cause, are one. Nevertheless, as I was introduced by an initiation, and the danger of all initiations is lest we should be delivered over to the violent spirits of the world, as happened to Adam when he initiated himself in his imagination ( Incarnation, 3d part, vi. I), and his desire was not all of God, I cannot answer that the forms which showed themselves to me may not have been assumed forms, for the door is open to all initiations, and this is what makes these ways so faulty and suspicious. I know that Germany is full of these initiations; I know that the Cabinet of Berlin is guided, and leads its King by their means - and, hitherto, without much profit to boast of; I know, in short, that the whole earth is full of these prodigies; but, I repeat, unless things come from the centre itself I do not give them my confidence. I can assure you I have received by the inward way truths and joys a thousand times higher than those I have received from without.

* * *

A remarkable instance of this kind, which I heard of about two years ago, is what occurred at the consecration of the Egyptian Masonic Lodge at Lyons, 27th July, 5556 [Masonic chronology], according to their reckoning - which I believe to be incorrect. The labors lasted three days, and the prayers fifty-four hours; there were twenty-seven in the meeting. While the members were praying to the Eternal to manifest His approbation by a visible sign, and the Master was in the middle of his ceremonies, the Repairer appeared and blessed the members assembled. He came down on a blue cloud, which served for vehicle to this apparition; gradually he ascended again on this cloud, which, from the moment of his descent from heaven to earth, acquired a splendor so dazzling that a young girl, C., who was present could not bear its light. The two great prophets and the lawgiver of Israel also gave signs of their benevolence and approval. Who could reasonably doubt the fervor and piety of those twenty-seven members? ... I repeat my question: do you believe in physical communications, emanating from or produced in the centre? I call centre, in the poverty of my nomenclature, the interior of our souls; but I know not whether perception of any sort can penetrate to it; yes or no?

* * *

I found some old acquaintances at Bale, who, to my surprise, were very advanced in the theory and practice of communications. They told me of an event which had just occurred to a celebrated ecclesiastic of Zurich whom I formerly knew; his name is Lavater. He has received an invitation to go to see some persons of the highest rank in a northern court; not the one you mentioned in one of your letters, whose Cabinet would not move a step without physical consultations [Berlin - Tr.]; the one in question is farther north [Copenhagen - Tr.]. Lavater arrived there last summer; he met with men of education engaged in public business and living in the world, occupying high positions - men of acknowledged probity, who, in inviting him, could have no motive but one of goodness, for they even defrayed the expense of his journey. These men assure him that they have immediate communications with the active intelligent Cause; they assure him that one of his friends, dead some time ago, will, through his medium, enter their society. These men promise to enlighten him on subjects upon which he had prayed for light for a long while - on the doctrine of the heavenly food, the great mystery... They tell him also, what is very remarkable, that whenever they are together they have a most intimate experience of the truth of the promise. "When two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them"; since then a cloud, white as snow, descends, and for about half an hour rest upon them. They were convinced that these manifestations were signs and emanations of the active and intelligent Cause:

(I) Because these communications were always had after prayer had been offered to that Cause, and the answers came immediately after the petitions.

(2) Because these manifestations enjoined their love for that Cause.

(3) Because the manifestation which they called Lord, Spirit of the Lord, Image, and Symbol of the Lord, received their adoration, which no good virtue would have dared to do.

(4) Because the answers were given at the same time, in many places, to different persons, and in the same manner.

(5) Because it judged them with severity, and on their sincere repentance it immediately blessed them, and that visibly.

(6) Because whenever they asked it "Art thou the active intelligent Cause?" they were answered "Yes," which no power good or bad, would have dared to say.

(7) Because they were quite able to distinguish him from the good and evil intermediate beings which surrounded him.

I thank you for elucidating the new branch of intercourse going on in the North. The great difficulty remains as to the conclusions of our Zuricher: "Art thou the active intelligent Cause?" They answered "'Yes', which no intermediate power, good or bad, would have dared to say." Is this conclusion right or not? - that's the question.

The father, notwithstanding his attachment to these subaltern initiations, has been gradually led round to my way of thinking by his daughters. What completely gained me the confidence of these young ladies, who may yet open all their soul to the truth, was reading the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of I Corinthians, which the eldest of them opened accidentally. But with the other men, members of this society, and who are men of a certain age, nothing of consequence can be done. They are infected with the idea of the prerogative of having this direct intercourse with the powers.

* * *

I have received a quire-full of details of the experiences at Copenhagen. They still glorify themselves in the belief that the light, which, after their questions, gives out the sign "yes" or "no," is a whitish phosphoric color, and not red, because red, or the color of fire, would be a bad species... Just as if it was not as easy to ape a whitish color as a fiery color.

Sometimes they see a star by the side of the light which is their oracle: they know this star represents a virtue. Then they ask: "Dare it remain there?" According to the answer "Yes" or "No," the scholars order, the star obeys.

They sometimes put questions on points of doctrine; for instance, they ask:

"Is there a passage in Scripture which indisputably proves the metempsychosis?"

"Yes and no."

Some understand this to mean that such passages may be found in the Old Testament, and they again ask:

"Is there any in the New Testament?"

"Yes."

"In the four Evangelists?"

"Yes."

"In St. Matthew?"

"Yes."

"In the first chapter?"

"No."

"In the second?"

"No."

"In the fourth?"

"No."

"In the eleventh?"

"Yes."

"In the four first verses?"

"No."

"In the four next?"

"No."

"In the fourteenth?"

"Yes."

* * *

In this record we find support for certain conclusions. First, that the modus operandi was the same then as it now is in American spiritualism. Second, the alleged spirits showed at that time the same ignorance and want of progress which they have given evidence of ever since. There the communicating spirits of 1792, including the "Great First Cause," spoke in line with the philosophic and religious views of the believers, going no further and knowing no more about God, Nature, or Man than the questioners. This is exactly what is proved by the record of forty years of American Spiritualism. If to this we add the fact, so well known, that the old Greek spiritualists obtained from their mediums at the Temples of the Oracles precise answers to their questions, confirming their own views, we must admit that spiritualism of no matter what kind, in every time, and among all nations, will gain from the unseen powers giving reports and communications no more in respect to philosophy, religion, and the laws of nature and man's constitution than corresponds with the most advanced thought of living believers. In other words, man's true teacher and initiator is himself in the body, and not any intelligence devoid of a body.

William Brehon

Path, October, 1893

"BLAVATSKIANISM" IN AND OUT OF SEASON

THEOSOPHISTS! let us consult together. Let us survey the army, the field of battle, and the fighters. Let us examine our ways and our speech, so that we may know what we are doing in this great affray which may last for ages and in which every act has a future. What do we see? A Theosophical Society struggling as a whole against the world. A few devoted members struggling against the world and some opponents within its ranks. A Society grown to its eighteenth year, after the expenditure of much time and energy and fame by those who have been with it in infancy, those who have come in from time to time, those who worked and left it for this generation. It has its karma like any other body, for it is a living thing and not a mere paper organization; and with that karma is also woven the karma of the units composing it.

How does it live and grow? Not alone by study and work, but by propriety of method of work; by due attention paid by the members to thought and speech in their theosophic promulgations. Wise workers, like wise generals, survey the field now and then to see if their methods are good or bad, even though fully convinced of the nobility and righteousness of their cause; they trust not only to the virtue of their aim and work, but attend to any defects now and then indicated by the assaults of the enemy; they listen to warnings of those who see or think they see errors of omission and commission. Let us all do this.

It happens to be the fact that most of those who work the hardest for the Society are at the same time devoted disciples, open or non-professed, of H.P. Blavatsky, but that leaves still a large number of members who, with the first-named, may be variously classified. First, there are those who do not rely at all on H.P. Blavatsky, while not distinctly opposed and none the less good members. Next are those who are openly opposed to her name and fame, who, while reading her works and profiting by them as well as by the work aroused by her in others, are averse from hearing her name, oppose the free assertion of devotion to her, would like now and then to have Theosophy stripped of her altogether, and opine that many good and true possible members are kept away from the T.S. by her personality's being bound up in it. The two last things of course are impossible to meet, because if it had not been for her the Theosophical Society with its literature would not have come into existence. Lastly are those in the world who do not belong to our ranks, composed of persons holding in respect to the T.S. the various positions of for, against, and indifferent.

The active workers may be again divided as follows:

(a) Moderate ones, good thinkers who present their thoughts in words that show independent and original thought on theosophical subjects, thus not referring to authority, yet who are earnest, devoted and loyal.

(b) Those who are earnest, devoted and loyal, but present Theosophy more or less as quotations from H.P.B.'s writings, constantly naming and always referring their thoughts and conclusions to her, thus appearing to present Theosophy as solely based on her as an authority.

(c) The over-zealous who err like the former, and, in addition, too frequently and out of place and time, bring forward the name of H.P. Blavatsky; often relating what it was supposed she had done or not done, and what she said, attributing infallibility to her either directly or by indirection; thus arousing an opposition that is added to any impression of dogmatism or authority produced by other members.

(d) Believers in phenomena who give prominence to the wonders said to have been performed by H.P. Blavatsky; who accentuate the value of the whole field of occult phenomena, and sincerely supposing, however mistaken the notion, that occult and psychical phenomena will arrest attention, draw out interest, inspire confidence; when, in fact, the almost certain results are, to first arouse curiosity, then create distrust and disappointment; for nearly every one is a doubting Thomas who requires, while the desire cannot be satisfied, a duplicate of every phenomenon for himself. In The Occult World, the Adept writing on this very subject says that the demand for new phenomena would go on crescendo until at last one would be crushed by doubt, or the other and worse result of creating superstition and blind faith would come about. Every thoughtful person must surely see that such must be the consequence.

It is true that the movement has grown most in consequence of the effort of those who are devoted to an ideal, inspired by enthusiasm, filled with a lasting gratitude to H.P. Blavatsky. Their ideal is the service of Humanity, the ultimate potential perfectibility of man as exemplified by the Masters and Adepts of all ages, including the present. Their enthusiasm is born from the devotion which the ideal arouses, their gratitude is a noble quality engendered by the untiring zeal of the soul who brought to their attention the priceless gems of the wisdom religion. Ingratitude is the basest vice of which man can be guilty, and it will be base for them to receive the grand message and despise the messenger.

But does devotion, loyalty, or gratitude require that we should thrust our estimate of a person forward to the attention of the public in a way that is certain to bring on opposition? Should our work in a great movement, meant to include all men, intended to condense the truth from all religions, be impeded or imperiled by over-zealous personal loyalty? I think not. We should be wise as serpents. Wisdom does not consist in throwing the object of our heart's gratitude in the faces of those who have no similar feeling, for when we do that it may easily result that personal considerations will nullify our efforts for the good of those we address.

Now it is charged in several quarters that we are dogmatic as a Society. This is extremely easy of disproof as a fact, and some trouble has been taken to disprove it. But is there not a danger that we might go too far on this line, and by continuing the disproof too long increase the very belief which we say is baseless? "The more proof offered the less believed" is how often true. Our constitution is the supreme law. Its being non-dogmatic is proof enough. Years of notification on almost every document have prepared the proofs which every one can see. I would seem that enough has been said on the subject of our non-dogmatism.

But the charge then is altered, and "dogmatism" is supplanted by "Blavatskiansim," and here the critics have a slight ground to stand on; here is where a danger may exist and where the generals, the captains, the whole army, should properly pay attention and be on their guard. In the words and methods of the various classes of members above mentioned is the cause for the charge. I am not directing any remarks to the question whether members "believe in Blavatsky or not," for the charge made is intended to imply that there is too much said about H.P. Blavatsky as authority, as source, as guide, too little original thinking, too much reliance on the words of a single person.

In the years that are gone, necessity existed for repelling mean personal attacks on H.P. Blavatsky's character. To take up arms in her behalf then was wise. Now her works remain. The necessity for constant repulse of attacks on her does not exist. Judgment can be used in doing so. Loyalty is not thrown to the winds when good judgment says there is no need to reply. One of the best replies is to carry on the work in the noble and altruistic spirit she always pointed out. Take, for instance, the almost senile attacks periodically made by the Society for Psychical Research. What good can be possibly accomplished by paying any attention to them? None at all, except what results to that body by inflating it with the idea that its shafts have hit a vulnerable spot. Ever since their ex post facto agent went to India to play at psychical investigation they have almost lived by their attacks, for by them, more than anything else, they gain some attention; her personality, even to this day, adds spice to their wide-of-the-mark discussions. Even at the Chicago World's Congresses their discussions were mostly given up to re-hashing the same stories, as if they were proud that, even though they knew nothing of psychic law, they had at least discovered one human being whose nature they could not fathom, and desired to for ever parade her with the various labels their fancy suggested. But in districts or new publications, where a new attack is made, good judgment may suggest an answer bringing up the statement of charges and copiousness of former answers. Now our work goes on in meetings, in publications, in discussions, and here is where the old idea of repelling attack may run into an unnecessary parade of the person to whom in heart we are loyal, while at the same time the voluminousness of her writings is often an excuse for not investigating for oneself, and this leads to quoting her too frequently by name as authority.

She never claimed authority, but, contrariwise, disclaimed it. But few of the theories broached by her were new to our day, albeit those are the key-ideas. Yet these very key-ideas are not those on which the quotations and personal references to her are made so often. She neither invented, nor claimed as new, the doctrines of Karma, Reincarnation, Devachan, Cycles, and the like. These are all exhaustively treated in various literatures - Buddhistic, Jain, Brahmanical, Zoroastrian. They are capable, like all theosophic doctrines, of independent examination, of philosophical, logical, and analogical proof. But, if we state them parrot-like, and then bring forward a quotation from H.P. Blavatsky to prove them, has not an opponent, has not any one, member or non-member, a right to say that the offending person is not doing independent thinking, is not holding a belief after due consideration, but is merely acting blindly on faith in matters where blind faith is not required? And if many members do the same thing, it is quite natural that a cry should be raised by some one of "Blavatskianism."

If this were an age in the West when any respect or reverence existed as a general thing in the people, the sayings of a sage could be quoted as authority. But it is not such an age. Reverence is paralyzed for a time, and the words of a sage are of no moment as such. H.P. Blavatsky came in this irreverent time, holding herself only as a messenger and indicator, not as a sage pure and simple. Hence to merely quote her words out of due place will but arouse a needless irritation. It may indicate in oneself a failure to think out the problem independently, an absence of diligence in working out our own salvation in the way directed by Gautama Buddha. What, then, are the right times and places, and which are out of place and time?

When the assembly and the subject are both meant to deal with the life and works of H.P. Blavatsky, then it is right and proper and wise to speak of her and her works, her acts, and words. If one is dealing with an analysis or compilation of her writings on any subject, then must she and what she wrote be used, named and quoted. But even at those times her words should not be quoted as and for authority, inasmuch as she said they were not. Those who consider them to be authority will quickly enough accept them. As she never put forward anything as original investigation of hers in the realm of science, in the line of experiments in hypnotism, in clairvoyance, mind-reading, or the like, we ought to be careful how and when we bring her statements forward to an unbelieving public.

But in an assembly of members coming together to discuss theosophical doctrines in general, say such as Karma, Reincarnation, the Septenary Constitution, and the like, it is certainly unwise to give quotation after quotation from H.P. Blavatsky's works on the matter in hand. This is not fair to the hearers, and it shows only a power of memory or compilation that argues nothing as to the comprehension of the subject on the reader's part. It is very easy to compile, to quote sentence after sentence, to weave a long series of extracts together, but it is not progress, nor independence, nor wisdom. On the other hand, it is a complete nullification of the life-work of the one who has directed us to the path; it is contrary to the spirit and genius of the Society. And if in such an assembly much time is given to recounting phenomena performed by H.P.B., or telling how she once said this and at another time did that, the time is out of joint with the remarks. Meetings of branches are meant for giving to the members and enquirers a knowledge of theosophical doctrines by which alone true progress is to come to our movement. New and good members are constantly needed; they cannot be fished out of the sea of enquirers by such a process as the personal history of anyone, they cannot be retained by relations of matters that do not teach them the true aim and philosophy of life, they will be driven off if assailed with quotations.

If there is power in a grateful loyalty to H.P. Blavatsky, as for my part I fully believe, it does not have its effect by being put forward all the time, or so often as to be too noticeable, but from its depth, its true basis, its wise foundation, its effect on our work, our act, and thought. Hence to my mind there is no disloyalty in reserving the mention of her name and qualities for right and timely occasions. It is certain that as Theosophy brings forward no new system of ethics, but only enforces the ethics always preached, the claim, if made, that our ethics, our high endeavor, are to be found nowhere else described save in the works left by H.P, Blavatsky, is baseless, will lead to wrong conclusions, and bring up a reaction that no amount of argument can suppress. No greater illustration of an old and world-wide religion can be found than that provided by Buddhism, but what did Buddha say to his disciples when they brought up the question of the honours to be paid to his remains? He told them not to hinder themselves about it, not to dwell on it, but to work out their own salvation with diligence¹

That the views held by H.P. Blavatsky herself coincided with this can be seen by reading the pamphlet entitled The Theosophical Society and H.P.B. being a reprint of articles that appeared in LUCIFER of December, 1890. She requested the reprint, and some of her notes are appended to the articles. In those Bro. Patterson took somewhat the same ground as this article, and she commended it in most positive terms.

William Q. Judge

Lucifer, December, 1893

¹See the Mahâparinibbana Sutta.

BOGUS MAHATMA MESSAGES

ON November 30th, 1894, I received, from a source I always respect, this warning: "Look out for anonymous and bogus 'occult' messages to members of the Society. Both will be sent, as attempts at delusion, as burlesques, and for other purposes." On the second of December, at 144 Madison Avenue, New York, a New York F.T.S. in the presence of Mr. A. Fullerton handed me a packet. A plate giving the written contents is given below.

The member's name is Joseph W. Ganson, a very earnest student. He said it had fallen into his lap at his Club, the Harvard, or seemed to fall out of a newspaper he held. The only other person present was a friend who declared he had nothing to do with it. The packet is of yellowish linen paper, looking quite eastern. It was addressed "Ganson," and near the address is "a pledge." Inside was also a half of a palm-leaf south Indian manuscript with a flower in it.

Mr. Ganson said he did not know whether it was genuine or not, but could not decide and asked me to tell him. I then said that if a joke he could take the words to heart, if he chose, for what was good in them, but that in three days I would decide. On December 5th I gave him a signed certificate that the message is not genuine and had been concocted by three persons, and that all genuine objective messages from the Masters carried with them a peculiar and definite odor which could not be imitated and which once identified would not be forgotten. The message was shown to a large number of members at a meeting, and but few were willing to decide for or against it, admitting non-ability save by argument, inference, and appearance. Appearance is no guide, because this message might have been genuine and still have the same appearance and contents.

Mr. W. E. Coleman of San Francisco is also occupying himself in sending post-cards to many members in all parts signed "Mahatma E." with three stars, referring to exposures and scurrilous attacks. Members may as well know these facts. I invite all to send to me any and all messages, real or pretended, and I will guarantee to render a decision according to the fact in each case. Beware not only of bogus messages but also of anonymous communications.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, January, 1895

A BUDDHIST DOCTRINE

THERE are twelve principal Buddhist sects in Japan. These are: Ku-Sha-Shiu, Jo-Jitsu-Shiu, Ris-Shiu, Ho-so-Shiu, San Ron-Shiu, Ke-Gon-Shiu, Ten-Dai-Shiu, Shin-Gon-Shiu, Jo-Do-Shiu, Zen-Shiu, Shin-Shiu, and Nichi-Ren-Shiu. It is of a tenet of the Shin-Shiu that I propose to speak. The student can learn much of the others by consulting the works of Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A., and other authorities.

The last four of those mentioned may be called the modern ones. Gen-Ku founded the Jo-Do in 1174 A.D.; the Zen-Shiu was started by Ei-Sai in 1191 A.D.; the Shin-Shiu was founded in 1224 A.D. by Shin-Ran; and in 1253 A.D., Nichi-Ren established that one named for him. This last is more frequently called by the founder's name because, although he adopted what is called the Saddharmapundarika as the principal Sutra of it, he altered the substance of the doctrine. For that reason it is called, paraphrastically, "Nichi-Ren's Saddharmapundarika sect."

The essential difference between the Shin-Shiu and the others may be seen by placing its doctrine and that of the Zen-Shiu side by side. In the latter the disciple is to see the nature of Buddha by his own thought, free from the influence of the eighty-four thousand different doctrines, while the Shin-Shiu teaches that we attain salvation "by the power of another," who is Amita Buddha.

The Zen-Shiu is said to have originated from the incident, well known to Buddhists, of Gotama Buddha's taking from the heavenly king a flower of golden color and holding it in his hand in silence. The disciples could not understand the meaning of this, except Mahakasyapa, who, although he knew, only smiled and remained also silent. Thereupon Buddha said to him, "I have the wonderful thought of Nirvana." This was called "the doctrine of thought transmitted by thought." Ananda received it from Kasyapa, and so on down a long list of patriarchs in the church. The twenty-eighth patriarch, Bodhidharma, a king's son, crossed over into China. In that country he attempted to teach the Emperor the secret of the doctrine, but the pupil could not understand it, and Bodhidharma entered a monastery where he pursued the practice of sitting in meditation gazing at a wall for nine years, after which he gained disciples. He was called "the wall-gazing Brahmana." A later devotee in 729 A.D. came from China to Japan and established a form of the doctrine of Zen-Shiu. In this school, as distinguished from the Shin-Shiu, the disciple exercises his own thought independent of doctrine, while in the latter a doctrine is relied upon. The words of the Indian poem Bhagavad-Gita may be profitably remembered here, where it says that "he who pursues the unmanifested path has a more difficult task [than any other] to perform." (1)

The other sects, except the Shin-Shiu, have various doctrines for the attainment of the end in view, but the followers of the Shin-Shiu declare that all these are "expedients." They do not exclude the Zen-Shiu, although it would appear per-haps to the aggressive mind of the Englishman or American that to tell a man he can attain Nirvana by his own power is not laying a mere expedient before him.

It is because of these doctrines of expediency in other sects that the Shin-Shiu call themselves "the True Sect of Buddhists."

The doctrine of the sect is also called by them "the Doctrine of the Pure Land." The pure land referred to is the Land of Amida Buddha [Amitabha]: the object is to be born into that land, that is, to obtain salvation. It has been other wise stated in this manner:

"Among those who follow the doctrine of the Pure Land, there are several different systems of teaching, which are as follows: - 'Some say that we should practise various good works, bring our stock of merits to maturity, and be born in the Pure Land. Others say that we should repeat only the name of Amitabha Buddha in order to be born in his Pure Land, by the merit produced from such repetition.' These doctrines are all considered as yet the temporary expedients. To rely upon the power of the original prayer of Amitabha Buddha with the whole heart and give up all idea of Ji-Riki or 'self-power' is called the truth. This truth is the doctrine of this sect." (2)

The eighteenth of the forty-eight prayers of Amita Buddha is the prayer referred to. It is: "If any of living beings of the ten regions who have believed in me with true thoughts and desire to be born in my country, and have even to ten times repeated the thought of my name, should not be born there, then may I not obtain the perfect knowledge." This prayer was made by him because of his great desire to deliver all beings from suffering. It was a prayer which he first uttered long before he himself obtained salvation, but he continued for ages after that to work to the end that he might be able to make the prayer of force and value to any one who should use it. It follows, of course, that he accomplished his desire, and the Shin-Shiu sect accordingly claims that this prayer or vow has a peculiar effect of its own, and has strength to enable whoever uses it to reach salvation.

The claims made for this prayer are in accordance with certain views that are held in the East about the force that resides in the vows of a wise or great saint. They are said to have an actual dynamic effect upon the minds and hearts of all persons who shall use them, even after the saint has died. It is claimed that the power has to do with magnetism. And it is said by the followers of Shin-Shiu that, when one begins to repeat and rely upon the prayer of Amita Buddha, he at once connects himself with the whole body of real believers, and as well with the power of Amita himself.

In its essence the doctrine is one of salvation by faith, but at the same time the sect does not claim - as the Christian does for his dogma - that there is no other way to be saved. They admit that a person may be saved "by his own power"- if he has the requisite strength to hold out -, but they think that in general men have not the power to resist evil for a time sufficient to permit the accomplishment of the result; and they assert that besides the lack of strength there will be doubt, for, "Faith by one's own power cannot afford rest to the heart. It is said, 'Shall I surely attain salvation or shall I not?' and thus what is called faith is in reality doubt," but "Faith by the power of another affords rest to the heart. It is said -: 'I am born by the power of that vow; I shall certainly attain salvation.' There is not the smallest doubt in the heart." Another Sutra says: "Those who follow the method of 'self power' believe in many other Buddhas; those who follow the method of 'another's power' believe only in the one Buddha, as a faithful servant does not serve two masters."

In a compilation made by direction of the Eastern Hongwanji of Japan it is said "The appellations 'true' and 'popular' are an important matter. Our sect terms the attaining of the rest of the heart the True System; the observation of the relations of life the Popular System. Our sect has granted the permission to marry. Hence the five relations of life necessarily exist. Where the five relations of life exist, the duties involved in them must be observed. This is termed 'the popular system.'

"It is said in the Sutra: 'The living beings in the ten regions, be they householders or houseless.' . . . Shall the holy path be different for them? Although the sins of the unenlightened be many, if these are contrasted with the power of the vow they are not as the millet seed to the ocean. . . . The sins of the unenlightened are heavy; if you precipitate them on the three worlds they inevitably sink; but if you place them on the ship of the vow they assuredly become light. The merit of living beings is full of leaks. Mida's land of reward has no
leaks. With the merit which is full of leaks you cannot be born into the land where there are no leaks."

From a later part of the same compilation: -"Our Founder said: 'brothers within the four seas.' Faith by the power of another proceeds from Mida. Thus Mida is father and mother; all within the four seas are brothers. The Chinese call foreigners barbarians; foreigners call China uncivilized. Both, we consider, are wrong. Those who do not observe the relations of life are the barbarians, without distinction of 'home' or 'foreign.' Throughout all that the heaven covers, wherever sun and moon shine, what is there that we shall call barbarian or uncivilized? When the heart is wide as heaven and earth, the discourse clear as sun and moon, then first is attained the equitable and just. Between heaven and earth there is no one to be disassociated, no spot not to be reached. The kindly relations of intercourse make the friend; two persons the same mind; their spirit is as disseparated gold. One country the same mind; as a golden bowl without defect. All countries the same mind; then first is attained the perfect equitability. The foundation of the same mind is the calling to remembrance of the one Buddha."...

"Zendo has said: 'We are truly like this: unenlightened we are subject to the evil of birth and death; for long Kalpas we revolve, sinking and floating in the sea of existence; there seems no cause of escape.' . .. But He, Amida Buddha, long kalpas ago putting forth a heart of great compassion, planning through five kalpas, having accomplished the long kalpas, perfected his vow."

Hence we find the sect without spells or supplications for the avoiding of trouble. They hold that the trouble and misery of our life are due to causes originated either in long past existence or in the present incarnation. These last are to be carefully avoided, and the "popular system" gives the various rules to follow. But the causes that lie rooted in prior incarnations cannot be provided for in any way. This stored-up Karma it is useless to regret or try to avoid. It will have its course. But we must submit cheerfully, knowing that, by relying on the power of Buddha's sublime vow and by joining right practice to it, in time all Karma, good and bad, will be exhausted. Hence there are no spells, talismans, or supplications used by the Shin-Shiu. All its followers must follow and imitate the Buddha in his great love and compassion, and they hold that, if this were the practice in every part of the world, harmony would prevail and prosperity come to all with peace and joy.

(1) See Bhagavad-Gita.--[Ed.]

(2) 12 Japanese Buddhist Sects, by Bunyiu Nanjio.

Eusebio Urban
Path, September, 1888

CAUTIONS IN PARAGRAPHS

Do not make statements that tend to mix up the Theosophical Society with any religious belief, political theory, or social observance or non-observance.

Beware of the proposition that the rich or those in social life needing theosophy as much as the humbler ranks should therefore have special efforts made for them while they fail or refuse to openly help the Society with their countenance and effort.

Do not be misled by the fancy that special effort to "convert" a scientific celebrity will lead to any great benefit to the theosophical movement, or sufficiently offset the time thereby lost from the general work among those who are ready to listen.

Never cry down the efforts of a sincere member to disseminate theosophy merely because it does not meet your standards of method or propriety.

Always discountenance any proposal to establish a censorship of either literature or effort in theosophical ranks, for such a censorship is against the broad and free platform on which the Society rests.

Suffer not yourself to be annoyed because scientific men claim as their new and original discoveries that which theosophical literature has always claimed: remember we are not in this movement for glory, but that men shall know the truth regardless of where the credit for discovery is given.

Never forget that a theosophical Branch is for the study of theosophy, and not for discussion upon outside topics.

Let not sentimentality make you fear to bring forward what you believe to be theosophy, even though some persons threaten to leave the ranks because their own fad seems endangered by the strength of your theory; but beware you do not mistake self-assertion in yourself for the strength of your theories.

Be not deluded by the idea that you can do great good by entering a church society in which you do not believe. Theosophy is not benefited by being thrown among those who declare they do not want it.

Beware of the person who offers to sell spiritual science in so many lessons for a sum of money. Expositions by lectures in public of general theosophical principles for an admission fee are proper, but courses of lessons on magic arts, spiritual science, secrets of nature, and the like are eternally improper, emanate from cupidity or undisciplined intellect, and lead to nothing.

Be charitable enough to remember that the theosophist is human, and perhaps has to struggle all the harder with our common failings just because he has entered on the battle with the lower nature.

Do not fancy that because ours is called a brotherhood any exclusion of woman is inferred. English is not the only language on earth, and in many others the same terms describes both feminine and masculine. Theosophy does not concern sex distinctions, and talks more of souls, which are sexless, than it does of the bodies they inhabit.

Carefully avoid confounding Brahmanism with Buddhism, and the religions flourishing outside India with those of that country. Buddhism not being the religion of India, confusion of uttered sounds and knowledge results from calling Hindus Buddhists.

Very carefully refrain from confusing Christianity with the religion of Jesus. The latter is not the former, inasmuch as Christianity is split up into over three hundred different sects, whereas Jesus had but one doctrine.

Pay the highest respect to the sermons of Jesus, from the remembrance of the fact that in his discourses he but gave forth once again the old doctrine taught to him by the ancient theosophists of whom he was a disciple.

Do not make the blunder of mistaking the glitter of our civilization for true progress. Weigh fine houses, good clothes, mechanical devices, and universal male suffrage against the poverty, misery, vice, crime, and ignorance which go with the former, before you conclude what is the best civilization.

Rodriguez Undiano

Path, July, 1893

CHANGE OF NAME

Commencing with the next, April, number, the PATH, which has been published for ten years under that name, will drop the title and thereafter will be issued under the name of THEOSOPHY. Its management, aims, and policy will in no way be altered, but will continue on the lines laid down at the outset of its career.

It is hoped that the change of name will not result in any disappointment to the present friends and readers of the magazine. All existing subscriptions will be filled by sending THEOSOPHY, unless other instructions are given, in which case the wishes of subscribers will be carried out as nearly as may be possible.

The change of name will necessitate a change of title under which the publishing and book business is conducted, and this, beginning with the first of April, will be the Theosophical Publishing Company.

It is therefore requested that all business communications, and all orders and subscriptions shall be addressed to the Theosophical Publishing Company, and all drafts, checks, money-orders and other forms of remittance be made payable to the same. Nothing intended for this department should be personally addressed, and only such matters as have been mentioned should be included in letters intended for it. Serious delay and much annoyance will be avoided if our friends will kindly observe this request.

All communications intended for publications should be sent to "Editor of THEOSOPHY."

William Q. Judge

Path, March, 1896

THE CHARGES AGAINST
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
[1]

EDITOR Irish Theosophist:

The matter of charges against me seems not yet to be at an end, as I am informed that The Westminster Gazette has made a long story of the whole thing, as it was once before given in California and other places, and has added to it various falsifications of fact. All this has led some European members of the T.S. to say that they think I should make a reply and explanation. One would suppose that the legal maxim that a man is called innocent until he is proven guilty is but a form in England, and that a man's friends are not obliged to defend him when accused until he has made all his proofs.

All I have to say for the present is this: that at the proper time and place I will have to say what I wish and find right and proper. Let us wait until all the innuendos, charges and accusations are fully presented. One who knows, as I do, that he is guided and helped by the Masters, knows also that there is a time and a place for everything, and is able to bide his time. That is what I am doing. When the true moment comes I will be able to speak, and then facts and circumstances will join in speaking for me.

William Q. Judge

New York, Nov. 20th, 1894
The Irish Theosophist
December 15, 1894

THE CHARGES AGAINST
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
[II]

EDITOR Irish Theosophist:

A long and sustained attack has been made on me and charges have been brought forward by Mrs. Besant, and in The Westminster Gazette, which it is thought I should reply to more fully than I have as yet. A very good and decisive reason exists for my not making that full reply and explanation, and it is time Theosophist should know it. It is as follows:

I have not been furnished with copies of the documentary evidence by which the charges are said to be supported. These documents - being letters written by myself and some of them ten years old - have been in the possession of Mrs. Besant from about February, 1894, to July 19th, 1894, and open enemies of mine have been allowed to make copies of them, and also to take facsimiles, but they have been kept from me, although I have demanded and should have them. It must be obvious to all fair-minded persons that it is impossible for me to make a full and definite reply to charges without having certified copies of those documents.

I arrived in London July 4th, 1894, and constantly, each day, asked for the copies and for an inspection of the papers. Mrs. Besant promised both, but never performed her promise. The proceedings and the Convention closed July 13th, and for six days thereafter I daily asked for the copies and inspection, getting the same promise with the same failure, until July 19th, when I peremptorily demanded them. Mrs. Besant then said she had just given them to Colonel Olcott, to whom I at once applied. He said he had sent them all to India. I at once told this to Mrs. Besant, saying I would give the facts to the daily papers, whereupon she went to Colonel Olcott, who said he had made a mistake as they were in his box. He then - I being in a hurry to leave from Liverpool on the 21st - let me hastily see the papers in Dr. Buck's presence, promising to send me copies. I had time to copy only two or three short letters. He has never fulfilled that promise.

These facts the members should know, as they ought at last to understand the animus under the prosecution. I shall not reply until I have full certified copies. It would seem that I am in this matter entitled to as much opportunity and consideration as my open enemies have had.

Yours,
William Q. Judge

New York, Jan. 25th, 1895
The Irish Theosophist
February 15, 1895

A CHAT WITH CORRESPONDENTS

One illustration of the expansion of Theosophical interest through this country is found in the growth of business during the last two years in the joint office of the PATH, and the General Secretary of the American Section. In the PATH department, this appears in the new subscriptions from various quarters; in the remittances for books and documents kept on hand or ordered from publishers as needed; and in the subscriptions transmitted to Lucifer, the Theosophist, and the T.P.S. In the General Secretary's department, it appears the growing list of members, with the consequent addition to the work of recording such, issuing Diplomas and Charters, and forwarding the Applications and the dues to India; in the increasing official correspondence with Branches and members; in the many requests from outsiders for information and for guidance in reading; in the larger number of cases requiring the issue of circulars or documents to each F.T.S. - involving no small labor in the addressing of wrappers or envelopes; in the occasional supply of items or corrections to the press. And a very large additional work has accrued to the office from (a) the preparation and issue of The Theosophical Forum each month, (b) the establishment of the Theosophical Circulating Library, (c) the printing and distribution - thanks to private assistance - of thousands of leaflets or tracts expounding the principles of Theosophy in a popular way. And to all this must be added the great labor accruing to the General Secretary, and unshareable by others, from his new function as Secretary of the ... Section.

Besides occasional aid from kind friends, the Editor and General Secretary has had the constant presence of one or another volunteer. This proving inadequate to the growing work, he was obliged to secure the permanent services of an office-boy, and, later on, of a stenographer. It was to cover the expense of these that the late Convention authorized an appeal to members. Such, then, is the present staff.

But the work has not ceased its growth. Let us hope and trust that it never will. New openings and opportunities continually present themselves, and must be promptly met. It is not, however, to solicit funds that the present Chat takes place. It is to solicit consideration.

It is evident that in an office with so much and such increasing duty, every time-saving appliance is a necessity. Hence the stenographer and the type-writing machine. Some of our friends dislike this. They wish a sweet note of sympathy direct from the General Secretary's own pen, and the intervention of machinery seems to chill the sympathetic current and dispel the fraternal aroma. But, Brethren, have you any right to expect that office business is to be disordered and important affairs put off in order that you may extort a fancied privilege and nurse a sentimental notion? Is it not more rational and manly (using this word as the antithesis to "childish" rather than to "feminine") to see that the Society's work is of more moment than your fancies, and that truth should have the same value to you whether its words are written or printed? Were the Editor of the PATH and the General Secretary to pen and not dictate answers to the letters received, his present life-work would lie over to his next incarnation.

Another thing. The same exigency of scant time makes imperative the obvious duty of condensed statement. But not a few F.T.S. of both sexes imagine it needful to inform the General Secretary of their varying spiritual moods, of their abounding faith in the Cause, and of their feelings and emotions and anticipations. How can any man read such outpourings; how reply to them? If half a page can state your wants, have you any right to send a sheet? With the utmost desire to give you every help, is it possible for the General Secretary to do so otherwise than briefly?

Still another thing, - this time from the editorial side of the duplex rôle. Zealous Theosophists not infrequently send us communications for the PATH. These, with the exception of poetry, are always welcomed. But it does not follow that they can always be used. For, to the publication of any literary matter, there are certain conditions. It must be fresh, readable, instructive, valuable for the end sought. That it should be true is not enough. A friend, hearing a parishioner's comments on the sermons of a well-known clergyman, replied, "But they are true." "Yes," said the parishioner, "that is the trouble; they are too true." An article may be so true as to be truism, so obvious as to be common-place. It may want point or life or finish or verve, and hence, to the larger experience of the editor, discerning quickly what is suitable or otherwise for his columns, may not be useful. Be not offended, Brethren, if your offerings, sincere and honest as they undoubtedly are, and prepared with care and love and zeal, fail to appear in type. Therein is no slight to you, for the decision is not personal but judicial, and the judge - in such matters - is wiser than you can be.

In these things, then, and perhaps in others, the Editor and General Secretary asks consideration, - consideration in making letters concise, clear, and explicit, in remembering his many duties and his little time, in recalling the scores of other correspondents with equal claims to attention, in contentment with the brief replies and the mechanical help a busy man finds imperative. In thus exemplifying Practical Theosophy, you will show that you have not joined the Society and read the PATH in vain.

Path, September, 1889

CHRISTIAN FATHERS ON REINCARNATION

OUR brother George R. S. Mead, the General Secretary of the European Section T.S., has held that whether or not Origen, the greatest of the Fathers, believed in reincarnation, the Christian Church never formally anathematized the doctrine. If this position is sound there will yet be an opportunity for the Roman Church to declare the doctrine by holding that the anathema pronounced was against a species of incarnation or of metempsychosis not very clearly defined except as a pre-existence of the soul as opposed to a special creation for each new body. This declaration can only be made by placing the future lives of the soul on some other planet after leaving this one. That would be reincarnation, but not as we understand it.

The issue of Lucifer for February has valuable contributions under "Notes and Queries" on this subject, and from that I extract something. Beausobre says:

It is a very ancient and general belief that souls are pure and heavenly substances which exist before their bodies and come down from heaven to clothe and animate them. . . . I only quote it to show that his nation (Jews) believed for a long time back in the pre-existence of souls. . . . All the most learned Greek fathers held this opinion, and a considerable portion of the Latin fathers followed them herein. . . . It has been held by several Christian philosophers. It was received into the Church until the fourth century without being obnoxious to the charge of heresy.

Beausobre, however, calls the belief an "error." It would be interesting to know whether it is not the fact that at about the fourth century the monks and bishops were ignorant men who would be more likely to take up a narrow dogma necessary for preservation of their power than to hold the broader and grander one of pre-existence. Origen died about A.D. 254. He was so great and learned that even in his lifetime other men forged his name to their own writings. But while he was still living uneducated monks were flocking into the ranks of the priesthood. They obtained enough strength to compel Jerome to turn against Origen, although previously holding similar views. It was not learning, then, nor spiritual knowledge that brought about the subsequent condemnation of Origen, but rather bigotry and unspiritual ignorance. Origen distinctly held as a fundamental idea "the original and indestructible unity of God and all spiritual essences." This is precisely the doctrine of the Isovasya Upanishad, which says:

When to a man who understands, the Self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?

Francks Kabbala is referred to in these answers as saying that Origen taught transmigration as a necessary doctrine for the explaining of the vicissitudes of life and the inequalities of birth. But the next quotation throws doubt again into the question, closing, however, thus:

When the soul comes into the world it leaves the body which had been necessary to it in the mothers womb, it leaves, I repeat, the body which covered it, and puts on another body fit for the life we lead on earth. . . . But as we do not believe in metempsychosis, nor that the soul can ever be debased so as to enter into the bodies of brute animals...

There are several ways of looking at this. It may be charged that some one interpolated the italicized words; or that Origen was referring to transmigrating back to animals; or, lastly, that he and his learned friends had a theory about incarnation and reincarnation not clearly given. My opinion is that he wrote as above simply as to retrograde rebirth, and that he held the very identical doctrine as to reincarnation found in Isis Unveiled and which caused it to be charged that H.P.B. did not know or teach reincarnation in 1877. Of course I cannot produce a quotation. But how could such a voluminous writer and deep thinker as Origen hold to the doctrines of unity with God, of the final restoration of all souls to pristine purity, and of pre-existence, without also having a reincarnation doctrine? There are many indications and statements that there was an esoteric teaching on these subjects, just as it is evident that Jesus had his private teaching for the select disciples. For that reason Origen might teach pre-existence but hold back the other. He says, according to Franck, that the question was not of metempsychosis according to Plato, "but of an entirely different theory which is of a far more elevated nature." It might have been this.

The soul, considered as spirit and not animal soul, is pure, of the essence of God, and desirous of immortality through a person; the person may fail and not be united to the soul; another and another person is selected; each one, if a failure in respect to union with the Self, passes into the sum of experience; but finally a personal birth is found wherein all former experiences are united and union gained. From thenceforward there is no more falling back, for immortality through a person has been attained. Prior to this great event the soul existed, and hence the doctrine of pre-existence. For all of the personal births the soul was the God, the Higher Self of each, the luminous one, the Augoeides; existing thus from all time, it might be the cause of rebirths but not itself be reincarnated, as it merely overshadowed each birth without being wholly in the flesh. Such a doctrine, extremely mystical and providing for each a personal God with a great possibility held out through reunion, could well be called by Origen "a different theory" from metempsychosis and "of more elevated character."

When once more the modern Christian Church admits that its founders believed in pre-existence and that Jesus did not condemn reincarnation, a long step will have been taken toward uprooting many intolerant and illogical doctrines now held.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, May, 1894

A CIRCULATING LIBRARY

A theosophical circulating Library has been established at the General Secretary's office in New York, Room 47, 21 Park Row. Donations of money and books have been made by members of the Aryan T.S. sufficient to start it, and it is expected that students throughout the country will be benefited by its use. The rules read as follows:

This Library is at the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society, Room 47, 21 Park Row, New York.

1. The books of this library will be lent to members of the Theosophical Society, and to students of Theosophy unable to purchase such.

2. Students not members of the Society must furnish endorsement from some member in good standing.

3. For ISIS UNVEILED or THE SECRET DOCTRINE, the charge will be 10 cts. per week, one volume only being allowed at a time; for any other book, five cts. per week, transit included.

4. The ordinary length of time during which a book may be kept out shall be 3 weeks, exclusive of the time required for freight or carriage; except that ISIS UNVEILED and THE SECRET DOCTRINE may be kept out 6 weeks.

5. Only one book at a time can be lent to a borrower.

6. Renewal of a book is permitted where no one else has asked for the same book before such request for renewal.

7. Expense of mailing or expressage must be remitted in advance before any book will be sent.

8. All books lost or defaced shall be paid for by the borrower or his or her endorser.

9. Violation of any rule will exclude from further use of the library.

Applications may be sent to the Librarian at above address.

All the best theosophical works will be kept on hand, and also as many useful books on psychological, mystical, and metaphysical subjects as the funds will permit. Among other books already on hand are: The Secret Doctrine, 2 sets; Isis Unveiled, 2 sets; Esoteric Buddhism, Occult World, Purpose of Theosophy, Magic, Paracelsus, THE PATH, Bhagavad Gita, Among the Rosicrucians, Bible Myths, &c.

It is intended for the use of all members throughout the United States. Borrowers will be careful to give accurate addresses and to take care of the books when taken out.

Donation of either money or books will be gladly received, and may be sent in care of THE PATH.

Path, June, 1889

CITIES UNDER CITIES

The theory that the remains of ancient cities exist under those of the present is not a new one. Dr. Schliemann held it, and working upon the clues found in Homer unearthed the buried Troy. Some have held it in respect to London, asserting that St. Paul's stands over the ruins of an old Pagan temple, and Roman ruins have been excavated in different parts of England. In India there is a mass of traditions telling of many modern cities said to stand over ancient ones that lie buried intact many feet below the present level. Lucifer for September noticed the "find" of an Amorite fortress sixty feet below the surface, with walls twenty-eight feet thick. It is well known to those who enjoyed intimate conversations with H. P. Blavatsky that she frequently gave more detailed and precise statements about great cities being built on the exact spots where others had stood long ages ago, and also about those over which only villages stand now. And as the constant explorations of the present day - reaching almost to the North Pole - give promise that perhaps soon the prophecies about revelations from mother Earth made by her will be fulfilled, I am emboldened to give the old theory, very likely known to many other students, to account for this building and rebuilding of cities over each other after such intervals that there can be no suspicion of communication between present and past inhabitants.

As man's civilization has traveled around the globe many times, filling now one country and now another with populous places, creating an enormous metropolis here and another there, his influence has been left on nearly every spot upon the earth, and that as well upon lands now beneath the seas as on those above them. If we can imagine the first coming of a population to a place never before inhabited, the old theory asks us to believe that certain classes of elementals - called devas generically by the Hindus - are gathered over the place and present pictures of houses, of occupations of busy life on every hand, and, as it were, beckon to the men to stay and build. These "fairies," as the Irish call them, at last prevail, and habitations are erected until a city springs up. During its occupation the pictures in the astral light are increased and deepened until the day of desertion arrives, when the genii, demons, elementals, or fairies have the store of naturally impressed pictures in the ether to add to their own. These remain during the abandonment of the place, and when man comes that way again the process is repeated. The pictures of buildings and human activity act telepathically upon the new brains, and the first settlers think they have been independent thinkers in selecting a place to remain. So they build again and again. Nature's processes of distributing earth and accumulating it hide from view the traces of old habitations, giving the spot a virgin appearance to the new coming people. And thus are not only cities built in advantageous positions, but also in places less convenient.

Evidence is accessible and plentiful in every country to show that the winds, the trees, birds, and beasts can in time cover over completely, while leaving them intact, the remains of roads and buildings once used and occupied by men. In Central America there are vast masses of ruins among which trees of considerable girth are now growing. In other districts the remains of well-made roads are sometimes found creeping out from tangled underbrush and disappearing under a covering of earth. At Elephanta near Bombay, and in other places in India, the earth has been blown gradually under pillars and gateways, rendering entrance impossible. On the Pacific Coast, in one of the Mexican States, there is old and new San Blas, the one on the hill, deserted and almost covered with trees and debris of all sorts which is surely constructing a covering that will ere long be some feet in thickness. So without regard to volcanic eruptions or landslides, which of course suddenly and forcibly overlay a city, it is quite possible for Nature through her slower processes to add to thickness of earthy covering at any place abandoned by man, and the very best illustration of this is in the coral islands which rise out of the ocean to be soon covered with earth and trees.

But, our ancient theory says, no process of a mechanical or physical kind has any power over the pictures impressed in the retentive ether, nor over those classes of elementals which find their natural work in presenting pictures of cities and buildings to the receptive brain of man. if he is materialistic he will recognize these pictures only subconsciously. But the subconscious impressions will translate themselves into acts just as hypnotized subjects respond to a suggestion they have no memory of. When, however, these elementals encounter a race of men who are psychically developed enough to see not only the pictures but also those entities which present them, it will then result that a conscious choice will be made, leading to a deliberate selection of one place for building on and the rejection of another.

I present this interesting old theory without proof except such as can be obtained by those few persons who are themselves able to see the devas at work on their own plane.

BRYAN KINNAVAN

Path, November, 1892

CLAIMING TO BE JESUS

IN one of the letters written by the Master K.H. and printed by Mr. Sinnett it is said the world [including doubtless East and West] is still superstitious. That this is true can hardly be denied, and in America the appearance of many who claim to be Jesus and who thus gain followers, shows how foolish and superstitious people yet are.

A man named Teed appeared in New York and is now in some western city, who said he was Jesus. He had a theory of our living inside a hollow globe. He induced a wealthy woman to give much money, and still has followers in his present place.

In Cincinnati a Mrs. Martin declared herself to be the Christ, and immortal. She gathered believers. But unfortunately in the summer of this year she died. Her coterie refused to believe in her demise and kept her body until mortification compelled a burial.

Out in New Mexico, in 1895, a German named Schlatter rises on the scene and at last says he is the Christ. He is one who takes no money, eats but little, and it is said he cures many of their diseases. At any rate great excitement arose about him and hundreds came to be cured. He then went to Denver, a larger city, and is still there posing as Jesus and claiming that his cures constitute the proof. And there are others scattered about; those cited are merely examples.

The posing of these claimants is due to partial insanity and to vanity. They do not like to pretend to be anything less than God. But their having followers shows how far superstitious and gullable other people are. Theosophists will doubtless laugh at both. But are we so free from the same defect? Has that folly exhibited itself or not among us, though perhaps under a different name? What of that "superstition" which sees in every dark-skinned Hindû either an Adept or a teacher, or at least a high disciple of some Yogi through whom occult favors may be had? Why it is known that this nonsense went so far in one case that the adorer devoted large sums of money to the crafty young fellow who posed as "just a little less than a Mahâtmâ." We are not quite clear of the beam we have seen in the eyes of others.

A safe rule will be that those who say they are Jesus or the equivalent of Christ, are not so, and instead of either following them or looking about for wonderful beings we will follow the ancient saying: "Man, know thyself."

William Brehon

Path, November, 1895

CLOSED OR OPEN LODGES

THE Theosophical Society has never prohibited Private Branches. If five Members-at-large can exist separately, they can exist together; for they are no worse off when organized than when not. It is conceivable, moreover, that there may be special circumstances where publicity is undesirable -as where there is exceptional local bitterness against Theosophy, or where the Charter-members are as yet too few or too ill-instructed to furnish papers and discussions of value to outsiders, or where want of intellectual capacity might excite derision in the community instead of respect. Another case is possible - where the Charter-members organize for the express purpose of providing open meetings, but temporarily hold only closed ones while studying and otherwise preparing themselves for fitness to edify visitors. In any one of these cases a provisional privacy is altogether legitimate.

But there is another case less commendable. It is where a group of Theosophists choose exclusiveness because they desire only those of their own set, or because they fear ridicule if know as F.T.S., or because they intend organization merely as a furtherance to their own intellectual culture or to the attainment of psychic power. The foundation of such a Lodge is timidity or selfishness, and on neither can a sound Theosophical superstructure be erected.

And what, in fact, has been the fate of Private Branches in the American Section? Five Charters to such have thus far been issued. Of these five Branches, two died quietly and soon, one surrendered its Charter, one is virtually extinct, and one is too recent formation to have a history. No one has contributed to the strength of the Society, to the extension of its teachings, or to the multiplication of its members.

There must be a reason for this. Nor is it hard of detection. The reason is simply that the essential idea of a permanently-closed Lodge and the essential idea of a Theosophical Branch are directly opposed. There is, indeed, a contradiction in the very words "Private Branch." A "Branch" is an offshoot of a parent tree, not underground but above ground. If you take away exposure to the sunlight and the air and the hardening forces of Nature, confining the young shoot to darkness and mystery and isolation, you not only deprive it of the very nourishment essential to its growth, but you perpetuate the interior forces which will ensure its decay. Nor only so. A "Private Branch" lacks the very marrow of Theosophical life - altruism. Theosophy is not a bank-deposit which one hoards in secret for contemplation and delectation; it is a purse of Fortunates, which fills up as fast as one empties it for the benefit of others. The true Theosophic spirit fixes its eye on the needs of a vast humanity in ignorance, knows that there is no other way to overcome ignorance and its consequences than by imparting truth, and queries how most efficaciously this may be done. The Theosophist thus animated joins the Society to help it, feels the want of sympathetic intercourse and of organized strength, exerts himself to form a Branch of the like-minded, projects work for it, values it because it makes possible a systematic outflow of knowledge and influence on the vicinage. He knows very well that, as the measure of his own Theosophic vitality is the degree in which he works and not merely meditates, so also it is with a Branch. In truth, a vigorous Theosophic spirit, filled with philanthropic earnestness to propagate truth, must feel somewhat repressed when discussing Cosmogony and the Seven Principles in a closely-styled Lodge, and have a suspicion of incongruity and discomfort. The spectacle of a snug and smug group gravely examining eternal verities which nobody else is allowed to hear of, verges somewhat on the ludicrous. This is one of the cases where a sense of humor keeps people out of the absurdities as well as out of errors.

It can never be too often repeated that real Theosophy is not contemplation or introspection of philosophizing or talk, but work, work for others, work for the world. We are told that the one fatal bar to progress is selfishness in some one of its Protean forms. It will never be overcome by thinking about oneself, but by not thinking about oneself. And as we have to think about something, the alternative is thought for others and how to help them. As the mind fills with such schemes and the hands take hold of them, self-interest is displaced and egoism fades out. Selfishness dies of inanition, and altruism grows because constantly fed. And all this time true progress goes insensibly on. The mind clears of prejudices and fogs, the spirit grows more sunny and cheerful, peacefulness settles over the whole interior being, and truth is seen with greater distinctness. For the great hindrance to evolution is decaying away.

This is equally true of a Branch. So long as it exists only for the improvement or entertainment of its members, the selfish principle is dominant, for selfishness is not the less genuine because applied to purposes in themselves high. Such a Branch does not expect to grow, it probably does not desire to grow, and it surely will not grow. What is there to make it grow? It lacks that essence of all life and growth which pervades everything vital. The opposite conception of a Branch, that of an organized force for the better propagation of truth, supplies just such a lack. Preparation of papers or discussion does not mean that mere exhibition of personal ideas, still less speculation on curious and recondite problems, but the arrangement in lucid language of those apprehensions of truth which the thinker believes to have intellectual or practical value. It is a gift to others, not a display of self. The life-principle of all Nature flows through the being, clarifying thought, vivifying motive, energizing speech. Then it flows without, warming dull or listless ears, arousing attention, exciting interest, stimulating inquiry. So the influence spreads, attendance increases, the Branch grows.

The history of open Branches demonstrates what might otherwise seem theory. As they have kept in view a missionary purpose and exerted themselves to make meetings interesting and instructive to outsiders, they have thriven. One Branch through years rarely adding a member to its small list, made its meetings open. In two years it enlarged between three and fourfold. Very naturally so. The fact of publicity becoming known, visitors drop in. Some suggestive topic pleases them, they attend again, feel an interest, then a charm, then a devotion. Then they join the Branch and invite others. Progress and prosperity follow.

While it would not be right for the T.S. to prohibit Private Branches, it would be wrong for it to look upon them as other than temporary and provisional, the missionary function being in abeyance only. Those who prepare the way for and those who organize Branch Societies would do well to lay stress upon the true conception of a Branch as a living, active, aggressive agency, not a proselyting scheme, but a means for circulating truth. Its outside effects are the main ones. If the members strive to benefit non-members, they will surely edify themselves. And between the energy of a Branch and its growth, there will always be a relation. Stationary membership almost certainly implies apathy, as an increasing one implies the reverse.

And, on the other hand, Branch members need to feel that public notice and Branch growth are only possible as meetings are made interesting. It is exactly so with the Churches. If the service is tame and the preaching imbecile, people will not go. Nor, perhaps, should they. Life is too short to be bored. The Oxford Don who passed his Sundays in the fields rather than in Church said that he "preferred sermons from stones to sermons from sticks"; and Theosophists, much more non-Theosophists, will choose an evening with books if the alternative is a Branch meeting which is lifeless, or where everything is left to chance, or where the intelligent are outraged with drivel. But where the leading speeches are duly and truly prepared, and the essayists worthy and well qualified, a state of things is brought about when attendants will seek to gain admission to further rights and benefits. Thoughtful contribution to open Branch discussions is as truly an aid to Theosophy as is sustentation of its periodicals or its work, and immediately tends to bring about that enlargement of the Society which we hope for as impressive to the public, conducive to our strength, and expressive of our advance.

Harris P.

Path, May, 1890

THE CLOSING CYCLE

IN the November number the "expiring Cycle" is referred to by Mr. Sinnett, and members are rightly warned not to be so absurd (though that is my word) as to think that after 1897 "some mysterious extinguisher will descend upon us."

Who is the person who gave out the concrete statement that 1897 was to be the close of a cycle when something would happen? It was H.P. Blavatsky. There is not the slightest doubt about it that she did say so, nor that she fully explained it to several persons. Nor is there any doubt at all that she said, as had been so long said from the year 1875, and that 1897 would witness the shutting of a door. What door? Door to what? What was or is to end? Is the T.S. to end and close all the books?

Nothing is more plain than that H.P. Blavatsky said, on the direct authority of the Masters, that in the last twenty-five years of each century an effort is made by the Lodge and its agents with the West, and that is ceases in its direct and public form and influence with the twenty-fifth year. Those who believe her will believe this; those who think they know more about it than she did will invent other ideas suited to their fancies.

She explained, as will all those who are taught (as are many) by the same Masters, that were the public effort to go on any longer than that, a reaction would set in very similar to indigestion. Time must be given for assimilation, or the "dark shadow which follows all innovations" would crush the soul of man. The great public, the mass, must have time and also material. Time is ever. The matter has been furnished by the Masters in the work done by H.P Blavatsky in her books, and what has grown out of those. She has said, the Masters have said, and I again assert it for the benefit of those who have any faith in me, that the Masters have told me that they helped her write the Secret Doctrine so that the future seventy-five and more years should have some material to work on, and that in the coming years that book and its theories would be widely studied. The material given has then to be worked over, to be assimilated for the welfare of all. No extinguisher will fall therefore on us. The T.S., as a whole, will not have the incessant care of the Masters in every part, but must grow up to maturity on what it has with the help to come from those few who are "chosen." H.P. Blavatsky has clearly pointed out in the Key, in her conclusion, that the plan is to keep the T.S. alive as an active, free, unsectarian body during all the time of waiting for the next great messenger, who will be herself beyond question. Thereby will be furnished the well-made tool with which to work again in grander scale, and without the fearful opposition she had without and within when she began this time. And in all this time of waiting the Master, "that great Initiate, whose single will upholds the entire movement," will have his mighty hand spread out wide behind the Society.

Up to 1897 the door is open to anyone who has the courage, the force, and the virtue to TRY, so that he can go in and make a communication with the Lodge which shall not be broken at all when the cycle ends. But at the striking of the hour the door will shut, and not all your pleadings and cryings will open it to you. Those who have made the connection will have their own door open, but the public general door will be closed. That is the true relation of the "extinguisher" as given by H.P. Blavatsky and the Master. It seems very easy to understand.

"Many are called but few are chosen," because they would not allow it. The unchosen are those who have worked for themselves alone; those who have sought for knowledge for themselves without a care about the rest; those who have had the time, the money, and the ability to give good help to Masters' cause, long ago defined by them to be work for mankind and not for self, but have not used it thus. And sadly, too, some of the unmarked and unchosen are those who walked a long distance to the threshold, but stopped too long to hunt for the failings and the sins they were sure some brother pilgrim had, and then they went back farther and farther, building walls behind them as they went. They were called and almost chosen; the first faint lines of their names were beginning to develop in the book of this century; but as they retreated, thinking indeed, they were inside the door, the lines faded out, and other names flashed into view. Those other names are those belonging to humble persons here and there whom these proud aristocrats of occultism thought unworthy of a moment's notice.

What seems to me either a printer's error or a genuine mistake in Mr. Sinnett's article is on page 26, where he says: "will be knowledge generally diffused throughout the cultured classes." The italics are mine. No greater error could seem possible. The cultured classes are perfectly worthless, as a whole, to the Master-builders of the Lodge. They are good in the place they have, but they represent the "established order" and the acme of selfishness. Substitute masses for cultured classes, and you will come nearer the truth. Not the cultured but the ignorant masses have kept alive the belief in the occult and the psychic now fanned into flame once more. Had we trusted to the cultured the small ember would long ago have been extinguished. We may drag in the cultured, but it will be but to have a languid and unenthusiastic interest.

We have entered on the dim beginning of a new era already. It is the era of Western Occultism and of special and definite treatment and exposition of theories hitherto generally considered. We have to do as Buddha told his disciples: preach, promulgate, expound, illustrate, and make clear in detail all the great things we have learned. That is our work, and not the bringing out of surprising things about clairvoyance and other astral matters, not the blinding of the eye of science by discoveries impossible for them but easy for the occultist. The Master's plan has not altered. He gave it out long ago. It is to make the world at large better, to prepare a right soil for the growing out of the powers of the soul, which are dangerous if they spring up in our present selfish soil. It is not the Black Lodge that tries to keep back psychic development; it is the White Lodge. The Black would fain have all the psychic powers full flower now, because in our wicked, mean, hypocritical, and money-getting people they would soon wreck the race. This idea may seem strange, but for those who will believe my unsupported word I say it is the Master's saying.

William Q. Judge

Irish Theosophist, January, 1895

COMETS

The probable genesis, the constitution, the movements, and the functions of comets have engaged the greatest attention of astronomers. They very often appear to defy laws which apply to other celestial bodies. That the laws governing the heavenly bodies are not all known must be admitted upon very little reflection. Two things alone would raise doubts as to whether modern astronomers are acquainted with all those laws. The first is that although the great fixed stars are known to be moving at enormous rates - for instance, that Sirius is receding from us with great velocity every moment - yet for ages they all appeared to stand in the same relative positions, and are therefore called "fixed" stars in comparison with the planetary bodies nearer to us, which move with apparently greater rapidity. The other is that some of the planets having one moon seem to have a different law prevailing over them, in that one of the moons will move in a direction opposite to the others. There are, in the first volume of the Secret Doctrine (first ed. pp. 203-209), two paragraphs which indicate some of the views of the Adepts in respect to comets.

Born in the unfathomable depths of Space, out of the homogeneous Element called the World-Soul, every nucleus of Cosmic matter suddenly launched into being begins life under the most hostile circumstances. Through a series of countless ages it has to conquer for itself a place in the infinitudes. It circles round and round between denser and already fixed bodies, moving by jerks, and pulling toward some given point or center that attracts it, trying to avoid, like a ship drawn into a channel dotted with reefs and sunken rocks, other bodies that draw and repel it in turn; many perish, their mass disintegrating through stronger masses and, when born within a system, chiefly within the insatiable stomachs of various suns. Those which move slower and are propelled into an elliptic course are doomed to annihilation sooner or later. Others moving in parabolic curves generally escape destruction, owing to their velocity.

Some very critical readers will perhaps imagine that this teaching as to the cometary stage passed through by all heavenly bodies is in contradiction with the statements just made as to the moon's being the mother of the earth. They will perhaps fancy that intuition is needed to harmonize the two. But no intuition is, in truth, required. What does science know of comets, their genesis, growth, and ultimate behavior? Nothing - absolutely nothing! And what is there so impossible that a laya center - a lump of cosmic protoplasm, homogeneous and latent - when suddenly animated or fired up, should rush from its bed in Space and whirl throughout the abysmal depths in order to strengthen its homogeneous organism by an accumulation and addition of differentiated elements? And why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe!

It is to be observed here that the same war which we see going on upon this plane goes on upon the cosmic planes also, it being stated that when a nucleus of matter begins life it does so under the most hostile circumstances. On this plane, the moment the soul leaves the body the never-ceasing life-energy begins to tear the particles apart and separate them into smaller lives. And it is known that the theory is held by the Adepts that during life one set of cells or points of life wars against another set, and that what we call death results from the balance being destroyed, so that the mass of cells which work for destruction, of any composition in nature, gaining the upper hand, immediately begin to devour the other, and, at last, turn upon themselves for their own destruction as composite masses. That is to say, not that there is one distinct quantity of cells which are destroyers, opposed by another distinct quantity which are conservers, but that the negative and positive forces in nature are constantly acting and reacting against each other. The equilibrium, or natural state, is due to the balancing of these two opposite forces. The positive is destructive, and if that force gains the upper hand it converts all those cells over which it has control for the moment into destroyers of the other, negative, cells. Hence a negative cell might at some time become a positive cell, and vice versa. After the balance is destroyed, then the positive forces accumulate to themselves more cells under their influence, and then again a division of the two forces takes place, so that a portion of the positive become negative, and in that way, continually dividing and subdividing, so-called death, as known to us, takes place.

It has not been understood what comets are, but these paragraphs indicate that the opinion of the Adepts is that they are the beginning of worlds, i.e., that we see in comets the possible beginning of worlds. The sentence beginning the quotations - "Born in the unfathomable depths of Space," etc. - means that, a laya center being formed, the homogeneous mass of matter is condensed at that point, and, the energy of nature being thrown into it, it starts up, a fiery mass, to become a comet. It will then either pursue its course in evolution, if it is accumulating to its matter from other masses, or will be drawn into them for their aggrandizement. The hint is thrown out that the parabolic moving masses, owing to their velocity, escape destruction because they are able to evade the attraction from greater masses.

In the second paragraph quoted a clue is given to those who would be likely to think that this theory could not be consistent with the other, viz., that the moon is the mother of the earth. It is intended to be shown in the paragraph that the starting-up, as before suggested, of a mass of matter from the laya center is due to the energy propelled into that center from a dying globe, such as the moon is. This having been begun, no matter what may be the wanderings of the fast-moving mass, it will at last come back to the place from which it started, when it shall have grown to a greater maturity. And this is indicated in the last statement - "Why should not such a comet settle in life, live, and become an inhabited globe?"

This theory is as useful, consistent, and reasonable as any that materialistic science has invented in respect to comets or any other heavenly bodies, and, being perfectly in accord with the rest of the theories given out by the Adepts, there can be no objection raised to it, that it violates the general system which they have outlined.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, April, 1895

A COMMENTARY ON THE GAYATRI

Unveil, O Thou who givest sustenance to the Universe, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return, that face of the True Sun now hidden by a vase of golden light, that we may see the truth and do our whole duty on our journey to thy sacred seat.

The Gayatri

I have adopted a translation as above, which is excellent in its giving of the meaning of this verse. What is the Gayatri? It is the sacred verse of the Hindus and begins with Om, their sacred word and letter. Its first words are: Om, Bhur, Bhurvah!

The first word contains in it a declaration of the three periods of a Manvantara and the three powers of that great Being who alone Is. Of a manvantara it is the beginning, the middle, and the end, and the three powers are Creation (or manifesting), Preservation (or carrying on), and Destruction. The three first words, Om, bhur, bhurvah, draw attention to and designate the three worlds. The whole verse is an aspiration in the highest sense. Every Brahman at his initiation is further instructed in this verse, but from giving that I am necessarily excused, as I cannot give it in a way in which I have not received it.

Unveil is the cry of the man who is determined to know the truth and who perceives that something hides it from him. It is hidden by his own Karmic effects, which have put him now where the brain and the desires are too strong for the higher self to pierce through so long as he remains careless and ignorant. The cry is not made to some man-made god with parts, passions, and attributes, but to the Self above who seeth in secret and bringeth out to light. It is directed to that on which the Universe is built and standeth, - no other than the Self which is in every man and which sitteth like a bird in a tree watching while another eats the fruit.

From this the whole Universe proceeds out into manifestation. The ancients held that all things whatsoever existed in fact solely in the idea, and therefore the practitioner of Yoga was taught - and soon discovered - that sun, moon, and stars were in himself, and until he learned this he could not proceed. This doctrine is very old, but today is adopted by many modern reasoners. For they perceive on reflection that no object enters the eye, and that whether we perceive through sight or feeling or any other sense whatever all objects are existing solely in idea. Of old this was demonstrated in two ways. First, by showing the disciple the actual interpenetration of one world by another. As that while we live here among those things called objective by us, other beings were likewise living in and among us and our objects and therein actually carrying on their avocations, perceiving the objects on their plane as objective, and wholly untouched by and insensible to us and the objects we think so material. This is no less true today than it was then. And if it were not true, modern hypnotism, clairvoyance, or clairaudience would be impossible. This was shown by a second method precisely similar to mesmeric and hypnotic experiments, only that to these was added the power to make the subject step aside from himself and with a dual consciousness note his own condition. For if a barrier of wood were erected in the sight of the subject which he clearly perceived and knew was wood, impervious to sight and an obstacle to movement, yet when hypnotised he saw it not, yet could perceive all objects behind it which were hidden in his normal state, and when he pressed against it thinking it to be empty air and feeling naught but force, he could not pass but wondered why the empty air restrained his body. This is modern and ancient. Clearly it demonstrates the illusionary nature of objectivity. The objectivity is only real relatively, for the mind sees no objects whatever but only their idea, and at present is conditioned through its own evolution until it shall have developed other powers and qualities.

The request made in the verse to unveil the face of the True Sun is that the Higher Self may shine down into us and do its work of illumination. This also spreads forth a natural fact unknown to moderns, which is that the sun we see is not the true sun, and signifies too that the light of intellect is not the true sun of our moral being. Our forefathers in the dim past knew how to draw forth through the visible Sun the forces from the True one. We have temporarily forgotten this because our evolution and descent into the hell of matter, in order to save the whole, have interposed a screen. They say in Christian lands that Jesus went into hell for three days. This is correct, but not peculiar to Jesus. Humanity is doing this for three days, which is merely the mystical way of saying that we must descend into matter for three periods so immense in time that the logarithm of one day is given to each period. Logarithms were not first known to Napier, but were taught in the pure form of the mysteries, because alone by their use could certain vast calculations be made.

Which is now hidden by a vase of Golden Light. That is, the light of the True Sun - the Higher Self - is hidden by the blood contained in the vase of the mortal body. The blood has two aspects - not here detailed - in one of which it is a helper to perception, in the other a hindrance. But it signifies here the passions and desires, Kama, the personal self, the thirst for life. It is this that veils from us the true light. So long as desire and the personality remain strong, just so long will the light be blurred, so long will we mistake words for knowledge and knowledge for the thing we wish to know and to realize.

The object of this prayer is that we may carry out our whole duty, after becoming acquainted with the truth, while we are on our journey to thy Sacred Seat. This is our pilgrimage, not of one, not selfishly, not alone, but the whole of humanity. For the sacred seat is not the Brahmanical heaven of Indra, nor the Christian selfish heaven acquired without merit while the meritorious suffer the pains of hell. It is that place where all meet, where alone all are one. It is when and where the three great sounds of the first word of the prayer merge into one soundless sound. This is the only proper prayer, the sole saving aspiration.

AN OBSCURE BRAHMAN

Path, January, 1893

COMMITTEE WORK

THE "LEAGUE OF THEOSOPHICAL WORKERS" has been formed in accordance with the report of the committee appointed at the last annual convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society for founding such league. Its central office is in New York City. Its officers are:

Mrs. J. Campbell Ver Planck, President.
Miss Katharine Hillard, Vice President.
Mr. H.T. Patterson, Secretary.
Mr. E.A. Neresheimer, Treasurer.

Under it local leagues may be formed, which leagues by the provisions of the Constitution of the society will be nearly autonomous.

Membership is only open to members of the Theosophical Society, though others may take part in its work as associate members.

Notice will shortly be sent out with full particulars as to the provisions of the Constitution, and suggestions as to the best methods to be followed by the local leagues.

THE STANDING COMMITTEE appointed at the last annual Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical Society for making of branch work more effective have their first suggestions nearly ready. It makes a somewhat voluminous paper, and will either be published in a subsequent number of the PATH, or sent out by the committee itself direct to the Branches. It embodies plans for the running of large and small, and formal and informal meetings. Also a draft of fifty-two subjects for discussion, the subjects being arranged in groups under different headings - this scheme being adopted in toto from the Brooklyn branch. There are in addition recommendations for study at subsidiary meetings, and outlines as to co-operative home work, with a valuable paper summarizing the entire Secret Doctrine on the topic of "hierarchies" - this summarization being the result of such work already done.

Path, June, 1891

COMMUNICATIONS FROM "SPIRITS"

THEIR SOURCES AND METHODS

THE complexity of this subject makes treatment of it difficult. So little is known, and challenge of power to know is so natural, that any treatment must be unsatisfactory. Those "spirits" whose existence as active entities wholly in the spiritual world is claimed by the votaries of the worship of the dead, have not told us clearly anything of lasting value. They have had in America distinctly forty years to give the information in, but disagreeing among themselves and not showing in any way a concert of mental action by way of explanation, nothing has as yet resulted from the very sphere where, if anywhere, the knowledge ought to exist. If it be true, as is asserted for them, that those who have reported are conscious, intelligent spirits, then all of them who while reporting to man have failed to lead him to a right conclusion are blameworthy. Some of these entities or intelligences or spirits or whatever they are have, however, made through their mediums assertions of fact about nature and occult physiology which are in my opinion true, but they have not been accepted. Independently speaking in the air, using trance mediums and writings, they have at various times spoken of and described the astral light; have upheld reincarnation; have sustained the teaching of Swedenborg, and in many ways indicated a complete agreement with Theosophical explanations of occult nature; they have shown that materializations of spirits cannot be possible, and that the sometimes really coagulated forms are liable to be frauds of a pious nature, inasmuch as they are not the bodies of the dead nor in any sense whatever their property, that they are over and over again simply surfaces or masses on which pictures of dead or living may be reflected, being thus a spirit-conjurer's trick beyond our power. But they have found no favor, and the cult does not, as a whole, think along those lines. If, then, the "spirits" themselves failed to get credence, how shall I gain any? The scientific world, on the other hand, knows not these realms, and believing not in either Theosophical or Spiritualistic explanations accords no belief to the one or the other. So we will have to be satisfied with just saying what is in mind, trusting to fate and time alone.

Many factors have to be admitted as present in this question. Some of them may be described, but many must as yet remain untouchable.

First. There are the minds (a) of the medium, and (b) of the sitter or sitters or enquirers. Neither can be left out of the account. At once this should show how vast is the theme, for it is well known that the mind and its powers are but little known.

Second. Occult psychological powers and faculties of all concerned. This would include the subconscious or subliminal mind of the hypnotic schools.

Third. Physical memory, which is automatic, racial, national, and personal. This is present at all times. To overlook it is simply blindness. To trace it is extremely difficult, requiring a trained mind and trained inner sense. It is that memory which causes a child to catch at a support even just at birth; it is the guide in sleep when often we do acts for preservation or otherwise; it brings up the hate that a man of one race may feel for another race after centuries of oppression or repulsion; it cause the cat, no matter how young, to arch back and expand the tail the moment a dog is near. To say that man, the one who is the last great product of all the material evolution, has not this physical memory would be folly. But I have not heard that the spirits have told of this, nor described it, nor indicated how it may be traced, not to what extent it acts in the simulation of conscious intelligence.

Fourth. Forces in their law and method wholly unknown to medium or sitters. These constitute the moving power, the writing force, the reflecting power, and all the vast number of hidden powerful forces behind the veil of objective matter.

Fifth. Entities of some kind or another, unseen but present, whether elementals, elementaries, shades, angels, nature-spirits, or what not.

Sixth. The Astral Light, the Ether, the Akasa, the Anima Mundi.

Seventh. The Astral Body of medium and sitter. I have purposely put this by itself, for it has its own automatic action as much as has the physical body. With it must be also noted its memory, its idiosyncrasies, whether it is new for the person in question or whether it is one that has been used for more than on life, though each time in a different body. For if it be new to the present body, its memories and powers and peculiarities will be different from those of one that has actually been through several lives. It is not so rare in fact that the astral body is an old one; many mediums have strange powers because they have several distinct astral memories due to so much prior experience in one astral body. This alone would furnish a field for study, but we have not heard of the "spirits" telling about it, though some have shown that they experience these multiform personalities.

Lastly, there is the great fact well known to those who have studied this subject from its occult side, that the personal inner self centered in the astral body has the power not only to delude itself, but also to delude the brain in the body and cause the person to think that a distinct other personality and intelligence is speaking to the brain from other spheres, when it is from the astral self. This is for some people extremely difficult to grasp, as they cannot see how that which is apparently another person or entity may be themselves acting through the means of the dual consciousness of man. This dual consciousness acts for good or for the opposite in accordance with the Karma and character of the inner, personal self. It sometimes appears to a sensitive as another person asking him to do this, that, or the other, or exhorting some line of conduct, or merely wearing some definite expression but being silent. The image seems to be another, acts as another, is to all present perception outside the perceiving brain, and no wonder the sensitive thinks it to be another or does not know what to think. And if the present birth happens to be one in which strong psychic power is a part of the nature, the delusion may be all the greater.

Having briefly analyzed to begin with, let us now go further.

During the history of Spiritualism, many communications have been made to and through mediums upon many subjects. Facts have been given that could not be known to the medium, some lofty ideas have also had expression, advice has emanated, prophecies have been issued, some of the questions that vex the soul have been treated.

The facts of death, kind of death, place where wills might be found have been told, unexecuted purpose of the dead expressed, personal peculiarities of the former person shown, have all been too easily accepted as proof of identity. These things are not proof. If they are, then a parrot or a phonograph may prove identity with a man. The possibilities are too many in other directions for this sort of proof to be final or even competent. The living clairvoyant may, by taking the requisite mental steps, become so absorbed in the person clairvoyantly brought up - both being alive - as to accurately reproduce all the other person's peculiarities. Consequently the same thing done in respect to a deceased may be possible in the same way for a clairvoyant entity on the other side of death reporting to us. But, at the same time, it is the fact that the astral body of the deceased does now and then consciously have a part in such reports by reason of unfinished separation from earth and its concerns, or from gross materiality. In other cases where the astral "shell," as some call it, is involved, it is galvanized by nature spirits or by the power of living beings once men who are condemned by their own character to live and function in the denser part of the astral envelope of the earth.

The very moment we go to a medium, who always forms the condensing focus for these forces and that realm we begin to draw to us the astral remains of all person whom we think of or who are enough like us or the medium to fall into the line of attraction. Thus we have in the sphere of the focus those we knew and those we never heard of and who never heard of us when they were alive. Elementals sprites which act as the nerves of nature come also, and they, condensed or plunged into the human astral shells, give a new life to the latter and cause them to simulate intelligence and action sufficient to delude all who are not positively trained in these matters. And this sort of training is almost unknown as yet here; it does not suffice to have followed on the proceedings of hundreds of seinces or hundreds of experiments; it consist in actual training of the inner senses in the living man. If the astral shape is coherent it will render a coherent report, but that is what also a phonograph will do. If it be partly gone or disintegrated it will, like a damaged phonograph cylinder, give a confused report or suddenly stop, to be replace by another, better or worse. In no case can it go beyond facts known before to it, or those known to the inner or outer sense of the medium or sitter. And as these astral shells form the greater part of what come to a medium, this is the reason that forty long years of dealing with them have resulted in so little. It is no wonder, then, that the "astral shell" theory has been over-worn by many Theosophists, causing Spiritualists to think that to be the only explanation which we have. A judicious fear also has contributed to the much dwelling on this theory, for with it come up all the actual and very present dangers to mediums and sitters. These galvanized things necessarily are devoid of conscience, and hence cannot but act on and from the very lowest plane of morals and life, just as may happen to be the left-over material memory of the astral person; and that will vary in accord with the essence of the former life and not with its appearance. Hence we may have the shade of Smith or Jones who seemed to their neighbors to have been good men but who in reality always had low or wicked thoughts and strong desires which law or convention prevented then from giving full expression to. In the astral world, however, this hypocrisy is absent, and the real inner character will show itself or have its effect. And in any case whatever, the material shade of the best of men will not be as good as the man tried to be, but will have all the follies and inner sinfulness of his inheritance against which he struggled when living. Therefore it cannot be that these astral remnants are beneficial to us, no matter who was the person they once belonged to. They are but old clothes, and not the spirit of the man. They are less divine than the living criminal, for he still may be a complete trinity.

But good thoughts, good advice, good teaching, high ideas, noble sentiments have also come from this other world, and it cannot be that "astral shells" have given them. If they were sifted out and tabulated, it would be found that they are not different from what living men have said of their own free will and intent. They are not new save as to means of communication. The strangeness of method very often serves to more deeply impress them on the mind of the recipient. But yet this extraordinary means has now and again led men to give them out as something new in all time, as very wonderful, as a revelation, when the unprejudiced observer sees that they are the opposite, are old or trite, and sometimes mixed up with gush and folly, the product of either one side or the other as might happen. This has cast a stigma on the cult of Spiritualism and made the profane to laugh.

We have therefore to consider such communications which were valuable at the time or to a person, and beneficial in their effect. For were we to refuse to do so, the weapon thus forged will cut the Theosophist who so often is found to be a believer - as I am myself - in communications from Masters or Mahâtmas who are no less spirits, but rather more so, because they are still in bodies of one sort or another.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, October, 1894

CONSIDERATIONS ON MAGIC

WE hear a good deal nowadays and are likely to hear still more of occult science. In this regard we may as well accept the inevitable. All things have their day, and all things revolve in cycles; they come and go, and come again, though never twice the same. Even our very thoughts conform to this universal law. The life, the teachings, and the fate of Pythagoras are involved in mystery, but the fate of the schools which he established and of the followers who succeeded him are matters of history. The slaughter of the Magi stands over against the abuses and abominations which are perpetrated in their name, and doubtless by many styling themselves Magicians.

It is not the object of this brief paper to attempt to define magic, or elucidate occult Science as such, but rather to suggest a few considerations which are of vital import at the present time, equally important to those who utterly deny to magic any more than an imaginative basis, as to those who convinced of its existence as a science, are, or are to become investigators. In both the publications and conversations of the day, frequently occur the expressions "black magic," and "white magic," and those who follow these studies are designated as followers of the "left hand path," or the "right hand path." It ought to be understood that up to a certain point all students of magic, or occultism, journey together. By and by is reached a place where two roads meet, or where the common path divides, and the awful voice from the silence, heard only in the recesses of the individual soul utters the stern command: "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." Instead of black and white magic, read, black and white motive.

The student of occultism is rushing on his destiny, but up to a certain point that destiny is in his own hands, though he is constantly shaping his course, freeing his soul from the trammels of sense and self, or becoming entangled in the web, which, with warp and woof will presently clothe him as with a garment without a seam.

If early in the race he finds it difficult to shake off his chains, let him remember that at every step they grow more and more tyrannical, and often before the goal is reached where the ways divide, the battle is lost or won, and the decision there is only a matter of form. That decision once made is irrevocable, or so nearly so that no exception need be made. Man lives at once in two worlds: the natural and the spiritual, and as in the natural plane he influences his associates, and is in turn influenced by them, so let him not imagine that in the spiritual plane he is alone. This will be a fatal mistake for the dabbler in magic, or the student in occultism. Throughout this vast universe, the good will seek the good, and the evil the evil, each will be unconsciously drawn to its own kind.

But when man faces his destiny in full consciousness of the issues involved, as he must before the final decision is reached, he will be no longer unconscious of these influences, but will recognize his companions: companions, alas! no longer, Masters now, inhuman, pitiless; and the same law of attraction which has led him along the tortuous path, unveils its face, and by affinity of evil, the slave stands in the presence of his master, and the fiends that have all along incited him to laugh at the miseries of his fellow men, and trample under his feet every kindly impulse, every tender sympathy, now make the measureless hells within his own soul resound with their laughter at him, the poor deluded fool whose selfish pride and ambition have stifled and at last obliterated his humanity.

Blind indeed is he who cannot see why those who are in possession of arcane wisdom, hesitate in giving it out to the world, and when in the cycles of time its day has come, they put forth the only doctrine which has power to save and bless, UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD, with all that the term implies.

There may be those who have already in this new era, entered the left-hand road. But now as of old, "by their works ye shall know them." To labor with them is in vain. Selfishness, pride and lust for power are the signs by which we may know them. They may not at once cast off disguise, and they will never deceive the true Theosophist. They can nevertheless deceive to their ruin the ignorant, the curious, the unwary, and it is for such as these that these lines are penned, and the worst of it is, that these poor deluded souls, are led to believe that no such danger exists, and this belief is fortified by the so-called scientists, who are quoted as authority, and who ridicule everything but rank materialism. Yet notwithstanding all this, these simple souls flutter like moths around the flame till they are drawn within the vortex. It is better a million times, that the proud, the selfish and time-serving should eat, drink and be merry, and let occultism alone, for these propensities unless speedily eradicated, will bear fruit and ripen into quick harvests, and the wages thereof is death, literally the "second death."

The purpose of Theosophy is to eradicate these evil tendencies of man, so that whether on the ordinary planes of daily life, or in the higher occult realms, the Christ shall be lifted up, and draw all men unto him.

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn.

The Christs of all the ages have preached this one doctrine: Charity and Brotherhood of Man. To deny the law of charity is to deny the Christ. The Theosophical Society is not responsible for unveiling to the present generation the occult nature of man. Modern Spiritualism had already done this; nor is the responsibility to be charged to the Spiritualists, for these unseen forces had revealed themselves in the fullness of time, and many millions had become convinced, many against their wills, of the reality of the unseen universe. These things are here, and neither crimination, or recrimination is of any use. The responsibility therefore, rests entirely with the individual, as to what use he makes of his opportunities, as to his purposes and aims, and as he advances in his course, involved in the circle of necessity, he influences whether he will or no, those whose spheres of life touch at any point his own. As ye sow, so shall ye also reap. By and by the cycle will close and both the evil and the good will return like bread cast upon the waters. This is a law of all life.

Imagine not that they are weak and vacillating souls who enter the left-hand road: Lucifer was once a prince of light, admitted to the councils of the Most High. He fell through pride, and dragged downward in his fall all who worshipped the demon pride. This is no foolish fable, but a terrible tragedy, enacted at the gates of paradise, in the face of the assembled universe, and reenacted in the heart of man, the epitome of all. Only Infinite pity can measure the downfall of such an one, only Infinite love disarm by annihilation, and so put an end to unendurable woe, and that only when the cycle is complete, the measure of iniquity balanced by its measure of pain. Occultism and magic are not child's-play, as many may learn to their sorrow, as many visitants of dark circles have already and long ago discovered. Better give dynamite to our children as a plaything, than Magic to the unprincipled, the thoughtless, the selfish and ignorant. Let all who have joined the Theosophical Society remember this, and search their hearts before taking the first step in any magical formulary. The motive determines all. Occult power brings with it unknown and unmeasured responsibility.

If in the secret councils of the soul, where no eye can see, and no thought deceive that divine spark conscience, we are ready to forget self, to forego pride, and labor for the well-being of man, then may the upright man face his destiny, follow this guide and fear no evil. Otherwise it were far better that a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into the depths of the sea.

PYTHAGORAS
Path, March, 1887

CONVERSATIONS ON OCCULTISM WITH HPB

IN 1875, '76, '77 and '78 my intimacy with H.P.B. gave me many opportunities for conversing with her on what we then called "Magic." These useful, and for me very wonderful, occasions came about late at night, and sometimes during the day. I was then in the habit of calling on her in the daytime whenever I could get away from my office. Many times I stayed in her flat for the purpose of hearing as much and seeing as much as I could. Later on, in 1884, I spent many weeks with her in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs in Paris, sitting beside her day after day and evening after evening; later still in 1888, being with her in London, at Holland Park, I had a few more opportunities. Some of what she said I publish here for the good of those who can benefit by her words. Certainly no greater practical occultist is known to this century: from that point of view what she said will have a certain useful weight with some.

ON DEVACHAN

This terms was not in use at this time. The conversation was about steps on the Path and returning here again. In answer to a question:

"Yes, you have been here and at this before. You were born with this tendency, and in other lives have met these persons [supposed Adept influences], and they are here to see you for that reason."

Later, when definite terms had come into use, the question raised was whether or not all stayed 1500 years in Devachan.

"Well, Judge, you must know well that under the philosophy we don't all stay there so long. It varies with the character of each. A thoroughly material thinker will emerge sooner than one who is a spiritual philosopher and good. Besides, recollect that all workers for the Lodge, no matter of what degree, are helped out of Devachan if they themselves permit it. Your own ideas which you have stated, that 1500 years had not elapsed since you went into Devachan, is correct, and that I tell is what Master himself tells me. So there you are."

PRECIPITATION BY MASTERS

In reply to a question on this she said:

"If you think Master is going to be always precipitating things, you mistake. Yes, He can do it. But most of the precipitations are by chelas who would seem to you almost Masters. I see His orders, and the thoughts and words He wishes used, and I precipitate them in that form; so does __ and one or two more."

"Well, what of Their handwritings?"

"Anything you write is your handwriting, but it is not your personal handwriting, generally used and first learned if you assume or adopt some form. Now you know that Masters' handwritings, peculiar and personal to Themselves, are foreign both as to sound and form -Indian sorts, in fact. So They adopted a form in English, and in that form I precipitate Their messages as Their direction. Why B__ almost caught me one day and nearly made a mess of it by shocking me. The message has to be seen in the astral light in facsimile, and through that astral matrix I precipitate the whole of it. It's different, though, if Master sends me the paper and the message already done. That's why I call these things 'psychological tricks.' The sign of an objective wonder seemed to be required, although a moment's thought will show it is not proof of anything but occult ability. Many a medium has had precipitations before my miserable self was heard of. But blessed is the one who wants no sign. You have seen plenty of these things. Whey do want to ask me? Can't you use your brain and intuition? I've sampled almost the whole possible range of wonders for you. Let them use their brains and intuition with the known facts and the theories given."

IF WHITE MAGICIANS ACT, WHAT THEN?

"Look here; here's a man who wants to know why the Masters don't interpose at once and save his business. They don't seem to remember what it means for a Master to use occult force. If you explode gunpowder to split a rock you may knock down a house. There is a law that if a White Magician uses his occult power and equal amount of power may be used by the Black one. Chemists invent powders for explosives and wicked men may use them. You force yourself into Mater's presence and you take the consequences of the immense forces around him playing on yourself. If you are weak in character anywhere, the Black ones will use the disturbance by directing the forces engendered to that spot and may compass your ruin. It is so always. Pass the boundary that hedges in the occult realm, and quick forces, new ones, dreadful ones, must be met. Then if you are not strong you may become a wreck for that life. This is the danger. This is one reason why Masters do not appear and do not act directly very often, but nearly always by intermediate degrees. What do you say,-'the dual forces in nature'? Precisely, that's just it; and Theosophists should remember it."

DO MASTERS PUNISH?

"Now I'm not going to tell you about this. They are just; They embody the Law and Compassion. Do not for an instant imagine that Masters are going to come down on you for your failures and wrongs, if any. Karma looks out for this. Masters' ethics are the highest. From the standpoint of your question, They do not punish. Have I not told you that, much as detractors have cast mud at Them, never will the Masters impose punishment. I cannot see why such a question comes up. Karma will do all the punishing that is necessary."

ABOUT ELEMENTALS

"It's a long time ago now that I told you this part would not be explained. But I can tell you some things. This one that you and Olcott used to call ___ can't see you unless I let him. Now I will impress you upon it or him so that like a photograph he will remember so far. But you can't make it obey you until you know how to get the force directed. I'll send him to you and let him make a bell."

[In a few days after this the proposed sign was given at a distance from her, and a little bell was sounded in the air when I was talking with a person not interested in Theosophy, and when I was three miles away from H.P.B.On next seeing her she asked if ___ had been over and sounded the bell, mentioning the exact day and time.]

"This one has no form in particular, but is more like a revolving mass of air. But it is, all the same, quite definite, as you know from what he has done. There are some classes with forms of their own. The general division into fiery, airy, earthy, and watery is pretty correct, but it will not cover all the classes. There is not a single thing going on about us, no matter what, the elementals are not concerned in, because they constitute a necessary part of nature, just as important as the nerve currents in your body. Why in storms you should see them how they move about. Don't you remember what you told me about that lady___who saw them change and move about at that opera? It was due to her tendencies and the general idea underlying the opera." [It was the opera of Tristan and Isolde, by Wagner.-J] "In that case, as Isolde is Irish, the whole ideas under it aroused a class of elementals peculiar to that island and its traditions. That's a queer place, Judge, that Ireland. It is packed full of a singular class of elementals; and, by Jove! I see they even have emigrated in quite large numbers. Sometimes one quite by accident rouses up some ancient system, say from Egypt; that is the explanation of that singular astral noise which you said reminded you of a sistrum being shaken; it was really objective. But, my dear fellow, do you think I will give you a patent elemental extractor? -not yet. Bulwer Lytton wrote very wisely, for him, on this subject."

[Riding over in Central Park, New York.] "It is very interesting here. I see a great number of Indians, and also their elementals, just as real as you seem to be. They do not see us; they are all spooks. But look here, Judge, don't confound the magnetism escaping through your skin with the gentle taps of supposed elementals who want a cigarette."

[In W. 34th Street, New York. The first time she spoke to me of elementals particularly, I having asked her about her Spiritualism.-J.]

"It is nearly all done by elementals. Now I can make them tap anywhere you like in this room. Select any place you wish." [I pointed to a hard plaster wall-space from from objects.] "Now ask what you like that can be answered by taps."

Q. What is my age? Taps: the correct number.

Q. How many in my house? Taps: right.

Q. How many months have I been in the city? Taps: correct.

Q. What number of minutes past the hour by my watch? Taps: right.

Q. How many keys on my ring? Taps: correct.

H.P.B. "Oh bosh! Let it stop. You won't get any more, for I have cut it off. Try your best. They have no sense; they got it all out of your own head, even the keys, for you know inside how many keys are on the ring, though you don't remember; but any how I could see into your pocket and count the number, and then that tapper would give the right reply. There's something better than all that magic nonsense."

SHE PRECIPITATES IN LONDON

In 1888 I was in London and wanted a paper, with about four sentences written on it in purple ink, which I had left in America. I came down to her room where B. Keightley was, and, not saying anything, sat down opposite H.P.B. I thought: "If only she would get me back some way a copy of that paper." She smiled at me, rose, went into her room, came out at once, and in a moment handed me a piece of paper, passing it right in front of Keightley. To my amazement it was a duplicate of my paper, a facsimile. I then asked her how she got it, and she replied: "I saw it in your head and the rest was easy. You thought it very clearly. You know it can be done; and it was needed." This was all done in about the time it takes to read these descriptive sentences.

William Q. Judge

Path, April, 1894

CORRESPONDENCE

Dear Brother: Is there any dictionary or book giving the correct pronunciation of the Oriental words so current in theosophical literature?

Yours ____________

In Sanscrit dictionaries the true pronunciation is found. But if our correspondent will, in these words, always read a as ah, e as eh, i as ee, u as oo, and o as oh, she will be right. Arjuna is sounded as Arjoona, Veda as Vaydah, Brahma as Brähmä, Prakriti as Präkreetee, Mulaprakriti as Moolah-pra-kreetee, and so on. - Ed.

* * *

Several letters have been written and inquiries propounded to the Editor regarding Sanscrit, and in one or two instances the assertion has been made that we were incorrect in saying that Sanscrit is not really a dead language. In reply to those asking about the language, we refer them to Perry's Sanscrit Primer (Ginn & Co., Boston), Lanman's Sanscrit Reader and Whitney's Sanscrit Grammar.

To the others, we quote from Perry's Primer, § 21, p.7: "The Sanscrit is used in India to this day very much as Latin was used in Europe in the previous century; it is a common medium of communication between the learned, be their native tongues what they may, and it is not the vernacular of any district whatever." And in India, the Editor was told by many Brahmins that it is in constant use in all religious convocations and assemblies convened among people of learning who come from widely separated parts of Hindustan.

Path, June, July, 1886

AN UNWRITTEN MESSAGE COMES VISIBLE

New York, May 16, 1886

Editor of the Path,

Dear Sir: - Could you explain the following?

A friend of mine, a physician, who is a rational agnostic and scoffer at all so-called supernatural things, relates the following curious mystery, which happened to him the other day.

He was sitting in his office holding in his hand a letter from one of his regular patients, which asked him to come as soon as he could. It being then towards 5 p.m., when his office hours are over, he was thinking whether he could go that day or not as he has an extensive practice. While thinking he found that the letter was gone. He searched for it on his table, but in vain. A strange feeling came over him as he could not even remember when he had received the letter, nor when he had opened it. A feeling that the letter had after all been a physical delusion he dismissed with scorn; he was sure it would by and by easily explain itself. However the servant was sure that no letter had since 2 p.m. been delivered, as she never leaves the door during that time.

The next morning he called on his patient, who was very glad to see him, though being a little astonished that her daughter had been very sick the preceding day for an hour or two. It had soon passed over. "I am glad to hear that it is nothing serious," the doctor said, "I wanted to excuse myself for not coming yesterday, I received your letter only at 5 p.m." "My letter?" the lady answered, "I never wrote to you; it is impossible, for about that time I was with my sick daughter, and thought very intensely to write, but as I had but one servant in the house I concluded to wait till my son came in. By the time he came, my daughter felt better, and so we concluded not to trouble you."

My friend went home, perfectly sure that in spite of all appearance, though no letter could be found after repeated searching - the lady had written but forgotten it. I can vouch for the truth of the story.

Remain yours fraternally,

H. P. L.

The explanation by those who adhere to mediumship would be, that this was what they call, "a spirit letter." But at this time we cannot accept that proposition; it seems rather a degradation of what we call "spirit," and many alleged "controls" of mediums have deprecated the constant referring of everything to spirit agency, when in perhaps the majority of cases, "spirits" have nothing to do in the matter. Many so called extraordinary things occur every day which are attributed to spirits, or classed as hallucination, which really are due to the powers of the living man, their laws of operation being almost unknown to western people.

The true student of Raj Yoga knows that everything has its origin in the mind; that even this universe is the passing before the Divine Mind of the images he desires to appear.

Now in the case before us, the doctor must be a sensitive man who has the power, unknown to himself, of seeing very clearly the mental images passing in the minds of those with whom he is in sympathy. These impressions are quite common, but they are not usually seen as apparently visible things. Some receive them as images, others as thoughts and ideas. We are all constantly affecting each other in this way every day of our lives, but not everyone receives the impression in the same way. The variations of the operations of manas, which may be properly called "mind," are infinite.

The lady whose daughter was sick, desired very intently to see the doctor, and the message was probably formulated in her mind at once. This is evident, for she awaited the arrival of the son to whom she would at once have given it. That message thus formed was impressed in the astral light, and because of the sympathy existing between patient and doctor it immediately rushed into the sphere of the doctor, registering itself in his mind. He then saw in his hand a letter, which apparently he could feel and read. This was either, (a) the reflection from his mind, or (b) an actual momentary appearance in his hand of the astral message. It was never found again because it had no corporeal existence.

It would be easy to cry "spirits," but it would be common sense. We might also say elementals did it, but that would infer that either the doctor or the patient has elementals devoted to them. Elementals do perform such things but the cases are not common, and therefore we are not justified in taking that explanation when neither party knows of elementals.

If the doctor had not been a sensitive man, he would merely have received the message and repeated it to himself as a sudden thought of that particular patient.

We know several persons of our acquaintance who habitually obey sudden impressions, causing them to write to absent friends, &c., always finding that they answer the other person's thought or written letter when on the way and undelivered until after the reply had been sent.

Let us then pay attention to these things in this light and not allow ourselves, except in known cases, to fly into the arms of alleged spirits or elementals. - Ed.

Path, June, 1886

Dear Path: Can you explain these?

(I) A young lady practicing on the piano a new and difficult piece felt a voice say "Stop! play no more." She paid no attention, but soon her arms felt heavy as lead. Persisting she spoke, "I will learn this," when a mighty crash as upon the outside of the house alarmed her, but no cause for it could be discovered. Returning she began again when the window was violently shaken as if by unseen hands. Her nephew, a musician, had died a short time before this.

Answer - If it be admitted that the noises were not produced quite naturally, then it is probable they were psychical. Such loud noises may be internal or psychic and only heard by the subject. The symptom of heaviness of arms indicates that she is mediumistic to a slight degree, or was at the time. Had she persisted and not given up, quite likely nothing more would have happened, - but she desisted and left thus a mental deposit for a repetition. If she were then mediumistic, it is probable that through elementals and the innumerable means for causing the production of such physical effects the noises resulted. Almost each such case is sui generis, and needs not only careful diagnosis but an equally careful record of the circumstances at the time.

(2) An aunt - a Spiritualist - of a young girl promised to return after death. One day the girl was intently studying arithmetic when a cold shiver ran over her, and looking up she saw form on the mirror a mist that soon took shape as the aunt who had died. Her shoulders were roughly shaken, and as the shape disappeared the aunt's voice was heard singing a favorite hymn.

Answer - Mere"spooks" and elementals aided by tendencies left in the family aura by the spiritualistic aunt. The rude shaking of the shoulders while a favorite hymn was sung was not gentle nor consistent, but strangely like the pranks played by elementals. There must have been on the girl's part some favoring predisposition of a psychic nature, and that, operating during the intent state of her mind while studying the lesson, tended to bring about those conditions which permitted the life-desire of the aunt for reappearance after death to be used by nature's forces, and produced the misty picture on the mirror. We do not believe the aunt knew anything about the matter. Her intentions and desires in life were enough as soon as the conditions favored, and the producing of a picture together with the favorite hymn were only tricks of the astral light. But the shaking of the shoulder was done by an elemental. Could you open yours ears and eyes to what goes on in the astral light, you would hear all the hymns ever sung still resounding, and see all the acts ever done being reënacted. Given the photographic plate, the object, the sun, and the chemicals, and you will produce the picture, but never apply the chemicals and there will be no picture; and it is obvious that no intelligence on the part of plate or chemicals is needed to produce the well-known result. It is much the same on the occult side of things.

Path, August, 1889

To The Editor: August 12th, 1889

In the August number of THE PATH is an article entitled "The Worship of the Dead," which incidentally discusses the condition in Kama-loka of those taken off untimely by suicide or accident. Does the law affect in the same way those who die in early life of disease?

Answer - We think that those who "die in early life of disease" may be said to have reached their natural limit of life, and that all their "principles" had been separated so as to prevent the fate of the others spoken of. The life of an individual is the expression of his Karma in action; in the case of suicide or accident - both of which are the sudden cutting off of a fixed term - the lower principles have not separated, while in death from disease the natural term of life is fixed by Karma at the limit when death occurs from the disease. - ED.

Path, September, 1889

Pasadena, Cal., August 22nd, 1889

I noticed in PATH an article on the "change which is coming," accompanied with a guess that this change might be the manufacture of gold. Has not Bellamy come nearer guessing the change - brotherhood and cooperation?

Answer - The article referred to, "A Dream of Gold," was only the speculation of one as to what would occur if gold could be made. He was not "guessing at the coming change." Edward Bellamy guessed well at a, but not at the, change. The state Bellamy pictures will not be arrived at except through blood and fire, and perhaps after the fall in value of gold shall have driven the thought of values out of the people's mind. The working man is no doubt oppressed, but he is still human, and, given power, will exhibit the faults of those who now have it. - ED.

Path, October, 1889

MISTAKES ABOUT INDIA

Dear Path: Is it advisable for me to go to India to forward my psychic and spiritual progress? I am told there they know about such matters. Would you advise me to go?

Leanto

We would advise you to stay at home and find out that "the kingdom of heaven is within you," and not in India nor America. India is the land of mystery truly, and the cradle of the race, but you will get on no more there than here in your spiritual development. The Hindus of today are not those of the past; their ancient philosophy is ours as we find it; but to go there expecting immediate efflorescence of knowledge and power would cause you disappointment. You would probably find your Hindu fellows asking you for aid in the same road. H.P.B. and Mr. Sinnett report one of the Masters as writing some years ago that the Master could not stay among the Hindus of today because of their condition. Could you stand it any better? Stay here and do your duty, looking within for light; there alone - no matter where your body is - can it be found. - ED.

Path, July, 1892

Dear Path: The article in February about our seal interested me, but the writer only hints that perhaps the seal used by H.P.B. on her letter paper was the origin of our seal. Is there any proof as to dates? May she not have adopted it from our seal?

Yours, X.M.

Answer - Since the February article was written I have obtained proof positive that H.P.B used the seal, as given in that article, upon her letter paper and envelopes as early as June, 1875. The Society was founded in November, 1875, so that she was using the symbol for four months before we adopted it. If the writer of the article "A Reminiscence" had known of this he might have gone further and positively asserted that her private symbol became our public corporate seal - another proof of the predominance of herself and her Masters in the Theosophical movement. The positive evidence secured during the month consists in old letters and envelopes of June and earlier in 1875, bearing the seal in colors, red, gold, and white. There lies before the writer a letter with its envelope, written by her from Philadelphia on June 10, 1875, each having the symbol precisely as printed in February Path and from the same plate.

William Q. Judge

Path, March, 1893

ON Ocean of Theosophy

Life and Death

Sir: Will you kindly explain a little more fully what you mean by the following passage in the Ocean of Theosophy, p. 36: "So in sleep we are again absorbing and not resisting the Life Energy; when we wake we are throwing it off. But as is exists around us like an ocean in which we swim, our power to throw it off is necessarily limited. Just when we wake we are in equilibrium as to our organs and life; when we fall asleep we are yet more full of life than in the morning. It has exhausted us; it finally kills the body."

If we are throwing off the life energy during the day, how is it that we are more full of life in the evening than in the morning?

Manchester, England Student

As said above, our power to throw off the life force accumulated is limited. From this limitation it results that we come to a point when our resistance grows less, just as in the entire life-span a year comes when we begin to go down the hill of life. As it lessens we are drawing near to the hour when the need of sleep will arise. Sleep is that condition of the body needed for procuring the equilibrium between Jiva and the body. Equilibrium is about established when we wake, and then the organs begin to resist the further influx of life and to throw off some of what we have taken in. Life constantly presses us just as the electric fluid tries to fill the object placed in the electric field; we cannot resist this pressure every day beyond a certain number of hours, and we fall asleep because Life has disturbed the equilibrium. Resting in sleep, that equilibrium is again established, to be again overcome the next day, or rather, in the next period of activity. This constant struggle being kept up for years, the bodily organs are not able to stand the wear and tear, and hence the body dies. Thus Life destroys the body. Construe the words "throwing it off" as meaning resisting it, and you will dispel the slight confusion arising in a book written so quickly as this one.

On Karma

Sir: (I) On p. 97 of Ocean you refer to the treatment of the Red Indians by the Americans, and seem to take for granted that the Indians did not merit such treatment. (2) Again, you say those Indians will be reborn in conquering peoples. If so, would not this process of retaliation go on constantly? (3) Animals seem to suffer and enjoy. If absolute justice rules, how do you account for their case? E.L.

Answer - (I) I fully agree that if people go on retaliating or hurting each other, evils will never cease and there will be an endless series of hates. But I do not take it for granted that the Indians did not merit in the eye of Karma as a law what they received. But man is not that law. His duty is compassion. The Americans as a higher race should have treated the Indians kindly instead of robbing and murdering them. Inevitably they will on their next rebirth follow out that practice and influence. But if we know Karma as the law, then we must act in the line of compassion and slowly but surely destroy the hate that exists, replacing it by love. We are not conscious agents of Karma. If we assume that position we assume to judge and execute, and may refuse to take up the good Karma of helping another who has offended. It is just the constant retaliation of men educated under such laws as the Mosaic or any like it, which has created a civilization of retaliation, of selfishness, and egotistical individualism. No. 2 is included in this reply. (3) Animals have Karma, or consequence of act, but they have not man's responsibility. While they seem to suffer and enjoy, it is all without any self-consciousness, and hence is less in itself and less lasting in effect. Their karma is bound up with man; and he is the responsible one and will have to bear the responsibility, although they feel the burden directly. All of the foregoing is, of course, my own opinion.

Path, April, 1894

Letters That Have Helped Me

Dear Path: Seeing in April issue the statement that the Letters compiled by Jasper Niemand were written by William Q. Judge, I would ask further: Were the Letters real, that is, not written for publication, and was each one written by the same person?

Yours, Reader

Answer - The Letters were written by me in the regular course of correspondence with the persons to whom they were sent, and were not then intended for publication, nor did I even dream of subsequent publication. Each letter as found in the book was written by one person, that is to say, myself.

William Q. Judge

Path, May, 1894

T.S. HEADQUARTERS

The following letter was sent from New York on August 3rd, 1894.

Editor Theosophist,

Dear Sir and Brother: I beg to call your attention to a very important and vital mistake which has been made by Brother Keightley in paragraph 5 of his letter to the Indian Section, published in Supplement to July Theosophist, and beg to request that this letter be given the same publicity in the journal as was given to his.

In that paragraph, page xxxvii, he asks the Indian Section to make an emphatic protest against what he called "the proposal of the American Section to remove the Headquarters of the Theosophical Society as such away from the sacred soil of India." This extraordinary request mush have been made without consideration of the full report of the last American Convention. At that Convention the Countess Wachtmeister, as delegate for the Indian Section, made a proposition for such removal and went into the matter at some length, but the proposal was voted down so far as the American Section is concerned by a resolution which you will find on page 34 of our report; and that resolution was drawn up by myself. We did not wish to consider the matter at all; my personal view is that no such removal should be made, and that idea I hitherto definitely expressed in writing to the President and Mr. Keightley over a year ago; but it would have been discourteous to have paid no attention to the proposition brought forward by the delegate of the Indian Section, and consequently the resolution, which is the third one on the page cited, was drawn in such terms as to politely dismiss the matter. I am in a position to state that at the time this resolution came up I took the same position privately in respect to the matter, stating that I did not think the General Headquarters of the Society should be removed from India; the question of removing the Indian Section Headquarters was one with which we have nothing to do as a Section. And the American Section wished the Indian Section to clearly understand that it has taken no position in respect to the General Headquarters, except as stated in the Report in which it has stated that it is premature to consider such a change.

The resolution reads a follows:

Resolved, That in our opinion it would be premature at the present time to consider any question relating to the removal of the Indian General Headquarters, deeming it advisable to leave such matters to be adjusted when the time for action shall have arrived.

William Q. Judge
General Secretary

Path, September, 1894

Dear Sir: (I) I understand lately that for some years you were in the habit of using many pen names - fictitious names in fact - to articles you printed in the PATH. The articles were valuable to many. But may I ask were these items included in the charges brought against you; and if they were not, is there any way of having them inserted and brought forward? Excuse me, however, I forgot to ask first if what I heard was true.

(2) Is it true that by merely rubbing your hand over your forehead four or five times - some say seven - you can write in any language and in any man's hand; and is it true that your are naturally a good writer, but for years have systematically written badly so that people might be deceived about your chirography? Homos

Answer - (I) It is too true that I have written many articles under "pen names." Letters that helped Jasper Niemand I wrote, and under "X" and other marks I allowed to be published. Many of my articles thus written have been of use. Would you advice me to collect and destroy all that I can find? These items were not in the charges, yet, though some subsequent edition may have them perhaps. In that case this will be a confession.

(2) I have not yet discovered that rubbing-the-forehead trick. But I am a good writer when I have time. I was a law copyist once for a few months and the writing was praised.

William Q. Judge

Path, July, 1895

CULLED FROM ARYAN SCIENCE

Rain Clouds

In the Vishnu Purana it is said:

"During eight months of the year the sun attracts the waters and then pours them upon the earth as rain"; and,

"The water which the clouds shed upon the earth is the ambrosia of the living beings, for it gives fertility to the plants which are the support of their existence. By this all vegetables grow and are matured and become the means of maintaining life."

Jupiter's Satellites

In the Vishnu Purana Jupiter is name Brihaspati, and is described as having a golden car drawn by eight pale-colored horses. This refers to his satellites.

Origin of Planet Mercury

The Puranas have a legend that the moon was originally in Jupiter's house but was seduced into living with Tara (the present path of the moon), the result of which was the birth of Mercury, meaning that Mercury was withdrawn from its original orbit into its present one nearer the sun.

The End of the World

This event is brought about, the Puranas state, by the rays of the sun dilating into seven suns which then burn up the world.

The Earth's Sphericity

The earth, situated in the middle of the heavens and composed of the five elements, is spherical in shape.

- Aryabhattiyam

A hundredth part of the circumference of a circle appears to be a straight line. Our earth is a big sphere, and the portion visible to man being exceedingly small, the earth appears to be flat.

Some fancy that those on the other side of the earth have their heads hanging down. Just as we live here, so do the rest, and feel in no way uneasy.

Those at the north have for their zenith the north, and those at the south, the south pole; the equator forms the horizon for both, and both find the heavens move from left to right and right to left, respectively. - Goladhyaya

The Atmosphere

The atmosphere surrounds the earth to the height of 60 miles, and clouds, lightning and the like are all phenomena connected with it. - Ibid.

Polar Days and Nights

For the period when the sun is north it is visible for six months at the north pole and invisible at the south, and vice versa. - Ibid.

Planetary Light

The earth, the planets and the comets all receive their light from the sun, that half towards the sun being always bright, the color varying with the peculiarity of the substance of each. - Laghvaryahattiyam

Currents in Earth and Its Oceans: and Blood Circulation

Just in the same way as there are arteries for the circulation of blood in the human body, the earth has undercurrents lying one over the other. -Varahasamhita [We find now that the gulf-stream is a well defined current in a great body of water, and in the Mediterranean two currents run out and in over one another. On land are many well-defined rivers running all their course underground.]

Path, April, 1889

CULTURE OF CONCENTRATION

THE term most generally in use to express what is included under the above title is SELF CULTURE. Now it seems to well enough express, for a time at least, the practice referred to by those who desire to know the truth. But, in fact, it is inaccurate from a theosophic standpoint.
For the self is held to be that designated in the Indian books as Ishwara, which is a portion of the eternal spirit enshrined in each human body. That this is the Indian view there is no doubt. The Bhagavad-Gita in Ch. 15 says that an eternal portion of this spirit, "having assumed life in this world of life, attracts the heart and the five senses which belong to nature. Whatever body Ishwara enters or quits, it is connected with it by snatching those senses from nature, even as the breeze snatches perfumes from their very bed. This spirit approaches the objects of sense by presiding over the ear, the eye, the touch, the taste, and the smell, and also over the heart"; and in an earlier chapter, "the Supreme spirit within this body is called the Spectator and admonisher, sustainer, enjoyer, great Lord, and also highest soul"; and again, "the Supreme eternal soul, even when existing within - or connected with - the body, is not polluted by the actions of the body."

Elsewhere in these books this same spirit is called the self, as in a celebrated sentence which in Sanscrit is "Atmanam atmana, pashya," meaning, "Raise the self by the self," and all through the Upanishads, where the self is constantly spoken of as the same as the Ishwara of Bhagavad-Gita. Max Muller thinks the word "self" expresses best in English the ideas of the Upanishads on this head.

It therefore follows that such a thing as culture of this self, which in its very nature is eternal, unchangeable, and unpollutable by any action, cannot be. It is only from inadequacy of terms that students and writers using the English tongue are compelled to say "self culture," while, when they say it, they admit that they know the self cannot be cultured.

What they wish to express is, "such culture or practice to be pursued by us as shall enable us, while on earth, to mirror forth the wisdom and fulfill the behests of the self within, which is all wise and all good."

As the use of this term "self culture" demands a constant explanation either outwardly declared or inwardly assented to, it is wise to discard it altogether and substitute that which will express the practice aimed at without raising a contradiction. For another reason also the term should be discarded. That is, that it assumes a certain degree of selfishness, for, if we use it as referring to something that we do only for ourself, we separate at once between us and the rest of the human brotherhood. Only in one way can we use it without contradiction or without explanation, and that is by admitting we selfishly desire to cultivate ourselves, thus at once running against a prime rule in theosophic life and one so often and so strenuously insisted on, that the idea of personal self must be uprooted. Of course, as we will not negative this rule, we thus again have brought before us the necessity for a term that does not arouse contradictions. That new term should, as nearly as possible, shadow forth the three essential things in the action, that is, the instrument, the act, and the agent, as well as the incitement to action; or, knowledge itself, the thing to be known or done, and the person who knows.

This term is CONCENTRATION. In the Indian books it is called Yoga. This is translated also as Union, meaning a union with the Supreme Being, or, as it is otherwise put, "the object of spiritual knowledge is the Supreme Being."

There are two great divisions of Yoga found in the ancient books, and they are called Hatha-Yoga and Raj-Yoga.

Hatha-Yoga is a practical mortification of the body by means of which certain powers are developed. It consists in the assumption of certain postures that aid the work, and certain kinds of breathing that bring on changes in the system, together with other devices. It is referred to in the 4th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita thus: "Some devotees sacrifice the sense of hearing and the other senses in the fires of restraint; some offer objects of sense, such as sound, in the fires of the senses. Some also sacrifice inspiration of breath in expiration, and expiration in inspiration, by blocking up the channels of inspiration and expiration, desirous of retaining their breath. Others, by abstaining from food, sacrifice life in their life."

In various treatises these methods are set forth in detail, and there is no doubt at all that by pursuing them one can gain possession of sundry abnormal powers. There is risk, however, especially in the case of people in the West where experienced gurus or teachers of these things are not found. These risks consist in this, that while an undirected person is doing according to the rules of Hatha-Yoga, he arouses about him influences that do him harm, and he also carries his natural functions to certain states now and then when he ought to stop for a while, but, having no knowledge of the matter, may go on beyond that and produce injurious effects. Then, again, Hatha-Yoga is a difficult thing to pursue, and one that must be pushed to the point of mastery and success. Few of our Western people are by nature fitted for such continuous and difficult labor on the mental and astral planes. Thus, being attracted to Hatha-Yoga by the novelty of it, and by the apparent pay that it offers in visible physical results, they begin without knowledge of the difficulty, and stopping after a period of trial they bring down upon themselves consequences that are wholly undesirable.

The greatest objection to it, however, is that it pertains to the material and semi-material man, -roughly speaking, to the body, and what is gained through it is lost at death.

The Bhagavad-Gita refers to this and describes what happens in these words: "All of these, indeed, being versed in sacrifice, have their sins destroyed by these sacrifices. But he alone reaches union with the Supreme being who eats of the ambrosia left from a sacrifice." This means that the Hatha-Yoga practice represents the mere sacrifice itself, whereas the other kind is the ambrosia arising from the sacrifice, or "the perfection of spiritual cultivation," and that leads to Nirvana. The means for attaining the "perfection of spiritual cultivation" are found in Raj-Yoga, or, as we shall term it for the present, Culture of Concentration.

When concentration is perfected, we are in a position to use the knowledge that is ever within reach but which ordinarily eludes us continually. That which is usually called knowledge is only an intellectual comprehension of the outside, visible forms assumed by certain realities. Take what is called scientific knowledge of minerals and metals. This is merely a classification of material phenomena and an empirical acquisition. It knows what certain minerals and metals are useful for, and what some of their properties are. Gold is known to be pure, soft, yellow, and extremely ductile, and by a series of accidents it has been discovered to be useful in medicine and the arts. But even to this day there is a controversy, not wholly settled, as to whether gold is held mechanically or chemically in crude ore. Similarly with minerals. The crystalline forms are known and classified.

And yet a new theory has arisen, coming very near to the truth, that we do not know matter in reality in this way, but only apprehend certain phenomena presented to us by matter, and variously called, as the phenomena alter, gold, wood, iron, stone, and so on. But whether the minerals, metals, and vegetables have further properties that are only to be apprehended by still other and undeveloped senses, science will not admit. Passing from inanimate objects to the men and women about us, this ordinary intellectual knowledge aids us no more than before. We see bodies with different names and of different races, but below the outer phenomena our everyday intellect will not carry us. This man we suppose to have a certain character assigned to him after experience of his conduct, but it is still only provisional, for none of us is ready to say that we know him either in his good or his bad qualities. We know there is more to him than we can see or reason about, but what, we cannot tell. It eludes us continually. And when we turn to contemplate ourselves, we are just as ignorant as we are about our fellow man. Out of this has arisen an old saying: "Every man knows what he is, but no one knows what he will be."

There must be in us a power of discernment, the cultivation of which will enable us to know whatever is desired to be known. That there is such a power is affirmed by teachers of occultism, and the way to acquire it is by cultivating concentration.

It is generally overlooked, or not believed, that the inner man who is the one to have these powers has to grow up to maturity, just as the body has to mature before its organs fulfill their functions fully. By inner man I do not mean the higher self-the Ishwara before spoken of, but that part of us which is called soul, or astral man, or vehicle, and so on. All these terms are subject to correction, and should not be held rigidly to the meanings given by various writers. Let us premise, first, the body now visible; second, the inner man - not the spirit; and third, the spirit itself.

Now while it is quite true that the second-or inner man - has latent all the powers and peculiarities ascribed to the astral body, it is equally true that those powers are, in the generality of persons, still latent or only very partially developed.

This inner being is, so to say, inextricably entangled in the body, cell for cell and fibre for fibre. He exists in the body somewhat in the way the fibre of the mango fruit exists in the mango. In that fruit we have the inside nut with thousands of fine fibres spreading out from it through the yellow pulp around. And as you eat it, there is great difficulty in distinguishing the pulp from the fibre. So that the inner being of which we are speaking cannot do much when away from his body, and is always influenced by it. It is not therefore easy to leave the body at will and roam about in the double. The stories we hear of this as being so easily done may be put down to strong imagination, vanity, or other causes. One great cause for error in respect to these doubles is that a clairvoyant is quite likely to mistake a mere picture of the person's thought for the person himself. In fact, among occultists who know the truth, the stepping out of the body at will and moving about the world is regarded as a most difficult feat, and for the reasons above hinted at. Inasmuch as the person is so interwoven with his body, it is absolutely necessary, before he can take his astral form about the country, for him to first carefully extract it, fibre by fibre, from the surrounding pulp of blood, bones, mucous, bile, skin, and flesh. Is this easy? It is neither easy nor quick of accomplishment, nor all done at one operation. It has to be the result of years of careful training and numerous experiments. And it cannot be consciously done until the inner man has developed and cohered into something more than irresponsible and quivering jelly. This development and coherence are gained by perfecting the power of concentration.

Nor is it true, as the matter has been presented to me by experiment and teaching, that even in our sleep we go rushing about the country seeing our friends and enemies or tasting earthly joys at distant points. In all cases where the man has acquired some amount of concentration, it is quite possible that the sleeping body is deserted altogether, but such cases are as yet not in the majority.

Most of us remain quite close to our slumbering forms. It is not necessary for us to go away in order to experience the different states of consciousness which is the privilege of every man, but we do not go away over miles of country until we are able, and we cannot be able until the necessary ethereal body has been acquired and has learned how to use its powers.

Now, this ethereal body has its own organs which are the essence or real basis of the senses described by men. The outer eye is only the instrument by which the real power of sight experiences that which relates to sight; the ear has its inner master - the power of hearing, and so on with every organ. These real powers within flow from the spirit to which we referred at the beginning of this paper. That spirit approaches the objects of sense by presiding over the different organs of sense. And whenever it withdraws itself the organs cannot be used. As when a sleep - walker moves about with open eyes which do not see anything, although objects are there and the different parts of the eye are perfectly normal and uninjured.

Ordinarily there is no demarcation to be observed between these inner organs and the outer; the inner ear is found to be too closely interknit with the outer to be distinguished apart. But when concentration has begun, the different inner organs begin to awake, as it were, and to separate themselves from the chains of their bodily counterparts. Thus the man begins to duplicate his powers. His bodily organs are not injured, but remain for use upon the plane to which they belong, and he is acquiring another set which he can use apart from the others in the plane of nature peculiarly theirs.

We find here and there cases where certain parts of this inner body have been by some means developed beyond the rest. Sometimes the inner head alone is developed, and we have one who can see or hear clairvoyantly or clairaudiently; again, only a hand is developed apart from the rest, all the other being nebulous and wavering. It may be a right hand, and it will enable the owner to have certain experiences that belong to the plane of nature to which the right hand belongs, say the positive side of touch and feeling.

But in these abnormal cases there are always wanting the results of concentration. They have merely protruded one portion, just as a lobster extrudes his eye on the end of the structure which carries it. Or take one who has thus curiously developed one of the inner eyes, say the left. This has a relation to a plane of nature quite different from that appertaining to the hand, and the results in experience are just as diverse. He will be a clairvoyant of a certain order, only able to recognize that which relates to his one-sided development, and completely ignorant of many other qualities inherent in the thing seen or felt, because the proper organs needed to perceive them have had no development. He will be like a two-dimensional being who cannot possibly know that which three-dimensional beings know, or like ourselves as compared with four-dimensional entities.

In the course of the growth of this ethereal body several things are to be observed.

It begins by having a cloudy, wavering appearance, with certain centres of energy caused by the incipiency of organs that correspond to the brain, heart, lungs, spleen, liver, and so on. It follows the same course of development as a solar system, and is, in fact, governed and influenced by the very solar system to which the world belongs on which the being may be incarnate. With us it is governed by our own solar orb.

If the practice of concentration be kept up, this cloudy mass begins to gain coherence and to shape itself into a body with different organs. As they grow they must be used. Essays are to be made with them, trials, experiments. In fact, just as a child must creep before it can walk, and must learn walking before it can run, so this ethereal man must do the same. But as the child can see and hear much farther than it can creep or walk, so this being usually begins to see and to hear before it can leave the vicinity of the body on any lengthy journey.

Certain hindrances then begin to manifest themselves which, when properly understood by us, will give us good substantial reasons for the practicing of the several virtues enjoined in holy books and naturally included under the term of Universal Brotherhood.

One is that sometimes it is seen that this nebulous forming body is violently shaken, or pulled apart, or burst into fragments that at once have a tendency to fly back into the body and take on the same entanglement that we spoke of at first. This is caused by anger, and this is why the sages all dwell
upon the need of calmness. When the student allows anger to arise, the influence of it is at once felt by the ethereal body, and manifests itself in an uncontrollable trembling which begins at the centre and violently pulls apart the hitherto coherent particles. If allowed to go on it will disintegrate the whole mass, which will then reassume its natural place in the body. The effect following this is, that a long time has to elapse before the ethereal body can be again created. And each time this happens the result is the same. Nor does it make any difference what the cause for the anger may be. There is no such thing as having what is called "righteous anger" in this study and escaping these inevitable consequences. Whether your "rights" have been unjustly and flagrantly invaded or not does not matter. The anger is a force that will work itself out in its appointed way. Therefore anger must be strictly avoided, and it cannot be avoided unless charity and love- absolute toleration-are cultivated.

But anger may be absent and yet still another thing happen. The ethereal form may have assumed quite a coherence and definiteness. But it is observed that, instead of being pure and clear and fresh, it begins to take on a cloudy and disagreeable color, the precursor of putrefaction, which invades every part and by its effects precludes any further progress, and at last reacts upon the student so that anger again manifests itself. This is the effect of envy. Envy is not a mere trifle that produces no physical result. It has a powerful action, as strong in its own field as that of anger. It not only hinders the further development, but attracts to the student's vicinity thousands of malevolent beings of all classes that precipitate themselves upon him and wake up or bring on every evil passion. Envy, therefore, must be extirpated, and it cannot be got rid of as long as the personal idea is allowed to remain in us.

Another effect is produced on this ethereal body by vanity. Vanity represents the great illusion of nature. It brings up before the soul all sorts of erroneous or evil pictures, or both, and drags the judgment so away that once more anger or envy will enter, or such course be pursued that violent destruction by outside causes falls upon the being. As in one case related to me. The man had made considerable progress, but at last allowed vanity to rule. This was followed by the presentation to his inner sight of most extraordinary images and ideas, which in their turn so affected him that he attracted to his sphere hordes of elementals seldom known to students and quite indescribable in English. These at last, as is their nature, laid siege to him, and one day produced all about the plane of his astral body an effect similar in some respects to that which follows an explosion of the most powerful explosive known to science. The consequence was, his ethereal form was so suddenly fractured that by repercussion the whole nature of the man was altered, and he soon died in a madhouse after having committed the most awful excesses.

And vanity cannot be avoided except by studiously cultivating that selflessness and poverty of heart advised as well by Jesus of Nazareth as by Buddha.

Another hindrance is fear. This is not, however, the worst of all, and is one that will disappear by means of knowledge, for fear is always the son of ignorance. Its effect on the ethereal form is to shrivel it up, or coagulate and contract it. But as knowledge increases, that contraction abates, permitting the person to expand. Fear is the same thing as frigidity on the earth, and always proceeds by the process of freezing.

In my next the subject will be further developed.

RAMATIRTHA
Path, July, 1888

CULTURE OF CONCENTRATION
PART II

IT is now over one year since I sent in Part I to the Editor of the PATH. Since then I have heard that some students expressed a desire to read Part II, forgetting to observe, perhaps, that the first paper was complete in itself, and, if studied, with earnest practice to follow, would have led to beneficial results. It has not been necessary before to write No. II; and to the various students who so soon after reading the first have asked for the second I plainly say that you have been led away because a sequel was indicated and you cannot have studied the first; furthermore I much doubt if you will be benefited by this any more than by the other.

Success in the culture of concentration is not for him who sporadically attempts it. It is a thing that flows from "a firm position assumed with regard to the end in view, and unremittingly kept up." Nineteenth Century students are too apt to think that success in occultism can be reached as one attains success in school or college, by reading and learning printed words. A complete knowledge of all that was ever written upon concentration will confer no power in the practice of that about which I treat. Mere book knowledge is derided in this school as much as it is by the clodhopper; not that I think book knowledge is to be avoided, but that sort of acquisition without the concentration is as useless as faith without works. It is called in some places, I believe, "mere eye-knowledge." Such indeed it is; and such is the sort of culture most respected in these degenerate times.

In starting these papers the true practice was called Raj Yoga. It discards those physical motions, postures, and recipes relating solely to the present personality, and directs the student to virtue and altruism as the bases from which to start. This is more often rejected than accepted. So much has been said during the last 1800 years about Rosicrucians, Egyptian Adepts, Secret Masters, Kaballah, and wonderful magical books, that students without a guide, attracted to these subjects, ask for information and seek in vain for the entrance to the temple of the learning they crave, because they say that virtue's rules are meant for babes and Sunday-schools, but not for them. And, in consequence, we find hundreds of books in all the languages of Europe dealing with rites, ceremonies, invocations, and other obscurities that will lead to nothing but loss of time and money. But few of these authors had anything save "mere eye-knowledge." 'Tis true they have sometimes a reputation, but it is only that accorded to an ignoramus by those who are more ignorant. The so-called great man, knowing how fatal to reputation it would be to tell how really small is his practical knowledge, prates about "projections and elementals," "philosopher's stone and elixir," but discreetly keeps from his readers the paucity of his acquirements and the insecurity of his own mental state. Let the seeker know, once for all, that the virtues cannot be discarded nor ignored; they must be made a part of our life, and their philosophical basis must be understood.
But it may be asked, if in the culture of concentration we will succeed alone by the practice of virtue. The answer is No, not in this life, but perhaps one day in a later life. The life of virtue accumulates much merit; that merit will at some time cause one to be born in a wise family where the real practice of concentration may perchance begin; or it may cause one to be born in a family of devotees or those far advanced on the Path, as said in Bhagavad-Gita. But such a birth as
this, says Krishna, is difficult to obtain; hence the virtues alone will not always lead in short space to our object.

We must make up our minds to a life of constant work upon this line. The lazy ones or they who ask for pleasure may as well give it up at the threshold and be content with the pleasant paths marked out for those who "fear God and honor the King." Immense fields of investigation and experiment have to be traversed; dangers unthought of and forces unknown are to be met; and all must be overcome, for in this battle there is no quarter asked or given. Great stores of knowledge must be found and seized. The kingdom of heaven is not to be had for the asking; it must be taken by violence. And the only way in which we can gain the will and the power to thus seize and hold is by acquiring the virtues on the one hand, and minutely understanding ourselves on the other. Some day we will begin to see why not one passing thought may be ignored, not one flitting impression missed. This we can perceive is no simple task. It is a gigantic work. Did you ever reflect that the mere passing sight of a picture, or a single word instantly lost in the rush of the world, may be basis for a dream that will poison the night and react upon the brain next day. Each one must be examined. If you have not noticed it, then when you awake next day you have to go back in memory over every word and circumstance of the preceding day, seeking, like the astronomer through space, for the lost one. And, similarly, without such a special reason, you must learn to be able to go thus backward into your days so as to go over carefully and in detail all that happened, all that you permitted to pass through the brain. Is this an easy matter?

But let us for a moment return to the sham adepts, the reputed Masters, whether they were well-intentioned or the reverse. Take Eliphas Levi, who wrote so many good things, and whose books contain such masses of mysterious hints. Out of his own mouth he convicts himself. With great show he tells of the raising of the shade of Apollonius. Weeks beforehand all sorts of preparations had to be made, and on the momentous night absurd necromantic performances were gone through. What was the result? Why only that the so-called shade appeared for a few moments, and Levi says they never attempted it again. Any good medium of these days could call up the shade of Apollonius without preparation, and if Levi were an Adept he could have seen the dead quite as easily as he turned to his picture in a book. By these sporadic attempts and outside preparations, nothing is really gained but harm to those who thus indulge. And the foolish dabbling by American theosophists with practices of the Yogis of India that are not one-eighth understood and which in themselves are inadequate, will lead to much worse results than the apochryphal attempt recorded by Eliphas Levi.

As we have to deal with the Western mind now ours, all unused as it is to these things and over-burdened with false training and falser logic, we must begin where we are, we must examine our present possessions and grow to know our own present powers and mental machinery. This done, we may proceed to see ourselves in the way that shall bring about the best result.

RAMATIRTHA
Path, February, 1890

THE CURE OF DISEASES

MORTAL ills and the needs of the stomach rank next after the instinct of self-preservation among all the subjects which engage the attention of the race. If we do not go on living we cannot do the work we think there is to do; if we remain hungry we will lose the power to work properly or to enjoy, and at last come to the door of death. From bad or scanty food follows a train of physical ills called generally disease. Disease reaches us also through too much food. So in every direction these ills attack us; even when our feeding is correct and sufficient it is found that we fall a prey because our Karma, settled by ourselves is some previous life, ordains that we enter on this one handicapped by the hereditary taint due to the wickedness or or the errors of our fathers and mothers. And the records of science show that the taint in the blood or the lymph may jump over many lives, attacking with virulence some generation distant very far from the source. What wonder, then that the cure of disease is an all-absorbing subject with every one! The Christian knows that it is decreed by Almighty God that He will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children even to the third and fourth generation, and the non-believer sees that by some power in nature the penalty is felt even so far.

All of this has given to the schools of mental and so-called "metaphysical" healing a strong pull on the fears, the feelings, the wishes, and the bodies of those to whom they address themselves, and especially in the United States. That there is more attention given to the subject in America seems true to those who have been on the other side of the Atlantic and noticed how small is the proportion of people there who know anything about the subject. But in the United States in every town many can be found who know about these schools and practice after their methods. Why it has more hold here can be left to conjecture, as the point under consideration is why it has any hold at all. It is something like patent medicine. Offer a cure to people for their many ills, and they will take it up; offer it cheap, and they will use it; offer it as an easy method, and they will rush for it under certain conditions. Metaphysical healing is easy for some because it declares, first, that no money need be paid to doctors for medicine; second, that medical fluids and drugs may be dispensed with; and third that it is easily learned and practiced. The difficulties that arise out of the necessities of logic are not present for those who never studied it, but are somewhat potent with those who reason correctly; - but that is not usual for the general run of minds. They see certain effects and accept the assumed cause as the right one. But many persons will not even investigate the system, because they think it requires them to postulate the non-existence of that which they see before their eyes. The statements quoted from the monthly Christian Science in March PATH are bars in the way of such minds. If they could be induced to just try the method offered for cure, belief might result, for effects indeed often follow. But the popular mind is not in favor of "mind cure," and more prominence is given in the daily papers to cases of death under it than to cures. And very full reports always appear of a case such as one in March, where "faith curers," in order to restore life, went to praying over the dead body of one of the members of a believing family.

During a recent tour over this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back, I had the opportunity of meeting hundreds of disciples of these schools, and found in nearly all cases that they were not addicted to logic but calmly ignored very plain propositions, satisfied that if cures were accomplished the cause claimed must be the right one, and almost without exception they denied the existence of evil or pain or suffering. There was a concurrence of testimony from all to show that the dominant idea in their minds was the cure of their bodily ills and the continuance of health. The accent was not on the beauty of holiness or the value to them and the community of a right moral system and right life, but on the cure of their diseases. So the conclusion has been forced home that all these schools exist because people desire to be well more than they desire to be good, although they do not object to goodness if that shall bring wholeness.

And, indeed, one does not have to be good to gain the benefit of the teachings. It is enough to have confidence, to assert boldly that this does not exist and that that has no power to hurt one. I do not say the teachers of the "science" agree with me herein, but only that whether you are good or bad the results will follow the firm practice of the method enjoined, irrespective of the ideas of the teachers.

For in pure mind-cure as compared with its congener "Christian Science," you do not have to believe in Jesus and the gospels, yet the same results are claimed, for Jesus taught that whatever you prayed for with faith, that you should have.

Scientific research discloses that the bodies of our race are infected with taints that cause nearly all of our diseases, and school after school of medicine has tried and still tries to find the remedy that will dislodge the foulness in the blood. This is scientific, since it seeks the real physical cause; metaphysical healing says it cures, but cannot prove that the cause is destroyed and not merely palliated. That there is some room for doubt history shows us, for none will deny that many pure thinking and acting pair have brought forth children who displayed some taint derived from a distant ancestor. Evidently their pure individual thoughts had no power over the great universal development of the matter used by those human bodies.

Turning now to medicine we find the Italian Count Mattei promulgating a system of cure by the homeopathic use of subtle vegetable essences which may well give pause to those who would make universal the curing by faith or mind alone. Some of his liquids will instantly stop a violent pain, restore sight, give back hearing, and dissipate abnormal growths. His globules will make a drunken man sober, and, given to the nurse who suckles a babe, will cure the child who takes the milk. The drunkard and the child do not think about or have faith in the remedies, yet they cure. Is it not better to restore health by physical means and leave the high teachings of the healers, all taken from well know sources, for the benefit of our moral nature?

And if Christian healers read these lines, should they not remember that when the prophet restored the widow's son he used physical means - his own magnetism applied simultaneously to every member of the child's body, and Jesus, when the woman who touched his garment was cured, lost a portion of his vitality - not his thoughts - for he said "virtue" had gone out from him? The Apostle also gave directions that if any were sick the others should assemble about the bed and anoint with oil, laying on their hands meanwhile: simply physical therapeutics following a long line of ancient precedent dating back to Noah. Moses taught how to cure diseases and to disinfect places where where contagion lurked. It was not by using the high power of thought, but by processes deemed by him to be effectual, such as sprinkling blood of animals slaughtered in peculiar circumstances. Without declaring for or against his methods, it is very certain that he supposed by these means subtle forces of a physical nature would be liberated and brought to bear on the case in hand.

The mass of testimony through the ages is against healing physical ills by the use of the higher forces in nature, and the reason, once well known but later on forgotten, is the one given in the article of January, 1892, - that diseases are gross manifestations showing themselves on their way out of the nature so that one may be purified. To arrest them though thought ignorantly directed is to throw them back into their cause and replant them in their mental plane.

This is the true ground of our objection to metaphysical healing practices, which we distinguish from the assumptions and so-called philosophy on which those methods are claimed to stand. For we distinctly urge that the effects are not brought by any philosophical system whatever, but by the practical though ignorant use of psycho-physiological processes.

William Q. Judge

Path, September, 1892

CYCLES

A PAPER READ BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE BEFORE
THE ARYAN T. S., OCTOBER 22, 1889

IN advancing these few observations upon the doctrine of cycles, no claim to an exhaustive study of the matter is made. This paper is merely by way of suggestion.

The subject was brought before my mind by our discussion some evenings ago, when the question of the descent upon earth, or ascent from it, of celestial beings or progressed souls engaged our attention. It seemed certain that such ascent and descent were governed by cyclic laws, and therefore proceeded in regular periods. Some sentences from the Wisdom of the Egyptians by Synesius in matter furnished me by Bro. Chas. Johnston, now of India, read:

After Osiris, therefore, was initiated by his father into the royal mysteries, the gods informed him . . . that a strong tribe of envious and malignant dæmons were present with Typhos as his patrons, to whom he was allied and by whom he was hurled forth into light, in order that they might employ him as an instrument of the evil which they inflict on mankind. For the calamities of nations are the banquets of the evil dæmons.

Yet you must not think that the gods are without employment, or that their descent to this earth is perpetual. For they descend according to orderly periods of time, for the purpose of imparting a beneficent impulse in the republics of mankind. But this happens when they harmonize a kingdom and send to this earth for that purpose souls who are allied to themselves. For this providence is divine and most ample, which frequently through one man pays attention to and affects countless multitudes of men.

For there is indeed in the terrestrial abode the sacred tribe of heroes who pay attention to mankind, and who are able to give them assistance even in the smallest concerns. . . . This heroic tribe is, as it were, a colony from the gods established here in order that this terrene abode may not be left destitute of a better nature. But when matter excites her own proper blossoms to war against the soul, the resistance made by these heroic tribes is small when the gods are absent; for everything is strong only in its appropriate place and time. . . . But when the harmony adapted in the beginning by the gods to all terrene things becomes old, they descend again to earth that they may call the harmony forth, energize and resuscitate it when it is as it were expiring. . . . When, however, the whole order of mundane things, greatest and least, is corrupted, then it is necessary that the gods should descend for the purpose of imparting another orderly distribution of things.

And in the Bhagavad Gita it is said by Krishna:

When Righteousness
Declines, O Bharata! when Wickedness
Is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take
Visible shape, and move a man with men,
Succoring the good and thrusting the evil back,
And setting Virtue on her seat again,

And

At the approach of Brahmas day, which ends after a thousand ages, all manifested objects come forth from the non-developed principle. At the approach of Brahmas night they are absorbed in the original principle. This collective mass of existing things, thus coming forth out of the absolute again and again, is dissolved at the approach of that night; and at the approach of a new day it emanates again spontaneously.

In the foregoing quotations two great aspects of cyclic law are stated.

The latter has reference to the great cycle which includes all cycles of every kind. All the minor cycles run their course within it. When it begins a new creation is ushered in, and when it ends the great day of dissolution has arrived. In Arnold's translation of the Bhagavad Gita the beginning of this great cycle is beautifully called by him "this vast Dawn," and of the close he reads:

When that deep night doth darken, all which is
Fades back again to Him who sent it forth.

The real figures expressing the mortal years included in this period are not given. Each Manwantara, according to the Hindus, is divided into the four Yugas or Ages, with a certain number of years allotted to each. Speaking on this subject in the Key to Theosophy (page 83), H. P. Blavatsky gives us a clue thus:

Take as a first comparison and a help towards a more correct conception, the solar year; and as a second, the two halves of that year, producing each a day and a night of six months duration at the North Pole. Now imagine, if you can, instead of a solar year of 365 days, ETERNITY. Let the sun represent the universe, and the polar days and nights of six months each--days and nights lasting each 182 trillions and quadrillions of years instead of 182 days each. As the sun rises every morning on our objective horizon out of its (to us) subjective and antipodal space, so does the Universe emerge periodically on the plane of objectivity, issuing from that of subjectivity--the antipodes of the former. This is the "Cycle of Life." And as the sun disappears from our horizon, so does the Universe disappear at regular periods when the "Universal Night" sets in....

This is about the best idea we can get of it. It is impossible for the human mind to conceive these periods. No brain can grasp 182 trillions of years, much less if quadrillions are added. Few if any persons can mentally traverse the full extent of even a million. But we can make an approximation to the idea by using her suggestion of dividing the year and calling six months a day and six months a night, and then extending each into what is equivalent to infinity with us, since it is impossible to seize such immense periods of time.

And carrying out the correspondence suggested by her, we have at once a figure of the inclusion of all the minor cycles, by calling each day when we rise and night when we sleep as the beginning and ending of minor cycles. Those days and nights go to make up our years and our life. We know each day and can calculate it, and fairly well throw the mind forward to see a year or perhaps a life.

A quotation from Vol. I.., at 31 of Isis Unveiled will give us the Indian figures. She says:

The Maha-Kalpa embraces an untold number of periods far back in the antediluvian ages. Their system comprises a Kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000 years which they divide into four lesser yugas running as follows:

Satya yug ------------- 1,728,000 years

Treta yug ------------- 1,296,000 years

Dwapara yug ------------- 864,000 years

Kali yug ------------- 432,000 years

________

4,320,000

which make one divine age or Maha yuga; seventy-one Maha Yugas make 306,720,000 years, to which is added a sandhi, or twilight, equal to a Satya yuga or 1,728,000 years, to make a manwantara of 308,448,000 years. Fourteen manwantaras make 4,318,272,000 years, to which must be added a sandhyamsa or dawn, 1,728,000, making the Kalpa or grand period of 4,320,000,000. As we are now (1878) only in the Kali Yuga of the 28th age of the 7th manwantara of 308,448,000 years, we have yet sufficient time before us to wait before we reach even half of the time allotted to the world.

Further H. P. Blavatsky clearly states that the other cycles are carried out within this greater one, as at 34, Vol. I.

As our planet revolves once every year around the sun and at the same time once in every 24 hours upon its own axis, thus traversing minor cycles within a larger one, so is the work of the smaller cyclic periods accomplished and recommenced within the Great Saros.

Leaving the region of mathematics, we find this great period represents the extension of pigmy man into the vast proportions of the great man, whose death at the close of the allotted period means the resolving of all things back into the absolute. Each of the years of this Being embraces of our years so many that we cannot comprehend them. Each day of his years brings on a minor cataclysm among men; for at the close of each one of his days, metaphorically he sleeps. And we, as it were, imitating this Being, fall asleep at night or after our diurnal period of activity.

We are as minor cells in the great body of this Being, and must act obediently to the impulses and movements of the body in which we are enclosed and take part.

This greater man has a period of childhood, of youth, of manhood, of old age; and as the hour arrives for the close of each period, cataclysms take place over all the earth. And just as our own future is concealed from our view, so the duration of the secret cycle which shows the length of life of this Being is hidden from the sight of mortals.

We must not, however, fall into the error of supposing that there is but one of such great Beings. There are many, each being evolved at the beginning of a new creation. But here we touch upon a portion of the ancient philosophy which is fully explained only to those who are able to understand it by virtue of many initiations.

The Sandhya and Sandhyamsa referred to in the quotation taken from Isis Unveiled are respectively the twilight and the dawn, each being said to be of the same length and containing the same number of years as the first or golden age -i.e., 1,728,000. It is in strict correspondence with our own solar day which has its twilight and dawn between day and night.

In going over the figures of the four ages, a peculiarity is noticed to which I refer at present as merely a curiosity. It is this:

The digits of Satya Yug 1. 7. 2. 8. added together make 18; those of Treta Yug 1. 2. 9. 6 make 18; those of Dwapara Yug 8. 6. 4 make 18; while those of Kali Yug 4. 3. 2 sum up only 9; but if those of the grand total of 4,320,000 be added together they make 9, and that with Kali give 18 again. 18 is a number peculiar to Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, and the poem has 18 chapters in it. If the three 18's and one 9 found as above be added together, the result will be 63, and 3x6 = 18, and if added make 9, and 18 added gives nine. If we multiply the three 18's and 9 produced from the different ages, we get 5. 8. 3. 2. which, if treated as before, give 18 again. And in the process of thus multiplying we discover a recurrence of the three eighteens and one 9, only inverted, as: The first 18 multiplied by the second one gives 3. 2. 4, which added results in 9; 324 multiplied by the third 18 gives 5. 8. 3. 2, which being added gives 18; and the product of the multiplication of 5,832 by 9, which is the result of adding the figures of Kali Yuga, is 5. 8. 4. 1, which on being added gives 18 again.¹ Now, as the last of these apparently fanciful operations, let us add together the results gained by multiplying the figures which were obtained during the various steps we have gone through and then adding the results.

The first figures are 1x8=	------------	8
The second 3x2x4=	------------	24
The third 5x8x3x2=	------------	240
The fourth 5x8x4x1=	------------	160
		____
These added together give which are the digits of Kali Yuga.	------------	4.3.2

Now turning to Isis Unveiled at p. 32 of Vol. 1, we find this remarkable paragraph:

Higgins justly believed that the cycle of the Indian system, of 432,000, is the true key of the secret cycle.

But in the following paragraph she declares it cannot be revealed. However, we may get some clues, for we see in the figures of Kali Yuga, 432,000, and in the great total (leaving out the Sandhis), 4,320,000. What this secret cycle is, I, however, am not competent to say. I only desire to throw out the hints.

Having thus glanced over the doctrine of the great cycle which includes all others, let us now devote a little consideration to the cycle referred to in the passages from the Egyptian Wisdom first quoted.

This cycle may be called for the present purpose The Cycle of Descending Celestial Influences. By "descending" I mean descending upon us.

Osiris here signifies most probably the good side of nature, and his brother Typhos the evil. Both must appear together. Typhos is sometimes called in the Egyptian books the opposer, and later with us, is known as the Devil. This appearance of Typhos at the same time with Osiris is paralleled in the history of the Indian Krishna who was a white Adept, for at the same time there also reigned a powerful Black magician named Kansa, who sought to destroy Krishna in the same way as Typhos conspired against the life of Osiris. And Rama also, in Hindu lore the great Adept or ruling god, was opposed by Ravana, the powerful Black magician king.

In instructing Osiris after the initiation, the gods foresaw two questions that might arise within him and which will also come before us. The first is the idea that if the gods are alive and do not mingle with men to the advantage of the latter and for the purpose of guiding them, then they must necessarily be without any employment. Such a charge has been made against the Beings who are said to live in the Himalayas, possessed of infinite knowledge and power. If, say the public, they know so much, why do not they come among us; and as they do not so come, then they must be without employment, perpetually brooding over nothing.

The instructor answered this in advance by showing how these Beings--called gods--governed mankind through efficient causes proceeding downward by various degrees; the gods being perpetually concerned in their proper sphere with those things relating to them, and which in their turn moved other causes that produced appropriate effects upon the earth, and themselves only coming directly into earthly relations when that became necessary at certain "orderly periods of time," upon the complete disappearance of harmony which would soon be followed by destruction if not restored. Then the gods themselves descend. This is after the revolution of many smaller cycles. The same is said in Bhagavad-Gita.

But frequently during the minor cycles it is necessary, as the Egyptian Wisdom says, "to impart a beneficent impulse in the republics of mankind." This can be done by using less power than would be dissipated were a celestial Being to descend upon earth, and here the doctrine of the influence among us of Nirmanakayas² or Gnanis is supported in the Egyptian scheme in these words:

For there is indeed in the terrestrial abode the sacred tribe of heroes, who pay attention to mankind, and who are able to give them assistance even in the smallest concerns.

This heroic tribe is, as it were, a colony from the gods established here in order that this terrene abode may not be left destitute of a better nature.

These "heroes" are none other than Nirmanakayas Adepts of this or previous Manwantaras who remain here in various states or conditions. Some are not using bodies at all, but keep spirituality alive among men in all parts of the world; and others are actually using bodies in the world. Who the latter are it would of course be impossible for me to know, and if I had the information, to give it out would be improper.

And among this "sacred tribe of heroes" must be classed other souls. They are those who, although now inhabiting bodies and moving among men, have passed through many occult initiations in previous lives, but are now condemned, as it were, to the penance of living in circumstances and in bodies that hem them in, as well as for a time make them forget the glorious past. But their influence is always felt, even if they themselves are not aware of it. For their higher nature being in fact more developed than that of other men, it influences other natures at night or in hours of the day when all is favorable. The fact that these obscured adepts are not aware now of what they really are, only has to do with their memory of the past; it does not follow, because a man cannot remember his initiations, that he has had none. But there are some cases in which we can judge with a degree of certainty that such adepts were incarnated and what they were named. Take Thomas Vaughan, Raymond Lully, Sir Thomas More, Jacob Boehme, Paracelsus, and others like them, including also some of the Roman Catholic saints. These souls were as witnesses to the truth, leaving through the centuries, in their own nations, evidences for those who followed, and suggestions for keeping spirituality bright seed-thoughts, as it were, ready for the new mental soil. And as well as these historical characters, there are countless numbers of men and women now living who have passed through certain initiations during their past lives upon earth, and who produce effects in many directions quite unknown to themselves now. They are, in fact, old friends of "the sacred tribe of heroes," and can therefore be more easily used for the spreading of influences and the carrying out of effects necessary for the preservation of spirituality in this age of darkness. We find in our present experience a parallel to this forgetting of previous initiations. There is hardly one of us who has not passed through circumstances in early life, all of which we have forgotten, but which ever since sensibly affect our thoughts and life. Hence the only point about which any question can be raised is that of reincarnation. If we believe in that doctrine, there is no great difficulty in admitting that many of us may have been initiated to some extent and forgotten it for the time. In connection with this we find in the 2d volume of the Secret Doctrine, at page 302, some suggestive words. The author says:

Now that which the students of Occultism ought to know is that the "third eye" is indissolubly connected with Karma.

In the case of the Atlanteans, it was precisely the Spiritual being which sinned, the Spirit element being still the "Master" principle in man, in those days. Thus it is in those days that the heaviest Karma of the Fifth Race was generated by our Monads. .

Hence the assertion that many of us are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies.

In another place she puts the date of the last Atlantean destruction as far back as 11,000 years ago, and describes them as a people of immense knowledge and power. If we allow about 1,000 years for our period in Devachan, we will have only passed through some eleven incarnations since then; and supposing that many more have been our lot--as is my opinion, then we have to place ourselves among those wonderful though wicked people at the height of their power. Granting that we were guilty of the sinful practices of the days in which we then lived, and knowing the effect of Karma, it must follow that since then we have passed through many very disagreeable and painful lives, resembling by analogy dreadful situations in the years between youth and maturity. No wonder, then, if for the time we have forgotten outwardly what we then learned.

But all these historical personages to whom I have referred were living in a dark cycle that affected Europe only. These cycles do not cover the whole of the human race, fortunately for it, but run among the nations influenced for the allotted period, while other peoples remain untouched. Thus while Europe was in darkness, all India was full of men, kings and commoners alike, who possessed the true philosophy; for a different cycle was running there.

And such is the law as formulated by the best authorities. It is held that these cycles do not include the whole of mankind at any one time. In this paper I do not purpose to go into figures, for that requires a very careful examination of the deeds and works of numerous historical personages in universal history, so as to arrive by analysis at correct periods.

It is thought by many that the present is a time when preparation is being made by the most advanced of the "sacred tribe of heroes" for a new cycle in which the assistance of a greater number of progressed souls from other spheres may be gained for mankind. Indeed, in Isis Unveiled this is plainly stated.

Writing in 1878, Madame Blavatsky says in Vol. I of Isis:

Unless we mistake the signs, the day is approaching when the world will receive the proofs that only ancient religions were in harmony with nature, and ancient science embraced all that can be known. Secrets long-kept may be revealed; books long-forgotten and arts long-time-lost may be brought out to light again; papyri and parchments of inestimable importance will turn up in the hands of men who pretend to have unrolled them from mummies or stumbled upon them in buried crypts; tablets and pillars, whose sculptured revelations will stagger theologians and confound scientists, may yet be excavated and interpreted. Who knows the possibilities of the future? An era of disenchantment and rebuilding will soon begin--nay, has already begun. The cycle has almost run its course; a new one is about to begin, and the future pages of history may contain full proof that--

If ancestry can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man
And told him secrets of the world unknown.

Now the way to get at the coming on of the period or close of a larger cycle without wandering in the mazes of figures, is to regard the history and present state of mankind as known.

Thus in the darker age of Europe we find India almost unknown and America wholly so. That was a period when cycles were operating apart from each other, for men were separated from and ignorant of each other. In these continents there were great and powerful nations ruling in both North and South America, but they were not in communication with Europe or India.

Now, however, China knows of and communicates with England and America, and even dark Africa has constant visitors from all civilized nations, and to some extent is affected by us. Doubtless in the greater number of towns in Africa the white man and his doings are more or less like fables, but we with larger knowledge know that those fables rest upon the fact of our explorations there.

Judging, then, from the appearances in the affairs of men, we can conclude that now some great cycle is either ending or beginning, and that a number of minor circles are approaching each other.

At the same time with these social or material cycles, there are corresponding ones on a higher plane. One is quite easy to trace. It is the influence of Eastern metaphysics upon the Western mind. This higher cycle had been revolving for many years among the Orientals before we came within its power. Our falling under it is due to a physical cycle as a means. That one which is represented in the progress of trade, of science, of means for transportation. In this way the philosophical system of India and Tibet has begun to affect us, and no man can calculate its course.

Taking into account the spiritual cycles all so intimately connected with Karma and reincarnation, one would be compelled to conclude that this cycle will not be slow or weak. For, if we in Europe and America are the reincarnations of the ancients who formulated this philosophy, we must certainly be powerfully affected upon having it presented to our notice in this life. And as the very air is getting filled with theosophical ideas, and children are growing up every day, the conclusion is irresistible that as the new generation grows up it will be more familiar with theosophical terms and propositions than we were in our youths. For in every direction now, children are likely to hear Karma, Reincarnation, Buddhism, Theosophy, and all these ideas mentioned or discussed. In the course of twenty-five years, then, we shall find here in the United States a large and intelligent body of people believing once more in the very doctrines which they, perhaps ages ago, helped to define and promulgate.

Why not, then, call one of our present cycles the cycle of the Theosophical Society? It began in 1875, and, aided by other cycles then beginning to run, it has attained some force. Whether it will revolve for any greater length of time depends upon its earnest members. Members who enter it for the purpose of acquiring ideas merely for their own use will not assist. Mere numbers do not do the work, but sincere, earnest, active, unselfish members will keep this cycle always revolving. The wisdom of those who set it in motion becomes apparent when we begin to grasp somewhat the meaning of cyclic law. The Society could have remained a mere idea and might have been kept entirely away from outward expression in organization. Then, indeed, ideas similar to those prevalent in our Society might have been heard of. But how? Garbled, and presented only here and there, so that perhaps not for half a century later would they be concretely presented. A wise man, however, knows how to prepare for a tide of spiritual influence. But how could an every-day Russian or American know that 1875 was just the proper year in which to begin so as to be ready for the oncoming rush now fairly set in? To my mind the mere fact that we were organized with a definite platform in that year is strong evidence that the "heroic tribe of heroes" had a hand in our formation. Let us, then, not resist the cycle, nor, complaining of the task, sit down to rest. There is no time for rest. The weak, the despairing, and the doubting may have to wait, but men and women of action cannot stand still in the face of such an opportunity.

Arise, then, O Atlanteans, and repair the mischief done so long ago!

Roll on, O Wheel, roll on and conquer;
Roll on forevermore!

Path, December, 1889

1. Readers who carry out the computations here suggested will find the results confusing. It appears likely that some steps originally included were omitted by the typesetter. (Editors of Theosophy Company.)

2. For Nirmanakayas see "The Voice of the Silence" and its glossary.

CYCLES AND CYCLIC LAW

LADIES and gentlemen: This is our last meeting; it is the last impulse of the Cycle which we began when we opened our sessions at this Parliament. All the other bodies which have met in this building have been also starting cycles just as we have been. Now, a great many people know what the word "cycle" means, and a great many do not. There are no doubt in Chicago many men who think that a cycle is a machine to be ridden; but the word that I am dealing with is not that. I am dealing with a word which means a return, a ring. It is a very old term, used in the far past. In our civilization it is applied to a doctrine which is not very well understood, but which is accepted by a great many scientific men, a great many religious men, and by a great many thinking men. The theory is, as held by the ancient Egyptians, that there is a cycle, a law of cycles which governs humanity, governs the earth, governs all that is in the universe. You may have heard Brother Chakravarti say the Hindus are still teaching that there is a great cycle which begins when the Unknown breathes forth the whole universe, and ends when it is turned in again into itself. That is the great cycle.

In the Egyptian monuments, papyri, and other records the cycles are spoken of. They held, and the ancient Chinese also held, that a great cycle governs the earth, called the sidereal cycle because it related to the stars. The work was so large that it had to be measured by the stars, and that cycle is 25,800 and odd years long. They claim to have measured this enormous cycle. The Egyptians gave evidence they had measured it also and had measured many others, so that in these ancient records, looking at the question of cycles, we have a hint that man has been living on the earth, has been civilized and uncivilized for more years than we have been taught to believe. The ancient Theosophists have always held that civilization with humanity went around the earth in cycles, in rings, returning again and again upon itself, but that at each turn of the cycle, on the point of return it was higher than before. This law of cycles is held in Theosophical doctrine to be the most important of all, because it is at the bottom of all. It is a part of the law of that unknown being who is the universe, that there shall be a periodical coming from and a periodical returning again upon itself.

Now, that the law of cycles does prevail in the world must be very evident if you will reflect for a few moments. The first cycle I would draw your attention to is the daily cycle, when the sun rises in the morning and sets at night, returning again next morning, you following the sun, rising in the morning and at night going to sleep again, at night almost appearing dead, but the next morning awaking to life once more. That is the first cycle. You can see at once that there are therefore in a mans life just as many cycles of that kind as there are days in his life. The next is the monthly cycle, when the moon, changing every 28 days, marks the month. We have months running to more days, but that is only for convenience, to avoid change in the year. The moon gives the month and marks the monthly cycle.

The next is the yearly cycle. The great luminary, the great mover of all, returns again to a point from whence he started. The next great cycle to which I would draw your attention, now we have come to the sun--it is held by science and is provable I think by other arguments the next cycle is that the sun, while stationary to us, is in fact moving through space in an enormous orbit which we can not measure. As he moves he draws the earth and the planets as they wheel about him. We may say, then, this is another great cycle. It appears reasonable that, as the sun is moving through that great cycle, he must draw the earth into spaces and places and points in space where the earth has never been before, and that it must happen that the earth shall come now and then into some place where the conditions are different and that it may be changed in a moment, as it were, for to the eye of the soul a thousand years are but a moment, when everything will be different. That is one aspect of cyclic doctrine, that the sun is drawing the earth in a great orbit of his own and is causing the earth to be changed in its nature by reason of the new atomic spaces into which it is taken.

We also hold that the earth is governed by cyclic law throughout the century as in a moment. The beings upon it are never in the same state. So nations, races, civilizations, communities are all governed in the same way and moved by the same law. This law of cycles is the law of reincarnation that we were speaking of today: that is, that a man comes into the world and lives a day, his life is as a day; he dies out of it and goes to sleep, elsewhere waking; then he sleeps there to wake again the next great day; after a period of rest, he again enters life; that is his cycle. We hold in Theosophical philosophy it has been proven by the Adepts by experiment that men in general awake from this period of rest after 1,500 years. So we point in history to an historical cycle of 1,500 years, after which old ideas return. And if you will go back in the history of the world you will find civilization repeating itself every 1,500 years, more or less like what it was before. That is to say, go back 1,500 years from now and you will find coming out here now the Theosophists, the philosophers, the various thinkers, the inventors of 1,500 years ago. And going further back still, we hold that those ancient Egyptians who made such enormous pyramids and who had a civilization we cannot understand, at that dim period when they burst on the horizon of humanity to fall again, have had their cycle of rest and are reincarnating again even in America. So we think, some of us, that the American people of the new generation are a reincarnation of the ancient Egyptians, who are coming back and bringing forth in this civilization all the wonderful ideas which the Egyptians held. And that is one reason why this country is destined to be a great one, because the ancients are coming back, they are here, and you are very foolish if you refuse to consider yourselves so great. We are willing you should consider yourselves so great, and not think you are born mean, miserable creatures.

The next cycle I would draw your attention to is that of civilizations. We know that civilizations have been here, and they are gone. There is no bridge between many of these. If heredity, as some people claim, explains everything, how is it not explained why the Egyptians left no string to connect them with the present? There is nothing left of them but the Copts, who are poor miserable slaves. The Egyptians, as a material race, are wiped out, and it is so because it is according to the law of cycles and according to the law of nature that the physical embodiment of the Egyptians had to be wiped out. But their souls could not go out of existence, and so we find their civilization and other civilizations disappearing, civilizations such as the ancient civilization of Babylon, and all those old civilizations in that part of the East which were just as strange and wonderful as any other. And this civilization of ours has come up instead of going down, but it is simply repeating the experience of the past on a higher level. It is better in potentiality than that which has been before. Under the cyclic law it will rise higher and higher, and when its time comes it will die out like the rest.

Also religions have had their cycles. The Christian religion has had its cycle. It began in the first year of the Christian era and was a very different thing then from what it is now. If you examine the records of Christianity itself you will see that the early fathers and teachers taught differently in the beginning from that which the priests of today are teaching now. Similarly you will find that Brahminism has had its cycle. Every religion rises and falls with the progress of human thought, because cyclic law governs every man, and thus every religion which man has.

So it is also with diseases. Is it not true that fevers are governed by a law of recurrence in time; some have three days, some four days, nine days, fifteen days, three years and so on? No physician can say why it is so; they only know that it is a fact. So in every direction the law of cycles is found to govern. It is all according to the great inherent law of the periodical ebb and flow, the Great Day and Night of Nature. The tides in Ocean rise and fall; similarly in the great Ocean of Nature there is a constant ebb and flow, a mightier tide which carries all with it. The only thing that remains unshaken, immovable, never turning is the Spirit itself. That, as St. James said--and he doubtless was himself a wise Theosophist--is without variableness and hath no shadow of turning.

Now, this great law of periodical return pertains also to every individual man in his daily life and thought. Every idea that you have, every thought, affects your brain and mind by its impression. That begins the cycle. It may seem to leave your mind, apparently it goes out, but it returns again under the same cyclic law in some form either better or worse, and wakes up once more the old impression. Even the very feelings that you have of sorrow or gladness will return in time, more or less according to your disposition, but inevitably in their cycle. This is a law it would do good for every one to remember, especially those who have variations of joy and sorrow, of exaltation and depression. If when depressed you would recollect the law and act upon it by voluntarily creating another cycle of exaltation, on its returning again with the companion cycle of lower feeling it would in no long time destroy the depressing cycle and raise you to higher places of happiness and peace. It applies again in matters of study where we use the intellectual organs only. When a person begins the study of a difficult subject or one more grave than usual, there is a difficulty in keeping the mind upon it; the mind wanders; it is disturbed by other and older ideas and impressions. But by persistency a new cycle is established, which, being kept rolling, at last obtains the mastery.

We hold further--and I can only go over this briefly-- that in evolution itself, considered as a vast inclusive whole, there are cycles, and that unless there were these turnings and returnings no evolution would be possible, for evolution is but another word for cyclic law. Reincarnation, or re-embodiment over and over again, is an expression of this great law and a necessary part of evolution.

Evolution means a coming forth from something. From out of what does the evolving universe come? It comes out from what we call the unknown, and we call it "unknown" simply because we do not know what it is. The unknown does not mean the non-existent; it simply means that which we do not perceive in its essence or fulness. It goes forth again and again, always higher and better; but while it is rolling around at its lower arc it seems to those down there that it is lower than ever; but it is bound to come up again. And that is the answer we give to those who ask, What of all those civilizations that have disappeared, what of all the years that I have forgotten? What have I been in other lives, I have forgotten them? We simply say, you are going through your cycle. Some day all these years and experiences will return to your recollection as so much gained. And all the nations of the earth should know this law, remember it and act upon it, knowing that they will come back and that others also will come back. Thus they should leave behind something that will raise the cycle higher and higher, thus they should ever work toward the perfection which mankind as a whole is striving in fact to procure for itself.

NOTE.--Final address by W.Q.J. at Parliament of Religions, 1893. Other talks by Mr. Judge on "The Organized Life of the T.S." and "Theosophy in the Christian Bible" were printed in Pamphlets No. 3 and No. 15.

CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND RETURN
AND OUR EVOLUTION

LECTURE, APRIL 25, 1892, BEFORE THE CONVENTION
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Mr. Chairman, Fellow Theosophists, Ladies and Gentlemen: The title of what I am about to say to you is CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND RETURN AND OUR EVOLUTION. Now what is a cycle? It has nothing to do with the word psychic, and I am sorry to have to say that, because I heard some people this morning repeat the title as "psychic" instead of "cyclic," seeming to think perhaps that that was the same thing, or had some relation to it. The word cyclic is derived from the Greek word Kuklos, or a ring. It has been turned in the English language into the word cycle, by the process of saying Kykle, and then cycle. The corresponding word in the Sanscrit is Kalpa, which has in fact a wider and a deeper meaning; because cycle in English is a word which covers, is used for, and thus somewhat confuses, many cycles. It is used for the small cycles, and the larger cycles, the intermediate cycles and the great ones, whereas the word Kalpa means and implies only one cycle of a large size, and the smaller cycles within that are designated by other words.

What is a cycle? It is a circle, a ring. But not properly a ring like a wedding ring, which runs into itself, but more properly like a screw thread, which takes the form of a spiral, and thus beginning at the bottom, turns on itself, and goes up. It is something like the great Horseshoe Curve in the Pennsylvania Railroad. There you go around the curve at the lower end; you go down into the horseshoe, and as you turn the grade rises, so that when you arrive at the opposite side you have gotten no further than the beginning, but you have risen just the distance between the two ends of the grade.

But what do we mean by a cycle in Theosophy, in our own investigations of nature, or man, or civilization, or our own

development, our own origin, our own destiny? We mean by cycles, just what the Egyptians, the Hindoos and the philosophers of the Middle Ages meant by it; that is, that there is a periodical return or cycling back, circling back of something from some place once more. That is why it is called cycle, inasmuch as it returns upon itself, seemingly; but in the Theosophical doctrine, and in the ancient doctrines, it is always a little higher in the sense of perfection or progress. That is to say, as the Egyptians held, cycles prevail everywhere, things come back again, events return, history comes back, and so in this century we have the saying: "History repeats itself."

But where do Theosophists say that cyclic law prevails? We say that it prevails everywhere. It prevails in every kingdom of nature, in the animal kingdom, the mineral world, the human world; in history, in the sky, on the earth. We say that not only do cycles pertain, and appertain, and obtain in and to the earth and its inhabitants, but also in what the Hindoos call the three kingdoms of the universe, the three worlds; that is, that below us, ourselves, and that above.

Now, if you will turn to Buckle, a great writer of the English school, you will find him saying in one of his standard books, a great book often quoted, that there is no doubt cyclic law prevails in regard to nations, that they have come back apparently the same, only slightly improved or degraded, for there is also a downward cycle included within those that rise; but Buckle did not discover a law. He simply once more stated what the ancients had said over and over again. And it has always seemed to me that if Buckle and other people of that kind would pay a little more attention to the ancients, they would save themselves a great deal of trouble, for he obtained his law by much delving, much painstaking labor, whereas he might have gotten the law if he had consulted the ancients, who always taught that there were cycles, and that there always will be cycles.

Among the ancients they had a great many large and important cycles. In their classification they had a Saros and a Naros, which are not understood today by us. They are known to some extent, but what exactly they are, we do not know. The Egyptians taught that there was a great sidereal cycle, and that is recognized today, at last; that is the cycle of 25,000 years, the great one caused by the fact that the sun went through the signs of the Zodiac in that length of time. Now, I do not assume that you know nothing about astronomy, but in order to make it clear, it will be better for me to state this over again, just as it is. The sun goes through the signs of the Zodiac from day to day and from year to year, but at the same time, in going through the signs of the Zodiac, he goes back slowly, like the hands of a clock ticking off the time. In going through that period he comes back to the same point again, and retards himself, or goes back; that is called the precession of the equinoxes, and it is so many seconds in such a length of time. Those seconds in the sky turned into time show you that the sun takes 25,000 and odd years to come back to the place from which he started out at any particular time; that is to say, if you imagine that on the first of April, this year, the sun was in such a degree of Aries, one of the signs of the Zodiac, he will not get back to that sign by the precession of the equinoxes until 25,000 years have passed away.

Now, the sun is the center of our solar system and the earth revolves around it, and as the earth revolves she turns upon her axis. The sun, it is known now by astronomers, as it was known by the ancients (who were ourselves in fact), revolves around a center. That is, that while we are going around the sun, he is going around some other center, so that we describe in the sky not a circle around the sun, but a spiral, as we move with the sun around his enormous orbit. Now do you grasp that idea exactly? It is a very important one, for it opens up the subject to a very large extent. There is a star somewhere in the sky, we do not know where--some think it is Alcyon, or some other star, some think it may be a star in the Pleiades, and some others think it is a star somewhere else--but they know by deduction from the known to the unknown, as Brother Thomas told you this morning, that the sun is attracted himself by some unknown center, and that he turns around it in an enormous circle, and as he turns, of course he draws the earth with him. In the course of 25,000 years in going around the signs of the Zodiac, he must take the earth into spaces where it has never yet been, for when he reaches this point in Aries, after 25,000 years, it is only apparently the same point, just as when I came around the curve of the Horseshoe, I started around the first point and went around the curve, came back to the same point, but I was higher up; I was in another position. And so, when the sun gets back again to the point in Aries, where he was on the first of April this year, he will not be in the exact position in the universe of space, but he will be somewhere else, and in his journey of 25,000 years through billions upon billions of miles, he draws the earth into spaces where she never was before, and never will be as that earth again. He must draw her into cosmic spaces where things are different, and thus cause changes in the earth itself, for changes in cosmic matter in the atmosphere, in the space where the sun draws the earth, must affect the earth and all its inhabitants. The ancients investigated this subject, and declared long ago this 25,000 years cycle, but it is only just lately, so to speak, that we are beginning to say we have discovered this. We know, as Nineteenth century astronomers, that it is a fact, or that it must be a fact, from deduction, but they knew it was a fact because they had observed it themselves and recorded the observations.

The Egyptians had also the cycle of the Moon, which we know, and they had more cycles of the moon than we have, for the moon not only has her cycle of twenty-eight days, when she changes from full to disappearance, and then again to youth, but she also has a period of return somewhere over fourteen years, which must itself have its effect upon the earth.

Then they said, also, that the human soul had its cycle, it being 5,000 years. That is, the man died, or the king died, and his body was turned into a mummy in the hope that when, after his five thousand years cycle had elapsed and he came back once more to earth, he would find his mummy there? No; but that no one else should have taken his mummied atoms and made a bad use of them. Mummification is explained by us in another way. Their knowledge of the law of cycles caused them to make the first mummy. They held that a human soul returned; they also held that all atoms are alive, just as we do; that they are sensitive points; that they have intelligence belonging to the plane on which they are, and that the man who misuses atoms of matter, such as you have in your bodies and your brains, must stand the consequences. Consequently, saying that to themselves, they said, "If I die, and leave those atoms, which I have used so well, perhaps some other man will take them and use them badly, so I will preserve them as far as possible until I return, and then by a process destroy the combination of atoms, absorb them into some place, or position, where they might be put to good use." That may seem offensive to some today, but I am merely repeating the theory. I am not saying whether I believe it or not.

The ancient Egyptians who held these theories have disappeared and left nothing behind but the pyramids, the temples of Thebes, the Sphinxes and all the great monuments which are slowly being discovered by us. Where have they gone? Have they come back? Do the Copts now in Egypt represent them? I think not, although heredity is the boasted explanation of everything. The Copts are their descendants? They know nothing, absolutely nothing but a simple language, and they live the life of slaves, and yet they are the descendants of the ancient Egyptians! What has become of them? The ancient Egyptians we think were co-laborers with the ancient Hindoos, whose cycle remains; that is to say, whose descendants remain, holding the knowledge, in part, of their forefathers, and we find that the Hindoos have held always the same theories as to cycles as the Egyptians held. They divided the ages of the world. They say manifestation begins, and then it lasts for a period called a Kalpa, an enormous number of years; that Kalpa is divided into ages. The small cycle is composed of a large number of years; one will be four thousand, another four hundred thousand, another will be a million, and so on, making a total which we cannot grasp with the mind but which we can write upon the paper.

Now, the idea of cycles came from the Hindoos, through the nations who spread out from there, for it is admitted that the land of Hindustan is the cradle of the race. The Aryan race came down into Christendom, so that we find the Christians, the Romans, the Greeks and all people around that time holding the same theories as to cycles; that is, that cyclic law prevails everywhere. We find it in the ancient mystics, the Christian mystics, the middle age mystics and the mystics of times nearer to ours.

If you will read the works of Higgins, who wrote the Anacalypsis, you will find there laborious compilations and investigations on the subject of the cycles. Do they obtain? Is there such a thing as a cycle which affects human destiny?

Coming closer to our own personal life, we can see that cycles do and must prevail, for the sun rises in the morning and goes to the center of the sky, descends in the west; the next day he does the same thing, and following him, you rise. You come to the highest point of your activity, and you go to sleep. So day follows night and night follows day. Those are cycles, small cycles, but they go to make the greater ones. You were born, at about seven years of age you began to get discretion to some extent. A little longer and you reach manhood, then you begin to fall, and at last you finish the great day of your life when body dies.

In looking at nature we also find that there are summer and winter, spring and autumn. These are cycles, and every one of them affects the earth, with the human beings upon it.

The esoteric doctrine that Brother Mead has been talking about, the inner doctrine of the old theosophists and the present day theosophists, to be found in every old literature and religious book, is that cyclic law is the supreme law governing our evolution; that reincarnation, which we talk so much about, is cyclic law in operation and is supreme. For what is reincarnation but a coming back again to life, just what the ancient Egyptians taught and which we are finding out to be probably true, for in no other way than by this cyclic law of reincarnation can we account for the problems of life that beset us; with this we account for our own character, each one different from the other, and with a force peculiar to each person.

This being the supreme law, we have to consider another one, which is related to it and contained in the title I have adopted. That is the law of the return of impressions. What do we mean by that? I mean, those acts and thoughts performed by a nation--not speaking about the things that affect nature, although it is governed by the same law--constitute an impression. That is to say, your coming to this convention creates in your nature an impression. Your going into the street and seeing a street brawl creates an impression. Your having a quarrel last week and denouncing a man, or with a woman and getting very angry, creates an impression in you, and that impression is as much subject to cyclic law as the moon, and the stars, and the world, and is far more important in respect to your development--your personal development or evolution--than all these other great things, for they affect you in the mass, whereas these little ones affect you in detail.

This Theosophical doctrine in respect to cycles, and the evolution of the human race, I think is known to you all, for I am assuming that you are all theosophists.

It is to be described somewhat in this way: Imagine that before this earth came out of the gaseous condition there existed an earth somewhere in space, let us call it the moon, for that is the exact theory. The moon was once a large and vital body full of beings. It lived its life, went through its cycles, and at last having lived its life, after vast ages had passed away, came to the moment when it had to die; that is, the moment came when the beings on that earth had to leave it, because its period had elapsed, and then began from that earth the exodus. You can imagine it as a flight of birds migrating. Did you ever see birds migrate? I have seen them migrate in a manner that perhaps not many of you have. In Ireland, and perhaps in England, the swallows migrate in a manner very peculiar. When I was a boy, I used to go to my uncle's place where there was an old mass of stone ruins at the end of the garden, and by some peculiar combination of circumstances the swallows of the whole neighboring counties collected there. The way they gathered there was this: When the period arrived, you could see them coming in all parts of the sky, and they would settle down and twitter on this pile of stone all day, and fly about. When the evening came--twilight--they raised in a body and formed an enormous circle. It must have been over forty feet in diameter, and that circle of swallows flew around in the sky, around this tower, around and around for an hour or two, making a loud twittering noise, and that attracted from other places swallows who had probably forgotten the occasion. They kept that up for several days, until one day the period arrived when they must go, and they went away--some were left behind, some came a little early, and some came too late. Other birds migrate in other ways. And so these human birds migrated from the moon to this spot where the earth began (I don't know where it is--a spot in space--) and settled down as living beings, entities, not with bodies, but beings, in that mass of matter, at that point in space, informed it with life, and at last caused this earth to become a ball with beings upon it. And then cycles began to prevail, for the impressions made upon these fathers when they lived in the ancient--mind fails to think how ancient--civilization of the moon, came back again when they got to this earth, and so we find the races of the earth rising up and falling, rising again and falling, rising and falling, and at last coming to what they are now, which is nothing to what they will be, for they go ever higher and higher. That is the theory, broadly, and in that is included the theory of the races, the great seven races who inhabited the earth successively, the great seven Adams who peopled the earth; and at last when this earth shall come to its time of life, its period, all the beings on it will fly away from it to some other spot in space to evolve new worlds as elder brothers who have done the same thing before in other spaces in nature. We are not doing this blindly. It has been done before by others--no one knows when it began. It had nothing in the way of a beginning, it will have no end, but there are always elder brothers of the race, who live on. As some have written, we cannot turn back the cycles in their course. The fire of patriotism cannot prevail against the higher destiny which will plunge a nation into darkness. All we can do is to change it here and there a little. The elder brothers are subject to law, but they have confidence and hope, because that law merely means that they appear to go down, in order to rise again at a greater height. So that we have come up through the cyclic law from the lowest kingdoms of nature. That is, we are connected in an enormous brotherhood, which includes not only the white people of the earth and the black people of the earth, and the yellow people, but the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the mineral kingdom and the unseen elemental kingdom. You must not be so selfish as to suppose that it includes only men and women. It includes everything, every atom in this solar system. And we come up from lower forms, and are learning how to so mould and fashion, use and abuse, or impress the matter that comes into our charge, into our bodies, our brains and our psychical nature, so that that matter shall be an improvement to be used by the younger brothers who are still below us, perhaps in the stone beneath our feet. I do not mean by that that there is a human being in that stone. I mean that every atom in the stone is not dead matter. There is no dead matter anywhere, but every atom in that stone contains a life, unintelligent, formless, but potential, and at some period in time far beyond our comprehension, all of those atoms in that stone will have been released. The matter itself will have been refined, and at last all in this great cycle of progress will have been brought up the steps of the ladder, in order to let some others lower still in a state we cannot understand come up to them.

That is the real theory. Is that superstition? If you believe the newspapers that is superstition, for they will twist and turn everything you say. Your enemies will say you said there was a man in that stone, and that you have been a stone. You have not been a stone, but the great monad, the pilgrim who came from other worlds has been in every stone, has been in every kingdom, and now has reached the state of man, to show whether he is able to continue being a man, or whether he will once more fall back, like the boy at school who will not learn, into the lowest class.

Now then, this law of impressions I have been talking about can be illustrated in this way: If you look at one of these electric lights--take away all the rest, leaving one only, so as to have a better impression--you will find the light makes an image on the retina, and when you shut your eye, this bright filament of light made by a carbon in an incandescent lamp will be seen by you in your eye. You can try it, and see for yourselves. If you keep your eye closed and watch intently, you will see the image come back a certain number of counts, it will stay a certain number of counts, it will go away in the same length of time and come back again, always changing in some respect but always the image of the filament, until at last the time comes when it disappears apparently because other impressions have rubbed it out or covered it over. That means that there is a return even in the retina of the impression of this filament. After the first time, the color changes each time, and so it keeps coming back at regular intervals, showing that there is a cyclic return of impression in the retina, and as Brother Thomas said this morning, if that applies in one place, it applies in every place. And when we look into our moral character we find the same thing, for as we have the tides in the ocean, explained as they say by the moon-- which in my opinion does not explain it, but of course, being no scientist, my view is not worth much so in man we have tides, which are called return of these impressions; that is to say, you do a thing once, there will be a tendency to repeat itself; you do it twice, and it doubles its influence, a greater tendency to do that same thing again. And so on all through our character shows this constant return of cyclic impression. We have these impressions from every point in space, every experience we have been through, everything that we can possibly go through at any time, even those things which our forefathers went through. And that is not unjust for this reason, that our forefathers furnished the line of bodily encasement, and we cannot enter that line of bodily encasement unless we are like unto it, and for that reason we must have been at some point in that cycle in that same line or family in the past, so that I must have had a hand in the past in constructing the particular family line in which I now exist, and am myself once more taking up the cyclic impression returning upon me.

Now this has the greatest possible bearing upon our evolution as particular individuals, and that is the only way in which I wish to consider the question of evolution here; not the broad question of the evolution of the universe, but our own evolution, which means our bodily life, as Madame Blavatsky, repeating the ancients, said to us so often, and as we found said by so many of the same school. An opportunity will arise for you to do something; you do not do it; you may not have it again for one hundred years. It is the return before you of some old thing that was good, if it is a good one, along the line of the cycles. You neglect it, as you may, and the same opportunity will return, mind you, but it may not return for many hundred years. It may not return until another life, but it will return under the same law.

Now take another case. I have a friend who is trying to find out all about theosophy, and about a psychic nature, but I have discovered that he is not paying the slightest attention to this subject of the inevitable return upon himself of these impressions which he creates. I discovered he had periods of depression (and this will answer for everybody), when he had a despondency that he could not explain. I said to him, you have had the same despondency maybe seven weeks ago, maybe eight weeks ago, maybe five weeks ago. He examined his diary and his recollection, and he found that he had actual recurrences of despondency about the same distance apart. Well, I said, that explains to me how it is coming back. But what am I to do? Do what the old theosophists taught us; that is, we can only have these good results by producing opposite impressions to bad ones. So, take this occasion of despondency. What he should have done was, that being the return of an old impression, to have compelled himself to feel joyous, even against his will, and if he could not have done that, then to have tried to feel the joy of others. By doing that, he would have implanted in himself another impression, that is of joy, so that when this thing returned once more, instead of being of the same quality and extension, it would have been changed by the impression of joy or elation and the two things coming together would have counteracted each other, just as two billiard balls coming together tend to counteract each others movements. This applies to every person who has the blues. This does not apply to me, and I think it must be due to the fact that in some other life I have had the blues. I have other things, but the blues never.

I have friends and acquaintances who have these desponding spells. It is the return of old cyclic impressions, or the cyclic return of impressions. What are you to do? Some people say, I just sit down and let it go; that is to say, you sit there and create it once more. You cannot rub it out if it has been coming, but when it comes start up something else, start up cheerfulness, be good to some one, then try to relieve some other person who is despondent, and you will have started another impression, which will return at the same time. It does not make any difference if you wait a day or two to do this. The next day, or a few days after will do, for when the old cyclic impression returns, it will have dragged up the new one, because it is related to it by association.

This has a bearing also on the question of the civilization in which we are a point ourselves.

Who are we? Where are we going? Where have we come from? I told you that the old Egyptians disappeared. If you inquire into Egyptian history, the most interesting because the most obscure, you will find, as the writers say, that the civilization seems to rise to the zenith at once. We do not see when it began. The civilization was so great it must have existed an enormous length of time to get to that height, so that we cannot trace it from its beginning, and it disappears suddenly from the sky; there is nothing of it left but the enormous remains which testify to these great things, for the ancient Egyptians not only made mummies in which they displayed the art of bandaging that we cannot better, but they had put everything to such a degree of specialization that we must conclude they had many centuries of civilization. There was a specialist for one eye and a specialist for the other, a specialist for the eyebrow, and so on. In my poor and humble opinion, we are the Egyptians.

We have come back again, after our five thousand or whatever years cycle it is, and we have dragged back with us some one called the Semitic race, with which we are connected by some old impression that we cannot get rid of, and so upon us is impinged that very Semitic image. We have drawn back with us, by the inevitable law of association in cyclic return, some race, some personages connected with us by some acts of ours in that great old civilization now disappeared, and we cannot get rid of it; we must raise them up to some other plane as we raise ourselves.

I think in America is the evidence that this old civilization is coming back, for in the theosophical theory nothing is lost. If we were left to records, buildings and the like, they would soon disappear and nothing could ever be recovered; there never would be any progress. But each individual in the civilization, wherever it may be, puts the record in himself, and when he comes into the favorable circumstances described by Patanjali, an old Hindoo, when he gets the apparatus, he will bring out the old impression. The ancients say each act has a thought under it, and each thought makes a mental impression; and when the apparatus is provided, there will then arise that new condition, in rank, place and endowment.

So we retain in ourselves the impression of all the things that we have done, and when the time comes that we have cycled back, over and over again, through the middle ages perhaps, into England, into Germany, into France, we come at last to an environment such as is provided here, just the thing physically and every other way to enable us to do well, and to enable the others who are coming after us. I can almost see them; they are coming in a little army from the countries of the old world to endeavor to improve this one; for here ages ago there was a civilization also, perhaps we were in it then, perhaps anterior to the ancient Egyptians. It disappeared from here, when we do not know, and it left this land arid for many thousands of years until it was discovered once more by the Europeans. The ancient world, I mean Europe, has been poisoned, the land has been soaked with the emanations, poisoned by the emanations of the people who have lived upon it; the air above it is consequently poisoned by the emanations from the land; but here in America, just the place for the new race, is an arable land which has had time over and over again to destroy the poisons that were planted here ages and ages ago. It gives us a new land, with vibrations in the air that stir up every particle in a man who breathes it, and thus we find the people coming from the old world seeming to receive through their feet the impressions of an American country. All this bears upon our civilization and race.

We are here a new race in a new cycle, and persons who know say that a cycle is going to end in a few years and a new one begin, and that that ending and beginning will be accompanied by convulsions of society and of nature. We can all almost see it coming. The events are very complete in the sky. You remember Daniel says, "A time, half a time, and a time," and so on, and people in the Christian system have been trying to find out the time when the time began, and that is just the difficulty. We do not know when the time began. And the only person who in all these many years has made a direct statement is Madame Blavatsky, and she said, "A cycle is ending in a few years, you must prepare." So that it was like the old prophets who came to the people and said, "Prepare for a new era of things, get ready for what you have to do." That is just what this civilization is doing. It is the highest, although the crudest, civilization now on the earth. It is the beginning of the great civilization that is to come, when old Europe has been destroyed: when the civilizations of Europe are unable to do any more, then this will be the place where the new great civilization will begin to put out a hand once more to grasp that of the ancient East, who has sat there silently doing nothing all these years, holding in her ancient crypts and libraries and records the philosophy which the world wants, and it is this philosophy and this ethics that the Theosophical Society is trying to give you. It is a philosophy you can understand and practice.

It is well enough to say to a man, Do right, but after a while, in this superstitious era, he will say, Why should I do right, unless I feel like it? When you are showing these laws, that he must come back in his cycle; that he is subject to evolution; that he is a reincarnated pilgrim soul, then he will see the reason why, and then in order to get him a secure basis, he accepts the philosophy, and that is what the theosophical society and the theosophical movement are trying to do. Brother George Mead said the other day, in speaking of a subject like this, that the great end and aim is the great renunciation. That is, that after progressing to great heights, which you can only do by unselfishness, at last you say to yourself, "I may take the ease to which I am entitled." For what prevails in one place must prevail in another, and in the course of progress we must come at last to a time when we can take our ease, but if you say to yourself, "I will not take it, but as I know this world and all the people on it are bound to live and last for many thousand years more, and if not helped perhaps might fail, I will not take it but I will stay here and I will suffer, because of having greater knowledge and greater sensitiveness"--this is the great renunciation as theosophy tells us. I know we do not often talk this way, because many of us think that the people will say to us at once when we talk of the great renunciation, "I don't want it; it is too much trouble." So generally we talk about the fine progress, and how you will at last escape the necessity of reincarnation, and at last escape the necessity of doing this or that and the other, but if you do your duty, you must make up your mind when you reach the height, when you know all, when you participate in the government of the world--not of a town, but the actual government of the world and the people upon it--instead of sleeping away your time, you will stay to help those who are left behind, and that is the great renunciation. That is what is told of Buddha, and of Jesus. Doubtless the whole story about Jesus, which cannot be proved historically to my mind, is based upon the same thing that we call renunciation. He was crucified after two or three years work. But we say it means that this being divine resolves he will crucify himself in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of others, so that he can save men. Buddha did the same thing long before Jesus is said to have been born. The story that he made the great renunciation just means that which I have been telling you, instead of escaping from this horrible place, as it seems to us. For this is indeed horrible, as we look at it, surrounded by obstructions, liable to defeat at any moment, liable to wake up in the morning after planning a great reform, and see it dashed to the ground. Instead of escaping all that, he remained in the world and started his doctrine, which he knew at least would be adhered to by some. But this great doctrine of renunciation teaches that instead of working for yourself, you will work to know everything, to do everything in your power for those who may be left behind you, just as Madame Blavatsky says in the Voice of the Silence, "Step out of the sunshine into the shade, to make more room for others."

Isn't that better than a heaven which is reached at the price of the damnation of those of your relatives who will not believe a dogma? Is this not a great philosophy and a great religion which includes the salvation and regeneration, the scientific upraising and perfecting of the whole human family, and every particle in the whole universe, instead of imagining that a few miserable beings after seventy years of life shall enter into paradise, and then they look behind to see the torments in hell of those who would not accept a dogma?

What are these other religions compared with that? How any man can continue to believe such an idea as the usual one of damnation for merely unbelief I cannot comprehend. I had rather--if I had to choose--be an idolator of the most pronounced kind, who believed in Indra, and be left with my common reasoning, than believe in such a doctrine as that which permits me to suppose that my brother who does not believe a dogma is sizzling in hell while I, by simply believing, may enjoy myself in heaven.

Theosophists, if they will learn the doctrine and try to explain it, will reform this world. It will percolate everywhere, infiltrate into every stratum of society and prevent the need of legislation. It will alter the people, whereas you go on legislating and leaving this world's people as they are, and you will have just what happened in France. Capitalists in that day, in the day of the revolution--that is the royalists--oppressed the people. At last the people rose up and philosophers of the day instituted the reign of reason, and out of the reign of reason--mind you they had introduced there a beautiful idea of mankind, that idea struck root in a soil that was not prepared--came the practice of murdering other people by the wholesale until streams of blood ran all over France. So you see if something is not done to raise the people what the result will be. We have seen in Chicago the result of such acts, the mutterings of such a storm if the theosophical philosophy--call it by any other name you like--is not preached and understood. But if these old doctrines are not taught to the race you will have a revolution, and instead of making progress in a steady, normal fashion, you will come up to better things through storm, trouble and sorrow. You will come up, of course, for even out of revolutions and blood there comes progress, but isnt it better to have progress without that? And that is what the theosophical philosophy is intended for. That is why the Mahatmas we were talking about, directing their servant H. P. Blavatsky, as they have directed many before, came out at a time when materialism was fighting religion and was about getting the upper hand, and once more everything moved forward in its cyclic way and these old doctrines were revivified under the guidance of the theosophical movement. They are doctrines that explain all problems and in the universal scheme give man a place as a potential god.

DELUSIONS OF CLAIRVOYANCE

SOME years ago it was proposed that psychometry should be used in detecting crime and for the exposing of motive in all transactions between man and man. This, the alleged discoverer said, would alter the state of society by compelling people to be honest and by reducing crime. Now for those who do not know, it may be well to say that when you psychometrize you take any object that has been in the immediate vicinity of any person or place of any action, or the writing of another, and by holding it to your forehead or in the hand a picture of the event, the writer, the surroundings, and the history of the object, comes before your mental eye with more or less accuracy. Time and distance are said to make no difference, for the wrapping from a mummy has been psychometrized by one who knew nothing about it, and the mummy with its supposed history accurately described. Letters also have been similarly treated without reading them, and not only their contents given but also the unexpressed thoughts and the surroundings of the writers. Clairvoyants have also on innumerable occasions given correct descriptions of events and persons they could never have seen or known. But other innumerable times they have failed.

Without doubt if the city government, or any body of people owning property that can be stolen, had in their employment a man or woman who could declare beyond possibility of ever failing where any stolen article was, and who stole it, and could in advance indicate a purpose on the part of another to steal, to trick, to lie, or otherwise do evil, one of two things would happen. Either criminals or intending offenders would abide elsewhere, or some means of getting rid
of the clear-seer would be put into effect. Looking at the alluring possibilities of clairvoyance so far as it is understood, many persons have sighed for its power for several different reasons. Some would use it for the purposes described, but many another has thought of it merely as a new means for furthering personal ends.

Its delusions are so manifold that, although mystical and psychical subjects have obtained in the public mind a new standing, clairvoyance will not be other than a curiosity for some time, and when its phenomena and laws are well understood no reliance greater than now will be placed upon it. And even when individual clairvoyants of wonderful power are known, they will not be accessible for such uses, because, having reached their power by special training, the laws of their school will prohibit the exercise of the faculty at the bidding of selfish interest, whether on the one side or the other.

If it were not always a matter of doubt and difficulty, natural clear-seers would have long ago demonstrated the unerring range of their vision by discovering criminals still uncaught, by pointing out where stolen property could be recovered, by putting a finger on a moral plague-spot which is known to exist but cannot be located. Yet this they have not done, and careful Theosophists are confirmed in the old teaching that the field of clairvoyance is full of delusions. Coming evil could in the same way be averted, since present error is the prelude and cause of future painful results.

The prime cause for delusion is that the thought of anything makes around the thinker an image of the thing thought about. And all images in this thought-field are alike, since we remember an object by our thought-image of it, and not by carrying the object in our heads. Hence the picture in our aura of what we have seen in the hands of another is of the same sort for untrained seers-as our ideas on the subject of events in which we have not participated. So a clairvoyant may, and in fact does, mistake these thought-pictures one for the other, thus reducing the chances of certainty. If an
anxious mother imagines her child in danger and with vivid bought pictures the details of a railway accident, the picture the seer may see will be of something that never happened and is only the product of emotion or imagination.

Mistakes in identity come next. These are more easily made a the astral plane, which is the means for clairvoyance, than yen upon the visible one, and will arise from numerous causes. So numerous and complex is this that to fully explain would not only be hopeless but tedious. For instance, the person, say at a distance, to whom the clairvoyant eye is directed may look entirely different from reality, whether as clothing or physiognomy. He may, in the depths of winter, appear clad in spring clothing, and your clairvoyant report that, adding probably that it symbolizes something next spring. But, in fact, the spring clothing was due to his thoughts about well-worn comfortable suit of this sort throwing a glamour f the clothing before the vision of the seer. Some cases exactly like this I have known and verified. Or the lover, dwelling on the form and features of his beloved, or the criminal upon the one he has wronged, will work a protean change and destroy identification.

Another source of error will be found in the unwitting transfer to the clairvoyant of your own thoughts, much altered either for better or worse. Or even the thoughts of some one else whom you have just met or heard from. For if you consult the seer on some line of thought, having just read the ideas on the same subject of another who thinks very strongly and very clearly, and whose character is overmastering, the clairvoyant will ten to one feel the influence of the other and give you his ideas.

Reversion of image is the last I will refer to. It has been taught always in the unpopular school of Theosophy that the astral light reverses the images, just as science knows the image a the retina is not upright. Not only have the Cabalists said us, but also the Eastern schools, and those who now have studied these doctrines along Theosophical lines have discovered it to be a fact. So the untrained clairvoyant may see a number or amount backwards, or an object upside down in whole or in part. The reliance we can place on the observations of untrained people in ordinary life the scientific schools and courts of law have long ago discovered; but seekers after the marvellous carelessly accept the observations of those who must be equally untrained in the field of clairvoyance. Of course there are many genuine cases of good clear-seeing, but the mass are not to be relied on. The cultivation of psychic senses is more difficult than any physical gymnastics, and the number of really trained clairvoyants in the Western world may be described by a nought written to the left.

M. MORE
Path, July, 1892

DEVACHAN

A LETTER to the editor from Holland upon this subject deserves reply, as is must give utterance to the questions of many other students.

The complaint in this letter is that when one goes to Devachan much time is lost away from earth life, where otherwise unselfish work for others might be continued by instantly returning to it after death. The reason given is that Devachan is an illusion, while the so-called illusions of earthly existence are in such a sense real that they are preferable to those of Devachan. In illustration of this, the supposed case is given of a parent in Devachan imagining that the beloved child is also there, when, in fact, the child not yet physically dead remains on earth perhaps in misery or leading a life of vice. This is the root of the objection - the supposed illusionary character of Devachan as compared to earth-life.

Now these feelings are always due to the thirst for life in the form which presently is most known to us, - that is, in a physical body. We cannot argue Devachan away any more than we can the necessity of incarnation upon this earth; the one is as philosophically necessary as is the other. A very easy way out of the difficulty - which arises almost wholly from our feelings - would be to calmly accept the law as it stands, being willing to take whatever may be our fate, whether that be in Devachan or in this earth-life. Our likes and dislikes can have no effect on the course of nature, but they may have an effect on ourselves which will be far from beneficial. For the dwelling upon pleasure or the constant desire to fly from "pain not yet come" will inevitably create Karmic causes which we would wish to avoid.

But perhaps there are some considerations on the subject of Devachan which may be of use. In the first place, I have never believed that the period given by Mr. Sinnett in Esoteric Buddhism of fifteen hundred years for the stay in that state was a fixed fact in nature. It might be fifteen minutes as well as fifteen hundred years. But it is quite likely that for the majority of those who so constantly wish for a release and for an enjoyment of heaven, the period would be more than fifteen hundred years. Indeed, the Hindu Scriptures give many special ceremonies for the attainment of heaven, or the regions of Indra, which is Devachan; and those ceremonies or practices are said to cause a stay in Indra-loka "for years of infinite number."

The first question, however, must be "What is the cause for passing into Devachan?" Some have said that it is good Karma or good acts that take us and keep us there, but this is a very incomplete reply. Of course, in the sense that it is happiness to go into that state, it may be called good Karma. But it does not follow that the man whose life is good, passed in constant unselfish work for others without repining, and free from desire to have somewhere his reward, will go to Devachan. Yet his Karma must be good; it must act on him, however, in other lives, for the earth-life is the place where such Karma has its operation. But if at the same time that he is thus working for others he wishes for release or for some place or time when and where he may have rest, then, of course, he must go to Devachan for a period which will be in proportion to the intensity of those desires.

Again, it should not be forgotten that the soul must have some rest. Were it, before becoming bright as the diamond, hard as adamant, and strong as steel, to go on working, working through earth-life after earth-life without a break between, it must at last succumb to the strain and come to nothing. Nature therefore has provided for it a place of rest - in Devachan; and that we should thankfully accept if it falls to our lot.

But does Devachan suffer in the comparison made between it and this life on earth? To me it seems not. Human life is as great an illusion as any. To the sage Ribhu, Vishnu said it was the longest-lived reign of fancy. To say that it is a terrible thing to think of a mother in Devachan enjoying its bliss while the child is suffering on earth, is to prefer one illusion over another, to hug a philosophical error to the breast. Both states are out of the true, while the Ego, who is the real witness, sees the lower personality struggling with these phantoms while it, whether the body be living or its other parts be in Devachan, enjoys eternal felicity. It sits on high unmoved, immovable. The great verse in the Isa-Upanishad settles this matter for me in these words: "What room is there for sorrow and what for doubt in him who knows that all spiritual beings are the same in kind, though differing in degree." Therefore if I believe this, I must also know that, no matter whether I and my best beloved are in Devachan or on earth, they and I must forever partake of the highest development attained by the greatest of sages, for, as they and I are spiritual beings, we must have communion forever on the higher planes of our being.

Then, again, the fact seems to be lost sight of that each night we go into a sort of Devachan - the dream state or sleep without dream. The loving mother, no matter how unfortunate or evil her child, must sleep, and in that state she may have dreams of her loved ones around her in just the very condition of mind and body she would have them enjoy. If Devachan be objectionable, why not also rebel against our necessary sleep which acts on our physical frame to give it rest, as Devachan does upon our more ethereal parts?

Lying unnoticed at the foot of this matter is the question of time. It goes to the very root of the objection, for the aversion to the stay in Devachan is based upon the conception of a period of time. This period - given or supposed as 1,500 years - is another great illusion which can be easily proved to be so. What we call time, measured by our seconds and minutes and hours, is not necessarily actual time itself. It is not the ultimate precedence and succession of moments in the abstract. For us it depends on and flows from the revolutions of our solar orb, and even with that standard it can be shown that we do not apprehend it correctly. We speak of seconds, but those are such as our watchmakers give us in the watch. They might be made longer or shorter. They are arrived at through a division of a diurnal solar revolution, the observation of which not necessarily mathematically accurate. If we lived on Mercury - where we must believe intelligent beings live - our conception of time would be different. From our childhood's experience we know that even in this life our appreciation of the passage of time rises and falls, for in early youth the 12 months from one Christmas to another seemed very, very long, while now they pass all too quickly. And from watching the mental processes in dreams we know that, in the space of time taken for a bell to drop from the table to the floor, one may dream through a whole lifetime, with all the incidents of each day and hour packed into such a limited period. Who can tell but that in a Devachanic state of three months the person may go through experiences that seem to cover thousands of years? If so, why not say for him - since time as we know it is an illusion - that he was in Devachan for those thousands?

Devachan, however, is not a meaningless or useless state. In it we are rested; that part of us which could not bloom under the chilling skies of earth-life bursts forth into flower and goes back with us to another life stronger and more a part of our nature than before; our strength is revived for another journey between deaths. Why shall we repine that nature kindly aids us in the interminable struggle; why thus ever keep the mind revolving about this petty personality and its good or evil fortune?

W.Q.J.

Path, September, 1890

DIREFUL PROPHECIES

THE whole mystic fraternity of Astrologers is now engaged in showing how the heavens portend great changes on this our earth. They agree with H.P.B., who said that her Eastern friends told her of coming cyclic changes now very near at hand. Beyond doubt there is some truth in all these sayings, although here and there the astrologers definitely prognosticating are not supported by fact. Sepharial, for instance, staked his reputation on the death of the Prince of Wales, which did not come off, and now where is the reputation? Just as good as ever, for astrologers know that either the judgment of the astrologer may be at fault from sundry causes, or that the birth-hour may be wrong, or that some saving aspect of the stars has been overlooked. Great earthquakes like that of Zante or the one in Kuchan come up, and the astrologers, while they regularly in those years foresaw earthquakes, did not seem able to locate them for any spot. They were afraid to say Persia for fear it might be in London. But earth quakes were foretold. A steady prognostication of disturbance has been indulged in, and this general outlook would seem right. The disturbances were expected in the realm of mind, morals, and religion by those true astrologers who seldom speak, and the increase of crime like that of bomb-throwing justifies each month the general prediction. Seismic disturbance is the physical sign of disturbance in the moral, psyhic, and mental fields. This is an old axiom in the East. In the record of the earthquake said to have taken place when Jesus died we have the Christian reflection of the same idea.

That earthquakes, floods, and great social changes would go on increasing has been known to Theosophists since the day Tom Paine saw psychically "a new order of things for the human race opening in the affairs of America," before the revolution. And ever since the increment of disaster has been great. The motto adopted by the makers of the Union - "A new order of ages" - was an echo from the realm of soul to the ears of men on earth. It marked a point in the cycle. The record of the disasters during the years since then would be found appalling. It takes in Asia and Europe, and would show millions of sudden deaths by violent earth-convulsions. And now in 1894 even Herbert Spencer, looking at the mental and social fields of human life, says in a magazine article:

A nation of which the legislators vote as they were bid and of which the workers surrender their rights of selling their labor where they please has neither the ideas nor the sentiments needed for the maintenance of liberty.... We are on the way back to the rule of the strong hand in the shape of the bureaucratic despotism of a socialistic organization and then of the military despotism which must follow it; if, indeed, some social crash does not bring the latter upon us more quickly.

Evidently this deeply philosophical and statistical writer feels the pressure in the atmosphere of social and material life. There is much unconscious prophecy in what he says. Earthquakes and deaths from them are dreadful, but they can be avoided when their probable place is known. But social earthquakes, moral pestilence, mental change belong to man, go with him where he goes, and cannot be averted by any alteration of place.

In the Illustrated American a writer on astrology gives definite prophecy of disaster. He erects a figure of the heavens for noon of November 12, 1894, showing a conjunction of Sun, Uranus, Venus, and Mercury in Scorpio, with Saturn only fifteen degrees away. Astrologically this is very bad. With the moon at the full in Taurus - the bull - it is ominous of floods and earthquakes. But we may add that in the psychic Zodiac it shows floods and heaving in the moral and social structure of the poor orphan man. Uranus and Saturn are bad planets anyway; they are erratic and heavy, subtle, dark, and menacing. This writer predicts ominously, but remains indefinite as to place. We will add that dying nations like those of Persia and China will feel most whatever effects shall be due; and in Europe, while there will be physical disturbance, the greater trouble will be in the social and governmental structures.

The astrologer then runs forward to December 30, 1901, when he says six planets will be in one sign and in a line, with a seventh opposite on the same line projected. This, it is said by such an ancient sage as Berosus, will bring a flood when it takes place in the zodiacal sign Capricornus, as is to be the case in 1901.

Many Theosophists believe these prognostications, others deride them. The former ask what shall we do? Nothing. Stay where you are. If you remove, it is more than likely you will run into the jaws of a blacker fate. Do your duty where you find yourself, and if from your goodness you are a favorite of the gods you will escape, while if you are not their favorite it is better for you to die and take another chance at bettering your character. Death will come when it will, and why should we fear, since it is "a necessary end." Theosophists too often occupy themselves with these woful lookings into the future, to the detriment of their present work. They should try to discover the fine line of duty and endeavor, leaving the astrologers of today, who are more at sea than any other mystics, to con over a zodiac that is out of place and calculate with tables which delude with the subtle power that figures have to lie when the basis of calculation is wrong.

William Q. Judge

Path, March, 1894

DOGMATISM IN THEOSOPHY

THE Theosophical Society was founded to destroy dogmatism. This is one of the meanings of its first object - Universal Brotherhood. And Col. H. S. Olcott in his inaugural address in 1875, at Mott Memorial Hall, New York, said that such was the object in view, citing the bad effect that intolerance had had in the past. That address was read by Mme. H. P. Blavatsky before its delivery, or its contents were communicated to her, so that it had her assent, for she was present when it was delivered.

In the Key to Theosophy, in the "Conclusion," H.P.B. again refers to this subject and expresses the hope that the Society might not, after her death, become dogmatic or crystallize on some phase of thought or philosophy, but that it might remain free and open, with its members wise and unselfish. And in all her writings and remarks, privately or publicly, she constantly reiterated this idea. Of this the writer has direct evidence as to her statements in private.

If our effort is to succeed, we must avoid dogmatism in theosophy as much as in anything else, for the moment we dogmatise and insist on our construction of theosophy, that moment we lose sight of Universal Brotherhood and sow the seeds of future trouble.

There is a great likelihood that members of the Society will insist on a certain orthodoxy in our ranks. They are already doing it here and there, and this is a note of warning to draw their attention to the danger. There is no orthodoxy in our Society. Even though nine-tenths of the members believe in Reincarnation, Karma, the sevenfold constitution, and all the rest, and even though its prominent ones are engaged in promulgating these doctrines as well as others, the ranks of the Society must always be kept open, and no one should be told that he is not orthodox or not a good Theosophist because he does not believe in these doctrines. All that anyone is asked to subscribe to is Universal Brotherhood, and its practice in the search for truth. For the efforts of those who are thus promulgating specific ideas are made under the sanction of the second object of the Society, which any one is free to follow or to refuse to follow as he sees fit. One may deny - undogmatically - reincarnation and other doctrines, or may assert belief in a personal or impersonal God, and still be a good member of the Society, provided Universal Brotherhood is subscribed to and put into practice.

If a member says he must formulate a God, or cannot believe in Reincarnation, none other should condemn or draw comparisons, or point to the writings of H.P.B. or any one else to show that such a member is untheosophical. The greatest minds on earth are puzzled by great ideas such as these, and yet, holding them, can still search for truth with others in a perfect spirit of toleration.

But at the same time it is obvious that to enter the Society and then, under our plea of tolerance, assert that theosophy shall not be studied, that the great body of thought and philosophy offered in our literature shall not be investigated, is untheosophical, unpractical, and absurd, for it were to nullify the very object of our organization; it is a dogmatism that flows from negation and indifference. We must study the philosophy and the doctrines offered to us before we are in a position to pass judgment and say that they are not true or that they shall be rejected. To judge or reject before examination is the province of little minds or prejudiced dogmatists.

And as the great body of philosophy, science, and ethics offered by H. P. Blavatsky and her teachers has upon it the seal of research, of reasonableness, of antiquity, and of wisdom, it demands our first and best consideration in order that we may with fitness conclude upon its acceptation or rejection.

So, then, a member of the Society, no matter how high or how low his or her position in its ranks, has the right to promulgate all the philosophical and ethical ideas found in our literature to the best ability possessed, and no one else has the right to object, provided such promulgation is accompanied by a clear statement that it is not authorized or made orthodox by any declaration from the body corporate of the T.S. Our Society must be kept free and open, no matter if, because we refuse to formulate beliefs as a Society, we remain small in number, for we can always be strong in influence.

Path, January, 1892

THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD

HAS such a being any existence? Has any one ever seen it? Are there many or several, and has it any sex? Such are the questions asked by nearly all students who read theosophical books. Some of those who all their life believed in fairies in secret and in the old tales of giants, have proceeded to test the question by calling upon the horrid shade to appear and freeze their blood with the awful eyes that Bulwer Lytton has made so famous in his "Zanoni." But the Dweller is not to be wooed in such a way, and has not appeared at all, but by absolute silence leads the invoker to at last scout the idea altogether.

But this same inquirer then studies theosophical books with diligence, and enters after a time on the attempt to find out his own inner nature. All this while the Dweller has waited, and, indeed, we may say, in complete ignorance as yet of the neophyte's existence. When the study has proceeded far enough to wake up long dormant senses and tendencies, the Dweller begins to feel that such a person as this student is at work. Certain influences are then felt, but not always with clearness, and at first never ascribed to the agency of what had long ago been relegated to the lumber-room of exploded superstitions. The study goes still farther and yet farther, until the awful Thing has revealed itself; and when that happens, it is not a superstition nor is it disbelieved. It can then never be gotten rid of, but will stay as a constant menace until it is triumphed over and left behind.

When Glyndon was left by Mejnour in the old castle in Italy, he found two vases which he had received direction not to open. But disobeying these he took out the stoppers, and at once the room was filled with intoxication, and soon the awful, loathsome creature appeared whose blazing eyes shone with malignant glare and penetrated to Glyndon's soul with a rush of horror such as he had never known.

In this story Lytton desired to show that the opening of the vases is like the approach of an enquirer to the secret recesses of his own nature. He opens the receptacles, and at first is full of joy and a sort of intoxication due to the new solutions offered for every problem in life and to the dimly seen vistas of power and advancement that open before him. If the vases are kept open long enough, the Dweller of the Threshold surely appears, and no man is exempt from the sight. Goodness is not sufficient to prevent its appearance, because even the good man who finds a muddy place in the way to his destination must of necessity pass through it to reach the end.

We must ask next, WHAT is the Dweller? It is the combined evil influence that is the result of the wicked thoughts and acts of the age in which any one may live, and it assumes to each student a definite shape at each appearance, being always either of one sort or changing each time. So that with one it may be as Bulwer Lytton pictured it, or with another only a dread horror, or even of any other sort of shape. It is specialized for each student and given its form by the tendencies and natural physical and psychical combinations that belong to his family and nation.

Where, then, does it dwell? is the very natural inquiry which will follow. It dwells in its own plane, and that may be understood in this manner.

Around each person are planes or zones, beginning with spirit and running down to gross matter. These zones extend, within their lateral boundaries, all around the being. That is to say, if we figure ourselves as being in the center of a sphere, we will find that there is no way of escaping or skipping any one zone, because it extends in every direction until we pass its lateral boundary.

When the student has at last gotten hold of a real aspiration and some glimmer of the blazing goal of truth where Masters stand, and has also aroused the determination to know and to be, the whole bent of his nature, day and night, is to reach out beyond the limitations that hitherto had fettered his soul. No sooner does he begin thus to step a little forward, than he reaches the zone just beyond mere bodily and mental sensations. At first the minor dwellers of the threshold are aroused, and they in temptation, in bewilderment, in doubt or confusion, assail him. He only feels the effect, for they do not reveal themselves as shapes. But persistence in the work takes the inner man farther along, and with that progress comes a realization to the outer mind of the experiences met, until at last he has waked up the whole force of the evil power that naturally is arrayed against the good end he has set before him. Then the Dweller takes what form it may. That it does take some definite shape or impress itself with palpable horror is a fact testified to by many students.

One of those related to me that he saw it as an enormous slug with evil eyes whose malignancy could not be described. As he retreated - that is, grew fearful -, it seemed joyful and portentous, and when retreat was complete it was not. Then he fell further back in thought and action, having occasionally moments of determination to retrieve his lost ground. Whenever these came to him, the dreadful slug again appeared, only to leave him when he had given up again his aspirations. And he knew that he was only making the fight, if ever he should take it up again, all the harder.

Another says that he has seen the Dweller concentrated in the apparent form of a dark and sinister-looking man, whose slightest motions, whose merest glance, expressed the intention and ability to destroy the student's reason, and only the strongest effort of will and faith could dispel the evil influence. And the same student at other times has felt it as a vague, yet terrible, horror that seemed to enwrap him in its folds. Before this he has retreated for the time to prepare himself by strong self-study to be pure and brave for the next attack.

These things are not the same as the temptations of Saint Anthony. In his case he seems to have induced an hysterical erotic condition, in which the unvanquished secret thoughts of his own heart found visible appearance.

The Dweller of the Threshold is not the product of the brain, but is an influence found in a plane that is extraneous to the student, but in which his success or failure will be due to his own purity. It is not a thing to be dreaded by mere dilettanti theosophists; and no earnest one who feels himself absolutely called to work persistently to the highest planes of development for the good of humanity, and not for his own, need fear aught that heaven or hell holds.

Eusebio Urban

Path, December, 1888

EACH MEMBER A CENTRE

Some years ago one of those Masters in whom so many of our members believe directed H.P.B. to write a letter for him to a certain body of Theosophists. In this he said that each member could become, in his own town or city, if earnest, sincere and unselfish, an active centre from which would radiate unseen powerful forces able to influence men and women in the vicinity for good; and that soon enquirers would appear, a Branch in time be organized and thus the whole neighbourhood would receive benefit. This seems just and reasonable in addition to its being stated by such high authority. Members ought to consider and think over it so that action may follow.

Too many who think themselves theosophically alone in their own town, have folded their hands and shut up their minds, saying to themselves that they could do nothing, that no one was near who could possibly care for Theosophy, and that that particular town was the "most difficult for the work."

The great mistake in these cases is forgetting the law indicated in what H.P.B. wrote. It is one that every member ought to know - that the mind of man is capable of bringing about results through means of other minds about him. If we sit and think that nothing can be done, then our subtle mind meets other minds within the radius of our sphere - not small - and shouts into them: "Nothing can be done." Of course then nothing is done. But if unselfishly and earnestly we think Theosophy, and desire that others should, like us, be benefited by it, then to the minds we meet in stray moments of the day and in many hours of the night we cry "Theosophy," and "Help and hope for thee." The result must be an awakening of interest upon the slightest provocative occasion.

Such an inner attitude, added to every sort of attempt at promulgation, will disclose many unsuspected persons who are thinking along this very line. Thus will the opportunity of the hour be taken advantage of.

Our last Convention marked an era: the dying away of strife and opening of greater chances, the enlargement and extension of inquiry and interest on the part of the great public. This is a very great opportunity. Branches and members alike ought to rise to meet and use all that this will afford. Remember that we are not fighting for any form of organization, nor for badges, nor for petty personal ends, but for Theosophy; for the benefit, the advantage and the good of our fellow-men. As was said not long ago, those of us who follow after and worship a mere organization are making fetishes and worshipping a shell. Unselfishness is the real keynote.

Those of us who still, after years and after much instruction, are seeking and wishing for personal progress or preferment in the occult side of life, are destroying that quality first referred to - of being a living, breathing centre of light and hope for others. And the self-seekers thus also lessen their possible chances in the next life here.

Close up the ranks! Each member a centre; each Branch a centre; the whole a vast, whirling centre of light and force and energy for the benefit of the nation and of the race.

[The Path, Vol. X, p. 201, October 1895.]

THE EARTH CHAIN OF GLOBES

ALTHOUGH H.P.B. gave out to several of those who met her during the period from 1875 to 1878 the very same teachings in respect to the nature of man and of the "worlds" he evolves in as were afterwards publicly expounded in Esoteric Buddhism by Mr. Sinnett upon letters received by him through her from her Teachers, the credit of thus publishing those teachings, if such credit is desired, must be granted to that author. But at the time he began his publications, we who had known the doctrines so many years before wrote to H.P.B. complaining that the method adopted would lead to confusion on the one hand and to a materializing of the doctrines on the other, while, of course, no objection was made in general to the divulgement of what at a prior date had been given us in confidence, for he could not and would not have given the teachings to the public at all unless he had been permitted to do so. And after all these years the confusion to which our letters adverted has arisen among Theosophists, while there has been an apparent lack of attempt to clear it away. In respect to the "Earth Chain of Globes," the materializing of the doctrine and the confusion in the minds of students have been greater than in regard to any other of the teachings. This cloudiness I will now attempt to dissipate, if possible, with the help of some of H.P.B.’s own words in her book, the time having arrived and permission being granted, and access being also had to certain plain statements thereupon from the original sources.

In Esoteric Buddhism 6th ed., p. 77, we find in reference to the "Chain of Globes":

Separated as these are in regard to the grossly mechanical matter of which they consist, they are closely and intimately bound together by subtle currents and forces. . . . It is along these subtle currents that the life elements pass from world to world. . . . The most ethereal of the whole series. . . . As it passes from world Z back again to world A.

Then follows, for illustrative purposes, the figure of a series of tubs to represent the various globes of the whole series, one filling up from the overflow out of the preceding tub. Further, that the life wave reaches Globe A or B, and so on.

All this, in the absence of other explanations, and naturally consequent upon modern habits of thought, has fixed the idea in minds of many that the seven globes through which the evolution of man is carried on are in fact separated from each other; that they have between each other spaces along which currents flow to and from; and although the illustration of the series of tubs might be very well used for even the most metaphysical of problems, it had the effect of additionally deepening the idea of the actual separation from each other of the seven "globes." It has been thought that they were as much apart from each as any visible planet, although connected by "subtle currents and forces."

But the fact is otherwise. The seven globes of earth's chain are not separated at all, and are interblended and mixed with each other. To make it clearer, if we were to develop inner sight so as to perceive on the plane of the next globe, the fifth, it would not appear as a definite ball in the sky or space. Whether it be smaller or larger than this earth a fact not yet cleared up it would be seen to possess the earth as the earth holds it.

It may be asked, Why was this not told in the beginning? Because it was useless to tell, no one being at hand to understand it; and also because if insisted on and it was not of enough importance to require insistence the consequence might have been that even Mr. Sinnett would not have published his invaluable and extremely useful book. He confessed in that work that the doctrines propounded were new to him, and seemingly opposed to modern ideas of nature. In great part this was true, though there were very many who did not find them new but who were not sufficient in number to risk then an insistence on a point that might too far violate the materialistic conceptions prevalent. Since then, however, times have altered, and a large and daily increasing number of minds are ready for the destruction of the idea contained in these words from the above quotation: "Separated as these are in regard to the grossly mechanical matter of which they are composed."Strike out this statement, and the rest of the explanation can be construed to agree with the facts as laid down by those who inspired the book.

The globes of the earth-chain are not "separated in regard to the grossly mechanical particles," but their particles are interblended. When we pass on to the plane of life which Globe 5 or E represents, it will be and appear to our then senses as gross, while the particles of this one will not be visible although still interblended with the other. It was to this very sentence that we objected in 1875 [1885?], because it contains the statement of a fallacy growing out of materialistic conception.

On this very subject the teachers of H.P.B. wrote, Secret Doctrine, V.I,p.166:

Were psychic and spiritual teachings more of Lilly understood, it would become next to impossible to even imagine such an incongruity. . . . In short, as Globes, they are in COADUNITION but not in CONSUBSTANTIALITY WITH OUR EARTH, and thus pertain to quite another state of consciousness.

This should be clear enough, and, as if to draw special attention to it, the very words which give the correct doctrine about our "fellow globes" were printed in capital letters.

"Consubstantiality" means the state of being the same substance. This is negatived in respect to the globes; but it is asserted that they, being of different substances, are united in one mass, for such is the meaning of "co-adunition." If this be the case, as must be on the original authority, it then follows that the " seven globes of earth's chain, while differing from each other as to what is commonly called substance, are united together in a single mass. And when one is asked to shake off the dense veil of matter which beclouds the sight so as to perceive another of the globes, it is by no means meant that the companion globe, or globes as the case may be, would be seen rolling in space all by itself": and this is from another explanatory letter from the first authority. In the paragraph from Secret Doctrine attention is called to the fact that just because the seven globes are in co-adunition but not in consubstantiality with each other they pertain to a state of consciousness quite other than that we are compelled to be in now.

As H.P.B. used a diagram in which the globes are set down as separated, it only requires to be remembered that the system could not, on a flat surface by mere lines, be illustrated in any other way and be at all clear. Besides, all the diagrams and illustrations must be construed with the quotation on p. 1 66 in view, as well as the numerous pages of similar explanations.

Every student should make inquiry of himself to see what his ideas are on this subject, and revise them if they are found not to be in accord with what was so clearly explained in the words above quoted. For this lies at the root of many other difficulties. Materialistic conceptions on this will lead to materializing, localizing, and separating of states such as Devachan, and to perhaps dogmas about places that do not exist, when states of consciousness should be dwelt upon. For, as was written in a letter quoted by H.P.B.:

Unless less trouble is taken to reconcile the irreconcilable - that is to say, the metaphysical and spiritual sciences with physical or natural philosophy, "natural" being a synonym to them [men of science] of that matter which falls under the perception of their corporeal senses - no progress can be really achieved.

And on page 169 of Vol. I of Secret Doctrine is a sentence not printed as a quotation, but which is really one from one of the same teacher's letters, reading:

To be fully realized [the evolution of the monads on the globes] both this process and that of the birth of the globes must be examined far more from their metaphysical aspect than from what one might call a statistical standpoint.

Although the Lodge has declared through the mouth of H.P.B. that the complete truth on these matters is the heritage of future generations, yet we who are working in the movement now, believing in reincarnation and knowing the force of Karmic tendencies, must not forget that we are destined to return in future years once more to the same work. We should therefore study the pure spiritual, psychic, and metaphysical aspects of the doctrines, leaving disputes with the changing science of the day to those who are amused by it. For those disputes are wholly unimportant, since they will all pass away; but the spirit of truth will not pass, nor shall we who endeavor to find her and to understand what she says to us.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

THE EARTH CHAIN OF GLOBES

IN February PATH the subject of the coadunition but non-consubstantiality of the seven globes of the Earth-chain was opened up slightly and discussed in view of certain expressions from the Adepts themselves on the same matter. Since then questions and doubts have arisen, as it seems that-as was suspected-the fundamental principles underlying this doctrine have not been clearly defined in the minds of all. And, indeed, before such clear definition is arrived at most if not all of the naturalistic and materialistic doctrines and modes of thought of the day will have to be abandoned. The true theory of the companion globes of our earth is one which cannot be fully comprehended if we are influenced, as many are, by the education which for centuries has been imposed upon us. When the adepts say that these doctrines must be examined from a metaphysical standpoint, the nineteenth century person thinks that therefore it must be so vague and unreal as not to constitute an inclusion of facts, since "facts" are hard and visible things, so to say.

The first question, coming from one who grasps to a great extent the theory broached in the paragraph from the Master's pen quoted in Secret Doctrine, is whether we will be able to see but one globe at a time as we change our centre of consciousness? That is to say, seeing that we now can perceive the earth with the eye and none of the other companions, does it follow from this that, when the race ceases to function on the earth and has taken up evolution on the next globe in order, we shall see then but that globe and none of the others of the chain among which will then be included this earth? It by no means follows that we then shall be able to see but one, but to what extent our then vision will be stretched or how many other globes we shall be able to see has not been given out publicly by the Masters, and it is held that alone in the keeping of the Lodge is the knowledge on this detail of the doctrine. We are left therefore to our own deductions, to be drawn from known facts. No very substantial benefit could be derived from exact knowledge about it, as it relates to matters and states of life removed from us inconceivably far both as to time and consciousness. Nor would a full explanation be comprehended. One of the teachers has written:

You do not seem to realize the tremendous difficulties in the way of imparting even the rudiments of our science to those who have been trained in the familiar methods of (modern science). You do not see that the more you have of the one the less capable you are to instinctively comprehend the other, for a man can only think in his worn grooves, and unless he has the courage to fill up these and make new ones for himself [italics are mine] he must perforce travel on the old lines. .
Such is, unfortunately. the inherited and self-acquired grossness of the Western mind, and so greatly have the very phrases expressive of modern thought been developed in the line of practical Materialism, that it is now next to impossible either for them to comprehend or for us to express in their own languages anything of that delicate, seemingly ideal, machinery of the occult cosmos. To some little extent that faculty can be acquired by the Europeans through study and meditation, but-that's all. And here is the bar which has hitherto prevented a conviction of the Theosophical truths from gaining currency among Western nations-caused Theosophical study to be cast aside as useless and fantastic.

As implied in the foregoing, the reason for not telling all about it is that it would not be comprehended, and not that the Lodge desires to keep it back from the world. The same difficulty has often been encountered by ordinary clairvoyants who have tried to give an account of the little they know of the "occult cosmos" to hearers whose modes of thought were purely materialistic or tainted by that kind of education. And I have met estimable theosophists who said to me that if they really were convinced that I believed certain things which I hinted to them they would be forced in sadness to conclude I was a most superstitious person meaning of course that their ignorance and inability would constitute my superstition.

But as we now reside in a physical body perfectly visible to us, and as the astral body is sometimes seen by certain persons, it follows most surely that some persons can now see another body or form of matter while functioning in their little earth. The fact that all do not see the astral body only proves that as yet the seeing of it is not normal for the whole human race. And looking at the other side of the matter, we know that sometimes persons escaped temporarily from the physical body and functioning wholly in the astral have been able to see the physical one as it slept in trance. From this we may conclude that when the race has gone to some other centre of consciousness called a globe, it may possibly be able to see another of the companions in the sky. This is made more probable from the fact that the Earth is the lowest or at the turning of the circle, and for that reason it is on its own plane and not in company as to plane with any other one. The others might be two at a time on the one plane and then visible to each other.

The next point raised is that if the article of February is accepted, then it results that we consider the companion globes to be only "phases of the Earth." The letter from the Master above quoted is pertinent here, for this objection arises solely and wholly from a materialistic education leading the objector to give the first place of importance to the earth, just as if it were not possible to say that earth is a phase of the other globes.

The globes are not in any sense phases of each other, but are "phases of consciousness." The consciousness alters and we function in another state of matter, in the same place, but not able to see the state of matter we have left. And as now the whole race is bound up by its total form and quality of consciousness, the units of it are compelled to remain in the general state of consciousness until the race progress permits an advance or change to another. In the evolution of the race it develops new senses and instruments for perception, but these proceed along with the changing centre of consciousness, and are not the causes for the latter but are effects due to the operation and force of that inner power of perceiving which at last compels nature to furnish the necessary instrument. When the new instruments are all perfected, then the whole race moves on to another plane altogether.

All this supports and enforces the doctrine of universal brotherhood upon which the Adepts have insisted. For the changing of consciousness as to centre is not for the benefit of the individual, but is permissible and possible when the whole mass of matter of the globe whereon the beings are evolving has been perfected by the efforts and work of the most advanced of the whole number, and that advanced class is man. If it were otherwise, then we should see millions upon millions of selfish souls deserting the planet as soon as they had acquired the necessary new senses, leaving their fellows and the various kingdoms of nature to shift for themselves. But the law and the Lodge will not permit this, but insist that we shall remain until the lower masses of atoms have been far enough educated to be able to go on in a manner not productive of confusion. Here again we trench upon the materialism of the age, which will roar with laughter at the idea of its being possible to educate the atoms.

The doctrine of the interpenetration of the planes of matter lies at the root of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and all such phenomena. Clairvoyance would be an impossibility were it not the fact that what for the ordinary sense is solid and an obstacle to sight is in reality for the other set of senses non-existent, free from solidity, and no obstacle. Otherwise clear seeing is impossible, and the learned doctors are right who say we are all deluded and never did any one see through a solid wall. For while the faculty of imagination is necessary for the training of the power to see through a solid wall, we could not so perceive merely by imagination, since objects must have a medium through which they are to be seen. This again strikes against materialistic conceptions, for the "objective" usually means that which can be seen and felt. But in the machinery of the "occult cosmos" the objective is constantly changing to the subjective and vice versa, as the centre of consciousness changes. In the trance or clairvoyant state the subjective of the waking man has become the objective. So also in dreams. There, clothed with another body of finer texture, the perceiver finds all the experiences objective as to their circumstances and subjective as to the feelings they produce on the perceiver who registers the sensations. And in precisely similar manner will the race see, feel, and know when it has changed all and begins to function on another globe.

WILLIAM BREHON
Path, February and March. 1893

THE EARTH CHAIN OF GLOBES
III

The Editor has handed me a communication from a reader upon this subject which I insert here, as it on the one hand shows a very common defect of students-inaccuracy of reading, thought, and reference, and on the other will serve as a question which arises in other minds. It reads:

Please state in reference to the Earth Chain of Globes whether it is meant to be conveyed on page 159 of S. D. Vol. I that the "seven globes from the 1st to the 7th proceed in seven Rounds," that each globe revolves seven times around the World Chain with its own particular development [say the Mineral Kingdom], before the next in order [say the Vegetable Kingdom] appears on Globe A? Or does the Mineral Kingdom only go once around the World Chain from I to 7? In Esoteric Buddhism, page 91, it is stated that the several kingdoms pass "several times around the whole circle as minerals, and then again several times as vegetables," but there is no distinct statement of this in S.D.-Yours, IGNOTUS.

Inaccuracies like those in the foregoing are not uncommon. They are constant and all-pervading. It is probably the fault of modern education, accentuated by the reading of a vast amount of superficial literature such as is poured out day by day. Any close observer can detect the want of attention displayed in metaphysical studies in contrast with the particular care given to matters of business and practical affairs of life. All those who are studying Theosophy ought to make themselves aware of this national defect, and therefore give the strictest attention to what they read upon metaphysics and devote less attention to the amount of such reading than to thinking upon what is read.

In the first place, the Secret Doctrine does not say on the page quoted, nor anywhere else, what "Ignotus" writes. Instead of reading as quoted, the passage is:

I. Everything in the metaphysical as in the physical Universe is septenary. [p. 158] . . . The evolution of life proceeds on these seven globes or bodies from the first to the seventh in Seven Rounds or Seven Cycles [p. 159].

I insert in italics the omitted words, the word proceeds having been put out of its place by "Ignotus." The error makes a completely new scheme, one unphilosophical and certainly not given out by the Masters. But though some may wonder why I notice such a false assumption, it is right to take it up because it must have arisen through carelessness, yet of such a sort as might perpetuate an important error. It follows from the restoration of the passage that the Globes do not "revolve around the world chain." The supposition of the correspondent is not peculiar among the many hurried ones made by superficial readers. He first assumed that the various globes of the Earth-Chain revolved, in some way which he did not stop to formulate, in seven rounds-I presume in some imaginary orbit of their own-in what he called the "world chain," and then he went on adapting the rest of the evolutionary theory to this primary assumption. By reading the Secret Doctrine and the former articles on this subject in the PATH, the point in question will be made clear. Evolution of the monad, which produces and underlies all other evolutions, proceeds on the seven planetary bodies of any chain of evolution. These seven places or spheres for such evolution represent different states of consciousness, and hence, as written in the Secret Doctrine and attempted to be shown in these articles, they may and do interpenetrate each other with beings on each. Therefore all such words as "round," "around," "chain," and the like must be examined metaphysically and not be allowed to give the mind a false notion such as is sure to arise if they are construed in the material way and from their materialistic derivation. "To go around" the seven globes does not mean that one passes necessarily from one place to another, but indicates a change from one condition to another, just as we might say that a man "went the whole round of sensations."

As to the other questions raised, Esoteric Buddhism is right in saying that the monads pass several times around the globes as minerals and vegetables, but wisely does not make the number and order very definite. In the Secret Doctrine one of the Masters writes that at the second round the order of the appearance of the human kingdom alters, but the letter goes no farther on that point except to say, as is very definitely put in the Secret Doctrine on p. 159, para. 4;

The Life Cycle . . . arrived on our Earth at the commencement of the Fourth in the present series of life-cycles and races. Man is the first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by the mineral and vegetable kingdoms-even the latter having to develop and continue its further evolution through man.

This states quite distinctly (a) that after the second round the order alters, and (b) that in the fourth round, instead of animals appearing as the first moving forms for the monads to inhabit, the human form comes first, preceded by mineral and vegetable, and followed by the brute-animal.

This change always comes on at any fourth round, or else we never could have evolutionary perfection. Other monads come originally from other spheres of evolution. In a new one such as this the preliminary process and order of mineral, plant, animal, human must be followed. But having in two or three rounds perfected itself in the task, the monad brings out 'the human form at the turning point, so that man as the model, means, guide, and savior may be able to intelligently raise up not only humanity but as well every other kingdom below the human. This is all made very clear and positive by repeated statement and explanation in the Secret Doctrine, and it is a matter for surprise that so many Theosophists do not understand it.
For fear that the present may be misunderstood I will add. Although the order of appearance of the human form alters as stated, this does not mean that the whole number of natural kingdoms does not make the sevenfold pilgrimage. They all make it, and in every round up to and including the seventh there are present in the chain of globes elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms constituting those kingdoms, but of course the minerals and vegetables of the seventh round and race will be a very different sort from those of the present.

But as what a Master has said hereon is far better than my weak words, I will refer to that. Thus:

Nature consciously prefers that matter should be indestructible under organic rather than inorganic forms, and works slowly but incessantly towards the realization of this object-the evolution of conscious life out of inert material.

WILLIAM BREHON
Path, April, 1893

KALI YUGA AND THE COMING RACE

(i) How many years are there in Kali Yuga? (2) Will the sixth sub-race begin very soon, that is, will it be at the end of the cycle of the first five thousand years of Kali Yuga? (3) Cannot a person of the fifth race come near where the sixth race shall live?

(ii) Kali Yuga is said by the Brahmins and by the Secret Doctrine to be 432,000 years long. We will have to accept the calculation for the present.

(2) Many thousands of years will pass before the next race will be here, and you will have died several times over before that, and also it is probable you will be one of that race unless you go to some other planet. You have made the error of sup-posing that the end of the cycle in 1898 is the end of the race. It is not. It is but a minor cycle, though quite important in its way. Hence-

(3) As we, including you, will be members of the new race in all probability if we take advantage of our opportunities, there is no profit in the question or its answer, for the sixth race not being due for so many centuries, and you being eligible for membership in it, there is no sequence. When the sixth race has fully come, many degenerate examples of the bodies of the fifth will be here with it and among it, but no special place will be kept for its development.

Path, January, 1895

ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARIES

Student. - If I understand you, an elemental is a centre of force, without intelligence, without moral character or tendencies, but capable of being directed in its movements by human thoughts, which may, consciously or not, give it any form, and to a certain extent intelligence; in its simplest form it is visible as a disturbance in a transparent medium, such as would be produced by a "glass fish, so transparent as to be invisible, swimming through the air of the room," and leaving behind him a shimmer, such as hot air makes when rising from a stove. Also, elementals, attracted and vitalized by certain thoughts, may effect a lodgment in the human system (of which they then share the government with the ego), and are very hard to get out.

Sage. - Correct, in general, except as to their "effecting a lodgment." Some classes of elementals, however, have an intelligence of their own and a character, but they are far beyond our comprehension and ought perhaps to have some other name.

That class which has most to do with us answers the above description. They are centres of force or energy which are acted on by us while thinking and in other bodily motions. We also act on them and give them form by a species of thought which we have no register of. As, one person might shape an elemental so as to seem like an insect, and not be able to tell whether he had thought of such a thing or not. For there is a vast unknown country in each human being which he does not himself understand until he has tried, and then only after many initiations.

That "elementals . . . may effect a lodgment in the human system, of which they then share the government, and are very hard to get out" is, as a whole, incorrect. It is only in certain cases that any one or more elementals are attracted to and "find lodgment in the human system." In such cases special rules apply. We are not considering such cases. The elemental world interpenetrates this, and is therefore eternally present in the human system.

As it (the elemental world) is automatic and like a photographic plate, all atoms continually arriving at and departing from the "human system" are constantly assuming the impression conveyed by the acts and thoughts of that person, and therefore, if he sets up a strong current of thought, he attracts elementals in greater numbers, and they all take on one prevailing tendency or color, so that all new arrivals find a homogeneous color or image which they instantly assume. On the other hand, a man who has many diversities of thought and meditation is not homogeneous, but, so to say, particolored, and so the elementals may lodge in that part which is different from the rest and go away in like condition. In the first case it is one mass of elementals similarly vibrating or electrified and colored, and in that sense may be called one elemental, in just the same way that we know one man as Jones, although for years he has been giving off and taking on new atoms of gross matter.

Student. - If they are attracted and repelled by thoughts, do they move with the velocity of thought, say from here to the planet Neptune?

Sage. - They move with the velocity of thought. In their world there is no space or time as we understand those terms. If Neptune be within the astral sphere of this world, then they go there with that velocity, otherwise not; but that "if" need not be solved now.

Student. - What determines their movements besides thought, - e.g., when they are floating about the room?

Sage. - Those other classes of thoughts above referred to; certain exhalations of beings; different rates and ratios of vibration among beings; different changes of magnetism caused by present causes or by the moon and the year; different polarities; changes of sound; changes of influences from other minds at a distance.

Student. - When so floating, can they be seen by any one, or only by those persons who are clairvoyant?

Sage. - Clairvoyance is a poor word. They can be seen by partly clairvoyant people. By all those who can see thus; by more people, perhaps, than are aware of the fact.

Student. - Can they be photographed, as the rising air from the hot stove can?

Sage. - Not to my knowledge yet. It is not impossible, however.

Student. - Are they the lights, seen floating about a dark séance room by clairvoyant people?

Sage. - In the majority of cases those lights are produced by them.

Student. - Exactly what is their relation to light, that makes it necessary to hold séances in the dark?

Sage. - It is not their relation to light that makes darkness necessary, but the fact that light causes constant agitation and alteration in the magnetism of the room. All these things can be done just as well in the light of day.

If I should be able to make clear to you "exactly what is their relation to light," then you would know what has long been kept secret, the key to the elemental world. This is kept guarded because it is a dangerous secret. No matter how virtuous you are, you could not - once you knew the secret - prevent the knowledge getting out into the minds of others who would not hesitate to use it for bad purposes.

Student. - I have noticed that attention often interferes with certain phenomena; thus a pencil will not write when watched, but writes at once when covered; or a mental question cannot be answered till the mind has left it and gone to something else. Why is this?

Sage. - This kind of attention creates confusion. In these things we use desire, will, and knowledge. The desire is present, but knowledge is absent. When the desire is well formed and attention withdrawn, the thing is often done; but when our attention is continued we only interrupt, because we possess only half attention. In order to use attention, it must be of that sort which can hold itself to the point of a needle for an indefinite period of time.

Student. - I have been told that but few people can go to a séance without danger to themselves, either of some spiritual or astral contamination, or of having their vitality depleted for the benefit of the spooks, who suck the vital force out of the circle through the medium, as if the former were a glass of lemonade and the latter a straw. How is this?

Sage. - Quite generally this happens. It is called Bhut worship by the Hindus.

Student. - Why are visitors at a séance often extremely and unaccountably tired next day?

Sage. - Among other reasons, because mediums absorb the vitality for the use of the "spooks," and often vile vampire elementaries are present.

Student. - What are some of the dangers at séances?

Sage. - The scenes visible - in the Astral - at séances are horrible, inasmuch as these "spirits" - bhuts - precipitate themselves upon sitters and mediums alike; and as there is no séance without having present some or many bad elementaries - half dead human beings, - there is much vampirizing going on. These things fall upon the people like a cloud or a big octopus, and disappear within them as if sucked in by a sponge. That is one reason why it is not well to attend them in general.

Elementaries are not all bad, but, in a general sense, they are not good. They are shells, no doubt of that. Well, they have much automatic and seemingly intelligent action left if they are those of strongly material people who died attached to the things of life. If of people of an opposite character, they are not so strong. Then there is a class which are really not dead, such as suicides, and sudden deaths, and highly wicked people. They are powerful. Elementals enter into all of them, and thus get a fictitious personality and intelligence wholly the property of the shell. They galvanize the shell into action, and by its means can see and hear as if beings themselves, like us. The shells are, in this case, just like a sleepwalking human body. They will through habit exhibit the advancement they got while in the flesh. Some people, you know, do not impart to their bodily molecules the habit of their minds to as great extent as others. We thus see why the utterances of these so-called "spirits" are never ahead of the highest point of progress attained by living human beings, and why they take up the ideas elaborated day-by-day by their votaries. This séance worship is what was called in Old India the worship of the Pretas and Bhuts and Pisachas and Gandharvas.

I do not think any elementary capable of motive had ever any other than a bad one; the rest are nothing, they have no motive and are only the shades refused passage by Charon.

Student. - What is the relation between sexual force and phenomena?

Sage. - It is at the bottom. This force is vital, creative, and a sort of reservoir. It may be lost by mental action as well as by physical. In fact its finer part is dissipated by mental imaginings, while physical acts only draw off the gross part, that which is the "carrier" (upadhi) for the finer.

Student. - Why do so many mediums cheat, even when they can produce real phenomena?

Sage. - It is the effect of the use of that which in itself is sublimated cheating, which, acting on an irresponsible mind, causes the lower form of cheat, of which the higher is any illusionary form whatever. Besides, a medium is of necessity unbalanced somewhere.

They deal with these forces for pay, and that is enough to call to them all the wickedness of time. They use the really gross sorts of matter, which causes inflammation in corresponding portions of the moral character, and hence divagations from the path of honesty. It is a great temptation. You do not know, either, what fierceness there is in those who "have paid" for a sitting and wish "for the worth of their money."

Student. - When a clairvoyant, as a man did here a year ago, tells me that "he sees a strong band of spirits about me," and among them an old man who says he is a certain eminent character, what does he really see? Empty and senseless shells? If so, what brought them there? Or elementals which have got their form from my mind or his?

Sage. - Shells, I think, and thoughts, and old astral pictures. If for instance, you once saw that eminent person and conceived great respect or fear for him, so that his image was graven in your astral sphere in deeper lines than other images, it would be seen for your whole life by seers, who, if untrained - as they all are here - could not tell whether it was an image or reality; and then each sight of it is a revivification of the image.

Besides, not all would see the same thing. Fall down, for instance, and hurt your body, and that will bring up all similar events and old forgotten things before any seer's eye.

The whole astral world is a mass of illusion; people see into it, and then, through the novelty of the thing and the exclusiveness of the power, they are bewildered into thinking they actually see true things, whereas they have only removed one thin crust of dirt.

Student. - Accept my thanks for your instruction.

Sage. - May you reach the terrace of enlightenment.

Path, May, 1888

ELEMENTALS - HOW THEY ACT

Student. - Is there any reason why you do not give me a more detailed explanation of the constitution of elementals and the modes by which they work?

Sage. - Yes. There are many reasons. Among others is your inability, shared by most of the people of the present day, to comprehend a description of things that pertain to a world with which you are not familiar and for which you do not yet possess terms of expression. Were I to put forth these descriptions, the greater part would seem vague and incomprehensible on one hand, while on the other many of them would mislead you because of the interpretation put on them by yourself. Another reason is that, if the constitution, field of action, and method of action of elementals were given out, there are some minds of a very inquiring and peculiar bent who soon could find out how to come into communication with these extraordinary beings, with results disadvantageous to the community as well as the individuals.

Student. - Why so? Is it not well to increase the sum of human knowledge, even respecting most recondite parts of nature; or can it be that the elementals are bad?

Sage. - It is wise to increase the knowledge of nature's laws, but always with proper limitations. All things will become known some day. Nothing can be kept back when men have reached the point where they can understand. But at this time it would not be wise to give them, for the asking, certain knowledge that would not be good for them. That knowledge relates to elementals, and it can for the present be kept back from the scientists of today. So long as it can be retained from them, it will be, until they and their followers are of a different stamp.

As to the moral character of elementals, they have none; they are colorless in themselves - except some classes - and merely assume the tint, so to speak, of the person using them.

Student. - Will our scientific men one day, then, be able to use these beings, and, if so, what will be the manner of it? Will their use be confined to only the good men of the earth?

Sage. - The hour is approaching when all this will be done. But the scientists of today are not the men to get this knowledge. They are only pigmy forerunners who sow seed and delve blindly in no thoroughfares. They are too small to be able to grasp these mighty powers, but they are not wise enough to see that their methods will eventually lead to Black Magic in centuries to come when they shall be forgotten.

When elemental forces are used similarly as we now see electricity and other natural energies adapted to various purposes, there will be "war in heaven." Good men will not alone possess the ability to use them. Indeed, the sort of man you now call "good" will not be the most able. The wicked will, however, pay liberally for the power of those who can wield such forces, and at last the Supreme Masters, who now guard this knowledge from children, will have to come forth. Then will ensue a dreadful war, in which, as has ever happened, the Masters will succeed and the evil doers be destroyed by the very engines, principalities, and powers prostituted to their own purposes during years of intense selfish living. But why dilate on this; in these days it is only a prophecy.

Student. - Could you give me some hints as to how the secrets of the elemental plane are preserved and prevented from being known? Do these guardians of whom you speak occupy themselves in checking elementals, or how? Do they see much danger of divulgement likely in those instances where elemental action is patent to the observer?

Sage. - As to whether they check elementals or not need not be enquired into, because, while that may be probable, it does not appear very necessary where men are unsuspicious of the agency causing that phenomena. It is much easier to throw a cloud over the investigator's mind and lead him off to other results of often material advantage to himself and men, while at the same time acting as a complete preventive or switch which turns his energies and application into different departments.

It might be illustrated thus: Suppose that a number of trained occultists are set apart to watch the various sections of the world where the mental energies are in fervid operation. It is quite easy for them to see in a moment any mind that is about reaching a clue into the elemental world; and, besides, imagine that trained elementals themselves constantly carry information of such events. Then, by superior knowledge and command over this peculiar world, influences presenting various pictures are sent out to that enquiring mind. In one case it may be a new moral reform, in another a great invention is revealed, and such is the effect that the man's whole time and mind are taken up by this new thing which he fondly imagines is his own. Or, again, it would be easy to turn his thoughts into a certain rut leading far from the dangerous clue. In fact, the methods are endless.

Student. - Would it be wise to put into the hands of truly good, conscientious men who now use aright what gifts they have, knowledge of and control over elementals, to be used on the side of right?

Sage. - The Masters are the judges of what good men are to have this power and control. You must not forget that you cannot be sure of the character at bottom of those whom you call "truly good and conscientious men." Place them in the fire of the tremendous temptation which such power and control would furnish, and most of them would fail. But the Masters already know the characters of all who in any way approach to a knowledge of these forces, and They always judge whether such a man is to be aided or prevented. They are not working to make these laws and forces known, but to establish right doctrine, speech, and action, so that the characters and motives of men shall undergo such radical changes as to fit them for wielding power in the elemental world. And that power is not now lying idle, as you infer, but is being always used by those who will never fail to rightly use it.

Student. - Is there any illustration at hand showing what the people of the present day would do with these extraordinary energies?

Sage. - A cursory glance at men in these western worlds engaged in the mad rush after money, many of them willing to do anything to get it, and at the strain, almost to warfare, existing between laborers and users of labor, must show you that, were either class in possession of power over the elemental world, they would direct it to the furtherance of the aims now before them. Then look at Spiritualism. It is recorded in the Lodge - photographed, you may say, by the doers of the acts themselves - that an enormous number of persons daily seek the aid of mediums and their "spooks" merely on questions of business. Whether to buy stocks, or engage in mining for gold and silver, to deal in lotteries, or to make new mercantile contracts. Here on one side is a picture of a coterie of men who obtained at a low figure some mining property on the advice of elemental spirits with fictitious names masquerading behind mediums; these mines were then to be put upon the public at a high profit, inasmuch as the "spirits" promised metal. Unhappily for the investors, it failed. But such a record is repeated in many cases.

Then here is another where in a great American city - the karma being favorable - a certain man speculated in stocks upon similar advice, succeeded, and, after giving the medium liberal pay, retired to what is called enjoyment of life. Neither party devoted either himself or the money to the benefiting of humanity.

There is no question of honor involved, nor any as to whether money ought or ought not to be made. It is solely one as to the propriety, expediency, and results of giving suddenly into the hands of a community unprepared and without an altruistic aim, such abnormal power. Take hidden treasure, for instance. There is much of it in hidden places, and many men wish to get it. For what purpose? For the sake of ministering to their luxurious wants and leaving it to their equally unworthy descendants. Could they know the mantram controlling the elementals that guard such treasure, they would use it at once, motive or no motive, the sole object being the money in the case.

Student. - Do some sorts of elementals have guard over hidden treasure?

Sage. - Yes, in every instance, whether never found or soon discovered. The causes for the hiding and the thoughts of the hider or loser have much to do with the permanent concealment or subsequent finding.

Student. - What happens when a large sum of money, say, such as Captain Kidd's mythical treasure, is concealed, or when a quantity of coin is lost?

Sage. - Elementals gather about it. They have many and curious modes of causing further concealment. They even influence animals to that end. This class of elementals seldom, if ever, report at your spiritualistic séances. As time goes on the forces of air and water still further aid them, and sometimes they are able even to prevent the hider from recovering it. Thus in course of years, even when they may have altogether lost their hold on it, the whole thing becomes shrouded in mist, and it is impossible to find anything.

Student. - This in part explains why so many failures are recorded in the search for hidden treasure. But how about the Masters; are they prevented thus by these weird guardians?

Sage. - They are not. The vast quantities of gold hidden in the earth and under the sea are at their disposal always. They can, when necessary for their purposes, obtain such sums of money on whom no living being or descendants of any have the slightest claim, as would appall the senses of your greatest money getter. They have but to command the very elementals controlling it, and They have it. This is the basis for the story of Aladdin's wonderful lamp, more true than you believe.

Student. - Of what use then is it to try, like the alchemists, to make gold? With the immense amount of buried treasure thus easily found when you control its guardian, it would seem a waste of time and money to learn transmutation of metals.

Sage. - The transmutation spoken of by the real alchemists was the alteration of the base alloy in man's nature. At the same time, actual transmutation of lead into gold is possible. And many followers of the alchemists, as well as of the pure-souled Jacob Boehme, eagerly sought to accomplish the material transmuting, being led away by the glitter of wealth. But an Adept has no need for transmutation, as I have shown you. The stories told of various men who are said to have produced gold from base metals for different kings in Europe are wrong explanations. Here and there Adepts have appeared, assuming different names, and in certain emergencies they supplied or used large sums of money. But instead of its being the product of alchemical art, it was simply ancient treasure brought to them by elementals in their service and that of the Lodge. Raymond Lully or Robert Flood might have been of that sort, but I forbear to say, since I cannot claim acquaintance with those men.

Student. - I thank you for your instruction.

Sage. - May you reach the terrace of enlightenment!

Path, July, 1888

ELEMENTALS - KARMA

STUDENT. - Permit me to ask you again, Are elementals beings?

Sage. - It is not easy to convey to you an idea of the constitution of elementals; strictly speaking, they are not, because the word elementals has been used in reference to a class of them that have no being such as mortals have. It would be better to adopt the terms used in Indian books, such as Gandharvas, Bhuts, Pisachas, Devas, and so on. Many things well known about them cannot be put into ordinary language.

Student. - Do you refer to their being able to act in the fourth dimension of space?

Sage. - Yes, in a measure. Take the tying in an endless cord of many knots - a thing often done at spiritist séances. That is possible to him who knows more dimensions of space than three. No three-dimensional being can do this; and as you understand "matter," it is impossible for you to conceive how such a knot can be tied or how a solid ring can be passed through the matter of another solid one. These things can be done by elementals.

Student. - Are they not all of one class?

Sage. - No. There are different classes for each plane, and division of plane, of nature. Many can never be recognized by men. And those pertaining to one plane do not act in another. You must remember, too, that these "planes" of which we are speaking interpenetrate each other.

Student. - Am I to understand that a clairvoyant or clairaudient has to do with or is affected by a certain special class or classes of elementals?

Sage. - Yes. A clairvoyant can only see the sights properly belonging to the planes his development reaches to or has opened. And the elementals in those planes show to the clairvoyant only such pictures as belong to their plane. Other parts of the idea or thing pictured may be retained in planes not yet open to the seer. For this reason few clairvoyants know the whole truth.

Student. - Is there not some connection between the Karma of man and elementals?

Sage. - A very important one. The elemental world has become a strong factor in the Karma of the human race. Being unconscious, automatic, and photographic, it assumes the complexion of the human family itself. In the earlier ages, when we may postulate that man had not yet begun to make bad Karma, the elemental world was more friendly to man because it had not received unfriendly impressions. But so soon as man began to become ignorant, unfriendly to himself and the rest of creation, the elemental world began to take on exactly the same complexion and return to humanity the exact pay, so to speak, due for the actions of humanity. Or, like a donkey, which, when he is pushed against, will push against you. Or, as a human being, when anger or insult is offered, feels inclined to return the same. So the elemental world, being unconscious force, returns or reacts upon humanity exactly as humanity acted towards it, whether the actions of men were done with the knowledge of these laws or not. So in these times it has come to be that the elemental world has the complexion and action which is the exact result of all the actions and thoughts and desires of men from the earliest times. And, being unconscious and only acting according to the natural laws of its being, the elemental world is a powerful factor in the workings of Karma. And so long as mankind does not cultivate brotherly feeling and charity towards the whole of creation, just so long will the elementals be without the impulse to act for our benefit. But so soon and wherever man or men begin to cultivate brotherly feeling and love for the whole of creation, there and then the elementals begin to take on the new condition.

Student. - How then about the doing of phenomena by adepts?

Sage. - The production of phenomena is not possible without either the aid or disturbance of elementals. Each phenomenon entails the expenditure of great force, and also brings on a correspondingly great disturbance in the elemental world, which disturbance is beyond the limit natural to ordinary human life. It then follows that, as soon as the phenomenon is completed, the disturbance occasioned begins to be compensated for. The elementals are in greatly excited motion, and precipitate themselves in various directions. They are not able to affect those who are protected. But they are able, or rather it is possible for them, to enter into the sphere of unprotected persons, and especially those persons who are engaged in the study of occultism. And then they become agents in concentrating the karma of those persons, producing troubles and disasters often, or other difficulties which otherwise might have been so spread over a period of time as to be not counted more than the ordinary vicissitudes of life. This will go to explain the meaning of the statement that an Adept will not do a phenomenon unless he sees the desire in the mind of another lower or higher Adept or student; for then there is a sympathetic relation established, and also a tacit acceptance of the consequences which may ensue. It will also help to understand the peculiar reluctance often of some persons, who can perform phenomena, to produce them in cases where we may think their production would be beneficial; and also why they are never done in order to compass worldly ends, as is natural for worldly people to suppose might be done, - such as procuring money, transferring objects, influencing minds, and so on.

Student. - Accept my thanks for you instruction.

Sage. - May you reach the terrace of enlightenment!

Path, June, 1888

THE ENQUIRER

Query - Is it well to talk about Occultism to the ordinary enquirer into Theosophy?

W.Q.J. - It is better not to do so. Ordinary enquirers may be attracted to Theosophy because of its mysterious appearance, but that is no reason for giving them just what they demand. For surely later on they will find that the pursuit of the mysteries and the occult is hedged about with many difficulties and that it demands an acquaintance with every other philosophy that ought to have been offered to them when they first enquired. Furthermore it is not the many who are fitted for Occultism, but rather the few, and those few will soon find their way into the path no matter how they may have approached it. Enquirers will then be directed to this philosophy and the ethics of the Theosophical system, as true Occultism springs from philosophy, and its practice is alone safely possible for those who have a right system of ethics.

Query - How is it that H.P.B. so severely criticizes the Western systems of Occultism and yet admits in some of her writings that they lead to the same end as the Eastern system?

W.Q.J. - It is very true that all systems of Occultism lead to the same end, since all must be based on similar principles however distorted some may be in practice, but the road by one will be more difficult than by another until the real highway of Universal Occultism is reached. It was thought by H.P.B. that true Eastern Occultism was the primeval system and hence better than the Western. For the Western is all overgrown with the weeds sown by Judaism in the beginning and mediæval Christianity in the end. So it will be found that although at bottom Western Occultism has the same doctrines as the Eastern, a vast mass of rubbish has to be carried off in order to get at the truth. Any one who will dive into Rosicrucianism will find those difficulties. It must always be borne in mind, too, that H.P.B. in speaking of Eastern Occultism had in view the real thing and not the many systems in India which would juggle the student quite as much as the things in the Western schools.

Speaking for my own beliefs, I do not think Western Occultism is worthy of the name and is only a hodge-podge that produces confusion when the mere outer crust of virtuous living is mastered. It leads to saintliness but not to that higher knowledge which must be added to the good in order to make them also the wise.

The Vahan, June 15, 1891

W.P. - I am very much interested in Theosophy and should like to help the Society. What work can I do?

W.Q.J. - This is a Theosophical business question. Service is rendered in may different ways: by work in the Branches, by spreading literature, by explaining the doctrines and doing away with misconceptions, by contributing money to be used in the work, by constituting oneself a loyal unit if ability and time be lacking; and chiefly always by acquiring a knowledge of Theosophical doctrines so as to be able to give a clear answer to inquiry. One could also procure some inquiring correspondent and by means of letters answer questions as to Theosophical literature and doctrines. These are all general answers, while the question requires almost a personal examination. Any work that is sincerely done in the Society with good motive and to the best of one's ability is good Theosophical work.

If another by altruistic service benefits one, is not such action vicarious and inconsistent with Karma?

W.Q.J. - A common error, which arises from incompletely viewing the doctrine of Karma, is the idea that we interfere with Karma when we benefit another. The question is equally applicable to the doing of any injury to another. It cuts both ways; so we might as well ask if it is not inconsistent with the law and vicarious for one to do any evil act which results harmfully to fellow creature. In neither case is there vicarious atonement or interference. If we can do good to our fellows, that is their good karma and ours also; if we have the opportunity to thus confer benefits and refuse to do so then that is our bad Karma in that we neglect a chance to help another. The Masters once wrote that we should not be thinking on our good or bad Karma, but should do our duty on every hand and at every opportunity, unmindful of what may result to us. It is only a curious kind of conceit, which seems to be the product of nineteenth century civilization, that causes us to falsely imagine that we, weak and ignorant human beings, can interfere with Karma or be vicarious atoners for others. We are all bound up together in one coil of Karma and should ever strive by good acts, good thoughts and high aspirations, to lift a little of the world's heavy Karma, of which our own is a part. Indeed, no man has any Karma of his own unshared by others; we share each one in the common Karma, and the sooner we perceive this and act accordingly the better it will be for us and for the world.

What place have mercy and forgiveness in Theosophy, and are they consistent with Karma?

W.Q.J. - Mercy and forgiveness should have the highest place in that branch of Theosophy which treats of ethics as applied to our conduct. And were it not for the prefect mercifulness of Karma - which is merciful because it is just - we ought long ago to have been wiped out of existence. The very fact that the oppressor, the unjust, the wicked, live out their lives is proof of mercy in the great heart of Nature. They are thus given chance after chance to retrieve their errors and climb, if even on the ladder of pain, to the height of perfection. It is true that Karma is just, because it exacts payment to the last farthing, but on the other hand it is eternally merciful, since it unerringly pays out its compensations. Nor is the shielding from necessary pain true mercy, but is indeed the opposite, for sometimes it is only through pain that the soul acquires the precise knowledge and strength it requires. In my view, mercy and justice go hand in hand when Karma issues it decrees, because that law is accurate, faithful, powerful, and not subject to the weakness, the failure in judgment, the ignorance that always accompany the workings of the ordinary human judgment and action.

G.E.L. - I am a married man, without children, and my wife, who takes no interest in Theosophy, complains that I am neglecting her to attend Theosophical meetings or lectures in the evenings. Should I give up the lectures?

W.Q.J. - Justice to ourselves and those dependent on us would seem to answer that no wife has the right to demand the whole of a man's time. If she cannot attend a lecture or meeting once a week, she ought to be willing that her husband may. But if she considers herself the "legal owner" of the man she married to the extent that she wishes to eat up his entire attention, then of course dissatisfaction will supervene, unjustly founded and wholly inexcusable. If her complaint of neglect is based upon one night in a week devoted to a Theosophical meeting which she has no taste for, the man who submits his own task-master, who ought not to ask other Theosophists to lay down his duty in daily life. Questions between man and wife ought to be settled in the family forum, and not dragged into the field of Theosophical discussion, where they are utterly out of place.

The Vahan, August 1, 1891

B.M. - In both Europe and America, I have met a good many Theosophists who enquire into and appear to dabble in practical applications of the directions found in some of our literature, in the "Upanishads" and in a little book by on Sabapathi Swamy, respecting psychic development, by means of postures, regulating the breath and the like. What can be said upon this?

W.Q. Judge - These attempts at practical Yoga - as it is called are most dangerous, and in addition presumptuous and foolish. It is well understood in the right circles in India, that the directions found in many of the Upanishads should never be practiced except under the following conditions: (a) a complete knowledge of all, and of the consequences, with a knowledge of the correctives to be applied when changes take place; and (b) the possession of a thoroughly competent guide to point out errors, to restrain endeavor and to indicate danger, as well as to cure troubles that ensue. Yet in the face of all this, and of repeated warnings, there are those who will foolhardily begin the practices in complete ignorance. They do not even pursue the ethical regulations that accompany all the other, such as the doing away with all vices, bad habits, uncharitable thoughts and so on; but go in for the practices, merely in the hope of procuring psychic powers. It is time it were stopped, and time that those who give out this literature looked into what they give out to a grasping and stiff-necked generation. That damage has been wrought both to the Society and some of its members cannot be contested, in face of actual experience in all parts of both countries. It is well known that these postures, even when ignorantly used, bring on physiological changes in the body, with great nervous derangements. Further than that the enquiring public is frightened off from our movement by the ill-balanced view of Theosophy and of the Society which these dabblers promulgate. Let us halt before it is too late. Let us give out the ethical and philosophical doctrines for the promulgation of which the Theosophical Society was founded. Thus alone can we accomplish our mission, which is to the world at large and not for the benefit of a few cranky investigators in a field that can only be safely trodden by the thoroughly prepared, the fully armed and the deeply experienced man who has a sound mind and high, pure aspirations, joined with a sound body.

The Vahan, January 1, 1892

E.W.B. - Is it correct for Theosophists to postulate that a "phase of Idolatry is necessary for the poor in mind?" I made and still make a very strong objection to any phase of Idolatry being necessary.

W.Q.J. - Common-sense, truth, discrimination and right rules of life all seem to declare that idolatry is not necessary for the Western world; but we cannot judge the mind of the East any more than we can understand why a Western hero-worshipper should indulge in such a practice.

G.W.R. - The Ego passes through a series of incarnations, in some of which it may inform the body of a man, in others of a woman. Is the sex of the vehicle chosen consciously by the spiritual Ego to perfect knowledge, or does it depend upon the Karma engendered in a preceding life? Can any principle be said to preponderate in one sex more than in another?

W.Q.J. - If masculine quality is the predominant characteristic, the Ego probably will be next in a male body; if not, the other sex. But the whole question is answered by that doctrine of Visihadwaitism which says that "Good Karma is that which is pleasing to Ishwara (the Ego), and bad Karma that which is displeasing to it."

P.C.W. - If animals do not reincarnate, how do they receive a just reparation for the life of suffering which some have to endure?

W.Q.J. - The answer is easy. They do reincarnate, but that which from them goes forth to reincarnation is not similar to the reincarnating principle of the human being. Were we to suppose that the monads now going through the present animal life were reincarnating in a haphazard way, then surely law disappears, our philosophy tumbles to the ground, and a reign of terror in the scheme of evolution ensues.

F.J.D. - What is the difference between forms seen in dreams or vision on an astral plane and those seen on a Kama-Manasic plane? And which of the two are considered as having the greater objective reality? If Kama-Manasic forms accompany Devachanic consciousness, how is this connected with the Higher Ego?

W.Q.J. - Forms seen in dreams and visions are almost always pictures; those on the Kama-Manasic are more often actual forms of that sort of matter. The difference - when existing - is that which there is between a photograph of a form and the form itself. The "forms" of Devachanic consciousness are not objective to us, but are to the being in the Devachanic state of consciousness. As the entity is not free - hence in Devachan - the mind creates for itself all its surroundings in every detail, and also thereby cultivates departments of the nature which could not be cultivated to the same extent elsewhere. The connection with the Higher Ego, as to which F.J.D.'s ideas are vague, is the same connection as in earth-life, only operating by a different channel.

F.G.B. - How am I to reconcile these two statements? - (a) The Seven planes of Cosmic Consciousness correspond to the Seven States of consciousness in man, ( S.D. I. p. 199, O, Ed.; I, p. 221, 3rd Ed.); (b) The Seven States of consciousness in man pertain to quite another question (than the planes of Cosmic Consciousness). ( S.D. I, p. 200, O. Ed; I, p. 221, foot-note, 3rd Ed.)

W.Q.J. - Quotation (b) does not conflict with (a), as attempted to be shown in the question. On p. 199 the seven planes are said to correspond to the seven states of consciousness in man; the third note on p. 200 says that the reference in the diagram to the fourth plane and above includes - or refers to - the four lower planes of cosmic consciousness - which is a totally different thing from human consciousness - and that the three higher planes of cosmic consciousness are inaccessible to present human intellect; and that the seven states of human consciousness pertain to another question. Quite so, and quite plain. The querent left out the word "human" in quotation (b) thus making "a totally different question" of the matter, for there is a great difference between saying "human consciousness" and "consciousness in man." The entire seven planes of cosmic consciousness must correspond with, and may yet not be the same as, the seven states of our present human consciousness for there is a radical disimilarity between a plane and a state, for you may be in a certain state of consciousness and yet function on a plane quiet different; as when the drunken man has all his consciousness in a Kamic state and functions with it on the earthly plane. Further, the seven states of human consciousness may perfectly well be our possession and not be developed for the race beyond the first four states of cosmic consciousness, its seven-fold character being potential with its own upper for divisions based on those of the cosmic. The confusion lies in the words plane and state.

The Vahan, May 1, 1892

S.M. - I can believe in the idea of continual progress of the soul in higher spheres, but cannot understand the idea of its returning again and again to this same earth; can Theosophists give any reason for the latter?

W.Q.J. - Ought to be answered by politely requesting the querent to read what has been for years written hereupon, and after having digested it, then to see if the question is not answered.

M.R. - Is not the Brahmanical faith the antipodes of Universal Brotherhood, in that no one who is not born a Brahman can ever be received into their religion?

W.Q.J. - That faith is not such antipodes, for the Brahmanical faith is not the same as the Brahmanical law of caste, now only a perversion of the actual and eternal divisions among men. Rightly understood and practiced, the real, the pure Brahmanical faith increases universal brotherhood and furnishes for Egos the right stream of heredity for future true progress. But nowadays it is corrupted and hence fulfils not its objects.

The Vahan, June 1, 1892

S.C. - Can any one explain the following sentence, quoted from H.P.B. in the Path for June: "Those who fall off from our living human Mahatmas to fall into the Saptarishis - the Star Rishis - are no Theosophists."

William Q. Judge - This is explained by the fact that there are two classes of beings able to influence mankind at large; the one being the "living human Mahatmas," and the other the non-human beings, who, though not strictly in our stream of evolution, can and sometimes do affect certain human beings. For the purposes of this answer - but not at all as a full description - the Saptarishis, as meant by H.P.B., are in a very advanced class of elementals, able sometimes to communicate with man, and by their apparent knowledge to make him suppose them to be high spiritual beings regularly evolved from the human stage. But, in fact, they are not human spirits, but of the same character as some of the Devas of the Hindus, and only by accident, as it were, work to the real benefit of the race. That is to say, by communicating with them one is deflected from the normal line of human development. In some cases they have influenced certain mediums, who, being deluded, or rather dazzled, by the extraordinary experiences passed through, do not lean to the human side of spiritual evolution. On the other hand, the "living human Mahatmas" form the direct link with the human spirits of all degrees, who have charge of human spiritual evolution.

The Vahan, August 1, 1892

ENVIRONMENT

TO the Western mind the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation contain difficulties which while they seem imaginary to the Eastern student are nevertheless for the Western man as real as any of the other numerous obstructions in the path of salvation. All difficulties are more or less imaginary, for the whole world and all its entanglements are said to be an illusion resulting from the notion of a separate I. But while we exist here in matter, and so long as there is a manifested universe, these illusions are real to that man who has not risen above them to the knowledge that they are but the masks behind which the reality is hidden.

For nearly twenty centuries the Western nations have been building up the notion of a separate I--of meum and tuum-- and it is hard for them to accept any system which goes against those notions.

As they progress in what is called material civilization with all its dazzling allurements and aids to luxury, their delusion is further increased because they appraise the value of their doctrine by the results which seem to flow from it, until at last they push so far what they call the reign of law, that it becomes a reign of terror. All duty to their fellows is excluded from it in practice, although the beautiful doctrines of Jesus are preached to the people daily by preachers who are paid to preach but not to enforce, and who cannot insist upon the practice which should logically follow the theory because the consequences would be a loss of position and livelihood.

So when out of such a nation rises a mind that asks for help to find again the path that was lost, he is unconsciously much affected by the education not only of himself but also of his nation through all these centuries. He has inherited tendencies that are hard to be overcome. He battles with phantasms, real for him but mere dreams for the student who has been brought up under other influences.

When, therefore, he is told to rise above the body, to conquer it, to subdue his passions, his vanity, anger and ambition, he asks, "what if borne down by this environment, which I was involuntarily born into, I shall fail?" Then when told that he must fight or die in the struggle, he may reply that the doctrine of Karma is cold and cruel because it holds him responsible for the consequences which appear to be the result of that unsought environment. It then becomes with him a question whether to fight and die, or to swim on with the current careless as to its conclusion but happy if perhaps it shall carry him into smooth water whose shores are elysian.

Or perhaps he is a student of occultism whose ambition has been fired by the prospect of adeptship, of attaining powers over nature, or what not.

Beginning the struggle he presently finds himself beset with difficulties which, not long after, he is convinced are solely the result of his environment. In his heart he says that Karma has unkindly put him where he must constantly work for a living for himself and a family: or he has a life long partner whose attitude is such that he is sure were he away from her he could progress: until at last he calls upon heaven to interpose and change the surroundings so opposed to his perfecting himself.

This man has indeed erred worse than the first. He has wrongly supposed that his environment was a thing to be hated and spurned away. Without distinctly so saying to himself, he has nursed within the recesses of his being the idea that he like Buddha could in this one life triumph over all the implacable forces and powers that bar the way to Nirvana. We should remember that the Buddha does not come every day but is the efflorescence of ages, who when the time is ripe surely appears in one place and in one body, not to work for his own advancement but for the salvation of the world.

What then of environment and what of its power over us?

Is environment Karma or is it Reincarnation? The LAW is Karma, reincarnation is only an incident. It is one of the means which The Law uses to bring us at last to the true light. The wheel of rebirths is turned over and over again by us in obedience to this law, so that we may at last come to place our entire reliance upon Karma. Nor is our environment Karma itself, for Karma is the subtle power which works in that environment.

There is nothing but the SELF--using the word as Max Müller does to designate the Supreme Soul and its environment. The Aryans for the latter use the word Kosams or sheaths. So that there is only this Self and the various sheaths by which it is clothed, beginning with the most intangible and coming down to the body, while outside of that and common to all is what is commonly known as environment, whereas the word should be held to include all that is not The Self.

How unphilosophical therefore it is to quarrel with our surroundings, and to desire to escape them? We only escape one kind to immediately fall into another. And even did we come into the society of the wisest devotees we would still carry the environment of the Self in our own bodies, which will always be our enemy so long as we do not know what it is in all its smallest details. Coming down then to the particular person, it is plain that that part of the environment which consists in the circumstances of life and personal surroundings is only an incident, and that the real environment to be understood and cared about is that in which Karma itself inheres in us.

Thus we see that it is a mistake to say as we often hear it said--"If he only had a fair chance; if his surroundings were more favorable he would do better," since he really could not be in any other circumstances at that time, for if he were it would not be he but some one else. It must be necessary for him to pass through those identical trials and disadvantages to perfect the Self; and it is only because we see but an infinitesimal part of the long series that any apparent confusion or difficulty arises. So our strife will be, not to escape from anything, but to realize that these Kosams, or sheaths, are an integral portion of ourselves, which we must fully understand before we can change the abhorred surroundings. This is done by acknowledging the unity of spirit, by knowing that everything, good and bad alike, is the Supreme. We then come into harmony with the Supreme Soul, with the whole universe, and no environment is detrimental.

The very first step is to rise from considering the mere outside delusive environment, knowing it to be the result of past lives, the fruition of Karma done, and say with Uddalaka in speaking to his son:

"All this Universe has the Deity for its life. That Deity is the Truth. He is the Universal soul. He Thou art, O Svetaketu!"*

HADJI ERINN
Path, February, 1887

THE ESOTERIC SHE

The Late Mme. Blavatsky - A Sketch of Her Career
By William Quan Judge

A WOMAN who, for one reason or another, has kept the world - first her little child world and afterward two hemispheres - talking of her, disputing about her, defending or assailing her character and motives, joining her enterprise or opposing it might and main, and in her death being as much telegraphed about between two continents as an emperor, must have been a remarkable person. such was Mme. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, born under the power of the holy Tzar, in the family of the Hahns, descended on one side from the famous crusader, Count Rottenstern, who added Hahn, a cock, to his name because that bird saved his life from a wily Saracen who had come into his tent to murder him.

Hardly any circumstance or epoch in Mme. Blavatsky's career was prosaic. She chose to be born into this life at Ekaterinoslaw, Russia, in the year 1831, when coffins and desolation were everywhere from the plague of cholera. The child was so delicate that the family decided upon immediate baptism under the rites of the Greek Catholic Church. This was in itself not common, but the ceremony was - under the luck that ever was with Helena - more remarkable and startling still. At this ceremony all the relatives are present and stand holding lighted candles. As one was absent a young child, aunt of the infant Helena, was made proxy for the absentee, and given a candle like the rest. Tired out by the effort, this young proxy sank down to the floor unnoticed by the others, and, just as the sponsors were renouncing the evil one on the babe's behalf, by three times spitting on the floor, the sitting witness with her candle accidentally set fire to the robes of the officiating priest, and instantly there was a small conflagration, in which many of those present were seriously burned. Thus amid the scourge of death in the land was Mme. Blavatsky ushered into our world, and in the flames baptized by the priests of a Church whose fallacious dogmas she did much in her life to expose.

She was connected with the rulers of Russia. Speaking in 1881, her uncle, Gen. Fadeef, joint Councillor of State of Russia, said that, as daughter of Col. Peter Hahn, she was grand-daughter of Gen. Alexis Hahn von Rottenstern Hahn of old Mecklenburg stock, settled in Russia, and on her mother's side daughter of Héléne Fadeef and grand-daughter of Princess Helena Dolgorouky. Her maternal ancestors were of the oldest families in Russia and direct descendants of the Prince or Grand Duke Rurik, the first ruler of Russia. Several ladies of the family belonged to the imperial house, becoming Czarinas by marriage. One of them, a Dolgorouky, married the grandfather of Peter the Great, and another was betrothed to Czar Peter II. Through these connections it naturally resulted that Mme. Blavatsky was acquainted personally with many noble Russians. In Paris I met three princes of Russia and one well-known General, who told of her youth and the wonderful things related about her then; and in Germany I met the Prince Emile de Wittgenstein of one of the many Russo-German families, and himself cousin to the Empress of Russia and aide-de-camp to the Czar, who told me that he was an old family friend of hers, who heard much about her in early years, but, to his regret, had never had the fortune to see her again after a brief visit made with her father to his house. But he joined her famous Theosophical Society by correspondence, and wrote, after the war with Turkey, that he had been told in a letter from her that no hurt would come to him during the campaign, and such turned out to be the fact.

As a child she was the wonder of the neighborhood and the terror of the simpler serfs. Russia teems with superstitions and omens, and as Helena was born on the seventh month and between the 30th and 31st day, she was supposed by the nurses and servants to have powers and virtues possessed by no one else. And these supposed powers made her the cynosure of all in her early youth. She was allowed liberties given none others, and as soon as she could understand she was given by her nurses the chief part in a mystic Russian ceremony performed about the house and grounds on the 30th of July with the object of propitiating the house demon. The education she got was fragmentary, and in itself so inadequate as to be one more cause among many for the belief of her friends in later life that she was endowed with abnormal psychic powers, or else in verity assisted by those unseen beings who she asserted were her helpers and who were men living on the earth, but possessed of developed senses that laughed at time and space. In girlhood she was bound by no restraint of conventionality, but rode any Cossack horse in a man's saddle, and later on spent a long time with her father with his regiment in the field, where, with her sister, she became the pet of the soldiers. In 1844, when 14, her father took her to London and Paris, where some progress was made in music, and before 1848 she returned home.

Her marriage in 1848 to Gen. Nicephore Blavatsky, the Governor of Erivan in the Caucasus, gave her the name of Blavatsky, borne till her death. This marriage, like all other events in her life, was full of pyrotechnics. Her abrupt style had led her female friends to say that she could not make the old Blavatsky marry her, and out of sheer bravado she declared she could, and sure enough, he did propose and was accepted. Then the awful fact obtruded itself on Helena's mind that this could not - in Russia - be undone. They were married, but the affair was signalized by Mme. Blavatsky's breaking a candlestick over his head and precipitately leaving the house, never to see him again. After her determination was evident, her father assisted her in a life of travel which began from that date, and not until 1858 did she return to Russia. Meanwhile her steps led her to America in 1851, to Canada, to New Orleans, to Mexico, off to India, and back again in 1853 to the United States. Then her relatives lost sight of her once more until 1858, when her coming back was like other events in her history. It was a wintry night, and a wedding party was on at the home in Russia. Guests had arrived, and suddenly, interrupting the meal, the bell rang violently, and there, unannounced, was Mme. Blavatsky at the door.

From this point the family and many friends testify, both by letter and by articles in the Rebus, a well-known journal in Russia, and in other papers, a constant series of marvels wholly unexplainable on the theory of jugglery was constantly occurring. They were of such a character that hundreds of friends from great distances were constantly visiting the house to see the wonderful Mme. Blavatsky. Many were incredulous, many believed it was magic, and others started charges of fraud. The superstitious Gooriel and Mingrelian nobility came in crowds and talked incessantly after, calling her a magician. They came to see the marvels others reported, to see her sitting quietly reading while tables and chairs moved of themselves and low raps in every direction seemed to reply to questions. Among many testified to was one done for her brother, who doubted her powers. A small chess table stood on the floor. Very light - a child could lift it and a man break it. One asked if Mme. Blavatsky could fasten it by will to the floor. She then said to examine it, and they found it loose. After that, and being some distance off, she said, "Try it again." They then found that no power of theirs could stir it, and her brother supposing from his great strength that this "trick" could easily be exposed, embraced the little table and shook and pulled it without effect, except to make it groan and creak. So with wall and furniture rapping, objects moving, messages about distant happenings arriving by aerial port, the whole family and neighborhood were in a constant state of excitement. Mme. Blavatsky said herself that this was a period when she was letting her psychic forces play, and learning fully to understand and control them.

But the spirit of unrest came freshly again, and she started out once more to find, as she wrote to me, "the men and women whom I want to prepare for the work of a great philosophical and ethical movement that I expect to start in a later time." Going to Spezzia in a Greek vessel, the usual display of natural circumstances took place, and the boat was blown up by an explosion of gunpowder in the cargo. Only a few of those on board were saved, she among them. This led her to Cairo, in Egypt, where, in 1871, she started a society with the object of investigating spiritualism so as to expose its fallacies, if any, and to put its facts on a firm, scientific, and reasonable basis, if possible. But it only lasted fourteen days, and she wrote about it then: "It is a heap of ruins - majestic, but as suggestive as those of the Pharoahs' tombs."

It was, however, in the United States that she really began the work that has made her name well known in Europe, Asia, and America; made her notorious in the eyes of those who dislike all reformers, but great and famous for those who say her works have benefited them. Prior to 1875 she was again investigating the claims of spiritualism in this country, and wrote home then analyzing it, declaring false its assertion that the dead were heard from, and showing that, on the other hand, the phenomena exhibited a great psycho-physiological change going on here, which, if allowed to go on in our present merely material civilization, would bring about great disaster, morally and physically.

Then in 1875, in New York, she started the Theosophical Society, aided by Col. H. S. Olcott and others, declaring its objects to be the making of a nucleus for a universal brotherhood, the study of ancient and other religions and sciences, and the investigation of the psychical and recondite laws affecting man and nature. There certainly was no selfish object in this, nor any desire to raise money. She was in receipt of funds from sources in Russia and other places until they were cut off by reason of her becoming an American citizen, and also because her unremunerated labors for the society prevented her doing literary work on Russian magazines, where all her writings would be taken eagerly. As soon as the Theosophical Society was started she said to the writer that a book had to be written for its use. Isis Unveiled was then begun, and unremittingly she worked at it night and day until the moment when a publisher was secured for it.

Meanwhile crowds of visitors were constantly calling at her rooms in Irving Place, later in Thirty-fourth street, and last in Forty-seventh street and Eighth avenue. The newspapers were full of her supposed powers or of laughter at the possibilities in man that she and her society asserted. A prominent New York daily wrote of her thus: "A woman of as remarkable characteristics as Cagliostro himself, and one who is every day as differently judged by different people as the renowned Count was in his day. By those who know her slightly she is called a charlatan; better acquaintance made you think she was learned; and those who were intimate with her were either carried away with belief in her power or completely puzzled." Isis Unveiled attracted wide attention, and all the New York papers reviewed it, each saying that it exhibited immense research. The strange part of this is, as I and many others can testify as eyewitnesses to the production of the book, that the writer had no library in which to make researches and possessed no notes of investigation or reading previously done. All was written straight out of hand. And yet it is full of references to books in the British Museum and other great libraries, and every reference is correct. Either, then, we have, as to that book, a woman who was capable of storing in her memory a mass of facts, dates, numbers, titles, and subjects such as no other human being ever was capable of, or her claim to help from unseen beings is just.

In 1878, Isis Unveiled having been published, Mme. Blavatsky informed her friends that she must go to India and start there the same movement of the Theosophical Society. So in December of that year she and Col. Olcott and two more went out to India, stopping at London for a while. Arriving in Bombay, they found three or four Hindoos to meet them who had heard from afar of the matter. A place was hired in the native part of the town, and soon she and Col. Olcott started the Theosophist, a magazine that became at once well known there and was widely bought in the West.

There in Bombay and later in Adyar, Madras, Mme. Blavatsky worked day after day in all seasons, editing her magazine and carrying on an immense correspondence with people in every part of the world interested in theosophy, and also daily disputing and discussing with learned Hindoos who constantly called. Phenomena occurred there also very often, and later the society for discovering nothing about the psychic world investigated these, and came to the conclusion that this woman of no fortune, who was never before publicly heard of in India, had managed, in some way they could not explain, to get up a vast conspiracy that ramified all over India, including men of all ranks, by means of which she was enabled to produce pretended phenomena. I give this conclusion as one adopted by many. For any one who knew her and who knows India, with its hundreds of different languages, none of which she knew, the conclusion is absurd. The Hindoos believed in her, said always that she could explain to them their own scriptures and philosophies where the Brahmins had lost or concealed the key, and that by her efforts and the work of the society founded through her, India's young men were being saved from the blank materialism which is the only religion the West can ever give a Hindoo.

In 1887 Mme. Blavatsky returned to England, and there started another theosophical magazine, called Lucifer, and immediately stirred up the movement in Europe. Day and night there, as in New York and India, she wrote and spoke, incessantly corresponding with people everywhere, editing Lucifer, and making more books for her beloved society, and never possessed of means, never getting from the world at large anything save abuse wholly undeserved. The Key to Theosophy was written in London, and also The Secret Doctrine, which is the great text book for Theosophists. The Voice of the Silence was written there too, and is meant for devotional Theosophists. Writing, writing, writing from morn till night was her fate here. Yet, although scandalized and abused here as elsewhere, she made many devoted friends, for there never was anything half way in her history. Those who met her or heard of her were always either staunch friends or bitter enemies.

The Secret Doctrine led to the coming into the society of Mrs. Annie Besant, and then Mme. Blavatsky began to say that her labors were coming to an end, for here was a woman who had the courage of the ancient reformers and who would help carry on the movement in England unflinchingly. The Secret Doctrine was sent to Mr. Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette to review, but none of his usual reviewers felt equal to it and he asked Mrs. Besant if she could review it. She accepted the task, reviewed, and then wanted an introduction to the writer. Soon after that she joined the society, first fully investigating Mme. Blavatsky's character, and threw in her entire forces with the Theosophists. Then a permanent London headquarters was started and still exists. And there Mme. Blavatsky passed away, with the knowledge that the society she had striven so hard for at any cost was at last an entity able to struggle for itself.

In her dying moment she showed that her life had been spent for an idea, with full consciousness that in the eyes of the world it was Utopian, but in her own necessary for the race. She implored her friends not to allow her then ending incarnation to become a failure by the failure of the movement started and carried on with so much of suffering. She never in all her life made money or asked for it. Venal writers and spiteful men and women have said she strove to get money from so-called dupes, but all her intimate friends know that over and over again she has refused money; that always she has had friends who would give her all they had if she would take it, but she never took any nor asked it. On the other hand, her philosophy and her high ideals have caused others to try to help all those in need. Impelled by such incentive, one rich Theosophist gave her $5,000 to found a working girls' club at Bow, in London, and one day, after Mrs. Besant had made the arrangements for the house and the rest, Mme. Blavatsky, although sick and old, went down there herself and opened the club in the name of the society.

The aim and object of her life were to strike off the shackles forged by priestcraft for the mind of man. She wished all men to know that they are God in fact, and that as men they must bear the burden of their own sins, for no one else can do it. Hence she brought forward to the West the old Eastern doctrines of karma and reincarnation. Under the first, the law of justice, she said each must answer for himself, and under the second make answer on the earth where all his acts were done. She also desired that science should be brought back to the true ground where life and intelligence are admitted to be within and acting on and through every atom in the universe. Hence her object was to make religion scientific and science religious, so that the dogmatism of each might disappear.

Her life since 1875 was spent in the unremitting endeavor to draw within the Theosophical Society those who could work unselfishly to propagate an ethics and philosophy tending to realize the brotherhood of man by showing the real unity and essential non-separateness of every being. And her books were written with the declared object of furnishing the material for intellectual and scientific progress on those lines. The theory of man's origin, powers, and destiny brought forward by her, drawn from ancient Indian sources, places us upon a higher pedestal that that given by either religion or science, for it gives to each the possibility of developing the godlike powers within and of at last becoming a co-worker with nature.

As every one must die at last, we will not say that her demise was a loss; but if she had not lived and done what she did humanity would not have had the impulse and the ideas toward the good which it was her mission to give and to proclaim. And there are today scores, nay, hundreds, of devout, earnest men and women intent on purifying their own lives and sweetening the lives of others, who trace their hopes and aspirations to the wisdom-religion revived in the West through her efforts, and who gratefully avow that their dearest possessions are the result of her toilsome and self-sacrificing life. If they, in turn, live aright and do good, they will be but illustrating the doctrine which she daily taught and hourly practised.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

New York Sun, Sept. 26, 1892

EVOLUTION

THE word "evolution" is the best word from a theosophical standpoint to use in treating of the genesis of men and things, as the process which it designates is that which has been always stated in the ancient books from whose perusal the tenets of the wisdom religion can be gathered. In the Bhagavad Gita we find Krishna saying that "at the beginning of the day of Brahma all things come forth from the non-developed principle, and at the coming on of Brahma's night they are resolved into it again," and that this process goes on from age to age. This exactly states evolution as it is defined in our dictionaries, where it is said to be a process of coming forth or a development. The "days and nights of Brahma" are immense periods of time during which evolution proceeds, the manifestation of things being the "day" and their periodical resolution into the Absolute the "night."

If, then, everything is evolved, the word creation can only be properly applied to any combination of things already in existence, since the primordial matter or basis cannot be created.

The basis of the theosophical system is evolution, for in theosophy it is held that all things are already in esse, being brought forth or evolved from time to time in conformity to the inherent law of the Absolute. The very next question to be asked is, What is this inherent law of the Absolute? as nearly as can be stated. Although we do not and cannot know the Absolute, we have enough data from which to draw the conclusion that its inherent law is to periodically come forth from subjectivity into objectivity and to return again to the former, and so on without any cessation. In the objective world we have a figure or illustration of this in the rising and setting of the sun, which of all natural objects best shows the influence of the law. It rises, as H. P. Blavatsky says, from the (to us) subjective, and at night returns to the subjective again, remaining in the objective world during the day. If we substitute, as we must when attempting to draw correspondences between the worlds, the word "state" for locality or place, and instead of the sun we call that object "the Absolute," we have a perfect figure, for then we will have the Absolute rising above the horizon of consciousness from the subjective state, and its setting again for that consciousness when the time of night arrives that is, the night of Brahma. This law of periodicity is the same as that of the cycles, which can be seen governing in every department of nature.

But let us assume a point of departure so as to get a rapid survey of evolution theosophically considered. And let it be at the time when this period of manifestation began. What was projected into the objective world at that time must have been life itself, which under the action of the law of differentiation split itself up into a vast number of lives, which we may call individual, the quantity of which it is not possible for us of finite mind to count. In the Hindu system these are called Jivas and Jivatman. Within these lives there is contained the entire plan to be pursued during the whole period of manifestation, since each life is a small copy of the great All from which it came. Here a difficulty arises for studious minds, calling for some attention, for they may ask "What then do you do with that which we call 'matter', and by and through which the lives manifest themselves?"

The reply is that the so-called matter is an illusion and is not real matter, but that the latter--sometime known in Europe as primordial matter--cannot be seen by us. The real matter is itself only another form of the life first thrown out, but in a less perfect state of differentiation, and it is on a screen of this real matter that its inner energies project pictures which we call matter, mistaking them for the real. It may then be further asked, "Have we not been led to suppose that that which we supposed was matter but which you now say is an illusion is something absolutely necessary to the soul for acquiring experience of nature?" To this I reply that such is not the case, but that the matter needed for the soul to acquire experience through is the real unseen matter. It is that matter of which psychic bodies are composed, and those other "material" things all the way up to spirit. It is to this that the Bhagavad Gita refers where it says that spirit (purusha) and matter (prakriti) are coeternal and not divisible from each other. That which we and science are accustomed to designate matter is nothing more than our limited and partial cognition of the phenomena of the real or primordial matter. This position is not overturned by pointing to the fact that all men in general have the same cognitions of the same objects, that square objects are always square and that shadows fall in the same line for all normal people, for even in our own experience we see that there is such a thing as a collective change of cognition, and that thus it is quite possible that all normal people are merely on the single plane of consciousness where they are not yet able to cognize anything else. In the case of hypnotizing everything appears to the subject to be different at the will of the operator, which would not be possible if objects had any inherent actuality of their own apart from our consciousness.

In order to justify a discussion of the Theosophical system of evolution, it is necessary to see if there be any radical difference between it and that which is accepted in the world, either in scientific circles or among Theologians. That there is such a distinction can be seen at once, and we will take first that between it and Theology. Here, of course, this is in respect to the genesis of the inner man more especially, although Theology makes some claim to know about race descent. The Church either says that the soul of each man is a special creation in each case or remains silent on the subject, leaving us, as it was once so much the fashion to say, "In the hands of a merciful Providence," who after all says nothing on the matter. But when the question of the race is raised, then the priest points to the Bible, saying that we all come from one pair, Adam and Eve. On this point Theology is more sure than science, as the latter has no data yet and does not really know whether we owe our origin to one pair, male and female, or to many. Theosophy, on the other hand, differs from the Church, asserting that Paramatma alone is self-existing, single, eternal, immutable, and common to all creatures, high and low alike; hence it never was and never will be created; that the soul of man evolves, is consciousness itself, and is not specially created for each man born on the earth, but assumes through countless incarnations different bodies at different times. Underlying this must be the proposition that, for each Manvantara or period of manifestation, there is a definite number of souls or egos who project themselves into the current of evolution which is to prevail for that period or manvantara. Of course this subject is limitless, and the consideration of the vast number of systems and worlds where the same process is going on with a definite number of egos in each, staggers the minds of most of those who take the subject up. And of course I do not mean to be understood as saying that there is a definite number of egos in the whole collection of systems in which we may imagine evolution as proceeding, for there could be no such definiteness considered in the mass, as that would be the same as taking the measure of the Absolute. But in viewing any part of the manifestation of the Absolute, it is allowable for us to say that there are to be found such a definite number of egos in that particular system under consideration; this is one of the necessities of our finite consciousness. Following out the line of our own argument we reach the conclusion that, included within the great wave of evolution which relates to the system of which this earth is a part, there are just so many egos either fully developed or in a latent state. These have gone round and round the wheel of rebirth, and will continue to do so until the wave shall meet and be transformed into another. Therefore there could be no such thing as a special creation of souls for the different human beings born on this earth, and for the additional reason that, if there were, then spirit would be made subservient to illusion, to mere human bodies. So that in respect to theology we deny the propositions, first, that there is any special creation of souls, second, that there is, or was, or could be by any possibility any creation of this world or of any other, and third, that the human race descended from one pair.

In taking up the difference existing between our theory and that of science we find the task easy. Upon the question of progress, and how progress or civilization may be attained by man, and whether any progress could be possible if the theories of science be true, our position is that there could be no progress if the law of evolution as taught in the schools is true, even in a material sense. In this particular we are diametrically opposed to science. Its assumption is that the present race on the earth may be supposed to belong to a common stock which in its infancy was rude and barbarous, knowing little more than the animal, living like the animal, and learning all it now knows simply by experience gained in its contest with nature through its development. Hence they give us the paleolithic age, the neolithic age, and so on. In this scheme we find no explanation of how man comes to have innate ideas. Some, however, seeing the necessity for an explanation of this phenomenon, attempt it in various ways; and it is a phenomenon of the greatest importance. It is explained by theosophy in a way peculiar to itself, and of which more will be said as we go on.

W.Q.J.
Path,August,1890

FAREWELL REMARKS OF MR. JUDGE
ON THE VICE-PRESIDENCY

[ Copy of a letter from Mr. Judge to Col. Olcott]

Dear Colonel,

Last June and July I laid before you the point that I was never elected Vice-President of the "Theosophical Society," consequently that office was then known to you to be vacant. The decision then arrived at by you, Mr. Bertram Keightley, and Mr. George R.S. Mead that I was Vice-President was invalid, of no effect, and quite contrary to the fact. The original notification to the public that my name was attached to the office was merely a notice of your selection, without the authority of the Society you are the President-Founder of, and without any election by a competent, regular and representative convention of that Society. I also informed you in July that no notice was ever given to me of the said invalid selection.

A long and bitter fight has been waged by Mrs. Annie Besant and others, one of the objects of which is to compel me to resign the said office which I do not hold. I have refused to accede to their requests, and would refuse even did I hold that I was legally the Vice-President.

But as I have worked a long time with you in the cause of Theosophy, and am with you one of those who helped H.P.B. to start the American movement in 1875, as I would aid you in all proper ways, and since I hear that you are to be in London this summer to "settle the Judge case," as you have proclaimed, I now beg to again point out to you that I do not hold and never have held the office of Vice-President of any Theosophical Society of which I am a member, and that you can consider this as my declaration that I cannot and will not oppose you filling the said so-called office in any way you may see fit, either arbitrarily or other wise.

While on this point I would say to you, that my signing my name hitherto as "Vice-President" was in ignorance of the important facts since ascertained, showing conclusively the de facto character of the act. Should you ask why then I raised the objection so long ago as July, I reply that the Master whom you think I do not hear from directed me to do so, and at that time I found only the fact of non-election in support of it.

Fraternally,
(Signed) William Q. Judge

May 8th,1895
The Vahan June 1, 1895
The Irish Theosophist
June 15, 1895

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

Fifteen years ago in November the Theosophical Society was started at the residence of H.P. Blavatsky in Irving Place, New York City, and was inaugurated in Mott Memorial Hall not far away. Since then the great Emile Bournouf has said in a prominent Parisian journal that the Theosophical Society is one of the three great movements of the age, the other two being Roman Catholicism and Buddhism. Of those who helped to start it, but few remain in the ranks. Nearly all the spiritualists dropped out in disgust, because they saw in it a foe to the worship of the dead. The Society has been often since then solemnly declared dead by a coroner's inquest composed of those who neither knew nor cared.

Its center of activity was moved to India in pursuance of a deliberate purpose, a purpose which has been accomplished. That was to affect the thought of the age even if in doing so the Society itself should meet its death. There, too, the coroner's inquest was held, but by those who knew and feared, and who rendered the same verdict, rehashed last month by Major Twigg in Chicago, who informed astonished members and the world that the Society was dead in India. However, we may disbelieve his report in view of over 160 branches there and an imposing headquarters building erected upon 21 acres of land.

The wave of interest once more arose in the United States, and upon our records are 49 Branches reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and after rolling over this country it suddenly raised itself in England where the sphinx of the Century, the original founder, took hold of the work in 1886. Then there was in England one Branch; now there are many, and the Society there owns a building for its centre of activity from which the wave is bound to roll again even unto far Cathay.

The work of those Fifteen years is not to be measured by the number of Branches or by the three magazines carried on in the three great countries, India, England, and the United States. It is to be measured by the thoughts of men. What are they now? They are full of the great doctrines the Adepts said should be thoughts once more, drawn from Brahmanism and Buddhism, - Karma and Reincarnation; with all the other doctrines brought forward prominently to the Occident. It was once impossible to find three men in New York or London who know the word theosophy. Now the Reviews print articles upon it, people in drawing rooms speak of it, the clerk, the merchant, and the professor read of it. But surer sign than all, though sadder than any, is the adoption of the terms found in Theosophical literature by men who design thereby to gain a living or get fame. They could not do this with that which was unfashionable, unfamiliar, or repulsive. Next comes literature in general. It is full of the words so long used by our members. The greatest publishers do not fear to print books ground out by writers whose knowledge of theosophy is derived for its popularity. They are sure barometers. They indicate an area of pressure or of high expansion.

Who did this, How was it? You may say that it would have been anyway. But you cannot rub out an historical fact, nor postulate for the past reasons which are impossible by reason of their non-existence. There is a sequence in cause and effect that compels us to accept all the factors. The Theosophical Society for many years has been giving out theosophical ideas and language, and now the whole world is using them. These fifteen years of its work just fading out to reincarnate in its sixteenth have been of use to the world, even though the world should deny it.

And who has held the position for strong and weak members alike? Two figures, a woman and a man, Helena P. Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott. His devotion and her tremendous strength have carried us to this point, and been the main agents for the influence our movement now has upon the thought of the world.

Such work can not be stayed or counteracted. The flimsy edifice of dogmatism is crumbling, the period of total disintegration is nearer, and our work has only begun. We have to hasten on with the materials for the future, so that ere the old structure is demolished the new one shall be ready for occupation. In five more years the Society will be of age, and must then be able to stand upon its feet, to think for itself, to act upon its convictions. Every day of this sixteenth year should be used wisely, earnestly, thoroughly, so that we shall be a able at each anniversary to feel that we have lived nearer to our highest ideals and at least tried to do the work which of all others humanity needs.

Path, December, 1890

FIVE YEARS FINISHED

About eighteen hundred and twenty-five days have slipped away since the PATH was started, and now we enter upon the sixth year without any prospect of having to abandon the work. If asked whether we feel satisfaction regarding the five years finished last month, the reply must be that it is too soon to look for satisfaction. A great many persons have praised and blamed the magazine and its editor; he himself never had any great concern with what people think about it, but an effort has always been made to present what we feel is true, free from bias or desire for gain. In the course of a few centuries and in other lives, it will be possible to find out just what influence the PATH has exerted. Just now we must content ourselves with offering thanks to those who with pen or money have assisted this most obscure journal, and to direct their attention to the new American theosophical year, which, beginning in April with the PATH's, has so much of promise and potency for the future. Let us grasp the thread once more!

Path, April, 1891

THE FORMATION OF CRYSTALS

In the writings of Froëbel, the German mineralogist and educator, there are some interesting passages on the formation of crystals. He says, "The world of crystals proclaimed to me in distinct and unequivocal terms the laws of human life."

"What the spiritual eye sees inwardly in the world of thought and mind, it sees outwardly in the world of crystals."

"Man in his external manifestation, like the crystal, bearing within himself the living unity, shows at first more one-sidedness, individuality, and incompleteness, and only at a later period rises to all-sidedness, harmony, and completeness."

Having thus perceived intuitionally the inner meaning of development as seen in crystals, he describes in detail the action of force in its tendency "to represent each thing in unity, individuality, and diversity; to generalize the most particular and to represent the most general in the most particular; and lastly, to make the internal external, the external internal, and to represent both in harmony and union." He speaks especially of "the tendency of force to derive the line and the plane from the point, to represent the point as a line and as a plane, the line as a point and as a plane, to contract the line into a point and expand it into a plane," etc. These processes are illustrated in the formation of the different crystal forms. The inner nature of the force is always spherical, and the crystal having passed through various stages tends to return to the spherical form.

"The force at last reaches so high a degree of tension of inner and outer opposition that even the external results show that the tendency to relieve this antithesis has become the chief tendency of the force."

This is the story of evolution and involution given in a few words, and is even more significant for us with our wider knowledge than it was for Froëbel himself. Yet he says that to him the crystals were "a mirror of the development and history of mankind." Much more are they so for the student of evolution.

He describes the development of the cube form according to the law of necessity. The force proceeds from a centre, and there is always at that centre a set of three bilateral directions perpendicular to one another.

"The result of the predominance of these three bilateral perpendicular directions must be a crystal limited by straight lines and planes, revealing in every part the inner nature and action of the force."

The cube is the only form which fulfills these conditions. For "each of the eight corners shows the perpendicularity of the three bilateral directions at the centre, and thus indicates externally the centre of the cube. Similarly, the three sets of four parallel edges show each of the inner directions fourfold. The six faces mark in their centres the six terminal points of the three bilateral directions, and thus determine the invisible centre of the cube."

He then explains the development of other regular forms from the cube - the tetrahedron and octahedron, by the tendency of the corners to become planes, the faces to become points, etc., and thus traces the inner meaning of the development of form. Following his line of thought carefully, one is not surprised that he saw so clearly the analogy between human development and the development of crystals, and that he saw in crystallography "the possibility of direct proof of the inner connection of all things."

SARAH CORBETT, F.T.S.

EDITOR'S NOTE - The foregoing short article is highly suggestive, and a study of the laws governing formation of crystals would be very instructive for Theosophists. The whole scheme of evolution on the planet had to be gone through in the mineral kingdom before the materials could be gotten ready for animal and present human bodies. These laws therefore are at the bottom of our mental and physical acts, inclusive of occult phenomena of every sort. Next after this are chemical laws, which must be understood as well as the first before the student can do anything practical in occultism. And when students study these and comprehend their complexity and vast range, it will be seen how foolish it is to wish to be Adepts when we are only children, and how much better it would be for the world if Theosophists hungered to seek and to save the world from its sorrow, rather than to be ever wishing to see wonders in nature and to do what only scientific training for lives can enable us to do. Disciples are many, but earnest, devoted, self-sacrificing disciples are few.

Path, February, 1893

"FORMS" OF ELEMENTALS

STUDENT. - What principal idea would it be well for me to dwell upon in my studies on the subject of elementals?

Sage. - You ought to clearly fix in your mind and fully comprehend a few facts and the laws relating to them. As the elemental world is wholly different from the one visible to you, the laws governing them and their actions cannot as yet be completely defined in terms now used either by scientific or metaphysical schools. For that reason, only as partial description is possible. Some of those facts I will give you, it being well understood that I am not including all classes of elemental beings in my remarks.

First, then, Elementals have no form.

Student. - You mean, I suppose, that they have no limited form or body as ours, having a surface upon which sensation appears to be located.

Sage. - Not only so, but also that they have not even a shadowy, vague, astral form such as is commonly ascribed to ghosts. They have no distinct personal form in which to reveal themselves.

Student. - How am I to understand that, in view of the instances given by Bulwer Lytton and others of appearances of elementals in certain forms?

Sage. - The shape given to or assumed by any elemental is always subjective in its origin. It is produced by the person who sees, and who, in order to be more sensible of the elemental's presence, has unconsciously given it a form. Or it may be due to a collective impression on many individuals, resulting in the assumption of a definite shape which is the result to the combined impressions.

Student. - Is this how we may accept as true the story of Luther's seeing the devil?

Sage. - Yes. Luther from his youth had imagined a personal devil, the head of the fraternity of wicked ones, who had a certain specific form. This instantly clothed the elementals that Luther evoked, either through intense enthusiasm or from disease, with the old image reared and solidified in his mind; and he called it the Devil.

Student. - That reminds me of a friend who told me that in his youth he saw the conventional devil walk out of the fire place and pass across the room, and that ever since he believed the devil had an objective existence.

Sage. - In the same way also you can understand the extraordinary occurrences at Salem in the United States, when hysterical and mediumistic women and children saw the devil and also various imps of different shapes. Some of these gave the victims information. They were all elementals, and took their illusionary forms from the imaginations and memory of the poor people who were afflicted.

Student. - But there are cases where a certain form always appears. Such as a small, curiously-dressed woman who had never existed in the imagination of those seeing her; and other regularly recurring appearances. How were those produced, since the persons never had such a picture before them?

Sage. - These pictures are found in the aura of the person, and are due to pre-natal impressions. Each child emerges into life the possessor of pictures floating about the clinging to it, derived from the mother; and thus you can go back an enormous distance in time for these pictures, all through the long line of you descent. It is a part of the action of the same law which causes effect upon a child's body through influences acting on the mother during gestation.¹

Student. - In order, then, to know the cause of any such appearance, one must be able to look back, not only into the person's present life, but also into the ancestor's past?

Sage. - Precisely. And for that reason an occultist is not hasty in giving his opinion on these particular facts. He can only state the general law, for a life might be wasted in needless investigation of an unimportant past. You can see that there would be no justification for going over a whole lifetime's small affairs in order to tell a person at what time or juncture an image was projected before his mind. Thousands of such impressions are made every year. That they are not developed into memory does not prove their non-existence. Like the unseen picture upon the photographer's sensitive plate, they lie awaiting the hour of development.

Student. - In what way should I figure to myself the essence of an elemental and its real mode of existence?

Sage. - You should think of these as centres of energy only, that act always in accordance with the laws of the plane of nature to which they belong.

Student. - Is it not just as if we were to say that gunpowder is an elemental and will invariable explode when lighted? That is, that the elementals know no rules of either wrong or right, but surely act when the incitement to their natural action is present? They are thus, I suppose, said to be implacable.

Sage. - Yes; they are like the lightning which flashes or destroys as the varying circumstances compel. It has no regard for man, or love, or beauty, or goodness, but may as quickly kill the innocent, or burn the property of the good as of the wicked man.

Student. - What next?

Sage. - That the elementals live in and through all objects, as well as beyond the earth's atmosphere.

Student. - Do you mean that a certain class of elementals, for instance, exist in this mountain, and float unobstructed through men, earth, rocks, and trees?

Sage. - Yes, and not only that, but at the same time, penetrating that class of elementals, there may be another class which float not only through rocks, trees, and men, but also through the first of the classes referred to.

Student. - Do they perceive these objects obstructive for us, through which they thus float?

Sage. - No, generally they do not. In exceptional cases they do, and even then never with the same sort of cognition that we have. For them the objects have no existence. A large block of stone or iron offers for them no limits or density. It may, however, make an impression on them by way of change of color or sound, but not by way of density or obstruction.

Student. - It is not something like this, that a current of electricity passes through a hard piece of copper wire, while it will not pass through an unresisting space of air.

Sage. - That serves to show that the thing which is dense to one form of energy may be open to another. Continuing your illustration, we see that man can pass through air but is stopped by metal. So that "hardness" for us is not "hardness" for electricity. Similarly, that which may stop an elemental is not a body that we call hard, but something which for us is intangible and invisible, but presents to them an adamantine front.

Student. - I thank you for your instruction.

Sage. - Strive to deserve further enlightenment!

Path, October, 1888

¹ See Isis Unveiled in the chapter on Teratology.

FRIENDS OR ENEMIES IN THE FUTURE

THE fundamental doctrines of Theosophy are of no value unless they are applied to daily life. To the extent to which this application goes they become living truths, quite different from intellectual expressions of doctrine. The mere intellectual grasp may result in spiritual pride, while the living doctrine becomes an entity through the mystic power of the human soul. Many great minds have dwelt on this. Saint Paul wrote:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

The Voice of the Silence, expressing the views of the highest schools of occultism, asks us to step out of the sunlight into the shade so as to make more room for others, and declares that those whom we help in this life will help us in our next one.

Buttresses to these are the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. The first shows that we must reap what we sow, and the second that we come back in the company of those with whom we lived and acted in other lives. St. Paul was in complete accord with all other occultists, and his expressions above given must be viewed in the light Theosophy throws on all similar writings. Contrasted with charity, which is love of our fellows, are all the possible virtues and acquirements. These are all nothing if charity be absent. Why? Because they die with the death of the uncharitable person; their value is naught, and that being is reborn without friend and without capacity.

This is of the highest importance to the earnest Theosophist, who may be making the mistake of obtaining intellectual benefits, but remains uncharitable. The fact that we are now working in the Theosophical movement means that we did so in other lives, must do so again, and, still more important, that those who are now with us will be reincarnated in our company on our next rebirth.

Shall those whom we now know or whom we are destined to know before this life ends be our friends or enemies, our aiders or obstructors in that coming life? And what will make them hostile or friendly to us then? Not what we shall say or do to and for them in the future life. For no man becomes your friend in a present life by reason of present acts alone. He was your friend, or you his, before in a previous life. Your present acts but revive the old friendship, renew the ancient obligation.

Was he your enemy before, he will be now even though you do him service now, for these tendencies last always more than three lives. They will be more and still more our aids if we increase the bond of friendship of today by charity. Their tendency to enmity will be one-third lessened in every life if we persist in kindness, in love, in charity now. And that charity is not a gift of money, but charitable thought for every weakness, to every failure.

Our future friends or enemies, then, are those who are with us and to be with us in the present. If they are those who now seem inimical, we make a grave mistake and only put off the day of reconciliation three more lives if we allow ourselves today to be deficient in charity for them. We are annoyed and hindered by those who actively oppose as well as others whose mere looks, temperament, and unconscious action fret and disturb us. Our code of justice to ourselves, often but petty personality, incites us to rebuke them, to criticise, to attack. It is a mistake for us to so act. Could we but glance ahead to next life, we would see these for whom we now have but scant charity crossing the plain of that life with ourselves and ever in our way, always hiding the light from us. But change our present attitude, and that new life to come would show these bores and partial enemies and obstructors helping us, aiding our every effort. For Karma may give them then greater opportunities than ourselves and better capacity.

Is any Theosophist, who reflects on this, so foolish as to continue now, if he has the power to alter himself, a course that will breed a crop of thorns for his next life's reaping? We should continue our charity and kindness to our friends whom it is easy to wish to help, but for those whom we naturally dislike, who are our bores now, we ought to take especial pains to aid and carefully toward them cultivate a feeling of love and charity. This adds interest to our Karmic investment. The opposite course, as surely as sun rises and water runs down hill, strikes interest from the account and enters a heavy item on the wrong side of life's ledger.

And especially should the whole Theosophical organization act on the lines laid down by St. Paul and The Voice of the Silence. For Karmic tendency is an unswerving law. It compels us to go on in this movement of thought and doctrine; it will bring back to reincarnation all in it now. Sentiment cannot move the law one inch; and though that emotion might seek to rid us of the presence of these men and women we presently do not fancy or approve--and there are many such in our ranks for every one--the law will place us again in company with friendly tendency increased or hostile feeling diminished, just as we now create the one or prevent the other. It was the aim of the founders of the Society to arouse tendency to future friendship; it ought to be the object of all our members.

What will you have? In the future life, enemies or friends?

EUSEBIO URBAN

Path, January, 1893

A FURTHER COMMUNICATION
FROM MR. JUDGE

February 23rd, 1895

Dear Sir,

On January 25th, I sent to you as General Secretary of your Section, a general letter replying to several communications from some of your Lodges, so that you, as the proper officer, might communicate it. But instead of pursuing the impartial course as required by your office, you have taken up the position of prosecutor, attorney, and pleader against me, making a long argumentative reply, full of assertions and conclusions of your own, and signed officially, so that you might print it, as you say, with my letter, in THE VAHAN.

Your rights and duties as General Secretary do not require nor permit such action; all that you had the right to do was to promulgate my letter or refuse to do so, but you have now made your office a partisan one in this matter, using it improperly for partisan ends.

I do not intend to controvert your intemperate letter, but I ask that this be published so that some at least of your misleading statements may be corrected.

You say that "in July you (I) argued that the charges did not lie against you (me) as Vice-President, and now you argue the exact contrary." This is an untruth as well as absurd. I have made no such contradictory statements.

You refer me to the fact that Mrs. Besant sent me a copy of what she meant to say to the Committee, and you attempt to make it appear that that very amateur attempt at a legal brief contained the testimony and the documents I require. It did not and does not. I have it. It is a special plea full of distortions, devoid of evidence, containing scraps of documents, devoid of documents referred to, and wholly incompetent. Mrs. Besant's intentions as to what she would say, do not settle matters. And to give instances: her statement did not contain the message I sent Col. Olcott about his resignation, nor the letter relied on to sustain a charge of forgery. Furthermore, I am entitled to have the entire contents of letters used in evidence, though she sought to introduce disjointed scraps only.

You say I demanded that my letters be handed over to my possession. This I could have done but did not. Very true, I may have privately asked Col. Olcott to give me my old letters written to H.P.B., he to keep copies, as I had both moral and legal right. But it is useless for you and others to try to obscure the fact that no inspection of the documents was given me until July 19th, nearly six days after the Convention, and that no copies have been given; and you yourself heard Mrs. Besant promise in Committee the copies to me, and Mr. Burrows say, "Of course Mr. Judge should have copies."

Lastly, the charges have been extended far beyond those got up by Mrs. Besant, and after all the publicity due to enemies, it seems untheosophical to read your words in which you say that you will take steps so that all may know what the charges are. Do you intend to circulate anew the Westminster Gazette's book?

Yours,
William Q. Judge

The Vahan
April I, 1895

THE FUTURE AND
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

IN 1888 H.P. Blavatsky wrote:

Night before last I was shown a bird's eye view of the theosophical societies. I saw a few earnest reliable theosophists in a death struggle with the world in general and with other - nominal and ambitious - theosophists. The former are greater in number than you may think, and they prevailed - as you in America will prevail, if you only remain stanch to the Master's programme and true to yourselves. And last night I saw.... The defending forces have to be judiciously - so scanty are they - distributed over the globe wherever theosophy is struggling with the powers of darkness. ¹

And in the Key to Theosophy:

If the present attempt in the form of our Society succeeds better than its predecessors have done, then it will be in existence as an organized living and healthy body when the time comes for the effort of the twentieth century. Not only so, but besides a large and accessible literature ready to men's hands, the next impulse will find a numerous and united body of people ready to welcome the new torch-bearer of truth. He will find the minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival which will remove the merely mechanical material obstacles and difficulties from his path. Think how much one to whom such an opportunity is given could accomplish. Measure it by comparison with what the Theosophical Society actually has achieved in the last fourteen years without any of these advantages and surrounded by hosts of hindrances which would not hamper the new leader.

Every member of the Society should be, and many are, deeply interested in the above words. The outlook, the difficulties, the dangers, the necessities are the same now as then, and as they were in the beginning of this attempt in 1875. For, as she has often said, this is not the first nor will it be the last effort to spread the truths and to undertake the same mission as that taken up by Ammonius Saccas some centuries ago - to lead men to look for the one truth that underlies all religions and which alone can guide science in the direction of ideal progress. In every century such attempts are made, and many of them have been actually named "theosophical." Each time they have to be adapted to the era in which they appear. And this is the era - marked by the appearance and the success of the great American republic - of freedom for thought and for investigation.

In the first quotation there is a prophecy that those few reliable theosophists, who are engaged in a struggle with the opposition of the world and that coming from weak or ambitious members, will prevail, but it has annexed to it a condition that is of importance. There must be an adherence to the program of the Masters. That can only be ascertained by consulting her and the letters given out by her as from those to whom she refers. There is not much doubt about that program. It excludes the idea that the Society was founded or is intended as "a School for Occultism," for that has been said in so many words long ago in some letters published by Mr. Sinnett and in those not published.

Referring to a letter received (1884) from the same source we find: "Let the Society flourish on its moral worth, and not by phenomena made so often degrading." The need of the west for such doctrines as Karma and Reincarnation and the actual Unity of the whole human family is dwelt upon at length in another. And referring to some of the effects of certain phenomena, it is said, ² "They have to prove... constructive of new institutions of a genuine practical brotherhood of Humanity, where all will become co-workers with Nature." Speaking of present materialistic tendencies, the same authority says:

"Exact experimental science has nothing to do with morality, virtue, philanthropy - therefore, can make no claim upon our help until it blends itself with metaphysics... The same causes that are materializing the Hindu mind are equally affecting all Western thought. Education enthrones scepticism, but imprisons spirituality. You can do immense good by helping to give the Western nations a secure basis upon which to reconstruct their crumbling faith. And what they need is the evidence that Asiatic psychology alone supplies. Give this, and you will confer happiness of mind on thousands... This is the moment to guide the recurrent impulse which must soon come, and which will push the age towards extreme atheism or drag it back to extreme sacerdotalism, if it is not led to the primitive soul-satisfying philosophy of the Aryans."

This is the great tone running through all the words from these sources. It is a call to work for the race and not for self, a request to bring to the west and the east the doctrines that have most effect on human conduct, on the relations of man to man, and hence the greatest possibility of forming at last a true universal brotherhood. We mush follow this program and supply the world with a system of philosophy which gives a sure and logical basis for ethics, and that can only be gotten from those to which I have adverted; there is no basis for morals in phenomena, because a man might learn to do the most wonderful things by the aid of occult forces and yet at the same time be the very worst of men.

A subsidiary condition, but quite as important as the other, is laid down by H.P.B. in her words that we must "remain true to ourselves." This means true to our better selves and the dictates of consciences. We cannot promulgate the doctrines and the rules of life found in theosophy and at the same time ourselves not live up to them as far as possible. We must practice what we preach, and make as far as we can a small brotherhood with the Theosophical Society. Not only should we do this because the world is looking on, but also from a knowledge of the fact that by our unity the smallest effort made by us will have tenfold the power of any obstacle before us or any opposition offered by the world.

The history of our sixteen years of life shows that our efforts put forth in every quarter of the globe have modified the thought of the day, and that once more the word "Theosophy," and many of the old ideas that science and agnosticism supposed were buried forever under the great wide dollar of present civilization, have come again to the front. We do not claim to be the sole force that began the uprooting of dogmatism and priestcraft, but only that we have supplied a link, given words, stirred up thoughts of the very highest importance just at a time when the age was swinging back to anything but what the reformers had fought for. The old faiths were crumbling, and no one stood ready to supply that which by joining religion and science together would make the one scientific and the other religious. We have done exactly what the letter quoted asked for, led the times a step "to the primitive soul-satisfying philosophy of the Aryans."

But we can never hope to see the churches and the ministers coming over in a body to our ranks. It would be asking too much of human nature. Churches are so much property that has to be preserved, and ministers are so many men who get salaries they have to earn, with families to support and reputations to sustain. Many "houses of worship" are intimately connected with the material progress of the town, and the personal element would prevent their sinking the old and glorious identity in an organization like to ours. Congregations hire their priests at so much a year to give out a definite sort of theology, and do not like to be told the truth about themselves nor to have too high a standard of altruism held up to them in a way from which, under the theosophical doctrines, there would be no escape. They may all gradually change, heresy trials will continue and heretical ministers be acquitted, but the old buildings will remain and the speakers go on in new grooves to make other reputations, but we may not hope to see any universal rush to join us.

Our destiny is to continue the wide work of the past in affecting literature and thought throughout the world, while our ranks see many changing quantities but always holding those who remain true to the program and refuse to become dogmatic or to give up common-sense in theosophy. Thus will we wait for the new messenger, striving to keep the organization alive that he may use it and have the great opportunity H.P.B. outlines when she says, "Think how much one to whom such an opportunity is given could accomplish."

William Brehon

Path, March, 1892

¹See Luciferfor June, 1891, p. 291

² Occult World, p. 291

"THE GATES OF GOLD"

When the strong man has crossed the threshold he speaks no more to those at the other (this) side. And even the words he utters when he is outside are so full of mystery, so veiled and profound, that only those who follow in his steps can see the light within them. - Through the Gates of Gold, p. 19.

He fails to speak when he has crossed, because, if he did, they would neither hear nor understand him. All the language he can use when on this side is language based upon experience gained outside the Gates, and when he uses that language, it calls up in the minds of his hearers only the ideas corresponding to the plane they are on and experience they have undergone; for if he speaks of that kind of idea and experience which he has found on the other side, his hearers do not know what is beneath his words, and therefore his utterances seem profound. They are not veiled and profound because he wishes to be a mystic whose words no one can expound, but solely because of the necessities of the case. He is willing and anxious to tell all who wish to know, but cannot convey what he desires, and he is sometimes accused of being unnecessarily vague and misleading.

But there are some who pretend to have passed through these Gates and who utter mere nothings, mere juggles of words that cannot be understood because there is nothing behind them rooted in experience. Then the question arises, "How are we to distinguish between these two?"

There are two ways.

1. By having an immense erudition, a profound knowledge of the various and numberless utterances of those known masters throughout the ages whose words are full of power. But this is obviously an immense and difficult task, one which involves years devoted to reading and a rarely-found retentiveness of memory. So it cannot be the one most useful to us. It is the path of mere book-knowledge.

2. The other mode is by testing those utterances by our intuition. There is scarcely any one who has not got an internal voice - a silent monitor - who, so to say, strikes within us the bell that corresponds to truth, just as a piano's wires each report the vibrations peculiar to it, but not due to striking the wire itself. It is just as if we had within us a series of wires whose vibrations are all true, but which will not be vibrated except by those words and propositions which are in themselves true. So that false and pretending individual who speaks in veiled language only mere nothingness will never vibrate within us those wires which correspond to truth. But when one who has been to and through those Gates speaks ordinary words really veiling grand ideas, then all the invisible wires within immediately vibrate in unison. The inner monitor has struck them, and we feel that he has said what is true, and whether we understand him or not we feel the power of the vibration and the value of the words we have heard.

Many persons are inclined to doubt the existence in themselves of this intuition, who in fact possess it. It is a common heritage of man, and only needs unselfish effort to develop it. Many selfish men have it in their selfish lives; many a great financier and manager has it and exercises it. This is merely its lowest use and expression.

By constantly referring mentally all propositions to it and thus giving it an opportunity for growth, it will grow and speak soon with no uncertain tones. This is what is meant in old Hindu books by the expression, "a knowledge of the real meaning of sacred books." It ought to be cultivated because it is one of the first steps in knowing ourselves and understanding others.

In this civilization especially we are inclined to look outside instead of inside ourselves. Nearly all our progress is material and thus superficial. Spirit is neglected or forgotten, while that which is not spirit is enshrined as such. The intuitions of the little child are stifled until at last they are almost lost, leaving the many at the mercy of judgments based upon exterior reason. How, then, can one who has been near the Golden Gates - much more he who passed through them - be other than silent in surroundings where the golden refulgence is unknown or denied. Obliged to use the words of his fellow travellers, he gives them a meaning unknown to them, or detaches them from their accustomed relation. Hence he is sometimes vague, often misleading, seldom properly understood. But not lost are any of these words, for they sound through the ages, and in future eras they will turn themselves into sentences of gold in the hearts of disciples yet to come.

MOULVIE

Path, May, 1888

THE GENERAL SECRETARY'S TOUR

The General Secretary was to have started for the West upon the very day when the death of Madame Blavatsky caused him to sail for Europe, and upon his return the new date was fixed for Sept. 5th, but sickness caused postponement till the 8th, at which time he left for Omaha. From Omaha he went to Washington Terr., visiting the 3 Branches therein, thence to Portland, Oregon, and to San Francisco, arriving about the 23rd. It had been arranged that his route through California should be made out by the Pacific Coast Committee, they being conversant with the State. It is hardly probable that the route can be completed before the close of October, after which occurs the series of visitations on his journey homewards, beginning with Salt Lake City. Branches and groups desiring a visit and a public lecture are desired to address him before Oct. 25th, Care Dr. J.A. Anderson, 4 Odd Fellows Bdg., San Francisco, stating what provision can be made for a hall, for his entertainment, and for the expense of travel. He will make out his schedule before leaving California, and will notify successive points of his date and length of stay.

This is the longest and most carefully planned tour yet made in America for Theosophical purposes, and is expected to produce good results. H.P.B.'s departure has sounded the word "Theosophy" all over the land and opened thousands of ears to an exposition of it, and there never was a time when a series of public lectures was so certain of attendance and of press notice. Every Western Branch may be quickened and its growth fostered by now receiving a visit during this tour, for the field is prepared for the seed and the sower is at hand. While no human arithmetic can ever figure the precise effect of a wide distribution of truth, it is reasonably certain that enough will be palpable to affirm the wisdom of the tour and to make American Theosophists long and labor for the time when a Permanent Lecturer will be part of the outfit of Headquarters. This is not at all an impossible thing. The Convention endorsed the project, and $1200 a year have been guaranteed towards expenses. If the General Secretary's present journey stimulates Theosophists in this direction it will be doing one of the many things expected from it.

Path, October, 1891

Pacific Coast Lecturer. Bro. Allen Griffiths of San Francisco has be appointed Lecturer for the Pacific Coast by the Committee for T.S. work there, and with the consent of the Executive Committee, to begin March 15th. The Branches and Members in California, Oregon, and Washington subscribed for the purpose. No doubt the result will be very beneficial to the movement on the coast.

Path, March, 1892

A GERMAN MYSTIC'S TEACHINGS

IN the last three numbers of the PATH we have given a story by the German Mystic Kernning of the experiences of a sensitive. The story is called advisedly "From Sensitive to Initiate." We did not think that it was intended to show what the final initiation is, but only one of the many initiations we have to undergo in our passage through matter. The trials of Caroline illustrate those we all have, whether we know them as such or not. She had a presence to annoy her; we, although not sensitive as she was, have within us influences and potential presences that affect us just as much; they cause us to have bias this way or that, to be at times clouded in our estimate of what is the true course or the true view to take, and, like her, so long as we do not recognise the cause of the clouds, we will be unable to dissipate them. But Kernning was a theosophist, and one of those men who knew the truth in theory and at the same time were able to make a practical application of what they knew. There are many cases today in which sensitive people do just what Caroline did and have "presences" to annoy them; but how many of our theosophists or spiritualists would be able to cast the supposed obsesser out, as Mohrland did in the story? They can be counted on one hand. The simplicity with which Kernning wrote should not blind us to the value of his work. In the preceding articles by him which we have from time to time given, there is much to be learned by those who look below the surface. We therefore add the following as a note to the last story in order to try to show its theosophic meaning.

The conversation about "Mantrams" between the Sage and the Student in the PATH for August involves an occult truth so important that it is worth while to recall that the power of mantrams is recognized by the school of German occultists represented by Kernning. Readers of the PATH who have attentively read "Some Teachings of a German Mystic" have observed that in nearly all instances the pupils achieve' an awakening of their inner self, or the "spiritual rebirth," by means of a particular word, a sentence, or perhaps even a letter of the alphabet, and that, in cases where persons are involuntarily awakened, it is by continued thinking upon some object or person, as in the case of the young sailor whose mind was continually dwelling on his absent sweetheart and was thereby released from the limitations of his own personality. Caroline Ruppert was aroused by a morbid dwelling on her disappointment in love and by remorse for her conduct towards her invalid mother, until these thoughts gained a mantric power over her, and it required intelligent exercise with other man-trains, given her by the Adept Mohrland, to restore her self-control and give her a symmetrical development. Out of a medium, or mere sensitive, she thus became an initiate, able to control the psychic forces by her own will. Every hapless "medium" who is obsessed by elementals and elementaries that make life a torment and who is compelled to do the bidding of these forces generated by personal vitality, and whose conflict obscures the true self-like a spring whose waters, finding no adequate channel, rise to the level of their source and thus drown it-, has it in his or her power, by intelligent exercise of the will, to obtain command over what they are now obliged to obey. But, in doing this, "right motive" must be kept constantly in view; care must be exercised to keep absolutely free from all mercenary or other selfish considerations, else one will become a black magician. The condition known as "mediumship" has been the subject of too much indiscriminate condemnation; it can be made a blessing as well as a curse, and the aim should be, not to suppress it, but to develop it in the right direction. The psychic powers, like all other natural forces, can be made either a good servant or a terrible master, and, in proportion to their subtlety as compared with other forces, so much greater is their power for good or for evil.

In psychic work the power of united endeavor has often been emphasized, and it is easy to see that the power is developed whether consciously or unconsciously exercised. Thus, with thousands thinking unitedly in one direction, as in the present Theosophical awakening, they all help each other, lending strength to each other's will, whether they are aware of it or not. According to this principle it would seem that a word used commonly for mantric purposes has a greater potency over the forces of the spirit, owing to the impression it has made upon the akasa, than a word not commonly used, for in the case of the former the user has the aid of the wills of all others who have used it.

In one of his works, "The Freemason," Kernning gives a good explanation of the power of mantrams, in replying to the strictures of a rationalistic critic, who says that such a use of words is made by the bonzes (yogis) of India, and therefore must be wholly nonsensical! Says Kernning:

Whoever has a great love for an art or science not only finds delight in the results, but their very names have a sort of magic power with him. Whoever feels a love for another person is moved whenever he thinks of that person or repeats the name of that person. The gambler, in spite of all the arguments against his infatuation made by others, and often, indeed, by himself, always beholds dice and cards before his eyes. The drunkard only needs, in order to be made thirsty, to hear the name of wine. The miser lives in the vision of his ducats and dollars, the ambitious man upon the insignia of fame and the plaudits of the multitude, the courtier upon his orders and titles, and in all these cases, not only are the things themselves concerned, but the names have become idolized. Now suppose that one should, instead of swimming in the depths, fill spirit and soul with exalted and divine ideas and names, can other than most beneficent results follow? Indeed, could a person be a genuine Christian without the life of Christ, and even his name, becoming animate in spirit and soul? Therefore there is no nonsensical or unreasonable practice in this; on the contrary, every one should be made aware of this simple method, which is founded upon human nature and is confirmed by experience, that he may attain the means of ennobling his nature, of directing his energies towards the highest end of his life, and reaching this end with certainty.

Path, October, 1888

GIVE US ONE FACT

SINCE last I wrote for THE PATH, the most distinct call I have heard from many students in The West is found in the cry: "Give us one fact!"

They have acquired the desire to know the truth, but have lingered still around the market places of earth and the halls of those scientific leaders of the blind who are the prophets of materialism. They say that some "scientific" men, while talking of Theosophy, have asked why the Masters have not "given us one fact on which we may begin and from which a conclusion might be reached"; and they - these students - most earnestly ask for that fact for themselves, even though they shall conceal it from the very men who have formulated the question.

Poor children. What are the facts ye desire? Is it some astounding thaumaturgical exhibitions that shall leave no room for doubt? If so, please say whether the feat is to be performed in the sight of thousands, or only in the presence of one postulant and his select circle? If the last, then ye are self-convicted of a desire to retain unto yourselves what belongeth to many. Or perhaps ye wish a statement of fact. But that would of course have to be supported by authority, and we, poor wanderers, have no force of authority in science or art; statements of facts coming from us would therefore be useless to you.

And I must tell you in confidence, as the messengers have before this been directed to do and have not failed therein, that an exhibition of thaumaturgical skill in the presence of a multitude would subvert the very ends the perfected men have in view. Suppose that some of those who know were now to appear in the busy hum of American life, where the total sum of objects appears, at this distance, to be the gain of wealth, and like the two young princes of Buddha's time were to rise in the air unaided and there emit sheets of fire alternately from their heads and feet, or were to rise again and float off to a distance in plain sight of all; would that demonstrate anything to you? Perhaps in the breasts of some aspiring students might spring up the desire to acquire the power to do likewise. But pause and tell me what would the many do to whom such things are myths? I will tell you. Some would admit the possibility of a genuine phenomenon, seeking ways and means to do it too, so that they might exhibit it for an admission price. Others, and including your scientific fact-seekers, would begin by denying its truth, by ascribing it to delusion, and by charging those who did it, no matter how really spiritual those were, with deliberate fraud and imposture, while a certain section would deny the very happening of the matter and falsify the eye-knowledge of hundreds. ¹

Still others would say "It is a God"! - "It is a devil," with consequences to correspond. No, friends, the true teachers do not begin by laying the foundations for greater error and more fast-bound superstition than those we are trying to destroy.

Then I must tell you in all seriousness and truth that statements of the facts you really wish have been over and over again made in many places, books, and times. Not alone are they to be found in you new theosophical literature, but in that of older times. In every year for centuries past these facts have been given out, - even in English. They were told in the days of the German and English Alchemists, and by the Cabalists. But greed and wrong motive have ever formed the self-constructed barriers and obscurers.

The Alchemists of the pure school spoke of the gold they could make by means of their powders, and the salt, together with their mercury; and the Cabalists said that by pronouncing Jehovah's name not only was the gold formed, but power obtained in all worlds. Very true statements. Are they not statements of fact? Did they satisfy the mass of seekers? So far from that, the result was to lead them into error. Many patiently sought for the powder and the proper combination of the salt or sulphur and mercury, so that they might make worthless gold metal, which today is exchangeable and tomorrow is useless, and which never could give peace of mind or open the door of the future. Then others went by themselves and tried various modulations of sound in pronouncing the supposed name of their Mighty God, until they today have some two-score sorts. What purblind ignorance this, for God is God and has not changed with the rise and fall of empires or the disappearance of languages; his name was once a different sound in ancient Egypt or India, in Lemuria, Atlantis or Copan. Where, then, are those many sounds of His Holy Name, or has that been altered?

"But where," ye say, "is the fact in the pronunciation of the name of God?" The answer is by asking "What and who is God?" He is the All; the earth, the sky, the stars in it; the heart of man; the elemental and organic world; the kingdoms of the universe; the realm of sound and the formless void. It not the pronunciation of that Name to consist therefore in Becoming all those kingdoms, and realms, and power, focussing in yourself the entire essence of them, each and all at once? Is this to be done by breathing forth "Jehovah" in one or many forms? You easily see it is not. And your minds will carry you on the next step to admit that before you can do this you must have passed through every one of those kingdoms, retaining perfect knowledge and memory of each, commander of each, before you can attempt the pronunciation of the whole. Is this a small task? Is it not the task Karma has set before you, compelling you like children to repeat parts of the word in the varied experiences of repeated lives spent on earth, bringing you back to the lesson until it is well learned?

And so we are brought to ourselves. Our Aryan ancestors have made the declaration, repeated by thousands since, that each man is himself a little universe. Through him pass all the threads of energy that ramify to all the worlds, and where any one of those lines crosses him is the door to the kingdom to which that thread belongs. Listen to the Chandogya Upanishad:

There is this city of Brahman - the body - and in it the palace, the small lotus of the heart, and in it that small ether. Both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars; and whatever there is of the Self here in the world, and whatever has been or will be, all that is contained within it.

Vain it is to make search without. No knowledge will reach you from anywhere but this small lotus of the heart. Just now ye are binding it so that it cannot burst open. It is with the delusions of the mind ye bind it in a knot. That knot ye must break. Break loose from scholastic error, make of your minds a still and placid surface on which the Lord of the palace in the heart can reflect pictures of Truth, become as little children who are not hindered by preconceptions, and ye will have knowledge.

The only fact I have to offer you is - YOURSELVES.

Nilakant

Path, March, 1888

¹We can agree with the writer, as we have seen just as wonderful things done by H.P. Blavatsky and next day heard accusations of fraud against her and charges of credulity against those who had seen. - [ED.]

GLAMOUR
ITS PURPOSE AND PLACE IN MAGIC
NOTE—This article was first printed by William Q. Judge in the Path, May, 1893.

    THE word “glamour” was long ago defined in old dictionaries as “witchery or a charm on the eyes, making them see things differently from what they really are.” This is still the meaning of the word. Not long ago, before the strange things possible in hypnotic experiments became known to the Western world, it seemed as if everything would be reduced to mere matter and motion by the fiat of science. Witchery was to fade away, be forgotten, be laughed out of sight, and what could not be ascribed to defective training of the senses was to have its explanation in the state of the liver, a most prosaic organ. But before science with its speculation and ever-altering canons could enlighten the unlearned multitude, hypnotism crept slowly and surely forward and at last began to buttress the positions of theosophy. Glamour stands once more a fair chance for recognition. Indeed, H. P. B. uttered prophetic words when she said that in America more than anywhere else this art would be practised by selfish men for selfish purposes, for money-getting and gratification of desire.

    Hurriedly glancing over some fields of folk-lore, see what a mass of tales bearing on glamour produced by men, gods, or elementals. In India the gods every now and then, often the sages, appear before certain persons in various guises by means of a glamour which causes the eye to see what is not really there. In Ireland volumes of tales in which the person sees houses, men, and animals where they are not; he is suddenly given the power to see under the skin of natural things, and then perceives the field or the market-place full of fairies, men, and women gliding in and out among the people. Anon a man or woman is changed into the appearance of animal or bird, and only regains the old semblance when touched with the magic rod. This change of appearance is not a change in fact, but always a glamour affecting the eyes of the other person. Such a mass of similar stories found during all time and among every people cannot be due to folly nor be without a basis. The basis is a fact and a law in man’s nature. It is glamour, the reason for glamour, and the power to bring it about. Just because there have always been those who, either by natural ability or training, had the power to bring on a “witchery over the eyes,” these stories have arisen.

    A writer well known in England and America once thought he had found a mare’s nest when he reported that Mme. Blavatsky had confessed to him that certain phenomena he enquired of had been caused by glamour.

    “Ah, glamour!” he said; “thus falls this theosophic house of cards”; and he went away satisfied, for in truth he had been himself thoroughly glamoured. But theosophists should not stumble and fall violently as this gentleman did over a word which, when enquired into, carries with it a good deal of science relating to an important branch of occultism. When I read in an issue of the Arena all about this confession on glamour, I was quite ready to believe that H. P. B. did say to the learned enquirer what he reported, but at the same time, of course, knew that she never intended to apply her enchantment explanation to every phenomenon. She only intended to include certain classes,—although in every occult phenomenon there is some glamour upon some of the observers according to their individual physical idiosyncrasies.

    The classes of phenomena covered by this word are referred to in part by Patanjali in his Yoga Aphorisms, where he says that if the luminousness natural to object and eye is interfered with the object will disappear, whether it be man or thing and whether it be day or night. This little aphorism covers a good deal of ground, and confutes, if accepted, some theories of the day. It declares, in fact, that not only is it necessary for rays of light to proceed from the object to the eye, but also light must also proceed from the eye towards the object. Cut off the latter and the object disappears; alter the character of the luminousness coming from the eye, and the object is altered in shape or color for the perceiver.

    Carrying this on further and connecting it with the well-known fact that we see no objects whatever, but only their ideal form as presented to the mind, and we arrive at an explanation in part of how glamour may be possible. For if in any way you can interfere with the vibrations proceeding to the eye on the way to affect the brain and then the percipient within, then you have the possibility of sensibly altering the ideal form which the mind is to cognize within before it declares the object to be without which produced the vibration.

    Take up now imagination in its aspect of a power to make a clear and definite image. This is done in hypnotism and in spiritualism. If the image be definite enough and the perceiver or subject sensitive enough, a glamour will be produced. The person will see that which is not the normal shape or form or corporature of the other. But this new shape is as real as the normal, for the normal form is but that which is to last during a certain stage of human evolution and will certainly alter as new senses and organs develop in us.

    Thus far having gone, is it not easy to see that if a person can make the definite and vivid mind-pictures spoken of, and if the minor organs can affect and be affected, it is quite probable and possible that trained persons may have glamoured the eyes of others so to make them see an elephant, snake, man, tree, pot, or any other object where only is empty space, or as an alteration of a thing or person actually there? This is exactly what is done in experiments by the hypnotists, with this difference, that they have to put the subject into an abnormal state, while the other operators need no such adventitious aids. Glamour, then, has a very important place in magic. That it was frequently used by H. P. B. there is not the smallest doubt, just as there is no doubt that the yogee in India puts the same power into operation.

    In many cases she could have used it by making the persons present think they saw her when she had gone into the next room, or that another person was also present who was not in fact. The same power of glamour would permit her to hide from sight any object in the room or in her hands. This is one of the difficult feats of magic, and not in the slightest degree dependent on legerdemain. Persons sometimes say this is folly even if true, but looked at in another light it is no folly, nor are the cases those in which anyone was entitled to know all that was going on. She exhibited these feats — seldom as it was—for the purpose of showing those who were learning from her that the human subject is a complicated and powerful being, not to be classed, as science so loves to do, with mere matter and motion. All these phenomena accomplished two. objects. First, to help those who learned from her, and second, to spread abroad again in the west the belief in man’s real power and nature. The last was a most necessary thing to do because in the West materialism was beginning to have too much sway and threatened to destroy spirituality. And it was done also in pursuance of the plans of the Great Lodge for the human race. As one of her Masters said, her phenomena puzzled sceptics for many years. Even now we see the effects, for when such men as Stead, the Editor of the Reuiew of Reviews, and Du Prel, Schiaparelli, and others take up the facts of Spiritualism scientifically, one can perceive that another day for psychology is dawning.

    This power of glamour is used more often than people think, and not excluding members of the T. S., by the Adepts. They are often among us from day to day appearing in a guise we do not recognize, and are dropping ideas into men’s minds about the spiritual world and the true life of the soul, as well as also inciting men and women to good acts. By this means they pass unrecognized and are able to accomplish more in this doubting and transition age than they could in any other way. Sometimes as they pass they are recognized by those who have the right faculty, but a subtle and powerful bond and agreement prevents their secret from being divulged. This is something for members of the Society to think of, for they may be entertaining now and then angels unawares. They may now and then be tried by their leaders when they least expect it, and the verdict is not given out but has its effect all the same.

    But glamour covers only a small part of the field of occultism. The use of the astral body enters into nearly all of the phenomena, and in other directions the subject of occult chemistry, absolutely unknown to the man of the day, is of the utmost importance; if it is ever given out it will be a surprise to science, but certainly that divulgation will not soon be to such a selfish age.
                                                                                                                                                                     WILLIAM BREHON

H.P.B.

A LION-HEARTED COLLEAGUE PASSES

On the shore stood Hiawatha,
Turned and waved his hand at parting;
On the clear and luminous water
Launched his birch canoe for sailing,
From the pebbles of the margin
Shoved it forth into the water;
Whispered to it, "Westward! Westward!"
And with speed it darted forward.
And the evening sun descending
Set the clouds on fire with redness,
Burned the broad sky, like a prairie,
Left upon the level water
One long track and trail of splendor,
Down whose stream, as down a river,
Westward, Westward Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.
    *    *    *
Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the beloved, . . .
To the Islands of the Blessed.

That which men call death is but a change of location for the Ego, a mere transformation, a forsaking for a time of the mortal frame, a short period of rest before one reassumes another human frame in the world of mortals. The Lord of this body is nameless; dwelling in numerous tenements of clay, it appears to come and go; but neither death nor time can claim it, for it is deathless, unchangeable, and pure, beyond Time itself, and not to be measured. So our old friend and fellow-worker has merely passed for a short time out of sight, but has not given up the work begun so many years ago - the uplifting of humanity, the destruction of the shackles that enslave the human mind.

I met H.P.B. in 1875 in the city of New York where she was living in Irving Place. There she suggested the formation of the Theosophical Society, lending to its beginning the power of her individuality and giving to its President and those who have stood by it ever since the knowledge of the existence of the Blessed Masters. In 1877 she wrote Isis Unveiled in my presence, and helped in the proof reading by the President of the Society. This book she declared to me then was intended to aid the cause for the advancement of which the Theosophical Society was founded. Of this I speak with knowledge, for I was present and at her request drew up the contract for its publication between her and her New York publisher. When that document was signed she said to me in the street, "Now I must go to India."

In November, 1878, she went to India and continued the work of helping her colleagues to spread the Society's influence there, working in that mysterious land until she returned to London in 1887. There was then in London but one Branch of the Society - the London Lodge - the leaders of which thought it should work only with the upper and cultured classes. The effect of H.P.B.'s coming there was that Branches began to spring up, so that now they are in many English towns, in Scotland, and in Ireland. There she founded her magazine Lucifer, there worked night and day for the Society loved by the core of her heart, there wrote the Secret Doctrine, the Key to Theosophy, and the Voice of the Silence, and there passed away from a body that had been worn out by unselfish work for the good of [not only] the few of our century but of the many in the centuries to come.

It has been said by detractors that she went to India because she merely left a barren field here, by sudden impulse and without a purpose. But the contrary is the fact. In the very beginning of the Society I drew up with my own hand at her request the diplomas of some members here and there in India who were in correspondence and were of different faiths. Some of them were Parsees. She always said she would have to go to India as soon as the Society was under way here and Isis should be finished. And when she had been in India some time, her many letters to me expressed her intention to return to England so as to open the movement actively and outwardly there in order that the three great points on the world's surface - India, England, and America - should have active centres of Theosophical work. This determination was expressed to me before the attempt made by the Psychical Research Society on her reputation, - of which also I know a good deal to be used at a future time, as I was present in India before and after the alleged exposé - and she returned to England to carry out her purpose even in the face of charges that she could not stay in India. But to disprove these she went back to Madras, and then again rejourneyed to London.

That she always knew what would be done by the world in the way of slander and abuse I also know, for in 1875 she told me that she was then embarking on a work that would draw upon her unmerited slander, implacable malice, uninterrupted misunderstanding, constant work, and no worldly reward. Yet in the face of this her lion heart carried her on. Nor was she unaware of the future of the Society. In 1876 she told me in detail the course of the Society's growth for future years, of its infancy, of its struggles, of its rise into the "luminous zone" of the public mind; and these prophecies are being all fulfilled.

Much has been said about her "phenomena," some denying them, others alleging trick and device. Knowing her for so many years so well, and having seen at her hands in private the production of more and more varied phenomena than it has been the good fortune of all others of her friends put together to see, I know for myself that she had control of hidden powerful laws of nature not known to our science, and I also know that she never boasted of her powers, never advertised their possession, never publicly advised anyone to attempt their acquirement, but always turned the eyes of those who could understand her to a life of altruism based on a knowledge of true philosophy. If the world thinks that her days were spent in deluding her followers by pretended phenomena, it is solely because her injudicious friends, against her expressed wish, gave out wonderful stories of "miracles" which can not be proved to a skeptical public and which are not the aim of the Society nor were ever more than mere incidents in the life of H. P. Blavatsky.

Her aim was to elevate the race. Her method was to deal with the mind of the century as she found it, by trying to lead it on step by step; to seek out and educate a few who, appreciating the majesty of the Secret Science and devoted to "the great orphan Humanity," could carry on her work with zeal and wisdom; to found a Society whose efforts - however small itself might be - would inject into the thought of the day the ideas, the doctrines, the nomenclature of the Wisdom Religion, so that when the next century shall have seen its 75th year the new messenger coming again into the world would find the Society still at work, the ideas sown broadcast, the nomenclature ready to give expression and body to the immutable truth, and thus to make easy the task which for her since 1875 was so difficult and so encompassed with obstacles in the very paucity of the language, - obstacles harder than all else to work against.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, June, 1891

H.P.B. AT ENGHIEN

IN the spring of 1884, H.P.B. was staying in Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris, and in the house were living Col. Olcott, Mohini M. Chatterji and the writer. Part of the time Bertram Keightley was also there. As always since I have know H.P.B. during the past seventeen years, she was there as elsewhere engaged daily with her writing, save for an occasional drive or visit. Many visitors from all classes were constantly calling, and among the rest came the Countess d'Adhémar, who at once professed a profound admiration for H.P.B. and invited her to come to the Château owned by the Count at Enghien, just outside the city, including in her invitation myself and Mohini Chatterji. Bertram Keightley was also invited for a few days. The invitation was accepted and we all went out to Enghien, where H.P.B. was given two large rooms downstairs and the others slept in rooms on the upper floors. Every convenience was given to our beloved friend, and there she continued her writing, while I at her request carefully read over, sitting in the same room, Isis Unveiled, making indices at the foot of each page, as she intended to use it in preparing the Secret Doctrine.

A lake was at one side of the house and extensive grounds covered with fine timber hid the building from the road, part being a well kept fruit and flower garden. A slight description of the rooms is necessary. Wide stairs led up to the hall; on one side, which we may call the road front, was the billiard room, the high window of which opened upon the leaden roof of the porch; the dining room looked out at the back over the edge of the lake, and the drawing room opened from it on the other side at right angles to the side of the billiard room. This drawing room had windows opening on three sides, so that both garden and lake could be seen from it. In it was the grand piano at the end and side opposite the dining room door, and between the two side windows was s marble slab holding ornaments; between the windows at the end near the piano, was the fireplace, and at that corner was one of the windows giving a view of the lake, Every evening it was the custom to spend some time in the drawing room in conversation, and there, as well as in the dining room, took place some phenomena which indeed were no more interesting than the words of H.P.B., whether those were witty, grave or gay. Very often Countess d'Adhémar's sister played the piano in a manner to delight even H.P.B., who was no mean judge. I remember well one melody, just then brought out in the world of Paris, which pleased her immensely, so that she often asked for its repetition. It was one suggestive of high aspiration and grandiose conceptions of nature. Many lively discussions with the Count on one side and H.P.B. on the other had place there, and often in the very midst of these she would suddenly turn to Mohini and myself, who were sitting listening, to repeat to us the very thoughts then passing in our brains.

Count d'Adhémar did not ask for the production of phenomena, but often said that could he and a few of his friends be convinced about Theosophy perhaps much good would result in France. Some us us desired in our hearts that in the home of such kind friends phenomena might occur, but none suggested it to H.P.B. But one day at dinner, when there were present the Count and Countess, their son Raoul, H.P.B., Mohini, the Countess' sister, myself, and one other, the strong and never-to-be-forgotten perfume which intimate friends of H.P.B. knew so well as often accompanying phenomena or coming of itself, floated round and round the table, plainly perceptible to several and not perceived either before or afterwards. Of course many skeptics will see nothing in this, but the writer and others well know that this of itself is a phenomenon, and that the perfume has been sent for many miles through the air as a message from H.P.B. or from those hidden persons who often aided in phenomena or in teachings. At this dinner, or at some other during the visit, we had all just come in from the flower garden. I had plucked a small rosebud and placed it upon the edge of the tumbler between myself and the Countess' sister who was on my left, H.P.B. being seated on my right. This lady began to talk of phenomena, wondering if H.P.B. could do as related of the Indian yogis. I replied that she could if she would, but did not ask her, and added that she could make even that small rosebud bloom at once. Just then H.P.B. stretched her hand out towards the rose, not touching it, and said nothing, continuing at once her conversation and the dinner. We watched the bud until the end of the meal and saw that it grew in that space of time much larger and bloomed out into a rose nearly full grown.

On another evening after we had all been in the drawing room for some time, sitting without lights, the moon shining over the lake and all nature being hushed, H.P.B. fell into a thought state. Shortly she rose and stood at the corner window looking over the water, and in a moment a flash of soft light shot into the room and she quietly smiled. Reminding me of this evening the Countess d'Adhémar writes in this month of June:-

H.P.B. seemed wrapped in thought, when suddenly she rose from her chair, advanced to the open window, and raising her arm with a commanding gesture, faint music was heard in the distance, which advancing nearer and nearer broke into lovely strains and filled the drawing room where we were all sitting. Mohini threw himself at H.P.B.'s feet and kissed the hem of her robe, which action seemed the appropriate outcoming of the profound admiration and respect we all felt toward the wonderful being whose loss we will never cease to mourn.

This astral music was very plain to us all, and the Count especially remarked upon its beauty and the faintness of it as it sank away into the unknown distance. The whole house was full of these bell sounds at night when I was awake very late and others had retired, They were like signals going and coming to H.P.B.'s room downstairs. And on more than one occasion as we walked in the grounds under the magnificent trees, have they shot past us, sometimes audible to all and again only heard by one or two.

The lead roof of the portico was a place where after dinner we sometimes sat, and there on some of those delightful evenings we were joined by the Countess Wachtmeister, who afterwards did so much for the comfort of H.P.B. at Würzburg and other places. Many chats were held there about occultism. In one of these we were speaking of images in the Astral Light and H.P.B. said: "Well, you know that it moves as other things in Kosmos do, and that the time comes when it floats off, as it were, letting another mass of the same 'light' take its place."

It was with a feeling of some regret that we left this delightful place where such quiet reigned and where H.P.B. was able to work amid the beauty and the stillness of nature. It cannot be blotted from the memory, because there our friend and teacher was untroubled by the presence of curiosity seekers, and thus was free to present to us who believed in her a side of her many-sided nature which pleased, instructed and elevated us all.

One incident remains to be told for which we must depend on others. I took away with me a book which could not be finished there, and just before leaving France went out to Enghien to return it. There I met the Countess d'Adhémar, who said that the peculiar and unmistakable perfume of which I spoke above had come in the house after we had all left. It was one evening about two days after H.P.B.'s departure and the d'Adhémars had some friends to dinner. After dinner they all went into the drawing room and soon noticed the perfume. It came, as they said to me, in rushes, and at once they began to hunt it out in the room, coming at last to the marble slab described, where, from one spot in the stone, they found the perfume rushing out in volumes. Such was the quantity of it that, as the Countess said to me, they were compelled to open the windows, since the odor was overpowering in larger masses. In returning to Paris I told H.P.B. of this and she only said: "It sometimes happens."

William Q. Judge

Lucifer, July, 1891

H.P.B. ON MESSAGES FROM MASTERS

SOME years ago H.P.B. was charged with misuse of Mahâtmâs names and handwritings, with forgery of messages from the Mahâtmâs, and with humbugging the public and the T.S. therewith. Those charges had floated vaguely about for sometime and at last came the explosion. Afterward when writing on the subject of "Lodges of Magic" in Lucifer ¹ the question of the genuineness or the opposite of such messages was dealt with, and what she wrote is here presented for reconsideration. It covers two matters.

First, it proves out of her own mouth what the PATH not long ago said that "if one letter has to be doubted then all have" to be doubted. Hence, if the Letter to some Brahmans is a fraud, as Col. Olcott and another say, then all the rest are, also.

Second, it applies precisely to the present state of affairs in respect to messages from Masters, just as if she had so long ago foreseen the present and left the article so that tyros in occultism, such as the present agitators are, might have something to show them how to use their judgment. The portion selected from her article reads:

We have been asked by a correspondent why he should not "be free to suspect some of the so-called 'precipitated' letters as being forgeries," giving as his reason for it that while some of them bear the stamp of (to him) undeniable genuineness, others seem from their contents and style, to be imitations. This is equivalent to saying that he has such an unerring spiritual insight as to be able to detect the false from the true, though he has never met a Master, nor been given any key by which to test his alleged communications. The inevitable consequence of applying his untrained judgment in such cases, would be to make him as likely as not to declare false what was genuine and genuine what was false. Thus what criterion has any one to decide between one "precipitated" letter, or another such letter? Who except their authors, or those whom they employ as their amanuenses (the chelas and disciples) can tell? For it is hardly one out of a hundred "occult" letters that is ever written by the hand of the Master, in whose name and whose behalf they are sent, as the Masters have neither need nor leisure to write them; and when a Master says "I wrote that letter" it means only that every word in it was dictated by him and impressed under his direct supervision. Generally they make their chela, whether near or far away, write (or precipitate) them, by impressing upon his mind the ideas they wish expressed, and if necessary aiding him in the picture-printing process of precipitation. It depends entirely upon the chela's state of development, how accurately the ideas may be transmitted and the writing-model imitated. Thus the non-adept recipient is left in the dilemma of uncertainty, whether if one letter is false all may not be, for as far as intrinsic evidence goes, all come from the same source, and all are brought by the same mysterious means. But there is another and far worse condition implied. All the so-called occult letters being supported by identical proofs, they have all to stand or fall together. if one is to be doubted, then all have, and the series of letters in the Occult World, Esoteric Buddhism, etc., etc., may be, and there is no reason why they should not be in such a case, - frauds, "clever impostures," and "forgeries" such as the ingenuous though stupid agent of the "S.P.R." has made them out to be, in order to raise in the public estimation the scientific acumen and standard of his "Principles." .....

Path, July, 1895

¹Vol. III, p. 92-93.

H.P.B. WAS NOT DESERTED
BY THE MASTERS

THERE are certain things connected with the personality of the great leader which have to be referred to and explained every now and again even in a Society whose effort is as much as possible to avoid the discussion of personalities. Sometimes they are disagreeable, especially when, as in the present instance, some other persons have to be brought in. And when the great leader is H.P. Blavatsky, a whole host of principles and postulates as to certain laws of nature cluster around her name. For not only was she one who brought to us from the wiser brothers of the human family a consistent philosophy of the solar system, but in herself she illustrated practically the existence of the supersensuous world and of the powers of the inner and astral man. Hence any theory or assertion touching on her relations with the unseen and with the Masters she spoke for inevitably opens up the discussion of some law or principle. This of course would not be the case if we were dealing with a mere ordinary person.

Many things were said about H.P.B. in her lifetime by those who tried to understand her, some of them being silly and some positively pernicious. The most pernicious was that made by Mr. A.P. Sinnett in London in the lifetime of H.P.B., and before the writing of the Secret Doctrine, that she was deserted by the Masters and was the prey of elementals and elemental forces. He was courageous about it, for he said it to her face, just as he had often told her he thought she was a fraud in other directions.

This theory was far-reaching, as can be seen at a glance. For if true, then anything she might say as from the Masters which did not agree with the opinion of the one addressed could be disposed of as being only the vaporing of some elementals. And that very use was made of it. It was not discussed only in the charmed seclusion of the London Lodge, but was talked of by nearly all of the many disciples and would-be disciples crowding around H.P.B. It has left its mark even unto this day. And when the total disagreement arose between H.P.B. and Mr. Sinnett as to the relation of Mars and Mercury to this earth, and as to the metaphysical character of the universe - H.P.B. having produced an explanation from the Master - then the pernicious theory and others like it were brought forward to show she was wrong, did not have word from the Master, and that Mr. Sinnett's narrow and materialistic views of the Master's statement - which had been made before the alleged desertion and elemental possession - were the correct ones. The dispute is imbedded in the Secret Doctrine. The whole philosophy hangs upon it. The disagreement came about because Mr. Sinnett held that his view of one of the letters from the Master received in India - through the hand of H.P.B. - was the correct view, whereas she said it was not. He kept rigidly to his position, and she asked the Master for further explanation. When this was received by her and shown to Mr. Sinnett he denied its authenticity, and then the desertion theory would explain the rest. He seemed to forget that she was the channel and he was not.

Although wide publicity was not given to the charge then, it was fully discussed by the many visitors to both camps, and its effect remains to this day among those who of late have turned in private against H.P.B. Among themselves they explain away very easily, and in public they oppose those who adhere firmly to her memory, her honor, and the truth of her statements about the Masters and their communications to her. They think that by dragging her down to the mediocre level on which they stand they may pretend to understand her, and look wise as they tell when she was and when she was not obsessed. This effort will, of course, be unsuccessful; and some will think the matter need not be brought forward. There are many reasons why it should be discussed and left no longer as a secret poison: because it leads to a negation of brotherhood; to an upholding of ingratitude, one of the blackest crimes; and, if believed, will inevitably lead to the destruction of the great philosophy broadly outlined by the Masters through H.P.B.

If, as claimed by Mr. Sinnett, H.P.B. was deserted by the Masters after they had used her for many years as their agent and channel of communication, such desertion would be evidence of unimaginable disloyalty on their part, utterly opposed to their principles as stated by themselves. For when the advisability of similar desertion was in Mr. Sinnett's mind many years before, when he did not approve of H.P.B.'s methods of conducting the movement in India, Master K.H. emphatically wrote him that "ingratitude is not among our vices," asking him if he would consider it just, "supposing you were thus to come," as H.P.B. did, and were to "abandon all for the truth; to toil wearily for years up the hard, steep road, not daunted by obstacles, firm under every temptation; were to faithfully keep within your heart the secrets entrusted to you as a trial; had worked with all your energies, and unselfishly to spread the truth and provoke men to correct thinking and a correct life - would you consider it just, if, after all your efforts," you were to be treated as you propose Mdme. Blavatsky should be treated? But this warning evidently produced only a transient effect, for in a few years' time, as stated, Mr. Sinnett came to the conclusion that his suggestion had been acted upon to an even greater extent than he had originally intended. At first he had only wished that H.P.B. should be put on one side as a channel between himself and the Master, leaving a newly organized T.S. to his own management under those conditions; but he afterwards thought that H.P.B. had been put on one side as a channel of any sort so far as the Masters were concerned. This wholesale later desertion would mean that in the meantime Master K. H. had entirely changed in character and had become capable of gross ingratitude, which is absurd. Masters are above all things loyal to those who serve them and who sacrifice health, position and their entire lives to the work which is the Master's; and H.P.B did all this and more, as the Master wrote. To take the other view and imagine that after years of such service as is described in the above quotation, H.P.B. was left to be figuratively devoured by elementals, would prove Masters to be merely monsters of selfishness, using a tool not made of iron but of a wonderful human heart and soul, and throwing this tool away without protection the moment they had done with it.

And how about the members and more faithful disciples who were left in ignorance of this alleged desertion? Would it have been loyal to them? They had been taught for years to look with respect upon H.P.B. and the teachings she gave out, and to regard her as the Masters' channel. They received no warning that the plan Mr. Sinnett had for so long carried in his mind could possibly be carried out, but on the contrary often received personally from the Masters endorsements of H.P.B.'s actions and teachings. Those who harbored constant doubts of her veracity were reproved; and yet it would seem for no other apparent reason than a necessary correction by her of Mr. Sinnett's wrong interpretation of earlier teachings she was abandoned by her old teachers and friends who had spent years in training her for just this work!

So the whole of this far-fetched supposition is alike contrary to brotherhood and to occultism. It violates every law of true ethics and of the Lodge, and to crown its absurdity would make the Secret Doctrine in large measure the work of elementals. Deserted before the explanation of Mr. Sinnett's mistakes appeared in that book, H.P,B. was obsessed to some advantage, it may be thought! But in fact a great depth of ignorance is shown by those who assert that she was deserted and who add that elementals controlled her, doing the work for her. They do not know the limitations of the elemental: an elemental can only copy what already exists, cannot originate or invent, can only carry out the exact impulse or order given, which if incomplete will cause the result to be similarly incomplete, and will not start work unless pushed on by a human mind and will. In no case is this elemental supposition tenable.

The ignorance shown on this point is an example of the mental standing of most of H.P.B.'s critics. Materialists in their bias, they were unable to understand her teachings, methods or character, and after badly assimilating and materializing the ideas they got original from her, they proceeded to apply the result to an explanation of everything about her that they could not understand, as if they were fitting together the wooden blocks of several different puzzles. But if in spite of all reason this view of desertion were to be accepted, it would certainly lead in the end, as I have said, to the destruction of the Theosophical philosophy. Its indirect effect would be as detrimental as the direct effect of degrading the ideal of Masters. This is clearly shown in the Secret Doctrine.

After pointing out in her "Introductory" to the Secret Doctrine (p. xviii) the preliminary mistake made by the author of Esoteric Buddhism in claiming that "two years ago (i.e., 1883) neither I nor any other European living knew the alphabet of the Science, here for the first time put into scientific shape," when as a matter of fact not only H.P.B. had known all that and much more years before, but two other Europeans and an American as well; - she proceeds to give the Master's own explanation of his earlier letters in regard to the Earth Chain of Globes and the relation of Mars and Mercury thereto (vol. i, pp. 160-170, o.e.). Mr Sinnett himself confesses that he had "an untrained mind" in Occultism when he received the letters through H.P.B. on which Esoteric Buddhism was based. He had a better knowledge of modern astronomical speculations than of the occult doctrines, and so it was not to be wondered at, as H.P.B. remarks, that he formed a materialistic view of a metaphysical subject. But these are the Master's own words in reply to an application from H.P.B. for an explanation of what she well knew was a mistake on Mr. Sinnett's part - the inclusion of Mars and Mercury as globes of the Earth Chain:

"Both (Mars and Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the earth's sidereal lords and superiors and as you are independent of the 'principles' of Daumling." "Unless less trouble is taken to reconcile the irreconcilable - that is to say, the metaphysical and spiritual sciences with physical or natural philosophy, 'natural' being a synonym to them (men of science) of that matter which falls under the perception of their corporal senses - no progress can be really achieved. Our Globe, as taught from the first, is at the bottom of the arc of descent, where the matter of our perceptions exhibits itself in its grossest form... Hence it only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our Earth must be on different and superior planes. In short, as Globes, they are in coadunition but not in consubstantiality with our Earth, and thus pertain to quite another state of consciousness."

Unless this be accepted as the correct explanation, the entire philosophy becomes materialistic and contradictory, analogy ceases to be of any value, and both the base and superstructure of Theosophy must be swept away as useless rubbish. But there is no fear of this, for the Master's explanation will continue to be accepted by the large majority of Theosophists.

And as to H.P.B. personally, these words might possibly be remembered with advantage: "Masters say that Nature's laws have set apart woe for those who spit back in the face of their teacher, for those who try to belittle her work and make her out to be part good and part fraud; those who have started on the path through her must not try to belittle her work and aim. They do not ask for slavish idolatry of a person, but loyalty is required. They say that the Ego of that body she uses was and is a great and brave servant of the Lodge, sent to the West for a mission with full knowledge of the insult and obloquy to be surely heaped upon that devoted head; and they add; 'Those who cannot understand her had best not try to explain her; those who do not find themselves strong enough for the task she outlined from the very first had best not attempt it'."

William Q. Judge

Theosophy, April, 1896

H. S. OLCOTT vs. H.P.B.

In the April Theosophist Col. Olcott makes public what we have long known to be his private opinion -a private opinion at through the pages of Old Diary Leaves, -that H.P.B. was a fraud, a medium, and a forger of bogus messages form the Masters. This final ingrate's blow is delivered in a Postscript to the magazine for which the presses were stopped. The hurry was so great that he could not wait another month before hurling the last handful of mud at his spiritual and material benefactor, our departed H.P.B. The next prominent person for whom we wait to make a similar public statement, has long made it privately.

Col. Olcott "stops the press" and rushes off the Postscript, "for the honor of the Masters." He wishes to defend those Masters, who sent H.P.B. as their messenger, by declaring that she "cooked up," forged, and humbugged with, a long and important message to Brahmans at Allahabad in 1881. The Colonel is H.P.B.'s first Western disciple, ignorant to this day of practical occultism and not able to propound a question to the Masters; never heard of Masters except through H.P.B. He now preserves the honor of Masters by blackening the character of their messenger. Splendid defence, this, of the Masters!

How does he explain the long silence of the Masters since 1881 on the subject! And another very pertinent question is this: How does this "defender of the Masters" explain his own silence in 1881 and since? He was present when the message was sent and knew of it. If he knew then that it was bogus why did he not divulge? If he did not know then, was it because he was unable to tell? If he has since been told by one of the Masters -á la Besant in the Judge case- will he kindly let us know which of the Masters told him, and when?

All these questions ought to be answered, and many proofs given by him showing the least occult ability to decide on false or genuine messages, because he has attempted to classify H.P.B. with frauds, forgers and mediums. Hence the Masters who sent her are put by him in similar categories. Observe that the forgery now alleged by him was at the very time H.P.B. was giving out from the Masters the series of messages which have become known to all. If we believe him, then the delivery by this irresponsible medium of one false message must throw doubt on every message. Certainly Col. Olcott is no occultist whose decision we will accept. Each of us will be left to decide for this, that, or the other message according to our fancy. Olcott does not like the one in question because he lives in India, and it is too gallingly true. Perhaps others may like it, and not be willing to accept other messages that contradict their partisan view of the London Lodge papers or metaphysics and science. For my part, the message in question testifies to its genuineness by its text, except for those who are hit by it, or those who have the Indian craze and think themselves Brahmans, or those whose self-interest and comforts are against it.

The message condemns bigotry. The person to whom it was sent were then of the most theologically bigoted families. They were wondering, like Pharisees, how it was possible that the Mahatmas could communicated with a beef-eating wine-drinking Sinnet and not with them, who took no such things and never shook hands. To these very points, to their superstitions, to their upholding idolatry, to the horrors of caste, the letter adverts. The whole letter rings true and strong. Were one at all disposed to join Olcott in his absurd explanations by mediumship, this letter is the one that would be selected as true.

If for a moment we accept this view of H.P.B. put forward by Olcott then there is, as she published herself, no certainty about any message. Who is to decide? If she hoodwinked with one message, all may be the same -bogus-and the great force and strength derived from a firm belief in Masters will be swept away, because she, their first messenger to us, is made out a fraud. All this is precisely what Olcott et al wish to do. He cannot tolerate the idea that H.P.B. was greater than himself, so he throws around her memory the dirty cloak of tricky and irresponsible mediumship. That done, anything can be explained and anything accounted for.

Well, for my part, I will not accept such nonsense; Col. Olcott being incompetent to decide on Mahatmic messages on occult lines, and being a disciple of H.P.B. is certainly much below her. His present utterance settles nothing about her character, about her mediumship or about the message; but it does serve to brand him as an ingrate and to place him plainly in view as one who calls that great teacher a fraud and medium.

Now let the next and the next come on, so that we may have the lines clearly drawn and the hypocrisies unveiled.

Mrs. A. Besant vs. H.P.B.

Mrs. Besant has sent an advance copy of an article to appear in Lucifer entitled "East and West." It is a very long article devoted chiefly to William Q. Judge, but in it she takes up the message from the Master to the Allahabad Brahmans, which Col. Olcott deals with in his April Postscript. She says the message was not genuine, and thus walks beside Col. Olcott in abuse of H.P.B., for everyone with correct information knows that the message came through H.P.B.

William Q. Judge

Path, June 1895

HIDDEN HINTS
IN THE SECRET DOCTRINE

Part I

From PAGES I TO 67, Vol. I

A PROPHECY. In the 20th century -1900-the scholars of our era will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but simply outlined-Vol.I, Intro. p. xxxvii. In other places the author hints at surprises in store in the way of manuscripts, etc. It would seem that by 1900 some "discoveries" will be made by scholars that will support our author. "Once the door permitted to be kept a little ajar, it will be opened wider with every new century. The times are ripe for a more serious knowledge than hitherto permitted." Vol, I, p. xxxviii, footnote. "We have not long to wait, and many of us will witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the races." V.I, Intro. xliv.

AN ARCHAIC MANUSCRIPT. Some of the doctrines given out are found by her in a collection of palm-leaves made impervious to the elements by some unknown process. Proem V. I, p.I. It is well known that some of the most ancient eastern manuscripts are on palm-leaves which are cut in oblong, narrow form and tied with a string. How is this seen by her? Either in the astral light or objectively, being brought to her table. By whom or what?

CONTINUITY OF PLAN FROM ONE MANVANTARA TO ANOTHER. In this old MS. it is said (Proem) that during the pralaya the plan for the next manvantara slumbers until the dawn of the next evolution, when its potential power goes forth to action. There is, therefore a continuity from manvantara through pralaya to succeeding manvantara. Continued on pp. 4 and 5 of V.I.

THE BASIS OF AFFINITY, hence for all correlations of force. It is stated that Leucippus taught an occult law when he declared, 500 B.C., that the lateral motion of atoms is the root for affinity and correlation of force. V.I, p. 2.

EACH PERIOD OF EVOLUTION is sui generis. "Yet at each new manvantara, its organization [speaking of the cosmos] may be regarded as the first and the last of its kind, as it evolutes every time on a higher plane." V. I, p. 3.

A NEW ELEMENT AT THE END OF OUR 4TH ROUND. "Occult science recognizes Seven Cosmical Elements, four entirely physical, the fifth -Ether-semi-material, as it will become visible in the air toward the end of our 4th Round, to reign supreme over the others during the whole of the 5th Round." Vol. I, p. 12.

AKASA AND MANAS CORRESPOND. See footnote p. 13, Vol. I. "That Akasa, the fifth universal Cosmic Principle-to which corresponds and from which proceeds human Manas-is, cosmically, a radiant, cool, diathermanous, plastic matter, creative in its physical nature, correlative in its grossest aspects and portions, immutable in its higher principles." It must therefore follow, under the law of correspondences, that manas in the seven-fold division is creative, correlative, and immutable in the same way and portions as stated for Akasa.

MANAS IN THE 5TH ROUND. By following out the correspondence we find that as Ether, the lower form of Akasa, now semi-material, will become visible in the air at the end of this Round-the 4th-so manas, now only semi-developed in this race, will be further evolved in the 5th Round, at the same time with the parent source, and as the form of Ether spoken of will then be the superior element in nature, so at the same time the superior principle reigning in the septenary constitution of man will be manas. The full development of manas imposes full responsibility on the race, and thus we see how the turning point is reached and what it may mean, and also what is the meaning of the "moment of Choice." With full responsibility the choice must be made by the race which thus has perfect manas. It is for and towards that period that the Masters of Wisdom are now working so as to prepare the present Egos for the momentous days when the choice of the good or evil path must be intelligently made.

And as in many places in the Secret Doctrine the author says that we are the same egos who were in the Atlantean bodies, and that they had a very weighty karma, we may perceive why it is that are those who will be compelled to make the great choice for good or evil destiny in the next Round.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EFFECT OF GREAT AND MINOR PRALAYA. The question "What happens to the planets during a minor pralaya or dissolution? is answered in footnote p. 18, V.I. They are dead, as it were, but not dissolved, for as, she says, "they remain intact as a huge animal caught and imbedded in the polar ice remains the same for ages." After the great Pralaya no planets remain in corporibus, but all are dissolved, their akasic "photographs" alone remaining. This must be taken metaphorically, or else we will again make objective that which is subjective. But in a minor pralaya the "dead planets" are objective in space, but with all their active life and energy gone.

DHYAN CHOHANS NOT THE ONLY TERM FOR THE HIGHEST BEINGS. "Each of the various groups has its own designation in the Secret Doctrine." V. I, p. 22, lines 8, 9. Nor are they personifications of powers in nature. Vol. I, p. 38, line 18.

EACH ROUND has its special class of Dhyanis to watch over it. The same for races, p. 42, Vol. I. (a). The present round is watched especially by the Fourth Class of Dhyanis.

THE ABSOLUTE NOT UNDERSTOOD by the Dhyan Chohans. p. 51, Vol. I, line 16. And yet some theosophists ask to have definitions or explanations of the Absolute. We heard of one who claimed to have "communed with the Absolute."

THE BREATH OF BRAHMA. This may be said to be the same as "The Eternal Breath" spoken of in the Secret Doctrine. It is motion, and proceeds through space ceaselessly. It does not stop during the pralayas. p. 55, Vol. I, line 11.

IDEALS AND TYPES IN THE ASTRAL LIGHT. The prototype is present in an ideal form in the Astral Light from dawn to night during the manvantaric period-everything from man to mite, from giant trees down to the tiniest blade of grass. p. 63, Vol. I, 1st para. There is a clear correspondence here with the formation of the astral man, which is the copy, plan, or prototype on which the corporeal man is formed.

THE PRIMORDIAL FORM of every manifested thing is like that of an egg. p. 65, Vol. I. A paramahansa once wrote for the Theosophist an article in which he said that theosophy was that Branch of Masonry which showed the universe in the form of an egg.

THE VERBUM, OR WORD, AND ITS FORCE. All religions speak of "the Word." The Jews, from whom the Christians get their religion, say that the all-powerful name of God if pronounced will shake the Universe; the Freemasons speak of the lost word; the Hindus tell of the great word; it is the Greek logos. The question is often raised, "Supposing there be such a word, wherein is its force?" H.P.B. says it is in motion and not in number. Note I, p. 67, Vol. I. The Hebrew Kaballah leans more to number, as being the force of power of this word.

From PAGES 67 TO 128 Vol. I

MATTER DURING PRALAYA. It is in a state of great tenuity seen only by Bodhisatvas. When evolution begins again it appears like curds in space. V.I, p. 69.

ELECTRICITY AN ENTITY. V. I, p. 76, line 6; it is an emanation from an Entity of power, p. 111, footnote, and is coexistent with the one life, p. 81; it is primordial matter of a special nature, p. 82.

PULSATION OF THE HEART AND THE TIDES. Probably due to the universal expanding and contracting of the atoms, which in turn are caused by the expansion and contraction of matter of space. V.I, p. 84. "There is heat internal and heat external in every atom," id.

TWO SORTS OF FIRE OR HEAT. One in the central Sun and the other in the manifested universe and solar system. V.I, p. 84, 87.

MAGICAL POTENCY OF WORDS is in the vowel sounds and not in the numbers. V.I, p. 94.

THE TERM "HUMAN" IS NOT TO BE CONFINED TO THIS GLOBE. It must be applied to all entities who have reached the fourth stage of development on any planet in space in its fourth round in any chain of planets. V.I, p. 106, 2d para.

BUDDHI AS COMPARED WITH SPIRIT is material, although for us and the highest conceptions we can form it is wholly beyond materiality. V.I, p. 119,line 7.

THE HUMAN MONAD is the union of the ray from the absolute with the soul. V.I, p. 119, para. I.

SYMBOLISM AND NUMBERS. They are intimately connected with the hosts of the Dhyan-Chohans. The basic numbers refer each to distinct groups of ideas which vary according to the group of Dhyan Chohans referred to. In other places the author says that, as the Dhyani are connected with evolution in all its intricacies and mysteries, it follows that symbolism is of the highest importance. V.I, p. 119 (b).

THE ONE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF OCCULT SCIENCE is "the radical unity of the ultimate essence of each constituent part of compounds in Nature-from Star to mineral Atom, from the highest Dhyan Chohan to the smallest infusoria." And this is to be applied spiritually, intellectually, and physically. V.I, p. 120, last para.

KARMA NEEDS MATERIAL AGENCIES to carry out its decrees. V.I, p. 123, line 2. The material agents spoken of here are not merely those that we class as such, but many others which are generally conceived of by us as spiritual. For, as said above, even Buddhi is material when compared with Atman of which it is the vehicle. The clue here given is in regard to the operations of Karma through the atoms that are used by the egos in their various incarnations. But in following this out it must not be forgotten that there is no particle or point of materiality which is not at the same time mixed with or in company with another principle-if the word may be used for this purpose-of spirit or the one life.

THE THREE GROUPS OF BUILDERS. These are as follows: The first is the group which constructs the entire system as a whole and which includes more than this globe system; the second is the group of builders who come in when the system as a great whole is ready and form the planetary chain of this earth; and the third is that group which builds or projects Humanity, as they are the great type of the microcosm-man. V.I, p. 128, second para.

THE LIPIKA AS COMPARED WITH THE BUILDERS are the great Spirits of the universe as a whole, the builders being of a special nature. The Lipika, like the others, are divided into three groups, but it is asserted that only the lowest of these three groups has to do with this system of ours and that the other two cannot be known, and also that those two are so high that it is doubtful if even the highest of the Adepts know about them. It may therefore be supposed that for the Adepts the Lipika of the higher degree are as great a mystery as the Mahatmas are for us, and that this ascending scale of greatness ever gives to the soul something still higher, no matter how far it may progress, to which to look and aspire. V.I, see whole of page 128.

But as each of the three groups is divided into seven others (p. 127), it may be the 21st sub-group which has to do with this globe; and it is said that as to the highest of the groups it is directly connected with our karma. V.I, p. 128, last line. Now as Karma rules the entire universe, it must follow, in order to make and keep harmony, that the "highest grade of Lipika" referred to on page 128 is not the highest of the last series of 21 sub-groups, but the highest of the whole three groups.

NOTE WELL. Whenever and "entity" is spoken of among the various "hosts" it is to be known as composed of many entities, just as man himself is similarly constituted, his total consciousness being that of the whole mass of beings who go to make up his intricate life.

From PAGES 128 TO 160, Vol. I

NIRMANAKAYAS. First reference to these on p. 132, note I, where they are called "the surviving spiritual principles of men," and in the text they are those who reincarnate for the good of the world if they choose.

ELECTRICITY AGAIN is mentioned as Life, p. 137, 4th line; also p. 139, line 17; also a form of "Fohat"; also p. 145, (b).

ETHER only partially manifested, and not to be fully so until the 5th Round, p. 140.

THAT ENTITIES ARE CONSTITUTED of many units, each an entity. Thus that "Fohat," elsewhere called "an Entity," is not one undivided entity but is made up of others; and that there are as many Fohats as there are worlds. Note 2, p. 143, and p. 145 (b).

ELIXIR OF LIFE. A hint thereupon. Note 2, p. 144.

ELEMENTALS CONCERNED in all forces, e.g. that electricity, magnetism, cohesion, and the like are made up of elementals. These of course, are not all of one class, but of several, p. 146. Near the end of this pate it is inferentially stated that elementals are generated in millions by other beings. This must be, in fact, a transforming process in the atoms. By referring to p. 143 a broad hint will be found as to this in the remarks upon the "fate of an atom" once caught into any world sphere, and the means of getting through "a current of efflux." Is this efflux through the transforming being?

THE MOON. In what sense dead? Only as to her inner principles. Her physical principles are not dead, but have a certain activity, p. 149, note I. And her spiritual principles have been transferred to this earth, p. 155, note, and p. 156, line 6.

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MOON will have occurred before this earth has passed through her 7th human round, p. 155, note.

ARCHETYPAL MAN ON GLOBE A. p. 159, last para. Here is a most interesting hint not often referred to and opening up a vista of thought. In the 1st round of the monads in this chain of planets, the monads from the preceding chain of worlds-say the moon's chain-become human beings on Globe A. But in the 2nd round the process alters, and it is in the 4th round that man appears on this earth, the 4th Globe. To quote: "on globe A man rebecomes a mineral, a plant, an animal, on globe B,C, etc. The process changes entirely from the 2d round, but-" This abruptness is to give the hint to intuitional investigators, and opens up as great a problem as the 8th sphere seemed once to be and still perhaps is. But we may ask if on Globe A-unseen by us-the archetypal process does not obtain?

From PAGES 160 TO 184, Vol. I

MARS AND MERCURY bear an occult relation to the earth which will not be explained. V.I., p. 163. This is not because no explanation exists, but because, as said (p. 164, footnote), these explanations belong to high grades of initiation.

FIGURES AND NUMBERS the key to the whole system. V.I., p. 164, last line. This has often been stated. Among the Jewish cabalists it is said that the Universe is built by number, weight, and measure, and that harmony is the law reigning over all. Now is the hint given be true, that figures and numbers will not be given for the above reasons, then it is useless for students to bother their minds about the occult meaning of numbers, as so many now do; for this occult meaning cannot be found without assistance.

VENUS IN HER 7TH ROUND. See italicized para.. on. p. 165, where it is said that that planet is in her last round. This must be her 7th. Hence the men there are as gods to us, and, if the argument from analogy is to be relied on, some of her great light must emanate from those beings and not all be from the sun.

MARS WITH TWO MOONS NOT HIS OWN. See p. 165, ital. para.. This is taken from the letter by a Master who, replying to the query as to why Mercury and Venus have no satellites, says: "It is because Mars has two to which he has no right and-for other reasons." That is, we infer that Mars absorbed these moons or dragged them off into his orbit at some time enormously distant and still keeps them. They cannot therefore stand to him in the same relation as our moon does to us. One of the "other reasons" may be that, Venus being in her 7th round, all vestiges of old moons have been sublimated and absorbed into her atmosphere.

ESOTERIC METAPHYSICS must be understood. V. I, p. 169 last para. This rule is laid down by the Adepts and is therefore of greater weight than if formulated by a student. It is useless to attempt to master the system on the lines of modern research, which at best are empirical, very faulty, and leading almost always to a materialization of the whole system. Metaphysics deal with the real because the ideal, and physical science with the phenomenal and therefore illusory and changeable.

EVOLUTION OF THE MONAD A BASIC PRINCIPLE. p. 171, Ist line, V. I. This is laid down with extreme clearness and should not be forgotten. It is not expanded so that inattentive minds may get it through much repetition, but it is postulated once for all. It is still altogether too customary for students to separate the Monads, first from the globes and then from the beings thereon. They cannot be thus divided off. All the globes and their objects are and ever will be monads in stages of evolution, just as we who now study the question are monads ourselves in other stages. The false notion should at once be discarded that there was a time when there were no monads on the globe but that there was here in waiting this ball of earth coming from no one know where, and that later on monads arrived to occupy it.

If we carry out the principle laid down, then the globe is the creation of the monad; and when the globe is evolved, at once monads needing that experience enter into it corporeality to continue its existence. These later monads are those far behind in the race who will, in some succeeding period of evolution, be in a position to evolve on their own account some new globe in ages yet far distant, for the carrying on of the same process eternally. For, as a material object cannot spring out of nothing, neither can education or knowledge or ability to plan arise out of nothing, but must be based upon and flow from a prior experience or education. So it must be that even now there are monads encased in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms which have never been farther than that, and will during the remainder of the race evolution continue their education in those lower kingdoms until their time shall come when, the door opening for their exit, they will pass out and higher to make room for others.

LIMIT TO NUMBER OF MONADS. Although there can be no such thing as a metaphysical limit to the monads, yet practically, for the purpose of any one manvantara, there must be a limited number of monads included within its evolutionary sweep. Since a manvantara, however vast and inconceivable by us, is wholly a finite period, it sets its own limits-within the illimitable absolute-for the monads attracted to it. This of necessity must be, since the natural world which makes experience possible, being finite because material, sets the limits by reason of its capacity being bounded. See 1st para. p. 171, V. I.

FATE OF THE ANTHROPOID APES. This interesting question is raised first on pp. 173 and 175 V. I. and not disposed of. There, in describing the course of the evolution of the monad, it is said that the laggards will not be men at all in this cycle save one exception. On p. 184, 2d para. it seems to be answered. "In this Round...the anthropoids destined to die out in this our race when their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms, or the highest elementals, of the Sixth and Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round..." These descendants of men through union with animals will thus be karmically rewarded in the next round after this, instead of having to wait until another manvantara.

From PAGES 184 TO 192, Vol. I

THE IMPULSE OF EVOLUTION is found in the force of the spiritual breath. It is not to be supposed because "human monads" cease to come into this chain of globes that therefore there is no impulse. The term "human monad" means that monad which having been through all lower experiences is fitted to inform the so-far perfected human body.

MAN FIRST IN THE 4TH ROUND. p. 187. The flow of human monad is at an end, except that those still incarcerated in the anthropoids have yet to come in. Full blown-or rather those that have been through all lower experiences-must proceed in their order through the strictly human evolution. The necessities of evolution demands this, and the turning point is reached in the fourth round which represents the square figure or number, and all monads in the lower kingdoms have to go on with the work of evolution in those until the next manvantara. At that time the monads now in human forms will have progressed beyond, thus leaving room for those below to come up higher.

OUR NATURES FROM WHAT. p. 189. In the note it is distinctly pointed out that the quotation from Shakespeare about our natures being marvelously mixed refers to the part which the Hierarchies of progressed souls throughout the system to which this globe belongs play in giving us our different combinations.

CORRESPONDENCE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION with the nebular evolution and condensation is to be found on these last lines of p. 191: "as the solid earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man."

ORIGIN OF WHITE AND BLACK MAGIC. See not on p. 192, where it is stated that at the highest point of development of the Atlantean race-the fourth-the separation into right and left-hand magic, or consciously good and evil thoughts, took place. Under the action of Karmic law and by the reincarnation over and over again of those engaged in these thoughts, the thoughts were preserved in the realm of mind in the double form of mental deposits and astral impressions. The mental deposits were brought back again and again to earth life, and the astral impressions affected all others who came under their influence. In this way not only were seeds sown in individual minds through their own thoughts, but a vast reservoir of good and bad impressions or pictures has been created in the ethereal medium about us by which sensitive persons are impelled to good and bad acts. And all repetitions of evil thoughts have added to the stock of evil thus remaining to affect and afflict mankind . But as the good also remains, the earnest friends of mankind are able to produce good effects and impressions which in their turn are added to the sum of good. There need be no feeling of injustice on the ground that sensitive persons are affected by evil pictures in the astral light, because such possibility of being thus impressed could not have arisen except through sympathetic attractions for them set up in former lives.

HIDDEN HINTS
IN THE SECRET DOCTRINE

Part II

From PAGES 192 TO 200, Vol. I

THE ASTRAL LIGHT is not in its nature truth revealing or "good." Note 2. p. 197. "It stands in the same relation to Akasa and Anima Mundi as Satan stands to the Deity. They are one and the same things seen from two aspects." It may be said that the astral light is the next step above material concerns. It is the first field into which the seer steps in his progress, but it is dangerous because misleading, and misleading because it reverses all things, as well as being the chief reservoir for the bad or material deeds and thoughts of men. Because it is strange, new, and extraordinary, it influences those who see in it, since it presents images of a weird character, and just from its newness and vividness those who see in it are apt to consider it to be of consequence. It is to be studied but not depended upon. Somewhat as the brain has to accustom itself to the reversed imaged on the retina-turning it straight by effort-so the inner sense have to become accustomed to the reversals made by the Astral Light.

THE FALL INTO GENERATION is explained from p. 192 to p. 198, Stanza VI. Necessarily this raises the question "Why any fall whatever?" The author says: "It was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the fall of mortal man." Hence if this be true, man has not fallen, but is, for this period of evolution, on the way upward. Spirit in order "to become a Self-Conscious Spirit must pass through every cycle of being culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. Spirit per se is an unconscious negative ABSTRACTION. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by merit; hence, to become the highest Dhyan Chohan it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious Being, which is synthesized for us in Man." (192-193) So the question, why any fall if it was purely originally, is based on the assumption that to remain in a state of unconscious abstraction if better. This cannot, however, be so. When a period of evolutions begins, with spirit at one end of the pole and matter at the other, it is absolutely necessary for spirit to proceed through experience in matter in order that self-consciousness may be acquired. It is a "fall" into matter so far as the fact is concerned, but so far as the result and the object in view it is neither fall nor rise, but the carrying out of the immutable law of the nature of spirit and matter. We ignorantly call it a fall or a curse, because our lower consciousness does not see the great sweep of the cycles nor apprehend the mighty purpose entertained. Following the lines of the philosophy elsewhere laid down, we see that at the close of each grand period of evolution some Egos will have failed to attain the goal, and thus some spirit-if we may say-is left over to be again at a new period differentiated into Egos who shall, helped by Egos of the past now become Dhyan Chohans, once more struggle upward. Such is the immense and unending struggle.

STATES AND PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS in Kosmos and Man. p. 192, 2nd and 3d para. It is here stated that of the seven planes of consciousness three are above the entire chain of globes to which the earth belongs, and that the earth is in the lowest of the lower four. But in man, as said here, there are seven states of consciousness which correspond to these seven cosmical planes. He is to "attune the three higher states in himself to the three higher planes in Kosmos." Necessarily he must have in him centres or seats of energy correspondingly, and, as the author points out, he must awaken those seats to activity, to life, before he can attune them to the higher planes. They are dormant, asleep as it were.

FIRST AND SEVENTH GLOBES of the chain are in the Archetypal plane. Page 200, note to diagram. That is, that on the first globe of the chain -A-the whole model of the succeeding globes is made or laid down, and upon that evolution proceeds up to the 7th, where, all having reached the highest stage of perfection after seven rounds, the complete model is fully realized. This is distinctly hinted in the note, for she says: "not the world as it existed in the Mind of the Deity, but a world made as a first model to be followed and improved upon by the worlds which succeed it physically-though deteriorating in purity." The reader will remember that in another place it is plainly said that on Globe A man appears, but that in the second round the process changes. If we assume, as we must, conscious Beings at work in the scheme of evolution, they have to create the mental model, as it were, of the whole planetary chain, and this has to be done at the time of the first globe. The plan is impressed on all the atoms or particles which are to take part in the evolution, and is preserved intact in that plane. The seventh globe is the receiver of the entire result of evolution is each round, and transfers it once more to Globe A, where it proceeds as before, and again the whole mass of evoluting beings is impressed with the original plan. This is repeated for every round.

THE THREE HIGHER PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS spoken of in third note to diagram on page 200 as being inaccessible to human consciousness as yet, does not involve a contradiction. For the attuning of our three higher states of consciousness to the three higher planes is possible, although attainment to those planes is impossible for ordinary human consciousness. The attempt has to be made so as to come into harmony in ourselves with those planes, so that the potentialities may be made active and development of new faculties made possible.

From PAGES 200 TO 212, Vol. I

FUNCTION OF COMETS. Comets are the wanderers who, in the great struggle and rush of matter in any place where a system of worlds is to come into existence, act as aggregators or collectors of the cosmic matter until at last sufficient collections are made to cause the beginning of globes. Italics on p. 201, V.I.

CYCLES. There is always much discussion respecting this vast and interesting subject, not only in theosophical circles but outside as well. Indeed, the discussion was begun ages before our T.S. was formed. It will hardly be finished in our life. The dispute or difficulty has not been as to whether there are cycles governing men and affairs, for the most materialistic are wont to talk of the cycles of recurrence of diseases, wars, and the like, but about when any cycle begins, and especially the larger ones. One of the Moon's cycles is known, and that of the great sidereal vault is approximated, but when we come to such as the latter there is considerable vagueness as to what was the state of things 25,000 years ago. On p. 202 of Vol. I, the hint is given that the fundamental basis controlling number and ground-work of the cycles is laid in the very beginning of the cosmic struggle anterior to the aggregation of matter into globes and suns, for (at foot p. 202) "This is the basic and fundamental stone of the secret cycles...The assertion that all the worlds (stars, planets, etc.), as soon as a nucleus of primordial substance in the laya (undifferentiated) state is informed by the freed principles of a just deceased sidereal body-becomes first comets, and then suns, to cool down to inhabitable worlds, is a teaching as old as the Rishis."

Now in each system to "struggle" is different from every other, a different proportion arises, and, the percentage of loss or remainder being variable, the cyclic bases in each system differ from others. It is very plain, then, that our present-day scientists can know nothing of these original differences and must remain ignorant of the true cycles. Only the eagle eye of the high Adept can see these numbers as they are written upon the great screen of time, and in the whispers that reach us from the ancient mysteries can be found the information we are seeking. Who shall hear aright?

THE VERY BEGINNING. Definitely as to the very beginning of manifestation-not of this little system of ours, but of the one vast whole-it is not possible nor permissible to speak. But a hint of seductive nature is thrown out on p. 203, 3d para., where, taking us back to the first act in the great drama of which our puny play is but a short sentence, H.P.B. says that the secret science declares that when the one great all has been thrown out into manifestation seven special differentiations of IT appear, and from those seven all the countless fires, suns, planets, and stars are lighted and go forth. So that, although in various systems of worlds the cycles and the numbers and bases may differ and be any whole number or fractional number, the great and perfect number is still seven. But no man now among us can understand that great seven when it includes all numbers the mind may reach by chance or by calculation.

From PAGES 212 TO 252, Vol. I

From p. 212 to 221 the reader can for himself find all that the author of the Secret Doctrine desired to give out in those pages.

WHAT ARE ELEMENTALS? In describing the groups of the Hierarchies the 6th and 7th groups are touched on at p. 221, where it is said that elementals are a part of the numberless side groups "shot out like the boughs of a tree form the first central group of the four." And they are all subject to Karma (19th line, p. 221), which they have to work out during every cycle. As it is said, lower on the page, "A Dhyan Chohan has to become" such, it must follow that even a Dhyan Chohan was once at work in the planes of being where elementals are, and from that rose up to the higher place; this must be under the laws of evolution, of Karma, of Reincarnation.

MAN'S GREAT DESTINY. Following the argument hinted at about elemental, on p. 221, it is said that the celestial Hierarchy of this Manvantara will be transferred in the next cycle of life to higher, superior worlds, in order to make room for a new hierarchy, of the same order, which will be composed of the elect ones of our own human race. Such is our destiny, and such the path up which we climb; and when that point is reached, we must work still on for the benefit of those below us. This is the basis of altruism, and without altruism the consummation cannot be reached.

THAT HIGH SPIRITS WORK ON EARTH in bodies of men, while those spirits are still in the highest spheres, see V.I. p. 233-234 and notes, also note p. 235. On p. 235 it is clearly explained that the author does not mean that which is called among the spiritualists "control" of mediums by a spirit but the actual continuance of the status and function of the incarnated spirit in the supersensous regions, while actually using as its own and working in a mortal envelope on earth. So that, according to her, there are certain persons on this earth, living and working as ordinary human beings and members of society, whose informing divine part is so immeasureably high in development that they as such high beings have a definite status and function in the "supersensous regions." We should say-assuming the correctness of the author's statement-that she herself was such a case, and that "H.P.B." whether hourly in the day or night when all around was still had a "status and function" in other spheres where she consciously carried on the work of that high station, whatever it was. There were many events in her daily life know to those who were intimate with her that this hint may ravel, or at least shed much light upon. And in one of her letters this sentence appears-in substance-"The difference between you and me is that your are not conscious except at day, while I am conscious day and night, and have much to do and to endure in both of these existences from which you, being thus half-conscious, are happily saved."

In the Hindu books and teachings there is a reference to this when they speak of high gnanees-that is, persons full of knowledge and spiritual power-being attracted to this earth by certain acts and at certain times i the history of nation, race, or city.

LOSS OF THE SOUL. The possibility of the abandonment of the body by the soul is outlined on page 234, V. I, thus: "The soul could free itself from and quit the tabernacle [of the body] for various reasons, such as insanity, spiritual and physical depravity, etc." And at the end of the note on p. 235 it is hinted broadly that such freeing of the soul from the body, leaving the latter to run out its course, is not confined to the case of those who are insane or depraved, but may occur with those who make great advance in knowledge and such consequent alteration in the constitution of the soul, as it we, that they no longer can dwell on earth, using the old body. It does not appear, however, that this subject is carried any further than this hint, found, as is so usual with H.P.B., in a note. In this the words are: "For the occurrence is found to take place in wicked materialists as well as in persons 'who advance in holiness and never turn back.'" From my knowledge of her methods I regard this note as a deliberate reverse of sentence, in which the object of it is found in the words which are used in the underlined part.

THE NECESSITY FOR INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. This is very emphatically put, and in precisely the style of H.P.B., in the 3d paragraph on page 244, in the parallelisms, where Atma is spoken of. Here she shows that Atma is not subject to change or improvement, but is the "ray of light eternal which shines upon and through the darkness of matter-when the latter is willing." [Italics are mine. (WQJ)] If matter, in the human being, the personal self, the body, and the astral body, with passions and desires, is not willing to be fully informed by the Spirit, then Atma will not shine through it because it cannot, in as much as matter then does not submit itself to the Divine behests. The willingness can only be shown by individual effort toward goodness and purification. It would seem that this ought to do away with that negation and supineness indulged in by even theosophists who talk of "not interfering with Karma."

ONLY THREE DIMENSIONS OF MATTER. The "fourth dimension" is combatted on pages 251-252 et seq.: "So long as there are foot-rulers within the resources of Kosmos, to apply to matter, so long will they be able to measure it in three ways and no more."

From PAGES 252 TO 260, Vol. I

ORDER OF THE ELEMENTS ESOTERICALLY is, Fire, air, water, earth. (2nd para.). Counting up from the earth, the order for the elementals, or the nature spirits in the elements, is: earth elementals, water elementals, air elementals, fire elementals. And it has always been said that those of the fire are the wisest and most distant so far as cognition of or by us is concerned, that the airy ones are also wise, and those of the water dangerous. Those of the earth have been described by seers in the form of gnomes sometimes seen by clairvoyant miners in the depths under us, and of this class also are those that have given rise to the superstition among the Irish respecting the fairies.

FIRE IN THE PRECEDING ROUNDS. She says (p. 253), "For all we know, FIRE may have been pure AKASA, the first Matter of the Magnum Opus of the Creators and 'Builders,'..." The phrase "For all we know" is sometimes to be translated "Thus it was."

THE FIFTH ELEMENT IN THE FIFTH ROUND. This, as said before in these notes, will be "The gross body of Akasa"... (257) and "will, by becoming a familiar fact of Nature to all men, as air is familiar to us now, cease to be as at present hypothetical."

WHAT IS THE SIXTH SENSE TO BE? In the first paragraph of page 258 she says that at first there will be a partial familiarity with a characteristic of matter to be known then as permeability, which will be perceived when certain new senses have been developed, and after that this singular characteristic will be fully known, as it will be developed concurrently with the sixth sense. We may therefore argue that she means to describe the sixth sense as one which will (among other things)give to us the power to permeate matter with ourselves. Let some one else now carry this idea further, as it is no doubt correct. It would seem that both the matter-characteristic and the power in man are being here and there exhibited, or else some of the phenomena seen at spiritualistic seances could never have happened; but alas! we need not look for aid there so long as the beloved "spirits from the summerland" continue to hold sway over their votaries.

THE EARTH IN ITS EARLY PERIODS. Some students have thought that this globe in its early times when, following the statements in Esoteric Buddhism, the human life-wave and so on had not come, there was no life on it, supposing in a vague way that there was, say in the fire-mist time, a mass of something devoid of life. This is contradicted and explained on page 258 in the second para. for: "Thus Occultism disposes of the so-called Azoic age of Science, for it shows that there never was a time when the Earth was without life upon it." This is asserted for no matter what form or sort of matter, thus, "Wherever there is an atom of matter, a particle or a molecule, even in its most gaseous condition, there is life in it, however latent and unconscious."

OF SPIRIT AND MATTER. In the commentary on p. 258 the author plainly writes, "Spirit is the first differentiation of (and in ) SPACE; and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit." This is a clear statement of what she desired to teach respecting spirit and matter, and as in other places it is said that spirit and matter are the opposite poles of the One-the Absolute-an agreement has to be made between the two. There is no real disagreement, since it is evident that differentiation must proceed in a definite order, from which it results that there must be always one state, plane, place, power, and idea in nature that is above and different from and beyond all others. And when we go beyond spirit, the highest we may speak of is the Absolute, which is the container of the next two-spirit and matter, the latter following the first in order of differentiation. These are said to be coeternal, and, indeed, are so, as far as our minds are concerned, for the reason that we cannot grasp either the first or the second differentiation of the Absolute. But because this doctrine of the coeternalness of spirit and matter has been taught, there never being the one without the other also present, some students have fallen into a materialistic view, probably because matter is that which being near to us is most apparent, and others, remaining somewhat vague, do not define the doctrine at all. Spirit and matter are coeternal because they exist together in the Absolute, and when the first differentiation spoken of above takes place, so does the second immediately. Hence, except when we are dealing with metaphysics, they must be regarded as the two poles of the one Absolute. And the Bhagavad Gita does not support the contrary, for it only says there is no spirit without also matter, as it is dealing through the words of Krishna with things as they are after the differentiation has taken place.

There is another class of theosophists who speak of the "superpersonal god," asserting at the same time that they do not mean "a personal God," and they are opposed by still another class who point to the well-known denial by H.P.B. of the existence of a personal god. It is in the sentence quoted that both of these may come to an agreement, for the believers in the superpersonal deity can without doubt find support in the lines on p. 258. For if spirit is the first, then matter is a grade below it, however fine and imperceptible that distinction may be.

If further we say, as many of us do, that the great inherent ideas of man were given to him by the first great teachers whose descendants and pupils the Adepts are, then we here also see how it is that there is such a wide and universal belief in a God. It must also be the origin of that universal optimism which may be found also in the ranks of the theosophists, who, while for present days are pessimistic, must be called the greatest optimists on the face of the earth. There are many other matters in this sentence. Many a student has puzzled his head very often in trying to discover from where come the impulse and the plan as well as the idea of perfection, for it must as a first thing reside somewhere, whether abstractly or concretely. Perhaps it is here; those students can look here at any rate.

A MYSTERIOUS PRINCIPLE MENTIONED. After going for a little space into the formation of this globe by the first builders, she speaks (page 259) of a certain akasic principle to which no name is given but left in hiatus. But in the note on that page we see, and I am violating nothing in referring to it, that very clearly it is pointed out that the primordial substance of which she then writes "is the body of those Spirits themselves, and their very essence." Now in many places in her writings, and also in those of other knowing ones through all time, this primordial substance is said to be one that , once controlled, gives him who has power over it the most transcendent abilities, -sway alike over mind and matter.

She and all of us are quite safe in speaking of it, since there are but few indeed who will see anything in it at all. Yet the few can have the hint if they never got it before. This, however, should always remain as a hint, and there ought to be no attempt to make it clear to science, for nothing will be gained except ridicule and maybe worse.

W.Q.J.

Path,1891:January, February,
March, May, June
September, October

1892: January, February

HIT THE MARK

Having taken the bow, the great weapon, let him place on it the arrow, sharpened by devotion. Then, having drawn it with a thought directed to that which is, hit the mark, O friend, - the Indestructible. OM is the bow, the Self is the arrow, Brahman is called its aim. It is to be hit by a man who is not thoughtless; and then as the arrow becomes one with the target, he will become one with Brahman. Know him alone as the Self, and leave off other words. He is the bridge of the Immortal. Meditate on the self as OM. Hail to you that you may cross beyond the sea of darkness.
- MUNDAKA UPANISHAD     

Archery has always been in vogue, whether in nations civilized or among people of barbarous manners. We find Arjuna, prince of India, the possessor of a wonderful bow called Gandiva, the gift of the gods. None but its owner could string it, and in war it spread terror in the ranks of the enemy. Arjuna was a wonderful archer too. He could use Gandiva as well with his right as with his left hand, and so was once addressed by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita dialogue as "thou both-handed." The bow figures in the lives of Greek heroes, and just now the novelist Louis Stevenson is publishing a book in which he sings the praises of a bow, the bow of war possessed by Ulysses; when war was at hand it sang its own peculiar, shrill, clear song, and the arrows shot from it hit the mark.

Archery is a practice that symbolizes concentration. There is the archer, the arrow, the bow, and the target to be hit. To reach the mark it is necessary to concentrate the mind, the eye, and the body upon many points at once, while at the same time the string must be let go without disturbing the aim. The draw of the string with the arrow must be even and steady on the line of sight, and when grasp, draw, aim, and line are perfected, the arrow must be loosed smoothly at he moment of full draw, so that by the bow's recoil it may be carried straight to the mark. So those who truly seek wisdom are archers trying to hit the mark. This is spiritual archery, and it is to this sort that the verse from the Mundaka Upanishad refers.

In archery among men a firm position must be assumed, and in the pursuit of truth this firm position must be taken up and not relaxed, if the object in view is to be ever attained. The eye must not wander from the target, for, if it does, the arrow will fly wide or fall short of its goal. So if we start out to reach the goal of wisdom, the mind and heart must not be permitted to wander, for the path is narrow and the wanderings of a day may cause us years of effort to find the road again.

The quality of the bow makes a great difference in the results attained by the archer. If it is not a good bow of strong texture and with a good spring to it, the missiles will not fly straight or with sufficient force to do the work required; and so with the man himself who is his own bow, if he has not the sort of nature that enables him to meet all the requirements, his work as a spiritual archer will fall that much short. But even as the bow made of wood or steel is subject to alterations of state, so we are encouraged by the thought that the laws of karma and reincarnation show us that in other lives and new bodies we may do better work. The archer says too that the bow often seems to alter with the weather or other earthly changes, and will on some days do much better work than on others. The same thing is found by the observing theosophist, who comes to know that he too is subject from time to time to changes in his nature which enable him to accomplish more and to be nearer the spiritual condition. But the string of the bow must always be strung tight; and this, in spiritual archery, is the fixed determination to always strive for the goal.

When the arrow is aimed and loosed it must be slightly raised to allow for the trajectory, for if not it will fall short. This corresponds on its plane with one of the necessities of our human constitution, in that we must have a high mental and spiritual aim if we are to hit high. We cannot go quite as high as the aim, but have to thus allow for the trajectory that comes about from the limitations of our nature; the trajectory of the arrow is due to the force of gravity acting on it, and our aspirations have the same curve in consequence of the calls of the senses, hereditary defects, and wrong habits that never permit us to do as much as we would wish to do.

Let us hit the mark, O friend! and that mark is the indestructible, the highest spiritual life we are at any time capable of.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, September, 1890

HOW SHE MUST LAUGH

SINCE the demise of H.P. Blavatsky's body, a little over a year ago, mediums in various parts of the world have reported her "spirit" as giving communications like what follows:

In Paris in May, 1891, that she objected to the cremation of her body and had changed her views. Yes indeed, how her views must have changed! Nota bene: this was from a Catholic medium.

In America in September, 1891, that she had absolutely changed all her views and was now sincerely sorry she had promulgated Theosophy at all. Again later, in the United States, that she desired to have materializing and picture-daubing mediums represent her theories and her teachers to the world, and to carry on her work.

About October, 1891, that her old ideas regarding "spooks" had altered, and that now she wished it to be known as her teaching that the cast-off astral remnants of a human being are in fact spirits, and may be taught in the after life! And further, she is at present - presumably in Kamaloka - desirous of seeing all her books burnt so that her old teachings, now pernicious in her sight, may be forgotten as speedily as possible.

Those who communicate these extraordinary reports from H.P.B. are not accused by us of malice or any improper motive. The first "message" came privately from one who had known her in life but whose views were always quite in line with the message. The others represent the different private opinions of the medium or clairvoyant reporting them. Such is nearly always the case with these "spirit messages." They do, indeed, come from psychic planes, and are not strictly the product of the medium's normal brain. But they are the result of obscure thoughts of the medium which color the astral atmosphere, and thus do no more than copy the living. In one case, and that was the hugest joke of all, the medium made a claim to at once step into H.P.B.'s shoes and be acknowledged the leader of the Society!

How she must laugh! Unless mere death may change a sage into an idiot, she is enjoying these jokes, for she had a keen sense of humor, and as it is perfectly certain that Theosophists are not at all disturbed by these "communications," her enjoyment of the fun is not embittered by the idea that staunch old & SHY; time Theosophists are being troubled. But what a fantastical world it is with its Materialists, Spiritualists, Christians, Jews, and other barbarians, as well as the the obscure Theosophists!

Path, July, 1892

HOW SHOULD WE TREAT OTHERS

The subject relates to our conduct toward and treatment of our fellows, including in that term all people with whom we have any dealings. No particular mode of treatment is given by Theosophy. It simply lays down the law that governs us in all our acts, and declares the consequences of those acts. It is for us to follow the line of action which shall result first in harmony now and forever, and second, in the reduction of the general sum of hate and opposition in thought or act which now darkens the world.

The great law which Theosophy first speaks of is the law of karma, and this is the one which must be held in view in considering the question. Karma is called by some the "law of ethical causation," but it is also the law of action and reaction; and in all departments of nature the reaction is equal to the action, and sometimes the reaction from the unseen but permanent world seems to be much greater than the physical act or word would appear to warrant on the physical plane. This is because the hidden force on the unseen plane was just as strong and powerful as the reaction is seen by us to be. The ordinary view takes in but half of the facts in any such case and judges wholly by superficial observation.

If we look at the subject only from the point of view of the person who knows not of Theosophy and of the nature of man, nor of the forces Theosophy knows to be operating all the time, then the reply to the question will be just the same as the everyday man makes. That is, that he has certain rights he must and will and ought to protect; that he has property he will and may keep and use any way he pleases; and if a man injure him he ought to and will resent it; that if he is insulted by word or deed he will at once fly not only to administer punishment on the offender, but also try to reform, to admonish, and very often to give that offender up to the arm of the law; that if he knows of a criminal he will denounce him to the police and see that he has meted out to him the punishment provided by the law of man. Thus in everything he will proceed as is the custom and as is thought to be the right way by those who live under the Mosaic retaliatory law.

But if we are to inquire not the subject as Theosophists, and as Theosophists who know certain laws and who insist on the absolute sway of karma, and as people who know what the real constitution of man is, then the whole matter takes on, or ought to take on, a wholly different aspect.

The untheosophical view is based on separation, the Theosophical upon unity absolute and actual. Of course if Theosophists talk of unity but as a dream or a mere metaphysical thing, then they will cease to be Theosophists, and be mere professors, as the Christian world is today, of a code not followed. If we are separate one from the other the world is right and resistance is a duty, and the failure to condemn those who offend is a distinct breach of propriety, of law, and of duty. But if we are all united as a physical and psychical fact, then the act of condemning, the fact of resistance, the insistance upon rights on all occasions - all of which means the entire lack of charity and mercy - will bring consequences as certain as the rising of the sun tomorrow.

What are those consequences, and why are they?

They are simply this, that the real man, the entity, the thinker, will react back on you just exactly in proportion to the way you act to him, and this reaction will be in another life, if not now, and even if now felt will still return in the next life.

The fact that the person whom you condemn, or oppose, or judge seems now in this life to deserve it for his acts in this life, does not alter the other fact that his nature will react against you when the time comes. The reaction is a law not subject to nor altered by any sentiment on your part. He may have, truly, offended you and even hurt you, and done that which in the eye of man is blameworthy, but all this does not have anything to do with the dynamic fact that if you arouse his enmity by your condemnation or judgment there will be a reaction on you, and consequently on the whole of society in any century when the reaction takes place. This is the law and the fact as given by the Adepts, as told by all sages, as reported by those who have seen the inner side of nature, as taught by our philosophy and easily provable by anyone who will take the trouble to examine carefully. Logic and small facts of one day or one life, or arguments on lines laid down by men of the world who do not know the real power and place of thought nor the real nature of man cannot sweep this away. After all argument and logic it will remain. The logic used against it is always lacking in certain premises based on facts, and while seeming to be good logic, because the missing facts are unknown to the logician, it is false logic. Hence an appeal to logic that ignores facts which we know are certain is of no use in this inquiry. And the ordinary argument always uses a number of assumptions which are destroyed by the actual inner facts about thought, about karma, about the reaction by the inner man.

The Master "K. H.," once writing to Mr. Sinnett in the Occult World, and speaking for his whole order and not for himself only, distinctly wrote that the man who goes to denounce a criminal or an offender works not with nature and harmony but against both, and that such act tends to destruction instead of construction. Whether the act be large or small, whether it be the denunciation of a criminal, or only your own insistence on rules or laws or rights, does not alter the matter or take it out of the rule laid down by that Adept. For the only difference between the acts mentioned is a difference of degree alone; the act is the same in kind as the violent denunciation of a criminal. Either this Adept was right or wrong. If wrong, why do we follow the philosophy laid down by him and his messenger, and concurred in by all the sages and teachers of the past? If right, why this swimming in an adverse current, as he said himself, why this attempt to show that we can set aside karma and act as we please without consequences following us to the end of time? I know not. I prefer to follow the Adept, and especially so when I see that what he says is in line with facts in nature and is a certain conclusion from the system of philosophy I have found in Theosophy.

I have never found an insistence on my so-called rights at all necessary. They preserve themselves, and it must be true if the law of karma is the truth that no man offends against me unless I in the past have offended against him.

In respect to man, karma has no existence without two or more persons being considered. You act, another person is affected, karma follows. It follows on the thought of each and not on the act, for the other person is moved to thought by your act. Here are two sorts of karma, yours and his, and both are intermixed. There is the karma or effect on you of your own thought and act, the result on you of the other person's thought; and there is the karma on or with the other person consisting of the direct result of your act and his thoughts engendered by your act and thought. This is all permanent. As affecting you there may be various effects. If you have condemned, for instance, we may mention some: (a) the increased tendency in yourself to indulge in condemnation, which will remain and increase from life to life; (b) this will at last in you change into violence and all that anger and condemnation may naturally lead to; (c) an opposition to you is set up in the other person, which will remain forever until one day both suffer for it, and this may be in a tendency in the other person in any subsequent life to do you harm and hurt you in the million ways possible in life, and often also unconsciously. Thus it may all widen out and affect the whole body of society. Hence no matter how justifiable it may seem to you to condemn or denounce or punish another, you set up cause for sorrow in the whole race that must work out some day. And you must feel it.

The opposite conduct, that is, entire charity, constant forgiveness, wipes out the opposition from others, expends the old enmity and at the same time makes no new similar causes. Any other sort of thought or conduct is sure to increase the sum of hate in the world, to make cause for sorrow, to continually keep up the crime and misery in the world. Each man can for himself decide which of the two ways is the right one to adopt.

Self-love and what people call self-respect may shrink from following the Adept's view I give above, but the Theosophist who wishes to follow the law and reduce the general sum of hate will know how to act and to think, for he will follow the words of the Master of H.P.B. who said: "Do not be ever thinking of yourself and forgetting that there are others; for you have no karma of your own, but the karma of each one is the karma of all." And these words were sent by H.P.B. to the American Section and called by her words of wisdom, as they seem also to me to be, for they accord with law. They hurt the personality of the nineteenth century, but the personality is for a day, and soon it will be changed if Theosophists try to follow the law of charity as enforced by the inexorable law of karma. We should all constantly remember that if we believe in the Masters we should at least try to imitate them in the charity they show for our weakness and faults. In no other way can we hope to reach their high estate, for by beginning thus we set up a tendency which will one day perhaps bring us near to their development; by not beginning we put off the day forever.

William Brehon, F.T.S.

Path, February, 1896

HOW THE SOCIETY IS RUN

WHO PAYS?

A FEW facts may be useful to stimulate and interest by way of chronicle. The Theosophical Society entered on its sixteenth year in November, 1890. It was founded without cash, it has worked in every quarter of the world; by its efforts the thought of the day has been affected in both East and West, all in the face of ridicule, without capital, and with but small contributions in its first ten years. How, then, has it been run, and who pays? It has been run on faith, and the few have paid while the many have benefited. Those few never begrudged the money, deeming it a duty to spend and be spent in a great and noble effort. But now that we have passed the fifteenth milestone and entered on the dawn preceding another important era in our history, it is surely time that more liberal contributions by those who have means should be made, and that those who can each spare a small sum, but hitherto have spent all on self or family, should donate that infinitesimal amount to enable the seed so carefully and painfully sown to be tended and made to yield a harvest.

Ever member knows, or ought to know, that in the office of the General Secretary an enormous quantity of work is done. Not mere formal official work - for of that there is minimum - but good, honest, painstaking work in attending to the needs of the whole body and of each and every member who indicates a want. Tracts by the hundred thousand sown over the land. Who paid? A few earnest men and women in money or work. Would our general treasury have permitted this? Every month a carefully prepared copy of the Forum is sent each member, and a carefully written article to each Branch. The printing of these, some $27 per month, was paid for by the treasury. Who paid for the labor, the intellect, the hire, the interest, the sympathy of the editor and assistants? No one but himself. And yet he, too, paid out largely in cash for the privilege of working in a noble cause. Every day occupied from nine o'clock to four in receiving, reading and answering with care and theosophic interest the numerous letters from members and enquirers. Who paid? No one; it was free. When, then, did the Forum have the needful mental attention? At night, when the hard work of the day was over. For what profit? For no worldly profit, but at a loss of pleasures of the theater, the music hall, the favorite study, while careless members in every corner almost hesitated to pay their dues.

Has the Society a complete record of its numerous members, of when and where admitted, and by whom endorsed? Yes, accurate in every particular. Who did it? The same persons in the same day's work. Who paid? No one, not even the treasury. And yet, indeed, some captious persons would even berate these unfortunate slaves of theosophy for an occasional whiff of the fragrant weed - their only dissipation. Thus the work goes on from day to day and week to week, no matter whether the members pay or not, and also in the face of many annoyances caused by the failure of Branch officials to read or follow the rules. But there is still other work done for the cause. Many persons talked with about theosophy, many articles written for the papers so that the name of theosophy may be made more widely known. When is that done, and who pays? In the evening, and it produces no pay.

Is pay desired, is it right to ask for it, is it the object of this to grumble at so much outlay? Not at all. But members ought to know these facts so that they may understand that a few persons in fact furnish the money for the very large expenses of the Society. This ought not to be so. One great reason why it should not be is that, when the necessary money is given by but a few, the resulting special karmic benefit flows to and follows after those few persons, whereas if the whole Society gave the means, not only greater work would be done, but also to every member would be recorded in the great karmic ledger the credit for such acts.

And just now there are great opportunities arising. The American Section should have in its special pay a number of learned men - they are called pandits - in India for the purpose of sending translations to us for general use and the education of the people in respect to what has been and is being done in the great cause of philosophy in Eastern lands. The present state of the general treasury will not permit of this now, although the amount of money per month needed for the object is not very large. We have in India from the efforts of Col. Olcott a library which will one day be a great institution. We ought to have the staff of pandits there too, for the especial use of this Section. It remains to be seen whether we shall be able to accomplish this. There is no reason why we should not. Other societies are able to get the money for all sorts of purposes, such, for instance, as paying the salaries of useless missionaries to people who cannot be converted and better unconverted. And we need also theosophical apostles.

Turn now to London. There we see that by the noble sacrifices of the few there is a headquarters, a real building, in which the work is carried on unceasingly. How could they ever have gotten a house if Mrs. Annie Besant had not given one to them, and how could they ever have produced the mass of literature given out by H.P. Blavatsky for our benefit if the Society had depended upon paid work for the procurement of it? See how much the English government and the colleges pay for the work of such men as Max Müller and others, which, although it is good work in its way and has been going on for many years, has made no sensible change in the people by its weak and wavering impact upon their minds. Yet in fifteen short years the efforts of H.P. Blavatsky, Col. Olcott, and others have made the entire world look with longing and respect and hope to the vast stores left to us by the ancient philosophers of the East. And all of this by the few for no pay and for no honor, and in the face of calumny and scorn from the world at large.

Is it not the duty of every member of the Society to now, if never before, give what he can in time, money, and effort for the pushing on the work so well begun?

A few practical words. There is hardly a man or woman in the Society who is not able to spare in the course of the year at least five dollars. It may be saved by men in a hundred different ways, and by women in ways they know. The accumulation of these small sums would in the end be enough to carry on the various old plans so long in use, and forward others just formulated and to be made in the future. And such contributions given to a cause that has no dogma, no creed to enforce, no particular set of bishops and ministers to feed and pamper, would carry with them a force and energy great enough to make the name of theosophy known to every human being in the world, and at last to bring about the realization of the first object of the Society - the brotherhood of man - among men, which now sadly enough resides above, in the ideal, in the field of the stars.

William Q. Judge

Path, March, 1891

HOW TO SQUARE THE TEACHINGS

PLACE has been given to Mr. Sinnett's admirably written article "Esoteric Teaching" for two good reasons:
first, because he requested its publication, and second, because the theme is excellent and the time propitious. But by its appearance the PATH is not bound to the conclusions of the learned author. *

Roughly summarizing the history of the recrudescence of the teaching of the Lodge for this century, we find H.P.B. publicly beginning it, though guardedly, in Isis Unveiled as herself the messenger of the real Teachers behind. At that time (1875) she gave private teachings (1) in America to certain persons. Then in India in the Theosophist, with H.P.B. as editor, it proceeds to further unfolding in articles entitled "Fragments of Occult Truth." It is a pity this name was not preserved and used for the book which the "Fragments" after-wards became-Esoteric Buddhism. Later the Occult World came out in 1884, and also Esoteric Buddhism. During all this time H.P.B. was doing her own work with others, explaining the same philosophy as was given to Mr. Sinnett, and contributed to literature the Key to Theosophy and the Secret Doctrine. The fact-not denied by Mr. Sinnett or anyone- is that the letters from the Masters from which the matter for Esoteric Buddhism was taken came in the main through H.P.B., for although it is true she "showed surprise" to Mr. Sinnett on seeing certain things communicated to him in letters from the Masters, the surprise was not at teachings which were new to her, but surprise that they were divulged at all, for she knew the teaching, inasmuch as she taught it under pledge as far back as from 1875 to 1878 in America.

In her Secret Doctrine, availing herself of the same teachers to whom she introduced Mr. Sinnett, she corrected two errors into which she said he had fallen, i.e., respecting Devachan and our companion planets. It is a perfectly unthinkable proposition to say that she was not advised by the Masters when writing the Secret Doctrine. I who saw many of the Masters' letters in 1888 in reference to the Secret Doctrine certainly cannot give up the evidence of my inner and outer senses. I know as surely as I know any fact that the same teachers were giving her in 1887 and 1888, as before, information for that book, in black upon white, and I am certain they dictated the corrections given in Secret Doctrine upon the points now before us. Evidence, eye-sight, and tradition confirm it, for in 1876 to 1878, I was given by her the same theories and the clue to the misunderstanding which a desire for consistency as to mere words has now aroused.

Even in 1888 it was not the time to make the point precisely clear to the public. Times have rule in occult teaching more than most readers - or writers - of theosophical books suspect. But the clue was given, a broad hint was thrown out. It is now the time when what I was told in 1876 and 1878 by the Masters through H.P.B. may be told, since the prohibition put personally upon me has been withdrawn.

The questions respecting Mars and Mercury - and I might add those which might have been but were not put about Venus - did touch upon other questions on the outskirts of higher initiations and which never are and never will be answered before the right time. The statement in the Master's letter to Mr. Sinnett that the questions put by the latter approached too near to secrets of higher initiations did not, it is true, refer directly to these questions about Mars and Mercury, but that does not alter the fact that all the questions then propounded on this planetary subject touched the delicate area; and whether Mr. Sinnett or anyone else liked it or not, attention had to be drawn off even at the risk of creating a temporary confusion on the topic. But in 1888 time had rolled on further, and now it is 1893, and nearer and nearer to another cycle. The clue may now be given. It may be noticed, if readers will observe, that the many questions raised in reference to Mars and Mercury served the additional purpose of so distracting the attention of questioners that hardly any queries were raised about the subject of "Cycles" on which the Masters had the completest information but about which the Lodge is more careful to remain silent than in respect to other points yet the cycles are more important and have more bearing on life than Mars and Mercury.

Mars, Mercury, and Venus have a special and direct relation to this earth and its invisible companions. Those three visible spheres have to do with certain cosmic principles and lines of influence in and on the earth, while the remaining visible planets of the Solar System have not the same relation. Read it thus, as taught before Mr. Sinnett was in the T.S., and as repeated in the Secret Doctrine:

The unseen companions of your earth are united with it in mass, though different as to quality of substance. The visible planets of your Solar System which have a relation special and peculiar to Earth are Mars. Mercury, and Venus. But what that peculiar - nay wonderful - relation is do not ask, for we will not tell you. If while the current is open you persist in the question. you will arouse in yourselves a perplexity which the answer obtained will not relieve. Is there not a spirit of irritation, of rage, and another of wisdom and active judgment in man and Nature which may relate to visible planets which are not an actual part of earth's own special family? This is as far as we will now go.

The whole misunderstanding hinges on the word "relation." It was a word which led up to many things. The presence of Mars and Mercury in the sky presents a relation to the earth. yet they have another relation to it which Saturn, Jupiter, and so on have not, while the latter bear the same relation to us of proximity as do the first. Admit the proposed construction above given, and at once there is complete concordance between Esoteric Buddhism and Secret Doctrine as to esoteric divulgements. But continue the controversy to try and show that Esoteric Buddhism had not a single blunder, and perplexities of all sorts impossible to relieve will spring up on every hand. The Masters have commended the book, and well so, as it is made up from their letters. But that does not prevent one making slight mistakes, as, for instance, the one that all men stay in devachan for 1500 years. This is not the fact, nor is it according to reason. And I make bold to say that it is not 1500 years since I was last in devachan, but much less; and this assertion is made on personal knowledge supported by confirmatory statement from the same Masters. But it is true that the general run of the human race stays in devachan for the average time of 1500 years of mortal time.

Mars, Mercury, Venus, then, are a part of our system in the sense of having an extremely important relation and influence with the human race and its planets, and having that in mind it was quite permissible for the teacher to reply that Mars and Mercury belong to our system.

*In the article here referred to by Mr. Judge, published in the same issue of the Path, Mr. Sinnett had commented critically on the article, "Mars and Mercury."

(1) Moreover, a considerable part of the philosophy expounded by Mr. Sinnett was taught in America, even before Isis Unveiled was published, to two Europeans and In my colleague, Col. H. S. Olcott.-Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. xix.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, September, 1893

Hypnotism

What is the hypnotic force or influence? What really happens when a hypnotic experiment is performed? What is proved by it? What force is exerted that, after making a man sleep, rouses him to a false wakefulness in which he obeys a suggestion, seems to lose his identity, becomes apparently another person, speaks a language he knows nothing of, sees imagined pictures as real ones? How is it that in this state his physical body follows the operator's suggestion and becomes blistered by a piece of paper which possesses no blistering power, sneezes when there is no actual titillation of the olfactory nerves, shivers over a hot stove, and perspires if it be suggested that a block of ice is a mass of fire?

All this and very much more has been done in hypnotic experiments, just as it was done many years ago by mesmerizers, electro-biologists, and wandering fascinators of all sorts. Then it was outside the pale of science, but now since physicians renamed a part of it "hypnotism" it is settled to stay among the branches of psychology, theoretical and applied. The new schools, of course, went further than the first did or could. They added a species of witchcraft to it by their latest claim to be able to externalize and localize the nerve-sensitiveness and hence mental impressionability of the subject; to put it in his photograph or within a glass of water, so that if the former be scratched or the latter touched, the patient at once jumped or screamed. This is the old way of making a wax image of your form and sticking pins in it, whereupon you pined and died; men and women were burned for this once. This, while interesting and important if true, possesses the interest of a nightmare, as it suggests how in the near future one's picture may be for sale to be blistered and stabbed by an enemy, provided the extraneous localization of sensibility is first provided for. But the other experiments touch upon the great questions of identity, of consciousness, of soul and of personality. They raise an issue as to whether the world be physical and mechanical, as Descartes thought, or whether it is fleeting and a form of consciousness existing because of thought and dominated by thought altogether, as the Theosophists modern and ancient always held.

Professor James of Harvard has published his conclusion that experiments in hypnotism convince him, as they have convinced many, of the existence of the hidden self in man, while the French schools dispute whether it is all due to one personality mimicking many, or many personalities wrapped up in one person and showing one phase after another. Facts are recorded and wonderful things done, but no reasonable and final explanation has been made by the modern schools. Except here and there they, being ignorant of man's hidden real nature and powers, or denying the existence of such, see no cause for alarm in all these experiments and no danger to either society or the individual. As the true evolution of man's inner powers at the same rate and time concurrently with all other racial and planetary evolution is not admitted by these schools, they cannot perceive in the future any possibly devilish use of hypnotic powers. The Theosophist, however, suggests an explanation for the phenomena, points to similar occurrences through history, and intimates a danger to come if the thinking world does not realize our true nature as a being made of thought and consciousness, built in and on these, and destructible by them also so far as his personality is concerned. The danger is not in knowing these things and processes, but in the lack of morality and ethics in the use of them both now and in the future.

One theory for use in explaining and prosecuting hypnotic research is about as follows. Man is a soul who live on thoughts and perceives only thoughts. Every object or subject comes to him as a thought, no matter what the channel or instrument, whether organ of sense or mental center, by which it comes before him. These thoughts may be words, ideas, or pictures. The soul-man has to have an intermediary or connecting link with Nature through and by which he may cognize and experience. This link is an ethereal double or counterpart of his physical body, dwelling in the latter; and the physical body is Nature so far as the soul-man is concerned. In this ethereal double (called astral body) are the sense-organs and centers of perception, the physical outer organs being only the external channels or means for concentrating the physical vibrations so as to transmit them to the astral organs and centers where the soul perceives then as ideas or thoughts. This inner ethereal man is made of the ether which science is now admitting as a necessary part of Nature, but while it is etheric it is none the less substantial.

Speaking physically, all outer stimulus from nature is sent from without to within. But in the same way stimuli may be sent from the within to the without, and in the latter mode is it that our thoughts and desires propel us to act. Stimuli are sent from the astral man within to the periphery, the physical body, and may dominate the body so as to alter it or bring on a lesion partial or total. cases of the hair turning grey in a night are thus possible. And in this way a suggestion of a blister may make a physical swelling, secretion, inflammation, and sore on a subject who has submitted himself to the influence of the hypnotizer. The picture or idea of a blister is impressed on the astral body, and that controls all the physical nerves, sensations, currents, and secretions. It is done through the sympathetic nervous plexus and ganglia. It was thus that ecstatic fanatical women and men by brooding on the pictured idea of the wounds of Jesus produced on their own bodies, by internal impression and stimulus projected to the surface, all the marks of crown of thorns and wounded side. It was self-hypnotization, possible only in fanatical hysterical ecstasy. The constant brooding imprinted the picture deeply on the astral body; then the physical molecules, every changing, became impressed from within and the stigmata were the result. In hypnotizing done by another the only difference is one of time, as in the latter instances the operator has simply to make the image and impress it on the subject after the hypnotic process has been submitted to, whereas in self-hypnotization a long-continued ecstasy is necessary to make the impression complete.

When the hypnotic process-or subjugation, as I call it- is submitted to, a disjunction is made between the soul-man and the astral body, which then is for the time deprived of will, and is the sport of any suggestion coming in unopposed, and those many and do sometimes arise outside the mind and intention of the operator. From this arises the sensitiveness to suggestion. The idea, or thought, or picture of an act is impressed by suggesting it on the astral body, and then the patient is waked. At the appointed time given by the suggestor a secondary sleep or hypnotic state arises automatically, and then, the disjunction between soul and astral body coming about of itself, the suggested act is performed unless-as happens rarely-the soul-man resists sufficiently to prevent it. Hence we point to an element of danger in the fact that at the suggested moment the hypnotic state comes on secondarily by association. I do not know that hypnotizers have perceived this. It indicates that although the subject be dehypnotized the influence of the operator once thrown on the subject will remain until the day of the operator's death.

But how is it that the subject can see on a blank card the picture of an object which you have merely willed to be on it? This is because every thought of any one make a picture; and a thought of a definite image make a definite form in the astral light in which the astral body exists and functions, interpenetrating also every part of the physical body. Having thus imaged the picture on the card, it remains in the astral light or sphere surrounding the card, and is there objective to the astral senses of the hypnotized subject.

Body, soul, and astral man properly in relation give us a sane man; hypnotized, the relation is broken and we have a person who is not for the time wholly sane. Acute maniacs are those in whom the disjunction between astral man and soul is complete. Where the hypnotized one remains for months in that state, the astral man ha become the slave of the body and its recollections, but as the soul is not concerned no real memory is present and no recollection of the period is retained.

The varied personalities assumed by some subjects brings up the doctrine of a former life on earth for all men. The division between soul and astral man releases the latter from some of the limitations of brain memory so that the inner memory may act, and we then have a case of a person reenacting some part of his former life or lives. But a second possibility also exists-that by this process another and different entity may enter the body and brain and masquerade as the real person. Such entities do exist and are the astral shells of men and women out of the body. If they enter, the person becomes insane; and many a maniac is simply a body inhabited by an entity that does not belong to it.

The process of hypnotizing is as yet unknown in respect to what does happen to the molecules. We claim that those molecules are pressed from periphery to center instead of being expanded from the inside to the surface. This contraction is one of the symptoms of death, and therefore hypnotizing is a long step toward physical and moral death. The view expressed by Dr. Charcot that a subject is liable to fall under the influence at the hands of anyone should be admitted, as also that in the wake of the hypnotizer will be found a host of hysteriacs, and that it all should be regulated by law is unquestionable. I go still further and say that many persons are already in a half-hypnotized state, easily influenced by the unprincipled or the immoral; that the power to hypnotize and to be sensitive to it are both progressive states of our racial evolution; that it can and will be used for selfish, wicked, and degrading purposes unless the race, and especially the occidental portion of it, understands and practices true ethics on the brotherhood of man. Ethics of the purest are found in the words of Jesus, but are universally negatived by Church, State, and individual. The Theosophical doctrines of man and nature give a true and necessary basis and enforcement to ethics, devoid of favoritism or illogical schemes of eternal damnation. And only through those doctrines can the dangers of hypnotism be averted, since legislation, while affixing penalties, will not alter or curtail private acts of selfishness and greed.

William Q. Judge

Path, February, 1894.

Note-This article was originally written for the N.Y. World, at request.

HYPNOTISM AND THEOSOPHY

Is hypnotism understood? What is the attitude of the Theosophical Society to hypnotism?

It is thought by some that magnetism and hypnotism are identical; for many have said this new force or power is only the old practice of Mesmer revived in this century, after long years of contempt, and labeled with a new name, which will permit doctors to take it up. This is not, however, altogether true. Dr. Charcot, of Paris, and his followers, may be credited with the revival of hypnotism; for, in consequence of their investigations, it has been accepted by the medical profession. I have seen the prominent doctors of the Atlantic coast change their views on this subject in twenty-five years. Dr. Hammond and others laughed at the credulity of those who believed that the phenomena, now so well known among hypnotizers, ever took place; today they write articles and admit the facts previously denied.

Many years ago, Dr. Esdaile, a surgeon of the British army, conducted a hospital in India, and there performed many difficult operations by using magnetism as an anaesthetic, even instructing native assistants to use it on patients in his stead. His book, long ago published, gives all the facts. There is plenty of testimony in all countries to the reality of the mesmeric and hypnotic states and powers.

The great question which arose after the proofs about hypnotism were in, was a very different one from any which has previously been brought forward. As soon as the process was described and admitted, experiments proceeded with rapidity, and the great subject of "suggestion" was laid bare. It was found that the hypnotized person could be made to do many strange things after recovering from the hypnotic state, provided the suggestion had been made to him when he was in the state. The subject was told to murder Dr. A or B; to steal a pocket-book. He was then taken out of the hypnotic state, and, at the appointed time, would take the suggested weapon - a paper knife or harmless thing - and go through all the required actions, or would actually steal the object he was told to steal. If this power could be used by a doctor in an experiment, it was argued that an actual murder might be planned and executed through a hypnotized person. Hence it was dangerous. Crime is possible of perpetration with impunity by the real culprit. Dr. Charcot gave an article to an important New York magazine in which he admitted the probabilities of suggestion to patients, but denied that there was danger from suggested crime, and yet also said there ought to be laws against indiscriminate hypnotization. In the latter conclusion, most of the Theosophical Society's members fully concur, but they also think that there is, and will be, danger from crime suggested to hypnotic subjects. Not in the immediate present, but in the future.

This is because hypnotism is not understood nor its dangers appreciated by the medical profession; still less do they credit the public with a correct knowledge on the subject.

The very best hypnotizers know very well that there are points at which the hypnotized subject escapes their influence, continues in the hypnotic state, and remains under some influence not known to the operator nor distinguishable by the subject. Here is one danger - the danger of ignorance and of a blind guide's leading one equally blind. Such writers as Braid, Binet and others are only statisticians. They simply give facts and methods, all being equally in the dark as to causes and possibilities. Again, the operators in the forefront of hypnotic fame know, too, as Dr. Charcot has said, there is a danger that hysteria will be developed where it never existed, and a long train of other evils. This is why he demands the suppression of indiscriminate operating. But the real rock of offense is this, and well known to theosophical students, that as the force and power of hypnotism are better known, it will be seen that whatever the influence is, the process going on in hypnotism is the contracting of the cells of the body and brain from the periphery to the centre. This process is actually a phenomenon of the death state, and is the opposite of the mesmeric effect; and this point is not known to the medical profession, nor will it be as they now proceed, because post mortem examinations never reveal the action of a living cell. Magnetism by human influence starts from within and proceeds to the outer surface, thus exhibiting a phenomenon of life the very opposite of hypnotism. And the use of magnetism is not objectionable, yet it should be limited in practice to competent members of the medical profession. The more studious and careful members of the Theosophical Society, then, are against the use of hypnotism. In all its anaesthetic phases it can be duplicated by mesmerism without any bad effects. Dr. Esdaile has abundantly shown this. Laws ought to be passed making it a misdemeanor to have public or private hypnotic séance. And these laws should also be aimed at even those doctors who, under the plea of science, put subjects into absurd and undignified positions. Such practices are not necessary, and are deliberately against the desire of the waking will and judgment of the subject. They only exhibit the operator's power and add nothing to knowledge that cannot be otherwise obtained.

But even with the remarkable cases recorded by Binet and others in France, the laws governing man's inner constitution, and which especially govern in hypnotism after a certain point, are not perceived by the learned writers. Some give only facts - either facts about strange recurrence of states, and others like Dr. James of this country assume that there is a hidden self who does these queer tricks with the mortal shape. Theosophists know that the extraordinary alterations in mind or mental power, the strange "recurrence of states" and the apparently distinct division or separation of intelligence in a single human subject are all explained by the ancient eastern method of reducing the inner powers of man into seven classes, in each of which the hidden self - the Ego - can and does act independently, the body being only a gross instrument or field for the action of the real man.

This theory divides him into seven planes of action, in each of which the Ego or hidden self can have a consciousness operating in a manner peculiarly appropriate to that plane, and also partaking of the consciousness and experience of the planes above it but not below. And each of these layers or fields for consciousness is further divided into other sub-fields, in every one of which there may be a separate experience and action, or all may be combined. Now in the cases taken up by Dr. James, the peculiarity noted was that when the subject acted as No. I, she had no recollection of a state called No. 2. No explanation of this was offered, only the fact being recorded. It is explained by the localization of the consciousness of the Ego in one or the other of the sub-fields of action of the first of the great class of seven.

The failure to recollect from one to the other was due to the fact that the Ego was forced into that particular field, and was thus unable to carry recollection with it. Hence it was entirely automatic in its action on that plane. This effect was due almost entirely to the specific contractile action of the hypnotic process, which, as said above, is essentially a contraction of the cells from outside to the centre. This will always prevent the Ego from educating itself to remember from state to state and field to field the experience of each, which education is however possible in the mesmerized or magnetized state, and of course in the normal waking life.

The cases where the subject escapes from the operator's control are all explicable under the same theosophic theory; that is, those are instances in which the Ego retreats from the first plane or field of consciousness made up of seven divisions or sub-fields to the next one of the whole class of seven, instead of entering one of the sub-divisions of the first. And, as the medical practitioners do not know of nor admit the reality of the higher inner sub-divisions, they are not acquainted with the means for reaching the Ego when it has escaped further from them into a field of consciousness where they are in ignorance of causes and conditions; that is to say, the hypnotizers are not examining the real field of operation of the force, but are looking at some of its phenomena merely.

These phenomena are exhibited in the body or outer shell while the psycho-physiological process, going on within, and causing the visible phenomena, are hidden from their view.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

_______

Note. - This article was printed in the Jenness Miller Illustrated Monthly, possibly some time in 1893. It is here reproduced from an undated page torn from this journal. A search for the volume in which it appeared has proved fruitless, the set in the Library of Congress being incomplete. - Editors.

HYPNOTISM-MESMERISM

SCIENCE TAKES A STEP

The encyclopaedias are not yet out of print which have classed mesmerism among the foolish supersitions of the ignorant played upon for profit by the quick-witted imposter, nor are the learned doctors dead who have published articles in support of the encyclopaedias; yet today the most eminent physicians in Europe declare that Mesmer was right and that mesmerism is not a superstitions, but that it is necessary for reputations to adopt a new name, -so mesmerism is rechristened Hypnotism. In this way those doctors who laughed at and derided what has long been know to the common people may now learnedly discuss phenomena which some years ago they ignored under its old name. In the March number of Scribner Dr. William James writes upon this subject under the name of the "Hidden Self," and the April Forum admits an article by the eminent Dr. Charcot upon "Hypnotism and Crime."

This step, though taken late, is in the right direction. But the eminent physicians who make this advance cannot claim to be the leaders of the people, for the latter have for generations known quite as much about the matter as the licensed practitioners, except that they use no high-sounding name to call it by. It is well known to many members of the Theosophical Society that there are perhaps thousands of people in the United States who forty years ago pursued the same investigations and made similar experiments to those of Dr. Charcot and others. In the year 1850 a certain Dr. J.B. Dods gave lectures about the country and taught what he called Electrical Psychology. This was then so well known that it attracted the attention of certain U.S. Senators, among them, Daniel Webster, John P. Hale, Theodore Rush, Sam Houston, Henry Clay, and others, who invited Dr. Dods to lecture before them in Washington. He delivered his lecture, went on with his experiments, and published a series of Lectures upon the subject. In these are to be found, together with other things, the directions so loudly proclaimed and appropriated now by physicians who would have hooted at Dr. Dods. And even on the point of the necessity of precaution and of keeping hypnotism out of the hands of unprincipled persons, Dods was not silent. In 1850 he said in his Introduction that, although he had taught more than one thousand individuals whom he had put under solemn pledge not to reveal his methods to impure and immoral persons, yet some were so unprincipled as to violate their pledge and hawk the "science" about everywhere.

Dr. Charcot in the April Forum pleads for legislation that will prevent just such unprincipled persons from dealing with subjects, not solely on the ground that crime may be easily and safely committed with the aid of hypnotism, but rather that sensitive persons may be protected from the recurrence of hysteria or catalepsy, and ventures the opinion that crime will probably not find any aid or safeguard in hypnotism. While we thoroughly agree with Dr. Charcot as to the need for placing safeguards around this budding science, it is from a conviction that crime can be aided and hidden by the use of such a practice, and is today thus aided and hidden. We do not care to commit hypnotism solely to the doctors, as he asks, just for their sake, but we would wish to place restrictions upon even those gentlemen, and to limit the number of them who may be allowed to use it.

The chief value to the Theosophist of this new step of the schools, is not, however, in the likelihood that rules and methods may be published, but that before long time the erstwhile materialist who can be convinced of a fact only when an Academy endorses it will be the more easily convinced that there is a soul. In the March Scribner article above spoken of, we have a public admission that the facts of hypnotism prove a Hidden Self. Dr. Charcot does not go as far as this, but the variety and peculiarly occult character of numerous facts daily brought to light by other investigators will raise such a mountain of proof that hardly any one will be able to overcome it or deny its weight. Once they begin to admit a Hidden Self,-using, indeed, the very words long adopted by many Theosophists and constantly found in the ancient Upanishads, they allow the entering wedge. And so not long to wait have we for the fulfillment of the predictions of H.P. Blavatsky made in Isis Unveiled and repeated in the Secret Doctrine, "...and dead facts and events deliberately drowned in the sea of modern scepticism will ascend once more and reappear upon the surface."

RODRIQUEZ UNDIANO

Path, May, 1890

HYPOCRISY OR IGNORANCE

There are some members of the Theosophical Society who expose themselves to the charges of indulging in hypocrisy or being ignorant about their own failings and shortcomings. They are those who, having studied the literature of the movement and accepted most of its doctrines, then talk either to fellow-members or to outsiders as if the goal of reunification and universal knowledge had been reached in their case, when a very slight observation reveals them as quite ordinary human beings.

If one accepts the doctrine of Universal Brotherhood, which is based on the essential unity of all human beings, there is a long distance yet intervening between that acceptation and its realization, even in those who have adopted the doctrine. It is just the difference between intellectual assent to a moral, philosophical, or occult law, and its perfect development in one's being so that it has become an actual part of ourselves. So when we hear a theosophist say that he could see his children, wife, or parents die and not feel anything whatever, we must infer that there is a hypocritical pretension or very great ignorance. There is one other conclusion left, which is that we have before us a monster who is incapable of any feeling whatever, selfishness being over-dominant.

The doctrines of Theosophy do ask for nor lead to the cutting out of the human heart of every human feeling. Indeed, that is an impossibility, one would think, seeing that the feelings are an integral part of the constitution of man, for in the principle call Kama -the desires and feelings- we have the basis of all our emotions, and if it is prematurely cut out of any being death or worse must result. It is very true that theosophy as well as all ethical systems demands that the being who has conscience and will, such as are found in man, shall control this principle of Kama and not be carried away by it nor be under its sway. This is self-control, mastery of the human body, steadiness in the face of affliction, but it is not extirpation of the feelings which one has to control. If any theosophical book deals with this subject it is the Bhagavad Gita, and in that Krishna is constantly engaged in enforcing the doctrine that all the emotions are to be controlled, that one is not to grieve over the inevitable-such as death, nor to be unduly elated at success, nor to be cast down by failure, but to maintain an equal mind in every event, whatever it may be, satisfied and assured that the qualities move in the body in their own sphere. In no place does he say that we are to attempt the impossible task of cutting out of the inner man an integral part of himself.

But, unlike most other systems of ethics, theosophy is scientific as well, and this science is not attained just when one approaching it for the first time in this incarnation hears of and intellectually agrees to these high doctrines. For one cannot pretend to have reached the perfection and detachment from human affairs involved in the pretentious statement referred to, when even as the words are uttered the hearer perceives remaining in the speaker all the peculiarities of family, not to speak of those pertaining to nation, including education, and to the race in which he was born. And this scientific part of theosophy, beginning and ending with universal brotherhood, insists upon such an intense and ever-present thought upon the subject, coupled with a constant watch over all faults of mind and speech, that in time an actual change is produced in the material person, as well as in the immaterial one within who is the mediator or way between the purely corporal lower man and his Higher divine self. This change, it is very obvious, cannot come about at once nor in the course of years of effort.

The charge of pretension and ignorance is more grave still in the case of those theosophists guilty of the fault, who happen to believe-as so many do-that even in those disciples whose duties in the world are nil from the very beginning, and who have devoted themselves to self-renunciation and self-study so long that they are immeasurably beyond the members of our Society, the defects due to family, tribal and national inheritance are now and then observable.

It seems to be time, then, that no theosophist shall ever by guilty of making pretension to any one that he or she has attained to the high place which now and then some assume to have reached. Much better is to be conscious of our defect and weaknesses, always ready to acknowledge the truth that, being human, we are not able to always or quickly reach to goal of effort.

EUSEBIO URBAN

Path, December 1891

ICONOCLASM TOWARD ILLUSIONS

A disposition not to interfere in any way with beliefs which are illusions prevails with many who dislike the pain caused by such tearing away of the veil. And the argument that illusionary beliefs, creeds, and dogmas should not be done away with so long as the believer is happy or good has been used by the Christian Church-and more especially by the Roman Catholic branch of it-as a potent means of keeping the mind of man in an iron chain. They are accustomed to add that unless such creeds and beliefs shall stand, morality will die out altogether. But experience does not prove the position to be correct.

For numerous examples exist in the dissenting or Protestant form of Christianity showing that the important doctrines of the Church are not necessary for the prevailing of good morals; and, on the other hand, immorality, vice, and crime in places high and low coexist with a formal declaration of belief in the church dogmas. In many parts of Italy the grossest superstition and murderous vengefulness and crooked hearts are found side by side with an outwardly pious compliance with the ordinances of the Church and a superstitious belief in its dogmas. The whole Christian assembly of nations officially violates the commands of Jesus every day and hour.

Shall it be worse or better, or kind or harsh, to tear away the veil as quickly as possible? And if the iconoclastic attack should be made, for what reason ought one to hesitate because the operation and the attack may result in mental pain?

The only reason for hesitation lies in this fear to give pain; there can be nothing but good results from the change from an untrue and illogical, and therefore debasing, creed, if a system that is complete and reasonable be furnished in its place.

Were we dealing with children or with a race mind which though dwelling in an adult body is but that of a child, then, indeed, it would be right to lead them on by what may be entirely an illusion. But the day of man's childhood as an immortal being has passed away. He is now grown up, his mind has arrived at the point where it must know, and when, if knowledge be refused, this violation of our being will result in the grossest and vilest superstition or the most appalling materialism. No child is born without the accompanying pains, and now the soul-mind of man is struggling for birth. Shall we aid in preventing it merely for the avoidance of preliminary pain? Shall we help a vast brood of priests to refasten the clamps of steel which for so many centuries they have held tightly on the race-mind? Never, if we see the great truth that we are preparing for a cycle when reason is to take her place beside the soul and guide the pilgrim to the tree of life eternal.

Be not beguiled by the argument that 'tis unwise to tell the truth. It is but the song of the siren, intended to lure the traveler to his doom.

Tell the truth, but do not force it. If even a pious soul should lose the historical Jesus Christ and see instead the glorious image of the Self in every man, that were a gain worth all the pain the first rude shock might give. The danger of lifting the veil of Isis lies not in the doctrines of Unity, Reincarnation, and Karma, but in untaught mysteries which not Theosophist is able to reveal. The change from dogma or creed to a belief in law and justice impartial will bring perhaps some tears to the soul, but the end thereof is peace and freedom.

The "great orphan Humanity," now grown up, no longer needs the toys of a thousand years ago, but requires, and with a voice like the rush of mighty waters demands, that every veil shall be lifted, every lie unveiled, and every light be lighted that can shed a ray upon the remainder of its toilsome road.

A.T. Mana

Path, December 1892

IF METHUSELAH EXISTED,
WHY SO SHORT OUR LIVES?

At a Theosophical Society meeting the other day, it was stated that in the early races, say the second and third, referred to in the Secret Doctrine, many had a much more ethereal body, which lived many more years than Methuselah, the aged. In elaborating this, the objection was advanced that the body of man is now much more compact and stable than it was in those early races, because the atoms of which it is composed know their business better now than then, have greater affinity for certain combinations and for each other, and are not so readily scattered and disintegrated; and, if so, how is it explained that the length of human life now is only three-score and ten years, against several hundred in primitive times?

At first sight this seems to be perhaps a strong objection, but a careful consideration will dissipate it.

In the first place, when the human body was in a nebulous state the friction between the particles was much less than when they had drawn closer together. If the theory of ultimate atoms is admitted, we must also assent to the law that there is friction between them which will develop heat or tend to reduce the cohesive power. The heat evolved will have a tendency to destroy the intervening medium, or at least to so alter its state as to make it useless as a medium for cohesions to act.

Further, if we suppose, as is perfectly justifiable, that there are large and small combinations of atoms in each of which the units are closer to each other, the heat evolved will destroy the constitution of the element, whatever it may be, that is between that combination of atoms and the adjoining one. And, still further, the friction between any two such bodies will also tend to rub off or draw off atoms from either of two to unite with the stronger, or be thrown entirely out of both collections.

Such a process as described will in the end bring about the disintegration of the entire mass of atoms. Thus at first, the atoms being farther removed, the destructive means can only act at intervals or more slowly than when the union is more intimate, and from this we reach the reason why the age of the combination of atoms would be greater in the one case than in the other.

Coming down to the present period we find that, in addition to the closer association of atoms in the physical frame, there is also another disturbing element tending to destruction of the union, that is, the force of the mind and the emotions.

It is well known that as man increases his brain use and power and the play of his emotions, he is able to affect his physical frame thereby. Today many hold that the American people are becoming too nervously organized. This reacts upon the atoms in the body, and must make the average age less than those ancient races when the mental and emotional natures did not have such sway over the human being.

This is perfectly in accord with the Secret Doctrine, as it is shown that in the early ages everything went slower in all departments and that now in Kali Yuga all things move with great rapidity.

So it may be properly concluded that the great law of conservation of energy, of correlation of forces, makes it now out of the ordinary for men to live to the age of Methuselah.

F.T.S.

Path, May 1891

IMAGINATION AND OCCULT PHENOMENA

The faculty of imagination has been reduced to a very low level by modern western theorisers upon mental philosophy. It is "only the making of pictures, daydreaming, fancy and the like": thus they have said about one of the noblest faculties in man. In Occultism it is well known to be of the highest importance that one should have the imagination under such control as to be able to make a picture of anything at any time, and if this power has not been so trained the possession of other sorts of knowledge will not enable one to perform certain classes of occult phenomena.

Those who have read Mr. Sinnett's Occult World will have noticed two or three classes of phenomena performed by H.P. Blavatsky and her unseen friends, and those who have investigated spiritualism will know that in the latter have been many cases of similar phenomena done by so-called "controls." Others who made no such investigations have, however, on their own account seen many things done by forces not mechanical but of a nature which must be called occult or psychical. In spiritualism, and by the Adepts like H. P. Blavatsky and others, one thing has excited great interest, that is the precipitating on to paper or other substances of messages out of the air, as it were, and without any visible contact between the sender of the message and the precipitated letters themselves. This has often occurred in séances with certain good mediums, and the late Stanton Moses wrote in a letter which I say many years ago that there had come under his hand certain messages precipitated out of the air. But in these cases the medium never knows what is to be precipitated, cannot control it at will, is in fact wholly ignorant of the whole matter and the forces operating and how they operate. The elemental forces make the pictures through which the messages are precipitated, and as the inner nature of the medium is abnormally developed, acting subconsciously to the outer man, the whole process is involved in darkness so far as spiritualism is concerned. But not so with trained minds or wills such as possessed by Madame Blavatsky and all like her in the history of the past, including the still living Adepts.

The Adepts who consciously send messages from a distance or who impress thoughts or sentences on the mind of another at a distance are able to do so because their imagination has been fully trained.

The wonderworker of the East who make you see a snake where there is none, or who causes you to see a number of things done in your presence which were not done in fact, is able to so impress you with his trained imagination, which, indeed, is also often in his case an inheritance, and when inherited it is all the stronger when trained and the easier to put into training. In the same way but to a much smaller degree the modern western hypnotizer influences his subject by the picture he makes with his imagination in those cases where he causes the patient to see or not to see at will, and if that power were stronger in the West than it is, the experiments of the hypnotizing schools would be more wonderful than they are.

Take the case of precipitation. In the first place, all the minerals, metals, and colored substances any one could wish for use are in the air about us held in suspension. This has long been proved so as to need no argument now. If there be any chemical process known that will act on these substances, they can be taken from the air and thrown down before us into visibility. this visibility only results from the closer packing together of the atoms of matter composing the mass. Modern science has only a few processes for thus precipitating , but while they do not go to the length of precipitating in letters or figures they do show that such precipitation is possible. Occultism has a knowledge of the secret chemistry of nature whereby those carbons and other substances in the air may be drawn out at will either separately or mixed. The next step is to find for these substances so to be packed together a mold or matrix through which they may be poured, as it were, and, being thus closely packed, become visible. Is there such mold or matrix?

The matrix is made by means of the trained imagination. It must have been trained either now or in some other life before this, or no picture can be precipitated nor message impressed on the brain to which it is directed. The imagination make a picture of each word of each letter of every line and part of line in every letter and work and having made that picture it is held there by the will and the imagination acting together for such a length of time as is needed to permit the carbons or other substances to be strained down through this matrix and appear upon the paper. This is exactly the way in which the Masters of H.P.B. sent those messages which they did not write with their hands, for while they precipitated some they wrote some others and sent them by way of the ordinary mail.

The explanation is the same for the sending of a message by words which the receiver is to hear. The image of the person who is to be the recipient has to be made and held in place; that is, in each of these cases you have to become as it were a magic lantern or a camera obscure and if the image of the letters or if the image of the person be let go or blurred, all the other forces will shoot wide of the mark and naught be accomplished. If a picture were made of the ineffectual thoughts of the generality of people, it would show little lines of force flying out from their brains and instead of reaching their destination falling to the earth just a few feet away from the person who is thus throwing them out.

But, of course, in the case of sending and precipitating on to paper a message from a distance, a good many other matters have to be well known to the operator. For instance, the inner as well as the outer resistance of all substances have to be known, for if not calculated they will throw the aim out, just as the billiard ball may be deflected if the resistance of the cushion is variable and not known to be so by the player. And again, if a living human being has to be used as the other battery at this end of the line, all the resistances and also all the play of that person's thought have to be known or a complete failure may result. This will show those who inquire about phenomena, or who at a jump wish to be adepts or to do as the adepts can do, what a task it is they would undertake. But there is still another consideration, and that is that inasmuch as all these phenomena have to do with the very subtle and powerful planes of matter it must follow that each time a phenomenon is done the forces of those planes are roused to action, and reaction will be equal to action in these things just as on the ordinary plane.

An illustration will go to make clear what has been said of the imagination. One day H.P. Blavatsky said she would show me precipitation in the very act. She looked fixedly at a certain smooth piece of wood and slowly on it come out letters which at last made a long sentence. It formed before my eyes and I could see the matter condense and pack itself on the surface. All the letters were like such as she would make with her hand, just because she was making the image in her brain and of course followed her own peculiarities. But in the middle, one of the letters were blurred and, as it were, all split into a mass of mere color as to part of the letter.

"Now here," she said, "I purposely wandered in the image, so that you could see the effect. As I let my attention go, the falling substance had no matrix and naturally fell on the wood any way and without shape."

A friend on whom I could reply told me that he once asked a wonderworker in the East what he did when he made a snake come and go before the audience, and he replied that he had been taught from very early youth to see a snake before him and that it was so strong an image everyone had to see it.

"But," said my friend, "how do you tell it from a real snake?"

The man replied that he was able to see through it, so that for him it looked like the shadow of a snake, but that if he had not done it so often he might be frightened by it himself. The process he would not give, as he claimed it was a secret in his family. But anyone who has made the trial knows that it is possible to train the imagination so as to at will bring up before the mind the outlines of any object whatsoever, and that after a time the mind seems to construct the image as if it were a tangible thing.

But there is a wide difference between this and the kind of imagination which is solely connected with some desire or fancy. In the latter case the desire and the image and the mind with all its powers are mixed together, and the result, instead of being a training of the image-making power, is to bring on a decay of that power and only a continual flying to the image of the thing desired. This is the sort of use of the power of the imagination which has lowered it in the eyes of the modern scholar, but even that result would not have come about if the scholars had a knowledge of the real inner nature of man.

William Q. Judge

Path, December 1892

THE IMPUDENCE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHERS

In Herbert Spencer's new book Justice, he defines that principle thus: "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man," and then goes on to say in his appendix that for more than thirty years he was the first to recognize this "equal freedom" as the summing up of justice in the abstract. But not till 1883 did this modern philosopher discover that Kant had made the same formula. He does not appear to know or recognize the French method of putting it in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, nor the attempt to insist upon it in the American Revolution, nor, indeed, in the thousands of declarations make long before the birth of Spencer.

We have nothing to say against Mr. Spencer's motives, but a great deal against the impudence, perhaps of an unconscious kind, of the schools of modern philosophers of which he forms one. Laboriously for years they write books and construct systems of thought called new by themselves, but as old as any Egyptian pyramid. These systems and formulas they make up in the most refreshing ignorance of what the ancients said about the same things, for "surely," they seem to be saying, "what could the ancients have knows of such deep matters/" The theory that no energy is lost was not for the first time known in the world when our moderns gave it out, nor is Mr. Spencer's theory of evolution, nor even his statement of it, his invention or discovery. All these were known to the Ancients. They are found in the Bhagavad-Gita and in many another eastern philosophical book.

If these modern philosophers confined themselves to their studies and had no influence in the world and upon the minds of young men who make the new nation, we would not have a word to say. But since they influence many minds and have enormous weight in the thinking of our day, it seems well to point out that is savors of impudence on their part to ignore the development of philosophy in the East, where nearly all the mooted philosophical questions of the day were ages ago discussed and disposed of. If Herbert Spencer could be so blind as he confesses himself to be as to suppose that he was the first to recognize the abstract formula of justice, then of course we are justified in presuming that he is equally ignorant of what has been said and decided in the six great schools of India. If such minds as Spencer's would acquaint themselves with all human thought upon any doctrine they may be considering, then they might save valuable time and maybe avoid confusion in their own minds and the minds of the vast numbers of men who read their books.

Our position, clearly stated by H.P.B. long ago, is that the present day has no philosophy and can have none that will not be a copy or a distortion of some truth or long-discarded notion once held by our superiors the Ancients, and that modern philosophers are only engaged in reproducing out of the astral light and out of their own past-lives' recollections that which was known, published, declared, and accepted or rejected by the men of old time, some of whom are now here in the garb of philosophers turning over and over again the squirrels'-wheels they invented many lives ago. For "there is nothing new under the sun."

William Brehon

Path, December, 1891

INDIA A STOREHOUSE FOR US

Hindustan has been called the land of mystery by many writers. For years it has been to the English a land for plunder by officials and younger sons seeking favors from fortune; for us it has been a far distant country surrounded with a halo of romance, enveloped in a cloud of memories that include the royal Sages, the Adepts, the wonderworkers, and countless monuments of human skill or limitless power. Among buildings its beautiful Taj Mahal stands unrivalled since the days of its builder Shah-Jehan; of marvellous structures its rock-cut temples challenge admiration, while its innumerable miles of underground temples and passages invite exploration and pique curiosity.

The singular vicissitudes of its fortune under conquest by the Moguls and the English point to its future and the great part it has to play in the destiny of the wide-branching Anglo-Saxon race. It has always been a storehouse, a perfect mine for plunder wherein looters have always revelled. And this fact has ingrained in its people reserve and secretiveness that are not equalled anywhere. The Mogul invaders took all the treasures in money or valuable objects that they could, and remained in the country to enjoy them. The quantity of precious things they confiscated cannot be calculated. At one place they entered the town and were beseeched by the priests to take all but not to molest the statue of the God. But the commander raised his mighty sword and clave the image to the breast. From its interior there fell out fortunes in gems and diamonds. So also the English. They overran the land, and of the great booty taken by common soldiers and officers back to Europe it has been declared by competent English writers no accurate estimate could be made, so great was the amount. In these two conquests occurred the events in the beginning which unerringly point to the destiny of India. For as at first she was a receptacle from which was taken an enormous treasure in material wealth and goods, so at the last her treasures of literature and philosophy are destined to cover the lands of English-speaking peoples, to infiltrate into the western mind, and finally drive out the puerile, degrading dogmas of christendom, replacing them with a noble and elevating scheme of philosophy which alone can save the world. This will never be done by the Hindu of today, to whom we need not look, but will come about, just as in the conquest, by the appropriation of the philosophy from the storehouse and receptacle in India by the vigorous, eager mind of the West.

Max Müller in his Cambridge Lectures upon India said:

But what I feel convinced of, and hope to convince you of, is that Sanskrit literature, if studied only in the right spirit, is full of human interest, full of lessons which even Greek could never teach us, a subject worthy to occupy the leisure, and more than the leisure, of every Indian Civil servant....There are other things, and, in one sense, very important things, which we too may learn from India.... If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found the solution of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself what literature we here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life - again I should point to India....I am thinking chiefly of India such as it was a thousand, two thousand, it may be three thousand, years ago. That India is full of problems the solutions of which concern all of us, even us in this Europe of the nineteenth century.

This quotation from such an eminent scholar supports the view I have held from youth that India is our great storehouse and as such ought to be used with all the means at our command and at every opportunity. Just as Prof. Müller says, I am not thinking of the Indian people of today, but of the minds of her past who have left to us an enormous mass of records of their studies and solutions of the greatest problems that can engage the attention of the human mind. It has become somewhat the fashion fro members of the Theosophical Society to suppose that the intention of the leaders of the Society was and is to make us follow the example of the swarming millions of Hindustan in ascetic or caste practices. To this some have mistakenly adhered and attempted the task, while others have railed against the man of straw of their own creation.

Others again, not taking the pains to understand the matter, have permitted outsiders to exclaim against the absurdity of following the lead of the Hindus, who are, they say, much below us in all respects. These weak members have by silence allowed the assertions to pass as proven and our Society to remain misrepresented. But while I cannot wholly agree that even the Hindu of today cannot be an example for us in anything, I leave it out of the question, inasmuch as he as well as ourselves is engaged in studying the records of the past for the same purpose that we should have in the same pursuit, as pointed out by Max Müller.

The student of Occultism, on hearing only the facts about the conquests of India, would see therein the finger of fate pointing to the future as fully indicated by the present circumstances.

For the great material and temporal events happening at the conquest of a nation always show to him who can see what is to be its future, in some respects at least. But long years have passed since that conquest, and we now have history to aid the purblind eye of the nineteenth century mind that is hardly able to see anything save dollars and cents or the mere daily benefits growing out of their possession and use. As orientalists and archaeologists have abundantly shown, it is known that our fables come from India, that the Greeks drew much from that source, and that we are indebted to her for more than we have yet been able to acknowledge. Müller and Schopenhauer and others have been delving into the Upanishads and Vedas, and every day there is growing more and more a widespread interest in ideas purely Hindu in their origin. Even poets of the female sex write sonnets in our magazines upon great doctrines such as Nirvana,(1) which, although utterly wrong in conception of that doctrine, yet show the flowing of the tide of old Brahmanical pondering. All of this pictures to me a new conquest of the West by India, the great land for conquerors. It is the rising from the grave of the mighty men of some thousands of years ago that constitutes this invasion and will bring about our conquest. And this silent leavening of the lump goes on while Mr. Gladstone is attempting with much show to prove that the Christian Bible is the only bible, as his friends in various Jerusalem Societies spend time and money in the attempt to establish the notion that a single semitic nation is the one that the West has received all her benefits from, and that it is necessary to prove the semitic narrative true in order to stem the tide of materialism.

If I were convinced by any reasonable proof or argument that Palestine was ever the cradle of our civilization or philosophy, or other than the seat of a people who are the true exponents of a fine social materialism, I would advocate great attention to her records. But it is not a single small nation we should look to. The fountain head is better than a secondary receptacle, a mere cistern that takes the overflow from the source. The fountain is old India, and to that the members of the Theosophical Society who are not only desirous of saving time but also of aiding the sages of the past in the evolution of doctrines which, applied to our great new civilization, can alone save it from failure, will bend themselves to the task of carrying out our second object - the investigation of Aryan literature, religion, and science.

We must prepare. There are men in India today who are qualified and willing to aid in translating works hitherto untranslated, in collecting that which shall enable us to disseminate and popularize true doctrines of man's life and destiny. Time is very short and cannot be spent by all of us in learning Sanskrit. But if every member of the Society gave all he could to its funds, the treasury of the American Section could afford the employment in India of pandits who would delve into their old stores for us, and we then could print and distribute results to every member. Ought not the year 1891 to mark a step in advance? Ought not the many members to now come to the aid of the few who hitherto have borne the greater part of the burden of the work and expense? Let us then get ready to use the material in the ancient storehouse of India, treasures that no man can be called a thief for taking, since the truths acquired by the mind respecting man's life, conduct, constitution, and destiny are the common property of the human race, a treasure that is lost by monopoly and expanded by dissemination.

Path, February, 1891

(1) See Current Literature, Jan., 1890, p. 48, "Nirvana," by Carrie Stevens Walter.

INDIA AND HER THEOSOPHISTS*

I am moved to say a word, not by way of fomenting controversy, but merely to express my own view about a thing which needs discussion. I distinctly disclaim the right or the desire to criticize the life or manners of the Hindu nation; nor have I any proposals to make for sweeping reforms in their life and manners. What I would direct myself to is the Theosophical movement there in relation to the national character of the Hindu, and to matters connected therewith.

I cannot agree with the statement that the Hindus and Hindu Theosophists are not intellectually active. They are, and always, have been too active, intellectually, altogether and at the expense of some other activities more important. That the peculiar characteristic of the educated Hindu is intellectual activity can hardly be doubted. It is exhibited on all occasions; in hair-splitting dialogues; in endless commentaries; in fine controversies over distinctions; in long explanations; in fact, in every possible place and manner. This is the real difficulty: it was the cause of India's decadence as it has become the obstacle against her rising to her proper place among nations. Too much intellectual activity in a nation like this, living in the tropics, with religion as a heritage and the guide for every act, is sure to lead, in any age, to spiritual pride; and spiritual pride in them then brings on stagnation. That stagnation will last until gradually there arise men of the same nation who, without fear of caste, or favor, or loss, or ostracism, or any other punishment or pain, will boldly bring about the reaction that shall result in the death of spiritual pride and the acquirement of the counterbalancing wheel to pure intellectual activity.

Intellectualism represents the letter of the law, and the letter killeth, while the spirit maketh alive. For seventeen years we have had constant and complete evidence that the above views are correct. The THEOSOPHIST full of articles by Hindus, always intellectual: Lucifer printing similar ones by Hindus; the Path now and then doing the same; articles on mighty themes of abstract scope by Brahmins who yet belong to one of the eighty-four castes of Brahmins. But if the spiritual activity prevailed we would have seen articles, heard orations, known of efforts, to show that a sub-division of the highest of the four castes into eight-four is not sanctioned by the Vedas, but is diametrically against them and out to be instantly abandoned. I should not suggest the destruction of the four castes, as those are national divisions which exist everywhere. The Hindu, however, has the tradition, and the family lines, and the power to restore this disturbed state of things to equilibrium. And until it is restored the day of Aryavarta's restoration is delayed. The disturbance began in the Brahmanical caste and there it must be harmonized first. Spiritual pride caused it and that pride must be killed out.

Here then is the real opportunity for Indian Theosophists. It is the same sort of call that the Christians' Jesus made on the young man whom he told to take up the cross and follow him. No foreigner could do this; no European Secretary could hope to succeed at it unless he were an incarnation of Vishnu. It means loss, trouble, fight, patience, steadiness, altruism, sacrifice. Where then are the Indian Theosophists-most of whom are in the Brahmanical caste-who will preach all over India to the Brahmins to give up their eighty-four divisions and coalesce into one, so that they, as the natural teachers and priests, may then reform the others castes? This is the real need and also the opportunity. All the castes will follow the highest. Just now they all, even to the outcastes, divide and sub-divide themselves infinitely in accordance with the example set.

Have those Indian Theosophists who believed that the Mahatmas are behind the Theosophical movement ever asked themselves why those Masters saw fit to start the Society in America and not in India, the home of the Adepts? It was not for political reasons, nor religious, but simply and solely because of the purely "intellectual activity" and spiritual pride of the Hindu.(1) For the West is every bit as selfish as the East. Those in Europe and America who know of Karma think selfishly on it; those who do not know, live for self. There is no difference in this respect.

In the West there is as much to be fought and reformed as in India, but the problem is differently conditioned. Each hemisphere must work upon itself. But the Western Theosophists finds himself in a very uncomfortable corner when, as the champion of Eastern doctrine and metaphysic, he is required to describe the actual present state of India and her Theosophists. He begins to tell of such a show of Branches, of Headquarters buildings, of collecting manuscripts, of translation into English, of rendering into vernaculars, of learned Pundits in the ranks, of wonderful Yogis, of the gigantic works of long dead Hindus, and then he stops, hoping his interlocutor has been dazzled, amazed, silenced. But pitilessly his examiner pushes, and enquires if it be true that every one of the four castes is sub-divided into nearly hundreds, if women are educated, if educated Hindu women are active in the Society, if the Hindu Theosophists are actively and ever as martyrs working to reform within itself, to remove superstition; if he is showing by the act of personal sacrifice-the only one that will ever bring on a real reform- that he is determined to restore India to her real place? No reply is possible that does not involve his confusion. For his merciless questioner asks if it be true that one of the Mahatmas behind the Society had written to Mr. Sinnett that he had ventured down into the cities of his native land and had to fly almost immediately from the vile and heavy atmosphere produced by the psychical condition of his people? (2) The reply is in the affirmative. No Rishi, however great, can alter a people; they must alter themselves. The "minor currents" that the Adepts can deflect have to be sought in other nations so as to, if possible, affect all by general reaction. This is truth, or else the Mahatmas lie. I believe them; I have seen the evidence to support their statement.

So there is no question of comparison of nations. The Indian Section must work out its own problem. The West is bad enough, the heavens know, but out of badness-the rajasika quality-there is a rising up to truth; from tamogunam comes only death. If there are men in India with the diamond hearts possessed by the martyrs of the ages, I call upon them from across these oceans that roll between us to rise and tell their fellow Theosophists and their country what they ought to know. If such men are there they will, of themselves, know what words to use, for the Spirit will, in that day and hour, give the words and the influence. Those who ask for particularity of advice are not yet grown to the stature of the hero who, being all, dareth all; who having fought many a fight in other lives rejoices in his strength, and fears neither life nor death, neither sorrow nor abuse, and wisheth no ease for himself while others suffer.

William Q. Judge

The Theosophist, September 1893

*Note-The publication of the following article was inadvertently delayed. -H.S.O.

(1) I dissent from this theory as being unsound. Admitting H.P.B. to have been the agent of the Masters, would not that imply that she and they were unable to foresee and prevent the ignominious collapse of the Cairo attempt of 1871 at founding an Occult Society; although she did her best to make it succeed, and fortified her influence with psychical phenomena quite as strange as those saw, four year later, at New York? But for that fiasco, a T.S. would have been formed by French, Russians, Arabs and Copts, in one of the moral pest-holes of the world. And, furthermore, although it was actually started at New York, it had fallen almost into the article of death by the close of 1878, when the two Founders [Estela Piscope -of which there were three, HSO did not recognize until very late in his life the importance of Judge, and then only begrudgingly.] sailed for India; and it was not until its dry bones were electrified by the smouldering spiritual life of India that it sprang with resistless rush along the path of its Karmic mission. [Estela Piscope -Actually, it was due to the efforts of Judge that the American section flourished, while the Indian section diminished notwithstanding the efforts of HSO and others.] When Mr. Judge becomes my successor and comes to live in India, he will know more about the Hindus and what is possible and impossible for their would-be reformers. [Estela Piscope - meaning that HSO accepted the caste system of India and thereby obliterated one of the main principles of Theosophy, that of Universal Brotherhood.] He writes now, in all kindness and good intent, in the strain of an Arya Samajist, and as H.P.B. and I did before and just after coming to India and replacing theory with actual knowledge of the Indian situation of affairs. -H.S.O.

(2) Mr. Judge should not convey the false impression that the Mahatmas find the spiritual aura of India worse than those of Europe and America, for everybody knows that H.P.B. reiterated continually the assertion that the spiritual state of the West was unbearable, and she yearned for our transfer to India. What Mahatma K.H. wrote to Mr. Sinnett ( vide Occult World. p. 120, 2nd Edition) was that he had seen drunken Sikhs at the Golden Temple, at Amristar, and heard an educated Hindu vakil declaring Yoga a delusion and the alleged Siddhis impossible; and that he could not endure even for a few days the stifling magnetism "even of his own countrymen"; i.e. , that it was as stifling as those of other races. What he found the magnetism of London and New York; has often been described by H.P.B. to a host of witnesses. Mr. Judge has forgotten that every true Yogi of our day finds the same state of things and flies to the jungle to escape it. It is the evil effect of modern education devoid of spiritual stimulus which has made the whole world spiritually leprous as it is. -H.S.O.

An Interesting Letter
(Written to an Indian Brother)

144 Madison Avenue
New York

Dear Brother, -I have your last long and welcome letter. The fears you express of the T.S. leading to dogmatism or fanaticism seem to be groundless to me. If we had a creed there would be danger; if the Society declared any particular doctrine to be true, or to be the accepted view of the T.S., great danger would result. But we have no creed, and the T.S. has not declared for any doctrine. Its members have asserted certain beliefs, but that is their right. They do not force them on others. Their declaration of their own beliefs does not unfit them to be members. I have my own settled beliefs, but I do not say that another must accept these. The eternal duty of right thought, act, and speech, is not affected by my theories. Hence all I ask of another is, to do his own duty and let me do mine. Such, indeed is the very genius of our Society, and that is the very reason why it still lives and has an influence.

And when we come to examine the work and the foundation of the T.S. and its policy, I find it perfectly proper for me to assert, as I do, in accordance with my own knowledge and belief, that our true progress lies in fidelity to Masters as ideals and facts. Likewise is it perfectly proper for another to say that he dose not know anything about the Masters-if such be his case-but is willing to work in and for the T.S. But he has no right to go further and deny my privilege of asserting my belief in those Beings.

So also further; I have the right to say that I think a constant reliance on Masters as such ideals and facts-or either-will lead the T.S. on to greater work. And he has his right to say that he can work without that reliance. But neither has he nor have you any right to say that my belief in this, or any assertion of it, is wrong or in any way improper.

I belong to that class of person in the T.S. who out of their own experience know that the Masters exist and actually help the T.S. You belong to a class which-as I read your letters and those of others who write similarly-express a doubt on this, that, or the other, seeming to question the expediency, propriety and wisdom of a man's boldly asserting confidence and belief in Beings who are unprovable for many, although you say (as in your present letter) that you believe in and revere the same Masters as I do. What, then, must I conclude? Am I not forced to the conclusion that inasmuch as you say you believe in these Beings, you think it unwise in me to assert publicly and boldly my belief? Well, then, if this is a correct statement of the case, why cannot you go on your way of belief and concealment of it, and let me proceed with proclamations? I will take the Karma of my own beliefs. I force no man to accept my assertions.

But I am not acting impulsively in my many public statements as tot he existence of Masters and help from Them. It is done upon an old order of Theirs and under a law of mind. The existence of Masters being a fact, the assertion of that fact made so often in America has opened up channels in men's minds which would have remained closed had silence been observed about the existence of those Beings. The giving out of names is another matter; that, I do not sanction nor practise. Experience has shown that a springing up of interest in Theosophy has followed declaration, and men's minds are more and more powerfully drawn away from the blank Materialism which is rooted in English, French, and German teaching. And the Masters have said "It is easier to help in America than Europe because in the former our existence has been persistently declared by so many." You may, perhaps, call this a commonplace remark, as you do some others, but for me it has a deep significance and contains a high endorsement. A very truism when uttered by a Mahatma has a deeper meaning for which the student must seek, but which he will lose if he stops to criticize and weigh the words in mere ordinary scales.

Now, I may as well say it out very plainly that the latter half of your letter in which you refer to a message printed in the Path in 1891 in August is the part you consider of most importance. To that part of your letter you gave the most attention, and to the same portion you wish for a reply more than to the preliminary pages. Now, on the contrary, I consider the preceding half of your letter the important half. This last bit, all about the printed message, is not important at all. Why? Because your basic facts are wrong.

(1) I never published such a letter, for I was not in America, although if I had been I should have consented. In August of that year I was in Europe, and did not get back to New York until after that month's Path was published. I had sailed for London May 13th, on hearing of H.P.B.'s death, and stayed there three months. Of course while away I had to leave all the publishing in the hands of Bro. Fullerton and others. But I do approve their work.

(2)The next baseless fact is thus smashed: I did not write the article you quote. I am not Jasper Niemand. Hence I did not get the message he printed a part of in his article. Jasper Niemand is a real person and not a title to conceal my person. If you wish to write him about the article, or any other, you can address care of me; I will forward; in time he will reply. This wrong notion about Jasper ought to be exposed. People choose now and then to assume that I am the gentleman. But several who have corresponded with him know that he is as distinct from me in person, place, and mind as you are yourself.

(3)Now, in July it was that Jasper Niemand got his message containing, I believe, things relative to himself, and also the words of general interest quoted by him. The general words he saw fit to use. Having had privilege to send his articles to Path, which accepts them without examination, his article was used at once without it being necessary for me to see it, for my orders were to print any he might send. Hence I saw neither the article nor proofs before publication. But I fully approve now as I did when, in the next September, I read it.

It is true I had later the privilege of seeing his message, but only read the text, did not examine the signature, and do not remember if even it had a signature. The signature is not important. The means for identification are not located in signatures at all. If you have not the means yourself for proving and identifying such a message, then signature seal, papers, watermarks, what not, all are useless.

As the "Master's seal," about which you put me the question, I do not know. Whether He has a seal or sues one is something in which I am ignorant. In my experience I have had messages from the Master, but they bear no seal and I attach no significance to the point. A seal on other messages of His goes for nothing with me; the presence or absence of a seal is nothing to me; my means of proof and identification are within myself and everything else is trumpery-your question, I say in reply that I have no recollection as to any signature or seal on this message to Jasper Niemand, because I read it but once.

Further, I think it a useful message. The qualities spoken of were more than ever needed at that crisis, and words of encouragement from Masters, however trite, were useful and stimulating. We do not-at least I do not- want Masters to utter veiled, mystical, or portentous phrases. The commonplace ones suit me best and are best understood. Perhaps, if you were satisfied with simple words from Them you might have had them. Who knows? They have written much of high import, enough for fifty years of effort in the letters published by Mr. Sinnett in the Occult World, and attributed to K.H. Why should one desire private messages in addition? I do not. Some men would sell their lives for the most commonplace phrase from Masters.

But as Masters are still living in bodies, and that in your own country and not so far from you as I am. I consider you privileged in, so to say, breathing the same air with those exalted personages. Yet I know beyond doubt or cavil that we, so far away, are not exempt from Masters' care and help. Knowing this we are content to "wait, to work, and to hope."

Fraternally
William Q. Judge

P.S.-Perhaps I ought to say somewhat more fully that the message in Path from Master, had, in my judgment, far more value than you attribute to it. There are in this Section many members who need precisely its assurance that no worker, however feeble or insignificant, is outside the range of Master's eye and help. My co-workers in New York were so impressed with the value to the Section of this particular message, that one of them paid the cost of printing it on slips and sending it to every member of the Section in good standing. Of course its worth and importance are better understood here than they can be by anyone not familiar with the Section and I can see ample justification of the Master's wisdom in sending the words He did.

Lucifer, April 1893

IRELAND

ERIN'S ISLE has always been somewhat of a mystery. Its people are so different from the English just across the channel that one who spends some time in London and then crosses over to Dublin will at once see the vast gulf that in the matter of temperament separates the two peoples.

And any one who studies the Irish, especially on the West Coast, and lives among them, will soon discover a deeply-seated belief in what is commonly called the supernatural that can only come from some distant past. Even the educated Irish are not free from this.

There is a willingness in the peasant to express belief in fairies, ghosts, and the like, which in the better classes is covered up from sight but still there. In the country districts the people will stone the lights out of the windows of a newly-vacated house, and in the city the educated man may frequently be found who will say, when his attention is called to such an occurrence, "And why shouldn't they? Do you want the devil to stay in the house?" The theory of course is that the elementals of the departed tenants can only escape through the broken window panes unless they have been used - as is not always the case - to open doors.

Belief in fairies is the old Hindu belief in the "devas" or lesser gods. I know many educated people who have declared they often heard fairy talking and singing. In fact, unless we take in the northern Irishman - who is not truly of that blood - we will never find a native of that land who is not born with a slight or greater touch upon the borders of the unseen or with a belief in it.

It is called the Isle of Destiny, and its hill-men will tell you that it has always been a "saintly island." It teems with tales exactly duplicating those of Hindu yogis; the very grass seems to whisper as with the footfalls of unseen beings. One tradition is that in very ancient times, before the island of Albion rose from under the water, there was an ancient college - or Ashram as the Hindus would call it- on the island, where great adepts lived and taught disciples who from there went out to all lands. They stayed there until a certain great cataclysm, and then migrated to ....In connection with this the following quotation from some remarks by H.P. Blavatsky in Lucifer will be of interest, in reading which one can also profitably remember the Greek tradition that near Britain there was an island called Ierna to which men went in order to learn more about the secret mysteries. She says (1):

It is a tradition among Occultists in general, and taught as an historical fact in Occult philosophy, that what is now Ireland was once upon a time the abode of the Atlanteans, emigrants from the submerged island mentioned by Plato. Of all the British Isles, Ireland is the most ancient by several thousands of years. Inferences and "working hypotheses" are left to the Ethnologists, Anthropologists, and Geologists. The Masters and Keepers of the old science claim to have preserved genuine records, and we Theosophists - i.e., most of us - believe it implicitly. Official Science may deny, but what does it matter? Has not Science begun by denying almost everything it accepts now?

BRYAN KINNAVAN

Path, February, 1892

(1) Lucifer, June 15, 1889, p. 347.

IS HEREDITY A PUZZLE?

A WELL known writer in Harpers Magazine said lately "Heredity is a Puzzle." He then proceeded, "The race is linked together in a curious tangle, so that it is almost impossible to fix the responsibility. . . . We try to study this problem in our asylums and prisons, and we get a great many interesting facts, but they are too conflicting to guide legislation. The difficulty is to relieve a person of responsibility for the sins of his ancestors, without relieving him of responsibility for his own sins."

This is the general view. Heredity is a puzzle, and will always remain one so long as the laws of Karma and Reincarnation are not admitted and taken into account in all these investigations. Nearly all of these writers admit--excepting those who say they do not know--the theological view that each human being is a new creation, a new soul projected into life on this earth.

This is quite logical, inasmuch as they assert that we are only mortal and are not spirits. The religious investigators admit we are spirits, but go no further, except to assume the same special creation. Hence, when they come to the question of "Heredity," it is a very serious matter. It becomes a puzzle, especially to those who investigate heredity and who are trying to decide on whom responsibility ought to rest, while they know nothing of Karma or Reincarnation. And it is hinted at that there is necessity for legislation on the subject. That is to say, if we have a case of a murderer to consider, and we find that he has come of a race or family of murderers, the result of which is to make him a being who cannot prevent himself from committing murder, we have to conclude that, if this is due to "heredity," he cannot in any sane sense be responsible. Take the case of the tribes, or family, or sect of Thugs in India, whose aim in life was to put people out of the world. Their children would of necessity inherit this tendency. It is something like a cat and a bird. It is the nature of the cat to eat the bird, and you cannot blame it. Thus we should be driven to pass a law making an exception in the case of such unfortunate persons. Then we should be met by the possibility of false testimony being adduced upon the trial of the criminal, going to show that he came under the law. This possibility is so great that it is not likely such a law will ever be passed. So that, even if the legal and scientific world were able to come to any conclusion establishing the great force of heredity, it would be barren of results unless the truth of Karma and Reincarnation were admitted. For in the absence of these, no law, and hence no remedy for the supposed injustice to be done to irresponsible criminals, could be applied. I am stating, not what I think ought to be done, but what will be the inevitable end of investigation into heredity without the aid of the other two great laws.

If these two doctrines should be accepted by the supposed legislators, it would follow that no such law as I have adverted to would ever be put on the books; for the reason that, once Karma and Reincarnation are admitted, the responsibility of each individual is made greater than before. Not only is he responsible even under his hereditary tendency, but in a wider sense he is also responsible for the great injury he does the State through the future effect of his life--that effect acting on those who are born as his descendants. There is no very great puzzle in "Heredity" as a law, from the standpoint of Karma and Reincarnation, although of course the details of the working of it will be complicated and numerous.

I know that some theosophists have declared that it puzzles them, but that is because it is a new idea, very different from those instilled into us during our education as youths and our association with our fellows as adults.

None of the observed and admitted facts in respect to heredity should be ignored, nor need they be left out of sight by a Theosophist. We are bound to admit that leanings and peculiarities are transmitted from father to son, and to all along down the line of descent. In one case we may find a mental trait, in another a physical peculiarity; and in a great-grandson we shall see often the bodily habits of his remote ancestor reproduced.

The question is then asked, "How am I to be held responsible for such strange inclinations when I never knew this man from whom I inherit them?" As theories go at this day, it would be impossible to answer this question. For if I have come from the bosom of God as a new soul; or if what is called soul or intelligence is the product of this body I inhabit and which I had no hand in producing; or if I have come from far distant spheres unconnected with this earth, to take up this body with whose generation I was not concerned; it would be the grossest injustice for me to be held responsible for what it may do. It seems to me that from the premises laid down there can be no escape from this conclusion, and unless our sociologists and political economists and legislators admit the doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, they will have to pass laws to which I have referred. We shall then have a code which may be called, "Of limitations of responsibility of criminals in cases of murder and other crimes."

But the whole difficulty arises from the inherited transmitted habit in the Western mind of looking at effects and mistaking them for causes, and of considering the instruments or means, through and by means of which laws of nature work, as causes. Heredity has been looked at, or is beginning to be, as the cause of crime and of virtue. It is not a cause, but only the means or instrument for the production of the effect, the cause being hidden deeper. It seems just as erroneous to call heredity a cause of either good or bad acts as it is to call the merely mortal brain or body the cause of mind or soul.

Ages ago the Hindu sages admitted that the body did not produce the mind, but that there was what they called "the mind of the mind," or, as we might put it, "the intelligence operating above and behind the mere brain matter." And they enforced their argument by numerous illustrations; as, for instance, that the eye could not see even when in itself a perfect instrument, unless the mind behind it was acting. We can easily prove this from cases of sleep walkers. They walk with their eyes wide open, so that the retina must, as usual, receive the impinging images, yet although you stand before their eyes they do not see you. It is because the intelligence is disjoined from the otherwise perfect optical instrument. Hence we admit that the body is not the cause of mind; the eyes are not the cause of sight; but that the body and the eye are instruments by means of which the cause operates.

Karma and Reincarnation include the premise that the man is a spiritual entity who is using the body for some purpose.

From remote times the sages state that he (this spiritual being) is using the body which he has acquired by Karma. Hence the responsibility cannot be placed upon the body, nor primarily upon those who brought forth the body, but upon the man himself. This works perfect justice, for, while the man in any one body is suffering his just deserts, the other men (or souls) who produced such bodies are also compelled to make compensation in other bodies.

As the compensation is not made at any human and imperfect tribunal, but to nature itself, which includes every part of it, it consists in the restoration of the harmony or equilibrium which has been disturbed.

The necessity for recognizing the law from the standpoint of ethics arises from the fact that, until we are aware that such is the law, we will never begin to perform such acts and think such thoughts as will tend to bring about the required alterations in the astral light needed to start a new order of thoughts and influences. These new influences will not, of course, come to have full effect and sway on those who initiate them, but will operate on their descendants, and will also prepare a new future age in which those very persons who set up the new current shall participate. Hence it is not in any sense a barren, unrewarded thing, for we ourselves come back again in some other age to reap the fruit of the seed we had sown. The impulse must be set up, and we must be willing to wait for the result. The potters wheel continues to revolve when the potter has withdrawn his foot, and so the present revolving wheel will turn for a while until the impulse is spent.

Path, November, 1888

IS KARMA ONLY PUNISHMENT?

THE following query has been received from H.M.H.: "In August PATH Hadji Erinn, in reply to the above question, stated that 'those who have wealth, and the happy mother seeing all her children respected and virtuous, are favorites of Karma. I and others believe that these apparent favors are only punishment or obstacles, and others think that the terms punishment and reward should not be used."

I cannot agree with this view, nor with the suggestion that punishment and reward should not be used as terms. It is easy to reduce every thing to a primordial basis when one may say that all is the absolute. But such is only the method of those who affirm and deny. They say there is no evil, there is no death; all is good, all is life. In this way we are reduced to absurdities, inasmuch as we then have no terms to designate very evident things and conditions. As well say there is no gold and no iron, because both are equally matter. While we continue to be human beings we must use terms that shall express our conscious perception of ideas and things.

It is therefore quite proper to say that an unhappy or miserably circumstanced person is undergoing punishment, and that the wealthy or happy person is having reward. Otherwise there is no sense in our doctrine.

The misunderstanding shown in the question is due to inaccurate thinking upon the subject of Karma. One branch of this law deals with the vicissitudes of life, with the differing states of men. One man has opportunity and happiness, another meets only the opposite. Why is this? It is because each state is the exact result bound to come from his having disturbed or preserved the harmony of nature. The person given wealth in this life is he who in the preceding incarnation suffered from its absence or had been deprived of it unjustly. What are we to call it but reward? If we say compensation, we express exactly the same idea. And we cannot get the world to adopt verbosity in speech so as to say, "All this is due to that man's having preserved the cosmic harmony."

The point really in the questioners mind is, in fact, quite different from the one expressed; he has mistaken one for the other; he is thinking of the fact so frequently obtruded before us that the man who has the opportunity of wealth or power oft misuses it and becomes selfish or tyrannous. But this does not alter the conclusion that he is having his reward. Karma will take care of him; and if he does not use the opportunity for the good of his fellows, or if he does evil to them, he will have punishment upon coming back again to earth. It is true enough, as Jesus said, that "it is difficult for the rich man to enter heaven," but there are other possessions of the man besides wealth that constitute greater obstacles to development, and they are punishments and may coexist in the life of one man with the reward of wealth or the like. I mean the obstruction and hindrance found in stupidity, or natural baseness, or in physical sensual tendencies. These are more likely to keep him from progress and ultimate salvation than all the wealth or good luck that any one person ever enjoyed.

In such cases--and they are not a few--we see Karmic reward upon the outer material plane in the wealth and propitious arrangement of life, and on the inner character the punishment of being unable or unfit through many defects of mind or nature. This picture can be reversed with equal propriety. I doubt if the questioner has devoted his mind to analyzing the subject in this manner.

Every man, however, is endowed with conscience and the power to use his life, whatever its form or circumstance, in the proper way, so as to extract from it all the good for himself and his fellows that his limitations of character will permit. It is his duty so to do, and as he neglects or obeys, so will be his subsequent punishment or reward.

There may also be another sort of wealth than mere gold, another sort of power than position in politics or society. The powerful, wide, all-embracing, rapidly-acting brain stored with knowledge is a vast possession which one man may enjoy. He can use it properly or improperly. It may lead him to excesses, to vileness, to the very opposite of all that is good. It is his reward for a long past life of stupidity followed by others of noble deeds and thoughts. What will the questioner do with this? The possessor thus given a reward may misuse it so as to turn it, next time he is born, into a source of punishment. We are thus continually fitting our arrows to the bow, drawing them back hard to the ear, and shooting them forth from us. When we enter the field of earth-life again, they will surely strike us or our enemies of human shape or the circumstances which otherwise would hurt us. It is not the arrow or the bow that counts, but the motive and the thought with which the missile is shot.

HADJI ERINN

Path, February, 1890

IS POVERTY BAD KARMA?

THE question of what is good Karma and what bad has been usually considered by theosophists from a very worldly and selfish standpoint. The commercial element has entered into the calculation as to the result of merit and demerit. Eternal Justice, which is but another name for Karma, has been spoken of as awarding this or that state of life to the reincarnating ego solely as a mere balance of accounts in a ledger, with a payment in one case by way of reward and a judgment for debt in another by way of punishment.

It has been often thought that if a man be rich and well circumstanced it must follow that in his prior incarnation he was good although poor; and that if he now be in poverty the conclusion is that, when on earth before, his life was bad if rich. So it has come about that the sole test of good or bad Karma is one founded entirely upon his purse. But is poverty with all its miseries bad Karma? Does it follow, because a man is born in the lowest station in life, compelled always to live in the humblest way, often starving and hearing his wife and children cry out for food, that therefore he is suffering from bad Karma?

If we look at the question entirely from the plane of this one life, this personality, then of course what is disagreeable and painful in life may be said to be bad. But if we regard all conditions of life as experiences undergone by the ego for the purpose of development, then even poverty ceases to be "bad Karma." Strength comes only through trial and exercise. In poverty are some of the greatest tests for endurance, the best means for developing the strength of character which alone leads to greatness. These egos, then, whom we perceive around us encased in bodies whose environment is so harsh that endurance is needed to sustain the struggle, are voluntarily, for all we know, going through that difficult school so as to acquire further deep experience and with it strength.

The old definition of what is good and what bad Karma is the best. That is: "Good Karma is that which is pleasing to Ishwara, and bad that which is displeasing to Ishwara." There is here but very little room for dispute as to poverty or wealth; for the test and measure are not according to our present evanescent human tastes and desires, but are removed to the judgment of the immortal self--Ishwara. The self may not wish for the pleasures of wealth, but seeing the necessity for discipline decides to assume life among mortals in that low station where endurance, patience, and strength may be acquired by experience. There is no other way to implant in the character the lessons of life.

It may then be asked if all poverty and low condition are good Karma? This we can answer, under the rule laid down, in the negative. Some such lives, indeed many of them, are bad Karma, displeasing to the immortal self imprisoned in the body, because they are not by deliberate choice, but the result of causes blindly set in motion in previous lives, sure to result in planting within the person the seeds of wickedness that must later be uprooted with painful effort. Under this canon, then, we would say that the masses of poor people who are not bad in nature are enduring oftener than not good Karma, because it is in the line of experience Ishwara has chosen, and that only those poor people who are wicked can be said to be suffering bad Karma, because they are doing and making that which is displeasing to the immortal self within.

WILLIAM BREHON, F.T.S.

Path, July, 1891

JACOB BOEHME AND THE
SECRET DOCTRINE

JACOB Boehme (or as some say Behmen) was a German mystic and spiritualist who began to write in the 17th century. In his works he inserted a picture of an angel blowing a trumpet, from which issued these words: "To all Christians, Jews, Turks and Heathens, to all the nations of the earth this Trumpet sounds for the last time." In truth it was a curious emblem, but he, the author, was a mystic, and as all experience shows, the path of the mystic is a strange one. It is, as Job says, a path which the "vulture knoweth not." Even as a bird cleaves the eternal ether, so the mystic advances on a path nor ordinarily manifest, a way which must be followed with care, because like the Great Light, which flashes forth and leaves only traces when it returns again to its centre, only indications are left for those who come after seeking the same spiritual wisdom. Yet by these "traces," for such they are called in the Kabbala, the way can be discerned, and the truth discovered.

Boehme was poor, of common birth, and totally devoid of ordinary education. He was only a shoemaker. Yet from the mind and out of the mouth of this unlettered man came mighty truths.

It would be idle to inquire into the complications of Karma which condemned him to such a life as his appeared to be. It must have been extremely curious, because though he had grasped the truth and was able to appreciate it, yet at the same time he could not give it out in its perfection. But he performed his work, and there can be no manner of doubt about his succeeding incarnation. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita, he has been already or will shortly be "born into a family of wise devotees"; and thence "he will attain the highest walk."

His life and writings furnish another proof that the great wisdom-religion-the Secret Doctrine-has never been left without a witness. Born a Christian, he nevertheless saw the esoteric truth lying under the moss and crust of centuries, and from the Christian Bible extracted for his purblind fellows those pearls which they refused to accept. But he did not get his knowledge from the Christian Scriptures only. Before his internal eye the panorama of real knowledge passed. His interior vision being open he could see the things he had learned in a former life, and at first not knowing what they were was stimulated by them to construe his only spiritual books in the esoteric fashion. His brain took cognizance of the Book before him, but his spirit aided by his past, and perchance by the living guardians of the shinning lamp of truth, could not but read them aright.

His work was called "The Dawning of the Eternal Day." In this he endeavors to outline the great philosophy. He narrates the circumstances and reasons for the angelic creation, the fall of its chief three hierarchies, and the awful effects which thereupon fell upon Eternal Nature. Mark this, not upon man-for he was not yet-but upon the eternal Nature, that is BRAHM. Then he says that these effects came about by reason of the unbalancing of the seven equipoised powers of forces of the Eternal Nature or Brahm. That is to say, that so long as the seven principles of Brahm were in perfect poise, there was no corporeal or manifested universe. So in the Bhagavad-Gita we find that Krishna tells Arjuna that "after the lapse of a thousand ages (or Night of Brahm) all objects of developed matter come forth from the non-developed principle. At the approach of that day they emanate spontaneously." (Bhagavad-Gita, Chap. 8. ) Such is the teaching of the Secret Doctrine.

And again Boehme shows the duality of the Supreme Soul. For he says in his work "Psychologia Vera cum Supplemento" that these two eternal principles of positive and negative, the yea and the nay of the outspeaking Supreme One, together constitute eternal nature, -not the dark world alone; which is termed the "root of nature,-" the two being as it were combined in perfect indissoluble union.

This is nothing else but Purush and Prakriti, or taken together, what is referred to in the Bhagavad-Gita where it is said: "But there is another invisible, eternal existence, superior to this visible one, which does not perish when all things perish. It is called invisible and indivisible. This is my Supreme Abode."

Clearly the Supreme Abode could never be in Purush alone, nor in Prakriti alone, but in both when indissolubly united.

This scheme is adhered to all through this great philosopher's works, no matter whether he is speaking of the great Universe or macrocosm, or of its antitype in man or microcosm. In "De Tribus Principiis" he treats of the three principles or worlds of Nature, describing its eternal birth, its seven properties, and the two co-eternal principles; and furthermore in "De Triplici Vita Hominis" he gives the three-fold life of man from which the seven is again deduced.

In "De Electione Gratia" he goes into a subject that often proves a stumbling block to many, and that is the inevitableness of evil as well as of good. From this it is easy to pass to a contemplation of one of the difficult points in occultism as shown in the Secret Doctrine, that nothing is evil, and that even if we admit evil or wickedness in man, it is of the nature of the quality or guna, which in the Bhagavad-Gita is denominated raja-foulness or bad action. Even this is better than the indifferent action that only leads to death. Even from wickedness may and does come forth spiritual life, but from indifferent action comes only darkness, and finally death.

Krishna says in Bhagavad-Gita, Chap. IV: "There are three kinds of action: first, that which is of the nature of Satyam, or true action; second, that which is of the nature of Raja, or bad action; third, that which is of the nature of Tamas, or indifferent action." He then says: "Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, thou shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin in the bark of spiritual wisdom"; and a little farther on "The ignorant and man without faith, whose spirit is full of doubt, is lost and cannot enjoy either world." And in another chapter in describing Himself, he says that he is not only the Buddha, but also is the most evil of mankind or the Asura.

This is one of the most mystical parts of the whole secret doctrine. While Boehme has touched on it sufficiently to show that he had a memory of it, he did not go into the most occult details. It has to be remembered that the Bhagavad-Gita, and many other books treating on the Secret Doctrine, must be regarded from seven points of view; and that imperfect man is not able to look at it from the centre, which would give the whole seven points at once.

Boehme wrote about thirty different treatise, all of them devoted to great subjects, portions of the Secret Doctrine.

Curiously enough the first treated of the "Dawn of the Eternal Day," and the second was devoted to an elucidation of "The Three Principles of Man." In the latter is really to be found a sevenfold classification similar to that which Mr. Sinnett propounded in "Esoteric Buddhism."

He held that the greatest obstacle in the path of man is the astral or elementary power, which engenders and sustain this world.

Then he talks of "tinctures," which we may call principles. According to him there are two principles ones, the watery, and the igneous. These ought to be united in Man; and they ardently seek each other continually, in order to be identified with Sophia or Divine Wisdom. Many Theosophists will see in this a clue not only to the two principles-or tinctures-which ought to be united man, but also to a law which obtains in many of the phenomena of magic. But even if I were able, I should not speak on this more clearly.

For many inquirers the greatest interest in these works will be found in his hypothesis as to the birth of the material Universe. On the evolution of man from spirit into matter he has much more than i could hope to glance at. In nearly all of it he was outlining and illustrating the Secret Doctrine. The books indicated are well worthy of study not only by Western but also by Eastern metaphysicians.

Let us add a few sentences to support this hypothesis from Count Saint Martin, who was a devoted student of these works.

"Jacob Boehme took for granted the existence of an Universal Principle; he was persuaded that everything is connected in the immense chain of truths, and that the Eternal Nature reposed on seven principles or bases, which he sometimes calls powers, forms, spiritual wheels, sources, and fountains, and that those seven bases exist also in this disordered material nature, under constraint. His nomenclature, adopted for these fundamental relations, ran thus: The first astringency, the second gall or bitterness, the third anguish, the fourth fire, the fifth light, the sixth sound, and the seventh he called BEING or the thing itself."

The reader may have begun to think the author did not rightly comprehend the first six but his definition of the seventh shows he was right throughout, and we may conclude the real meanings are concealed under these names.

"The third principle, anguish, attenuates the astringent one, turns it into water, and allows a passage to fire, which was shut up in the astringent principle."

There are in this many suggestions and a pursuit of them will repay the student.

"Now the Divine Sophia caused a new order to take birth in the centre of our system, and there burned our sun; from that do come forth all kinds of qualities, forms and powers. This centre is the Separator." It is well known that from the sun was taken by the ancients all kinds of power; and if we mistake not, the Hindus claim that when the Fathers enter into Para-Nirvana, their accumulated goodness pours itself out on the world through the "Door of the Sun."

The Bhagavad-Gita says, that the Lord of all dwells in the region of the heart, and again that this Lord is also the Sun of the world.

"The earth is a condensation of the seven primordial principles, and by the withdrawal of eternal light this became a dark valley." It is taught in the East, that this world is a valley and that we are in it, our bodies reaching to the moon, being condensed to hardness at the point where we are on the earth thus becoming visible to the eye of man. There is a mystery in this statement, but not such an one as cannot be unravelled.

Boehme proceeds: "When the light mastered the fire at the place of the sun, the terrible shock of the battle engendered an igneous eruption by which there shot forth from the sun a stormy and frightful flash of fire-Mars. Taken captive by light it assumed a place, and there it struggles furiously, a pricking goad, whose office is to agitate all nature, producing reaction. It is the gall of nature. The gracious, amiable Light, having enchained unerupted Mars, proceeded by its own power to the bottom or end of the rigidity of Nature, when unable to proceed further it stopped, and became corporeal; remaining there it warms that place, and although a valet in Nature, it is the source of sweetness and the moderator of Mars.

"Saturn does not originate from the sun, but was produced from the severe astringent anguish of the whole body of this Universe. Above Jupiter the sun could not mitigate the horror, and out of that arose Saturn, who is the opposite of meekness, and who produces whatever of rigidity there is in creatures, including bones, and what in moral nature corresponds thereto." (This is all the highest astrology, from one who had no knowledge of it.) "As in the Sun is the heart of life, so by Saturn commenceth all corporeal nature. Thus in these two resides the power of the whole universal body, and without their power there could be no creation nor any corporification.

"Venus originates in effluvia from the Sun. She lights the unctuosity of the water of the Universe, penetrates hardness, and enkindles love."

"Mercury is the chief worker in the planetary wheel; he is sound, and wakes up the germs in everything. His origin, the triumph of Light over Astringency (in which sound was shut up silent), set free the sound by the attenuation of the astringent power."

It is certain that if this peculiar statement regarding Mercury is understood, the student will have gained a high point of knowledge. A seductive bait is here held out to those striving disciples who so earnestly desire to hold converse with the elemental world. But there is no danger, for all the avenues are very secret and only the pure can prevail in the preliminary steps.

Boehme says again: "The Mercury is impregnated and fed continually by the solar substance; that in it is found the knowledge of what was in the order above, before Light had penetrated to the solar centre."

As to the Moon, it is curious to note that he says, "she was produced from the sun itself, at the time of his becoming material, and that the moon is his spouse." Students of the story of Adam being made to sleep after his creation and before coats of skin were given, when Eve was produced from his side, will in this a strong hint.

The above is not by any means a complete statement of Boehme's system. In order to do justice to it, a full analysis of all his works should be undertaken. However, it is sufficient if thoughtful minds who have not read Boehme, shall turn to him after reading this, or if but one earnest reader of his works, or seeker after wisdom, shall receive even a hint that may lead to a clearing up of doubts, or to the acquisition of one new idea. Count Saint Martin continually read him; and the merest glance at the "Theosophic Correspondence" or, "Man-His Nature, &., " of Saint Martin will show that from that study he learned much. How much more then will the Western mind be aided by the light shed on both by the lamp of Theosophical teachings.

"Let the desire of the pious be fulfilled."

William Q. Judge

Theosophist, April, 1886.

"THE JUDGE CASE"

Final Refusal to Give Copies of Documents to Accused

In order to give the prosecutors every opportunity I wrote in February to Colonel Olcott, asking again for copies of the written documents in his possession forming the basis of Mrs. Besant's charges, and reminded him of his promise at London last July to send me the copies. While doubtful as to the result, I thought that perhaps he would see the propriety and wisdom of giving me the copies. But it is now quite evident that no intention ever existed to deal fairly. He replies under date of Feb. 26th, 1895, as follows:

My Dear Judge,
...I don't know where you get your law from, but hang me if I ever heard of an accused who has been furnished with a copy of the charges pending against him, expecting that the documentary proofs in the hands of the prosecuting attorney shall be given him before the issue is on for trial...I have given copies to nobody; Old's copies were taken by him before the action began and while he was the custodian {italics mine.-J.} of the documents prior to their coming into my possession. He had no right to take them or to use them How many duplicates he may have made and given out I cannot imagine...H.S.O.

The law requires inspection and copies of letter if demanded by the accused; Theosophy and brotherhood would not require less than the law.

It is singular that Mr. Old was the "custodian before" Olcott got the letters, when many of them were letters to Olcott himself. This part of the letter is, of course, untrue-to call a spade by its name. He calmly admits that Old as an enemy was allowed to take copies-Olcott having handed the originals over to Old out of his despatch box- and shows he does not care really how many duplicates were made. But the accused cannot have the copies.

It may be that as Olcott is coming to London this summer "to settle the Judge case," as he says himself, he is keeping the copies from me because of some new campaign he is aiding the virulent prosecutors to begin.

The Theosophical Society has become, in Europe and India, a detective bureau, an organization for assaults on character, for punishments, and has ceased to be a portion of the real theosophical movement.

William Q. Judge

The Irish Theosophist
May 15, 1895

THE KALI YUGA

A CORRESPONDENT is confused on this subject from the statement in What is Theosophy by Mr. Old, that we are in the midst of the Iron or Black Age. Doubtless his sentence, which is on page 28 of the book, is misleading, because "kali" means "black," and hence it would seem that he meant we are now in the middle of Kali Yuga, but reading further it is seen that he refers only to the first part of the Age. Kali Yuga is in length 432,000 years according to the old Indian calculation, and we are now coming to the end of its first five thousand years, that preliminary period being reckoned from the death of Krishna. In passing, it may be justly thought that this five thousand year period is the origin of the idea of the Hebrews that the world is about that age, just as the Greeks in the time of Solon imagined that all things had to count from their former great cataclysm, but which the Egyptian priests showed to Solon was incorrect, for, as they said, "There had been many great cataclysms before that."

In the Secret Doctrine is to be found this: "The fourth sub-race was in Kali Yuga when destroyed." This is not amenable to objection on the ground that we who are not that race are in Kali, for each race goes through the various Ages for itself; hence the former races, both primary and sub-, go through all the four periods from the Golden to the Black.

It must follow from this, and such is the oldest teaching on the subject, that at one and the same time races may be on the earth running each for itself through one or other of the periods. Some might be in the Golden Age and others in the Black. At present it is admitted that the Aryans are in the Kali Age, but certain childlike races are not so. Within the present five thousand year period we know that races have absolutely finished their Kali Yuga and gone out of existence. This happened to that which ruled a part of the American continent, and hence for them in particular their Kali Yuga must have begun earlier than ours did. The Hottentots also disappeared during our memory. This method of considering the subject will clear it up, leaving only to be settled for each race the period which they are in, or the beginning and ending of it. And, as said, for the Aryans the great Kali Yuga began five thousand (odd) years ago.

To find out when the great Kali Yuga for the major race, including all its sub-races, began would be impossible, as there are no means, and H.P.B., the only one for the present who had access to those who held the records, said precise figures on those heads would not be given out. But she and also those behind her who gave her so much information laid it down, as in accord with the philosophy of nature given out, that a division into four was the order for evolution in respect to the life of races, and hence that each great race, whatever its number in the whole seven, would be compelled to go through the four periods from the Satya to Kali, while at the same time the minor races had the same division, only that each part would be shorter than those pertaining to the great race as a whole. For that reason it seems plain that the figures for the various Ages (or Yugas) are only such as relate to and govern the sub- or minor races.

The overlapping of races as to their particular Yuga (or Age) can be easily seen in history. When the whites came to America the Indians were in their stone age in some places, using stone hammers, spears, knives, and arrows. Even in cultured South America the priests used stone knives for use at the sacrifices. We, however, had gone far beyond that. The red Indian of North America would have remained wholly in the stone age had we not altered it to some extent while we proceeded as instruments for his annihilation. Therefore in our own period we have examples of two races being in different Ages while living at the same time on the globe.

The foregoing is the general scheme outlined in the Secret Doctrine, where there are numerous pages showing that when a new race, whether a sub or a major one, comes in it does so while many of the old race still exist, the one gradually rising in development while the other falls. They shade into one another as night does into day, until at last either night or day predominates. This period of shading is allowed for in regard to the Ages, and in the Brahmanical calculation we find that they add twilights and dawns, since preceding a new Age there must be the dawn as following it will come the twilight. The twilight of the one will be the dawn of the other.

Using the Zodiac for the purpose of considering the question of the Ages, we find that, roughly speaking, the time taken by the sun to go round the whole circle is 25,800 years, as shown by the retrograde movement of the equinoctial points. This is the type for the yearly circle, which makes the four seasons and the four seasons in their turn symbolize the four Ages. Their length will be in proportion to the greater swing of the sun. Among the seasons the winter corresponds to the Kali Age, for then all is turned hard and cold, just as in the Black Age, the light of the Spiritual Sun being dimmed, the hardness and coldness of materiality appear in the moral life. Now if the sidereal period be divided by four, we have the figures 6450 years, or the five-thousand-year period with the requisite twilight or dawn added. And it was taught by the Egyptians that with every quarter of the circle of the Sun's great path there were changes caused physically by the alteration of the poles, and spiritually there must be changes due to the inner development of the human race as an entirety. While the materialistic philosopher thinks the changes would be due to the movement of the poles, the teaching from the Lodge is that the spiritual inner changes cause the physical ones through the appropriate means; in this case those means are in the movements of the great heavenly bodies. This is because the whole Cosmos is on the same grand plan, with all its parts working together, each in its own way.

For the present, students will have to be satisfied with the general statement that we are in Kali Yuga. The characteristics of the present time show it clearly enough, for while physical civilization is high the spiritual side of it is low and dark, and selfishness is the prevailing order. None of us can really pretend to know more than this, for while we have the Brahmanical calculation and the words of the Secret Doctrine, yet that is taking the word of another, plausible, of course, and also concordant with all other parts of the system, but still not of our own knowledge. The beginning of this Age and the time of its ending are dark to us; but the general theory, sufficient for our present needs, is perfectly clear, and as good an assumption as any of those indulged in by science certainly better than the incredible ideas of the theologian. Of one thing we are getting more and more proof each day, and that is of the immense period during which man has been on the earth, and with that admitted all the great cyclic lengths given by the ancient and modern Theosophists of weight are entitled to credence.

We can also get great comfort from the theory given out at various times, that in Kali Yuga a small effort goes farther for results than the same when made in a better Age. In the other Ages the rates of all things are slower than in this; hence, evil now seems quick; but in the same way good is also much quicker in effect and reach than in a slower time.

Path, November, 1894

THE KALI YUGA - THE PRESENT AGE

STUDENT. - I am very much puzzled about the present age. Some theosophists seem to abhor it as if wishing to be taken away from it altogether, inveighing against modern inventions such as the telegraph, railways, machinery, and the like, and bewailing the disappearance of former civilizations. Others take a different view, insisting that this is a better time than any other, and hailing modern methods as the best. Tell me, please, which of these is right, or, if both are wrong, what ought we to know about the age we live in.

Sage. - The teachers of Truth know all about this age. But they do not mistake the present century for the whole cycle. The older times of European history, for example, when might was right and when darkness prevailed over Western nations, was as much a part of this age, from the standpoint of the Masters, as is the present hour, for the Yuga - to use a sanscrit word - in which we are now had begun many thousands of years before. And during that period of European darkness, although this Yuga had already begun, there was much light, learning, and civilization in India and China. The meaning of the words "present age" must therefore be extended over a far greater period than is at present assigned. In fact, modern science has reached no definite conclusion yet as to what should properly be called "an age," and the truth of the Eastern doctrine is denied. Hence we find writers speaking of the "Golden Age," the "Iron Age," and so on, whereas they are only parts of the real age that began so far back that modern archaeologists deny it altogether.

Student. - What is the sanscrit name for this age, and what is its meaning?

Sage. - The sanscrit is "Kali," which added to Yuga gives us "Kali-Yuga." The meaning of it is "Dark Age." Its approach was known to the ancients, its characteristics are described in the Indian poem "The Mahabharata." As I said that it takes in an immense period of the glorious part of Indian history, there is no chance for anyone to be jealous and to say that we are comparing the present hour with that wonderful division of Indian development.

Student. - What are the characteristics to which you refer, by which Kali-Yuga may be known?

Sage. - As its name implies, darkness is the chief. This of course is not deducible by comparing today with 800 A.D., for this would be no comparison at all. The present century is certainly ahead of the middle ages, but as compared with the preceding Yuga it is dark. To the Occultist, material advancement is not of the quality of light, and he finds no proof of progress in merely mechanical contrivances that give comfort to a few of the human family while the many are in misery. For the darkness he would have to point but to one nation, even the great American Republic. Here he sees a mere extension of the habits and life of the Europe from which it sprang; here a great experiment with entirely new conditions and material was tried; here for many years very little poverty was known; but here today there is as much grinding poverty as anywhere, and as large a criminal class with corresponding prisons as in Europe, and more than in India. Again, the great thirst for riches and material betterment, while spiritual life is to a great extent ignored, is regarded by us as darkness. The great conflict already begun between the wealthy classes and the poorer is a sign of darkness. Were spiritual light prevalent, the rich and the poor would still be with us, for Karma cannot be blotted out, but the poor would know how to accept their lot and the rich how to improve the poor; now, on the contrary, the rich wonder why the poor do not go to the poorhouse, meanwhile seeking in the laws for cures for strikes and socialism, and the poor continually growl at fate and their supposed oppressors. All this is of the quality of spiritual darkness.

Student. - Is it wise to inquire as to the periods when the cycle changes, and to speculate on the great astronomical or other changes that herald a turn.

Sage. - It is not. There is an old saying that the gods are jealous about these things, not wishing mortals to know them. We may analyze the age, but it is better not to attempt to fix the hour of a change of cycle. Besides that, you will be unable to settle it, because a cycle does not begin on a day or year clear of any other cycle; they interblend, so that, although the wheel of one period is still turning, the initial point of another has already arrived.

Student. - Are these some of the reasons why Mr. Sinnett was not given certain definite periods of years about which he asked?

Sage. - Yes.

Student. - Has the age in which one lives any effect on the student; and what is it?

Sage. - It has effect on every one, but the student after passing along in his development feels the effect more than the ordinary man. Were it otherwise, the sincere and aspiring students all over the world would advance at once to those heights towards which they strive. It takes a very strong soul to hold back the age's heavy hand, and it is all the more difficult because that influence, being a part of the student's larger life, is not so well understood by him. It operates in the same way as a structural defect in a vessel. All the inner as well as the outer fibre of the man is the result of the long centuries of earthly lives lived here by his ancestors. These sow seeds of thought and physical tendencies in a way that you cannot comprehend. All those tendencies affect him. Many powers once possessed are hidden so deep as to be unseen, and he struggles against obstacles constructed ages ago. Further yet are the peculiar alterations brought about in the astral world. It, being at once a photographic plate, so to say, and also a reflector, has become the keeper of the mistakes of ages past which it continually reflects upon us from a plane to which most of us are strangers. In that sense therefore, free as we suppose ourselves, we are walking about completely hypnotized by the past, acting blindly under the suggestions thus cast upon us.

Student. - Was that why Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"?

Sage. - That was one meaning. In one aspect they acted blindly, impelled by the age, thinking they were right.

Regarding these astral alterations, you will remember how in the time of Julian the seers reported that they could see the gods, but they were decaying, some headless, others flaccid, others minus limbs, and all appearing weak. The reverence for these ideals was departing, and their astral pictures had already begun to fade.

Student. - What mitigation is there about this age? Is there nothing at all to relieve the picture?

Sage. - There is one thing peculiar to the present Kali-Yuga that may be used by the Student. All causes now bring about their effects much more rapidly than in any other or better age. A sincere lover of the race can accomplish more in three incarnations under Kali-Yuga's reign than he could in a much greater number in any other age. Thus by bearing all the manifold troubles of this Age and steadily triumphing, the object of his efforts will be more quickly realized, for, while the obstacles seem great, the powers to be invoked can be reached more quickly.

Student. - Even if this is, spiritually considered, a Dark Age, is it not in part redeemed by the increasing triumphs of mind over matter, and by the effects of science in mitigating human ills, such as the causes of disease, disease itself, cruelty, intolerance, bad laws, etc.?

Sage. - Yes, these are mitigations of the darkness in just the same way that a lamp gives some light at night but does not restore daylight. In this age there are great triumphs of science, but they are nearly all directed to effects and do not take away the causes of the evils. Great strides have been made in the arts and in cure of diseases, but in the future, as the flower of our civilization unfolds, new diseases will arise and more strange disorders will be known, springing from causes that lie deep in the minds of men and which can only be eradicated by spiritual living.

Student. - Admitting all you say, are not we, as Theosophists, to welcome every discovery of truth in any field, especially such truth as lessens suffering or enlarges the moral sense?

Sage. - This is our duty. All truths discovered must be parts of the one Absolute Truth, and so much added to the sum of our outer knowledge. There will always be a large number of men who seek for these parts of truth, and others who try to alleviate present human misery. They each do a great and appointed work that no true Theosophist should ignore. And it is also the duty of the latter to make similar efforts when possible, for Theosophy is a dead thing if it is not turned into the life. At the same time, no one of us may be the judge of just how much or how little our brother is doing in that direction. If he does all that he can and knows how to do, he does his whole present duty.

Student. - I fear that a hostile attitude by Occult teachers towards the learning and philanthropy of the time may arouse prejudice against Theosophy and Occultism, and needlessly impede the spread of Truth. May it not be so?

Sage. - The real Occult Teachers have no hostile attitude toward these things. If some persons, who like theosophy and try to spread it, take such a position, they do not thereby alter the one assumed by the real Teachers who work with all classes of men and use every possible instrument for good. But at the same time we have found that an excess of the technical and special knowledge of the day very often acts to prevent men from apprehending the truth.

Student. - Are there any causes, other than the spread of Theosophy, which may operate to reverse the present drift towards materialism?

Sage. - The spread of the knowledge of the laws of Karma and Reincarnation and of a belief in the absolute spiritual unity of all beings will alone prevent this drift. The cycle must, however, run its course, and until that is ended all beneficial causes will of necessity act slowly and not to the extent they would in a brighter age. As each student lives a better life and by his example imprints upon the astral light the picture of a higher aspiration acted in the world, he thus aids souls of advanced development to descend from other spheres where the cycles are so dark that they can no longer stay there.

Student. - Accept my thanks for your instruction.

Sage. - May you reach the terrace of enlightenment.

Path, April, 1888

Kali Yuga And The Coming Race

(1) How many years are there in Kali Yuga? (2) Will the sixth sub-race begin very soon, that is, will it be at the end of the cycle of the first five thousand years of Kali Yuga? (3) Cannot a person of the fifth race come near where the sixth race shall live?

(1) Kali Yuga is said by the Brahmins and the Secret Doctrine to be 432,000 years long. We will have to accept the calculation for the present.

(2) Many thousands of years will pass before the next race will be here, and you will have died several times over before that, and also it is probable you will be one of that race unless you go to some other planet. You have made the error of supposing that the end of the cycle in 1898 is the end of the race. It is not. It is but a minor cycle, though quite important in its way. Hence-

Path, January, 1895

KARMA

THE child is the father of the man, and none the less true is it:

My brothers! each mans life
The outcome of his former living is;
The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes
The bygone right breeds bliss. .

"This is the doctrine of Karma."

But in what way does this bygone wrong and right affect the present life? Is the stern nemesis ever following the weary traveler, with a calm, passionless, remorseless step? Is there no escape from its relentless hand? Does the eternal law of cause and effect, unmoved by sorrow and regret, ever deal out its measure of weal and woe as the consequence of past action? The shadow of the yesterday of sin--must it darken the life of today? Is Karma but another name for fate? Does the child unfold the page of the already written book of life in which each event is recorded without the possibility of escape? What is the relation of Karma to the life of the individual? Is there nothing for man to do but to weave the chequered warp and woof of each earthly existence with the stained and discolored threads of past actions? Good resolves and evil tendencies sweep with resistless tide over the nature of man and we are told:

"Whatever action he performs, whether good or bad, every thing done in a former body must necessarily be enjoyed or suffered." Anugita, Cp. III.

There is good Karma, there is bad Karma, and as the wheel of life moves on, old Karma is exhausted and again fresh Karma is accumulated.

Although at first it may appear that nothing can be more fatalistic than this doctrine, yet a little consideration will show that in reality this is not the case. Karma is twofold, hidden and manifest, Karma is the man that is, Karma is his action. True that each action is a cause from which evolves the countless ramifications of effect in time and space.

"That which ye sow ye reap." In some sphere of action the harvest will be gathered. It is necessary that the man of action should realize this truth. It is equally necessary that the manifestations of this law in the operations of Karma should be clearly apprehended.

Karma, broadly speaking, may be said to be the continuance of the nature of the act, and each act contains within itself the past and future. Every defect which can be realized from an act must be implicit in the act itself or it could never come into existence. Effect is but the nature of the act and cannot exist distinct from its cause. Karma only produces the manifestation of that which already exists; being action it has its operation in time, and Karma may therefore be said to be the same action from another point of time. It must, moreover, be evident that not only is there a relation between the cause and the effect, but there must also be a relation between the cause and the individual who experiences the effect. If it were otherwise, any man would reap the effect of the actions of any other man. We may sometimes appear to reap the effects of the action of others, but this is only apparent. In point of fact it is our own action.

...None else compels
None other holds you that ye live and die.

It is therefore necessary in order to understand the nature of Karma and its relation to the individual to consider action in all its aspects. Every act proceeds from the mind. Beyond the mind there is no action and therefore no Karma. The basis of every act is desire. The plane of desire or egotism is itself action and the matrix of every act. This plane may be considered as non-manifest, yet having a dual manifestation in what we call cause and effect, that is, the act and its consequences. In reality, both the act and its consequences are the effect, the cause being on the plane of desire. Desire is therefore the basis of action in its first manifestation on the physical plane, and desire determines the continuation of the act in its karmic relation to the individual. For a man to be free from the effects of the Karma of any act he must have passed to a state no longer yielding a basis in which that act can inhere. The ripples in the water caused by the action of the stone will extend to the furthest limit of its expanse, but no further; they are bounded by the shore. Their course is ended when there is no longer a basis or suitable medium in which they can inhere; they expend their force and are not. Karma is, therefore, as dependent upon the present personality for its fulfillment, as it was upon the former for the first initial act. An illustration may be given which will help to explain this.

A seed, say for instance mustard, will produce a mustard tree and nothing else; but in order that it should be produced, it is necessary that the co-operation of soil and culture should be equally present. Without the seed, however much the ground may be tilled and watered, it will not bring forth the plant, but the seed is equally in-operative without the joint action of the soil and culture.

The first great result of Karmic action is the incarnation in physical life. The birth-seeking entity consisting of desires and tendencies, presses forward towards incarnation. It is governed in the selection of its scene of manifestation by the law of economy. Whatever is the ruling tendency, that is to say, whatever group of affinities is strongest, those affinities will lead it to the point of manifestation at which there is the least opposition. It incarnates in those surroundings most in harmony with its Karmic tendencies and all the effects of actions contained in the Karma so manifesting will be experienced by the individual. This governs the station of life, the sex, the conditions of the irresponsible years of childhood, the constitution with the various diseases inherent in it, and in fact all those determining forces of physical existence which are ordinarily classed under the terms, "heredity," and "national characteristics."

It is really the law of economy which is the truth underlying these terms and which explains them. Take for instance a nation with certain special characteristics. These are the plane of expansion for any entity whose greatest number of affinities are in harmony with those characteristics. The incoming entity following the law of least resistance becomes incarnated in that nation, and all Karmic effects following such characteristics will accrue to the individual. This will explain what is the meaning of such expressions as the "Karma of nations," and what is true of the nation will also apply to family and caste.

It must, however, be remembered that there are many tendencies which are not exhausted in the act of incarnation. It may happen that the Karma which caused an entity to incarnate in any particular surrounding, was only strong enough to carry it into physical existence. Being exhausted in that direction, freedom is obtained for the manifestation of other tendencies and their Karmic effects. For instance, Karmic force may cause an entity to incarnate in a humble sphere of life. He may be born as the child of poor parents. The Karma follows the entity, endures for a longer or shorter time, and becomes exhausted. From that point, the child takes a line of life totally different from his surroundings. Other affinities engendered by former action express themselves in their Karmic results. The lingering effect of the past Karma may still manifest itself in the way of obstacles and obstructions which are surmounted with varying degrees of success according to their intensity.

From the standpoint of a special creation for each entity entering the world, there is vast and unaccountable injustice. From the standpoint of Karma, the strange vicissitudes and apparent chances of life can be considered in a different light as the unerring manifestation of cause and sequence. In a family under the same conditions of poverty and ignorance, one child will be separated from the others and thrown into surroundings very dissimilar. He may be adopted by a rich man, or through some freak of fortune receive an education giving him at once a different position. The Karma of incarnation being exhausted, other Karma asserts itself.

A very important question is here presented: Can an individual affect his own Karma, and if so to what degree and in what manner?

It has been said that Karma is the continuance of the act, and for any particular line of Karma to exert itself it is necessary that there should be the basis of the act engendering that Karma in which it can inhere and operate. But action has many planes in which it can inhere. There is the physical plane, the body with its senses and organs; then there is the intellectual plane, memory, which binds the impressions of the senses into a consecutive whole and reason puts in orderly arrangement its storehouse of facts. Beyond the plane of intellect there is the plane of emotion, the plane of preference for one object rather than another: the fourth principle of the man. These three, physical, intellectual, and emotional, deal entirely with objects of sense perception and may be called the great battlefield of Karma.¹ There is also the plane of ethics, the plane of discrimination of the "I ought to do this, I ought not to do that." This plane harmonizes the intellect and the emotions. All these are the planes of Karma or action: what to do, and what not to do. It is the mind as the basis of desire that initiates action on the various planes, and it is only through the mind that the effects of rest and action can be received.

An entity enters incarnation with Karmic energy from past existences, that is to say the action of past lives is awaiting its development as effect. This Karmic energy presses into manifestation in harmony with the basic nature of the act. Physical Karma will manifest in the physical tendencies bringing enjoyment and suffering. The intellectual and the ethical planes are also in the same manner the result of the past Karmic tendencies and the man as he is, with his moral and intellectual faculties, is in unbroken continuity with the past.

The entity at birth has therefore a definite amount of Karmic energy. After incarnation this awaits the period in life at which fresh Karma begins. Up to the time of responsibility it is as we have seen the initial Karma only that manifests. From that time the fresh personality becomes the ruler of his own destiny. It is a great mistake to suppose that an individual is the mere puppet of the past, the helpless victim of fate. The law of Karma is not fatalism, and a little consideration will show that it is possible for an individual to affect his own Karma. If a greater amount of energy be taken up on one plane than on another this will cause the past Karma to unfold itself on that plane. For instance, one who lives entirely on the plane of sense gratification will from the plane beyond draw the energy required for the fulfillment of his desires. Let us illustrate by dividing man into upper and lower nature. By directing the mind and aspirations to the lower plane, a "fire" or centre of attraction, is set up there, and in order to feed and fatten it, the energies of the whole upper plane are drawn down and exhausted in supplying the need of energy which exists below due to the indulgence of sense gratification. On the other hand, the centre of attraction may be fixed in the upper portion, and then all the needed energy goes there to result in increase of spirituality. It must be remembered that Nature is all bountiful and withholds not her hand. The demand is made, and the supply will come. But at what cost? That energy which should have strengthened the moral nature and fulfilled the aspirations after good, is drawn to the lower desires. By degrees the higher planes are exhausted of vitality and the good and bad Karma of an entity will be absorbed on the physical plane. If on the other hand the interest is detached from the plane of sense gratification, if there is a constant effort to fix the mind on the attainment of the highest ideal, the result will be that the past Karma will find no basis in which to inhere on the physical plane. Karma will therefore be manifested only in harmony with the plane of desire. The sense energy of the physical plane will exhaust itself on a higher plane and thus become transmuted in its effects.

What are the means through which the effects of Karma can be thus changed is also clear. A person can have no attachment for a thing he does not think about, therefore the first step must be to fix the thought on the highest ideal. In this connection one remark may be made on the subject of repentance. Repentance is a form of thought in which the mind is constantly recurring to a sin. It has therefore to be avoided if one would set the mind free from sin and its Karmic results. All sin has its origin in the mind. The more the mind dwells on any course of conduct, whether with pleasure or pain, the less chance is there for it to become detached from such action. The manas (mind) is the knot of the heart, when that is untied from any object, in other words when the mind loses its interest in any object, there will no longer be a link between the Karma connected with that object and the individual.

It is the attitude of the mind which draws the Karmic cords tightly round the soul. It imprisons the aspirations and binds them with chains of difficulty and obstruction. It is desire that causes the past Karma to take form and shape and build the house of clay. It must be through non-attachment that the soul will burst through the walls of pain, it will be only through a change of mind that the Karmic burden will be lifted.

It will appear, therefore, that although absolutely true that action brings its own result, "there is no destruction here of actions good or not good. Coming to one body after another they become ripened in their respective ways." Yet this ripening is the act of the individual. Free will of man asserts itself and he becomes his own saviour. To the worldly man Karma is a stern Nemesis, to the spiritual man Karma unfolds itself in harmony with his highest aspirations. He will look with tranquility alike on past and future, neither dwelling with remorse on past sin nor living in expectation of reward for present action.

Path, December, 1886

(1) See Bhagavad-Gita where the whole poem turns upon the conflict in this battlefield, which is called the "sacred plain of Kurukshetra," meaning, the "body which is acquired by Karma." (ED. of Theosophy Company)

KARMA IN THE DESATIR

THE Desatir is a collection of the writings of the different Persian Prophets, one of whom was Zoroaster. The last was alive in the time of Khusro Parvez, who was contemporary with the Emperor Revaclius and died only nine years before the end of the ancient Persian monarchy. Sir William Jones was the first who drew the attention of European scholars to the Desatir. It is divided into books of the different prophets. In this article the selections are from the "Prophet Abad."

"In the name of Lareng! Mezdam (1) separated man from the other animals by the distinction of a soul, which is a free and independent substance, without a body or anything material, indivisible and without position, by which he attaineth to the glory of the angels.

"By his knowledge he united the soul with the elemental body. If one doeth good in an elemental body, and possesseth useful knowledge, and acts aright, and is a Hirtasp, and doth not give pain to harmless animals; when he putteth off the inferior body I will introduce him to the abode of the angels that he may see me with the nearest angels.

"And every one who wisheth to return to the lower world and is a doer of good shall, according to his knowledge and conversation and actions, receive something, either as a King or Prime Minister, or some high office or wealth, until he meeteth with a reward suited to his deeds.

"Those who, in the season of prosperity, experience pain and grief suffer them on account of their words or deeds in a former body, for which the Most Just now punisheth them.

"In the name of Lareng! Whosoever is an evil doer, on him He first inflicteth pain under human form: for sickness, sufferings of children while in their mothers womb, and after they are out of it, and suicide, and being hurt by ravenous animals, and death, and being subjected to want from birth to death, are all retributions for past actions: and in like manner as to goodness.

"If any one knowingly and intentionally kill a harmless animal and do not meet with retribution in the same life either from the unseen or the earthly ruler, he will find punishment awaiting him at his next coming."

Certain verses declare that foolish and evil doers are condemned to the bodies of vegetables, and the very wicked to the form of minerals, and then declare they so remain,

"Until their sins be purified, after which they are delivered from this suffering and are once more united to a human body: and according as they act in it they again meet with retribution."

In the Desatir the doctrine is held that animals are also subject to punishment by retributive Karma; thus:

"If a ravenous animal kill a harmless animal it must be regarded as retaliation on the slain, since ferocious animals exist for the purpose of inflicting such punishment. The slaying of ravenous animals is laudable, since they in a former existence have been shedders of blood and slew the guiltless. The punisher of such is blest.

"The lion, the tiger, the leopard, the panther, and the wolf, with all ravenous animals, whether birds, quadrupeds, or creeping things, have once possessed authority; and everyone whom they kill hath been their aider or abettor who did evil by supporting or assisting, or by the orders of, that exalted class; and having given pain to harmless animals are now punished by their own masters. In fine, these grandees, being invested with the forms of ravenous beasts, expire of suffering and wounds according to their misdeeds; and if any guilt remain they will return a second time and suffer punishment along with their accomplices."

BRYAN KINNAVAN
Path, October, 1891

(1) Mezdam is the Lord God, so to say.

LAWS GOVERNING ELEMENTALS

STUDENT. - A materialist stated to me as his opinion that all that is said about mantrams is mere sentimental theorizing, and while it may be true that certain words affect people, the sole reason is that they embody ideas distasteful or pleasant to the hearers, but that the mere sounds, as such, have no effect whatever, and as to either words or sounds affecting animals he denied it altogether. Of course he would not take elementals into account at all, as their existence is impossible for him.

Sage. - This position is quite natural in these days. There has been so much materialization of thought, and the real scientific attitude of leading minds in different branches of investigation has been so greatly misunderstood by those who think they follow the example of the scientific men, that most people in the West are afraid to admit anything beyond what may be apprehended by the five senses. The man you speak of is one of that always numerous class who adopt as fixed and unalterable general laws laid down from time to time by well known savants, forgetting that the latter constantly change and advance from point to point.

Student. - Do you think, then, that the scientific world will one day admit much that is known to Occultists?

Sage. - Yes, it will. The genuine Scientist is always in that attitude which permits him to admit things proven. He may seem to you often to be obstinate and blind, but in fact he is proceeding slowly to the truth - too slowly, perhaps for you, yet not in the position of knowing all. It is the veneered scientist who swears by the published results of the work of leading men as being the last word, while, at the very moment he is doing so, his authority may have made notes or prepared new theories tending to greatly broaden and advance the last utterance. It is only when the dogmatism of a priest backed up by law declares that a discovery is opposed to the revealed word of his god, that we may fear. That day is gone for a long time to come, and we need expect no more scenes like that in which Galileo took part. But among the materialistic minds to whom you referred, there is a good deal of that old spirit left, only that the "revealed word of God" has become the utterances of our scientific leaders.

Student. - I have observed that within even the last quarter of a century. About ten years ago many well-known men laughed to scorn any one who admitted the facts within the experience of every mesmerizer, while now, under the term "hypnotism," they are nearly all admitted. And when these lights of our time were denying it all, the French doctors were collating the results of a long series of experiments. It seems as if the invention of a new term for an old and much abused one furnished an excuse for granting all that had been previously denied. But have you anything to say about those materialistic investigators? Are they not governed by some powerful, though unperceived, law?

Sage. - They are. They are in the forefront of the mental, but not of the spiritual, progress of the time, and are driven forward by forces they know nothing of. Help is very often given to them by the Masters, who, neglecting nothing, constantly see to it that these men make progress upon the fittest lines for them, just as you are assisted not only in your spiritual life but in your mental also. These men, therefore, will go on admitting facts and finding new laws or new names for old laws, to explain them. They cannot help it.

Student. - What should be our duty, then, as students of truth? Should we go out as reformers of science, or what?

Sage. - You ought not to take up the role of reformers of the schools and their masters, because success would not attend the effort. Science is competent to take care of itself, and you would only be throwing pearls before them to be trampled under foot. Rest content that all within their comprehension will be discovered and admitted from time to time. The endeavor to force them into admitting what you believe to be so plain would be due almost solely to your vanity and love of praise. It is not possible to force them, any more than it is for me to force you, to admit certain incomprehensible laws, and you would not think me wise or fair to first open before you things, to understand which you have not the necessary development, and then to force you into admitting their truth. Or if, out of reverence, you should say, "These things are true," while you comprehended nothing and were not progressing, you would have bowed to superior force.

Student. - But you do not mean that we should remain ignorant of science and devote ourselves only to ethics?

Sage. - Not at all. Know all that you can. Become conversant with and sift all that the schools have declared, and as much more on your own account as is possible, but at the same time teach, preach, and practice a life based on a true understanding of brotherhood. This is the true way. The common people, those who know no science, are the greatest number. They must be so taught that the discoveries of science which are unillumined by spirit may not be turned into Black Magic.

Student. - In our last conversation you touched upon the guarding of buried treasure by elementals. I should like very much to hear a little more about that. Not about how to control them or to procure the treasure, but upon the subject generally.

Sage. - The laws governing the hiding of buried treasure are the same as those that relate to lost objects. Every person has about him a fluid, or plane, or sphere, or energy, which-ever you please to call it, in which are constantly found elementals that partake of his nature. That is, they are tinted with his color and impressed by his character. There are numerous classes of these. Some men have many of one class or of all, or many of some and few of others. And anything worn upon your person is connected with your elementals. For instance, you wear cloth made of wool or linen, and little objects made of wood, bone, brass, gold, silver, and other substances. Each one of these has certain magnetic relations peculiar to itself, and all of them are soaked, to a greater or less extent, with your magnetism as well as nervous fluid. Some of them, because of their substance, do not long retain this fluid, while others do. The elementals are connected, each class according to its substance, with those objects by means of the magnetic fluid. And they are acted upon by the mind and desires to a greater extent than you know, and in a way that cannot be formulated in English. Your desires have a powerful grasp, so to say, upon certain things, and upon others a weaker hold. When one of these objects is suddenly dropped, it is invariably followed by elementals. They are drawn after it, and may be said to go with the object by attraction rather than by sight. In many cases they completely envelop the thing, so that, although it is near at hand, it cannot be seen by the eye. But after awhile the magnetism wears off and their power to envelop the article weakens, whereupon it appears in sight. This does not happen in every case. But it is a daily occurrence, and is sufficiently obvious to many persons to be quite removed from the realm of fable. I think, indeed, that one of your literary persons has written an essay upon this very experience, in which, although treated in a comic vein, many truths are unconsciously told; the title of this was, if I mistake not, "Upon the Innate Perversity of Inanimate Objects." There is such a nice balancing of forces in these cases that you must be careful in your generalizations. You may justly ask, for instance, Why, when a coat is dropped, it seldom disappears from sight? Well, there are cases in which even such a large object is hidden, but they are not very common. The coat is full of your magnetism, and the elementals may feel in it just as much of you as when it is on your back. There may be, for them, no disturbance of the relations, magnetic and otherwise. And often in the case of a small object not invisible, the balancing of forces, due to many causes that have to do with your condition at the time, prevents the hiding. To decide in any particular case, one would have to see into the realm where the operation of these laws is hidden, and calculate all the forces, so as to say why it happened in one way and not in another.

Student. - But take the case of a man who, being in possession of treasure, hides it in the earth and goes away and dies, and it is not found. In that instance the elementals did not hide it. Or when a miser buries his gold or jewels. How about those?

Sage. - In all cases where a man buries gold, or jewels, or money, or precious things, his desires are fastened to that which he hides. Many of his elementals attach themselves to it, and other classes of them also, who had nothing to do with him, gather round and keep it hidden. In the case of the captain of a ship containing treasure the influences are very powerful, because there the elementals are gathered from all the persons connected with the treasure, and the officer himself is full of solicitude for what is committed to his charge. You should also remember that gold and silver - or metals - have relations with elementals that are of a strong and peculiar character. They do not work for human law, and natural law does not assign any property in metals to man, nor recognize in him any peculiar and transcendent right to retain what he has dug from the earth or acquired to himself. Hence we do not find the elementals anxious to restore to him the gold or silver which he had lost. If we were to assume that they occupied themselves in catering to the desires of men or in establishing what we call our rights over property, we might as well at once grant the existence of a capricious and irresponsible Providence. They proceed solely according to the law of their being, and, as they are without the power of making a judgment, they commit no blunders and are not to be moved by considerations based upon our vested rights or our unsatisfied wishes. Therefore, the spirits that appertain to metals invariably act as the laws of their nature prescribe, and one way of doing so is to obscure the metals from our sight.

Student. - Can you make any application of all this in the realm of ethics?

Sage. - There is a very important thing you should not overlook. Every time you harshly and unmercifully criticize the faults of another, you produce an attraction to yourself of certain quantities of elementals from that person. They fasten themselves upon you and endeavor to find in you a similar state or spot or fault that they have left in the other person. It is as if they left him to serve you at higher wages, so to say.

Then there is that which I referred to in a preceding conversation, about the effect of our acts and thoughts upon, not only the portion of the astral light belonging to each of us with its elementals, but upon the whole astral world. If men saw the dreadful pictures imprinted there and constantly throwing down upon us their suggestions to repeat the same acts or thoughts, a millennium might soon draw near. The astral light is, in this sense, the same as a photographer's negative plate, and we are the sensitive paper underneath, on which is being printed the picture. We can see two sorts of pictures for each act. One is the act itself, and the other is the picture of the thoughts and feelings animating those engaged in it. You can therefore see that you may be responsible for many more dreadful pictures than you had supposed. For actions of a simple outward appearance have behind them, very often, the worst of thoughts or desires.

Student. - Have these pictures in the astral light anything to do with us upon being reincarnated in subsequent earth-lives?

Sage. - They have very much indeed. We are influenced by them for vast periods of time, and in this you can perhaps find clues to many operations of active Karmic law for which you seek.

Student. - Is there not also some effect upon animals, and through them upon us, and vice versa?

Sage. - Yes. The animal kingdom is affected by us through the astral light. We have impressed the latter with pictures of cruelty, oppression, dominion, and slaughter. The whole Christian world admits that man can indiscriminately slaughter animals, upon the theory, elaborately set forth by priests in early times, that animals have no souls. Even little children learn this and very early begin to kill insects, birds, and animals, not for protection, but from wantonness. As they grow up the habit is continued, and in England we see that shooting large numbers of birds beyond the wants of the table, is a national peculiarity, or, as I should say, a vice. This may be called a mild illustration. If these people could catch elementals as easily as they can animals, they would kill them for amusement when they did not want them for use; and, if the elementals refused to obey, then their death would follow as a punishment. All this is perceived by the elemental world, without conscience of course; but, under the laws of action and reaction, we receive back from it exactly that which we give.

Student. - Before we leave the subject I should like to refer again to the question of metals and the relation of man to the elementals connected with the mineral world. We see some persons who seem always to be able to find metals with ease - or, as they say, who are lucky in that direction. how am I to reconcile this with the natural tendency of elementals to hide? Is it because there is a war or discord, as it were, between different classes belonging to any one person?

Sage. - That is a part of the explanation. Some persons, as I said, have more of one class attached to them than another. A person fortunate with metals, say of gold and silver, has about him more of the elementals connected with or belonging to the kingdoms of those metals than other people, and thus there is less strife between the elementals. The preponderance of the metal-spirits makes the person more homogeneous with their kingdoms, and a natural attraction exists between the gold or silver lost or buried and that person, more than in the case of other people.

Student. - What determines this? Is it due to a desiring of gold and silver, or is it congenital?

Sage. - It is innate. The combinations in any one individual are so intricate and due to so many causes that you could not calculate them. They run back many generations, and depend upon peculiarities of soil, climate, nation, family, and race. These are, as you can see, enormously varied, and, with the materials at your command now, quite beyond your reach. Merely wishing for gold and silver will not do it.

Student. - I judge also that attempting to get at those elementals by thinking strongly will not accomplish that result either.

Sage. - No, it will not, because your thoughts do not reach them. They do not hear or see you, and, as it is only by accidental concentration of forces that unlearned people influence them, these accidents are only possible to the extent that you possess the natural leaning to the particular kingdom whose elementals you have influenced.

Student. - I thank you for your instruction.

Sage. - May you be guided to the path which leads to light!

Path, September, 1888

LETTER TO EUROPEAN CONVENTION

Following is a copy of a letter from the Executive Committee to be read at the following European Convention on July 4th:

From the Theosophical Society in America to the European Theosophists, in Convention Assembled as, "The European Section of the Theosophical Society."

Brothers and Sisters:-We send you our fraternal greeting, and fullest sympathy in all works sincerely sought to be performed for the good of Humanity. Separated though we are from you by very great distance we are none the less certain that you and we, as well as all other congregations of people who love Brotherhood, are parts of that great whole denominated The Theosophical Movement, which began far back in the night of Time and has since been moving through many and various peoples, places and environments. that grand work does not depend upon forms, ceremonies, particular persons or set organizations, -"Its unity throughout the world does not consist in the existence and action of any single organization, but depends upon the similarity of work and aspiration of those in the world who are working for it." Hence organizations of the theosophists must vary and change in accordance with place, time, exigency and people. To hold that in and by a sole organization for the whole world is the only way to work would be boyish in conception and not in accord with experience or nature's law.

Recognizing the foregoing, we, who were once the body called the America Section of the T.S., resolved to make our organization, or merely outer form for government and administration, entirely free and independent of all others; but retained our theosophical ideals, aspirations, aims and objects, continuing to be a part of the theosophical movement. This change was an inevitable one, and perhaps will ere long be made also by you as well as by others. It has been and will be forced, as it were, by nature itself under the sway of the irresistible law of human development and progress.

But while the change would have been made before many years by us as an inevitable and logical development, we have to admit that it was hastened by reason of what we considered to be strife, bitterness and anger existing in other Sections of the theosophical world which were preventing us from doing our best work in the field assigned to us by Karma. In order to more quickly free ourself from these obstructions we made the change in this, instead of in some later year. It is, then, a mere matter of government and has nothing to do with theosophical propaganda or ethics, except that it will enable us to do more and better work.

Therefore we come to you as fellow-students and workers in the field of theosophical effort, and holding out the hand of fellowship we again declare the complete unity of all theosophical workers in every part of the world. This you surely cannot and will not reject from heated, rashly-conceived counsels, or from personalities indulged in by anyone, or from any cause whatever. To reject the proffer would mean that you reject and nullify the principle of Universal Brotherhood upon which alone all true theosophical work is based. And we could not indulge in those reflections nor put forward that reason but for the knowledge that certain persons of weight and prominence in your ranks have given utterance hastily to expressions of pleasure that our change of government above referred to has freed them from nearly every one of the thousands of earnest, studious and enthusiastic workers in our American group of Theosophical Societies. This injudicious and untheosophical attitude we cannot attribute to the whole or to any majority of your workers.

Let us then press forward together in the great work of the real Theosophical Movement which is aided by working organizations, but is above them all. Together we can devise more and better ways for spreading the light of truth through all the earth. Mutually assisting and encouraging one another we may learn how to put Theosophy into practice so as to be able to teach and enforce it by example to others. We will then each and all be members of that Universal Lodge of Free and Independent Theosophists which embraces every friend of the human race. And to all this we beg your corporate official answer for our more definite and certain information, and to the end that this and your favorable reply may remain as evidence and monuments between us.

Fraternally yours,
(signed) William Q. Judge
President

(Signed)
Elliott B. Page
A.P. Buchman
C.A. Griscom, Jr.
H.T. Patterson
Jerome A. Anderson
Frank I. Blodgett
Members of the Executive Committee

Path, July, 1895

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY IN EUROPE

In last month's issue we published a copy of the kindly and courteous letter of greeting from the Executive Committee of the Theosophical Society in America to the European Theosophists assembling in Convention on July 4th. We have now to inform our readers that by a majority vote of the delegates and proxies at that convention this letter was laid on the table, after a speech by Mrs. Annie Besant in which she declared it a personal attack on herself and an insult to those upholding her. While strongly deprecating such a unfortunate action, and lamenting deeply that in the name of "Theosophy" any gathering of persons should ever have permitted personality and suspicion thus to override justice and judgement, nevertheless, to all upholders of high theosophic principles, it must be a source of reassurance that the inspiration of the unseen powers behind the Movement has not been entirely clouded in some quarters, when we add that fully half the hall arose and protested against the purblind and fanatical attitude that had brought about the repudiation of a document intended to draw harmoniously together for the greater advancement of our cause all workers in the Movement. Step by step have those who sacrifice the highest theosophical principles to personal attacks on their fellow students, descended the scale or discernment; hour by hour their position has been made more fatally clear; and now finally, in an unguarded moment, they stand self-confessed, their attitude made plain that all who have eyes to see can perceive the unveiled truth. Further comment is out of place; we would fain have made workers of all, have united all in the work, and made this great Movement an undivided Power-differing for different places in external organization, yet one and undivided in Spirit. But some have temporarily placed themselves outside its pale; though members of the "Theosophical Society," by this very vote they account themselves non-Theosophists.

Path, August, 1895

LETTER TO EUROPEAN GENERAL SECRETARY

144 Madison Avenue
New York, January 25, 1895

George R. S. Mead, Esq.
Gen'l Sec'y European Section T.S.

Sir and Brother:-I have received some seven requests by resolution from Branches and Centers of your Section to the effect, (a) that I should resign the office of Vice-President of the T.S., (b) that i should answer charges published against me by a paper inimical to the T.S. or give reasons for not replying, (c) that I should offer myself for trial on said charges; and I have also read the full publications of these requests and other matter connected therewith in the Vahan. I now beg to ask you to act as the proper official channel for the general reply to those requests, and to inform your Executive Committee also.

First. I am amazed at the undue, precipitate, and untheosophical haste displayed in the requests to me to reply to the public attack made on me before I could have time to do so or had refused, when the slightest reflection would show I could not possibly reply in such a hurry, and when a true brotherly feeling would seem to require that before making the demands, means should be taken to discover whether I had an intention to reply or explain. The Barcelona Lodge, however, asked you to inquire of me whether the charges made in said paper were true or not. Please let them know that I again say the charges are absolutely false.

Second. When the Judicial Commitee met in July and when thereafter Mrs. Besant, as prosecutor, publicly assented, in apparent good faith, to a general resolution declaring the matter closed and dropped, she was then in possession of all the alleged evidence now in her possession. Inasmuch as her name and her opinions have been used in a part of the above-mentioned correspondence, as some sort of proof of something. I draw your Lodges' attention to the fact that she had in her possession all said evidence at the time when she, as your public leader, publicly assented to two statements and a solemn resolution closing the matter passed at your Convention. It now appears that some Lodges desire to nullify and override that action; hence either (a) the resolution was not passed in good faith, or (b) it was procurred through hoodwinking and deceiving the Convention. If you and those Lodges say that they did not have the said alleged evidence, and would not have passed the resolution had you possessed the said alleged evidence, then their present desire to avoid the resolution-for that is what the requests indicate-is due to a feeling that you were hoodwinkied into passing it. This being so, I must refer you to Mrs. Besant, for I had no part whatever in proposing, forwarding, or passing the resolution.

Third. In reply to the request that I shall resign the office of Vice-President, please say that I am obliged to refuse the request. If it is proper I should now resign, it was just as much so in July when your leading prosecutors had all the alleged evidence in their possession. I regard resignation as evidence of guilt. If I resigned that office I could not be in any way tried on any charges, and very soon after a resignation the same persons might say I resigned to evade responsibility.

Fourth. I have replied to the public newspaper in the only way it deserves. I have still under consideration a full reply to the T.S. respecting the real charges, but I refuse to be hurried until the right time, for the cogent reasons given below. And as I have seen that new misstatements of fact and charges are being circulated against me by F.T.S. who are keeping up this disgraceful pursuit, I have additional reasons for waiting until all possible innuendos and distortions shall have come forth, even were I now fully prepared to reply.

I cannot make a proper reply to the charges until I have in my possession a copy of the documentary evidence which it was, or is, proposed to use in support of the charges. These documents consist of various letters of mine on which are memoranda not in my handwriting. Some of them are letters written over ten years ago. They have been deliberately kept away from me, although open enemies have been given and allowed to take complete copies and facsimilies. No fair person would ask that I should answer without them.

I arrived in London July 5th, 18945, and at once demanded, first, copies of letters, and second, an inspection of all the evidence. Mrs. Besant promised these, but did not perform. The Council met informally on July 6, when I again demanded the evidence and received the same promise as before with the same failure to perform. July 7th the formal meeting of the Council took place. The same demand was again made with the same result. Each day until the second day before departure I made the request and met the same promise followed by failure to perform. The Judicial Committee met and I then made the same demand, and at the meeting Mrs. Besant and others said, "Oh, of course Mr. Judge should have copies of the proposed evidence." But the papers were neither copied nor shown me up to July 19th, almost a week after Convention, and when I was packing my trunk. All this time until the 19th, Mrs. Besant had the papers. On the 19th I formally and peremptorily demanded them. She said she had given them to Col. Olcott, who said they had been just sent off to the mail to go to India; this I repeated to Mrs. Besant and said I would publish the fact to the public. She hastened to Col. Olcott and he said he had made a mistake, as the papers were in his travelling case. He then, in Dr. Buck's presence, in a great hurry, as I sailed on the 21st, allowed me a hasty look at the papers on July 19th, I taking a copy of one or two short ones. But several being lengthy, and especially the one by which they hoped to destroy my general credibility, I could not copy them. Col. Olcott then promised to send copies; Mrs. Besant declared herself quit of the matter. Up to this date the promises made have not been fulfilled. I am without copies of the documents on which the charges are based.

Mrs. Besant, as prosecutor, never fulfilled her promise nor her duty. I then believed and still believe that they never intended to give me copies nor to permit inspection but hoped to hurry me into a trial unprepared in every respect. These facts, with the fact that they allowed Mr. Old to copy everything, will throw some light on the matter and on the opinions of the parties. I shall certainly not reply until I have before me the documentary evidence or copies and know the precise offenses with which I am charged. This is common justice.

Fraternally,
William Q. Judge
Vice-President T.S.

Path, March, 1895
The Vahan, March 1, 1895

THE LETTER TO THE BRAHMANS

In April, 1893 (1), an open letter to the Brahmans was sent by William Q. Judge. It called the "Brahmans of India," because its writer holds that there are Brahmans of the past now living in Western bodies, and because the term "Brahman" more properly refers in reality to character than to birth. Copies of the letter were sent all over the T.S. in India. Many criticism were offered, but none were received pointing to the addition for the words "of India." The letter was translated into Sanscrit, Bengali, and Hindi, and in that form was sent all over India.

Although some F.T.S., without corresponding with the Brahmans to whom the letter was directed, said that it was needless and that no idea existed among the orthodox Brahmans that the T.S. favored Buddhism as against other religions, and although the sender of the letter was chided for it, yet the many letters from the Brahmans who are not in the T.S. all state how glad they were to hear definitely that the T.S. was not to be confounded with a Buddhist propaganda. These letters are in Sanscrit, Hindi, Bengali, and English, and may easily be seen at New York.

In the second place the letter aroused discussion of an important point, for in the West the idea is prevalent that the T.S. is a Buddhist propaganda, and T.S. lecturers have to constantly combat this false notion. It is essential that the public shall not misconstrue us and say that because some doctrines given by Theosophists are Buddhistic therefore the Society is also.

So, carrying out the idea of the Letter to the Brahmans, Bro. Rai B. K. Laheri of Ludhiana, India, himself a Brahman and an F.T.S., went to the great Bharat Dharma Mandala held at Delhi in November, 1893, by the orthodox Brahman pundits, and laid before them the letter referred to. They discussed it and the T.S., and he reports that they passed resolutions to help the T.S., and show they were satisfied that the Society is not a Buddhist propaganda. They then separated for their homes, to carry the letter and their own ideas thereon to the remotest corner of orthodox India. This result will of itself justify the letter. Western readers will the better understand when they know that this Mandala is a great orthodox Brahmanical gathering. They will see that the T.S. cannot afford to shut its eyes to the fact that some millions of Hindus do not use English, in which so much of our literature is written, and that it might be well if we could in some way spread our work among them.

The vernacular work of Bellary members is in line with this. It was brought up at last Indian Convention, but so far as the T.S. is concerned it is now in the hands of a committee. Bros. Jagannathiah and Swaminathiah hope to be successful in the Bellary work. Bro. Laheri also will work to the same end, and many American are willing to help with needed money. It would be perfectly competent for the American Section to raise funds for a work that might result in awakening a great current in India, leading to a revival of interest among Hindus themselves, to a looking up of MSS, both paper and palm lear, to that change in India herself which must come so as to supplement fully the Western activity and devotion.

Brahmans are poor. They are disheartened. No one helps them. Old MSS lie rotting away. Despair is around many a Brahman who formerly had pupils whom he fed, for now he cannot feed himself. Western glitter of invention and materialistic thought has drawn off the young, and some hand must be stretched out to help until the willing ones there are able to help themselves. Such help will be given, and even the letter to the Brahmans has aroused a hope in the breast of many a man in India. Any one wishing to aid in the matter can address the General Secretary, American Section, or Bro. R. B. K. Haheri, Ludhiana, Punjab, India.

Path, March 1894

(1) See PATH of May, 1893.

MADAME BLAVATSKY IN INDIA
A Reply to Moncure D. Conway

By William Q. Judge

There are three reasons when I reply to Moncure D. Conway's article in the October ARENA, entitled "Madame Blavatsky at Adyar."

First, I am an old and intimate friend of hers, while Mr. Conway met her but twice according to his own account, and then only for a short time. Second, she has given up her mortal body and cannot reply to his attacks. Third, because, although his article is given as an account of her, it is, in fact, an attack on the Theosophical Society I had the honor to take part in founding with Madame Blavatsky and others, and with the history of which in all its details I am well acquainted, from having been one of its secretaries ever since its organization in 1875.

The October article covers twelve pages, and is mainly a rehashing of old charges made by other people, and about which Mr. Conway has no personal knowledge whatever, besides a good deal of matter in which the mistakes are too evident to mislead anyone who has really given the theosophical movement any study.

Let us observe in the beginning the qualifications which Mr. Conway possesses as a reporter. He says Adyar is fifteen miles from Madras when at the most it is only six, and the extent of Madras itself is only fifteen. "Palms" are described as being at the entrance, whereas the only palms on the place were a few weak ones at the seaside of the compound and where the road did not run. No doubt the "palms" he speaks of are to give a better color to the luxuriousness of the self-sacrifice he does not approve. In the next few lines the "guru" of a chela is described as a "mahatma" (page 508), a definition invented solely by the critic. In this little scene he gives the command of a mahatma as the reason for a Hindu's not shaking his hand; all travelers know that the Hindus do not shake hands with one another, much less with strangers; Mr. Conway must have observed this as i did when there, if he met any but the official English. His description of the "shrine," on page 582, is so far removed from fact that i am constrained to doubt the accuracy even of his recollection of what was said to him by Madame Blavatsky. I know the shrine well, have examined it fully, and just after he was there, and not only that, but by own orders it was taken from the wall, and its contents removed soon after he left India, and in that removal I took chief part just before the famous so-called exposé, in the Christian College magazine. According to Mr. Conway "it reached nearly to the ceiling," the fact being that it was a wall cabinet and nothing more, and its total height from bottom to top was not four feet, which would be a very low ceiling. Its doors were painted black and varnished, but his recollection attributes to it a decoration of "mystical emblems and figures," perhaps to accord with what he thought a theosophical shrine out to have. "The interior of the shrine was inlaid with metal work," he says, and evidently he saw it but once in haste. I saw it for several days together, examined it fully, took charge of it, with my own hands removed the objects within it, and instead of its interior being inlaid with metal work it was lined with common red plush. The description given by Mr. Conway makes a better newspaper story, however. Painting the interior with his imagination, he says there was a Buddha there, which is not so; and then occurs the crowing absurdity that the portrait of Koothumi "holds a small barrel-shaped praying machine on his head." This is curious instance of hypnotism and bad memory mixing facts, for there was a tibetan prayer wheel in the shrine, but it lay on the bottom shelf, and the picture of Koothumi which I then removed, gives him with a fur cap on. It sounds like a bad dream that the learned doctor had. But further, and this is the case when any good journalist would have verified the mere facts of record, he says, speaking of the effect of the scandals on the branches of the society in India, that the seventy-seven branches there in 1879 are now (1891) "withering away under the Blavatsky scandal," the fact being that now over one hundred and fifty branches exist there which pass resolutions of high respect for her memory, and continue the work she incited them to begin, included in that being a growing correspondence with the increasing membership in America, and the helping forward of a special department of the society's work, especially devoted to the translation of their old books and the procurement of manuscripts and treatises that Max Muller and others wish to have. If Mr. Conway had never before taken part in attacks upon Madame Blavatsky and the society, some inaccuracy might be attributed to inexperience; but as the case is otherwise, one is led to the conclusion that some other motive than zeal for fact must have stimulated the present article. And it may interest him to know that Madame Blavatsky herself said to me of him after he had seen her:-"The gentleman is in his decadence, with a great disappointment hanging over his life; from this point he will find himself of less and less importance in the world, and you will find him at last for a paltry pay attacking over my shoulders the cause you wish to serve," a part of which we know to be now true.

Since I am trying to defend a friend who has passed beyond the veil, it is impossible to overlook the statement made in the note on page 582 of Mr. Conway's article, in which he leaves the impression that that article is his first presentation of the matter to the public; indeed, such is his declaration, the only indefiniteness being the omission of the names of the "friends of Madame Blavatsky" to whom he mentioned the affair so as to give them the chance of replying. The omission of their names now prevents my having their testimony, for I know all her friends and they are a sort who would not fail to give me the facts. It may have escaped Mr. Conway's recollection that after he had made his visit to Adyar and had his conversation with Mme. Blavatsky, he wrote a long account of it to the Glasgow Herald published in Glasgow, Scotland, in which he showed the same spirit as in the one under review, and that I wrote a reply to it for the same paper, which the paper published: and that later when I was in London on my way to Adyar he met Colonel Olcott and myself over one of the services in South Place Chapel, in which he had advertised himself as to speak on theosophy and spiritualism, but wholly omitted any reference to theosophy when he saw us there; and that our conversation was in the underground railroad, in the course of which he referred to the articles in the Glasgow Herald, and exhibited the same vexation of which he accuses himself in the present one at page 581, when he found that the shrine had been permanently closed just three days before he got there. Perhaps the "glamour" of Adyar still lingers around his recollections.

I come now to the particular incident around which the October article revolves. It is the explanation supposed to have been offered by Madame Blavatsky of all her life and work to a visitor who told her he wanted an explanation to give to his flock (in South Place Chapel) who were always ready to admit facts. From his account it is clear that he did not inquire of her as to the philosophical doctrines of man and mind, and theories as to cosmogenesis she had been engaged in promulgating, nor of the objects and purposes of the Theosophical Society to which her life was devoted, and then as now an active body working not only in India but in Europe and America. His sole inquiry was about paltry phenomena that she never spoke of with any particular interest. For, he goes on: "Now,' I said, 'what do these rumors mean? I hear of your lifting teapots from beneath your chair, summoning lost jewels, conversing with Mahatmas a thousand miles away."

If this is all that passed-and no more is given of questions by him-there is not a work in it relating to philosophy nor any of the many other important subjects upon which Madame Blavatsky had been for long before assiduously writing and talking. Her reply therefore attaches solely to the question. It is given by him: "It is glamour, people think they see what they do not. That is the whole of it." This reply has naught to do with the existence of Mahatmas, nor with their powers, nor with the theories of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis given by her, nor with the aims and work of her society, nor with her views as to many hidden and natural powers of man, on which she had before that spoken and written much. It simply offered an explanation she had never failed to give, included in the "glamour." This power of producing glamour is now well known to the French and other schools of hypnotists, and it is a correct explanation of many of her very best and most wonderful phenomena. It is the explanation of numerous extraordinary feats to be witnessed in India. By its means a letter could be brought into the room and deposited anywhere without a person present seeing either letter or messenger. For grant the power, and the limits of the exercise cannot be fixed. Take the production of a teacup from beneath a chair where a moment or two before it had not been. The same power of glamouring would enable her to leave the room, still seeming to be present, to procure a teacup from the adjoining apartment and then to produce it suddenly from beneath the chair, all the while the spectators thinking they saw her sitting there. This is one of the possibilities of the realm of glamour, and admitted by Mr. Conway in my presence as I shall show. Glamour is only another name for hypnotism, partly understood by Dr. Charcot and his pupils, but fully known to Madame Blavatsky, who was taught in a school were the science is elaborated with a detail that western schools have not yet reached to but eventually will. And this she has often asserted of many of her own phenomena, for she has deliberately called them "psychological frauds."

I have said Mr. Conway admitted in my presence something germane to this inquiry. It was in his own South Place Chapel where I went in 1884 to hear him discourse on a subject which he advertised to be upon spiritualism and theosophy. For some reason unknown to me, he omitted all reference to theosophy, but dwelt at length on his experiences in India with fakirs, juggles, and yogis. He related with a sober mien marvels of magic, of hypnotism, or of fraud that outshine anything he has criticised in Madame Blavatsky. Among those, he told of seeing an old fakir or yogi make coins dance about a table at the word of command and following Mr. Conway's unexpressed wish, there being no connection between the operator and the table, as he averred. "This," he said, "is very wonderful. I do not know how to explain it. But some day I will go back and inquire further." And yet Madame Blavatsky explained it for him at the Adyar conversation.

I do not think, as some have said, that she was making fun of him by thinking: "You soft-headed and innocent old goose, do you really suppose that I am going seriously to answer a person who proclaims in advance his mission here as you did and expects to see me execute phenomena whereon he may write a sermon for his London babes?" (1) On the contrary, she was ready to go on with him further if he chose to proceed beyond mere marvels that she had often dubbed with the name of glamour before he came. But he went no further, and calmly proceeded, plodding along with grotesque solemnity that is refreshing in the extreme.

In fine, all that Mr. Conway's somewhat labored article amounts to is that we are asked by him to believe that after Madame Blavatsky had duped some of the brightest minds of both West and East, and secured a firm hold on their loyalty, reverence, and affection,-including many hundred Hindus of learning and wide experience in their own land of marvels, as they have told me with their own lips-had succeeded in establishing a system of imposture upon which, if we accept his view, she must depend, she was ready in a casual conversation to confess all her acts to be frauds and to throw herself on the mercy of Mr. Conway merely because he preached in South Place Chapel and had a congregation-hardly. If confession,-"an unwitnessed confession" as he calls it,-were her determination at the interview, it is interesting to ask why she did not confess to him that there were trap-doors and sliding panels to help phenomena? But there was no such confession, no trap-doors, no frauds.

On p. 587, Mr. Conway says: "The most curious thing about this turbaned spiritualism is its development of the Koothoomi myth. I asked Sir. W. W. Hunter, Gazetteer-General of India, and other orientalists about the name of this alleged Mahatma or Rahat (Sic), and they declared Koothoomi to be without analogies in any Hindu tongue ancient or modern.

It is easy to lose one's self in the ocean of Indian literature with its vast number of names, so perhaps Mr. Conway can be forgiven. But the name of Sir. W. W. Hunter is not that of a great orientalist, and those of the "other orientalists" whom he asked are not given, so they must be considered of doubtful authority. On turning to The Classical Dictionary of India (by Mr. John Garrett, Director of Public Instruction at Mysore, India, printed in 1871 at Madras, Higginbotham & Co.) under K we find,

Kuthumi: a pupil of Paushyinji and teacher of Sama Veda.

The name is the same as the one spelled "Koothoomi" in The Arena, for the double "o" stands for "u".

Proceeding with his peculiar analysis of this "myth," Mr. Conway says: "I was assured on good authority that the name was originally 'Cotthume' and a mere mixture of Ol-Cott and Hume, Madame Blavatsky's principal adherents." The evident recklessness of statement here is noticeable and inexcusable. No name of the "good authority" is given; certainly it was not Mr. Sinnett who first gave publicity to the name Koothoomi; perhaps it was some learned orientalist who never read John Garrett's book. But as I knew H.P. Blavatsky well in 1874, before she met Messrs. Sinnett or Hume, and before this name-now dubbed a myth-was ever given to the public, I may be allowed to say that it was not originally "Cotthume," but was one that I and others in New York were perfectly familiar with through his correspondence with us at that time on matters connected with the society. And when Mr. Sinnett published his Esoteric Buddhism, giving this name to the world, we all felt that ribaldry would follow. I wrote then to Madame Blavatsky expressing regret that the name was given out. To this she replied:

Do not be alarmed nor grieved. The name was bound to come out some day, and as it is a real one its use instead of the New York substitute is better, because the latter was unreal. The mud that you fear is now to be thrown at sacred names will not hurt them, but inevitably will fly back in the face of those who throw it.

The remainder of the article shows an utter lack of acquaintance with the theosophical movement which has been classed by the great Frenchman Emile Burnouf, as one of the three great religious movements of the day. Mr. Conway appears to think it depends on Colonel Olcott, ignoring the many other persons who give life to the "propaganda." Such men as Mr. A.P. Sinnett, and women like Mrs. Annie Besant, are left out of account, to say nothing of the omission to notice the fact that in each of the three great divisions of the globe, Europe, Asia, and America, there is a well-organized section of the society, and that there is a great body of literature devoted to the work. This was so well known to others that shortly before her death an article by Madame Blavatsky was printed by the North American Review, describing the progress of the movement. But Mr. Conway would have us suppose that Colonel Olcott's few published speeches represent us or indicate our future, and he gravely advises that headquarters should be fixed in Ceylon, so that through a union with Buddhism, a lasting vitality may be assured. This can never be done. The society has had for several years a headquarters in Ceylon, just as it has others in London, New York, San Francisco, and Madras, but it is not, nor is it to be, a Buddhist society. A slight review of its literature, emanating form those centres, would have shown this to Mr. Conway, and perhaps enabled him to give us a better and broader article. Again, the interest it has excited in England make the last sentence of his article, "If theosophy is to live, it must 'take refuge in Buddha' " a stale, emaciated joke. The convention of the society in London, in July last, attracted over twelve hundred people to a public meeting at Portman Rooms, and later St. James Hall and St. George's were crammed with people, including such men as Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Justice Pollock, to hear Mrs. Annie Besant lecture as a theosophist on "Reincarnation," while her lecture on theosophy at the Democratic Club brought such a crush that doors and windows were pressed in. All of this was the subject of newspaper reports, column after column having been devoted to it, with an immediate exhaustion of morning editions. It seems more likely that theosophy will "take refuge" in London than in "Buddha."

Having now directly answered Mr. Conway's article I will take advantage of the opportunity to append some facts directly known to myself, about the "shrine" and the rooms at Adyar.

I went to Adyar in the early part of the year 1884, with full power from the president of the society to do whatever seemed best for our protection against an attack we had information was about to be made in conjunction with the missionaries who conducted the Christian College at Madras. I found that Mr. Coulomb had partly finished a hole in the wall behind the shrine. It was so new that its edges were ragged with the ends of laths and the plaster was still on the floor. Against it he had placed an unfinished teak-wood cupboard, made for the occasion, and having a false panel in the back that hid the hole in the wall. But the panel was too new to work and had to be violently kicked in to show that it was there. It was all unplaned, unoiled, and not rubbed down. He had been dismissed before he had time to finish. In the hall that opened on the stairs he had made a cunning panel, opening the back of a cupboard belonging to the "occult room." This was not finished and force had to be used to make it open, and then only by using a mallet. Another movable panel he also made in the front room, but event the agent of the psychical society admitted that it was very new. It was of teak, and I had to use a mallet and file to open it. All these things were discovered and examined in the presence of many people, who then and there wrote their opinions in a book I provided for the purpose, and which is now at headquarters. The whole arrangement was evidently made up after the facts to fit them on the theory of fraud. That it was done for money was admitted, for a few days after we had completed our examination the principal of the Christian College came to the place-a thing he had never done before-and asked that he and his friends be allowed to see the room and the shrine.

He almost implored us to let him go up, but we would not, as we say he merely desired to finish what he called his "exposure." He was then asked in my presence by Dr. Hartmann what he had paid to Coulomb for his work, and replied, somewhat off his guard, that he had paid him somewhere about one hundred rupees. This supports the statement by Dr. Hartmann (made in print), that Coulomb came to him and said that ten thousand rupees were at his disposal if he could ruin the society. He merely exaggerated the amount to see if we would give him more to be silent.

The assailants of H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society have ever seemed to be beset by a singular fatuity. It seems that they must, as it were by force, deny all accepted laws of motive and of life in judging these things, explaining the conduct of members of the society on principles the reverse of any ever known to human beings, facts as plain as noonday being ignored, and other facts construed on theories which require the most tremendous credulity to accept. They perceive no fine impulse, and laugh at the idea of our desiring to give a basis for ethics although not a word in all the writing of Madame Blavatsky shows her or us in any other light.

The Arena, March 1892

(1) Theosophical Forum for November, 1891

THE MAHATMAS AS IDEALS AND FACTS

A visitor from one of the other planets of the solar system who might learn the term Mahatma after arriving here would certainly suppose that the etymology of the word undoubtedly inspired the believers in Mahatmas with the devotion, fearlessness, hope, and energy which such an ideal should arouse in those who have the welfare of the human race at heart. Such a supposition would be correct in respect to some, but the heavenly visitor after examining all the members of the Theosophical Society could not fail to meet disappointment when the fact was clear to him that many of the believers were afraid of their own ideals, hesitated to proclaim them, were slothful in finding arguments to give reasons for their hope, and all because the wicked and scoffing materialistic world might laugh at such a belief.

The whole sweep, meaning, and possibility of evolution are contained in the word Mahatma. Maha is "great," Atma is "soul," and both compounded into one mean those great souls who have triumphed before us not because they are made of different stuff and are of some strange family, but just because they are of the human race. Reincarnation, karma, the sevenfold division, retribution, reward, struggle, failure, success, illumination, power, and a vast embracing love for man, al1 these lie in that single word. The soul emerges from the unknown, begins to work in and with matter, is reborn again and again, makes karma, developes the six vehicles for itself, meets retribution for sin and punishment for mistake, grows strong by suffering, succeeds in bursting through the gloom, is enlightened by the true illumination, grasps power, retains charity, expands with love for orphaned humanity, and thenceforth helps all others who remain in darkness until all may be raised up to the place with the "Father in Heaven" who is the Higher Self. This would be the argument of the visitor from the distant planet, and he in it would describe a great ideal for all members of a Society such as ours which had its first impulse from some of these very Mahatmas.

Without going into any argument further than to say that evolution demands that such beings should exist or there is a gap in the chain -- and this position is even held by a man of science like Professor Huxley, who in his latest essays puts it in almost as definite language as mine -- this article is meant for those who believe in the existence of the Mahatmas, whether that faith has arisen of itself or is the result of argument. It is meant also for all classes of the believers, for they are of several varieties. Some believe without wavering; others believe unwaveringly but are afraid to tell of their belief; a few believe, yet are always thinking that they must be able to say they have set eyes on an Adept before they can infuse their belief into others; and a certain number deliberately hide the belief as a sort of individual possession which separates them from the profane mortals who have never heard of the Adepts or who having heard scoff at the notion. To all these I wish to speak. Those unfortunate persons who are ever trying to measure exalted men and sages by the conventional rules of a transition civilization, or who are seemingly afraid of a vast possibility for man and therefore deny, may be well left to themselves and to time, for it is more than likely they will fall into the general belief when it is formed, as it surely will be in the course of no long time. For a belief in Mahatmas -- whatever name you give the idea -- is a common property of the whole race, and all the efforts of all the men of empirical science and dogmatic religion can never kill out the soul's own memory of its past.

We should declare our belief in the Adepts, while at the same time we demand no one's adherence. It is not necessary to give the names of any of the Adepts, for a name is an invention of a family, and but few persons ever think of themselves by name but by the phrase 'I am myself.' To name these beings, then, is no proof, and to seek for mystery names is to invite condemnation for profanation. The ideal without the name is large and grand enough for all purposes.

Some years ago the Adepts wrote and said to H.P.B. and to several persons that more help could be given to the movement in America because the fact of their existence was not concealed from motives of either fear or doubt. This statement of course carries with it by contradistinction the conclusion that where, from fear of schools of science or of religion, the members had not referred much to the belief in Mahatmas, the power to help was for some reason inhibited. This is the interesting point, and brings up the question "Can the power to help of the Mahatmas be for any cause inhibited?" The answer is, It can. But why?

All effects on every plane are the result of forces set in motion, and cannot be the result of nothing, but must ever flow from causes in which they are wrapped up. If the channel through which water is meant to flow is stopped up, the water will not run there, but if a clear channel is provided the current will pass forward. Occult help from Masters requires a channel just as much as any other help does, and the fact that the currents to be used are occult makes the need for a channel greater. The persons to be acted on must take part in making the channel or line for the force to act, for if we will not have it they cannot give it. Now as we are dealing with the mind and nature of man, we have to throw out the words which will arouse the ideas connected with the forces we desire to have employed. In this case the words are those which bring up the doctrine of the existence of Adepts, Mahatmas, Masters of wisdom. Hence the value of the declaration of our belief. It arouses dormant ideas in others, it opens up a channel in the mind, it serves to make the conducting lines for the forces to use which the Mahatmas wish to give out. Many a young man who could never hope to see great modern professors of science like Huxley and Tyndall and Darwin has been excited to action, moved to self-help, impelled to seek for knowledge, by having heard that such men actually exist and are human beings. Without stopping to ask if the proof of their living in Europe is complete, men have sought to follow their example. Shall we not take advantage of the same law of the human mind and let the vast power of the Lodge work with our assistance and not against our opposition or doubt or fear? Those who are devoted know how they have had unseen help which showed itself in results. Those who fear may take courage, for they will find that not all their fellow beings are devoid of an underlying belief in the possibilities outlined by the doctrine of the existence of the Adepts.

And if we look over the work of the Society we find wherever the members boldly avow their belief and are not afraid to speak of this high ideal, the interest in theosophy is awake, the work goes on, the people are benefited. To the contrary, where there are constant doubt, ceaseless asking for material proof, incessant fear of what the world or science or friends will think, there the work is dead, the field is not cultivated, and the town or city receives no benefit from the efforts of those who while formally in a universal brotherhood are not living out the great ideal.

Very wisely and as an occultist, Jesus said his followers must give up all and follow him. We must give up the desire to save ourselves and acquire the opposite one, -- the wish to save others. Let us remember the story in ancient writ of Arjuna, who, entering heaven and finding that his dog was not admitted and some of his friends in hell, refused to remain and said that while one creature was out of heaven he would not enter it. This is true devotion, and this joined to an intelligent declaration of belief in the great initiation of the human race will lead to results of magnitude, will call out the forces that are behind, will prevail against hell itself and all the minions of hell now striving to retard the progress of the human soul.

The Path, March 1893 (Eusebio Urban) W. Q. JUDGE

A MAHATMA'S MESSAGE TO SOME BRAHMANS

A copy of the letter hereunder printed was sent me in 1893 by the Brahman gentleman mentioned therein, whose full name is Benee Madhab Battacharya and who was at one time president of the Prayag T.S. at Allahabad. He sent it to me after the publication of my "Letter to the Brahmans" in order to try and show me that the T.S. was in fact a Buddhist propaganda. The original is in the possession of Mr. Sinnett, who informed me not long ago that he thought he had it among his papers, but had no leisure to look for it. It print it now for reasons which will appear. It reads:

Message which Mr. Sinnett is directed by one of the Brothers writing through Madame Blavatsky, to convey to the native members of the Prayag Branch of the Theosophical Society.

The Brothers desire me to inform one and all of you natives that unless a man is prepared to become a thorough Theosophist, i.e., to do what D. Mavalankar did-give up entirely caste, his old superstitions, and show himself a true reformer (especially in the case of child-marriage), he will remain simply a member of the Society, with no hope whatever of ever hearing from us. The Society, acting in this directly in accord with our orders, forces no one to become a Theosophist of the Second Section. It is left with himself at his choice. It is useless for a member to argue "I am one of a pure life, I am a teetotaller and an abstainer from meat and vice, all my aspirations are for good, etc." and he at the same time building by his acts and deeds an impassible barrier on the road between himself and us. What have we, the disciples of the Arhats of Esoteric Buddhism and of Sang-gyas, to do with the Shasters and orthodox Brahmanism? There are 100 of thousands of Fakirs, Sannyasis, or Sadhus leading the most pure lives and yet being, as they are, on the path of error, never having had an opportunity to meet, see, or even hear of us. Their forefathers have driven the followers of the only true philosophy upon earth away from India, and now it is not for the latter to come to them but for them to come to us, if they want us. Which of them, is ready to become a Budhist, a Nastika, as they call us? None. Those who have believed and followed us have had their reward. Mr. Sinnett and Hume are exceptions. Their beliefs are no barriers to us, for they have none. They may have bad influences around them, bad magnetic emanations, the result of drink, society and promiscous physical associations (resulting even form shaking hand with impure men), but all this is physical and material impediments which with a little effort we could counteract, and even clear away, without much detriment to ourselves. Not so with the magnetic and invisible results proceeding from erroneous and sincere beliefs. Faith in the gods or god and other superstition attracts millions of foreign influences, living entities and powerful Agents round them, with which we would have to use more than ordinary exercise of power to drive them away. We do not choose to do so. We do not find it either necessary or profitable to lose our time waging war on the unprogressed planetaries who delight in personating gods and sometimes well-know characters who have lived on earth. There are Dhyan-Chohans and Chohans of darkness. Not what they term devils, but imperfect intelligences who have never been born on this or any other earth or sphere no more than the Dhyan Chohans have, and who will never belong to the "Children of the Universe," the pure planetary intelligences who preside at every Manvantara, while the Dark Chohans preside at the Pralaya.

Now this is a genuine message from the Master, allowing of course, for any minor errors in copying. Its philosophical and occult references are furthermore confirmed by the manuscript of part of the third volume of the Secret Doctrine, not yet printed. We know also that Master K. H. informed Mr. Sinnett and others that he was an esoteric Budhist; H.P.B. declared herself a Buddhist; on my asking her in 1875 what could the Masters' belief be called she told me they might be designated "pre-Vedic Budhists," but that no one would now admit there was any Buddhism before the Vedas, so I had best think of them as Esoteric Buddhists.

But I am informed that Mrs. Besant has several times privately stated that in her opinion the letter first above printed was a "forgery or humbug" gotten up by H.P.B. I know that Mr. Chakravarti has said the same thing, because he said it to me in New York.

MANTRAMS

STUDENT. - You spoke of mantrams by which we could control elementals on guard over hidden treasure. What is a mantram?

Sage. - A mantram is a collection of words which, when sounded in speech, induce certain vibrations not only in the air, but also in the finer ether, thereby producing certain effects.

Student. - Are the words taken at haphazard?

Sage. - Only by those who, knowing nothing of mantrams, yet use them.

Student. - May they, then, be used according to rule and also irregularly? Can it be possible that people who know absolutely nothing of their existence or field of operations should at the same time make use of them? Or is it something like digestion, of which so many people know nothing whatever, while they in fact are dependent upon its proper use for their existence? I crave your indulgence because I know nothing of the subject.

Sage. - The "common people" in almost every country make use of them continually, but even in that case the principle at the bottom is the same as in the other. In a new country where folk-lore has not yet had time to spring up, the people do not have as many as in such a land as India or in long settled parts of Europe. The aborigines, however, in any country will be possessed of them.

Student. - You do not now infer that they are used by Europeans for the controlling of elementals.

Sage. - No. I refer to their effect in ordinary intercourse between human beings. And yet there are many men in Europe, as well as in Asia, who can thus control animals, but those are nearly always special cases. There are men in Germany, Austria, Italy, and Ireland who can bring about extraordinary effects on horses, cattle, and the like, by peculiar sounds uttered in a certain way. In those instances the sound used is a mantram of only one member, and will act only on the particular animal that the user knows it can rule.

Student. - Do these men know the rules governing the matter? Are they able to convey it to another?

Sage. - Generally not. It is a gift self-found or inherited, and they only know that it can be done by them, just as a mesmerizer knows he can do a certain thing with a wave of his hand, but is totally ignorant of the principle. They are as ignorant of the base of this strange effect as your modern physiologists are of the function and cause of such a common thing as yawning.

Student. - Under what head should we put this unconscious exercise of power?

Sage. - Under the head of natural magic, that materialistic science can never crush out. It is a touch with nature and her laws always preserved by the masses, who, while they form the majority of the population, are yet ignored by the "cultured classes." And so it will be discovered by you that it is not in London or Paris or New York drawing-rooms that you will find mantrams, whether regular or irregular, used by the people. "Society," too cultured to be natural, has adopted methods of speech intended to conceal and to deceive, so that natural mantrams can not be studied within its borders.

Single, natural mantrams are such words as "wife." When it is spoken it brings up in the mind all that is implied by the word. And if in another language, the word would be that corresponding to the same basic idea. And so with expressions of greater length, such as many slang sentences; thus, "I want to see the color of his money." There are also sentences applicable to certain individuals, the use of which involves a knowledge of the character of those to whom we speak. When these are used, a peculiar and lasting vibration is set up in the mind of the person affected, leading to a realization in action of the idea involved, or to a total change of life due to the appositeness of the subjects brought up and to the peculiar mental antithesis induced in the hearer. As soon as the effect begins to appear the mantram may be forgotten, since the law of habit then has sway in the brain.

Again, bodies of men are acted on by expressions having the mantramic quality; this is observed in great social or other disturbances. The reason is the same as before. A dominant idea is aroused that touches upon a want of the people or on an abuse which oppresses them, and the change and interchange in their brains between the idea and the form of words go on until the result is accomplished. To the occultist of powerful sight this is seen to be a "ringing" of the words coupled with the whole chain of feelings, interests, aspirations, and so forth, that grows faster and deeper as the time for the relief or change draws near. And the greater number of persons affected by the idea involved, the larger, deeper, and wider the result. A mild illustration may be found in Lord Beaconsfield of England. He knew about mantrams, and continually invented phrases of that quality. "Peace with honor" was one; "a scientific frontier" was another; and his last, intended to have a wider reach, but which death prevented his supplementing, was "Empress of India." King Henry of England also tried it without himself knowing why, when he added to his titles, "Defender of the Faith." With these hints numerous illustrations will occur to you.

Student. - These mantrams have only to do with human beings as between each other. They do not affect elementals, as I judge from what you say. And they are not dependent upon the sound so much as upon words bringing up ideas. Am I right in this; and is it the case that there is a field in which certain vocalizations produce effects in the Akasa by means of which men, animals, and elementals alike can be influenced, without regard to their knowledge of any known language?

Sage. - You are right. We have only spoken of natural, unconsciously-used mantrams. The scientific mantrams belong to the class you last referred to. It is to be doubted whether they can be found in modern Western languages - especially among English speaking people who are continually changing and adding to their spoken words to such an extent that the English of today could hardly be understood by Chaucer's predecessors. It is in the ancient Sanscrit and the language which preceded it that mantrams are hidden. The laws governing their use are also to be found in those languages, and not in any modern philological store.

Student. - Suppose, though, that one acquires a knowledge of ancient and correct mantrams, could he affect a person speaking English, and by the use of English words?

Sage. - He could; and all adepts have the power to translate a strictly regular mantram into any form of language, so that a single sentence thus uttered by them will have an immense effect on the person addressed, whether it be by letter or word of mouth.

Student. - Is there no way in which we might, as it were, imitate those adepts in this?

Sage. - Yes, you should study simple forms of mantramic quality, for the purpose of thus reaching the hidden mind of all the people who need spiritual help. You will find now and then some expression that has resounded in the brain, at last producing such a result that he who heard it turns his mind to spiritual things.

Student. - I thank you for your instruction.

Sage. - May the Brahmamantram guide you to the everlasting truth - OM.

Path, August, 1888

MARS AND MERCURY

IN the June PATH there was printed a review of a pamphlet issued by the London Lodge T. S., and this magazine may perhaps be construed as committed to an approval of everything contained in the pamphlet, although the private
initials of the reviewer were annexed to the remarks. The pamphlet referred to brings up an old dispute which we had thought was settled by what is found in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1, running from page 162 to 168. "Gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge for some men," wrote H.P.B.'s teacher, and this curiosity led to a question being put some years ago to the Adepts, who furnished the main body of Esoteric Buddhism and all the important matter in The Secret Doctrine, in respect to other visible globes. The author of Esoteric Buddhism then construed the reply to mean that Mars and Mercury are two of the seven planets of the earth-chain of globes. H.P.B., the only person in actual and constant communication with the Masters, corrected the mistake made by Mr. Sinnett in the pages of The Secret Doctrine to which I have referred, saying on page 164: "But neither Mars nor Mercury belongs to our chain; they are, along with the other planets, septenary Units in the great host of 'chains' of our system, and all are as visible as their upper globes are invisible." Her correction of the misconception was made upon the written authority of the same Masters who sent through her the letters on which Esoteric Buddhism was written.

On the ground of authority in respect to this question, about which none of the Theosophical writers have any information independent of what the Masters have written, we must conclude that the statement in The Secret Doctrine is final. If no other point were involved, there would be no necessity for going further with the matter, but as the consistency of the entire philosophy is involved, it is necessary to advert again to this subject. The two Masters who had to do with Esoteric Buddhism and The Secret Doctrine have distinctly said:-first, that none of the other globes of the earth-chain are visible from its surface; second, that various planets are visible in the sky to us because they are in their turn fourth-plane planets, representing to our sight their own septenary chains; third, that the six companion globes of the earth are united with it in one mass, but differ from it as to class of substance; fourth, that Mr. Sinnett misunderstood them when he thought they meant to say that Mars and Mercury were two of the six fellow globes of the earth-and this correction they make most positively in The Secret Doctrine; lastly, they have said that the entire philosophy is one of correspondences, and must be so viewed in every part. We do not understand that Mr. Sinnett has said that H.P.B. was not reporting the Masters when she wrote the above in The Secret Doctrine, or that the Masters have denied that they hold the above views.

If we admit that Mars and Mercury are two visible planets of the seven-fold chain belonging to the earth, then the consistency of the philosophy is destroyed, for as it is with planets, so it is with man. Every planet, considered for the moment as an individual, is to be analysed in the same way as a single human being, subject to the same laws in the same way. Hence, if two of the principles of the earth are visible, that is, Mars and Mercury, then why is it that two of man's seven principles are not visible, in addition to his body? In his seven-fold constitution his body represents the earth in her septenary chain, but he cannot see objectively any other of his principles. The philosophy must be consistent throughout. If it is inconsistent at one point it fails at every other. The same Masters who have communicated through H.P.B. with Mr. Sinnett for the purpose of having Esoteric Buddhism written, have over and over again positively stated that the law of correspondence rules throughout in this philosophy.

The earth is a fourth-plane planet. The beings upon it are now in the fourth stage, and for that reason cannot see objectively any planet that is not on the same plane of development, and every planet which they see is for that reason a fourth-plane planet. If this be correct, then Mars and Mercury must be fourth-plane planets, and hence not in the earth's chain of globes.

If we assume with the writer of the pamphlet referred to that Mars and Mercury are two out of the whole seven of which the earth is a third, then the question arises, To what principle do these two planets correspond?, for they must correspond to either prana, kama, astral body, Manas, Buddhi, or Atman. Any attempt at an answer to this question will show the confusion in the assumption; for it is admitted that Mars is in obscuration, and the natural question then would be, Which of the earth's principles is correspondingly in obscuration'? In attempting to answer this from the assumption started with, we have the statement that Mars is the planet we have last been in, hence it must represent a disused faculty or principle, and not one which we are about to develop. As Manas is the next principle to be fully developed, it would follow that Mars does not represent it, and hence the whole matter falls into confusion, because the first four principles have been already developed and are not in disuse. Following this on the false assumption, then Mars would represent an eighth principle.

Mars is in a state of obscuration at the present time, as stated by the Masters and H.P.B. This is because, in that chain of development, the Egos have finished their fourth round, or because the fourth round has not yet commenced, except in respect to the planet itself as a place of habitation, the Egos having passed on to the next globe of that chain, quite as invisible from the surface of Mars as our next globe in order is invisible from our surface. The same may be said for Mercury, except in respect to obscuration, since the information vouchsafed about it declares that it is beginning to get out of the obscuration caused by the absence of Egos.

A reference to the pages of The Secret Doctrine referred to above will be found helpful on this point. It is also stated on page 163 of that book, Vol. 1, on the authority of the Masters, that "No companion planets from A to Z, that is, no upper globes of any chain in the Solar System, can be seen." I may say that the relation borne by Mars and Mercury to the earth will not be spoken of or explained by the Masters. Furthermore, one of the Masters wrote to the author of Esoteric Buddhism in respect to this matter, stating, "You are putting me questions pertaining to the highest initiation. I can give you only a general view, but I dare not, nor will I enter upon details."

It is not necessary for us to know the relation between Mars, Mercury, and the Earth, especially, nor to know whether Mars and Mercury are in any particular state; all that is necessary is to know, do they or not belong to our chain? And that they do not has been distinctly stated, both from the position of authority and upon the ground of consistent philosophy. Upon authority, because in no other way can we solve this riddle; upon philosophy, to show the reasonableness of the authoritative statement. All such difficulties can be solved by remembering and working upon the law that, as it is in respect to man and his principles or vehicles, so it is in respect to any planet whatever.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, July, 1893

MASTERS, ADEPTS, TEACHERS, AND DISCIPLES

This article is meant for members of the T.S., and chiefly for those who keep H.P.B. much in mind, whether out of respect and love or from fear and envy. Those members who believe that such beings as the Masters may exist must come to one of two conclusions in regard to H.P.B.: either that she invented her Masters, who therefore have no real existence, or that she did not invent them but spoke in the names and by the orders of such beings. If we say she invented the Mahatmas, then, of course, as so often was said by her, all that she has taught and written is the product of her own brain, from which we would be bound to conclude that her position on the roll of great and powerful persons must be higher than people have been willing to place her. But I take it most of us believe in the truth of her statement that she had those teachers whom she called Masters and that they are more perfect beings than ordinary men.

The case I wish to briefly deal with, then, is this: H.P.B. and her relations to the Masters and to us; her books and teachings; the general question of disciples or chelas with their grades, and whether a high chela would appear as almost a Master in comparison to us, including every member from the President down to the most recent applicant.

The last point in the inquiry is extremely important, and has been much overlooked by members in my observation, which has extended over the larger part of the T.S. An idea has become quite general that chelas and disciples are all of one grade, and that therefore one chela is the same as another in knowledge and wisdom. The contrary, however, is the case. Chelas and disciples are of many grades, and some of the Adepts are themselves the chelas of higher Adepts. There is therefore the greatest difference between the classes of chelas, since among them has to be counted the very humblest and most ignorant person who has devoted himself or herself to the service of mankind and the pursuit of the knowledge of the Self. On the other hand, there are those chelas high in grade, actual pupils of the Masters themselves, and these latter have so much knowledge and power as to seem to us to be Adepts. Indeed, they are such when one compares them with oneself as a mere product of the nineteenth century. They have gained through knowledge and discipline those powers over mind, matter, space, and time which to us are the glittering prizes of the future. But yet these persons are not the Masters spoken of by H.P.B. So much being laid down, we may next ask how we are to look at H.P.B.

In the first place, every one has the right to place her if he pleases for himself on the highest plane, because he may not be able to formulate the qualities and nature of those who are higher than she was. But taking her own sayings, she was a chela or disciple of the Masters, and therefore stood in relation to them as one who might be chided or corrected or reproved. She called them her Masters, ans asseverated a devotion to their behests and a respect and confidence in and for their utterances which the chela has always for one who is high enough to be his Master. But looking at her powers exhibited to the world, and as to which one of her Masters wrote that they had puzzled and astonished the brightest minds of the age, we see that compared with ourselves she was an Adept. In private as in public she spoke of her Masters much in the same way as did Subba Row to the writer when he declared in 1884, "The Mahatmas are in fact some of the great Rishees and Sages of the past, and people have been too much in the habit of lowering them to the petty standard of this age." But with this reverence for her teachers she had for them at the same time a love and friendship not often found on earth. All this indicates her chelaship to Them, but in no way lowers her to us or warrants us in deciding that we are right in a hurried or modern judgment of her.

Now some Theosophists ask if there are other letters extant from her Masters in which she is called to account, is called their chela, and is chided now and then, besides those published. Perhaps yes. And what of it? Let them be published by all means, and let us have the full and complete record of all letters sent during her life; those put forward as dated after her death will count for naught in respect to any judgment passed on her, since the Masters do not indulge in any criticisms on the disciples who have gone from earth. As she has herself published letters and parts of letters from the Masters to her in which she is called a chela and is chided, it certainly cannot matter if we know of others of the same sort. For over against all such we have common sense, and also the declarations of her Masters that she was the sole instrument possible for the work to be done, that They sent her to do it, and that They approved in general all she did. And she was the first direct channel to and from the Lodge, and the only one up to date through which came the objective presence of the Adepts. We cannot ignore the messenger, take the message, and laugh at or give scorn to the one who brought it to us. There is nothing new in the idea that letters are still unpublished wherein the Masters put her below them, and there is no cause for any apprehension. But it certainly is true that not a single such letter has anything in it putting her below us; she must ever remain the greatest of chelas.

There only remains, then, the position taken by some and without a knowledge of the rules governing these matters, that chelas sometimes write messages claimed to be from the Masters when they are not. This is an artificial position not supportable by law or rule. It is due to ignorance of what is and is not chelaship, and also to confusion between grades in discipleship. It has been used as to H.P.B. The false conclusion has first been made that an accepted chela of high grade may become accustomed to dictation given by the Master and then may fall into the false pretense of giving something from himself and pretending it is from the Master. It is impossible. The bond in her case was not of such a character to be dealt with thus. One instance of it would destroy the possibility of any more communication from the teacher. It may be quite true that probationers now and then have imagined themselves as ordered to say so and so, but that is not the case of an accepted and high chela who is irrevocably pledged, nor anything like it. This idea, then, ought to be abandoned; it is absurd, contrary to law, to rule, and to what must be the case when such relations are established as existed between H.P.B. and her Masters.

William Q. Judge

Path, June, 1893

MECHANICAL THEOSOPHY

The earnest, devoted student can hardly believe that there exist any theosophists sincerely holding a belief in theosophical doctrines but who are, at the same time, found to have such a mechanical conception of them as permits one to retain undisturbed many old dogmas which are diametrically opposed to theosophy. Yet we have such among us.

It comes about in this manner. First, Theosophy and its doctrines are well received because affording an explanation of the sorrows of life and a partial answer to the query, "Why is there anything?" Then a deeper examination and larger comprehension of the wide-embracing doctrines of Unity, Reincarnation, Karma, the Sevenfold Classification, cause the person to perceive that either a means of reconciling certain old time dogmas and ideas with Theosophy must be found, or the disaster of giving the old one up must fall on him.

Contemplating the criminal class and laws thereon the mechanical theosophist sees that perhaps the retaliatory law of Moses must be abandoned if the modus vivendi is not found. Ah! of course, are not men agents for karma? Hence the criminal who has murdered may be executed, may be violently thrust out of life, because that is his karma. Besides, Society must be protected. You cite the bearing on this of the subtile, inner, living nature of man. The mechanical theosophist necessarily must shut his eyes to something, so he replies that all of that has no bearing, the criminal did murder and must be murdered; it was his own fault. So at one sweep away goes compassion, and, as well, any scientific view of criminals and sudden death, in order that there may be a retaliatory Mosaic principle, which is really bound up i our personal selfish natures.

Our naturalistic mechanician in the philosophy of life then finds quite a satisfaction. Why, of course, being in his own opinion a karmic agent he has the right to decide when he shall act as such. He will be a conscious agent. And so he executes karma upon his fellows according to his own desires and opinions; but he will not give to the beggar because that has been shown to encourage mendicity, nor would he rescue the drunken woman from the gutter because that is her fault and karma to be there. He assumes certainly to act justly, and perhaps in his narrowness of mind he thinks he is doing so, but real justice is not followed because it is unknown to him, being bound up in the long, invisible karmic streams of himself and his victim. However, he has saved his old theories and yet calls himself a theosophist.

Then again the mechanical view, being narrow and of necessity held by those who have no native knowledge of the occult, sees but the mechanical, outer operations of karma. Hence the subtile relation of parent and child, not only on this plane but on all the hidden planes of nature, is ignored. Instead of seeing that the child is of that parent just because of karma and for definite purposes; and that parentage is not merely bringing an ego into this life but for wider and greater reasons; the mechanical and naturalistic theosophist is delighted to find that his Theosophy allows one to ignore the relation, and even to curse a parent, because parentage is held to be merely a door into life and nothing more.

Mechanical Theosophy is just as bad as that form of Christianity which permits a man to call his religion the religion of love, while he at the same time may grasp, retaliate, be selfish, and sanction his government's construction of death-dealing appliances and in going to war, although Jesus was opposed to both. Mechanical Theosophy would not condemn-as Christianity does not-those missionaries of Jesus who, finding themselves in danger of death in a land where the people do not want them, appeal to their government for warships, for soldiers, guns and forcible protection in a territory they do not own. It was the mechanical view of Christianity that created an Inquisition. This sort of religion has driven out the true religion of Jesus, and the mechanical view of our doctrines will, if persisted in, do the same for Theosophy.

Our philosophy of life is one grand whole, every part necessary and fitting into every other part. Every one of its doctrines can and must be carried to its ultimate conclusion. Its ethical application must proceed similarly. If it conflict with old opinions those must be cast off. It can never conflict with true morality. But it will with many views touching our dealings with one another. The spirit of Theosophy must be sought for; a sincere application of its principles to life and act should be made. Thus mechanical Theosophy, which inevitably leads-as in many cases it already has-to a negation of brotherhood, will be impossible, and instead there will be a living, actual Theosophy. This will then raise in our hearts the hope that at least a small nucleus of Universal Brotherhood may be formed before we of this generation are all dead.

William Q. Judge

Path, November, 1895

MEDITATION, CONCENTRATION, WILL

THESE three, meditation, concentration, will, have engaged the attention of Theosophists perhaps more than any other three subjects. A canvass of opinions would probably show that the majority of our reading and thinking members would rather hear these subjects discussed and read definite directions about them than any others in the entire field. They say they must meditate, they declare a wish for concentration, they would like a powerful will, and they sigh for strict directions, readable by the most foolish theosophist. It is a western cry for a curriculum, a course, a staked path, a line and rule by inches and links. Yet the path has long been outlined and described, so that any one could read the directions whose mind had not been half-ruined by modem false education, and memory rotted by the superficial methods of a superficial literature and a wholly vain modern life.

Let us divide Meditation into two sorts. First is the meditation practiced at a set time, or an occasional one, whether by design or from physiological idiosyncrasy. Second is the meditation of an entire lifetime, that single thread of intention, intentness, and desire running through the years stretching between the cradle and the grave. For the first, in Patanjali's Aphorisms will be found all needful rules and particularity. If these are studied and not forgotten, then practice must give results. How many of those who reiterate the call for instruction on this head have read that book, only to turn it down and never again consider it? Far too many.

The mysterious subtle thread of a life meditation is that which is practiced every hour by philosopher, mystic, saint, criminal, artist, artisan, and merchant. It is pursued in respect to that on which the heart is set; it rarely languishes; at times the meditating one greedily running after money, fame, and power looks up briefly and sighs for a better life during a brief interval, but the passing flash of a dollar or a sovereign recalls him to his modern senses, and the old meditation begins again. Since all theosophists are here in the social whirl I refer to, they can every one take these words to themselves as they please. Very certainly, if their life meditation is fixed low down near the ground, the results flowing to them from it will be strong, very lasting, and related to the low level on which they work. Their semi-occasional meditations will give precisely semi-occasional results in the long string of recurring births.

"But then," says another, "what of concentration? We must have it. We wish it; we lack it." Is it a piece of goods that you can buy it, do you think, or something that will come to you just for the wishing? Hardly. In the way we divided meditation into two great sorts, so we can divide concentration. One is the use of an already acquired power on a fixed occasion, the other the deep and constant practice of a power that has been made a possession. Concentration is not memory, since the latter is known to act without our concentrating on anything, and we know that centuries ago the old thinkers very justly called memory a phantasy. But by reason of a peculiarity of the human mind the associative part of memory is waked up the very instant concentration is attempted. It is this that makes students weary and at last drives them away from the pursuit of concentration. A man sits down to concentrate on the highest idea he can formulate, and like a flash troops of recollections of all sorts of affairs, old thoughts and impressions come before his mind, driving away the great object he first selected, and concentration is at an end.

This trouble is only to be corrected by practice, by assiduity, by continuance. No strange and complicated directions are needed. All we have to do is to try and to keep on trying.

The subject of the Will has not been treated of much in theosophical works, old or new. Patanjali does not go into it at all. It seems to be inferred by him through his aphorisms. Will is universal, and belongs to not only man and animals, but also to every other natural kingdom. The good and bad man alike have will, the child and the aged, the wise and the lunatic. It is therefore a power devoid in itself of moral quality. That quality must be added by man.

So the truth must be that will acts according to desire, or, as the older thinkers used to put it, "behind will stands desire." This is why the child, the savage, the lunatic, and the wicked man so often exhibit a stronger will than others. The wicked man has intensified his desires, and with that his will. The lunatic has but few desires, and draws all his will force into these; the savage is free from convention, from the various ideas, laws, rules, and suppositions to which the civilized person is subject, and has nothing to distract his will. So to make our will strong we must have fewer desires. Let those be high, pure, and altruistic; they will give us strong will.

No mere practice will develop will per se, for it exists forever, fully developed in itself. But practice will develop in us the power to call on that will which is ours. Will and Desire lie at the doors of Meditation and Concentration. If we desire truth with the same intensity that we had formerly wished for success, money, or gratification, we will speedily acquire meditation and possess concentration. If we do all our acts, small and great, every moment, for the sake of the whole human race, as representing the Supreme Self, then every cell and fibre of the body and inner man will be turned in one direction, resulting in perfect concentration. This is expressed in the New Testament in the statement that if the eye is single the whole body will be full of light, and in the Bhagavad Gita it is still more clearly and comprehensively given through the different chapters. In one it is beautifully put as the lighting up in us of the Supreme One, who then becomes visible. Let us meditate on that which is in us as the Highest Self, concentrate upon it, and will to work for it as dwelling in every human heart.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Irish Theosophist,
July 15, 1893

"MEN KARMIC AGENTS"

THE above is the title of an essay in the T.P.S. series by Alexander Fullerton, in which he treats the question solely in regard to whether we should take punitive or reformatory measures with those of our fellow-beings who transgress in those respects in which we so often see culpability. In that essay he has said a great deal that cannot be controverted from the general rules prevailing, but there are other considerations, and also other ways of understanding the term "Karmic Agent."

For this H.P.B. had a particular and technical meaning under which the Karmic Agent is at once removed from the ordinary general mass to which the essay in the Siftings has reference. A statement of the law of Karma of course makes not only men karmic agents but also every other being in the Cosmos, inasmuch as they are all under the law of action and reaction, and, with the same law, go to make Cosmos what it is. Taken as a unit in the general mass of men, each man is a Karmic agent in the above sense, just as each horse and dog, or the rain and the sun are. So in our daily actions, even the smallest, whether we are conscious or not of the effect, we are such agents. A single word of ours may have an influence for a lifetime upon another. It may cause once more the fire of passion to blaze up, or bring about a great change for good. We may be the means of another's being late for an appointment and thus save him from calamity or the reverse, and so on infinitely. But all this is very different from the technical sense I have referred to, and which might be taken to be the sense of the title of the article thus specially removed from the general class.

The special sense is in this: a "Karmic Agent" is one who concentrates more rapidly than is usual the lines of influence that bring about events sometimes in a strange and subtle way. Of these there are two classes; the first, those among the mass who, from the lives they have led in the past, arrive in this one gifted--or cursed with the power unknown to themselves. The second, those who by training have the power, or rather have become concentrators of the forces, and know it to be the case. Of these are the Adepts, both great and small. An instance of this may be found in the life of Zanoni as related by Bulwer Lytton. It was observed that those who met Zanoni soon showed in their affairs very great changes, and although Lytton's son has said, out of his imagination, I think, that his father never intended what theosophists say he did by the book, there is no doubt that Bulwer meant to teach and illustrate the law.

In Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms it is also spoken of in the 36th Aphorism, second book, thus (Amer. Ed.): "When veracity is complete the Yogee becomes the focus for the Karma resulting from all works, good and bad"; and in the Bombay edition, "when veracity is complete he is the receptacle of the fruit of works."

It is a well-known tradition in India, called by the civilized West a superstition, that if one should meet and talk with an Adept his Karma good and bad would come to a head more quickly than usual, and thus that the Adept could confer a boon, letting the evil pass and increasing the good. I have conversed with those who asserted they had by chance met Yogis in the forest with whom they talked, telling them that some dear friend was sick unto death, and then on returning home found that the sickness had all gone at the very time of the conversation. And others met such men, who told them that the meeting would bring on the opposite by reason of quick concentration, but that even that would be a benefit, as it would, as it were, eat up much unpleasant Karma once for all. Of this class of traditions is the story of the centurion's daughter and Jesus of Nazareth.

And H.P.B. held that there are many people in the world, engaged in its affairs, who are, without knowing it, Karmic agents in this special sense, and continually bring to others good and bad sudden effects which otherwise would have come slowly to pass, spread over many more days or years, and showing in a number of small events instead of in one.

If this theory be true, we have here also the explanation of the superstition of the evil eye, which is only a corrupt form of the knowledge that there are such Karmic agents among us who by looking at others draw together very quickly effects that without the presence of the Karmic agent might never have been noticed because of their taking more time to transpire.

But if we follow too strictly the theory that men are Karmic agents for the punishment or reformation of others, many mistakes will be made and much bad feeling engendered in others, making it inevitable that we who cause these feelings must receive some day, in this life or another, the exact reaction. And on the other hand, we should not shrink from the duty to relieve pain and sorrow if we can, for it is both cowardice and conceit to say that we will not help this or that man because it is his Karma to suffer. In the face of suffering it is our good Karma to relieve it if in our power. We are ignorant at best, and cannot tell what will be the next result of what we are about to do or to suggest; hence it is wiser not to assume too often and on too small occasions to be the reformers or punishers as agents for Karma of those who seem to offend.

D.K.

Path, March, 1892

Theosophical Siftings, vol. 4, Nos. 14-15.

MENTAL DISCIPLINE

STUDENT. - Is there not some attitude of mind which one should in truth assume in order to understand the occult in Nature?

Sage. - Such attitude of mind must be attained as will enable one to look into the realities of things. The mind must escape from the mere formalities and conventions of life, even though outwardly one seems to obey all of them, and should be firmly established on the truth that Man is a copy of the Universe and has in himself a portion of the Supreme Being. To the extent this is realized will be the clearness of perception of truth. A realization of this leads inevitably to the conclusion that all other men and beings are united with us, and this removes the egotism which is the result of the notion of separateness. When the truth of Unity is understood, then distinctions due to comparisons made like the Pharisee's, that one is better than his neighbor, disappear from the mind, leaving it more pure and free to act.

Student. - What would you point out as a principal foe to the mind's grasping of truth?

Sage. - The principal foe of a secondary nature is what was once called phantasy; that is, the reappearance of thoughts and images due to recollection or memory. Memory is an important power, but mind in itself is not memory. Mind is restless and wandering in its nature, and must be controlled. Its wandering disposition is necessary or stagnation would result. But it can be controlled and fixed upon an object or idea. Now as we are constantly looking at and hearing of new things, the natural restlessness of the mind becomes prominent when we set about pinning it down. Then memory of many objects, things, subjects, duties, persons, circumstances, and affairs brings up before it the various pictures and thoughts belonging to them. After these the mind at once tries to go, and we find ourselves wandering from the point. It must hence follow that the storing of a multiplicity of useless and surely-recurring thoughts is an obstacle to the acquirement of truth. And this obstacle is the very one peculiar to our present style of life.

Student. - Can you mention some of the relations in which the sun stands to us and nature in respect to Occultism?

Sage. - It has many such, and all important. But I would draw your attention first to the greater and more comprehensive. The sun is the center of our solar system. The life-energies of that system come to it through the sun, which is a focus or reflector for the spot in space where the real center is. And not only comes mere life through that focus, but also much more that is spiritual in its essence. The sun should therefore not only be looked at with the eye but thought of by the mind. It represents to the world what the Higher Self is to the man. It is the soul-center of the world with its six companions, as the Higher Self is the center for the six principles of man. So it supplies to those six principles of the man many spiritual essences and powers. He should for that reason think of it and not confine himself to gazing at it. So far as it acts materially in light, heat, and gravity, it will go on of itself, but man as a free agent must think upon it in order to gain what benefit can come only from his voluntary action in thought.

Student. - Will you refer to some minor one?

Sage. - Well, we sit in the sun for heat and possible chemical effects. But if at the same time that we do this we also think on it as the sun in the sky and of its possible essential nature, we thereby draw from it some of its energy not otherwise touched. This can also be done on a dark day when clouds obscure the sky, and some of the benefit thus be obtained. Natural mystics, learned and ignorant, have discovered this for themselves here and there, and have often adopted the practice. But it depends, as you see, upon the mind.

Student. - Does the mind actually do anything when it takes up a thought and seeks for more light?

Sage. - It actually does. A thread, or a finger, or a long darting current flies out from the brain to seek for knowledge. It goes in all directions and touches all other minds it can reach so as to receive the information if possible. This is telepathically, so to say, accomplished. There are no patents on true knowledge of philosophy nor copyrights in that realm. Personal rights of personal life are fully respected, save by potential black magicians who would take anyone's property. But general truth belongs to all, and when the unseen messenger from one mind arrives and touches the real mind of another, that other gives up to it what it may have of truth about general subjects. So the mind's finger or wire flies until it gets the thought or seed-thought from the other and makes it its own. But our modern competitive system and selfish desire for gain and fame is constantly building a wall around people's minds to everyone's detriment.

Student. - Do you mean that the action you describe is natural, usual, and universal, or only done by those who know how and are conscious of it?

Sage. - It is universal and whether the person is aware or not of what is going on. Very few are able to percieve it in themselves, but that makes no difference. It is done always. When you sit down to earnestly think on a philosophical or ethical matter, for instance, your mind flies off, touching other minds, and from them you get varieties of thought. If you are not well-balanced and psychically purified, you will often get thoughts that are not correct. Such is your Karma and the Karma of the race. But if you are sincere and try to base yourself on right philosophy, your mind will naturally reject wrong notions. You can see in this how it is that systems of thought are made and kept going, even though foolish, incorrect, or pernicious.

Student. - What mental attitude and aspiration are the best safeguards in this, as likely to aid the mind in these searches to reject error and not let it fly into the brain?

Sage. - Unselfishness, Altruism in theory and practice, desire to do the will of the Higher Self which is the "Father in Heaven," devotion to the human race. Subsidiary to these are discipline, correct thinking, and good education.

Student. - Is the uneducated man, then, in a worse condition?

Sage. - Not necessarily so. The very learned are so immersed in one system that they reject nearly all thoughts not in accord with preconceived notions. The sincere ignorant one is often able to get the truth but not able to express it. The ignorant masses generally hold in their minds the general truths of Nature, but are limited as to expression. And most of the best discoveries of scientific men have been obtained in this sub-conscious telepathic mode. Indeed, they often arrive in the learned brain from some obscure and so-called ignorant person, and then the scientific discoverer makes himself famous because of his power of expression and means for giving it out.

Student. - Does this bear at all upon the work of the Adepts of all good Lodges?

Sage. - It does. They have all the truths that could be desired, but at the same time are able to guard them from the seeking minds of those who are not yet ready to use them properly. But they often find the hour ripe and a scientific man ready, and then touch his cogitating mind with a picture of what he seeks. He then has a "flash" of thought in the line of his deliberations, as many of them have admitted. He gives it out to the world, becomes famous, and the world wiser. This is constantly done by the Adepts, but now and then they give out larger expositions of Nature's truths, as in the case of H.P.B. This is not at first generally accepted, as personal gain and fame are not advanced by any admission of benefit from the writings of another, but as it is done with a purpose, for the use of a succeeding century, it will do its work at the proper time.

Student. - How about the Adepts knowing what is going on in the world of thought, in the West, for instance?

Sage. - They have only to voluntarily and consciously connect their minds with those of the dominant thinkers of the day to at once discover what has been or is being worked out in thought and to review it all. This they constantly do, and as constantly incite to further elaborations or changes by throwing out the suggestion in the mental plane so that seeking and receptive minds may use it.

Path, December, 1894

MESMERISM

This is the name given to an art, or the exhibition of a power to act upon others and the facility to be acted upon, which long antedate the days of Anton Mesmer. Another name for some of its phenomena is Hypnotism, and still another is Magnetism. The last title was given because sometimes the person operated on was seen to follow the hand of the operator, as if drawn like iron filings to a magnet. These are all used today by various operators, but by many different appellations it has been known; fascination is one, and psychologizing is another, but the number of them is so great it is useless to go over the list.

Anton Mesmer, who gave greater publicity in the Western world to the subject than any other person, and whose name is still attached to it, was born in 1734, and some few years before 1783, or about 1775, obtained great prominence in Europe in connection with his experiments and cures; but, as H. P. Blavatsky says in her Theosophical Glossary, he was only a rediscoverer. The whole subject had been explored long before his time - indeed many centuries anterior to the rise of civilization in Europe - and all the great fraternities of the East were always in full possession of secrets concerning its practice which remain still unknown. Mesmer came out with his discoveries as agent, in fact - though, perhaps, without disclosing those behind him - of certain brotherhoods to which he belonged. His promulgations were in the last quarter of the century, just as those of the Theosophical Society were begun in 1875, and what he did was all that could be done at that time.

But in 1639, one hundred years before Mesmer, a book was published in Europe upon the use of mesmerism in the cure of wounds, and bore the title, The Sympathetical Powder of Edricius Mohynus of Eburo. These cures, it was said, could be effected at a distance from the wound by reason of the virtue or directive faculty between that and the wound. This is exactly one of the phases of both hypnotism and mesmerism. And along the same line were the writings of a monk named Uldericus Balk, who said diseases could be similarly cured, in a book concerning the lamp of life in 1611. In these works, of course, there is much superstition, but they treat of mesmerism underneath all the folly.

After the French Academy committee, including Benjamin Franklin, passed sentence on the subject, condemning it in substance, mesmerism fell into disrepute, but was revived in America by many persons who adopted different names for their work and wrote books on it. One of them named Dods obtained a good deal of celebrity, and was invited during the life of Daniel Webster to lecture on it before a number of United States senators. He called his system "psychology," but it was mesmerism exactly, even to details regarding nerves and the like. And in England also a good deal of attention was given to it by numbers of people who were not of scientific repute. They gave it no better reputation than it had before, and the press and public generally looked on them as charlatans and upon mesmerism as a delusion. Such was the state of things until the researches into what is now known as hypnotism brought that phase of the subject once more forward, and subsequently to 1875 the popular mind gave more and more attention to the possibilites in the fields of clairvoyance, clairaudience, trance, apparitions, and the like. Even physicians and others, who previously scouted all such investigations, began to take them up for consideration, and are still engaged thereon. And it seems quite certain that, by whatever name designated, mesmerism is sure to have more and more attention paid to it. For it is impossible to proceed very far with hypnotic experiments without meeting mesmeric phenomena, and being compelled, as it were, to proceed with an enquiry into those as well.

The hypnotists unjustifiably claim the merit of discoveries, for even the uneducated so-called charlatans of the above-mentioned periods cited the very fact appropriated by hypnotists, that many persons were normally - for them - in a hypnotized state, or, as they called it, in a psychologized condition, or negative one, and so forth, according to the particular system employed.

In France Baron Du Potet astonished every one with his feats in mesmerism, bringing about as great changes in subjects as the hypnotizers do now. After a time and after reading old books, he adopted a number of queer symbols that he said had the most extraordinary effect on the subject, and refused to give these out to any except pledged persons. This rule was violated, and his instructions and figures were printed not many years ago for sale with a pretense of secrecy consisting in a lock to the book. I have read these and find they are of no moment at all, having their force simply from the will of the person who uses them. The Baron was a man of very strong natural mesmeric force, and made his subjects do things that few others could bring about. He died without causing the scientific world to pay much attention to the matter.

The great question mooted is whether there is or is not any actual fluid thrown off by the mesmerizer. Many deny it, and nearly all hypnotizers refuse to admit it. H. P. Blavatsky declares there is such a fluid, and those who can see into the plane to which it belongs assert its existence as a subtle form of matter. This is, I think, true, and is not at all inconsistent with the experiments in hypnotism, for the fluid can have its own existence at the same time that people may be self-hypnotized by merely inverting their eyes while looking at some bright object. This fluid is composed in part of the astral substance around every one, and in part of the physical atoms in a finely divided state. By some this astral substance is called the aura. But that word is indefinite, as there are many sorts of aura and many degrees of its expression. These will not be known, even to Theosophists of the most willing mind, until the race as a whole has developed up to that point. So the word will remain in use for the present.

This aura, then, is thrown off by the mesmerizer upon his subject, and is received by the latter in a department of his inner constitution, never described by any Western experimenters, because they know nothing of it. It wakes up certain inner and non-physical divisions of the person operated on, causing a change of relation between the various and numerous sheaths surrounding the inner man, and making possible different degrees of intelligence and of clairvoyance and the like. It has no influence whatsoever on the Higher Self, (1) which it is impossible to reach by such means. Many persons are deluded into supposing that the Higher Self is the responder, or that some spirit or what not is present, but it is only one of the many inner persons, so to say, who is talking or rather causing the organs of speech to do their office. And it is just here that the Theosophist and the non-Theosophist are at fault, since the words spoken are sometimes far above the ordinary intelligence or power of the subject in waking state. I therefore propose to give in the rough the theory of what actually does take place, as has been known for ages to those who see with the inner eye, and as will one day be discovered and admitted by science.

When the hypnotic or mesmerized state is complete - and often when it is partial - there is an immediate paralyzing of the power of the body to throw its impressions, and thus modify the conceptions of the inner being. In ordinary waking life every one, without being able to disentangle himself, is subject to the impressions from the whole organism; that is to say, every cell in the body, to the most minute, has its own series of impressions and recollections, all of which continue to impinge on the great register, the brain, until the impression remaining in the cell is fully exhausted. And that exhaustion takes a long time. Further, as we are adding continually to them, the period of disappearance of impression is indefinitely postponed. Thus the inner person is not able to make itself felt. But, in the right subject, those bodily impressions are by mesmerism neutralized for the time, and at once another effect follows, which is equivalent to cutting the general off from his army and compelling him to seek other means of expression.

The brain - in cases where the subject talks - is left free sufficiently to permit it to obey the commands of the mesmerizer and compel the organs of speech to respond. So much in general.

We have now come to another part of the nature of man which is a land unknown to the Western world and its scientists. By mesmerism other organs are set to work disconnected from the body, but which in normal state function with and through the latter. These are not admitted by the world, but they exist, and are as real as the body is - in fact some who know say they are more real and less subject to decay, for they remain almost unchanged from birth to death. These organs have their own currents, circulation if you will, and methods of receiving and storing impressions. They are those which in a second of time seize and keep the faintest trace of any object or word coming before the waking man. They not only keep them but very often give them out, and when the person is mesmerized their exit is untrammelled by the body.

They are divided into many classes and grades, and each one of them has a whole series of ideas and facts peculiar to itself, as well as centres in the ethereal body to which they relate. Instead now of the brain's dealing with the sensations of the body, it deals with something quite different, and reports what these inner organs see in any part of space to which they are directed. And in place of your having waked up the Higher Self, you have merely uncovered one of the many sets of impressions and experiences of which the inner man is composed, and who is himself a long distance from the Higher Self. These varied pictures, thus seized from every quarter, are normally overborne by the great roar of the physical life, which is the sum total of possible expression of a normal being on the physical plane whereon we move. They show themselves usually only by glimpses when we have sudden ideas or recollections, or in dreams when our sleeping may be crowded with fancies for which we cannot find a basis in daily life. Yet the basis exists, and is always some one or other of the million small impressions of the day passed unnoticed by the physical brain, but caught unerringly by means of other sensoriums belonging to our astral double. For this astral body, or double, permeates the physical one as colour does the bowl of water. And although to the materialistic conceptions of the present day such a misty shadow is not admitted to have parts, powers, and organs, it nevertheless has all of these with a surprising power and grasp. Although perhaps a mist, it can exert under proper conditions a force equal to the viewless wind when it levels to earth the proud constructions of puny man.

In the astral body, then, is the place to look for the explanation of mesmerism and hypnotism. The Higher Self will explain the flights we seldom make into the realm of spirit, and is the God - the Father - within who guides His children up the long steep road to perfection. Let not the idea of it be degraded by chaining it to the low floor of mesmeric phenomena, which any healthy man or woman can bring about if they will only try. The grosser the operator the better, for thus there is more of the mesmeric force, and if it be the Higher Self that is affected, then the meaning of it would be that gross matter can with ease affect and deflect the high spirit - and this is against the testimony of the ages.

A Paramahansa of the Himâlayas has put in print the following words: "Theosophy is that branch of Masonry which shows the Universe in the form of an egg." Putting on one side the germinal spot in the egg, we have left five other main divisions: The fluid, the yolk, the skin of the yolk, the inner skin of the shell, and the hard shell. The shell and the inner skin may be taken as one. That leaves us four, corresponding to the old divisions of fire, air, earth, and water. Man, roughly speaking, is divided in the same manner, and from these main divisions spring all his manifold experiences on the outer and the introspective planes. The human structure has its skin, its blood, its earthy matter - called bones for the moment, its flesh, and lastly the great germ which is insulated somewhere in the brain by means of a complete coat of fatty matter.

The skin includes the mucous, all membranes in the body, the arterial coats, and so on. The flesh takes in the nerves, the animal cells so-called, and the muscles. The bones stand alone. The blood has its cells, the corpuscles, and the fluid they float in. The organs, such as the liver, the spleen, the lungs, include skin, blood, and mucous. Each of these divisions and all of their subdivisions have their own peculiar impressions and recollections, and all, together with the coördinator the brain, make up the man as he is on the visible plane.

These all have to do with the phenomena of mesmerism, although there are those who may think it not possible that mucous membrane or skin can give us any knowledge. But it is nevertheless the fact, for the sensations of every part of the body affect each cognition, and when the experiences of the skin cells, or any other, are most prominent before the brain of the subject, all his reports to the operator will be drawn from that, unknown to both, and put into language for the brain's use so long as the next condition is not reached. This is the Esoteric Doctrine, and will at last be found true. For man is made up of millions of lives, and from these, unable of themselves to act rationally or independently, he gains ideas, and as the master of all puts those ideas, together with others from higher planes, into thought, word, and act. Hence at the very first step in mesmerism this factor has to be remembered, but nowadays people do not know it and cannot recognize its presence, but are carried away by the strangeness of the phenomena.

The very best of subjects are mixed in their reports, because the things they do see are varied and distorted by the several experiences of the parts of their nature I have mentioned, all of which are constantly clamouring for a hearing. And every operator is sure to be misled by them unless he is himself a trained seer.

The next step takes us into the region of the inner man, not the spiritual being, but the astral one who is the model on which the outer visible form is built. The inner person is the mediator between mind and matter. Hearing the commands of mind, he causes the physical nerves to act and thus the whole body. All the senses have their seat in this person, and every one of them is a thousand-fold more extensive in range than their outer representatives, for those outer eyes and ears, and sense of touch, taste, and smell, are only gross organs which the inner ones use, but which of themselves can do nothing.

This can be seen when we cut off the nerve connection, say from the eye, for then the inner eye cannot connect with physical nature and is unable to see an object placed before the retina, although feeling or hearing may in their way apprehend the object if those are not also cut off.

These inner senses can perceive under certain conditions to any distance regardless of position or obstacle. But they cannot see everything, nor are they always able to properly understand the nature of everything they do see. For sometimes that appears to them with which they are not familiar. And further, they will often report having seen what they are desired by the operator to see, when in fact they are giving unreliable information. For, as the astral senses of any person are the direct inheritance of his own prior incarnations, and are not the product of family heredity, they cannot transcend their own experience, and hence their cognitions are limited by it, no matter how wonderful their action appears to him who is using only the physical sense-organs. In the ordinary healthy person these astral senses are inextricably linked with the body and limited by the apparatus which it furnishes during the waking state. And only when one falls asleep, or into a mesmerized state, or trance, or under the most severe training, can they act in a somewhat independent manner. This they do in sleep, when they live another life than that compelled by the force and the necessities of the waking organism. And when there is a paralyzation of the body by the mesmeric fluid they can act, because the impressions from the physical cells are inhibited.

The mesmeric fluid brings this paralyzing about by flowing from the operator and creeping steadily over the whole body of the subject, changing the polarity of the cells in every part and thus disconnecting the outer from the inner man. As the whole system of physical nerves is sympathetic in all its ramifications, when certain major sets of nerves are affected others by sympathy follow into the same condition. So it often happens with mesmerized subjects that the arms or legs are suddenly paralyzed without being directly operated on, or, as frequently, the sensation due to the fluid is felt first in the fore-arm, although the head was the only place touched.

There are many secrets about this part of the process, but they will not be given out, as it is easy enough for all proper purposes to mesmerize a subject by following what is already publicly known. By means of certain nerve points located near the skin the whole system of nerves may be altered in an instant, even by a slight breath from the mouth at a distance of eight feet from the subject. But modern books do not point this out.

When the paralyzing and change of polarity of the cells are complete the astral man is almost disconnected from the body. has he any structure? What mesmerizer knows? How many probably will deny that he has any structure at all? Is he only a mist, an idea? And yet, again, how many subjects are trained so as to be able to analyze their own astral anatomy?

But the structure of the inner astral man is definite and coherent. it cannot be fully dealt with in a magazine article, but may be roughly set forth, leaving readers to fill in the details.

Just as the outer body has a spine which is the column whereon the being sustains itself with the brain at the top, so the astral body has its spine and brain. It is material, for it is made of matter, however finely divided, and is not of the nature of the spirit.

After the maturity of the child before birth this form is fixed, coherent, and lasting, undergoing but small alteration from that day until death. And so also as to its brain; that remains unchanged until the body is given up, and does not, like the outer brain, give up cells to be replaced by others from hour to hour. These inner parts are thus more permanent than the outer correspondents to them. Our material organs, bones, and tissues are undergoing change each instant. They are suffering always what the ancients called "the constant momentary dissolution of minor units of matter," and hence within each month there is a perceptible change by way of diminution or accretion. This is not the case with the inner form. It alters only from life to life, being constructed at the time of reincarnation to last for a whole period of existence. For it is the model fixed by the present evolutionary proportions for the outer body. It is the collector, as it were, of the visible atoms which make us as we outwardly appear. So at birth it is potentially of a certain size, and when that limit is reached it stops the further extension of the body, making possible what are known today as average weights and average sizes. At the same time the outer body is kept in shape by the inner one until the period of decay. And this decay, followed by death, is not due to bodily disintegration per se, but to the fact that the term of the astral body is reached, when it is no longer able to hold the outer frame intact. Its power to resist the impact and war of the material molecules being exhausted, the sleep of death supervenes.

Now, as in our physical form the brain and spine are the centres for nerves, so in the other there are the nerves which ramify from the inner brain and spine all over the structure. All of these are related to every organ in the outer visible body. They are more in the nature of currents than nerves, as we understand the word, and may be called astro-nerves. They move in relation to such great centres in the body outside, as the heart, the pit of the throat, umbilical centre, spleen, and sacral plexus. And here, in passing, it may be asked of the Western mesmerizers what do they know of the use and power, if any, of the umbilical centre? They will probably say it has no use in particular after the accomplishment of birth. But the true science of mesmerism says there is much yet to be learned even on that one point; and there is no scarcity, in the proper quarters, of records as to experiments on, and use of, this centre.

The astro-spinal column has three great nerves of the same sort of matter. They may be called ways or channels, up and down which the forces play, that enable man inside and outside to stand erect, to move, to feel, and to act. In description they answer exactly to the magnetic fluids, that is, they are respectively positive, negative, and neutral, their regular balance being essential to sanity. When the astral spine reaches the inner brain the nerves alter and become more complex, having a final great outlet in the skull. Then, with these two great parts of the inner person are the other manifold sets of nerves of similar nature related to the various planes of sensation in the visible and invisible worlds. These all then constitute the personal actor within, and in these is the place to seek for the solution of the problems presented by mesmerism and hypnotism.

Disjoin this being from the outer body with which he is linked, and the divorce deprives him of freedom temporarily, making him the slave of the operator. But mesmerizers know very well that the subject can and does often escape from control, puzzling them often, and often giving them fright. This is testified to by all the best writers in the Western schools.

Now this inner man is not by any means omniscient. he has an understanding that is limited by his own experience, as said before. Therefore, error creeps in if we rely on what he says in the mesmeric trance as to anything that requires philosophical knowledge, except with rare cases that are so infrequent as not to need consideration now. For neither the limit of the subject's power to know, nor the effect of the operator on the inner sensoriums described above, is known to operators in general, and especially not by those who do not accept the ancient division of the inner nature of man. The effect of the operator is almost always to colour the reports made by the subject.

Take an instance: A. was a mesmerizer of C., a very sensitive woman, who had never made philosophy a study. A. had his mind made up to a certain course of procedure concerning other persons and requiring argument. But before action he consulted the sensitive, having in his possession a letter from X., who is a very definite thinker and very positive; while A., on the other hand, was not definite in idea although a good physical mesmerizer. The result was that the sensitive, after falling into the trance and being asked on the question debated, gave the views of X., whom she had not known, and so strongly that A. changed his plan although not his conviction, not knowing that it was the influence of the ideas of X. then in his mind, that had deflected the understanding of the sensitive. The thoughts of X., being very sharply cut, were enough to entirely change any previous views the subject had. What reliance, then, can be placed on untrained seers? And all the mesmeric subjects we have are wholly untrained, in the sense that the word bears with with the school of ancient mesmerism of which I have been speaking.

The processes used in mesmeric experiment need not be gone into here. There are many books declaring them, but after studying the matter for the past twenty-two years, I do not find that they do other than copy one another, and that the entire set of directions can, for all practical purposes, be written on a single sheet of paper. But there are many other methods of still greater efficiency anciently taught, that may be left for another occasion.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Lucifer, May, 1892

(1) Âtmâ, in its vehicle Buddhi. [Ed.]

MESMERISM AND THE HIGHER SELF

Recently a book on the subject of the "Rationale of Mesmerism" having been published in London, written by Mr. A. P. Sinnett, I read in it some astounding statements about the relation of the higher self to Mesmerism. He says that it is the higher self that acts in the case of those mesmerized subjects who show clairvoyance, clairaudience, and the like, of a high order. That is to say, the views expressed amount to the doctrine that pure spirit, which the Higher Self is, can be acted on and affected by the gross physical power of mesmerism. This idea seems to be quite contrary to all that we have read in Theosophical literature on the philosophy of man and his complex nature. For if there is anything clearly stated in that, it is that the higher self cannot be affected in this manner. IT is a part of the supreme spirit, and as such cannot be made to go and come at the beck of a mesmerizer.

It is a well known fact that the more gross and physical the operator, the stronger is his influence, and the easier he finds it to plunge his subject into the trance state. Seldom do we find the very delicate, the nervous, or the highly spiritualized able to overcome the senses of another by these means. For when we have thus spiritualized our bodies, the means by which we can affect others and make them do what we wish are such as pertain to a finer plane of matter than the one with which mesmerism deals, and the particular instruments used are of an order that must not be described in these pages, since they are secret in their nature and must not be given out too soon. They can be discovered by those who look the proper way, and have been given out by way of hint many a time in the past decade, but discretion is to be observed. And even these means, fine and subtle as they are, do not act on the higher self, but upon exactly the same parts of our inner nature as those reached by ordinary mesmerism. Not only does the whole of our philosophy sustain the contention that the higher self is not acted on, but we have also the eminent writer H. P. Blavatsky saying that the human spirit - and that is the higher self - cannot be influenced by any man.

Mesmeric force is purely material, although of a finer sort of materiality than gas. It is secreted by the physical body in conjunction with the astral man within, and has not a particle of spirituality about it further than that spirit is immanent in the whole universe. And when it is brought to bear on the willing or unwilling subject, the portion of the nature of the latter which is waked up, or rather separated from the rest, is the astral man.

Probably the reason why Mr. Sinnett and others make the mistake of confounding this with the higher self is that the utterances of the one entranced seem so far to transcend the limits of ordinary waking consciousness. But this only makes the possible horizon of consciousness wider; it does not prove we are hearing direct from the spirit. The vast powers of memory are well known, and when we add to the worldly estimate of its powers the knowledge of the ancient esoteric schools, we can see that the uncovering of the subconscious memories will give us much that a spiritualist might attribute to a denizen of the summerland. Thus in the famous case of the ignorant servant of the pastor who was in the habit of walking up and down in her hearing and repeating aloud verses from the Latin and the Greek, we know that when she fell sick with fever her constant repetition of those Latin and Greek verses was an act of the under memory which had caught and retained all, though she was, in her usual health, too ignorant to say one word in either of those languages. These illustrations can be multiplied a thousand fold from the records of clairvoyants of all sorts and conditions. When the barrier to the action of the subconscious memory is removed, whether by sickness, by training, by processes, or by natural change of the body, all the theretofore unperceived impressions come to the surface.

Clairvoyance and similar phenomena are explicable by the knowledge of the inner man, and, that being so, it is straining a point and degrading a great idea to say the higher self is involved. For the inner astral man has the real organs which partially function through the one we know. The real eye and ear are there. So what happens in mesmeric trance is that the outer eye and ear are paralyzed for the time, and the brain is made to report what is seen and heard by the inner senses.

These, it is well known, are not limited by time or space, and so give to the operator very wonderful things when viewed from the ordinary level of observation.

And at the same time it is well known to those who have experimented strictly on the lines laid down by the masters of occultism that the sight and hearing and ideation of the mesmerized subject are all deflected and altered by the opinions and thoughts of the operator. And this is especially the case with very sensitive subjects who have gone into the so called lucid state. They are in a realm of which they know but little, and will give back to him who has put them into that state answers on such subjects as the inner constitution of man and nature which will be enlarged copies of what the operator himself has been thinking on the same subject, if he has thought definitely on them. From the tenor of parts of the book I mentioned, it seems clear that the ideas as to the higher self there expressed emanated from sensitives who have in fact merely enlarged and confirmed the views expressed by the author of that work some years ago in "Transactions of the London Lodge" on the subject of the higher self, as may be seen from reading the latter. A simple subject of the mesmeric influence, no matter how far in advance of other sensitives, is not by any means a trained seer, but in the opinion of the esoteric schools is untrained, for training in this means a complete knowledge on the part of the seer of all the forces at work and of all the planes to which his or her consciousness gains entry. Hence one who merely goes into that condition by the force of the mesmeric fluid is a wanderer wholly unfit to guide any one. It is different in the case of the previously trained seer who uses the mesmeric fluid of another simply as an aid toward passing into that state. And the assertion can be made with confidence that there are no seers so trained in the western world yet. Hence no operator can have the advantage of the services of such, but all investigators are compelled to trust to the reports from the state of trance made by men or women - chiefly women - who never went through the long preliminary training and discipline, not only physically but also mentally, that are absolute prerequisites to seeing correctly with the inner eyes. Of course I except from this the power to see facts and things that take place near and far. But that is only the use of inner sight and hearing; it is not the use of the inner understanding. But on this subject I should like to say a little more at some future time.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, May, 1892

METHODS OF THEOSOPHICAL WORK

In my experience with the Theosophical Society I have noticed a disposition on the part of some members to often object to the methods of others or to their plans on the ground that they are unwise, or not suitable, or what not. These objections are not put in a spirit of discord, but more often arise merely from a want of knowledge of the working of the laws which govern our efforts.

H.P.B. always said - following the rules laid down by high teachers - that no proposal for theosophical work should be rejected or opposed provided the proposer has the sincere motive of doing good to the movement and to his fellows. Of course that does not mean that distinctly bad or pernicious purposes are to be forwarded. Seldom, however, does a sincere theosophist propose such bad acts. But they often desire to begin some small work for the Society, and are frequently opposed by those who think the juncture unfavorable or the thing itself unwise. These objections always have at bottom the assumption that there is only one certain method to be followed. One man objects to the fact that a Branch holds open public meetings, another that it does not. Others think the Branch should be distinctly metaphysical, still more that it should be entirely ethical. Sometimes when a member who has not much capacity proposes an insignificant work in his own way, his fellows think it ought not to be done. But the true way is to bid good-speed to every sincere attempt to spread theosophy, even if you cannot agree with the method. As it is not your proposal, you are not concerned at all in the matter. You praise the desire to benefit; nature takes care of results.

A few examples may illustrate. Once in New York a most untrue newspaper article about theosophy appeared. It was a lying interview. All that it had in it true was the address of an official of the T.S. It was sent by an enemy of the Society to a gentleman who had long desired to find us. He read it, took down the address, and became one of our most valued members. In England a lady of influence had desired to find out the Society's place but could not. By accident a placard that some members thought unwise fell into her hands noticing an address on theosophy in an obscure place. She attended, and there met those who directed her to the Society. In the same town a member who is not in the upper classes throws cards about at meetings directing those who want to know theosophical doctrines where to go. In several cases these chance cards, undignifiedly scattered, have brought into the ranks excellent members who had no other means of finding out about the Society. Certainly the most of us would think that scattering cards in this manner is too undignified to be our work.

But no one method is to be insisted on. Each man is a potency in himself, and only by working on the lines which suggest themselves to him can he bring to bear the forces that are his. We should deny no man and interfere with none; for our duty is to discover what we ourselves can do without criticizing the actions of another. The laws of karmic action have much to do with this. We interfere for a time with good results to come when we attempt to judge according to our own standards the methods of work which a fellow member proposes for himself. Ramifying in every direction are the levers that move and bring about results, some of those levers - absolutely necessary for the greatest of results - being very small and obscure. They are all of them human beings, and hence we must carefully watch that by no word of ours the levers are obstructed. If we attend strictly to our own duty all will act in harmony, for the duty of another is dangerous for us. Therefore if any member proposes to spread the doctrines of theosophy in a way that seems wise to him, wish him success even if his method be one that would not commend itself to you for your own guidance.

WILLIAM BREHON, F.T.S.

Path, August, 1891

MODERNIZED UPANISHAD

THE TALAVAKARA UPANISHAD
THE TEACHING OF BRAHMAN

CHAPTER FIRST (1)

The Master was asked by the pupil to tell at whose wish the mind of man, when sent forth for any act, proceeds on its errand, by whose command the first breath goeth forth, and at whose wish the mind of man, when sent forth for any act, proceeds on its errand, by whose command the first breath goeth forth, and at whose wish do men utter speech. He was also asked to tell what intelligent power directs the eye or the ear in the performance of natural functions.

The reply given by the Master, thus approached by the pupil, was that in respect to the ear, the brain, the speech of man, the breathing, and the eye, the other organs are of themselves wholly unable to act, but are the means whereby the real, but unseen, inner organs of sight, speech, hearing, seeing, and breathing obtain touch with nature, make themselves manifested, and become able to cognize outside objects.

The perfectly trained man, one fully grounded in philosophy, who has gained control of these organs both within and without, and who can locate his consciousness in the inner being, becomes really immortal when death releases him from the connection with the body. but the ordinary man, by reason of his being fully entrapped and deluded by the outer senses which are always intimately connected with the inner ones, is compelled after death to go into the Devachanic state and to return again to earthly life where he takes up a fresh set of material organs and sense connections.

But there is another sort of consciousness which cannot be expounded to one who has not himself gained an experience of it. It is beyond description in words used on this plane. For it is different from the known, above what we suppose to be the unknown, and not that which people here adore as their highest conception of being.

Know, therefore, that the basis for the operations of the mind, of the senses, of the organs is Brahman alone. Without that we could neither taste, smell, hear, see, nor think.

SECOND CHAPTER

Then to the pupil the Master said, so as to impress it on his mind, "If thou thickest I know the form of Brahman well, thou are not wise; but perhaps thou newest it thyself, if so then tell me."

To this the pupil replied that we cannot know or describe Brahman, the substratum of all, in the ordinary manner by connecting him with some things already known to us, but at the same time we are not able to say that we do not know him. We feel the actuality of Brahman, but cannot enter into a description of it as we would of an object, by giving its known characteristics, or of a piece of land by its metes and bounds, its quality and its vegetation. The knowing of it at last, its full realization, is a species of awakening out of the present state, and then the knowledge bursts upon us. By the real Self we gain and keep strength in the interior nature, and by knowledge we become able to destroy the bonds of material reincarnation, thus attaining conscious immortality. And by knowing this, one has discovered the true aim of life. If this is not understood while a man is existing here on earth in a body, then he will be compelled to reincarnate until he does comprehend it. But the wise, who have directed their thoughts to all things, and have at last come to recognize the real Self within themselves, are possessors of conscious immortality and pass unfettered out of this life never to return.

THIRD CHAPTER

The elemental spirits of all grades that work in nature on every plane, in air, water, earth, and fire in all their correlations and combinations, were evolved from lower and less conscious states through aeons of effort by the highest mind. This was a constant struggle between the informing power of the mind and the heavy non-conscious material base which alone existed before what we now call matter had been differentiated from primordial cosmic substance. It was in ages long passed away, while the elemental model of all material things was under construction. Without the informing power, which was itself brought over from previous and incalculably distant periods of evolution, the elemental spirits would not have come into existence, as they had no power of their own to stir the depths of cosmic matter. Hence their evolution is called the "Victory of Brahman."

They were evolved on many planes, each in a different degree (2), and among them were the higher order related to fire, air, and nascent mind. These being the highest were in possession of a consciousness peculiar to their own plane of existence and were destined to become the conscious human beings of the future. But it seemed to them that they had themselves obtained the victory over cosmic substance and brought about their own evolution.

And in order to raise these cosmic spirits by gentle steps to a higher state of development, the highly progressed entities from other Manvantaras appeared to then on their own plane and in their own spheres of consciousness, but were not comprehended. Then the ruling spirits of fire were unable to burn, and those of air unable to move, a straw that was created before them. Next, Indra, representing the nascent power of mind and imagination, advanced toward those who came to teach, but instead of them perceived only the primordial root and basis of matter(3). For spirit as distinguished from matter cannot be perceived. It is from spirit-the eternal purusha-that matter is emanated, and together they form the two phases of the one Absolute and Unknowable.

FOURTH CHAPTER

The elemental spirits had to fall down into material existence, suffer in its toils, and at last by experience gain further development through evolution.

But the principles of fire and air, and the thinking man, are nearest to Brahman in the eternal scheme of nature's evolution.

And as Brahman flashed forth only to at once disappear from the sight of the gods, so in like manner a knowledge of the elemental spirits in this manvantara is evanescent and fitful. And in respect to the psychological being called Man, he perceives the truth either directly or by reflection. When he has perceived it by reflection, his imagination keeps the images together through the means of the eternal base which is Brahman itself. After repeated experiences of these reflections of truth he is at last able to look directly on it, and then he many become consciously immortal.

A name of Brahman is expressed by the words "The desire of it," and by that name it may be pondered upon. He who has discovered what the true aim of life is should meditate upon it and make all his desires bend to it. And as he progresses toward a knowledge of it, so all beings are insensibly impelled to aid him in the search, because there exists in all the desire to know the root of all things.

Thus you have been told the teaching of Brahman. It stands upon penance, restraint of self, and sacrifice; the Holy books are its limbs and the True is it abode. He who comprehends in their entirety and subtle connection these teachings, and has shaken off all evil, has become conscious of the endless, unconquerable world of spiritual knowledge.

Path, September, 1892

(1) In the original this is called Khanda instead of Chapter.
(2) They are called devas or gods in the original.
(3) In the Sanskrit this is called Mulaprakriti.

MOON'S MYSTERY AND FATE

PROBABLY no heavenly body has received as much attention from men in all ages as our moon. Many causes contributed to this. The Moon is near us; she is a remarkable and large object in the sky; she enlightens the night; she appears to have much to do with man and his affairs. Omens, spells, wishes, oracles, divination, traditions cluster around her during all time. It would be difficult to find a scripture that does not exalt the moon. The Christian Bible says that God ordained that the sun should rule the day and the moon the night. The Roman Church depicts Mary the Mother of God holding the child while she stands upon the crescent moon. The twelfth chapter of Revelations opens thus:

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

Other religions are the same as this modern Hebraic one in giving the moon a very great prominence.

Even science cannot escape the fascination. The brilliancy and nearness of the moon and her many recurring changes all aid in fixing the attention of science. Modern and ancient science alike unite in watching the night's great light as she performs her journey round us. Nations regulate themselves and their acts, religious and commercial, by the moon. Feast days of the church are fixed more by the lunar than the solar calendar, for all the movable feasts depend on the moon. Calendars rule commercial affairs in credits, obligations, and settlements.

From earliest times the calendar, ruled in fact by the moon's motion, has been of immense interest to man. Periodically rulers of the earth try to reform the calendar of days and months when it as periodically gets out of order. The present arrangement of months with twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, and thirty-one days was invented to make a calendar which would last some centuries before another one will be needed, just because the moon's motion will not give twelve regular months, but twelve regular ones and one small one of about six days. And when the present style of reckoning was introduced, many communities of men in Europe rebelled because they thought they had been deprived of some actual days of life.

Caesar ordered a reformation of the calendar by attempting to use the sun, but in time it fell into great confusion. Pope Gregory XIIl directed ten days to be suppressed, and then found that the Julian calendar had an error which would amount to three days in four hundred years - quite a serious matter. The Gregorian year now prevails, except in Russia. But still the greater number of men and the greater number of festivals depend On the moon and her motion. While if we examine the records relating to superstition, we will find that whatever may have been the place once held by the sun, it has been usurped by the moon, leaving one nation distinctly worshipers of the Lord of Day.

Modern Theosophy, coming on the field as the uniter of all religions by explaining the symbols and traditions of each, is not exempt from the mystery of the moon. H. P. Blavatsky is our sole originator of a theory regarding the satellite which one could not have invented with the most wonderful imagination. She says her teachers told her, and leaves us to work out the details; but her theory will bear investigation if taken as part of the whole evolutionary scheme reported by her. If we had thought to escape from lunar dreams and puzzles we were in error, for while she plainly asserts that the former body of the entity now called Man's Earth is the very moon in our sky, the existence of a mystery is as plainly declared. The first mystery which she claimed to reveal - and, indeed, she first of every one states it - is that in a remote period, when there was no earth, the moon existed as an inhabited globe, died, and at once threw out into space all her energies, leaving nothing but the physical vehicle. Those energies revolved and condensed the matter in space near by and produced our earth; the moon, its parent, proceeding towards disintegration, but compelled to revolve around her child, this earth. This gives us a use and history for the moon.

But then the same messenger says that the "superstition" prevailing so long and widely as to the moon's bad influence, as in insanity, in necromancy, and the like, is due to the fact that the moon, being a corpse intimately associated with earth, throws upon the latter, so very near to her, a stream of noxious emanations which, when availed of by wicked and knowing persons, may be used for man's injury. Then the same writer goes on to assert that six mysterious doctrines or facts remain yet untold, and all relating to the moon.

It would be idle to speculate on these mysteries, for it has ever been found that unless the Great Initiates speak, the general run of men can but modify, enlarge, or intertwine by their fancy those facts and doctrines of which they have heard. But as to the fate of the moon, H.P.B., speaking for those Initiates, says plainly what is to become of our satellite.

In the first volume of Secret Doctrine, in a foot note on page 155 of the first edition, she writes:

Both [Mercury and Venus] are far older than the Earth, and, before the latter reaches her seventh Round her mother moon will have dissolved into thin air, as the "Moons" of the other planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are planets which have several moons - a mystery again which no Oedipus of astronomy has solved.

This is extremely plain as to our moon, yet raises another mystery as to the general subject of moons. If correspondence is a law of nature, as I firmly believe, then it would be in accordance with it for the moon, considered as earth's former body, to dissolve all away in course of time. And as evolution proceeds with uniformity, the upward progress of our races and earth should be marked by the gradual fading and final disappearance of the moon, as H.P.B. says. It is likely that before our sixth round is ended, it being the round relating to Buddhi as the vehicle of spirit, the body of the moon, which was the vehicle for prana and astral body, will have disappeared. Very probably one of the unrevealed mysteries has to do with the uses and purposes of and for the whole mass of matter now constituting the moon's bulk. But whatever those mysteries are, the fate of our satellite is very clearly asserted, for the benefit of those who have confidence in H.P.B.'s teachers, and who are willing to take the key of correspondence for the unlocking of the lock of Nature.

WILLIAM BREHON
Path, June, 1894

THE MORAL LAW OF COMPENSATION

BY AN EX-ASIATIC (W. Q. Judge, F.T.S.)

For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.--Job, Chap. V, v. 23, Christian Bible.

AS a western Theosophist, I would like to present to my Indian brethren a few thoughts upon what I conceive to be the operation of the Law of Compensation in part, or, to put it more clearly, upon the operation of one branch of this law.

It seems undeniable that this law is the most powerful, and the one having the most numerous and complicated ramifications of all the laws with which we have to deal. This it is that makes so difficult for a human spirit, the upward progress after which we all are striving, and it is often forced upon me that it is this law which perpetuates the world, with its delusions, its sadness, its illusions, and that if we could but understand it so as to avoid its operation, the nirvana for the whole human family would be an accomplished fact.

In a former number a respected brother from Ceylon, speaking with authority, showed us how to answer the question so often asked: "Why do we see a good man eating the bread of poverty, and the wicked dwelling in riches, and why so often is a good man cast down from prosperity to despair, and a wicked man after a period of sorrow and hardship made to experience for the balance of his life nothing but success and prosperity?" He replied that our acts in any one period of existence were like the arrow shot from the bow, acting upon us in the next life and producing our rewards and punishments. So that to accept his explanation--as we must--it is, of course, necessary to believe in reincarnation. As far as he went, he was very satisfactory, but he did not go into the subject as thoroughly as his great knowledge would permit. It is to be hoped that he will favor us with further essays upon the same subject.

I have not yet seen anywhere stated the rationale of the operation of this law--how and why it acts in any particular case.

To say that the reviling of a righteous man will condemn one to a life of a beggar in the next existence is definite enough in statement, but it is put forward without a reason, and unless we accept these teachings blindly we cannot believe such consequences would follow. To appeal to our minds, there should be a reason given, which shall be at once plain and reasonable. There must be some law for this particular case; otherwise, the statement cannot be true. There must occur, from the force of the revilement, the infraction of some natural regulation, the production of some discord in the spiritual world which has for a consequence the punishment by beggary in the succedent existence of the reviler. The only other reason possible of statement is, that it is so ordered. But such a reason is not a reason at all because no Theosophist will believe that any punishment, save that which man himself inflicts, is ordered. As this world is a world produced by law, moved by law, and governed by the natural operation of laws which need no one to operate them, but which invariably and unerringly operate themselves, it must follow that any punishment suffered in this way is not suffered through any order, but is suffered because the natural law operates itself. And further, we are compelled to accept this view, because to believe that it was ordered, would infer the existence of some particular person, mind, will, or intelligence to order it, which for one instant no one will believe, who knows that this world was produced, and is governed, by the operation of number, weight and measure, with harmony over and above all.

So then we should know in what manner the law operates, which condemns the reviler of a righteous man to beggary in his next existence. That knowledge once gained, we may be able to find for ourselves the manner and power of placating, as it were, this terrible monster of compensation by performing some particular acts which shall in some way be a restoration of the harmony which we have broken, if perchance we have unconsciously or inadvertently committed the sin.

Let us now imagine a boy born of wealthy parents, but not given proper intelligence. He is, in fact, called an idiot. But instead of being a mild idiot, he possesses great malice which manifests itself in his tormenting insects and animals at every opportunity. He lives to be, say, nineteen and has spent his years in the malicious, although idiotic, torment of unintelligent, defenseless animal life. He has thus hindered many a spirit in its upward march and has beyond doubt inflicted pain and caused a moral discord. This fact of his idiocy is not a restoration of the discord. Every animal that he tortured had its own particular elemental spirit, and so had every flower that he broke in pieces. What did they know of his idiocy, and what did they feel after the torture but revenge? And had they a knowledge of his idiocy, being unreasoning beings, they could not see in it any excuse for his acts. He dies at nineteen, and after the lapse of years is reborn in another nation-- perchance another age--into a body possessing more than average intelligence. He is no longer an idiot, but a sensible active man who now has a chance to regenerate the spirit given to every man, without the chains of idiocy about it. What is to be the result of the evil deeds of his previous existence? Are they to go unpunished? I think not. But how are they to be punished; and if the compensation comes, in what manner does the law operate upon him? To me there seems to be but one way, that is through the discord produced in the spirits of those unthinking beings which he had tortured during those nineteen years. But how? In this way. In the agony of their torture these beings turned their eyes upon their torturer, and dying, his spiritual picture through the excess of their pain, together with that pain and the desire for revenge, were photographed, so to speak, upon their spirits-- for in no other way could they have a memory of him--and when he became a disembodied spirit they clung to him until he was reincarnated when they were still with him like barnacles on a ship. They can now only see through his eyes, and their revenge consists in precipitating themselves down his glance on any matter he may engage in, thus attaching themselves to it for the purpose of dragging it down to disaster.

This leads to the query of what is meant by these elementals precipitating themselves down his glance. The ancients taught that the astral light--Akasa--is projected from the eyes, the thumbs and the palms of the hands. Now as the elementals exist in the astral light, they will be able to see only through those avenues of human organism which are used by the astral light in traveling from the person. The eyes are the most convenient. So when this person directs his glance on any thing or person, the astral light goes out in that glance and through it those elementals see that which he looks upon. And so also, if he should magnetize a person, the elementals will project themselves from his hands and eyes upon the subject magnetized and do it injury.

Well then, our reincarnated idiot engages in a business which requires his constant surveillance. The elementals go with him and throwing themselves upon everything he directs, cause him continued disaster.

But one by one they are caught up again out of the orbit of necessity into the orbit of probation in this world, and at last all are gone, whereupon he finds success in all he does and has his chance again to reap eternal life. He finds the realization of the words of Job quoted at the head of this article: he is in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field are at peace with him." These words were penned ages ago by those ancient Egyptians who knew all things. Having walked in the secret paths of wisdom which no fowl knoweth and the vulture's eye hath not seen, they discovered those hidden laws, one within the other like the wheels of Ezekiel, which govern the universe. There is no other reasonable explanation of the passage quoted than the theory faintly outlined in the foregoing poor illustration. And I only offer it as a possible solution or answer to the question as to what is the rationale of the operation of the Moral Law of Compensation in that particular case, of which I go so far as to say that I think I know a living illustration. But it will not furnish an answer for the case of the punishment for reviling a righteous man.

I would earnestly ask the learned friends of the Editor of THE THEOSOPHIST to give the explanation, and also hint to us how in this existence we may act so as to mitigate the horrors of our punishment and come as near as may be to a league with the stones and the beasts of the field.

Theosophist, October, 1881

MUCH READING, LITTLE THOUGHT

The wise man sagely said that of making books there is no end. If true in his day, it is the same now. Among members of the Theosophical Society the defects are widespread, of reading too many of the ever coming books and too little thought upon the matter read. Anyone who is in a position to see the letters of inquiry received by those in the Society who are prominent, knows that the greater number of the questions asked are due to want of thought, to the failure on the part of the questioners to lay down a sure foundation of general principles.

It is so easy for some to sit down and write a book containing nothing new save its difference of style from others, that the pilgrim theosophist may be quickly bewildered if he pays any attention. This bewilderment is chiefly due to the fact that no writer can express his thoughts in a way that will be exactly and wholly comprehended by every reader, and authors in theosophic literature are only, in fact, trying to present their own particular understanding of old doctrines which the readers would do much better with if they devoted more time to thinking them out for themselves.

In the field of every day books there is so much light reading that the superficial habit of skimming is plainly everywhere apparent, and it threatens to show itself in theosophical ranks.

So well am I convinced there are too many superfluous books in our particular field, that, if I had a youth to train in that department, I should confine him to the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Upanishads, and the Secret Doctrine for a very long time, until he was able to make books for himself out of those, and to apply the principles found in them to every circumstance and to his own life and thought.

Those theosophists who only wish to indulge in a constant variety of new theosophical dishes will go on reading all that appears, but the others who are in earnest, who know that we are here to learn and not solely for our pleasure, are beginning to see that a few books well read, well analysed, and thoroughly digested are better than many books read over once. They have learned how all that part of a book which they clearly understand at first is already their own, and that the rest, which is not so clear or quite obscure, is the portion they are to study, so that it also, if found true, may become an integral part of their constant thought.

William Brehon

Path, June, 1890

Musings On The True Theosophist's Path

"The way of inward peace is in all things to conform to the pleasure and disposition of the Divine Will. Such as would have all things succeed and come to pass according to their own fancy, are not come to know this way; and therefore lead a harsh and bitter life; always restless and out of humor, without reading the way of peace."

Know then Oh Man, that he who seeks the hidden way, can only find it through the door of life. In the hearts of all, at some time, there arises the desire for knowledge. He who thinks his desire will be fulfilled, as the little bird in the nest, who has only to open his mouth to be fed, will very truly be disappointed.

In all nature we can find no instance where effort of some kind is not required. We find there is a natural result from such effort. He who would life the life or find wisdom can only do so by continued effort. If one becomes a student, and learns to look partially within the veil, or has found within his own being something that is greater than his outer self, it gives no authority for one to sit down in idleness or fence himself in from contact with the world. Because one sees the gleam of the light ahead he cannot say to his fellow "I am holier than thee" or draw the mantle of seclusion around himself.
The soul develops like the flower, in God's sunlight, and unconsciously to the soil in which it grows. Shut out the light and the soil grows damp and sterile, the flower withers or grows pale and sickly. Each and every one is here for a good and wise reason. If we find partially the why we are here, then is there the more reason that we should by intelligent contact with life, seek in it the farther elucidation of the problem. It is not the study of ourselves so much, as the thought for others that opens this door. The events of life and their causes lead to knowledge. They must be studied when they are manifested in daily life.

There is no idleness for the Mystic. He finds his daily life among the roughest and hardest of the labors and trials of the world perhaps, but goes his way with smiling face and joyful heart, nor grows too sensitive for association with this fellows, nor so extremely spiritual as to forget that some other body is perhaps hungering for food.

It was said by one who pretended to teach the mysteries "It is needful that I have a pleasant location and beautiful surroundings." He who is a true Theosophy will wait for nothing of the sort, either before teaching, or what is first needful, learning. It would perhaps, be agreeable, but if the Divine Inspiration comes only under those conditions, then indeed is the Divine afar from the most of us. He only can be a factor for good or teach how to approach the way, who forgetting his own surroundings, strives to beautify and illumine those of others. The effort must be for the good of others, not the gratifying of our own senses, or love for the agreeable of pleasant.

Giving thought to self will most truly prevent and overthrow your aims and objects, particularly when directed toward the occult.

Again there arises the thought "I am a student, a holder of a portion of the mystic lore." Insidiously there steals in the thought "Behold I am a little more than other men, who have not penetrated so far." Know then oh man, that you are not as great even as they. He who thinks he is wise is the most ignorant of men, and he who begins to believe he is wise is in greater danger than any other man who lives.

You think, oh man, that because you have obtained a portion of occult knowledge, that it entitles you to withdraw from contact with the rest of mankind. It is not so. If you have obtained true knowledge it forces you to meet all men not only half way, but more than that to seek them. It urges you not to retire but, seeking contact, to plunge into the misery and sorrow of the world, and with your cheering word, if you have no more (the Mystic has little else) strive to lighten the burden for some struggling soul.

You dream of fame. We know no such thing as fame. He who seeks the upward path finds that all is truth; that evil is the good gone astray. Whey should we ask for fame? It is only the commendation of those we strive to help.

Desire neither notice, fame or wealth. Unknown you are in retirement. Being fameless you are undisturbed in your seclusion, and can walk the broad face of the earth fulfilling your duty, as commanded, unrecognized.

If the duty grows hard, or you faint by the way, be not discouraged, fearful or weary of the world. Remember that "Thou may'st look for silence in tumult, solitude in company, light in darkness, forgetfulness in pressures, vigor in despondency, courage in fear, resistance in temptation, peace in war, and quiet in tribulation."

Work as those work who are ambitious. -Respect life as those do who desire it. -Be happy as those are who live for happiness. -Light on the Path

We are tried in wondrous ways, and in the seemingly unimportant affairs of life, there often lie the most dangerous of the temptations.

Labor, at best, is frequently disagreeable owing either to mental or physical repugnance. When he who seeks the upward path, begins to find it, labor grows more burdensome, while at the time, he is, owing to his physical condition, not so well fitted to struggle with it. This is all true, but there must be no giving in to it. It must be forgotten. He must work, and if he cannot have the sort he desires or deems best suited to him, then must he take and perform that which presents itself. It is that which he most needs. It is not intended either, that he do it to have it done. It is intended that he work as if it was the object of his life, as if his whole heart was in it. Perhaps he may be wise enough to know that there is something else, or that the future holds better gifts for him, still this also must to all intents be forgotten, while he takes up his labor, as if there were no tomorrow.

Remember that life is the outcome of the Ever-Living. If you have come to comprehend a little of the mystery of life, and can value its attractions according to their worth; these are no reasons why you should walk forth with solemn countenance to blight the enjoyments of other men. Life to them is as real, as the mystery is to you. Their time will come as yours has, so hasten it for them, if you can, by making life brighter, more joyous, better.

If it be your time to fast, put on the best raiment you have, and go forth, not as one who fasts, but as one who lives for life.

Do your sighing and crying within you. If you can not receive the small events of life and their meanings without crying them out to all the world, think you that you are fitted to be trusted with the mysteries?

The doing away with one or certain articles of diet, in itself, will not open the sealed portals. If this contained the key, what wise beings must the beasts of the field be, and what a profound Mystic must Nebuchadnezzar have been, after he was "turned out to grass!"

There are some adherents of a faith, which has risen in the land, who deem it wise to cast away all things that are distasteful to them; to cut asunder the ties of marriage because they deem it will interfere with their spiritual development, or because the other pilgrim is not progressed enough. Brothers, there lives not the man who is wise enough to sit as a judge upon the spiritual development of any living being. He is not only unwise but blasphemous who says to another: "Depart! you impede my exalted spiritual development."

The greatest of all truths lies frequently in plain sight, or veiled in contraries. The impression has gone abroad that the Adept or the Mystic of high degree, has only attained his station by forsaking the association of his fellow creatures or refusing the marriage tie. It is the belief of very wise Teachers that all men who had risen to the highest degrees of Initiation, have at some time passed through the married state. Many men, failing in the trials, have ascribed their failure to being wedded, precisely as that other coward, Adam, after being the first transgressor cried out "It was Eve."

One of the most exalted of the Divine Mysteries lies hidden here-therefore, Oh Man, it is wise to cherish that which holds so much of God and seek to know its meaning; not by dissolution and cutting asunder, but by binding and strengthening the ties. Our most Ancient Masters knew of this and Paul also speaks of it. (Ephesians v. 32.)

Be patient, kindly and wise, for perhaps in the next moment of life, the light will shine out upon thy companion, and you discover that you are but a blind man, claiming to see. Remember this, that you own not one thing in this world. Your wife is but a gift, your children are but loaned to you. All else you possess is given to you only while you use it wisely. Your body is not yours, for Nature claims it as her property. Do you not think, Oh Man, that it is the height of arrogance for you to sit in judgment upon any other created thing, while you, a beggar, are going about in a borrowed robe?

If misery, want and sorrow are thy portion for a time, be happy that it is not death. If it is death be happy there is no more life.

You would have wealth, and tell of the good you would do with it. Truly will you lose your way under these conditions. It is quite possible, that you are as rich as you ever will be, therefore, desire to do good with what you have -and do it. If you have nothing, know that it is bet and wisest for you. Just so surely as you murmur and complain just so surely will you find that "from him that hath not, shall be taken even that which he hath." This sounds contradictory, but in reality is in most harmonious agreement. Work in life and the Occult are similar; all is the result of your own effort and will. You are not rash enough to believe that you will be lifted up into Heaven like the Prophet of old-but you really hope some one will come along and give a good shove toward it.

Know then, Disciples, that you only can lift yourselves by your own efforts. When this is done, you may have the knowledge that you will find many to accompany you on your heretofore lonely journey; but neither they or your Teacher will be permitted to push or pull you one step onward.

This is all a very essential part of your preparation and trial for Initiation.

You look and wait for some great and astounding occurrence, to show you that you are going to be permitted to enter behind the veil; that you are to be Initiated. It will never come. He only who studies all things and learns from them, as he finds them, will be permitted to enter, and for him there are no flashing lightnings or rolling thunder. He who enters the door, does so as gently and imperceptibly, as the tide rises in the nighttime.

Live well your life. Seek to realize the meaning of every event. Strive to find the Ever Living and wait for more light. The True Initiate does not fully realize what he is passing through, until his degree is received. If you are striving for light and Initiation, remember this, that your cares will increase, your trials thicken, your family make new demands upon you. He who can understand and pass through these patiently, wisely, placidly-may hope.

III

If you desire to labor for the good of the world, it will be unwise for you to strive to include it all at once in your efforts. If you can help elevate or teach but one soul-that is a good beginning, and more than is given to many.

Fear nothing that is in Nature and visible. Dread no influence exerted by sect, faith, or society. Each and every one of them originated upon the same basis-Truth, or a portion of it at least. You may not assume that you have a greater share than thy, it being needful only, that you find all the truth each one possesses. You are at war with none. It is peace you are seeking, therefore it is bet that the good in everything is found. For this brings peace.

It has been written that he who live the Life shall know the doctrine. Few there be who realize the significance of The Life.

It is not by intellectually philosophizing upon it, until reason ceases to solve the problem, nor by listening in ecstatic delight to the ravings of an Elemental clothed-whose hallucinations are but the offspring of the Astral-that the life is realized. Nor will it be realized by the accounts of the experience of other students. For there be some who will not realize Divine Truth itself, when written, unless it be properly punctuated or expressed in flowery flowing words.

Remember this: that as you live your life each day with an uplifted purpose and unselfish desire, each and every event will bear for you a deep significance-an occult meaning-and as you learn their import, so do you fit yourself for higher work.

These are no rose-gardens upon the way in which to loiter about, nor fawning slaves to fan one with golden rods of Ostrich plumes. The Ineffable Light will not stream out upon you every time you may think you have turned up the wick, nor will you find yourself sailing about in an astral body, to the delight of yourself and the astonishment of the rest of the world, simply because you are making the effort to find wisdom.

He who is bound in any way-he who is narrow in his thoughts-find it doubly difficult to pass onward. You may equally as well gain wisdom and light in a church as by sitting upon a post while your nails grow through your hands. It is not by going to extremes or growing fanatical in any direction that the life will be realized.

Be temperate in all things, most of all in the condemnation of other men. It is unwise to be intemperate or drunken with wine. It is equally unwise to be drunken with temperance. Men would gain the powers; or the way of working wonders. Do you know, O man, what the powers of the Mystic are? Do you know that for each gift of this kind he give a part of himself? That it is only with mental anguish, earthly sorrow and almost his heart's blood, these gifts are gained? Is it true, think you, my brother, that he who truly possess them desires to sell them at a dollar a peep, or any other price? He who would trade upon these things finds himself farther from his goal than when he was born.

There are gifts and powers. Not just such as you have created in your imagination, perhaps. Harken to one of these powers: He who has passed onward to a certain point, finds that the hearts of men lie spread before him as an open book, and from there onward the motives of men are clear. In other words he can read the hearts of men. But not selfishly; should he but once use this knowledge selfishly, the book is closed-and he reads no more. Think you, my brother, he would permit himself to sell a page out of this book?

Time-that which does not exist outside the inner circle of this little world-seems of vast importance to the physical man. There comes to him at times, the thought that he is not making any progress, and that he is receiving nothing from some Mystic source. From the fact that he has the thought that no progress is being made the evidence is gained that he is working onward. Only the dead in living bodies need fear. That which men would receive from Mystic sources is frequently often repeated, and in such a quiet, unobtrusive voice, that he who is waiting to hear it shouted in his ear, is apt to pass on unheeding.

Urge no man to see as yourself, as it is quite possible you may see differently when you awake in the morning. It is wiser to let the matter rest without argument. No man is absolutely convinced by that. It is but blowing your breath against the whirlwind.

It was once written over the door: "Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here." It has taken hundreds of years for a few to come to the realization that the wise men had not the slightest desire for the company of a lot of hopeless incurables in the mysteries. There is to be abandoned hope for the gratification of our passions, our curiosities, our ambition or desire for gain. There is also another Hope-the true; and he is a wise man who comes to the knowledge of it. Sister to Patience, they together are the Godmothers of Right Living, and two of the ten who assist the Teacher.

AMERICAN MYSTIC

Path, August, 1886

THE NEW "DEPARTMENT OF BRANCH WORK"

The following circular addressed to Branches will explain itself. It is proper, however, to state that the original plan, dictated by the need for economy, contemplated a division of the country into three Sections, the production upon a typewriter, by the multiple process, of three copies of a selected paper, and the transmission of a copy from Branch to Branch through each Section. But this was open to grave objections. There would always be danger of loss in the transmission, in which case all succeeding Branches would have no paper; complaints of dilatoriness in preceding Branches would be incessant; Branches would necessarily have to read the paper at their next meeting or forward it unread; and the last Branch in one Section would not receive the paper until 4 months after is issue. Besides, the General Secretary could not supply new Branches with back papers, ad the Branches could not retain papers for future study or reference. Upon conference with several active Theosophists in New York, he was proffered aid toward printing the papers, and so the consent of the Executive Committee was obtained to the use of the General Fund. By the present arrangement a Branch retains its papers and can bind them in a volume from time to time, as well as circulate them among members absent from the meetings where they were read, and the General Secretary will be able to supply new Branches with complete sets from the beginning.

Every Branch is invited to forward for examination any paper which has been read before it and found pleasing. But it is well to state in advance that it is useless to forward papers which are common-place or incorrectly spelled. There are some hints on this subject in PATH for Sept. "89, page 192.

Into what this new Department may ultimately develop, cannot be now foreseen. But at present no papers can be furnished to individuals, nor at any time can unaccepted papers be returned unless postage shall have been enclosed.

To the President of the _____T.S.

Dear Sir and Brother:

I had not expected so soon to encounter the need to avail myself of the authority granted by the Convention to appeal to the Branches for a renewal of their subscriptions towards the expenses of the General Secretary's office, but a proffer of mechanical help towards one of several important schemes I have had much at heart has determined me to ask your aid thus early in the year. If the Branches respond at all liberally, I may be able to effectuate the others. The one now pressing upon me is expounded below, and will be known as the

DEPARTMENT OF BRANCH WORK.

The General Secretary has long been conscious of that deplorable waste by which valuable and interesting papers, once read at a Branch meeting, are unused again, and has desired some arrangement making possible their circulation among other Branches, particularly among those weak in membership or in capacity for originating discussion. It is needless to enumerate the various difficulties, but a leading one has been the expense. He believes that the result of an organized and regular system of circulation will be threefold; 1st, to greatly extend the range of the best and newest Theosophical thought; 2d, to supply weak Branches with interesting matter for instruction and debate; 3d, to promote that attractiveness in Branch meetings which will make them sought by intelligent outsiders, thus giving the Branches a status in their communities, and tending to increase both their growth and influence.

Having secured the consent of the Executive Committee to the plan, he now purposes to print from time to time on the Aryan Path a selected paper, and mail a copy to each Branch. The number of papers issued will depend upon the amount of attention he and his aids can spare from the constantly-increasing work of the office, and also upon the funds placed at his disposal by the Branches and individuals. While no certain periodicity can be pledged, it is thought that a bi-weekly issue will prove practicable.

If the plan commends itself to your Branch, I invite you to apprise me what contribution, if any, it can make towards the expenses of the General Secretary's office during the present fiscal year. It must be distinctly understood that any Branch desiring the papers will be supplied with them, whether contributing financially or not, it being not doubted that the stronger Branches will feel it their privilege to assist the more liberally because there are weak Branches really unable to give at all. As the summer season is that wherein most time can be found for effectuating much of the work involved, I shall be glad of as early a reply as you can make.

Very truly and fraternally yours,
William Q. Judge, Gen'l Sec'y

Path, June 1890

Although the General Secretary has twice announced (once in italics) that Branch papers cannot be furnished to individuals, applications continue to come in-and to be refused. The matter was carefully considered at the outset, and the decision reached for the following reasons:-

1. The project was intended specifically for Branch aid, and any other use would vitiate this.

2. Branches were invited to bear expense upon that understanding, and it would not be fair to receive from a Branch a sum varying from $3 to $90 for one copy of each Paper, and then retail Papers to individuals at 5 or 10 cts. each.

3. If individual members of a Branch-and they could not be excluded form a general sale-could buy Papers, there would be just that less stimulus to induce their presence at meetings.

4. The General Secretary purposes furnishing to each new Branch a full set of Papers already issued. If individual orders were allowed, either the drain upon some one Paper or Papers would destroy the sets, or he would need to print of each Paper a large stock. Economy of funds and of office space forbids.

Now these considerations were and are conclusive. There need not be any arguments upon them and there cannot be any reversal. ONLY THE BRANCHES ARE TO HAVE BRANCH PAPERS. And this being so, the General Secretary invites Branch Members to attend their meetings more regularly so as to hear these Papers, and invites Members-at-large to a degree of missionary work in their localities which will create new Branches and thereby ensure Papers. Meantime let them regard him as resolute, even inexorable, and let them write him no letters of either expostulation or blandishment.

Path, August, 1890.

NIGAMAGAMA DHARMA SABHA

This is the name of a society in India which has also members in the ranks of the Theosophical Society in America and elsewhere. It has been noticed by Co. H. S. Olcott in the Theosophist of April, 1894, under the title of "The Hindu Revival," and it is now well that we should all know the facts more fully. This article will attempt to give some information. Col. Olcott says:

The foregoing remarks are introductory to the notice we are about to make of the founding at the recent Magh Mela at Prayag of a new association of Hindu ascetics and laymen under the title of Nagamagama Dharma Sabha. Our theosophical colleagues Rai B. K. Laheri and Pandit Jagneshwar Mukhapadaya are among the promoters and most active managers of this important movement, and are thus forging one more link in the chain of sympathy which ought to bind every wellwisher of the Aryan religion to the cause of theosophy.

Then follows the rules, and at the close he says:

Since the adoption of the above rules nearly five hundred Sadhus, Brahmacharyas, and pandits have signed for membership.

Strange as it may seem to some, this is an American movement, and was begun about January, 1893. Feeling that such a society should be started, I wrote to Brother Laheri and asked him to aid me in doing it, I promising on my part to raise money as I was able for helping on the work, and a little society was begun under a different name. Brother Laheri took hold of it at once, and after consulting with some pandits suggested that the name be altered to the present one. NIGAMAGAM DHARMA SABHA. This was agreed to, and one of the rules affecting the West is that members from the West must be members of the T.S., and they should furnish means and also now and then give other help. One of its first works was the "Letter to the Brahmans," to which many replies were received from India and for which gratitude was expressed. The object of that open letter was to remove from the minds of the Hindus, if possible, the wrong notion that the T.S. was a Buddhist propaganda, so that future work with the aid of the Society might be possible. It had a good effect, Brother Laheri acting for the new society went also, as before noticed, to a great meeting of orthodox Brahmans in India, and after his lecture to them they endorsed the movement of the T.S. Money has been raised in America and sent to India for the N.D.S. with the object of beginning the following as might be possible.

(a) To have a Sanscrit organ for the Society.

(b) To engage the services of a good pandit at some seat of learning in order to revive among the Hindus under Hindu methods their own religion, to the end that more and more a knowledge of its true philosophy should spread there and in the West.

(d) To aid all good movements among the Hindus, and especially to do all such works as would tend to spread theosophy others.

(e) To procure rare manuscripts and palm leaves, and have them translated.

Under (d) it has been proposed to aid effectively the work so long carried on by Jagannathiah and Swaminathiah, F.T.S., at Bellary, India, where they have a small vernacular section and a little journal. It is proposed to them, in a letter sent by me, to include their work in that of the N.D.S. without in any way impeding them or having them alter the name they have adopted. To this end they will no doubt agree; and money has already been sent them for their help.

Brother Laheri recently writes thus:

The facts is that N.D.S. is now all over India in some form or other. In the Northwest it is under the guidance of J. Mukerjee, and several Dandiswamis, Brahmacharyas, and Paramahansas are among the members. I am in touch with the orthodox Brahmans in the Punjab and Northwest, and in Madras have the same relation through the Sanmarga Samaj, Bellary, I do not wish to make members at random nor to expend in useless matters the money they our most beloved brothers in America send in love, affection, and sympathy to their poor Hindu brothers. Hundreds of plans will have to be formed and hundred given up as we learn by experience. You have got the best wishes of India for you because you really try to improve her cause; people are simply delighted to see that America sends money through you to help in that.

Now this whole enterprise is for the benefit of the T. S. in India, and is not outside of its work. It was begun privately so as to prevent suspicion and distrust, but now there is no need for keeping it so. It is a fact that while Theosophy is forwarded best in the West by our own methods, those methods will not do for India, and such is the opinion of many Brahmans who know their own land. But help must be extended to them so that they can rise to their feet and help themselves. So the work of the N.D.S. in so far as the West is concerned is to furnish the means and later some of the men, so that under strictly Hindu ways and in the tongues of the land our objects may be forwarded by attempting to arouse a new spiritual aspiration. It is not competent for the T. S. as yet to donate money from its funds for this work, but it is right and proper that members should, if they see fit, give some of their money to it. This they have done, and several have sent me some subscriptions. These of course ought not to limit that which is needed for our own work, and it is not expected that members will cut off from the latter to give to the former, but that the aid given to N.D.S. shall be additional to all other. It is also intended to procure through the N.D.S. such rare palm-leaf manuscripts as will not only be of interest here but also perhaps a means of obtaining funds from those who would not give them to the T.S.

As Brother Laheri says, many plans will have to be formed and many given up until at last the best shall be discovered. But the plan of aiding the already-started work at Bellary is for the present permanent. American members become such by certificate issued by me under authority of Brother Laheri, and will be informed as the work goes on of its progress. So far, since May 1893, I have received $548.00 and have disbursed $360.00 in drafts to India exclusive of a small bill for needed printing. Any one wishing to know more and to help can address me, as all names in the West have to go through my hands.

William Q. Judge

Path, July, 1894

OCCULT ARTS
III
DISINTEGRATION-REINTEGRATION

Just as we have seen that precipitation is known to material science in electroplating and other arts, so also is it true that in most departments of applied science disintegration is understood, and that here and there reintegration of such substances as diamonds has been successfully accomplished. But these are all by mechanical or chemical processes. The question here is, whether-as in respect to precipitation-the occult powers of man and nature can bring about the results. Has anyone ever reduced a solid object to impalpable powder and then at a distant place restored the object to its former state? And, if so, how is it done? As to the first, I can only say that I have seen this done, and that many testimonies have been offered by others at various times for the same thing. In the records of Spiritualism there are a great many witnesses to this effect, and accepting all cases in that field which are free from fraud the same remarks as were made about precipitation apply. With mediums it is unconsciously done; the laws governing the entire thing are unexplained by the medium or the alleged spirits; the whole matter is involved in obscurity so far as that cult is concerned, and certainly the returning spooks will give no answer until they find it in the brain of some living person. But the fact remains that among powerful physical mediums the operation has been performed by some unknown force acting under hidden guidance, itself as obscure.

This feat is not the same as apportation, the carrying or projecting of an object through space, whether it be a human form or any other thing. Buddhist and Hindu stories alike teem with such apportations; it is alleged of Apollonius the Greek, of Tyana; Christian saints are said to have been levitated and carried. In the Buddhist stories many of the immediate disciples of Buddha, both during his life and after his death, are said to have flown through the air from place to place; and in the history of Rama, some ascetics and Hanuman the monkey god are credited with having so levitated themselves.

So many metals and minerals may be volatilized that we may take it as a general rule that all-until an exception is met with-are volatile under the proper conditions. Gold is slow in this respect, some observers having kept it heated for two months with no loss of weight, and others found a small loss after exposing it to violent heat; a charge of electricity will dissipate it. Silver volatilizes at red heat, and iron can also be similarly affected. But when we come to wood or softer vegetable matter, the separation of its atoms from each other is more easily accomplished. The process of disintegrating by the use of occult forces and powers is akin to what we can do on the material plane. The result is the same, however the means employed may vary; that is, the molecules are pressed apart from each other and kept so. If by mechanical, chemical, and electrical processes man can bring about this result, there is no reason, save in an asserted unproved denial, why it may not be done by the use of the mind and will. Rarity or unusualness proves nothing; when the telegraph was new its rarity proved nothing against its actuality; and it is every day becoming more the fashion to admit than it is to deny the possibility of anything in the realm opened up by our knowledge of electricity, while the probability is left merely to suspended judgment.

Passing from material science to the medical researches into hypnotism, we find there the stepping-stone between the purely mechanical physical processes and the higher subtler realm of the mind, the will, and the imagination. Here we see that the powerful forces wielded by the mind are able to bring about effects on bone, flesh, blood, and skin equal in measure to many processes of disintegration or volatilization. But in every-day life we have similar suggestive facts. In the blush and the cold chill which come instantaneously over the whole frame, spreading in a second from the mental source, are effects upon matter made directly from mind. Even a recollection of an event can easily bring on this physical effect. In hypnotic experiments the skin, blood, and serum may be altered so as to bring out all the marks and changes of a burn or abrasion. In these cases the mind influenced by another mind makes an image through which the forces act to cause the changes. It is possible because, as so often asserted by the ancient sages, the Universe is really Will and Idea, or, as is so well put in a letter from one of the Adepts, "the machinery of the cosmos is not only occult, it is ideal: and the higher metaphysics must be understood if one is to escape from the illusions under which men labor and which will continually lead them into the adoption of false systems respecting life and nature in consequence of the great 'collective hallucination' in which modern scientific persons glory so much, but which they do not call by that name." (1)

So much, then, being briefly premised, it is said by the schools of occultism, known not only since the rise of the Theosophical movement but followed for ages in the East and continued down to the present day in India-that the trained man by the use of his will, mind, and imagination can disintegrate an object, send it along currents definitely existing in space, transport the mass of atoms to a distant place, passing them through certain obstacles, and reintegrating the object at the given distant spot exactly with the same visibility, limits, and appearance as it had when first taken up for transport. But this has its limitations. It cannot ordinarily be done with a human living body. That would require such an expenditure of force and so interfere with the right of life that it may be excluded altogether. Size and resistance of obstacle have also to do with success or failure. Omnipotence or a sort that may transcend law is not admitted in Occultism; that the Adepts pointed out when they wrote that if they could at one stroke turn the world into an arcadia for lofty souls they would do so, but the world can only be conquered step by step and under the rule of law. It is the same in all operations that copy nature either chemically or mechanically. Hence it is said in these schools that "there are failures in occult art as well as among men." Such failures come from an inability to cope with limiting conditions.

We can analyse the phenomenon of disintegration and transport of mass of matter and reintegration in this way: There is the operator who must know how to use his will, mind, and imagination. Next is the object to be dealt with. Then there is the resisting obstacle through which it may have to pass; and the air, either, and astral light through which it travels. Lastly is the question whether or not there is the force called cohesion, by means of which masses of matter are held together within limits of form.

If it be said that the force known as gravity holds masses of matter together, we are reduced to accepting a more mysterious explanation for a common thing than the three persons in one God. But cohesion without any other postulate amounts merely to saying that masses of matter cohere because they cohere. Occultism, in common with the Vedantic philosophy, says that there is a force of cohesion which has its roots and power in the spirit and in the ideal form; and attraction and repulsion operate from the same base also. Further, that school holds gravitation to be but an exhibition of the action of these two-attraction and repulsion. Living masses such as vegetables, animals, and men deal with matter in another state from that which is in minerals, and exhibit the quicker action of disintegrating forces; while minerals go to pieces very slowly. Both kinds are compelled in time to fall apart as masses in consequence of the action of evolutionary law when they are left altogether to themselves; that is, the whole quantity of matter of and belonging to the globe is continually subject to the hidden forces which are moulding it for higher uses and turning it, however slowly, into a higher class of matter. The normal rate is what we see, but this normal rate may be altered, and that it can be altered by intelligent mind and will is the fact. This alteration of rate is seen in the forcing processes used for plants by which they are made to grow much faster than is usual under common conditions. In the same way in masses of matter which will surely go to pieces in the course of time, long or short, the molecules may be pushed apart before their time and held so by the trained will. That is, the force of repulsion can be opposed to natural attraction so as to drive the molecules apart and hold them thus away from each other. When the repulsion is slackened, the molecules rush together again to assume their former appearance. In this case the shape is not altered, the largely diffused body of molecules retains its shape though invisible to the eye, and upon appearing to sight again it simply condenses itself into the smaller original limits, thus becoming dense enough to be once more seen and touched.

When a small object is thus disintegrated by occult means it can be passed through other objects. Or if it is to be transported without disintegration, then any dense intervening obstacle is disintegrated for a sufficient space to allow it to pass. That the latter is one of the feats of fakirs, yogis, and certain mediums can be hardly a matter of doubt except for those who deny the occult character of the cosmos. Alleged spirits in respect to this have said, "We make the intervening obstacle fluid or diffused, or do the same thing for the object transported," and for once they seem to be right. A gentleman of high character and ability in the northwest told me that one a day a man unknown in his village came to the door, and exhibiting some rings of metal made one pass through the other, one of the rings seeming to melt away at the point of contact. H.P. Blavatsky has narrated to me many such cases, and I have seen her do the same thing. As, for instance, she has taken in my sight a small object such as a ring, and laying it on the table caused it to appear without her touching it inside of a closed drawer near by. Now in that instance either she disintegrated it and caused it to pass into the drawer, or disintegrated the drawer for a sufficient space, or she hypnotized me with all my senses on the alert, putting the object into the drawer while I was asleep and without my perceiving any sort of change whatever in my consciousness. The latter I cannot accept, but if it be held as true, then it was more wonderful that the other feat. The circumstances and motive were such as to exclude the hypnotizing theory; it was done to show me that such a phenomenon was possible and to give me a clue to the operation, and also to explain to me how the strange things of spiritualism might be done and, indeed, must be done under the laws of man's mind and nature.

Next we have the intelligent part of the matter to look at. Here the inner senses have to act under the guidance of a mind free from the illusions of matter, able to see into the occult cosmos behind the veil of objectivity. The will acts with immense force, exerting the powers both of attraction and repulsion as desired; knowledge of occult chemistry comes into use; the currents in the astral light or ether have to be known, as also how to make new currents. Those who have seen into the astral light and looked at the currents moving to and fro will understand this, other will either doubt, deny, or suspend judgment. The imagination as in the case of precipitation is the sight and the hand of the mind and the will, without which the latter can accomplish nothing, just as the will and brain of a man whose arms are cut off can do nothing unless others aid him. But mind, will, and imagination do not reconstruct the disintegrated object, for as soon as the dispersing force is slackened from its hold on the mass of molecules, the imagination having held the image of the object, the atoms obediently and automatically rearrange themselves as before.

All this may seem fanciful, but there are those who know of their own knowledge that it is all according to fact. And it is doubtless true that in no long time modern science will begin, as it is even now slowly starting, to admit all these things by admitting in full the ideal nature of the cosmos, thus removing at once the materialistic notions of man and nature which mostly prevail at the present day.

(1) From an unpublished letter.

OCCULT ARTS-Precipitation

The Word "precipitation" means to throw upon or within. This term is used in chemistry to describe the fact of a substance, held or suspended in fluid, being made to disengage itself from the intimate union with the fluid and to fall upon the bottom of the receptacle in which it is held; in the use of applied electricity it may be used to describe the throwing upon a metal or other plate, of particles of another metal held in suspension in the fluid of the electric bath. These two things are done every day in nearly all the cities of the world, and are so common as to be ordinary. In photography the same effect is described by the word "develop," which is the appearing on the surface of the sensitized gelatine plate of the image caught by the camera. In chemical precipitation the atoms fall together and become visible as a separate substance in the fluid; in photography the image made by an alteration of the atoms composing the whole surface appears i the mass of the sensitized plate.

In both cases we have the coming forth into visibility of that which before was invisible. In the case of precipitation of a substance i the form of a powder at the bottom of the receptacle containing the fluid, there is distinctly, (a) before the operation an invisibility of a mass of powder, (b) upon applying the simple means for precipitation the sudden coming into sight of that which was before unseen.

And precisely as the powder may be precipitated in the fluid, so also from the air there can be drawn and precipitated the various metals and substances suspended therein. This has been so often done by chemists and others that no proofs are needed.

The ancients and all the occultists of past and present have always asserted that all metals, substances, pigments, and materials exist in the air held in suspension, and this has been admitted by modern science. Gold, silver, iron and other metals may be volatilized by heat so as to float unseen in the air, and this is also brought about every day in various mines and factories of the world. It may therefore be regarded as established beyond controversy that as a physical fact precipitation of substances, whether as merely carbon or metal, is possible and is done every day. We can then take another step with the subject.

Is it possible to precipitate by will-power and use of occult laws upon a surface of wood, paper, metal, stone, or glass a mass of substance in lines or letters or other combinations so as to produce an intelligible picture or a legible message? For modern science this is not possible, yet; for the Adept it is possible, has been done, and will be still performed. It has also been done unintelligently and as mere passive agents or channels, among mediums in the ranks of European and American spiritualists. But in this latter case it has the value, and no more than that, of the operations of nature upon and with natural objects, to be imitated by conscious and intelligently acting man when he has learned how, by what means, and when. The medium is only a passive controlled agent or channel who is ignorant of the laws and forces employed, as well as not knowing what is the intelligence at work, nor whether that intelligence is outside of a part of the medium.

The Adept, on the other hand, knows how such a precipitation can be done, what materials may be used, where those materials are obtainable, how they can be drawn out of the air, and what general and special laws must be taken into account. That this operation can be performed I know of my own knowledge; I have seen it done, watching the process as it proceeded, and have seen the effect produced without a failure. One of these instances I will give later on.

Precipitation of words or messages from Adepts has been much spoken of in the Theosophical Society's work, and the generality of persons have come to some wrong conclusions as to what they must be like, as well as how they are done and what materials may be and are used. Most suppose as follows:

1. That the precipitate messages are on rice paper;

2. That they are invariably in one or two colors of some sort of chalk or carbon;

3. That in every case they are incorporated into the fibre of the paper so as to be ineradicable.;

4. That in each case when finished they came from Tibet or some other distant place invisibly through the air;

5. That all of them are done by the hand of the Adept and are in his handwriting as commonly used by him or them.

While it is true in fact that each of the above particulars may have been present in some of the cases and that every one of the above is possible, it is not correct that the above are right as settled facts and conclusions. For the way, means, methods, conditions, and results of precipitation are as varied and numerous as any other operation of nature. The following is laid down by some of the masters of this art as proper to be kept in mind.

(a) A precipitated picture or message may be on any sort of paper.

(b) It may be in black or any other pigment.

(c) It may be in carbon, chalk, ink, paint, or other fluid or substance.

(d) It may be on any sort of surface or any kind of material.

(e) It may be incorporated in the fibre of the paper and be thus ineffaceable, or lie upon the surface and be easily eradicated.

(f) It may come through the air as a finished message on paper or otherwise, or it may be precipitated at once at the place of reception on any kind of substance and in any sort of place.

(g) It is not necessary in the handwriting of the Adept, and may be in the hand comprehended by the recipient and a language foreign to the Adept, or it may be in the actual hand of the Adept, or lastly in a cipher known to a few and not decipherable by any one without its key.

(h) As matter of fact the majority of the messages precipitated or sent by the Adepts in the history of the Theosophical Society have been in certain forms of English writing not the usual writing of those Adepts, but adopted for use in the Theosophical movement because of a fore-knowledge that the principal language of that movement would for some time be the English.

Some messages have been written and precipitated in Hindu or Urdu, some in Hindustani, and some in a cipher perfectly unintelligible to all but a few persons. These assertions I make upon personal knowledge founded on observation, on confirmation through an inspection of messages, and on logical deduction made from facts and philosophical propositions. In the first place, the Adepts referred to-and not including silent ones of European birth-are Asiatics whose languages are two different Indian ones: hence their usual handwriting is not English and not Roman in letters. Secondly, it is a fact long suspected and to many well known both in and out of the Theosophical Society that the Fraternity of Adepts has a cipher which they employ for many of their communications: that, being universal, is not their handwriting. Thirdly, in order to send any one a precipitated message in English it is not necessary for the Adept to know that language; if you know it, that is enough; for, putting the thought in your brain, he sees it there as your language in your brain, and using that model causes the message to appear. But if he is acquainted with the language you use, it is all the easier for the Adept to give you the message exactly as he forms it in his brain at first. The same law applies to all cases of precipitation by an alleged spirit through a medium who does not know at all how it is done; in such a case it is all done by natural and chiefly irresponsible agents who can only imitate what is in the brains concerned in the matter.

These points being considered, the questions remain, How is it all done, what is the process, what are the standards of judgment, of criticism, and of proof to the outer sense, is imposition possible, and, if so how may it be prevented?

As to the last, the element of faith or confidence can never be omitted until one has gotten to a stage where within oneself the true standard and power of judging are developed. Just as forgery may be done on this physical plane, so also may it be done on the other and unseen planes and its results shown on this. Ill-disposed souls may work spiritual wickedness, and ignorant living persons may furnish idle, insincere, and lying models or not only ill-disposed souls that are out of the body, but also for mere sprites that are forces in nature of considerable power but devoid of conscience and mind. Mind is not needed in them, for they use the mind of man, and merely with this aid work the hidden laws of matter. But this furnishes some protection illustrated in the history of spiritualism, where so many messages are received that on their face are nonsense and evidently but the work of elementals who simply copy what the medium or the sitter is vainly holding in mind. In those cases some good things have come, but they are never beyond the best thought of the persons who, living, thus attempt to speak with the dead.

Any form of writing once written on earth is imprinted in the astral light and remains there as model. And if it has been used much, it is all the more deeply imprinted. Hence the fact that H.P. Blavatsky, who once was the means for messages coming from the living Adepts, is dead and gone is not a reason why the same writing should not be used again. It was used so much in letters to Mr. Sinnett from which Esoteric Buddhism was written and in many other letters from the same source that its model or matrix is deeply cut in the astral light. For it would be folly and waste of time for the Adepts to make new models every time any one died. They would naturally use the old model. There is no special sanctity in the particular model used by them, and any good clairvoyant can find that matrix in the astral light. Hence from this, if true, two things follow: (a) that new communications need not be in a new style of writing, and (b) there is a danger that persons who seek either clairvoyants or mesmerized lucides may be imposed on and made to think they have messages from the Adepts, when in fact they have only imitations. The safeguard therein is that, if these new messages are not in concordance with old ones known to be from their first appointed channel, they are not genuine in their source, however phenomenally made. Of course for the person who has the power inside to see for himself, the safeguard is different and more certain. This position accords with occult philosophy, it has been stated by the Adepts themselves, it is supported by the facts of psychic investigation inside the ranks of Spiritualism, of Theosophy, of human life.

It is well known that mediums have precipitated messages on slates, on paper, and on even human skin, which in form and manner exactly copied the hand of one dead and gone, and also of the living. The model for the writing was in the aura of the enquirer, as most mediums are not trained enough to be able independently to seek out and copy astral models not connected with some one present. I exclude all cases where the physical or astral hand of the medium wrote the message, for the first is fraud and the second a psychological trick. In the last case, the medium gazing into the astral light sees the copy or model there and merely makes a facsimile of what is thus seen, but which is invisible to the sitter. There is no exemption from law in favor of the Adepts, and the images they make or cause to be made in astral ether remain as the property of the race; indeed in their case, as they have a sharp and vivid power of engraving, so today in the astral light, all the images made there by them are deeper and more lasting than those cut by the ordinary and weak thoughts and acts of our undeveloped humanity.

The best rules for those who happen to think they are in communication with Adepts through written messages is to avoid those that contradict what the Adepts have said before; that give the lie to their system of philosophy; that, as has happened, pretend that H.P.B. was mistaken in her life for what she said and is now sorry. All such, whether done with intention or without it, are merely bombinans in vacuo, sound that has o significance, a confusion between words and knowledge delusive and vain altogether. And as we know that the Adepts have written that they have no concern with the progress of selfish science, it must be true that messages which go on merely to the end of establishing some scientific proposition or that are not for the furtherance especially of Brotherhood cannot be from them, but are the product of other minds, a mere extension through occult natural law of theories of weak men. This leads to the proposition that:

Precipitation of a ;message is not per se evidence that it is from one of our White Adepts of the Great Lodge.

The outer senses cannot give a safe final judgment upon a precipitated message, they can only settle such physical questions as how it came, through whom, the credibility of the person, and whether any deception on the objective plane has been practiced. The inner senses, including the great combining faculty or power of intuition, are the final judges. The outer have to do solely with the phenomenal part, the inner deal with the causes and the real actors and powers.

As precipitations have been phenomenally made through "controlled" mediums who are themselves ignorant of the laws and forces at work, these are but strange phenomena proving the existence of a power in Nature either related to human mind or wholly unrelated to it. These are not the exercise of Occult Arts, but simply the operation of natural law, however recondite and obscure. They are like the burning of a flame, the falling of water, or the rush of the lightning, whereas when the Adept causes a flame to appear where there is no wick, or a sound to come where there is no vibrating visible surface, occult art is using the same laws and forces which the medium are automatically and unconsciously operated by subtle parts of the medium's nature and "nature spirits," as well as what we know as Kama-lokic human entities, in combination. And here the outer senses deal solely with the outer phenomena, being unable to touch in the least on the unseen workings behind. So they can only decide whether a physical fraud has been practiced; they can note the day, the hour, the surrounding circumstances, but no more.

But if one hitherto supposed to be in communication with the White Adepts comes to us and says "Here is a message from one of Those," then if we have not independent power in ourselves of deciding the question on inner knowledge, the next step is either to believe the report or disbelieve it. In the case of H.P.B., in whose presence and through whom messages were said to come from the White Adepts, it was all the time, at the final analysis, a matter of faith in those who confessedly had and have no independent personal power to know by the use of their own inner senses. But there intuition, one of the inner powers, decided for the genuineness of the report and the authentication of the messages. She herself put it tersely in the was: "If you think no Mahatma wrote the theories I have given of man and nature and if you do not believe my report, then you have to conclude that i did it all." The latter conclusion would lead to the position that her acts, phenomena, and writings put her in the position usually accorded by us to a Mahatma. As to the letters, messages of a personal nature, each one had and has to decide for himself whether or not to follow the advice given.

Another class of cases is where a message is found in a closed letter, on the margin or elsewhere on the sheet. The outer senses decide whether the writer of the letter inserted the supposed message or had some one else do it, and that must be decided on what is known of the character of the person. If you decide that the correspondent did not write it nor have anyone else do so, but that it was injected phenomenally, then the inner senses must be used. If they are untrained, certainly the matter becomes one of faith entirely, unless intuition is strong enough to decide correctly that a wise as well as powerful person caused the writing to appear there. Many such messages have been received in the history of the T.S. Some came in one way, some in another; one might be in a letter from a member of the Society, another in a letter from an outsider wholly ignorant of these matters. In every case, unless the recipient had independent powers developed within, no judgment on mere outer phenomena would be safe.

It is very difficult to find cases such as the above, because first, they are extremely rare, and second, the persons involved do no wish to relate them, since the matter transmitted had a purely personal bearing. A fancy may exist that in America or England or London such messages, generally considered bogus by enemies and outsiders, are being constantly sent and received, and that persons in various quarters are influenced to this or that course of action by them, but this is pure fancy, without basis in fact so far as the knowledge and experience of the writer extend. While precipitations phenomenally by the White Adepts in communicating with those thus favored. They had disciples with whom communication is already established and carried on, most generally through the inner ear and eye, but sometimes through the prosaic mail. In these cases no one else is involved and no one else has the right to put questions. The disciple reserves his communications for the guidance of his own action, unless he or she is directed to tell another. To spread broad-cast a mass of written communications among those who are willing to accept them without knowing how to judge would be the sheerest folly, only productive of superstition and blind credulity. And this digression will be excused, it being necessary because the subject of precipitation as a fact has been brought up very prominently. I may further digress to say that no amount of precipitations, however clear of doubt and fraud as to time, place, and outward method, would have the slightest effect on my mind or action unless my own intuition and inner senses confirmed them and showed them to be from a source which should call for my attention and concurrence.

How, then is this precipitation done, and what is the process? This question brings up the whole of the philosophy offered in the Secret Doctrine. For if the postulate of the metaphysical character of the Cosmos is denied, if the supreme power of the disciplined mind is not admitted, if the actual existence of an inner and real world is negatived, if the necessity and power of the image-making faculty are disallowed, then such precipitation is an impossibility, always was, and always will be. Power over mind, matter, space, and time depends on several things and positions. Needed for this are: Imagination raised to its highest limit, desire combined with will that wavers not, and a knowledge of the occult chemistry of Nature. All must be present or there will be no result.

Imagination is the power to make in the ether an image. This faculty is limited by any want of the training of the mind and increased by good mental development. In ordinary persons imagination is only a vain and fleeting fancy which makes but a small impression comparatively in the ether. This power, when well-trained, makes a matrix in ether wherein each line, word, letter, sentence, color, or other mark is firmly and definitely made. Will, well-trained, must then be used to draw from the ether the matter to be deposited, and then, according to the laws of such an operation, the depositing matter collects in masses within the limits of the matrix and becomes from its accumulation visible on the surface selected. The will, still at work, has then to cut off the mass of matter from its attraction to that from whence it came. This is the whole operation, and who then is the wiser? Those learned in the schools laugh, and well they may, for there is not in science anything to correspond, and many of the positions laid down are contrary to several received opinions. But in Nature there are vast numbers of natural effects produced by ways wholly unknown to science, and Nature does not mind the laughter, nor should any disciple.

But how is it possible to inject such a precipitation into a closed letter? The ether is all-pervading, and the envelope or any other material bar is no bar to it. In it is carried the matter to be deposited, and as the whole operation is done on the other side of visible nature up to the actual appearance of the deposit, physical obstructions do not make the slightest difference.

It is necessary to return for a moment to the case of precipitations through mediums. Here the matrix needs to trained imagination to make it nor trained will to hold it. In the astral light the impressions are cut and remain immovable; these are used by the elementals and other forces at work, and no disturbing will of sitter being able to interfere-simply from blind ignorance-there is no disturbance of the automatic unconscious work. In the sitter's aura are thousands of impressions which remain unmoved because all attention has been long ago withdrawn. And the older or simpler they are the more firmly do they exist. These constitute also a matrix through which the nature spirits work.

I can properly finish this with the incident mentioned at the beginning. It was with H.P.B. I was sitting in her room beside her, the distance between us being some four feet. In my hand I held a book she never had had in her possession and that I had just taken from the mail. It was clear of all marks, its title page was fresh and clean, no one had touched it since it left the bookseller. I examined its pages and began to read. In about five minutes a very powerful current of what felt like electricity ran up and down my side on the skein, and I looked up at her. She was looking at me and said: "What do you read? I had forgotten the title, as it was one I had never seen before, and so I turned back to the title page. There at the top on the margin where it had not been before was a sentence of two lines in writing in ink, and the ink was wet, and the writing was that of H.P.B. who sat before me. She had not touched the book, but by her knowledge of occult law, occult chemistry, and occult will, she had projected out of the ink-bottle before her the ink to make the sentence, and of course it was in her own handwriting, as that was the easiest way to do it. Hence my own physical system was used to do the work, and the instant of its doing was when I felt the shock on the skin. This is to be explained in the way I have outlined, or it is to be all brushed aside as a lie or as a delusion of mine. But those last I can not accept, for I know to the contrary, and further I know that the advice, for such it was, in that sentence was good. I followed it and the result was good. Several other times also have I seen her precipitate on different surfaces, and she always said it was not proof of anything whatever save the power to do the thing, admitting that black and white magicians could do the same thing, and saying that the only safety for any one in the range of such forces was to be pure in motive, in thought, and in act.

OCCULT ARTS -
SOME PROPOSITIONS BY H.P. BLAVATSKY

IV

The following is extracted from H.P.B.'s first book (1), and is printed in this series with the belief that it will be useful as well as interesting. She gives some fundamental oriental propositions relating to occult arts, thus:

1. There is no miracle. Everything that happens is the result of law-eternal, immutable, ever-active. Apparent miracle is but the operation of forces antagonistic to what Dr. W.B. Carpenter, F.R.S.-a man of great learning but little knowledge-calls "the well ascertained laws of nature." Like many of his class, Dr. Carpenter ignores the fact that there may be laws once "known," now unknown, to science.

2. Nature is triune: there is a visible objective nature, an invisible, indwelling, energizing nature, the exact model of the other and its vital principle; and above these two is spirit, the source of all forces, alone eternal and indestructible. The lower two constantly change; the higher third does not.

3. Man is also triune: he has his objective physical body; his vitalizing astral body (or soul), the real man; and these two are brooded over and illuminated by the third-the sovereign, the immortal spirit. When the real man succeeds in merging himself with the latter, he becomes an immortal entity.

4. Magic, as a science, is the knowledge of these principles, and of the way by which the omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit and its control over nature's forces may be acquired by the individual while still in the body. Magic, as an art, is the application of this knowledge in practice.

5. Arcane knowledge misapplied is sorcery; beneficently used, true magic or WISDOM.

6. Mediumship is the opposite of Adeptship; the medium is the passive instrument of foreign influences, the Adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies.

7. All things that ever were, that are, or that will be, having their record upon the astral light, or tablet of the unseen universe, the initiated Adept, by using the vision of his own spirit can know all that has been known or can be known.

8. Races of men differ in spiritual gifts as in color, stature, or any other external quality; among some peoples seership naturally prevails, among others mediumship. Some are addicted to sorcery, and transmit its secret rules of practice from generation to generation, with a range of psychical phenomena, more or less wide, as the result.

9. One phase of magical skill is the voluntary and conscious withdrawal of the inner man (astral form) from the outer man (physical body). In the cases of some mediums withdrawal occurs, but it is unconscious and involuntary. With the latter the body is more or less cataleptic at such times; but with the Adept the absence of the astral form would not be noticed, for the physical senses are alert, and the individual appears only as though in a fit of abstraction-"a brown study," as some call it.

To the movements of the wandering astral form neither time nor space offers obstacles. The thaumaturgist thoroughly skilled in occult science can cause himself (that is, his physical body) to seem to disappear or to apparently take on any shape that he may choose. He may make his astral form visible, or he may give it protean appearances. In both cases these results will be achieved by a mesmeric hallucination of the senses of all witnesses, simultaneously brought on. This hallucination is so perfect that the subject of it would stake his life that he saw a reality, when it is but a picture in his own mind, impressed upon his consciousness by the irresistible will of the mesmerizer.

But while the astral form can go anywhere, penetrate any obstacle, and be seen at any distance from the physical body, the latter is dependent upon ordinary methods of transportation. It may be levitated under prescribed magnetic conditions, but not pass from one locality to another except in the usual way...Inert matter may be in certain cases and under certain conditions disintegrated, passed through walls and recombined, but living animal organisms cannot.

...Arcane science teaches that the abandonment of the living body by the soul frequently occurs, and that we encounter every day in every condition of life such living corpses. Various causes, among them overpowering fright, grief, despair, a violent attack of sickness, or excessive sensuality, may bring this about. The vacant carcass may be entered and inhabited by the astral form of an Adept, sorcerer, or an elementary (an earth-bound disembodied human soul), or, very rarely, an elemental. Of course an Adept of white magic has the same power, but unless some very exceptional and great object is to be accomplished he will never consent to pollute himself by occupying the body of an impure person. In insanity the patient's astral being is either semi-paralyzed, bewildered, and subject to the influence of every passing spirit of any sort, or it has departed, forever, and the body is taken possession of by some vampirish entity, near its own disintegration and clinging desperately to earth, whose sensual pleasures it may enjoy for a brief season longer by this expedient.

10. The corner stone of MAGIC is an intimate practical knowledge of magnetism and electricity, their qualities, correlations, and potencies. Especially necessary is a familiarity with their effects within and upon the animal kingdom and man. There are occult properties in many other minerals equally strange with that in the lodestone, which all practitioners of magic must know, and of which so-called exact science is wholly ignorant. Plants also have like mystical properties in a most wonderful degree, and the secrets of the herbs of dreams and enchantments are only lost to European science, and, useless to say too, are unknown to it except in a few marked instances, such as opium and hashish. Yet the psychical effects of even these few upon the human system are regarded as evidences of a temporary mental disorder...

To sum up all in a few words: MAGIC is spiritual WISDOM; nature the material ally, pupil, and servant of the magician. One common vital principle pervades all things, and this is controllable by the perfected human will. The Adept can stimulate the movements of the natural forces in plants and animals in a preternatural degree. Such experiments are not obstructions of nature but quickenings; the conditions of intenser vital action are given.

The Adept can control the sensations and alter the conditions of the physical and astral bodies of other persons not Adepts; he can also govern and employ, as he chooses, the spirits of the elements. He cannot control the immortal spirit of any human being, living or dead, for all such spirits are alike sparks of the Divine Essence and not subject to any foreign domination.

Propositions 2 and 3 contain and include the seven-fold classification. In 1877 H.P.B. was writing for those who had known but the three-fold scheme. In number two the vital principle (prana or jiva) is given; the body with vitality makes two; the real man inside called the soul, being composed of astral body, desires, and mind, makes five; the spirit, including the connecting link of Buddhi, completes the seven. The will is one of the forces directly from spirit, and is guided, with ordinary men, by desire; in the Adept's case the will is guided by Buddhi, Manas, and Atma, including in its operation the force of a pure spiritual desire acting solely under law and duty.

William Q. Judge

Path, October, November, December, 1893: January, 1894

(1) Isis Unveiled, Vol. ii, page 587, et seq.

OCCULT TEACHINGS

STUDENT. - What is Occultism?

Sage. - It is that branch of knowledge which shows the universe in the form of an egg. The cell of science is a little copy of the egg of the universe. The laws which govern the whole govern also every part of it. As man is a little copy of the universe - is the microcosm - he is governed by the same laws which rule the greater. Occultism teaches therefore of the secret laws and forces of the universe and man, those forces playing in the outer world and known in part only by the men of the day who admit no invisible real nature, behind which is the model of the visible.

Student. - What does Occultism teach in regard to man, broadly speaking?

Sage. - That he is the highest product of evolution, and hence has in him a centre or focus corresponding to each centre of force or power in the universe. He therefore has as many centres or foci for force, power, and knowledge as there are such in the greater world about and within.

Student. - Do you mean to include also the ordinary run of men, or is it the exceptions you refer to?

Sage. - I include every human being, and that will reach from the lowest to the very highest, both those we know and those beyond us who are suspected as being in existence. Although we are accustomed to confine the term "human" to this earth, it is not correct to confine that sort of being to this plane or globe, because other planets have beings the same as ours in essential power and nature and possibility.

Student. - Please explain a little more particularly what you mean by our having centres or foci in us.

Sage. - Electricity is a most powerful force not fully known to modern science, yet used very much. The nervous, physical, and mental systems of man acting together are able to produce the same force exactly, and in a finer as well as subtler way and to as great a degree as the most powerful dynamo, so that the force might be used to kill, to alter, to move, or otherwise change any object or condition. This is the "vril" described by Bulwer Lytton in his Coming Race.

Nature exhibits to our eyes the power of drawing into one place with fixed limits any amount of material so as to produce the smallest natural object or the very largest. Out of the air she takes what is already there, and by compressing it into the limits of tree or animal form makes it visible to our material eyes. This is the power of condensing into what may be known as the ideal limits, that is, into the limits of the form which is ideal. Man has this same power, and can, when he knows the laws and the proper centres of force in himself, do precisely what Nature does. He can thus make visible and material what was before ideal and invisible by filling the ideal form with the matter condensed from the air. In his case the only difference from Nature is that he does quickly what she brings about slowly.

Among natural phenomena there is no present illustration of telepathy good for our use. Among the birds and the beasts, however, there is telepathy instinctually performed. But telepathy, as it is now called, is the communicating of thought or idea from mind to mind. This is a natural power, and being well-understood may be used by one mind to convey to another, no matter how far away or what be the intervening obstacle, any idea or thought. In natural things we can take for that the vibration of the chord which can cause all other chords of the same length to vibrate similarly. This is a branch of Occultism, a part of which is known to the modern investigator. But it is also one of the most useful and one of the greatest powers we have. To make it of service many things have to combine. While it is used every day in common life in the average way - for men are each moment telepathically communicating with each other - to do it in perfection, that is, against obstacle and distance, is perfection of occult art. Yet it will be known one day even to the common world.

Student. - Is there any object had in view by Nature which man should also hold before him?

Sage. - Nature ever works to turn the inorganic or the lifeless or the non-intelligent and non-conscious into the organic, the intelligent, the conscious; and this should be the aim of man also. In her great movements Nature seems to cause destruction, but that is only for the purpose of construction. The rocks are dissolved into earth, elements combine to bring on change, but there is the ever onward march of progress in evolution. Nature is not destructive of either thing or time, she is constructive. Man should be the same. And as a free moral agent he should work to that end, and not to procuring gratification merely nor for waste in any department.

Student. - Is Occultism of truth or of falsehood; is it selfish or unselfish; or is it part one and part the other?

Sage. - Occultism is colorless, and only when used by man for the one side or the other is it good or bad. Bad Occultism, or that which is used for selfish ends, is not false, for it is the same as that which is for good ends. Nature is two-sided, negative and positive, good and bad, light and dark, hot and cold, spirit and matter. The Black magician is as powerful in the matter of phenomena as the White, but in the end all the trend of Nature will go to destroy the black and save the white. But what you should understand is that the false man and the true can both be occultists. The words of the Christian teacher Jesus will give the rule for judgment: "By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" Occultism is the general, all-inclusive term, the differentiating terms are White and Black; the same forces are used by both, and similar laws, for there are no special laws in this universe for any special set of workers in Nature's secrets. But the path of the untruthful and the wicked, while seemingly easy at first, is hard at last, for the black workers are the friends of no one, they are each against the other as soon as interest demands, and that may be anytime. It is said that final annihilation of the personal soul awaits those who deal in the destructive side of Nature's hall of experience. Student. - Where should I look for the help I need in the right life, the right study?

Sage. - Within yourself is the light that lighteth every man who cometh here. The light of the Higher Self and of the Mahâtma are not different from each other. Unless you find your Self, how can you understand Nature?

Path, October, 1894

OCCULT VIBRATIONS

A FRAGMENT OF CONVERSATION WITH H.P.B. IN 1888

The following was written by me at the dictation of H.P.B. in 1888 with the purpose of printing it at that time. But it was not used then, and as I brought it home with me it is now of interest. - W.Q.J.

Q. - It has struck me while thinking over the difference between ordinary people and an adept or even a partly developed student, that the rate of vibration of the brain molecules, as well as he coördination of those with the vibrations of the higher brain, may lie at the bottom of the difference and also might explain many other problems.

H.P.B. - So they do. They make differences and also cause many curious phenomena; and the differences among all persons are greatly due to vibrations of all kinds.

Q. - In reading the article ["Aum!"] in the PATH of April, 1886, this idea was again suggested. I open at p. 6, Vol. I.

The divine Resonance spoken of above is not the Divine Light itself. The Resonance is only the outbreathing of the first sound of the entire Aum.... It manifests itself not only as the power which stirs up and animates the particles of the universe, but also in the evolution and dissolution of man, of the animal and mineral kingdoms, and the Solar system. Among the Aryans it was represented by the planet Mercury, who has always been said to govern the intellectual faculties and to be the universal stimulator.

What of this?

H.P.B. - Mercury was always known as the god of secret wisdom. He is Hermes as well as Budha the son of Soma. Speaking of matters on the lower plane, I would call the "Divine Resonance" you read of in the PATH "vibrations" and the originator, or that which gives the impulse to every kind of phenomena in the astral plane.

Q. - The differences found in human brains and natures must, then, have their root in differences of vibration?

H.P.B. - Most assuredly so.

Q. - Speaking of mankind as a whole, is it true that all have one key or rate of vibration to which they respond?

H.P.B. - Human beings in general are like so many keys on the piano, each having its own sound, and the combination of which produces other sounds in endless variety. Like inanimate nature they have a key-note from which all the varieties of character and constitution proceed by endless changes. Remember what was said in Isis Unveiled at p. 16, Vol. I, "The Universe is the combination of a thousand elements, and yet the expression of a single spirit, - a chaos to the sense (physical), a cosmos to the reason" (manas).

Q. - So far this applies generally to nature. Does it explain the difference between the adept and ordinary people?

H.P.B. - Yes. This difference is that an adept may be compared to that one key which contains all the keys in the great harmony of nature. He has the synthesis of all keys in his thoughts, whereas ordinary man has the same key as a basis, but only acts and thinks on one or a few changes of this great key, producing with his brain only a few chords out of the whole great possible harmony.

Q. - Has this something to do with the fact that a disciple may hear the voice of his master through the astral spaces, while another man cannot hear or communicate with the adepts?

H.P.B. - This is because the brain of a chela is attuned by training to the brain of the Master. His vibrations synchronize with those of the Adept, and the untrained brain is not so attuned. So the chela's brain is abnormal, looking at it from the standpoint of ordinary life, while that of the ordinary man is normal for worldly purposes. The latter person may be compared to those who are color-blind.

Q. - How am I to understand this?

H.P.B. - What is considered normal from the view of the physician is considered abnormal from the view of occultism, and vice versâ. The difference between a color-blind signal man who mistakes the lamps and the adept who sees is that the one takes one color for another, while the adept sees all the colors in every color and yet does not confuse them together.

Q. - Has the adept, then, raised his vibrations so as to have them the same as those of nature as a whole?

H.P.B. - Yes; the highest adepts. But there are other adepts who, while vastly in advance of all men, are still unable to vibrate to such a degree.

Q. - Can the adept produce at his will a vibration which will change one color to another?

H.P.B. - He can produce a sound which will alter a color. It is the sound which produces the color, and not the other or opposite. By correlating the vibrations of a sound in the proper way a new color is made.

Q. - Is it true that on the astral plane every sound always produces a color?

H.P.B. - Yes; but these are invisible because not yet correlated by the human brain so as to become visible on the earth plane. Read Galton, who gives experiments with colors and sounds as seen by psychics and sensitives, showing that many sensitive people always see a color for every sound. The color-blind man has coming to him the same vibrations as will show red, but not being able to sense these he alters the amount, so to say, and then sees a color corresponding to the vibrations he can perceive out of the whole quantity. His astral senses may see the true color, but the physical eye has its own vibrations, and these, being on the outer plane, overcome the others for the time, and the astral man is compelled to report to the brain that it saw correctly. For in each case the outer stimulus is sent to the inner man, who then is forced, as it were, to accept the message and to confirm it for the time so far as it goes. But there are cases where the inner man is able to even then overcome the outer defect and to make the brain see the difference. In many cases of lunacy the confusion among the vibrations of all kinds is so enormous that there is not correlation between the inner and the outer man, and we have then a case of aberration. But even in some of these unfortunate cases the person inside is all the time aware that he is not insane but cannot make himself be understood. Thus often persons are driven really insane by wrong treatment.

Q. - By what manner of vibrations do the elementals make colors and lights of variety?

H.P.B. - That is a question I cannot reply to though it is well known to me. Did I not tell you that secrets might be revealed too soon?

Path, June, 1893

OCCULTISM FOR BARTER

ESOTERIC COLLEGES AND FALSE PROPHETS

WHEN Jesus of Nazareth went to the Temple in Jerusalem he, it is said, drove money changers out of the courts; and later he said that many false prophets should arise. For the Christian that temple symbolized the Palace of God, and the occultist knows that the story really means the driving out from the heart of all materialistic thought. Jesus, with a prophet's eye, saw what has so often come to pass since then,- false prophets arising on every side, both in and out of the Church that bears his name.

In the present days no country can boast as ours of having so many false prophets, who, taking advantage of the popular leaning to mysticism hang out signs of various kinds, but one and all offering for sale the things of the spirit.

It is not to magazines or books dealing with these subjects that we refer, for printing and paper must be paid for when one wants to lay his ideas before the people. But it is quite a different thing when men or women offer to sell to the buyer, for money, the knowledge of self or any mystery in nature pertaining to spiritual things.

In one place we have a man pretending that he is a reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and in another, one deliberately stating that he is Gautama Buddha come again in order to correct errors in his promulgated doctrines. Again, we find astrologers and diviners, mediums and seers, opening shops wherein they dispense oracles to the willing, gullible people. One is quite as pernicious as the other, for the taint of money will corrupt anything. And those who have means are somewhat
to blame, in that they imagine that their money can procure them knowledge of the deep, spiritual things of Nature.

The latest thing in this line is that which began in Boston soon after the starting there of a magazine called the Esoteric. With that journal we had no concern, for its founders had a right to use it to promulgate just as much of truth as they had hold of in the same way that the PATH gives out its ideas of nature and of man. But in the beginning, the managers of that magazine let it be understood that they were, or one of them -to wit, Mr. Hiram Butler - was a theosophist; or member of the Theosophical Society. An examination of the records just made shows that he never was a member of that body.

Not very long ago a bulky book was circulated by this prophet, in which mysterious statements were made that one Vidya Nyaka desired to found a College in the U.S. to teach the stockholders (!) and students all the mysteries, and among others, the power of acquiring vast wealth, and it was said that after the college was organized unlimited means would be at its disposal, drawn from the funds at command of adepts; but, as a preliminary merely, the faithful must disburse. And disburse they did. We grieve to say that many theosophists sent in money to this scheme which, on its very face, boldly showed that it was founded as a means of giving its stock-holders wealth.

The first note was sounded in an alleged "Letter to a Seeker" published by the Esoteric. This was a fraud which took in theosophists who do not get acquainted with what is written in out-of-the-way places. It was a hit at the Theosophical Society and at the Adepts, pretending that They were cold and dead and selfish, and that only the Solar Biologists were fitted to help Americans. It exhibited ignorance when it left the domain of plagiarism. What it plagiarized from is a book called "The Wisdom of the Adepts," by Rev. Thomas Lake Harris, in which he attempted to show that Buddhist Adepts are systematically trying to subvert Christianity in America, and this "Letter to a Seeker" took as subtitle, "The Wisdom of the Wise." Fragments are taken, word for word, from pages 8, 9, 319, 249, 371, 248, 249, of Harris's book, and used to construct this letter in the Esoteric and signed Nemo. If Rev. Harris did not write it, then it was stolen from him; or, if he did, then the Esoteric is a secret organ for a Christian sect which is anti-theosophical, while it outwardly professes theosophy. Either of these alternatives is equally damaging.

The second note was a loud one on a brass bugle heralding the founding of the Esoteric College, as the direct outcome of the efforts of the magazine, with Mr. Butler at the head of it, and Vidya Nyaka in the mysterious distance with a medley of nonsensical letters at the end of his name. The real name of Vidya N. is Ohmart, and he is known to many men in Boston who experienced his wiles before Butler joined hands with him. Before that, Ohmart was satisfied to deal with men on pure business principles, but when he combined with Butler he played upon the credulity of the mystically inclined people who sincerely desired to know the things of the spirit and foolishly thought that the great pretensions of this pair hid great knowledge and wisdom.

It all speedily ended with a frightful expose in the N. Y. World, Boston Globe and Herald, and Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst of it was that the press mixed the Theosophical Society in it, entirely without cause but wholly because of Butler's theosophic claims, and today hundreds of people think that exposure was an exposure of humbug on our part. Such are the facts; hear now of the Karma:

Mr. Butler and all his confederates have to some slight extent injured the Theosophical Society, and the nemesis provided by the immutable law of Karma will follow him until the full consequence is felt and compensation made. We do not need sworn zealots to wreak a vengeance. That will follow, whatever it be, because behind the Theosophical Society is a mighty power that works by law and by will, and not by money. No wealth can buy its favor nor avert its care for its members and for the enemies of the Society. Already material damages and great annoyance have come to these men who dared to sell and buy in the Temple of God. And the same nemesis, but perhaps with lesser fury, will pursue all those members of the Theosophical Society who have in their hearts said, "Lo, here is one who offers at a price that which the Adepts of the Theosophical Society say can only be obtained through toil and unselfish effort; let us go buy of him." We are sorry for both, but surely lessons must be learned, and we had thought that the lesson was taught when the mysterious H. B. of L. invaded our ranks seeking recruits and getting those who would not try the right way. The end is not yet, the hour has not struck, but it will arrive. Let us then rely upon Karma and do our duty.

Path, March, 1889

OCCULTISM: WHAT IS IT?

NOT only in the Theosophical Society, but out of it, are tyros in Occultism. They are dabblers in a fine art, a mighty science, an almost impenetrable mystery. The motives that bring them to the study are as various as the number of individuals engaged in it, and as hidden from even themselves as is the center of the earth from the eye of science. Yet the motive is more important than any other factor.

These dilettanti in this science have always been abroad. No age or country has been without them, and they have left after them many books - of no particular value. Those of today are making them now, for the irresistible impulse of vanity drives them to collate the more or less unsound hypotheses of their predecessors, which, seasoned with a proper dash of mystery, are put forth to the crowd of those who would fain acquire wisdom at the cost-price of a book. Meanwhile the world of real occultists smiles silently, and goes on with the laborious process of sifting out the living germs from the masses of men. For occultists must be found and fostered and prepared for coming ages when power will be needed and pretension will go for nothing.

But the persons now writing about occultism and competent to do any more than repeat unproved formulae and assertions left over from mediaeval days, are few in number. It is very easy to construct a book full of so-called occultism taken from French or German books, and then to every now and then stop the reader short by telling him that it is not wise to reveal any more. The writings of Christian in France give much detail about initiations into occultism, but he honestly goes no further than to tell what he has gained from Greek and Latin fragments. Others, however, have followed him, repeated his words without credit, and as usual halted at the explanation.

There are, again, others who, while asserting that there is magic science called occultism, merely advise the student to cultivate purity and spiritual aspirations, leaving it to be assumed that powers and knowledge will follow. Between these two, theosophists of the self-seeking or the unselfish type are completely puzzled. Those who are selfish may learn by bitter disappointment and sad experience; but the unselfish and the earnest need encouragement on the one hand and warning on the other. As an Adept wrote years ago to London Theosophists: "He who does not feel equal to the work need not undertake a task too heavy for him." This is applicable to all, for every one should be informed of the nature and heaviness of the task. Speaking of this tremendous thing - Occultism - Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita says: "During a considerable period of time this doctrine has been lost in the world.... This mystery is very important." We do not think that the doctrine has yet been restored to the world, albeit that it is in the keeping of living men - the Adepts. And in warning those who strive after occultism with a selfish motive he declares: "Confused by many worldly thoughts, surrounded by the meshes of bewilderment, devoted to the enjoyment of their desires, they descend to foul Naraka . . . and hence they proceed to the lowest plane of being."

In what, then, does the heaviness of the Occultist's task consist? In the immensity of its sweep as well as the infinitude of its detail. Mere sweet and delightful longing after God will not of itself accomplish it, nor is progress found in aspiring to self-knowledge, even when as a result of that is found partial illumination. These are excellent; but we are talking of a problem whose implacable front yields to nothing but force, and that force must be directed by knowledge.

The field is not emotional, for the play of the emotions destroys the equilibrium essential to the art. Work done calling for reward avails not unless it has produced knowledge.

A few examples will show that in Occult Science there is a vastness and also a multiplicity of division not suspected by theosophical Occultists in embryo.

The element of which fire is a visible effect is full of centres of force. Each one is ruled by its own law. The aggregate of centres and the laws governing them which produce certain physical results are classed by science as laws in physics, and are absolutely ignored by the book-making Occultist because he has no knowledge of them. No dreamer or even a philanthropist will ever as such know those laws. And so on with all the other elements.

The Masters of Occultism state that a law of "transmutation among forces" prevails forever. It will baffle any one who has not the power to calculate the value of even the smallest tremble of a vibration, not only in itself but instantly upon its collision with another, whether that other be similar to it or different. Modern science admits the existence of this law as the correlation of forces. It is felt in the moral sphere of our being as well as in the physical world, and causes remark-able changes in a man's character and circumstances quite beyond us at present and altogether unknown to science and metaphysics.

It is said that each person has a distinct mathematical value expressed by one number. This is a compound or resultant of numberless smaller values. When it is known, extraordinary effects may be produced not only in the mind of the person but also in his feelings, and this number may be discovered by certain calculations more recondite than those of our higher mathematics. By its use the person may be made angry without cause, and even insane or full of happiness, just as the operator desires.

There is a world of beings known to the Indians as that of the Devas, whose inhabitants can produce illusions of a character the description of which would throw our wildest romances into the shade. They may last five minutes and seem as a thousand years, or they may extend over ten thousand actual years. Into this world the purest theosophist, the most spiritual man or woman, may go without consent, unless the knowledge and power are possessed which prevent it.

On the threshold of all these laws and states of being linger forces and beings of an awful and determined character. No one can avoid them, as they are on the road that leads to knowledge, and they are every now and then awakened or perceived by those who, while completely ignorant on these subjects, still persist in dabbling with charms and necromantic practices.

It is wiser for theosophists to study the doctrine of brotherhood and its application, to purify their motives and actions, so that after patient work for many lives, if necessary, in the great cause of humanity, they may at last reach that point where all knowledge and all power will be theirs by right.

EUSEBIO URBAN
Path, May, 1890

OF OCCULT POWERS AND
THEIR ACQUIREMENT

THERE are thousands of people in the United States, as well in the ranks of the Society as outside, who believe that there are certain extraordinary occult powers to be encompassed by man. Such powers as thought reading, seeing events yet to come, unveiling the motives of others, apportation of objects, and the like, are those most sought after, and nearly all desired with a selfish end in view. The future is inquired into so as to enable one to speculate in stocks and another to circumvent competitors. These longings are pandered to here and there by men and societies who hold out delusive hopes to their dupes that, by the payment of money, the powers of nature may be invoked.

Even some of our own members have not been guiltless of seeking after such wonderful fruit of knowledge with those who would barter the Almighty, if they could, for gold.

Another class of earnest theosophists, however, have taken a different ground. They have thought that certain Adepts who really possess power over nature, who can both see and hear through all space, who can transport solid objects through space and cause written messages to appear at a distance with beautiful sounds of astral bells, ought to intervene, and by the exercise of the same power make these earnest disciples hear sounds ordinarily called occult, and thus easily transmit information and help without the aid of telegraph or mailboat. But that these Beings will not do this has been stated over and over again; for the kingdom of heaven is not given away, it must be "taken by violence." It lies there before us to be entered upon and occupied, but that can be only after a battle which, when won, entitles the victor to remain in undisturbed possession.

As many have seemed to forget these rules, I thought it well to offer them the following words from one of those very Adepts they seek to meet:

The educing of the faculty of hearing occult sounds would be not at all the easy matter you imagine. It was never done to any one of us, for the iron rule is that what powers one gets he must himself acquire, and when acquired and ready for use, the powers lie dumb and dormant in their potentiality like the wheels in a music box, and only then it is easy to wind the key and start them....Yet every earnestly-disposed man may acquire such powers practically; that is the finality of it. There are no more distinctions of persons in this than there are as to whom the sun shall shine upon or the air give vitality to. There are powers of all nature before you; take what you can.

This is perfectly clear and strictly according to the Secret Canon. "When the materials are all prepared and ready, the architect shall appear"; and when we have acquired the powers we seek, by educing them ourselves from our inner being, the Master will then be ready and able to start into exercise that which we have obtained.

But-even here is an important point. If the Master can, so to say, wind the key and thus start the machinery, He can also refuse to give the necessary impulse. For reasons that have to do with the motives and life of students, it may be advisable for a while not to permit the exercise of these powers which "lie dumb and dormant in their potentiality." To sanction their use might in one lead to the ruin of other lives, or in another to personal disaster and retardation of true progress.

Therefore the Master says that quite often he may not only refuse to give the start, but yet further may prevent the wheels from moving.

THERE ARE THE POWERS OF ALL NATURE BEFORE YOU; TAKE WHAT YOU CAN.

Rodriguez Undiano

Path, February, 1889.

OF STUDYING THEOSOPHY

It is often asked: How should I or my friend study theosophy?

In beginning this study a series of "don'ts" should first engage the student's attention. Don't imagine that you know everything, or that any man in scientific circles has uttered the last word on any subject; don't suppose that the present day is the best, or that the ancients were superstitious, with no knowledge of natural laws. Don't forget that arts, sciences, and metaphysics did not have their rise with European civilization; and don't forget that the influence of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle of ancient Greece is still imposed upon the modern mind. Don't think that our astronomers would have made anything but a mess of the zodiac if the old Chaldeans had not left us the one we use. Don't forget that it is easy to prove that civilization of the highest order has periodically rolled around this globe and left traces great and small behind. Don't confuse Buddhism with Brahmanism, or imagine that the Hindus are Buddhists; and don't take the word of English or German sanscrit scholars in explanation of the writings and scriptures of eastern nations whose thoughts are as foreign in their form to ours as our countries are. One should first be prepared to examine with a clear and unbiased mind.

But suppose the enquirer is disposed at the outset to take the word of theosophical writers, then caution is just as necessary, for theosophical literature does not bear the stamp of authority. We should all be able to give a reason for the hope that is within us, and we cannot do that if we have swallowed without study the words of others.

But what is study? It is not the mere reading of books, but rather long, earnest, careful thought upon that which we have taken up. If a student accepts reincarnation and karma as true doctrines, the work is but begun. Many theosophists accept doctrines of that name, but are not able to say what it is they have accepted. They do not pause to find out what reincarnates, or how, when, or why karma has its effects, and often do not know what the word means. Some at first think that when they die they will reincarnate, without reflecting that it is the lower personal I they mean, which cannot be born again in a body. Others think that karma is - well, karma, with no clear idea of classes of karma, or whether of not it is punishment or reward or both. Hence a careful learning from one or two books of the statement of the doctrines, and then a more careful study of them, are absolutely necessary.

There is too little of such right study among theosophists, and too much reading of new books. No student can tell whether Mr. Sinnett in Esoteric Buddhism writes reasonably unless his book is learned and not merely skimmed. Although his style is clear, the matter treated is difficult, needing firm lodgment in the mind, followed by careful thought. A proper use of his book, The Secret Doctrine, The Key to Theosophy, and all other matter written upon the constitution of man, leads to an acquaintance with the doctrines as to the being most concerned, and only when that acquaintance is obtained is one fitted to understand the rest.

Another branch of study is that pursued by natural devotees, those who desire to enter into the work itself for the good of humanity. Those should study all branches of theosophical literature all the harder, in order to be able to clearly explain it to others, for a weak reasoner or an apparently credulous believer has not much weight with others.

Western theosophists need patience, determination, discrimination, and memory, if they ever intend to seize and hold the attention of the world for the doctrines they disseminate.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, January, 1890

AN OLD MESSAGE FROM THE MASTER

The following message was not among those which Mrs. Besant intended to use against me - because it was not known to the prosecutors - in the recent proceedings, which never should have been begun because unconstitutional. I obtained it Nov. 1st, 1891, in the distant State of Wyoming, U.S. It reads:

We sent him to London and made him stay so long in order to lay down currents which have since operated, for inasmuch as "sacred names" were assailed long ago the present reaction in England more than counterbalances the assault on us which you so much deplore. But the only thing we deplore is the sorrow of the world, which can only be cut off by the philosophy you were such a potent factor in bringing to the West, and which now other disciples are promulgating also. This is the age of the common people although you may not agree - but so it is - and as we see forces at work and gathering by you unseen, we must commend all efforts that give wide-spread notice to even one word of the philosophy.

This is meant for A.P.S. Have you the courage to send it.

[Signed by M.]

I had the courage, copied it at the time it was received, and sent the original to Mr. Sinnett by mail from Wyoming. He must have received it, because otherwise it would have come back to me in accordance with directions on the envelope. If there ever was a genuine message this is one. It refers to the great public excitement in England, about that time, about Theosophy, in the course of which the "sacred names" of the Masters were mentioned. The person referred to as being in London "to lay down currents" is myself. I invite the attention of the prosecutors to this message.

Very probably Mr. Sinnett will not contest the genuineness of the message, because he sent me, nearly about that time, a letter from himself addressed to the Master, requesting me to transmit it and procure the answer, if any. Many of us - those who accept the above as genuine - will find it of interest, seeing that it confirms what several hold, that this is the era of the masses, and that Master has more interest in efforts for their good than on the progress of any particular person or class.

Being under no obligation to secrecy I cannot be blamed for giving out the foregoing facts at this time, when I am attacked at every point; it will certainly derogate nothing from Mr. Sinnett's standing to admit the fact of his believing, at the time mentioned, that I could transmit a request or letter to the Master.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

The Irish Theosophist
February 15, 1895

ON EVOLUTION

A correspondent of PATH says:

I am unable to get a comprehensive view of evolution theosophically. Does a "round" mean once around the 7 planets which belong to the earth chain? If so, how is the moon our parent?

A round means a going once around the seven globes of the earth-chain. It was also called a "ring." Some have confused it with incarnating in the seven races on any one planet. The seven races have to go seven times around the seven globes of this chain, developing in each the characteristics of each, which cannot be obtained in any other way.

There are seven globes in the chain, of which the earth is one. The other six are not visible to us, as they are made of matter in a different state, and on a different plane from matter as we know it and see it. The first race began on Globe No. 1 and carried on evolution there, and then went to Globe No. 2, and so on all around the seven. This it did seven times. Race No. 2 proceeded similarly, having in its possession all that was gained by No.1. We are now the Fifth Race engaged in going round the whole chain; hence we are called those of the Fourth Round, but are the Fifth Race. We must go round the whole chain of 7 planets 3 times more before as a race we are perfected.

When the Seventh Round is finished, as well as the halt for rest that follows, we begin again as a Sixth Race and go through Seven Rounds as such. When that is concluded we begin as the Seventh Race and repeat the process of Seven Rounds through the chain, thus bringing the grand evolution for this chain to a perfect end. After that we pass on upon a higher plane, the possessors of all the knowledge and development acquired during that sevenfold progress. This is the outline of the grand scheme, and, as you see, includes the whole series of seven planets.
But in every round of planets, on each one, and in each race as it begins and proceeds, there are many sub-races, root races, and offshoots, all necessary in the process of development for each race. For a race cannot spring up in a moment, out of nothing; it must grow forth from something. Therefore a new race is made by offshoots making sub-roots that finally grow slowly in the main race which will be. This is occurring in America, and hence here is afforded a present and perfect illustration. For here many examples of various root and sub-and offshoot races coming together, by generation of children among themselves, are producing the sub-root for the new race. This process will go on for a long period, during which old, decayed branchlets and offshoot families and races will be absorbed into the new growing stem, and when the time is ready-a long way off-for the new race, all will have to migrate to the next planet.

It is now plain that ring and round do not mean the process of going through the race in its process of formation on any planet, as its beginnings come on and are finally replaced by its finished product, but that these words refer to the grand march around the whole chain of globes, of which this earth is the fourth.

The question about the moon ought now to be clear. It is evident that the moon is not one of the 7 planets. By reading the Secret Doctrine we see that the moon is a deserted planet on the same plane as the earth-a fourth-round globe of a previous manvantara. It is the old fourth globe of an old chain, and is the parent of the earth, while the other six globes of our chain have similar parents, visible only from those globes. It is our parent because we came from it when the hour struck, long ago, for the migration from it of the humanity that had thereon passed through its grand sevenfold pilgrimage. In like manner, some future day, this earth will become "a moon" to some newer planet not now born.

Ques. 2-If the prototype of all forms has always existed, how can new forms come through evolution of the physical or material?

New material forms may come, but they are not prototypes. The latter are not material, therefore no confusion between the two can exist. There is evolution of material forms, but prototypes remain unaffected. This is a question which requires the questioner to look up exact meanings of the words used by him. It is not substantial. Fix the true meanings and the confusion will vanish.

Ques. 3-If man made his first appearance as a material body, why does the embryo pass through all the changes, vegetable and animal, before birth?

It is the order of nature. All the atoms have to grow used to their work before they can do it well and quickly. At first as astral atoms only, they do it over and over again until all the atoms acquire the habit of doing it without fail. They then go on to other work. This having been the way for ages, the human body is now gestated in nine months, whereas at earlier periods such gestation took years, later on fewer years, and finally as now. In future times the process will be finished more quickly, and then the embryo will pass through all these old states almost instantaneously. The reason, therefore, is that the physical human molecules of this period of evolution have only acquired the ability to pass through the series in nine months, as a result of millions of years of prior slow work. For nature goes by steps, one at a time. The embryo exhibits these phases because there are still left in the matter used the old impressions, and racial evolution is gradually wiping them out by transforming them into new organs, by eliminating those not useful and by condemning others. When the work is fully understood by every atom so that it acts with unerring, machine-like precision, it will be possible to bring out a body in a very short space of time.

Path, July, 1892

ON THE FUTURE: A FEW REFLECTIONS

Although I am an American citizen, the place of my birth was in Ireland, and in what I am about to say I cannot be accused of Columbia-mania, for no matter how long might be my life I could never be an American. For that perhaps it is right, since it is compulsory, to wait for some distant incarnation.

Now, either H. P. B. was right or she was wrong in what she says in the Secret Doctrine about the future of America. If wrong, then all this may be dismissed as idle speculation. But, if right, then all thoughtful Theosophists must take heed, weigh well, mentally appropriate and always remember what are her words as well as the conclusions to which they lead.

In the first pages of the second volume she speaks of five great Continents. First, the Imperishable Sacred Land [this is at the North Pole, W.Q.J.]; second, the Hyperborean, now part of it is in Northern Asia; third, Lemuria, sunk long ago, but leaving some remains, islands, the points of high mountain ranges; fourth, Atlantis, presumably in the Atlantic Ocean, now below the level of the water, but with perhaps Teneriffe and Atlas as reminders; and fifth, "was America."

From a survey of the book, digging in notes and culling from the text here and there, the conclusion is irresistible that although the present America is not the actual Continent as it is to be, it is a portion of it; and certainly is now the nursery for the race that will in the future occupy the sixth Continent, which for the sixth Great Root-Race will emerge from the waters. Where? Perhaps when the present America has been split up by tremendous cataclysms, leaving here and there large pieces on its western side, it is in the Pacific Ocean that the great mass of the new one will come up from the long sleep below the sea. Rightly then will the great far western ocean have been named Pacific, for that Race will not be given to contest nor hear of wars or rumours of war, since it will be too near the seventh, whose mission it must be to attain to the consummation, to seize and hold the Holy Grail.

Turn to page 444 and onward of the second volume. Read there that the Americans have become in only three hundred years a primary race pro tem., in short, the germs of the sixth sub-race, to blossom in a few more centuries into the pioneers of that one which must succeed to the present European fifth sub-race in all its characteristics. Then after about 25,000 years, which you will note is meant for a great sidereal cycle of a little over that length of time, this new race will prepare for the seventh sub-race. Cataclysms will then fall upon you; lands and nations will be swept away, first of all being the European, including the British Isles - if not gone before - and then parts of both North and South America. And how puny, mongrel, indeed, will be the remains of the scientists of today, great masters of microbes now, but then to be looked upon as strange remains of the Nineteenth Century, when, as the people will tell each other then, so many, with Truth before them, laughed at it and stoned its apostles, dancing a fantastic dance meanwhile around the altar of invisible matter.

It seems as if some power, deliberately planning, had selected North and South America for the place where a new primary root-race should be begun. These two continents were evidently the seats of ancient races and not the habitat of wild undeveloped men. The red man of the Northern one has all the appearance and beliefs of a once great race. He believes in one God, a Devachan of happy hunting after death. Some tribes have diagrams of how the world was formed and peopled, that strangely resemble Hindû cosmogony, and their folklore bears deep marks of having come down from an older and better time. Following the course of exploration southwards, we we find accumulating evidences all the way of a prior civilization now gone with the cyclic wave which brought it up. Central America is crowded with remains in stone and brick; and so on south still we discover similar proofs. In course of time these continents became what might be called arable land, lying waiting, recuperating, until the European streams of men began to pour upon it. The Spanish overflowed South America and settled California and Mexico; the English, French, and Spanish took the North, and later all nations came, so that now in both continents nearly every race is mixed and still mixing. Chinese even have married women of European blood; Hindûs are also here; the ancient Parsî race has its representatives; the Spanish mixed with the aborigines, and the slaveholders with the Africans. I doubt not but that some one from every race known to us has been here and has left, within the last two hundred years, some impression through mixture of blood.

But the last remnants of the fifth Continent, America, will not disappear until the new race has been some time born. Then a new Dwelling, the sixth Continent, will have appeared over the waters to receive the youth who will tower above us as we do above the pigmies of Africa. But no America as we now know it will exist. Yet these men must be the descendants of the race that is now rising here. Otherwise our philosophy is all wrong. So then, in America now is forming the new sub-race, and in this land was founded the present Theosophical Society: two matters of great importance. It was to the United States, observe, that the messenger of the Masters came, although Europe was just as accessible for the enterprise set on foot. Later, this messenger went to India and then to Europe, settling down in the British Isles. All of this is of importance in our reflections. For why in America at first does she begin the movement, and why end her part of it in England? One might be led to ask why was not an effort made at all costs to give the last impulse outwardly in the land of promise where she began the work?

Do not imagine for one moment, O ye English brothers of mine, that London was selected for this because the beauties of your island called her, or for that she had decided at the finish that after all a mistake had been made in not going there first. It was all out of stern necessity, with a wisdom derived from many older heads, having in view the cycles as they sweep resistlessly forward. The point where the great energy is started, the centre of force, is the more important, and not the place at which it is ended. And this remains true, no matter how essential the place of ending may be in the scheme. What, do you suppose India is not as important? and would not that land have offered seemingly a better spot than all for the beginning of the magnum opus? Adepts do not make mistakes like that.

America's discovery is ascribed to Christopher Columbus. Although it is doubted, yet no one doubts that the Spanish people did the most at first in peopling it, meanwhile working off some old and making some new Karma, by killing many of the aborigines. Thus it is that doomed people rush on to their doom, even as the troops of insects, animals and men were seen by Arjuna to rush into Krishna's flaming mouths. But later came the sturdy stock from England, who, in the greatest nation, the most enduring on this continent, have left their impress indelibly in the people, in its laws, in its constitution, its customs, its literature and language. Perhaps England and Ireland are the gateways for the Egos who incarnate here in the silent work of making a new race. Maybe there is some significance in the fact that more lines of steamships conveying human freight come to the United States from England, passing Ireland on the way as the last seen land of the old world, than from anywhere else. The deeds of men, the enterprises of merchants, and the wars of soldiers all follow implicitly a law that is fixed in the stars, and while they copy the past they ever symbolize the future.

Did H. P. B. only joke when she wrote in her book that Ireland is an ancient Atlantean remnant, and England a younger Isle, whose rising from the sea was watched by wise men from Erin's shore? Perhaps the people of that old land may have an important influence in the new race of America. It would appear from comparison that they might have had, and probably will in the future. Perhaps, politically, since many expect social disturbances in America. In such a case any student of character will admit that the Irish, ignorant or not, will stand for law and order - for her sons are not battling here with an ancient foe. Why, too, by strange freak of fate is the great stone of destiny in Westminster Abbey fixed under the coronation chair on which the Queen was crowned? Let us also be informed if there be any finger-shadow pointing to the future in the fact that England's Queen, crowned over that stone, ¹ is Empress of India, from which we claim the Aryans came, and where their glorious long-forgotten knowledge is preserved? Her name is Victory. It is the victory for "the new order of Ages"; and that new order began in America, its advent noted and cut on the as yet unused obverse side of the present seal of the United States Government. A victory in the union of the Egos from East and West; for England stretches one hand over to the home of the new race, which she can never own, with the other governing India, and completes the circuit. It may be a fleeting picture, perhaps to be wiped out for a while in a stream of blood, but such is the way the cycles roll and how we may learn to read the future. For England's destiny is not complete, nor has the time struck. None of us hug foolish delusions too long, and even if Ireland were once a most sacred place, that is no reason why we should want to go there. For in America those whose Karma has led them there will work for the same end and brotherhood as others left in India and Europe. The dominant language and style of thought in America is English, albeit transforming itself every day. It is there that silently the work goes on; there European fathers and mothers have gone, establishing currents of attraction that will inevitably and unceasingly draw into reincarnation Egos similar to themselves. And the great forward and backward rush is completed by the retarded Egos as they die out of other nations, coming meanwhile into flesh again among the older races left behind.

* * * *

At least such seemed the view while the clouds lifted - and then once more there was silence.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, F.T.S.

Lucifer, March, 1892

(1) It is an interesting fact that in India there is an important ceremony called "mounting the stone."

ONE OF THE SIGNS OF THE CYCLE

THE people of all nations now turn their eyes to America, and that name for them stands for the United States. Its energy, activity, and freedom hold the imagination of the foreigner, and here he thinks aspirations may be realized, unfettered by the chains of caste, kingly prerogative, or religious restraint. With all that, Europeans often laugh at the newness and crudity of America, yet admiration cannot be withheld for the tremendous nerve power, the facile adaptability, the swift onward rush of the civilization beginning to bloom in the United States. It is the occult forces working in this land and really affecting all men, whether they know it or not, that is the reason.

Men who are not counted seers often see centuries into the future; and Tom Paine, the last who could be called a seer, had one such sight about America, although he called it a thought or "that which he saw with his mind's eye." When he was yet in England he wrote that he seemed to see a great vista opening for the world in the affairs in America. This was before he wrote Common Sense, which, as George Washington said, did more for our independence than any other thing. Paine was destined to be a great factor in American affairs, and naturally-in the occultist's eyes at least-he would see in advance some slight vision of the "great experiment" in which he was so soon to take an influential share. This experiment was not conceived alone by mortal minds, but is a part of the evolutionary plan, for here the next great movement has already begun and will reach a high development.

Its greatest importance for us is theosophically. We think, quite naturally, that the theosophic ideas and culture are supreme, but if we needed confirmation from the outer barbarians we have it in the lately-written words of the great Frenchman, Emile Burnouf, who said that one of the three great factors in religious development of today is the Theosophical Society. If we assume this to be true, a glance at statistics will point to one of the signs of the cycle.

In England there are almost 30 million people, yet for fifteen years the Theosophical Society has not made much progress there. For some years but one branch existed-the London Lodge, and now there are not ten. India has a population of 350,000,000, but if a count were taken we should find that the possible material available for the creation of T.S. Branches would not reach 1,000,000 souls. The reason for this is that out of the whole of 350,000,000 there are an immense number who cannot sympathise with the movement, indeed can hardly know of it, because they are uneducated and unable to speak or read English; the English-speaking Hindu is one who joins us there. And we find in India say 175 active Branches.

Turning now to America-to the United States where Theosophy has been promulgated-we can only reckon on a population of say 50,000,000. Yet those 50,000,000 have furnished us with 36 Branches, and more rapidly coming into existence. Those who work for and in the T.S. in the United States know of the great interest there is in the subject in every part of the country, and can feel quite sure that not only may there very soon be one hundred Branches here, hut also that nearly every man, woman, and child will ere long know of the word of Theosophy and of the Society bearing its name. Several causes make this possible in the United States as nowhere else. There is a wider spread of general English education, a more constant reading of newspapers and magazines by all classes from lowest to highest, and a keener spirit of inquiry working in a freer mental atmosphere, than in any other country.

The statistics given lead to but one conclusion: they place the possibilities of theosophical growth in the United States ahead of India. Any one can calculate the proportions in the proposition: given the U.S. with 50 million people and 36 Branches, more than two-thirds of which have been formed within the last three years, and India numbering one million available people and 175 Branches, of which the greater number have been in existence many years, which is greater proportional growth and which gives greater promise for the future?

But the analysis must not end here, for the conditions and the people are different. Most of India's people will probably for many centuries remain as they are, some technical idolators, some Jains, some Mohammedans, some Fire worshippers, and some Buddhists. But here the lines of demarcation between the different sects are being shaded into disappearance, there are no great differences of religion and of caste, and people of all avowed religions are daily finding theosophy creeping into their thoughts and their literature. It is a sign of the Cycle; it points to India as the conserver of the ancient wisdom-religion, and to America as its new and vigorous champion who will adopt those old truths without fear of caste or prejudice, and exemplify them through the new race to be brought forth in the old Fifth continent. The careful student of Theosophy will not fail to see that America alone, of all lands, meets all the requirements respecting the problem. "Where is the new race to be born?" H.P. Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine calls it the Fifth continent, although for the time including Europe under that head. Here we see the fusion of all races going on before our eyes, and here too is the greatest push of energy, of inquiry, and of achievement.

William Brehon

Path, May, 1890

THE ORIENTAL DEPARTMENT

AMERICAN SECTION

The year 1891 is to mark an era in the Theosophical Society. The General Secretary desires to announce that with the consent of the Executive Committee he will begin this month the work of the ORIENTAL DEPARTMENT in order to carry out more effectually than ever before the second object of the Society - the investigation of Aryan and other religions, sciences, and literature. It is purposed to procure articles or translations relating to eastern religions, philosophies, literature, folk-lore, social customs and observances from competent Hindus, Parsees, and other Asiatic members and persons. These will be issued in pamphlet form monthly or oftener as funds allow, and will be distributed free to all Branches and members-at-large in good standing.

An extension of this scheme includes the employment of pandits - scholars - in India and elsewhere as soon as the funds come to hand. It is obvious to anyone who will inspect the cash book that our funds will not now permit of the enlargement of this scheme, but it could be put into extensive operation at once if members would give more than the small fee required by the Constitution. Through this Department the General Secretary hopes to be able to furnish a fund of valuable and interesting information such as cannot be otherwise obtained except at great expense for books and other means of study. It is certain that what little has been said to our people by interested missionaries and travellers has been very wide of truth in respect to the people of Asia, their manners, customs, literature, and social life. Indeed, but little can be got from Asiatics by such agents, and it is believed that only through our Society the real truth may be reached. Such a general and correct knowledge of distant people, all brothers of the human family, will do much to enlarge the boundaries of our thoughts, to abate race prejudice, and in all ways tend to strengthen the feeling of brotherhood which it is the aim of the Theosophical Society to arouse. Nor is there any reason why the T.S. should not be a great Asiatic investigating Society.

Any one desiring to aid the Society in this work can do so by making donations to the General Treasury, as the Executive Committee has passed an order that the general fund may be used for this purpose in addition to the items of rent, clerk hire, Forum and Branch paper printing to which it is now devoted.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
General Secretary

Path, February, 1891

__________

This Department of our work was set on foot in the U.S. with the object of bringing about a closer union between East and West by giving our American members a more complete knowledge of India than they could otherwise obtain. The example has been followed in Europe, where the new European Section has started a similar activity.

In order to make the work more uniform, the European Convention directed its Secretary to endeavor to have the American Oriental Department act n concurrence with the European, and this will no doubt be done. As the General Secretary here has been enabled to secure the services of a pundit in India, it will be easy to transmit to Europe paper matrices of the matter set up here, and the Blavatsky Press can cast metal stereos so that the two issues may correspond.

As the Adyar Oriental Library is gradually growing in importance, that may also be regarded is a part of our Oriental work, and it is purposed to utilize it as much as possible. Indeed, if circumstances had permitted it, the pundit secured for us would have resided there so that it might be made the central office for this branch of the Society's activity. But all this will come in time. With such great distances between us it is difficult to perfect our system quickly, and racial differences of method have also delayed us slightly in the beginning. As time goes on, all defects will be corrected and greater efficiency acquired.

Nor should our members judge the Oriental Department by the issues already published, for they have been necessarily hurried and somewhat imperfect in form. Indeed, there are so many difficulties to overcome that some time must elapse before ever thing will be running smoothly. Our funds as yet will not permit the employment of an American with the ability and time to thoroughly examine each issue so as to find and correct every error in style, fact, or transliteration and translation of words. As the General Secretary's entire time is already engrossed, as well as that of his staff, mistakes will creep in because of the ease with which words in a foreign language, carelessly indited, may be misunderstood. But as we have not yet claimed to be orientalists, any slurs cast upon the Department can be easily passed aside. Time, which proves all things, will prove this enterprise to be of use and value, or will show the necessity of giving it up. The latter contingency is not regarded as possible.

W.Q.J.

Path, September, 1891

OUR SUN AND THE TRUE SUN

Considering how little is known of the sun of this system, it is not to be wondered at that still more is this the case respecting the true sun. Science laughs, of course, at the mystic's "true sun," for it sees none other than the one shining in the heavens. This at least they pretend to know, for it rises and sets each day and can be to some extent observed during eclipses or when spots appear on it, and with their usual audacity the 19th century astronomers learnedly declare all that they do not know about the mighty orb, relegating the ancient ideas on the subject to the limbo of superstitious nonsense. It is not to the modern schools that I would go for information on this subject, because in my opinion, however presumptuous it may seem, they really know but little about either Moon or Sun.

A dispute is still going on as to whether the sun throws out heat. (1) On one hand it is asserted that he does; on the other, that the heat is produced by the combination of the forces from the sun with the elements on and around this earth. The latter would seem to the mystic to be true. Another difference of opinion exists among modern astronomers as to the distance of the sun from us, leaving the poor mystic to figure it out as he may. Even on the subject of spots on our great luminary, everything nowadays is mere conjecture. It is accepted hypothetically - and no more - that there may be a connection between those spots and electrical disturbances here. Some years ago Nasmyth discovered (2) objects (or changes) on the photosphere consisting of what he called "willow leaves," 1000 miles long and 300 miles broad, that constantly moved and appeared to be in shoals. But what are these? No one knows. Science can do no more about informing us than any keen sighted ordinary mortal using a fine telescope. And as to whether these "willow leaves" have any connection with the spots or themselves have relation to earthly disturbances, there is equal silence. To sum it up, then, our scientific men know but little about the visible sun. A few things they must some day find out, such as other effects from sun spots than mere electrical disturbances; the real meaning of sun spots; the meaning of the peculiar color of the sun sometimes observed - such as that a few years ago attributed to "cosmic dust," for the want of a better explanation to veil ignorance; and a few other matters of interest.

But we say that this sun they have been examining is not the real one, nor any sun at all, but is only an appearance, a mere reflection to us of part of the true sun. And, indeed, we have some support even from modern astronomers, for they have begun to admit that our entire solar system is in motion around some far off undetermined centre which is so powerful that it attracts our solar orb and thus draws his entire system with him. But they know not if this unknown centre be a sun. They conjecture that it is, but will only assert that it is a centre of attraction for us. Now it may be simply a larger body, or a stronger centre of energy, than the sun, and in turn quite possibly it may be itself revolving about a still more distant and more powerful centre. In this matter the modern telescope and power of calculation are quickly baffled, because they very soon arrive at a limit in the starry field where, all being apparently stationary because of immense distances, there are no means of arriving at a conclusion. All these distant orbs may be in motion, and therefore it cannot be said where the true centre is. Your astronomer will admit that even the constellations in the Zodiac, immovable during ages past, may in truth be moving, but at such enormous and awful distances that for us they appear not to move.

My object, however, is to draw your attention to the doctrine that there is a true sun of which the visible one is a reflection, and that in this true one there is spiritual energy and help, just as our own beloved luminary contains the spring of our physical life and motion. It is useless now to speculate on which of the many stars in the heavens may be he real sun, for I opine it is none of them, since, as I said before, a physical centre of attraction for this system may only be a grade higher than ours, and the servant of a centre still farther removed. We must work in our several degrees, and it is not in our power to overleap one step in the chain that leads to the highest. Our own sun is, then, for us the symbol of the true one he reflects, and by meditating on "the most excellent light of the true sun" we can gain help in our struggle to assist humanity. Our physical sun is for physics, not metaphysics, while that true one shines down within us. The orb of day guards and sustains the animal economy; the true sun shines into us through its medium within our nature. We should then direct our thought to that true sun and prepare the ground within for its influence, just as we do the ground without for the vivifying rays of the King of Day.

MARTTANDA

Path, February, 1890

(1) Among great scientists such as Newton, Secchi, Pouillet, Spaeren, Rosetti, and others, there is a difference as to estimated heat of the sun shown by their figures, for Pouillet says 1,461° and Waterston 9,000,000°or a variation of 8,998,600&#176!

(2) See Source of Heat in the Sun, R. Hunt, F.R.S. Pop. Sc. Rev. Vol. IV, p. 148.

PAPYRUS

The Tale-teller, shading his gentle eyes from the evening sun, paused a moment while he listened to the soft strains of the music as it floated out from the open Temple. The joyous crowd swept by unheeding except for one or two who dropped out of the current and were left stranded among those who had gathered at his feet. Presently he came back from the realm of harmony whither he had drifted, and as the world-light once more stole over his face he told the tale of:

THREE WHO SOUGHT OUT THE WAY

Word has gone forth over all lands "that all who sought earnestly and in the true manner should find the way to the mysterious Temple of the Veiled Goddess."

Three kings of the land, moved by the power of the words, determined that they also would become students and reach the goal.

Intu, the Illustrious, making ready for the search, deemed nothing else could be more potent in his quest than the seal of his kingdom. Thereupon he bound on his forehead the Great Seal, a hawk.

Kour, the Magnificent, making ready for the way thought nothing could be more powerful in his searching than the seal of his kingdom. Making ready he bound upon his breast the Great Seal, a golden heart.

Kadmon, the Sorrowful -a king only by sufferance, for his kingdom consisted only of that which the others did not value -Kadmon deemed it wise also, inasmuch as they would all journey together, to take his seal; which was the two others in union; but furthermore, he blindfolded his eyes.

The three passing onward encountered many strange and unfamiliar things, for the road was new, and no wayfarer could know more than one step onward, which was the one he was taking. Upon each side, and frequently in front, barring the way, were curious objects, sometimes pleasant and agreeable, but more often quite the reverse. The foliage of the trees was new and strange, while the fruits grew on different sort of trees, while at others the same sort of trees bore entirely dissimilar fruits. The path which they were pursuing was quite the opposite of an ordinary one, for before them it was visible but one step, while it stretched Far into the distance behind them. Intu, however, had already made all plain to himself by a process of reasoning entirely his own. It was, that these things being the direct opposite of all in his own country which he ruled, therefore they could only be caused by some one different from himself -a superior being, that being must be the Goddess- therefore they were upon the right path, at least he was.

Kour thought these things delightful, they were so strange, so new. In fact they were phenomenal and he love phenomena. They gave him such queer sensations, and anything which did that or made him feel other than when in his own hand-must be caused by the Goddess -oh yes, there were on the right path, at least he was. As for Kadmon, he seeing none of these things, could only judge by that which he remembered of his own country. Each of the others, told him of their existence in their own way. This was confusing. He determined, therefore to walk onward as if he were in his own land, but to press steadily on. They were thus, in reality treading three separate paths, and in their several ways they passed many persons who had stopped to rest -to eat or sleep- or because the way was dark and difficult; some because they were too poor, others because they were ill, footsore or blind. Intu lost some time, for he stopped to argue with many on the peculiarities of the way and the logical reasonableness of it, but he had no time to pause for aught else.

Kour felt for the wayfarers, he was sorry for and loved them. If they would only feel as he did they could go on easily, but he had no time to stop to make them feel that way.

Both Intu and he had all such people in their own lands. There was no time to waste on natural things. It was the supernatural in a metaphysical or soul-stirring way they sought.

And Kadmon, the Sorrowful, paused. In his land these were to be found also. He too realized the reasonableness of the way. He too loved it and was exalted by it. He too felt for and loved the other wayfarers. He did more-he sorrowed for them. What mattered it if he did not find the temple immediately, he was young, the others growing old and blind, there were sorrowful and weary. So he stopped and gave this thoughts and help to the ill, cheering the weary, helping the poor, and blindfolded as he was, led the blind over the step he had just passed. So interested did he become in these labors he forgot he was himself seeking the Goddess.

It was but a little distance farther on that they caught up with Intu, which was not surprising as he had reached the end of his path. It had ended at a stone wall. As he could not scale the wall, he sat down to reason "why an ordinary stone wall should obstruct such an extraordinary path?" Being a very perplexing intellectual problem -there he remained. A little farther and Kour was passed. He had encountered a radiant maiden, partially veiled, who told him wondrous tales of strange happenings. Her manner was very mysterious, and he felt she was the Goddess. Taking her hand in his and leaning his head upon her bosom, he was so happy that he knew she was the Goddess and there he remained to dream.

And Kadmon, tarrying with the sorrowful and weary, felt the bandage slip from his eyes, as the light from the rising sun streaming in red and gold over the path fell upon and glorified the ragged wayfarers. In the brilliance over their heads he read the words: "This way lies the path to the Temple" while a soft voice breathed into his soul: "By the way of Intu alone, the path is not found. By that of Kour alone, it is not gained. Both wisely used in unison are guides, while on the road. By something, which is greater than either, only, is the Temple reached. Work on!:

And the sorrowful, taking in his own, the hands of the weary and weak, passed on.

Rameses
Path, September, 1887

THE PERSIAN STUDENT'S DOCTRINE

BEFORE the flashing diamond in the mysterious mountain behind the Temple began to lose its brilliance, many foreigners had visited the Island. Among them were students who came from Persia. Coming that great distance they sought more knowledge, as in their own land the truth was already beginning to be forgotten. It was hidden under a thick crust of fanciful interpretations of the sayings of their sages which were fast turning into superstitious notions. And these young men thought that in the Island, the fame of which had spread over land and sea, they would find learning and wisdom and the way to power. But yet while in such a frame of mind, they regarded some things as settled even for sages. What they said did not have much influence on me until they began to quote some of the old writings from the prophets of their country, attempting to prove that men, though god-like and immortal, transmigrated sometimes backwards into beasts and birds and insects. As some old Buddhist monks had years before given out the same idea with hints of mystery underneath, the sayings of these visitors began to trouble me. They quoted these verses from the prophet the Great Abad:

Those who, in the season of prosperity, experience pain and grief, suffer them on account of their words or deeds in a former body, for which the Most Just now punisheth them.

Whosoever is an evil doer, on him He first inflicteth pain under the human form; for sickness, the sufferings of children while in their mothers womb, and after they are out of it, and suicide, and being hurt by ravenous animals, and death, and being subjected to want from birth till death, are all retributions for past actions; and in like manner as to goodness.

The lion, the tiger, the leopard, the panther, . . . with all ravenous animals, whether birds or quadrupeds or creeping things, have once possessed authority: and every one whom they kill hath been their aider or abetter, who did evil by supporting, or assisting, or by the orders of, that exalted class; and having given pain to harmless animals are now punished by their own masters.

The horse submits to be ridden on, and the ox, the camel, the mule, and the ass bear burdens. And these in a former life were men who imposed burdens on others unjustly.

Such persons as are foolish and evil doers, being enclosed in the body of vegetables, meet with the reward of their stupidity and misdeeds. And such as possess illaudable knowledge and do evil are enclosed in the body of minerals until their sins be purified; after which they are delivered from this suffering, and are once more united to a human body; and according as they act in it they again meet with retribution.

These young men made such good arguments of these texts, and dwelt so strongly upon the great attainments of Abad, who was beyond doubt a prophet of insight, that doubts arose in my mind. While the verses did not deny the old doctrine of man's reincarnation, they added a new view to the matter that had never suggested itself to me before. The students pointed out that there was a very wise and consistent doctrine in those verses wherein it was declared that murderers, tyrants, and such men would be condemned to inhabit the bodies of such murderous beasts as lions and tigers. They made out a strong case on the other verses also, showing that those weak but vicious men who had aided and abetted the stronger and more violent murderers should be condemned to precipitation out of the human cycle into the bodies of defenseless animals, in company with ferocious beasts, by the strength and ferocity of which they would at last be destroyed themselves. And thus, said these visitors, they proceed in each other's company, lower and lower in the scale of organized life, reaching at last those kingdoms of nature like the mineral, where differentiation in the direction of man is not yet visible. And from there the condemned beings would be ground out into the great mass and slime at the very bottom of nature's ladder.

Not wishing to admit or accept these doctrines from strangers, I engaged in many arguments with them on the matter, until at last they left the Island to continue their pilgrimage.

So one day, being troubled in mind about these sayings of Abad, which, indeed, I heard from the students were accepted in many countries and given by several other prophets, I sought out the old man who so often before had solved problems for me. He was a man of sorrow, for although possessor of power and able to open up the inner planes of nature, able to give to a questioner the inner sight for a time so that one could see for himself the real truth of material things, something ever went with him that spoke of a sorrow he could not tell about. Perhaps he was suffering for a fault the magnitude of which no one knew but himself; perhaps the final truths eluded him; or maybe he had a material belief at bottom. But he was always kind, and ever ready to give me the help I needed provided I had tried myself in every way and failed to obtain it.

"Brother," I said, "do we go into animals when we die?"

"Who said that we do?" was his answer.

"It is declared by the old prophet Abad of the Worshippers of Fire that we thus fall down from our high estate gained with pain and difficulty."

"Do you believe it; have you reasoned it out or accepted the doctrine?"

"No," I said, "I have not accepted it. Much as I may reason on it, there are defects in my replies, for there seems to be consistency in the doctrine that the ferocious may go into the ferocious and vicious into the wild animals; the one destroying the other and man, the hunter, killing the ferocious. Can you solve it?"

Turning on me the deep and searching gaze he used for those who asked when he would determine if curiosity alone moved them, he said, "I will show you the facts and the corrupted doctrine together, on the night of the next full moon."

Patiently I waited for the moon to grow, wondering, supposing that the moon must be connected with the question, because we were said to have come by the way of the moon like a flock of birds who migrated north or south according to their nature. At last the day came and I went to the old man. He was ready. Turning from the room he took me to a small cave near the foot of the Diamond Mountain. The light of the diamond seemed to illuminate the sky as we paused at the entrance. We went in by the short passage in front, and here, where I had never been before, soft footfalls of invisible beings seemed to echo as if they were retreating before us, and half-heard whispers floated by us out into the night. But I had no fear. Those footfalls, though strange, had no malice, and such faint and melodious whispering aroused no alarm. He went to the side of the cave so that we looked at the other side. The passage had a sharp turn near the inner entrance, and no light fell around us. Thus we waited in silence for some time.

"Look quietly toward the opposite wall," said the old man, "and waver not in thought."

Fixing an unstrained gaze in the direction of the other side, it soon seemed to quiver, then an even vibration began across it until it looked like a tumbling mass of clouds. This soon settled into a grey flat surface like a painter's canvas, that was still as the clear sky and seemingly transparent. It gave us light and made no reflection.

"Think of your question, of your doubts, and of the young students who have raised them; think not of Abad, for he is but a name," whispered my guide.

Then, as I revolved the question, a cloud arose on the surface before me; it moved, it grew into shapes that were dim at first. They soon became those of human beings. They were the living pictures of my student friends. They were conversing, and I too was there but less plain than they. But instead of atmosphere being around them they were surrounded with ether, and streams of ether full of what I took to be corporeal atoms in a state of change continually rushed from one to the other. After I had accustomed my sight to this, the old man directed me to look at one of the students in particular. From him the stream of ether loaded with atoms, very dark in places and red in others, did not always run to his fellows, but seemed to be absorbed elsewhere. Then when I had fixed this in my mind all the other students faded from the space, their place taken by some ferocious beasts that prowled around the remaining student, though still appearing to be a long distance from him. And then I saw that the stream of atoms from him was absorbed by those dreadful beasts, at the same time that a mask fell off, as it were, from his face, showing me his real ferocious, murderous mind.

"He killed a man on the way, in secret. He is a murderer at heart," said my guide. "This is the truth that Abad meant to tell. Those atoms fly from all of us at every instant. They seek their appropriate center; that which is similar to the character of him who evolves them. We absorb from our fellows whatever is like unto us. It is thus that man reincarnates in the lower kingdoms. He is the lord of nature, the key, the focus, the highest concentrator of nature's laboratory. And the atoms he condemns to fall thus to beasts will return to him in some future life for his detriment or his sorrow. But he, as immortal man, cannot fall. That which falls is the lower, the personal, the atomic. He is the brother and teacher of all below him. See that you do not hinder and delay all nature by your failure in virtue."

Then the ugly picture faded out and a holy man, named in the air in gold "Abad," took his place. From him the stream of atoms, full of his virtue, his hopes, aspirations, and the impression of his knowledge and power, flowed out to other Sages, to disciples, to the good in every land. They even fell upon the unjust and the ferocious, and then thoughts of virtue, of peace, of harmony grew up where those streams flowed. The picture faded, the cloudy screen vibrated and rolled away. We were again in the lonely cave. Faint footfalls echoed round the walls, and soft whispers as of peace and hope trembled through the air.

BRYAN KINNAVAN

Path, October, 1892

PLAIN THEOSOPHICAL TRACES

IN the Key to Theosophy the author says that at the last quarter of each century there is always a distinct movement partaking of the nature of the present Theosophical one, and this opinion is held by many Theosophists. Can these efforts be traced? Did any people call themselves by the name "Theosophist" one hundred years ago? Is it necessary that all such movements should have been called in the past "Theosophical"? And if the claim that such movements are started by the Adepts be true, is the present Society the only body with which those beings work?

Taking up the last question first, we may turn to H.P.B. for authority. She often said that while the T. S. movement of today was distinctly under the care of the Adepts, it was not the only one through which effect was sought to be made on the race-thought and ethics, but that in many different ways efforts were constantly put forward. But still, she insisted, the T. S. wears the badge, so to say, of the Eastern and Ancient Schools, and therefore has on it the distinctive mark or what the Sanskrit calls lakshana - of the old and united Lodge of Adepts. Inquiring further of reason and tradition, we find that it would be against both to suppose that one single organization should be the sole channel for the efforts of the Brotherhood. For if that Brotherhood has the knowledge and power and objects attributed to it, then it must use every agency which is in touch with humanity. Nor is it necessary to assume that the distinct efforts made in each century, as contra-distinguished from the general current of influence in all directions, should be called Theosophical. The Rosicrucians are
often supposed not to have existed at all as a body, but deep students have come to the conclusion that they had an organization. They were Christian in their phraseology and very deep mystics; and while they spoke of Holy Ghost, Sophia, and the like, they taught Theosophy. They were obliged by the temper of the time to suit themselves to the exigencies of the moment, for it would have been extreme folly to destroy the hope of making any effect by rushing out in opposition then. It is different now, when the air and the thought are free and men are not burned by a corrupt church for their opinions. In one sense the T. S. is the child of the Rosicrucian Society of the past. H.P.B. often said this, and inquiry into their ideas confirms the declaration. The Rosicrucians were Christian in the beginning and descendants afterwards of Christians. Even today it is hinted that in one of the great cities of this new Republic there is a great charity begun and carried on with money which has been given by descendants of the Rosicrucians under inward impulse directed by certain of the Adepts who were members of that body. For blood does count for something in this, that until an Adept has passed up into the seventh degree he is often moved in accordance with old streams of heredity. Or to put it another way, it is often easier for an Adept to influence one who is in his direct physical line than one who by consanguinity as well as psychic heredity is out of the family.

Looking into Germany of 200 years ago, we at once see Jacob Boehme. He was an ignorant shoemaker, but illuminated from within, and was the friend and teacher of many great and learned men. His writings stirred up the Church; they have influence today. His life has many indications in it of help from the Masters of Wisdom. A wide-spread effect from his writings can be traced through Germany and over to France even after his death. He called himself a Christian, but he was also named "Theosopher," which is precisely Theosophist, for it was only after his day that people began to use "ist" instead of "er." Long after his death the influence lasted. In the sixties many hundreds of his books were deliberately sent all over the world. They were given free to libraries all over the United States, and prepared the way for the work of the Theosophical Society in an appreciable measure, though not wholly.

One hundred years ago there was such a movement in France, one of the agents of which was Louis Claude, Count St. Martin, whose correspondence was called "Theosophical correspondence." He refers to Boehme, and also to unseen but powerful help which saved him from dangers during the Revolution. His books, L'Homme de Desir and others, were widely read, and there are hints of a Society which, however, was compelled to keep itself secret. At the same date almost may be noted the great American Revolution influenced by Thomas Paine, who, though reviled now by ignorant theologians, was publicly thanked by Washington and the first Congress. This republic is a Theosophical effort, for it gives freedom, and fortunately does not declare for any particular religion in the clauses of its Constitution. Hints have been thrown out that the Adepts had some hand in the revolt of the Colonies in 1775. In replying to Mr. Sinnett some years ago, it was written by his Teacher that the Brotherhood dealt with all important human movements, but no one could arraign the body at the bar and demand proofs.

Bro. Buck wrote in 1889: "I have a volume entitled Theosophical Transactions of the Philadelphian Society, London, 1697, and another dated entitled Introduction to Theosophy or the Science of the Mystery of Christ, and in 1 856 Theosophical Miscellanies was issued."

About 1500 years ago Ammonius Saccas made a similar effort which was attended with good results. He had almost the same platform as the T. S., and taught that the aim of Jesus was to show people the truth in all religions and to restore the ancient philosophy to its rightful seat. It is not at all against the theory we are dealing with that the various efforts were not dubbed with the same name. Those who work for the good of humanity, whether they be Adepts or not, do not care for a mere name; it is the substantive effort they seek, and not a vindication in the eyes of men of being first or original or anything else.

But we have only considered the Western World. All these centuries since A.D.1, and long before that, Theosophical efforts were put forth in Asia, for we must not forget that our theories, as well as those of Ammonius Saccas, are Eastern in their origin. However much nations may at first ignore the heathen and barbarian, they at last came to discover that it is frequently to the heathen the Christian owes his religion and philosophy. So while Europe was enjoying the delights of rude and savage life, the Easterns were elaborating, refining, and perfecting the philosophy to which we owe so much. We who believe in the Adepts as Brothers of Humanity must sup-pose that ignorance did not prevail in the Brotherhood as to the effect sure to be one day produced in Europe whenever her attention could be diverted from money-making and won to the great Eastern stores of philosophy. This effect came about through England, Germany, and France. Frenchmen first drew attention to the Upanishads, Germans went in for Sanscrit, and England conquered India, so that her metaphysical mines could be examined in peace. We have seen the result of all this more and more every year. There is less ignorant, narrow prejudice against the "heathen," the masses are beginning to know that the poor Hindu is not to be despised in the field of thought, and a broader, better feeling has gradually developed. This is much better than the glorification of any Brotherhood, and the Lodge is always aiming at such results, for selfish pride, arrogance, and the love of personal dominion have no place therein. Nor should they in our present Theosophical Society.

WILLIAM BREHON
Path, August, 1892

POINTS OF AGREEMENT IN ALL RELIGIONS

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Let me read you a few verses from some of the ancient Scriptures of the world, from the old Indian books held sacred by the Brahmans of Hindustan.(1)

What room for doubt and what room for sorrow is there in him who knows that all spiritual beings are the same in kind and only differ from each other in degree?

The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings and much less this fire. When He shines, everything shines after Him; by His light all this is lighted.

Lead me from the unreal to the real!

Lead me from darkness to light!

Lead me from death to immortality!

Seeking for refuge, I go to that God who is the light of His own thoughts; He who first creates Brahman and delivers the Vedas to him; who is without parts, without actions, tranquil, without fault, the highest bridge to immortality, like a fire that has consumed its fuel. - Mundaka Upanishad.

Such are some of the verses, out of many thousands, which are enshrined in the ancient Hindu Vedas beloved by those we have called "heathen"; those are the sentiments of the people we have called idolaters only.

As the representative of the Theosophical movement I am glad to be here, and to be assigned to speak on what are the points of agreement in all religions. I am glad because Theosophy is to be found in all religions and all sciences. We, as members of the Theosophical Society, endorse to the fullest extent those remarks of your chairman in opening, when he said, in effect, that a theology which stayed in one spot without advancing was not a true theology, but that we had advanced to where theology should include a study of man. Such a study must embrace his various religions, both dead and living. And pushing that study into those regions we must conclude that man is greatly his own reveler, has revealed religion to himself, and therefore that all religions must include and contain truth; that no one religion is entitled to a patent or exclusive claim upon truth or revelation, or is the only one that God has given to man, or the only road along which man can walk to salvation. If this be not true, then your Religious Parliament is no Parliament, but only a body of men admiring themselves and their religion. But the very existence of this Parliament proclaims the truth of what I have said, and shows the need which the Theosophical Society has for nineteen years been asserting, of a dutiful, careful, and brotherly inquiry into all the religions of the world, for the purpose of discovering what the central truths are upon which each and every religion rests, and what the original fountain from which they have come. This careful and tolerant inquiry is what we are here for today; for that the Theosophical Society stands and has stood: for toleration, for unity, for the final and irrevocable death of all dogmatism.

But if you say that religion must have been revealed, then surely God did not wait for several millions of years before giving it to those poor beings called men. He did not, surely, wait until He found one poor Semitic tribe to whom He might give it late in the life of the race? Hence He must have given it in the very beginning, and therefore all present religions must arise from one fount.

What are the great religions of the world and from whence have they come? They are Christianity, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Mohammedanism. The first named is the youngest, with all its warring sects, with Mormonism as an offshoot and with Roman Catholicism boldly claiming sole precedence and truth.

Brahmanism is the old and hoary religion of India, a grown-up, fully-developed system long before either Buddhism or Christianity was born. It extends back to the night of time, and throws the history of religion far, far beyond any place where modern investigators were once willing to place even the beginning of religious thought. Almost the ancient of ancients, it stands in far-off India, holding its holy Vedas in its hands, calmly waiting until the newer West shall find time out of the pursuit of material wealth to examine the treasures it contains.

Buddhism, the religion of Ceylon, of parts of China, of Burmah and Japan and Tibet, comes after its parent Brahmanism. It is historically older than Christianity and contains the same ethics as the latter, the same laws and the same examples, similar saints and identical fables and tales relating to Lord Buddha, the Saviour of Men. It embraces today, after some twenty-five hundred years of life, more people than any other religion, for two-thirds of the human family profess it.

Zoroastrianism also fades into the darkness of the past. It too teaches ethics such as we know. Much of its ritual and philosophy is not understood, but the law of brotherly love is not absent from it; it teaches justice and truth, charity and faith in God, together with immortality. In these it agrees with all, but it differs from Christianity in not admitting a vicarious salvation, which it says is not possible.

Christianity of today is modern Judaism, but the Christianity of Jesus is something different. He taught forgiveness, Moses taught retaliation, and that is the law today in Christian State and Church. "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" is still the recognized rule, but Jesus taught the opposite. He fully agreed with Buddha, who, preaching 500 years before the birth of the Jewish reformer, said we must love one another and forgive our enemies. So modern Christianity is not the religion of Jesus, but Buddhism and the religion of Jesus accord with one another in calling for charity, complete tolerance, perfect non-resistance, absolute self-abnegation.

If we compare Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism together on the points of ritual, dogmas, and doctrines, we find not only agreement but a marvellous similarity as well, which looks like an imitation on the part of the younger Christianity. Did the more modern copy the ancient? It would seem probable. And some of the early Christian Fathers were in the habit of saying, as we find in their writings, that Christianity brought nothing new into the world, that it existed from all time.

If we turn to ritual, so fully exemplified in the Roman Catholic Church, we find the same practices and even similar clothing and altar arrangements in Buddhism, while many of the prescribed rules for the altar and approaching or leaving it are mentioned very plainly in far more ancient directions governing the Brahman when acting as priest. This similarity was so wonderful in the truthful account given by the Catholic priest Abbé Huc that the alarmed Church first explained that the devil, knowing that Christianity was coming, went ahead and invented the whole thing for the Buddhists by a species of ante facto copying, so as to confound innocent Catholics therewith; and then they burned poor Abbé Huc's book. As to stations of the cross, now well known to us, or the rosary, confession, convents, and the like, all these are in the older religion. The rosary was long and anciently used in Japan, where they had over one hundred and seventy-two sorts. And an examination of the mummies of old Egypt reveals rosaries placed with them in the grave, many varieties being used. Some of these I have seen. Could we call up the shades of Babylon's priests, we should doubtless find the same rituals there.

Turning to doctrines, that of salvation by faith is well known in Christianity. It was the cause of a stormy controversy in the time of St. James. But very strangely, perhaps, for many Christians, the doctrine is a very old Brahmanical one. They call it "The Bridge Doctrine," as it is the great Bridge. But with them it does not mean a faith in some particular emanation of God, but God is its aim. God is the means and the way, and God the end of the faith; by complete faith in God, without an intermediary, God will save you. They also have a doctrine of salvation by faith in those great sons of God, Krishna, Rama, and others; complete faith in either of those is for them a way to heaven, a bridge for the crossing over all sins. Even those who were killed by Krishna, in the great war detailed in the Ramayana, went straight to heaven because they looked at him, as the thief on the cross looking at Jesus went to Paradise. In Buddhism is the same doctrine of faith. The twelve great sects of Buddhism in Japan have one called the Sect of the Pure Land. This teaches that Amitabha vowed that any one who calls three times on his name would be born into his pure Land of Bliss. He held that some men may be strong enough to prevail against the enemy, but that most men are not, and need some help from another. This help is found in the power of the vow of Amita Buddha, who will help all those who call on his name. The doctrine is a modified form of vicarious atonement, but it does not exclude the salvation by works which the Christian St. James gives out.

Heaven and Hell are also common to Christianity, Buddhism, and Brahmanism. The Brahman calls it Swarga; the Buddhist, Devachan; and we, Heaven. Its opposite is Naraka and Avitchi. But names apart, the descriptions are the same. Indeed, the hells of the Buddhists are very terrible, long in duration and awful in effect. The difference is that the heaven and hell of the Christian are eternal, while the others are not. The others come to an end when the forces which cause them are exhausted. In teaching of more than one heaven there is the same likeness, for St. Paul spoke of more than a single heaven to one of which he was rapt away, and the Buddhist tells of many, each being a grade above or below some other. Brahman and Buddhist agree in saying that when heaven or hell is ended for the soul, it descends again to rebirth. And that was taught by the Jews. They held that the soul was originally pure, but sinned and had to wander through rebirth until purified and fit to return to its source.

In priesthood and priestcraft there is a perfect agreement among all religions, save that the Brahman instead of being ordained a priest is so by birth. Buddha's priesthood began with those who were his friends and disciples. After his death they met in council, and subsequently many councils were held, all being attended by priests. Similar questions arose among them as with the Christians, and identical splits occurred, so that now there are Northern and southern Buddhism and the twelve sects of Japan. During the life of Buddha the old query of admitting women arose and caused much discussion. The power of the Brahman and Buddhist priests is considerable, and they demand as great privileges and rights as the Christian ones.

Hence we are bound to conclude that dogmatically and theologically these religions all agree. Christianity stands out, however, as peculiarly intolerant - and in using the word "intolerant" I but quote from some priestly utterances regarding the World's Fair parliament - for it claims to be the only true religion that God has seen fit to reveal to man.

The great doctrine of a Savior who is the son of God - God himself - is not an original one with Christianity. It is the same as the extremely ancient one of the Hindus called the doctrine of the Avatar. An Avatar is one who comes down to earth to save man. He is God incarnate. Such was Krishna, and such even the Hindus admit was Buddha, for he is one of the great ten Avatars. The similarity between Krishna or Cristna and Christ has been very often remarked. He came 5,000 years ago to save and benefit man, and his birth was in India, his teaching being Brahmanical. He, like Jesus, was hated by the ruler, Kansa, who desired to destroy him in advance, and who destroyed many sons of families in order to accomplish his end, but failed. Krishna warred with the powers of darkness in his battles with Ravana, whom he finally killed. The belief about him was that he was the incarnation of God. This is in accord with the ancient doctrine that periodically the Great Being assumes the form of man for the preservation of the just, the establishment of virtue and order, and the punishment of the wicked. Millions of man and women read every day of Krishna in the Ramayana of Tulsi Das. His praises are sung each day and reiterated at their festivals. Certainly it seems rather narrow and bigoted to assume that but one tribe and one people are favored by the appearance among them of an incarnation in greater measure of God.

Jesus taught a secret doctrine to his disciples. He said to them that he taught the common people in stories of a simple sort, but that the disciples could learn of the mysteries. And in the early age of Christianity that secret teaching was known. In Buddhism is the same thing, for Buddha began with one vehicle or doctrine, proceeded after to two, and then to a third. He also taught a secret doctrine that doubtless agreed with the Brahmans who had taught him at his father's court. He gave up the world, and later gave up eternal peace in Nirvana, so that he might save men. In this the story agrees with that of Jesus. And Buddha also resisted Mara, or the Devil, in the wilderness. Jesus teaches that we must be as perfect as the Father, and that the kingdom of heaven is within each. To be perfect as the Father we must be equal with him, and hence here we have the ancient doctrine taught of old by the Brahmins that each man is God and a part of God. This supports the unity of humanity as a spiritual whole, one of the greatest doctrines of the time prior to Christianity, and now also believed in Brahmanism.

That the universe is spiritual in essence, that man is a spirit and immortal, and that man may rise to perfection, are universal doctrines. Even particular doctrines are common to all the religions. Reincarnation is not alone in Hinduism or Buddhism. It was believed by the Jews, and not only believed by Jesus but he also taught it. For he said that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elias "who was for to come." Being a Jew he must have had the doctrines of the Jews, and this was one of them. And in Revelations we find the writer says: "Him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the house of my God, and he shall go out no more."

The words "no more" infer a prior time of going out.

The perfectibility of man destroys the doctrine of original sin, and it was taught by Jesus, as I said. Reincarnation is a necessity for the evolution of this perfection, and through it at last are produced those Saviors of the race of whom Jesus was one. He did not deny similar privileges to others, but said to his disciples that they could do even greater works than he did. So we find these great Sages and Saviors in all religions. There are Moses and Abraham and Solomon, all Sages. And we are bound to accept the Jewish idea that Moses and the rest were the reincarnations of former persons. Moses was in their opinion Abel the son of Adam; and their Messiah was to be a reincarnation of Adam himself who had already come the second time in the person of David. We take the Messiah and trace him up to David, but refuse, improperly, to accept the remainder of their theory.

Descending to every-day-life doctrines, we find that of Karma, or that we must account and receive for every act. This is the great explainer of human life. It was taught by Jesus and Matthew and St. Paul. The latter explicitly said:

"Brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap."

This is Karma of the Brahman and Buddhist, which teaches that each life is the outcome of a former life or lives, and that every man in his rebirths will have to account for every thought and receive measure for the measure given by him before.

In ethics all these religions are the same, and no new ethic is given by any. Jesus was the same as his predecessor, Buddha, and both taught the law of love and forgiveness. A consideration of the religions of the past and today from a Theosophical standpoint will support and confirm ethics. We therefore cannot introduce a new code, but we strive by looking into all religions to find a firm basis, not due to fear, favor, or injustice, for the ethics common to all. This is what Theosophy is for and what it will do. It is the reformer of religion, the unifier of diverse systems, the restorer of justice to our theory of the universe. It is our past, our present, and our future; it is our life, our death, and our immortality.

Path, July, 1894

An address delivered April 17th, 1894, before the Parliament of Religions at San Francisco, Calif., by William Q. Judge.

The Midwinter Fair at San Francisco had annexed to it a Religious parliament modeled after the first great one of 1893 at Chicago. Dr. J. D. Buck and William Q. Judge, the latter as General Secretary American Section, were officially invited to address the Parliament at one of its sessions as representatives of the Theosophical movement. Time was so short that all speakers were limited to thirty minutes each; for that reason the address is not as full as it would be had more time been granted. But the occasion once more showed the strength of the T.S. movement.

THE POWER TO KNOW

STUDENT. - What is the effect of trying to develop the power of seeing in the astral light before a person is initiated?

Sage. - Seeing in the astral light is not done through Manas, but through the senses, and hence has to do entirely with sense-perception removed to a plane different from this, but more illusionary. The final perceiver or judge of perception is in Manas, in the Self; and therefore the final tribunal is clouded by the astral perception if one is not so far trained or initiated as to know the difference and able to tell the true from the false. Another result is a tendency to dwell on this subtle sense-perception, which at last will cause an atrophy of Manas for the time being. This makes the confusion all the greater, and will delay any possible initiation all the more or forever. Further, such seeing is in the line of phenomena, and adds to the confusion of the Self which is only beginning to understand this life; by attempting the astral another element of disorder is added by more phenomena due to another plane, thus mixing both sorts up. The Ego must find its basis and not be swept off hither and thither. The constant reversion of images and ideas in the astral light, and the pranks of the elementals there, unknown to us as such and only seen in effects, still again add to the confusion. To sum it up, the real danger from which all others flow or follow is in the confusion of the Ego by introducing strange things to it before the time.

Student. - How is one to know when he gets real occult information from the Self within?

Sage. - Intuition must be developed and the matter judged from the true philosophical basis, for if it is contrary to true general rules it is wrong. It has to be known from a deep and profound analysis by which we find out what is from egotism alone and what is not; if it is due to egotism, then it is not from the Spirit and is untrue. The power to know does not come from book-study nor from mere philosophy, but mostly from the actual practice of altruism in deed, word, and thought; for that practice purifies the covers of the soul and permits that light to shine down into the brain-mind. As the brain-mind is the receiver in the waking state, it has to be purified from sense-perception, and the truest way to do this is by combining philosophy with the highest outward and inward virtue.

Student. - Tell me some ways by which intuition is to be developed.

Sage. - First of all by giving it exercise, and second by not using it for purely personal ends. Exercise means that it must be followed through mistakes and bruises until from sincere attempts at use it comes to its own strength. This does not mean that we can do wrong and leave the results, but that after establishing conscience on a right basis by following the golden rule, we give play to the intuition and add to its strength. Inevitably in this at first we will make errors, but soon if we are sincere it will grow brighter and make no mistake. We should add the study of the works of those who in the past have trodden this path and found out what is the real and what is not. They say the Self is the only reality. The brain must be given larger views of life, as by the study of the doctrine of reincarnation, since that gives a limitless field to the possibilities in store. We must not only be unselfish, but must do all the duties that Karma has given us, and thus intuition will point out the road of duty and the true path of life.

Student. - Are there any Adepts in America or Europe?

Sage. - Yes, there are and always have been. But they have for the present kept themselves hidden from the public gaze. The real ones have a wide work to do in many departments of life and in preparing certain persons who have a future work to do. Though their influence is wide they are not suspected, and that is the way they want to work for the present. There are some also who are at work with certain individuals in some of the aboriginal tribes in America, as among those are Egos who are to do still more work in another incarnation, and they must be prepared for it now. Nothing is omitted by these Adepts. In Europe it is the same way, each sphere of work being governed by the time and the place.

Student. -What is the meaning of the five-pointed star?

Sage. - It is the symbol of the human being who is not an Adept, but is now on the plane of the animal nature as to his life-thoughts and development inside. Hence it is the symbol of the race. Upside down it means death or symbolizes that. It also means, when upside down, the other or dark side. It is at the same time the cross endowed with the power of mind, that is, man.

Student. - Is there a four-pointed star symbol?

Sage. - Yes. That is the symbol of the next kingdom below man, and pertains to the animals. The right kind of clairvoyant can see both the five- and the four-pointed star. It is all produced by the intersections of the lines or currents of the astral light emanating from the person or being. The four-pointed one means that the being having but it has not as yet developed Manas. Student. - Has the mere figure of a five-pointed star any power in itself?

Sage. - It has some, but very little. You see it is used by all sorts of people for trademarks and the like, and for the purposes of organizations, yet no result follows. It must be actually used by the mind to be of any force or value. If so used, it carries with it the whole power of the person to whom it may belong.

Student. - Why is the sword so much spoken of in practical Occultism by certain writers?

Sage. - Many indeed of these writers merely repeat what they have read. But there is a reason, just as in warfare the sword has more use for damage than a club. The astral light corresponds to water. if you try to strike in or under water with a club, it will be found that there is but little result, but a sharp knife will cut almost as well under water as out of it. The friction is less. So in the astral light a sword used on that plane has more power to cut than a club has, and an elemental for that reason will be more easily damaged by a sword than by a club or a stone. But all of this relates to things that are of no right value to the true student, and are indulged in only by those who work in dark magic or foolishly by those who do not quite know what they do. It is certain that he who uses the sword or the club will be at last hurt by it. And the lesson to be drawn is that we must seek for the true Self that knows all Occultism and all truth, and has in itself the protecting shield from all dangers. That is what the ancient Sages sought and found, and that is what should be striven after by us.

Path, November, 1894

PRACTICAL THEOSOPHY

The ethics of life propounded by Jesus are not different from those found in theosophy, but the latter holds in its doctrines a compelling power which is absent from Christianity and from those systems which require a man to be good for virtue's sake alone. It is not easy to practice virtue for the simple reason that we ought to do so, since the desire for reward is inherent in humanity, and is a reflection of the evolutionary law which draws the universe ever upward to higher points of development. A man reads the command of Jesus to turn the other cheek to the smiter, to resist not evil, to forgive without stint, and to take no thought for the morrow, and then - pauses. His next thought is that such a canon is wholly utopian, and would if followed subvert society. In this he is sustained by eminent authority as well as by example, for a great Bishop has declared that no state can exist under such a system.

Theosophic doctrine, however, on either the selfish or spiritual line of life, convinces that the moral law must be obeyed. If we regard only the selfish side, we find when people are convinced that evil done in this life will be met with sure punishment in another reincarnation, they hesitate to continue the old careless life when they lived for themselves alone.

Hence practical theosophy must enter into every detail of life in our dealings with others and our discipline of ourselves. It reminds us that we should be more critical of ourselves than of others, that we must help all men if we are to be helped ourselves. And herein the theosophist may escape the accusation of selfishness, for if in desiring to lay up for a future incarnation a store of help from others by giving assistance now himself, he does so in order that he may then be in a still better position to help humanity, there is no selfishness. It is the same as if a man were to desire to acquire this world's goods in order to help those dependent on him, and surely this is not selfish.

The practical theosophist adds to his charitable deeds upon the material plane the still greater charity of giving to his fellow men a system of thought and life which explains their doubts while it furnishes a logical reason for the practice of virtue. He extinguishes a hell that never could burn, and the terrors of which soon faded from the mind of the sinners; but he lights the lamp of truth and throws its beams upon the mortal's path so that not only the real danger, the real punishment, can be seen, but also the reward and compensation.

The civilized man cannot be guided by fear or superstition, but reason may take hold of him. Theosophy being not only practicable but also reasonable as well as just, its doctrines are destined to be those of the civilized man. They will gradually drive out the time-worn shibboleths of the theologian and the scientist, giving the people of coming centuries a wisdom-religion deeply-based and all-embracing.

Were theosophical practice universal, we should not see the unjust Judge plotting beforehand with the officials of a railroad company about the decision he should render, nor the venal public officer engaged with the Judge and the officials in arranging the virtuous protest to be offered in court against the foreordained decree, for both would fear to rouse a cause which in their next life might issue in unjust accusation and punishment. Nor would men save their lives, as now they often do, at another's expense, since in succeeding incarnations that person might be the means of depriving them of life twice over. The rich man who now hoards his wealth or spends it on himself alone would not be thus guilty, seeing that, as compensation in another life, his friends would forsake him and nature seem to withdraw subsistence.

The practical theosophist will do well if he follows the advice of the Masters now many years in print, to spread, explain, and illustrate the laws of Karma and Reincarnation so that they may enter into the lives of the people. Technical occultism and all the allurements of the Astral Light may be left for other times. Men's thoughts must be affected, and this can only be done now by giving them these two great laws. They not only explain many things, but they have also an inherent power due to their truth and their intimate connection with man, to compel attention.

Once heard they are seldom forgotten, and even if rebelled against they have a mysterious power of keeping in the man's mind, until at last, even against his first determination, he is forced to accept them. The appreciation of justice is common to all, and the exact justice of Karma appeals even to the person who is unfortunate enough to be undergoing heavy punishment: even if, ignoring justice, he does good in order to make good Karma, it is well, for he will be reborn under conditions that may favor the coming out of unselfish motive.

"Teach, preach, and practice this good law for the benefit of the world, even as all the Buddhas do."

QUILLIAM

Path, July, 1890

PRINCE TALLEYRAND - CAGLIOSTRO

A good deal for and against Cagliostro has been said since the time when he disappeared from the scene, and so much has been written against him by his enemies, especially the members of the order of Jesus, that the ordinary run of people have come to think of him as no more than an impostor, and a very cheap one at that. This has been pushed so far that his name in the encyclopædias stands for one of the great charlatans who from time to time are said to appear for the delusion of mankind and their own profit. The same sort of reputation has been given also to our honored fellow student Helena P. Blavatsky, and for similar reasons, with just as little basis. Indeed, there seems to be little doubt that in time to come her enemies, like his, will delight to call her a great impostor, as has been done already by a little-minded so-called investigator who went all the way to India to look into matters theosophical.

If Cagliostro was in fact an impostor, it is a strange thing that so much attention was paid to him by the very best men and women of Europe. That fact will always call for explanation, and, until it is given due weight, the unbeliever in encyclopædias will be likely to think a good deal of the Count. There are some persons now of quite bright minds and wide acquaintance with men who say they believe he is still living, not under his old name but with another, and that he is engaged in a great work which embraces the whole human family. This may or may not be true, since it calls for a very great age on his part, but the student of the occult knows that we are neither old nor young, but ever immortal.

The great Prince Talleyrand has left us something regarding Cagliostro which is of weight. It is to be found in a book published in London in 1848, containing the Memoirs of the Prince by his private secretary M. Colemache, in chapter four. It there appears that the Prince was asked to give the incidents of his visit to Cagliostro, and did so at some length. He had heard so much about the Count that he resolved to pay him a visit and see for himself the man about whom nearly every one was talking. An appointment was made, and at the time set Talleyrand called and was ushered into the presence, where he found the strange figure - a woman dressed in black and whose face was veiled - of whom much has also been said on the ground that she was alleged to be the confederate of Cagliostro or else a very good sensitive or medium. The Count appeared to be busy, and gazed into the eyes of the Prince with such a peculiar stare that the latter was not able to collect his thoughts, obliging Cagliostro to remind him of the many people waiting for an audience who could not be kept waiting if there was nothing to be said. Thereupon, as the Prince says himself, being utterly confused he failed to recollect the posers he had prepared, and was forced to ask Cagliostro if he could tell him anything about a certain Countess. The reply he received to this was that she would be at the theatre that night and would wear a certain dress and certain ornaments. Then Talleyrand asked if he could have a remedy for headaches she often had, and Cagliostro reaching down took up a jug and gave the Prince what looked like water. It was directed to be applied to her forehead, and the strict injunction given that no one else was under any circumstances to handle the bottle or touch the water. Talleyrand then went off, the Countess appeared at the theatre exactly as was said, and after the play the party, including Talleyrand, went to a supper. The meal had progressed almost to the coffee when some one asked for the result of the visit to the supposed impostor. The Prince produced the bottle, but, contrary to the directions, allowed every one of the company to smell it and handle it. It was then proposed to apply the water to the fair forehead of the Countess, but there was some hesitation, until at last a quantity of the liquid was poured in the hand of one of the guests and placed on her forehead. Immediately she screamed with pain, but the hand could not be easily withdrawn; it had to be pulled off with violence, and with it came a large patch of the lady's skin. The next day the police were sent after Cagliostro, and the jug of liquid was taken to an official analyst who made report that it was water and nothing else, just the same as what was in the bottle. This could not be explained by the Prince, but on the examination Cagliostro said it was indeed water which he had strongly magnetised, and that if the Prince had followed directions no harm would have come; he, however, had permitted a lot of roysterers to handle and smell it, and they had turned the immensely strong magnetism into the violent agent it turned out to be. Of course the manufacturers of hypotheses will say that it was not water but "some" acid or the like, not being able, though, to tell what they mean exactly. The incident is well attested and made a deep impression on the Prince, who gives evidence thus to facts and not to disputable theories.

J. QUILTER

Path, October, 1890

THE PROMULGATION OF THEOSOPHY

TOO much attention has been paid by several to the opinions of men in the world who have a reputation in science and in scholarship. Their opinions are valuable in their respective fields, but the ideas of the world should not be permitted to dwarf our work or smother our hearts desire. These owners of reputations do not entirely govern the progress of the race.

The great mass of mankind are of the common people, and it is with them we have chiefly to deal. For our message does not come only for the scholar and the scientific man. In spite of scholars, in spite of science, the superstitions of the people live on. And perhaps those very superstitions are the means of preserving to us the almost forgotten truth. Indeed, had we listened only to those learned in books, we would long ago have lost all touch with our real life.

If we believe in our message and in the aim of the Society, we ought never to tire telling the people that which they can understand. And the rich as well as the poor are the people to whom I refer. They need the help of Theosophy, for they are wandering very close to the marshes of materialism. They must have a true ethic, a right philosophy. Tell them of our great doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. Tell of these with confidence, unshaken by opinions of others, and that confidence of yours will beget confidence in the hearer. Science and exact scholarship are factors in our progress, but although they are important, the mass of the people are more important still. You cannot scientifically prove everything. But if you are sure, as so many of us are, that we are immortal pilgrims, then tell the people plainly and practically how they have been here before in other bodies, and will be here again to suffer or enjoy just as they may have decided in their other life, and they will believe it. They will soon come to that belief because these laws are facts in nature, facts in their own real experience. Were I to attend only to scholars, I should be able to do no other work, while all the time my fellow-creatures--not scholars and in the vast majority--would be deprived of the spiritual help it was my duty to give them.

We are really working for the future, laying the foundation for a greater day than this. We are all coming back together to carry on this work if we now take up all our opportunities. We must act from duty now, and thus be right for the future.

Our duty is to recognize the great human soul with which we have to deal and for which we should work. Its progress, its experience, its inner life, are vastly more important than all our boasted civilization. That civilization could easily be swept away, and what would be left? Your country could be frozen up solidly in a few weeks, were the Gulf Stream deflected from these shores. Mines have honeycombed your land, and a good earthquake might easily shake all your material glories to destruction beneath the sea. What then could remain save the human experience, the experience of the soul? But no cataclysm can destroy your thoughts. They live on. And so all the work that you do for the inner life of man can meet with no destruction, even though records and books and all the ingenious works upon this outer plane were swept out of existence. If then you believe in this mighty doctrine of Reincarnation, do not be afraid to tell it.

But do not, as Theosophists, confine yourselves to the intellect. The dry or the interesting speculations upon all the details of cosmogony and anthropology will not save the world. They do not cure sorrow nor appeal to those who feel the grinding stones of fate, and know not why it should be so. Address yourselves therefore to using your intellectual knowledge of these high matters, so as to practically affect the hearts of men.

Our debt to science is very great. It has leveled the barriers and made freedom of thought a possibility. Science is our friend, for without its progress you would now, at the order of the bigot, all be in the common jail. It has combated the strength and cut the claws of bigoted churches. And even those iconoclasts, such as Robert Ingersoll, who often violate the sentiment and ideals of many good men, have helped in this progress, for they have done the tearing down which must precede the building up. It is our place to supply the new structure, for the churches are beginning to find that they must look into subjects which once were kept out of sight. A sign of this was seen at a recent Council of the Methodist Church in America, where their brightest lights declared that they must accept evolution, or they would go down. The only church which does not publicly as yet proclaim on these matters is the Roman Catholic. It is so sly that I should not be surprised ere long to hear of its throwing its mantle over all our doctrines publicly, and saying that such had always been its doctrine. But if that step be taken it will be the fatal one. So even that need give us no fear.

We are working with and for the great unseen, but actual, Brotherhood of Humanity, and in our efforts, if sincere, will have the aid of those our Brothers who have perfected themselves before us and are ever ready to help on the human family. So if we are firmly fixed in that belief, we can never weaken.

I have heard some words about our pretending to be undogmatic, or that our claim to freedom is against the fact. I do not hold such an opinion. Our Society is, as a body, wholly unsectarian. It must always be so. But that does not affect the inevitable result of so many joined in one effort. A large number of us must have come at last to a common belief. This we can boldly say, and at the same time also that no enquirer is obliged to subscribe to those beliefs. For this we have the warrant, not only of our own statutes, but also that of the oft-repeated declarations of H. P. Blavatsky. If I have a belief which works with all the problems that vex us so much, then I will tell it to my fellow who has joined these ranks. If wrong, the interchange of thought will correct me; if right, the truth must at last prevail. In this, Brotherhood means toleration of opinion, and not a fear of declaring the beliefs you hold, nor does that declaration negative in the least the claim to unsectarianism.

This Society is a small germ of a nucleus for a real outer Brotherhood. If we work aright the day must come when we shall have accomplished our aim and formed the nucleus. If we had five hundred members in the Society loving one another with true hearts, not criticizing nor condemning, and all bent on one aim with one belief we could sweep the whole world with our thoughts. And this is our work in the future, the work traced out for us by those Masters in whom so many of us firmly believe.

If we only have patience, what a glorious, wide, and noble prospect opens up before us!

NOTE--This article is from an address given by Mr. Judge in London, at the close of the European T.S. convention, July 15, 1892.

PROOFS OF THE HIDDEN SELF

THROUGH DREAMS

THE dream state is common to all people. Some persons say they never dream, but upon examination it will be found they have had one or two dreams and that they meant only to say their dreams were few. It is doubtful whether the person exists who never has had a dream. But it is said that dreams are not of importance; that they are due to blood pressure, or to indigestion, or to disease, or to various causes. They are supposed to be unimportant because, looking at them from the utilitarian view-point, no great use is seen to follow. Yet there are many who always make use of their dreams, and history, both secular and religious, is not without records of benefit, of warning, of instruction from the dream. The well-known case of Pharaoh's dream of lean and fat kine which enabled Joseph as interpreter to foresee and provide against a famine represents a class of dream not at all uncommon. But the utilitarian view is only one of many.

Dreams show conclusively that although the body and brain are asleep - for sleep begins primarily in the brain and is governed by it - there is still active a recollector and perceiver who watches the introspective experience of dreaming. Sorrow, joy, fear, anger, ambition, love, hate, and all possible emotions are felt and perceived in dreams. The utility of this on the waking plane has nothing to do with the fact of perception. Time all is measured therein, not according to solar division but in respect to the effect produced upon the dreamer. And as the counting of this time is done at a vastly quicker rate than is possible for the brain, it follows that some person is counting. In all these dreams there is a recollection of the events perceived, and the memory of it is carried into the waking state. Reason and all the powers of intelligent waking man are used in dreams; and as emotion, reasoning, perception, and memory are all found to be even more active in dreams than in waking life, it must follow that the Hidden Self is the one who has and does all this.

The fanciful portion of dreams does not invalidate the position. Fancy is not peculiar to dreaming; it is also present in waking consciousness. In many people fancy is quite as usual and vivid as with any dreamer. And we know that children have a strong development of fancy. Its presence in dream simply means that the thinker, being liberated temporarily from the body and the set forms or grooves of the brain, expands that ordinary faculty. But passing beyond fancy we have the fact that dreams have prophecy of events not yet come. This could not be unless there exists the inner Hidden Self who sees plainly the future and the past in an ever present.

IN CLAIRVOYANCE

Waking clairvoyance cannot now be denied. Students of Theosophy know it to be a faculty of man, and in America its prevalence is such as to call for no great proof. There is the clairvoyance of events past, of those to come, and of those taking place.

To perceive events that have taken place in which the clairvoyant had no part nor was informed about, means that some other instrument than the brain is used. This must be the Hidden Self. Seeing and reporting events that subsequently transpire gives the same conclusion. If the brain is the mind, it must have had a part in a past event which it now reports, either as actor or as hearer from another who was present, but as in the cases cited it had no such connection as actor, then it follows that it has received the report from some other perceiver. This other one is the Hidden Self, because the true clairvoyant case excludes any report by an eye-witness.

Then again, when the clairvoyant is dealing with an event presently proceeding at a distance, it is necessary that a perceiver who recollects must be present in order to make report. For the brain and its organs of sight and hearing are too far off. But as the clairvoyant does report correctly what is going on, it is the other Hidden Self who sees the event, bridges the gap between it and the brain, and impresses the picture upon the bodily organs.

THE FEELING OF IDENTITY

If recollection is the basis for the feeling of identity continuous throughout life, and if brain is the only instrument for perception, then there is an inexplicable series of gaps to be accounted for or bridged over, but admitting the Hidden Self no gaps exist.

We are born feeling that we are ourself, without a name, but using a name for convenience later on. We reply to challenge by saying "It is I" - the name following only for convenience to the other person. This personal identity remains although we fall asleep each night and thus far become unconscious. And we know that even when a long period is blotted out of memory by fall, blow, or other accidental injury, the same feeling of identity crosses that gap and continues the same identical "I" to where memory again acts. And although years of life with all their multiplicity of events and experience have passed, leaving but a small amount of recollection, we yet know ourselves as that unnamed person who came to life so many years before. We do not remember our birth nor our naming, and if we are but a bundle of material experience, a mere product of brain and recollection, then we should have no identity but constant confusion. The contrary being the case, and continuous personal identity being felt and perceived, the inevitable conclusion is that we are the Hidden Self and that Self is above and beyond both body and brain.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, August, 1894

PROPHECIES BY H. P. BLAVATSKY

In the introduction to the Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky boldly affirms the existence of a great Fraternity of Men, Adepts, who preserve the true philosophy through all changes, now revealing it, and again, at certain eras, withdrawing it from a degraded age; and emphatically she says that the doctrine is never a new one, but only a handing on again of what was always the system. Then referring to the reception her works would receive in this century (Introd. xxxvii), she says that scholars with reputations would not regard the teachings seriously, but that "they will be derided and rejected à priori in this century."

This is quite definite, and was a prophetical statement. All Theosophists have witnessed its confirmation, for surely both she and the old teachings given out have been derided and rejected. Derision arose first on the ground that such things could not be. If there was no strength in the theories advanced, derision would have been all they should have met, but soon their power compelled enough attention to bring on rejection. So this prophecy is fulfilled.

The next one is in the same sentence, and may serve to give courage to those who have found light, hope, and strength in Theosophy, and to those ardent members who are not so old as to fail in living a few more years. Continuing, she declares that the derision and rejection met in this century would be "only in this one. For in the twentieth century of our era scholars will begin to recognize that the Secret Doctrine has neither been invented nor exaggerated, but, on the contrary, simply outlined; and finally, that its teachings antedate the Vedas."

We have but eight years to wait for this recognition, and then, as she has said in a private letter of some years ago, after her death - already accomplished - Theosophists and the world will know what they have lost. It is not long to wait, and here is a prophecy easy to watch and profit by. These words of hers are not the cry of a martyr, but the clear, bold tone of the sage who, while giving out right teachings in a transitory, a preparatory age, knows full well that present recognition is an impossibility; there is no regret and no note of disappointed hope in it, for she had no such hopes or ambitions to be defeated, and perchance will be on the scene at the time of the prophesied indorsement.

The bearing of the statement about the Vedas is important for those Theosophists to remember who, whether Hindus or Westerns, have now and then fancied that H.P.B. rested on and worked for the Indian sacred books. For if her teachings will be one day shown to antedate the Vedas, then they must be superior to the latter and to all Shastras, Puranas, and Sutras. What, then, of caste and any school of peripatetics founded upon individual constructions? The answer is easy for those who shall believe in the superior doctrine.

Then passing on to the next page (Introd. xxxviii) to touch upon the subject of the Messenger from the great Fraternity - she herself being the one for this Century - she observes significantly: that "In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and irrefutable proofs that there exists a science called Gupta-Vidya; and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of all religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found."

Herein are two prophetical intimations. The first, that in the Century just at hand the Masters may send another Messenger with power, learning, strength, and credentials to carry on the work she began and in which we have been so fortunate as to be companions; the second, that this Messenger will make clear the sources we have sought. The first will be glorious, the second satisfying; and both will help humanity. It is not long to wait, eight years! And cannot indiscreet Theosophists put off attempts at the making of dogmas they might have trouble to give up?

To close these words on the future she says (Introd. xliv), "And then the last prophecy contained in that book (the first volume of the prophetic record for the Black Age) will be accomplished. We have not long to wait, and many of us will witness the Dawn of the New Cycle, at the end of which not a few accounts will be settled and squared between the races."

This new cycle begins in the next century, and when the end of it is reached much that is now unknown will have been revealed; the earth itself will give up the secrets of the past, in ignorance of which our day has laughed at the ancients; the Fraternity will have caused "accidental discoveries" of manuscripts and objects, the finding of which will make many a theologian quake and bring to the barbarian followers of the ancients great joy that they did not bow down and worship the Golden Calf of today. And even if that great day should be some centuries away, we know that we shall all be present in better bodies with better minds, if only we have patience, fidelity, and courage now.

Path, December, 1892

PSYCHOMETRY

BY WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

The name Psychometry has been given to a faculty which, it is claimed, inheres in about seven out of every ten persons. but it seems to me to be a designation at once, inadequate and inaccurate, because it does not express to the mind all that is intended to be conveyed.

Expressed in many words, the power to psychometrise means: the power to bring up before the mental or spiritual eye, a panoramic view of all that has occurred to the object examined. The use of the word "psychometry" came about because it was laid down by Professors Buchanan and Denton, that by the power one measured the soul of the thing.

If the word "soul" means the innermost spiritual part of the thing measured, it will here be inadequate and incorrect; while, if it be held to mean the mere outside or accidental material part or attribute of the object, then it is perverted from its proper and intended use. The phenomena taken into consideration in the pursuit of psychometry, belong almost entirely to accidental or exterior impressions, which, while they percolate or permeate the whole mass of the object examined, never partake of its constitution or properties. At the same time, in psychometrising an object, the faculty under consideration takes account of the spirit or soul of the object. So that we see that the designation, soul-measuring, is not only inaccurate but also redundant. Some other word ought to be selected to express what we intend when we use the word "psychometry."

The Science of today does not recognize psychometry, because it does not allow that the human soul or mind has the power to produce effects which it admits can be produced by the use of chemicals or electricity. It is admitted that a lasting and reproduceable impression can be made upon a piece of smooth steel by simply placing on it another object, such as a penny, and that the washed-out images on certain plates can be brought to light again by electricity or chemicals. But they will not admit that a man can, by simply holding the same plates in his hand or to his forehead, take off and bring up clearly before his mind's eye the same old and obliterated impressions. What they do admit, however, proves that those impressions are really lasting, and gives us ground for hoping that one day they will admit all the rest.

If one will erect a paper screen, say five feet square, and stand behind it, he will find, of course, that the view in front is obstructed completely. But make a pin-hole at the upper right-hand corner and place the eye thereat. What follows? He sees the objects which were hitherto concealed. Make another pin-hole at the opposite corner, five feet away, and the same objects or scene can be observed in their entirety. This can, of course, be repeated at all parts of the screen. If at the time that he is looking at the scene in front through the pin-hole at the upper right-hand corner, a camera-lens is put through a hole in the center of the screen, a photograph of all that he is looking at through the pin-hole will be taken by the camera.

This proves, conclusively, that the image of the object or scene in part is impressed or thrown against every part of the screen; and that the minutest point, or rather upon the very smallest piece of the screen, will be found a picture in its entirety of the whole object or scene that is before it, as well as a complete picture thrown over the whole body of the screen.

An ancient familiar illustration will exemplify my meaning. If one hold a drop of quicksilver on a plate, the face is reflected from it. If the drop be scattered into a thousand smaller drops, each one reflects the face again. Or, more easily understood yet: If five men stand affront of one man ten feet away, each pair of eyes of the five sees the one man; proving that there exists on each separate retina a separate and complete image of the one object.

Theosophists and occultists from the earliest times have held that every object in the world receives and keeps all impressions, not only of all objects that stand before it, but also of all that happens before it; that these impressions are indelible and can at any time be taken off by man's nervous system and from that reported to the mind; and, therefore, that if we possess a piece of stone from the Roman Forum, we can reproduce to the mind, as clearly as a picture, all that happened in the Forum.

The use of the screen-illustration and our insistence upon it, was to show that no ridiculous or impossible claim is made when we say that the small fragment from the Forum will give a complete picture and not a fragmental one.

I received from a friend, in the year 1882, a piece of the linen wrapping of an Egyptian ibis found on the breast of a mummy. I handed it, wrapped up in tissue-paper, to a friend who did not know what, if anything, was in the paper. He put it to his forehead and soon began to describe Egyptian scenery; then an ancient city; from that he went on to describe a man in Egyptian clothes sailing on a river; then that this man went ashore into a grove where he killed a bird; then that the bird looked like pictures of an ibis, and ended by describing the man as returning with the bird to the city, the description of which tallied with the picture and description of ancient Egyptian cities.

I leave this coincidence, as science designates it, with those who can appreciate it at its true value.

When science begins to admit the existence in man of what the Christians call spirit, but which some people know to be matter in a finely-divided state, then will psychometry be studied as it should be, and incalculable aid and dazzling light be thrown upon archaeological and ethnological research.

But is there any hope for Science?

The Platonist, January, 1884

REGARDING ISLAMISM

THE conversion to the religion of the Prophet Mohammed of Alexander Russell Webb, F.T.S., and his establishing in New York a paper devoted to Islamism,together with his lectures on the subject, have caused a great deal of attention to be given to Mohammedanism. Bro. Webb is still a member of the Society,with an interest in its progress, and this is another illustration of the broadness of our platform. But he says that it has surprised him to find the members in general paying slight regard to the life of the Prophet,his sayings and his religion, as one of our objects calls for the study of all religions. In India he found many followers of the Prophet in our Branches, and among them much knowledge of formerly so-called esoteric doctrines,which are common to all religions. That such would be the case must have long ago been evident to those who have read the admirable articles which were printed some years ago in the PATH upon Sufi poetry, as the Sufis really preserve the inner doctrines of Islam. But it is natural that the religion of Mohammed has not received from Western people very great consideration. They judge it in the mass, and not from some of its teachings. The West has developed its social system and its religious belief on its own lines, and having seen that many of the followers of the Prophet are polygamists, which is contrary to Western notions, the entire Islamic system has been condemned on that ground, both in a social and religious sense.

The best Mohammedans say that the Prophet did not teach polygamy, but only permitted it in case a man could treat many wives in exactly the same way in every respect that he could one. Although over against this the Prophet himself had but one wife, and was in fact a celibate, it was quite natural that his followers should liberally construe what he said on the subject and take unto themselves as many wives as their means permitted. This is human nature, and would probably be the result today in the West if our people placed reliance on the words of a Teacher who had made a similar statement.

The words of the Koran upon the subject of polygamy, as given by Mr. Webb, are:

And if ye are apprehensive that ye shall not deal fairly with orphans, then of other women who seem good in your eyes, marry but two, or three, or four; if ye still fear that ye shall not act equitably, then one only.-Koran, Sura IV, verse 3.

The next prominent conception held by Western people about the Mohammedans is that they have forced an acceptance of their doctrines. We have such stories as that they carried sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, compelling people to accept the book under threat of the sword; that they burned books containing matter other than that in the Koran, on the ground that if it was in the Koran the books were unnecessary, and if it was not in the Koran the books were wrong and should be burned. But the disciples of the Prophet assert that he never taught any such thing, and point to much learning on the part of the Mohammedans in the past. Doubtless these disciples are right, but we know that many Mohammedans tried to coerce people, and that there is some foundation for the story in respect to destruction of that which was not found in the Koran. For these reasons the West has been opposed to Islamism without really knowing much about it. The religion has been judged by the proceedings of its followers. Similar charges might be made against Christian peoples, who notoriously both individually and as nations are in the habit of going directly contrary to the commands of their Founder.

A student of these subjects, then, comes to consider lastly the claims of Islamism on philosophical and religious grounds, and naturally asks the question whether it has any better philosophy than any other religion, and if its religion is supported by a correct philosophy. If it be found that the truths given out by the Prophet were known and written down before his time, then why should the Western student turn to the later religion, the product of a more or less undeveloped people, when he may go to the original from which it undoubtedly came? And if in that original we can find broader and more definite expositions of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, we may very properly use Islamism to illustrate the Theosophic truism that one single truth is the basis upon which all religions stand, but we are not necessarily obliged to adopt it to the exclusion of anything else.

Islamism seems to many to exact a belief in a God, and the conception of a God demands that that being shall be separate from those who believe in him. This view does not appeal to many Western Theosophists, because they assert that there can be no God different or separate from man. In the Rig Veda of the Brahmans there are as grand, and some think grander, conceptions of God and nature, as can be found in any Islamic book. If the two are equal in this regard, then the Rig Veda, being admittedly the elder, must have the first place by reason of age; but if the Rig Veda and the philosophy growing out of it are broader and grander than the other, then for that reason it must be more acceptable.

The five fundamental precepts of Islam are given in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as follows:

First, Confession of the Unity of God; second, stated prayer; third, almsgiving; fourth, the fast of Ramadan; fifth, observance of the festival of Mecca.

In the latest English publication on the subject, Mr. Webb says:

Orthodox Mohammedanism may be divided into six heads: First, faith in God, the one God, the creator of all things, who always was and ever will be, the single, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, all-merciful, eternal God; second, faith in angels, ethereal beings perfect in form and radiant in beauty, without sex, free from all gross or sensual passion and the appetites and infirmities of all frail humanity; third, belief in the Koran as a book of Divine revelation, given at various times to Mohammed by God or through the Angel Gabriel; fourth, belief in God's prophets, the most preeminent of whom were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed; fifth, belief in the resurrection and final judgment, when all mankind shall appear before God, who will reward or punish them according to the deeds they have done on earth; sixth, belief in predestination, or the inability of man to avoid, by any act of his own, the destiny irrevocably predetermined by God and written down in the eternal book previous to the creation of the world.

The religion of the Prophet contains, in common with all other religions, a secret doctrine which is the same as that found in those differently named. As referred to above, the Sufis taught a very high kind of mysticism, but not any higher than that of the Hindus, nor any different from the mysticism of the Christians, both of early and later times. They taught union with God; so do the Hindu and the Christian. They spoke of their wife and their mistress and their concubines or houris; so do mediaeval alchemists, and many of the Indian Yogis speak in a similar strain; so that in whatever direction we turn it is found that there is no substantial difference between Islamism and any other religion except in respect to age, and it is really the youngest of all, excepting perhaps the later Christian development found among the Mormons of America or Latter-day Saints. In fact, some Western Theosophists have said that it would be just as well to accept Mormonism as Islamism, since the teachings are identical and the practices are also. The Mormons say that polygamy is not taught, but they practice it; they have their mysticism, their prophecy, their various kinds of frenzy, and among them are many extraordinary examples of prevision, notably with Brig-ham Young, the second prophet.

Americans might be inclined, if they were about to make a change, to accept their own natural product in preference to an Arabian one. Certainly in regard to morality, honesty, thrift, temperance, and such virtues, the Mormons stand as well as the followers of the Prophet Mohammed. But as we know little about true Islamism, a careful consideration of it will no doubt add to our knowledge and broaden our conceptions, since it must end in our seeing once more that none of the religions of the day are true ones, but that a single body of truth underlying them all must be the religion of the future.

HADJI ERINN
Path, July, 1893

REINCARNATION IN JUDAISM

AND THE BIBLE

THE lost chord of Christianity is the doctrine of Reincarnation. It was beyond doubt taught in the early days of the cult, for it was well known to the Jews who produced the men who founded Christianity. The greatest of all the Fathers of the Church--Origen--no doubt believed in the doctrine. He taught pre-existence and the wandering of the soul. This could hardly have been believed without also giving currency to reincarnation, as the soul could scarcely wander in any place save the earth. She was in exile from Paradise, and for sins committed had to revolve and wander. Wander where? would be the next question. Certainly away from Paradise, and the short span of human life would not meet the requirements of the case. But a series of reincarnations will meet all the problems of life as well as the necessities of the doctrines of exile, of wanderings for purification, of being known to God and being judged by him before birth, and of other dogmas given out among the Jews and of course well known to Jesus and whoever of the seventy-odd disciples were not in the deepest ignorance. Some of the disciples were presumably ignorant men, such as the fishermen, who had depended on their elders for instruction, but not all were of that sort, as the wonderful works of the period were sufficiently exciting to come to the ears of even Herod. Paul cannot be accused of ignorance, but was with Peter and James one of several who not only knew the new ideas but were well versed in the old ones. And those old ones are to be found in the Old Testament and in the Commentaries, in the Zohar, the Talmud, and the other works and sayings of the Jews, all of which built up a body of dogmas accepted by the people and the Rabbis. Hence sayings of Jesus, of Paul, and others have to be viewed with the well-known and never-disputed doctrines of the day held down to the present time, borne well in mind so as to make passages clear and show what was tacitly accepted. Jesus himself said that he intended to uphold and buttress the law, and that law was not only the matter found in the book the Christian theologians saw fit to accept, but also in the other authorities of which all except the grossly unlearned were cognizant. So when we find Herod listening to assertions that John or Jesus was this, that, or the other prophet or great man of olden time, we know that he was with the people speculating on the doctrine of reincarnation or "coming back," and as to who a present famous person may have been in a former life. Given as it is in the Gospels as a mere incident, it is very plain that the matter was court gossip in which long philosophical arguments were not indulged in, but the doctrine was accepted and then personal facts gone into for amusement as well as for warning to the king. To an Eastern potentate such a warning would be of moment, as he, unlike a Western man, would think that a returning great personage would of necessity have not only knowledge but also power, and that if the people had their minds attracted to a new aspirant for the leadership they would be inflamed beyond control with the idea that an old prophet or former king had come back to dwell in another body with them. The Christians have no right, then, to excise the doctrine of reincarnation from their system if it was known to Jesus, if it was brought to his attention and was not condemned at all but tacitly accepted, and further, finally, if in any single case it was declared by Jesus as true in respect to any person. And that all this was the case can, I think, be clearly shown.

First for the Jews, from whom Jesus was born, and to whom he said unequivocally he came as a missionary or reformer. The Zohar is a work of great weight and authority among the Jews. In II, 199 b, it says that "all souls are subject to revolutions." This is metempsychosis or a'leen b'gilgoola; but it declares that "men do not know the way they have been judged in all time." That is, in their "revolutions" they lose a complete memory of the acts that have led to judgment. This is precisely the Theosophical doctrine. The Kether Malkuth says, "If she, the soul, be pure, then she shall obtain favor .. . but if she hath been defiled, then she shall wander for a time in pain and despair. . . until the days of her purification." If the soul be pure and if she comes at once from God at birth, how could she be defiled? And where is she to wander if not on this or some other world until the days of her purification? The Rabbis always explained it as meaning she wandered down from Paradise through many revolutions or births until purity was regained.

Under the name of "Din Gilgol Neshomes" the doctrine of reincarnation is constantly spoken of in the Talmud. The term means "the judgment of the revolutions of the souls." And Rabbi Manassa, son of Israel, one of the most revered, says in his book Nishmath Hayem: "The belief or the doctrine of the transmigration of souls is a firm and infallible dogma accepted by the whole assemblage of our church with one accord, so that there is none to be found who would dare to deny it. . . . Indeed, there is a great number of sages in Israel who hold firm to this doctrine so that they made it a dogma, a fundamental point of our religion. We are therefore in duty bound to obey and to accept this dogma with acclamation . . . as the truth of it has been incontestably demonstrated by the Zohar, and all books of the Kabalists."

These demonstrations hold, as do the traditions of the old Jews, that the soul of Adam reincarnated in David, and that on account of the sin of David against Uriah it will have to come again in the expected Messiah. And out of the three letters ADM, being the name of the first man, the Talmudists always made the names Adam, David and Messiah. Hence this in the Old Testament: "And they will serve Jhvh their God and David their king whom I shall reawaken for them." That is, David reincarnates again for the people. Taking the judgment of God on Adam "for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," the Hebrew interpreters said that since Adam had sinned it was necessary for him to reincarnate on earth in order to make good the evil committed in his first existence; so he comes as David, and later is to come as Messiah. The same doctrine was always applied by the Jews to Moses, Seth, and Abel, the latter spelt Habel. Habel was killed by Cain, and then to supply the loss the Lord gave Seth to Adam; he died, and later on Moses is his reincarnation as the guide of the people, and Seth was said by Adam to be the reincarnation of Habel. Cain died and reincarnated as Yethrokorah, who died, the soul waiting till the time when Habel came back as Moses and then incarnated as the Egyptian who was killed by Moses; so in this case Habel comes back as Moses, meets Cain in the person of the Egyptian, and kills the latter. Similarly it was held that Bileam, Laban, and Nabal were reincarnations of the one soul or individuality. And of Job it was said that he was the same person once known as Thara, the father of Abraham; by which they explained the verse of Job (ix, 21), "Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my own soul," to mean that he would not recognize himself as Thara.

All this is to be had in mind in reading Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee"; or in Romans ix, v, 11, 13, after telling that Jacob and Esau being not yet born, "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated"; or the ideas of the people that "Elias was yet to first come"; or that some of the prophets were there in Jesus or John; or when Jesus asked the disciples "Whom do men think that I am?" There cannot be the slightest doubt, then, that among the Jews for ages and down to the time of Jesus the ideas above outlined prevailed universally. Let us now come to the New Testament.

St. Matthew relates in the eleventh chapter the talk of Jesus on the subject of John, who is declared by him to be the greatest of all, ending in the 14th verse, thus:

And if ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.

Here he took the doctrine for granted, and the "if" referred not to any possible doubts on that, but simply as to whether they would accept his designation of John as Elias. In the 17th chapter he once more takes up the subject thus:

10. And his disciples asked him saying, Why, then, say the scribes that Elias must first come? And Jesus answered and said unto them; Elias truly shall first come and restore all things. But I say unto you that Elias is come already, and they knew him not but have done to him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of Man suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist.

The statement is repeated in Mark, chapter ix, v. 13, omitting the name of John. It is nowhere denied. It is not among any of the cases in which the different Gospels contradict each other; it is in no way doubtful. It is not only a reference to the doctrine of reincarnation, but is also a clear enunciation of it. It goes much further than the case of the man who was born blind, when Jesus heard the doctrine referred to, but did not deny it nor condemn it in any way, merely saying that the cause in that case was not for sin formerly committed, but for some extraordinary purpose, such as the case of the supposed dead man when he said that the man was not dead but was to be used to show his power over disease. In the latter one he perceived there was one so far gone to death that no ordinary person could cure him, and in the blind man's case the incident was like it. If he thought the doctrine pernicious, as it must be if untrue, he would have condemned it at the first coming up, but not only did he fail to do so, he distinctly himself brought it up in the case of John, and again when asking what were the popular notions as to himself under the prevailing doctrines as above shown. Matthew xvi, v. 13, will do as an example, as the different writers do not disagree, thus:

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, Whom do men say that I am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremias or one of the prophets.

This was a deliberate bringing-up of the old doctrine, to which the disciples replied, as all Jews would, without any dispute of the matter of reincarnation; and the reply of Jesus was not a confutation of the notion, but a distinguishing of himself from the common lot of sages and prophets by showing himself to be an incarnation of God and not a reincarnation of any saint or sage. He did not bring it up to dispute and condemn as he would and did do in other matters; but to the very contrary he evidently referred to it so as to use it for showing himself as an incarnate God. And following his example the disciples never disputed on that; they were all aware of it; St. Paul must have held it when speaking of Esau and Jacob; St. John could have meant nothing but that in Revelations, chap. iii, v. 12.

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God and he shall go no more out.

Evidently he had gone out before or the words "no more" could have no place or meaning. It was the old idea of the exile of the soul and the need for it to be purified by long wandering before it could be admitted as a "pillar in the temple of God." And until the ignorant ambitious monks after the death of Origen had gotten hold of Christianity, the doctrine must have ennobled the new movement. Later the Council of Constantinople condemned all such notions directly in the face of the very words of Jesus, so that at last it ceased to vibrate as one of the chords, until finally the prophecy of Jesus that he came to bring a sword and division and not peace was fulfilled by the warring nations of Christian lands who profess him in words but by their acts constantly deny him whom they call "the meek and lowly."

W.Q.J.

Path, February, 1894

REINCARNATION IN THE BIBLE

AN exhaustive paper on this subject is not contemplated in this article, but even a sketch will show that the Christian Bible has in it the doctrine of Reincarnation. Of course those who adhere only to what the church now teaches on the subject of man, his nature and destiny, will not quickly accept any construction outside of the theological one, but there are many who, while not in the church, still cling to the old book from which they were taught.

In the first place, it must be remembered that the writers of the biblical books were Jews with few exceptions, and that the founder of Christianity--Jesus--was himself a Jew. An examination of his own sayings shows that he thought his mission was to the Jews only and not to the Gentiles. He said, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." This clearly referred to the Jews and as clearly excluded the Gentiles. And on one occasion he refused for some time to do anything for a Gentile woman until her importunity at last compelled him to act; and then too he referred to his mission to the Jews. So in looking into these things we must also look at what were the beliefs of the day. The Jews then most undoubtedly believed in reincarnation. It was a commonly accepted doctrine as it is now in Hindustan, and Jesus must have been acquainted with it. This we must believe on two grounds: first, that he is claimed by the Christian to be the Son of God and full of all knowledge; and second, that he had received an education which permitted him to dispute with the doctors of divinity. The theory of reincarnation was very old at the time, and the Old Testament books show this to be so.

"Proverbs" gives the doctrine where Solomon says he was with the Creator from the beginning and that then his (Solomon's) delights were with the sons of men and in the habitable parts of the earth. This disposes of the explanation that he meant he existed in the foreknowledge of the Creator, by the use of the sentences detailing his life on the earth and with men. Then again Elias and many other famous men were to actually return, and all the people were from time to time expecting them. Adam was held to have reincarnated to carry on the work he began so badly, and Seth, Moses, and others were reincarnated as different great persons of subsequent epochs. The land is an oriental one, and the orientals always held the doctrine of the rebirth of mortals. It was not always referred to in respect to the common man who died and was reborn, but came up prominently when the names of great prophets, seers, and legislators were mentioned. If readers will consult any well educated Jew who is not "reformed," they will gain much information on this national doctrine.

Coming now to the time of Jesus, all the foregoing has a bearing on what he said. And, of course, if what he said does not agree with the view of the church, then the church view must be given up or we will be guilty of doubting the wisdom of Jesus and his ability to conduct a great movement. This, indeed, is the real position of the Church, for it has promulgated dogmas and condemned doctrines wholly without any authority, and some that Jesus held himself it has put its anathema upon.

When there was brought into the presence of Jesus a man who was born blind, the disciples naturally wondered why he had thus been punished by the Almighty, and asked Jesus whether the man was thus born blind for some sin he had committed, or one done by his parents. The question was put by them with the doctrine of reincarnation fully accepted, for it is obvious the man must have lived before, in their estimation, in order to have done sin for which he was then punished. Now if the doctrine was wrong and pernicious, as the church has declared it to be by anathematizing it, Jesus must have known it to be wrong, and then was the time for him to deny the whole theory and explode it, as well as definitely putting his seal of condemnation upon it for all time. Yet he did not do so; he waived it then and said the blindness was for other reasons in that case. It was not a denial of it. (See November Forum.¹)

But again when John the Baptist, who had, so to say, ordained Jesus to his ministry, was killed by the ruler of the country, the news was brought to Jesus, and he then distinctly affirmed the doctrine of reincarnation. Hence his waiving the matter in the case of the blind man is shown to have been no refusal to credit the theory. Jesus affirmed the doctrine, and also affirmed the old ideas in relation to the return to earth of the prophets by saying that the ruler had killed John not knowing that he, John, was Elias "who was for to come."

On another occasion the same subject arose between Jesus and the disciples when they were talking about the coming of a messenger before Jesus himself. The disciples did not understand, and said that Elias was to come first as the messenger, and Jesus distinctly replied that Elias had come already in the person called John the Baptist. This time, if any, was the time for Jesus to condemn the doctrine, but, on the contrary, he boldly asserts it and teaches it, or rather shows its application to certain individuals, as was most interesting and instructive for the disciples who had not enough insight to be able to tell who any man was in his real immortal nature. But Jesus, being a seer, could look into the past and tell them just what historical character any one had been. And so he gave them details about John, and we must suppose more particulars were gone into than have come down to us in the writings naturally incomplete and confessed to be but a partial narrative of the doings and sayings of Jesus.

It must now be evident that there is a diametrical disagreement between the church and Jesus. The church has cursed the doctrine he taught. Which is right? The true believer in Jesus must reply that Jesus is; the church will say it is right by acting on that line. For if the doctrine be taught, then all men are put on an equal basis, and hence the power of the human rulers of heaven and earth is at once weakened. Such an important doctrine as this is one that Jesus could not afford to pass over. And if it is wrong, then it was his duty to condemn it: indeed, we must suppose that he would have done so were it not entirely right. And as he went further, even to the extent of affirming it, then it stands with his seal of approval for all time.

John the Revealer believed it of course, and so in his book we find the verse saying that the voice of the Almighty declared that the man who overcame should "go out no more" from heaven. This is mere rhetoric if reincarnation be denied; it is quite plain as a doctrine if we construe it to mean that the man who by constant struggle and many lives at last overcomes the delusions of matter will have no need to go out into life any more, but from that time will be a pillar, what the Theosophist knows as "Dhyan Chohan" forevermore. And this is exactly the old and oriental doctrine on the point.

St. Paul also gives the theory of reincarnation in his epistles where he refers to the cases of Jacob and Esau, saying that the Lord loved the one and hated the other before they were born. It is obvious that the Lord cannot love or hate a non-existing thing, and that this means that Jacob and Esau had been in their former lives respectively good and bad and therefore the Lord--or Karma loved the one and hated the other before their birth as the men known as Jacob and Esau. And Paul was here speaking of the same event that the older prophet Malachi spoke of in strict adherence to the prevalent idea. Following Paul and the disciples came the early fathers of the church, and many of them taught the same. Origen was the greatest of them. He gave the doctrine specifically, and it was because of the influence of his ideas that the Council of Constantinople 500 years after Jesus saw fit to condemn the whole thing as pernicious. This condemnation worked because the fathers were ignorant men, most of them Gentiles who did not care for old doctrines and, indeed, hated them. So it fell out of the public teaching and was at last lost to the Western world. But it must revive, for it is one of the founder's own beliefs, and as it gives a permanent and forceful basis for ethics it is really the most important of all the Theosophical doctrines.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, December, 1892

* The Theosophical Forum was a small publication issued monthly to all members of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, comprised of answers to questions on the Theosophical philosophy. The reply to which Mr. Judge here refers elaborates on the explanation of Jesus statement (John, 9) concerning the man who was born blind--Eds. (of Theosophy Company)

REINCARNATION OF ANIMALS

VERY little has been said on the question whether or not the theory of Reincarnation applies to animals in the same way as to man. Doubtless, if Brahman members well acquainted with Sanscrit works on the general subject were to publish their views, we should at least have a large mass of material for thought and find many clues to the matter in the Hindu theories and allegories. Even Hindu folk-lore would suggest much. Under all popular "superstitions" a large element of truth can be found hidden away when the vulgar notion is examined in the light of the Wisdom-Religion. A good instance of this on the material plane is to be found in the new treatment proposed for small-pox. The old superstition was that all patients with that disease must be treated and kept in darkness. But the practise was given up by modern doctors. Recently, however, some one had the usual "flash" and decided that perhaps the chemical rays of the sun had something to do with the matter, and began to try red glass for all windows where small-pox patients were. Success was reported, the theory being that the disease was one where the chemical rays injured the skin and health just as they do in ordinary sunburn. Here we see, if the new plan be found right, that an old superstition was based on a law of nature. In the same way the folk-lore of such an ancient people as the Hindu deserves scrutiny with the object of discovering the buried truth. If they are possessed of such notions regarding the fate of animals, careful analysis might give valuable suggestion.

Looking at the question in the light of Theosophical theories, we see that a wide distinction exists between man and animals. Man reincarnates as man because he has got to the top of the present scale of evolution. He cannot go back, for Manas is too much developed. He has a Devachan because he is a conscious thinker. Animals cannot have Manas so much developed, and so cannot be self-conscious in the sense that man is. Besides all this, the animal kingdom, being lower, has the impulse still to rise to higher forms. But here we have the distinct statement by the Adepts through H.P.B. that while possibly animals may rise higher in their own kingdom they cannot in this evolution rise to the human stage, as we have reached the middle or turning-point in the fourth round. On this point H.P.B. has, in the second volume of the Secret Doctrine (first ed.) at p. 196, a foot note as follows:

In calling the animals "Soulless," it is not depriving the beast, from the humblest to the highest species, of a "soul," but only of a conscious surviving Ego-soul, i.e., that principle which survives after a man and reincarnates in a like man.

The animal has an astral body that survives the physical form for a short period; but its (animal) Monad does not reincarnate in the same, but in a higher species, and has no "Devachan" of course. It has the seeds of all the human principles in itself, but they are latent.

Here the distinction above adverted to is made. It is due to the Ego-Soul, that is, to Manas with Buddhi and Atma. Those principles being latent in the animal, and the door to the human kingdom being closed, they may rise to higher species but not to the man stage. Of course also it is not meant that no dog or other animal ever reincarnates as dog, but that the monad has tendency to rise to a higher species, whatever that be, whenever it has passed beyond the necessity for further experience as "dog." Under the position the author assumes it would be natural to suppose that the astral form of the animal did not last long, as she says, and hence that astral appearances or apparitions of animals were not common. Such is the fact. I have heard of a few, but very few, cases where a favorite animal made an apparitional appearance after death, but even the prolific field of spiritualism has not many instances of the kind. And those who have learned about the astral world know that human beings assume in that world the form of animal or other things which they in character most resemble, and that this sort of apparition is not confined to the dead but is more common among the living. It is by such signs that clairvoyants know the very life and thought of the person before them. It was under the operation of this law that Swedenborg saw so many curious things in his time.

The objection based on the immense number of animals both alive and dead as calling for a supply of monads in that stage can be met in this way. While it is stated that no more animal monads can enter on the man-stage, it is not said nor inferred that the incoming supply of monads for the animal kingdom has stopped. They may still be coming in from other worlds for evolution among the animals of this globe. There is nothing impossible in it, and it will supply the answer to the question, Where do the new animal monads come from, supposing that all the present ones have exhausted the whole number of higher species possible here? It is quite possible also that the animal monads may be carried on to other members of the earth-chain in advance of man for the purpose of necessary development, and this would lessen the number of their appearances here. For what keeps man here so long is that the power of his thought is so great as to make a Devachan for all lasting some fifteen centuries--with exceptions-- and for a number who desire "heaven" a Devachan of enormous length. The animals, however, being devoid of developed Manas, have no Devachan and must be forced onwards to the next planet in the chain. This would be consistent and useful, as it gives them a chance for development in readiness for the time when the monads of that kingdom shall begin to rise to a new human kingdom. They will have lost nothing, but, on the contrary, will be the gainers.

WILLIAM BREHON

Path, April, 1894

RELIGION AND REFORM
FROM A THEOSOPHICAL VIEWPOINT

By WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, F.T.S.

TWO great shadowy shapes remain fixed in the attention of the mind of the day, threatening to become in the twentieth century more formidable and engrossing than ever. They are religion and reform, and in their sweep they include every question of pressing human need; for this first arises through the introspective experience of the race out of its aspirations toward the unknown and the ever present desire to solve the questions whence and why? while the second has its birth in the conditions surrounding the bodies of the questioners of fate who struggle helplessly in the ocean of material existence.

Many men wielding small or weighty pens have wrestled with these questions, attacking them in ways as various as the minds of those who have taken them up for consideration, but it still remains for the theosophist to bring forward his views and obtain a hearing. This he should always do as a matter of duty, and not from the pride of fame or the self-assertion which would see itself proclaimed before men. For he knows that, even if he should not speak or could not get a hearing, the march of that evolution in which he thoroughly believes will force these views upon humanity, even if that has to be accomplished by suffering endured by every human unit.

The theosophist can see no possibility of reform in existing abuses, in politics or social relations, unless the plan of reform is one which grows out of a true religion, and he does not think that any of the prevailing religions of the Occident are true or adequate. They do not go to the root of the evil which causes the pain and sorrow that call for reform or alleviation. And in his opinion theosophy--the essence or concentrated virtue of every religion alone has power to offer and effect the cure.

None of the present attempts at reform will meet success so long as they are devoid of the true doctrine as to man, his nature and destiny, and respecting the universe, its origin and future course. Every one of these essays leaves man where it finds him, neglecting the lessons to be drawn from the cycles in their never-ceasing revolution. While efforts are made to meliorate his mere physical condition, the real mover, the man within, is left without a guide, and is therefore certain to produce from no matter how good a system the same evils which are designed to be destroyed. At every change he once more proceeds to vitiate the effect of any new regimen by the very defects in human nature that cannot be reached by legislation or by dogmatic creeds and impossible hells, because they are beyond the reach of everything except the power of his own thought. Nationalism, Socialism, Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, and Anarchism are each and all ineffective in the end. The beautiful dream depicted by Nationalism cannot be made a physical fact, since it has no binding inward sanction; Communism could not stand, because in time the Communist would react back into the holder of individual rights and protector of property which his human nature would demand ought not to be dissipated among others less worthy. And the continuance of the present system, in which the amasser of wealth is allowed to retain and dispose of what he has acquired, will, in the end, result in the very riot and bloodshed which legislation is meant to prevent and suppress.

Indeed, the great popular right of universal suffrage, instead of bringing about the true reign of liberty and law, will be the very engine through which the crash will come, unless with it the Theosophic doctrines are inculcated. We have seen the suffrage gradually extended so as to be universal in the United States, but the people are used by the demagogues and the suffrage is put to waste. Meanwhile, the struggle between capital and labor grows more intense, and in time will rage with such fury that the poor and unlearned, feeling the goad of poverty strike deeper, will cast their votes for measures respecting property in land or chattels, so revolutionary that capital will combine to right the supposed invasion by sword and bullet. This is the end toward which it is all tending, and none of the reforms so sincerely put forward will avert it for one hour after the causes have been sufficiently fixed and crystallized. This final formation of the efficient causes is not yet complete, but is rapidly approaching the point where no cure will be possible.

The cold acquirements of science give us, it is true, magnificent physical results, but fail like creeds and reforms by legislative acts in the end. Using her own methods and instruments, she fails to find the soul and denies its existence; while the churches assert a soul but cannot explain it, and at the same time shock human reason by postulating the incineration by material fire of that which they admit is immortal. As a means of escape from this dilemma nothing is offered save a vicarious atonement and a retreat behind a blind acceptance of incongruities and injustice in a God who is supposed by all to be infinitely merciful and just.

Thus, on the one hand, science has no terrors and no reformatory force for the wicked and the selfish; on the other, the creeds, losing their hold in consequence of the inroads of knowledge, grow less and less useful and respected every year. The people seem to be approaching an era of wild unbelief. Just such a state of thought prevailed before the French revolution of 1793.

Theosophy here suggests the reconciliation of science and religion by showing that there is a common foundation for all religions and that the soul exists with all the psychic forces proceeding therefrom. As to the universe, Theosophy teaches a never-ending evolution and involution. Evolution begins when the Great Breath--Herbert Spencers "Unknowable" which manifests as universal energy--goes forth, and involution, or the disappearance of the universe, obtains when the same breath returns to itself. This coming forth lasts millions upon millions of years, and involution prevails for an equal length of time. As soon as the breath goes forth, universal mind together with universal basic matter appears. In the ancient system this mind is called Mahat, and matter Prakriti. Mahat has the plan of evolution which it impresses upon Prakriti, causing it to ceaselessly proceed with the evolution of forms and the perfecting of the units composing the cosmos. The crown of this perfection is man, and he contains in himself the whole plan of the universe copied in miniature but universally potential.

This brings us to ourselves, surrounded as we are by an environment that appears to us to cause pain and sorrow, no matter where we turn. But as the immutable laws of cause and effect brought about our own evolution, the same laws become our saviors from the miseries of existence. The two great laws postulated by Theosophy for the world's reform are those of Karma and Reincarnation. Karma is the law of action which decrees that man must suffer and enjoy solely through his own thoughts and acts. His thoughts, being the smaller copy of the universal mind, lie at the root of every act and constitute the force that brings about the particular body he may inhabit. So Reincarnation in an earthly body is as necessary for him as the ceaseless reincarnation of the universal mind in evolution after evolution is needful for it. And as no man is a unit separate from the others in the Cosmos, he must think and act in such a way that no discord is produced by him in the great universal stream of evolution. It is the disturbance of this harmony which alone brings on the miseries of life, whether that be of a single man or of the whole nation. As he has acted in his last life or lives, so will he be acted upon in succeeding ones. This is why the rich are often unworthy, and the worthy so frequently poor and afflicted. All appeals to force are useless, as they only create new causes sure to react upon us in future lives as well as in the present. But if all men believed in this just and comprehensive law of Karma, knowing well that whatever they do will be punished or rewarded in this or other new lives, the evils of existence would begin to disappear. The rich would know that they are only trustees for the wealth they have and are bound to use it for the good of their fellows, and the poor, satisfied that their lot is the just desert for prior acts and aided by the more fortunate, would work out old bad Karma and sow the seeds of only that which is good and harmonious.

National misery, such as that of Whitechapel in London (to be imitated ere long in New York), is the result of national Karma, which in its turn is composed of the aggregation of not only the Karma of the individuals concerned but also of that belonging to the rest of the nation. Ordinary reforms, whether by law or otherwise, will not compass the end in view. This is demonstrated by experience. But given that the ruling and richer classes believe in Karma and Reincarnation, a universal widespread effort would at once be made by those favorites of fortune toward not only present alleviation of miserable conditions, but also in the line of educating the vulgar who now consider themselves oppressed as well by their superiors as by fate. The opposite is now the case, for we cannot call individual sporadic or sectarian efforts of beneficence a national or universal attempt. Just now we have the General of the Salvation Army proposing a huge scheme of colonization which is denounced by a master of science, Prof. Huxley, as utopian, inefficient, and full of menace for the future. And he, in the course of his comment, candidly admits the great danger to be feared from the criminal and dissatisfied classes. But if the poorer and less discriminating see the richer and the learned offering physical assistance and intelligent explanations of the apparent injustice of life which can be found only in Theosophy there would soon arise a possibility of making effective the fine laws and regulations which many are ready to add to those already proposed. Without such Theosophic philosophy and religion, the constantly increasing concessions made to the clamor of the uneducated democracy's demands will only end in inflating the actual majority with an undue sense of their real power, and thus precipitate the convulsion which might he averted by the other course.

This is a general statement of the only panacea, for if once believed in even from a selfish motive it will compel, by a force that works from within all men, the endeavor to escape from future unhappiness which is inevitable if they violate the laws inhering in the universal mind.

The Twentieth Century

New York, March 12, 1891

REMEMBERING THE EXPERIENCES
OF THE EGO

TO many it seems puzzling that we do not remember the experiences of the Higher Self in sleep. But as long as we ask "Why does not the lower self remember these experiences," we shall never have an answer. There is a contradiction in the question, because the lower self, never having had the experiences it is required to remember, could not at any time recollect them.

When sleep comes on, the engine and instrument of the lower personality is stopped, and can do nothing but what may be called automatic acts. The brain is not in use, and hence no consciousness exists for it until the waking moment returns. The ego, when thus released from the physical chains, from from its hard daily task of living with and working through the bodily organs, proceeds to enjoy the experiences of the plane of existence which is peculiarly its own.

On that plane it uses a method and processes of thought, and perceives the ideas appropriate to it through organs different from those of the body. All that it sees and hears (if we may use those terms) appears reversed from our plane. The language, so to say, is a foreign one even to the inner language used when awake. So, upon reassuming life in the body, all that it has to tell its lower companion must be spoken in a strange tongue, and for the body that is an obstruction to comprehension. We hear the words, but only now and then obtain flashes of their meaning. It is something like the English-speaking person who knows a few foreign words entering a foreign town and there being only able to grasp those few terms as he hears them among the multitude of other words and sentences which he does not understand.

What we have to do, then, is to learn the language of the Ego, so that we shall not fail to make a proper translation to ourselves. For at all times the language of the plane through which the Ego nightly floats is a foreign one to the brain we use, and has to be always translated for use by the brain. If the interpretation is incorrect, the experience of the Ego will never be made complete to the lower man.

But it may be asked if there is an actual language for the Ego, having its sound and corresponding signs. Evidently not; for, if there were, there would have been made a record of it during all those countless years that sincere students have been studying themselves. It is not a language in the ordinary sense. It is more nearly described as a communication of ideas and experience by means of pictures. So with it a sound may be pictured as a color or a figure, and an odor as a vibrating line; an historical event may be not only shown as a picture, but also as a light or a shadow, or as a sickening smell or delightful incense; the vast mineral world may not only exhibit its planes and angles and colors, but also its vibrations and lights. Or, again, the ego may have reduced its perceptions of size and distance for its own purposes, and, having the mental capacity for the time of the ant, it may report to the bodily organs a small hole as an abyss, or the grass of the field as a gigantic forest. These are adduced by way of example, and are not to be taken as hard and fast lines of description.

Upon awakening, a great hindrance is found in our own daily life and terms of speech and thought to the right translation of these experiences, and the only way in which we can use them with full benefit is by making ourselves porous, so to speak, to the influences from the higher self, and by living and thinking in such a manner as will be most likely to bring about the aim of the soul.

This leads us unerringly to virtue and knowledge, for the vices and the passions eternally becloud our perception of the meaning of what the Ego tries to tell us. It is for this reason that the sages inculcate virtue. Is it not plain that, if the vicious could accomplish the translation of the Ego's language, they would have done it long ago, and is it not known to us all that only among the virtuous can the Sages be found?

Eusebio Urban

Path, June, 1890

Replanting Diseases For Future Use

The ills I wish to speak of now are those of the body. Our moral nature will be purified and ennobled, widened and strengthened, by attention to the precepts of the saints and sages who through all the ages continue speaking for our benefit. And I refer to these with a view to "mind-cure" and "metaphysical healing."

In the article on the "Cure of Diseases" I stated our real ground of objections to the practices demonstrated variously, as the practitioners have been Theosophists, Christians, or followers of mind healers, to be directed to methods which in fact introduce a new sort of palliative that throws back into our inner, hidden planes of life diseases otherwise passing down and out through the natural gateway, our bodily frame.

A consideration of this subject requires that we enquire awhile into the complete nature of man. This inquiry has been made before by much greater minds than mine, and I only hand on what they have found and what I have corroborated for myself. Mind-healers and Spiritual Scientists and the rest do not make any reference to this subtle nature of ours except to admit though to be powerful and to say that the "spiritual body is pure and free from disease." Mind itself is not described by them, nor is it stated that the "spiritual body" has any anatomy possible of description. But the field of Theosophic research is not devoid of an anatomical enumeration, so to say, of the parts of the inner body-the "spiritual body" of some of these schools-nor of the "mind" spoken of by them all.

The mind is manas of the Hindus. It is a part of the immortal man. The "spiritual body" is not immortal. It is compounded of astral body with the passions and desires. Mind is the container of the efficient causes of our circumstances, our inherent character and the seeds that sprout again and again as physical diseases as well as those purely mental. It is the mover who is either voluntary in his motion, free if it will, of moved hither and thither by every object and influence and colored by every idea. From life to life it occupies body after body, using a new brain instrument in each incarnation. As Patanjali put it ages ago, in mind lie planted all seeds with self-reproductive power inherent in them, only waiting for time and circumstances to sprout again. Here are the causes for our diseases. Product of thought truly, but thought long finished and now transformed into cause beyond our present thought. Lying like tigers by the edge of the jungle's pool ready to spring when the hour arrives, they may come forward accompanied by counteractions due to other causes, or them may come alone.

When these seeds sprout and liberate their forces they show themselves in diseases in the body, where they exhaust themselves. To attack them with the forces belonging to the plane of mind is to force them again to their hiding place, to inhibit their development, to stop their exhaustion and transfer to the grosser level of life. They are forcibly dragged back, only to lie waiting once more for their natural expression in some other life. That natural expression is through a body, or rather through the lowest vehicle in use in any evolutionary period.

This is a great wheel that ever revolves, and no man can stop it. To imagine we can escape from any cause connected with us is to suppose that law and order desert the manifested universe. No such divorce is possible. We must work everything out to the last item. The moment we evolve a thought and thus a cause, it must go on producing its effects, all becoming in turn causes for other effects and sweeping down the great evolutionary current in order to rise again. To suppose we can stop this ebb and flow is chimerical in the extreme. Hence the great sages have always said we have to let the Karmic effects roll on while we set new and better causes in motion, and that even the perfect sage has to endure in his bodily frame that which belongs to it through Karma.

The inner anatomical structure should also be known. The ethereal body has its own current-nerves, for want of a better word, changes and method of growth and action, just as the gross body has. It is, in fact, the real body, for it seldom alters throughout life, while the physical counterpart changes every moment, its atoms going and coming upon the matrix or model furnished by the ethereal body.

The inner currents emanate from their own centers and are constantly in motion. They are affected by thoughts and the reflection of the body in its physiological changes. They each act upon the other incessantly. (Every center of the inner body has its appropriate correspondent in the physical one, which it affects and through which it is in turn acted upon.) It is by means of these subtle currents-called vital airs when translated from the Sanscrit-that impressions are conveyed to the mind above, and through them also are the extraordinary feats of the sèance room and the Indian Yogi accomplished.

And just as one may injure his body by ignorantly using drugs or physical practices, so can the finer currents and nerves of the inner man be thrown out of adjustment if one in pride or ignorance attempts, uninstructed to deal with them.

The seeds of disease being located primarily in the mind, they begin to exhaust themselves through the agency of the inner currents that carry the appropriate vibrations down upon the physical plane. If left to themselves-aside from palliations and aids in throwing off-they pass out into the great crucible of nature and one is free from them forever. Therefore pain is said to be a kind friend who relieves the real man of a load of sin.

Now the moment the practices of the mind-curer are begun, what happens is that the hidden inner currents are violently grasped, and, if concentration is persisted in, the downward vibrations are thrown up and altered so as to carry back the cause to the mind, where it is replanted with the addition of the purely selfish desires that led to the practice. It is impossible to destroy the cause; it must be allowed to transform itself. And when it is replaced in the mind, it waits there until an opportunity occurs either in this life or in the next rebirth.

In some cases the physical and psychological structures are not able to stand the strain, so that sometimes the return of the downward vibrations is so great and sudden that insanity results; in other cases disease with violent characteristics set in.

The high tone of thought enjoined by some schools of healers has the effect of making the cause of trouble sink deeper into hiding, and probably adds to concentration. But any thought would do as well, provided concentration is persisted in, for it is the concentration that makes the effect, and not the philosophy. The system of affirming and denying make concentration easier.

For when the practitioner begins, he immediately brings to play certain inner forces by virtue of his dwelling on one thing. The veriest savages do the same. They have long taught it for various purposes, and their ideals go no higher than food and sleep, fetishes and superstitions.

When one is thus operating on another who is willing, the change of inner nerve currents is brought by sympathy, which in these cases is the same as the phenomenon so well known in physics by the name of induction. When a person is operated on-or against, I call it-the effect is either repelled or produced. If produced, it is by the same induction brought about without his knowledge and because he was not stronger than the operator.

Here is the danger again. The schools of hypnotists are teaching how to do it. The mind-currents and "metaphysicians" are doing the same. An army of possibilities lurks under it all: for already there are those practitioners who deliberately practice against their opponents, sitting by day after day to paralyze the efforts of other people. It is like dynamite in the hands of a child. Some day it will explode, and those who taught it will be responsible, since instead of being taught it ought to be warned against. The world could get along with what disease there is, if it only turned attention to high ethics and altruistic endeavor. For after a few centuries of right living the nations would have purged themselves and built up a right moral building well founded on the rocks of true philosophy, charity, and love.

William Q. Judge

Path, October, 1892

RESPECTING REINCARNATION

OBJECTIONS frequently raised against "Reincarnation," and that appear to those who make them to be strong, are some growing out of the emotional part of our nature. They say, "We do not wish to be some one else in another life; how can we recognize our friends and loved ones if they and we thus change our personality? The absorbing attachments we form here are such that happiness would seem impossible without those we love."

It is useless to say in reply that, if Reincarnation be the law, it can and will make no difference what we would like or dislike. So long as one is governed by his likes and dislikes, logical arguments will not dissipate objections, and, if it is coldly asserted that the beloved objects of our affection pass at death forever beyond us, no relief is afforded to the mind nor is a strictly accurate statement made. In fact, one of the miseries of conditioned existence is the apparent liability of forever losing those upon whom we place our hearts. So to meet this difficulty raised by ever present death, the christian churches have invented their heaven in which reunion is possible under a condition, the acceptance of the dogma of the Redeemer. None of their believers seem to consider that, inasmuch as constantly many of those most closely bound to us by every tie do not and never will meet the prerequisite condition, happiness in that heaven cannot be possible when we constantly are aware that those unbelievers are suffering in hell, for, enough memory being left to permit us to recognize believing friends, we cannot forget the others. Greater than ever, then, that difficulty becomes.

What are these loves? must be asked. They are either (a) a love for the mere physical body, or (b) one for the soul within. Of course in the first case, the body being disintegrated at death, it is not possible for us, nor need we wish--unless we are grossly materialistic--to see that in the other life. And personality belongs only to the body. Hence, if the soul that we do love inhabits another physical frame, it is the law--a part of the law of Reincarnation not often stated or dwelt on--that we will again, when incarnated, meet that same soul in the new tenement. We cannot, however, always recognize it. But that, the recognition or memory of those whom we knew before, is one of the very objects of our study and practice. Not only is this the law as found in ancient books, but it has been positively stated, in the history of the Theosophical Society, in a letter from an Adept addressed not many years ago to some London theosophists. In it he asked them if they imagined that they were together as incarnated beings for the first time, stated that they were not, and laid down the rule that the real affinities of soul life drew them together on earth.

To be associated against our will with those who lay upon us the claim of mother, father, brother, son, or wife from a previous life would neither be just nor necessary. Those relations, as such, grew out of physical ties alone, and souls that are alike, who really love each other, as well as those who harbor hate, are brought together in mortal bodies as now father and now son--, or otherwise.

So, then, with the doctrine of Devachan we have the answer. In that state we have with us, for all practical purposes and to suit our desire, every one whom we loved on earth: upon being reincarnated we are again with those whose souls we are naturally attracted to.

By living up to the highest and best of our convictions, for humanity and not for self, we make it possible that we shall at last recognize in some earth-life those persons whom we love, and to lose whom forever seems such a dreary and uninviting prospect.

Path, August, 1888

RINGS, ROUNDS, AND OBSCURATION

A NUMBER of correspondents have propounded questions growing out of a recent article on "Evolution" and relating to the great progress round the chain of globes of which this earth is one. One of these is:

If we are transferred to the next planet of our chain, shall we be born there like a child on this one, or have we to evolve through minerals, plants, etc.?

No details, such as are requested in this enquiry, have been given out by the Adepts, all that has been said being general in its nature wherever the other planets of our chain were spoken of. In the Secret Doctrine H. P. Blavatsky distinctly says the teaching has to do with this earth particularly, and that when other planets are mentioned there are only hints, except in regard to the grand fact that the human life-wave passes from this to the next globe, and so on through the chain. The only other writer on this who quotes authority is Mr. Sinnett in Esoteric Buddhism, and in that he copies the letters sent him by H. P. B.’s Masters. He has information of detail regarding only this earth. Consequently, to hazard an answer to the question would be guessing. No one knows what exact function the other planets in the chain perform; all we know is that the human life-wave does pass into the next planet when the cycle is completed for this one. Whether we shall be born there as human children or into other forms we do not know. And doubtless it is not necessary we should be informed, inasmuch as ages must pass before we shall be released from this world. By that time we should have forgotten the facts.

These considerations apply to another question. Whether only a part, or the whole, of the human family is at the same time on one globe. Of this we cannot speak with authority. But in the Secret Doctrine the author says the Adepts teach that seven races appear in the beginning on seven different portions of the earth. This would appear to indicate that the egos within those race-forms come from another planet in the chain. And as it is distinctly taught that an obscuration overtakes a globe when the entire race deserts it for another, it is very safe to assume the teaching to be that deserted planets go into obscuration if the races that left them have not completed all their rounds. And as the matter of obscuration as compared with pralaya—or total destruction—is also raised, we may keep in mind at this point that a total pralaya only comes when the entire seven rounds of the seven races around the seven globes is completed. The obscuration is similar to the sleep of man’s body, making a reawakening possible; while total pralaya is similar to the actual death of the body of a man, followed by his ego’s going into the state of Devachan. This agrees with the views given by H.P.B., as from the Masters, that the Nirvana for the great human family is really that long period which intervenes between the total death of a planetary chain and the new birth of a new planetary chain, upon which a higher form of evolution will be started at the hour of that new birth.

When the article in July PATH said "we must go round the whole chain of seven planets three times more before as a race we are perfected," the words as a race were intended to, as they do, point out that sub-races were not being dealt with. Sub-races grow on the planet, and not by going to other ones. Hence there is no obscuration or pralaya after a sub-race. As these, in their process of formation, proceed with their development upon this globe—or any other they may be on, cataclysms for that globe take place from time to time, involving either the entire mass or only a portion of it. These cataclysms are not obscurations of the globe. For the latter can only come on when the egos of the race have abandoned the globe for the purpose of continuing work on another of the same chain. And carrying on the correspondence for the purpose of illustration, those cataclysms are similar to the sicknesses and accidents which come to a man during a single lifetime. When all the necessary sub-races have been evolved, and the root, trunk, branch, twig, leaf, blossom, and fruit seven in all—are completed, then the race, having been thus perfected as such, passes on to the next globe in the chain. This is what is involved in the sentence quoted from the July PATH.

Confusion may be avoided by remembering that the race of which we form a part includes many sub-races, and that the term "sub-races" does not mean that a new sub-race comes on only when a preceding one has disappeared. The true Hindus and many European races are in our race, so that we and they are all sub-races. In America a new sub-race is being formed as preparation for many others, all preparing the ground for the final great race. It is only when sub-races have fully accomplished their task that they leave this earth altogether. And in saying they leave or disappear, what is meant is that the race as a physical expression goes out, not that the egos in the bodies leave this world and go to another one.

As all the egos engaged in this evolution are not in equal stages of progress, but are very varied in their development, some forward and others backward, the whole process is a matter of education for the egos. They go backward and forward in the various sub-races which are on the earth at the same time just as the development of the egos requires, in the same way as one incarnates in family after family in his own race. So that in one life one may be in an advanced sub-race in accordance with predominating qualities, but in that incarnation may bring up certain defects or generate certain causes requiring him to pass over next life to some other less progressed sub-race for the purpose of extirpating the defects or working off the causes.

In this way accurate adjustment, perfect development, regularity and roundness are all amply provided for. Classes of egos from time to time move up en masse, and at last no ego is left requiring the development afforded by some sub-races, and the latter then, as physical forms, begin to die away, being inhabited only by very low orders of intelligence which need no description. But as these are much lower in power than even the mere brain-matter of the forms they come into, the result is that they drag the physical race down, they are unable to give the natural brain capacity its normal expression, and that race will show all the signs of human decrepitude until its remaining members, gradually becoming curiosities in Ethnology, are at last engulfed altogether by death. This is one of the great facts in racial history not yet understood by the world. A race is both physical and spiritual. The physical body and brain require an informing intelligence of a degree of power sufficient to keep up the exact amount of tension demanded by that sort of body, and if this is not furnished the consequence will be that equilibrium is destroyed, followed in time by sterility among the females of the race, leading inevitably to extinction.

It is an obscure point, but of the highest importance. Not improbably many will reject it, but the fact of racial extinction is known, as in the case of Hottentots and others, and ordinary theories fail to show why a perfect blight falls upon some masses of people.

Returning to the great progress of the seven races, it is to be noted that when the complete seven have all finished the seven rounds the entire family of egos evolving on the seven globes commences to leave the whole chain forever, and the various globes composing it begin to die altogether. This, however, does not take place at the same time for the whole seven. They die one by one because the "human life wave" never arrives at or leaves any globe in a complete mass. Such coming and going is similar to the migration of birds from zone to zone, they being known to go in detachments until all have migrated. The advance portion of the life-wave will arrive at globe seven on its last journey, the remainder following; and thus the whole wave will be at last withdrawn from globe after globe beginning with number one or A until the entire stream has passed out from the seventh, it being, as it were, the door of departure. It is evident, then, that globe A, being the one to be first completely abandoned, has time to throw its energies off into space for the purpose of beginning the formation of a new first-plane globe to be ready in that new chain for the incoming rush of pilgrim souls as soon as the rest between chains is over.

This is exactly what happened for the predecessors of this chain of globes, and, as our earth is a fourth-round or fourth-plane globe, it was formed in space by the energies of the old moon which is a fourth-plane globe of a former chain. For this reason the Adepts call the Moon our parent, meaning the parent of our globe. And the Moon may illustrate the question about obscuration and pralaya, as she is not in obscuration but is in her final pralaya and is disintegrating as quickly as nature will permit, this earth meanwhile absorbing her particles slowly from day to day while the great cycle of our evolution unerringly goes on. It has also been stated in letters from the Adepts that the well-known planet Mars is now in obscuration. This means that the body of the planet is, as it were, sleeping in space, as it rolls about the sun and has no inhabitants on it such as we. The life-wave belonging to it has passed on to the next or some other globe of its own chain, but since that wave has to return, the body of the planet does not go into pralaya, but waits for the new day. Its life as a sleeping globe is maintained by a certain subtle principle which is not publicly referred to by those who know of it, and which will not permit it to die until the whole chain of globes of which it is one has been traversed seven times, or the equivalent of seven, by the wave of life belonging to it.

W.Q.J.
Path, November, 1892

ROUNDS AND RACES

A FUNDAMENTAL axiom in Theosophy is that no one should accept as unquestionably true any statement of fact, principle, or theory which he has not tested for himself. This does not exclude a reasonable reliance upon testimony; but only that blind credulity which sometimes passes for faith. As we understand the rule, it is that we should at all times keep a clear and distinct boundary between what we know, and what we only accept provisionally on the testimony of those who have had larger experience until we reach a point of view from which we can see its truth. We owe it to ourselves to enlarge the sphere of clear knowledge and to push back as far as possible the boundary of opinion and hypothesis.

The realm of knowledge has various departments. Our physical senses furnish us one class of knowledge; our intellectual powers investigate another field on mathematical lines; and yet another faculty enables us to apprehend ethical teachings and to trace them to their true basis in Karma. That we have other faculties, now largely latent, which when developed will enable us to enter other fields of observation and investigation, is beginning to be seen and appreciated. Among the subjects which man may thus in the future examine for himself is a large block of truth concerning evolution, the out-breathing of the Great Breath, the birth and development of a chain of globes, and of human life thereon, some part of which has been imparted to us by those who claim to know, and which is chiefly useful, perhaps, for the light which it throws on our surroundings, our destiny, and our duty.

The grander sweeps of this block of truth are given to us in the barest outline, and not until our present physical earth is reached do we find anything like detailed information. From the hints given out, however, and reasoning according to the doctrine of correspondences, "as above, so below," we may plausibly infer many things in regard to other globes and other systems; but such flights can hardly be taken with much profit or advantage until we become thoroughly familiar with the things that are revealed in regard to our immediate surroundings.

In reading what has been written about the evolution of our planetary chain, it becomes apparent that some writers either did not have clear views on the subject, or that confusion and even contradiction have resulted from difficulty in finding words adapted to its expression and in using the words chosen in a strictly consistent manner. The article entitled "Evolution" found on page 117 of THE PATH for July, 1892, is, it seems to me, open to this objection; and I ask leave of the Editor to contribute briefly to the work of making the subject more clear.

The planetary chain consists of seven companion globes, which for convenience of reference are named from the first seven letters of the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. We occupy globe D, the fourth in the chain. The course of evolution begins on globe A, and proceeds by regular stages through globes B, C, D, E, etc. In the beginning, globe A was first evolved, and life received a certain degree of development upon it; then globe B came into existence, and the life-wave removed from globe A to B, where it went forward another stage; then globe C was evolved and received the life wave for a still further stage in its progress; and so on, until at the end of the first round globe G was evolved and furnished the field for the highest development attainable in that round.

The first round - the first tour of the life-wave through the seven globes from A to G - having been completed, the monads - the life wave - passed again to globe A, and commenced the second round, or the second tour through the chain. Without following out details, it is enough to say that three such rounds have been completed, and the fourth round has commenced its sweep and is still in progress; and that we now occupy globe D in this fourth round. Three times the life-wave has passed from globe A to globe G; and has now reached globe D in its fourth tour through the chain.

Now, leaving entirely out of sight for the present what has happened during the former three rounds, and on globes A, B, and C in this fourth round, let us consider what has happened on globe D since the life-wave reached it this fourth time; prefacing, however, the general statement that this globe will be exhausted and the life-wave be ready to pass from it to Globe E when seven root-races shall have finished their course here. Each root-race is divided into seven sub-races; and each sub-race into seven family-races; and so on; these divisions and subdivisions following each the other, and not coexisting, except as an earlier race or division of a race may survive its time and overlap a subsequent race or division. Since the life-wave reached globe D in this fourth round, four root-races have run their course upon it, and the fifth root-race has reached its fifth subdivision or sub-race, of which we are part. This fifth sub-race is said to be preparing in America for transition or transformation into the sixth sub-race: it is not entirely clear whether we in the United States today belong to the seventh family-race of the fifth sub-race, or to the first family race of the sixth sub-race. It seems certain that we are near the transition point, unless there must be an intervening pralayic period.

The sixth and seventh sub-races of the fifth root-race must run their course, and these must be followed by the sixth and seventh root-races with their various subdivisions, before the life-wave passes from our present globe D and begins its further evolution on globe E. From analogy we may infer that seven great races, with their sub-races, etc., will be necessary to complete the work of that globe; and the same for globes F and G, before the fourth round shall be concluded and the life-wave be ready to pass to globe A for the beginning of the fifth round.

Thus the planetary chain consists of seven globes; the life-wave makes during the existence of the chain seven complete tours of the chain from globe A to globe G, these tours being called rounds; the life-wave remains on each globe after reaching it in each round, until it completes seven root races, divided into forty-nine sub-races and into three hundred and forty-three family-races.

It should be remembered that the flow of the life-wave is not continuous: it has its ebb as well as its flood. There is a period of rest or pralaya after the close of each round before another is commenced: a pralaya after each globe in the round; similarly each race, sub-race, etc., is preceded and followed by its pralayic rest. The purpose of this paper is not to develop the entire scheme in all its completeness, even if that were possible; but to bring out as sharply as may be the general outlines, and especially to note the distinction between rounds and races, the seven rounds being seven circuits of the entire chain, while the seven root-races are seven life-waves (or seven repetitions of the same wave) which consecutively flow and ebb on each globe before leaving it. There are seven root-races on each globe; forty-nine root-races in each round; three hundred and forty-three root-races in the seven rounds which complete the life of the planetary chain.

In studying this subject, it must be borne in mind that, while numerous passages in The Secret Doctrine refer to universal cosmogony and the evolution of the solar system and of our planetary chain, still the bulk of that work is devoted to the evolution of humanity on globe D in the fourth round only. It must also be remembered that the groups of monads discussed in "Theosophical Gleanings" in Vol. VI of Lucifer are not to be taken as identical with the seven root-races through which the monadic host passes on each globe in each round.

The foregoing outline of the course of evolution through the SEVEN ETERNITIES of a maha-manvantara is mechanical and clumsy; it is only a skeleton, which must be clothed upon with muscles and sinews by reading between the lines before its true relations and proportions can be understood. The following quotations from The Secret Doctrine will perhaps throw a ray of light upon the connection of the globes of the chain:

It only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our earth must be on different and superior planes. In short, as globes, they are in COADUNITION but not IN CONSUBSTANTIALITY WITH OUR EARTH. (The capitals are in the text.) Vol. I, p. 166.

When "other worlds" are mentioned . . . the Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our Earth for their location is nowhere in the space known to and conceived by the profane. They are, as it were, blended with our world — interpenetrating it and interpenetrated by it. Vol. I, p. 605.

In a foot note to page 265 of Walker’s work on Reincarnation, (Lovell’s edition), the opinion is expressed that the figures (seven planets, seven rounds, seven races, etc.), are only symbols; even so: if they are symbols, they must no less be clearly apprehended before the truths symbolized can be grasped.

ALPHA
Path, December, 1892

RULES IN OCCULTISM

Student. - Are there any rules, binding on all, in white magic or good occultism? I mean rules similar to the ten commandments of the Christians, or the rules for the protection of life, liberty, and property recognized by human law.

Sage. - There are such rules of the most stringent character, the breaking of which is never wiped out save by expiation. Those rules are not made up by some brain or mind, but flow from the laws of nature, of mind, and of soul. Hence they are impossible of nullification. One may break them and seem to escape for a whole life or for more than a life; but the very breaking of them sets in motion at once other causes which begin to make effects, and most unerringly those effects at last react on the violator. Karma here acts as it does elsewhere, and becomes a Nemesis who, though sometimes slow, is fate itself in its certainty.

Student. - It is not, then, the case that when an occultist violates a rule some other adept or agent starts out like a detective or policeman and brings the culprit to justice at a bar or tribunal such as we sometimes read of in the imaginative works of mystical writers or novelists?

Sage. - No, there is no such pursuit. On the contrary, all the fellow-adepts or students are but too willing to aid the offender, not in escaping punishment, but in sincerely trying to set counteracting causes in motion for the good of all. For the sin of one reacts on the whole human family. If, however, the culprit does not wish to do the amount of counteracting good, he is merely left alone to the law of nature, which is in fact that of his own inner life from which there can be no escape. In Lytton's novel, Zanoni, you will notice the grave Master, Mejnour, trying to aid Zanoni, even at the time when the latter was falling slowly but surely into the meshes twisted by himself that ended in his destruction. Mejnour knew the law and so did Zanoni. The latter was suffering from some former error which he had to work out; the former, if himself too stern and unkind, would later on come to the appropriate grief for such a mistake. But meanwhile he was bound to help his friend, as are all those who really believe in brotherhood.

Student. - What one of those rules in any way corresponds to "Thou shalt not steal"?

Sage. - That one which was long ago expressed by the ancient sage in the words, "Do not covet the wealth of any creature." This is better than "Thou shalt not steal," for you cannot steal unless you covet. If you steal for hunger you may be forgiven, but you coveted the food for a purpose, just as another covets merely for the sake of possession. The wealth of others includes all their possessions, and does not mean mere money alone. Their ideas, their private thoughts, their mental forces, powers, and faculties, their psychic powers - all, indeed, on all planes that they own or have. While they in that realm are willing to give it all away, it must not be coveted by another.

You have no right, therefore, to enter into the mind of another who has not given the permission and take from him what is not yours. You become a burglar on the mental and psychic plane when you break this rule. You are forbidden taking anything for personal gain, profit, advantage, or use. But you may take what is for general good, if you are far enough advanced and good enough to be able to extricate the personal element from it. This rule would, you can see, cut off all those who are well known to every observer, who want psychic powers for themselves and their own uses. If such persons had those powers of inner sight and hearing that they so much want, no power could prevent them from committing theft on the unseen planes wherever they met a nature that was not protected. And as most of us are very far from perfect, so far, indeed, that we must work for many lives, yet the Masters of Wisdom do not aid our defective natures in the getting of weapons that would cut our own hands. For the law acts implacably, and the breaches made would find their end and result in long after years. The Black Lodge, however, is very willing to let any poor, weak, or sinful mortal get such power, because that would swell the number of victims they so much require.

Student. - Is there any rule corresponding to "Thou shalt not bear false witness"?

Sage. - Yes; the one which requires you never to inject into the brain of another a false or untrue thought. As we can project our thoughts to another's mind, we must not throw untrue ones to another. It comes before him, and he, overcome by its strength perhaps, finds it echoing in him, and it is a false witness speaking falsely within, confusing and confounding the inner spectator who lives on thought.

Student. - How can one prevent the natural action of the mind when pictures of the private lives of others rise before one?

Sage. - That is difficult for the run of men. Hence the mass have not the power in general; it is kept back as much as possible. But when the trained soul looks about in the realm of soul it is also able to direct its sight, and when it finds rising up a picture of what it should not voluntarily take, it turns its face away. A warning comes with all such pictures which must be obeyed. This is not a rare rule or piece of information, for there are many natural clairvoyants who know it very well, though many of them do not think that others have the same knowledge.

Student. - What do you mean by a warning coming with the picture?

Sage. - In this realm the slightest thought becomes a voice or a picture. All thoughts make pictures. Every person has his private thoughts and desires. Around these he makes also a picture of his wish for privacy, and that to the clairvoyant becomes a voice or picture of warning which seems to say it must be let alone. With some it may assume the form of a person who says not to approach, with others it will be a voice, with still others a simple but certain knowledge that the matter is sacred. All these varieties depend on the psychological idiosyncrasies of the seer.

Student. - What kind of thought or knowledge is excepted from these rules?

Sage. - General, and philosophical, religious, and moral. That is to say, there is no law of copyright or patent which is purely human in invention and belongs to the competitive system. When a man thinks out truly a philosophical problem it is not his under the laws of nature; it belongs to all; he is not in this realm entitled to any glory, to any profit, to any private use in it. Hence the seer may take as much of it as he pleases, but must on his part not claim it or use it for himself. Similarly with other generally beneficial matters. They are for all. If a Spencer thinks out a long series of wise things good for all men, the seer can take them all. Indeed, but few thinkers do any original thinking. They pride themselves on doing so, but in fact their seeking minds go out all over the world of mind and take from those of slower movement what is good and true, and then make them their own, sometimes gaining glory, sometimes money, and in this age claiming all as theirs and profiting by it.

Path, January, 1895

"THE SELF IS THE FRIEND OF SELF
AND ALSO ITS ENEMY"

THIS sentence in the Bhagavad Gita has been often passed over as being either meaningless or mysterious; on one hand worthless to consider, and on the other hand impossible. Some students have, however, made good use of the teaching contained in it. It is a verse that bears directly upon Theosophy as applied to our daily life, and therefore may well be scrutinized.

It indicates two selfs, one the enemy and also the friend of the other. Evidently, without the suggestions found in Theosophy, two selfs in one person cannot seem otherwise than meaningless, except in those cases, admitted by Science, where there is a aberration of the intellect, where one lobe of the brain refuses to work with the other, or where there is some cerebral derangement. But after a little study of the constitution of man-material and spiritual-as we find it outlined in the Wisdom-Religion, we easily see that the higher and the lower self are meant.

The next injunction, to "raise the self by the self," clearly points to this; for, as a thing cannot raise itself without a fulcrum, the self which will raise us must be the higher one, and that which is to be raised is the lower.

In order to accomplish this task we must gain an acquaintance with the self which is to be raised. The greater and more accurate that acquaintance is, the quicker will proceed the work of elevating the being who attempts it.

Let us for a moment look at the obstacles in the way, the reasons why, with so many, their understanding of themselves is so plainly deficient.

Everyone knows that he can see the defects in the actions and character of other men better than his own. Some, of course, there are who do not allow that they have defects.

St. James says that a man looketh in a glass and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is. While I have often doubted this, yet it is true in respect to that looking-glass which is often by others held up to us to see ourselves in. We see for a moment our appearance and then forget it.

There are some things, however, as to which it is often impossible for us to know ourselves. Such of our tones as are harsh or disagreeable we often cannot hear as others do. For there is hardly anything so difficult as to really hear our own voice in its entirety of tone and accent. We are so accustomed to it that we cannot tell whether it be pleasing or repellent, musical or discordant. We have to rely upon the statements of those who hear it. Indeed, I doubt seriously if anyone can ever fully hear, in the way those to whom we speak do, the tones of his voice, because it is conveyed to us not only through the medium of the outer ear which receives the vibrations made without us, but we receive it in addition through the vibrations made within all through the skull, and hence it must ever be a different voice for ourselves. So it would not be profitable to pay too much attention to the sound of our voice if we do so to the exclusion of that inner attitude which nearly always determines the tone in which we speak; for if our feelings be kind and charitable, it is more than likely that the vocal expression of them will correspond. The cultivation of the voice, so far as it is possible, can safely be left to those teachers who aim to soften and polish it.

By taking a few examples from among the many about us and assuming that they represent possible defects and peculiarities of our own, we may arrive at something useful in our Theosophic life.

Here is one who will constantly tell you that several others are always very fond of talking of themselves and their affairs, and appear to take no interest in the conversation unless it has themselves for center. And after thus depicting the failings of the others, this person-man or woman- immediately proceeds to show that that is his own particular fault for from that moment the burden of the conversation is "I" or "my" affairs.

Our next subject is one who talks a great deal about altruism and brotherhood, but would not give a dollar to any good cause. Not perhaps from intentional niggardliness, but from sheer habit of not giving and not helping.

Here is another who exemplifies the prominent defect of the century, inattention. He listens to you, but only hears a part, and then, when repeating what he says he heard you say, he gives a version entirely at variance with yours. Or, listening to an argument or discussion, he only attends to that part which being familiar to him strikes him favorably.

Next we have the bigot who, while exalting freedom of thought and the unity of all men, displays most frightful bigotry.

Then there is another who illustrates a variety of the first to which I referred;-the man who wishes apparently only to impose his own views upon you, and is careless about knowing what your opinions may be.

Now all of these are only samples; but in some degree every one of us has them all, perhaps slightly, but still there. They are all the result of the predominance of the lower self, for they all show a disposition to put the personal I to the front. They are the present triumph of the lower self over the efforts of the higher. They may be abated in some degree by attention to their outer expression, but no real progress will be gained unless work upon the hidden plane is begun. Such a defect as that one of not listening long to another man's views, but hurrying to tell him what you think yourself, is one that affects the acquiring of new ideas. If you constantly tell others what you think, you are gaining nothing. For your experience and views are your own, well known to you. The repeated expression of them only serves to imprint them more strongly on your mind. You do not receive any of the new lights that other minds might cast upon your philosophy if you gave them the opportunity.

There are other factors in our constitution which are powerful for the production of faults. Every man has two lines of descent. One is that which comes through his parents and has to do with his mental and physical makeup. This line may run back into the most strange and peculiar places, and be found winding in and out among manners and minds not suspected by us. Suppose your physical line of descent comes through Danes or Norwegians and mine through the French. There will be to some extent a want of sympathy and appreciation on the mental plane between us. Of course this effect will not be apparent if the period of time is long since our blood ran in those bodies, but still there will be left some trace of it. There will be a tendency always for the physical, including the brain, to show the characteristics which result from the preponderance of inherited faculties and dispositions. These characteristics belong wholly to the physical plane, and are carried down from the centuries past by inheritance, affecting the particular body you may inhabit in any one incarnation. It is your Karma to have that sort of physical environment about our inner self. Now the obstacles to the perception of truth and to the acquirement of knowledge of self which are in consequence of the physical inheritance, are difficult to perceive, involving much study and self-examination for the bringing them to light. But they are there, and the serious Theosophist will search for them. These differences in the physical body, which we will call for the time differences in inheritance, are of the highest importance. They resemble the differences between telescopes or microscopes made by different opticians, and tend to cause us to see truth clearly or blurred, or surrounded by many-colored mists. What we most desire to have is mental telescope that is not only powerful, but also devoid of the colors which achromatic quality only will dispel.

The second line of descent is that one which belongs purely to the inner man; that is, the psychical line. It is obscure, and, indeed, can only be discovered and defined by an adept or a trained seer whose clairvoyance permits him to see that intangible yet powerful thread which has so much to do with our character. It is just as important as the physical descent, in fact more so, because it has to do with the ever-living man, whereas the physical tenement is selected by or follows upon the actions which the inner man compelled the former body to perform. So it may be altered at any time with ease if we live in obedience to the higher law.

Passing from the broad line of descent in a nation, we find each individual governed also by the family peculiarities and faults, and they are not as easy to define as those that are national, since few men are in possession of any facts sufficient to ascertain the general family tendencies.

Coming down now to ourselves, it is almost axiomatic that each one/s mind acts in a way peculiar to itself. There is a tendency that daily grows stronger after our earlier for the mind to get into a rut, its own rut or mode of looking at things and ideas. This is of great importance. For the man who has freed his mind so that it is capable of easily entering into the methods of other minds is more likely to see truth quicker than he who is fixed in his own ways.

We must then at once constitute ourselves our own critics and adversaries, for it is not often that anyone else is either willing or capable to take that part for us.

Our first step and the most difficult-for some, indeed impossible-is to shock ourselves in such a manner that we may quickly be able to get out of, or rather understand, our own mental methods. I do not mean that we must abandon all our previous training and education, but that we shall so analyze all our mental operations as to know the certainty, to easily perceive, the actual difference in method between ourselves and any other person. This is a thing seldom undertaken or accomplished by men nowadays. Each one is enamored of his own mental habits, and disinclined to admit that any other one can be better. When we have become acquainted with this mental path of ours, we are then in position to see whether in any particular case our view is false.

This is the psychological and metaphysical equivalent of that scientific process which classifies and compares so as to arrive at distinguishing differences in things in order that physical laws may be discovered. For while we remain in ignorance of the method and path of our mind's actions, there is no way in which we can compare with other minds. We can compare views and opinions, but not the actual mechanics of the thought. We can hear doctrines, but are unable to say whether we accept or reject from right reasoning or because our peculiar slant on the mental plane compels us to ratiocinate wholly in accordance with a mental obliquity acquired by many years of hurried life.

The value of thus understanding our own mental bias to that we can give it up at will and enter into a bias of another's mind is seen when we consider that each of us is able to perceive but one of many sides which truth presents. If we remain in the rut which is natural, we pass through an entire life viewing nature and the field of thought through but one sort of instrument. But by the other practice we may obtain as many different views of truth as the number of the minds we meet. When another human being brings his thoughts before us, we may not only examine them in our way, but also take his method and, adopting his bias for the time as our own, see just that much more.

It is very easy to illustrate this from ordinary life. The novelist sees in the drawing-rooms of society and the hovels of the poor only the material that may serve as the basis for a new book, while the social schemer drives thought of hovels away and sees in society only the means of gratifying pride and ambition, yet the artist can only think of the play of color and arrangement of figures, the harmony that delights his artistic sense.

The plain man of affairs is not attracted by the complex events of every day which have no relation to his business, whereas the student of Occultism knows that very obscure events point to other things yet in the future. In every stratum of society and every art or profession we constantly have it brought home to us that each man looks at any subject from but one or two standpoints, and when a well-balanced mind is found looking at events and men and thoughts freely from all sides, everyone sees at once a superiority in the person, albeit they may not be able to explain it.

But it is in Theosophic study especially that it is wise for us to constitute ourselves our own critics and to adopt as far as possible the practice of leaving our own mental road and taking up some other. The truth is simple and not so difficult to arrive at if we will follow the advice of the Hindu Upanishad and cut away error. Error grows largely out of notions and preconceptions educated into us by our teachers and our lives.

The influence of these preconceptions is seen every day among those Theosophists who are seeking for more books to read upon Theosophy. Their minds are so full of old notions which are not violently expelled, that truth cannot be easily perceived. But if they read fewer new books and spent more time in re-reading those first attempted, meanwhile studiously endeavoring to enter into all of the author's thought, much more progress would be gained.

Take, for instance, the Key to Theosophy. It is full of all the main doctrines of the Wisdom-Religion, and of hints towards others. Many persons have read the book and then sought another. They say they have mastered it. Yet if you put to them some questions or listen to their own, it is apparent that only that part of the work which in some way coincides with their own previous training and line of thought has been grasped. Now this is just the part they need not have dwelt upon, because, being like to themselves, it may at any time be understood. But if one will ever stand as one's own critic, then those parts which seem obscure will be attacked, and, being viewed from all sides, may be soon turned into a possession. And just because such has not been the practice, it has come to be the fact that some extremely valuable presentations of doctrine and philosophy remain buried in earlier Theosophical books and magazines, while those who once read them have gone feverishly on to other works and forgotten that which have enlightened them.

The Theosophist who delights to call himself practical and logical, an abhorrer of mysticism, should try to see what the mystical Theosophist means, and the mystic one should read carefully the words of the practical member to the end that he may counterbalance himself. A wholly practical or entirely mystical mind is not well balanced. And as long as the logical and practical man in our ranks scouts mysticism and never reads it, so long will he remain deformed and unbalanced in the eyes of those who see both sides, because he is wrapped up in ideas and methods that are only right in their own domain. The attitude of mind proposed is not to be observed only toward our literature and the philosophy studied; it is to be that of every hour and applicable to our dealings with our fellow-men. It will lead us to discern the common failings of refusing to consider the thoughts expressed by another because his or her personality is disagreeable to us. Often in our ranks we can find those who never pay any attention to certain other members who they have decided cannot reason properly or talk clearly. Now aside from all considerations of charity and politeness, there is an occult law much lost sight of, and that is that everyone is led insensibly by Karmic law to address others on these topics and to afford an opportunity to the person addressed of taking a leap, so to say, out of his own favorite way, and considering life as seen through the eyes of another. This is often brought about, if we permit it, through the endeavor to control the irritation or dullness caused by the way in which the other person presents the thought in his mind. But if we refuse to use the opportunity, either by absolutely running away or by covering our minds with a hard coat of indifference, the new and bright idea just trembling into the field of our consciousness is thrown back and lost in the dark recesses of the mental plane. Or, taking another view, we may under Karmic law be the one and only person just then fitted to elucidate our brother's ideas, and we remain still the debtor to him if we do not accept the opportunity. On either hand the result is demerit.

Let us, then, conquer self in the field indicated, and thus turn the inward insidious enemy and deceiver into the friend and guide.

William Q. Judge

Branch Paper No. 5
August, 1890.

A SERVANT OF THE MASTERS
COL. HENRY S. OLCOTT

A PIONEER in a great movement, such as that represented by the Theosophical Society, should be known to the contemporary members of the organization, who ought in justice to have information of the work performed by that pioneer. This is especially the case in our Society, for, although it was started in the United States, Colonel Olcott very soon went to India, and there continued the work begun here. When he left this country there was but one Branch in America, and comparatively few members, but now theosophists are found in nearly every State of the Union. Few of them have had the time and opportunity to become acquainted with the facts in respect to Colonel Olcott's connection with the movement, and it is for their information that this statement is especially intended. As his work in India has absorbed most of his time, it has necessarily followed that nearly all new members here were deprived of that attention from him which some of them would perhaps be pleased to receive, and, India being so far distant, he has remained for them almost a stranger. Were that effect of distance not rectified in some way, we might be in danger of taking the position temporarily assumed a few years ago by new members similarly situated in India, who, not concurring in his methods as an American, and feeling that they could perhaps suggest a line of action more suited to the English mind and habits, proposed to the Masters a radical change which would involve his retirement from his then prominent position. The reply from The Brothers is worthy of consideration from every thoughtful theosophist.

Having disposed of personal motives, let us analyze our terms for helping us to do public good. Broadly stated, these terms are-first, that an independent Anglo-Indian Theosophical Society shall be founded through your kind services, in the management of which our present representatives (Col. Olcott and H.P. Blavatsky) shall not have any voice. (1)...And supporting you were thus to come-as Madame B. did and Mr. O. will-, supposing you were to abandon all for the truth, to toil wearily for years up the hard, steep road, not daunted by obstacles, firm under every temptations; were to faithfully keep within your hearts the secrets entrusted to you as a trial; had worked with all your energies and unselfishly to spread the truth and provoke men to correct thinking and a correct life; would you consider it just, if, after all your efforts, we were to grant to Madame B. or Mr. O. as "outsiders" the terms you now ask for yourselves? Of these two persons, one has already given three-fourths of a life, the other six years of manhood's prime, to us, and both will so labor to the close of their days: though ever working for their merited reward, yet never demanding it, nor murmuring when disappointed. Even though they respectively could accomplish far less than they do, would it not be a palpable injustice to ignore them in an important field of Theosophical effort? Ingratitude is not among our vices, nor do we imagine you would wish to advise it.(2)

What They wanted, and what the Society needs, is a man of intelligence who can and will work for a high and far Ideal regardless of all opposition, unconcerned as to his future reward. In Colonel Olcott such a man has been found, and by knowing what he has done we shall be able to give reasons for our esteem and loyalty.

Colonel Olcott is a lawyer, and for several years practised law in the city of New York. It is a somewhat curious fact that very many of those well known in the theosophical field are lawyers. I might mention Subba Row and Sreeenevasa Row, of Madras. The first is a prominent Hindu pleader; the other is Sub-Judge in Madras. Many Americans have met Mohini M. Chateerji, who was admitted to the Bar in Bengal. A prominent member in Poona, India, is Judge N.D. Khandalavalla and all over India theosophists are to be found acting as lawyers or judges. In England, a former President of the London Lodge was a well known solicitor, and some of the earnest members there now are in the same profession. In America we of course have a great many members who are lawyers.

When I met colonel Olcott in 1875, the Theosophical Society had not yet been formed. In October of that year a meeting was held in the apartment of H.P. Blavatsky at 46 Irving Place, New York, at which it was proposed to form a Society for the study of those subjects which have since engaged our attention. In a book now lying before me I have the original minutes of that meeting and of others following it, with the names of all present. So if there be persons anxious to claim the honor of being among the founders of the Society it will be wise first to be sure that their names are in this book. Possibly such registration will some day be accounted an honor by all, as it now is by advanced minds.

At that first meeting I proposed Colonel Olcott as President of the Society, and was made temporary Secretary myself. A Committee appointed to select a name for the infant met several times after that at Olcott's office, 7 Beeckman Street, New York, and decided upon the present name. The objects of the Society had been given to Col. Olcott by the Masters before that; they were adopted and have never been changed. Up to this time Olcott had been a well know Club man, and no one supposed that he would ever show such abnegation as he since has in respect to the things of this world. The wisdom of his selection as President has been vindicated by our history. The Society was unpopular from the outset, and had indeed so little money that all the first diplomas were engrossed by hand by one of the members in this city.

During the period between October 1875, and November 1878, Col. Olcott received many letters from the Masters on the subject of the Society, in which no promises were made that have not since been fulfilled. He worked steadily with the Society until 1878, and then, in December, went to India with H.P. Blavatsky. When they arrived there, full as many difficulties had to be met as in America, with the additional disadvantage to Col. Olcott, of being upon strange ground, but they persevered all opposition. Among such troubles were those caused by the English police, who for a time suspected H.P. Blavatsky to be a Russian spy, a mistake happily remedied by orders from their superiors. In all I say here, it must not be forgotten that the part played by H.P. Blavatsky can never be rightly given to the world, because it would not be understood. Her service and efforts can never be estimated, but they may be glimpsed by intuitional natures.

In Bombay, in 1878, Col. Olcott hired a bungalow as temporary Headquarters. He had then no help and no acquaintance with Indian methods, but Madame Blavatsky and himself started the publication of the Theosophist, and Masters promised to give certain hints through its pages, a promise fulfilled by the publication of "Fragments of Occult Truth" (since embodied in Esoteric Buddhism) and other articles. A young Hindu gentleman, Damodar Mavalankar, soon came and cast in his lot with the Founders, to be later called to Thibet by his Master. In these early days enough troubles of all kinds were experienced to bend any ordinary man of soft metal, but Col. Olcott went straight onward, depending upon the help of the Masters to enable him to overcome all obstacles. When the project of starting a real Headquarters took shape he removed to Madras, where he was helped by Iyaloo Naidoo (now of Hyderbad) and others in getting the present building at Adyar. Various Branches had been established and interest was gradually spreading, but nothing could be done anywhere without Col. Olcott, upon whom all the Hindu members had come to rely. This necessitated much travel on his part at a time when his office assistance only comprised Messrs. Damodar, Ananda, and Babajee. Damodar attended to a vast mass of correspondence and worked night and day, snatching his brief rest on skins spread upon the marble floor. Ananda, with similar devotion, gave up a clerkship under Government to work at the accounts and general routine, while Col. Olcott traveled North, South, East, and West, lecturing and stirring up the natives to the truths of ancient philosophy, and, in spite of severe and hurried journeys in a country where all our modern luxury of travel is unknown, his speeches are all excellent and many of them are thrilling from their exquisite eloquence and diction. He also took complete charge of all Conventions, a step which always resulted in greater unity. Going to Ceylon, he inaugurated a great movement there, and was received into the Buddhist Church by the High Priest, who authorized him to admit others also. He had previously been invested with the Brahminical thread by Brahmins in India, an honor by them considered as the highest possible mark of respect and friendship. The Ceylon movement prospered largely, and now has instituted Sunday Schools, a newspaper, and Headquarters of its own. Each year Col. Olcott makes a tour through India, working with indescribable energy, received everywhere with enthusiasm, lecturing to hundreds in crowded halls, opening schools and other reform societies for boys, and increasing the size and usefulness of Branches in all directions. When he conceived the idea of a grand Asiatic Library at Headquarters in Adyar, he pursued it so vigorously that it soon became a fact, and one of the highest importance. Many palm-leaf MSS. which would otherwise be lost will be preserved there, and many rare and often hitherto unknown books will be presented. The Library already numbers 460 volumes in Sanscrit (inclusive of MSS.) 263 volumes in other Indian languages and about 2,000 volumes in Western languages, including the Classics and Hebrew. The very learned N. Bhashyacharya of Cuddapah has consented to become its Director and Professor. A Permanent Fund was also started by Col. Olcott with the object of providing sufficient income for the maintenance and repair of Headquarters, and, as this Fund is slowly growing, it is hoped that it may also pay the expense of propaganda in time. Hitherto all excess of expenditure above the small sums received from dues and charters has been met by private means of the two Founders.

Envious minds may think that Col. Olcott, now known all over India and Ceylon as well as being a name of note in Western countries, knew that he should gain a greater fame and wider acquaintance by resigning all that most men esteem a most pleasant and valued in life, just at a time too when the tendency is to grow fast to the personal centre, and going to a far land, there to pass his days in unremitting and arduous labors for the good of humanity, for a sublime Ideal. This is seen to be wrong when we consider that he had no certainty of success, nothing to go upon but promises made by Masters, who do not mix in public matters. Moreover, he had a wide acquaintance here, and all his American friends, thought him foolish to go to a distant country on what they call "a wild goose chase," and an impracticable affair all around that "has no money in it." On the other hand, if they now say that he knew well what he was doing when he thus depended on promises made by the Adepts, there is no escape from the conclusion that those Adepts can be trusted, and on their part know the future and what is best for man. The faith of Col. Olcott himself in these great Beings has always remained unshaken, as his last act evinces. He has been several times urged by members to promulgate a creed to be accepted, but has always refused to go one step beyond the original lines and objects laid down by Masters so that he has been thus greatly instrumental in producing an unsectarian and united Society devoted to spiritual things.

The following extract from a letter to the Simla Eclectic Theosophical Society from the Masters, on this subject, sustains him in his position:

It is time that Theosophy should enter the arena. The sons of Theosophists are more likely to become in their turn Theosophists and anything else. No messenger of Truth, no prophet, has ever achieved during his lifetime a complete triumph,-not even Buddha. The Theosophical Society was chosen as the corner stone, the foundation, of the future religion of humanity. To achieve the proposed object, a greater, wider, and especially more benevolent intermingling of the high and the low, of the alpha and omega, of society was determined upon. The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the dark nations. This prospect may not smile to all alike. He is no theosophist who objects to the principle...and it is we, the humble disciples of the perfect Lamas, who are expected to allow the Theosophical Society to drop its noblest title, "The Brotherhood of Humanity," to become a simple school of philosophy. Let us understand each other. He who does not feel competent enough to grasp the noble idea sufficiently to work for it, need not undertake a task too heavy for him. But there is hardly a theosophist in the whole society unable to effectually help it by correcting the erroneous impression of outsiders, if not by actually propagating himself this idea.

In his loyalty and faith he has found a power which enables him to go on and on under immense strain, ill at times, often in utter darkness as to the morrow's trials, but ever upheld by a self forgetful enthusiasm, ever devoted and forceful as only those men are who live out their inner convictions, who will throw aside all life seems to hold rather than renounce one of these beliefs, and who have based them upon the holy Cause of Universal Brotherhood and the existence of those Masters Who are sharers in the divine and eternal, Who live but for Humanity.

William Q. Judge

Path, April, 1888

(1) Occult World, p. 72 (4th Ed).

(2) id. p. 73, 74.

THE SEVENFOLD DIVISION
WHY NOT CHANGE THE DESIGNATION?

MR. Sinnett's book Esoteric Buddhism has done a great deal towards bringing before the West the Eastern philosophy regarding man and his constitution, but it has also served to perpetuate the use of a word that is misleading and incorrect. In that work on p. 61 he states, "Seven distinct principles are recognized by Esoteric Science as entering into the constitution of man," and then gives his scheme of division thus, The body, Vitality, Astral Body, Animal Soul, Human Soul, Spiritual Soul, and seventh, Spirit or Atma. Now if Spirit be, as the whole philosophy declares, in all and through all, it is erroneous to call it one of the series. This very early led to the accusation that we believed in seven distinct spirits in man. It always leads to misconception, and directly tends to preventing our understanding fully that the Atma includes, and is the substratum of, all the others. In India it caused a protracted and, at times, heated discussion between the adherents of the rigid seven-fold classification of Esoteric Buddhism and several learned and unlearned Hindus who supported a four-fold or five-fold division. During that debate the chief Hindu controverter, while holding to a different system, admitted the existence of "a real esoteric seven-fold classification," which of course cannot be given to the public. Mr. Sinnett also evidently made a mistake when he said that the first mentioned division is the esoteric one.

Now it would seem that many of these misconceptions and differences could be prevented if a word were adopted and invariably used that would clearly express the idea intended to be conveyed. As the prime declaration of theosophy is that all these so-called bodies and appearances are for the purpose of enabling the ONE-the Atma-to fully comprehend nature and "bring about the aim of the soul," why not denominate all that it uses for that purpose as vehicles? This name is strictly in accord with all parts of the philosophy. It is in effect the same as Upadhi, or basis, foundation, carrier. By its use we make no error when we say that theosophy declares there is Atma, which works with and through six vehicles. Strictly, the body is a vehicle for the astral body, it for the next, and so on up to Atma, which is therefore seen to be all and in all, as is clearly declared in Bhagavad-Gita.

This change, or to some other than "principles," should be adopted by all theosophists, for every day there is more inquiry by new minds, and theosophists themselves, indeed, need to use their words with care when dealing with such subjects. Or if greater clearness is desired, let us say that there is one principle which acts through six vehicles. The scheme will then stand thus:

Atma (spirit), one principle, indivisible

Its vehicles are:

Buddhi.............................................................................	Spiritual Soul
Manas.............................................................................	Human Soul
Kama Rupa.....................................................................	Animal Soul
Linga Sharira.................................................................	Astral Body
Prana or Jiva.................................................................	Vitality
Rupa................................................................................	The Body

Names have power, and if we go on talking of 7 principles when in truth there is but one, we are continually clouding our conception of theosophic truth.

EUSEBIO URBAN
Path, April, 1890

SHALL WE TEACH CLAIRVOYANCE?
A NOTE OF WARNING

MY attention has been arrested by the address delivered in the Adyar course by Dr. Daly and reported in the September Theosophist. It is entitled "Clairvoyance."

Coming out in the Adyar course, it has a certain flavor of authority which will appeal to many members of the Society and may cause them to adopt the suggestions for practice given in the latter part of the address. Yet at the same time it is very true that the Theosophical Society is not responsible for the utterances of members in their private capacity.

The fact that clairvoyance is a power sought after by many persons cannot be disputed, but the questions, Is it well to try to develop clairvoyance? and Shall we teach it? have not yet been definitely decided. Hence I may be permitted to give my views upon them.

At the outset I desire to declare my personal attitude on these questions and my beliefs as to facts. In using the term "clairvoyance" I intend to include in it all clear perception on that plane.

I. I have for many years been convinced by proofs furnished by others and from personal experience that clairvoyance is a power belonging to man's s inner nature; and also that it is possessed by the animal kingdom.

2. This faculty is either inherited or educed by practice.

3. Those who have it by birth are generally physically diseased or nervously deranged. The cases where clairvoyance is shown by a perfectly healthy and well-balanced person are rare.

4. The records of spiritualism for over forty years in America conclusively prove that clairvoyance cannot be safely sought after by persons who have no competent guide; that its pursuit has done harm; and that almost every medium to whom one puts the question "Am I able to develop clairvoyance?" will reply "Yes."

5. There are no competent guides in this pursuit to be found here or in Europe who are willing to teach one how to acquire it without danger.

6. The qualifications such a guide should possess render the finding of one difficult if not impossible. They are: the power to look within and see clearly the whole inner nature of the student; a complete knowledge of all the planes upon which clairvoyance acts, including knowledge of the source, the meaning, and the effect of all that is perceived by the clairvoyant; and last, but not least, the power to stop at will the exercise of the power. Evidently these requirements call for an adept.

Who are the teachers of clairvoyance, and those who advise that it be practiced? In the main, the first are mediums, and any investigator knows how little they know. Every one of them differs from every other in his powers. The majority have only one sort of clairvoyance; here and there are some who combine, at most, three classes of the faculty. Not a single one is able to mentally see behind the image or idea perceived, and cannot say in a given case whether the image seen is the object itself or the result of a thought from another mind. For in these planes of perception the thoughts of men become as objective as material objects are to our human eyes. It is true that a clairvoyant can tell you that what is being thus perceived is not apprehended by the physical eye, but beyond that he cannot go. Of this I have had hundreds of examples. In 99 out of 100 instances the seer mistook the thought from another mind for a clairvoyant perception of a living person or physical object.

The seers of whom I speak see always according to their inner tendency, which is governed by subtle laws of heredity which are wholly unknown to scientific men and much more to mediums and seers. One will only reach the symbolic plane; another that which is known to occultists as the positive side of sound; another to the negative or positive aspects of the epidermis and its emanations; and so on through innumerable layer after layer of clairvoyance and octave after octave of vibrations. They all know but the little they have experienced, and for any other person to seek to develop the power is dangerous. The philosophy of it all, the laws that cause the image to appear and disappear, are terra incognita.

The occult septenary scheme in nature with all its modifications produces multiple effects, and no mere clairvoyant is able to see the truth that underlies the simplest instance of clairvoyant perception. If a man moves from one chair to another, immediately hundreds of possibilities arise for the clairvoyant eye, and he alone who is a highly trained and philosophical seer - an adept, in short - can combine them all so as to arrive at true clear-perception. In the simple act described almost all the centres of force in the moving being go into operation, and each one produces its own peculiar effect in the astral light. At once the motion made and thoughts aroused elicit their own sound, color, motion in ether, amount of etheric light, symbolic picture, disturbance of elemental forces, and so on through the great catalogue. Did but one wink his eye, the same effects follow in due order. And the seer can perceive but that which attunes itself to his own development and personal peculiarities, all limited in force and degree.

What, may I ask, do clairvoyants know of the law of prevention or encrustation which is acting always with many people? Nothing, absolutely nothing. How do they explain those cases where, try as they will, they cannot see anything whatever regarding certain things? Judging from human nature and the sordidness of many schools of clairvoyance, are we not safe in affirming that if there were any real or reliable clairvoyance about us now-a-days among those who offer to teach it or take pay for it, long ago fortunes would have been made by them, banks despoiled, lost articles found, and friends more often reunited? Admitting that there have been sporadic instances of success on these lines, does not the exception prove that true clairvoyance is not understood or likely to be?

But what shall theosophists do? Stop all attempts at clairvoyance. And why? Because it leads them slowly but surely - almost beyond recall into an interior and exterior passive state where the will is gradually overpowered and they are at last in the power of the demons who lurk around the threshold of our consciousness. Above all, follow no advice to "sit for development." Madness lies that way. The feathery touches which come upon the skin while trying these experiments are said by mediums to be the gentle touches of "the spirits." But they are not. They are caused by the ethereal fluids from within us making their way out through the skin and thus producing the illusion of a touch. When enough has gone out, then the victim is getting gradually negative, the future prey for spooks and will-o'-the-wisp images.

"But what," they say, "shall we pursue and study?" Study the philosophy of life, leave the decorations that line the road of spiritual development for future lives, and practice altruism.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, December, 1890

THE SHEATHS OF THE SOUL

In my last article, "Mesmerism," I arrived at the point where we discover that the inner mortal man has several sheaths through which he obtains touch with Nature, feeling her motions and exhibiting in return is own powers and functions. It is a doctrine as old as any Esoteric School now alive, and far more ancient than the modern scientific academies; an understanding of it is absolutely needful if we are to gain an adequate comprehension of real Mesmerism.

Instead of looking at the human being as that which we see, it is to be regarded as a being altogether different, functioning and perceiving in a way quite peculiar to itself, and being compelled to translate every outward impression, as well as those coming from within, from one language into another, that is to say from pictures into words, signs and acts, or vice versa. This statement is vague, I admit, yet nevertheless true. The vagueness arises from the difficulties of a language that has as yet dealt but slightly with these subjects, and the development of which has gone on in a civilization wholly materialistic. Man is a Soul, and as such stands among material things. This Soul is not only on its way upward for itself, but is compelled at the same time to draw up, refine, purge and perfect the gross matter - so-called - in which it is compelled to live. For though we call the less fine stages of substance by the name "matter," it is, however, made up of lives which have in them the potentiality of becoming Souls in the enormously distant future; and the Soul being itself a life made up of smaller ones, it is under the brotherly necessity of waiting in the bonds of matter long enough to give the latter the right impetus along the path of perfection.

So during the long ages that have passed since the present evolution began in this solar system, the Soul has constructed for its own use various sheaths, ranging from very fine ones, near to its own essential being, to those that are more remote, ending with the outer physical one, and that one the most illusionary of them all, although appearing from the outside to be the truly real. These sheaths are necessary if the Soul is to know or to act. For it cannot by itself understand Nature at all, but transforms instantly all sensations and ideas by means of the different sheaths, until in the process it has directed the body below, or obtained itself experience above. By this I mean that whatever Soul initiates, it has to pass along through the several sheaths, each reporting, as it were, to the one next below it; and in like manner they report from below upward in the case of sensations from natural phenomena and impressions on the outside. In the beginnings of evolution, during all its stages, this took appreciable amounts of solar time, but at this point of the system's march along the line of growth it takes such an infinitesimally short space that we are justified in calling it instantaneous in all cases of normal and well-balanced persons. There are, of course, instances where longer time is used in consequence of the slower action of some one of the sheaths.

The number of sharply defined sheaths of the Soul is seven, but the sub-differentiations of each raises the apparent number very much higher. Roughly speaking, each one divides itself into seven, and every one in each collection of seven partakes of the nature of its own class. There may, therefore, be said to exist forty-nine sheaths possible of classification.

Physical body may be recognized as one sheath, and the sub-divisions in it are such as skin, blood, nerves, bones, flesh, mucous membrane and ...

Astral body is another, but not so easily recognized by the men of today. It has also its own sub-divisions answering in part to those of the physical body. But being one stage higher than the latter it includes in one of its own sub-divisions several of those in the body. For instance, the surface sensations of blood, skin, flesh and mucous membrane will be included in a single one of the astral sub-divisions.

And exactly at this point the Esoteric Schools diverge from and appear to contradict modern pathology and physiology. For the modern school admits only the action of nerves along skin and mucous membrane and in flesh, as the receivers and transmitters of sensation. It would appear to be so, but the facts on the inside are different, or rather more numerous, leading to additional conclusions. Likewise too we clash with the nineteenth century in the matter of the blood. We say that the blood cells and the fluid they float in receive and transmit sensation.

Each sub-division among the physical sheaths performs not only the duty of receiving and transmitting sensations, but also has the power of retaining a memory of them which is registered in the appropriate ganglion of the body, and continually, from there, implanted in the corresponding centre of sensation and action in the astral body. At the same time the physical brain has always the power, as is of course a common fact, of collecting all the physical sensations and impressions.

Having laid all this down - without stopping for argument, which would end in nothing without physical demonstrations being added - the next step is this. The lower man who collects, so to say, for the Soul's use, all the experiences below it, can either at will when trained, or involuntarily when forced by processes or accident or abnormal birth, live in the sensations and impressions of one or many of the various sheaths of the physical or astral body.

If trained, then there will be no delusions,or any temporary delusion will be easily dispersed. If untrained, delusion walks arm in arm with the sensations. If deceased or forced, the outer acts may be correctly performed but the free intelligence is absent, and all the delusions and illusions of hypnotic and mesmeric states show themselves.

If the inner lower man be functioning among the sensations - or planes, if you like - of some astral sense or centre, then clairvoyance or clairaudience comes on, because he is conveying to the brain those impressions derived from similar planes of nature in any direction.

And when to this is added a partial touch of some minor physical sub-divisions of the sheaths, then delusion is made more complete, because the experience of a single set of cells is taken for the whole and reported, by means of the brain, in the language used by a normal being. Indeed so vast are the possible combinations in this department that I have only mentioned a few by way of illustration.

It is this possibility of the inner lower man being connected with one or more of the sheaths, and disconnected from all the rest, which has led one of the French schools of hypnotizers to conclude to the effect that every man is a collection of personalities, each complete in itself. The positions laid down above are not destroyed by the fact, as observed at Paris and Nancy, that the subject in hypnotic state No. 2 knows nothing about state No. 1, for each normal person, when acting normally, compounds all the various sets of sensations, experiences, and recollections into one whole, the sum total of all, and which is not recognizable as any one of them distinct from the rest.

It must also be remembered that each person has pursued in prior lives this or that course of action, which has trained and developed this or that Soul-sheath. And although at death many of them are dissolved as integral collections, the effect of such development formerly pursued is not lost to the reincarnating being. It is preserved through the mysterious laws that guide the atoms when they assemble for the birth of a new personal house to be occupied by the returning Soul. It is known that the atoms - physical and astral - have gone through every sort of training. When the Soul is reincarnating it attracts to itself those physical and astral atoms which are like unto its old experience as far as possible. It often gets back again some of the identical matter it used in its last life. And if the astral senses have received in the prior existence on earth great attention and development, then there will be born a medium or a real seer or sage. Which it will be depends upon the great balancing of forces from the prior life. For instance, one who in another incarnation attended wholly to psychic development without philosophy, or made other errors, will be born, maybe, as an irresponsible medium; another, again, of the same class, emerges as a wholly untrustworthy partial clairvoyant, and so on ad infinitum.

A birth in a family of wise devotees and real sages is declared from old time to be very difficult of attainment. This difficulty may be gradually overcome by philosophical study and unselfish effort for others, together with devotion to the Higher Self pursued through many lives. Any other sort of practice leads only to additional bewilderment. *

The Soul is bound to the body by a conversion to the corporeal passions; and is again liberated by becoming impassive to the body.

That which Nature binds, Nature also dissolves; and that which the Soul binds, the Soul likewise dissolves. Nature, indeed, bound the body to the Soul; but the Soul binds herself to the body. Nature, therefore, liberates the body from the Soul; but the Soul liberates herself from the body.

Hence there is a two-fold death; the one, indeed, universally known, in which the body is liberated from the Soul; but the other peculiar to philosophers, in which the Soul is liberated from the body. Nor does the one entirely follow the other.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Lucifer, June, 1892

* Mr. Judge's article ends here. As the Lucifer editors explained in a subsequent issue. "A paragraph from Plotinus on Suicide, intended to fill up a couple inches, was accidentally inserted above Mr. Judge's signature as part of his article."

THE SIGNS OF THIS CYCLE

MEN of all nations for many years in all parts of the world have been expecting something they know not what, but of a grave nature, to happen in the affairs of the world. The dogmatic and literal Christians, following the vague prophecies of Daniel, look every few years for their millennium. This has not come, though predicted for almost every even year, and especially for such as 1000, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, and now for the year 2000. The red Indians also had their ghost dances not long ago in anticipation of their Messiahs coming.

The Theosophists too, arguing with the ancients and relying somewhat on the words of H. P. Blavatsky, have not been backward in respect to the signs of the times.

But the Theosophical notions about the matter are based on something more definite than a vague Jewish priests vaticinations. We believe in cycles and in their sway over the affairs of men. The cyclic law, we think, has been enquired into and observations recorded by the ancients during many ages; and arguing from daily experience where cycles are seen to recur over and over again, believing also in Reincarnation as the absolute law of life, we feel somewhat sure of our ground.

This cycle is known as the dark one; in Sanscrit, Kali Yuga, or the black age. It is dark because spirituality is almost obscured by materiality and pure intellectualism. Revolving in the depths of material things and governed chiefly by the mind apart from spirit, its characteristic gain is physical and material progress, its distinguishing loss is in spirituality. In this sense it is the Kali Yuga. For the Theosophist in all ages has regarded loss of spirituality as equivalent to the state of death or darkness; and mere material progress in itself is not a sign of real advancement, but may have in it the elements for its own stoppage and destruction. Preëminently this age has all these characteristics in the Western civilizations. We have very great progress to note in conquests of nature, in mechanical arts, in the ability to pander to love of luxury, in immense advancements with wonderful precision and power in the weapons made for destroying life. But side by side with these we have wretchedness, squalor, discontent, and crime; very great wealth in the hands of the few, and very grinding poverty overcoming the many.

As intellectualism is the ruler over this progress in material things, we must next consider the common people, so called, who have escaped from the chains which bound them so long. They are not exempt from the general law, and hence, having been freed, they feel more keenly the grinding of the chains of circumstance, and therefore the next characteristic of the cycle--among human beings is unrest. This was pointed out in the PATH in Vol. I, p. 58, May, 1886, in these words:

The second prophecy is nearer our day and may be interesting; it is based upon cyclic changes. This is a period of such a change, and we refer to the columns of the Sun (of the time when the famous brilliant sunsets were chronicled and discussed not long ago) for the same prognostication. . . . This glorious country, free as it is, will not long be calm; unrest is the word for this cycle. The people will rise. For what, who can tell? The statesman who can see for what the uprising will be might take measures to counteract. But all your measures cannot turn back the iron wheel of fate. And even the city of New York will not be able to point its finger at Cincinnati and St. Louis. Let those whose ears can hear the whispers and the noise of the gathering clouds of the future take notice; let them read, if they know how, the physiognomy of the United States whereon the mighty hand of nature has traced the furrows to indicate the character of the moral storms that will pursue their course no matter what the legislation may be.

This was not long after the riots in Cincinnati, and New York was warned, as well as other places inferentially, that the disturbances in Ohio were not to be by any means the end. And now in 1892, just six years after our prophecy, three great States of the Union are in uproar, with the poor and the rich arrayed against each other, arms in hand. Pennsylvania at the works of a great factory almost in a civil war; New York calling her militia out to suppress disorder among workmen and to protect the property of corporations who have not taken a course to inspire their workers with love; and Tennessee sending military and volunteers to do battle with some thousands of armed miners who object to convicted lawbreakers being allowed to take the work and the wages away from the citizen. We are not dealing with the rights or the wrongs of either side in these struggles, but only referring to the facts. They are some of the moral signs of our cycle, and they go to prove the prognostications of the Theosophist about the moral, mental, and physical unrest. The earth herself has been showing signs of disturbance, with an island blown up in one place, long inactive volcanoes again erupting, earthquakes in unaccustomed places such as Wales and Cornwall. All these are signs. The cycle is closing, and everywhere unrest will prevail. As lands will disappear or be changed, so in like manner ideas will alter among men. And, as our civilization is based on force and devoid of a true philosophical basis, the newest race in America will more quickly than any other show the effect of false teachings and corrupted religion.

But out of anger and disturbance will arise a new and better time; yet not without the pain which accompanies every new birth.

Path, October, 1892

SPIRITUAL GIFTS AND THEIR
ATTAINMENT

ONE of the questions which a Theosophist is apt to ask, and to ask with some earnestness and intensity is, How can I make progress in the higher life? How can I attain spiritual gifts? For the phrase "spiritual gifts," which is a rather loose-jointed expression, we are indebted to Paul, the Apostle and Adept, who thus wrote to the Corinthian Church: "Concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant." Among the "gifts" which he goes on to enumerate are these, -wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, the speaking of divers tongues, and the interpretation of tongues. And while the Apostle urges the Corinthians to "covet earnestly the best gifts," he yet proceeds to show them a more excellent way, namely the supreme law of love. "Now abideth," he says, "faith, hope, charity (or love), these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Spiritual gifts, then, however desirable their possession may be, are plainly not, in the opinion of this good Adept, on the highest plane, not the supreme object of human attainment, or the most excellent way of reaching human perfection. They may doubtless properly be regarded as evidences of advancement on the higher planes of thought and spiritual life, and may be coveted and used for the benefit of others; but they are not in themselves the chief object of human desire. For man's supreme aim should be to become God, and "God is love."

But let us look at the matter a little more closely. In the first place, what is a "gift"? What is the common acceptance of the word? Clearly something given to or bestowed upon a recipient, not something which a man already possesses, or which he may obtain by a process of growth or development. The latter, strictly speaking, would be a "fruit," not a gift. A tree which has been producing nothing but leaves and branches for many years finally breaks out into blossom and fruit. No new "gift" ha been conferred upon it; it has simply reached a stage of development in its natural growth where certain powers, inherent in the tree form the beginning, have an opportunity to assert themselves. In the same way the transcendental powers possessed by the Adepts are not gifts; but the natural result of growth in certain directions, and the necessary efflorescence, so to speak, of the profound development in their cases of those spiritual potentialities which are the birthright of all men.

Taking this view of the meaning of the word, I think most Theosophists will be ready to admit that the phrase "spiritual gifts" is a misnomer. There are and can be no gifts for man to receive. Whatever the student of the higher life is, he is as the result of his past labors. Whatever he may become in the future will be due to his own efforts. He may develop his latent faculties and in time become an Adept, or he may drift along the currents of life without aim or effort, till he finally sinks into oblivion. His destiny is in his own hands, and is in no way dependent upon "gifts."

Bearing in mind, however, the manifold nature of man, the subject may be looked at from another point of view. For all practical purposes man may be said to consist of body, soul, and spirit, the soul being the true ego, and the spirit one with the Supreme. And regarding these for the time as separate entities, it is perfectly true, as James, another apostle, puts it, that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." Every aspiration of the soul for spiritual things, every resolve of man to lead a purer life, every helping outstretched hand to a weaker brother, every desire for the truth, all hungering and thirsting after righteousness: -these and like yearnings and strivings of the soul have first of all come from above, from the Divine within. In this sense they may be called "gifts,"-gifts from the higher nature to the lower, from the spiritual to the human. And this action of the above upon the below is seen in those humane attributes, or qualities, or virtues-whatever one may be pleased to call them-which Paul in another place enumerates as the "fruits of the spirit,-love, joy, peace, long suffering gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."

Looked at from either of these points of view, how can we attain spiritual gifts? The answer would seem to depend upon what we are really striving for. If the extraordinary powers of the Adepts have captivated our fancy and fired our ambition, then we must posses our souls in patience. Few, if any, of us are at all fitted for a "forcing" process. We must be content to wait and work; to grow and develop; line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, till, ages hence perhaps, we come to the full stature of the perfect man. If, however, wisely recognizing our limitations, we strive instead after what may be termed the ordinary manifestations of the spirit, two obvious lines of conduct suggest themselves.

Every impulse from above, every prompting of the Divine within, should meet at once with a hearty welcome and response. If you feel as if something urged you to visit some sick or afflicted neighbor or friend, obey the suggestion without delay. If the wish to turn over a new leaf comes into the lower consciousness, don't wait till next New Year's before actually turning it over; turn it now. If some pathetic story of suffering has moved you, act on the emotion while your cheeks are still wet with tears. In short, put yourself at once in line with the Divine ways, in harmony with the Divine laws. More light, more wisdom, more spirituality must necessarily come to one thus prepared, thus expectant. How can a bar of iron be permeated with the earth's magnetism if it is placed across instead of in line with the magnetic meridian? How can a man expect spiritual gifts or powers if he persists in ignoring spiritual conditions, in violating spiritual laws? To obtain the good, we must think good thoughts; we must be filled with good desires; in short, we must be good.

And this practical suggestion is to fulfill faithfully and conscientiously every known duty. It is in and through the incidents of daily life, in work well done, in duties thoroughly performed, that we today can most readily make progress in the higher life,-slow progress, it may be, but at any rate sure. These are stepping stones to better things. We advance most rapidly when we stop to help other wayfarers. We receive most when we sacrifice most. We attain to the largest measure of Divine love when we most unselfishly love the brethren. We become one with the Supreme most surely when we lose ourselves in work for Humanity.

DIES NON

Path, February 1889

THE SUBJECTIVE AND THE OBJECTIVE
A LESSON FROM THE CAVE OF PLATO-REPUBLIC, BOOK VII

After this, I said, imagine the enlightenment and ignorance of our nature in a figure: Behold! human beings living in a sort of underground den, which has a mouth opening towards the light, and reaching all across the den; they have been here from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them; for the chains are arranged in such a manner as to prevent them from turning their heads. At a distance above and behind them the light of a fire is blazing, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way, like the screen which marionette players have before them, over which they show the puppets.

I see, he said.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall, carrying vessels which appear over the wall; and some the of the passengers, as you would expect, are talking, and some of them are silent?

That is a strange image, he said, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said, how could they see anything but the shadows, if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which were being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.

And if they were able to talk with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.

And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy that the voice which they heard was the voice of a passing shade?

No question, he said.

There can be no question, that the truth would be to them just nothing but the shadows of the images.

THE term consciousness is used by writers connected with the Theosophical movement with a very wide range of meaning. Atoms are invisible lives, says H.P.B.; and there is no such thing as inorganic, in the sense of dead or lifeless matter. Every variety or kind of existence is conscious on its own plane or according to its own condition or state; the molecules of granite as well and as truly, though not in the same way, as the mind of man. Every molecule in the brain has its own consciousness, according to its state or plane of existence; and the sum of the consciousness of its molecules is the consciousness of the brain in its totality, considered as a merely physical, visible organ.

But the astral man, which we may take to be coextensive with the physical man, and to correspond with it, if not to coincide with it, organ for organ and molecule for molecule, is the real seat of sensation; and in the brain the sensations are registered and interpreted. The astral brain, the organ of Kama Manas, or of the lower or personal mind, furnishes the connecting link between the thinker and the object of thought; and here is bridged the chasm which has been recognized by philosophers in Western lands at least, as utterly impassable. Says President Bascom:

Facts must exist either in space as physical or in consciousness, as mental; there is no third state. Mental and physical phenomena are cut broadly and deeply apart, by the fact that the one class transpires exclusively in consciousness and the other as exclusively out of consciousness (in space).

Again he says:

There is no a priori impossibility discoverable by us, making the transfer of influence from mind to matter, from matter to mind, an absurdity. Our last traces of physical force in the movement inward are found in the brain; our first traces in the movement outward are also met with at the same point. Thus far only can the eye trace material changes; here is it first able to pick them up. How the last nervous impulse is linked to the play of consciousness...we cannot imagine...We are profoundly ignorant of any connection between the two.

Now the scheme of Theosophy recognizes a continuous gradation of powers, faculties, states, principles-call them what you will-from the highest or most spiritual to the lowest or most material. In this whole gamut of states or conditions no chasm is found; there is nothing to bridge; consciousness is the necessary substratum and presupposition of the most material, and consciousness is the noumenon or essential reality of the most spiritual.

We know of nothing more material or external than the physical, material, visible body-the world of matter, so called; and here is the inner wall (reversing the figure from outward to inward) of the cave which Socrates describes in Plato's dialogue; the wall upon which fall the shadows supposed by the prisoners to be the only realities. Indeed, the "wall" may be taken as merely the drop-curtain of the theatre, and the shadows themselves as representing the physical substance known to ourselves and our fellow prisoners. Hence there can be on this lowest plane (the plane of the shadows) really no consciousness as we know it; consciousness only looks on what is below, and cannot for its chains turn its face upward to the light. It is said, indeed, that the atom is the Atma or seventh principle of the molecule; but the molecule is infinitesimal and invisible, and what consciousness on that plane-we cannot profitably guess even, much less know.

The astral or kamic man is within, or above, or superior to the physical man; and its apprehension of external or physical nature, which we term sensation, is the lowest form of consciousness recognized by us. But mere sensation is not intelligent. As the astral or emotional man exists within (in the symbolic meaning of "within") the physical man, and by its power of sense takes hold of the latter, so there exists within the astral or emotional the logical faculty or principle whose office is to sort out the sensations and refer each to its source or cause in the outer world. This logical faculty (the lower mind or Kama Manas) is, as related to the world or planes below it, the faculty that perceives; and its action in taking hold of and interpreting the sensation is called perception.

Now suppose we consider the real Ego, the enduring entity that we mean when we say "man," to be one of the prisoners represented by Plato as confined in a den or cave; and external, physical, visible and tangible matter as the shadows on the wall of the cave. The Ego, in its descent from spirit into matter, goes deeper and deeper into the cave until it reaches the wall and is stopped. It can go no farther; and it must, impelled by the universal and all-embracing law of action and reaction, retrace its course toward spirit. Its progress downward or outward (from spirit,-inward as to the cave) has been without consciousness in any sense that we can comprehend. When it strikes the wall of its dungeon and strives to go still farther, it cannot do so; its limit is reached. The develops unintelligent consciousness-a consciousness wholly spiritual, and in no sense manasic. As it recedes backward in involution, still facing the wall, the reflected light of Manas thrown back from the wall enables it to interpret in a manner these sensations-to distinguish them from each other and to group them-but not at first to relate them to itself. Here is the beginning of the lowest mind, known in Mr. Sinnett's classification as Kama Rupa or the Animal soul. To reach this degree of development immeasurable ages were required. The first dawn of sensation begins when the physical development has proceeded far enough to furnish a suitable vehicle for the astral body. The astral development goes on, and moulds the physical world to its purpose, until it in its turn has become-or until the two together have become-a suitable vehicle for the emotional and perceptive faculties. These steps are easy to name, but they have been taken with slow and toilsome tread through the first, second and third rounds of our chain of globes; and were repeated in briefer but immensely long periods in the first races of this our fourth round.

To the stone belongs molecular consciousness, not consciousness as we know it, but only so called by analogy; to the plant belongs astral consciousness, or the dawn of sensation; to the animal belongs emotional consciousness, or the dawn of perception. As this faculty or principle becomes more and more fully developed and active a new faculty begins to act-the human intellect, the lower manas begins to awake and exercise its functions. The prisoner has retreated far enough from the wall of his cave, has evolved far enough toward spiritual perception, to be able to recognize his lower principles as himself-to relate the experience, the sensations, the perceptions of these lower principles to his own identity; to distinguish between the "I" and the "not-I." This is self-consciousness, or consciousness of self; and here the human stage is reached in the return of the monad from its journey to the confines of matter.

In Discussions of Philosophy and Literature, Sir William Hamilton, one of the foremost philosophers of modern times, makes the following statement:

In the philosophy of mind, subjective denotes what is to be referred to the thinking subject, the Ego; objective, what belongs to the object of thought, the Non-Ego....These correlative terms correspond to the first and most important distinction in philosophy; they embody the original antithesis in consciousness of self and non-self-a distinction which in fact involves the whole science of mind; for psychology is nothing more than a determination of the subjective and the objective in themselves, and in their reciprocal relations.

Hamilton was not only a profound thinker and an erudite scholar; he was also a master in the English language, and capable of expressing his thoughts clearly and tersely. The definition above quoted certainly gives the right use of these terms; and for those who, with President Bascom, hold that a gulf that cannot be bridged cuts broadly apart the facts which transpire in consciousness and the facts which transpire in space, it would seem to need no further elucidation. But when they are used in Theosophical discussing, the further consideration must not be overlooked, that the Ego, the Non-Ego, and the bond between the two (the thinker, the object of thought, and the thought) are all one. This gives emphasis to the fact that the line between the subject and object is purely imaginary; the distinction is logical and not metaphysical. Thus the terms subjective and objective are seen to be wholly correlative, and what is subjective in one relation is objective in another, and vice versâ. This correlative feature has always been recognized; but it becomes more significant and takes on new phases when viewed in the light of the septenary constitution of man.

Philosophers who have thought most deeply, and who have explored most fully the nature of man, and the various problems of ontology, show by their postulates and their reasoning that they implicitly apprehend, if they do not explicitly recognized, several of the distinctions represented by the septenary classification of principles. Dr. James March, president of the University of Vermont at the time of his death about fifty years ago, left several philosophical treatises which were afterward collected and published by his successor in the faculty of that institution. It is many years since I read this work, but I remember distinctly an essay in which the learned doctor discussed the changes wrought by the supervening of higher faculties in the course of evolution. He spoke of the force by which a crystal is built up by accretion, by regular additions from without; of the force by which a vegetable germ develops from within; of the powers of perception and locomotion which distinguish the animal, to some species of he conceded the logical faculty of ratiocination; and of the faculty of intuition, or perception of intellectual and spiritual truths and axioms, which distinguishes man from the lower forms of animal life. Here, in the classification of existence as amorphous, crystalline, vegetable, animal and human, each higher including all lower but superadding a new faculty, power, or principle or growth, there is plainly foreshadowed the method upon which our teaching of the septenary constitution of nature and of man is developed.

As the subjective is that which is within, and the objective is that which is without, the relation first emerges upon the evolution of the astral principle, or Linga Sharira; for the merely physical entity is so thoroughly one in nature that its different forms can hardly be considered as bearing this relation to each other. (Yet there is probably a septenary in physical nature below the astral, as witness earth, water, air, fire, etc.; and earth may be in truth objective to air.) The distinctions that are so obvious, organic, inorganic, etc., are really differing manifestations of the informing higher principles. But upon the development of the astral principle the relation appears; this is subjective as to the physical body, and the latter is objective as to the former. So when the kamic principle develops, or evolves from potentiality to potency, from a latent state to activity, this in turn becomes subjective, and to it the lower principles are objective. When the Lower Manas in its turn becomes active and subjective, it take intelligent cognizance of the lower principles as objective, and recognizes their identity with itself, and then self-consciousness appears. And when, by evolution or training, the Higher Manas becomes active, then will the entire quaternary, or lower Ego, become in relation to this added faculty, objective.

This is very well expressed in an article in Lucifer for September, 1891 (Vol IX, p. 23,) as follows:

This expansion of consciousness includes a development of the subtile senses which open up to the inner man new worlds, people with their inhabitants, and interdependent the one with the other. The subjective becomes the objective, with a still more subtile subjectivity beyond, which can become again objective as a still more spiritual consciousness is attained by the striver after freedom.

In the Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 189, H.P.B. says:

It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as "objectivity" and "subjectivity," "materiality" and "spirituality," when the same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception.

This paper is intended to be suggestive rather than exhaustive; and I shall have accomplished my purpose if I have set the relation of subjective to objective in a clearer light, and pointed out the direction in which to look for a better understanding of the philosophical side of our literature.

ALPHA

Path, February, 1896

SUICIDE IS NOT DEATH

As a student of Theosophy and human nature I have been interested in the discussion of the subject of self-murder to which The World has given a place in its columns. The eloquent agnostic, Col. Ingersoll, planted his views in the ground with the roots of them in the grave, giving the poor felo de se nothing beyond the cold earth to cheer him in his act, save perhaps the cowardly chance of escape, from responsibility or pain. Those who, as Nym Crinkle says, occupy themselves with replying to Col. Ingersoll fall back on the mere assertion that it is a sin to kill the body in which the Lord saw fit to confine a man. Neither of these views is either satisfactory or scientific.

If suicide is to be approved it can only be on the ground that the man is only a body, which, being a clod, may well be put out of its sufferings. From this it would be an easy step to justify the killing of other bodies that may be in the way, or old, or insane, or decrepit, or vicious. For if the mass of clay called body is all that we are, if man is not a spirit unborn and changeless in essence, then what wrong can there be in destroying it when you own it, or are it, and how easy to find good and sufficient reason for disposing similarly of others? The priest condemns suicide, but one may be a Christian and yet hold the opinion that a quick release from earth brings possible heaven several years nearer. The Christian is not deterred from suicide by any good reasons advanced in his religion, but rather from cowardice. Death, whenever natural or forced has become a terror, is named "The King of Terrors." This is because, although a vague heaven is offered on the other side, life and death are so little understood that men had rather bear the ills they know than fly to others which are feared through ignorance of what those are.

Suicide, like any other murder is a sin because it is a sudden disturbance of the harmony of the world. It is a sin because it defeats nature. Nature exists for the sake of the soul and for no other reason, it has the design, so to say, of giving the soul experience and self-consciousness. These can only be had by means of a body through which the soul comes in contact with nature, and to violently sever the connection before the natural time defeats the aim of nature, for the present compelling her, by her own slow processes, to restore the task left unfinished. And as those processes must go on through the soul that permitted the murder, more pain and suffering must follow.

And the disturbance of the general harmony is a greater sin than most men think. They consider themselves alone, as separate, as not connected with others. But they are connected throughout the whole world with all other souls and minds. A subtle, actual, powerful band links them all together, and the instant one of all these millions disturbs the link the whole mass feels it by reaction through soul and mind, and can only return to a normal state through a painful adjustment. This adjustment is on the unseen, but all-important, planes of being in which the real man exists. Thus each murderer of self or of another imposes on entire humanity an unjustifiable burden. From this injustice he cannot escape, for his body's death does not cut him off from the rest; it only places him, deprived of nature's instruments, in the clutch of laws that are powerful and implacable, ceaseless in their operation and compulsory in their demands.

Suicide is a huge folly, because it places the committer of it in an infinitely worse position than he was in under the conditions from which he foolishly hoped to escape. It is not death. It is only a leaving of one well-known house in familiar surroundings to go into a new place where terror and despair alone have place. It is but a preliminary death done to the clay, which is put in the "cold embrace of the grave," leaving the man himself naked and alive, but out of mortal life and not in either heaven or hell.

The Theosophist sees that man is a complex being full of forces and faculties, which he uses in a body on earth. The body is only a part of his clothing; he himself lives also in other places. In sleep he lives in one, awakes in another, in thought in another. He is a threefold being of body, soul and spirit. And this trinity can be divided again into its necessary seven constituents. And just as he is threefold, so also is nature - material, psychical or astral, and spiritual. The material part of nature governs the body, the psychical affects the soul and the spirit lives in the spiritual, all being bound together. Were we but bodies, we might well commit them to material nature and the grave, but if we rush out of the material we must project ourselves into the psychical or astral. And as all nature proceeds with regularity under the government of law, we know that each combination has its own term of life before a natural and easy separation of the component parts can take place. A tree or a mineral or a man is a combination of elements or parts, and each must have its projected life term. If we violently and prematurely cut them off one from the other, certain consequences must ensue. Each constituent requires its own time for dissolution. And suicide being a violent destruction of the first element - body - the other two, of soul and spirit, are left without their natural instrument. The man then is but half dead, and is compelled by the law of his own being to wait until the natural term is reached.

The fate of the suicide is horrible in general. He has cut himself off from his body by using mechanical means that affect the body, but cannot touch the real man. He then is projected into the astral world, for he has to live somewhere. There the remorseless law, which acts really for his good, compels him to wait until he can properly die. Naturally he must wait, half dead, the months or years which, in the order of nature, would have rolled over him before body and soul and spirit could rightly separate. He becomes a shade; he lives in purgatory, so to say, called by the Theosophist the "place of desire and passion," or "Kama Loka." He exists in the astral realm entirely, eaten up by his own thoughts. Continually repeating in vivid thoughts the act by which he tried to stop his life's pilgrimage, he at the same time sees the people and the place he left, but is not able to communicate with any one except, now and then, with some poor sensitive, who often is frightened by the visit. And often he fills the minds of living persons who may be sensitive to his thoughts with the picture of his own taking off, occasionally leading them to commit upon themselves the act of which he was guilty.

To put it theosophically, the suicide has cut himself off on one side from the body and life which were necessary for his experience and evolution, and on the other from his spirit, his guide and "Father in heaven." He is composed now of astral body, which is of great tensile strength, informed and inflamed by his passions and desires. But a portion of his mind, called manas, is with him. He can think and perceive, but, ignorant of how to use the forces of that realm, he is swept hither and thither, unable to guide himself. His whole nature is in distress, and with it to a certain degree the whole of humanity, for through the spirit all are united. Thus he goes on, until the law of nature acting on his astral body, that begins to die, and then he falls into a sleep from which he awakens in time for a season of rest before beginning once more a life on earth. In his next reincarnation he may, if he sees fit, retrieve or compensate or suffer over again.

There is no escape from responsibility. The "sweet embrace of the wet clay" is a delusion. It is better to bravely accept the inevitable, since it must be due to our errors in other older lives, and fill every duty, try to improve all opportunity. To teach suicide is a sin, for it leads some to commit it. To prohibit it without reason is useless, for our minds must have reasons for doing or not doing. And if we literally construe the words of the Bible, then there we find it says no murderer has a place but in hell. Such constructions satisfy but few in an age of critical investigation and hard analysis. But give men the key to their own natures, show them how law governs both here and beyond the grave, and their good sense will do the rest. An illogical nepenthe of the grave is as foolish as an illogical heaven for nothing.

NOTE. - This article first appeared in the New York World.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

The Lamp, September, 1894

THE SYNTHESIS OF OCCULT SCIENCE

THE impassable gulf between mind and matter discovered by modern science is a logical result of the present methods of so-called scientific investigation. These methods are analytical and hypothetical, and the results arrived at are necessarily tentative and incomplete. Even the so-called "Synthetic Philosophy" of Spencer is, at best, an effort to grasp the entire method and modulus of nature within one of its processes only. The aim is at synthesis, but it can hardly deserve the name of philosophy, for it is purely speculative and hypothetical. It is as though the physiologist undertook to study the function of respiration in man through the single process of expiration, ignoring the fact that every expiratory act must be supplemented by inspiration or respiration cease altogether.

Taking, therefore, the facts of experience derived from the phenomena of nature and viewing both cosmic and organic processes purely from their objective side, the "missing links," ''impassable gulfs, and "unthinkable gaps occur constantly. Not so in Occult Science. So far as the science of occultism is concerned, it is both experimental and analytical, but it acknowledges no "missing links," "impassable gulfs," or "unthinkable gaps," because it finds none. Back of occult science there lies a complete and all-embracing Philosophy. This philosophy is not simply synthetical in its methods, for the simplest as the wildest hypothesis can claim that much; but it is synthesis itself. It regards Nature as one complete whole, and so the student of occultism may stand at either point of observation. He may from the stand-point of Nature's wholeness and completeness follow the process of segregation and differentiation to the minutest atom conditioned in space and time; or, from the phenomenal display of the atom, he may reach forward and upward till the atom becomes an integral part of cosmos, involved in the universal harmony of creation. The modern scientist may do this incidentally or empirically, but the occultist does it systematically and habitually, and hence philosophically. The modern scientist is confessedly and boastfully agnostic. The occultist is reverently and progressively gnostic.

Modern science recognizes matter as "living" and "dead," "organic" and "inorganic," and "Life" as merely a phenomenon of matter. Occult science recognizes, "foremost of all, the postulate that there is no such thing in Nature as inorganic substances or bodies. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical 'atoms' are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma has an end, and their inertia becomes activity." (Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 626 fn.) Occultism recognizes ONE UNIVERSAL, ALL-PERVADING LIFE. Modern science recognizes life as a special phenomenon of matter, a mere transient manifestation due to temporary conditions. Even logic and analogy ought to have taught us better, for the simple reason that so-called "inorganic" or "dead" matter constantly becomes organic and living, while matter from the organic plane is continually being reduced to the inorganic. How rational and justifiable, then, to suppose that the capacity or "potency" of life is latent in all matter!

The "elements," "atoms," and "molecules" of modern science, partly physical and partly metaphysical, though altogether hypothetical, are, nevertheless, seldom philosophical, for the simple reason that they are regarded solely as phenomenal. The Law of Avogadro involved a generalization as to physical structure and number, and the later experiments of Prof. Neumann deduced the same law mathematically from the first principles of the mechanical theory of gases, but it remained for Prof. Crookes to perceive the philosophical necessity of a primordial substratum, protyle, and so, as pointed out in the Secret Doctrine, to lay the foundations of "Metachemistry"; in other words, a complete philosophy of physics and chemistry that shall take the place of mere hypothesis and empiricism, if one or two generalizations deduced as logical or mathematical necessities from the phenomena of physics and chemistry have been able to work such revolutions in the old chemistry, what may we not expect from a complete synthesis that shall grasp universals by a law that compasses the whole domain of matter? And yet this complete synthesis has been in the possession of the true occultist for ages. Glimpses of this philosophy have been sufficient to give to minds like Kepler, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Schopenhauer, and, lastly, to Prof. Crookes, ideas that claimed and held the interested attention of the scientific world. While, at certain points, such writers supplement and corroborate each other, neither anywhere nor altogether do they reveal the complete synthesis, for none of them possessed it, and yet it has all along existed.

"Let the reader remember these 'Monad's of Leibnitz, every one of which is a living mirror of the universe, every monad reflecting every other, and compare this view and definition with certain Sanskrit stanzas (Slokas) translated by Sir William Jones, in which it is said that the creative source of the Divine Mind, . . . 'Hidden in a veil of thick darkness, formed mirrors of the atoms of the world, and cast reflection from its own face on every atom'."--S.D., Vol. 1, p. 623.

It may be humiliating to "Modern Exact Science" and repugnant to the whole of Christendom to have to admit that the Pagans whom they have despised, and the "Heathen Scriptures" they long ridiculed or ignored, nevertheless possess a fund of wisdom never dreamed of under Western skies. They have the lesson, however, to learn, that Science by no means originated in, nor is it confined to, the West, nor are superstition and ignorance confined to the East.

It can easily be shown that every real discovery and every important advancement in modern science have already been anticipated centuries ago by ancient science and philosophy. It is true that these ancient doctrines have been embodied in unknown languages and symbols, and recorded in books inaccessible to western minds till a very recent date. Far beyond all this inaccessibility, however, as a cause preventing these old truths from reaching modern times, has been the prejudice, the scorn and contempt of ancient learning manifested by the leaders of modern thought.

Nor is the lesson yet learned that bigotry and scorn are never the mark of wisdom or the harbingers of learning; for still, with comparatively few exceptions, any claim or discussion of these ancient doctrines is met with contempt and scorn. The record has, however, been at least outlined and presented to the world. As the authors of the Secret Doctrine have remarked, these doctrines may not be largely accepted by the present generation, but during the twentieth century they will become known and appreciated.

The scope and bearing of philosophy itself are hardly yet appreciated by modern thought, because of its materialistic tendency. A complete science of metaphysics and a complete philosophy of science are not yet even conceived of as possible; hence the ancient wisdom by its very vastness has escaped recognition in modern times. That the authors of ancient wisdom have spoken from at least two whole planes of conscious experience beyond that of our every-day "sense-perception" is to us inconceivable, and yet such is the fact; and why should the modern advocate of evolution be shocked and staggered by such a disclosure? It but justifies his hypothesis and extends its theatre. Is it because the present custodians of this ancient learning do not scramble for recognition on the stock exchange, and enter into competition in the marts of the world? If the practical outcome of such competition needed illustration, Mr. Keely might serve as an example. The discoveries of the age are already whole centuries in advance of its ethical culture, and the knowledge that should place still further power in the hands of a few individuals whose ethical code is below, rather than above, that of the ignorant, toiling, suffering masses, could only minister to anarchy and increase oppression. On these higher planes of consciousness the law of progress is absolute; knowledge and power go hand in hand with beneficence to man, not alone to the individual possessors of wisdom, but to the whole human race. The custodians of the higher knowledge are equally by both motive and development almoners of the divine. These are the very conditions of the higher consciousness referred to. The synthesis of occult science becomes, therefore, the higher synthesis of the faculties of man. What matter, therefore, if the ignorant shall scout its very existence, or treat it with ridicule and contempt? Those who know of its existence and who have learned something of its scope and nature can, in their turn, afford to smile, but with pity and sorrow at the willing bondage to ignorance and misery that scorns enlightenment and closes its eyes to the plainest truths of experience.

Leaving, for the present, the field of physics and cosmogenesis, it may be profitable to consider some of the applications of these doctrines to the functions and life of man.

The intellect derived from philosophy
is similar to a charioteer; for it
is present with our desires, and
always conducts them to the beautiful.

--DEMOPHILUS

"In reality, as Occult philosophy teaches us, everything which changes is organic; it has the life principle in it, and it has all the potentiality of the higher lives. If, as we say, all in nature is an aspect of the one element, and life is universal, how can there be such a thing as an inorganic atom!"(1) Man is a perfected animal, but before he could have reached perfection even on the animal plane, there must have dawned upon him the light of a higher plane. Only the perfected animal can cross the threshold of the next higher, or the human plane, and as he does so there shines upon him the ray from the suprahuman plane. Therefore, as the dawn of humanity illumines the animal plane, and as a guiding star lures the Monad to higher consciousness, so the dawn of divinity illumines the human plane, luring the monad to the supra-human plane of consciousness. This is neither more nor less than the philosophical and metaphysical aspect of the law of evolution. Man has not one principle more than the tiniest insect; he is, however, "the vehicle of a fully developed Monad, self-conscious and deliberately following its own line of progress, whereas in the insect, and even the higher animal, the higher triad of principles is absolutely dormant." The original Monad has, therefore, locked within it the potentiality of divinity. It is plainly, therefore, a misnomer to call that process of thought a "Synthetic Philosophy" that deals only with phenomena and ends with matter on the physical plane. These two generalizations of Occult philosophy, endowing every atom with the potentiality of life, and regarding every insect or animal as already possessing the potentialities of the higher planes though these powers are yet dormant, add to the ordinary Spencerian theory of evolution precisely that element that it lacks, viz, the metaphysical and philosophical; and, thus endowed, the theory becomes synthetical.

The Monad, then, is essentially and potentially the same in the lowest vegetable organism, up through all forms and gradations of animal life to man, and beyond. There is a gradual unfolding of its potentialities from "Monera" to man, and there are two whole planes of consciousness, the sixth and the seventh "senses," not yet unfolded to the average humanity. Every monad that is enclosed in a form, and hence limited by matter, becomes conscious on its own plane and in its own degree. Consciousness, therefore, no less than sensitiveness, belongs to plants as well as to animals. Self-consciousness belongs to man, because, while embodied in a form, the higher triad of principles, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, is no longer dormant, but active. This activity is, however, far from being fully developed. When this activity has become fully developed, man will already have become conscious on a still higher plane, endowed with the sixth and the opening of the seventh sense, and will have become a "god" in the sense given to that term by Plato and his followers.

In thus giving this larger and completer meaning to the law of evolution, the Occult philosophy entirely eliminates the "missing links" of modern science, and, by giving to man a glimpse of his nature and destiny, not only points out the line of the higher evolution, but puts him in possession of the means of achieving it.

The "atoms" and "monads" of the Secret Doctrine are very different from the atoms and molecules of modern science. To the latter these are mere particles of matter endowed with blind force: to the former, they are the "dark nucleoles," and potentially "Gods," conscious and intelligent from their primeval embodiment at the beginning of differentiation in the dawn of the Manvantara. There are no longer any hard and fast lines between the "organic" and the "inorganic"; between the "living" and "dead" matter. Every atom is endowed with and moved by intelligence, and is conscious in its own degree, on its own plane of development. This is a glimpse of the One Life that--

Runs through all time, extends through all extent,
Lives undivided, operates unspent.

It may be conceived that the "Ego" in man is a monad that has gathered to itself innumerable experiences through aeons of time, slowly unfolding its latent potencies through plane after plane of matter. It is hence called the "eternal pilgrim."

The Manasic, or mind principle, is cosmic and universal. It is the creator of all forms, and the basis of all law in nature. Not so with consciousness. Consciousness is a condition of the monad as the result of embodiment in matter and the dwelling in a physical form. Self-consciousness, which from the animal plane looking upward is the beginning of perfection, from the divine plane looking downward is the perfection of selfishness and the curse of separateness. It is the "world of illusion" that man has created for himself. "Maya is the perceptive faculty of every Ego which considers itself a Unit, separate from and independent of the One Infinite and Eternal Sat or 'be-ness." The "eternal pilgrim" must therefore mount higher, and flee from the plane of self-consciousness it has struggled so hard to reach.

The complex structure that we call "Man" is made up of a congeries of almost innumerable "Lives." Not only every microscopic cell of which the tissues are composed, but the molecules and atoms of which these cells are composed, are permeated with the essence of the "One Life." Every so-called organic cell is known to have its nucleus, a center of finer or more sensitive matter. The nutritive, all the formative and functional processes consist of flux and re-flux, of inspiration and expiration, to and from the nucleus.

The nucleus is therefore in its own degree and after its kind a "monad" imprisoned in a "form." Every microscopic cell, therefore, has a consciousness and an intelligence of its own, and man thus consists of innumerable "lives." This is but physiological synthesis, logically deduced no less from the known facts in physiology and histology than the logical sequence of the philosophy of occultism. Health of the body as a whole depends on the integrity of all its parts, and more especially upon their harmonious association and cooperation. A diseased tissue is one in which a group of individual cells refuse to cooperate, and wherein is set up discordant action, using less or claiming more than their due share of food or energy. Disease of the very tissue of mans body is neither more nor less than the "sin of separateness." Moreover, the grouping of cells is upon the principle of hierarchies. Smaller groups are subordinate to larger congeries, and these again are subordinate to larger, or to the whole. Every microscopic cell therefore typifies and epitomizes man, as man is an epitome of the Universe. As already remarked, the "Eternal Pilgrim," the Alter-Ego in man, is a monad progressing through the ages. By right and by endowment the ego is king in the domain of mans bodily life. It descended into matter in the cosmic process till it reached the mineral plane, and then journeyed upward through the "three kingdoms" till it reached the human plane. The elements of its being, like the cells and molecules of mans body, are groupings of structures accessory or subordinate to it. The human monad or Ego is therefore akin to all below it and heir to all above it, linked by indissoluble bonds to spirit and matter, "God" and "Nature." The attributes that it gathers, and the faculties that it unfolds, are but the latent and dormant potentialities awaking to conscious life. The tissue cells constitute mans bodily structure, but the order in which they are arranged, the principle upon which they are grouped, constituting the human form, is not simply an evolved shape from the lower animal plane, but an involved principle from a higher plane, an older world, viz, the "Lunar Pitris." "Hanuman the Monkey" antedates Darwins "missing link" by thousands of millenniums. So also the Manasic, or mind element, with its cosmic and infinite potentialities, is not merely the developed "instinct" of the animal. Mind is the latent or active potentiality of Cosmic Ideation, the essence of every form, the basis of every law, the potency of every principle in the universe. Human thought is the reflection or reproduction in the realm of mans consciousness of these forms, laws, and principles. Hence man senses and apprehends nature just as nature unfolds in him. When, therefore, the Monad has passed through the form of the animal ego, involved and unfolded the human form, the higher triad of principles awakens from the sleep of ages and over-shadowed by the "Manasa-putra" and built into its essence and substance. How could man epitomize Cosmos if he did not touch it at every point and involve it in every principle? If mans being is woven in the web of destiny, his potencies and possibilities take hold of divinity as the woof and pattern of his boundless life. Why, then, should he grow weary or disheartened? Alas! why should he be degraded, this heir of all things!

The peculiarity also of this theology, and in which its transcendency consists, is this, that it does not consider the highest God to be the principle of beings, but the principle of principles, i.e. of deiform processions from itself, all which are eternally rooted in the unfathomable depths of the immensely great source of their existence, and of which they may be called supersensuous ramifications and superluminous blossoms.

--Thomas Taylor. Introduction to Mystical Hymns of Orpheus

III

It has often been thought a strange thing that there are no dogmas and no creed in Theosophy or Occultism. Is theosophy a religion? is often asked. No, it is religion. Is it a philosophy? No, it is philosophy. Is it a science? No, it is science. If a consensus of religion, philosophy, and science is possible, and if it has ever been reached in human thought, that thought must long since have passed the boundaries of all creeds and ceased to dogmatize. Hence comes the difficulty in answering questions. No proposition stands apart or can be taken separately without limiting and often distorting its meaning. Every proposition has to be considered and held as subservient to the synthetic whole. Really intelligent people, capable of correct reasoning, often lack sufficient interest to endeavor to apprehend the universality of these principles. They expect, where they have any interest at all in the subject, to be told "all about it" in an hours conversation, or to learn it from a column in some newspaper; all about man, all about Nature, all about Deity; and then either to reject it or to make it a part of their previous creed. These are really no wiser than the penny-a-liner who catches some point and turns it into ridicule, or makes it a butt for coarse jest or silly sarcasm, and then complacently imagines that he has demolished the whole structure! If such persons were for one moment placed face to face with their own folly, they would be amazed. The most profound thinker and the most correct reasoner might well afford to devote a life-time to the apprehension of the philosophy of occultism, and other life-times to mastering the scientific details, while at the same time his ethics and his religious life are made consistent with the principle of altruism and the Brotherhood of man. If this be regarded as too hard a task, it is, nevertheless, the line of the higher evolution of man, and, soon or late, every soul must follow it, retrograde, or cease to be.

Man is but a link in an endless chain of being; a sequence of a past eternity of causes and processes; a potentiality born into time, but spanning two eternities, his past and his future, and in his consciousness these are all one, Duration, the ever-present. In a former article man was shown to be a series of almost innumerable "Lives," and these lives, these living entities called "cells," were shown to be associated together on the principle of hierarchies, grouped according to rank and order, service and development, and this was shown to be the "physical synthesis" of man, and the organic synthesis as well. Disease was also shown to be the organic nutritive, or physiological "sin of separateness." Every department of man's being, every organ and cell of his body, was also shown to possess a consciousness and an intelligence of its own, held, however, subordinate to the whole. In health every action is synchronous and rhythmical, however varied and expanded, however intense and comprehensive. Enough is already known in modern physics to justify all these statements, at least by analogy. The principle of electrical induction and vibration, the quantitative and qualitative transmission of vibration and its exact registration, and their application to telegraphy, the telephone, and the phonograph, have upset all previous theories of physics and physiology. "A metallic plate, for instance, can that talk like a human being? Yea or nay? Mr. Bouillard--and he was no common man--said No; to accept such a fact were to upset all our notions of physiology. So said Mr. Bouillard, right in the face of Edison's phonograph in full Academy, and he throttled the luckless interpreter of the famous American inventor, accusing it of ventriloquism." (2)

Occultism teaches that the Ego both precedes and survives the physical body. The phenomena of mans life and the process of his thought can be apprehended and explained on no other theory. Modern physiology teaches in detail certain facts regarding the life of man. It, moreover, groups these facts and deduces certain so-called principles and laws, but such a thing as a synthesis of the whole man is seldom even attempted. "Psychology" is mere empiricism, represented by disjointed facts, and these, of course, but little understood, and more often misinterpreted.

Ask the modern physiologist if man can think when unconscious, and he will answer No; and if asked if man can be conscious and not think, he will as readily answer No. Both answers will be based on what is known, or supposed to be known, of memory. The idea that the real man, the Ego, is always conscious on some plane, and that it "thinks," as we ordinarily use the term, only on the lower plane through the physical brain, in terms of extension and duration, or space and time, is seldom in the least apprehended by the modern physiologist. If, however, one grasps the idea of the ego as the real man dwelling in the physical body and using it as its instrument through which it is related to space and time, perception, sensation, thought, and feeling, the gaps in physiology and psychology begin to disappear. Here again it should be particularly borne in mind that this doctrine of the ego must be considered in the light of the complete synthesis of occultism, and just to the extent that this is intelligently done will the significance of the ego appear.

The brief and concise outline of the philosophy of occultism given in the Introduction to the Secret Doctrine is therefore very significant, and the student who desires to apprehend that which follows in these two large volumes ought to study this outline very carefully. No subsequent proposition, no principle in the life of man, can be correctly understood apart from it. The subject-matter following is necessarily fragmentary, but the outline is both inclusive and philosophical, and if one reasons logically and follows the plainest analogies he can never go far astray. The relation of mind to brain, of thought to consciousness, of life to matter, and of man to Nature and to Deity, is there clearly defined; not, indeed, in all its details, but in a philosophical modulus, to be worked out in reason and in life. The all-pervading Life, the cyclic or periodical movements, the periods of action and of repose, and the intimate relations and inter-dependences of all things apply to Cosmos, and equally to every atom in its vast embrace.

Students sometimes complain that they cannot understand, that the subject is so vast, and so deep and intricate, and not made clear. lt is because they do not realize what they have undertaken. Occultism can neither be taught nor learned in "a few easy lessons." The "object lessons" sometimes given by H.P.B., almost always misunderstood and misapplied, though often explained at the time, served as often to excite vulgar curiosity and personal abuse as to arrest attention and study. If, before the advent of the T.S. in the face of the creeds of Christendom, the materialism of science, the indifferences and supercilious scorn of Agnosticism, and the babel of spiritualism, it had been proposed to begin at the foundations and reconstruct our entire knowledge of Nature and of man; to show the unity and the foundations of the worlds religions; to eliminate from science all its "missing links"; to make Agnosticism gnostic; and to place the science of psychology and the nature and laws of mind and soul over against "Mediumship"; it would have been held as an herculean task, and declared impossible of accomplishment. Now that the thing has virtually been accomplished and this body of knowledge presented to the world, people think it strange that they cannot compass it all, as the poet Burns is said to have written some of his shorter poems, "while standing on one leg!"

Again, people complain at the unfamiliar terms and the strange words imported from foreign languages. Yet if one were to undertake the study of physics, chemistry, music, or medicine, quite as great obstacles have to be overcome. Is it a strange thing, then, that the science that includes all these, and undertakes to give a synthesis of the whole realm of Nature and of life, should have its own nomenclature?

Beyond all these necessary and natural obstacles, there is another, viz., that contentious spirit that disputes and opposes every point before it is fairly stated or understood. Suppose one ignorant of mathematics were to proceed in the same manner and say, "I don't like that proposition," "I don't see why they turn a six upside down to make a nine," "Why don't two and two make five?", and so on, how long would it take such a one to learn mathematics? In the study of the Secret Doctrine it is not a matter of likes or dislikes, of belief or unbelief, but solely a matter of intelligence and understanding. He who acknowledges his ignorance and yet is unwilling to lay aside his likes and dislikes, and even his creeds and dogmas, for the time, in order to see what is presented in its own light and purely on its merits, has neither need nor use for the Secret Doctrine. Even where a greater number of propositions are accepted or "believed" and a few are rejected, the synthetic whole is entirely lost sight of. But, says some one, this is a plea for blind credulity, and an attempt to bind the mind and the conscience of man to a blind acceptance of these doctrines. No one but the ignorant or the dishonest can make such an assertion in the face of the facts. Listen to the following from p. xix, Introduction to the Secret Doctrine. "It is above everything important to keep in mind that no theosophical book acquires the least additional value from pretended authority." If that be advocating blind credulity, let the enemies of the T.S. make the most of it. If any authority pertains to the Secret Doctrine, it must be sought inside, not outside. It must rest on its comprehensiveness, its completeness, its continuity and reasonableness; in other words, on its philosophical synthesis, a thing missed alike by the superficial and the contentious, by the indolent, the superstitious, and the dogmatic.

O wise man: you have asked rightly. Now listen carefully. The illusive fancies arising from error are not conclusive.

The great and peaceful ones live regenerating the world like the coming of spring, and after having themselves crossed the ocean of embodied existence, help those who try to do the same thing, without personal motives.

--Crest Jewel of Wisdom

In the foregoing articles, necessarily brief and fragmentary, a few points have been given to show the general bearing of the Secret Doctrine on all problems in Nature and in Life.

Synthesis is the very essence of philosophy--"the combination of separate elements of thought into a whole"--the opposite of analysis, and analysis is the very essence of science.

In the "Outline of the Secret Doctrine" by "C.J.," now running through the pages of Lucifer, this philosophy or synthesis of the whole is made very clear.

There have been many philosophisers in modern times, but there can be but one philosophy, one synthesis of the whole of Eternal Nature. With the single exception of the writings of Plato, no one in modern times had given to the Western world any approximation to a complete philosophy, previous to the appearance of H. P. Blavatskys Secret Doctrine. The writings of Plato are carefully veiled in the symbolical language of initiation. The Secret Doctrine, coming more than two millenniums later, and in an age of so-called Science, is addressed to the Scientific thought of the age, and hence considers the whole subject largely from the stand-point of Science. The present age is as deficient in philosophy as was the age of Plato in knowledge of science. It follows, therefore, that while the Secret Doctrine itself apprehends equally both philosophy and science, in addressing itself to the thought of an age it must recognize here, as it does everywhere, the law of cycles that rules in the intellectual development of a race no less than in the revolutions of suns and worlds, and so address the times from that plane of thought that is in the ascendant. It is just because analytical thought is in the ascendant, because it is the thought-form of the age, that the great majority of readers are likely to overlook the broad synthesis and so miss the philosophy of the Secret Doctrine. The only object of these brief and fragmentary papers has been to call attention to this point.

We are now in a transition period, and in the approaching twentieth century there will be a revival of genuine philosophy, and the Secret Doctrine will be the basis of the "New Philosophy." Science today, in the persons of such advanced students as Keely, Crookes, Lodge, Richardson, and many others, already treads so close to the borders of occult philosophy that it will not be possible to prevent the new age from entering the occult realm. H. P. Blavatskys Secret Doctrine is a storehouse of scientific facts, but this is not its chief value. These facts are placed, approximately at least, in such relation to the synthesis or philosophy of occultism as to render comparatively easy the task of the student who is in search of real knowledge, and to further his progress beyond all preconception, provided he is teachable, in earnest, and intelligent. Nowhere else in English literature is the Law of Evolution given such sweep and swing. It reminds one of the ceaseless under-tone of the deep sea, and seems to view our Earth in all its changes "from the birth of time to the crack of doom." It follows man in his triple evolution, physical, mental, and spiritual, throughout the perfect circle of his boundless life. Darwinism had reached its limits and a rebound. Man is indeed evolved from lower forms. But which man? the physical? the psychical? the intellectual? or the spiritual? The Secret Doctrine points where the lines of evolution and involution meet; where matter and spirit clasp hands; and where the rising animal stands face to face with the fallen god; for all natures meet and mingle in man.

Judge no proposition of the Secret Doctrine as though it stood alone, for not one stands alone. Not "independence" here more than with the units that constitute Humanity. It is interdependence everywhere; in nature, as in life.

Even members of the T.S. have often wondered why H.P.B. and others well known in the Society lay so much stress on doctrines like Karma and Reincarnation. It is not alone because these doctrines are easily apprehended and beneficent to individuals, not only because they furnish, as they necessarily do, a solid foundation for ethics, or all human conduct, but because they are the very key-notes of the higher evolution of man. Without Karma and Reincarnation evolution is but a fragment; a process whose beginnings are unknown, and whose outcome cannot be discerned; a glimpse of what might be; a hope of what should be. But in the light of Karma and Reincarnation evolution becomes the logic of what must be. The links in the chain of being are all filled in, and the circles of reason and of life are complete. Karma gives the eternal law of action, and Reincarnation furnishes the boundless field for its display. Thousands of persons can understand these two principles, apply them as a basis of conduct, and weave them into the fabric of their lives, who may not be able to grasp the complete synthesis of that endless evolution of which these doctrines form so important a part. In thus affording even the superficial thinker and the weak or illogical reasoner a perfect basis for ethics and an unerring guide in life, Theosophy is building toward the future realization of the Universal Brotherhood and the higher evolution of man. But few in this generation realize the work that is thus undertaken, or how much has already been accomplished. The obscurity of the present age in regard to genuine philosophical thought is nowhere more apparent than in the manner in which opposition has been waged toward these doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation. In the seventeen years since the Theosophical movement has been before the world there has not appeared, from any source, a serious and logical attempt to discredit these doctrines from a philosophical basis. There have been denial, ridicule, and denunciation ad nauseum. There could be no discussion from such a basis, for from the very beginning these doctrines have been put forth and advocated from the logical and dispassionate plane of philosophy. Ridicule is both unanswerable and unworthy of answer. It is not the argument, but the atmosphere of weak minds, born of prejudice and ignorance.

The synthesis of occultism is therefore the philosophy of Nature and of Life; the full -- or free--truth that apprehends every scientific fact in the light of the unerring processes of Eternal Nature.

The time must presently come when the really advanced thinkers of the age will be compelled to lay by their indifference, and their scorn and conceit, and follow the lines of philosophical investigation laid down in the Secret Doctrine. Very few seem yet to have realized how ample are these resources, because it involves a process of thought almost unknown to the present age of empiricism and induction. It is a revelation from archaic ages, indestructible and eternal, yet capable of being obscured and lost; capable of being again and again reborn, or like man himself--reincarnated.

"He who lives in one color of the rainbow is blind to the rest. Live in the Light diffused through the entire arc, and you will know it all."--The Path.

"He who knows not the common things of life is a beast among men. He who knows only the common things of life is a man among beasts. He who knows all that can be learned by diligent inquiry is a god among men."--Plato.

Path, November, 1891,

February, March, May, 1892

(1) Quotations are from the Secret Doctrine and other writings of H. P. Blavatsky.
(2) Dr. J. Oehorowicz, "Mental Suggestion," p. 291.

THEOSOPHICAL DOCTRINE

MR. CHAIRMAN; brothers and sisters; men and women; members of the Parliament of Religions: The Theosophical Society has been presenting to you but one-half of its work, but one-half of that which it has to present to the world. This is the Parliament of Religions. This is a Parliament of the Religions of the day. Theosophy is not only a religion; it is also a science; it is religious science and scientific religion, and at a Parliament of Religions it would not be possible, indeed it would not be proper, to present the science of Theosophy, which relates to so many matters outside of the ordinary domain of the religions of today. The time will come when religion will also be a science. Today it is not. The object of Theosophy is to make of religion also a science, and to make science a religion, so we have been presenting only one-half of the subject which we deal with, and I would like you to remember that. We could not go into the other part; it would be beyond the scope of this meeting.

Now, we have discovered during the last week, as many have discovered before by reading, by experience, and by travel, that the religions of the world are nearly all alike. We have discovered that Christianity is not alone in claiming a Savior. If you will go over to Japan you will find that the Buddhists of Japan have a doctrine which declares that any one who relies upon and repeats three times a day the name "Amita Buddha," will be saved. That is one Savior of the Buddhists, who had the doctrine before Christianity was started. If you will go among the Buddhists elsewhere you will find that they also have a Savior; that by reliance upon the Lord Buddha, they claim they will be saved. If you will go to the Brahmins and the other religions of India, you will find they also have a Savior. In some parts of that mysterious land they say: "Repeat the name of Rama"--God--"and he will save you." The Brahmins themselves have in their doctrines a doctrine which is called the "Bridge Doctrine": that which has God for its aim, has God himself as the means of salvation; is itself God. And so wherever you go throughout this wide world, examining the various religions, you find they all have this common doctrine. Why should we then say that the latest of these religions is the inventor of the doctrine? It is not. It is common property of the whole human race, and we find on further inquiry that these religions all teach, and the Christian religion also, that this Savior is within the heart of every man, and is not outside of him.

We have discovered further by examining all these religions and comparing them with the Christian religion, which is the one belonging to the foremost nation of today, that in these other religions and in Christianity are found certain doctrines which constitute the key that will unlock this vast lock made up of the different religions. These doctrines are not absent from Christianity any more than they are absent from Buddhism or from Brahminism, and now the time has come when the world must know that these doctrines are common property, when it is too late for any people West or East to claim that they have a special property in any doctrine whatever.

The two principles which unlock this great lock which bars men sometimes from getting on, are called Karma and Reincarnation. The latter doctrine bears a more difficult Sanscrit name.

The doctrine of Karma put into our language is simply and solely Justice. What is justice? Is it something that condemns alone? I say, No. Justice is also mercy. For mercy may not be dissociated from justice, and the word justice itself includes mercy within it. Not the justice of man, which is false and erring, but the justice of Nature. That is also mercy. For if she punishes you, it is in order that she may do a merciful act and show you the truth at last by discipline. That is the doctrine of Karma, and it is also called the ethical law of causation. It means that effect follows cause uniformly; not alone in mere objective nature, where if you put your hand in the fire it will surely be burned, but in your moral nature, throughout your whole spiritual and intellectual evolution. It has been too much the custom to withdraw from use this law of cause and effect the moment we look at man as a spiritual being; and the religions and philosophies of the past and the present have the proof within them that this law of cause and effect obtains on the spiritual, the moral, and the intellectual planes just as much as it does on the physical and objective. It is our object to once more bring back this law of justice to the minds of men and show them that justice belongs to God, and that he is not a God who favors people, but who is just because he is merciful.

The doctrine of reincarnation is the next one. Reincarnation, you say, what is that? Do you mean that I was here before? Yes, undoubtedly so. Do you mean to tell me that this is a Christian, a Buddhist, a Brahminical, a Japanese doctrine, and a Chinese one? Yes, and I can prove it; and if you will examine your own records with an unprejudiced and fearless mind, afraid of no man, you will prove it also. If you go back in the records of Christianity to the first year of it, you will find that for many centuries this doctrine was taught. Surely the men who lived near Jesus knew what the doctrine was. It was admitted by Jesus himself. He said on one occasion that Elias had already come back in the person of John, but had been destroyed by the ruler. How could Elias come back and be born again as John unless the law of nature permitted it? We find on examining the writers, the early Christian fathers who made the theology of the Christian churches admitting, by the greatest of them, Origen, that this doctrine was true. He, the greatest of them all, who wrote so much men could not read all his books, believed in it. It is said in the Christian scripture that Jesus also said so much they could not record it, and if they had, the volumes could not be counted. If these teachings were not recorded, we can imagine from what he spoke and from what his early followers believed, that this doctrine was taught distinctly by him in words.

It is the doctrine of which the Reverend Mr. Beecher, brother of the famous Henry Ward Beecher, in a book called The Conflict of Religions, said, "It is an absolute necessity to Christianity; without it Christianity is illogical. With it it is logical." And a great writer, the Rev. William Alger, whose book, A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, is used in the religious educational institutions of all denominations with perhaps one exception, has written twice in two editions and said that after fifteen years study of the subject he had come to the conclusion that the doctrine was true and necessary.

Furthermore, we find that in these countries where Christianity arose--for Christianity is not a Western product-- reincarnation has always been believed. You ask for human evidence. You believe in this city, not only in this city but everywhere, in a court of law, if many witnesses testify to a fact it is proven. Well, millions upon millions of men in the East testify that they not only believe in reincarnation, but that they know it is true, that they remember that they were born before and that they were here before, and hundreds and thousands of men in the West have said the same thing. That they not only believe it, but that they know it. Poets have written of it all through English literature. It is a doctrine that almost everybody believes in their hearts. The little child coming straight from the other shore, coming without any defects straight from the heavenly Father, believes that it has always lived.

If the doctrine of immortality which is taught by every religion is true, how can you split it in halves and say, you began to be immortal when you were born and you were never immortal before? How is it possible you did not live before if there is any justice in this universe? Is it not true that what happens is the result of your conduct? If you live a life of sin and wickedness, will you not suffer? If you steal, and rob, and lie, and put in operation causes for punishment, will you not be punished? Why should not that law be applied to the human being when born, to explain his state and capacity? We find children are born blind, deformed, halt, without capacity; where is the prior conduct which justifies such a thing, if they have just been born for the first time? They must have lived before. The disciples asked Jesus, "Why was this man born blind; was it for some sin he had committed?" When committed? When did he commit it if he had never been born before? Why ask Jesus, their master, this question, unless they believed the doctrine, unless, as we think, it is the true one and one then prevalent?

This doctrine of reincarnation, then, we claim is the lost chord of any religion that does not promulgate it. We say it is found in the Christian religion; it is found in every religion, and it offers to us a means whereby our evolution may be carried on, it offers an explanation to the question, Why are men born with different characters? We find one man born generous, and he will always be generous; we find another born selfish, and selfish he will be to the end of his life. We find one man born with great capacity, a great mind that can cover many subjects at once; or a special mind and capacity like that of Mozart. Why was he born so? Where did he get it if not from the character he had in the past? You may say that heredity explains it all. Then please explain how Blind Tom, born of negro parents who never knew anything about a piano, who never knew anything about music, was able to play upon a mechanically scaled instrument like the piano? It is not a natural thing. Where did he get the capacity? Heredity does not explain that. We explain it by reincarnation. Just so with Mozart, who at four years of age was able to write an orchestral score. Do you know what that means? It means the writing down the parts for the many instruments, and not only that, but writing it in a forced scale, which is a mechanical thing. How will that be explained by heredity? If you say that among his ancestors there must have been musicians, then why not before or after him? See Bach! If Bach could look back from the grave he would have seen his musical genius fading and fading out of his family until at last it disappeared.

Heredity will not explain these great differences in character and genius, but reincarnation will. It is the means of evolution of the human soul; it is the means of evolution for every animate and inanimate thing in this world. It applies to everything. All nature is constantly being reëmbodied, which is reincarnation. Go back with science. It shows you that this world was first a mass of fiery vapor; come down the years and you see this mass reëmbodied in a more solid form; later still it is reëmbodied as the mineral kingdom, a great ball in the sky, without life; later still animal life begins evolving until now it has all that we know of life, which is a reëmbodiment over and over again, or reincarnation. It means, then, that just as you move periodically from house to house in the city, you are limited by every house you move into, so the human being, who never dies, is not subject to death, moves periodically from house to house, and takes up a mortal body life after life, and is simply limited a little more or a little less, just as the case may be, by the particular body he may inhabit.

I could not go through all this subject to answer all the objections, but Theosophy will answer them all. The differences in people are explained by the fact that the character of the individual attracts him to the family that is just like himself, and not to any other family, and through heredity he receives his discipline, punishment, and reward.

The objections to reincarnation are generally based upon the question, why we do not remember. In the West that objection arises from the fact that we have been materialists so long, we have been deceived so long, that we have forgotten; we are not able to remember anything but what makes a violent impression on our senses. In the East and in some places in the West the people remember, and the time will come when the people in the West will remember also. And I warrant you that the children of the West know this, but it is rubbed out of their minds by their fathers and mothers. They say to the child, "Don't bother me with such questions; you are only imagining things." As if a child could imagine that it had been here before if it had not been. They never could imagine a thing which has not some existence in fact or that is not built up from impressions received. As you watch the newborn child you will see it throw its arms out to support itself. Why should the child throw out its arms to support itself? You say, instinct. What is instinct? Instinct is recollection imprinted upon the soul, imprinted upon the character within a child just born, and it knows enough to remember that it must throw out its arms to save itself from being hurt. Any physician will tell you this fact is true. Whether they explain it in the same way as I do or not, I don't know. We cannot remember our past lives simply because the brain which we now have was not concerned with these past lives. You say you cannot remember a past life, and therefore you don't believe it is true. Well if we grant that kind of argument, apply it to the fact that you cannot remember the facts of your present existence here; you cannot remember what dinner you ate three weeks ago; you cannot remember one-quarter of what has happened to you. Do you mean to say that all these things did not happen because you cannot remember? You cannot remember what happens to you now, so how do you expect to remember what happened to you in another life? But the time will come when man not so immersed in materiality will form his soul to such an extent that its qualities will be impressed upon the newborn child body and he will be able to remember and to know all his past, and then he will see himself an evolving being who has come up through all the ages as one of the creators of the world, as one of those who have aided in building this world. Man, we say, is the top, the crown of evolution; not merely as one who has been out there through favor, but as one who worked himself up through nature, unconsciously sometimes to himself, but under law, the very top and key of the whole system, and the time will come when he will remember it.

Now, this being the system of evolution which we gather from all religions, we say it is necessary to show that cause and effect act on man's whole being. We say that this law of cause and effect, or Karma, explains every circumstance in life and will show the poor men in Chicago who are born without means to live, who sometimes are hunted by the upper class and live in misery, why they are born so. It will explain why a man is born rich, with opportunity which he neglects; and another man born rich, with opportunity which he does not neglect. It will explain how Carnegie, the great iron founder in America, was a poor telegraph boy before he was raised to be a great millionaire. It will explain how one is born with small brain power, and another born with great brain power. It is because we have never died; we have always been living, in this world or in some other, and we are always making causes and character for the next life as well as for this.

Do you not know that your real life is in your mind, in your thoughts? Do you not know a great deal is due to your own mind, and under every act is a thought, and the thoughts make the man, and those thoughts act upon the forces of nature? Inasmuch as all these beings come back and live together over and over again, they bring back the thoughts, the impressions of those they have met and which others have made upon them there. When you persecute and hurt a man now, you are not punished afterwards because of the act you did to him, but because of the thought under your act and the thought under his feelings when he received your act. Having made these thoughts, they remain forever with you and him, and when you come again you will receive back to yourselves that which you gave to another. And is not that Christianity as well as Brahminism and Buddhism? You say, No. I say, Yes; read it in the words of Jesus, and I would have you to show that you are right if you say, No. St. Paul I suppose is authority for you, and St. Paul says "Brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." I ask you where and when shall he reap that which he has sown? He must reap it where he sowed it, or there is no justice. He must come back here and help to cure that evil which he caused; he must come back here if he did cause any evil and continue to do all the good he can, so he may help to evolve the whole human race, which is waiting for him also. Jesus said; "Judge not, that ye be not judged; for with what measure ye mete, so shall it be measured out to you again." When? If you go to heaven after this life and escape all you have done, certainly not then, and you make Jesus to have said that which is not true, and make St. Paul say that which is not true.

But I believe that St. Paul and Jesus knew what they were talking about and meant what they said. So, then, we must come again here in order that God shall not be mocked and each man shall reap that which he has sowed.

It is just the absence of this explanation that has made men deny religion; for they have said: "Why, these men did not get what they sowed. Here are rich, wicked men who die in their beds, happy, with a shrive at the end of it. They have not reaped." But we know, just as Jesus and St. Paul have said, they will reap it surely, and we say according to philosophy, according to logic, according to justice, they will reap it right here where they sowed it, and not somewhere else. It would be unjust to send them anywhere else to reap it but where they did it. That has been taught in every religion ever since the world began, and it is the mission of the Theosophical Society to bring back the key to all the creeds, to show that they are really at the bottom in these essential doctrines alike, and that men have a soul in a body, a soul that is ever living, immortal and can never die, cannot be withered up, cannot be cut in two, cannot be destroyed, is never annihilated, but lives forever and forever, climbing forever and forever up the ladder of evolution, nearer and nearer, yet never reaching the full stature of the Godhead. That is what Theosophy wishes men to believe; not to believe that any particular creed is true. Jesus had no creed and formulated none. He declared the law to be, "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you." That was the law and the prophets. That is enough for any one. Love your neighbor as yourself. No more. Why, then, any creeds whatever? His words are enough, and his words and our ethical basis are the same. That is why we have no form of religion. We are not advocating religion; we are simply pointing out to men that the truth is there to pick up and prize it. Religion relates to the conduct of men; nature will take care of the results; nature will see what they will come to; but if we follow these teachings which we find everywhere, and the spirit of the philosophy which we find in all these old books, then men will know why they must do right, not because of the law, not because of fear, not because of favor, but because they must do right for rights own sake.

NOTE--Address given by Mr. Judge at the Parliament of Religions, 1893. (Title added.)

THEOSOPHICAL DON'TS

The following suggestions arise from experience and are due to facts in the Theosophical world.

Don't speak or write as if morality and ethics were unknown before H.P.B. wrote the Voice of the Silence. Some of our devoted band have been heard to speak in such a way that hearers thought the speaker meant to convey the idea that only in the Voice or other similar books of ours could be found the high and correct ethics by which one ought to guide his life. Buddhism, Christianity, and all the other religions teach the same morals, and literature is full of it.

Don't say that all the Theosophical doctrines were first given out by the Mahâtmas through their Theosophical chelas. Attributing everything solely to the Mahâtmas is foolish, as it is easily controverted. And do not be forever saying, "We are taught this and are told that." The number of doctrines found mentioned for the first time by the Mahâtmas through H.P.B. are few, extraordinary in conception and scope, and easily recognized.

Don't explain everything by one theory. To wit: do not be so inadequate as to brush off the whole of Spiritualism with one word, "all spooks and shells." You will be wrong if you do so, and the result will be antagonism.

Don't say that science is all wrong and that men of science are materialists. Huxley has done us good service; he has but lately admitted consciousness to be a third factor in the universe, not a part of force and matter; and Spencer has many a good thing in his works. Besides, if you want H.P.B. on the matter, you can read her words that the truth is to be found in a union of science with occultism.

Don't think or say that phenomena are good stepping stones to Theosophy. They are not, for those who stand upon them will fall from them to their hurt.

Don't run down the spirit of true Christianity, nor imagine that we can get ministers and congregations en masse to change into Theosophists. The true spirit of Christianity, as meant to be taught in the beginning, is doubtless Theosophy, but truth is not aided by running amuck among the faith of a whole people.

Don't say that H.P.B. has been reincarnated unless you know it and are able to prove it. To say you think so is not proof. She may or may not be, and either way the work must go on.

Don't talk as if messages from the Masters are all precipitated on rice paper, the writing incorporated in the paper, and such child's talk, indulged in only by those who do not know. And forget not that precipitation proves only that something was precipitated. It can be done by mediums and by various sorts of occultists.

Don't think or say that the only true occultism is found in the East, or that we must go to the East for it, or that the West has none of it. Remember that the greatest known Adept was a Western woman, a Russian, and that the energy of the lodge of Masters was first expended here in the West in this age. If so, is it not reasonable to suppose that the West has its occultists even though hidden? Recollect also that H.P.B. received in her house in New York before witnesses Western men of occult science who worked wonders there at times. Perhaps it is as has been hinted many a time, that the true thing is to be found in a union of the East and the West. The terms Guru and Chela have been misused so that all too many are looking to India for help, from which they will get but little until the West is itself full of wise students of occultism who know the meaning of being placed by karma in the West. The fact is, again, that in the East the men are looking to the great Russian woman for the very spiritual help that first shed its rays upon the West unmistakably. Again, there is extant a letter from the Mahâtma K. H. to a Western man wherein it said that he should work in his own land and forget not that Karma so demanded.

Don't teach that vegetarianism is the road to heaven and spiritual growth. Was not the great Nazarene right when he intimated that, the kingdom of heaven being within, it did not come from eating or drinking? And has not our old friend H.P.B. written suggestively that cows and elephants are pure vegetarians? Reflect on the fact that some of the very best people on earth were meat-eaters, and that wicked or gross thoughts are more hurtful than the eating of a ton of flesh. In fact, . . .

Don't fail to exercise your common sense on all and every occasion.

W.Q.J.

Path, December, 1894

THE THEOSOPHICAL MOVEMENT

There is a very great difference between the Theosophical Movement and any Theosophical Society. The Movement is moral, ethical, spiritual, universal, invisible save in effect, and continuous. A Society formed for theosophical work is a visible organization, an effect, a machine for conserving energy and putting it to use; it is not nor can it be universal, nor is it continuous. Organized Theosophical bodies are made by men for their better cooperation, but, being mere outer shells, they must change from time to time as human defects come out, as the times change, and as the great underlying spiritual movement compels such alterations.

The Theosophical Movement being continuous, it is to be found in all times and in all nations. Wherever thought has struggled to be free, wherever spiritual ideas, as opposed to forms and dogmatism, have been promulgated, there the great movement is to be discerned. Jacob Boehme's work was a part of it, and so also was the Theosophical Society of over one hundred years ago; Luther's reformation must be reckoned as a portion of it; and the great struggle between Science and Religion, clearly portrayed by Draper, was every bit as much a motion of the Theosophical Movement as is the present Society of that name - indeed that struggle, and the freedom thereby gained for science, were really as important in the advance of the world, as are our different organizations. And among political examples of the movement is to be counted the Independence of the American colonies, ending in the formation of a great nation, theoretically based on Brotherhood. One can therefore see that to worship an organization, even though it be the beloved theosophical one, is to fall down before Form, and to become the slave once more of that dogmatism which our portion of the Theosophical Movement, the T.S., was meant to overthrow.

Some members have worshipped the so-called "Theosophical Society," thinking it to be all in all, and not properly perceiving its de facto and piecemeal character as an organization nor that it was likely that this devotion to mere form would lead to a nullification of Brotherhood at the first strain. And this latter, indeed, did occur with several members. They even forgot, and still forget, that H. P. Blavatsky herself declared that it were better to do away with the Society rather than to destroy Brotherhood, and that she herself declared the European part of it free and independent. These worshippers think that there must be a continuance of the old form in order for the Society to have an international character.

But the real unity and prevalence, and the real internationalism, do not consist in having a single organization. They are found in the similarity of aim, of aspiration, of purpose, of teaching, of ethics. Freemasonry - a great and important part of the true Theosophical Movement - is universally international; and yet its organizations are numerous, autonomous, sovereign, independent. The Grand Lodge of the state of New York, including its different Lodges, is independent of all others in any state, yet every member is a Mason and all are working on a single plan. Freemasons aver all the world belong to the great International Masonic Body, yet they have everywhere their free and independent government.

When the Theosophical Society was young and small, it was necessary that it should have but one government for the whole of it. But now that it has grown wide and strong, having spread among nations so different from each other as the American, the English, the Spanish, the Swedish and others in Europe, and the Hindû, it is essential that a change in the outward form be made. This is that it become like the Freemasons - independent in government wherever the geographical or national conditions indicate that necessity. And that this will be done in time, no matter what certain persons may say to the contrary, there is not the slightest doubt.

The American Group, being by geographical and other conditions outwardly separate, began the change so as to be in government free and independent, but in basis, aspiration, aim and work united with all true Theosophists.

We have not changed the work of H.P.B.; we have enlarged it. We assert that any person who has been admitted to any Theosophical Society should be received everywhere among Theosophists, just as Masons are received among Masons. It is untheosophical to denounce the change made by the American Group; it is not Theosophy nor conducive to its spread to make legal claims to theosophical names, symbols and seals so as to prevent if possible others from using them. Everyone should be invited to use our theosophical property as freely as he wishes. Those who desire to keep up H.P.B.'s war against dogmatism will applaud and encourage the American movement because their liberated minds permit; but those who do not know true Theosophy, nor see the difference between forms and the soul of things, will continue to worship Form and to sacrifice Brotherhood to a shell.

Path, August, 1895

THEOSOPHICAL OBJECTS

The Theosophical Society has been in existence since November, 1875, having been then founded in New York with the following objects:

First. - To form the nucleus of a UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD OF HUMANITY, without distinction of race, creed, caste or color.

Second. - To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences, and demonstrate the importance of that study.

Third. - To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in man.

The Society appeals for support and encouragement to all who truly love their fellow-men and desire the eradication of the evils caused by the barriers raised by race, creed, or color, which have so long impeded human progress; to all scholars, to all sincere lovers of TRUTH, wheresoever it may be found, and to all philosophers, alike in the East and in the West; and lastly, to all who aspire to higher and better things than the mere pleasures and interests of a worldly life, and are prepared to make the sacrifices by which alone a knowledge of them can be attained.

The Society represents no particular creed, is entirely unsectarian, and includes professors of all faiths. No person's religious beliefs are interfered with, and all that is exacted from each member is the same toleration of the views of others which he desires them to exhibit towards his own.

The Society, as a body, eschews politics and all subjects outside its declared sphere of work, the rules stringently forbidding members to compromise its strict neutrality in these matters.

As a condition precedent to membership, belief in and adherence to the first of the above named objects is required; as to the other two, members may pursue them or not, as they see fit. The act of joining the Society, therefore, carries with it no obligation whatever to profess belief in either the practicability of presently realizing the brotherhood of mankind, or in the superior value of Aryan over modern science, or the existence of occult powers latent in man. It implies only intellectual sympathy in the attempt to disseminate tolerant and brotherly feelings, to discover as much truth as can be uncovered by diligent study and careful experimentation, and to essay the formation of a nucleus of a universal brotherhood.

The promoters of the Society's objects do not declare that in our time there can be established on earth a living brotherhood of peoples and governments. Nor do they expect or desire to sweep away at one blow the various distinctions which now exist in society and government. They believe that, in the natural order of things, with the progress of enlightenment, whatever is an obstacle and encumbrance to the development of human knowledge and happiness will pass away, as the morning mist before the sun.

What the Society hopes and means to achieve is, the bringing together a large body of the most reasonable and best educated persons of all extant races and religious groups, all of whom shall accept and put into practice the theory that, by mutual help and a generous tolerance of each other's preconceptions, mankind may be benefited largely and the chances for discovering hidden truth greatly improved.

The Society sows the seed, leaving it to germinate in the fulness of time, for the benefit of future generations. It represents all creeds and every branch of science, for it believes that science and true religion should be one; it is the opponent of bigotry, no matter where, and the foe of vice, together with whatever tends towards its propagation. At the same time, a man whose past has been bad cannot be refused admittance, if he has a sincere desire to improve himself while he endeavors to benefit mankind. Nor in its members does it look for saint-like perfection, insisting only that each shall, as nearly as he can, live up to his best ideal.

The last of the three objects of the Society appeals to many persons, but not to the greater number. There are both exoteric and esoteric activities, or circles, or groups, at work in the Society, and some persons are desirous of seeking, that they may obtain, psychic powers. The rules for such pursuits are laid down with minuteness in the ancient Hindu books, to which all seekers are referred. No sacred teacher can be supplied to aspirants, nor messages sent to or conveyed from the Adepts. Those who are thus seeking for powers should know that within themselves lies the key to unlock the door; that the very first step toward the place where that key may be found is the acquirement, in truth, of the feeling of universal brotherhood, and that the selfish desire to obtain psychic powers is a bar to such attainment.

At the same time, however, there are many devoted members in various countries who have acquired some information as to ways and means of investigation, and who are so bound up in the work that they consider it their sacred duty to help all inquirers, and, as far as possible, to put all Theosophists who ask them on the same road they themselves are trying to tread.

_______

NOTE. - This information apparently was drawn up in June, 1893, and circulated by William Q. Judge as General Secretary of the American Section of the Theosophical Society.

THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

The death of H. P. Blavatsky should have the effect on the Society of making the work go on with increased vigor free from all personalities. The movement was not started for the glory of any person, but for the elevation of Mankind. The organization is not effected as such by her death for her official positions were those of Corresponding Secretary and President of the European Section. The Constitution has long provided that after her death the office of Corresponding Secretary should not be filled. The vacancy in the European Section will be filled by election in that Section, as that is matter with which only the European Branches have to deal. She held no position in the exoteric American Section, and had no jurisdiction over it in any way. Hence there is no vacancy to fill and no disturbance to be felt in the purely corporate part of the American work. The work here is going on as it always has done, under the efforts of its members who now will draw their inspiration from the books and works of H.P.B. and from the purity of their own motive.

All that the Society needs now to make it the great power it was intended to be is first, solidarity, and second, Theosophical education. These are wholly in the hands of its members. The first gives that resistless strength which is found only in Union, the second gives that judgment and wisdom needed to properly direct energy and zeal.

Read these words from H. P. Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy:

"If the present attempt in the form of our Society succeeds better than its predecessors have done, then it will be in existence as an organized, living, and healthy body when the time comes for the effort of the XXth century. The general condition of men's minds and hearts will have been improved and purified by the spread of its teachings, and, as I have said, their prejudices and dogmatic illusions will have been, to some extent, at least, removed. Not only so, but besides a large and accessible literature ready to men's hands, the next impulse will find a numerous and united body of people ready to welcome the new torch-bearer of Truth. He will find the minds of men prepared for his message, a language ready for him in which to clothe the new truths he brings, an organization awaiting his arrival which will remove the merely mechanical, material obstacles and difficulties from his path. Think how much one to whom such an opportunity is given could accomplish. Measure it by comparison with what the Theosophical Society actually has achieved in the last fourteen years without any of these advantages and surrounded by hosts of hindrances which would not hamper the new leader. Consider all this and then tell me whether I am too sanguine when I say that, if the Theosophical Society survives and lives true to its mission, to its original impulses, through the next hundred years - tell me, I say, if I go too far in asserting that this earth will be a heaven in the twenty-first century in comparison with what it is now!"

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Path, June, 1891

THEOSOPHICAL STUDIES

Study all scriptures written near and far;
Worship all images and saints of earth;
But if you do not study who and what you are,
All your vast studies are as nothing worth.

There are a great many people who are always reading, reading, reading. They read each book that they can get hold of upon theosophical or occult subjects. Yet they do not seem to get on in their studies and so state with an air that seems to amount to an indictment of the thing they are studying.

Then there are others who are not known to read much, yet they seem to have a very complete grasp of the subject. I know two Theosophists, one of whom has read probably more than all the students in the Western Societies. He often refers to some new book just out, asking if we have read it. Yet he is hopelessly, at present, entangled in the vast net he has thrown around himself, composed almost wholly of the different ideas put forth by other minds, and has thus voluntarily placed himself under their domination. The other one has read but few books, just enough to know what theories are brought forward, yet he exhibits an extraordinary knowledge upon most Theosophical propositions and upon things not quite generally known.

What is the reason for this?

The reason is that truth is in fact very simple and quite on the surface, but most people prefer to bury it deep in a well, so that they may have the pleasure of digging for it.

There are a few general axiomatic propositions which should be applied in all directions, and with their aid most difficulties can be cleared away, and there is one great doctrine which overshadows them all, binding them together. This latter is the doctrine of universal brotherhood. It should not be merely accepted as a great and high idea - so great in fact that it cannot be understood - but constant inquiry should be made by all earnest people to find out its actual, logical and scientific basis. For if it has no such basis, then it ought to be abandoned as a mere illusion, a mere juggle with words.

"Of making many books there is no end," has been very well said of old. It is easy to make a book, but it is difficult to write one. To make one all that has to be done is to read enough of those formerly written and then cast it all into your own language. There are too many books thus made up and cast forth upon theosophical waters, to the confusion of the poor student. Why read all these? There are many of them full of the misconceptions of their authors, who, although sincere, are themselves struggling to get into clear air.

But all this prevalence of authorship has produced in our people a habit of desiring more books, and a resulting disregard for what has been written of old time. Humanity has not changed much in many ages, and has always been pursuing its investigations, leaving behind it a record. But in the lapse of time the only books which endure are those which contain truth, and are thus real books. And we in this age are ceaselessly and needlessly writing and reading as those of the past ages did, with the same inevitable result: that our real books will in the end be identical with those now left to us as a heritage from the past. So we ought to turn to those old books and with their aid look within! And in order to use them, all we have to do is by a little careful preliminary study come to comprehend the position of their authors, so that what at first appears strange in their writings will soon take on a different meaning, enabling us to see that, "that small, old path leading far away on which the sages walk," has been all found and pointed out to us with infinite care and pains, by the sometimes despised sages of eastern lands.

But even all this good study if not combined with practice is "nothing worth." It is time thrown away. And that practice does not consist in forming secret or exclusive bodies, either in or out of the Theosophical Society. Such so-called "exclusive" bodies are known to exist, but the excluded ones need not have any regret. Those exclusive of others are not practicing; they are not finding out anything of real profit; nor will their studies come to much more than dust and ashes in the mouth, for they are ignoring universal Brotherhood, and the first of the great law, that "the first step in true magic is devotion to the interests of others."

So we come to the last words of the first verse, that we must study ourselves. To do that we must help others and study them. The great self, which is the fountain and giver of all knowledge and power, is reflected in every man, and the wise student cannot afford to ignore the plain deduction that our first effort must be to remove from our minds the sense of being separate from any other person, his deeds or his thoughts. This is said to be a difficult task; but that difficulty arises on the one hand from selfishness and on the other from a natural averseness to accepting such a simple solution.

It is in fact not possible for us to gain from others. We cannot be told truths which do not already potentially exist in ourselves. We may hear them but they pass by and leave no trace. This is what Jesus meant when he said: "To him that hath shall be given"; and in the Hermetic philosophy it is plainly stated: "Do not think that I tell you what you know not; I only tell what you knew before."

It is therefore better to take up two or three books such as Isis Unveiled, the Bhagavad Gita and Light on the Path, study them with care and allow their influence to cause the old knowledge within to revive, and the good seeds left over from past lives to germinate and grow into noble trees.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
The Occult Word
February-March, 1887

THEOSOPHICAL STUDY AND WORK

The birth and life of a Branch of the Theosophical Society are very like to those of an individual. As with persons so with a body of theosophists engaged in theosophical endeavor and study, the parentage and the subsequent environment have much to do with the continuance of life and with the power of the influence exerted over the units which compose the association, as well as that which radiates from the Branch to others outside. And in a Theosophical Society its authorship is divided among all those who come together in order to start and carry it on. If the authors of its being are unintelligent, or confused, or uncertain, or self-seeking in the formation of the Society, its life and work will be the same. Growth will be stopped, influence hindered, and results - nothing. The work and influence of a Branch hinge upon the knowledge of theosophical doctrine, upon the motives, ideas, and ideals of the members, and so we have to consider what is the knowledge required and what should be the aims, ideas, and ideals of those who form and are to work in a Branch T.S. An inquiry should also be made into the methods which ought to be adopted as well as those that are to be avoided.

The work of a Branch has two objective points where it is intended, in the theosophical order of things, that its help and influence are to be felt. The first is in and among its members, and the other upon that portion of the world which lies within its purview. If, as I firmly believe, the theory of universal brotherhood is based upon a law - a fact in nature that all men are spiritual beings who are indissolubly linked and united together in one vast whole, then no Branch, no individual theosophist, can be regarded as without significance and influence, nor is any member justified in supposing that he or she is too obscure, too unprogressed, to be of any benefit to the movement and thus to mankind at large.

The fact that a branch T.S. is a body of individuals makes stronger the certainty that by means of the subtile link which, under the law of unity, connects together all the men who are on this planet, a wider and more potent influence for good or evil may be exerted through a Branch than through any single individual. For just as man is composed of atoms descended to him in various lines from many forefathers, all of which have a part in the influence he exerts, so a Branch is a being composed of the atoms - its members - included within its borders. And it is no fancy, no fantastic dream, to say that this being may be intelligent, or forceful, or weak, or wicked as a whole, just as it is made the one or the other by its component parts. And the declarations made by the adepts respecting individual theosophists should have weight with such a body. Those Beings have said that each member can aid the movement by explaining its fundamental doctrines or at least by doing away with misconceptions, and that no single unit in the whole should be so ignorant as to suppose that he or she has a special karma of his own unconnected with the rest. Not a single good example in theosophic life is lost, They say, but every one of us affects not only the immediate associates but also projects into the great universal current an influence that has its weight in the destiny of the race. Some of these golden words are as follows:

"Let not the fruit of good karma be your motive; for your karma, good or bad, being one and the common property of all mankind, nothing good or bad can happen to you that is not shared by many others." Hence, if the motive be for yourself it is selfish and can only generate a double effect - good and bad - and will either nullify your good actions or turn them to some other man's profit. "There is no happiness for one who is ever thinking of self and forgetting other selves."

This is all applicable to a Branch in its totality, for it is an intelligent being quite as much under the government of karma as any individual. It will feel the karma of its actions, and the responsibility will rest upon the members who have neglected or obeyed the dicates of theosophic duty. And the karma of the entire international body will react upon it for benefit or the reverse, according to the good, bad, or indifferent karma which the Branch may have acquired by its course of action. It is a part of the whole, and no portion can be exempt from the influences belonging to the total mass of workers. Thus a Branch which has been indifferent, or selfish, or full of doubt or disloyalty regarding the ideals it promised to follow, will attract out of the international theosophic karma just enough to accentuate its weakness and doubt, and on the other hand a Branch which has worked hard, unselfishly, and earnestly will attract the good from the whole sum of karma, and that, added to its own, will enable it to resist bad effects and will further strengthen the vital elements in its own corporate body.

The good or bad karma of the whole Theosophic Society may be figured as surrounding it from one end of the world to the other in the shape of layers or spheres of light or darkness. The light is good karma and the darkness is bad. Those units - Branches - which contain the elements of light within them will attract from the sphere of light as much of that as they are capable of holding, and the darkness will be drawn in by those which have darkness already. Thus we are all, theosophically speaking, keepers and helpers of each other, not only in the United States but in England, in Bombay, in Calcutta, in Madras. If we do not do our duty it may happen that some struggling Branch in some far off place will by reason of its newness or weakness be the recipient, not of help but of damage from us. Each Branch is separately responsible for its own actions, and yet every one is helped or injured by every other. These reciprocating influences work on the real though unseen plane where every man is dynamically united to every fellow man. And I am not uncharitable in saying that if the Indian Branches had worked more for the far-distant United States when it was unable to stand alone, we should now be the possessors of more in the way of elucidation and statistics and other aids from that far-distant land than we can show. But even if the early-formed United States' Branches had worked with more zeal and energy toward the real ends of the Society, we should have been able earlier to materially aid and comfort our sincere brother and sacrificing worker, Col. H. S. Olcott. And now the newer Branches of the Society in this country have a better opportunity than others in the past, for all the fighting has been done and much work is ready to their hand.

So the most obscure has a place in the scheme as important as the one that is large and well known, while those that are lazy or doubting or selfish must compensate some time or another for their acts of commission, as well as for any failure to add to the general sum of good.

With this in view we may conclude that a single Branch has the power to efficiently aid and benefit not only its members but also the whole theosophic body corporate. This may be made clearer by remembering how often in the history of the world a family or even a man has sometimes been for the nation or race a power for the greatest good or evil.

Under this doctrine of unity and selflessness the work of a Branch ought to be entered into by all the members with an unselfish spirit which will lead them to have patience with the weaker brethren, for a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and therefore endeavor should be made to bring to the minds of the weakest the truths that the others see with less difficulty. And next, every individual, by eliminating the desire to get knowledge for himself, will thereby make the Branch as a whole open and porous to the unseen but real and powerful influences managed from behind the scenes by the great personages who have as a part of their work in the world the theosophic movement, and who are constantly at work among us for the purpose of aiding those who are sincere and unselfish. If the testimony of those who have been long in the Society is to be believed, then, as they assert, there are among us every day many disciples (who are known in our literature by the name of "Chelas") who are engaged in fanning the flame of spiritual illumination wherever they find it among the members. Their influence in not exerted because of wealth or personal prominence, but upon any one of any class who has tried to understand theosophy for the sake of others and in order that he may communicate to others in his turn. Not only has this been asserted by the leaders in the movement, but in the experience of many of us we have seen help extended to those who are in earnest for their fellow-man.

And this is peculiarly and more strongly applicable to those members who have as one of their aims the acquisition of psychic and abnormal powers. These powers cannot be safely found and used by the man who desires them for himself, and his mere statement in his heart or in words that he desires them for others goes for naught unless the deeper and inner motive and object coincide with the high one which is expressed. Our members, new and old, might as well become acquainted with the bald and naked truth on this subject now, as to wait for years of bitter experience to burn it into them. There are such powers and man may acquire them, but each age and each race has its limitations that it is not possible for the average man to overcome. Hardly any member who has desires for these would admit that he would be willing to become a black magician in order to acquire them, that is, would sacrifice his chances for emancipation for their sake. Yet without altruism one cannot get them except as a black magician. One has to deliberately make up his mind that he will sacrifice everything and everybody else to his design if it is his intention to obtain them without following the rules laid down by the White Adepts inculcating truth, purity, charity, and all the virtues - in fact, altruism. There is no secret about the fact that two ways and no more lie open to the one who wishes for the powers of an adept, and those are on the right hand, that of virtue and altruism, and on the left - the black side - that of intense and unrelenting selfishness. No compromise, no mere dabbling, is allowed or possible, and more so in the selfish path, for there every one's hand is against every other one; none will help at any crisis, and, when the hour arrives that the student in that school is in peril from the unseen and terrible forces of nature, his companions on the road will but sneer at his weakness and rejoice at his downfall. And indeed, the line of demarcation between these two ways, for students of the grade of most of the members of our Society, is very thin. It is like the hair line which the Mohammedan mystic says divides the false from the true. One has to be very careful so as to know if his motive is really so unselfish as he pretends it to himself to be. But it can always be tested by the reality of the feeling of brotherhood that he has in him. A mere intellectual longing to know and to discover further in this field is selfish and of the black variety, for unless every desire to know the truth is in order that one may give it to others, it is full of taint. Moreover, it will lead to no powers and to no real knowledge, for success on either side depends upon the burning of desire in the heart. With the white school this is for the sake of fellow-man, and on the dark hand the same fierce desire is for self alone.

Many persons, however, think that they can belong to the Society, and while negatively selfish, that is, ready and willing to sit down and hear others expound theosophical doctrine and never work for the body themselves, they may receive benefit in the way of comprehension of the doctrines of man and nature which are promulgated among us. But they forget a law in these matters of great importance, one, indeed, that they may not be willing to admit, and which is much opposed to our modern ideas of the powers and functions of the human mind. It is that such an attitude by reason of its selfishness builds up a hard wall between their minds and the very truths they wish to know. I speak of an actual dynamic effect which is as plain to the eye of the trained seer as is any object to the healthy eye.

We have been so accustomed for many years to vague ideas about the human mind, what it is, and what its powers really are, that people in general have no definite notion whether there be or not any material effect in the human economy from thoughts, or whether they are like what is usually called "imagination," a something very unreal and wholly without objectivity. But it is a fact that the mind of the selfish person is always making about itself a hard reflecting surface which throws off and away from its grasp the very knowledge the man himself would take if he but knew the reason why he fails.

This brings us naturally to the proposition that the aims of the members in a Branch should be to eradicate selfishness and to promulgate and illustrate the doctrine of universal brotherhood, basing the explanation upon the actual unity of all beings. This of itself will lead to the explanation of many other doctrines, as it underlies them all, great and small. And in order to do this the members ought to study the system as a whole, so that its parts may be comprehended. It is for the want of such study that we so often hear members, when asked to explain their theosophy, saying, "Well, to tell the truth, I know how it all is, but am not able to make it clear to you." They are not clear because they have not taken the time and trouble to learn the few fundamental propositions and how to apply them to any and every question.

A very common error is the supposition that new men, new enquirers, can be converted to theosophy and brought into its ranks by taking up and enforcing phenomena. In the term "phenomena" I include all such as spiritualism, clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, hypnotism, mesmerism, thought-reading, and the like. These convert but few if any, because there is not much known about them and so many proofs are required before belief is induced. And even a belief in these things gives no sound basis of a theosophical character. A perfect illustration of this is seen in the history of H. P. Blavatsky, who for many years has permitted phenomena to occur with herself for the benefit of certain specific persons. These have been talked about by the whole world, and the Psychical Society saw fit to send a man to look into them after they had taken place, but although the very persons who saw them happen testified to their genuineness, they were denied by him and all laid to fraud and confederation. Everyone who was inclined from the first to believe in them continued to so believe, and those who never believed remained in the same state as before.

The best attested phenomena are ever subject to doubt so long as the philosophy on which they depend is not understood.

Furthermore, the mass of men and women in the world are not troubled about phenomena. These they think can be left alone for the present because more pressing things engage their attention and call for solution. The great problems of life: why we are here, why we suffer, and where may justice be found that will show the reason for the sufferings of the good man, or, indeed, for the sufferings of any one, press upon us. For each man thinks he is unjustly borne hard upon by fate when his cherished plans go for nothing, or his family is carried off by death, or his name is disgraced by a wayward child, or when, as is very often the case, he is unjustly accused and injured by his fellow-men. There are many who find themselves born poor when others less worthy are rich, and they ask why it is all thus and get no reply from the common religious systems of the day. It is the life and its sorrows that destroy our peace, and every human heart wants to know the reason for it.

We must therefore offer theories that will give the answer, and these theories are the great doctrines of karma and reincarnation. These show justice triumphant in the world, meting out reward or punishment as it is deserved in any state of life. After an experience of fifteen years in the Society's work I have seen that more good and useful men and women have been attracted to our movement by these doctrines than have ever come to it by reason of phenomena, and that a great many have left our ranks who began on the phenomenal side. The members in general may not be aware of the fact that when the Society was formed the greater number of its New York members were spiritualists and that they nearly all left us long ago.

There is a mysterious power in these doctrines of karma and reincarnation which at last forces them upon the belief of those who take them up for study. It is due to the fact that the ego is itself the experiencer of rebirth and karma and has within a clear recollection of both, and rejoices, as it were, when it finds the lower mind taking them up for study. Each person is the concentration and result of karma, and is compelled from within to believe. The ethics of theosophy as enforced and illuminated by these twin doctrines should therefore be the object of our search and promulgation.

Furthermore, this course is authorized, for those who believe in the Adepts, by their words written about us. I quote:

"It is the insatiable craving for phenomena made so often degrading that has caused you so much trouble. Let the Society henceforth flourish upon its moral worth and the study of philosophy and ethics put into practice."

The next question is how to carry all this out in practice.

First, by having the Branch open to the public and never private.

Second, by regular attendance and meetings.

Third, by establishing a library, at first with the few important books, which few can be added to by the members from time to time through donations of books which they have read.

Fourth, by always having an article, original or otherwise, for reading and discussion. If literary talent is not available, its want can be supplied from the great quantity of articles which have come out in the Society's magazines during the last fifteen years. In those nearly every subject of theosophical interest has been written upon and explained. They can be looked up with very little labor, and used at each meeting. And they can be carried on upon settled lines so as to go over each subject fully. It will be found that nearly all the questions that now puzzle new members have been at one time or another illustrated and explained in these articles.

Fifth, by a careful elementary study of our doctrines from one or two books until the main outline of all is grasped. Take, for instance, Esoteric Buddhism. This gives the system in the main, and many persons have read it, but a great many of these have done this but once. For them there often arise questions they might easily solve if they had made the system as a whole a part of their mental furniture. This book can be corrected by the Secret Doctrine, in which Mme. Blavatsky has said that Esoteric Buddhism is in the main correct, and she gives the means for supplying its deficiencies. Then there is that most useful book, Five Years of Theosophy, containing some of the most valuable articles that appeared in the Theosophist.

Sixth, by a method of discussion which does not permit any one person in the Branch to assert that his or her views are the correct ones. We cannot get at truth by assertion, but only by calm consideration of views advanced, and the self-asserting person is very nearly always close to error. I know this view is contrary to that of American independence, which leads us on forever to assert ourselves. The true philosophy annuls this and teaches that it is only from the concurrence of investigation that the truth can be arrived at. And the deeper occultism says that the self-asserter debars himself from truth forever. No one mind has all the knowledge possible, and each one is naturally capable of seeing but the one side that is easy for him by reason of his race inheritance and the engrafted tendencies of his education.

Seventh, by remembering that we cannot at once alter the constitutional tendencies of the atoms of our brains, nor in a flash change ourselves. We are insensibly affected by our education, by the ideas of our youth, by the thought, whatever it was, that preceded our entrance upon theosophy. We require to have patience, not with the system of theosophy, but with ourselves, and be willing to wait for the gradual effect of the new ideas upon us.

The taking up of these ideas is, in effect, a new mental incarnation, and we, just as is the case of a new manvantara, have to evolve from the old estate and with care gradually eradicate the former bias. It is taught in the Secret Doctrine that the moon is the parent of the earth and has given to us all that we are now working over in our world. It is the same in the case under consideration. Our former mental state is our mental moon, and has given us certain material which we must work over, for otherwise we attempt to go contrary to a law of nature and will be defeated.

Some may ask if there is not any sort of study that will enable us to shave off these old erroneous modes of thought. To them I can only give the experience of many of my friends in the same direction. They say, and they are supported by the very highest authority, that the one process is to enquire into and attempt to understand the law of spiritual unity and the fact that no one is separate but that all are one in the plane of spirit, and that no single person has a particular spirit of his own, but that atman, called the "seventh Principle," is, in fact, the synthesis of the whole and is the common property of every being high and low, human, animal, animate, inanimate, or divine. This is the teaching of the Mundaka Upanishad of the Hindus, and the meaning of the title "Mundaka" is "Shaving," because it shaves off the errors which stand in the way of truth, permitting then the brilliant lamp of spiritual knowledge to illuminate our inner nature.

And for those who desire to find the highest ethics and philosophy condensed in one book, I would recommend the Bhagavad Gîtâ, studied with the aid of such lectures as those of our Hindu brother - now deceased - Subba Row of Madras. They have been reprinted from the Theosophist and can be procured by any one. In the Secret Doctrine Mme. Blavatsky says: "The best metaphysical definition of primeval theogony in the spirit of the Vedantins may be found" in these lectures.

In the conclusion of The Key to Theosophy H. P. Blavatsky, speaking of the future of the Theosophical Society, writes:

Its future will depend almost entirely upon the degree of selflessness, earnestness, devotion, and last but not least, upon the amount of knowledge and wisdom possessed by those members on whom it will fall to carry on the work and to direct the Society after the death of the Founders. If they cannot be free from the bias of theological education, the result can only be that the Society will drift off on to some sandbank of thought or another, and there remain a stranded carcass to moulder and die. But if that danger be averted the Society will live on into and through the twentieth century. It will burst asunder the iron fetters of creed and caste. The West will learn to understand and appreciate the East at its full value. The development of psychic powers will proceed healthily and normally, and mankind will be saved from terrible bodily and mental dangers which are inevitable where those powers develop in a hotbed of selfishness and passion as they now threaten to do.

At the last quarter of every century one or more persons appear in the world as the agents of the masters, and a greater or less amount of occult knowledge is given out.

She concludes by stating that the present T. S. is one of those attempts to help the world, and the duty of every member is made plain that they should preserve this body with its literature and original plans so as to hand it on to our successors who shall have it ready at the last quarter of the next century for the messenger of the Masters who will then, as now, reappear. Failure or success in this duty presents no obscure outcome. If we succeed, then in the twentieth century that messenger will find the materials in books, in thought and in popular terms, to permit him or her to carry forward the great work to another stage without the fierce opposition and the tremendous obstacles which have frowned upon us during the last fifteen years just closed. If we fail, then the messenger will waste again many precious years in repreparing the ground, and ours will be the responsibility.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Aryan Branch Paper, November, 1890

THEOSOPHICAL SYMBOLISM

The number 7 has, ever since the Theosophical Society was founded November 17th, 1875, played a prominent part in all its affairs, and, as usual, the symbols which particularly relate or pertain to the Society are in number, seven. They are: first the seal of the Society; second, the serpent biting his tail; third, the gnostic cross near the serpent's head; fourth, the interlaced triangles; fifth, the cruxansata in the centre; sixth, the pin of the Society, composed of a cruxansata entwined by a serpent, forming together T.S.; and seventh, OM the sacred Vedic word.

The seal of the Society contains all of the symbols enumerated, excepting aum, and is the synthesis of them. It, in fact, expresses what the Society is itself, and contains, or ought to, in symbolic form, the doctrines which many of its members adhere to.

A symbol to be properly so called, must be contained in the idea or ideas which it is intended to represent. As a symbol of a house could never be the prow of a boat, or the wing of a bird, but must be contained somewhere in the form of the house itself; that is, it must be an actual part chosen to represent or stand for the whole. It need not be the whole, but may be a lower form or species used as the representative of a higher of the same kind. The word is derived from the Greek words meaning to throw with, that is to throw together. To be a just and correct symbol, it should be such as that the moment it is seen by one versed in symbolism, its meaning and application become easily apparent. The Egyptians adopted to represent the soul passing back to its source, after the trial in the Hall of Two Truths, a winged globe, for a globe is a symbol of either the Supreme Soul or a portion of it, and the wings were added to represent its life and flight to the upper spheres. In another branch of their symbology they represented justice by a scale which gives a just balance; while even there in the Hall of Two Truths, they reverted again to the other mode and symbolized the man being weighed by justice, in the form of his heart over against the feather of truth in the opposite pan of the scales.

There is one very curious hieroglyph of the Egyptians which deserves some study by those of curious mind. Here we will merely point it out, remarking that there is a mine of great value in the Egyptian method of picturing their ideas of the macrocosm. In one of the numerous papyri now in the British Museum, there is a picture of a globe being held up by a beetle by means of his head and two fore legs, while he is standing upon a sort of pedestal which has certain divisions, looking on the whole, like a section of an hour glass crossed by horizontal lines that project from each side. This pedestal represents stability; but what does the whole mean or shadow forth? Those who can follow up suggestions should direct their thoughts to the relation which the Sun bears to the earth in its orbital revolution.

To proceed with our analysis: The second symbol is, the serpent biting his tail. This is wisdom, and eternity. It is eternity, because that has neither beginning nor end and therefore the ring is formed by the serpent swallowing his tail. There is an old hermetic symbol similar to this, in which the circle is formed by two serpents interlaced and each swallowing the tail of the other one. No doubt the symbolism in that is, in respect to the duality of the manifested All, and hence, two serpents inextricably entwined.

Furthermore, the scales of the reptiles form the figures of facettes or diamonds, which shadow forth the illimitable diversity of the aspects of wisdom or truth. This is not due to any want of coherence or congruity in truth itself, but solely to the diverse views which each individual takes of the one Truth. These reflecting facettes are the beings composing the macrocosm: each one has developed himself only to a certain degree, and therefore can only appreciate and reflect that amount of wisdom which has fallen to his lot. As he passes again and again through the form of men, he slowly develops other various powers of appreciating more truth, and so at the last may become one with the whole - the perfect man, able to know and to feel completely his union with all. This is when he has acquired the highest Yoga. So in our experience and in history and ethnology we find individuals, nations and races, whose want of responsiveness to certain ideas, and others whose power to grasp them, can only be explained by the doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma. If those doctrines are not accepted, there is no escape from a blank negation.

It is not necessary to express the duality of the Supreme Soul by two serpents, because in the third component part of the Seal, elsewhere, that is symbolized by the interlaced triangles. One of these is white, that one with the point uppermost, and the other is black with its apex directed downward. They are intertwined because the dual nature of the Supreme, while in manifestation, is not separate in its parts. Each atom of matter, so called, has also its atom of spirit. This is what the Bagavad-Gita (1) denominates Purusha and Prakriti, and Krishna there says that he is at once Purusha and Prakriti, he is alike the very best and the very worst of man. These triangles also mean, "the manifested universe." It is one of the oldest and most beautiful of symbols, and can be discovered among all nations, not only those now inhabiting the earth, but also in the monuments, carvings and other remains of the great races who have left us the gigantic structures now silent as far as the voice of man is concerned, but resounding with speech for those who care to listen. They seem to be full of ideas turned into stone.

The triangles thus combined form in the interior space, a six sided plane figure. This is the manifested world. Six is the number of the world, and 666 is the great mystery which is related to the symbol. St. John talks of this number. Around the six sided centre are the six triangles projecting into the spiritual world, and touching the enclosed serpent of wisdom. In an old book, this is made by the great head of the Lord rising above the horizon of the ocean of matter, with the arms just raised so that they make the upper half of the triangle. This is the "long face," or macroscopos, as it is called. As it rises slowly and majestically, the placid water below reflects it in reverse, and thus makes the whole double triangle. The lower one is dark and forbidding in its aspect, but at the same time the upper part of the darker one is itself light, for it is formed by the majestic head of this Adam Kadmon. Thus they shade into one another. And this is a perfect symbolism, for it clearly figures the way in which day shades into night, and evil into good. In ourselves we find both, or as the Christian St. Paul says, the natural and spiritual man are always together warring against each other, so that what we would do we cannot, and what we desire not to be guilty of, the darker half of man compels us to do. But ink and paper fails us in the task of trying to elucidate this great symbol. Go to Hermes, to St. John, the Caballah, the Hindu books, wherever you please, and there will you find the seven times seven meanings of the interlaced triangles.

OM is the Sacred Vedic syllable: let us repeat it with a thought directed to its true meaning.(2)

Within the small circle, placed upon the serpent, is a cross with its ends turned back. This is called the Gnostic Cross. It signifies evolution, among other ideas, for the turning back of its ends is caused by the revolving of the two diameters of the circle. The vertical diameter is the spirit moving down and bisecting the horizontal. This completed, the revolution round the great circle commences, and that motion is represented in the symbol by the ends turned back. In Chapter III of Bagavad-Gita Krishna says: "he who in this life does not cause this cycle, thus already revolved, to continue revolving lives to no purpose, a life of sin, indulging his senses." That is, we must assist the great wheel of evolution and not oppose it; we must try to help in the great work of returning to the source from whence we came, and constantly endeavor to convert lower nature into higher, not only that of ourselves, but also of our fellow men and of the whole animated world.

This cross is also the symbol of the Hindu Chakkra, or discus, of Vishnu. In the Mahabharata is described the conflict between the Asuras and Devas, for the possession of the vase of Amreeta which had been churned with infinite trouble, from the ocean, and which the Asuras desired to take for themselves. The conflict began when Rahu, an Asura, assuming the form of a Deva, began drinking the ambrosia. In this case the Amreeta was spiritual wisdom, material existence, immortality, and also magic power. The deceit of Rahu was discovered before he had swallowed, and then the battle began.

In the midst of this dreadful hurry and confusion of the fight, Nar and Narayan entered the field together. Narayan beholding a celestial bow in the hands of Nar, it reminded him of his Chakkra, the destroyer of the Asuras. The faithful weapon, ready at the mind's call, flew down from heaven and with direct and refulgent speed, beautiful, yet terrible to behold. And being arrived, glowing like the sacrificial flame, and spreading terror around, Narayan with his right arm formed like the elephantine trunk, hurled forth the ponderous orb, the speedy messenger and glorious ruin of hostile towns, who, raging like the final all destroying fire, shot bounding with desolating force, killing thousands of the Asuras in his rapid flight, burning and involving, like the lambent flame, and cutting down all that would oppose him. Anon he climbeth the heavens from whence he came. (Mahabharata, Book I, Ch. 15.)

Ezekiel, of the Jews, saw this wheel, when he was among the captives by the river Chebar in Chaldea. In a vision he saw the four beasts and the man of the Apocalypse, and with them "for each of the four faces," was a wheel, of the colour of a beryl; it was "as a wheel within a wheel," and they went wherever the living creatures went, "for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels." All of this appeared terrible to him, for he says: "And when they went I heard a noise like the noise of great waters, like the voice of the Almighty, a noise of tumult like the noise of a host."

There are many other meanings concealed in this symbol, as in all the others.

In the center of the interlaced triangles is placed the Cruxansata. This is also extremely ancient. In the old Egyptian papyri it is frequently found. It signifies life. As Isis stands before the candidate, or the soul, upon his entry, she holds in one hand this cross, while he holds up his hand that he may not look upon her face. In another there is a winged figure, whose wings are attached to the arms, and in each hand is held the same cross. Among other things we find here the horizontal and vertical diameters once more, but conjoined with the circle placed on top. This is the same as the old astrological sign for Venus. But in the seal, its chief and most important meaning is the regenerated man. Here in the centre, after passing the different degrees and cycles, both spirit and matter are united in the intelligent regenerated man, who stands in the middle knowing all things in the manifested universe. He has triumphed over death and holds the cross of life.

The last theosophical symbol is the pin of the Society, adopted early in its history but not used much. It is the cross we have just been considering, entwined in such a way by a serpent, that the combination makes T S as a monogram.

The foregoing is not exhaustive. Every symbol should have seven meanings of principal value, and out of every one of those we have been considering can be drawn that number of significations. Intelligent study of them will be beneficial, for when a consistent symbol, embodying many ideas is found and meditated upon, the thought or view of the symbol brings up each idea at once before the mind.

NILAKANT

Path, May, 1886

(1) Bagavad-Gita, ch. 13; id. ch. 10.

(2) PATH, No. I, p. 24.

THEOSOPHICAL TRACTS

Earnest Theosophists, of small means and opportunity, often inquire what one thing they can do to further the spread of Truth and contribute to the upbuilding of the Society. There is certainly one which is simple, inexpensive, and often most efficient, and which can be systematically carried on in precise proportion to spareable funds. It is the mailing of a Theosophic tract to any name in any place in any State. One cent stamped envelopes are sold by the P.O. at the rate of $5.90 per 500, and each of the two tracts thus far issued from the PATH office is furnished at the rate of 50 cts. per 100, smaller quantities in either case being in proportion.

The two tracts referred to were printed and electrotyped by private funds, and were then presented to the office, so that receipts from sales make possible new editions. Moreover, the PATH has been informed that provision will be made for the reprinting in this country of certain others which are successively to appear in the pamphlets of the T. P. S., so that in time a series of these brief circulars, treating condensedly of some Theosophical topic and bearing the address, etc. of the General Secretary, will be available to any one wishing to purchase them for distribution. Due notice of each new issue will appear in the PATH.

In the press, in private correspondence, and in social life, a Theosophist on the alert for an opportunity to sow seed finds many a name whereto may be sent a circular. It simply requires to be folded, placed in a stamped envelope, addressed, and mailed. The donor is unknown. Possibly the circular may be wasted; yet who can foretell that? The ground may be altogether ready for the sowing.

Of the two tracts referred to, there have been sold within the last two months, of the "Epitome of Theosophy" 1024 copies, of "Theosophy as a Guide in Life" 2254 copies. From the PATH office there have now been issued, of the former about 10,000, of the later about 6,000. The latter is perhaps more fitted for general public use, but almost every Theosophist could keep on hand a small supply of each, and be prepared to use either when opportunity arose.

Path, August, 1889

TO THEOSOPHISTS WILLING TO WORK

For some 18 months past, private zeal has carried out a system by which a single copy of one of the tracts expounding popularly some Theosophic topic has been mailed to names gathered from newspapers published in the smaller towns through the United States. In this simple way the seed of much Theosophic truth has been scattered broadcast, and many minds have thus for the first time received word of that Wisdom which is in time to reform humanity. To take part in such sowing is a privilege to all who love their fellow-men, and, while it is impossible to learn the results achieved, we may be sure that no such effort can be wholly without fruit. The present time is peculiarly ripe therefore. Ample evidence demonstrates the "Theosophy is in the air," and every judicious publication of its doctrines hastens the day when its motives too shall become operative and its reforms be realized.

The system referred to above appears the only way by which a knowledge of Theosophy can be carried direct to every town, village, and hamlet in the land. In a smaller form it was recommended to Theosophists in a brief article on Page 154 of the PATH for August, 1889. Through responses to this, and otherwise, the General Secretary has been enabled to thoroughly organize a scheme by which a proffer of help from any Theosophist willing to devote from $1.00 up and some time may be utilized, while all danger of duplicating addresses is avoided. To each one thus proffering, the General Secretary will supply a printed circular of instructions and assign a definite field. It is only needful to inform the General Secretary of the amount of money the offerer feels prepared to expend, and thereupon he will be furnished with the circular and the field, as well as with printed blanks for convenience in ordering the copies of the newspapers indicated.

Every theosophist desirous to aid the Society, to promulgate its teachings, and to serve the highest interests of man is invited to communicate with the General Secretary briefly and to the point. No name is divulged. A few score of earnest, active, generous brethren can thus in time sow seed over this whole continent, and prepare the harvest which is sure to come, but which will come the sooner if we fail not in our labor.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, Gen'l. Sec'y.
P.O. Box 2629, New York City

Path, November, 1889

THE TRACT-MAILING SCHEME

The General Secretary heartily thanks those Brethren who have responded to the call "To Theosophists Willing to Work," and congratulates them that the number now reaches 47. Thousands of tracts are now on their beneficent way through the land. It may very well be that there are many Theosophists thoroughly sympathetic with this work, but unable, some to spare the time, others to pay the cost, of taking part. Several of the former have contributed the funds wherewith several of the latter have been set to work, and if those Brethren who have money but no time will donate money, and if those who have time but no money will donate time, the operations of the Tract-mailing Scheme can be enormously increased. The General Secretary, upon receiving a gift of money, supplies the necessary tracts and envelopes to the profferer of time, and the work goes on.

It is also suggested that any friend able to contribute both time and money, and thus personally participate in this missionary effort, should decide upon the sum he can at present spare and remit about one-third thereof to the General Secretary. Tracts to that amount will be sent him, and he will find that the stamped envelopes and newspapers just complete the sum to be expended.

One other thing. This is a scheme which should be permanent. It can go on year after year with the same benefit, for the country is vast and new towns are ever growing up. Each F. T. S. can feel that his efforts are helping to ensure the future of the Cause and of the Society, and can apply for a new field as soon as his resources enable him to do so. To missionize one town is no small gift: what would it not be to missionize several towns a year throughout life!

Path, December, 1889

THEOSOPHY AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

From ignorance of the truth about man's real nature and faculties and their action and condition after bodily death, a number of evils flow. The effect of such want of knowledge is much wider than the concerns of one or several persons. Government and the administration of human justice under man-made laws will improve in proportion as there exists a greater amount of information on this all-important subject. When a wide and deep knowledge and belief in respect to the occult side of nature and of man shall have become the property of the people then may we expect a great change in the matter of capital punishment.

The killing of a human being by the authority of the state is morally wrong and also an injury to all the people; no criminal should be executed no matter what the offence. If the administration of the law is so faulty as to permit the release of the hardened criminal before the term of his sentence has expired, that has nothing to do with the question of killing him.

Under Christianity this killing is contrary to the law supposed to have emanated from the Supreme Lawgiver. The commandment is: "Thou shalt not kill!" No exception is made for states or governments; it does not even except the animal kingdom. Under this law therefore it is not right to kill a dog, to say nothing of human beings. But the commandment has always been and still is ignored. The Theology of man is always able to argue away any regulation whatever; and the Christian nations once rioted in executions. At one time for stealing a loaf of bread or a few nails a man might be hanged. This, however, has been so altered that death at the hands of the law is imposed for murder only, - omitting some unimportant exceptions.

We can safely divide the criminals who have been or will be killed under our laws into two classes: i.e., those persons who are hardened, vicious, murderous in nature; and those who are not so, but who, in a moment of passion, fear, or anger, have slain another. The last may be again divided into those who are sorry for what they did, and those who are not. But even though those of the second class are not by intention enemies of Society, as are the others, they too before their execution may have their anger, resentment, desire for revenge and other feelings besides remorse, all aroused against Society which persecutes them and against those who directly take part in their trial and execution. The nature, passions, state of mind and bitterness of the criminal have, hence, to be taken into account in considering the question. For the condition which he is in when cut off from mundane life has much to do with the whole subject.

All the modes of execution are violent, whether by the knife, the sword, the bullet, by poison, rope, or electricity. And for the Theosophist the term violent as applied to death must mean more than it does to those who do not hold theosophical views. For the latter, a violent death is distinguished from an easy natural one solely by the violence used against the victim. But for us such a death is the violent separation of the man from his body, and is a serious matter, of interest to the whole state. It creates in fact a paradox, for such persons are not dead; they remain with us as unseen criminals, able to do harm to the living and to cause damage to the whole of Society.

What happens? All the onlooker sees is that the sudden cutting off is accomplished; but what of the reality? A natural death is like the falling of a leaf near the winter time. The time is fully ripe, all the powers of the leaf having separated; those acting no longer, its stem has but a slight hold on the branch and the slightest wind takes it away. So with us; we begin to separate our different inner powers and parts one from the other because their full term has ended, and when the final tremor comes the various inner component parts of the man fall away from each other and let the soul go free. But the poor criminal has not come to the natural end of his life. His astral body is not ready to separate from his physical body, nor is the vital, nervous energy ready to leave. The entire inner man is closely knit together, and he is the reality. I have said these parts are not ready to separate - they are in fact not able to separate because they are bound together by law and a force over which only great Nature has control.

When then the mere physical body is so treated that a sudden, premature separation from the real man is effected, he is merely dazed for a time, after which he wakes up in the atmosphere of the earth, fully a sentient living being save for the body. He sees the people, he sees and feels again the pursuit of him by the law. His passions are alive. He has become a raging fire, a mass of hate; the victim of his fellows and of his own crime. Few of us are able, even under favorable circumstances, to admit ourselves as wholly wrong and to say that punishment inflicted on us by man is right and just, and the criminal has only hate and desire for revenge.

If now we remember that his state of mind was made worse by his trial and execution, we can see that he has become a menace to the living. Even if he be not so bad and full of revenge as said, he is himself the repository of his own deeds; he carries with him into the astral realm surrounding us the pictures of his crimes, and these are ever living creatures, as it were. In any case he is dangerous. Floating as he does in the very realm in which our mind and senses operate, he is forever coming in contact with the mind and senses of the living. More people than we suspect are nervous and sensitive. If these sensitives are touched by this invisible criminal they have injected into them at once the pictures of his crime and punishment, the vibrations from his hate, malice and revenge. Like creates like, and thus these vibrations create their like. Many a person has been impelled by some unknown force to commit crime; and that force came from such an inhabitant of our sphere.

And even with those not called "sensitive" these floating criminals have an effect, arousing evil thoughts where any basis for such exist in those individuals. We cannot argue away the immense force of hate, revenge, fear, vanity, all combined. Take the case of Guiteau, who shot President Garfield. He went through many days of trial. His hate, anger and vanity were aroused to the highest pitch every day and until the last, and he died full of curses for every one who had anything to do with his troubles. Can we be so foolish as to say that all the force he thus generated was at once dissipated? Of course it was not. In time it will be transformed into other forces, but during the long time before that takes place the living Guiteau will float through our mind and senses carrying with him and dragging over us the awful pictures drawn and frightful passions engendered.

The Theosophist who believes in the multiple nature of man and in the complexity of his inner nature, and knows that that is governed by law and not by mere chance or by the fancy of those who prate of the need for protecting society when they do not know the right way to do it, relying only on the punitive and retaliatory Mosaic law - will oppose capital punishment. He sees it is unjust to the living, a danger to the state, and that it allows no chance whatever for any reformation of the criminal.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, September, 1895

Theosophy Generally Stated

From the Official Report, World's Parliament of Religions, 1893

THE claim is made that an impartial study of history, religion and literature will show the existence from ancient times of a great body of philosophical, scientific and ethical doctrine forming the basis and origin of all similar thought in modern systems. It is at once religious and scientific, asserting that religion and science should never be separated. It puts forward sublime religious and ideal teachings, but at the same time shows that all of it can be demonstrated to reason, and that authority other than that has no place, thus preventing the hypocrisy which arises from asserting dogmas on authority which no one can show as resting on reason. This ancient body of doctrine is known as the "Wisdom Religion" and was always taught by adepts or initiates therein who preserve it through all time. Hence, and from other doctrines demonstrated, it is shown that man, being spirit and immortal, is able to perpetuate his real life and consciousness, and has done so during all time in the persons of those higher flowers of the human race who are members of an ancient and high brotherhood who concern themselves with the soul development of man, held by them to include every process of evolution on all planes. The initiates, being bound by the law of evolution, must work with humanity as its development permits. Therefore from time to time they give out again and again the same doctrine which from time to time grows obscured in various nations and places. This is the wisdom religion, and they are the keepers of it. At times they come to nations as great teachers and "saviours," who only re-promulgate the old truths and system of ethics. This therefore holds that humanity is capable of infinite perfection both in time and quality, the saviours and adepts being held up as examples of that possibility.

From this living and presently acting body of perfected men H.P. Blavatsky declared she received the impulse to once more bring forward the old ideas, and from them also received several keys to ancient and modern doctrines that had been lost during modern struggles toward civilization, and also that she was furnished by them with some doctrines really ancient but entirely new to the present day in any exoteric shape. These she wrote among the other keys furnished by her to her fellow members and the world at large. Added, then, to the testimony through all time found in records of all nations we have this modern explicit assertion that the ancient learned and humanitarian body of adepts still exists on this earth and takes an interest in the development of the race.

Theosophy postulates an eternal principle called the unknown, which can never be cognized except through its manifestations. This eternal principle is in and is every thing and being; it periodically and eternally manifests itself and recedes again from manifestation. In this ebb and flow evolution proceeds and itself is the progress of the manifestation. The perceived universe is the manifestation of this unknown, including spirit and matter, for Theosophy holds that those are but the two opposite poles of the one unknown principle. They coexist, are not separate nor separable from each other, or, as the Hindu scriptures say, there is no particle of matter without spirit, and no particle of spirit without matter. In manifesting itself the spirit-matter differentiates on seven planes, each more dense on the way down to the plane of our senses than its predecessor, the substance in all being the same only differing in degree. Therefore from this view the whole universe is alive, not one atom of it being in any sense dead. It is also conscious and intelligent, its consciousness and intelligence being present on all planes though obscured on this one. On this plane of ours the spirit focalizes itself in all human beings who choose to permit it to do so, and the refusal to permit it is the cause of ignorance, of sin, of all sorrow and suffering.

In all ages some have come to this high state, have grown to be as gods, are partakers actively in the work of nature, and go on from century to century widening their consciousness and increasing the scope of their government in nature. This is the destiny of all beings, and hence at the outset Theosophy postulates this perfectibility of the race, removes the idea of innate unregenerable wickedness, and offers a purpose and an aim for life which is consonant with the longings of the soul and with its real nature, tending at the same time to destroy pessimism with its companion, despair.

In Theosophy the world is held to be the product of the evolution of the principle spoken of from the very lowest first forms of life guided as it proceeded by intelligent perfected beings from other and older evolutions, and compounded also of the egos or individual spirits for and by whom it emanates. Hence man as we know him is held to be a conscious spirit, the flower of evolution, with other and lower classes of egos below him in the lower kingdoms, all however coming up and destined one day to be on the same human stage as we now are, we then being higher still. Man's consciousness being thus more perfect is able to pass from one to another of the planes of differentiation mentioned. If he mistakes any one of them for the reality that he is in his essence, he is deluded; the object of evolution then is to give him complete self-consciousness so that he may go on to higher stages in the progress of the universe. His evolution after coming on the human stage is for the getting of experience, and in order to so raise up and purify the various planes of matter with which he has to do, that the voice of the spirit may be fully heard and comprehended.

He is a religious being because he is a spirit encased in matter, which is in turn itself spiritual in essence. Being a spirit he requires vehicles with which to come in touch with all the planes of nature included in evolution, and it is these vehicles that make of him an intricate, composite being, liable to error, but at the same time able to rise above all delusions and conquer the highest place. He is in miniature the universe, for he is as spirit, manifesting himself to himself by means of seven differentiations. Therefore is he known in Theosophy as a sevenfold being. The Christian division of body, soul, and spirit is accurate so far as it goes, but will not answer to the problems of life and nature, unless, as is not the case, those three divisions are each held to be composed of others, which would raise the possible total to seven. The spirit stands alone at the top, next comes the spiritual soul or Buddhi as it is called in Sanskrit. This partakes more of the spirit than any below it, and is connected with Manas or mind, these three being the real trinity of man, the imperishable part, the real thinking entity living on the earth in the other and denser vehicles by its evolution. Below in order of quality is the plane of the desires and passions shared with the animal kingdom, unintelligent, and the producer of ignorance flowing from delusion. It is distinct from the will and judgment, and must therefore be given its own place. On this plane is gross life, manifesting, not as spirit from which it derives its essence, but as energy and motion on this plane. It being common to the whole objective plane and being everywhere, is also to be classed by itself, the portion used by man being given up at the death of the body. Then last, before the objective body, is the model or double of the outer physical case. This double is the astral body belonging to the astral plane of matter, not so dense as physical molecules, but more tenuous and much stronger, as well as lasting. It is the original of the body permitting the physical molecules to arrange and show themselves thereon, allowing them to go and come from day to day as they are known to do, yet ever retaining the fixed shape and contour given by the astral double within. These lower four principles or sheaths are the transitory perishable part of man, not himself, but in every sense the instrument he uses, given up at the hour of death like an old garment, and rebuilt out of the general reservoir at every new birth. The trinity is the real man, the thinker, the individuality that passes from house to house, gaining experience at each rebirth, while it suffers and enjoys according to its deeds - it is the one central man, the living spirit-soul.

Now this spiritual man, having always existed, being intimately concerned in evolution, dominated by the law of cause and effect, because in himself he is that very law, showing moreover on this plane varieties of force of character, capacity, and opportunity, his very presence must be explained, while the differences noted have to be accounted for. The doctrine of reincarnation does all this. It means that man as a thinker, composed of soul, mind and spirit, occupies body after body in life after life on the earth which is the scene of his evolution, and where he must, under the very laws of his being, complete that evolution, once it has been begun. In any one life he is known to others as a personality, but in the whole stretch of eternity he is one individual, feeling in himself an identity not dependent on name, form, or recollection.

This doctrine is the very base of Theosophy, for it explains life and nature. It is one aspect of evolution, for as it is re-embodiment in meaning, and as evolution could not go on without re-embodiment, it is evolution itself, as applied to the human soul. But it is also a doctrine believed in at the time given to Jesus and taught in the early ages of Christianity, being now as much necessary to that religion as it is to any other to explain texts, to reconcile the justice of God with the rough and merciless aspect of nature and life to most mortals, and to throw a light perceptible by reason on all the problems that vex us in our journey through this world. The vast, and under any other doctrine unjust, difference between the savage and the civilized man as to both capacity, character, and opportunity can be understood only through this doctrine, and coming to our own stratum the differences of the same kind may only thus be explained. It vindicates Nature and God, and removes from religion the blot thrown by men who have postulated creeds which paint the creator as a demon. Each man's life and character are the outcome of his previous lives and thoughts. Each is his own judge, his own executioner, for it is his own hand that forges the weapon which works for his punishment, and each by his own life reaches reward, rises to heights of knowledge and power for the good of all who may be left behind him. Nothing is left to chance, favor, or partiality, but all is under the governance of law. Man is a thinker, and by his thoughts he makes the causes for woe or bliss; for his thoughts produce his acts. He is the centre for any disturbance of the universal harmony, and to him as the centre the disturbance must return so as to bring about equilibrium, for nature always works towards harmony. Man is always carrying on a series of thoughts, which extend back to the remote past, continually making action and reaction. He is thus responsible for all his thoughts and acts, and in that his complete responsibility is established; his own spirit is the essence of this law and provides for ever compensation for every disturbance and adjustment for all effects. This is the law of Karma or justice, sometimes called the ethical law of causation. It is not foreign to the Christian scriptures, for both Jesus and St. Paul clearly enunciated it. Jesus said we should be judged as we gave judgment and should receive the measure meted to others. St. Paul said: "Brethren, be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that also shall he reap." And that sowing and reaping can only be possible under the doctrines of Karma and reincarnation.

But what of death and after? Is heaven a place or is it not? Theosophy teaches, as may be found in all sacred books, that after death the soul reaps a rest. This is from its own nature. It is a thinker, and cannot during life fulfill and carry out all nor even a small part of the myriads of thoughts entertained. Hence when at death it casts off the body and the astral body, and is released from the passions and desires, its natural forces have immediate sway and it thinks its thoughts out on the soul plane, clothed in a finer body suitable to that existence. This is called Devachan. It is the very state that has brought about the descriptions of heaven common to all religions, but this doctrine is very clearly put in the Buddhist and Hindu religions. It is a time of rest, because the physical body being absent the consciousness is not in the completer touch with visible nature which is possible on the material plane. But it is a real existence, and no more illusionary than earth life; it is where the essence of the thoughts of life that were as high as character permitted, expands and is garnered by the soul and mind. When the force of these thoughts is fully exhausted the soul is drawn back once more to earth, to that environment which is sufficiently like unto itself to give it the proper further evolution. This alternation from state to state goes on until the being rises from repeated experiences above ignorance, and realizes in itself the actual unity of all spiritual beings. Then it passes on to higher and greater steps on the evolutionary road.

No new ethics are presented by Theosophy, as it is held that right ethics are for ever the same. But in the doctrines of Theosophy are to be found the philosophical and reasonable basis for ethics and the natural enforcement of them in practice. Universal brotherhood is that which will result in doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, and in your loving your neighbour as yourself - declared as right by all teachers in the great religions of the world.

WILLIAM Q JUDGE

Lucifer, December, 1893

THEOSOPHY IN THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE

I HAVE been asked to say a few more words on the subject of Theosophy in the Christian Bible; that is, I have been asked to show what Theosophical doctrines can be found in the Christian books.(1)

One of the Theosophical doctrines is the doctrine of Karma; that is, exact justice ruling in the spiritual as well as in the physical; the exact carrying out of effect from cause in the spiritual nature of man, the moral nature as well as in the physical world. That is, that every man is ruled in his life, not by a vengeful and partial God, but by justice. This life is just; whether one is miserable or happy, whether he is poor or rich, it is just. Where is this doctrine found in the Christian Bible, this doctrine that as ye have sown so shall ye reap? That is, having lived before in this world you have made causes which bring about today the life you lead now, which have made the characteristics that you have, which made you what you are now, and have plunged you into a living hell or into a happy heaven today. We say this doctrine has not of late been taught in Christianity; but it is in the books of the Christians and it ought to have been taught, it would have been profitable had it been expounded. Now, where can it be found?

Does not Jesus say, among other things, you should not judge others? Why? Because if you do you will be judged yourself. What you mete out to others will be meted out to you. That is, what men do to others will be done to themselves. Where and when is this to be done? When is the measure to be meted out if not in this life or some other? St. Paul says: "Brethren, be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." Do not these quotations prove that in St. Paul and in the words of Jesus can be found this doctrine of Karma: that as you sow so shall you reap? That your circumstances now are the result of your own acts? This is the doctrine which is the most prominent in the Theosophical field. I call it Theosophical, not because the members teach it, nor from its presence in our literature, but because it is found in the religion of every nation; that is why it is Theosophical. But you have been taught that you must be good or you will be punished. In the West you are told you will be rewarded and punished in this life and in the next. But men are not punished in this life. Today thousands of men live lives of luxury, strife, and crime, but they are not punished here, and, according to the teachings of Christianity, they stand a pretty good chance of escaping punishment hereafter if they only believe. We see that many are not rewarded who are good, but are often born into misery.
The doctrine of reincarnation is taught in the Christian Bible, that is, that you will be born over and over again in this world according to your destiny, to follow the effects of causes you yourself have put in motion in whatever life. Where is that found? In the mouth of Jesus; and certainly if Jesus, the founder of Christianity, has stated this, has any man or any body of men, has any person any right to say that it is not true? I deny their right, and I say that Christianity has been deprived by theologians of a doctrine which Jesus himself declared, when reincarnation is taken away from it. We say that the doctrine is in the Gospels. One day they brought to Jesus a man who was born blind and asked him why was this man born blind; was it for some sin he had committed or those his parents committed? Now, how could a man be born blind for a sin he had himself committed unless he had lived before that time to commit it? This was a doctrine believed in at that day. The Jews believed it and Jesus was a Jew. He did not deny the doctrine on that occasion. He only said, "Not for that reason." If the doctrine were wrong, certainly Jesus, as the Son of God, would not only have denied it, but he would have said, "The doctrine you enunciate is false." He said nothing of the kind. At another time he himself declared the doctrine, and he asked his disciples, "Whom do men think that I am?", meaning and referring to what was believed at that time, that great sages were born over and over again for the enlightenment of mankind. They call them Avatars in the East. They had an idea great sages and prophets would come back. Will you tell me how such men then could be reborn at all unless under natural law and unless such law governs every man? So Jesus, referring to this idea, said to his disciples: "Whom do men think that I am?" And they said: "Some men think that you are Elias, who was for to come." St. John had been killed just then by the ruler of Judea, and Jesus said to them that Elias had already come back in the person of John and the rulers had killed him, not knowing he was a reincarnation of Elias. So in one case he did not deny and in the other he explicitly asserted the doctrine. And if we take this view we know what he meant when he said to Nicodemus that a man must be born again. He meant not only the regeneration of the soul, but reborn into the body again; that is, that man is a soul who comes into a house to live life after life, and he must go from house to house until he has learned the whole architecture of human life and is able to build a perfect house. In Revelations, the last word of all the books, we find the great speaker writing that he heard the voice of God saying to him that him who overcometh the flesh and the devil, the world and sin, "I shall make a pillar in the house of my Father and he shall go out no more." Does not that mean he had gone out before? The old fathers in the early ages of Christianity taught that if we triumphed over the flesh and the devil, the world and sin, God would make each one a pillar in the house of his father and he would not have to go out again. That is the doctrine of reincarnation.

Then if you will look at the history of the Christian Church you find that the doctrine was taught for five hundred years, and not until the Council of Constantinople was it rejected. At that time it was turned out by ignorant monks, and since then it has not been taught by the teachers, but it is in the Christian books, and to these Christian books we appeal. I say these very doctrines are in many other places found there. Another doctrine is that man is not merely a body, but is a composite being of many divisions. St. Paul taught we have a spiritual body as well as a material body, that we are a spiritual body and a physical body and spirit. That will bring in every one of the seven principles of the Theosophical category. So we say, all through the Christian books, in the Old Testament and in the New, we may find the great doctrines of Theosophy, by which I mean the great universal ideas of unity, of universal brotherhood, of strict justice and no favoritism, of reincarnation, and of the composite nature of man, which permeate every religion as well as the books of the Christians, both old and new.

(1) An address made by Wm. Q. Judge at the Parliament of Religions, World's Fair of 1893, Chicago, Illinois.

THEOSOPHY - ITS CLAIMS, DOCTRINES, AND PROGRESS

WHEN the Theosophical Society was started by the erstwhile famous Madam Blavatsky, in 1875, the now famous orator, Mrs. Annie Besant, was beginning to deny that there was any life beyond this one, and was entering on that part of her career in which she has made herself a much-talked-of woman in all parts of the civilized world. None of the theosophists had the slightest idea then that such an able champion for their cause was actually training herself for its service, nor did she think then of what the present years would tell of her. For the third time, now, Mrs. Besant has come to the United States to lecture on the doctrines of this new-old faith. In England large audiences always greet her, and the London papers cite the last large meeting she had there in St. James Hall as proof that her hold on the public is not weakened. Her eloquence is, in fact, described as being quite as powerful as in the past, and some writers think it has increased in effect. On this trip she will go to the Pacific coast, speaking in all its principal cities, and also in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and others on the way out and back.

Her visit will greatly encourage the theosophists, who are now a body of people extending from this coast to the Pacific. The objects of the society are: First--To form a nucleus of a universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race, creed, or color. Second To promote the study of Aryan and other Eastern literatures, religions, and sciences, and demonstrate the importance of that study. Third--To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the psychical powers latent in man.

The general headquarters of the body is at a suburb of Madras, in India, built on the bank of a pretty little river, and near to the sea. Here, any day, you can meet all sorts of men of all nations--gold-colored Brahmins from south and north, black Hindoos and white Europeans, Mohammedans and Christians, and now and then some picturesque Indian mendicant making a pious pilgrimage.

In New York the local branch has purchased a large house at 144 Madison Avenue, where it has not only the general office of the American secretary, but also three good libraries and a book-selling department. Many well-known names are on their list of members. There is Professor James, of Harvard, who joined in Boston; Thomas A. Edison, too, is one of the old members but not now an active one. Dr. J. H. Salisbury, of Fifty-ninth Street, who introduced a special form of treatment of diseases, is a member; Miss Katherine Hillard, the lecturer on poetry, is another; and then one can find merchants, doctors, lawyers, and people of every profession in the membership. They have free public lectures every Sunday, and their own meetings on Tuesdays.

In San Francisco the societies activity is marked. They sustain there a lecturer who goes up and down the coast speaking to the public freely on the subject. They do not seek proselytes, but content themselves with presenting their ideas, which cover a large number of doctrines, as supports for the principle of universal brotherhood. No antagonism to Christianity is manifested, although dogmatists might see in what they say a current of opposition to all dogmatic schools. One of their recent lectures was an attempt to show from the Bible that Jesus taught the doctrine of pre-existence and re-incarnation, and it was asserted then that many a Christian minister has believed this. But it is not a dogma with them, as all can believe what they like so long as they tolerate the beliefs of others. A similar sort of lecture in Washington, some little time ago, brought out one of the Jesuits there in some lectures to show the truths and errors of theosophy, in which the final conclusion was that the present form of the movement was engineered by the devil himself. At Fort Wayne, Indiana, the local branch has called itself after Annie Besant, and includes a great many of the best men in the town, such as two Supreme Court judges, leading lawyers, doctors, and bankers. Much interest was created in the subject there by a discussion carried on in the newspapers, and also by an attack made on the whole movement by one of the preachers of the city. But, generally, the theosophist comes out ahead, because his opponent assumes a good deal that the theosophist does not say, and then a fair presentation of theosophy follows.

It cannot be denied that this movement has attained importance. Weak and derided seventeen years ago, its membership has steadily increased; they have an excellent organization, and are well united. They say they are not spiritualists, and when one considers the violence with which some spiritualists assail theosophy one believes they are not. The theory they advance about an astral body which is an exact duplicate of the physical one is very interesting, and it is claimed that it will fully explain many facts in the psychic realm, and much that puzzles people in dreams, visions, and the seeing of apparitions. They say that all the work of the Psychical Society will amount to naught until these theories are accepted.

Mrs. Besant gives her adherence to all these doctrines on the ground that she has experimented in the field and proved all to her satisfaction. Her explanation of her change of belief is that hitherto no such field of inquiry had been suggested to her, but when Madam Blavatsky showed her the possibilities, examination followed, and that resulted in belief. This declaration of opinion by such a well-known woman had the effect of turning many agnostics in the same direction, and the theosophists say that before very long all the scientific world will come to accept these theories. This is a bold claim, but they show the utmost confidence, and, it is said, point to prophecies to the same effect. If sincerity of effort, and at times fanaticism in following along a course in the face of violent opposition, will do anything, they may succeed. They all give time and energy to the work for no compensation except the joy of seeing the movement grow. Some work all day for the society and have no remuneration, and Mrs. Besant herself not only receives no salary, but devotes what she makes by pen and voice to the society's work. It is one of their teachings to do all you can for the human family without hope of reward. They may be mistaken, but they are well-meaning, sincere, and devoted, and withal exhibit evidences, not easy to trace to their source, of being managed by some master-hand that closes up the ranks and often turns seeming disaster into victory.

Touching the religious side, they hold that the ethics promulgated by Jesus are universal and ancient. But they say that at present there is no real basis for ethics in the religion or science of the day, and that the people profess ethics but do not practice them. Theosophy proposes to enforce the practice of these true ethics by the doctrines of actual unity of the human race and the constant re-birth of souls into this life; hence, as all return here to reap the reward of their deeds, good and bad, the theosophist asserts that belief in this doctrine will cause men to practice what is preached.

BRYAN KINNAVAN

Frank Leslie's Weekly

December 15, 1892

THINGS COMMON TO CHRISTIANITY
AND THEOSOPHY

THAT the Theosophical Society is not opposed to Christianity in either its dogmatic or pure form is easily demonstrated. Our constitution forbids it and the second object of the Society does also. The laws of our body say that there shall be no crusade against any religion, tacitly excepting, of course, the few degraded and bestial religions now in the world; the second object provides for a full and free study of all relations without bias and without hatred or sectarianism. And our history also, offering to view branch societies all over the world composed of Christians, refutes the charge that the Society as such is opposed to Christianity. One instance is enough, that of the well-know Scottish Lodge, which states in its printed Transactions No. IX, "Theosophists who are Christians (and such are the majority of the Scottish Lodge)...Therefore Christians who are sincere and who know what Theosophy means must be Theosophists..." If members of this Society have said to the contrary it has been from ignorance and a careless thinking, for on the same ground we should also be opposed to all other religions which have any formalism, as has Christianity. Generally speaking, then, the Society is not and cannot be opposed to Christianity, while it may lead to a denial of some of the men-made theories of that Church.

But that is no more than branches of Christianity have always been doing, nor is it as much a danger to formal Christianity as the new standards of criticism which have crept into the Church.

Nor can it be either that Theosophy as a whole is opposed to Christianity, inasmuch as Theosophy is and must be the one truth underlying all religions that have ever been among men. A calm and sincere examination of all the world's religions reveals the fact that in respect to ethics, in respect to laws, in respect to cosmogony and cosmology, the other religious books of the world are the same in most respects as those of the Christians, and that the distinguishing difference between the latter's religion and the others is that it asserts an exclusiveness for itself and a species of doctrinal intolerance not found in the rest.

If we take the words and the example of Jesus as the founder of Christianity, it is at once seen that there is no opposition at all between that form of religion and Theosophy. Indeed, there is the completest agreement. New ethics are not brought forward by Theosophy, nor can they be, as ethics of the right sort must always be the same. In his sermons and sayings are to be found the ethics given out by Buddha and by all other great teachers of all time. These cannot be altered, even though they hold up to weak mortals an ideal that is very difficult to live up to and sometimes impossible to realize in daily life. That these rules of conduct laid down by Jesus are admittedly hard to follow is shown in the behavior of Christian states toward each other and in the declarations of their high prelates that the religion of Jesus cannot be the basis for diplomatic relations nor for the state government. Hence we find that the refuge from all this adopted by the theologian is in the statement that, although other and older religions had moral truth and similar ethics to those of Jesus, the Christian religion is the only one wherein the founder asserted that he was not merely a teacher from God but was also at the same time God himself; that is, that prior to Jesus a great deal of good was taught, but God did not see fit until the time of Jesus to come down among men into incarnation. Necessarily such a declaration would seem to have the effect of breeding intolerance from the high and exclusive nature of the claim made. But an examination of Brahmanism shows that Rama was also God incarnate among men, though there the doctrine did not arouse the same sum of intolerance among its believers. So it must be true that it is not always a necessary consequence of such a belief that aggressive and exclusive intolerance will grow up.

The beliefs and teachings of Christianity are not all supportable by the words of Jesus, but his doctrines are at all times in accord with Theosophy. There is certainly a wide difference between the command of Jesus to be poor and have neither staff nor money and the fact of the possession by the Church of vast sums of money and immense masses of property, and with the drawing of high salaries by prelates, and with the sitting of prelates among the rulers of the earth upon thrones, and in the going to war and the levying of taxes by the Pope and by other religious heads. The gathering of tithes and enforcement of them by law and by imprisonment at the instance of the Protestant clergy are not at all consistent with the words of Jesus. But all of the foregoing inconsistent matters are a part of present Christianity, and if in those respects a difference from or opposition to them should seem to arise from Theosophical teachings we must admit it, but cannot be blamed. If we go back to the times of the early Christians and compare that Christianity with the present form, we see that opposition by Theosophy could hardly be charged, but that the real opposition then would be between that early form of the religion and its present complexion. It has been altered so much that the two are scarcely recognizable as the same. This is so much so that there exists a Christian sect today called "Early Christian."

Every one has at all times a right to object to theological interpretations if they are wrong, or if they distort the original teaching or introduce new notions. In this respect there is a criticism by Theosophy and Theosophists. But thinkers in the world not members of this Society and not leaning to Theosophy do the same thing. Huxley and Tyndall and Darwin and hosts of others took ground that by mere force of truth and fact went against theological views, Galileo also, seeing that the earth was round and moved, said so, but the theologian, thinking that such belief tended to destroy the power of the church and to upset biblical theories, made him recant at the risk of his liberty and life. If the old views of theology were still in force with the state behind them, the triumphs of science would have been few and we might still be imagining the earth to be flat and square and the sun revolving about it.

Theosophical investigation discloses to the student's view the fact that in all ages there have appeared great teachers of religion and that they all had two methods of instruction. One, or that for the masses of people, was plain and easy to understand; it was of ethics, of this life and of the next, of immortality and love; it always gave out the Golden Rule. Such a teacher was Buddha, and there can be no controversy on the fact that he died centuries before the birth of Jesus. He declared his religion to be that of love. Others did the same. Jesus came and taught ethics and love, with the prominent exception of his prophecy that he came to bring a sword and division as recorded in the Gospels. There is also an incident which accents a great difference between him and Buddha; it is the feast where he drank wine and also made some for others to drink. In regard to this matter, Buddha always taught that all intoxicating liquors were to be rigidly abstained from. The second method was the secret or Esoteric one, and that Jesus also used. We find his disciples asking him why he always used easy parables with the people, and he replied that to the disciples he taught the mysteries, or the more recondite matters of religion. This is the same as prevailed with the older saints. Buddha also had his private teachings to certain disciples. He even made a distinction among his personal followers, making classes in their ranks, to one of which he gave the simplest of rules, to the other the complex and difficult. So he must have pursued the ancient practise of having two sects of teachings, and this must have been a consequence of his education.

At twelve years of age he came to the temple and disputed with the learned rabbis on matters of law. Thus he must have known the law; and what that law was and is it is necessary to ask. It was the law of Moses, full of the most technical and abstruse things, and not all to be found in the simple words of the books. The Hebrew books are a vast mine of cypher designedly so constructed and that should be borne in mind by all students. It ought to be known to Christians, but is not, as they prefer not to go into the mysteries of the Jews. But Jesus knew it. His remark that "not one jot or tittle of the law would pass" show this. Most people read this simply as rhetoric, but it is not so. The jots and tittles are a part of the books and go to make up the cypher of the Cabala or the hidden meaning of the law. This is a vast system of itself, and was not invented after the time of Jesus. Each letter is also a number, and thus every word can be and is, according to a well-known rule, turned into some other word or into a number. Thus one name will be a part of a supposed historical story, but when read by the cypher it becomes a number of some cycle or event or a sign of the Zodiac or something else quite different from the mere letters. Thus the name of Adam is composed of three consonants, A,D, and M. These mean by the system of the cypher respectively, "Adam, David, and Messiah." The Jews also held that Adam for his first sin would have to and did reincarnate as David and would later come as Messiah. Turning to Revelations we find traces of the same system in the remarks about the numbers of the beast and the man. The Cabala or hidden law is of the highest importance, and as the Christian religion is a Hebraic one it cannot be properly studied or understood without the aid given by the secret teaching. And the Cabala is not dead nor unknown, but has many treatises written on it in different languages. By using it, we will find in the Old Testament and in the records of Jesus a complete and singular agreement with Theosophy.

Examine for instance, the Theosophical teachings that there is a secret of esoteric doctrine, and the doctrine of inability of man to comprehend God. This is the Brahmanical doctrine of the unapproachableness of Parabrahm. In Exodus there is a story which to the profane is absurd, of God telling Moses that he could not see Him. It is in Exodus xxxiii, 20, where God says Moses could see him from behind only. Treat this by the rule of the Cabala and it is plain, but read it on the surface and you have nonsense. In Exodus iii, 14, God says that his name is "I am that I am." this is AHYH ASHR AHYH, which has to be turned into its numerical value, as each letter is also a number. Thus A is 1, H is 5, Y is 10, H is 5. There being two words the same, they add up 42. The second word is A, 1; SH, 300; R, 200 making 501, which added to 42 gives 543 as the number of "I am that I am." Now Moses by the same system makes 345 or the reverse of the other, by which the Cabala shows God meant Moses to know God by his reverse or Moses himself. To some this may appear fanciful, but as it is the method on which these old books are constructed it must be known in order to understand what is not clear and to remove from the Christian books the well-sustained charge of absurdity and sometimes injustice and cruelty shown on their face. So instead of God's being made ridiculous by attributing to him such a remark as that Moses could only "see his hinder parts," we perceive that under the words is a deep philosophical tenet corresponding to those of Theosophy, that Parabrahm is not to be known and that Man is a small copy of God through which in some sense or in the reverse we may see God.

For the purposes of this discussion along the line of comparison we will have to place Christianity on one side and put on the other as representing the whole body of Theosophy, so far as revealed, the other various religions of the world, and see what, if anything, is common between them. First we see that Christianity, being the younger, has borrowed its doctrines from other religions. It is now too enlightened an age to say, as the Church did when Abbe Huc brought back his account of Buddhism from Tibet, that either the devil or wicked men invented the old religions so as to confuse and confute the Christian. Evidently, no matter how done, the system of the Christian is mixed Aryan and Jewish. This could not be otherwise, since Jesus was a Jew, and his best disciples and the others who came after like Paul were of the same race and faith. The early Fathers also, living as they did in Eastern lands, got their ideas from what they found about them.

Next a very slight examination will disclose the fact that the ritual of the Christian Church is also borrowed. Taken from all nations and religions, not one part of it is either of this age or of the Western hemisphere The Brahmans have an extensive and elaborate ritual, and so have the Buddhists. The rosary, long supposed by Catholics to be a thing of their own, has existed in Japan for uncounted years, and much before the West had any civilization the Brahman had his form of rosary. The Roman Catholic Christian sees the priest ring the bell at a certain part of the Mass, and the old Brahman knows that when he is praying to God he must also ring a bell to be found in every house as well as in the temple. This is very like what Jesus commanded. He said that prayer must be in secret, that is, where no one can hear; the Brahman rings the small bell so that even if ears be near they shall not hear any words but only the sound of the bell. The Christian has images of virgin and child; the same thing is to be found in Egyptian papyri and in carved statues of India made before the Christian came into existence. Indeed, all the ritual and observance of the Christian churches may be found in the mass of other religions with which for the moment we are making a rough comparison.

Turning now to doctrine, we find again complete agreement with the dogmatic part of Christianity in these older religions. Salvation by faith is taught by some priests. That is the old Brahmanical theory, but with the difference that the Brahman one calls for faith in God as the means, the end, and the object of faith. The Christian adds faith in the son of God. A form of Japanese Buddhism said to be due to Amitabha says that one may be saved by complete faith in Amita Buddha, and that even if one prays but three times to Amita he will be saved in accordance with a vow made by that teacher. Immortality of soul has ever been taught by the Brahmans. Their whole system of religion and of cosmogony is founded on the idea of soul and of the spiritual nature of the universe. Jesus and St. Paul taught the unity of spiritual beings-or men-when they said that heaven and the spirit of God were in us, and the doctrine of Unity is one of the oldest and most important of the Brahmanical scheme. The possibility of arriving at perfection by means of religion and science combined so that a man becomes godlike-or the doctrine of Adepts and Mahatmas as found in Theosophy-is common to Buddhism and Brahmanism, and is not contrary to the teachings of Jesus. He said to his disciples that they could if they would do even greater works-or "miracles"-than he did. To do these works one has to have great knowledge and power. The doctrine assumes the perfectibility of humanity and destroys the theory of original sin; but far from being out of concordance with the religion of Jesus, it is in perfect accord. He directed his followers to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is. They could not come up to that command by any possibility unless man has the power to reach to that high state. The command is the same as is found in the ancient Aryan system. Hence, then, whether we look broadly over the field at mere ritual dogma or at ethics, we find the most complete accord between Theosophy and true Christianity.

But now taking up some important doctrines put forward by members of the Theosophical Society under their right of free investigation and free speech, what do we discover? Novelty, it is true, to the mind of the western man half-taught about his own religion, but nothing that is uncommon to Christianity. Those doctrines may be, for the present, such as Reincarnation or rebirth over and over again for the purpose of discipline and gain, for reward, for punishment, and for enlargement of character; next Karma, or exact justice or compensation for all thoughts and acts. These two are a part of Christianity, and may be found in the Bible.

Reincarnation has been regarded by some Christian ministers as essential to the Christian religion. Dr. Edward Beecher said he saw its necessity, and the Rev. Wm. Alger has recorded his view to the same effect. If a Christian insists upon the belief in Jesus, who came only eighteen centuries ago after millenniums had passed and men had died out of the faith by millions, it will be unjust for them to be condemned for a failure to believe a doctrine they never heard of; hence the Christian may well say that under the law of reincarnation, which was upheld by Jesus, all those who never heard of Jesus will be reborn after his coming in A.D. I, so as to accept the plan of salvation.

In the Gospels we find Jesus referring to this doctrine as if a well established one. When it was broached by the disciples as the possible reason for the punishment by blindness from birth of a man of the time. Jesus did not convert the doctrine, as he would have done did he see in his wisdom as Son of God that it was pernicious. But at another time he asserted that John the Baptist was the reincarnation of Elias the ancient prophet. This cannot be wiped out of the books, and is a doctrine as firmly fixed in Christianity, though just now out of favor, as is any other. The paper by Prof. Landsberg shows you what Origen, one of the greatest of the Christian Fathers, taught on preëxistence of souls. This theory naturally suggests reincarnation on this earth, for it is more natural to suppose the soul's wanderings to be here until all that life can give has been gained, rather than that the soul should wander among other planets or simply fall to this abruptly, to be as suddenly raised up to heaven or thrown down to hell.

The next great doctrine is Karma. This is the religion of salvation by works as opposed to faith devoid of works. It is one of the prime doctrines of Jesus. By "by their works ye shall know them," he must have meant that faith without works is dead. The meaning of Karma literally is "works," and the Hindus apply it not only to the operations of nature and of the great laws of nature in connection with man's reward and punishment, but also to all the different works that man can perform. St. James insists on the religion of works. He says that true religion is to visit the fatherless and the widows and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. St. Matthew says we shall be judged for every act, word, and thought. This alone is possible under the doctrine of Karma. The command of Jesus to refrain from judgment or we should ourselves be judged is a plain statement of Karma, as is, too, the rest of the verse saying that what we mete out shall be given back to us. St. Paul, following this, distinctly states the doctrine thus: "Brethren, be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap." The word "whatsoever" includes every act and thought, and permits no escape from the consequences of any act. A clearer statement of the law of Karma as applied to daily life could hardly be made. Again, going to Revelations, the last words in the Christian book, we read all through it that the last judgment proceeds on the works-in other words, on the Karma-of men. It distinctly asserts that in the vision, as well as in the messages to the Churches, judgment passes for works.

We therefore must conclude that the religion of Jesus is in complete accord with the chief doctrines of Theosophy; it is fair to assume that even the most recondite of theosophical theories would not have been opposed by him. Our discussion must have led us to the conclusion that the religion of Karma, the practise of good works, is that in which the religion of Jesus agrees with Theosophy, and that alone thereby will arrive the longed-for day when the great ideal of Universal Brotherhood will be realized, and will furnish the common ground on which all faiths may stand and from which every nation may work for the good and the perfection of the human family.

William Q. Judge

Paper read before
Aryan (N.Y.) T.S., 1894

THOUGHTS ON KARMA

EVERY day in life we see people overtaken by circumstances either good or bad and coming in blocks all at once or scattered over long periods of time. Some are for a whole life in a miserable condition, and others for many years the very reverse; while still others are miserable or happy by snatches. I speak, of course, of the circumstances of life irrespective of the effect on the mind of the person, for it may often be that a man is not unhappy under adverse circumstances, and some are able to extract good from the very strait lines they are put within. Now all this is the Karma of those who are the experiencers, and therefore we ask ourselves if Karma may fall in a lump or may be strung out over a long space of years. And the question is also asked if the circumstances of this life are the sum total result of the life which has immediately preceded it.

There is a little story told to a German mystic in this century by an old man, another mystic, when asked the meaning of the verse in the Bible which says that the sins of the father will be visited on the children to the third and fourth generation. He said: "There was once an Eastern king who had one son, and this son committed a deed the penalty of which was that he should be killed by a great stone thrown upon him. But as it was seen that this would not repair the wrong nor give to the offender the chance to become a better man, the counsellors of the king advised that the stone should be broken into small pieces, and those be thrown at the son, and at his children and grandchildren as they were able to bear it. It was so done, and all were in some sense sufferers yet none were destroyed." It was argued, of course, in this case that the children and grandchildren could not have been born in the family of the prince if they had not had some hand in the past, in other lives, in the formation of his character, and for that reason they should share to some extent in his punishment. In no other way than this can the Christian verses be understood if we are to attribute justice to the God of the Christians.

Each Ego is attracted to the body in which he will meet his just deserts, but also for another reason. That is, that not only is the body to give opportunity for his just reward or punishment, but also for that he in the past was connected with the family in which the body was born, and the stream of heredity to which it belongs is his too. It is therefore a question not alone of desert and similarity, but one of responsibility. Justice orders that the Ego shall suffer or enjoy irrespective of what family he comes to; similarity decrees that he shall come to the family in which there is some characteristic similar to one or many of his and thus having a drawing power; but responsibility, which is compounded of justice, directs that the Ego shall come to the race or the nation or the family to which its responsibility lies for the part taken by it in other lives in forming of the general character, or affecting that physical stream of heredity that has so much influence on those who are involved in it. Therefore it is just that even the grandchildren shall suffer if they in the past have had a hand in moulding the family or even in bringing about a social order that is detrimental to those who fall into it through incarnation. I use the word responsibility to indicate something composed of similarity and justice. It may be described by other words probably quite as well, and in the present state of the English language very likely will be. An Ego may have no direct responsibility for a family, national, or race condition, and yet be drawn into incarnation there. In such an event it is similarity of character which causes the place of rebirth, for the being coming to the abode of mortals is drawn like electricity along the path of least resistance and of greatest conductibility. But where the reincarnating Ego is directly responsible for family or race conditions, it will decide itself, upon exact principles of justice and in order to meet its obligations, to be reborn where it shall receive, as grandchild if you will, physically or otherwise the results of its former acts. This decision is made at the emergence from Devachan. It is thus entirely just, no matter whether the new physical brain is able or not to pick up the lost threads of memory.

So to-day, in our civilization, we are all under the penalty of our forefathers sins, living in bodies which medical science has shown are sown with diseases of brain and flesh and blood coming in the turbid stream of heredity through the centuries. These disturbances were brought about by ourselves in other centuries, in ignorance, perhaps, of consequences so far-reaching, but that ignorance lessens only the higher moral responsibility and tends to confine the results to physical suffering. This can very well lead, as it often does, to efforts on the part of many reincarnating Egos in the direction of general reform.

It was through a belief in this that the ancients attempted to form and keep up in India a pure family stream such as the highest caste of Brahmin. For they knew that if such a clean family line could be kept existing for many centuries, it would develop the power of repelling Egos on the way to rebirth if they were not in character up to the standard of that stream of life. Thus only teachers by nature, of high moral and spiritual elevation, would come upon the scene to act as regenerators and saviors for all other classes. But under the iron rule of cyclic law this degenerated in time, leaving now only an imitation of the real thing.

A variation of the Eastern story told above is that the advice of the kings counsellors was that the broken stone should be cast at the prince. This was done, and the result was that he was not killed but suffered while the pieces were being thrown. It gives another Karmic law, that is, that a given amount of force of a Karmic character may be thrown at one or fall upon one at once, in bulk, so to say, or may be divided up into smaller pieces, the sum of which represents the whole mass of Karmic force. And so we see it in life. Men suffer through many years an amount of adverse Karma which, if it were to fall all at once, would crush them. Others for a long time have general good fortune that might unseat the reason if experienced in one day; and the latter happens also, for we know of those who have been destroyed by the sudden coming of what is called great good fortune.

This law is seen also in physics. A piece of glass may be broken at once by a single blow, or the same amount of force put into a number of taps continuously repeated will accomplish the same result and mash the glass. And with the emotions we observe the same law followed by even the most ignorant, for we do not tell bad news at once to the person who is the sufferer, but get at it slowly by degrees; and often when disaster is suddenly heard of, the person who hears it is prostrated. In both cases the sorrow caused is the same, but the method of imparting the news differs. Indeed, in whatever direction we look, this law is observed to work. It is universal, and it ought to be applied to Karma as well as to anything else.

Whether the life we are now living is the net result of the one just preceding is answered by Patanjali in his 8th and 9th aphorisms, Book IV.

"From these works there results, in every incarnation, a manifestation of only those mental deposits which can come to fructification in the environment provided. Although the manifestation of mental deposits may be intercepted by unsuitable environments, differing as to class, place, and time, there is an immediate relation between them, because the memory and the train of self-reproductive thought are identical," and also by other doctrines of the ancients. When a body is taken up, only that sort of Karma which can operate through it will make itself felt. This is what Patanjali means. The "environment" is the body, with the mind, the plastic nature, and the emotions and desires. Hence one may have been great or the reverse in the preceding life, and now have only the environment which will serve for the exhaustion of some Karma left over from lives many incarnations distant. This unexhausted Karma is known as stored-up Karma. It may or may not come into operation now, and it can also be brought out into view by violent effort of the mind leading to such changes as to alter the bodily apparatus and make it equivalent to a new body. But as the majority of men are lazy of mind and nature, they suffer themselves to run with the great family or national stream, and so through one life make no changes of this inner nature. Karma in their cases operates through what Patanjali calls "mental deposits." These are the net results stored from each life by Manas. For as body dies, taking brain with it, there can be no storage there nor means of connecting with the next earth-life; the division known as Kama is dissipated or purged away together with astral body at some time before rebirth; astral body retains nothing--as a general rule for the new life, and the value or summation of those skandhas which belong to Kama is concentrated and deposited in Manas or the mind. So, when the immortal being returns, he is really Manas-Buddhi-Atma seeking a new environment which is found in a new body, prana, Kama, and astral double. Hence, and because under the sway of cyclic law, the reincarnation can only furnish an engine of a horsepower, so to say, which is very much lower than the potential energies stored in Manas, and thus there remain unexhausted "mental deposits," or unexhausted Karma. The Ego may therefore be expending a certain line of Karma, always bringing it to similar environments until that class of Karma shall be so exhausted or weakened as to permit another set of "mental deposits" to preponderate, whereupon the next incarnation will be in a different environment which shall give opportunity for the new set of deposits to bring about new or different Karma.

The object that is indicated for life by all this is, to so live and think during each life as to generate no new Karma, or cause for bondage, while one is working off the stock in hand, in order that on closing each life-account one shall have wiped off so much as that permits. The old "mental deposits" will thus gradually move up into action and exhaustion from life to life, at last leaving the man in a condition where he can master all and step into true consciousness, prepared to renounce final reward in order that he may remain with humanity, making no new Karma himself and helping others along the steep road to perfection.

EUSEBIO URBAN
Path, August, 1892

THREE GREAT IDEAS

AMONG many ideas brought forward through the theosophical movement there are three which should never be lost sight of. Not speech, but thought, really rules the world; so, if these three ideas are good let them be rescued again and again from oblivion.

The first idea is, that there is a great Cause - in the sense of an enterprise - called the Cause of Sublime Perfection and Human Brotherhood. This rests upon the essential unity of the whole human family, and is a possibility because sublimity in perfectness and actual realization of brotherhood on every plane of being are one and the same thing. All efforts by Rosicrucian, Mystic, Mason and Initiate are efforts toward the convocation in the hearts and minds of men of the Order of Sublime Perfection.

The second idea is, that man is a being Who may be raised up to perfection, to the stature of the Godhead, because he himself is God incarnate. This noble doctrine was in the mind of Jesus, no doubt, when he said that we must be perfect even as is the father in heaven. This is the idea of human perfectibility. It will destroy the awful theory of inherent original sin which has held and ground down the western Christian nations for centuries.

The third idea is the illustration, the proof, the high result of the others. It is, that the Masters those who have reached up to what perfection this period of evolution and this solar system will allow are living, veritable facts, and not abstractions cold and distant. They are, as our old H. P. B. so often said, living men. And she said, too, that a shadow of woe would come to those who should say they were not living facts, who should assert that "the Masters descend not to this plane of ours." The Masters as living facts and high ideals will fill the soul with hope, will themselves help all who wish to raise the human race.

Let us not forget these three great ideas.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Irish Theosophist, February, 1895

THE THREE PLANES OF HUMAN LIFE
JAGRATA, SWAPNA, SUSHUPTI:

WAKING, DREAMING, DREAMLESS SLEEP

I SPEAK of ordinary men. The Adept, the Master, the Yogi, the Mahatma, the Buddha, each lives in more than three states while incarnated upon this world, and they are fully conscious of them all, while the ordinary man is only conscious of the first - the waking-life, as the word conscious is now understood.

Every theosophist who is in earnest ought to know the importance of these three states, and especially how essential it is that one should not lose in Swapna the memory of experiences in Sushupti, nor in Jagrata those of Swapna, and vice versa.

Jagrata, our waking state, is the one in which we must be regenerated; where we must come to a full consciousness of the Self within, for in no other is salvation possible.

When a man dies he goes either to the Supreme Condition from which no return against his will is possible, or to the other states - heaven, hell, avitchi, devachan, what not - from which return to incarnation is inevitable. But he cannot go to the Supreme State unless he has perfected and regenerated himself; unless the wonderful and shining heights on which the Masters stand have been reached while he is in a body. This consummation, so devoutly desired, cannot be secured unless at some period in his evolution the being takes the steps that lead to the final attainment. These steps can and must be taken. In the very first is contained the possibility of the last, for causes once put in motion eternally produce their natural results.

Among those steps are an acquaintance with and understanding of the three states first spoken of.

Jagrata acts on Swapna, producing dreams and suggestions, and either disturbs the instructions that come down from the higher state or aids the person through waking calmness and concentration which tend to lessen the distortions of the mental experiences of dream life. Swapna again in its turn acts on the waking state (Jagrata) by the good or bad suggestions made to him in dreams. All experience and all religions are full of proofs of this. In the fabled Garden of Eden the wily serpent whispered in the ear of the sleeping mortal to the end that when awake he should violate the command. In Job it is said that God instructeth man in sleep, in dreams, and in visions of the night. And the common introspective and dream life of the most ordinary people needs no proof. Many cases are within my knowledge where the man was led to commit acts against which his better nature rebelled, the suggestion for the act coming to him in dream. It was because the unholy state of his waking thoughts infected his dreams, and laid him open to evil influences. By natural action and reaction he poisoned both Jagrata and Swapna.

It is therefore our duty to purify and keep clear these two planes.

The third state common to all is Sushupti, which has been translated "dreamless sleep." The translation is inadequate, for, while it is dreamless, it is also a state in which even criminals commune through the higher nature with spiritual beings and enter into the spiritual plane. It is the great spiritual reservoir by means of which the tremendous momentum toward evil living is held in check. And because it is involuntary with them, it is constantly salutary in its effect.

In order to understand the subject better, it is well to consider a little in detail what happens when one falls asleep, has dreams, and then enters Sushupti. As his outer senses are dulled the brain begins to throw up images, the reproductions of waking acts and thoughts, and soon he is asleep. He has then entered a plane of experience which is as real as that just quitted, only that it is of a different sort. We may roughly divide this from the waking life by an imaginary partition on the one side, and from Sushupti by another partition on the other. In this region he wanders until he begins to rise beyond it into the higher. There no disturbances come from the brain action, and the being is a partaker to the extent his nature permits of the "banquet of the gods." But he has to return to waking state, and he can get back by no other road than the one he came upon, for, as Sushupti extends in every direction and Swapna under it also in every direction, there is no possibility of emerging at once from Sushupti into Jagrata. And this is true even though on returning no memory of any dream is retained.

Now the ordinary non-concentrated man, by reason of the want of focus due to multitudinous and confused thought, has put his Swapna field or state into confusion, and in passing through it the useful and elevating experiences of Sushupti become mixed up and distorted, not resulting in the benefit to him as a waking person which is his right as well as his duty to have. Here again is seen the lasting effect, either prejudicial or the opposite, of the conduct and thoughts when awake.

So it appears, then, that what he should try to accomplish is such a clearing up and vivification of Swapna state as shall result in removing the confusion and distortion existing there, in order that upon emerging into waking life he may retain a wider and brighter memory of what occurred in Sushupti. This is done by an increase of concentration upon high thoughts, upon noble purposes, upon all that is best and most spiritual in him while awake. The best result cannot be accomplished in a week or a year, perhaps not in a life, but, once begun, it will lead to the perfection of spiritual cultivation in some incarnation hereafter.

By this course a centre of attraction is set up in him while awake, and to that all his energies flow, so that it may be figured to ourselves as a focus in the waking man. To this focal point-looking at it from that plane - converge the rays from the whole waking man toward Swapna, carrying him into dream - state with greater clearness. By reaction this creates another focus in Swapna, through which he can emerge into Sushupti in a collected condition. Returning he goes by means of these points through Swapna, and there, the confusion being lessened, he enters into his usual waking state the possessor, to some extent at least, of the benefits and knowledge of Sushupti. The difference between the man who is not concentrated and the one who is, consists in this, that the first passes from one state to the other through the imaginary partitions postulated above, just as sand does through a sieve, while the concentrated man passes from one to the other similarly to water through a pipe or the rays of the sun through a lens. In the first case each stream of sand is a different experience, a different set of confused and irregular thoughts, whereas the collected man goes and returns the owner of regular and clear experience.

These thoughts are not intended to be exhaustive, but so far as they go it is believed they are correct. The subject is one of enormous extent as well as great importance, and theosophists are urged to purify, elevate, and concentrate the thoughts and acts of their waking hours so that they shall not continually and aimlessly, night after night and day succeeding day, go into and return from these natural and wisely appointed states, no wiser, no better able to help their fellow men. For by this way, as by the spider's small thread, we may gain the free space of spiritual life.

EUSEBIO URBAN
Path, August, 1888

TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS

IS there any foundation for the doctrine of transmigration of souls which was once believed in and is now held by some classes of Hindus?" is a question sent to the PATH.

From a careful examination of the Vedas and Upanishads it will be found that the ancient Hindus did not believe in this doctrine, but held, as so many theosophists do, that "once a man, always a man," but of course there is the exception of the case where men live bad lives persistently for ages. But it also seems very clear that the later Brahmins, for the purpose of having a priestly hold on the people or for other purposes, taught them the doctrine that they and their parents might go after death into the bodies of animals, but I doubt if the theory is held to such an extent as to make it a national doctrine. Some missionaries and travelers have hastily concluded that it is the belief because they saw the Hindu and the Jain alike acting very carefully as to animals and insects, avoiding them in the path, carefully brushing insects out of the way at a great loss of time, so as to not step on them. This, said the missionary, is because they think that in these forms their dead friends or relatives may be living.

The real reason for such care is that they think they have no right to destroy life which it is not in their power to restore. While I have some views on the subject of transmigration of a certain sort that I am not now disposed to disclose, I may be allowed to give others on the question "How might such an idea arise out of the true doctrine?"

First, what is the fate of the astral body, and in what way and how much does that affect the next incarnation of the man? Second, what influence has man on the atoms, millions in number, which from year to year enter into the composition of his body, and how far is he--the soul--responsible for those effects and answerable for them in a subsequent life of joy or sorrow or opportunity or obscurity? These are important questions.

The student of the theosophic scheme admits that after death the astral soul either dies and dissipates at once, or remains wandering for a space in Kama Loca. If the man was spiritual, or what is sometimes called "very good," then his astral soul dissipates soon; if he was wicked and material, then the astral part of him, being too gross to easily disintegrate, is condemned, as it were, to flit about in Kama Loca, manifesting itself in spiritualistic séance rooms as the spirit of some deceased one, and doing damage to the mental furniture of mortals while it suffers other pains itself. Seers of modem times have declared that such eidolons or spooks assume the appearance of beasts or reptiles according to their dominant characteristics. The ancients sometimes taught that these gross astral forms, having a natural affinity for the lower types, such as the animal kingdom, gravitated gradually in that direction and were at last absorbed on the astral plane of animals, for which they furnished the sidereal particles needed by them as well as by man. But this in no sense meant that the man himself went into an animal, for before this result had eventuated the ego might have already re-entered life with a new physical and astral body. The common people, however, could not make these distinctions, and so very easily held the doctrine as meaning that the man became an animal. After a time the priests and seers took up this form of the tenet and taught it outright. It can be found in the Desatir, where it is said that tigers and other ferocious animals are incarnations of wicked men, and so on. But it must be true that each man is responsible and accountable for the fate of his astral body left behind at death, since that fate results directly from the mans own acts and life.

Considering the question of the atoms in their march along the path of evolution, another cause for a belief wrongly held in transmigration into lower forms can be found. The initiates could teach and thoroughly understand how it is that each ego is responsible for the use he makes of the atoms in space, and how each may and does imprint a definite character and direction upon all the atoms used throughout life, but the uninitiated just as easily would misinterpret this also and think it referred to transmigration. Each man has a duty not only to himself but also to the atoms in use. He is the great, the highest educator of them. Being each instant in possession of some, and likewise ever throwing them off, he should so live that they gain a fresh impulse to the higher life of man as compared with the brute. This impress and impulse given by us either confer an affinity for human bodies and brains, or for that which, corresponding to brutal lives and base passions, belongs to the lower kingdoms. So the teachers inculcated this, and said that if the disciple lived a wicked life his atoms would be precipitated down instead of up in this relative scale. If he was dull and inattentive, the atoms similarly impressed traveled into sticks and stones. In each case they to some extent represented the man, just as our surroundings, furniture, and clothing generally represent us who collect and use them. So from both these true tenets the people might at last come to believe in transmigration as being a convenient and easy way of formulating the problem and of indicating a rule of conduct.

HADJI

Path, March, 1891

TRUE PROGRESS
IS IT AIDED BY WATCHING THE ASTRAL LIGHT?

PERHAPS those who have engaged in discussions about whether it is more advisable to become acquainted with the Astral Plane and to see therein than to study the metaphysics and ethics of theosophy, may be aided by the experience of a fellow student. For several years I studied about and experimented on the Astral Light to the end that I might, if possible, develop the power to look therein and see those marvelous pictures of that place which tempt the observer. But although in some degrees success followed my efforts so far as seeing these strange things was concerned, I found no increase of knowledge as to the manner in which the pictures were made visible, nor as to the sources from which they arose. A great many facts were in my possession, but the more I accumulated the farther away from perception seemed the law governing them. I turned to a teacher and he said:

"Beware of the illusions of matter."

"But," said I, "is this matter into which I gaze?"

"Yes; and of grosser sort than that which composes your body; full of illusions, swarming with beings inimical to progress, and crowded with the thoughts of all the wicked who have lived."

"How," replied I, "am I to know aught about it unless I investigate it?"

"It will be time enough to do that when you shall have been equipped properly for the exploration. He who ventures into a strange country unprovided with needful supplies, without a compass and unfamiliar with the habits of the people, is in danger. Examine and see."

Left thus to myself, I sought those who had dabbled in the Astral Light, who were accustomed to seeing the pictures therein every day, and asked them to explain. Not one had any theory, any philosophical basis. All were confused and at variance each with the other. Nearly all, too, were in hopeless ignorance as to other and vital questions. None were self-contained or dispassionate; moved by contrary winds of desire, each one appeared abnormal; for, while in possession of the power to see or hear in the Astral Light, there were unregulated in all other departments of their being. Still more, they seemed to be in a degree intoxicated with the strangeness of the power, for it placed them in that respect above other persons, yet in practical affairs left them without any ability.

Examining more closely, I found that all these "seers" were but half-seers-and hardly even that. One could hear astral sounds but could not see astral sights; another saw pictures, but no sound or smell was there; still others saw symbols only, and each derided the special power of the other. Turning even to the great Emanuel Swedenborg, I found a seer of wonderful power, but whose constitution made him see in the Astral world a series of pictures which were solely an extension of his own inherited beliefs. And although he had had a few visions of actual everyday affairs occurring at a distance, there were so few as only to be remarkable.

One danger warned against by the teacher was then plainly evident. It was the danger of becoming confused and clouded in mind by the recurrence of pictures which had no salutary effect so far as experience went. So again I sought the teacher and asked:

"Has the Astral Light no power to teach, and, if not, why is it thus? And are there other dangers than what I have discovered?"

"No power whatever has the astral plane, in itself, to teach you. It contains the impressions made by men in their ignorance and folly. Unable to arouse the true thoughts, they continue to infect that light with the virus of their unguided lives. And you, or any other seer, looking therein will warp and distort all that you find there. It will present to you pictures that partake largely of your own constitutional habits, weaknesses, and peculiarities. Thus you only see a distorted or exaggerated copy of yourself. It will never teach you the reason of things, for it knows them not.

"But stranger dangers than any you have met are there when one goes further on. The dweller of the threshold is there, made up of all the evil that man has done. None can escape its approach, and he who is not prepared is in danger of death, of despair, or of moral ruin. Devote yourself, therefore, to spiritual aspiration and to true devotion, which will be a means for you to learn the causes that operate in nature, how they work, and what each one works upon."

I then devoted myself as he had directed, and discovered that a philosophical basis, once acquired, showed clearly how to arrive at dispassion and made exercise therein easy. It even enables me to clear up the thousand doubts that assail those others who are peering into the Astral Light. They compelled the disciple to abjure all occult practices until such time as he had laid a sure foundation of logic, philosophy, and ethics; and only then was he permitted to go further in that strange country from which many an unprepared explorer has returned bereft of truth and sometimes despoiled of reason. Further, I know that the Masters of the Theosophical Society have written these words: "Let the Theosophical Society flourish through moral worth and philosophy, and give up the pursuit of phenomena." Shall we be greater than They, and ignorantly set the pace upon the path that leads to ruin?

BRYAN KINNAVAN

Path, July, 1890

THE TRUTH ABOUT EAST AND WEST

Mrs. Besant and others have joined together to try and show that I am attempting to create discord in the Theosophical Society between the East and West. In this case they seem to consider India as the East. I may say myself that I do not consider it the East alone. The charge is made publicly and privately, as well as in a set of resolutions offered by Mrs. Besant and passed at a meeting in India in December. It is based on the fact that in a circular issued by me privately in the E.S.T., I stated the fact that the spiritual crest, the center, of the wave of evolution is in the West and not in the East. A mere sentimental desire to preserve an apparent but not actual peace among the officials of the T. S. has no power to prevent me from stating facts and bringing forward ideas which are of the highest importance to the human family and to the right progress of that part of the Theosophical movement represented by the T. S. The attempt to create discord is on the side of those who take up, for personal ends only, my statement as to the relative position of the East and West - a statement supported by facts, and given also to me by the Masters, who know. This cry against me of fomenting discord is due also to a limited knowledge of the evolutionary wave and tendency, to a mere craze about India, and also to a narrow view of what is included in the term "East."

Of course I must say in the very beginning that if we deny H. P. Blavatsky had any knowledge on this matter and deny that she has brought from the Masters definite statements relating to some matters connected with it which are greatly beyond our knowledge; if we intend to reduce her to the position of an untrained and irresponsible psychic; if it is our purpose to accept her reports of what Masters say only when those agree with our preconceived notions; then of course there will only be a continual and unsettled dispute, inflaming sectional and race feelings, and leading to nothing but strife. But those who exercise calm judgment and try to divest themselves of personal pride, whether natural or acquired, in respect to any race or country; those who are not afraid to look at facts will be able to view this matter in such a way as to see that no discord should arise, and certainly that it is not intended by me to create any.

THE EAST NOT INDIA

Let us once for all give up the notion that the East is India. India is but a small part of it. There are China, Japan, Persia, Arabia, Turkey, Russia in Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Ceylon, and other parts. Tibet is a large country, and the place where it was constantly said by H.P.B. the Masters are, if anywhere. India has been regarded carelessly as "the East" among Theosophists, because it is under English rule and hence more heard of than other parts. Were Tibet open and under English or French rule, we would speak of it as the East quite as much as, if not more than, we have done of India.

And when we examine into what, if anything, India has done for the great East of which she is a part, we find that for hundreds of years she has done nothing whatever, and apparently has no intention of doing anything. Her dominant religion - Brahmanism - is crystallized and allows for no propaganda. Other nations may die in their sins, unless, perchance, they are fortunate enough to be born among the Brahmans for good conduct.

THE MASTERS AND INDIA

Mrs. Besant has referred to the sayings of the Masters about India to support her assertion that I am trying for discord. Let us refer to the published record which is in The Occult World, by Mr. Sinnett, where K. H. says what I quote:

I had come for a few days, but now find that I myself cannot endure for any length of time the stifling magnetism even of my own countrymen. [Italics mine. -J.] I have seen some of our proud old Sikhs drunk and staggering over the marble pavement of their sacred temple. . . . I turn my face homeward tomorrow (p. 120-121)

Imagine, then, that since we are all convinced that the degradation of India is largely due to the suffocation of her ancient spirituality. . . . But you know, as any man who has read history, that patriots may burst their hearts in vain if circumstances are against them. Sometimes it has happened that no human power, not even the fury and force of the loftiest patriotism, has been able to bend an iron destiny aside from its fixed course, and nations have gone out like torches dropped into the water in the engulfing blackness of ruin. Thus, we who have the sense of our country's fall, though not the power to lift her up at once, cannot do as we would. . . .(p. 126).

The present tendency of education is to make them (Hindus) materialistic and to root out spirituality. With a proper understanding of what their ancestors meant by their writings, education would become a blessing, whereas it is now often a curse (p. 136).

He finds the magnetism of his countrymen too stifling to be borne; asserts that India is spiritually degraded; hints that her destiny is to go out "in the engulfing blackness of ruin," unless she is raised up, which would arouse a doubt as to her ability to uplift any other nation. It also explains why she has not, for so many centuries, done anything to help other countries. He says the Hindus are getting materialistic - referring to those who take English education - and ends by declaring himself a follower of his Patron Buddha. The Letter to Some Brahmans, published in the PATH, enforces the point about Buddhism, and also shows how dense is the surrounding aura of those Brahmans who are strictly orthodox, and how much easier it is for the Adepts to affect the Westerners than the Hindus. And if the wall around the educated Brahman is impenetrable, how much more so is that surrounding the mass of ignorant, superstitious people who take their religion from the Brahman? The spiritual degradation of India to which the Master referred is an indisputable fact. The great majority of Brahmans are theologically and metaphysically as fixed and dogmatic as the Romish Church; they also keep up idol-worship and a great number of degrading caste observances. The poor, uneducated, common people, forming the core of the Hindu population, are gentle, it is true, but they are ignorant and superstitious. Their superstitions are theological; the Brahman fosters this. The other class, consisting of those who take up English, have lost faith and are, as the Master wrote, materialized.

This is Master's picture. It is also the actual picture. Now where is the wrong in knowing the fact, and in asserting that such an India of today, no matter how glorious it may have been 10,000 years ago, is not the teacher of the West. Rather is it that the West is to lead the reform and raise up the fallen country with all others.

THE WEST'S MATERIAL POWER

India, Tibet, and other Eastern countries cannot draw, fix, and hold the attention of the civilized world. Their position is negative or imitative. But the Western nations are the conquerors who compel attention, first perhaps by arms, but at last by triumphs of science and industry. It is through the West's material power that our mental horizon has been enlarged by a knowledge of other nations, of their literature, their ancient philosophy, and their religion. Had we waited for them to give us this, we never would have obtained it.

THEOSOPHY A WESTERN PLANT

The Theosophical movement was founded and flourishes in the West preëminently and under Western influence. It began in America, farthest West, started there by the Masters. A very pertinent question here is, why it was not begun in India if that country is the one of all we are to look to? Very evidently the beginning was made so far West because, as so often stated by H.P.B., the next new race is to appear in the Americas, where already preparations in nature for the event are going on. This means that the centre, the top, the force of the cyclic wave of evolution is in the West - including Europe and America - and all the observable facts support the contention.

This evolutionary wave is not a mere theoretical thing, but is a mass of revolving energy composed of human egos from all the ancient ages of the past. It cannot be stopped; it should not be hindered in any way. This is what makes the importance of the West. The Masters work scientifically, and not sentimentally or by hysterical impulse. Hence they take advantage of such a cyclic wave, well knowing that to have begun in the East would have been child's play. They desired, one can see by viewing the history and the words from them of the last twenty years, the new and growing West to take from all the East whatever philosophy and metaphysics were needed; to assimilate them, to put them into practice; to change the whole social and economic order; and then react back, compulsorily, upon the East for its good and uplifting.

We have had an accentuation of India in the T. S. just because this movement is a Western one and also an English-language movement. It is heard of in India precisely because the English conqueror is there with his language, which the lawyer, the government servant, and many merchants must know if they wish to get on. If, on the other hand, Russian were the governmental language of India, not much of this movement would ever have been there. So the T. S. movement is in India slightly - in proportion to population almost microscopically - because some English prevails there; it is in Europe in English; to a slight extent in other languages. But it cannot yet reach the masses of France, Germany, Spain, Russia, because of the languages. But while America has only sixty million or so of people, it already pays more attention to Theosophy than any other nation, because, although made up of all nations, it has English as its tongue for law, government, business, and social life.

If, as some experts say, the United States' population doubles every twenty-five years, then in a quarter of a century it will have over 120,000,000 people, and probably 1,920,000,000 in a century. All these will speak English or its derived future language.

Now in the face of all these facts, and of many more which could be brought forward, where is the brotherliness, the Theosophy, the truth in starting against me a charge that I wish or try to set the East and West against each other? If in India are Initiates - which H.P.B. often denied, if there is the highest spiritual wisdom, why so many Hindus trying to reform it; why so many Hindus at the feet of H.P.B. asking for truth and how to find the Master; why so many Hindus in the E.S.T. for the purpose of getting teaching from Westerners? The answers are easy. Let those who are not carried away by a mere name, who can calmly examine facts, see that the West is the advancing conqueror of human destiny; that the Eastern lands, both India and other places, are storehouses for the world, holding from the past treasures that the West alone can make avail of and teach the East how to use. Let sectional jealousy cease, and let us all be careful that we do not inject into the mental sphere of the Theosophical Society any ideas, arising from sentiment or from insufficient reflection, which might become a hindrance, however slight, to the evolutionary impulse, or which might tend concretely to limit the expansion of the great work begun by H.P.B. To create such a hindrance is an act, the gravity of which, though it may be not appreciated, is nevertheless very great.

It is the destiny of the West to raise the East from its darkness, superstition, and ignorance, to save the world; it is its destiny to send Theosophical principles, literature, and teachers into even such a remote land as Tibet, whose language we as yet can scarcely learn.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, April, 1895

TWO LOST KEYS

THE BHAVAGAD-GITA - THE ZODIAC

It has never been admitted by orientalists that there existed a key to the Bhagavad-Gita, other than a knowledge of the Sanskrit language in which it is written. Hence our European translators of the poem have given but its philosophical aspect.

But it is believed by many students of theosophy - among them such an authority as H. P. Blavatsky - that there are several keys to the noble poem, and that they have been for the time lost to the world. There has been no loss of them in the absolute sense, since they are preserved intact in many rolls and books made of polished stones hidden and guarded in certain underground temples in the East, the location of which would not be divulged by those who know. No search has been made by the profane for these wonderful books, because there is no belief in their existence; and for the sincere student who can project his mental sight in the right direction, there is no need for such discovery of the mere outward form in which those keys are kept.

There is also a key for the Zodiac. The modern astrologers and astronomers have lifted up their puny voices to declare regarding the probable origin of the Zodiac, giving a very commonplace explanation, and some going so far as to speak of the supposed author of it, not that they have named him or given him a distinct place in history, but only referred to the unknown individual. It is very much to be doubted if these modern star-gazers would have been able to construct anything whatever in the way of a Zodiac, had they not had this immemorial arrangement of signs ready to hand.

The Bhagavad-Gita and the Zodiac, while differing so much from each other in that the one is a book and the other the sun's path in the heavens, are two great storehouses of knowledge which may be construed after the same method. It is very true that the former is now in book shape, but that is only because the necessities of study under conditions which have prevailed for some thousands of years require it, but it exists in the ideal world imbedded in the evolutionary history of the human race. Were all copies of it destroyed tomorrow, the materials for their reconstruction are near at hand and could be regathered by those sages who know the realities underlying all appearances. And in the same way the Zodiac could be regathered by those sages who know the realities underlying all appearances. And in the same way the Zodiac could be made over again by the same sages - not, however, by our modern astronomers. The latter no doubt would be able to construct a path of the sun with certain classifications of stars thereon, but it would not be the Zodiac; it would bear but little relation to the great cosmic and microcosmic periods and events which that path really has. They would not apply it as it is found used in old and new almanacs to the individual human being, for they do not know that it can in any way be so connected, since their system hardly admits any actual sympathy between man and the Zodiac, not yet having come to know that man is himself a zodiacal highway through which his own particular sun makes a circuit.

Considering how laughable in the eyes of the highly-educated scientific person of today the singular figures and arrangement of the Zodiac are, it is strange that they have not long ago abolished it all. But they seem unable to do so. For some mysterious reason the almanacs still contain the old signs, and the moon's periods continue to be referred to these ancient figures. Indeed, modern astronomers still use the old symbology, and give to each new asteroid a symbol precisely in line with the ancient zodiacal marks so familiar to us. They could not abolish them, were the effort to be made.

The student of the Bhagavad-Gita soon begins to feel that there is somewhere a key to the poem, something that will open up clearly the vague thoughts of greater meanings which constantly rise in his mind. After a while he is able to see that in a philosophical and devotional sense the verses are full of meaning, but under it all there runs a deep suggestiveness of some other and grander sweep for its words. This is what the lost key will reveal.

But who has that key or where it is hidden is not yet revealed, for it is said by those who know the Brotherhood that man is not yet in the mass ready for the full explanation to be put into his hands. For the present it is enough for the student to study the path to devotion, which, when found, will lead to that belonging to knowledge.

And so of the Zodiac. As our acquaintance, through devotion and endeavor, with the journey of our own sun through our own human zodiac grows better, we will learn the meaning of the great pilgrimage of the earthly luminary. For it is impossible in this study to learn a little of ourselves without knowing more of the great system of which we are a copy.

For Atmân is the sun,
The moon also it is;
And the whole collection of stars
Is contained within it.

WILLIAM BREHON, F.T.S.

Path, August, 1890

UNIVERSAL APPLICATIONS OF DOCTRINE

DURING the last few years in which so much writing has been done in the theosophical field of effort, a failure to make broad or universal applications of the doctrines brought forward can be noticed. With the exception of H. P. Blavatsky, our writers have confined themselves to narrow views, chiefly as to the state of man after death or how Karma affects him in life. As to the latter law, the greatest consideration has been devoted to deciding how it modifies our pleasure or our pain, and then as to whether in Devachan there will be compensation for failures of Karma; while others write upon reincarnation as if only mankind were subject to that law. And the same limited treatment is adopted in treating of or practicing many other theories and doctrines of the Wisdom Religion. After fourteen years of activity it is now time that the members of our society should make universal the application of each and every admitted doctrine or precept, and not confine them to their own selfish selves.

In order to make my meaning clear I purpose in this paper to attempt an outline of how such universal applications of some of our doctrines should be made.

Before taking up any of these I would draw the attention of those who believe in the Upanishads to the constant insistence throughout those sacred books upon the identity of man with Brahma, or God, or nature, and to the universal application of all doctrines or laws.

In Brihadaranyaka Upanishad(1) it is said:

Tell me the Brahman which is visible, not invisible, the atman who is within all?

This, thy Self who is within all. . . . He who breathes in the up-breathing, he is thy Self and within all. He who breathes in the down-breathing, he is thy Self and within all. He who breathes in the on-breathing, he is thy Self and within all. This is thy Self who is within all.

The 6th Brahmana is devoted to showing that all the worlds are woven in and within each other; and in the 7th the teacher declares that "the puller" or mover in all things whatsoever is the same Self which is in each man.

The questioners then proceed and draw forth the statement that "what is above the heavens, beneath the earth, embracing heaven and earth, past, present, and future, that is woven, like warp and woof, in the ether," and that the ether is "woven like warp and woof in the Imperishable." If this be so, then any law that affects man must govern every portion of the universe in which he lives.

And we find these sturdy men of old applying their doctrines in every direction. They use the laws of analogy and correspondences to solve deep questions. Why need we be behind them? If the entire great Self dwells in man, the body in all its parts must symbolize the greater world about. So we discover that space having sound as its distinguishing characteristic is figured in the human frame by the ear, as fire is by the eye, and, again, the eye showing forth the soul, for the soul alone conquers death, and that which in the Upanishads conquers death is fire.

It is possible in this manner to proceed steadily toward the acquirement of a knowledge of the laws of nature, not only those that are recondite, but also the more easily perceived. If we grant that the human body and organs are a figure, in little, of the universe, then let us ask the question, "By what is the astral light symbolized?" By the eye, and specially by the retina and its mode of action. On the astral light are received the pictures of all events and things, and on the retina are received the images of objects passing before the man. We find that these images on the retina remain for a specific period, capable of measurement, going through certain changes before fading completely away. Let us extend the result of this observation to the astral light, and we assume that it also goes through similar changes in respect to the pictures. From this it follows that the mass or totality of pictures made during any cycle must, in this great retina, have a period at the end of which they will have faded away. Such we find is the law as stated by those who know the Secret Doctrine. In order to arrive at the figures with which to represent this period, we have to calculate the proportion thus: as the time of fading from the human retina is to the healthy mans actual due of life, so is the time of fading from the astral light. The missing term may be discovered by working upon the doctrine of the four yugas or ages and the length of one life of Brahma.

Now these theosophical doctrines which we have been at such pains to elaborate during all the years of our history are either capable of universal application or they are not. If they are not, then they are hardly worth the trouble we have bestowed upon them; and it would then have been much better for us had we devoted ourselves to some special departments of science.

But the great allurement that theosophy holds for those who follow it is that its doctrines are universal, solving all questions and applying to every department of nature so far as we know it. And advanced students declare that the same universal application prevails in regions far beyond the grasp of present science or of the average mans mind. So that, if a supposed law or application is formulated to us, either by ourselves or by some other person, we are at once able to prove it; for unless it can be applied in every direction--by correspondence, or is found to be one of the phases of some previously-admitted doctrine, we know that it is false doctrine or inaccurately stated. Thus all our doctrines can be proved and checked at every step. It is not necessary for us to have constant communications with the Adepts in order to make sure of our ground; all that we have to do is to see if any position we assume agrees with well-known principles already formulated and understood.

Bearing this in mind, we can confidently proceed to examine the great ideas in which so many of us believe, with a view of seeing how they may be applied in every direction. For if, instead of selfishly considering these laws in their effect upon our miserable selves, we ask how they apply everywhere, a means is furnished for the broadening of our horizon and the elimination of selfishness. And when also we apply the doctrines to all our acts and to all parts of the human being, we may begin to wake ourselves up to the real task set before us.

Let us look at Karma. It must be applied not only to the man but also to the Cosmos, to the globe upon which he lives. You know that, for the want of an English word, the period of one great day of evolution is called a Manwantara, or the reign of one Manu. These eternally succeed each other. In other words, each one of us is a unit, or a cell, if you please. in the great body or being of Manu, and just as we see ourselves making Karma and reincarnating for the purpose of carrying off Karma, so the great being Manu dies at the end of a Manwantara, and after the period of rest reincarnates once more. the sum total of all that we have made him or it. And when I say "we," I mean all the beings on whatever plane or planet who are included in that Manwantara. Therefore this Manwantara is just exactly what the last Manwantara made it, and so the next Manwantara after this millions of years off-- will be the sum or result of this one, plus all that have preceded it.

How much have you thought upon the effect of Karma upon the animals, the plants, the minerals, the elemental beings? Have you been so selfish as to suppose that they are not affected by you? Is it true that man himself has no responsibility upon him for the vast numbers of ferocious and noxious animals, for the deadly serpents and scorpions, the devastating lions and tigers, that make a howling wilderness of some corners of the earth and terrorize the people of India and elsewhere? It cannot be true. But as the Apostle of the Christians said, it is true that the whole of creation waits upon man and groans that he keeps back the enlightenment of all. What happens when, with intention, you crush out the life of a common croton bug? Well, it is destroyed and you forget it. But you brought it to an untimely end, short though its life would have been. Imagine this being done at hundreds of thousands of places in the State. Each of these little creatures had life and energy; each some degree of intelligence. The sum total of the effects of all these deaths of small things must be appreciable. If not, then our doctrines are wrong and there is no wrong in putting out the life of a human being.

Let us go a little higher, to the bird kingdom and that of four-footed beasts. Every day in the shooting season in England vast quantities of birds are killed for sport, and in other places such intelligent and inoffensive animals as deer. These have a higher intelligence than insects, a wider scope of feeling. Is there no effect under Karma for all these deaths? And what is the difference between wantonly killing a deer and murdering an idiot? Very little to my mind. Why is it, then, that even delicate ladies will enjoy the recital of a bird or deer hunt? It is their Karma that they are the descendants of long generations of Europeans who some centuries ago, with the aid of the church, decided that animals had no souls and therefore could be wantonly slaughtered. The same Karma permits the grandson of the Queen of England who calls herself the defender of the faith--of Jesus--to have great preparations made for his forth-coming visit to India to the end that he shall enjoy several weeks of tiger-hunting, pig-sticking, and the destruction of any and every bird that may fly in his way.

We therefore find ourselves ground down by the Karma of our national stem, so that we are really almost unable to tell what thoughts are the counterfeit presentments of the thoughts of our forefathers, and what self-born in our own minds.

Let us now look at Reincarnation, Devachan, and Karma.

It has been the custom of theosophists to think upon these subjects in respect only to the whole man--that is to say, respecting the ego.

But what of its hourly and daily application? If we believe in the doctrine of the One Life, then every cell in these material bodies must be governed by the same laws. Each cell must be a life and have its karma, devachan, and reincarnation. Everyone of these cells upon incarnating among the others in our frame must be affected by the character of those it meets; and we make that character. Every thought upon reaching its period dies. It is soon reborn, and coming back from its devachan it finds either bad or good companions provided for it. Therefore every hour of life is fraught with danger or with help. How can it be possible that a few hours a week devoted to theosophic thought and action can counteract-- even in the gross material cells the effect of nearly a whole week spent in indifference, frivolity, or selfishness? This mass of poor or bad thought will form a resistless tide that shall sweep away all your good resolves at the first opportunity.

This will explain why devoted students often fail. They have waited for a particular hour or day to try their strength, and when the hour came they had none. If it was anger they had resolved to conquer, instead of trying to conquer it at an offered opportunity they ran away from the chance so as to escape the trial; or they did not meet the hourly small trials that would, if successfully passed, have given them a great reserve of strength, so that no time of greater trial would have been able to overcome them.

Now as to the theory of the evolution of the macrocosm in its application to the microcosm, man.

The hermetic philosophy held that man is a copy of the greater universe; that he is a little universe in himself, governed by the same laws as the great one, and in the small proportions of a human being showing all those greater laws in operation, only reduced in time or sweep. This is the rule to which H. P. Blavatsky adheres, and which is found running through all the ancient mysteries and initiations. It is said that our universe is a collection of atoms or molecules--called also "lives"; living together and through each the spirit struggles to reach consciousness, and that this struggle is governed by a law compelling it to go on in or between periods. In any period of such struggle some of these atoms or collections of molecules are left over, as it were, to renew the battle in the next period, and hence the state of the universe at any time of manifestation or the state of each newly-manifested universe--must be the result of what was done in the preceding period.

Coming down to the man, we find that he is a collection of molecules or lives or cells, each striving with the other, and all affected for either good or bad results by the spiritual aspirations or want of them in the man who is the guide or god, so to say, of his little universe. When he is born, the molecules or cells or lives that are to compose his physical and astral forms are from that moment under his reign, and during the period of his smaller life they pass through a small manvantara just as the lives in the universe do, and when he dies he leaves them all impressed with the force and color of his thoughts and aspirations, ready to be used in composing the houses of other egos.

Now here is a great responsibility revealed to us of a double character.

The first is for effects produced on and left in what we call matter in the molecules, when they come to be used by other egos, for they must act upon the latter for benefit or the reverse.

The second is for the effect on the molecules themselves in this, that there are lives or entities in all--or rather they are all lives--who are either aided or retarded in their evolution by reason of the proper or improper use man made of this matter that was placed in his charge.

Without stopping to argue about what matter is, it will be sufficient to state that it is held to be co-eternal with what is called "spirit." That is, as it is put in the Bhagavad-Gita: "He who is spirit is also matter." Or, in other words, spirit is the opposite pole to matter of the Absolute. But of course this matter we speak of is not what we see about us, for the latter is only in fact phenomena of matter: even science holds that we do not really see matter.

Now during a manvantara or period of manifestation, the egos incarnating must use over and over again in any world upon which they are incarnating the matter that belongs to it.

So, therefore, we are now using in our incarnations matter that has been used by ourselves and other egos over and over again, and are affected by the various tendencies impressed in it. And, similarly, we are leaving behind us for future races that which will help or embarrass them in their future lives.

This is a highly important matter, whether reincarnation be a true doctrine or not. For if each new nation is only a mass of new egos or souls, it must be much affected by the matter-environment left behind by nations and races that have disappeared forever.

But for us who believe in reincarnation it has additional force, showing us one strong reason why universal brotherhood should be believed in and practised.

The other branch of the responsibility is just as serious. The doctrine that removes death from the universe and declares that all is composed of innumerable lives, constantly changing places with each other, contains in it of necessity the theory that man himself is full of these lives and that all are traveling up the long road of evolution.

The secret doctrine holds that we are full of kingdoms of entities who depend upon us, so to say, for salvation.

How enormous, then, is this responsibility, that we not only are to be judged for what we do with ourselves as a whole, but also for what we do for those unseen beings who are dependent upon us for light.

W.Q.J.

Path, October, 1889

(1)111 Adh., 4th Brah.

UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD A FACT IN NATURE

I HAVE been requested to speak on the subject of Universal Brotherhood as a fact in nature; not as a theory, not as a Utopian dream which can never be realized; not as a fact in society, not as a fact in government, but as a fact in nature. That is, that Universal Brotherhood is an actual thing, whether it is recognized or whether it is not. Christian priests have claimed for some years, without right, that Christianity introduced the idea of Universal Brotherhood. The reason the claim was made, I suppose, was because those who made it did not know that other religions at other times had the same doctrine. It is found in the Buddhist scriptures, it is found in the Chinese books, it is found in the Parsee books, it is found everywhere in the history of the world, long before the first year of the Christian Era began. So it is not a special idea from the Christian Scriptures. Every nation, then, every civilization has brought forward this doctrine, and the facts of history show us that, more than at any other time, the last eighteen hundred years have seen this doctrine violated in society, in government, and in nations. So that at last men have come to say, "Universal Brotherhood is very beautiful; it is something that we all desire, but it is impossible to realize." With one word they declare the noble doctrine, and with the other they deny the possibility of its ever being realized.

Why is this the case? Why is it that although Christianity and other religions have brought forward this doctrine, it has been violated? We cannot deny that it has been. The history of even the last few years proves it. The history of the last forty years in America, without going any farther back, proves that this doctrine has been violated in the West. How could it have been a doctrine that the Americans believed in when they had slavery in their midst? How could it have been believed in by the French when they stretched out their hand and demanded of Siam, a weak and powerless nation, that it must give up to them its own property? How could it have been believed in by the Germans and French when they constructed engines of war and went into battle and destroyed each other by the thousand? Does not the American War of the Rebellion and the vast amount of treasure wasted and the thousands slain in that civil war prove conclusively that Universal Brotherhood has not been practiced? It has been professed but not practiced. Now, go further back, go back in the history of the nations in Europe, without going to any other country, and what do you find? Do you not find sectarian prejudice? Their view of Universal Brotherhood has for years prevented the progress of science. Is it not true that only since science became materialized--a most remarkable thing, but it is true--I insist that since then only science has made progress. If Universal Brotherhood had been a belief of this nation, then we would not have had the burning of witches in America; nor in other countries would we have had the burning of Catholics by Protestants, nor the burning of Protestants by Catholics; we would not have had the persecutions that have stained the pages of history; and yet we have always claimed that we have had Universal Brotherhood. We have had the theory but not the practice. Now, then, has there not been something wanting? It is a beautiful doctrine. It is the only doctrine of the Theosophical Society, the only thing that any man is asked by us to subscribe to. What, then, is the matter with it? Why so many men who say that it is beautiful, but it is impossible, simply impossible? There are even some branches of the Christian church which say, "There is Jesus; why, the altruistic, noble teachings of Christ are beautiful; but no State could live three months under such doctrine." The reason that it has not prevailed in practice is that it has been denied in the heart.

The Theosophist who knows anything about life insists that Universal Brotherhood is not a mere theory. It is a fact, a living ever present fact, from which no nation can hope to escape; no man can escape from it, and every man who violates it violates a law, violates the greatest law of nature, which will react upon him and make him suffer. And that is why we have had suffering; that is why you have in Chicago, in London, in New York, in Berlin, in all the great cities of the world, masses of people who are claiming with violence what they call their rights and saying they must have them, and that another class is oppressing them; and danger lurks in every corner because men are insisting on Universal Brotherhood. This noble doctrine has already become a danger. The reason of all these things is that men have denied the fact. Now, we propose to show you, if we can, that it is a fact.

If you will notice you will find that when it rains over a certain area vast numbers of men are affected similarly. The rain has to fall on the fields in order that the harvest may grow, so that afterwards it may be gathered, and all the farmers are affected together by the rain. If you examine society you will find that at the same hour every day almost all the people are doing exactly the same thing. At a certain hour in the morning thousands of your citizens are going down that railway or rush all together to catch the train and at another few moments afterward they are rushing out of the train to get to business, all doing the same thing, one common thought inspiring them. That is one of the proofs--a small one--in social and business life that they are affected together, they are all united. Then in the evening they will come home at the same hour, and if you could see, at the same hour you would see them all eating together and digesting together, and then later on they are all lying down together at the same hour. Are they not united even in their social life? Brothers even in that? And what do we see here in business? Lately I have felt it; every man has felt it, and many women; doubtless all have felt it; lately we have had a financial crisis, perhaps have it yet, in which dollars have been scarce, during which men have discovered that there are only just so many dollars and half dollars to each person in the country, and we have altogether been suffering from that panic all over this vast country. Suffering, why? Because commercially we are united and cannot get out of it. China even is affected by it, and Japan. India, they say, was the cause of it. Some men say the reason for this panic is that India put the price of rupees down, and we who produce so much silver began to feel it. I do not know that is the reason. But I think there is another cause. I think the American nation is so fond of luxury, so fond of fine clothes, so fond of having a heap of money, that it has gone too far and there was bound to come a reaction, because it is all united together with the whole world, and when it spread itself out too far the slightest touch broke the fabric. That is the reason, and that is another proof of Universal Brotherhood. We are all united, not only with each other here, but with the entire world.

Now, then, go further still materially and you find that all men are alike. We have the same sort of bodies, a little different perhaps in height, weight, and extension, but as human beings we are all alike, all the same color in one country, all the same shape in any country, so that as mere bodies of flesh they are united, they are the same. We know every man and woman has exuding from him or her what is called perspiration. The doctors will tell you there is a finer perspiration you cannot see, the invisible perspiration which goes out a short distance around about us; we know it comes out from every person, and the emanations of each person are affecting every other person, being interchanged always. All those in this room are being affected by these emanations and also by the ideas of each other, and the ideas of the speakers speaking to you. So it is in every direction; wherever you go, wherever you look, we are united; in whatever plane, the plane of mind as well as the plane of the body; the plane of the emotions, of the spirit, what not, we are all united, and it is a fact from which we cannot escape. Now, then, further: science is beginning to admit what the old Theosophists have always said, that there is going on every minute in every person a death, a dissolution, a disappearance. It used to be taught and thought in the West that we could see matter, that this table is made of matter. It is admitted today by your best scientific men in every part of Western civilization that you do not see matter at all; it is only the phenomena of matter we see; and it is my senses which enable me to perceive these phenomena. It is not matter at all, and so we do not see matter. Now admitting that, they go further and say there is a constant change in matter so-called; that is, this table is in motion. This is not a purely Theosophical theory. Go to any doctor of Physics and he will admit to you as I have stated it. This table is in motion; every molecule is separate from every other, and there is space between them, and they are moving. So it is with every man; he is made of atoms and they are in motion. Then how is it we remain the same size and weight nearly always from the moment of maturity until death? We eat tons of meat and vegetables but remain the same. It is not because of the things you have eaten. In addition to that the atoms are alive, constantly moving, coming and going from one person to another; and this is the modern doctrine today as well as it was the doctrine of ancient India. They call it the momentary dissolution of atoms; that is to say, to put it in another way, I am losing, all of you in this room are losing, a certain number of atoms, but they are being replaced by other atoms. Now, where do these other atoms come from? Do they not come from the people in this room? These atoms help to rebuild your body as well as does the food you eat. And we are exuding atoms from our minds, and we are receiving into ourselves the atoms other men have used. For, remember, science teaches you, and Theosophy has always insisted, that matter is invisible before it is turned into this combination of the life cycle, which makes it visible, makes it tangible to us. So these atoms leave us in a stream and rush into other people. And therefore the atoms of good men go into bad men, the atoms impressed by bad men go into good men, and vice versa. In that way as well as others we are affecting everybody in this world; and the people in Chicago who are living mean, selfish lives are impressing these invisible atoms with mean and selfish characters, and these mean and selfish atoms will be distributed by other men, and by you again to your and their detriment. That is another phase of Universal Brotherhood. It teaches us to be careful to see that we use and keep the atoms in our charge in such a condition that they shall benefit others to whom they shall go.

There is another view of Universal Brotherhood, and I don't pretend to exhaust the argument on this point, for I have not the time nor force to state all that is put forward in the Theosophical books and literature and thought. That is, that there is in this world an actual Universal Brotherhood of men and women, of souls, a brotherhood of beings who practice Universal Brotherhood by always trying to influence the souls of men for their good. I bring to you the message of these men; I bring to you the words of that brotherhood. Why will you longer call yourselves miserable men and women who are willing to go to a Heaven where you will do nothing? Do you not like to be gods? Do you not want to be gods? I hear some men say, "What, a god! Impossible!" Perhaps they do not like the responsibility. Why, when you get to that position you will understand the responsibility. This actual Brotherhood of living men says, Why, men of the West, why will you so long refuse to believe you are gods? We are your brothers and we are gods with you. Be then as gods! Believe that you are gods, and then, after experience and attainment, you will have a place consciously in the great Brotherhood which governs the entire world, but cannot go against the law. This great Brotherhood of living men, living souls, would, if they could, alter the face of civilization; they would, if they could, come down and make saints of every one of you; but evolution is the law and they cannot violate it; they must wait for you. And why will you so long be satisfied to believe that you are born in original sin and cannot escape? I do not believe in any such doctrine as that. I do not believe I was born in original sin. I believe that I am pretty bad, but that potentially I am a god, and I propose to take the inheritance if it is possible. For what purpose? So that I may help all the rest to do the same thing, for that is the law of Universal Brotherhood; and the Theosophical Society wishes to enforce it on the West, to make it see this great truth, that we are as gods, and are only prevented from being so in fact by our own insanity, ignorance, and fear to take the position.

So, then, we insist that Universal Brotherhood is a fact in nature. It is a fact for the lowest part of nature; for the animal kingdom, for the vegetable kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. We are all atoms, obeying the law together. Our denying it does not disprove it. It simply puts off the day of reward and keeps us miserable, poor, and selfish. Why, just think of it! If all in Chicago, in the United States, would act as Jesus has said, as Buddha has said, as Confucius said, as all the great ethical teachers of the world have said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," would there be any necessity for legal measures and policemen with clubs in this park as you had them the other day? No, I think there would be no necessity, and that is what one of this great Brotherhood has said. He said all the troubles of the world would disappear in a moment if men would only do one-quarter of what they could and what they ought. It is not God who is to damn you to death, to misery. It is yourself. And the Theosophical Society desires above all things, not that you should understand spiritualism, not that wonderful occult works should be performed, but to understand the constitution of matter and of Life as they are, which we can never understand but by practicing right ethics. Live with each other as brothers; for the misery and the trouble of the world are of more importance than all the scientific progress that may be imagined. I conclude by calling upon you by all that humanity holds dear to remember what I say, and whether Christians, Atheists, Jews, Pagans, Heathen, or Theosophists, try to practice Universal Brotherhood, which is the universal duty of all men.

NOTE--Address given by Wm.Q. Judge at the Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 1893.

UPANISHADS ON RE-BIRTH

Hence one whose fire is burned out is reborn through the tendencies in mind; according to his thoughts he enters life. But linked by the fire with the Self, this life leads to a world of recompense.--Prashna Upanishad.

Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.--Genesis.

THE above quotation from Prashna Upanishad gives the old doctrine, the same as in Buddhism, that re-birth is due to mind and to the tendencies therein. "Whose fire has burned out" means the fire of life expiring. "According to his thoughts" does not refer to what one wishes to have for rebirth, but to the seeds of thought left in the mind from the thinking of each hour of life; these in a mass make a tendency or many tendencies which on coming out either keep the soul to that family in all modes of thought and act or tend to segregate the soul from the circle into which it was born. "This life leads to a world of recompense," because by the fire of life it is linked to the Self, which being thus bound goes after death to the state where recompense is its portion. The alternation to and fro from one state to another for purposes of compensation is not the attainment of knowledge but the subjection to results eternally, unless the soul strives to find the truth and becomes free, and ceases to set up causes for future births.

A Jewish tradition says that Adam had to reincarnate as David and later as the Messiah; hence "to dust thou shalt return."

Path, February, 1894

WHAT IS THE UDGITHA?

JAMESTOWN April 16th, 1886

DEAR BROTHER: - Will you kindly explain, through THE PATH, what is to be understood by the Udgitha, or hymn of praise to Brahm? With best wishes for the success of your enterprise, I remain,

Fraternally yours,....................
L. J.........................................

This is a vital question. It may have arisen from the peculiarity of the word inquired about, or it may be that our brother really knows the importance of the point. We refer him to the article on OM in the April number. OM is the Udgitha, and OM has been explained in that article. Read between the lines; and read also the "Upanishad Notes" in this month's PATH.

In the Maitrayana-Brahmana-Upanishad, (Pr. VI), it is said:

The Udgitha, called Pranava, the leader, the bright, the sleepless, free from old age and death, three footed (waking, dream, and deep sleep), consisting of three letters and likewise to be known as fivefold, is placed in the cave of the heart.

This is the Self. Not the mere body or the faculties of the brain, but the Highest Self. And that must be meditated on, or worshipped, with a constant meditation. Hymn of praise, then, means that we accept the existence of that Self and aspire to or adore Him. Therefore, it is said again, in the same Upanishad:

In the beginning Brahman was all this. He was one, and infinite....The Highest Self is not to be fixed, he is unlimited, unborn, not to be reasoned about, not to be conceived. He is, like the ether, everywhere, and at the destruction of the Universe, he alone is awake. Thus from that ether he wakes all this world, which consists of (his) thought only, and by him alone is all this meditated on, and in him it is dissolved. His is that luminous form which shines in the sun, and the manifold light in the smokeless fire....He who is in the fire, and he who is in the heart, and he who is in the sun, they are one and the same. He who knows this becomes one with the One.

Now, "to know" this, does not mean to merely apprehend the statement, but actually become personally acquainted with it by interior experience. And this is difficult. But it is to be sought after. And the first step to it is the attempt to realize universal brotherhood, for when one becomes identified with the One, who is all, he "participates in the souls of all creatures"; surely then the first step in the path is universal brotherhood.

The hymn of praise to Brahm (which is Brahman) is the real object of this magazine, and of our existence. The hymn is used, in the sacrifice, when verbally expressed, and we can offer it in our daily existence, in each act, whether eating, sleeping, waking, or in any state. A man can hardly incorporate this idea in his being and not be spiritually and morally benefited.

But we cannot fully explain here, as it is to be constantly referred to in this magazine. - [Ed.]

Path, May, 1886

WHAT OUR SOCIETY NEEDS MOST

The first object of our Society is the formation of a nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood. This is a practical object and at the same time a fact in nature. It has been long regarded by the greater number of men as an Utopian ideal, one that might be held up, talked about, desired, but impossible of attainment. And it was no wonder that people so regarded it, because the ordinary religious view of God, nature, and man placed everything on a selfish basis, offered personal distinction in heaven to the saints who might die in the odor of sanctity, and thus made impossible the realization of this beautiful dream. But when the Theosophical philosophy shows that there is a unity among beings not only in their better natures but also on the physical plane, our first object becomes most practical. For if all men are brothers in fact, that is, joined one to another by a tie which no one can break, then the formation of the nucleus for the future brotherhood is something that has to do with all the affairs of man, affects civilizations, and leads to the physical as well as moral betterment of each member of the great family.

This first object means philanthropy. Each Theosophist should therefore not only continue his private or public acts of charity, but also strive to so understand Theosophical philosophy as to be able to expound it in a practical and easily understood manner, so that he may be a wider philanthropist by ministering to the needs of the inner man. This inner man is a thinking being who feeds upon a right or wrong philosophy. If he is given one which is wrong, then, becoming warped and diseased, he leads his instrument, the outer man, into bewilderment and sorrow.

Now as Theosophical theories were and are still quite strange, fascinating, and peculiar when contrasted with the usual doctrines of men and things, very many members have occupied themselves with much metaphysical speculation or with diving into the occult and the wonderful, forgetting that the higher philanthropy calls for a spreading among men of a right basis for ethics, for thought, for action. So we often find Theosophists among themselves debating complicated doctrines that have no present application to practical life, and at the same time other members and some enquirers breathing a sigh of relief when anyone directs the inquiries into such a channel as shall cause all the doctrines to be extended to daily life and there applied.

What we most need is such a Theosophical education as will give us the ability to expound Theosophy in a way to be understood by the ordinary person. This practical, clear exposition is entirely possible. That it is of the highest importance there can be no doubt whatever. It relates to and affects ethics, every day life, every thought, and consequently every act. The most learned, astute, and successful church, the Roman Catholic, proceeds on this basis. Should we refrain from a good practise because a bigot takes the same method? The priests of Rome do not explain, nor attempt to explain or expound, the highly metaphysical and obscure, though important, basis of their various doctrines. They touch the people in their daily life, a knowledge of their own system in all its details enabling them to put deep doctrine into every man's language, although the learning of the preacher may be temporarily concealed. With them the appeal is to fear; with us it is to reason and experience. So we have a natural advantage which ought not to be overlooked.

High scholarship and a knowledge of metaphysics are good things to have, but the mass of the people are neither scholars nor metaphysicians. If our doctrines are of any such use as to command the efforts of sages in helping on to their promulgation, then it must be that those sages - our Masters - desire the doctrines to be placed before as many of the mass as we can reach. This our Theosophical scholars and metaphysicians can do by a little effort. It is indeed a little difficult, because slightly disagreeable, for a member who is naturally metaphysical to come down to the ordinary level of human minds in general, but it can be done. And when one does do this, the reward is great from the evident relief and satisfaction of the enquirer.

It is pre-eminently our duty to be thus practical in exposition as often as possible. Intellectual study only of our Theosophy will not speedily better the world. It must, of course, have effect through immortal ideas once more set in motion, but while we are waiting for those ideas to bear fruit among men a revolution may break out and sweep us away. We should do as Buddha taught his disciples, preach, practise, promulgate, and illustrate our doctrines. He spoke to the meanest of men with effect, although having a deeper doctrine for greater and more learned minds. Let us, then, acquire the art of practical exposition of ethics based on our theories and enforced by the fact of Universal Brotherhood.

Path, September, 1892

WHAT THE MASTERS HAVE SAID

In 1888, speaking of Col. Olcott, an article in this magazine quoted from letters from the Adepts sent to Mr. Sinnett at a time some objections were made to the work of the Society on the ground that enough attention was not paid to men of science and to science itself. Since the year in which those letters were written many persons have joined the Theosophical Society and its sphere of work has greatly extended. And now no less than then, the workers have begun to pay too much attention to the intellectual side of Theosophy and too little to that phase on which the Masters who are behind insist and which is called by H.P.B. in The Voice of the Silence the "heart doctrine." Others also have said that they do not want any of the heart doctrine, but wish us to be highly respectable and scientific. Let us consult the Masters, those of us who believe in them.

When the letters to the Simla Lodge were written it was said by objecting Theosophists that it was time now to take a different tack and to work for men of science, and there was a slight suspicion of a repulsion between the Hindus, who are black, and the Europeans, as well as an openly expressed condemnation of the methods of Col. Olcott and H. P. Blavatsky. The reply from the Adepts, made after consultation with others very much higher still, runs in part:

No messenger of truth, no prophet, has ever achieved during his lifetime a complete triumph - not even Buddha. The Theosophical Society was chosen as the corner-stone, the foundation of the future religion of humanity. To achieve the proposed object a greater, wider, and especially a more benevolent intermingling of the high and the low, of the alpha and omega of society was determined on.

Who determined this? The Adepts and those who are yet still behind them, that is to say, for the Theosophist, the Dhyan Chohans who have control of such matters. Why was it decided? Because the world is sunk in sorrow and in selfishness which keeps the one side of society from helping the other. The letter goes on:

The white race must be the first to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the dark nations. This prospect may not smile to all alike. He is no Theosophist who objects to the principle... and it is we, the humble disciples of the perfect Lamas, who are expected to allow the Theosophical Society to drop its noblest title, The Brotherhood of Humanity, to become a simple school of philosophy. Let us understand each other. He who does not feel competent enough to grasp the noble idea sufficiently to work for it need not undertake a task too heavy for him.

The depth of the sarcasm here cannot be measured, and at the same time it is almost impossible to fully understand the opportunity pointed out in those words and the loss of progress one may suffer by not heeding them. They apply to all, and not merely to the persons they were written to, for the Masters always say what applies universally. The letter continues:

But there is hardly a Theosophist in the whole Society unable to effectually help it by correcting the erroneous impression of outsiders, if not by actually himself propagating this idea.

Later on, near the time when H.P.B. was in Germany, others came and asked what they might do, how they might work, and what "sphere of influence" they might find. The Master known as K. H. then wrote a letter to one, and at the same time sent copies with fuller notes on the communication to others. A part of that letter has lately been published in the German magazine, the Sphinx. In it the Master said among other things:

Spheres of influence can be found everywhere. The first object of the Theosophical Society is philanthropy. The true Theosophist is a philanthropist, who "Not for himself but for the world he lives." This, and philosophy, the right comprehension of life and its mysteries, will give the "necessary basis" and show the right path to pursue. Yet the best "sphere of influence" for the applicant is now in [his own land].

The reference to a basis and a sphere of influence is to the idea of those who held that a scientific or at least a very long preparation to get a basis and a sphere for work was needed first. But the answer shows the Adept as not agreeing, and as pointing out the way to work along the line of the heart doctrine. And some of the fuller notes annexed to the copy of this letter sent at the same time to others read:

My reference to "philanthropy" was meant in its broadest sense, and to draw attention to the absolute need of the "doctrine of the heart" as opposed to that which is merely "of the eye." And before, I have written that our society is not a mere intellectual school for occultism, and those greater than we have said that he who thinks the task of working for others too hard had better not undertake it. The moral and spiritual sufferings of the world are more important and need help and cure more than science needs aid from us in any field of discovery. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." - K.H.

After seventeen years of work it is now time that the whole Society should pay a little more attention to the words of those Masters of wisdom who have thus indicated the road, and these are the "original lines" traced out and meant to be followed. All those who do not follow them are those who feel dissatisfied with our work, and those who try to go upon these lines are those who feel and know that help is always given to the sincere Theosophist who ever tries not only to understand the philosophy but also to make it forceful for the proving and the exemplifying of the doctrine and object of Universal Brotherhood.

ONE OF THE RECIPIENTS

Path, February, 1893

WHICH IS VAGUE, THEOSOPHY OR SCIENCE?

IT is commonly charged against the exponents of Theosophy that they deal in vague generalities only. A lecture is given or paper read by a Theosophist, and the profane hearer laughs, saying, "All this is metaphysical absurdity; these are mere abstractions; let us have something like that which science gives us, something we can grasp."

A great many persons imagine, knowing but little in reality about science, that it is sure, certain, and fixed in the vital premises which underlie the practical outcome seen in many branches of life's activity. Why is this so? An inquiry into the question discloses the fact that some, if not all, the basic postulates of science are the purest abstractions, and that many statements from which deductions of fact are drawn are themselves the merest hypotheses. We will also find that the commonest of people unconsciously use in every work-a-day acts the most abstract and indefinite premises without which they could do but little.

Take navigation of the ocean, by which we are able to send the largest ships carrying the richest of cargoes from shore to shore of any sea. These are guided in their course by men who know little or nothing of Theosophy and who would laugh at metaphysics. But in order to safely carry the ship from departure to destination, they have to use the lines of longitude and latitude, which, while seeming very real to them, have no existence whatever, except in theory. These lines must be used, and, if not, the ship will strike a rock or run upon the shore. Where are the parallels of longitude and latitude? They are imagined to be on the earth, but their only visible existence is upon the chart made by man, and their real existence is in the mind of the astronomer and those who understand the science of navigation. The sea captain may think they are on the chart, or he may not think of it at all. Where do they stop? Nowhere; they are said to extend indefinitely into space; yet these abstractions are used for present human commercial needs. Is this any less vague than Theosophy?

In the latter we have to guide the great human ship from shore to shore, and in that immense journey are obliged to refer to abstractions from which to start. Our spiritual parallels of latitude and longitude are abstractions, indeed, but no more so than those laid down upon the seamans chart. The scientific materialist says: "What nonsense to speak of coming out of the Absolute!" We may reply, "What nonsense for the mariner to attempt to guide his ship by that which has no existence whatever, except in fancy; by that which is a pure abstraction!" Again he laughs at us for assuming that there is such a thing as the soul, "for," he says, "no man has ever seen it, and none ever can; it cannot be demonstrated." With perfect truth we can reply: "Where is the atom of science; who has ever seen it; where and when has its existence been demonstrated?" The "atom" of science is today as great a mystery as the "soul" of Theosophy. It is a pure hypothesis, undemonstrated and undemonstrable. It can neither be weighed, nor measured, nor found with a microscope: indeed, in the opinion of many Theosophists it is a far greater mystery than the soul, because some say they have seen that which may be soul; which looks like it; and no man has been, at any time, so fortunate or unfortunate as to have seen an atom.

Further, the scientific materialist says, "What do you know about the powers of the soul, which you say is the central sun of the human system?" And we answer that "it is no more indefinite for us than the sun is for the astronomers who attempt to measure its heat and estimate its distance. As to the heat of the sun, not all are agreed that it has any heat whatever, for some learned men think that it is a source of an energy which creates heat when it reaches the earths atmosphere only. Others, celebrated in the records of science, such as Newton, Fizeau, and many other well-known astronomers, disagree as to the quantity of heat thrown out by the sun, on the hypothesis that it has any heat, and that difference is so great as to reach 8,998,600 degrees. Thus as to the central sun of this system, there is the greatest vagueness in science and no agreement as to what may be the truth in this important matter. In Theosophy, however, on the other hand, although there is some vagueness with mere students as to the exact quantity of heat or light thrown out by the soul, those who have devoted more time to its study are able to give closer estimates than any which have been given by scientific men in respect to the sun of the solar system. Yet all these generalities of science are the very things that have led to the present wonderful material development of the nineteenth century.

But let us glance for a moment at the subject of evolution, which engages the thought of materialist and theosophist alike; let us see if theosophy is more vague than its opponents, or more insane, we might say, in ability to lay wild theories before intelligent men. The well-known Haeckel in his Pedigree of Man says, in speaking of Darwins teachings and lauding them: "Darwin puts in the place of a conscious creative force, building and arranging the organic bodies of animals and plants on a designed plan, a series of natural forces working blindly, or we say, without aim, without design. In place of an arbitrary act we have a necessary law of evolution. . . . A mechanical origin of the earliest living form was held as the necessary sequence of Darwins teaching." Here we have blind, undesigning forces, beginning work without design, haphazard, all being jumbled together, but finally working out into a beautiful design visible in the smallest form we can see. There is not a single proof in present life whether mineral, vegetable, or animal, that such a result from such a beginning could by any possibility eventuate. But these scientific men in those matters are safe in making hypotheses, because the time is far in the dark of history when these blind, undesigning acts were begun. Yet they ought to show some present instances of similar blindness producing harmonious designs. Now is this not a wild, fanciful, and almost insane statement of Haeckel's? Is it not ten times more absurd than theosophical teachings? We begin truly with Parabrahmam and Mulaprakriti and Hosts of Dhyan Chohans, but we allege design in everything, and our Parabrahmam is no more vague than motion or force, pets of science.

So I have found that a slight examination of this question reveals science as more vague than Theosophy is in anything. But some may say results are not indefinite. The same is said by us, the results to be reached by following the doctrines of theosophy, relating, as they do, to our real life, will be as definite, as visible, as important as any that science can point to.

EUSEBIO URBAN

Path, November, 1890

WHY RACES DIE OUT

A THEOSOPHIST'S REASON FOR IT

IN our own times we have instances of the disappearance of races, and very often it is attributed to the influence of civilized vices. The Hottentots have entirely gone, and the decimation of the Hawaiian Islanders is about complete. Similarly the Red Indians of the Continents of North and South America have been surely, if slowly, passing away, so that now there is only a remnant of them left, and soon after the Spanish conquest the great masses of the aboriginal inhabitants had faded away.

The Hottentots had reached almost the acme of decline when we knew them, but the Aztecs, Toltecs, and other South Americans had not reached such a pitch when they encountered the Spanish. The Red Indians had gone down between the two, while the Hawaiians were still below the Indians. It has always seemed to me that the claim that these races were destroyed by taking up our vices is not well founded. It is pleasant, perhaps, to the pessimist who dislikes this civilization, but it will not agree with all the facts. The decrease of population in the Hawaiian Islands cannot be justly attributed to rum and social evils taken over from us, although a great deal of injury no doubt arose from those abuses. About the Hottentots we may feel pretty sure, because their degradation was almost complete when they were discovered, and the Mexicans and South American people had no time to adopt Spanish vices, nor did such exist in a degree to kill off the inhabitants.

The theory outlined by H. P. Blavatsky is that when the Egos inhabiting any race have reached the limit of experience possible in it, they begin to desert that race environment and seek for another, which, in the sure processes of natures evolution, is certain to be in existence elsewhere on the globe. The Egos then having left the old families, the latter begin to die out through sterility attacking the females, so that fewer and fewer bodies are made for inhabitancy. This goes on from century to century pari passu with mental decay. And this mental deterioration arises from the fact that the small stock of what we might call the retarded Egos who come in during the process have not had the experience and training in that particular environment which had been gone through by those who have deserted to another race, and hence--on the theosophical theory that brain is not the producer of mind--the whole personnel of the old race rushes down in the scale, sooner or later presenting the sad spectacle of a dying race. Final extinction is the result when the process has gone far enough.

At the time when the first steps toward old age and decrepitude are taken by such a race, the eternal cyclic laws that always bring about a universal correspondence between the affairs of man and the operations of cosmos cause cataclysms to happen, and even in the seeming height of a nation's power great numbers of bodies are destroyed. Some indications of this may be seen in our own day in the great destruction of human life that has begun to overtake the older portions of the Chinese nation. These are finger posts that declare the beginning of the exodus of the Egos who have had such a long experience in that race environment that they have begun to emigrate elsewhere because their experience has wrought in their character changes which unfit them for dealing with the old bodies, and those are left for the starting of other less progressed men. After the lapse of more years the natural cataclysms will increase in violence and extent, engulfing more and more millions of bodies and preparing for other cycles.

We may suppose that the Red Indians predecessors went through similar experiences, for there are in the Americas evidences of great convulsions such as upheavals from below and overflowing by water that deposited great masses of mud. In one of the States there was lately found good evidence that animals had been thus buried for ages. The men, having reason to guide them, removed themselves to other parts to carry out the sad decrees of Karma which had ordered their demise. And under the suggestion made above, the egos untried in that environment only occupied the racial body for the sake of the experience which might be gained during the time that is left. Now our civilization with weapons and other means is completing the work, as it on its part fulfils the law by creating on the old soil an entirely new race in which the experience gained by the mind in prior cycles of existence may show itself forth.

This process is almost exactly that which happens in families. Reincarnating egos continue in families that suit their mental progress just so long as is needed; and if no more egos are in the cycle of rebirth exactly fitted to the physical, psychical, and mental state of the family, it begins to die out. And it even exhibits often in its own small way the phenomena of natural cataclysm, for we know that sudden ruin and quick extinction often carry off an entire family, leaving not even a descendant in the very remotest degree.

Hence I conclude that, like families, Races disappear when they are of no further use in the gaining of experience by the great pilgrim soul.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Path, October, 1891

A WORD ON PRONOUNS

IT is claimed that civilization cannot alter the nature of the savage. If there be any withdrawal of the restraining influences of civilization, his tendency is inevitably "back to the blanket," and to snake-worship, or whatever form of worship his ancestors may have been given to. This desire to fall down and worship something, or somebody, appears to be one of the proclivities of the human mind not to be eradicated, -- not in this age, at least. It was born in the blood, and does not seem to have been civilized out of it, whether the blood be black or white. Carlyle calls it "hero-worship."

These reflections were started by seeing the personal pronouns of the Himalayan Brothers printed with "caps," as the printers say. As, in their case, the name "Brothers" has become a proper name, it may legitimately be capitalized to distinguish it from the name of any, or all other brothers; but why capitalize their pronouns? Those referring to Christ are usually printed with caps, but it would seem much better to omit them. Can a capital letter add to his glory, or the absence of it detract therefrom? Neither does it add to that of the Himalayan Brothers. The only thing is does do is, in some sort of fashion, to gratify the craving of the human heart to worship in some way, even if it be only the weak sort of adoration expressed through an enlarged letter. These Brothers themselves, if they are what they are represented, would, I fancy, look upon these capitalized pronouns (if their attention were called to them at all) with a smile of pity for this desire to worship and adore. They, of all others, would not wish this empty honor. The higher one rises in the scale of life, the farther the desire for worship and empty honors recedes from him or her. Let us honor all true worth and nobility of character, but never "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee" to any. The Brothers on the Asiatic mountains are simply human like the rest of us, for have we not all within us the promise and the potency of that higher life which awaits but our self-sacrificing efforts to develop it? While we all have the germs of adept-hood within us, but few have the character to lead a life that shall bring it out. And so we may justly honor those who do succeed, but the silly worship of the past let us strive to out grow.

NOTE-We hare printed the above because the subject has been referred to before by us, and we think the ideas expressed are of some importance-to students, but not to the "Brothers" spoken of by the writer. We distinctly disagree with Miss Burr when she describes the capitalizing in PATH or elsewhere of the pronouns used for the "Brothers" as "hero worship," and also with her suggestion that the use of such capitals shall be dispensed with. Her article has not been thus disfigured, since she herself omitted the caps. Nor can we agree that the Adepts referred to are, as she says, "simply human like the rest of us," for that statement is too Americanly independent for us to adopt it, and also somewhat wide of the mark.

True independence we believe in, but no in that sort which, merely from the influence of ideas of political freedom based on theoretical equality, causes a man to place himself on such an equal footing with others that he will not accord to beings infinitely beyond him in degree the highest marks of respect.

Sages do not concern themselves with small questions of etiquette or address, but that should not prevent us when we write to each other of those sages from capitalizing the pronouns used. Every one is at liberty to do this if he pleases, or to refrain; and we have no blame to attach. But the Adepts, while human, are not "simply like the rest of us." The highest divine being is truly a human ego in perfection, but the difference between the state of such an ego and these lower unperfected human gods is beyond our power to measure. And the difference is so great that the writer's second last sentence should be altered to read that, "while a few amongst tens of thousands have the power to strive for Adeptship, hardly one in all those thousands is able to comprehend the Mahatma as He is." -Ed.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, October, 1887

A WORD ON THE "SECRET DOCTRINE"

AN OLD LETTER REPUBLISHED

There is so much discussion going on just now in the Theosophical movement as to the value of the Secret Doctrine, and as to the amount of aid given to H. P. Blavatsky in the compilation of it, and as to her position as a Teacher in Occult matters, that it appears to us that the republication of an old letter - published in 1888 - which bears on these questions, is peculiarly timely, and may be of service to many who did not have the opportunity of reading it on its first issue. The letter is, of course, of no authority for those members of the T.S. who do not share our sentiments of reverence for the Masters, but for those who do, the interest of it will be great. It was received in mid-ocean by Col. Olcott, P.T.S., and was originally published with his consent in a small pamphlet entitled "An Explanation important to all Theosophists," issued by H.P.B.

ANNIE BESANT
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

Misunderstandings have grown up between Fellows both in London and Paris which imperil the interests of the movement. You will be told that the chief originator of most if not of all these disturbances is H.P.B. This is not so; though her presence in England has, of course, a share in them. But the largest share rest with others, whose serene unconsciousness of their own defects is very marked and much to be blamed. One of the most valuable effects of Upasika's mission is that it drives men to self-study and destroys in them blind servility for persons. Observe your own case, for example. But your revolt, good friend, against her "infallibility" - as you once thought it - has gone too far, and you have been unjust to her. . . .

. . . Try to remove such misconceptions as you will find, by kind persuasion and an appeal to the feelings of loyalty to the cause of truth, if not to us. Make all these men feel that we have no favorites, nor affections for persons, but only for their good acts and humanity as a whole. But we employ agents - the best available. Of these, for the last thirty years, the chief has been the personality known as H.P.B. to the world (but otherwise to us). Imperfect and very "troublesome" no doubt she proves to some; nevertheless there is no likelihood of our finding a better one for years to come, and your Theosophists should be made to understand it. . . .

. . . Since 1885 I have not written nor caused to be written save through her agency direct or remote a letter or a line to anybody in Europe or America, nor communicated orally with or through any third party. Theosophists should learn it. You will understand later the significance of this declaration, so keep it in mind. . . . Her fidelity to our work being constant and her sufferings having come upon her through it, neither I nor either of my Brother Associates will desert or supplant her. As I once before remarked, ingratitude is not among our vices. . . . To help you in your present perplexity, H.P.B. has next to no concern with administrative details and should be kept clear of them so far as her strong nature can be controlled. But this you must tell to all; with occult matters she has everything to do. . . . We have not "abandoned her." She is not "given over to chelas." She is our direct agent. I warn you against permitting your suspicions and resentment against her "many follies" to bias your intuitive loyalty to her. In the adjustment of this European business you will have two things to consider, - the external and administrative, and the internal and psychical. Keep the former under your control and that of your most prudent associates jointly; leave the latter to her. You are left to devise the practical details.

I have also noted your thoughts about the Secret Doctrine. Be assured that what she has not annotated from scientific and other works we have given or suggested to her. Every mistake or erroneous notion corrected and explained by her from the works of other Theosophists was corrected by me or under my instruction. It is a more valuable work than its predecessor, - an epitome of occult truths that will make it a source of information and instruction for the earnest student for long years to come.

. . . (This letter) . . . is merely given you as a warning and a guide; to others as a warning only; for you may use it discreetly if needs be . . . Prepare, however, to have the authenticity of the present denied in certain quarters.

(Signed) K.H.

[Extract correctly copied - H.S. Olcott.]

Path, October, 1893

THE WORK SINCE MAY

THIS month ends the year and gives us, for examination and review, seven months of experience in theosophical work. Las April, after the Boston Convention, there were some who had fears that great difficulty, perhaps disaster, was soon to come upon the work. It was a sort of superstition for which they could hardly account-a superstition connected solely with the mere framework of an organization. In the general mental development of the world there could be found no basis for the notion that Theosophy was decaying. So the superstition was connected with forms as a ghost is with a house. But there were others who had no fears and no sort of superstition. They perceived the truth of the idea thrown out by others wiser we that the unity of the movement depends on singleness of purpose and aspiration and not on a world-wide single organization. By the time the fears of the first must be allayed and the hopes of the second justified.

The echoes of the Convention had not died away when active, widespread work went on as before, without a halt. We reported to the meeting, and before any voting on the Constitution, that there were 102 branches in the jurisdiction. This was true as to the record, but some of those were even then so inactive as to be subjects of grave consideration. Today - when this is penned -notwithstanding losses and prophecies and croakings, domestic and foreign, we have ninety branches. These ninety have among them several new ones formed since April, out of new material and not resulting from a split. This part of the seven months' history is in itself enough to show the wisdom of our course, and to give to everyone the greatest encouragement.

The very first result of the vote at Boston was to infuse into all "loyal" branches new energy and determination in increase the activity while trying to make brotherhood practical. All the new branches are made up of good working material. In those cases where -as in some cities-the new body was formed by half of the old, the branch was doubly determined to be of still more use that was the old. So now the entire body of branches may be regarded as strong, active, inspired for action and trying to work for brotherhood.

Official activities began the day after Convention. The Forum was made of greater value by changing its plan and shape. Reports from everywhere commend it and show that its usefulness has increased. The other official papers were continued as before. Almost immediately a new, active, and actual working committee was formed for propaganda in the Central States-a vast territory. Another was formed in New England. While the Central Committee was being formed Mr. Burcham Harding worked in the New England district, lecturing in public and visiting branches. When everything was ready he started work in the State of Indiana, and succeeded in spreading Theosophy in nearly every town, and by means of the reports given by newspapers, must have reached nearly every inhabitant. The best sort of people came to hear him. When, as did happen, bigoted ministers publicly denounced him, the people came to his rescue and snubbed the priest. Everybody seemed to want to know about theosophy, and papers would give columns to his lectures. This may be taken as an indication of the liveliness of Theosophy and as proof that more people desire this philosophy than members seemed to think. The case of Indiana I select out of many because it furnishes a condensed example. At the same time the New England, the Atlantic and the Californian work went on unabated. The San Francisco members had for some time been holding Sunday theosophical services for the convicts in the prison there. This is continued. And there, also, every Sunday a free public lecture is given, to which very good audiences come. The old Pacific Coast Committee did not stop work a day and its lectures went up and down among the people as usual, finding as much interest as ever in Theosophy. In New York an additional series of popular lectures was started at Chickering Hall by Mr. Claude Falls Wright with the aid of the Aryan T.S. These seem to be likely to attract large audiences very shortly. All this time the correspondence with enquires went on and new members came in as before and in greater numbers.

I have brought forward these facts-and they are not all that might be selected-to show in a measure what the seven months' work has been since the eventful last Convention. It proves once more that "the Theosophical Movement is greater than any Theosophical Society." It ought to show that the Theosophical Society in America is a strong, active, intelligent body, not depending on personalities but upon hard, common-sense work. And behind that hard work there are forces and a spirit which will keep it alive for more that a century if members always look for the spirit and not for the letter. No member has now the right to be gloomy or afraid. If seven months can show such facts, where is there cause for fear? There is none. The future grows from the present, and nothing but a cataclysm can stop our progress.

W. Q. J.

Path, October, 1895

WRONG POPULAR NOTIONS

WHAT are your proofs?" is often asked of the Theosophical student who believes in reincarnation and Karma, who holds t the existence of the astral body, and who thinks that evolution demands a place in the cosmos for Mahâtmâs (or great souls) as facts and ideals. "If you cannot prove reincarnation just as you would a fact in a court of law, I will not believe," says one, while another says, "Make such objective demonstrations as science does, and then you may expect me to agree with you." But in truth all these objectors accept as proven in the way they demand for Theosophy many things which on a slight examination are seen to rest as much on theory and metaphysical argument as do any of the doctrines found in Theosophical literature. The axioms of mathematics are unprovable; the very word assumes that they have to be accepted. Being accepted, we go forward an on the basis of their unproved truth demonstrate other and succedent matters. The theories of modern astronomy are taken as true because by their means eclipses are foretold and other great achievements of that science made possible. But many centuries ago quite different theories of the relations and motions and structure of the heavens allowed the old astronomers to make the same deductions. Let us examine a few words and things.

THE ATOM

The atom and the molecule are very influential words. They are constantly used by people claiming to follow science, but who indulge in criticisms on the uncertainties of Theosophical speculation. Yet no one ever saw an atom or a molecule. They are accepted as facts by science-just as the spiritually-inclined accept the existence of the invisible soul-yet it is impossible to objectively prove either the one or the other. They are deemed to be proven because they are necessary. But let a Theosophist say that the astral body exists, and Mahâtmâs also, because both are necessary in evolution, and at once a demand arises for demonstration" by objective proofs.

THE SUN

The sun is the apparent source of energy, and is confidently supposed by many to be a mass of burning material. No one, however, knows this to be so. No one was ever there, and the whole set of theories regarding the luminary rests on assumptions. Many natural facts are against some of the theories. The great fact that the higher the mountain the more cold it is on top would be one, not wholly accounted for by theories as to radiation. And when we remember the great, the immense, difference between the various scientific estimates of the sun's heat, doubt increases. Seeing that electricity is now so much better known, and that it is apparently all pervading, the ancient idea that the sun is a center of electrical or magnetic energy which turns into heat as well as other things on reaching here, becomes plausible and throws some spice of illusion into the doctrine that our sun is a mass of burning matter.

Again, the sun is seen as if over the horizon in full view every clear evening, when in fact he has been some minutes down below the line of sight. Refraction partly accounts for his, but none the less is his apparent visibility or position above the horizon an illusion.

THE STARS

Many of those that are known as fixed stars are immeasurably far away. Sirius is at an immense distance, and has been receding always many thousands of miles each minute. Others are so far off that it takes one hundred thousand years for their light to reach here.

Yet since records began they have all remained apparently in one place and in the same relation to each other. They constitute a vast illusion. They are moving and yet they remain still. We point the telescope at one of our sister planets, and knowing that its light takes fifteen minutes or more to get to us, we must be continually directing the glass to a point where the planet is not, and by no possibility can we point to where it actually is. Still, for all this uncertainty, many complicated and definite calculations are based on these observations of mere illusions.

LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE

These are practically used every hour of the day for the safe-guarding of human life and property. But they exist only in the brains of men, for they are not in the sky or on land. They are theoretical divisions made by man, and they are possible only because the sole reality in nature is that which is jeered at by many as the ideal. But if the ancients are said to be constructors of a great human chart in the Zodiac, the divisions of which have a bearing on the navigation of the great ocean of human evolution, the proud practical man says that you have but shown the ancients to be fanciful, superstitious, grotesque. But they were not so. Doubtless the saying recorded of Jesus about the time when we should see "the sign of the Son of Man in the heavens" will not so far from now be found to have a practical meaning in human life.

The ancient Sage was like the modern captain. The captain takes an observation of the illusionary stars and the blazing sun, thus discovering whether his ship is near of far from land. The Sage observed the Zodiac, and from the manner it and its boats were related to each other he was able to calculate whether the human freight in the boat of human evolution was near a rock or on the free, open sea in its eternal and momentous journey.

SENSATION OF TOUCH

Every one is accustomed to say that he has touched this or that object on which his fingers may have rested. But this is not so. We do not touch anything; we only perceive and report a sensation which we call touch. If that sensation is due to actual contact between he skin and object, then the harder we pressed, and thus the nearer we came to the object's surface, the more accurate should be the sensation. If fact, however, if we press hard we dull the sensation and turn it into one of pain for the skin. There is always a space between the skin and the surface dealt with, just as there is always a space between the molecules of each mass. If two smooth planes be pushed on to each other they well adhere, and the smoother they are the more difficult it will be to get them apart. If we could actually touch the hand to any surface so as to cover all of it with a touching surface, we could not withdraw the hand at all. All that we get, then, by what we call touch is the idea produced by the vibration and by than much of contact as is possible in the case.

CONTINOUS SOLIDITY

Quite Theosophical is the scientist when he says that "we cannot know anything of the actual nature of matter in itself, but can only know the sensation or the phenomena." The mineral or metal called even the hardest is not solid or continuous in itself. This is now admitted by all scientific men. Even the diamond, "hardest of all," is a mass of moving molecules made up of like moving atoms. Its hardness is only relative. It is simply harder than glass because its atoms are moving at a more rapid rate. In a recent lecture in London Mr. Bell, a scientific light, told how the edge or point of the diamond cuts the glass because the molecules on the diamond move rapidly and get in between the slower ones of the glass and thus cut it. And so it is with all other masses of matter. They are only masses of molecules in different rates of vibration; none of them solid or hard save in a relative sense. Is it not true, then, as so often held by philosophers and so insisted on by those Adepts who gave us information through H. P. Blavatsky that the world we are in is to be properly considered in a metaphysical sense and not as a mere mechanism that can be explained on mechanical principles? An in the face of all the illusions and all the speculations of life and science, why should the Theosophist be asked to make or give any different sort of proofs that those availed of by science in all its investigations? There is no reason.
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, November, 1894

A YEAR ON THE PATH

THE present issue of this Magazine closes the first year of its publication. It was not started because its projectors thought that they alone knew the true Path, but solely out of an intense longing to direct inquiring minds towards a way which had seemed to many persons who had tried it, to hold out the possibility of finding an answer to the burning questions that vex the human heart.
The question is always naturally asked "What is the Path?" or "What is the Philosophy?" which is the same thing, for of course the following of any path whatever will depend upon the particular philosophy or doctrines believed in. The path we had in view is held by us to be the same one which in all ages had been sought by Heathen, Jew and Christian alike. By some called the path to Heaven, by others the path to Jesus, the path to Nirvana, and by the Theosophists the path to Truth. Jesus has defined it as a narrow, difficult and straight path. By the ancient Brahmins it has been called, "the small old path leading far away on which those sages walk who reach salvation"; and Buddha thought it was a noble fourfold path by which alone the miseries of existence can be truly surmounted.

But of course mental diversities inevitably cause diversity in the understanding of any proposition. Thus it happens that Theosophists have many different views of how the path should be followed, but none of them disagree with the statement that there must be one Truth, and that no religion can be called higher that Truth. We therefore have pursued, as far as possible, a course which is the result of the belief that the prevalence of similar doctrines in the writings and traditions of all peoples point to the fact that the true religion is that one which will find the basic ideas common to all philosophies and religions.

We turned most readily and frequently to the simple declarations found in the ancient books of India, esteeming most highly that wonderful epic poem - the Bhagavad-Gita. And in that is found a verse that seems to truly express in powerful words what philosophers have been blindly grasping after in many directions.

"It is even a portion of myself (the Supreme) that in this material world is the universal spirit of all things. It draweth together the five organs and the mind, which is the sixth, in order that it may obtain a body, and that it may leave it again; and that portion of myself (Ishwar) having taken them under his charge, accompanieth them from his own abode as the breeze the fragrance from the flower."(1)

To catch the light which gleams through this verse, is not for mortal minds an easy task, and thus it becomes necessary to present as many views from all minds as can be obtained. But is seems plain that in every religion is found the belief that that part of man which is immortal must be a part of the Supreme Being, for there cannot be two immortalities at once, since that would give to each a ginning, and therefore the immortal portion of man must be derived from the true and only immortality.

This immortal spark has manifested itself in many different classes of men, giving rise to all the varied religions, many of which have forever disappeared from view. Not any one of them could have been the whole Truth, but each must have presented one of the facettes of the great gem, and thus through the whole surely run ideas shared by all. These common ideas point to truth. They grow out of man's inner nature and are not the result of revealed books. But some one people or another must have paid more attention to the deep things of life that another. The "Christian" nations have dazzled themselves with the baneful glitter of material progress. They are not the peoples who will furnish the clearest clues to the Path. A few short years and they will have abandoned the systems now held so dear, because their mad rush to the perfection of their civilization will give them control over now undreamed of forces. Then will come the moment when they must choose which of two kinds of fruit they will take. In the meantime it is well to try and show a relation between their present system and the old, or at least to pick out what grains of truth are in the mass.
In the year just passing we have been cheered by much encouragement from without and within. Theosophy has grown not only in ten years, but during the year past. A new ate is not far away. The huge, unwieldy flower of the 19th century civilization, has almost fully bloomed, and preparation must be made for the wonderful new flower which is to rise from the old. We have not pinned our faith on Vedas nor Christian scriptures, nor desired any others to do so. All our devotion to Aryan literature and philosophy arises from a belief that the millions of minds who have trodden weary steps before ours, left a path which might be followed with profit, yet with discrimination. For we implicitly believe that in this curve of the cycle, the final authority is the man himself. In former times the disclosed Vedas, and later, the teachings of the great Buddha, were the right authority, in whose authoritative teachings and enjoined practices were found the necessary steps to raise Man to an upright position. But the grand clock of the Universe points to another hour, and now Man must seize the key in his hands and himself - as a whole - open the gate. Hitherto he has depended upon the great souls whose hands have stayed impending doom. Let us then together enter upon another year, fearing nothing, assured of strength in the Union of Brotherhood. For how can we fear death, or life, or any horror or evil, at any place or time, when we well know that even death itself is part of the dream which we are weaving before our eyes.

Our belief may be summed up in the motto of the Theosophical Society, "There is no religion higher than Truth," and our practice consists in a disregard of any authority in matters of religion and philosophy except such propositions as from their innate quality we feel to be true.

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
Path, October, 1887

(1) Bhagavad-Gita, ch.15.

"YOURS TILL DEATH AND AFTER, H.P.B."

Such has been the manner in which our beloved teacher and friend always concluded her letters to me. And now, though we are all of us committing to paper some account of that departed friend and teacher, I feel ever near and ever potent the magic of that resistless power, as of a mighty rushing river, which those who wholly trusted her always came to understand. Fortunate indeed is that Karma which, for all the years since I first met her, in 1875, has kept me faithful to the friend who, masquerading under the outer mortal garment known as H. P. Blavatsky, was ever faithful to me, ever kind, ever the teacher and the guide.

In 1874, in the City of New York, I first met H.P.B. in this life. By her request, sent through Colonel H. S. Olcott, the call was made in her rooms in Irving Place, when then, as afterwards, through the remainder of her stormy career, she was surrounded by the anxious, the intellectual, the bohemian, the rich and the poor. It was her eye that attracted me, the eye of one whom I must have known in lives long passed away. She looked at me in recognition at that first hour, and never since has that look changed. Not as a questioner of philosophies did I come before her, not as one groping in the dark for lights that schools and fanciful theories had obscured, but as one who, wandering many periods through the corridors of life, was seeking the friends who could show where the designs for the work had been hidden. And true to the call she responded, revealing the plans once again, and speaking no words to explain, simply pointed them out and went on with the task. It was if but the evening before we had parted, leaving yet to be done some detail of a task taken up with one common end; it was teacher and pupil, elder brother and younger, both bent on the one single end, but she with the power and the knowledge that belong but to lions and sages. So, friends from the first, I felt safe. Others I know have looked with suspicion on an appearance they could not fathom, and though it is true they adduce many proofs which, hugged to the breast, would damn sages and gods, yet it is only through blindness they failed to see the lion's glance, the diamond heart of H.P.B.

The entire space of this whole magazine would not suffice to enable me to record the phenomena she performed for me through all these years, nor would I wish to put them down. As she so often said, they prove nothing, but only lead some souls to doubt and others to despair. And again, I do not think they were done just for me, but only that in those early days she was laying down the lines of force all over the land and I, so fortunate, was at the centre of the energy and saw the play of forces in visible phenomena. The explanation has been offered by some too anxious friends that the earlier phenomena were mistakes in judgment, attempted to be rectified in later years by confining their area and limiting their number, but until some one shall produce in the writing of H.P.B. her concurrence with that view, I shall hold to her own explanation made in advance and never changed. That I have given above. For many it is easier to take refuge behind a charge of bad judgment than to understand the strange and powerful laws which control in matters such as these.

Amid all the turmoil of her life, above the din produced by those who charged her with deceit and fraud and others who defended, while month after month, and year after year, witnessed men and women entering the theosophical movement only to leave it soon with malignant phrases for H.P.B., there stands a fact we all might imitate - devotion absolute to her Master. "It was He," she writes, "who told me to devote myself to this, and I will never disobey and never turn back."

In 1888 she wrote to me privately: -

"Well, my only friend, you ought to know better. Look into my life and try to realize it - in its outer course at least, as the rest is hidden. I am under the curse of ever writing, as the wandering Jew was under that of being ever on the move, never stopping one moment to rest. Three ordinary healthy persons could hardly do what I have to do. I live an artificial life; I am an automaton running full steam until the power of generating steam stops, and then - good-bye!...Night before last I was shown a bird's-eye view of the Theosophical Societies. I saw a few earnest reliable Theosophists in a death struggle with the world in general, with other - nominal but ambitious - Theosophists. The former are greater in numbers than you may think, and they prevailed, as you in America will prevail, if you only remain staunch to the Master's programme and true to yourselves. And last night I saw ... and now I feel strong - such as I am in my body - and ready to fight for Theosophy and the few true ones to my last breath. The defending forces have to be judiciously - so scanty they are - distributed over the globe, whereever Theosophy is struggling against the powers of darkness."

Such she ever was; devoted to Theosophy and the Society organized to carry out a programme embracing the world in its scope. Willing in the service of the cause to offer up hope, money, reputation, life itself, provided the Society might be saved from every hurt, whether small or great. And thus bound body, heart and soul to this entity called the Theosophical Society, bound to protect it at all hazards, in face of every loss, she often incurred the resentment of many who became her friends but would not always care for the infant organization as she had sworn to do. And when they acted as if opposed to the Society, her instant opposition seemed to them to nullify professions of friendship. Thus she had but few friends, for it required a keen insight, untinged with personal feeling, to see even a small part of the real H. P. Blavatsky.

But was her object merely to form a Society whose strength should lie in numbers? No so. She worked under directors who, operating from behind the scene, knew that the Theosophical Society was, and was to be, the nucleus from which help might spread to all the people of the day, without thanks and without acknowledgment. Once, in London, I asked her what was the chance of drawing the people into the Society in view of the enormous disproportion between the number of members and the millions of Europe and America who neither knew of nor cared for it. Leaning back in her chair, in which she was sitting before her writing desk, she said: -

"When you consider and remember those days in 1875 and after, in which you could not find any people interested in your thoughts, and now look at the wide-spreading influence of theosophical ideas - however labelled - it is not so bad. We are not working merely that people may call themselves Theosophists, but that the doctrines we cherish may affect and leaven the whole mind of this century. This alone can be accomplished by a small earnest band of workers, who work for no human reward, no earthly recognition, but who, supported and sustained by a belief in that Universal Brotherhood of which our Masters are a part, work steadily, faithfully, in understanding and putting forth for consideration the doctrines of life and duty that have come down to us from immemorial time. Falter not so long as a few devoted ones will work to keep the nucleus existing. You were not directed to found and realise a Universal Brotherhood, but to form the nucleus for one; for it is only when the nucleus is formed that the accumulations can begin that will end in future years, however far, in the formation of that body which we have in view."

H.P.B. had a lion heart, and on the work traced out for her she had the lion's grasp; let us, her friends, companions and disciples, sustain ourselves in carrying out the designs laid down on the trestle-board, by the memory of her devotion and the consciousness that behind her task there stood, and still remain, those Elder Brothers who, above the clatter and the din of our battle, ever see the end and direct the forces distributed in array for the salvation of "that great orphan - Humanity."

WILLIAM Q. JUDGE, F.T.S.

Lucifer, June, 1891

Satya yug	-------------	1,728,000	years
Treta yug	-------------	1,296,000	years
Dwapara yug	-------------	864,000	years
Kali yug	-------------	432,000	years
		________
		4,320,000

ABOUT KILLING ANIMALS

ABOUT "SPIRIT" MATERIALIZATIONS

SOME EVIDENCE FROM SPIRITUALISM

THE ADEPTS

SOME OBJECTIONS AND ANSWERS TO THEM

THE ADEPTS AND MODERN SCIENCE

ADEPTS AND POLITICS

THE ADEPTS IN AMERICA IN 1776

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES IN LIFE

AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS

RELATIVITY

THE ALLEGORICAL UMBRELLA

AN ALLEGORY

AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?

-Genesis IV, 9

AN ANCIENT TELEPHONE

ANOTHER THEOSOPHICAL PROPHECY

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONERS

ARE THERE NEW SOULS? WHY REINCARNATION?

APHORISMS ON KARMA

THE APPLICATION OF THEOSOPHICAL THEORIES

ARE THE "ARABIAN NIGHTS" ALL FICTION?

ARE WE DESERTED?

ARGUMENT FOR REINCARNATION

ASTROLOGICAL

ASTROLOGY VERIFIED

AUM!

AUTHORITY

AUTHORSHIP OF SECRET DOCTRINE

BEFORE AMERICAN SPIRITUALISM

"BLAVATSKIANISM" IN AND OUT OF SEASON

CAUTIONS IN PARAGRAPHS

CHANGE OF NAME

THE CHARGES AGAINST WILLIAM Q. JUDGE [1]

THE CHARGES AGAINST WILLIAM Q. JUDGE [II]

A CHAT WITH CORRESPONDENTS

CHRISTIAN FATHERS ON REINCARNATION

A CIRCULATING LIBRARY

CITIES UNDER CITIES

CLAIMING TO BE JESUS

CLOSED OR OPEN LODGES

THE CLOSING CYCLE

COMETS

A COMMENTARY ON THE GAYATRI

COMMITTEE WORK

COMMUNICATIONS FROM "SPIRITS"

THEIR SOURCES AND METHODS

CONVERSATIONS ON OCCULTISM WITH HPB

CORRESPONDENCE

CULLED FROM ARYAN SCIENCE

THE CURE OF DISEASES

CYCLES

CYCLES AND CYCLIC LAW

CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND RETURN AND OUR EVOLUTION

LECTURE, APRIL 25, 1892, BEFORE THE CONVENTION WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

DEVACHAN

DIREFUL PROPHECIES

DOGMATISM IN THEOSOPHY

THE DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD

EACH MEMBER A CENTRE

ELEMENTALS AND ELEMENTARIES

ELEMENTALS - HOW THEY ACT

ELEMENTALS - KARMA

THE ENQUIRER

ENVIRONMENT

THE ESOTERIC SHE

EVOLUTION

FAREWELL REMARKS OF MR. JUDGE ON THE VICE-PRESIDENCY

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

FIVE YEARS FINISHED

THE FORMATION OF CRYSTALS

"FORMS" OF ELEMENTALS

FRIENDS OR ENEMIES IN THE FUTURE

A FURTHER COMMUNICATION FROM MR. JUDGE

THE FUTURE AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

"THE GATES OF GOLD"

THE GENERAL SECRETARY'S TOUR

GIVE US ONE FACT

H.P.B.

A LION-HEARTED COLLEAGUE PASSES

THE CHARGES AGAINST
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
[1]

THE CHARGES AGAINST
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE
[II]

CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND RETURN
AND OUR EVOLUTION

LECTURE, APRIL 25, 1892, BEFORE THE CONVENTION
WILLIAM Q. JUDGE

FAREWELL REMARKS OF MR. JUDGE
ON THE VICE-PRESIDENCY

A FURTHER COMMUNICATION
FROM MR. JUDGE

THE FUTURE AND
THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

H.P.B. WAS NOT DESERTED
BY THE MASTERS

HIDDEN HINTS
IN THE SECRET DOCTRINE

HIDDEN HINTS
IN THE SECRET DOCTRINE