CHAPTER VIII

UNCONSCIOUSNESS

Whatever thou lovest, man, that too, become you must,
God, if thou lovest God; – dust, if thou lovest dust”.

-Angelus Silesius.

Thus a man that reigned as a king in a former incarnation may be reborn as a beggar, if his character was that of a beggar; and a liberal beggar may create as his future successor a king or a being of noble birth. Both act without freedom of choice at the time of their visit to the Earth, following unconsciously their Karma. But the Adept, who knows his own real self and has learned to realise his immortal existence, will be his own master. He has grown above the sense of personality, and thereby gained immortal consciousness during his earthly life. He has thrown away his lower self, and death cannot rob him of that which he no longer possesses and to which he attaches no value. Being conscious of his existence and of the conditions under which he exists, he may follow his own choice in the selection of a body, if he chooses to reincarnate, either for the benefit of humanity or for his own progression. Having entirely overcome the attractions of Earth, he is truly free. He is dead and unconscious to all earthly [Page 199] temptations, but conscious of the highest happiness attainable by man. The delusion of the senses can fashion for him no other tabernacle to imprison his soul, and before him lies open the road to eternal rest in Nirvana. [

If a person has once attained spiritual self-knowledge he will not need to follow the blind law of attraction, but he will be able to choose the body and the conditions most suitable to him. He may then reincarnate himself in the body of a child, or in the body of a grown person, whose soul has been separated by disease or accident from the body, and that person will thus be brought to life again, if no vital organ is too seriously injured, to carry on the functions of life again. Cases are known in which a certain person apparently died, and finally came to life again, when from that time he appeared to be an entirely different man; he may have died as a ruffian and after his recovery become suddenly like a saint, so that such a sudden change appeared inexplicable on any other theory than that an entirely different character had taken possession of his body. Such people may, after their recovery takes place, speak a language they never learned, talk familiarly of things they never saw; call people by their names, of which they never heard, know all about places, where their physical bodies never have been, etc., etc. If phenomena could prove anything, such occurrences might go to prove the theory of the reincarnation of living adepts.

“Shall we know our loved ones after death ?” is a question which is often asked, and which answers itself if the true nature of the “Ego” is known. In all planes rules the law of harmony, and like is attracted to like; but an illusion can only know illusions. We do not [Page 200] know each other in this life, if we have not the knowledge of our own self.

CHAPTER IX

TRANSFORMATIONS

“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”.-Rom. xii. 2.

Man does not know the influences which cause him to think and to act, as long as he does not know his own nature. He is therefore not a responsible being, except to the extent of his wisdom and power to control his own nature. Wisdom and strength can only be attained in life by experience and by the exercise of the power of overcoming temptation.If the true nature of the constitution of man were properly understood, capital punishment would soon be abandoned as perfectly useless, unjust, and contrary to the law of nature. That which commits a murder or any other crime is a conscious and invisible power, [Page 207] which cannot be killed and which does not improve in character by being separated from its external form. The body is innocent, it is merely an instrument in the hands of the invisible culprit, the astral man. The face of even a criminal bears an expression of peace when the soul has departed. By severing the bonds between this vicious power and the physical form, we do not change its tendency to act evil; but while during the life of the body the action of that power was restricted to only one form, having been liberated, it now incites numerous other weak-minded people to perform the same crimes for which the body was executed. Thus by capital punishment evil is not abolished, but its sphere of action increased. As far as the theory of influencing other would-be criminals with fear, my making an example of one, and thus to prevent others from committing crimes, is concerned; it is well known that criminals do not look upon any punishment as being something which they have deserved for their deeds, but as being a consequence of having been so careless as to allow themselves to be caught, and they usually make up their minds, that if they were permitted to escape, they would be more careful – not to be caught again.Life is a school through which everyone must pass for the purpose of acquiring experience, strength of character, and self-knowledge. To rob a person of this opportunity is a great crime if it is done knowingly. The fool who kills another man has little responsibility, because he has no actual knowledge of the nature of his deed; but the lawgiver who institutes legal murder is the true criminal . A lock of hair, a piece of clothing, the handwriting of a person or any article he may have touched, handled, or worn, can indicate to an intuitive mind that person's state of health, his physical, emotional, intellectual, and moral attributes and qualifications. The picture of a murderer may be impressed on the retina of his victim, and reproduced by means of photography; it is impressed on all the surroundings of the place where the deed occurred, and can there be detected by the psychometer who, thus coming en rapport with the criminal, can follow [Page 208] him and hunt him down just as the bloodhound traces the steps of a fugitive slave.[Emma Hardinge Britten: “Ghost Land”. The case cited in this book, in which a clairvoyant followed the tracks of a murderer through several towns and caught him at last, is quoted in several German publications of the last century.]This tendency of the Astral Light to inhere in material bodies gives amulets their power and invests keep-sakes and relics with certain occult properties. A ring, a lock of hair, or a letter from a friend, can not only conjure up that friend's picture in a person's memory, but bring him en rapport with the peculiar mental state of which that person was or is a representation. If you wish to forget a person, or free yourself from his magnetic attraction, part from everything that reminds you of him, or select only such articles as call up disagreeable memories and are therefore repulsive. Articles belonging to a person bring us in sympathy with that person, and this circumstance is sometimes used for purposes of black magic. Paracelsus in his writings about the Mumia and the transplantation of diseases gives many illustrations of this theory. The existence of a power, by which a disease may be transferred upon a healthy person, even in “non-contagious” cases, by means of some article belonging to the sick person, is generally believed in by the people in various countries. It must, however, be remembered that in making such experiments the success depends on the amount of “faith” which the magician can employ. Without that faith, which is soul knowledge, nothing can be accomplished in any department of life.As every form is the representation of a certain mental state, every object has such attributes as always belong to that state, and therefore every substance has its sympathies and its antipathies; the loadstone attracts iron, and iron the oxygen of the air; hygroscopic bodies attract water, affinities exist between certain bodies, some substances change their colours under certain coloured rays, while others remain unaffected, etc.. These phenomena are all nothing else but the various manifestations [Page 209] of the One Life, in which the principle of Love is active and seeks to unite whatever is harmonious. Every material object is condensed and solidified force. Looked at in this light, it does not seem impossible that the ancients should have attributed certain virtues to certain precious stones, and believed that the Garnet was conducive to joy, the Chalcedony to courage, the Topaz promoting chastity, the Amethyst assisting reason, and the Sapphire intuition. A spiritual force, to be effective, requires a sensitive object to act upon. In an age which tends to extreme materialism, spiritual influence ceases to be perceived, but if a person cannot feel the occult influences of nature, it does not necessarily follow that they do not exist, and that there are not others able to perceive them because their impressional capacities are greater.

Only the fool believes that he knows everything. What is really known is only like a grain of sand on the shore of the ocean in comparison to what is still unknown. Physiologists know that certain plants and chemicals have certain powers, and they explain their effects. They know that Digitalis decreases the quickness of the pulse by paralysing the heart; that Belladonna dilates the pupil by paralysing the muscular fibres of the Iris; that Opium in small doses produces sleep by causing anaemia of the brain, while large doses produce coma by causing congestion, etc.; but why these substances have such effects, or why some chemical compound of Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon, and Hydrogen is poisonous in one chemical combination, while the same substances, if combined in a different stoechiometrical proportion, may be used as food, neither chemistry nor physiology can tell us at present. If we, however, look upon all forms as symbols of mental states, it will not be more difficult to imagine why strychnine is poisonous, than why hate can kill, or fear paralyse the heart . A simple idea which is once firmly rooted in the mind cannot be changed. If an idea is complicated it is less difficult to modify it in its details, so that gradually an entirely different compound will be the [Page 210] result. In physical chemistry the law is analogous. Compound bodies may be easily changed into other combinations, but single bodies cannot be changed. There are, however, indications that even these so-called single bodies are the results of combinations of still more primitive elements. It has been observed that when lightning has struck gilded ornaments they have become blackened, and it has been found, on analysing the blackened matter, that the presence of sulphur was distinctly indicated. Unless sulphur exists in the lightning it must have existed in the gold, and have been evolved by the action of lightning. We may then fairly assume that gold contains the elements of sulphur, and this is no anomaly in the case of gold, as other metals have also been proved to contain the elements of sulphur, [David Low, F.R.S,E: “Simple Bodies in Chemistry”.] and the dreams of physical Alchemy may have some foundation, after all. But sulphur is supposed to be related to nitrogen, and the elements of nitrogen are believed to be hydrogen and carbon, and if we go still further, we find that even on the physical plane all bodies are only modifications of one primordial element, which is not of a sufficiently material nature to be detected by physical means, and that in this primordial element the germs of all other secondary principles must be contained.The power to receive, preserve, and transform ideas, is the power of Will and Imagination. If an idea enters into the mind, the imagination clothes it into a form, with or without a conscious exercise of the will. We step upon a piece of rope in the dark and immediately imagine that we have stepped upon a snake. This is called passive imagination; while, if we determine to give a certain form to an idea, it is called active imagination; but in both cases the will is active; only in the former instance it is exercised instinctively, and in the latter this is done with intent and deliberation.The will is, therefore, the active power, and it forms the basis of all artistic and magical. operations. [Page 211] Art and magic are closely related together; both give objective form to subjective ideas. The artist exercises this power when he mentally projects the picture formed in his mind upon the canvas and chains it there by the use of his pencil or brush; the sculptor shapes the picture of a form on his mind and embodies it in the marble. He then employs mechanical force to free the ideal from all that is foreign to it, and raises it from the tomb, a materialisation of thought. In the regeneration of man the will is entirely inactive as far as the creation of an ideal is concerned; but it is highly active in keeping away all the influences which will prevent the realisation of the ideal. God does not need the co-operation of man, his will alone is sufficient; he only requires that the will of man shall not prevent him in the performance of his work. The magician forms an image on his mind and makes it perceptible to others by projecting it into their mental spheres. Uniting his own mental sphere with theirs, they are made to participate of his imagination, and they see that as a reality what he chooses to fancy and think.By this law many of the feats performed by Indian fakirs can be explained. They cause tigers and elephants to appear before a multitude, by forming the images of such things in the sphere of their mind. What the spectators see on such occasions is nothing else but the thoughts of the conjuror, rendered objective and visible by the latter.[The fact, that what the spectators on such occasions believe to see does not actually take place, has been proved by means of photography.]In the case of an artist mechanical labour executes the work; in the case of a magician, the will; but the greatest amount of labour will not enable a person who is not an artist to produce a real work of art, and the greatest concentration of thought will not enable a person who has no spiritual power to perform a true magical feat. The “will” to which we refer is a spiritual self-conscious power, unknown to modern psychology. A person may be an excellent anatomist and know nothing whatever about living spiritual [Page 212] principles; he may be a splendid chemist and know nothing whatever about Alchemy; he may have perfect control over the mechanical forces of nature acting on the physical plane and know nothing whatever about the chemistry of the soul.For this reason the mysteries of Alchemy will for ever remain mysteries to a scientist who has no spiritual power at his command. This spiritual power is the spiritual will. Without this power he can only separate the substances of compound bodies and recombine them again as is done in Chemistry, but not employ the principle of life.The processes of nature are alchemical processes; because, without the principle of life acting upon the chemical substances of the earth, no growth would result. If the force of attraction and repulsion were entirely equal, everything would be at a standstill. If growth and decay would go hand in hand, nothing could grow, because a cell would begin to decay as soon as it would begin to form. The chemist may take earth, and water, and air, and separate them into their constituent elements, and recombine them again, and at the end of his work he will be where he began. But the Alchemy of nature takes water, and earth, and air, and infuses into them the fire of life, forming them into trees and producing flowers and fruits. Nature could not give her life-imparting influence to her children if she did not possess it; the chemist, having no life-principle at his command, or not knowing how to employ it, cannot perform the wonders of Alchemy. The reason why we have at present very few alchemists, is because we have very few persons endowed with the life of the spirit. There are three aspects of Alchemy. It deals with the physical substances of things, more especially with their souls, and in its highest aspect with their spiritual centres. In its physical processes it requires physical means, and from the study of these modern chemistry has taken its rise. By the developed powers of his soul the Alchemist may act upon the souls of material substances, and if he can change their qualities, the character of the physical form may be changed. If the spiritual [Page 213] “fire” is awakened within him, he attains the spiritual powers required to act upon the inferior elements. An insufficient degree of heat will not accomplish anything great: he must gradually attain within himself the fire of divine love until he becomes himself the Salamander, able to live in a light in which nothing impure can exist. [ H. P. Blavatsky says: “Everything in this world of effects is made up of three principles and four aspects, each object has an objective exterior, a vital soul, and a divine spark of spiritual fire. By these principles nature acts, and in order to imitate nature, Kriyasakti (the creative will) must be developed in man. This spiritual power is also called the “Word”, of which it is written, that there is no need to seek it in distant places; “ for it is close to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart”.] Johannes Tritheim says: “The Spiritus Mundi resembles a breath, appearing at first like a fog and afterwards condensing like water. This ' water' (A'kasa) was in the beginning pervaded by the principle of life, and light was awakened in it by the fiat of the eternal spirit. This spirit of light, called the soul of the world (the Astral Light), is a spiritual substance, which can be made visible and tangible by art; it is a substance, but being invisible, we call it spirit. This 'soul' or corpus is hidden in the centre of everything, and can be extracted by means of the spiritual fire in man, which is identical with the universal spiritual fire, constituting the essence of nature and containing the images and figures of the Universal Mind”.

“This Light resides in the Water and is hidden as a Seed in all things. Everything that originated from the spirit of light is sustained by it, and therefore this spirit is omnipresent; the whole of nature would perish and disappear if it were removed from it; it is the principium of all things. [J. Tritheim: “Miraculosa”, Chap. xiv. ]

Some of the more enlightened modern chemists do not deny the possibility that a metal may be transformed into another; but the most serious objections made against the ancient Alchemists is that their object was to make artificial material gold. Such objections are based upon an entire misconception of alchemistical terms. The sole circumstance that certain planetary constellations in the microcosm were of the utmost importance for the success of alchemical processes is sufficient to show that the Alchemists experimented with the souls of things, of which their material forms are only the external representatives on the physical plane. Gold, the purest and most incorruptible metal, represented Spirit, Magnesia wisdom, and Calcinated Magnesia wisdom attained through suffering.

Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt represent the trinity of all things, the fiery, watery, and material elements, and have nothing to do with material substances. They are essentially one, but threefold in their manifestation. [ Here we are about to divulge one of the secrets of Alchemy, the truth of which will, however, be self-evident. On a preceding page we have explained that in every atom of the body of man are contained all the principles which go to make up the whole organism of man, with all its organs and functions; and likewise, in every atom of matter is contained a principle, which may grow into a whole universe of matter with its great variety of substances. A principle cannot be changed or transformed into another. Principles are eternal. Only the mode of their manifestation may be changed. and the basis of all material things, manifesting itself outwardly as iron or lead, may. under certain conditions, by changing the divine purpose of its existence be made to manifest itself as silver or gold. The Alchemist does not create any new substance, he merely guides nature, and induces her to grow “ the seeds of minerals”, In the same sense as a gardener assists nature to grow the seeds of plants, and to develop them into flowers. The alchemists, therefore, say: “ We cannot make gold out of anything which is not gold. To make material gold, we must have spiritual gold; we can merely cause the spirItual gold which exists already to grow into a visible and material form. This process is taught by the science of Alchemy, but this science is necessarily incomprehensible to him who has not arrived at that stage of spiritual knowledge, in which he can exercise a “spiritual will”, and a “spiritual will” does not exist in a man whose will is not free of material or personal desires. As the gardener puts the seed into the ground, and supplies it with water and with the necessary temperature, likewise the Alchemist waters“ the seeds of the metals with spiritual influences proceeding from his own divine soul. If a true appreciation of these truths is arrived at, it will at once remove Alchemy from the realm of superstition, and bring it within the limits of an exact spiritual science.

Now, this man was not a full-fledged Alchemist, and could not make gold and the Elixir of Life, because, as he said, he could not find a woman sufficiently pure and at the same time willing, to assist him in his labours; for, it is known to all Alchemists, it requires the co-operation of the male and the female element to accomplish the highest process. This person could therefore not make pure gold; but he could change the nature of metals so that they would obtain certain chemical qualities, differing from substances of the same kind. He could, so to say ennoble metals, so that, for instance, Iron or Brass would not rust if exposed to air and water; and we are now in possession of a Rosicrucian Cross made of brass, which, although it is over twenty years old, and has been exposed to salt-water air, and to climates where every other inferior metal rusts, is still as bright as it has been when first received, and it never needed any cleaning or polishing.

This person also had the power to cause combustible substances to become incombustible, and he could perform many of the alchemical processes described in the books of T. Tritheim, abbot of Spandau. He insisted that he could have made himself to live a thousand years, if he had found a suitable person to assist him in his alchemical work. ] [Page 215]

The most important alchemical work is the generation of man; it requires not only the chemical combination of physical substances, but involves the chemistry of the soul and an influence of the spirit, and all must harmoniously act together, if a human being and not a human monster and mental homunculus is to be the result. If [Page 216] the rules of Alchemy were better understood and adhered to, scrofula, cancers, syphilis, tuberculosis, and other inherited diseases would disappear, and a strong and healthy generation of men and women would be the result.

If – as some modern physiologists believe – thoughts were a secretion of the brain, as the bile is a secretion of the liver, a thought would be lost as soon as it was expressed, and we would have to wait for the brain to recuperate its power, and to form and secrete another one like it again before we could have twice the same thought. We would have to be careful not to express our thought or impart our knowledge to others, as by doing so it would be lost to ourselves. Verily, if we seek for absurdities, we need not look for them in ancient books on Alchemy, but find them sufficiently represented in the works of modern scientific authorities.

Thoughts and ideas are entities, and exist independently of the perception of man; they do not need man for their existence, but man needs them to enable him to think. Thoughts and ideas, set in motion by the Will, move through space; a thought set in motion in the Astral Ether resembles the expanding ripples upon the surface of a lake; a thought projected to a certain destination by the power of an Adept may be compared to an electric current passing with lightning-velocity through space. Thoughts directed towards an object are like a mountain stream rushing towards that object, and if the wills of several persons combine to direct it, it grows in extension and force, provided their wills are single-minded and without any secondary designs. [ This law is said to be well known to certain “Jesuits” and employed for the purpose of influencing minds at a distance.] If a mountain stream strikes [Page 218] a rock, whose resistance it cannot conquer and which it cannot pass, the waters will swell into a lake, devastating the shore and surging back towards its source. If a thought-current cannot enter the sphere of mind of the individual towards whom it is directed, it rebounds upon the mind of the individual from whom the impulse came. A person who concentrates the full power of a malicious thought upon another may, if he fails to succeed, be killed by the energy which he has called into action.

An illustration of this law may be seen when a person dies of grief on account of disappointment. The ray of force continually projected by long and intense desire, unable to accomplish its purpose, returns to the heart, producing a sudden revulsion of feeling; it changes love into grief, attraction into repulsion, desire into contempt, it may cause sickness and death.

Light travels through the air with a velocity of over 180,000 miles per second; thoughts pass with a similar velocity through space. A ray of light is seen to flash through the air and is intercepted by some non-conducting material. An idea flashes through space and is intercepted by a receptive mind. A sound is heard by an indefinite number of persons, and an idea may affect the world. As a pebble thrown into water produces concentric waves, which grow wider and wider, but less distinct as distance increases, so a thought affects some person, and spreading from that centre creates a ripple in the family, the town, the country, or all over the world.

A biogenesis of thought-infections and mental epidemics might be written. To such an investigation would belong the histories of all great reformations originating from some central idea; also the history of the crusades, the flagellants, the inquisition, medieval witchcraft, and modern materialism, and the absurdities of fashion.

To give presupposes the ability to receive. The possibility to impress a thought upon another mind presupposes the ability of that mind to receive that impression. A person who is sufficiently sensitive and [Page 219] in a passive condition, will without difficulty be brought under the control of the will of another, and be made to act unconsciously in obedience to that will. A sleeping person may be impressed with such dreams as another may call up in his imagination, by projecting a picture formed in his mind into the mind of the sleeper; a person in a mesmeric trance may have his imagination identified with that of the person who mesmerised him, and be made to comply implicitly with the will of the master.

We see in everyday life that one person subjects another one to his will and causes him to obey his commands without putting him to sleep, and even without expressly stating a wish. A general does not need to hypnotise his soldiers to make them obey his orders.The difference between such an obedient person and one in the hypnotic sleep is merely that the former will not and the latter cannot resist.

An impulse created by the will continues until the energy is exhausted. If the first impulse is followed by a series of others acting in the same direction, the effect will be correspondingly greater, and one person may affect the thoughts of another at a distance of thousands of miles by continually directing his thoughts upon him.

It would be impossible to move inanimate bodies at a distance by the mere power of will, if there were no substantial contact between such objects and the person who attempts to move them. Nevertheless such movements take place, and prove that there must be a contact of some kind, even if it is an invisible one. The A'kasa furnishes that contact, and the developed will power of a person may act through the substance of his soul upon the soul of the object, and set that object in motion. In this way tables may be made to talk and bells be made to ring. This, however, cannot be accomplished by everybody; to accomplish this an astral organism is required, and it can therefore be done only by such persons as have their astral body developed and are capable to use its organs at will. [ H. P. Blavatsky writes in a private letter to the author: ”I proved that all that mediums can do through “spirits”, others could do at will without any spirits; that the ringing of bells, thought-reading, raps, and physical phenomena could be achieved by anyone who had the faculty of acting in his physical body through the organs of the astral body, and I had that faculty ever since I was four years old. I could make furniture move and objects fly apparently, and by my astral arms that supported them, which remained invisible; all this before I even knew of the Masters”. ] [Page 220]

The thoughts and consciousness of a person or of a number of persons may be projected and concentrated upon any object or to any place that exists within the sphere of their minds. It may be made to inhere in material objects by entering their astral elements and producing corresponding vibrations. Plants or precious stones may be brought in this manner into sympathetic relation with persons, so that if the person is sick or dies, the plants wither and the stones lose their brilliancy. No object in nature is entirely inanimate, and the life-principle is the same in all, whether it be a man or a stone; only the state of their activities differ. If we can induce corresponding vibrations in the souls of a lower order of life, their life will be united with us because all individual forms are only centres in which the Universal Mind has crystallised into forms, and all forms are related together and bound together by the universal cement of Love. A bird may drop down dead when its mate is killed, a mother may feel the pain of an accident happening to her child, twin-brothers have been known to have become affected simultaneously with the same disease and to die at the same time, although their bodies were far apart from each other. No being stands entirely isolated in nature, all are united by divine love, and the more they become conscious of the love that unites them the more do they realise that they are one.

Separation and differentiation exists only in regard to the form, the fundamental power is one, and those who have united their minds with that principle know that they are one, and distance forms no impediment to the actions of their minds. Spirit is substance, inseparable, impenetrable, indivisible, and eternal; form is an aggregate, separate, penetrable, divisible and subject to [Page 221] continual change. The “communion of the saints“ is a reality, for they are all one in the spirit. Light is only one. A number of lights in a room are as one light composed of that number. There is only one “Sound “ but many expressions. If an orchestra is played in a room, each instrument produces sound, the sound of each fills the whole room and is heard according to its intensity. One instrument may sound louder than another; one light may shine brighter than the rest; but they do not annihilate or extinguish each other. Sound is one, and Light is one, and Spirit is one, only their manifestations differ in quality and in strength.

Love is one, but it manifests itself in various ways. Love unites all. Love is a state of the Will. Thought is directed by will, but the will to be powerful must be pure. If we desire two things at the same time, the will acts in two different directions: but division causes weakness, only in unity is strength. Will is one. The will is a universal principle and not confined within a form. If we concentrate our will and thought united upon a cloud in the sky, we can cause that cloud to dissolve, and the rapidity with which it dissolves will be proportionate to the strength of our concentration of mind.[There will be very few of our readers who have never noticed, that if they pass a certain person in the street, and then turn around to look after him or her, it very often happens that the latter turns at the same time to look after them. This happens so frequent, to be a mere matter of coincidence, and is caused by the fact that the impulse of will of one person can communicate itself to another person. But if one desires to make a person turn around by the effort of his will, and for the purpose of seeing whether he can do so, he will probably fail; because the desire to gratify his curiosity weakens the force of his will; he desires two things at once, and he fails. ]

As all forms are only external expressions of thought, if we could hold on to a thought and project it, we could create a form. But men do not control thought, they are the victims of it; they do not think what they choose, but what they are forced to think, by the thoughts flying into their minds. To obtain magic power the first requirement is to learn how to control [Page 222] thought; to command our own moods of mind, and to allow only such ideas to enter the mind as we voluntarily choose to admit. Whoever has for the first time attempted to command a thought, and to hold on to it for five minutes, will have experienced the difficulty, and yet without this first requirement no progress in magic will ever be made.

Before one can become a magician he must learn to control his own mind; for mind is the substance with which the magician acts, and the power to control it is the beginning of magic. No one can control the mind of another as long as he cannot control his own. The will acts outwardly from within the centre of the heart, and no one can make it act beyond the periphery of his body as long as he has not become strong enough to guide it within the body. The neophyte must learn first to control his own emotions before he can control the emotions of others, he must know how to master his thoughts before he can make them objective. But the mind cannot control its own self, it cannot rise above its own nature. To control the action of the mind a Master is required; this Master is the spirit of man. But spirit without substance is without power – without an organism through which to act, it is merely a spirit. That which controls the mind is the spiritually awakened inner man – the divine nature in man, which is superior to his terrestrial mind.

To change a form we change the state of mind, of which the form is an expression. Certain states of mind find their expressions in certain attitudes, and these attitudes induce corresponding mental states. A proud man will walk erect, a coward will creep, a continually practised creeping walk will develop a cowardly nature, and a habitually erect posture will make a man proud or conscious of his dignity. An actor who can identify himself fully with the personality whose part he plays, need not study attitudes to appear natural; an angry person who forces himself to smile lessens his anger; a person with a continual scowl on the face will find it difficult to be gay. It is on account of the desire to facilitate the entering into certain mental states that [Page 223] certain attitudes have been prescribed in religious ceremonies and acts of devotion.

If the Mind were its own Master, if the actions of the Universal Mind were not subject to the eternal divine law of cause and effect, but guided by the arbitrary whims and notions of some invisible power constituted of Mind without wisdom, the most extraordinary results were liable to follow and the age of actual miracles would begin. The earth would perhaps stand still for a day or a year and begin to revolve again the next; sometimes it might turn fast and at other times slow, and there is no end to the absurdities which might take place; especially if this imaginary power could be induced to follow the advices of its worshippers.

To the superficial observer the processes of nature seem to be the results of chance. The sun shines and the rain falls upon the land of the pious as well as upon that of the wicked; storms and fires rage, careless whether they destroy the life and property of the learned or that of the ignorant, because they are the necessary results of the law of cause and effect. The interest of individuals cannot control the welfare of the whole. While the welfare of the human body seems to be, to a certain extent, under the control of the will of the individual, the processes of nature, as a whole, appear to be unguided by the reason of the Universal Mind.

The intellect, being unreasonable, is disposed to gauge the absolute reason of the Universal Mind by the relative understanding of comparatively microscopic man. By the same right might the insect crawling in the dust doubt the intelligence of the wanderer, by whose foot it is maimed or killed without consideration and without remorse; such an insect, if capable of reasoning, would discover no intellect in that foot, and yet the man, whose foot is the destroyer, may be highly intellectual.

The cause, why we cannot comprehend the eternal principle of reason in nature, is because it acts according to law, being one with the law; while our intellect, being filled with considerations of self-interests, is not free of desire, and therefore always inclined to act contrary to the law. [Page 224]

Invisible causes produce visible effects, and the same cause, acting under similar conditions, will always produce similar results. Whenever a certain amount of energy has been accumulated, the time will arrive when it will be expended. The accumulated tension between the particles of explosives finds its equilibrium at the approach of a spark; the electric tension established in the upper regions of the air finds its relief in lightning; accumulated emotions will be equilibrised by an outburst of passion; accumulated energies in the soul of the earth produce earthquakes in the body of the earth, in the same manner as an outburst of grief causes the human form to tremble and to shake. Man's reason may prevent an outburst of his emotions; but where is the personal god to control the emotions of the soul of the world ? God does not prevent the growth of warts, or cancers, or tumours; God being the law cannot act in contradiction with himself. His blessings are accompanied by curses. Man's foot crushes the insect, because man's perception and intelligence does not pervade his feet; God does not prevent the growth of a stone in the bladder, because the high cannot manifest itself in the low, wisdom cannot be active in an unconscious form; the means must be adapted to the end. When universal Man will have so far perfected himself as to be a self-conscious sphere of wisdom without any material parts, then will nature itself be a god. The music that can be made with a harp cannot be made with a stick. The absolute intelligence of the Universal Mind can only manifest itself relatively through instruments adapted to intellectual manifestation. Consciousness can manifest itself as relative consciousness only in conscious forms.

Wisdom is not a product of the organisation of man. It is eternal and universal. It finds its expression in the fundamental laws upon which the universe with all its forms is constructed. It is expressed in the shape of a leaf, in the body of an animal, in the organism of man. Its action can be found everywhere in nature, as long as the beings in nature live according to natural law. There are no diseases in nature, which have not been originally created by powers which acted contrary to the laws of [Page 225] nature and became therefore unnatural. Outward appearances seem to contradict this assertion; because we find animals affected with diseases, and epidemic diseases are even of frequent occurrence in the vegetable kingdom. But a deeper investigation into the occult laws of nature will go to show that all the forms of nature, minerals, vegetables, and animals, are merely states or expressions of the Universal Mind of Universal Man. They are the products of the imagination of Nature, and as the imagination of Nature is acted on, influenced and modified by the imagination of man, a morbid imagination of man is followed by a morbid state of Nature, and morbid results follow again on the physical plane. This law explains why periods of great moral depravity, sensuality, superstition, and materialism are always followed by plagues, epidemics, famine, wars, etc., and it would be worth the while to collect statistics to show that such has invariably been the case.

The elementary forces of nature are blind and obey the law that controls them. A motion originated by an impulse continues until the original energy is expended. Stones have no intelligence, because they have no organisation through which intelligence can become manifest, but if an intelligent power sets them into motion, they obey the law of its nature. As the organisms rise in the scale of evolution and development of form, their consciousness becomes more manifest. Consciousness becomes manifest as instinct in the animal creation. It teaches the bird to fly, the fish to swim, the ants to build their houses, the swallows to make their nests. Acting through the nerve centres and the spinal cord it induces the actions of the heart and lungs and other organic and involuntary actions of the body.

As the spinal cord, in the course of evolution, develops into a brain, the principle of consciousness obtains a more perfect instrument for its manifestation. Intellectual power takes the place of instinct, and the Universal Mind begins to think through the individual brain of man, in the same sense as universal nature uses his body for manifesting her powers.

With the highest development of the human brain, [Page 226] the most perfect instrument for the external manifestation of mind is attained. But the essential man is a spirit, and with the development of the most perfect physical form the climax of his spiritual evolution is not reached. The essential man is a spirit and requires a spiritual organisation for the display of his powers. He has within himself the latent power to realise his own divine and universal existence, and to awaken this power hidden within his psychical constitution another light than the light of nature is required. This Light is the light of Divine Wisdom, one and infinite, and beyond the conception of the brain. It is itself the one eternal Life into which man must enter, if he desires to realise his own immortal existence. To realise that divine universal existence, an organised soul as wide as the universe is required. This soul belongs to the divine man, the Divinity in Humanity, whose material body is the world and whose self-consciousness is Divine Wisdom, the self-recognition of Truth, the Redeemer of All.

“And God said: Let us make Man”. – Bible.

THE most important question that was ever asked, and is still asked with anxiety and often with fear, is the same that was propounded thousands of years ago by the Egyptian Sphinx, who killed him that attempted to solve the riddle and did not succeed:What is Man ? Ages have passed away since the question was first asked, nations have slain each other in cruel religious warfare, making vain efforts to impose upon each other such solution of the great problem as they believed they had found, but from the tombs of the past only re-echoes the same question – What is Man? And yet the answer seems simple. Reason, if divested of religious or scientific prejudices, tells us that man, like every other form in the universe, is a collective centre of energy, a solitary ray of the universally present Divine Light “which is the common source of everything that exists”; he is a true child of the great Spiritual Sun. [Page 228] As the rays of our sun only become visibly active in contact with dust, so the divine ray is absorbed and reflected by matter.

The sun-ray plays with the waves of the ocean: the heat created by the contact of water with light from above extracts from below the refined material, and the vapours rise to the sky, where, like the ghosts of the seas, they wander in clouds of manifold shapes, travelling freely through the air, playing with the winds, until the time arrives when the energies which keep them suspended become exhausted and they once more descend to the earth. In a similar manner a divine ray of the spiritual sun mingles with matter while dwelling on Earth, absorbing and assimilating whatever corresponds to its own nature. As the butterfly flits from flower to flower, tasting the sweets of each, so the human monad passes from life to life, from planet to planet, gathering experience, knowledge, and strength, but when the day of life is over, night follows, and with it follows sleep, bringing dreams of vivid reality. The grossest elements remain to mingle again with earth, the more refined elements – the astral elements – which are still within the attraction of the planet, float about, driven hither and thither by their inherent tendencies, until the energy which holds them together is exhausted, and they dissolve again in the plane to which they belong, but the highest spiritual energies of man, held together by love, freed from the attraction of Earth, ascend to their source like a white-robed spirit, bringing with them the products of experiences beyond the limits of matter. Man's love and aspiration do not belong to Earth. They create energies which are active beyond the confines of the grave and the funeral-pyre; their activity lasts for ages, until it becomes exhausted, and the purified ray, still endowed with the tendencies impressed upon it by its last visit to the planet, again seeks association with matter, builds again its prison-house of animated clay, and appears an old actor in a new part upon the ever-changing stage of life.

Some of the greatest philosophers have arrived at a recognition of this truth by speculation and logical [Page 229] reasoning, while others, whose minds were illumined by wisdom, have perceived it as a self-evident fact by the power of intuition.

To build the new house the impressions gathered by its previous visits furnish the material. The slothful rich man of the past may become the beggar of the future, and the industrious worker in the present life develop tendencies which will lay the foundation of greatness in the next. Suffering in one life may produce patience and fortitude that will be useful in another; hardships will produce endurance, self-denial will strengthen the will; tastes engendered in one life will be our guides in another; and latent energies will become active whenever circumstances require it during an existence on the material plane either in one life or another according to the eternal law of cause and effect.

A child burns its fingers by touching the flame, and the adult does not remember all the circumstances under which the accident occurred; still the fact that fire will burn and must not be touched will remain impressed upon the mind. In the same manner the experiences gained in one life are not remembered in their details in the next, but the impressions which they produce will remain. [ There is a certain stage in the spiritual evolution of man, when he will remember the events of his previous lives; but to remember them in his present state of imperfection would be merely a hindrance in his progress. It has been said, that by not remembering the errors of our past lives, and their evil consequences, man is liable to commit his previous errors again; but we ought not to do good merely as a matter of speculation and to avoid evil consequences resulting therefrom, but from an inherent sense of duty, regardless of what the resulting consequences may be.] Again and again man passes through the wheel of transformation, changing his lower energies into higher ones, until matter attracts him no longer, and he becomes what he is destined to be, a god.

Man, like the majority of organised beings, is an atom in the immensity of the universe; he cannot be divided and still remain a man; but unlike other and lower organised beings, whose realisation of existence is confined to the physical or astral plane, that which [Page 230] constitutes him a Man and distinguishes him from an animal is an integral and conscious part of the highest spiritual energy of the universe, which is everywhere present, and his spiritual consciousness is, therefore, not limited to a certain locality in the physical world.

Who made Man ? — Man makes himself during every day of his life. He is his own creator. The clay – the material body – that clings to the ray of the manifested Life, is taken from Earth, the energies, called the astral soul, are the products of the astral plane, the highest energies belong to the spirit. Animal man, like the lower orders of nature, is a product of the blind law of necessity, and may even be produced artificially. [ See Paracelsus, Homunculi”. ] The physical attributes of the child and its mental qualifications are the result of inheritance of previously existing conditions. Like the tree that can send its roots into the neighbouring soil and gather the nutriment by which it is surrounded, but cannot roam about in search of food at distant places, so physical man has only a limited choice in the selection of such means of development as he may require; he grows, because he cannot resist the law of necessity and the impulses given by nature. But as reason begins to enlighten him, the work of creation begins. The intelligence within says to the will: “Let us make man”. She urges the will, and the will sullenly leaves its favourite occupation of serving the passions and begins to mould man in accordance with the divine image held up before him by wisdom.

Let us make Man, means: Let us make a divine man out of an animal man; let us surround the divine ray within us with the purest of essences; let us throw off everything which is sensual and grossly material, and which hinders our progress; let us transform the emotions into virtues in which the spiritual ray may clothe itself when it re-ascends to its throne.

Let us make man! It depends entirely on our efforts what kind of a man we shall make. To make an average man or even a superior one in the common acceptation of the term is not a very difficult matter.[Page 231] Follow the rules of health and the laws of diet, provide above all for yourself and never give anything away, unless by doing so you are sure to get more in return. You will then make a respectable animal, a “self-made” man, prominent, independent, and rich - one who lives and dies on the plane of selfishness, an object of envy for many; respected perhaps by many, but not by his conscience.

There is another class of self-made men; those on the intellectual plane. They stand before the world as the world's benefactors, as philosophers, teachers, statesmen, inventors, or artists. They have what is called genius, and instead of being mere imitators, they possess originality. They benefit themselves by benefiting the world. Intellectual researches that benefit no one are unproductive; they resemble physical exercise with dumb-bells, by which muscular strength may be gained, but no labour accomplished. An intellectual pursuit may be followed for merely selfish purposes; but unless there is a love for the object of that study, little progress will be made, and instead of a sage, a bookworm will be the result. True genius is a magician who creates a world for himself and for others, and his power expands as he grows in perfection.

The lower intellectual labour alone cannot be the true object of life; the truth cannot be grasped by the unaided efforts of the brain, and he who attempts to arrive at the truth merely by the intellectual labour of the brain, without consulting the heart, will fail. The heart resembles the Sun as the seat of Wisdom, the brain corresponds to the Moon; it is the seat of the reasoning intellect, and receives its light and life from the Sun. If the Sun stands guard over the Moon, thoughts which are distasteful to the heart will not enter the brain. The heart and the head should work together in harmony, to kill the dragon of ignorance, dwelling upon the threshold of the temple, and to arrive at the truth.

In the allegorical books of the Alchemists the Sun represents Intelligence; he is the “heart” of our solar system; the Moon represents dreams and desires or the “brain”; Earth represents the physical Body. If the [Page 232] male Sun cohabits with the female Moon in the water of Truth, they will produce a son whose name is Wisdom. The intellect is the material man whose bride is spiritual understanding, the divine woman; no man or woman is perfect as long as the celestial marriage has not taken place through the power of Divine Love.[Compare “ The Perfect Way, of the Finding of Christ”.]

The materials of which Man is constructed are the principles that flow into him from the store-house of universal nature, the builder is the will, reason the superintendent, and wisdom the supreme architect. The building goes on without noise, and no sound of the hammer is heard, because the materials are already prepared by nature; they only require to be put into their proper places. The highest is the Spirit or “Consciousness”, and Spirit alone is immortal. Such of the lower elements as harmonise with it amalgamate with the spirit, and are rendered conscious and immortal. Spirit can only find its corresponding vibrations in the highest spiritual elements of the soul such as are furnished by the higher principles, and consist of the purest thoughts, aspirations, and memories produced by the fifth, in which resides the intellectual power of man. Pure intelligence is Spirituality, but intellectual activity confined within the lower planes of thought can bring to light no spiritual treasures. Intellectual activity is not a power; but the result of the power of spirit acting within the mind. A very intellectual and learned person may be very unhappy and unharmonious, if his tendencies are towards selfishness, and his mind incapable to be illuminated by the light of truth. Wisdom is the self-recognition of the truth; it resides in the spiritual soul of man, and sends its light down into his fifth principle, shining through the clouds of matter like the sunlight penetrating a fog.

The fifth principle receives its stimulus from the fourth, the irrational nature of man. We cannot build a house without solid material, and we may just as well attempt to run a steam-engine without fuel or water as to make a genius out of a being without any emotions. The stronger the emotions are, the more enduring will [Page 233] be the spiritual temple, if they can be made to fit into the walls and pillars. A person originally without any emotions is without virtues, he is without energy, a shadow, neither cold nor warm, and necessarily useless. The passionate man is nearer to the spirit, if he can guide his passions in the right direction, than the man who has nothing to guide and nothing to conquer.

To produce a perfect building, or a perfect man, the proportions must be harmonious. Wisdom guides the work and love furnishes the cement. An emotion is either a virtue or a vice according to the manner in which it is applied. Misapplied virtues become vices, and well-directed vices are virtues. A man who acts according to the dictates of prudence alone is a coward; one who indiscriminately exercises his generosity is a spendthrift; courage without caution is rashness; veneration without knowledge produces superstition; charity without judgment makes a beggar, and even one-sided justice, un-tempered by mercy, produces a miserly, cruel, and despicable tyrant.

The irrational soul, impelled only by its desires and unguided by wisdom, resembles a drunken man who has lost his physical balance; it totters from side to side, falls from one extreme into another, and cannot guide its steps. Only an equilibrium of forces can produce harmony, beauty, and perfection. The irrational soul, swayed by uncontrollable emotions, forms an unfit habitation for the divine ray, that loves peace and tranquillity.

The control of the emotions is the difficult struggle that is allegorically represented by the twelve labours of Hercules, which the oracle of Zeus commanded him to perform. Every man who desires to progress is his own Hercules and works for the benefit of the king (his Atma), whose orders he receives through the divine oracle of his own conscience. He is constantly engaged in battle, because the lower principles fight for their lives and will not be conquered. They are the products of matter and they cling to their source.

Whence do the emotions come?

The cosmologies of the ancients express under various [Page 234] allegories the same fundamental truth; that “in the beginning” the Great First Cause evolved out of itself, by the power of its own will, certain powers, whose action and reaction brought the elementary forces that constituted the world into existence. These elementary forces are the Devas of the East, the Elohims of the Bible, the Afrites of the Persians, the Titans of the Romans, the Eggregores of the book of Enoch. They are the active agents of the cosmos, beneficial or detrimental according to the conditions under which they act, intelligent or unintelligent according to the nature of the instrument through which they work. They are not necessarily self-conscious rational entities, but may manifest themselves through conscious organisms endowed with reason; they are not persons, but become personified by finding expression in individual forms. Love and hate, envy and benevolence, lust and greed are not persons, but become personified in human or animal forms. An extremely malicious person is the embodiment of malice, and if he sees the demon in an objective form, he beholds the reflection of his own soul in the mirror of his mind. Spirit exists everywhere, but we cannot perceive a spirit unless it first enters the sphere of our soul. The spirit that enters our soul obtains its life from ourselves, and if we do not expel it from our soul it grows strong by vampirising our life. Like a parasite growing on a tree and feeding on its substance, it fastens its feelers around the tree of our life and grows strong while our own life grows weak. A thought, once taking root in the mind, will grow until it becomes expressed in an act, when, obtaining a life of its own by that act, it leaves its place to a successor. Those elementary forces of nature are everywhere, and always ready to enter the soul if its doors are not defended. To call up a wicked spirit we need not go in search of him, we need only allow him to come. To call up a devil means to give way to an evil thought, to vanquish him means to resist successfully a temptation to evil.

The elementary powers of nature are innumerable, and their classification gave rise to the pantheons of the [Page 235] Greeks and to the mythologies of the East. The greatest power is Zeus, the father of the gods, or the source from which all other powers take their origin. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, springs from his head, her origin is the noblest of all, but Venus, the daughter of the Sun, arising from the ocean of the universal Soul, conquers all by her beauty. She holds together the worlds in space by the power of her attraction, binds souls to souls, chains the like to like, and binds the evil to evil. She is the mother of the minor gods that combat each other, because love of self, love of possession, love of fame, love of power, etc., are all only children of the universal power of love. They fight among themselves like children, because action gives rise to reaction, love is opposed by hate, hope by fear, faith by doubt, etc. To control them the god of Power (Mars) must be united with the goddess of Love – in other words, the passions must be held in obedience by the Will.

Each power exists and is held in its elementary matrix or vehicle, the A'kâsa, the Universal Proteus, the generator of form, which finds its outward expression in Matter, and these powers constitute the eternal circle, or the snake, “whose head shall be crushed by the heel of the woman”, meaning Wisdom, the eternal virgin, whose “daughters” are faith, hope, and charity.

The snake cannot enter the soul, if the soul is defended by wisdom. If an evil thought enters the soul and we do not reject it, we harbour a devil in our heart, whose claims we take into consideration; we give him a promise and induce him to remain, and, like an unwelcome creditor, he will continually urge his claims until they are fulfilled.

The lower triads of principles in the constitution of man receive their nutriment from the inferior kingdoms of nature. If the body is overfed or stimulated by drink, the emotional element will become excessively active and the intellect will become weak. Too stimulating food or drink is injurious for higher development, because life will in such cases withdraw its activity from the higher principles and be made to work in the lower principles of man. Large quantities of otherwise healthy [Page 236] food will be injurious for the same reason. The principle of life which transforms the lower energies into higher ones is the same principle which causes the digestion of food. If it is squandered in the lower organs, the higher organs will starve. Some men are habituated to meat-eating, and they require it; others are used to alcohol, and if they would suddenly discontinue its use they will suffer; but meat and alcohol are, under normal conditions, unnecessary for the human system, and often they act positively injurious.

The principle argument of the lovers of animal food is that it “gives bodily strength, and is necessary for those who have to perform manual labour”. This argument is based upon an erroneous opinion, because animal food does not give as much strength as a vegetable diet; [According to the calculations made by Prov. J. V. Liebig, the same amount of albuminous substances for which, if in the form of animal food, is paid IOO d., can be bought in the shape of peas for 9d. , and in that of wheat for 4d ] it only stimulates the organism, and induces it to use up the strength which it already possesses in a short period of time instead of saving it up for the future. The consequences of an exclusive animal diet, gluttony, extreme sensuality, combativeness, cruelty, and stupidity, indolence, physical and psychical apathy, are the necessary consequences of over-stimulation.

The body politic resembles the individual body. It is of no use to destroy the means to gratify a desire as long as the desire itself is suffered to exist. The evils that affect mankind are the outcome of their desires for such evils. Means to gratify evil desires will exist as long as they are patronised, and if they are abolished other means will be found. Weeds are not destroyed by cutting their leaves, if the roots are allowed to remain. These roots grow in the dark soil of, ignorance, they can only be destroyed by the light of the truth.

To eat and drink and sleep for the purpose of living, and not to live for the purpose of eating, drinking, and sleeping, is a maxim which is often heard, but which is not frequently carried out. A great deal of nutriment daily taken by men serves no other purpose than to comply with habit, and to gratify an artificially created desire. The more a man is gross and material, the greater is the quantity of food he desires, and the more food he takes the more gross and material will he become. Noble and refined natures require little nutriment, ethereal beings and “spiritual” entities require no material food.

The means should always be adapted to the end in view. If the end is low and vulgar, low and vulgar means will be needed; if it is noble and high, equally high and noble means are required. A prize-fighter, whose main object is to develop muscle, will require [Page 239] a different training from that of one who desires to develop the faculty to perceive spiritual truths. Conditions that may be suitable for the development of one person may be impracticable for another. One man will develop faster through poverty, another through wealth; one man may need as his initial psychic stimulus the gentle and exalting influences of married life, while another one's aspirations rise higher, if independent of earthly ties. Each man who exercises his will for the purpose of his higher development is, to the extent he exercises it, a practical occultist. Everyone grows necessarily in one direction or in another; none remain stationary. Those who desire to outstrip others in growth must act.

One of the Tibetan Adepts says in a letter —

“Man is made up of ideas, and ideas guide his life. The world of subjectivity is the only reality to him even on this physical plane. To the occultist it grows more real as it goes further and further from illusory earthly objectivity, and its ultimate reality is Parabrahm. Hence an aspirant for occult knowledge should begin to concentrate all his desires on the highest ideal, that of absolute self-sacrifice, philanthropy, divine kindness, as of all the highest virtues obtainable on this Earth, and work up to it incessantly. The more strenuous his efforts to rise up to that ideal, the oftener is his will-power exercised, and the stronger it becomes. When it is thus strengthened, it sets up a tendency, in the gross shell of Stula-sharira, to do such acts as are compatible with the highest ideal he has to work up to, and his acts intensify his will-power doubly, owing to the operation of the well-known law of action and reaction. Hence in Occultism great stress is laid on practical results.

“Now the question is: What are these practical results, and how are they to be produced ? It is a well-known fact, derived from observation and experience, that progress is the law of nature. The acceptance of this truth suggests the idea, that humanity is in its lower state of development, and is progressing towards the stages of perfection. It will approach the final goal when it develops new sensibilities and a clear relation with [Page 240] nature. From this it is obvious that a final state of perfection will be arrived at when the energy that animates man co-operates with the One Life operating in the Cosmos in achieving this mighty object; and knowledge is the most powerful means to that end.

“Thus it will be clear that the ultimate object of nature is to make man perfect through the union of the human spirit with the One Life. Having this final goal before our mind, an intellectual brotherhood should be formed by uniting all together, and this is the only stepping-stone towards the final goal. To produce this practical result, union, we must hold up the highest ideal, which forms the real man, and make others see that truth and act up to it. To lead our neighbours and fellow-creatures to this right path, the best means should be pursued with self-sacrificing habits. When our energy as a collective whole is thus expended, in working up to the highest ideal, it becomes potent, and the grandest results are produced on the spiritual plane. As this is the most important work in which every occultist should be engaged, an aspirant for higher knowledge should spare no efforts to bring about this end. With the progressive tide of evolution of the body as a whole, the mental and the spiritual faculties of humanity expand.To help this tide on, a knowledge of philosophical truths should be spread. This is what is expected from an aspirant for occult knowledge, and what he should do”.

The will is developed through action and strengthened by faith. The movements of the body, such as walking, are only successfully performed by a person because he has a full and unwavering faith in his power to perform them. Fear and doubt paralyse the will and produce impotency; but hope and faith produce marvellous results. The lawyer or physician who has no faith in his own ability will make blunders, and if his clients or patients share his doubts, his usefulness will be seriously impaired; whereas even the ignorant fanatic or quack may succeed, if he has faith in himself.

Lord Lytton says: “The victims of the ghostly one are those that would aspire and can only fear”.[Page 241] Fear and Doubt are the hell-born daughters of ignorance that drag man down to perdition; while Faith is the white-robed angel that lends him her wings and endows him with power. “ Samsayatma Vinasyati” (the doubter perishes), said Krishna to Arjuna, his favourite disciple.

Faith is soul-knowledge; therefore, even without intellectual knowledge, it is more useful than intellectual knowledge without faith. Strong faith, even if resting upon an erroneous conception, acts powerfully in producing results; faith produces an exalted state of the imagination, which strengthens the will, banishes pain, cures disease, leads to heroism, and transforms hell into heaven.

The only way to develop will-power is to act according to law. Each act creates a new impulse, which, added to the already existing energy, increases its strength. Good acts increase the power for good; evil acts, the power for evil. A person who acts only from impulse manifests no will of his own. If he obeys his lower impulses he passively develops into a criminal or a maniac; he who acts by the impulse of divine wisdom is a god. The most horrible crimes are often committed without any proportionate provocation, because the perpetrators had not the power to resist the impulses that prompted them to such acts. Such persons are not necessarily wicked; they are weak and irresponsible beings; they are the servants of the impulses that control them, and they can be made the helpless instruments and victims of those who know how to call forth their emotions; they are like the soldiers of two opposing armies, who are not necessarily personal enemies; but are made to hate and kill each other by appeals to their passions. The oftener such persons give way to impulses, the more is their power of resistance diminished, and their own impotency is their ruin. It is of little use to be merely passively good, if abstinence from wrong-doing may be so called. A person who does neither good nor evil accomplishes nothing. A stone, an animal, an imbecile, may be considered good, because they do no active evil; a person may live a hundred years, and at the end of [Page 242] his life he may not have been more useful than a stone. [He who is neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, will be spued out by nature”. – Bible.]

There is nothing in nature which has not a threefold aspect and a threefold activity. The Will-power forms no exception to this rule. In its lowest aspect the Will is that power which induces the voluntary and involuntary functions of the physical organism; its centre of activity is the spinal cord. In its higher aspect it is the power which induces psychic activity; it is diffused through the blood which comes from the heart and returns to it, and its actions are governed, or can be governed, by intellect acting in the brain by means of the impulses, influences, and auras radiating from there. In its highest aspects the Will is a living and self-conscious power having its centre in Wisdom.

The will, to become powerful, must be free of desire. If we desire an object, we do not attract that object, but the object attracts us. Eliphas Levi says: “The Will accomplishes everything which it does not desire”; and the truth of this paradox is seen in every-day life. Those who crave for fame or riches are never contented; the rich miser is poorer than the beggar in the street; happiness is a shadow that flies before him who seeks it in material pleasures. The surest way to become rich is by being contented with what we have; the safest way to obtain power is to sacrifice ourselves for others; and if we desire love, we must distribute the love we possess to others, and then the love of others will descend upon us like the rain descends upon the earth.

The development of the will is a process of growth, and the only true way to develop the Will is by being obedient to the universal Law. If we wish to use nature, we must act according to natural law; if we wish to use spiritual powers, we must act in obedience to the spiritual law. Then will we become masters of Nature and God, and our Will, will become a serviceable instrument for the fulfillment of law; but as long as the Will is governed by personal desire, it is not we [Page 243] who control our will, but it is our desire. As long as we do the will of the lower animal we cannot be gods; only when we perform the will of the Divinity, we will become free of the bondage of the animal elements, and our true Self will be the Master.

Man in his youth longs for the material pleasures of earth, for the gratification of his physical body. As he advances, he throws away the playthings of his childhood and reaches out for something higher. He enters into intellectual pursuits, and after years of labor he may find that he has been wasting his time by running after a shadow. Perhaps love steps in and he thinks himself the most fortunate of mortals, only to find out, sooner or later, that ideals can only be found in the ideal world. He becomes convinced of the emptiness of the shadows he has been pursuing, and, like the winged butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, he stretches out his feelers into the realm of infinite spirit, and is astonished to find a radiant sun where he only expected to find darkness and death. Some arrive at this light sooner; others arrive later, and many are lured away by some illusive light and perish, and like insects that mistake the flame of a candle for the light of the sun, scorch their wings in its fire.

Life is a continual battle between error and truth; between man's spiritual aspirations and the demands of his animal instincts. There are two gigantic obstacles in the way of progress: his misconception of the nature of God and of Man. As long as man believes in an extra-cosmic personal God distributing favours to some and punishing others at pleasure, a God that can be reasoned with, persuaded, and pacified by ignorant man, he will keep himself within the narrow confines of his ignorance, and his mind cannot expand. To think of some place of personal enjoyment or heaven, does not assist man's progression. If such a person desists from doing a wicked act, or denies himself a material pleasure, he does not do so from any innate love of good; but either because he expects a reward from God for his “sacrifice”, or because his fear of God makes him a coward. We must do good, not on account of any [Page 244] personal consideration, but because to do good is our duty. To be good is to be wise; the fool expects rewards; the wise expects nothing. The wise knows that by benefiting the world he benefits himself, and that by injuring others he becomes his own executioner.

What are the powers of Man, by which he may benefit the world ? Man has no powers belonging to himself. Even the substance of which his organisation is made up, does not belong but is only lent to him by Nature, and he must return it. He cannot make any use of it, except through that universal power, which is active within his organisation, which is called the Will, and which itself is a function of an universal principle, the Spirit.

Man as a personal and limited being is merely a manifestation of this universal principle in an individual form, and all the spiritual powers he seems to possess belong to the Spirit. Like all other forms in nature he receives life, light, and energy from the universal fountain of Life, and enjoys their possession for a short span of time; he has no powers whatever which he may properly call his own.

Thus the sunshine and rain, the air and earth, does not belong to a plant. They are universal elements belonging to nature. They come and help to build up the plant, they assist in the growth of the rosebush as well as the thistle; their business is to develop the seed, and when their work is done, the organism in which they were active returns again to its mother, the Earth. There is then nothing which properly belongs to the plant; but the seed continues to exist without the parental organism after having attained maturity, and in it is contained the character of the species to which it belongs.

Life, sensation, and consciousness are not the property of personal man; neither does he produce them. They are functions of the Spirit and belong originally to God. The One Life furnishes the principles which go to build up the organism called Man, the forms of the good as well as those of the wicked. They help to develop the germ of Intelligence in man, and when their work is [Page 245] done they return again to the universal fountain. The germ of Divinity is all there is of the real man, and all that is able to continue to exist as an individual, and it is not a man, but a Spirit, one and identical in its essence with the Universal God, and one of his children. How many persons exist in whom this divine germ reaches maturity during their earthly life ? How many die before it begins to sprout ? How many do not even know that such a germ exists?

To this Universal Principle belong the functions which we call Will and Life and Light; its foundation is Love. To it belong all the fundamental powers which produced the universe and man, and only when man has become one and identical with God or to speak more correctly, when he has come to realise his oneness with God, can he claim to have powers of his own.

But the Will of this Universal Power is identical with universal Law, and man who acts against the Law acts against the Will of God, and as God is man's only real eternal Self, he who acts against that Law destroys himself.

The first and most important object of man's existence is, therefore, that he should learn the law of God and of Nature, so that he may obey it and thereby become one with the law and live in God. A man who knows the Law knows himself, and a man who knows his divine Self knows God.

The only power which man may rightfully claim his own is his Self-knowledge; it belongs to him because he has required it by the employment of the powers lent to him by God. Not the “knowledge” of the illusions of life, for such knowledge is illusive, and will end with those illusions; not mere intellectual learning, for that treasure will be exhausted in time; but the spiritual self-knowledge of the heart, which means the power to grasp the truth which exists in ourselves.

What has been said about the Will is equally applicable to the Imagination. If man lets his own thoughts rest, and rises up to the sphere of the highest ideal, his mind becomes a mirror wherein the thoughts of God will be reflected, and in which he may see the past, the [Page 246] present, and future; but if he begins to speculate within the realm of illusions, he will see the truth distorted and behold his own hallucinations.

The knowledge of God and the knowledge of man are ultimately identical, and he who knows himself knows God. If we understand the nature of the divine attributes within us, we will know the Law. It will then not be difficult to unite our Will with the supreme Will or the cosmos; and we shall be no longer subject to the influences of the astral plane, but be their masters. Then will the Titans be conquered by the gods; the serpent in us will have its head crushed by Divine Wisdom; the devils within our own hells will be conquered, and instead of being ruled by illusions, we shall be ruled by Wisdom.

It is sometimes said that it does not make any difference what a man believes so long as he acts rightly; but a person cannot be certain to act rightly, unless he knows what is right. The belief of the majority is not always the correct belief, and the voice of reason is often drowned in the clamour of a superstition based upon erroneous theological doctrine. An erroneous belief is detrimental to progress in proportion as it is universal; such belief rests on illusion, knowledge is based on truth. The greatest of all religious teachers therefore recommended Right Belief as being the first step on the Noble Eightfold Path.

The eight stages on the noble eightfold Path to find the truth are, according to the doctrine of Gautama Buddha, the following -

1. Right Belief.

2. Right Thought.

3. Right Speech.

4. Right Doctrine.

5. Right Means of Livelihood.

6. Right Endeavour.

7. Right Memory.

8. Right Meditation.

Perhaps it will be useful to keep in mind the following rules — [Page 247]

I. Do not believe that there is anything higher in the universe than your own divine self, and know that you are exactly what you permit yourself to become. The true religion is the recognition of divine truth; idols are playthings for children.

2. Learn that man is essentially a component and integral part of universal humanity, and that what is done by one individual acts and reacts on all.

3. Realise that man's nature is an embodiment of ideas, and his physical body an instrument which enables him to come into contact with matter; and that this instrument should not be used for unworthy purposes. It should neither be worshipped nor neglected.

4. Let nothing that affects your physical body, its comfort, or the circumstances in which you are placed, disturb the equilibrium of your mind. Crave for nothing on the material plane, live about it without losing control over it. Matter forms the steps upon which we may ascend to the kingdom of heaven.

5. Never expect anything from anybody, but be always ready to assist others to the extent of your ability, and according to the requirements of justice. Never fear anything but to offend the moral law and you will not suffer. Never hope for any reward and you will not be disappointed. Never ask for love, sympathy, or gratitude from anybody, but be always ready to bestow them on others. Such things come only when they are not desired.

6. Learn to distinguish and to discriminate between the true and the false, and act up to your highest ideal. Grieve not if you fall, but rise and proceed on your way.

7. Learn to appreciate everything (yourself included) at its true value in all the various planes. A person who attempts to look down upon one who is his superior is a fool, and a person who looks up to one who is inferior is mentally blind. It is not sufficient to believe in the value of a thing, its value must be realised, otherwise it resembles a treasure hidden in the vaults of a miser. [Page 248]

Louis Claude de Saint Martin (the Unknown Philosopher) says:

“This is what should pass in a man who is restored to his divine proportions through the process of regeneration —

“Not a desire, but in obedience to the law.

“Not an idea, which is not a sacred communication with God.

“Not a word, which is not a sovereign decree.

“Not an act, which is not a development and extension of the vivifying rule of the Word.

“Instead of this, our desires are false, because they come from ourselves.

“Our thoughts are vague and corrupt, because they form adulterous alliances.

“Our words are without efficacy, because we allow them to be blunted every day by the heterogeneous substances to which we continually apply them.

“Our acts are insignificant and barren, because they can but be the results of our words”.

The best of all instructions for becoming spiritual and ultimately divine are to be found in the Bhagavad Gita. They also teach that man needs not to exert his self-will for the purpose of saving himself; for Krishna says: “Devote thy heart to Me, worship Me, sacrifice yourself to Me, bow down before Me, so shalt thou surely come to me”;[ Bhagavad Gita, xviii. 65] and the prayer of the Christians says: “Let thy will be done on earth (in our mortal nature) as it is done in heaven (in our spiritual nature)”.

Such and similar instructions are nothing new; they have been pronounced in various forms by the philosophers of all ages, and have been collected in books, and men have read them without getting any better for it, because they could not realise the necessity for following such advice. These doctrines have been taught by the ancient Rishis and Munis, by Buddha and Christ, Confucius, Zoroaster and Mahomed, Plato, Luther and Shakespeare, and every reformer. They have been preached in sermons, and written in poems and prose, in works of philosophy, literature, fiction, and art. [Page 249] They have been heard by all, understood by some, and practised by a few. To learn them is easy, to realise them is difficult, to adopt them in practical life is divine. The highest spiritual truths cannot be intellectually grasped, the reasoning powers of half-animal man cannot conceive of their importance; terrestrial man can only look up to those ideals which are perceptible to his spiritual vision in moments of aspiration, and only gradually can he grow up into that plane when, becoming less animal and more spiritual, he will be able to realise the fact that this growth is not necessary to please a god whose favour must be obtained, or to insure a happy animal life; but that he himself becomes a god by that growth, and learns to experience his own immortal existence. The highest energies are latent in the lower ones; they are the attributes of the spiritual soul, which in the majority of men is still in a state of infancy, but which in future generations will be more universally developed, when humanity as a whole, having progressed higher, will look back upon our present era as the age of ignorance and misery, while they themselves will enjoy the fruits of the higher evolution of Man. [Page 250]

CHAPTER XI

LIGHT

“Let there be Light”. — Bible

FORM, personality, and sensuality are the death of spirit: the dissolution of form, loss of personality and unconsciousness of sensuous perceptions, render spirit free and restore it to life. The elementary forces of nature, bound to forms, become the prisoners of the forms. Being entombed in matter they lose their liberty of action and move only in obedience to external impulses; the more they cling to form, the more dense, compact, heavy, and dull will they become, and the less will they be self-acting and free. Sunlight and heat are comparatively free; their elements travel from planet to planet, until they are absorbed by earthly forms. Crystallised into matter they sleep in trees and forests and fields of coal, until they are liberated by the slow decomposition of form, or forcibly restored to freedom by the god of fire. The waves of ocean and lake play joyfully with the shore. Full of mirth they throw their spray upon the lazy rocks. The laughing waters of the wandering brook glide restlessly through forest and field, dancing and whirling and playing with the flowers that grow by the side of their road. They rush without fear over precipices, falling in cascades over the mountain sides, uniting, dividing, and uniting again, mingling with rivers and resting at last for a while in the sea. But when winter arrives and King Frost puts his icy hand upon their faces, they crystallise into individual forms, they are then robbed of their freedom, and like [Page 251] the damsels and knights of the enchanted castle, they are doomed to sleep until the warm breath of youthful Spring breaks the spell of the sorcerer, and kisses them back into life.

The fundamental laws of nature are the same in all her departments, and man forms no exception to the general rule. He is a centre around which some of the intelligent as well as some of the unintelligent forces have crystallised into a form. Bound by the laws of the Karma which that centre created, they are doomed to dwell in a form, and to partake of the accidents to which forms are exposed; imprisoned in a personality, they partake of the sufferings which the tendencies of that personality have called into existence. They may be exposed to desires whose thirst increases in proportion as they are furnished with drink, to passions whose fire burns hotter in proportion as their demand for fuel is granted, they are tempted to run after shadows that ever fly, to grasp at hopes that ever beckon and vanish as soon as they are approached, to sorrows that enter the house although the doors may be closed against them, to fears whose forms have no substance, to illusions that disappear only with the life of the form. Like Prometheus bound to a rock, the impersonal spirit is chained to a personality, until the consciousness of his herculean power awakes in him, and bursting his chains he becomes again free.

Not all the elements that go to make up a complete man are enclosed in his material form. The far greater part of them is beyond the limits of his physical body; the latter is merely a centre in which those invisible elements meet. The body of man does not enclose the sphere of his spirit; his soul is far greater than the circumference of his form.[ For this reason persons manifesting great genius have been called “great souls” or “Mahatmas”, from “maha” great and “atma” the soul. ] The elements that exist beyond the limits of his visible organism stand in intimate relation with those that are within, although the elements within the form may not seem to be conscious of the existence of those beyond. Still they act and react upon each other. [Page 252]

The mind of man is far more important than his physical form. Thought can create a form, but no form can produce a thought; and yet the substance of thought is invisible as long as it has not clothed itself in a form. Air exists within and beyond the physical body; it is invisible and yet it is an important element of the body, a man who could not breathe would be very incomplete. The ocean of mind in which man exists is as necessary to his soul-life as the air is to his body, he cannot breathe if deprived of air; he cannot think if deprived of mind. The outer acts upon the inner, the inner upon the outer, the above upon the below, the great upon the little, and the little upon the great. A man who could live independent of his surroundings would be self-existent, he would be a god.

The spirit is not confined by the form, it only over-shadows the form; the form does not contain the spirit, it is only its outward expression; it is the instrument upon which the spirit plays, and which reacts upon its touch, while the spirit responds to its vibrations. An ancient proverb says: “Everything that exists upon the Earth has its ethereal counterpart above the Earth, and there is nothing, however insignificant it may appear in the world, which is not depending on something higher; so that, if the lower part acts, its preceding higher part reacts upon it”. [ Sohar Wajecae ]

The greatest philosophers in ancient times taught that the νομς that alone recognised noumena, always remained outside the physical body of man; that it overshadowed his head, and that only the ignorant believed it existed within themselves. Modern philosophers have arrived at similar conclusions. Fichte writes: “The real spirit which comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an impersonal pneuma – universal reason – and the good of man's whole development therefore can be no other than to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness”.

The Bhagavad Gita says: “The Supreme Brahma is within and without all beings; motionless and yet [Page 253] moving. Not distributed in beings, yet constantly distributed in them. He is the light of all luminous things and in everything its perfection”, [ Bhagavad Gita, xiii] and the same truth, speaking through the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth, says: “ I am the Light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life”. [St John, viii. 12 ]

The greatest of all teachers, Gautama Buddha, says: “The permanent never mingles with the impermanent, although the two are one. Only when all outward appearances are gone, is that one principle of life left, which exists independently of all external phenomena. It is the fire that burns within the external light when the fuel is expended and the flame is extinguished, for that fire is neither in the flame nor in the fuel, nor yet inside either of the two, but above, beneath, and everywhere”.

This principle, in which rests the self-recognition of eternal truth is the real Ego of every human being, and he who succeeds in attaining self-knowledge of it has found the Christ. It is the true and living Christ of the real Christians, not the dead “Jesus” but the living Saviour, the Divinity, who, being born in our Humanity, remains with his followers unto the end of the world. Everyone who unites his own soul with that Christ – no matter what his creed or confession may be – will become as true and veritable a Christ as ever lived upon the Earth. It is the λογος of the ancients, the Adam Kadom of the Hebrews, the Osiris of the Egyptians, the Iswar of the Hindus, the way, the light, and the truth, the divine Self of every man and the Redeemer for all.[ Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem is born; If he's not born in thee, thy soul is all forlorn”. — Angelus Silesius (born 1624)]

Hermes Trismegistus says of that being called “Man”: “Its father is the Sun (Divine Wisdom), his mother the stars (the Astral light) and his body the generations of men”

The whole of a man is not enclosed within the small [Page 254] circle that circumscribes his terrestrial life. He who has found the “ Father ” within himself knows the true insignificance of his own personal self. The life of the personality is made up of a comparatively small number of years passed among the illusions of the terrestrial plane; the experience of the inner man is made up of the essence of a great many of such lives; he has retained of them only that which is useful and grand, while the worthless materials have been rejected, but the life of the Divine man is eternal, universal, self- existent, and infinite. He who has once realised the presence of his God laughs at the idea of having ever imagined himself to be something more than a bundle of semi-conscious elements from which the inner Self draws nutriment, if it finds anything therein compatible with its own nature. What is all the power and glory of earthly kings compared with the divine Man, the King in the realm of the soul? what is all the science of this earth but nonsense, if compared with the self-knowledge of the regenerated ? Well may he who has welcomed the Lord in his soul be willing to renounce money, power and fame, terrestrial loves and all the illusions of life, if it can be called “renunciation” to refuse to touch things upon which one looks with indifference. How can he, who has never seen the image of the true Saviour, in his heart love him, and how can he who has once beheld his own real ideal Self cease to love and adore it with his whole mind and with all the faculties of the soul? But such things will not be understood by those who cannot yet rise above limitation; let those who know them rejoice and worship in silence.

He who has succeeded in merging the higher elements of his soul with that divine Self will know its power in his own heart. This principle baptises his soul with fire, and he who receives this baptism of fire is ordained a priest and a King. He who is full of its influence is the true “vicegerent of God”, because the supreme power of the universe acts through his instrumentality. The recognition of this principle fills his heart with a peace “which passeth understanding”. it attracts the [Page 255] affections of men to him, and sheds blessings upon everyone who approaches his presence. It forgives the sins of men, by transforming them into other beings who have not sinned and need therefore not to be pardoned; it does not require to hear confession to give advice, because it understands the innermost thoughts of every being, and its admonishing voice is heard in the heart that has learned to understand the language of conscience. The development of the power to perceive its power confirms men's faith, by enabling them to recognise that to be true which they heretofore only believed to be true, and being taught by the truth itself, they can make no mistake. It communicates with man by being absorbed by man, and by absorbing the soul of man into itself; it brings the dying to life, because, being immortal, he who is consciously united with it enjoys its own immortality; the marriages it celebrates can never be dissolved, because in its power all humanity is bound together to one indissoluble whole; to separate from it would be death to the part that separates itself from the whole. The world in which this principle exists is the sphere of eternal life; it is the only true and infallible “church” and its power cannot be taken away. This church is truly universal, nothing can live without its jurisdiction, because nothing can continue to exist without the authority of life. Still it has no particular name, requires no other fee for initiation but self-sacrifice, no ceremonies or rites except the “crucifixion” and death of the irrational man. “Heathens” and “Infidels” may enter it without changing their faith; opinions cease to exist where the truth is revealed.

But this true Christ is not the Christ of popular Christianism. He has long ago been driven away from the modern Christian temples, and an idol has occupied his place. The money-changers and tradesmen have again taken possession of the temple of the soul, sacrificing the life-blood of the poor at the altars of wooden gods, closing their eyes to the truth and worshipping tinsel, squandering the wealth of nations for the glorification of the illusion of self. The true “Son of Man” [Page 256] is still scoffed at by his nominal followers, traduced by his pretended friends, tormented by the lusts of the flesh, crucified by men who do not recognise in him the only source of their life, killed by men in their own hearts, ignorantly and foolishly, because they do not know what they are doing, and that their own life-substance departs at the time when he departs from their life.

Modern hypocrisy adores the religion of selfishness and rejects the gospel of love. Humanity debases her own dignity by crouching at the feet of idols, where she should stand up in her own dignity and purity as the queen of the whole creation. The soul of humanity is still dreaming and has not yet awakened to life. She seeks for a god whom she does not know, and cannot realise the fact that in herself is that god, and that there can be no other god besides him. Men and women clamour for the coming of a god, and yet this god is there and everywhere, and ever ready to manifest his presence as soon as he is admitted into the heart.

This unknown god is attainable to all and may be recognised by everyone. It is a principle ever ready to be born as a power in every heart where the conditions for its birth are prepared. It always begins to come to life in a “manger” between the elemental and animal forces in man. It can only be born in a lowly place, because pride and superstition are its enemies, and in a heart filled with vanity it would soon perish. The news of its birth sends a thrill of pleasure through the physical body, and the morning stars in the soul sing together for joy, heralding the dawn of the day for the resurrection of the celestial spirit. The three magicians from the East, Spirit, Soul, and Matter, representing Love, Wisdom, and Power, appear at the manger and offer their gifts to the new-born babe. If the king of pride and ambition does not succeed in driving it out of the country, it begins to grow, and as it grows its divinity becomes manifest. It argues with the intellectual powers in the temple of the mind and silences their sophistry by its superior knowledge. It penetrates into mysteries, which intellectuality, born of sensual [Page 257] perceptions, cannot. explain. Grey-headed material science, superstition hoary with age, old logic based upon misconceptions of fundamental truths, give way, and are forced to acknowledge the wisdom of the half-grown god.

Living in the wilderness of material desires, it is vainly tempted by the devil of selfishness. It cannot be misled by personal considerations, because being superior to them, it has no personal claims. The “devil” can give to it nothing that it does not already possess, because being the highest it rules over all that is low.

This principle is the first emanation of The Absolute. It becomes the “only-begotten son” of its father, and is as old as the father, because the Absolute could only become a “father” at the time when the “son” was born.[Bible: St John i. 1; Hebrews i. 3] It is the living Word, and every man is that Word, in whom this “son of god” becomes manifest. It is the divine self of every man, his own divine ethereal counterpart without any infirmities, because the latter only belong to the terrestrial form. It is not a personality, but it may become individualised in man and yet remain in its essence impersonal, a living being, ubiquitous, incorruptible, and immortal. This is the great mystery before which the intellect, reasoning from particulars to universals, stands hopelessly still, but which the soul, whose inner spiritual perceptions are alive, beholds with astonishment and wonder. Only that which is infinite and immortal in man can comprehend infinitude and immortality.

As long as the wavering intellect doubts the existence of God, it cannot become conscious of His existence, because only the steady light of unclouded reason can penetrate into the depths where divine wisdom dwells. Mere “belief” is a confession of ignorance; true faith is based upon experience. We cannot be convinced of the existence of something we do not know, and of which we are unconscious, except by becoming conscious of its existence. Consciousness, knowledge, and realisation of the existence of something can only begin at the moment when that something begins to become conscious within [Page 258] ourselves. We may search for the god within us, but we cannot artificially bring him to life. We can prepare the conditions under which he may manifest his consciousness within ourselves, by divesting the mind from all predilections and prejudices; the divine principle awakes within us by the power of its own grace. Such a grace is not a favour conferred by a partial, whimsical, and personal god, it is the effect of a free will which has the power to grant its own prayers. As well may an acorn enclosed in a stone pray to be developed into an oak as a man whose heart is filled with desires for the low ask to become conscious of the high. To put implicit belief in the statement of bonze or priest is weakness, to keep the soul pure, so that it can be taught by wisdom itself, is strength, to arrive at conviction through the knowledge of the soul confers the only true faith.

Tennyson speaks of the beginning of true faith when he says -

“We have but faith, we cannot know,
A beam in darkness, let it grow”.

When the divine being becomes conscious in the personal man, the body begins to feel new sensations, the pulse begins to throb with more vigour, the animal forces stirred up in their “hells” by the arrival of the new light, become more active, pains will be experienced in various parts of his body, and the candidate for immortality will physically experience a process resembling the martyrdom of the crucified Christ. [The pains referred to are the result of the penetrating power of the spirit, infusing a new life into the physical form.] The penetration of the mortal by the new life will necessarily cause suffering until the lower elements are entirely subjected and that which is impure eliminated.

There is no salvation except through suffering; pains accompany man's entrance into the world, pains accompany his regeneration. The low must die so that the high may live. Only he who has tasted the bitterness [Page 259] of evil can fully realise the sweetness of good, only he who has suffered the heat of the day can fully appreciate the cool of the evening breeze. He who has lived in darkness will know the true value of light when he enters its realm.

What is true in regard to individual man is equally true in regard to humanity as a whole, but that which may be accomplished in a few suitable individual organisms in a comparatively short time, will require ages to take place in the body of humanity as a whole.

“Though other things grow fair against the sun,
Yet fruits that blossom first will first be ripe”.

Othello, ii. 3.

“The cross of Golgotha can never save thy soul,
The cross in thine own heart alone can make thee whole”.

The theory of the redemption of man does not date from the time when the historical Christ is supposed to have been born. The history of Christ finds its prototype in the history of Krishna. The Greeks taught the redemption of the soul under the allegory of Amor and Psyche. Psyche (the human soul) enjoys the embraces of her divine lover every night (in each incarnation). She feels his divine presence and hears the voice of intuition in her heart, but she is not permitted to see the source from which that voice proceeds. At a time when the god is sleeping her curiosity awakes and she wishes to see him objectively. She lights the lamp of the intellect and proceeds to examine critically the source of her happiness; but at that moment the god disappears. Despairingly she wanders through the lower regions of her intellect and through the sphere of sensual perceptions. She cannot find her god by the power of reasoning from the material plane. Ready to die (giving up her self-will), she is saved by the power of love. Losing her “self” in love, she becomes united with him, knowing his attributes, which are now her own.

Modern Christianity has not destroyed the Olympian gods, it only destroyed the forms in which they were represented. They were allegorical representations of truths, and truths cannot be killed. The laws of nature are the same today as they were at the time of Tiberius; Christianism has only changed the symbols and called old things by new names. Dead heathen idols have been resurrected in the form of Roman Catholic saints.

Modern writers have represented the same old truths in other forms, in prose and in verse. Goethe represents it beautifully in his “Faust.” Dr Faust, the man of great intellect and celebrated for his learning, in spite of all his scientific accomplishments, is unable to find the truth.