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FUNDAMENTALS

OF THE

ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY

By

G. de PURUCKER

M.A., D.LITT.

Edited by

A. TREVOR BARKER

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The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky

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PREFACE

DR. DE PURUCKER, the present Leader of The

Theosophical Society, which has its International

Headquarters at Point Loma, California, delivered the

lectures contained in this volume to members of the

Esoteric Section during the years 1924-1927. They were given

under the direction of Katherine Tingley, then Leader of The

Theosophical Society, in fulfilment of a long cherished plan to

give to the world a work which would serve not only as a com

mentary upon The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky, but at the

same time would be the means of giving out certain esoteric

keys, which would enable students to unlock for themselves the

treasure of knowledge therein contained. Many are the educated

men and women who have been forced to lay aside The Secret

Doctrine as too abstruse and difficult, because they had no

instruction and therefore no understanding of the fundamental

conceptions upon which the Esoteric Philosophy is based.

To those who hunger for truth and spiritual knowledge, and

who bring an open mind to the study of this book, it is not too

much to say that in asking they will receive, and in seeking

they will find.

The original stenographic report of these lectures was corrected

by the Author, but he has not had the time to read the proofs,

the reaffonsibility for which he left to the Editor. The book

owes much to the collaboration of Dr. J. H. Fussell who, in

addition to doing some of the preliminary work of preparing the

MS. for publication, undertook the selection of the quotations

which appear at the head of each chapter. It should be mentioned

that all references to The Secret Doctrine are to the original

Edition (1888) of that work.

A certain amount of criticism was aroused among students of

Theosophy by the announcement that Dr. de Purucker had given

in these pages teaching which is not contained in the works of

H. P. Blavatsky. Moreover, these critics appear to base their

objections upon isolated quotations from Mme Blavatsky, in an

endeavour to show that it is impossible at this time that further

genuine teaching can be given, and ipso facto anything that is

given must be false. But students will recognise that anything

in the nature of dogmatism is contrary to the spirit of the Esoteric

Philosophy, and for that reason should be avoided. Inevitable

vi PREFACE

child of crystallized thought, it begins its lethal work by laying

a shadow on the mind, and ends by producing a sect.

The tendency of the dogmatist is to read only those parts

of the teaching which suit his own peculiar purpose, and

the rest of the Teacher's writings are pushed into the back-

ground and thus prevented from doing their beneficent vfbik.

Shall we not see for ourselves how H. P. Blavatsky regardeft the

problem ? In her Five Messages to the American Theosophists,

she wrote :

" Orthodoxy in Theosophy is a thing neither possible nor desirable.

It is diversity of opinion, within certain limits, that keeps the Theo-

sophical Society a living and a healthy body, its many other ugly

features notwithstanding. Were it not, also, for the existence of a

large amount of uncertainty in the minds of students of Theosophy,

such healthy divergencies would be impossible, and the Society woul d

degenerate into a sect, in which a narrow and stereotyped creed would

take the place of the living and breathing spirit of Truth and an ever-

growing Knowledge.

According as people are prepared to receive it, so will new Theo-

sophical teaching be given. But no more will be given than the

world, on its present level of spirituality, can profit by. It depends

on the spread of Theosophy the assimilation of what has been already

given how much more will be revealed and how soon/ 1

Again in the Introductory to The Secret Doctrine she

wrote :

" In Century the Twentieth some disciple more informed, and far

better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom to give final and

irrefutable proofs that there exists a Science called Gupta-Vidya ;

and that, like the once-mysterious sources of the Nile, the source of

all religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for

many ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found. "

These statements are quite enough to show that Mme Blavatsky

never meant it to be understood that under no circumstances

would additional teaching be given. On the contrary she clearly

indicated that although the two volumes of The Secret Doctrine

contained all that could be given to the world in the nineteenth

century, the giving of further teaching would depend necessarily

upon the readiness of people to receive it.

So far from claiming that her writings contain the whole of

Theosophy she pointed out in her Introductory to The Secret

Doctrine that she had raised " but a small corner of the dark

veil " and " after long millenniums of silence and secrecy " had

given but an " outline of a few fundamental truths ", " because

that which must remain unsaid could not be contained in a

hundred such volumes ". The Esoteric Doctrine in its totality

has always existed in the keeping of The Adepts in The Sacred

PREFACE vii

science, and it is therefore a complete system of thought which

does not evolve or change. But the whole of it never has and

never will be given out publicly, and therefore since from time

to time additional teaching is given, this does constitute for the

public a further unfolding or evolution of the age-old Doctrine.

In dther* words Theosophy the Wisdom of the Gods is eternal

in Nature, but our understanding of it grows, and as " those who

have ears to hear " become fit and ready to receive more teaching,

more will be given. This fact is clearly brought out also by

William Q. Judge :

" If any persons regard H. P. B/s writings as the infallible oracles

of Theosophy, they go directly against her own words and the works

themselves ; they must be people who do not indulge in original

thinking and cannot make much impression on the times.

As for the Theosophical Society, the moment it makes a hard and

fast definition of Theosophy it will mark the first hour of its decay.

Inasmuch as Theosophy is the whole body of truth about man

and nature, either known now or hereafter to be discovered, it

has the ' power of growth, progress and advancement/ since every

new truth makes it clearer. But among the truths will not be

reckoned at any time the definitions, dogmas, creeds or beliefs laid

down by man. 11

None the less it is a fact, paradoxical though it may seem to

some, that no teaching calling itself Theosophical will bear the

test of a thoroughly impartial investigation, unless it is consistent

with the teaching of H. P. Blavatsky ; and this precisely because

her writings bear the stamp of consistency with the recorded

teachings of all the great Sages and Seers of Antiquity.

Herein lies the strength of Dr. de Purucker, not only in this

work but in his other writings. True to the lines laid down by

Mme Blavatsky, he makes no appeal to dogmatic authority, but

claims his right to an impartial hearing on the ground that his

teaching " closely adheres to Nature, and follows the laws of

uniformity and analogy'*. "Proof," he defines, "as the pre-

ponderance of evidence bringing conviction to the mind," and

goes on to show that if Knowledge is to grow in us then it is

necessary to check any tendency to crystallization of thought,

i.e., to limit the understanding by closing the doors of the mind

to further light upon any particular subject of study. The truth

is that in the search for the Great Knowledge, progress is seen

to be as endless as boundless Infinitude inwards and upwards

for ever towards the Unutterable. Herein perhaps also is the

secret of humility.

The meaning of any part of this book is not to be understood

by merely dipping into it here and there. A particular doctrine

is touched upon in one chapter, outlined in another, then dealt

viii PREFACE

with in fuller detail until in some later chapter the key thougnt

to the whole subject is revealed if the preceding ideas have been

grasped. Thus the mind of the reader is opened gradually to

receive teaching which becomes ever deeper with each succeeding

chapter, unfolding before the inner eye a vision of the age-old

Path that leads at last from darkness into Light.

A. TREVOR BARKER

70 QUEEN'S GATE,

LONDON, S.W. 7,

Dec. 2&th, 1931.

INTRODUCTION

WE sometimes lock ourselves in little boxes of opinion,

and will not be free for fear. But still sun shines,

winds blow, waves " boom and blanche on the

precipices" ; and the winds and sun of the spirit,

the waves of time. While some are busy proving that no

Teacher can come, one has appeared among us who Teaches.

The spirit will not be confined by rules that the petty mind

dictates to it, and we can impose no Thou shalt nots upon

inspiration. There are certain marks by which we may know

what comes from the heights : a light to illumine life and the

hidden things ; a sublimity to enlarge the Soul. Do you not

see that what is ever-living cannot be cribbed and cabined

within what was spoken in this year or that, even by Speakers

with Authority ; because words are finite things : of value as

carriers of the messages of the Spirit ; harmful and tyrannous

when we bow our souls to them, and would make their finite-

ness an absolute ?

H. P. Blavatsky came not to shackle us with new creeds, but

to bring greatness and freedom to our minds. She pointed the

way to sublimity of life and thought : her keynote is sublimity.

She never said, there is a place where evolution stops, or where

knowledge stops. Because some have given out ridiculousness

in place of her sublime, it does not mean that the great Lodge

and its powers and wisdom are exhausted, or that there must

be no advance in knowledge.

As I understand the book, it makes this appeal : Turn your

eyes to the mountain-tops of being ; feed your souls on the

grandeur of Truth. Who has H. P. Blavatsky as a living

power in his thought is not coffined in a creed, but judges each

new idea that comes to him by its power to illumine life.

KENNETH MORRIS

LLWYNYPIA,

Nov. 22nd, 1931.

IX

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE SELF : MAN'S INMOST LINK WITH THE UNUTTERABLE. THE ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY : TAUGHT IN ALL THE ANCIENT RELIGIONS . . i

CHAPTER II

WHERE is REALITY ? TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN. MAN'S COMPOSITE NATURE

ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS '. THREEFOLD, FOURFOLD, FlVE-

FOLD, OR SEVENFOLD 8

CHAPTER III

THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA : OBJECTIVE IDEALISM THE BASIS OF MORALS :

ROOTED IN THE SPIRITUAL UNITY THE DIVINITY OF THE ALL. THE

SELF AND THE "SELVES" 17

CHAPTER IV

FROM PRIMORDIAL POINT TO UNIVERSE AND MAN. How DOES MANIFESTA-

TION ARISE ? MANVANTARA AND PR ALA Y A . . . . .26

CHAPTER V

THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS AND THE NEBULAR THEORY. GODS BEHIND

THE KOSMOS : WHY NATURE is IMPERFECT . . . . -37

CHAPTER VI

THE DAWN OF MANIFESTATION : LAYA-CENTERS. A CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE

SPIRITUALLY PURPOSIVE. STOIC DOCTRINE OF THE INTERMINGLING

OF ALL BEINGS : " LAWS OF NATURE." PHILOSOPHICAL POLYTHEISM

AND THE DOCTRINE OF HIERARCHIES 48

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VII

PAOB

" HIERARCHIES " : ONE OF THE LOST KEYS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY.

THE PYTHAGOREAN SACRED TETRACTYS. THE LADDER OF LIFE :

THE LEGEND OF PADMAPANI 60

CHAPTER VIII

TRACES OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY IN GENESIS .... 73

CHAPTER IX

OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC COSMOGONY. GLOBES, ROUNDS AND RACES :

COSMIC TIME-PERIODS 84

CHAPTER X

THE DOCTRINE OF SWABHAVA SELF-BECOMING CHARACTERISTIC INDI-

VIDUALITY. MAN, SELF-EVOLVED, His OWN CREATOR. Monadologie OF

LEIBNITZ CONTRASTED WITH TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 96

CHAPTER XI

THE COSMIC PILGRIMAGE FROM UN-SELF-CONSCIOUS GODSPARK TO FULLY

SELF-CONSCIOUS GOD ......... 108

CHAPTER XII

PSYCHOLOGY : ACCORDING TO THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. IMMORTALITY

is CONDITIONAL : THE Loss OF THE SOUL . . . . .120

CHAPTER XIII

THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. SELF, EGO, AND SOUL : " I AM " AND " I

AM I " 127

CHAPTER XIV

" HEAVENS " AND " HELLS " : TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY,

AND OF THE EXOTERIC RELIGIONS . . . . . J 37

CHAPTER XV

THE EVOLUTION OF THE " ABSOLUTE ". GENERALIZED PLAN OF EVOLUTION

ON ALL PLANES. SEVEN KEYS TO WISDOM AND FUTURE INITIATIONS 147

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER XVI

PACK

ATMA-VIDYA : How THE ONE BECOMES THE MANY. " LOST SOULS " AND

" SOULLESS BEINGS ". MAN, A COMPOSITE BEING : No ABIDING

PRINCIPLE IN MAN 159

CHAPTER XVII

THE SILENT WATCHER 178

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SPIRITUAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF ADEPTS. THE " WONDROUS-

BEING ", THE BUDDHAS, NlRMANAKAYAS, DHYAN-CHOHANS . . IQI

CHAPTER XIX

THE SEVEN JEWELS AND THE SEVEN STAGES OF INITIATION . .213

CHAPTER XX

T^E HIGHER ASPECT OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. INITIATION AND THE

MYSTERIES : AVATARAS, BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS, THEIR

RELATION TO GLOBES, ROUNDS, AND RACES 230

CHAPTER XXI

INITIATIONS AND THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. ROOT-RACES AND THEIR SUB-

DIVISIONS. GLOBE-ROUNDS. PLANETARY ROUNDS. SOLAR KALPAS :

How CALCULATED. RACIAL CATACLYSMS 243

CHAPTER XXII

THE HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION. THE INCARNATION OF THE MANASAPUTRAS 254

CHAPTER XXIII

THE SUN AND THE PLANETS : THEIR ROLE IN THE EVOLUTIONARY DRAMA 271

PART II

CHAPTER XXIV

THE TEN STAGES OF BEING ACCORDING TO THE SYRIAN SYSTEM. ESOTERIC

METHOD OF TEACHING : PARADOXES : INTUITION . . .285

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXV

FAOB

THE MYSTERIES OF SEPTENARY NATURE. CORRESPONDENCES : GLOBES,

ELEMENTS, HUMAN PRINCIPLES. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS OF THE

ANCIENTS. RACIAL TIME-PERIODS AND CATASTROPHES . . . 295

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MICROCOSM, A MIRROR OF THE MACROCOSM. ELEMENTS, PRINCIPLES.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE ONE LIFE. RELATIVITY : A FUNDAMENTAL

CONCEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM 305

CHAPTER XXVII

THE Two FUNDAMENTAL KOSMICAL HIERARCHIES : MATTER AND SPIRIT-

CONSCIOUSNESS. CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS. GODS-MONADS-ATOMS . 312

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ADVENTURE OF AN ATOM. LAYA-CENTERS : SUN, COMETS, AND

PLANETS : SOUL AND MONAD. THE KEYNOTE OF OCCULTISM . 321

CHAPTER XXIX

SPACE : THE BOUNDLESS ALL. INFILLED WITH INTERLOCKING, INTER-

PENETRATING UNIVERSES. ONE ACTION, ONE HIERARCHICAL IN-

TELLIGENCE, ONE COURSE OF OPERATION THROUGHOUT NATURE :

ONE ORGANISM, ONE UNIVERSAL LIFE 328

CHAPTER XXX

THE INTERRELATION OF GODS, MONADS, ATOMS A KEY TO THE DOCTRINE

OF EVOLUTION. SUCCESSIVE EMANATIONS : SHEATHS. HIGHER

BEINGS EMANATING AND CLOTHING THEMSELVES IN HOSTS OF LOWER

, BEINGS. MORALITY BASED ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE . 336

' CHAPTER XXXI

THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS. THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL LAW THROUGH-

OUT LIFE AND BEING : AN ENDLESS LADDER OF PROGRESS. ANA-

LOGICAL PROCESSES OF COSMICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT.

THE RIVER OF LIFE 344

CONTENTS xv

CHAPTER XXXII

PAGE

OUT OF THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE. FROM THE VISIBLE INTO THE

INVISIBLE. THE MAGNUM OPUS 356

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LIFE- WAVE AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS. THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

AS TAUGHT BY THE STOICS 365

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE SPACES OF SPACE. THE SECRET DOCTRINE, A UNIFIER : UNIVERSAL

KEYS. DOCTRINES OF " THE VOID " AND OF " THE FULLNESS "

CONTRASTED 373

CHAPTER XXXV

OCCULTISM AND THE MYSTERY-SCHOOLS. SEVEN DEGREES OF INITIATION :

MAN BECOMES A GOD. SEVEN KOSMIC PLANES : OUR PLANETARY

CHAIN OF SEVEN GLOBES ON THE FOUR LOWER PLANES : THE PASSAGE

OF THE LIFE- WAVE THERETHROUGH 385

CHAPTER XXXVI

INTERPENETRATING SPHERES OF BEING. LOKAS AND TALAS : BI-POLAR

COSMICAL PRINCIPLES AND ELEMENTS. THE " HERESY OF SEPARATE-

NESS " ........... 396

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE FRAME- WORK OF THE KOSMOS. LOKAS AND TALAS : PRINCIPLES

AND ELEMENTS : WORLDS NOT STATES MERELY. SPACE THE

ULTIMATE REALITY 409

CHAPTER XXXVIII

DEGENERATION AND CLOSING OF THE SCHOOLS OF THE MYSTERIES. NEO-

PYTHAGOREAN AND NEO-PLATONIC SYSTEMS : MAIN SOURCES OF

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. ESOTERIC AND EXOTERIC TEACHINGS :

SYMBOLISM , 417

xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXXIX

THEOSOPHY AND OCCULTISM. OCCULTISM : THE QUINTESSENCE OF TRUTH,

REALITY : A COMPLETE WHOLE. OCCULTISM AND MORAL RESPONSI-

BILITY. OUR SOLAR SYSTEM: A KOSMIC ATOM : " EGG OF BRAHMA " 429

CHAPTER XL

DEFINITIONS OF DEITY : ATHEISM : PANTHEISM. Is THERE A SUPREME

PERSONAL GOD ? KOSMIC ARCHITECTS AND BUILDERS. REALLY TO

KNOW, ONE MUST BECOME 435

CHAPTER XLI

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES. THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM AND

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM. THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS : WHY " SACRED " ? 447

CHAPTER XLII

THE DOCTRINE OF THE SPHERES IN ITS FOUR ASPECTS. THE SEVEN SACRED

PLANETS AND THEIR RECTORS : THEIR RELATION TO OUR EARTH-

CHAIN. THE CIRCULATIONS OF THE KOSMOS : OUTER ROUNDS AND

INNER ROUNDS : SISHTAS. ONE UNIVERSAL BASIC LAW : As ABOVE,

so BELOW. THE " EYE " AND THE " HEART " DOCTRINES . . 458

CHAPTER XLIII

ANALOGY : THE LIFE OF MAN AND THE LIFE OF A PLANETARY CHAIN.

OCCULTISM AND ETHICS : " LIVE THE LIFE IF THOU WOULDST KNOW

THE DOCTRINE " 471

CHAPTER XLIV

PRINCIPLES OF THOUGHT AND STUDY : CAN OCCULTISM BE TAUGHT ?

ANCIENT ASTROLOGY A TRUE SCIENCE. OUR EARTH-CHAIN OF GLOBES,

THE SEVEN SACRED PLANETS, AND THE TWELVE ZODIACAL SIGNS.

LIFE- ATOMS : THE BUILDING-BLOCKS OF THE UNIVERSE . .481

CHAPTER XLV

PHYSIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PNEUMATOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE. TEN

AND TWELVE PLANES OF THE UNIVERSAL SOLAR SYSTEM : INTERMEDI-

ATE CRITICAL PLANES. ALL MANIFESTED BEING A GRADED CONTINUUM

OF INTERRELATED, INTERLOCKED HIERARCHIES : EACH WITH ITS

OWN BEGINNING AND END. SISHTAS AND THE "SURPLUS OF LIF*" 496

CONTENTS xvii

CHAPTER XLVI

PAGE

THE CHELA-LIFE. SEVEN AND TEN LIFE- WAVES : THE COURSE OF THE

MONADS AROUND THE SEVEN GLOBES : LAWS OF " ACCELERATION "

ON THE DOWNWARD AND OF " RETARDATION " ON THE UPWARD ARC.

FIFTH AJJD SIXTH ROUNDERS. THE SACRED " WORD " . . .514

CHAPTER XLVII

TEACHER AND PUPIL. REQUISITES OF CHELASHIP .... 527

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE HEART OF THE UNIVERSE. THE WAY TO PEACE, BLISS, UNDERSTAND-

ING, is WITHIN. THE GREAT QUEST : KNOW THYSELF : THE WHOLE

SECRET OF INITIATION. OUR RESPONSIBILITY : ETHICAL VALUES AND

THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE : HARMONY 535

PART I

FUNDAMENTALS OF

f HE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

PART I

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CHAPTER I

THE SELF : MAN'S INMOST LINK WITH THE UNUTTERABLE. THE

ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY : TAUGHT IN ALL THE ANCIENT

RELIGIONS.

. . . neither the collective Host (Demiurgos) , nor any of the working powers

individually, are proper subjects for divine honors or worship. All are entitled

to the grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever

striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best of his

ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever unknowable and incog-

nizable Kdrana alone, the Causeless Cause of all causes, should have its shrine

and altar on the holy and ever untrodden ground of our heart invisible, intan-

gible, unmentioned, save through " the still small voice " of our spiritual con-

sciousness. Those who worship before it ought to do so in the silence and the

sanctified solitude of their Souls ; making their spirit the sole mediator between

them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their

sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the Presence.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 280.

FELLOW-STUDENTS of the Ancient Wisdom :

We stand on holy ground. The Leader's call seems like

the clarion voice of the Law, of the Ancient Wisdom, which,

echoing down the ages, rings in our hearts at a moment

like this, and seems to tell us in accents that we may interpret if

we have the heart and the soul so to do : " Fideles, surswn cor da :

Up hearts, ye faithful ones ! " And may we not answer in the

same spirit which the Leader has shown, has manifested to us

this evening : " Yea, verily, in the name of Truth, we lift our

hearts to the shining god within each one of us " ?

We are here this evening in the presence of the agent and the

representative of the Exalted Men who form the Guardian-Body

of the Esoteric Philosophy. We must feel called. The hour is a

solemn one. It is time for us to rise above personality and, face

to face with ourselves, search our hearts, and endeavor so to

speak the words which we have learned that, as the Teacher has

told us, others who have had less chance than ourselves may in

their turn pass on these truths of the inner life.

In our last two meetings we studied the Three Fundamental

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Postulates or Principles in H. P. Blavatsky's wonderful* work,

The Secret Doctrine. I remember in particular the Teacher's words

in comment after the meeting had ended. They struck me as very

beautiful, profoundly suggestive. She said :

" Thinking towards the unthinkable is a wonderful, spiritual-

izing force ; one cannot think toward it without a dispcjsition

either to think more or feel more without opening up the inner

consciousness of man. And when that inner consciousness is

awakened, the soul finds itself closer to the infinite laws, closer

to THAT, or that Great Center that no words can express."

We have endeavored to reach two planes, which we have to

compare, to reach, by the appeal to the Inmost within ourselves.

We are taught that there exists in man a link with the Unutter-

able, a cord, a communication, that extends from It to the inner

consciousness ; and that link such is the teaching as it has

come down to us is the very Heart of Being. It arises in that

super-sensory Principle, that Unutterable Mystery which H. P.

Blavatsky defines in the first of the Three Fundamental Pro-

positions as above human mind. Becoming one with that link,

we can transcend the powers of ordinary human intellect, and

reach (even if it be by striving out, upward, towards) that Uc-

utterable, which is though it is beyond human power to express

it in words, or beyond human thought which is, we know, the

Concealed of the Concealed, the Life of Life, Truth of Truth,

the ALL.

Here is the thought, it seems to me, which illustrates so well

the Teacher's words ; striving toward this inwards, towards the

Inmost, we can attain to some conception, if not understanding,

of the Infinite Principle of all that is. From It, in the course of

endless duration, there spring into manifestation so the teaching

runs at the end of the great universal or cosmic Pralaya, the

beginnings of things. These beginnings eventuate in the forms

of life and being that H. P. Blavatsky describes in the Second

and Third Fundamental Propositions.

This inmost link with the Unutterable was called in ancient

India by the term SELF, which has been often mistranslated

' Soul '. The Sanskrit word is Atman, and applies, in psychology,

to the human entity. The upper end of the link, so to speak, to

use human terms, was called Paramatman, or the ' Self Beyond ',

the permanent SELF words which describe neatly and clearly

to those who have studied this wonderful philosophy, somewhat

of the nature and essence of the thing which man is, and the

source from which, in that beginningless and endless duration, he

sprang. Child of earth and child of heaven, he contains both in

himself.

We pass now from considering the First Proposition to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 3

Secorfd and the Third. And in order that we may understand

what we mean when we use certain words, it will be useful to

illustrate our usages of such words. Let us take up the very

interesting and remarkably well translated book entitled The

Song Celestial, the work of Sir Edwin Arnold. It is a translation

into ipngHsh verse of the Bhagavad-Gitd. That work is an episode

or an interlude in the Mahdbhdmta, the greater of the two great

Hindti epics. It is found in the sixth book of the Mahdbhdrata,

i.e., the ' Great Bharata ' ; and in the style of the Hindti writings

it comprises a dissertation on religious, philosophical, and mystical

subjects. It has been several times translated, more or less

successfully. Possibly the best has been that of our second

Teacher, William Quan Judge. His work is a recension, rather,

of a translation by Wilkins, modified by Cockburn, and in turn

corrected, according to the Esoteric Philosophy, by Mr. Judge.

Sir Edwin's Song Celestial, in book the second, has the following :

... The soul which is not moved,

The soul that with a strong and constant calm

Takes sorrow and takes joy indifferently,

Lives in the life undying ! That which is

Can never cease to be ; that which is not

Will not exist. To see this truth of both

Is theirs who part essence from accident,

Substance from shadow. Indestructible,

Learn thou ! the Life is, spreading life through all ;

It cannot anywhere, by any means,

Be anywise diminished, stayed, or changed.

But for these fleeting frames which it informs

With spirit deathless, endless, infinite,

They perish. ....

Never the spirit was born ; the spirit shall cease to be never ;

Never was time it was not ; End and Beginning are dreams !

Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever ;

Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems !

Now these words are exquisitely beautiful. They nevertheless

contain a mistranslation, a misrendering of the text of this

wonderful little work. In the first place, Sir Edwin translates

the Sanskrit word TAT, which we explained in our last study,

first by the word soul and next by the word spirit. Of course,

analogically, it has a reference to the Soul and the Spirit of Man ;

but the Sanskrit of it does not point particularly to the Soul of

Man. I will read a translation in prose, of these same verses,

made with no attempt at poetic thought, no attempt to use

beautiful language, but simply to express the thought :

The man whom these do not lead astray, Bull among men ! who

is the same in pain and pleasure, and of steady soul, he partakes of

immortality.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

There is no existence for the unreal ; there is no non-existence for

the Real. Moreover, the ultimate characteristic of both these is seen

by those who perceive true principles.

Know THAT to be indestructible by which this whole Universe was

woven.

The Sanskrit word for That is TAT ; and by that word the

Vedic Sages described this Unutterable Principle, from which all

sprang. The figure is that of the weaving of a web.

The destruction of this Imperishable, none is able to bring about.

These mortal bodies are said to be of the imbodied Eternal, Inde-

structible, Immeasurable One. . . .

He who knows It as the slayer, and he who thinks It to be the slain :

both of them understand not. It slays not, nor is it slain.

It is not born, nor does it ever die ; It was not produced, nor shall

it ever be produced.

It is unborn, constant, everlasting, primeval. It is unhurt when

the body is slain.

The application that the writer in the Bhagavad-Gitd makes,

is to the link which we have spoken of, the deathless, undying

principle within us ; and he describes it by the word THAT, and

contrasts it with the manifested Universe, which, following t^e

Ancient Teachings of India, was invariably spoken of as THIS :

the Sanskrit word is ID AM.

The Sages of Olden Times left on record the inner teaching of

the religions of the peoples among whom they lived. This inner

teaching was the Esoteric Philosophy, the Theosophy of the

period. In Hindusthan this Theosophy is found in the Upanishads,

a part of the Vedic literary cycle. The word itself implies ' Secret

Doctrine ' or ' Secret Teachings '. From the Upanishads and

from other parts of the wonderful Vedic literature, the ancient

sages of India produced what is called to-day the Ved&nta a com-

pound Sanskrit word meaning ' the End (or Completion) of the

Veda ', that is to say, instruction in the final and most perfect

exposition of the meaning of the Vedic tenets.

In Ancient Greece there were various Schools and various

Mysteries ; and the Theosophy of Ancient Greece was held very

secret ; it was taught in the Mysteries and it was taught by

different teachers to select bodies of their disciples. One of such

great teachers was Pythagoras ; another was Plato ; and this

Theosophy was more or less clearly outlined and imbodied, after

the fall of the so-called Pagan religions, in what is to-day called

the Neo-Platonic philosophy. It represents actually the inner

teachings of Pythagoras, Plato, and the inner sense of those

mystical doctrines which passed current in Greece under the name

of the Orphic poems.

Of the Theosophy of Egypt we have but scanty remainings

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 5

such as exist in what is called ' The Book of the Dead '. Of the

Theosophy of ancient America, of the Incan, the Mayan, empires

we have next to nothing. The Theosophy of ancient Europe has

passed away. All that remains to us is a certain number of

mystical writings such as the Scandinavian Eddas, and the

Germanic* books, which are represented, for instance, in the

Sagas found written in the old High German and in the Anglo-

Saxon tongues.

A study which anyone can make of the doctrines contained in

'the Upanishads, in ' The Book of the Dead ', in the Neo-Platonic

philosophy, in the Scandinavian Eddas, and elsewhere, shows

that they had one common basis, one foundation, one common

truth. Various men in various ages at various times taught the

same truth, using different words and different tropes, different

figures, different metaphors ; but underneath always was the

Ancient Doctrine, the Secret Wisdom.

The Theosophy of the Jews was imbodied in what was later

called the Qabbalah, from a Hebrew word meaning ' to receive ' ;

that is to say, it was the traditional doctrine handed down, or

received (according to the statements of the Qabbalah itself)

through the prophets and the sages of Jewry ; and was said to

have been first taught by " God Almighty to a select company of

angels in Heaven ".

We must understand, when we approach the teachings of the

Ancient Wisdom, that the ancient teachers spoke and thought

and taught anthropocentrically ; that is, that they all insisted on

following the psychological laws of the human mind, and there-

fore taught in human figures of speech, oft using quaint metaphors,

very odd, and yet so instructive as figures of speech. How wise

that was ! because they were able to carry on the Ancient Teach-

ings, and did so in such fashion that least of all did this anthropo-

centric system encourage the dogmatic rulings that have most

truly blasted all that was best in the teachings of the Christian

Church. These tropes, these metaphors, were so quaint that the

mind understood almost instantly that they were but the vehicle

imbodying the Truth. Let us remember this, and our work

becomes immensely more easy.

Now let us take the Qabbalah as a sample of the manner in

which one Theosophy the Jewish approaches the mystery of

how the Unmanifest produces the Manifest, how from that which

is endless and beginningless duration, sprang forth matter, space

in the sense of material extension, and time. But first let me

quote from another Sanskrit work, one of the Upanishads, the

Kena-Upanishad. Speaking of this Unutterable Mystery, it says :

The eye reacheth it not, language reacheth it not, nor does thought

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

reach to it at all ; verily, we know not nor can we say how onff should

teach it ; it is different from the known, it is beyond the unknown.

Thus have we heard from the men of olden times, for they taught it

to us.

The great Sankaracharya, perhaps the most famous of Indian

commentators on the Upanishads and the marvelously beautiful

system of philosophy drawn from them called the Veddnta, says,

commenting on the Aitareya-Upanishad :

There is the One, sole, alone, apart from all duality, in which there

appear not the multitudinous illusory presentments of unreal bodies

and conditions of this universe of merely apparent reality ; passion-

less, unmoving, pure, in utter peace ; knowable only by the lack of

every adjective epithet ; unreachable by word or by thought.

The Qabbalah is the traditionary teaching of the sages among

the Jews. It is a wonderful teaching ; it contains in outline or in

epitome every fundamental tenet or teaching that our own Secret

Doctrine contains. The teachings of the Qabbalah are often

couched in very quaint and sometimes amusing language ; some-

times its language rises to the height of sublimity. What does the

Z6har t the second of the great books that remain of the Jewish

Qabbalah (the word ' Zohar ' itself meaning ' Splendor '), have to

say of the manner in which the Jewish religious books should be

studied ? It says this (iii, 152 a) :

Woe be to the son of man who says that the Torah [the Hebrew

Bible, especially the Pentateuch, or rather the first four books of the

Bible excluding Deuteronomy, the fifth] contains common sayings

and ordinary narratives. If this were the case we might in the present

day compose a code of doctrines from profane writings which would

excite greater respect. If the Law contains ordinary matter, then there

are nobler sentiments in profane codes. Let us go and make a selection

from them and we shall be able to compile a far superior code. No !

Every word of the Law has a sublime sense and a heavenly mystery.

... As the spiritual angels had to put on earthly garments when

they descended to this earth, and as they could neither have remained

nor be understood on the earth without putting on such a garment,

so it is with the Law. When it descended on earth, the Law had to

put on an earthly garment, in order to be understood by us, and the

narratives are its garment. . . . Those who have understanding do

not look at the garment but at the body [the esoteric meaning] beneath ;

whilst the wisest, the servants of the heavenly King, those who dwell

on Mount Sinai, look at nothing but the soul,

i.e., at the ultimate Secret Doctrine or sacred wisdom hid under

the ' body ', under the exoteric narratives or stories of the Bible.

In these days, when Modernists and Fundamentalists quarrel

quarrel unnecessarily, quarrel about exoteric superficialities,

quarrel about things which arise out of the egoism of men, quarrel

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 7

about Ihe dogmatic teachings of the Christian Church, every one

of them probably based on ancient Pagan Esoteric Philosophy

it is an immense pity that they do not know and understand that

this teaching of the Qabbalah as expressed in the Zohar is a

true one ; it is the teaching of our three Leaders and Teachers ;

for under every garment is the life. As Jesus taught in parables,

so the Bible was written in tropes, in figures of speech, in

metaphors.

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CHAPTER II

WHERE IS REALITY ? TRUTH CAN BE KNOWN. MAN'S COMPOSITE

NATURE ACCORDING TO DIFFERENT SYSTEMS : THREEFOLD,

FOURFOLD, FIVEFOLD, OR SEVENFOLD.

The fundamental Law in that system [i.e., the Esoteric Philosophy], the central

point from which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon

which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous divine SUB-

STANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.

..." Some few, whose lamps shone brighter, have been led,

From cause to cause to nature's secret head,

And found that one first Principle must be . . ."

It is called " Substance-Principle," for it becomes " substance " on the plane

of the manifested Universe, an illusion, while it remains a " principle " in the

beginningless and endless abstract, visible and invisible SPACE. It is the omni-

present Reality : impersonal, because it contains all and everything. Its

impersonality is the fundamental conception of the System. It is latent in every

atom in the Universe, and is the Universe itself.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 273.

It is the True. It is the Self, and thou art It.

Chhdndogya- Upanishad.

The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao ; the name

which can be uttered is not its eternal name. Without a name, it is the Beginning

of Heaven and Earth ; with a name, it is the Mother of all things. Only one

who is eternally free from earthly passions can apprehend its spiritual essence ;

he who is ever clogged by passions can see no more than its outer form. These

two things, the spiritual and the material, though we call them by different

names, in their origin are one and the same. This sameness is a mystery the

mystery of mysteries. It is the gate of all spirituality.

The Sayings of Lao Tzti (LIONEL GILES, Trans.).

E open Volume I of H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine

this evening at page 13, and we read the second

paragraph, which is as follows :

The reader has to bear in mind that the Stanzas given treat only

of the Cosmogony of our own planetary System and what is visible

around it, after a Solar Pralaya. The secret teachings with regard to

the Evolution of the Universal Kosmos cannot be given, since they

could not be understood by the highest minds in this age, and there

seem to be very few Initiates, even among the greatest, who are

allowed to speculate upon this subject. Moreover the Teachers say

openly that not even the highest Dhy&ni-Chohans have ever pene-

trated the mysteries beyond those boundaries that separate the

milliards of Solar systems from the " Central Sun/ 1 as it is called.

Therefore, that which is given relates only to our visible Kosmos,

after a " Night of Brahma/'

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 9

We*choose this as the general text of our study this even-

ing. Following the Teacher's instructions, as we understand

them, it seems not only appropriate but necessary to open our

study of the more secret matters of which The Secret Doctrine

treats, by asking in what manner or by what method do we obtain

an understanding and a realization of these doctrines ? Do they

come to us as dogmatic teachings, or are they derived, following

the definition that Webster gives of Theosophy in his dictionary,

by inner spiritual communion with ' God ' ? There is something

in Webster's definition which is true. The Theosophist does

believe that he has within himself the faculty of approaching

divine things, of raising the inner man so that he can thereby

obtain a more accurate mental representation of things as they

are, or of Reality.

But on the other hand, if everyone did this, without proper and

capable guidance and leading and teaching, extreme vanity and

human conceit as well as many other forces in the human economy,

would inevitably lead to an immense diversity of opinions and

teachings and doctrines, each man believing that he had the

truth and he only, and hence that those who followed him and

preached his views should form with him a special ' church ' or

' sect ' of their own. The words themselves would probably be

avoided, but it would amount to that.

Therefore, here we find the use, the benefit, the appositeness, of

the Theosophical doctrines which our Teachers have given to us,

to the effect that these teachings have come down to us from

immemorial antiquity transmitted from one Teacher to another

and that originally they were communicated to the nascent

human race, when once it became self-conscious, by Beings from

a higher sphere Beings who themselves were of divine origin ;

and further, that this communication or emanation of their

spiritual and higher intellectual selves into us, gave us our own

higher principles. For the Teachers have told us that these

doctrines have been checked or proved age after age, generation

after generation, by innumerable spiritual seers, to use Helena

Petrovna Blavatsky's own words checked in every respect,

checked as to fact, checked as to origin, checked as to operation

on the human mind.

Now then, as the older students of this School many of whom

are here present know well, the faculties by which man can

attain a knowledge of truth, of the Real, can be called upon or

evoked at any moment in any place, provided the right conditions

are made, so that the striving soul may thus reach successfully

upward or inward, and know. Sometimes, in the most simple

teachings are found the most divine truths. And why ? Because

the simple teachings are the fundamental ones.

io

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Consider for a moment, therefore, the seven principles 8f man,

in their connexion with the seven principles of the universe. The

seven principles of man are a likeness or copy of the seven cosmic

principles. They are actually the offspring of the seven cosmic

principles, limited in their action in us by the workings of the

Law of Karman, but running in their origin back "into That

which is beyond : into that which is the Essence of the universe

or the Universal ; in, beyond, within, to the Unmanifest, to the

Unmanifestable, to that first Principle which Helena Petrovna

Blavatsky enunciates as the leading thought of the Wisdom-

Philosophy of The Secret Doctrine.

These principles of man are reckoned as seven in the philosophy

by which the human, spiritual, and psychical economy has been

explained to us in the present age. In other ages these principles,

or parts, of man were differently reckoned the Christian reckons

them as Body, Soul, and Spirit, and does not know the difference

between the soul and the spirit : he thinks there must be a

difference but does not know what it is ; and many say that the

soul and spirit are the same.

Some of the Indian thinkers divided man into a basic fourfold

entity, others into a fivefold. The Jewish philosophy, as found in

the Qabbalah which is the esoteric tradition of the Jews, teaches

that man is divided into four parts :

1. The highest and most spiritual of all, that principle or art

which is to us a mere breath of being, they called Neshdmdh.

2. The second principle was called Ruahh or Spiritual Soul,

spelled sometimes Ruach according to another method of trans-

literation.

3. The Astral Soul (or Vital Soul) was called Nefesh, the third

next lower, which man has in common with the brutes.

4. Then comes the Guf or physical vehicle, the house in which

all these others dwell.

Over all, and higher than all, higher than the Neshdmdh

which is not an emanation of this Highest, not a creation, not an

evolution, but of which it was the production in a sense which we

shall later have to explain there is the Ineffable, the Boundless,

called Ain Suf.

The Sanskrit terms which have been given by our Teachers to

the seven principles of man in our own Theosophical Philosophy,

are as follows, and we can get much help from explaining the

original Sanskrit meanings of them, and illustrating the sense in

which those words were used, and why they were chosen.

I. Sthula means coarse, gross, not refined, heavy, bulky, fat in

the sense of bigness. Sartra comes from a root which can best be

translated by saying that it is that which is easily dissolved, easily

worn away ; the idea being something transitory, foam-like, full

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY ri

of holes, as it were. Note the meaning hid in this : it is very im-

portant.

2. The second principle let us call the Linga-Sartra. Linga is

a Sanskrit word which means characteristic mark ; hence model,

pattern. It, as we all know, forms the model or pattern on which

the physical body is built this physical body, composed mostly

of porosity, if the expression be pardoned ; the most unreal thing

we know, full of holes, foamy as it were. We will revert to this

thought later.

3. The third principle, commonly called the Life-Principle, is

Prdna. Now this word is used here by our Philosophy in a general

sense. There are, as a matter of fact, a number of life-currents,

vital fluids. They have several names. One system gives the

number as three ; another as five, which is the commonly accepted

number ; another as seven ; another twelve, as is found in some

Upanishads ; and one old writer even gives them as thirteen.

4. Then there is the Kama-principle ; the word kdma means

desire. It is the driving or impelling force in the human economy ;

colorless, neither good nor bad, only such as the mind and soul

direct its use.

5. Then comes Manas ; the Sanskrit root of this word means to

think, to cogitate, to reflect mental activity, in short.

6. Then comes Buddhi, or the Spiritual Soul, the vehicle or

carrier of the highest principle of all, the Atman. Now Buddhi

comes from a Sanskrit root budh. This root is commonly trans-

lated, to enlighten, but a better translation is to awaken and, hence,

to understand ; Buddha, the past participle of this root is applied

to one who is spiritually awakened, no longer living a living death,

but awakened to the spiritual influence from within or from

' above ' 9 Buddhi is the principle in us which gives us spiritual

consciousness, and is the^ vehicle of the most high part of man.

This highest part is the Atman.

7. This principle (Atman) is a universal one ; but during in-

carnations its lowest parts, if we can so express it, take on attri-

butes, because it is linked with the Buddhi as the Buddhi is

linked with the Manas, as the Manas is linked to the Kama, and

so on down the scale.

Atman is also sometimes used of the Universal Self or Spirit

which is called in the Sanskrit writings Brahman (neuter), and the

Brahman or Universal Spirit is also called the Paramatman, a

compound Sanskrit term meaning the highest or most universal

Atman. The root of Atman is hardly known. Its origin is un-

certain, but the general meaning is that of self.

Beyond Brahman is the Para-Brahman. Para is a Sanskrit

word meaning beyond. Note the deep philosophical meaning of

this; there is no attempt here to limit the Illimitable, the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Ineffable, by adjectives ; it simply means beyond the Br&hman.

In the Sanskrit Vedas and in the works deriving therefrom and

belonging to the Vedic literary cycle, this beyond is called That,

as this world of manifestation is called This. Other very expres-

sive terms are Sat, the Real ; and A sat, the Unreal or the mani-

fested universe ; in another sense Asat means ' not Sat 4 ', i.e., even

beyond (higher than) Sat.

Now this Para-Brahman is intimately connected with Mula-

prakriti a word we shall explain in a moment. Their interaction

and intermingling cause the first nebulous thrilling, if the words

will pass, of the Universal Life when spiritual desire first arose

in it in the beginnings of things. Such is the old teaching, employ-

ing of necessity the old anthropocentric tropes, clearly understood

to be only human metaphors, human similes ; for the conceptions

of the Seers of ancient times, their teachings, their doctrines, had

to be told in human language to the human mind.

Now then, a man can reach inward, going ' upward ' step by

step, climbing higher as his spiritual force and power wax greater

and more subtil, until he reaches beyond his normal faculties,

and steps beyond the ' Ring Pass Not ', as Helena Petrovna Blavat-

sky calls it in her Secret Doctrine. Where and what is this ' Ring

Pass Not ' ? It is, at any period of man's consciousness, the

utmost reach that his spirit can attain. There he stops, and looks

into the Beyond into the Unmanifested from which we came.

The Unmanifest is in us ; it is the Inmost of the inmost in our

souls, in our spirits, in our essential beings. We can reach towards

it. We can actually reach it never.

Now, where is Reality ? Is the Real, is the True, to be found in

these lower vestures of materiality ? Or is it to be found in the

State of Being from which everything came ?

The ancient Stoics in their really wonderful philosophy taught,

and the same teaching originated in the esoteric philosophy of

Hellas or Greece as found later in the Neo-Platonic teachings

these ancient Stoics taught that Truth can be known ; that the

most real thing, the greatest thing, was to be found in ever-

receding vistas, as the Spirit of man strived inward, ^nd beyond,

veil after veil falling away as the Wise Man (their technical term)

advances in the evolution of his soul. They taught that the

material universe was illusory precisely as our Teachers tell us of

the Maya ; and the Stoic understood (and this teaching is our

own) that this apparently dense, gross, heavy, material universe

is phenomenally unreal, mostly built up of holes, so to say a

teaching which is beginning to be re-echoed even to-day in the

writings and thoughts of the more intuitional of our scientists.

The Stoics taught that the ether was denser than the most dense

material thing, fuller than the most full material thing using

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 13

humar^ words, of course. To us, with our human eyes, trained

only to see objects of illusion, it appears to be the most diaphanous,

the thinnest, the most ethereal. What was the Reality, the Real,

behind this All ? The real thing ? They said it was God, Life of

Life, Truth of Truth, Root of Matter, Root of Soul, Root of Spirit.

When the Stoic was asked : What is God ? he nobly answered l

What is God not ?

Turning now to the Ancient Wisdom of Hindusthan, to the

Ufianishads, let us take from the Chhdndogya-Upanishad, mainly

in the sixth lecture, a conversation between a father and his son.

Hearken to the Ancient Wisdom, going back far beyond the time

when the ancient Brahmanic teachings and the Brahmanas became

what they are today to the time when real men taught real

things. The son asks :

" If a man who has slept in his own house, rises and goes to another

village, he knows that he has come from his own house. Why then do

people not know that they have come from the Sat ? " [A Sanskrit

word meaning the Real, the Ineffable of which we have spoken.]

And the father teaches his son as follows :

" These rivers, my son, run, the eastern towards the east, the

western towards the west. They go from sea to sea. They become

indeed sea. And as those rivers, when they are in the sea, do not

know, I am this or that river,

" In the same manner, my son, all these creatures, when they have

come from the True [that is the Real] know not that they have come

from the True [on account of the Maya], Whatever these creatures

are here, whether a lion, or a wolf, or a boar, or a worm, or a midge,

or a gnat, or a mosquito, that they become again and again."

Now listen :

" That which is that subtil essence, in it all that exists has its self.

It is the True, It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it." " Please,

Sir, inform me still more," said the son. " Be it so, my child," the

father replied.

Now the son is supposed to ask, " How is it that living beings,

when in sleep or death they are merged again in the Sat [that is,

the Real], are not destroyed ? Waves, foam, and bubbles arise

from the water, and when they merge again in the water, they are

gone/'

" If someone were to strike at the root of this large tree, here,"

says the father, " it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its

stem, it would bleed, but live. If he were to strike at its top, it would

bleed, but live. Pervaded by the living Self that tree stands firm,

drinking in its nourishment and rejoicing ;

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? But if the life (the living Self) leaves one of its branches, that

branch withers ; if it leaves a second, that branch withers ; if it

leaves a third, that branch withers. If it leaves the whole tree, the

whole tree withers. In exactly the same manner, my son, know this."

Thus he spoke :

" This (body) indeed withers and dies when the living self has left

it ; the living Self dies not. That which is that subtil essence, in it

all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou,

O Svetaketu, art it."

" Please, Sir, inform me still more," said the son. " Be it so, my

child I " the father replied. " Fetch me from thence a fruit of the

Nyagrodha tree." " Here is one, Sir." " Break it." " It is broken,

Sir." " What do you see there ? " " These seeds, almost infinitesimal."

" Break one of them." " It is broken, Sir." " What do you see there ? "

" Not anything, Sir." The father said : " My son, that subtil essence

which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great

Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe it, my son. That which is the subtil

essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self,

and thou, Svetaketu, art it." " Please, Sir, inform me still more,"

said the son. " Be it so, my child," the father replied.

" Place this salt in water, and then wait on me in the morning."

The son did as he was commanded. The father said to him : " Bring

me the salt, which you placed in the water last night." The son having

looked for it, found it not, for, of course, it was melted. The father,

said : " Taste it from the surface of the water. How is it ? " The

son replied : " It is salt." " Taste it from the middle. How is it ? "

The son replied : "It is salt." " Taste it from the bottom, how is

it ? " The son replied : " It is salt." The father said : " Throw it

away and then wait on me." He did so ; but salt exists for ever.

Then the father said : " Here also, in this body, forsooth, you do not

perceive the True [Sat], my son ; but there indeed it is.

" That which is the subtil essence [that is, the saltiness of the salt],

in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou,

O Svetaketu, art it." " Please Sir, inform me still more," said the

son. " Be it so, my child," the father replied. (Translation by Max

Miiller).

Let us turn to another part of this Upanishad, to the eighth

lecture. And we read as follows : " Harih, Om." Hari is the

name of several Deities of Siva, and Vishnu, but here, appar-

ently, it is used for Siva, which, as our first Teacher has taught

us, is pre-eminently the divine protector of the mystic occultist,

' Om ' is a word considered very holy in the Brahmanical litera-

ture. It is a syllable of invocation, and its general usage, as

elucidated in the literature treating of it, which is rather volumin-

ous, for this word ' Om ' has attained to almost divinity, is that

it should never be uttered aloud, or in the presence of an out-

sider, a foreigner, or a non-Initiate, but it should be uttered in

the silence of one's heart, in the intimacy of one's inner closet.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 15

We a^ have reason to believe, however, that it was uttered, and

uttered aloud in a monotone by the disciples in the presence of

their Teacher. This word is always placed at the beginning of

any scripture that is considered of unusual sanctity.

The teaching is, that prolonging the uttering of this word, both

of the and the Af, with the mouth closed (precisely as the

Teacher has taught us to do it in this School), it re-echoes in and

arouses vibration in the skull, and affects, if the aspirations be

pure, the different nervous centers of the body for great good.

The Brahmanas say that it is an unholy thing to utter this

word in any place which is unholy. I now read :

There is this city of Brahman [that is, the heart and the body],

and in it the palace, the small lotus (of the heart), and in it that small

ether.

The Sanskrit word which Miiller, the translator, has not given

here for ' small ether ', doubtless because he knew not how to

translate it, is antardkdta, a compound Sanskrit word meaning

within the Akdia. He called it ' small ether ', doubtless because he

knew not how to translate it too difficult. I read again :

Now what exists within that small ether, that it is to be sought for,

that is to be understood. And if they should say to him : " Now

with regard to that city of Brahman, and the palace in it, i.e., the

small lotus of the heart, and the small ether within the heart, what

is there within it that deserves to be sought for, or that is to be under-

stood ? "

Then he should say : " As large as this ether (all space) is, so large

is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained

within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and

stars ; and whatever there is of him (the Self) here in the world, and

whatever is not [i.e., ' whatever has been or will be ' says Max Miiller],

all that is contained within it."

And if they should say to him : "If everything that exists is con-

tained in that city of Brahman, all beings and all desires (whatever

can be imagined or desired), then what is left of it, when old age

reaches it and scatters it, or when it falls to pieces ? "

Then he should say : " By the old age of the body, that (the ether,

or Brahman within it) does not age ; by the death of the body, that

(the ether, or the Brahman within it) is not killed. That (the Brahman)

is the true Brahma-city (not the body). In it all [true] desires are

contained. It is the Self, free from sin, free from old age, from death

and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it

ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine.

Now as here on earth people follow as they are commanded, and

depend on the object which they are attached to, be it a country or

a piece of land,

" And, as here on earth, whatever has been acquired by exertion,

perishes, so perishes whatever is acquired for the next world by

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

sacrifices and other good actions performed on earth. THbse who

depart from hence without having discovered the Self and those

true desires, for them there is no freedom in all the worlds. But

those who depart from hence, after having discovered the Self and

those true desires, for them there is freedom in all the worlds."

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CHAPTER III

THE DOCTRINE OF MAYA : OBJECTIVE IDEALISM THE BASIS OF

MORALS : ROOTED IN THE SPIRITUAL UNITY THE DIVINITY

OF THE ALL. THE SELF AND THE " SELVES ".

May& or illusion is an element which enters into all finite things, for everything

that exists has only a relative, not an absolute, reality, since the appearance

which the hidden noumenon assumes for any observer depends upon his power

of cognition. To the untrained eye of the savage, a painting is at first an unmean-

ing confusion of streaks and daubs of color, while an educated eye sees instantly

a face or a landscape. Nothing is permanent except the one hidden absolute

existence which contains in itself the noumena of all realities. The existences

belonging to every plane of being, up to the highest Dhyan-Chohans, are, in

degree, of the nature of shadows cast by a magic lantern on a colorless screen ;

but all things are relatively real, for the cogniser is also a reflection, and the

things cognised are therefore as real to him as himself. Whatever reality things

possess must be looked for in them before or after they have passed like a flash

through the material world ; but we cannot cognise any such existence directly,

so long as we have sense-instruments which bring only material existence into

the field of our consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting

in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our

only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during

the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and

the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each

advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached " reality " ;

but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our

own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 39, 40.

The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because all is temporary

therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that of the Sun. Compared to

the eternal immutability of the ONE, and the changelessness of that Principle, the

Universe, with its evanescent ever-changing forms, must be necessarily, in the

mind of a philosopher, no better than a will-o'-the-wisp. Yet, the Universe is

real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself.

Ibid., I, 274.

IN taking up again this evening our study of The Secret

Doctrine at the point we reached a fortnight ago, I open

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's book, the first volume, at

page 17, and read the third fundamental postulate at least

a portion of it :

The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul,

the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root ; and the obli-

gatory pilgrimage for every Soul a spark of the former through the

Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity ") in accordance with Cyclic and

Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely

spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious)

existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the

Universal Sixth principle or the OVER-SOUL has (a) passed through

i8

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara,

and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by

self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus

ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to

the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel

(Dhyani-Buddha).

Paul, the Apostle of the Christians " to the Gentiles ", as they

call him, according to the Christian Gospels in Acts, xvii, verses

2^-28, spoke to an assembly of the Athenians on Mars Hill, com-

monly called the Areopagus, and he said the following (the transla-

tion being ours) :

For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with

this inscription : " To the Unknowable God." For in It we live and

move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said,

" For we are also of Its line. 1 '

The poets of whom Paul speaks were probably Cleanthes the

Stoic, and Aratus. It is perhaps well to mention that the sense

of ' Unknowable ', as used in connexion with this word Agnosias,

is that employed by Homer, by Plato, and by Aristotle* This

Greek word Agnostos also permits the translation 'unknown',

but merely because the Unknown in this connexion is the

Unknowable.

The Athenians had raised an altar to the Ineffable, and with

the true spirit of religious devotion they left it without further

qualification ; and Paul, passing by and seeing it, thought he

saw an excellent chance to ' make hay while the sun shone ', so

to say, and claimed the Unknowable to which this altar had

been raised, as the Jewish God, Jehovah.

A fortnight ago, following the Teacher's instructions, we stated

how it was that man could form some conception of that Ineffable

Principle of which Helena Petrovna Blavatsky speaks on pages

14-19 of her Secret Doctrine, as being the first of the three funda-

mental postulates, necessary in order to understand the true

teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom ; and we saw that man has in

himself, as was then said, a faculty transcending the ordinary

human intellectual power something in Jbdm by which he can

raise himself upwards or, perhaps better, inwards, towards the

Inmost Center of his own being, which in very truth is that

Ineffable : from It we came, back to It we are journeying through

the aeons of time.

All the ancient philosophers taught the truth concerning this

same fundamental principle, each in his own way, each with

different terms, each in the language of the country where it was

promulgated, but always there was taught the central truth :

that in the inmost being of man there lives a divinity, and this

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 19

divinity is the offspring of the Highest, and that man can becdme

a God in the flesh or he can sink as the Teacher's words have

told us this evening lower even than the common average of

humanity, so that he becomes at first obsessed or beset, and

finally possessed by the daemons of his own lower nature and

by those df the lower sphere ; and by these particular daemons

we mean the elemental forces of life, of chaotic life, or of the

material sphere of being.

Again, how is it that man cannot see these truths intimately and

immediately ? We all know the answer is, on account of the

illusion under which his mind labors, the illusion which is a part

of himself, not cast upon him from the outside : he sees, for

instance, and his mind reacts to the vision, and the reaction is

conducted along the lines of the illusion, which, taking the ancient

Sanskrit word, our first Teacher has called Maya.

This is a technical term in the ancient Brahmanical philosophy.

Let us examine its root. What does the word Maya come from ?

It comes from a Sanskrit root md ; the meaning of ma is to

measure, and by a trope of speech that is by a figure of speech

it comes to mean to effect, or to form, and hence to limit. There is

an English word mete, meaning to measure out, from the same

Indo-European root. It is found in the Anglo-Saxon as the root

met, it is found in the Greek as med, and it is found in the Latin

also in the same form.

Now Maya, as a technical term, has come to mean ages ago

in the wonderful Brahmanical philosophy it was understood very

differently from what it is now usually understood to be the

fabrication by man's mind of ideas derived from interior and

exterior impressions, and hence the illusory aspect of man's

thoughts as he considers and tries to interpret and understand

life and his surroundings and thence was derived the sense

which it technically bears, illusion. It does not mean that the

exterior world is non-existent ; if it were, it obviously could not

be illusory ; it exists, but ^'s not. It is ' measured out ' or it

stands out to the human spirit as a mirage. In other words, we

do not see clearly and plainly and in their reality the vision and

the visions which our mind and senses present to the inner life

and eye.

The familiar illustrations of Maya in the Vedanta, which is the

highest form that the Brahmanical teachings have taken, and

which is so near to our own teaching in many respects, were such

as follows : A man at eventide sees a coiled rope on the ground,

and springs aside, thinking it a serpent. The rope is there, but

no serpent.

Another illustration is what is called the ' horns of the hare '.

Now the animal called the hare has no horns, but when it also

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

is seen at eventide its long ears seem to project from its head in

such fashion that it appears even to the seeing eye as being a

creature with horns. The hare has no horns, but there is then

in the mind an illusory belief that an animal with horns exists

there.

That is what Maya means: not that a thing seen does not

exist, but that we are blinded and our mind perverted by our

own thoughts and our own imperfections, and do not as yet

arrive at the real interpretation and meaning of the world, of the

universe around us. By ascending inwardly, by rising up, by

inner aspiration, by an elevation of soul, we can reach upwards

or rather inwards toward that plane where Truth abides in

fullness.

Bernard of Clairvaux, the French mystic of the Middle Ages,

said that one way of doing this, and he spoke truly, was by

' emptying the mind ', pouring out the trashy stuff it contains,

the illusory beliefs, the false views, the hatreds, suspicions, care-

lessness, etc., and that by emptying out all this trash, the temple

within is cleansed, and the light from the God within streams

forth into the soul a wonderful figure of thought for a Christian

Mystic, but a true one.

It may be asked : What relationship has our wonderful philo-

sophy to the many so-called idealistic systems of Europe, par-

ticularly in Germany, and represented by Bishop Berkeley in

Britain ? The answer is that there are points of contact, naturally,

because the men who evolved these systems of philosophy were

earnest men, and no man can earnestly think and strive upwards

without arriving at some visions of truth, some faint perceptions

of the inner life but none of the systems of idealism which they

taught is exactly the idealism ; which Theosophy is. Theosophy is

not an absolute idealism, it does not teach that the external

universe is absolutely non-existent and that all external phe-

nomena merely exist in the mind.

Theosophy is not exactly either the idealism of Kant nor the

wonderful pessimistic idealism of Schopenhauer wonderful as

this great thinker was, and wonderful precisely because he

derived his knowledge (and confessed it openly) from the Orient.

The idealism of Theosophy is nearest to the philosophy of the

German philosopher, von Schelling, who taught (principally) that

truth was to be perceived by receding inwards and taking it from

the Spirit, and that the outward world is ' dead mind ' or perhaps

rather inert mind not the mind of the thinker obviously, but

the mind of the Deity. Now thi is called ' objective idealism '

because it recognises the external object as having existence :

it is not non-existent, as absolute idealism would put it. Schell-

ing's ideas come nearest but by no means equal the grandiose

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 21

teaching which our great Teachers have taught us is the

Truth.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky says on page 631 of the first volume

of The Secret Doctrine :

Esoteric ^philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism though it

regards the objective Universe and all in it as Mdyd, temporary

illusion draws a practical distinction between collective illusion,

Mahdmdyd, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objec-

tive relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this

illusion lasts.

The teaching, as all older students of the Esoteric School know

and I believe that many of them are here present this evening

is that Maya is thus called from the action of Mtilaprakriti, or

root-nature, the co-ordinate principle of that other line of co-

active consciousness which we call Parabrahman. We remember

that we discussed these questions at our former meeting, and we

say that from the moment when manifestation begins, it acts

dualistically, that is to say, that everything in Nature from that

point onwards is crossed by pairs of opposites, such as long and

short, high and low, night and day, good and evil, consciousness

and non-consciousness, etc., and that all these things are essen-

tially mayic or illusory real while they last, but the lasting is

not eternal. It is through and by these pairs of opposites that

the self-conscious soul learns Truth.

What is the basis of morals ? This is the most important ques-

tion that can be asked of any system of thought. Is morality

based on the dicta of man ? Is morality based on the conviction

in most men's hearts that for human safety it is necessary to have

certain abstract rules which it is merely convenient to follow ?

Are we mere opportunists ? or is morality, ethics, based on Truth,

which it is not merely expedient for man to follow, but needful,

necessary ? Surely upon the latter !

And in the third Fundamental Postulate which we read at the

opening of our study this evening, we find, as was before said, the

very elements, the very fundamentals, of a system of morality

greater than which, profounder than which, more persuasive than

which, perhaps, it would be impossible to imagine anything.

On what, then, is morality based ? And by morality I mean not

merely the opinion which some pseudo-philosophers have, that

morality is more or less that which is ' good for the community ',

based on the mere meaning of the Latin word mores, ' good cus-

toms ', as opposed to bad. No ! morality is that instinctive hunger

of the human heart to do righteousness, to do good to every man

because it is good and satisfying and ennobling to do so.

When man realizes that he is one with all that is, inwards and

outwards, high and low ; that he is one with them, not merely

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as members of a community are one, not merely as individuals

of an army are one, but like the molecules of our own flesh, like

the atoms of the molecule, like the electrons of the atom, com-

posing one unity not a mere union but a spiritual unity then he

sees Truth.

Everyone of us belongs to, and is an inhering part of, that

Sublime and Ineffable Mystery the ALL which contains and

is individual and spiritual unity.

We have all of us one inward universal Self, and each one has

also his individual ego. The ego springs from the Self and the

Self is the Ineffable, the Inmost of the Inmost, one in all of us

giving each one of us that sense of selfhood ; although by exten-

sion of meaning we also speak, and properly speak, of the ' lower

self ', because this is a tiny ray from the Highest. Even the evil

man, as our present great Teacher has taught us, has in himself

not merely the spark of the divine, but the very ray of divinity

itself : he is both the selfish ego and the Universal Self.

Why then are we taught that when we attain selflessness, we

attain the Divine ? Precisely because selflessness is the attribute

of the Paramatman, the Universal Self, where all personality

vanishes. Paramatman is a Sanskrit compound, meaning highest

or supreme self.

If we examine our own spirits, if we reach inwards, if we stretch

ourselves inwards, as it were, towards the Inmost, every one of us

may know that as he goes farther, farther, farther in, the self

becomes selfless, the light becomes pure glory.

What a thought, that in the heart of each one of us there

dwells, there lives, the Ever-Unfolding, the Constant, the Eternal,

the Changeless, knowing no death, knowing no sorrow, the very

divinity of all ! How it dignifies human life ! What courage does

it give to us ! How does it clear away all of the old moldy super-

stitions 1 What unspeakable visions of Reality, of the Truth, do

we obtain when we go inwards, after having emptied the mind,

as Bernard says, of all the mental trash that encumbers it 1

These are the doctrines of our Teachers ; our present Outer

Head is telling us it daily, hinting at it in this way and in that

way, using these words and those words, taking the opportunity

on every occasion that presents itself to awaken us, to instil these

eternal truths into us.

When man has reached the state where he realizes this and has

so ' emptied his mind ' that it is filled only with the Self Itself,

with the selfless selfhood of the Eternal what did the ancients

call this state ? What did they call such a man himself ? They

called the state, ' Bodhi ' ; and they called the human, ' Buddha ' ;

and the organ in and by which it was manifested, 'Buddhi'.

All these words came from a Sanskrit root, meaning to awaken.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 23

When rflan has awakened from the living death in which we live,

when he has cast off the toils of mind and flesh and, to use the old

Christian term, has put on the ' garments of eternity ', then he has

awakened, he is a Buddha. And the ancient Brahmanical teachings,

found today even in the Vedanta, state that he has become one

with not * absorbed ' as is constantly translated but has become

one with the Self of selves, with the Paramatman, the Supreme

Self.

Hearken a moment to the wisdom of the ancient Orient, not the

voice of modern Brahmanism (excepting the Vedanta) but to a

book which was ancient before our ancestors knew anything

higher than the quasi-barbaric ideas which Europe had two

thousand years ago.

We read from the Chhdndogya-Upanishad, one of the most

important of the 108 or more Upanishads. The very word

'Upanishad' signifies 'Esoteric treatise'. We read from the

eighth lecture, seventh, eighth, and ninth sections. They con-

tain such truth that the Teacher has permitted us to take up our

time in reading it.

" Prajapati said " we interrupt by saying that Prajapati is a

Sanskrit word meaning governor or lord or master of progeny.

The word is applied to many of the Vedic gods, but in particular

to Brahma that is to say the third step from Parabrahman the

evolver-creator, the first and most recondite figure of the triad

consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Brahma is the Emanator

or Evolver, Vishnu the Sustainer or Preserver, and Siva, which

may be translated euphemistically perhaps as ' beneficent ', the

Regenerator. This name is very obscure. However :

Praj^pati said : " The Self which is free from sin, free from old age,

from death and grief, from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing

but what it ought to desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought

to imagine, that it is which we must search out, that it is which we

must try to understand. He who has searched out that Self and

understands it, obtains all worlds and all desires. 11

We interrupt to ask why ? Because this Self of selves, this

Inmost, is all worlds : it is All, it is Everything. Now to quote :

The Devas [gods] and Asuras [demons] both heard these words,

and said : " Well, let us search for that Self by which, if one has

searched it out, all worlds and all desires are obtained/ 1

Thus saying Indra went from the Devas, Virochana from the Asuras,

and both, without having communicated with each other, approached

Praj^pati, holding fuel in their hands, as is the custom for pupils

approaching their master.

They dwelt there as pupils for thirty-two years. Then

asked them : " For what purpose have you dwelt here ? "

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They replied: " A saying of yours is being repeated, Viz. 'the

Self which is free from sin, free from old age, from death and grief,

from hunger and thirst, which desires nothing but what it ought to

desire, and imagines nothing but what it ought to imagine, that it is

which we must search out, that it is which we must try to understand.

He who has searched out that Self and understands it,, obtains all

worlds and all desires/ Now we both have dwelt here because we

wish for that Self/'

Prajkpati said to them : " The person that is seen in the eye, that is

the Self. This is what I have said. This is the immortal, the fearless,

this is Brahman/ 1

Interrupting : the Self that is seen in the eye is a figure of speech

not infrequently found in the ancient Sanskrit writings ; it signi-

fies that sense of an indwelling presence that one sees when he

looks into the eyes of another.

They asked : " Sir, he who is perceived in the water, and he who is

perceived in a mirror, who is he ? "

He replied : " He himself indeed is seen in all these/'

(Eighth Section) " Look at your Self in a pan of water, and whatever

you do not understand of your Self, come and tell me."

They looked in the water-pan. Then Prajapati said to them:

" What do you see ? "

They said : " We both see the self thus altogether, a picture even

to the very hairs and nails/'

Prajapati said to them : " After you have adorned yourselves, look

again into the water-pan."

They, after having adorned themselves, having put on their best

clothes and cleaned themselves, looked into the water-pan.

Prajapati said : " What do you see ? "

They said : " Just as we arc, well adorned, with our best clothes and

clean, thus we are both there, Sir, well adorned, with our best clothes

and clean."

Prajapati said : " That is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless,

this is Brahman."

Then both went away satisfied hv their hearts.

And Prajipati, looking after them, said : " They both go away

without having perceived and without having known the Self, and

whoever of these two, whether Devas or Asuras, will follow this

doctrine will perish."

Interrupting : they saw Maya and not the Self.

Now Virochana, satisfied in his heart, went to the Asuras and

preached that doctrine to them, that the self (the body) alone is to be

worshipped, that the self (the body) alone is to be served, and that

he who worships the self, and serves the self, gains both worlds, this

and the next.

Therefore they call even now a man who does not give alms here,

who has no faith, and offers no sacrifices, an Asura, for this is the

doctrine of Asuras. They deck out the body of the dead with perfumes,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 25

flowers, and fine raiment by way of ornament, and think they will

thus conquer that world.

(Ninth Section) But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas,

saw this difficulty.

Interrupting : the difficulty now comes which Indra saw.

As this self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when thet>ody

is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed, well

cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind, if the

body is blind, lame, if the body is lame, crippled if the body is crippled,

and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see

no good in this (doctrine).

Taking fuel in his hand he came again as a pupil to Praj^pati.

Praj&pati said to him : " Maghavat [Indra], as you went away with

Virochana, satisfied in your heart, for what purpose did you come

back ? "

He said : " Sir, as this self (the shadow) is well adorned, when the

body is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed,

well cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind,

if the body is blind, lame if the body is lame, crippled if the body is

crippled, and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. There-

fore I see no good in this (doctrine)."

" So it is indeed, Maghavat/' replied Praj^pati ; " but I shall explain

him (the true Self) further to you. Live with me another thirty-two

years. 1 '

Indra was able to see beyond the maya of the personal self, and

therefore was searching for the Real, for the True, the Self Itself.

The translation is Max Miiller's. It may be well to add in con-

clusion that all translations which have been made and may

hereafter be made are made by ourself, from any one of the

ancient languages, and if any quotation is taken from another

translator, his name will be given.

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CHAPTER IV

FROM PRIMORDIAL POINT TO UNIVERSE AND MAN. 'HOW DOES

MANIFESTATION ARISE ? MANVANTARA AND PRALAYA.

The Scintillas are the " Souls," and these Souls appear in the threefold form

of Monads (units), atoms, and gods according to our teaching. " Every atom

becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule), and once attracted into the sphere

of terrestrial activity, the Monadic Essence, passing through the mineral,

vegetable, and animal kingdoms, becomes man." (Esoteric Catechism.) Again,

" God, Monad, and Atom are the correspondences of Spirit, Mind, and Body

(Atma, Manas, and Sthula-Sarlra) in man." In their septenary aggregation they

are the " Heavenly Man " (see Kabala for the latter term) ; thus, terrestrial man

is the provisional reflection of the Heavenly. ..." The Monads (Jivas) are the

Souls of the Atoms, both are a fabric in which the Chohans (Dhyanis, gods) clothe

themselves when a form is needed." (Esoteric Catechism.)

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 619.

Parabrahm (the One Reality, the Absolute) is the field of Absolute Conscious-

ness, i.e., that Essence which is out of all relation to conditioned existence, and

of which conscious existence is a conditioned symbol. But once that we pass

in thought from this (to us) Absolute Negation, duality supervenes in the contrast

of Spirit (or consciousness) and Matter, Subject and Object.

Spirit (or Consciousness) and Matter are, however, to be regarded, not as

independent realities, but as the two facets or aspects of the Absolute (Parabrahm)

which constitute the basis of conditioned Being whether subjective or objective.

Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the

Absolute is essential to the existence of the " Manifested Universe." Apart from

Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual conscious-

ness, since it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as

" I am I," a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind

at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic

Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness

could ensue.

The " Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it

were, the very essence of its EX-istence as " manifestation." But just as the

opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the

One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there

is " that " which links spirit to matter, subject to object.

This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the

occultists Fohat. It is the " bridge " by which the " Ideas " existing in the

" Divine Thought " are impressed on Cosmic substance as the " laws of Nature."

Ibid.. I, 15, 16.

BEFORE we open our study of The Secret Doctrine this

evening, it should be said that the Teacher has asked

me to repeat what was before stated with reference to

the nature of these studies, that is, that they are a sim-

plification of The Secret Doctrine in the sense of an explanation

and unfolding of the meaning of the teachings that the book

contains ; and in order to achieve these ends, it will be of course

necessary to bring to bear upon these doctrines for comparison

and in order to show analogy or identity, lines of thought from

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 27

the great religions of the world and from the great minds of ancient

times ; because these, in their essence, have sprung from the

central source of men's thought and religion which we to-day

call Theosophy.

Yet before we can really embark upon the study of The Secret

Doctrine itsfelf, as a book, it will be necessary during the course

of our studies to clear from our path certain stumbling-blocks

which are in the way of each of us ; certain ideas and so-called

principles of thought which have been instilled into our minds

from childhood, and which, on account of the psychological

effect they have on our minds, really prevent us from grasping

the truths of Being that Helena Petrovna Blavatsky has so

masterly given us in The Secret Doctrine.

In addition, it will be necessary to investigate certain very

ancient principles of thought, and to penetrate more deeply into

the real meaning of the ancient religions and philosophies than

has ever been done in any modern books, because those books

have been written by men who know nothing about the Esoteric

Philosophy, men who were mostly rebels against the barren

ecclesiasticism of the Christian Church; who, in order to gain

freedom from those chains of ecclesiasticism, actually went too

far the other way, and saw nothing but priestcraft and evil-doing

in these old religions, and in the acts and teachings of the men

who taught them, priests, philosophers, or scientists.

We really, also, cannot understand The Secret Doctrine unless

we have made these preliminary studies. We may read it as a

book, as we would take down a book from the shelf in the public

library and read it, but in doing so we do not get the essence, the

heart, the core of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's meaning.

Another point always to keep in mind is, that we are, as the

Teacher has told us more than once in these meetings, actually

assembled here as fellow-students and members of the Inner

School we are undertaking the study of the very doctrines which

formed the core of the heart of the teachings of the Mysteries

of ancient days. These Mysteries were divided into two general

parts, the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater.

The Lesser Mysteries were very largely composed of dramatic

rites or ceremonies, with some teaching ; the Greater Mysteries

were composed of, or conducted almost entirely on the ground of,

study, and later were proved by personal experience in initiation.

In the latter was explained among other things the secret

meaning of the mythologies of the old religions, as for instance

the Greek.

The active and nimble mind of the Greeks produced a mythology

which for grace and beauty is perhaps without equal, but it

nevertheless is very difficult to explain ; the Mysteries of Samo-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

thrace and of Eleusis the greater ones explained amcfog other

things what these myths meant. These myths formed the basis

of the exoteric religions ; but note well that exotericism does

not mean that the thing which is taught exoterically is in itself

false, but merely that it is a teaching given without the key to it :

such teaching is symbolic, illusory, touching on the truth : the

truth is there, but without the key to it which is the esoteric

meaning it yields no proper sense.

We open our study of The Secret Doctrine, this evening, by

reading from Vol. I, page 43, second and third paragraphs :

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of every-

thing, worlds as well as atoms ; and this stupendous development has

neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our " Universe "

is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them " Sons of

Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each

one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and

being a cause as regards its successor.

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured

as an out breathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is

eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the

Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When

" the Great Breath " is projected, it is called the Divine Breath, and is

regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One Existence

which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes the Kosmos.

(See Isis Unveiled.) So also it is when the Divine Breath is inspired

again the Universe disappears into the bosom of " the Great Mother,"

who then sleeps, " wrapped in her invisible robes."

A fortnight ago we were studying the question of Maya and the

relationship of the inner being of man to the Ineffable Essence ;

it remains for us briefly to study how man, who has a personal

element in him, sprang forth from the very essence of imperson-

ality, if one may so call it. We can say at once that the Infinite

and Impersonal never becomes finite and personal. How, then,

does the spirit of man (already the first film over the face of the

Absolute, as it were) come into being ? Let us remember that

the manifestation of worlds, and, deductively, of the beings

who inhabit those worlds, took place in the extension of matter

popularly called ' space '. A center, first, is ' localized ' a very

poor word to use ! and is, de facto, not infinite, not eternal ; if

it were, it could neither manifest nor come into outward existence,

for this is limitation. The Eternal, the Ineffable, the Infinite,

does not ever manifest at all, either partially or in toto. Words

themselves are misleading in treating of these subjects ; but what

can we say ? We must use human expressions in order to convey

our meaning.

How then arose manifestation ? The Ancient Wisdom tells

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 29

us the following : In the seeds of life remaining in space from a

planet which had previously run its Manvantara and had passed

into latency or Prakriti-Pralaya there came (when the hour

struck for manifestation to begin again) into being in these seeds

of life the activity called in Sanskrit trishnd (thirst, if you like,

desire for manifestation), thus forming the center around which

was to gather a new universe. It had by karmic necessity its

particular place in space and was to produce its particular kind

of progeny : gods, monads, atoms, men, and the three elementary

or elemental kingdoms of the world as we see it around us :

from the karmic seeds which were brought over and which were

lying latent from the preceding Manvantara.

The Universe reimbodies itself (it does not ' reincarnate ', which

means coming into flesh), following precisely the analogical lines,

mutatis mutandis, that the soul of man does in reincarnating,

making the necessary allowances for varying conditions. As

man is the product of his former life, or rather of his lives, so is a

universe, a solar system, a planet, an animal, an atom the very

great as well as the so-called infinitesimal the fruitage, the

flower, of what went before. Each of these bears its load of

karman precisely as the soul of man does.

The teachings relating to the evolving of the inner planes of

Being, which precede and produce the outer planes, are very

esoteric, as our Teachers have told us, and belong to a study

higher than we venture to approach at the present time, but we

can form some general idea of how it is done, as has already been

said, by analogy and by comparison with the life of man.

When manifestation begins, what is called ' duality ' super-

venes. It would seem to be a procession something like this,

were we to symbolize it by a diagram. (See page 30).

Consider this uppermost straight line a hypothetical plane :

it may be, humanly speaking, immeasurable miles in depth or in

extension, but mere extension has nothing to do with the general

concept. Above it stretches the infinitude of the Boundless, and

below the diagram is the Boundless, and inwards through it is the

Boundless, interpenetrating everywhere ; but for purposes of

our present illustration we will say that it is ' above '.

Let us place anywhere we may please a point A, another one

A 7 here, and a third A" there. We have now reached, after a long

period of latency or pralaya has passed, a period of manifestation

or manvantara ; such a point as A, or A" or A", we will call the

Primordial Point, the first breaking-through into the cosmic

plane below ; the spirit-force above arising into activity in the

seeds of being and forcing its way down into the lower life of

manifestation not pushed nor moved by anything outside of itself

is driven into manifestation by the karmic life of its own essential

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 31

being, by the thirst of desire or blossoming forth, like a fresh

upspringing in early summer of a flower, in which the tendency

in manifestation is outward. This first appearance is conceived

of in philosophy as the First or Primordial Point ; this is the

name given to it in the Jewish Theosophy called the QabMllh.

From the moment that the Point, as it were the seed of life,

the germ of being all these are but names for the one thing,

the spiritual atom, the spiritual monad, call it what you will

from the moment that it bursts through into the lower life as it

were, differentiation or duality sets in and continues thencefor-

ward to the end of the Great Cycle, forming the two side-lines

of the diagrammatic triangle. We may call one A B the Brahma

(masculine), and the other A C the Prakriti or Nature (feminine).

Brahm. is frequently also called Purusha, a Sanskrit word

meaning Man, the Ideal Man, like the Qabbalistic Adam Qadmdn,

the primordial entity of space, containing in Prakriti or Nature

all the septenary scales of manifested being.

At all times, from the very first instant when duality sets in,

there is an unceasing attraction between these two lines or poles,

and they join. Remember that this symbol is merely a paradigm,

that it is merely a paradigmatic scheme or representation.

Absolutely, it would be absurd to say that life and beings pro-

ceed into manifestation as geometric triangles only ; but we can

represent it symbolically to our minds in this fashion. When

these two join, the Father and the Mother, spirit (or Reality)

and illusion (or may a), Brahma (or Purusha) and Prakriti (or

Nature), their union produces the Son. In the Christian scheme

they give the spiritual or primordial Son the name of Christos ;

in the Egyptian scheme Osiris and Isis (or her twin sister Neph-

thys which is merely the more recondite side of Isis) produce

their son Horus, the spiritual Sun, physically the sun or the

Light-Bringer ; and so similarly in the different schemes that

the ancient world has handed down to us.

From the interaction of these three, by inter-polar action, by

the spiritual forces working in and out, two other lines fall down-

wards according to the mystical way in which this scheme of

emanation is taught and they also join and form the square

or the manifested Kosmos.

Now from the Central or Primordial Point is born or proceeds

the Sun of Life. By It and through It is our union with the

Ineffable. Man may be down here a physical being on earth,

or anywhere else a luminous, ethereal entity : but it matters not

where he is or what his body : for once the seven principles of

his being are in action, man the thinking entity, is produced,

linked by his seventh principle, and his sixth, with that Sun of

Life.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

To every ' man ' of the unnamable multitudes of self-conscious

beings belonging to this Kosmos or Universe, there extend

respectively upwards or downwards, two natures : one of which

is a ray of spirit connecting him with the divine of the Divinest,

and from that extending upwards in all directions and linking us

in every sense of the word with the Ineffable, the Boundless,

which is, therefore, the core of our being, the center of our

essence.

The appearance and evolution of man as a human being on

this planet Terra, follow the same line of Nature's wonderful

analogical working that a planet does in space, or a sun does

with its brothers of a solar system, the planets. Man, thus being

in very truth a child of Infinity, the offspring of the Ineffable,

has latent within himself the capacity of the Universe.

And on this fact depends what we have so often been told of

the getting of ' powers '. The very method by which we do not

get them, the very way of missing and losing them, is to run after

them, strange as it may sound, because this is the impulse of

vanity and selfishness. If we, then, selfishly seek them, what do

we get ? We get the action of the lower powers upon us ; it is a

growing thirst for sensation which we do get, and this leads us

towards and into the nether abyss of Matter, the opposite pole of

the Boundless, if it is followed.

But in the great Soul who has passed by and thrown off this

thirst for personal acquisition, in whom the grasping spirit for

self is no longer dominant, who feels his Oneness with everything

that is, who feels that every human being, yea the very pismire

that laboriously crawls up a sand-knob only to tumble down again,

is himself no metaphor but an actuality : a different body, but

the same life, the same essence, the same things latent in it as in

him in him indeed lies the power of ascending the ladder of

Being, drawn by the link with the Highest in his innermost

nature. He and they are both filled full of latent powers and

forces, and he and they may become in time very Gods, blazing,

as it were, with power like the Sun ; and the only way is utter

selflessness, because selflessness, paradoxical as it may sound,

is the only way to the Self, the Self Universal. The personal

self shuts the door before us.

Of course we cannot crush out of our being the sense of self-

hood, nor is that desirable ; but in the lowest aspect it takes upon

itself the forms of all selfishness, until the being of the man

who follows the ' left-hand path ', as they call it, or the path

downwards, ends in what the early Christians stealing from the

Greeks called Tartarus, the place of disintegration.

When man ascends beyond the reach of matter, he has cast off

the bondage of Maya, or illusion. Let us remember that when

FUNDAMENTALS OF HIE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 33

manifestation opens, Prakriti becomes or rather is Maya ; and

Brahma, the Father, is the spirit of the consciousness, or the

Individuality. These two are really one, yet they are also the two

aspects of the one Life-ray acting and reacting upon itself, much

as a man himself can say, " I am I ". He has the faculty of self-

analysis, or* self-division ; all of us know it, we can feel it in our-

selves ; one side of us, in our thoughts, can be called the Prakriti

or the material element, or the Mayavi element, or the element of

illusion ; and the other, the spirit, the individuality, the God

within.

Yet as man sees life, as he runs his eye down the scale of beings,

he sees it through Maya ; in fact, he is the child of Maya on one

side, as he is of the Spirit on the other. Both are in him. His

lesson is to learn that the two are one and that they are not

separate ; then he no longer is deceived. His lesson is to under-

stand that Maya, the great Deluder, is the famous snake or serpent

of antiquity, which leads us out from the ' Garden of Eden '

(employing a Biblical metaphor), through experience and suffering

to learn what illusion is and is not.

Also matter, which is the mayavi manifestation of Prakriti on

this plane (and I mean here physical matter), itself is not sub-

stantial. The most dense and rigid things we can think of, per-

haps, are the metals, and actually they are, perhaps, the most

porous, the most foamlike, the most evanescent, as seen from the

other or higher side of being, from the other side of the plane.

So well is this now beginning to be understood that even our more

intuitive scientists are telling us that ' space ', which seems to

us so thin, and tenuous, is in reality more rigid than the hardest

steel. Why is it that electricity prefers metals as a path, to

common wood, or cotton-wool, or some other such thing ?

Before we go further, it would seem necessary to study a

little what we mean by the words Manvantara and Pralaya. Let

us take Manvantara first. This word is a Sanskrit compound,

and as such means nothing more than ' between two Manus ' ;

more literally, ' Manu between '. ' Manu ', or Dhyani-Chohan,

in the Esoteric System, is the entities collectively which appear

first at the beginning of manifestation and from which, like a

cosmic tree, everything is derived or born. Manu actually is the

(spiritual) tree of life of any Planetary Chain, of manifested being.

Manu is thus (in one sense) the third logos ; as the second is the

Father-Mother, the Brahma and Prakriti ; and the first is what

we call the Unmanifest Logos, or Brahman (neuter) and its cosmic

veil Pradhana.

Pradhana is also a Sanskrit compound, meaning that which

is ' placed before ' ; and from this, it has become a technical

term in philosophy, and means what we would call the first

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

filmy appearance of root-matter, ' placed before ', or rather* around,

Brahman, as a Veil. Root-matter is m&la-prakriti, root-nature,

and corresponding to it as the other or active pole, is Brahman

(neuter). That from which the First or Unmanifest Logos pro-

ceeds is called Para-Brahman, and Mulaprakriti is Its Kosmic

Veil. Parabrahman is another Sanskrit compound, meaning

' beyond Brahman '. Mtilaprakriti, again, as said above, is a

Sanskrit compound meaning mtila root, prakriti nature.

First, then, the Boundless, symbolized by the O I then Para-

brahman, and Mulaprakriti its other pole ; then lower, Brahman

and its Veil Pradhana ; then Brahma-Prakriti or Purusha-

Prakriti (Prakriti being also maya) ; the manifested Universe

appearing through and by this last : Brahma-Prakriti, Father-

Mother. In other words, the second logos, Father-Mother, is the

producing cause of manifestation through their son, which in a

Planetary Chain is Manu. A Manvantara, therefore, is the period

of activity between any two Manus, on any plane, since in any

such period there is a root-Manu at the beginning of Evolution,

and a seed-Manu at its close, preceding a Pralaya.

Pralaya : this is also a Sanskrit compound, formed of laya, from

a Sanskrit root lt t and the prefix pra. What does li mean ? It

means to dissolve, to melt away, to liquefy, as when one pours

water upon a cube of salt or of sugar. The cube of salt or of sugar

vanishes in the water ; it dissolves, changes its form ; and this

may be taken as a figure, as a symbol, of what Pralaya is : a

crumbling away, a vanishing away of matter into something

else which is yet in it, and surrounds it, and interpenetrates it.

That is Pralaya, usually translated as the state of latency, state

of rest, state of repose, between two manvantaras or life-cycles.

If we remember distinctly the meaning of the Sanskrit word, our

minds take a new bent in direction, follow a new thought ; we get

new ideas ; we penetrate into the arcanum of the thing that takes

place.

Now there are many kinds of Manvantaras ; also many kinds of

Pralayas. There are, for instance, the Universal Manvantara and

the Universal Pralaya, and these are called Prakritika, because

it is the pralaya or vanishing away, melting away, of Prakriti or

Nature. Then there is the solar pralaya. Sun in Sanskrit is

Sfirya, and the adjective from this is Saurya ; hence, the saurya-

pralaya, or the pralaya of the solar system. Then, thirdly, there

is the terrestrial or planetary pralaya. The Sanskrit word for

earth is Bhflmi, and the adjective corresponding to this is Bhau-

mika : hence, the bhaumika-pralaya. Then we can say that there

is the pralaya or death of the individual man. Man is purusha ;

the corresponding adjective is paurusha : hence, the paurusha-

pralaya, or death of man. So, then, we have given examples of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 35

various praiayas : first of the Prakritika, or dissolution of Nature ;

next the solar pralaya, the saurya ; next the bhaumika or the

passing away of the earth ; and then the paurusha, or the death

of man. And these adjectives apply equally well to the several

kinds of Majivantaras, or life-cycles.

There is another kind of Pralaya which is called Nitya. In its

general sense, it means ' constant ' or ' continuous ', and can be

exemplified by the constant or continuous change life and death

of the cells of our bodies it is a state in which the entity, the

indwelling and dominating entity, remains, but its different

principles and rftpas undergo continuous change. Hence it is

called Nitya. It applies to the body of man, to the outer sphere

of earth, to the earth itself, to the solar system, and to all Nature.

It is likewise represented by a symbol that our first great

Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has given us from the Oriental Wisdom,

the out-breathing and in-breathing of Brahman. This symbol,

by the way, is not solely Indian. It is found in the ancient Egyp-

tian texts, where one or another of the Gods, Khnumu, for in-

stance, breathes forth from his mouth the cosmic egg. It is

also found alluded to in the Orphic Hymns, where the cosmic

serpent breathes forth as an egg the things which are to be, or

the future universe. Everywhere, especially where ancient religion

or philosophy has longest retained its hold, there do we find

the symbol of the cosmic egg. Religions of less age and of less

influence do not so often employ it. The cosmic egg was found as

a symbol in Egypt ; it was found in Hindfisthan ; it was found

in Peru, where the ' Mighty Man ', the Sanskrit Purusha, the Ideal

Man, the Paradigmatic Man, was called Manco Capac, and his wife

and sister was called Mama Oello, which means ' Mother-egg ' ;

these brought the universe into being, becoming later the sun and

the moon respectively.

Why did the Ancients symbolize the beginning of manifestation

under the form of an egg ? Let us ask : Is it not a fine symbol ?

As the egg producing the chick contains the germ of life (laid by

its mother, the hen, and fructified by the other pole of being) so

the cosmic egg, which is the Primordial Point of which we spoke

in the early part of our study this evening, also contains the germ

of life. The egg itself also can be called the germ of life, and the

germ of life within the egg can be called the inner germ that

more subtil point which receives those impulses of which we have

spoken before, coming down from the highest center of com-

munication between the outward world and the inner, the lines

of inner magnetic action and reaction. And when the chick within

the egg is formed, it bursts its shell and comes forth into the light

of day, precisely as we saw was the case with the Primordial Point.

When the karmic hour had struck, it burst forth, as it were, into

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

other spheres of manifestation and activity. The Ancients,

carrying the figure still farther, even spoke of Heaven as a dome-

like affair, as the upper part of an egg-shell.

Let us think more deeply of these ancient symbols. The

Ancients were not fools. There is a deep meaning in these olden

figures of speech. Why did Homer speak of his Olympus, the

abode of Zeus and the Gods, as being brazen, like brass, one of the

hardest and most intractable things that the Greeks knew ? Why

did Hesiod speak of the same as made of iron ? Because they

realized that the life here in matter and of matter, was based upon

an evanescent substratum, and that the lower world of matter is,

as has been so often said, evanescent, foamy, full of holes, as it

were, and unreal.

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CHAPTER V

THE ESOTERIC TEACHINGS AND THE NEBULAR THEORY.

GODS BEHIND THE KOSMOS : WHY NATURE IS IMPERFECT.

To make of Science an integral whole necessitates, indeed, the study of spiritual

and psychic, as well as physical, Nature. Otherwise it will ever be like the

anatomy of man, discussed of old by the profane from the point of view of his

shell-side and in ignorance of the interior work. . . .

. . . The duty of the Occultist lies with the Soul and Spirit of Cosmic Space,

not merely with its illusive appearance and behavior. That of official physical

science is to analyse and study its shell the Ultima Thule of the Universe and

man, in the opinion of Materialism.

With the latter, Occultism has nought to do. It is only with the theories of

such men of learning as Kepler, Kant, Oersted, and Sir W. Herschel, who believed

in a Spiritual world, that Occult Cosmogony might treat, and attempt a satisfac-

tory compromise. But the views of those physicists differed vastly from the

latest modern speculations. Kant and Herschel had in their mind's eye specula-

tions upon the origin and the final destiny, as well as the present aspect, of the

Universe, from a far more philosophical and psychic standpoint ; whereas modern

Cosmology and Astronomy now repudiate anything like research into the mys-

teries of being. The result is what might be expected : complete failure and in-

extricable contradictions in the thousand and one varieties of so-called scientific

theories, and in this theory as in all others.

The nebular hypothesis, involving the theory of the existence of a primeval

matter, diffused in a nebulous condition, is of no modern date in astronomy as

everyone knows. Anaximenes, of the Ionian school, had already taught that the

sidereal bodies were formed through the progressive condensation of a primordial

pregenetic matter, which had almost a negative weight, and was spread out

through Space in an extremely sublimated condition.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 588-590.

WITH the Teacher's permission there are three points

which it would seem necessary to touch upon slightly,

before we begin our evening's study.

The first is with regard to the question of morals,

that is to say, right conduct based upon right views, right think-

ing. We have touched upon this matter at nearly every meeting

of this Lodge, because the line, the path, of duty of right conduct

based upon right views is the Path of all who would tread on-

ward to the Ancient Wisdom and to the Ancient Mysteries. Our

Teachers have told us this again and again, and the great thinkers,

philosophers, and religious men, of all ages, have told us the same

thing.

These meetings, as our present Teacher has told us so often,

are not for purposes of intellectual study only, nor to amuse

ourselves with abstruse and mystic knowledge ; but mainly, firstly,

principally, for the purpose of gaining a right foundation for right

views, which shall govern human conduct. When we have this

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

foundation we have the beginnings of all laws ; we can affect the

world not only by our own views and by our own acts, but by

those of other members who will come in and swell our number ;

and, further, we shall be able in time to affect for good even the

governments of the world, not directly and immediately perhaps,

but at least indirectly and in the course of time. All the horrible

things that perplex and confuse and distress mankind today arise

wholly, almost, out of a lack of right views, and hence, a lack of

right conduct. We have the testimony of the Greek and Roman

initiates and thinkers that the Ancient Mysteries of Greece taught

men, above everything else, to live rightly and to have a noble

hope for the life after death.

Next, the second point : in our last meeting we touched upon

the Ancient Mysteries in the ancient Mystery-Schools, and we

took as examples those of Greece, from which the Romans derived

their own Mysteries but we touched upon one point only, the

mythological aspect ; and this mythological aspect comprises

only a portion a relatively small portion of what was taught

in the Mystery- Schools, principally at Samothrace and at Eleusis.

At Samothrace was taught the same Mystery-teaching that was

current elsewhere in Greece, but here it was more developed and

recondite ; and the foundation of these Mystery-teachings was

morals. The noblest and greatest men of ancient times in Greece

were initiates in the Mysteries of these two seats of esoteric

knowledge.

In other countries farther to the east they had other Mystery-

Schools or " colleges ", and this word " college " by no means

necessarily meant a mere temple or building ; it meant " associa-

tion," as in our modern word colleague, " associate ". The Teu-

tonic tribes of northern Europe, the Germanic tribes which

included Scandinavia had their. Mystery-colleges also ; and

teacher and neophytes stood on the bosom of Mother-Earth, under

Father-Ether, the boundless sky, or in subterranean receptacles,

and taught and learned. We state here at once that the core, the

heart, the center, of the Ancient Mysteries was the abstruse

problems dealing with Death. These teachings we still have, and

when the Teacher says that it is time to give them out, they will be

forthcoming ; she is the judge as to when this shall be.

The third point is with regard to the paradigms or diagrams

which we may find necessary to use from time to time in order to

illustrate certain teachings. Remember that these paradigms are

relative and changeable ; they are not hard and fast or absolute

things ; this fact must be kept always clear in the mind, and

around these diagrams or paradigms the mind should never be

allowed to crystallize. Why ? Because any paradigm, any par-

ticular combination of geometrical lines, can illustrate different

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 39

thoughts or things, as, for instance, the paradigm of the triangle

from which hangs the square (as used at our last meeting) can

apply equally as well to the highest combined principle in man, the

spiritual-mental monad, as to the lower principles into which the

monad falls at the beginning of incarnation or manifestation, and

from whichf it will resurrect when the first chimes of the pralayic

bells are heard in the Aka6ic spaces.

We will now resume our study. We take up, as our general

theme, the same two paragraphs on p. 43 of Vol. I of The Secret

Doctrine, which we read at our last meeting : paragraphs one and

two :

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of every-

thing, worlds as well as atoms ; and this stupendous development has

neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our " Universe "

is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them " Sons

of Necessity," because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes,

each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor,

and being a cause as regards its successor.

The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as

an outbreathing and inbreathing of " the Great Breath/' which is

eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the

Absolute Abstract Space and Duration being the other two. When

the " Great Breath " is projected, it is called the Divine Breath,

and is regarded as the breathing of the Unknowable Deity the One

Existence which breathes out a thought, as it were, which becomes

the Kosmos. (See Isis Unveiled.) So also is it when the Divine Breath

is inspired again the Universe disappears into the bosom of "the

Great Mother/' who then sleeps " wrapped in her invisible robes/'

It was the intention to take up this evening the dawn of mani-

festation as it is found in the " Hebrew Book of Beginnings",

called Genesis, and to study this and to show its similarity and

likeness, and the fundamental identity of truth on which it is

based, as compared with the other religions of the world. But in

view of the fact that we were obliged at our last study to touch

upon the first coming-into-being of the veil cast over the face of

the Ineffable, it would seem best this evening to undertake, if we

have time, a short sketch of what in science is called the Nebular

Theory, how far the esoteric teachings run with it, and where and

when they part from it.

The Nebular Theory, as originally taught in science by the

Frenchman Laplace but derived by him from the great German

thinker and philosopher, Immanuel Kant stated that the space

which is now occupied by the planets of the solar system, was

originally filled with a very tenuous form of matter, in a highly

incandescent (or burning) state. Let us say just here that this

particular theory of Laplace as regards incandescence, has never

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

been proved, that it is not subject in all respects to mathematical

demonstration, and cannot be, and that it itself, if taken as a

whole, forms one of the greatest proofs against the truth of the

nebular theory as it was then stated, and as it has since been modi-

fied in some degree by modern thinkers.

Laplace further stated that this nebula was in a cbndition of

slow rotation, or circular moving, in the same direction in which

the planets now move around in their orbits, and in the same

direction in which the planets and the sun now move around their

axes. In other words, the present orbital revolution and rotation

of the planets are derived from this mechanical, original, circular

motion of the primal nebula.

Laplace further stated that this hot, immense object cooled,

and as it cooled it shrank, according to a certain law of heat, and

this shrinking, according to a law of dynamics, increased the

velocity of rotation, and the momentum of any point on its sur-

face. Now, as everyone knows, the parts of a wheel which are

nearest the periphery, the circumference, move with the greatest

momentum, and the greatest speed, though no faster, in another

sense, than do the particles at the hub. This increase of rapidity

in whirling around grew so great that a time came when the

centrifugal force overcame the centripetal or cohesive force, and

then this whirling nebula threw off a ring, and this ring also con-

tinued going around, and condensing, and finally formed a sphere

or ball which became the outmost planet, Neptune. And so

progressively the other planets came into being, the core of the

nebula remaining as our sun. In brief, as the nebular body con-

tracted and condensed its matter, the same phenomenon occurred

again in the same way, and thus the second outermost planet,

Uranus, was thrown oft, and so on until all the planets had come

into being as spheres. Now some of these tenuous, still nebulous

planets, by contracting and thus increasing their rotational

velocity, themselves evolved rings around themselves, which in

their turn were thrown off from their parent-planets, and following

the same course as their parent-planets, became spheres, which

thus became the satellites, the moons of the respective planets ;

while the center of the original nebula condensed into the (sup-

posedly) incandescent or fiery ball which is the sun.

When H. P. Blavatsky first brought the Theosophical teachings

to the Western world, questions of cosmogony, or the beginning

and primal development of the universe, came much to the fore,

and she was asked, and her Teachers were also asked through her,

in what respect the nebular theory ran side by side with and

" corroborated " the exposition of the theory of the occultists,

the esoteric theory ; and the answer then given was called " an

evasive answer "* It aroused criticism and some angry language.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 41

Why, i{ was asked, if the Teachers know these wonderful truths,

had not they illuminated the world with the splendor of their

teachings ? Why did they keep them and other things hid ? No

teaching can be bad for man, if it is true, it was argued. Which

was a very foolish argument, indeed, so far as it goes, because

many teachings are true, and are yet utterly unfit for the average

man to have. However, we are going to investigate that question

to-night.

The nebular theory, the Teachers said, was, in its main outlines,

and in certain respects only, fairly representative of what the

esoteric teaching was, but it yet, for all that, had vital defects ;

and these defects they did not entirely specify nor did they fully

outline them ; but they gave clear hints where the defects lay and

what they were ; and they also gave a clear, logical, and concise

reason for their reticence, which was obligatory and unavoidable.

Now the main defect in the theory of Laplace was as probably

the older students who are assembled here this evening know well

enough that it was a purely mechanical, purely mechanistic,

purely materialistic hypothesis, in some respects uncorroborable

even by mathematics, and based upon nothing but the fact that

in the vast abysses of space, astronomers, investigating wastes

of stellar light, found nebulae and nebulosities, and, adopting

Kant's idea, argued dogmatically upon it. But, nevertheless,

there was truth in the nebular theory there was some truth.

Now what is that truth ? And what was the most vital defect ?

The most vital defect, first, was the fact as hinted above that it

(the theory) omitted all action of spiritual beings in the universe

as the drivers, the agents, the mechanics (or mechanicians) of

the mechanism which undoubtedly exists. We are taught that

the Esoteric Philosophy does not deny mechanical action in the

Universe, but declares that where there is mechanical action there

is government, or, specifically, mechanicians at work, producing

the movements of the mechanism, in accordance with Karman.

There must be " law "-givers or " law "-makers or " law "-

impulsors, if the expression may be used ; and behind these there

must be the Universal Life. In other words, the vital defect was

that this nebular theory omitted the first truth of all Being

that the Gods were behind the Kosmos, spiritual Beings, spiritual

Entities the name matters nothing. Not God, but Gods.

" Nature " is imperfect, hence of necessity makes " mistakes ",

because its action derives from hosts of Entities at work. What we

see around us all the time is proof of it. " Nature " is not perfect.

If it had sprung from the " hands of the Immutable Deity ",

hence perfect and immutable like its Parent, knowing no change,

it would be a Perfect Work. It is much to the contrary, as we

know, and its imperfections or " mistakes " arise from the fact

4*

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

that the beings existing in and working in and controlling and

making nature extend in endless hierarchies from the Inmost of

the Inmost, from the Highest of the Highest, downwards for ever,

upwards for ever, in all degrees of imperfection and of perfection,

which is precisely what we see in the scenes of manifestation

surrounding us. Our intuition tells us the truth concerning this,

and we should trust it.

This was well known to the ancients. The Stoics expressed it

and taught it in their magnificent philosophy. The Stoics of

Rome and of Greece originally expressed it by what they called

Theocrasy. Theocrasy has a compound meaning Theos, a god,

divine being, and krasis, meaning an intermingling an inter-

mingling of everything in the universe, intermingling with every-

thing else, nothing possibly separable from the rest, the Whole.

It is the cardinal heresy of the Oriental religions to-day, notably

in that of the Buddhists, if a man thinks that he is separate or

separable from the universe. This is their cardinal heresy, the

most fundamental error that man can make. The early Christians

called it the " sin against the Holy Ghost ". If we look around us

and if we look within, we realize that we are one entity, as it were,

one great human host, one living tree of human life, woven in-

separably into and from Nature, the ALL.

The next defect of the nebular theory was that the nebula was

declared to be in its earliest stages incandescent, burning. The

esoteric teaching is that it is indeed glowing, but glowing with a

cold light, the same as, or similar to, that of the firefly, if you like.

There is no more heat in a nebula than there is in the light of the

firefly. This light in the nebula, this luminosity, is not from com-

bustion of any kind ; but, then, what is it from ? It is from the

indwelling Daivl-Prakriti, " divine nature or light ", in its mani-

festation on that plane, the same light which in sentient beings

manifests in a higher form as consciousness in all its degrees,

running from dull physical consciousness up through the soul and

the ego : through the self up into the Selfless Self of the Paramat-

man, or the " Supreme Self " a mere expression of convenience

as meaning the acme or summit of a Hierarchy, because really

there is no Supreme Self, which would mean a limit, hence finite-

ness. If there were, there would be a lowest self. Self is boundless,

endless, the very heart of being, the foundation and dimensionless

core of all that is.

Next, the third vital defect : The planets and the sun were not

evolved or born in the manner stated by the nebular theory. How

are the sun and the planets born ? (Let me say here by way of

parenthesis, that this subject should come much later in our

study, but there is a reason for referring to it now.) Every solar

or planetary body, the sun and planets in our solar system, and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 43

analogically (that is, by analogy), everywhere else, is the child or

rather the result or reimbodiment of a former cosmic entity, which,

upon entering into its pralaya, its Prakritika-pralaya the dis-

solution of its lower principles at the end of its long life-cycle,

exists in space in the higher activity of its spiritual principles, and

in the dispersion of its lowest principles, which latter latently

exist in space as Skandhas, in what our Teachers have taught us

is called in Sanskrit a toy0-condition, from the root It, referred to

in our last meeting, meaning to dissolve or to vanish away ; hence,

a laya-center is a " point of disappearance " which is the Sans-

krit meaning, and even the dictionary meaning ; a laya-center

is the mystical point where a thing disappears from one plane, if

you like, and passes onwards to reappear on another plane.

To repeat an illustration which we used in our last meeting :

pour water on a cube of sugar or salt, and watch it dissolve

vanish as a cube or discrete entity. It has entered its laya-state

as a cube or entity of sugar or salt. The form of it has gone, and

itself the sugar or salt has entered into something else. When

the higher principles of a cosmic body enter into something else,

what is that something else into which they enter ? They enter

into the highest cosmic aether, first, and in due course go still

higher into the intense activity of the spiritual planes ; there long

aeons are passed in states and conditions to us almost unimagin-

able. In due course of time, they begin their downward course

into matter again, or re-imbodiment, and finally, by attraction,

re-collect their old skandhas hitherto lying latent, and thus form

for themselves a new body, by passing into manifestation through

and by the laya-center where those skandhas were waiting.

Those lower principles were meanwhile in Nirvana, what we

would call Devachan after the death of man, for Devachan as a

state applies not to the highest or heavenly or divine monad, but

only to the middle principles of man, to the personal ego, or the

personal soul, in man. Applied to us this condition is the state of

Devachan the " land of the gods ", if you like ; but applied to

a cosmic body it is the state of Nirvana. Nirvana is a Sanskrit

compound, nir, out, and vdna the past-participle passive of the

root vd, blow, i.e., literally " blown out ".

So badly has the meaning of the ancient Indian thought (and

even its language, the Sanskrit) been understood, that for many

years very erudite European scholars were discussing whether

being " blown out " meant actual entitative annihilation or not.

I remember once talking with a Chinese savant he happened to

be a Chinese Buddhist and he told me that the state of man after

death was " like this " and he took up a lighted candle which was

on the table and blew upon it, and the light went out. And he

said, " That way ". He was right, because he was referring to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

lower principles in man. They (not we, our monadic or excitative

essence), they are merely the vehicle in which we live ; and when

we die, our physical body is " blown out ", breaks up, enters into

its pralaya or dissolution, and its molecules, its particles, go into

the laya-state, and pass a certain time there until Nature calls

them forth again : or, to put it more accurately in another way,

until the indwelling impulse in each physical monadic particle

through the thirst for active being, rises forth into manifestation

again, and it re-enters some body of appropriate kind and of

similar evolutional degree.

This is one and only one facet of the secret of the much mis-

understood doctrine of transmigration into animals. The lower

elements, the astral body and the astral dregs of the animal or

physical man, become the principles not the latent higher, but the

intermediate principles of the beast-world. They are human

dregs cast off by man.

Now, the cosmic dust resulting from the dissolution of a former

world rests in a laya-center ; while the highest principles of that

world or planetary chain are in their para-nirvana, and remain

there until the divine thirst for active life on the highest plane of

descent, which re-arises in the cosmic monad of a planet or sun,

pulls, pushes, or urges, or impels, that monad to the spiritual

frontiers of manifestation ; and when it arrives at those frontiers,

it bursts through them as it were, or breaks through, or goes

through, or cycles downward through, into the plane below it,

and thus again and again through many planes, till finally the

cycling monad reaches and touches or lightens all those lower

elements which are remaining in the laya-center : awakens them,

re-awakens them, revivifies them, recalls them into being, re-

illuminates them from within ; and this produces the luminosity

or nebulosity seen in so many parts of interstellar space. There-

fore, it is, actually, daivi-prakriti, " divine Nature ", " divine

light ", in one of its lowest forms the seventh, counting down-

wards and this same light, or force, on this our plane (our

Teachers have told us) in one of its very lowest forms, is electricity

and magnetism. Our Teachers have also told us that the physical

universe here in which we live the stones, metals, trees, etc.

is corporealized light. They are all formed of atoms, and these

atoms, so to speak, are the mystic atoms of this light, the corpus-

cular part of light, because light is corpuscular : it is not a mere

" mode of motion " or a wave or something else. Light (our

light) is a body, as much a body as electricity one of its forms

is a body, i.e., material, or subtil matter.

Now, then, when this nebula of which we have been speaking

let us give it the scientific name has attained the point of

development or evolution downwards into manifestation where the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 45

re-imbodying principles of the former world or cosmos, or sun, or

planet, as the case may be, have sufficiently entered into it, it

begins to rotate by a characteristic energy, similar to electro-

magnetism, inherent in itself. Plato tells us that circular motion

is one of the first signs of entitative, free, existence a saying

which is often laughed at by our young savants of science, and

quondam bigwigs of a transitory era of dogmatic thinking. Plato

defines being as a " body which is capable of acting and being

acted upon ". It is a good definition to remember, for it implies

both passive and active existence or manifestation : and he

said that, with reference to the highest essence of the cosmos

the Primal Principle of which our first great Teacher speaks as the

Ineffable That, as the Sanskritists call it it is not " a " being,

hence limited, possessing bounds, because neither does it act nor

is it acted upon. It is All, eternally, endlessly All.

So this cosmic nebula drifts from the place where it first was

evolved, the guiding impulse of Karma directing here and direct-

ing there, this luminous nebulosity moving circularly, and con-

tracting, passing through other phases of nebular evolution, such

as the spiral stage and the annular ; until it becomes spherical,

or rather a nebular series of concentric spheres. The nebula in

space, as just said, takes often a spiral form, and from the core,

the center, there stream forth branches, spiral branches, and they

look like whirling wheels within wheels, and they whirl during

many ages. When the time has come when the whirling has

developed pari passu with the indwelling lives and intelligences

within the cosmic nebula then the annular form appears, a

form like a ring or concentric rings, with a heart in the center,

and after long seons, the central heart becomes the sun or central

body of the new solar system, and the rings the planets. These

rings condense into other bodies, and these other bodies are the

planets circulating around their elder brother, the sun ; elder,

because he was the first to condense into a sphere.

The idea of modern scientists that the nebular sun threw off the

planets, and that the earth after partial solidification threw off

the moon, and that the other planets having moons did likewise,

is not the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy. It has never been

proved, and it is criticized daily by men as eminent as those who

propounded these theories. The nebular theory as propounded

and ' modified from time to time, Science has never proved ;

scientists have never been able to prove why so much heat could

develop and be retained in so tenuous, so diaphanous an object.

Why, if the luminosity arises from combustion of gaseous matter,

does it not burn itself out ? It had billions of years, countless

ages, in which to burn out, and the sky is dotted with nebulae

which have not burned out yet ; and similarly with regard to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

sun. The sun is formed of the same matter as the nebtite, later

becoming cometary matter. The sun does not burn ; it has no

more heat in it than has a pane of glass which transmits the solar

ray.

The sun is not in combustion : it is the generator and storehouse

of the mighty ocean of force and forces which feed our entire

solar system. Matter is corporealized or crystallized Force ;

Force, inversely, may be called subtil Matter or matter in its

fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh states, for Force and Matter are

One. The sun is a storehouse and generator of Forces, and is

itself Force in its first and second states i.e., matter in its sixth and

seventh states, counting upward. We shall study this subject more

fully in a later lecture.

These are a bare outline of the teachings that we have received

on the subjects treated of. The moon comprises another subject,

which will merit in due time very particular study, indeed.

First a nebula ; then a comet ; then a planet ; but the above

sketch outlines the state of a solar system in the first era of

the solar manvantara. Now let us take any one planet and

shortly, briefly, touch upon the nature of a planetary manvantara.

The sun, of course, remains throughout the solar manvantara.

It began with it, and when the solar system comes to an end, its

(the sun's) pralaya will also come. But the planets are different

in certain respects. They have their manvantara also, each one

of them, lasting usually many billions of years ; and when a

planetary chain or body has reached its term, when its hour strikes

for going into rest, or into pralaya or dissolution, the manvantara

ends, and pralaya begins, but in this case it is not a Prakritika-

pralaya, which, you remember, we alluded to in our last meeting

it signifies or means the dissolution of Nature. The planetary

body remains dead, as is now the moon itself, but it sends its

principles (precisely as the former solar system did which we

were studying) into a laya-center in space, and they remain there

for "innumerable ages". Meanwhile the other planets of that

solar system go through their cycles ; but the planet which we

have picked out for illustration, when its time comes again to

descend into manvantara, follows its line of development in

precisely the same way as outlined before. It descends again into

manifestation through the inner divine planetary thirst for active

life and is directed to the same solar system, and to the same

spot, relatively speaking, that its predecessor (its former self)

had, attracted thither by magnetic and other forces on the lower

planes. It forms, in the beginning of its course, or journey, down-

wards, a planetary nebula ; after many aeons, it becomes a comet,

following ultimately an elliptic orbit, around the sun of our solar

system, thus being " captured ", as our scientists wrongly say,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 47

by the sun ; and finally condenses into a planet in its earliest

physical condition. The comets of short periodic time are on their

way to rebecoming planets in our solar system, provided they

successfully elude the many dangers that beset such ethereal

bodies before^ condensation and hardening of their matter shield

them from destruction.

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CHAPTER VI

THE DAWN OF MANIFESTATION : LAYA-CENTERS. A CONSCIOUS

UNIVERSE SPIRITUALLY PURPOSIVE. STOIC DOCTRINE OF

THE INTERMINGLING OF ALL BEINGS : " LAWS OF NATURE."

PHILOSOPHICAL POLYTHEISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF

HIERARCHIES.

(a) The hierarchy of Creative Powers is divided into seven (or 4 and 3)

esoteric, within the twelve great Orders, recorded in the twelve signs of the

Zodiac ; the seven of the manifesting scale being connected, moreover, with the

Seven Planets. All this is subdivided into numberless groups of divine Spiritual,

semi-Spiritual, and ethereal Beings.

The Chief Hierarchies among these are hinted at in the great Quaternary,

or the " four bodies and the three faculties " of Brahma exoterically, and the

Panchasyam, the five Brahmas, or the five Dhyani-Buddhas in the Buddhist

system.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 213.

. . . The refusal to admit in the whole Solar system of any other reasonable

and intellectual beings on the human plane, than ourselves, is the greatest conceit

of our age. All that science has a right to affirm is that there are no invisible

Intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point-

blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds, under totally different

conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world ; nor can it deny that

there may be a certain limited communication between some of those worlds

and our own. To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely

divine Spirits, to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be

seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the

Earth, which progeny is indissolubly linked with them, each principle in man

having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings who furnish us with

the respective invisible elements in us.

Ibid., I, 133.

WE open our study this evening by reading from

H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 258,

the second paragraph :

" Whatsoever quits the Laya State, becomes active

life ; it is drawn into the vortex of MOTION (the alchemical solvent of

Life) ; Spirit and Matter are the two States of the ONE, which is neither

Spirit nor Matter, both being the absolute life, latent." (Book of Dzyan,

Comm. iii, par. 18). ..." Spirit is the first differentiation of (and in)

SPACE : and Matter the first differentiation of Spirit. That, which is

neither Spirit nor Matter that is IT the Causeless CAUSE of Spirit

and Matter, which are the Cause of Kosmos. And THAT we call the

ONE LIFE or the Intra-Cosmic Breath."

In our study of a week ago, we embarked upon a brief dis-

cussion, or rather a short excursus, with regard to certain

astronomical factors which enter very largely into the occult or

4 8

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 49

Esoteric teaching which leads to a proper comprehension of

Cosmogony or World-Building, and also of Theogony or the

Genesis of the Gods or Divine Intelligences who initiate and

direct Cosmogony, as these are outlined in The Secret Doctrine.

Within the time at our disposal we shortly reviewed the Esoteric

formulae in which the ancient wisdom is imbodied, and the

effectual agencies which act at the Dawn of Manifestation ; and

this evening we shall undertake briefly to review the causal

agencies or aspects of the same subject.

The dawn of manifestation, as The Secret Doctrine tells us,

begins in and with the awakening of a laya-center. The Sanskrit

word laya t as we saw before, signifies in Esotericism that point

or spot any point or any spot in space, which, owing to karmic

law, suddenly becomes the center of active life, first on a higher

plane and later descending into manifestation through and by

the lower planes. In one sense it (such a /oya-center) may be

conceived of as a canal, a channel, through which the vitality

of the superior spheres is pouring down into, and inspiring,

inbreathing into, the lower planes or states of matter, or rather

of substance. But behind all this vitality there is a driving

force, as was before remarked. There are mechanics in the

universe, mechanics of many degrees of consciousness and power.

But behind the pure mechanic stands the spiritual mechanician.

It would seem absolutely necessary first to soak our minds

through and through with the thought that everything in our

cosmical universe, i.e., the stellar universe, is alive, is directed

by will and governed by intelligence. Behind every cosmic

body that we see, there is a directing intelligence and a guiding

will.

If Theosophy has one natural enemy against which it has

fought and will always fight it is the materialistic view of life,

the view that nothing exists except dead unconscious matter,

and that the phenomena of life and thought and consciousness

spring from it. This is not merely unnatural and therefore

impossible ; it is absurd as a hypothesis.

On the contrary, as we may read in The Secret Doctrine, the

main, fundamental, and basic postulate of being is that the

universe is driven by will and consciousness, guided by will and

consciousness, and is spiritually purposive. When a laya-center

is fired into action by the touch of these two on their downward

way, becoming the imbodying life of a solar system, or of a

planet of a solar system, the center manifests first on its highest

plane. The Skandhas (which, as it will be remembered, we

described in a former study) are awakened into life one after

another : first the highest ones, next the intermediate ones, and

lastly the inferior ones, cosmically and qualitatively speaking.

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In such laya-centers the imbodying life shows itself tirst to

our physical' human eyes as a luminous nebula matter, which

we may describe as being of course on the fourth plane of Nature

or Prakriti, but nevertheless in the second (counting downwards)

of the seven principles or states of the material universe. It is a

manifestation in that universe of Daivi-Prakriti, i.e., " shining "

Prakriti, or " divine " Prakriti. As the aeons pass, this laya-

center now manifesting as a nebula, remains in space steadily

though slowly developing and condensing (following the impulses

of the forces that have awakened it into action on this plane)

as the aeons pass, I say, it is drawn towards that part or locality

in space if we are speaking of a solar system or towards that

sun, if we are describing the coming into being of a planet, with

which it has karmic skandhic affinities, or magnetic attraction,

and eventually manifests in the latter case as a comet, the matter

of which, by the way, is entirely different from the matter we

have any knowledge of on earth, and which it is impossible to

reproduce under any physical conditions in our laboratories,

because this matter, while on the fourth plane of manifestation

(otherwise we should not sense it with our fourth-plane eyes), is

matter in another state than any known to us probably in the

sixth state, counting from below, or the second state counting

from above.

Of such matter is the sun, or rather the solar body, in its

outward form, composed. It is physical matter in the sixth state,

counting upwards, or in the second state counting downwards or

outward ; and its nucleus, which, as H. P. Blavatsky tells us in

The Secret Doctrine, is a particle or a solar atom of primal matter-

stuff, or spirit-stuff , is matter in the seventh state counting upwards,

or the fii;st or highest, counting downwards.

This comet in time, if it succeed in pursuing its way towards

becoming what it is destined to be, becomes finally a planet ; it

so becomes unless it meet with some disaster, as when it is

swallowed up by one or another of the suns which it may pass

in its far-flung orbit. Some comets have already, in our solar

system, so nearly reached the planetary state in its first stages, on

the way to becoming a full-grown planet of the solar system,

that their orbits lie within the confines or limits of this system.

Such, for instance, is Encke's comet, having an elliptical orbit,

and moving around the sun in a closed curve in the space of two

and a half or three years. Another one is Biela's, which, I

believe, has not been seen again, after it appeared to break into

two, I think in the 'fifties of last century. Another one was

Faye's, having the largest orbit of all these three. Two others

are de Vico's and Brorsen's.

It would seem as if all those comets which are drawn into

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 51

elliptical orbits around our sun, were so drawn because they were

karmically destined ultimately to become planets of our system ;

but others, again, suffer another fate. They perish, absorbed

or torn to pieces by the inexpressibly active influences which

surround not merely our own but all other suns, because each

sun, while being the center of its own system of planets, and their

life-giver, from another aspect is a cosmical vampire.

There is much more on this subject that must be said, but it

is very doubtful whether, at the present stage of our study, it

would be wise to embark upon a wider exposition now ; and also

because we know not whether the Teacher would approve of

our going into the matter more fully at present.

If possible, we desire this evening to return to the point where

we were, before embarking upon this excursus, and to take up

again the same thread of thought then interrupted, continuing

it this evening with a study of the beginning of things as outlined

in the Jewish book of Genesis, or " Beginning ", and as illustrated

more particularly by the Jewish Theosophy called the Qabbalah.

If the time allotted to us be insufficient to do so this evening, we

hope to begin that study at our next meeting.

Nothing in the universe is separate from any other thing. All

things hang together not merely sympathetically and magnetic-

ally but because all beings are fundamentally one. We have one

self, one Self of selves, manifesting in the inmost of the Inmost

being of all. But we have many egos, and the study of the ego

in that branch of our thought which is embraced under the head

of psychology, is one of the most inherently necessary and one

of the most interesting and important that can be undertaken.

Around the ego center, so far as we humans are concerned,

some of the most important teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom.

Without going into this study at some length, it is impossible

for us to understand certain of the teachings in The Secret

Doctrine. The ancient Stoics (the very wonderful philosophy

originating with some of the Greek philosophers, and which

became so deservedly popular among the deeper thinkers of

Rome) taught that everything in the universe is intermingled,

or interwoven, not by fundamentally distinct essences or entities

interpenetrating each other, nor in what we theosophists today

call " planes of being ", merely, but by various aspects or differ-

entiations of one common substance, the Root of all, and they

expressed the principle through the three Greek words, Krasis

di 'holou, a mingling through everything, an intermingling of all the

essences in the Cosmos, arising out of, and differentiated from,

the Root-substance common to all. This is also the teaching of

our own Esoteric Wisdom. It is the manifestation, in other

words, of all beings, of all thinking, unthinking, and senseless

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

beings, and of all the gods giving direction and purpose to the

complex universe, which we see around us today ; and in this

varied life was placed the primal cause of all the beauty, the

concord, as well as the strife and discord that do exist in Nature,

and which is the cause of the so-called mistakes that Nature

makes. The origin, in other words, of what some people and

some Christians call the " insolvable riddle " of the " Origin of

evil ". What is the " origin of evil " ? The Ancient Wisdom says

that it is merely the conflict of wills of evolving beings an

inevitable and necessary phase of evolution.

Properly to understand this Intermingling involves another

important subject of study which we shall take up at a later

date, and this is the doctrine of Hierarchies. Hierarchy, of

course, merely means that a scheme or system or state of delegated

directive power and authority exists in a self-contained body,

directed, guided, and taught by one having supreme authority,

called the Hierarch. The name is used by us, by extension of

meaning, as signifying the innumerable degrees, grades, and

steps of evolving entities in the Kosmos, and as applying to all

parts of the universe ; and rightly so, because every different

part of the universe and their number is simply countless is

under the vital governance of a Divine Being, of a God, of a

Spiritual Essence, and all material manifestations are simply the

appearances on our plane of the workings and actions of these

Spiritual Beings behind it. The series of Hierarchies extends

infinitely in both directions. Man may, if he so choose, for

purposes of thought, consider himself at the middle point, from

which extends above him an unending series of steps upon steps

of higher beings of all grades growing constantly less material

and more spiritual, and greater in all senses towards an ineffable

point, and there the imagination stops ; not because the series

itself stops, but because our thought can reach no farther out

nor in. And similar to this series, an infinitely great series of

beings and states of beings descends downwards (to use human

terms) downwards and downwards, until there again the

imagination stops merely because our thought can go no farther.

The eternal action and interaction or what the Stoics also

called the intermingling of these beings produce eternally the

various so-called " planes of being ", and the action of the will

of these beings on matter or substances is the manifestation of

what we call the " laws of Nature ". This is a very inaccurate

and misleading phrase ; but it seems justifiable in a metaphorical

sense, because as a human legislator or a human law-giver will

set forth or set down certain rules of conduct, certain schemes of

action, which are to be obeyed, so the Intelligences behind the

actions of Nature do the same thing, not in a legislative way, but

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 53

by the action of their own spiritual economy. So man himself, in

similar fashion, lays down the " laws " for the less lives which

compose his essences the principles under the center which he

governs and which comprise even the physical body, and the

lives building it. Each one of these lives, as was said before, is

a microcosmic universe or cosmos, that is to say, an ordered

entity, an entity ruled by inescapable or ineluctable habit, which

the scientists of our own race, applying the rule to universal

cosmical action, call the " laws " of Nature.

And they in turn, these less lives, have similar universes under

them. It is unthinkable that the series can stop or have an end,

because if it did, we should have an infinity that ends, an un-

thinkable proposition. It is merely the paucity of our ideas and

the feebleness of our imagination which make us to suppose that

there may be a stop at certain points ; and it is this feebleness

of thought which has given birth to and promoted the rise of

the different religious systems ; in one case the monotheism of the

Christian Church, and in another case the monotheism of the

Mohammedan peoples, and in another case still the monotheism

of the Jewish people. Of these three, the Jews have had the

longest history and the wisest history, for the Jews originally

were never a monotheistic people. In their early history they

were convinced polytheists using the term in the philosophical

sense, lest people imagine when they hear of Polytheism that it

means our absurd modern Western misconception of what we

think the cultured Romans and Greeks thought about their gods

and goddesses, or what we think they ought to have believed,

which is conceited nonsense.

The popular mythology of the Greeks and Romans, as also

that of ancient Egypt or of Babylonia, and that of the Germanic

or Celtic tribes of Europe, was understood in a different way

from our gross misconception of it ; and conceived of in a different

way by the wise men in those days, who understood perfectly

well all the usual symbols and allegories by which the esoteric

teachings were outlined and taught in the popular mythologies.

And we must remember that " exoteric " does not necessarily

mean false. It means only that in exoteric teachings the keys

to the esoteric teachings have not been given out.

We often hear the claim made by monotheistic believers, that

the great " prophets " of Israel, the so-called wise men of that

people, knew better than their ancient predecessors what their

people ought to know and believe. They these prophets

taught monotheism, we are assured, and redirected the thoughts

of the people away from the ancient beliefs indeed, the multi-

plicity of beliefs towards one tribal God whom they called

Jehovah, a word, by the way, which the later orthodox Jewish

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

religionists held and still hold so sacred that tney would

not even pronounce it aloud, but in reading aloud substituted

for it another word, when this word " Jehovah " occurred in a

sentence in the Jewish Bible. Now this substitute word is

" Adonai ", and means " my Lords " in itself a tru confession

of polytheistic thought. Judaism is replete in its Law, or Bible,

at least, with polytheism ; and so prone is the human heart to

follow the instincts of its spirit, that when the Christian Church

in its blindness overthrew philosophical Polytheism, as an error

in religion, the reaction, fully to be expected as a consequence,

finally and, indeed, very soon set in, and that Church answered

the cry of the human heart by substituting " saints " for the

injured and banished Gods and Goddesses, thus inaugurating a

cultural adoration of dead men and women for Powers, Intelli-

gences, in Nature ! They had to give them saints in order to

supply the places of the forgotten Deities ; and even gave to

these saints more or less the same powers that the ancient gods

and goddesses were reputed to have exercised and to have had.

They had a saint as a patron or protector of city, state, or

country St. George for England, St. James for Spain, St. Denis

for France, and so on. The same thought, the same function,

the same desire satisfied the instincts of the human heart

cannot be ignored or violated with impunity. But how greatly

different was the initiate view of the Wise Men in " Pagan "

times I

Now when the Ancients spoke of the multiplicity of Gods they

did so with wisdom, understanding, and reverence. Is it con-

ceivable that the great men of the ancient days who then dis-

covered and established the canons of belief followed by us

usually ignorant of our great debt to them even to-day in all

our lines of thought, and which we value like little children and

have valued since the rebirth of literature in our Western world,

is it conceivable, I say, that they had no conception of cosmical

or of divine unity, something which even the average man of

intelligence to-day will come to ? How absurd I No ! They

could think and they knew as well as we do, but they also knew,

yea, even the degenerated thinkers in the early ages of the

Christian era, that if " God " made the world, being a perfect

and infinite Being, his work (or Its work) could be only a perfect

and infinite work, worthy of its perfect and infinite Maker, free

from vanity, free from limitations, free from sin, free from decrepi-

tude and ceaseless, gnawing change. Yet, as we see and consider

the things around us, as we know that the world, being an

exemplar of change and hence of limitations and decay, therefore

cannot be and is not infinite, we know the instincts of our being

tell us that it is the work of less beings, of minor and limited

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 55

Powers, however exalted spiritually ; and as we penetrate into

our own thoughts and study the life of the beings and of the nature

around us, we see also that there is life within life, wheel within

wheel, purpose within purpose, and that behind the outward

manifestations or action (the " laws of Nature ") of the so-called

Gods, there are still more subtil Powers, still more exalted Intelli-

gences at work : verily, wheels within wheels, lives within lives,

and so on for ever : an unending and boundless Unity in Multi-

plicity, and Multiplicity limitless and unbounded in Unity. So,

as said before, when we speak of the unity of Life, or of the

" divine unity ", we merely mean that here our penetrating

spirit has reached the limit of its present powers, a point at

which human thought can go no farther. It has run to its

utmost limits, and from the feebleness of it, we are bound in

truth to say, Here is as far as our thought can go. It is our

present " Ring called ' Pass Not ! ' " But this honest confession

of human limitation does not mean that there is " nothing "

beyond. On the contrary, it is a proof that Life and space are

endless.

Now the Neo-Platonists who first came into prominence in the

early centuries of the Christian era and who, with the Stoics,

provided Christianity with all that it had that was philosophically

good and spiritual and true taught that the summit, the acme,

the flower, the highest point (that they called the " hyparxis ")

of any series of animate and " inanimate " beings, whether we

enumerate the stages or degrees of the series as seven or ten or

twelve (according to whichever system we follow), was the

" divine unity "for that series or Hierarchy, and that this hyparxis

or flower or summit or beginning or highest being was again in

its turn the lowest being of the Hierarchy above it, and so extending

onwards for ever.

Change within change, wheel within wheel, each Hierarchy

manifesting one facet, as it were, of the divine cosmic Life, each

Hierarchy showing forth one thought, as it were, of the divine

thinkers. Good and evil are relative, and rigidly offset and equili-

brate each other. There is no absolute good, there is no absolute

evil ; these are mere human terms, only. " Evil " in any sphere

of life, is imperfection, for it. " Good " in any sphere of life, is

perfection, for it. But the good of one is the evil of another,

because the latter is the shadow of something higher above it.

Just as " light " and " darkness " are not absolute but relative

things. What is " darkness " ? Darkness is absence of light,

and the light that we know is itself the manifestation of life in

matter hence a material phenomenon. Each is (physically) a

form of vibration, each is, therefore, a form of life.

Various names were given to these Hierarchies considered as

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

series of beings. For instance, let us take the standard and

generalized Greek Hierarchy as shown by writers in periods

preceding the rise of Christianity, though the Neo-Platonists, as

we have seen, had their own Hierarchies, and gave the stages or

degrees thereof special names. It is often asserted by those

people who know everything I mean the bigwigs of the modern

day, who even believe that they know better what the ancients

believed than the ancients did themselves that Neo-Platonism

was evolved merely to oppose and overthrow, and to take the

place of the wonderful, soul-saving, spiritual doctrines of

Christianity, forgetting that from Neo-Platonism and Neo-

Pythagoreanism, and Stoicism, early Christianity drew nearly

everything of religious and philosophic good that it had in it.

But the Neo-Platonic doctrine was, in sober fact, actually the

setting forth to a certain degree only of the esoteric doctrine of the

Platonic school, and was, in its esoteric reach, the teaching which

Plato and the early Pythagoreans taught secretly to their

disciples.

We now resume our thread. The hyparxis, as we showed,

means the summit or beginning of a Hierarchy. The scheme

started with the divine, the highest point of the series or its

Divinity :

(i) Divine. (2) Gods, or the spiritual. (3) Demi-gods, some-

times called divine heroes, involving a very mystical doctrine.

(4) Heroes proper. (5) Men. (6) Beasts or animals. (7) Vegetable

world. (8) Mineral world. (9) Elemental world, or what was

called the realm of Hades. As said, the Divinity (or aggregate

Divine Lives) itself was the hyparxis of this series of Hierarchies,

because each of these nine stages was itself a subordinate Hier-

archy. The names mean little, you may give them other names ;

the name itself matters not much ; the important thing is to get

the thought. Now, as said before, remember that this Esoteric

Wisdom taught that this (or any other) Hierarchy of nine, hangs

like a pendant jewel from the lowest Hierarchy above it, which

made the tenth counting upwards, which we can call, if you like,

the Super-Divine, the Hyper-Heavenly, and that this tenth was

the lowest stage (or the ninth, counting downwards) of still

another Hierarchy extending upwards ; and so on, indefinitely.

Now when the Christians finally overthrew the ancient

religion ; when the karmic cycle had brought about an era of

what Plato called spiritual barrenness and we remember to

divide the work of evolution into two parts, epochs of barrenness

and epochs of fertility when the Christian religion came in as

part of an epoch of barrenness, the Christians took over very

much of this ancient thought, as was only to be expected ;

history merely repeated itself. And they derived it, as was said

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 57

before, mainly from the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagoreans and

the Neo-Platonists, but mostly from the Neo-Platonists. This was

done in very large part, at Alexandria, the great center of Greek

or Hellenistic culture at that time ; the chiefest thinkers of the

Neo-Platoqists also lived in Alexandria. This Neo-Platonic

stream of beautiful thought in the Christian religion, entered into

it with special force around the fifth century, through the writings

of a man who was called Dionysius the Areopagite, from the

" Hill of Ares ", or Mars, at Athens. The Christian legend runs

that when Paul preached at Athens, he did so on Mars Hill, or

the Areopagus, and that one of his first converts was a Greek

called Dionysius ; and Christian tradition goes on to say that

he was, later, the first Christian Bishop of Athens. Now this

may all be fable. However, the Christians claimed it as a

fact.

Now in the fifth or sixth century, five hundred years more or

less after Paul is supposed to have preached in Athens, there

appeared in the Greek world a work calling itself the writings of

Dionysius, the Areopagite claiming authorship from this same

man. It is evidently the work of a Neo-Platonist-Christian.

That is to say, of a Christian, who for reasons of his own, perhaps

policy (social or financial), remained within the Christian Church,

but was more or less a Greek pagan, a Neo-Platonist at heart.

This work, by coming out under the name of the first (alleged)

Bishop of Athens, Dionysius, almost immediately began to have

immense vogue in the Christian Church ; and it remains to this

day, not indeed one of the canonical works, but one of the works

which the Christians consider among the greatest they have on

mystical lines, and perhaps their most spiritual work ; it very

deeply affected Christian theological thought from the time of

its appearance.

One of the works comprised in this book, attributed by the

Christians themselves to Dionysius, Paul's first convert in

Athens, is a treatise on the Divine Hierarchies, in which the

teaching is that God is infinite and therefore did the work of

creation through less abstract and spiritual beings ; and a scheme

of Hierarchies is here set forth, one lower than another, one

derived from the other ; which is exactly the teaching in the

Qabbalah, the Theosophy of the Jews ; which also is exactly

the teaching of the Neo-Platonists and essentially that of the

Stoics, and of the old Greek mythology. It is a " pagan " teaching

throughout, and merely became Christianized because adapted

to the new religion, and because Christian names are used : and,

instead of saying and enumerating gods, divine heroes, demi-gods or

heroes, men, animals, etc., the names are God, Archangels, Thrones,

Powers, etc. But the schematic or essential thought is the same :

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

and, furthermore, there are actually passages in the works of

this Dionysius which are taken word for word wholesale

from the writings of the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, who lived and

flourished and wrote voluminously on Neo-Platonic subjects in

the third century.

Now this work, particularly in the field of dogmatic ecclesias-

tical thought, formed the basis of much of the theology of the

Greek and Roman Churches ; we may even say that on it their

mediaeval theology was actually based. It formed the main

source of the studies and writings of the Italian Thomas Aquinas

(i3th century), one of the greatest mediaeval doctors of the

Christian religion, and of Johannes Scotus, called Erigena, an

Irishman (gth century), and probably of Duns Scotus (i3th

century), a remarkable Scot ; and of many more. Spenser,

Shakespeare, and Milton, to speak only of English literature,

are full of the spirit of these writings. They provided much of the

mystical thought of the Dark Ages, and ultimately in a degener-

ate form helped to give rise to the hair-splitting and quibbling

and squabbles of the quasi-religious writers known as the School-

men. But these men had lost the inner sense or heart of the thing

through the ecclesiastical growth and political power of the

Christian Church, and they began to argue about things of no

spiritual consequence whatever ; such as the query, Which came

first : the hen or the egg ? or, How many angels can dance on the

point of a needle ? or, If an irresistible force meets an immovable

obstacle, what then happens ? These most pragmatical and

useful diversions and intellectual vagaries lasted for a certain

time, and then, with the renaissance of thought in Europe, due

largely to the labors of the devotees of Science and natural

Philosophy, the European world gradually began to pull out of

this mental slough, and brought in an era, which is now in full

and strong current, and which has inaugurated and continued,

for good or for ill (perhaps both), the streams of human thinking

as we see it today. Do we Theosophists presume vainly to

interpret the lessons of universal history when we say that we

are the forerunners and the makers of the new era a far nobler

and more spiritual cycle which is to come, and is even now

dawning, albeit coming to being in no little sorrow and tribulation

of both soul and intellect ?

In conclusion, we may call attention to the fact that just about

the time when the first 5000 years of the Hindu cycle called the

Kaliyuga (lasting 432,000) came to an end, there also came to

an end a certain " Messianic " cycle of twenty-one hundred

years (actually, if we come to exact figures, 2160), which is,

note well, just one half of the Hindti-Babylonian root-cycle of

4320 years.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 59

In our next evening of study we hope to take up, with the

Teacher's permission, the outline of Cosmogony and Theogony

from the Polytheistic standpoint, as found in the Book of Genesis,

the first of the Jewish Bible.

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CHAPTER VII

" HIERARCHIES " : ONE OF THE LOST KEYS OF THE ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY. THE PYTHAGOREAN SACRED TETRACTYS. THE

LADDER OF LIFE : THE LEGEND OF PADMAPANI.

Theophilosophy proceeds on broader lines. From the very beginning of ;Eons

in time and space in our Round and Globe the Mysteries of Nature (at any

rate, those which it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils

of those same now invisible " heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols.

The keys thereto passed from one generation of " wise men " to the other. Some

of the symbols, thus passed from the east to the west, were brought therefrom

by Pythagoras, who was not the inventor of his famous " Triangle." The latter

figure, along with the plane cube and circle, are more eloquent and scientific

descriptions of the order of the evolution of the Universe, spiritual and psychic,

as well as physical, than volumes of descriptive Cosmogonies and revealed

" Geneses." The ten points inscribed within that " Pythagorean triangle " are

worth all the theogonics and angelologies ever emanated from the theological

brain. For he who interprets them on their very face, and in the order given

will find in these seventeen points (the seven Mathematical Points hidden) the

uninterrupted series of the genealogies from the first Heavenly to terrestrial man.

And, as they give the order of Beings, so they reveal the order in which were

evolved the Kosmos, our earth, and the primordial elements by which the latter

was generated. Begotten in the invisible Depths, and in the womb of the same

" Mother " as its fellow-globes he who will master the mysteries of our Earth

will have mastered those of all others.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, pp. 612, 613.

" It is that LIOBT which condenses into the forms of the ' Lords of Being '

the first and the highest of which are t collectively, JIVATMA, or Pratyagdtmd

(said figuratively to issue from Paramatma. It is the Logos of the Greek

philosophers appearing at the beginning of every new Manvantara). From

these downwards formed from the ever-consolidating waves of that light, which

becomes on the objective plane gross matter proceed the numerous hierarchies of the

Creative Forces, some formless, others having their own distinctive form, others, again,

the lowest (Elementals) , having no form of their own, but assuming every form

according to the surrounding conditions."

Ibid., II, pp. 33, 34-

W'

The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated

by almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings,

each having a mission to perform, and who whether we give to them

one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans or Angels are

" messengers " in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic

and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their respective degrees

of consciousness and intelligence ; and to call them all pure Spirits

without any of the earthly alloy " which time is wont to prey upon "

is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was,

*E open our study this evening by reading from The

Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 274 :

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 61

or prepa&s to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or

a coming cycle (Manvantara).

When we ended our study last week, because of the short time

that the Teacher has set for us in which to speak, we left un-

mentioned a number of very important things, which we shall

have to take up this evening before we can proceed to the particu-

lar study that was to follow in proper course the excursus which

we embarked upon three weeks ago.

First a few words more concerning the Nebular Theory or

Hypothesis and the Planetary Theory deriving from it, as con-

sidered from the Theosophical standpoint, and consequently a

further explanation or rather development of the doctrine of

Hierarchies, which will lead us to the study towards which we

have aimed, that is to say, the consideration of Cosmogony or the

beginning of worlds as outlined in the Jewish Book of Genesis or

" Beginnings ".

About one hundred years ago, more or less within a few years

of each other, there died three remarkable men, namely Kant,

perhaps the greatest philosopher that Europe has produced ;

Sir William Herschel, the astronomer ; and the Marquis de

Laplace ; the first a German, the second a German-Englishman,

or an Anglo-German, and the third a Frenchman. All these three

men in some degree were responsible for the enunciation and the

development of the theory of world-beginning which eventuated

in the Nebular Hypothesis of Laplace. It is interesting also to

note that all three men were of humble birth, and by the force

of their own intelligence and character became, all three of them,

remarkable men. Kant was, I believe, the son of a saddler ; Sir

William Herschel was also of humble origin, and was in youth an

oboist in the Hanoverian Guards ; and Pierre Simon Laplace

was the son of a farmer ; Laplace was ennobled, and upon him

was conferred the nobiliary title of Marquis.

Now the Nebular Theory really originated with Kant ; he it

was who laid down the basic lines, the fundamental ground, as it

were, upon which the Nebular Theory was later developed

mathematically by Laplace. Coincident with Kant's work and

writings was the astronomical work of Herschel in England,

and those two men were responsible for the fundamentals of the

Nebular Theory. Laplace took it up after they had more or less

laid down the main lines, developed it into what is called the

" Nebular hypothesis or theory of Laplace ", and on account of

its explaining in mathematical form the mechanism of the

universe, that is to say, of the solar system and the planets, and

their satellites, it has been called a " magnificently audacious "

hypothesis. It was Laplace who carried the theory a good deal

farther than the work of Kant and Herschel than the point

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

where Kant and Herschel had left it ; and, in a sense/ Laplace

materialized it. As H. P. Blavatsky tells us, if the nebular

theory had remained at the point where Kant and Herschel had

left it, there would be little for the Theosophical writers and

thinkers to do except to develop it and explain it in accordance

with the Esoteric Philosophy.

It is very interesting to note that another great man, Sweden-

borg in Sweden, also worked upon the same theory and apparently

had very nearly the same ideas that Kant and Herschel had as

regards a nebular genesis of cosmical systems. Now these two

latter men had a spiritual idea back of the theory which they

enunciated, and it was the abandonment of that spiritual idea

by Laplace, and the substitution by him of a mechanico-mathe-

matical theory in its place, which furnished those influences which

directed the nebular hypothesis away from the line and thought

and teachings as laid down in the Esoteric Philosophy, as taught

by the ancient Teachers.

The nebular hypothesis has in some respects been much changed

since the day of Laplace ; scientists have thought more about it,

a fact which was also true in 1887 or 1888 when H. P. Blavatsky

wrote The Secret Doctrine. There has been an attempt by later

astronomers of our own day, Sir Norman Lockyer, and the

American astronomer and mathematician See, to replace a

nebular origin of cosmical bodies at least in part with what has

been called a planetesimal hypothesis or a planetesimal origin

that is to say, that the bodies of the solar system have been built

up of and by cosmic dust and tiny planets drawn together by the

force of gravitation. Now this theory is, philosophically speaking,

at an immense distance from the teachings of the Esoteric Philos-

ophy, although this Philosophy does admit and teach that at a

later stage in the evolution of cosmical bodies, collection and

concretion of stellar dust is, actually, one of the phases in the

growth of worlds.

Theosophy admits that a planet or a solar system, in the course

of its formation, does gather to itself " star-dust " and vagrant

bodies dispersed in space ; but this factor in its growth is not its

origin. The origin of a sun, of a solar system and of the planets

in it, and consequently of the entire universe within the encircling

zone of the Milky Way, has a spiritual background, has spiritual

essences or gods behind it, who form such a system, and direct it,

and are the mechanicians in it and of it. Their work is carried on

(more or less) along the main lines of the nebular theory as

enunciated by Kant and Herschel : that is to say, space is etern-

ally filled with matter in a certain state or condition of being,

and when this matter, as Kant and Herschel would have said,

receives the divine impulse, it is concreted and becomes luminous,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 63

and this* concretion is further (and later) strengthened by its

drawing into itself, from the immense spacial expanse in which

it is, material " star-dust " and larger bodies.

Now, when we look up at the sky we see material bodies,

fourth-plane bodies seen with our fourth-plane eyes, but behind

these fourth-plane bodies there are spiritual intelligences, which

are called in the Esoteric Philosophy, Dhyan-Chohans, or " Lords

of Meditation ". As the Ancients put it, every celestial body

is an " animal ". Now the word animal comes from the Latin,

and means a living being. Commonly, in speech, we speak of

" animals " when we should say " beasts " or " brutes " ; that

is to say, a " brute " is an entity which has not yet been raised

to the level of a self-conscious entity ; it is brute in the original

Latin sense, i.e., " heavy ", " gross ", hence irrational and incom-

plete ; it is not yet finished. But an animal really means a

living being, and in that sense the word applies to men ; also,

in the view of the Ancients, it applies to the stellar, solar, and

planetary bodies they are " animals " in the sense of being

living things, with a physical corpus or body, but nevertheless

animate or insouled : in the mystical teachings of the Esoteric

Philosophy they are insouled things, as indeed every atom is,

every tiny universe, or tiny cosmos.

Now this insouling is done by (or is the action of) what is

commonly called Hierarchies. There is not for every individual

entity in Kosmos, whether atom, beast, man, god, planet, or sun,

one concreted soul, as it were, derived from the universal World-

Soul, with nothing no connecting links above it and nothing

below it not at all. There are no true vacancies in Nature,

physical, astral, or spiritual : there are no vacuums. Everything

is linked on to everything else, by literally countless bonds of

union, which is another master-key to the teachings of the

Esoteric Philosophy. As in man, so in every other unit of being,

in every other entity, the universal life manifests through a

Hierarchy ; the multiform and varied qualities of beings are

but the life-rays of a Hierarchy, that is to say, grades or steps of

consciousness and matter, ascending from below upward, or if

you like, coming downwards from above, through all of which

the center of consciousness call it soul or ego for the moment

must pass in its evolution towards godhood.

Now this teaching of Hierarchies is fundamental. It is one of

the present-day " lost keys " of the Esoteric Philosophy. Nothing

can be understood adequately without a clear comprehension of

it. As man is in our ordinary psychology considered to be a

triad, or a triform entity body, soul, and spirit so he may be

considered from another point of view as a four-fold entity, or

as a five-fold, or a six-fold, or a seven-fold, or (the most esoteric

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

of all) as a ten-fold entity. Why ten ? Because ten, the*Teachers

have told us, is the key-number which explains the compound

fabric of the universe. The universe is built on a denary scale,

that is, on a scale counting by tens. In a few moments we shall

develop in outline the philosophical import of seven and ten.

Let us say now that man is septenary in our view (5nly because

we reckon in as principles, two elements of his being which are

not, strictly speaking, human principles ; one the physical

body which really is not a " principle " at all : it is merely a

house, his " carrier " in another sense, and no more belongs to

man except that he has excreted it, thrown it out from himself

this physical body, we say, is no more himself than is the

house in which his body lives. He is a complete human being

without it.

The second strictly non-human principle is the highest of all

the seven, the Higher Self, the Atman, the seventh non-human

because it is universal. The Self no more belongs to me than

to you or to anyone else. Selfhood is the same in all beings. But

beyond the Atman, there is the Paramatman, which we have

briefly studied before, the Supreme Self. The Atman is, as it

were, the star of our own self-issue, the Root of our selfhood, the

point where we cling, as it were, to the " Highest ". If we can

conceive of an ocean of superspiritual ether, so to speak, and in

that ocean call it consciousness a vortex, a laya-center, a

point, a Primordial Point, whence the six principles below it

flow forth into concrete manifestation through its vehicles the

souls or egos we obtain a very crude conception of the Root of

our being. It is the Atman, the channel or spiritual point where

the superspiritual breaks, as it were, from and through a barrier

downwards into individualized life. This process we shall

more fully explain later, and shall then illustrate it by

diagram.

Now this matter of Hierarchies as dealt with in the different

world-religions virtually in the same manner but under different

names and in different paradigmatic schemes. For instance, you

can think of the ten parts or grades or steps of a Hierarchy as one

under the other, like the floors in a house, or like the flats in an

apartment-house, a very gross simile, it is true, but having the

advantage of suggesting steps or planes, and of suggesting high

and low. We can think of a Hierarchy in another, more subtil,

manner, as consisting in triads of spheres, or living centers, three

triads hanging from the tenth or highest point ; and that highest

center is, as already explained, the point beyond which our

thought and imagination can soar no higher, and we merely say

that this center is the highest that the human intellect can reach.

But we know that beyond it, this tenth which is our highest,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 65

there is also the lowest center or plane of another Hierarchy still

higher from which our Hierarchy hangs as a pendant ; and so

on endlessly. We cannot say of Infinity, that the Infinite begins

here and ends there : if this were so, it would not be infinite, it

would not >e boundless. Our doctrine of Universal Life, of

Universal Consciousness, of one Universal " Law " working

everywhere, means that that " Law " manifests in every atom,

and in every part of Universal Being, and in all directions,

and for all duration, and in the same manner everywhere ;

because it cannot manifest in radically diverse ways ; if

so, it would be many fundamental " laws " and not one

" Law ".

For instance as regards Hierarchies in our last study we

considered the Hierarchy of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, which

is really the esoteric teaching of ancient Greece in the form that

Plato gave to it. And there were nine stages, nine degrees,

hanging, as it were, from the topmost, the spiritual sun or the

central sun. We can conceive of these Hierarchies as seven con-

centric circles around and deriving from a central point, the

Highest Triad, which we can call the infinite or the Primordial

Point ; or, again, we can call this primordial point the At man

or Self of the thinking entity, man, and then the other spheres

or circles of being around him, will stand for his six other

principles, somewhat in this fashion :

This is one way of representing a human individual Hierarchy,

the different spheres or concentric circles, six of them, all flowing

forth from the center, or seventh element, the Self. All Hier-

archies are divided into seven, nine, or ten. The reason for this

is a question that we shall have to go into by and by. There is

no need to represent all these methods or paradigmatic schemes,

but the idea is the same in all. Another way of representing a

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Hierarchy by paradigm is, as said before, by like lines, ten of

them, in this way :

. 5

.6

. 7

.8

or by representing the nine stages or spheres as three triads on

three planes, and the tenth on its own fourth plane :

We have studied the system of the Neo-Platonic Hierarchies

in brief outline ; and, if we have time, we shall take up this

evening two other paradigmatic schemes by which Hierarchies

are variously represented. Let us call earnest attention here to

the important fact, before going farther, that these schemes,

these paradigmatic representation^ on a flat surface, do not

mean that the grades or steps or planes of being are either flat

surfaces, or are like " nests " of boxes ; they merely show by

analogy, by hints, the relations and the functions of the grades

among themselves.

It is obvious to any thinking man that the Hierarchies of being

do not rise one above another like the floors of a house ; it is

perhaps true that all over the world they are so represented by

different systems ; but this is merely to show that there is a high

and a low, a series of conditions or states of spirit and matter.

Just as we would teach children, so the ancient Teachers taught

us, in simple ways. Nor are we to imagine that the Hierarchies

actually extend somewhere in space in the form of triangles or

circles. We represent them in this way in order to show their

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 67

intermingling relations and their interpenetrating functions

among each other. Why, however, do we separate the grades

into triads ? Because certain ones of these grades or planes are

more nearly related, intermingle more easily, function more

easily together, since their conditions or states are more closely

akin, (i) the first triad, the highest ; (2) the intermediate ;

(3) the lowest triad ; and all overshadowing the corpus, the

physical body. Or we can take another scheme, and have the

three lowest centers forming the bottom triad ; the three inter-

mediate centers next ; and then the three highest ; all the three

triads hanging from a point, the Primordial Point, " God ", if

you like.

Now let us consider the question : Have the Christians a

Hierarchy in their theology ? They have ; and by this I mean

that the Christians had one, apparently from the earliest times,

till the natural resiliency of the human mind began to exert

itself in rebellion against the dogmatism and materialization of

the Christian teaching which reached its climax in the epoch

preceding the Renaissance of thought, when the discoveries of

science freed the human mind from its dogmatic shackles.

Nevertheless, up till that time this teaching of Hierarchies con-

trolling living beings flourished in the Christian Church, and it

originated in the form it then had, as we pointed out in our last

study, in the writings of Dionysius, " the Areopagite ". One of

his works was called On the Celestial Hierarchy, and it showed

how all spiritual being was divided into a Hierarchy of ten degrees

or stages, the tenth or highest being God. This mystic writer

followed this work with another called On the Ecclesiastical

Hierarchy, and he claimed as a good Christian, or in order to

please his good Christian friends there is every reason to

believe that he copied the hierarchical scheme of the Neo-

Platonic philosophy, which was purely pagan, of course that

on earth the celestial Hierarchy was re-enacted or reflected or

repeated in an ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which was the Christian

Church, topped by Jesus as the highest representative thereof

and as the " Logos of God " !

Now what were the names that Dionysius gave to the grades

or stages of his Hierarchy ? First, God, as the summit, the

Divine Spirit ; then came the Seraphim ; then the Cherubim ;

then the Thrones, forming the first triad. Then Dominations,

Virtues, Powers, forming the second triad. Then Principalities,

then Archangels, then Angels, the third triad counting down-

ward.

It is interesting to note that this Hierarchy is syncretistic,

that is, composite, taken from different sources, and built up into

a unity. Seraphim and Cherubim are from the Hebrew. This

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

plural word Seraphim comes from a Hebrew root meaning to

" burn with fire ", hence, to be inflamed with love. Cherubim

is a curious -word, but scholars generally think that it means

" forms ". The Seraphim are mystically believed to be red in

color, and the Cherubim dark blue. The Thrones, the Domina-

tions, the Virtues, the Powers, the Principalities, are all taken

from the Christian teachings of Paul in the Epistles, Ephesians

i, 21, and Colossians i, 16, and are distinctly mystic. The two last,

the archangels and the angels, are not at all Christian in their

origin, but are derived in indirect and tortuous descent from the

ancient Greek and Asiatic especially old Persian system of

thought which recognized messengers or ministers or transmitters

between man and the spiritual world ; the Greek word angel

originally meant " messenger ", and the highest type of these

were called archangels, or angels of the highest degree.

Now the fault, or rather inadequacy, of this Christian system

is that its highest point reached no higher than this god here, a

modification on Greek lines of the Jewish Jehovah ; and it went

no farther below in reach or extent than man himself. The

Ineffable, Unthinkable, on the one hand, and the immeasurable

spheres of beings below man, on the other hand, are ignored. It

was merely a chapter torn out of the Ancient Wisdom and taken

over into Christianity ; but small and imperfect as it was, it

provided Christianity with all the mysticism and spiritualizing

thought that saved it from utter materialism in religion during

the Middle Ages.

Let us now take up another Hierarchy, the Jewish scheme of

the Qabbalah. You see that there are nine degrees here, nine

degrees all pendant from the Supreme Self or God. Now the

Jewish Qabbalistic Hierarchy, or Hierarchies, or system of Hier-

archies, is an outgrowth of the teachings and thinkings of the

Jewish doctors or Rabbis, from a time very far back, and is

actually a reflexion of esoteric Babylonian teachings.

As the Book of Genesis (the first few chapters of it at least) is

very largely taken from the Babylonians, so the Jews derived

their Angelology, or system of angels or angelical Hierarchies,

from that same source. Now this teaching found its finest

expression in the Jewish Theosophy, called the Qabbalah (this

word, as said before, meaning to receive i.e., traditionary lore

handed down from teacher to teacher), and the teaching of the

Hierarchies in the Qabbalah is fundamental, the whole system

being based on it : it implies the intermingling and the inter-

change of all life and all beings, between low and high, in this

regard exactly as in our own teaching. Hence the Qabbalah is,

so far as it goes, a faithful reflexion of the Esoteric Philosophy.

The Qabbalah, as outlined in the book Zohar a word meaning

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 69

splendor , this book is often called the " Bible of the Qabbalists "

is in large part exoteric from the Theosophical viewpoint,

because all our teachings, with regard to certain things,

are in the Zohar, but not all the explanations are there, and

this fact makes the book exoteric, in so far as the keys are

lacking.

Now the teaching in the Qabbalah with regard to the Hierarchies

and the Ladder of Life, is, that from the Boundless, or Ain Suph,

down to infinity below, the Ladder of Life consists of steps, or

degrees, or grades, of consciousness and of consciousnesses, and

of being and of beings, and that there is a constant interchange,

an interflow of communication, between these innumerable

grades of the various Hierarchies or worlds. Precisely our teach-

ing naturally ! The Qabbalistic Hierarchy consists of, or more

accurately is typified by, nine grades or planes or spheres hanging

from a tenth (or a first, if you like) , all together making ten. They

bore the following names. The first is called the Crown, the

Primordial Point, the first and highest of the Sefiroth (sometimes

spelt Sephiroth) or the grades, steps, planes, spheres, before

spoken of. The next Sephira is called Wisdom. (We have no

time now to give the Hebrew words here ; they may be found

in any book on the Qabbalah.) 1 The next, the third, is called

Understanding, or, perhaps better, Intelligence. These form the

head and two shoulders of the Adam Qadmon, or Archetypal Man,

or Ideal Man. According to the thinking of the Qabbalists, as

these Hierarchies are particularly and sympathetically related to

certain respective parts of the human body, so these three just

spoken of have each its respective relation : certain parts about

the crown of the head, or in the head, or from the head, or

belonging to the head, for the first Sephira ; the right shoulder

to Wisdom ; the left to Understanding. The right arm is called

Greatness, or sometimes Love ; the left arm is called Power, or

sometimes Justice, and is considered a feminine quality ; the

breast or region of the chest or heart is called Beauty. The right

leg (remember I am speaking generally of the Archetypal Man)

is called Subtility ; the left leg is called Majesty, and is con-

sidered a feminine quality. The generative organs are called

Foundation.

Now these make nine. Each of these grades is assumed to

emanate from the one above it. First the Crown ; from the Crown,

Wisdom ; from the Crown and Wisdom, Understanding ; from the

three Crown, Wisdom, and Understanding comes the fourth ;

from the four all together comes the fifth ; from the five all

together comes the sixth ; and so on down to the ninth ; and

1 See I sis Unveiled, II, 213; and Theosophical Glossary.

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the ninth, with all the forces and qualities of the others behind it,

produces this round being, an egg-shaped container or

" carrier ", or vehicle, an auric egg, and this auric

egg, as the tenth, is called Kingdom, or sometimes

Dwelling-Place, because it is the fruit or result or

emanation, or field of action of all the others,' manifesting

through these different planes of being.

Now why should the Hierarchies sometimes be numbered or

reckoned as seven, and sometimes as ten ? Because ten is the

most sacred fundamental number in occultism. It is that upon

which the universe is built. The fabric of being is built along the

lines of the decad or ten. The Pythagoreans, members of one of

the most mystic of the ancient Greek schools of thinking, had

what they called the sacred Tetractys, a word referring to the

number four ; and how did they represent this Tetractys ? In

this fashion : First a point above and alone, the Monad ; then

two points below that, or the Dyad ; then three points below

these, or the Triad ; and then four points below these, or

the Tetrad ten points altogether.

They had an oath which they con-

sidered the most sacred adjuration

of the Pythagorean School, which

they uttered when they swore by

the " Holy Tetractys ". What is

this oath? It is worth remem-

bering : " Yea, by the Tetraktys,

which has supplied to our soul

the fountain containing the roots

of everflowing nature ". This

is just full of profound thought. Finally, the tetraktys em-

blematized (among other things) the procession of beings into

manifestation. First the Primordial point, then the line, then

the superficies, then the cube i +2 +3 +4=10.

Now what, finally, is the difference between the system of

seven and that of ten ? The seven is the fundamental number

of the manifested universe ; but over the seven hovers eternally

the infinite and immortal Triad, the Unmanifest. This is the key.

Some religions specialize in sevens ; but all religions have the

ten, also, in their various numerical schemes.

As H. P. Blavatsky says we have not time to read her words

in full to-night, although I had intended to read, after finishing

this explanation, her own words on this very subject from her

esoteric Instructions No. i (we must remember that this is an

esoteric gathering) and also from The Secret Doctrine the

number ten is the secret or sephirical principle of the universe,

because on and through this denary system the universe is

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 71

formed and built. Man (as a whole) is tenfold, the universe (as

a whole) is tenfold, but both are septenary in manifestation.

Every atom, every living being, and every universe is a complete

Hierarchy of ten degrees : three highest considered as the Root,

and seven lower in active manifestation. This Root, or Highest

Triad, is a mystery-teaching, concerning which very little open

explanation is to be found even in the ancient literatures.

In The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 98, H. P. Blavatsky

first enumerates certain things which you can see for yourself

in the Stanza there printed, to wit : " The Voice of the Word,

Svabhavat, the Numbers, for he is One and Nine " ; to which

she joins the following as a foot-note :

Which makes ten, or the perfect number applied to the " Creator,"

the name given to the totality of the Creators blended by the Mono-

theists into One, as the " Elohim," Adam Kadmon or Sephira the

Crown are the androgyne synthesis of the 10 Sephiroth, who stand

for the symbol of the manifested Universe in the popularised Kabala.

The esoteric Kabalists, however, following the Eastern Occultists,

divide the upper Sephirothal triangle from the rest (or Sephira,

Chochmah and Binah [that is, the Crown, Wisdom and Understand-

ing]) which leaves seven Sephiroth. . . .

Then on page 360 (very unfortunately we did not have time

to refer to this at our last meeting) she says here in relation to

other matters : " The 10, being the sacred number of the universe,

was secret and esoteric . . . " ; and on page 362 : "... the

whole astronomical and geometrical portion of the secret sacer-

dotal language was built upon the number 10. . . ."

It may be interesting and well worth while to point out here,

that these quotations give the reason why the numerical com-

putations of the Esoteric Philosophy have not yet been satis-

factorily solved by students with a mathematical turn of mind

because they will persist in working with the number seven,

alone, in spite of Madame Blavatsky's open hints to the contrary,

for she says openly that the number seven must be used in

calculations in a manner hitherto unknown to Western mathe-

matics. The hint ought to be sufficient in itself alone, because

the seven, considered as a basis for computation, is a very

unwieldy and awkward number with which to calculate. The

subject is alluded to in veiled manner in Instructions No. I,

page 9, in speaking of Padmapani, or the " Lotus-handed " one

of the names in Tibetan mysticism of the Bodhisattwa Avalo-

kitewara. H. P. Blavatsky says, after narrating a legend

concerning this character :

He vowed to perform the feat before the end of the Kalpa, adding

that in case of failure he wished that his head would split into number-

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less fragments. The Kalpa closed ; but Humanity felt him not within

its cold, evil heart. Then Padmapani's head split and was shattered

into a thousand fragments. Moved with compassion, the Deity re-

formed the pieces into ten heads, three white and seven of various

colors. And since that day man has become a perfect number, or Ten.

In this allegory the potency of SOUND, COLOR, AND NUMBER is so

ingeniously introduced as to veil the real esoteric meaning. To the

outsider it reads like one of the many meaningless fairy-tales of

creation ; but it is pregnant with spiritual and divine, physical and

magical, meaning. From Amitabha no color or the white glory are

born the seven differentiated colors of the prism. These each emit a

corresponding sound, forming the seven of the musical scale. As

Geometry among the Mathematical Sciences is specially related to

Architecture, and also proceeding to Universals to Cosmogony,

so the ten Jods of the Pythagorean Tetrad, or Tetraktys, being made

to symbolize the Macrocosm, the Microcosm, or man, its image, had

also to be divided into ten points. For this Nature herself has pro-

vided, as will be seen.

One more citation, in order to finish the subject. On page 15,

H. P. Blavatsky writes shortly as follows :

As the Universe, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, arc ten, why

should we divide Man into seven " principles " ? This is the reason why

the perfect number ten is divided into two, a reason which cannot be

given out publicly : In their completeness, i.e., super-spiritually and

physically, the forces are TEN : to wit, three on the subjective and

inconceivable, and seven on the objective plane. Bear in mind that

I am now giving you the description of the two opposite poles : (a) the

primordial triangle, which as soon as it has reflected itself in the

" Heavenly Man/' the highest of the lower seven disappears, returning

into " Silence and Darkness " ; and (b) the astral paradigmatic man,

whose Monad (Atma) is also represented by a triangle, as it has to

become a ternary in conscious Devachanic interludes.

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CHAPTER VIII

TRACES OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY IN GENESIS.

The oldest religions of the world exoterically, for the esoteric root or founda-

tion is one are the Indian, the Mazdean, and the Egyptian. Then comes- the

Chaldaean, the outcome of these entirely lost to the world now, except in its

disfigured Sabaeanism as at present rendered by the archaeologists ; then, passing

over a number of religions that will be mentioned later, comes the Jewish,

esoterically, as in the Kabala, following in the line of Babylonian Magism ;

exoterically, as in Genesis and the Pentateuch, a collection of allegorical legends.

Read by the light of the Zohar, the initial four chapters of Genesis are the frag-

ment of a highly philosophical page in the World's Cosmogony.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 10.

The first lesson taught in Esoteric philosophy is, that the incognisable Cause

does not put forth evolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, but only

exhibits periodically different aspects of itself to the perception of finite Minds.

Now the collective Mind the Universal composed of various and numberless

Hosts of Creative Powers, however infinite in manifested Time, is still finite when

contrasted with the unborn and undecaying Space in its supreme essential aspect.

That which is finite cannot be perfect. . . .

The Hebrew Elohini, called in the translations " God," and who create

" light," are identical with the Aryan Asuras. They are also referred to as the

" Sons of Darkness " as a philosophical and logical contrast to light immutable

and eternal. . . . The Zoroastrian Amshaspends create the world in six days or

periods also, and rest on the Seventh ; whereas that Seventh is the first period

or " day," in esoteric philosophy (Primary creation in the Aryan cosmogony).

It is that intermediate /Eon which is the Prologue to creation, and which stands

on the borderland between the uncreated eternal Causation and the produced

finite effects ; a state of nascent activity and energy as the first aspect of the

eternal immutable Quiescence. In Genesis, on which no metaphysical energy

has been spent, but only an extraordinary acuteness and ingenuity to veil tho

esoteric Truth, " Creation " begins at the third stage of manifestation. " God "

or the Elohim are the " Seven Regents " of Pymander. They are identical with

all the other Creators.

Ibid., II, pp. 487-8.

THIS evening we open our study with the following

citation from the first volume of The Secret Doctrine,

page 224 :

Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the

offspring of the Elohim of Life (or Pitris) ; in its qualitative and

physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the "Ancestors/ 1 the lowest

Dhyinis, or Spirits of the Earth ; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual

nature, it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and charac-

teristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the

handiwork of hosts of various spirits"; distributively, the tabernacles of

those hosts ; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them.

And on page 225, second paragraph :

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the " Lord

God " ; but he is the child of the Elohim, so arbitrarily changed into

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the singular masculine gender. The first Dhy&iis, commissioned to

" create " man in their image, could only throw off their shadows, like

a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. (See

Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the

dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many.

In opening our study this evening it seems advisable first to

speak of two things, a less thing and a greater thing ; we take

the less thing first. As has been seen from the beginning of our

studies, as outlined by the Teacher, we have been bringing

forward for our consideration at every one of our meetings,

teachings found in the great religions of the world, mostly of the

past, which are similar to or identical with our own. This has

been done in order to join all these teachings, as found in the old

religions, with the teachings as given by H. P. Blavatsky today,

that is, with Theosophy. This shows the universality of thought

in religions and thereby induces a spirit of kindliness and brother-

hood, and leads to the accentuation of the moral sense which so

greatly lacks in the comparative religious study of the doctrines

of the predominant ancient religions by the mass of scholars in

the Occident today. It does away at one sweep with the egoistic

opinion that " we are more perfect and morally better than you

are ", with the idea that we Occidentals are a superior people,

and with the idea that a certain race and a certain religion are,

by the fiat of the Deity, the chosen receptacles or vehicles for the

only truth : that all the other religions are false, and that those

who professed them in ancient times were merely brands prepared

for the burning !

The second thing and the greater, is this. We have constantly

been bringing forward certain religious or philosophical analogies

and certain points of view thereupon which are veritable doctrinal

touch-stones ; our aim being that those who may read these

studies, as outlined by the Teacher, shall be enabled to have at

hand, and through the thoughts therein expressed to have

clear-set in their own minds, keys by which to test the truth and

reality of the essential or fundamental doctrines of these ancient

religions ; because all these doctrines in their essence and in their

inner meaning, in those old religions, are true. In this sense

Brahmanism is true, in this sense Buddhism is true, likewise

Confucianism, and the doctrines of Laotse called Taoism. They

are all true in that sense.

But all of them have been, in greater or less degree, subject to

the influences of certain creations of human fancy ; and for one

who has not been trained in these studies, it is often difficult to

separate the merely human fancies from the Nature-true teachings

of the ancient Wisdom- Religion. All the ancient religions sprang

from that same source Theosophy, as it is called today. But

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 75

it is, as said before, sometimes difficult to know what is the

original teaching and what the merely human accretion or

creation. These creations of human phantasy and irreligious

fear are very evident in the two modern monotheistic religions,

which have sprung from Judaism, that is to say in Christianity

and in Islam. In these two the human accretions of phantasy

are very marked ; but in both of them there exists a solid sub-

stratum of mystical thought based on the ancient teachings of

the Wisdom-Religion.

In Christianity it is particularly in the Neo-Pythagorean and

the Neo-Platonic forms, as Christianized somewhat and as

manifested in the teachings of Dionysius, called " the Areo-

pagite " ; and in the later Mohammedan religion it is manifested

somewhat more distantly in the borrowings from Greek thought

mainly, though also from other sources, as we find them outlined

by the Mohammedan doctors and thinkers, such as Ibn Sina,

commonly called Avicenna in Europe, a Persian, who lived and

wrote at the end of the tenth century ; by Averroes in Cordova,

Spain, properly called Roshd, who flourished during the twelfth

century ; and by another eminent Mohammedan scholar (mention-

ing these three out of many) Al Farabi, of the tenth century, by

descent a Turk. The Ancient Wisdom also affected the teachings

of Mohammed in a highly mystical form, though greatly changed,

as shown in the Sufi doctrines, which are particularly and mani-

festly of Persian origin, owing their rise to that spiritual-minded

and subtil people, the Persians. These doctrines are a very

welcome contrast with the hard and mechanical religious beliefs

which arose out of the egoism of the crude Arabian tribes of that

period.

Now the main theme of our study this evening is the considera-

tion of the opening verses of the " Book of Beginnings ", called

Genesis the first book in the Law of the Jews. We shall first

read the English translation of these verses as found in the so-

called " authorized version ", and of the same chapters we shall

make a translation for ourselves, in which you will be enabled to

see the difference from the former ; and we will explain what the

difference is, and how it comes to be, and for this purpose we

shall have to go into a brief exposition of certain peculiarities of

the ancient Hebrew tongue.

In the " authorized version " of the English Bible, called the

version of King James, the Book of Genesis opens as follows,

Chapter I, verse I :

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2. And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was

upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face

of the waters.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

3. And God said, Let there be light ; and there was light.

4. And God saw the light, that it was good : and God divided the

light from the darkness.

5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the

waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which

were under the firmament from the waters which were above the

firmament : and it was so.

8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and

the morning were the second day.

9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered

together unto one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so.

10. And God called the dry land Earth ; and the gathering together

of the waters called he Seas : and God saw that it was good.

VERSE 26.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness :

and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl

of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every

creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God

created he him ; male and female created he them.

Now, in the first place, Hebrew is a Semitic tongue, one of the

company of languages of which Arabic and Ethiopic and Ara-

maean (or Aramaic) and Phoenician and Assyrian are other

members. The Hebrew in which the Bible is written is called

the Biblical Hebrew. It is ancient Hebrew. The language spoken

in Palestine at the time when Jesus is supposed to have lived

upon the earth in Jerusalem and around that district, was

Aramaean, and not Hebrew, which was then extinct as a spoken

language, and of course when he spoke to his disciples he spoke

to them in Aramaean.

The Hebrew language as found in the ancient manuscripts of

the Bible none earlier, probably, than the ninth century of the

Christian era is written with " points ", taking the place of

vowels, because Hebrew writing is a consonantal system its

alphabet is wholly consonantal. It has the alef, or " a ", which

is nevertheless reckoned as a consonant. It has the waw, or

" w ", and it also is reckoned as a consonant ; and it has the

yod, or " y ", also reckoned as a consonant, but it has no vowel-

signs proper.

Thus, the language is written without true vowels. Further-

more, in the most ancient manuscripts and certainly it was so

in the original or pre-Christian era texts the letters are all " run

together ", following one after another, without separation of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 77

words. There were some marks possibly, by which certain things

in the text were pointed out as of particular importance ; but

the letters followed one another interminably, with no separa-

tion into words, and without vowels. So, you see, there is an

open field for many kinds of speculation, even for very able

Hebrew scholars, as to what any certain combination of letters

found in this endless stream may have originally meant. This

way of writing was universal, practically, in ancient times ; the

earliest Greek and Latin manuscripts of the New Testament are

written in this fashion, which merely followed the ancient custom,

as may still be seen on the ruins of public buildings in Greece and

Rome. Obviously, interpretation, or correct reading, was often

dubious : the reader might be very doubtful of the original sense

of a passage in a manuscript so written.

So much was this the case that there arose in Palestine at an

undetermined date but we know that it may go back to about

the time of the fall of Jerusalem before Titus, or, say, about the

beginning of the Christian era a school of interpreters, who

interpreted by what they were pleased to call " tradition ",

Masorah, that is to say, " traditional " knowledge, how the

Hebrew Bible should be read, how these streams of consonants

should be divided up in reading into words, and what vowel-

points should be put there in order to fix the pronunciation in

accordance therewith. This system of " points " was probably

not introduced into the text till the seventh century. This school

was called the School of the Masorah, and its expounders and

followers were called Massoretes.

This school of the Masorah reached its fullest development and

completion probably in the ninth century of the Christian era.

But while this school depended upon what it called " tradition ",

there is no certainty of proof that their interpretations of their

own combinations of letters into words were always correct.

They seemed to have got, however, and to have passed down to

posterity, some knowledge of the general original sense.

In order to illustrate this matter, let us take the first five

English words of Genesis : we drop all the vowels, retaining only

the consonants, and we have this : Nthbgnnnggdcrtd. You

could here insert vowels almost ad libitum, in seeking a meaning.

" In the beginning God created ", and now imagine endless lines

of such consonants !

Add to it the fact that Hebrew writing begins at the right

hand and runs to the left. Furthermore, it begins at what we

would call the end of the book, and runs to the front, as writings

in other Semitic tongues do. This fashion of writing was not

uncommon with other peoples in ancient days. Greek and Latin

writing in ancient times sometimes followed this system, but

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later, as you can see today if you have been in Greece or in

Rome, in the old inscriptions on the temples and elsewhere, it

usually began at the left and went to the right, usually with no

breaks for words. In the very old Greek writings (and elsewhere

too) they also had what they called boustrophedon, from two

Greek words meaning ox-turning, taken from the path followed

by the plowing ox : when it starts, let us say, from one end of a

field it goes to the other end and then turns and goes back and

over it, in the opposite direction, but aside and parallel with

the other line, in plowing its furrows. This method is not followed

in the Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible that we possess.

Now, in beginning our translation of the first verses of Genesis,

we are met, in the very first two words, by a difficulty. These

words can be translated in two or three different ways. The

translation as given in the European Bibles, and as found in the

" authorized " English version, is a fairly correct rendering so

far as mere words go ; but anyone who has undertaken transla-

tions from a foreign tongue and particularly from a dead tongue,

and more especially again from a tongue which is a religious

tongue and evidently written more or less in cipher, can realize

the difficulties there lie in picking out the various meanings which

any one word may have, in choosing which is the word that is

best for the translation, which word carries the meaning nearest

to the intention of the writer. The first two words as usually

read are " be " and " rshith " ; and so divided, their meanings

are as here follow : Be means in, reshith means beginning, this

second word being a feminine form, and coming originally from

the masculine word Resh, or Rosh, meaning (among several other

things) head, chief part, first part. Hence we may translate Be

reshith as " In first part ", or " In highest part ", etc.

But this same combination of letters Brashith could also be

translated (by dividing differently) as Bore, one word, a verb, and

shtth, another word, a noun ; meaning Bore, or " forming ", and

shtth, an " institution ", " establishment ", " arrangement ".

" Forming the establishment (or arrangement) " of what ?

The text goes on to say what is arranged or established By

arranging " formed the Elohim Heaven and Earth/ 1

Furthermore, the word resh, or rosh, above selected, may also

mean " head " as before said, signifying " wisdom ", or " know-

ledge " : hence, " In wisdom the Elohim formed Heavens and

Earth ". Remember, it is permissible to put in vowels almost at

choice, because vowels do not exist in the original text of the

book, in the Bible, itself ; hence the opening for more than

merely one interpretation.

Resh, or r6sh, then, also means " head " ; it also means

" wisdom " ; it also means " host " or " multitude ". So here

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 79

we may select still another a fourth translation : Bertsh, " in

multitude ", or " by multitude ". Yithbdre would then be the

next word, " formed Elohim ". Here comes again another

remarkable change in meaning and I am making these remarks

in order to point out how the Hebrew text of the Bible may bear

many translations. Supposing then that we divide the first

fourteen Hebrew letters of the text into the following word-

combinations : Be-resh yithbdre Elohtm, we get (by using yithbdre,

which is one of the forms of the Hebrew verb, called the reflexive

form, meaning action upon oneself) the following translation :

" By multitude ", " Through multitude, the Gods formed them-

selves ". What follows in the text ? " into the heavens and the

earth ". That is : " In a host (or multitude) the gods formed

(made) themselves into the Heavens and the Earth ". See the

vast difference in meaning from the " authorized version ". This

last translation we believe is the best ; it shows at once the

identity of thought with all other ancient cosmogonic systems.

" By multitude formed " (or " evolved " : this word Bdrd

means to " fatten ", to " shape ", to " become heavy or gross ",

to " cut ", to " form ", to " be born ", to " evolve ") ' ' by (or

in) multitude " or " through (or in) multitude evolved Elohim

themselves into the heavens and the earth ".

Now the fourth word, Elohtm. This is a very curious word.

The first part of it alone is el, meaning God, divinity, from which

comes the second, a feminine form, eloh, Goddess. 1m is merely

the masculine plural. So, if we translate every element in this

single word, it would mean, " God, Goddess, plural " showing

the androgynous essence of the divinities, as it were : the polar

opposites of the Hierarchy ; the essential duality in life.

Verse 2. " And the earth became ethereal ". Now the second

word a verb in the Hebrew text of the second verse answers

to two Latin verbs : esse, to be, and fieri, to become ; but almost

always its original sense is fieri, to become, like the Greek

gignomai, meaning to become, to grow into a new state of some-

thing. " And the earth became " or " grew into ethereality ".

The two next words (" tohti " and " bohu ") of the text, which we

here translate " ethereality ", are very difficult words rightly to

interpret. They both mean " emptiness ", " waste ", " Immateri-

ality", hence " dissolution " ; the fundamental idea means

something unsubstantial, not materially gross. We continue our

translation : " And darkness upon the face of the ethers. And

the Rtiahh (the spirit-soul) of the Gods (of Elohim) (fluttered,

hovered) brooding/ 1 The word we translate " brooded " is

derived from and means the action of a hen which flutters, and

hovers, and broods over the eggs in its nest. How graphic, how

significant is this figure of speech !

8o

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You see the same thought here that you see in practically all

the ancient teachings ; the figure or symbol of the cosmic soul

brooding over the waters of space, preparing the world-egg : that

of the cosmic egg and the divine bird laying the cosmic egg.

" And the spirit-soul of Elohim brooding upon the face of the

waters ", says the Hebrew text. Now " waters ", as we have

shown before, was a common expression or symbol for space, the

ethereal expansion, as it were. We continue our translation :

" And said (the) Elohim (The Gods) Light, come-into-being !

and Light came-into-being. And saw (the) Gods the light, that

(it was) good. And divided Elohim between the light and

between the darkness. And called Elohim the light day, and

the darkness called they night. And (there) came-into-being eve,

and (there) came-into-being morn. Day one. And said Elohim

(let there) come-into-being an expanse in (the) midst of the

waters, and let it be a separator (divider) between waters and

waters. And made Elohim (or the Gods) the expanse, and they

separated between the waters which (were) below the expanse,

and between the waters which (were) above the expanse, and (it)

came-to-be so. And called Elohim (the Gods) the expanse

heavens, and (there) came-into-being eve, and (there) came-into-

being morn. Day second. And said Elohim (the Gods) " (let

there) be-gathered-together (i.e., solidified, condensed) the

waters above the heavens into one place, and (let there) be-seen

the dry-part (the solidified or manifested part) " (the word means

" dry ", in opposition to humidity. Humidity means water,

standing for space. It means, therefore, the collected matter

of a planet to be, of a solar system to be, or a universe to be),

" and (it) came-to-be so. And called the Gods the dry-part earth,

and the solidification (gathering-together) of the waters called

they seas. And saw Elohim (the Gods) that (it was) good."

Now turn to verses 26, 27, 28 of the same, the first, chapter.

" And said (the Gods) Elohtm, Let us make humanity (the word

is Adam) in our shadowy image (in our shadow, in our phantom.

The word is tselem), according to our pattern (or model). And

let them descend into the fish of the sea and into the flying

creatures of the heavens, and into the beast, and into all the

earth, and into all moving creatures which move upon the earth.

And formed (or shaped or evolved, the same verb as above,

Bdrd) Elohim (the Gods) humanity in their phantom, in the

shadowy image of Elohtm, formed (or evolved) they him."

Now come two very interesting words, usually translated

" male and female ", which are two of the meanings respectively

found in the dictionaries ; but the root-meanings of these words

are the following : " thinker and receiver " (or receptacle) :

" thinker and receptacle evolved they them. And blessed them

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 81

the Elohim ", that is, the Elohim blessed them, " and said to them

the Elohim, ' be fruitful, increase, and fill the earth '/' and so forth.

You see, therefore, that here, merely by using other words

than those usually chosen by Christian translators, or later

Jewish translators, and yet recognised dictionary words, and by

forcing no meanings, we have found the identical meanings of the

Esoteric teachings as outlined in The Secret Doctrine when treat-

ing of these subjects. First the Hierarchy and its manifested

divinities evolving the universe or Kosmos out of themselves,

using the reflexive form of the Hebrew verb bard, as shown

above. Furthermore, a study of the first verse of Genesis will

show us that the evolution treated in it has no relation solely

and especially to the creation of this earth or of any other par-

ticular earth, but is a general doctrine having reference rather to

the first manifestation of material being in ethereal space, and that

the fowls of the air and the fish of the sea and the beasts, which

are spoken of, do not necessarily refer (although they could) to the

particular animals which we know under those names on earth,

but do also refer (in accord with a well known fact of ancient

mythology) to the " animals of the heavens " of which we spoke

in our last study, i.e., to every globe of the starry spheres, to

every nebula and to every comet, all such being considered in the

ancient teachings to be a living being, an " animal " having its

physical corpus or body, and having behind it its Director, or

Governor, or Divine Essence, or Spirit.

Furthermore, we see that the Elohim evolved Man, Humanity,

out of themselves, and told them to become, then to enter into

and inform these other creatures. Indeed, these sons of the

Elohim are, in our teachings, the children of light, the sons of

light, which are we ourselves, and yet different from ourselves,

because higher, yet they are our own very selves inwardly ; for,

in fact, the Elohim, became, evolved into, their own offspring,

remaining in a sense still always the inspiring Light, within or

rather above according to the interpretation authorized by the

very words chosen from the dictionary and flaunting no rule of

Hebrew grammar. For, following the ancient teachings of the

Esoteric Philosophy, and strengthened by exactly similar thought

in the Babylonian religious teachings from which these Hebrew

teachings originally came, we see that the Elohim projected

themselves into the nascent forms of the then " humanity ",

which thenceforward were " men, 1 ' however imperfect their

development still was.

What were these Elohim, these divinities, these Gods ? In the

hierarchical system of the Qabbalah they are the sixth in deriva-

tion from above, from the first or the Crown, and thus are by no

means the highest. They were, cosmogonically, the manifested

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Formers, or Weavers, of the Web of the Universe. Jehovah,

spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis, is the third angelic

potency, counting downwards from the Crown the summit of

the Hierarchy of the Qabbalah.

In chapter five of Genesis, verses i and 2, there is ap interesting

expression. We translate : " This (the) book of the generations

of humanity (Adam) . In the day of Elohim (of the Gods) evolving

humanity, in the pattern (or model) of the Elohim, made they

him. Thinker-and-receptacle made they them, and blessed them

and called their name humanity (or Adam) in the day of their

making." Evidently, it is not here question of a single human

pair, of a man and a woman in our sense, but of nascent androgy-

nous humanity, and they had one name, Adam, and their attributes

were thinker and casket (or receptacle) : ethereal beings

children of the Elohim who are themselves capable of thinking

and of receiving and understanding and developing under the

lessons which were to follow from their incarnations in the lower

fleshly beings they themselves evolved, and signified under the

terms as set forth here the " fowls " of the " air ", and the

" fish " of the " sea ", and every living thing which moveth

upon the face of the earth.

These ancient writings have more than one mystical or esoteric

application, or, as H. P. Blavatsky says, they have more than

one key. But, again, what or who were these Elohim ? They

were our theosophical monads. It is curious, by the way, that

Leibnitz, the great Slavic-German philosopher, evolved a theory

of monadic evolution which is singularly like our own in some

respects. For him, the universe was replete with progressing

entities, which he called " monads ", spiritual beings which

evolved through the forces innate in themselves, yet acting and

reacting upon each other a faithful echo, in so far as it goes, of

the Ancient Wisdom-Religion.

Again, what do we mean when we speak respectively of

emanation, evolution, and creation ? Emanation and evolution are

closely similar in meaning. Emanation is from a Latin word

meaning " flowing out ", and in all the ancient teachings of

importance the idea was that the Gods actively, transitively,

" flowed out " from themselves their offspring or children.

Evolution is also a Latin word and means " rolling out ",

" unfolding ", something which is unfolded ; and obviously a

thing which is " flowed out ", using the words " flowed out "

transitively, is also unrolled out, unfolded out.

Now creation originally in its Latin sense meant practically

the same as does this Hebrew word Bard. It meant " making ",

" shaping ", " carving ", " cutting " of course out of pre-

existing material or matter, and the Christian theory (which was

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 83

more or less that of the Jews in their later days) that God made

the world " out of nothing ", is preposterous, absurd, both

historically and linguistically. It is founded on no ancient

teaching whatever, and it arose naturally enough, in a sense,

from the monotheistic mania, which endeavored to make God

extra-cosmic, apart from the universe, and above it, a pure spirit,

having no relation of ineluctable union with his creatures, God

the " Father and Maker " of them, and yet an absolute personal

non-entity having no " body, parts, or passions ", yet a Person

withal ! ! Of course the two concepts are contradictory and

mutually destructive, and had we the time it would be easy to

dilate further the preposterous absurdity of which we speak.

We can see, therefore, in closing our study this evening, that

it is very difficult to say which of these three : Emanation,

Evolution, Creation, is first in the order of procession. Was it

emanation, followed by evolution, followed by creation ; or was

it evolution, followed by emanation, followed by creation ? Cer-

tainly, creation in its original sense of shaping, forming comes

the last of the three, as is easily shown. The difficulty lies in the

fact that in every cosmic act of emanation we immediately

perceive an act of evolution or unfolding ; and in every act of

evolution we immediately perceive an act of emanation. Every

monad pari passu passes from one into the other, just as all

mankind evolved pari passu from one into the other. We should,

probably, say that emanation, evolution, creation, work simul-

taneously and co-ordinately, during manifestation.

But taking the question from a purely philosophical standpoint,

it is probably accurate and best to say that the first step from

what we call the Unmanifest into the Manifest is emanation, a

flowing out from its source of a monad or rather a host of monads,

which, as they in turn follow the pattern set for them by their

source and their Karmic past, grow darker, and more material,

proportionately as they recede from their central fount of life ;

and, again, as they emanate, they also evolve, bringing out from

within that which they innately are or have, and they do this in

accordance with the karmic lines or patterns upon which we have

faintly touched in previous studies, when speaking of the Skan-

dhas, because every act of emanation and of evolution begins a

new life-cycle following the pralaya or rest-period of a former life-

period or manvantara. Then finally, when the period of self-

consciousness is reached in the cyclical progression of evolution,

comes a period of will, conscious choice, when man begins to

" create " or fashion voluntarily ; that is, through the exercise

of his will and his intuition and his intellect, he carves his own

destiny and likewise affects the world creationally which exists

around him.

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CHAPTER IX

OUTLINE OF ESOTERIC COSMOGONY. GLOBES, ROUNDS AND

RACES ! COSMIC TIME-PERIODS.

Can one fail to recognise in Creuzer great powers of intuition, when, being

almost unacquainted with the Aryan Hindu philosophies, little known in his day,

he wrote :

" We modern Europeans feel surprised when hearing talk of the Spirits of the

Sun, Moon, etc. But we repeat again, the natural good sense and the upright

judgment of the ancient peoples, quite foreign to our entirely material ideas upon

celestial mechanics and physical sciences . . . could not see in the stars and

planets only that which we see : namely, simple masses of light, or opaque bodies

moving in circuits in sidereal space, merely according to the laws of attraction

or repulsion ; but they saw in them living bodies, animated by spirits as they saw

the same in every kingdom of nature. . . . This doctrine of spirits, so consistent

and conformable to nature, from which it was derived, formed a grand and unique

conception, wherein the physical, the moral, and the political aspects were all

blended together. ..." (gypte, pp. 450 to 455.)

It is such a conception only that can lead man to form a correct conclusion

about his origin and the genesis of everything in the universe of Heaven and

Earth, between which he is a living link. Without such a psychological link,

and the feeling of its presence, no science can ever progress, and the realm of

knowledge must be limited to the analysis of physical matter only.

The Secret Doctrine (IT. P. BLAVATSKY), II, pp. 369-70.

E open our study tonight by reading once again

from page 224 and page 225 of The Secret Doctrine,

Vol. I, as follows :

Mankind in its first prototypal, shadowy form, is the

offspring of the E16him of Life (or Pitris) ; in its qualitative and

physical aspect it is the direct progeny of the "Ancestors/' the lowest

Dhy&nis, or Spirits of the Earth ; for its moral, psychic, and spiritual

nature it is indebted to a group of divine Beings, the name and charac-

teristics of which will be given in Book II. Collectively, men are the

handiwork of hosts of various spirits ; distributively, the tabernacles

of those hosts ; and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of

them.

And the second paragraph on page 225 :

Man is not, nor could he ever be, the complete product of the

" Lord God " ; but he is the child of the Eldhim, so arbitrarily changed

into the singular masculine gender. The first Dhyllnis, commissioned

to " create " man in their image, could only throw off their shadows,

like a delicate model, for the Nature-Spirits of matter to work upon.

(See Book II.) Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of

the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many.

In our last study we called attention to the first chapter of

8 4

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 85

the Hebrew Book of Genesis, and translated verses I to 10, and

verses 25, 26, and 27 thereof. The intention was to show that

the Ancient Wisdom was outlined even in the Jewish Book of

Beginnings, even as it is elsewhere found in the scriptures of the

other great world-religions. Of course, in all meetings where the

time at one's disposal is limited, such as it is in these meetings,

it is impossible adequately to treat every point of interest, and to

deal with every phase of the subject at once ; for this reason the

Teacher has instructed me first to sketch an outline of a subject

under discussion, and in later studies to return to the details.

Now in continuation of our study of the esoteric sense under-

lying this first chapter of Genesis, we must point out that this

chapter does not deal with man as we now know him. The

" man " spoken of in this first chapter is the spiritual being

which descended into matter in the first Round of this man-

vantara, as a spiritual, or rather ethereal, being ; and consequently,

when in verse 27 we translated the peculiar phrase, " Thinker

and receiver formed (or evolved) they him ", we must understand

that this allusion does not refer to sexual man and woman of the

present time. These words, thinker and receiver, refer to the

spiritual nature of the then ethereal vehicles of humanity, not to

our present day man or woman ; and the word receiver can also

be translated receptacle, the vehicle or house of the higher nature.

Also, at the period dealt with in this verse 27 of the first chapter

of Genesis, man in the general sense humanity was of double

sex, or androgyne ; hence, obviously, there was no " woman "

then. This first chapter practically ignores the first, purely

sexless, state of ethereal Adam ; and enters upon its description of

" man " when the latter was already sinking into material

existence as a semi-self-conscious ethereal androgyne. In other

words, the first chapter does not detail the separation of the

sexes, which occurred far later. This general statement is plainly

shown by even the exoteric rendering of the teaching but let us

read from another chapter of Genesis, verse 5 of Chapter II :

And every plant of the field BEFORE IT WAS IN THE EARTH, and

every herb of the field BEFORE IT GREW : for the Lord God had not

caused it to rain upon the earth, and there WAS NOT A MAN to till the

ground.

" Man " had not yet come. Let me preface future explanations

by saying that this second chapter of Genesis deals with the third

and the fourth Rounds of our Manvantara, the latter or fourth

being our present round ; and more particularly with the Third

Root-Race of our Fourth Round ; whereas chapter first is a highly

generalized and succinct Jewish epitome of early cosmogony, and

ends with a similarly brief allusion to Rounds first and second.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

And in verses 19, 20, 21, and 22, we find the following :

19. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the

field, and every fowl of the air ; and brought them unto Adam to see

what he would call them : and whatsoever Adam called every living

creature, that was the name thereof.

20. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air,

and to every beast of the field ; but for Adam there was not found a

helpmeet for him.

21. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and

he slept ; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead

thereof ;

22. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he

a woman, and brought her unto the man.

As in verse 5 above, I use here the ordinary English translation

of the so-called " Authorized Version ", although, as a matter of

fact, a very luminously different translation could be made of

these verses. It would lead us too far from our main point to

do so now.

Now, in the first place, this second chapter records a different

method from that recorded in Chapter I, and a change as regards

the evolving of the ethereal being from the Elohim, having

reference to the making of physical humanity, or " man ", from

the " dust of the ground " (verse 7). In the second place, this

English word rib of verses 21 and 22 should be translated side, the

allusion being to the separation of the androgyne or dual-sexed

humanity of Race the Third of our Fourth Round into sexed

humanity as now existent.

Now Plato in his Banquet, page 189, alludes to this same

historical physiological fact of pre-history, and says that (one of)

the early races of mankind was bi-sexually formed ; that they

had great and terrible powers, and that their wickedness and

ambition waxed very great, so that Zeus grew angry at their

wickedness, and decided to cut them in two, as one would divide

an egg with a hair. This Zeus did ; and bade Apollo to render

the two halves more shapely, etc. Apollo so did, and he closed

up the flesh of the two halves. Since then all mankind was man

and woman. A typically Platonic tale, imbodying actual facts

of forgotten history.

This deals with the earliest portion of the Fourth Root-Race,

and much more especially with the middle period of the Third

Root-Race of the Fourth or present Round on this planet. Up

to the present time we have not had the need to set forth the

teaching regarding the Rounds and Races ; but we are fast

approaching the time when we shall have to develop that subject.

We will now leave, for the present, with a few more words of

explanation, the outline of emanation and evolution as found in

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 87

the Jewish Bible and as outlined by us at our last study and thus

far this evening ; and therefore first, before leaving it, it will be

well to say a few words on the question of the Elohim, a subject

upon which we touched last week.

Elohim is a word frequently found in the Jewish Bible, and is,

as stated in our last preceding lecture, in itself an evidence of

the polytheistic bias, teachings, and beliefs of the ancient Jewish

people. The Bible itself shows it. Usually this word a plural

common noun is to be translated as " Gods ". But in most

places where it occurs in the Hebrew text it is translated in the

English " Authorized Version " as God. There is no true or

solid reason for such a translation ; the proper rendering is

Gods ; but the monotheistic and Christian tendencies of the

translators made them set the translation for what they considered

to be the best interests of the Christian Church, and their God

Almighty ; so they translated it in various places by various

names, as for instance, it is translated as " Judges " in Exodus

xxi, 6 ; xxii, 8, 9 ; and in many other places ; but the essen-

tial, intrinsic meaning is always Gods, or beings having divine

standing.

We now approach in our studies very difficult and, indeed,

highly esoteric matters. In the first place, let us never forget that

the Elohim, the Gods, who are spoken of under various names

in the various religions of the ancient world as the creators or

rather evolvers or parents of mankind, are spiritual beings who

are ourselves. And the key to this apparent riddle is found in

the doctrine and exposition of the Hierarchies of individualized

life, as outlined in a former study.

A Hierarchy can be considered as an aggregate unit, as a

collective entity in the same sense that an army is ; neverthe-

less, an army is composed of units ; and yet, again, this army of

beings in any one Hierarchy is indeed from another aspect more

than a mere collective entity, because it is united in its apex, in

what is actually the fount of that Hierarchy. This fount is the

hyparxis or spiritual sun from which all the other nine planes or

classes of the Hierarchy emanate and evolve down to the lowest,

thence beginning a new Hierarchy ; even as the hyparxis of any

one Hierarchy is the lowest class or plane of a superior Hierarchy,

and so practically ad infinitum.

Man is a spiritual being throughout, through and through and

through. Matter itself is but one manifestation of spirit. We live

in a universe of spirit, and although matter exists it exists as

Maya, illusion ; not as a mere illusionary nothing, but as some-

thing, as a modality, so to say, of spirit ; but as we grow higher

into the upper planes of the hierarchical scale, the maya, for the

sphere of life embraced by that Hierarchy, fades away from

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before our eyes, -and we see truth in greater degree and pro-

gressively more widely the higher we go.

With regard to the descent into matter, or falling into matter,

of mankind, that is to say the descent into manifested being of

the spiritual entities, the spiritual hierarchy which man actually

and properly is, we must remember that we cannot understand

this profound subject very well without undertaking an outline

or sketch, more or less complete, of what are the Rounds and

Races ; yet before doing this, we must clear away from our minds

certain scientific conceptions, or rather misconceptions, which

have been implanted in us by intensive teaching from childhood,

and which have for that reason become a part of our mental life.

Two main pillars of our modern science are the following :

first, the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy : that is to say,

that the amount of force or of energy in the universe is constant,

and no increase can be created to add unto it, and no amount can

be taken away from it ; the second great pillar is the doctrine

of the Correlation, or the Convertibility, of Forces : that is to

say, that any force can, at least theoretically, be converted into

some other force, as mechanical motion into electrical and

electrical into mechanical, and so forth as regards the other

forces working in matter.

Now these two theories or doctrines of science do make an

approach in certain respects to the esoteric conception of the

wonderful element back of and causative of all the changes in

Nature, but nevertheless the conception of the Esoteric Philosophy,

as our Teachers have shown it to us, cannot accept either of these

two doctrinal pillars of science as thus conceived. First, the

doctrine of the Conservation of Energy. It is perfectly true that

no " new " force can be " created ", and it is likewise perfectly

true that no energy or force can ever be utterly lost. Forces are

not converted or transformed, as the twin doctrine of science has

it ; it is possible, however, for a force to pass from one plane of

being into another to come into one plane from a higher, or,

indeed, from a lower. In other words, it is possible for a force-

or energy-element outside of some plane to enter into being and

manifestation upon it. Hence, the materialistic doctrine of a

universe of dead, lifeless, non-vital matter nothing above it

or beyond it or below it or through it cannot be accepted by

the students of the Esoteric Philosophy.

As regards the correlation or Convertibility of Energy. It is

true, in one sense, that all the forces in the universe are correlated.

It is a fundamental axiom of Theosophy that the Universe, our

Universe, any Universe, is a living organism, and hence that its

energies or forces, and all of them, are correlated ; but this does

not mean that one force can become another. The idea offends the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 89

very essence, the very foundation of the Esoteric teaching with

regard to manifestation, its Hierarchies, and individual lives

all offspring of the ONE LIFE. What happens is rather this :

That one force is not turned into or converted into another, but

evokes or calls forth or arouses into active life or manifestation

a "force " which was not " latent" a curious contradiction of

sense but which was in equilibrium. When the modern scientist

speaks of latent or potential energy, it is to the Occultist a con-

summate logical absurdity, the very name energy or force meaning

activity, and to talk about a " latent force " is like talking about

" latent activity " or " dead life ", or a square triangle, or a flat

sphere. It is impossible as long as we base our conception on

the scientific postulates. But and note this well, please : a

Theosophist, an Occultist, could use this phrase " latent force ",

because in his mouth the phrase has a meaning and sense.

For instance, a spiritual hence latent or non-material force

is not " converted " into matter ; a material force is not " con-

verted " into spirit. Why ? Because spirit and matter, or force

and matter, are not two, but fundamentally and essentially ONE.

Throughout the long period of manvantaric time there is a gradual

evolution of one thing into another, but this procession of life is

not accomplished along the lines or by the methods of the scientific

theories which apply in the doctrine called the Convertibility of

material Energy. The latter is a dream to us : it does not

exist.

This is, in fact, a subject which we shall have to develop more

fully at a later period of our study, but we come now to the

question of the descent of spiritual and then ethereal man into

matter, down the ten steps of the Hierarchical scale. We saw in

a former study that this descent was begun by the entrance

through a laya-center of the spiritual entities seeking mani-

festation on lower planes, the time having struck for them to

open their great Maha-Manvantara or the world-period which

was to follow. As soon as the spiritual essences touched the high-

est degree of the lower plane, our fourth-matter plane, it stirred

the particular laya-center therein to which they were directed

by karmic energy, into corresponding activity or sympathetic

life. Ths first manifestation thereof as seen from the same plane

was the nebula, a cloudy nebula ; the second stage, aeons later,

was a spiral nebula ; and the third, aeons still later, was an annular

nucleated nebula, like a ring with a globe in the center ; the

latest stage, before the evolving body settled into life as a planet,

was a comet, directed or drawn to that particular solar system or

sun to which it was karmically related in the former Planetary

Manvantara.

Now the Life-Cycle, or Manvantara, of a planet, consists

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

objectively of seven Rounds, or smaller manvantaras, around

seven globes ; but this is preceded by three elemental cycles

ten in all. The first three stages or cycles, call them the three

elemental Rounds, if you will, are on the three archetypal planes

above the seven ; this period is not yet really ethereal mani-

festation : it is the first descent of the Arupa (or bodiless) beings,

of spiritual nature, into sub-spiritual manifestation ; but when

the third or lowest of the three archetypal planes has been

traversed, by that time the life-wave or life-essence has con-

solidated sufficiently in ethereal matter to form an airy shape

or ethereal globe. This globe thence starts on the manvantaric

cycle down into matter, a cycle which proceeds in several stages,

actually seven, and upon and in seven globes, as already stated.

During the first Round, upon the first globe, the life-wave has

to complete a Ring consisting of seven Root-Races on that

globe ; after, or rather at, the end of the evolution of each Root-

Race, respectively, its (the Root-Race's) surplus energy is there-

upon exploded or protruded into the sphere lower and there

forms the first, second, third, etc., element of the second globe

of the first Round ; the life-energy or life-wave has to run a ring

of seven Root-Races in and upon that second globe, and when

each such Root-Race has reached its end there, its surplus energy

is thereupon exploded or protruded exactly as before into a

magnetic center below it, and the seven there, after all have

arrived, form the third globe, and so on till the seven globes are

formed. This is the first Round. Beginning with the second

Round on the seven globes, the process is altered in important

particulars, because all the seven globes are already formed, as

globes.

At the end of the first Round there is a planetary Obscuration

or Rest-Period, when the entities leave the last globe, the seventh,

and enter into a (lower) nirvanic period of manvantaric repose,

answering to the devachanic or between-life-states of the human

entity between its respective lives. And so also at the end of

the second Round, and of the third, when we reach the fourth,

which is our present Round.

As the Life- Wave cycles down into matter, it grows with every

yuga (or Age) grosser, and more material, until the middle of the

fourth Round (ours), when it begins to ascend. Every Round is

grosser than its preceding one until the present, our fourth, the

most material, is reached. This descent is called the " Shadowy

Arc ", or " Cycle of Darkness ". We have, already, passed the

lowest or middle period of the fourth Round, and in consequence

now have begun the ascending arc, or the " Luminous Arc " ;

we have three and a half more rounds to run before we reach the

and of the Kalpa, or Planetary Manvantara, when the gr$at

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 91

Nirvana or para-Nirvana of the entire septenary Planetary

Chain of the seven globes takes place.

Now as regards the geometrical outline of the course followed

by this descent into matter, we may consider it to be in the form

of an epicycloid. Let me try to explain diagramatically what is

here meant by an epicycloid. An epicycloid is formed when a

point on a small circle, which runs around and upon the convex

side of the circumference of a larger circle, traces a curve which

touches the circumference of the larger circle at the beginning and

end of each revolution of the smaller circle thereupon, as at

A and B in the figure. The curve

A-B is the epicycloid. For instance,

this figure shows the two circles : we

will say that the point on the smaller

circle begins its curve at A, rolling

upwards to the left ; at B, the point

on the smaller circle has completed

a full revolution ; the curve A-B is

the epicycloid.

Any point on this smaller circle

as the latter rolls along the out-

side of the circumference of the larger circle will describe or

generate a curve, which is an epicycloid ; and as there is a geo-

metrical relation between the commensurable radii of any two

circles : for instance, if the radius of this smaller circle is one

and the radius of the larger circle is seven, the proportion being

1:7, the rolling point will describe or generate seven arcs or cusps

around and upon the circumference of the larger circle.

Now each one of these seven arcs represents here, geometrically,

a globe of a Round. (Equally well does it represent geometrically

one of the seven Root-Races on each globe during any Round.)

In the first Round, the Life- Wave, starting from the seventh or

highest plane, after its third full elemental cycle of and in the

arupa world, begins to form the rupa or form-world ; and as the

smaller circle rolls along the circumference of the greatest cycle,

so to say, the Life- Wave (or globe) progressively grows more

material, each one of these arcs which the cycling smaller circle

makes on the circumference of the greater, representing a sphere

of being, and also geometrically represents the Life-Wave of the

planet beginning the evolution of material existence, " rising

upward " (or increasing in material density) until it reaches

its maximum of materiality, and then " descending " or decreasing

in materiality until it again touches the plane of departure, the

circumference of the greater circle (or cycle).

The process by which the spirit descends into matter is called

in Sanskrit Pravritti (which we may paraphrase into English as

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"earth-birth", or "earth-day' 1 ), practically the same word as

evolution or emanation, in our modern tongues ; the process of

entering upon or ascending along the " luminous arc ", ultimately

to find itself home again in the spiritual world, is called Nirvritti.

Both words are from the Sanskrit root vrit, meaning to revolve,

or to roll. The prefix pra answers to the preposition forth or

forward, and the prefix nirto the prepositional phrases " out of ",

" away from ", hence backwards, or reverse action. Pravritti is

therefore used to mean the evolution or emanation of matter, which

is equivalent to the involution of spirit ; Nirvritti, the evolution of

spirit the reverse process.

What are the durations of the time-periods during which the

Life-Wave manifests in the Manvantara of seven Rounds, and in

the seven respective planets of each Round ? As our first great

Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, has told us, the doctrines concerning

the time-periods have been from immemorial time considered too

esoteric to be given to the outward world in anything at all

approaching fulness of teaching or detail, but throughout the

teachings that have been openly given there are many hints of

immense value. For instance, the time required for one Round

that is the cycle from globe A to the last globe of the seven (we

will call it Z), starting from the Root-Manu or collective " human-

ity " of globe A and ending with the Seed-Manu or collective

" humanity " of globe Z is called a Round-manvantara, and its

period is 306,720,000 years. It is called " manvantara " because

it is the " reign of one Manu " say a certain quality of Humanity.

Now this word " manvantara " is Sanskrit and means between

manus, i.e., between a Root-Manu on globe A and the Seed-Manu

on globe Z, for a JRowwd-Manvantara. Now to this period of

306,720,000 years must be added the length of the Sandhi,

meaning " connexion ", or " junction ", or interval, according to a

certain method of calculation, necessary in order fully to complete

the evolution of the planet for the Round ; this sandhi is of the

length of a krita-yuga, or 1,728,000 years, which brings the com-

plete period or term of a I?0*md-Manvantara to 308,448,000 years

of mortals.

As has already been stated, there is, after the end of every

round, an obscuration which also lasts for a certain period which

we do not here specify ; but this can be found by any reader of

these studies who cares to give the subject thought, and to be

guided by the teachings already given.

But how long a period do the seven Rounds take for their

course ? What is the period of a maha-manvantara, or great

manvantara, sometimes called a Kalpa, after which the globes

no longer go into mere obscuration or repose, but die utterly ?

The period of the Maha-Manvantara or Kalpa is also called a

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 93

" Day of Brahma ", and its length is 4,320,000,000 ; and the

" Night of Brahma ", the planetary rest-period, which is also

called the para-nirvanic period, is of equal length. Seven Rounds,

as said, form a Day of Brahma.

These figures are the Brahmanical figures, and they are also

the figures of esoteric Buddhism (for we insist that Buddhism

has an esoteric doctrine) ; the root-number 432, as any student

knows, is also found in the chronological doctrines of ancient

Babylonia ; it is likewise the real meaning in the chronological

line of the Pythagorean Tetraktys, 1-2-3-4, the 432 springing

from the unity or monad, a subject of which we spoke in our last

study.

We are also told that the duration of a planet's life, i.e., of a

planetary chain of seven globes, is one of 360 divine days, corre-

sponding to a divine year, and that Brahma's life (or the life of the

universal system) is one hundred of those divine years expressed

in 15 figures of years of mortals. A planetary manvantara is also

related to the duration of life of a solar system ; a planetary

manvantara (or seven Rounds) is a " day " of Brahma, as already

said ; each of these days lasting 4,320,000,000 years of mortals,

which really means the life-time of a planet during its seven rounds,

and corresponding to one incarnation of a human life on earth.

How long, then, does Brahma live in any one of his manifested

universes, which we know are called the " out -breathings of the

Self-Existent " ? We can calculate it 4,320,000,000 times 100,

times 360, or in other words, 36,000, lives has any planet to live

before the prakritika-pralaya (or the elemental pralaya) sets in,

the end of that life (or pravritti) of the Universal system.

What happens when comes the end of a solar system ? At a

former meeting we spoke of the " bells of pralaya ". It was with

no intention of attempting to be rhetorical, or of employing

oratorical phraseology that we used this phrase. We have no

such ambition. We chose the words because the teachings are

that when the great (or maha-) pralaya comes upon the planets

of any system, and their sun, then strange noises of various

kinds are heard in the air of a planet belonging to such a solar

system ; and these noises are repeated in miniature, so to say,

not only at the end of the planetary manvantara (or the life-time

of the planet), but also in still smaller miniature at the end of

every Round. These phenomena are likewise alluded to in other

religions than the Indian, as for instance in the Christian and Jewish:

in Revelation, vi, 14 ; and in Isaiah, xxxiv, 4. The Christian

writers speak of the time, 2 Peter, iii, 10, 12, when the " elements

shall melt with the fervent heat ", and " the heavens shall pass

away with a great noise ", but they " look for new heavens and a

new earth " or a new planetary manvantara and allude to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

pralayas as the- time when "the heaven departed as a scroll

when it is rolled together", etc. These allusions to pralayic

disintegration are figurative to a certain extent, but are suffi-

ciently along the lines of the ancient Eastern thought to show us

whence they came from the archaic Wisdom-Religion (Theo-

sophy) of the Orient. We are told that some of the strange

Noises that will occur towards the end of the prakritika-manvan-

tara, before the cosmic or prakritika-pralaya sets in, are strange

hollow boomings, strange cracklings as of musketry-fire, strange

bell-like ringings as of the snapping of immense metallic belts.

Now the sun is both the heart and the brain of our solar system,

and sends seven-faceted life into every atom of its universe, the

solar universe of which we and our planet Terra are a part. The

sun itself is in some respects a vampire, but it is also pre-eminently

and essentially a life-giver ; it is, cosmogonically, our Elder

Brother, and not at all our physical parent as modern scientific

wiseacres would have it ; it is also in a vital sense our Father-

Mother, because through it, from planes superior to our own,

come down the life-streams from worlds (systems) above ours

yet our planet as all the other planets also in a relative degree

receives these life-streams, as every individual atom and every

human being, in the smallest miniature thereof, receives the same

individually from the Inmost of the Inmost within itself or him-

self. This is, as you will remember was stated in former studies,

the same spiritual life ; but cosmically, that is to say, with regard

to the universe, the sun is the brain and heart of our system,

vitalizing and informing the endless hosts of beings under its

systemic sway.

We do not see the (true) sun. The sun is not burning, or

incandescent. Heat exists around the sun, but it is not from

burning gases or incandescence. We see the sun's robes, or

reflexion, but we do not see the sun itself. It is, in very truth, a

spiritual thing, and we think we receive our entire supply of heat

and light from it because the forces flowing from the sun act in

conjunction and reactively with the forces on our own earth

forces working in the universal nature around us. If most of our

light is due to the sun, this is not the case with 75 per cent of the

heat which we receive, which comes most of it from our own

globe and its forces, and especially from the immensely thick

clouds of cosmic dust which fills all space. The electro-magnetic

forces at work between this cosmic dust and our earth furnish

most of the terrestrial heat.

I wish this evening, before closing, to call your attention to

the fact that the ancient initiate-astronomers, when speaking of the

seven sacred spheres of our universe, the seven or nine in which

the bodies of the solar system and the stars were set beyond

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 95

which was the Empyrean or the fiery sphere desired to convey a

meaning which is now lost for the masses. There was a meaning

of deep and wide significance also in their geocentric teachings.

They knew as well as do we (and we have proofs of it), that the

earth and the other planets whirl around the sun in elliptical

orbits, but they had a reason for teaching the geocentric doctrines

in public, and some day we shall have need to go into an analysis

and proof of this assertion.

Let us close our evening's study in calling attention to the fact

that Theosophy is a doctrine of hope ; it is a doctrine of spiritu-

ality ; it is a doctrine which refines and elevates man ; it is a

doctrine in which there is room for the humblest to understand

something and for the brightest and highest and most spiritual

of us to put their feet on the lowest steps of that spiritual stair

along which they may climb in hierarchical ascendings up to the

highest, not only in our own planet, hand in hand with the great

Buddhas of former times, and of the times to come, but beyond

our planet and beyond our own solar system into those illimitable

spiritual spheres in which the solar system now exists, and through

which we derive our life spiritual, mental, psychical, pranic, and

physical.

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CHAPTER X

THE DOCTRINE OF SWABIiAvA SELF-BECOMING CHARACTERISTIC

INDIVIDUALITY. MAN, SELF-EVOLVED, HIS OWN CREATOR.

" MONADOLOGIE " OF LEIBNITZ CONTRASTED WITH TEACHINGS

OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY.

The MONAD emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconscious-

ness ; and, skipping the first two planes too near the ABSOLUTE to permit of any

correlation with anything on a lower plane it gets direct into the plane of

Mentality. But there is no plane in the whole universe with a wider margin,

or a wider field of action in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and

apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in its turn an appropriate

smaller plane for every " form," from the " mineral " monad up to the time

when that monad blossoms forth by evolution into the DIVINE MONAD. But all

the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations,

throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or

the partial or total obscuration of matter two polar antitheses as it ascends

into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of materiality.

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY) I, p. 175.

.... In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an

independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure

Essence of the Universal Sixth principle or the OVER-SOUL has (a) passed

through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and

(b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and

self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees

of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant,

up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the

Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won

by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of

metempsychoses and reincarnations.

Ibid., I, p. 17.

HE general text of our study this evening is found in

The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 83, stanza 3,

verse 10 :

10. FATHER-MOTHER SPIN A WEB WHOSE UPPER END IS

FASTENED TO SPIRIT (Purusha), THE LIGHT OF THE ONE DARKNESS,

AND THE LOWER ONE TO MATTER (Prakriti) ITS (the Spirit's) SHADOWY

END ; AND THIS WEB IS THE UNIVERSE SPUN OUT OF THE TWO SUB-

STANCES MADE IN ONE, WHICH IS SWABHAVAT.

(a) In the Mndukya (Mundaka) Upanishad it is written, " As a

spider throws out and retracts its web, as herbs spring up in the

ground ... so is the Universe derived from the undecaying one "

(I, i, 7). Brahma, as " the germ of unknown Darkness," is the material

from which all evolves and develops " as the web from the spider, as

foam from the water," etc. This is only graphic and true, if Brahmi

the " Creator " is, as a term, derived from the root brih, to increase

or expand. Brahm& " expands " and becomes the Universe woven

out of his own substance.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 97

The same idea has been beautifully expressed by Goethe, who

says :

" Thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,

And weave for God the garment thou see'st Him by."

In the course of our studies we have been advancing stage by

stage, step by step, from general principles, and our course has

been always towards that point of emanation and evolution which

finds itself at the dawn of manifestation, or the opening of Man-

vantara. We have touched upon many subjects but lightly,

because the intricacy of the theme did not at the time permit us

to go into and to follow side-avenues of thought, however attrac-

tive and important they might be ; but these avenues we shall

have to explore as time and opportunity bring once more before

us, in the course of our study, the portals which we have passed

and perhaps have merely glanced into.

As the Teacher has directed, we have brought to the attention

of those who will read these studies certain fundamental natural

principles, as fundamental and important in their respective

bearings as the two foundation-stones of popular Theosophy

today, called Reincarnation and Karman. One of these principles

is the doctrine of Hierarchies, upon which much more could and

should be said than has hitherto been said, and it will be said in

due time.

Another such fundamental principle or doctrine a true key

opening the very heart of being, and, besides other things, reaching

into the root-meaning of the so-called " origin of evil " and of the

inner urge towards right and righteousness, which man calls his

moral sense is that which flows forth from the philosophical

conceptions behind the word Swabhava, meaning, generally, the

essential characteristic of anything ; the mediaeval scholastics

spoke of this essentiality of things as their Quidditas, or Quiddity,

the whatness of anything : that which is its heart, its essential

nature, its characteristic essentiality. The word Swabhava (a noun)

itself is derived from the Sanskrit root BM, meaning " to become ",

or " to be ", and the prefix of the word, the three preceding

letters, sva, is also of course Sanskrit and means " self/ 1 The

word thus translated means " self-becomingness ", a technical

term, a key-word, in which philosophical conceptions of immense

and wide-reaching import inhere. We shall develop some of these

more fully as we proceed with our studies.

In the quotation from the stanzas which we have read this

evening, you will have noticed the word Swabhavat, from the

same elements as is Swabhava, from the same Sanskrit root.

Swabhavat is the present participle of the verb bhu, meaning

that which becomes itself, or develops from within outwardly its

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

essential self by emanation, evolution ; in other words, that which

by self-urge develops the potencies latent in its nature, in its self,

in its Being of being. We have often spoken of the " Inmost of the

Inmost ", as implying that " inmost " link or root by which we

(and all other things) flow forth from the very essence of the heart

of things, which is our UTTER SELF, and we have spoken of it

sometimes with the hand placed upon the breast ; but we must

be exceedingly careful not to think that this Inmost of the Inmost

is in the physical body. Let me explain just what I mean.

The Qabbalists divide the planes of nature into which the ten

Sephiroth became queer English, this, but very accurately and

correctly expressing the thought into four during manifestation,

and they were called the four 'Oldm, a word having originally the

meaning of " concealed " or " hid " or " secret ", but also used

for time, likewise used almost exactly in the sense of the Gnostic

teaching of " Aions ", (aeons) as spheres, Lokas in Sanskrit. The

highest of the Qabbalistic 'olams, or spheres, was 'Oldm Atsiloth,

meaning the " seon " or " age " or the " loka " of " condensation/'

The second was called 'Oldm Hab-Beriah, meaning the aeon or age

or loka of " creation ". The third in descent and increasing

materiality was called 'Oldm Ha-Yetstrah or loka of Form. The

fourth, last, most material and grossest, was called 'Oldm Ha-

'Asiah, meaning the seon or world of " action " or "causes ".

This last plane or sphere or world is the lowest of the four, and is

sometimes called the world of Matter, or, again, of " shells ",

man (and other physical entities) sometimes being considered

a shell in the sense of being the garment or the vehicle or " shell "

or corpus of the indwelling spirit.

Now psychologically these four spheres were considered as being

copied, or reflected, or as having a locus (place) in the human

body ; and, in order to correspond with the four basic principles

into which the Jewish Qabbalistic philosophers divided man,

Neshdmdh (or spirit) was supposed to have its locus in the head,

or rather hovering thereover ; the second, RAahh (or Soul), was

supposed to have its locus or center in the breast or chest ; the

third, the lowest of the active principles, called Nefesh (or the

animal-astral soul), was supposed to have its locus or center in

the abdomen. The fourth vehicle was Guf, or the inclosing shell

of the physical body. The "Neshdmdh, the highest of all, from

which the others emanated stage by stage, the Rtiahh from the

Neshamah, the Nefesh from the Rtiahh, and the Guf from the

Nefesh (the Guf actually is the linga-Sarira, esoterically, and

secretes the human physical body) should not be considered so

much in the head as over-shadowing as it were the head and body.

It may be likened to a solar ray, or to an electric ray, or again

to the so-called " golden chain " of the great Greek poet Homer

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 99

and the far later Neo-Platonic philosophers, which connects Zeus

and all lower entities ; or to the chain of beings in a Hierarchy

linked by their hyparxis with the lowest plane of the next higher

Hierarchy.

Now this " Inmost of the Inmost " is in that part of us which

overshadows us, which is above us physically, rather than in us.

And it really is our spiritual Monad. Therefore, before we can

know what we mean by the Swabhava, and the wonderful

doctrine fundamentally emanating therefrom, we must under-

stand what we mean by Monad and the sense in which the word

Monad is used. Those who were students of H. P. Blavatsky

while she was alive with us, and who have studied under our

two other Teachers, W. Q. Judge, and the present one, Katherine

Tingley, will realise the necessity of making our sense clear by

choosing words which shall convey clearly and sensibly, and

without possibility of misconception, the thoughts which lie

behind the words. In European philosophy, monad, as a philo-

sophical word, seems to have been first employed by the great

Italian philosopher, the noted Giordano Bruno, in thought a

Neo-Platonist, who derived his inspiration from the philosophy

of Greece, now called Neo-Platonism ; a more modern use of the

word monad, in a spiritual-philosophical sense, was that of the

Slavic-German philosopher, Leibnitz. Monadism formed the heart

of all his teachings, and he said that the universe was composed,

built up, of monads : that is to say, he conceived them to be

spiritual centers having no extension, but having an inner and

inherent energy of development, the respective hosts of monads

being of various degrees and each one achieving its own develop-

ment by an innate characteristic nature (or Swabhava). The

essential meaning of this, as it is at once seen, is characteristic

Individuality, which is Self, pursuing its own unfoldment and

growing by stages higher and higher through self-unfolding or

self-becoming (or Swabhava). Leibnitz taught that these monads

were connected, spiritually, psychically, and physically, by a

" law of harmony ", as he expressed it, which is our Swabhavat

the Self-Existent, developing during manifestation into the Hosts

of monads, or monadic centers.

Now Leibnitz seems to have taken (at least in part) the main

philosophical conception, as regards his monads, as developed in

his philosophy in his Monadologie from the Flemish-Nether-

landish mystic, Van Helmont. This man Van Helmont, however,

took it from Bruno, or, perhaps, directly, as Bruno did, from the

Neo-Platonic philosophers. As far as the basic ideas of Bruno,

Van Helmont, and Leibnitz go, they very much resemble each

other ; they resemble also the teaching on this subject of the

Esoteric Wisdom, Esoteric Theosophy, but only in so far as we

zoo

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

consider manifestation, because the monads themselves, in their

ultimate, enter into the " silence and darkness ", as Pythagoras

would have put it, when the great Maha-Pralaya or cosmical

Dissolution begins. A monad in the ancient teachings now called

Theosophy remember that " Theosophy " really means the

Wisdom which the Gods or divine beings study, a truly divine

thing means a spiritual atom we are compelled here to use

popular language ; and a spiritual atom is equivalent to saying

pure Individuality, the selfness of the Self, the essential nature or

characteristic or Swabhavic core of every spiritual being, the

self of itself. This Esoteric Wisdom derives this Self not its ego,

which is an entirely different and lower and inferior thing it

derives this divine Monad, it derives this divine Substance-

consciousness, from the Paramatman (which we have studied

before), the so-called " Supreme " Self, not that this Supreme

Self is God in the curiously contradictory Christian sense, not

supreme in that sense, but supreme in the sense of absolute,

unconditioned, and all-pervading universality for and in a single

cosmical aggregation of Hierarchies, for it is the summit, acme,

pinnacle, and Source thereof.

Now, if we remember what we have studied in our former

meetings in this connexion, and the conceptions that we figurated

on the blackboard by means of paradigmatic schemes, or diagrams,

we shall recollect that we represented the highest that we could

intellectually conceive of as a triangle, figuring it thus in our

minds not that this highest actually is a triangle, which would

be ludicrous, but representing it diagrammatically to ourselves

in that fashion ; and the highest sphere in the mathematical

sense of being without physical extension as we conceive of such

from which all the succeeding ten steps, planes, degrees of any

Hierarchy radiated, we called the Boundless, the Without Bounds,

the Ain Suph as the Qabbalists said : and that the two aspects

of the Boundless formed, so to speak, the two sides of this divine

triangle, one of these two aspects being Para-Brahman (" beyond

Brahman "), and the other being Mulaprakriti (or " root-nature ").

It must be remembered, in this connexion, that any diagram-

matic representation may and often does figurate different

conceptions when the premisses differ. And next, that from this

divine triangle there was a reflexion, as it were, an emanation,

into the lower shadow, into the substance or matter below, the

rays of the upper sun shining into the lower atmosphere, so to say,

and illuminating it, and that this lower illuminated atmosphere

or substance was called the lower monad, and the upper was called

the higher monad ; and that, as the energy or life-waves swept

downwards through the second monad or the lower monad, the

square or manifested nature came into being as the third stage of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 101

evolution. With the premisses before stated, therefore, this upper

triangle, which may be considered as one, or a trinity in unity, is

the upper monad, or the Inmost of the Inmost, the self of the

Self ; and the lower triangle is its emanation, its three lines

representing Father, Mother, and Son. The Father, again, may

be considered as the Primal Point of the second or lower triangle,

that is to say the point forming the apex of the triangle, which

is a laya-center through which stream down into our sphere the

manifesting forces which themselves become the universe. (See the

figure infra.)

And herein we may see an example of the philosophical value

of the hierarchical system considered as a representation of

Nature's symmetrical architecture, because each stage of the

downward progress, each step or plane downwards, is informed,

insouled, by the upper parts which remain above ; while the

lower planes or parts are spiritually and ethereally and physically

secreted and excreted step by step, plane after plane, and cast

forth like foam on the substratal waves of life. The physical

nature as we see it even on this our own plane, is, so to speak,

concreted divinity, and it actually is concreted light, because

light is ethereal matter or substance.

Some day we shall have to study this question of spirit and

substance, force and matter, and their relations and interactions,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

more thoroughly than we have been able to do thus far in our

lectures.

Now, from the highest of the highest, from what is to us the

unknown of the unknown, the inmost of the Inmost, through all

these planes, there streams down, as it were, the Divine Ray,

passing from one Hierarchy to another Hierarchy below it, and

then to another still lower, and then to a third yet more material,

and so on till the limit of the cosmical aggregate is reached, when

it begins to ascend along the stupendous Round, returning

towards its primal Source. Note carefully that as it descends it

evolves these various Hierarchies from itself ; and on its ascending

Round, draws them back into itself again. Surrounding this

immense spiritual aggregate, we are taught to conceive an aura

as it were, taking the shape of an egg, which we can call, if you like,

following the example of the Qabbalists, the Shechindh, a Hebrew

word meaning dwelling or vehicle, or what the Esoteric Philosophy

calls the Auric Egg in the case of man, and representing in this

paradigmatic scheme the universe which we see around us in its

highest aspects, for this aura is the very outgrowth of mula-

prakriti ; while this mystical line which we draw in the figure as

running down through all the various grades of the Hierarchy, is

the stream of the Self, the Unconditioned Consciousness, welling

up in the inmost of everything.

Now to come back to the word Swabhavat, the " s0//-becom-

ing ", the " srf/-Existing ". It is, in the super-spiritual, following

the above paradigmatic scheme, the second Divine Monad or

second Divine Logos ; or, looking at it in another and lower way,

it is the first cosmic Monad, the reflexion of the primeval or primal

Divine Monad above it, and is the first manifestation or quiver

of cosmic life when the end of universal pralaya having come,

the cry goes forth, so to say, on the watch-tower of eternity,

" Let there be manifestation and light ! "

The Elohim in a former stage were Monads ; and you remember

that we translated verses 25, 26, and 27 of the first chapter of

Genesis, a translation radically different from that given in any

European translation, and we saw that these Elohim said, " Let

us make man in our own shadow, (or phantom) (that is, in our

own shadow-selves or matter-selves), and in our own pattern ",

in other words, they made man by becoming him ; in other words

again, Humanity is the lower principles of the Elohim themselves

as Monads.

So the monad is the inmost of ourselves, not as a soul, as a

" gift of God ", but as the highest part of ourselves ; and our very

bodies are concreted spirit, which is on this plane the lowest, the

shadowy end, the matter-end, of the self-Hierarchy which each

one of us is.

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Let us remember again that each Hierarchy has its SwabMva,

or specific characteristic. To exemplify it by colors, one Hier-

archy is predominantly blue, another is predominantly red,

another green, another yellow or golden, and so on ; but each

one has its own forty-nine roots or divisions, forty-nine aspects

of the one underlying Root-Substance common to all, so that of

necessity each one of these forty-nine in its turn develops one of

the other colors. So that, if we could perceive it spiritually, we

should see all nature around us everywhere flashing and corusca-

ting in a most marvelous interplay of colors a wonderful picture !

This is sheer fact, not a metaphor. And, furthermore, there is

for every Kosmos a cosmic Hierarchy which includes all the

lesser Hierarchies thereof, and each Hierarchy, large or small, is

linked on, above and below, (or outward and inward) to other

Hierarchies, higher and lower, and each separate, individual

Hierarchy consists of nine (or ten) planes or degrees. Seven of

these are, throughout, on the manifesting planes. Hence, a

Hierarchy, strictly speaking, consists of ten planes housing ten

states of matter and ten forces ; but seven thereof are manifesting

forces ; the seven in manifestation run from the arupa (or form-

less) to the rupa (or form) worlds ; and they are all linked together,

co-ordinated together, combined together, beyond present human

conception or understanding.

It is along these lines of spiritual thought that the dogmatic

religious or scientific system quarrels, if we may use this expres-

sion, with the Esoteric Philosophy, because that system is based

at least as regards the scientific view upon purely mechanical

and materialistic hypotheses, invented by the scientists of the

last century concerning the nature and action of what is called

" matter " and " force ", as if there could in reason be a true

definition or explanation of these two on a basis of fortuitous

mechanicalism arising out of utterly lifeless " matter ".

Let us say now, although it is departing a little from our main

theme, that force is simply matter on a higher plane ethereal

matter, if you will ; and that physical matter is simply force on our

plane : matter actually is naught but concreted force ; or, to reverse

the idea, force is nothing but sublimated or etherealized matter,

because the two, matter and spirit, are one. It is best and truest

to say that matter is concreted or compacted force ; just as

Nature (matter as we know it) is equilibrated spirit.

Now we may once more return to this wonderful teaching of

Swabhava, after this rather long but necessary explanation or

introduction. The Monad is our inmost Self ; each man has his

own or rather is his own Monad ; each being of whatever

degree or kind has its particular characteristic nature not

merely the outer or vehicular characteristics that change from

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

incarnation to incarnation, and from manvantara to manvantara

but every entity, high or low, has, so to say, a keynote of its

being, and this is its Swabhava : the selfhood of the S^lf , essential

characteristic of the Self, by the urge of which the Self becomes

the many selves, producing and manifesting the hosts of varied

qualities and types and degrees. Now note carefully : The

urge behind evolution or development is not external to the evolving

entity but within itself ; and the future results to be achieved in

evolution that which the evolving entity becomes lie in germ or

seed in itself ; both this urge and this germ or seed, arise out of

one thing, and THIS is ITS SWABHAVA.

Remember what we said in our former study about the nature

and evolution of the universe. What is a or any universe ?

It is a self-contained and self-sustained and self-sufficient entity in

manifestation, but is merely one of countless hosts of other uni-

verses, all children of the Boundless ; there is, for instance, an

atomic universe, and a terrestrial or planetary universe, and a

man or human universe, and a solar universe, and so on indefi-

nitely ; yet all hang together, interpenetrate each other, and

form any cosmical aggregate. And how and why ? Because each

universe, great or small, is a Hierarchy, and each Hierarchy

represents and is the development of and is a part of the spiritual

urge and evolving germ arising out of the Self, thereof, of the Self

of each, each developing and evolving its own particular essential

characteristic ; and all these forces taken together are the

Swabhava of any entity. Swabhava, in short, may be called the

essential Individuality of any monad, expressing its own charac-

teristics, qualities, and type, by self-urged evolution.

We should note also in passing, that perhaps the most mystic

school in Buddhism, which H. P. Blavatsky says has practically

kept most faithfully to this one of the esoteric teachings of

Gautama-Buddha, is a school still extant in Nepal, which is called

the Swabhavika school, a Sanskrit adjective derived from the

noun Swabhava ; this school comprises those who follow the

doctrine of Swabhava, or the doctrine which teaches the becoming

or unfolding of the Self by inner impulse the 5^//-becoming. We

do not, according to it, become " through the grace of a God " ; we

become whatever we are or are to be through our own selves ; we

make ourselves ; derive ourselves from ourselves ; become our own

children; have always done so, and will for ever do so. This applies

not only to man, but to all beings everywhere. Herein we see the

root, the force, the meaning, of morals. Responsible for every act

we do, for every thought we think, responsible to the uttermost

farthing, never anything " forgiven ", never anything " wiped

out ", except when we ourselves turn the evil we have done into

good. We shall have to discuss more fully, some time, the question

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 105

of the " origin of evil " which is involved herein. We may note

in passing that this school is called " atheistic " and " material-

istic ", simply because of two reasons : first, the profound

thought of this doctrine is misinterpreted by Occidental scholars ;

second, many of its followers have, in fact, degenerated.

You see immediately the ethical force of such a doctrine as this

of the Swabhava, when it is properly understood. We become, what

we are in germ in our inmost essence ; we also follow and make a

part of (likewise) the type and the course of evolution of the

particular planetary chain to which we belong by affinity, of

which we spoke briefly in our last meeting. We first follow along

the shadowy arc down into matter, and when we have reached

the lowest point of that arc, then, through the inner impulses of

our nature, through what our present Teacher Katherine Tingley

calls " self-directed evolution " which is the very heart of this

doctrine of Swabhava, one of the most fundamental doctrines in

the esoteric philosophy when we have reached the bottom, I

repeat, then the same inner impulse carries us (provided that we

have passed the danger-point of being attracted into the lower

sphere of matter) up the luminous arc, up and back into the

higher spiritual spheres, but beyond the point of departure

whence we first started downward on our cyclical journey into

material experience for that Manvantara.

We make our own bodies, we make our own lives, we make

our own destinies, and we are responsible for it all, spiritually,

morally, intellectually, psychically, and even physically. It is a

manly doctrine ; there is no room in it for moral cowardice ;

no room in it for casting our responsibility upon the shoulders of

another God, angel, man, or demon. We can become Gods,

because we are gods in the germ even now, inwardly. We start

upon our evolutionary journey as an unself conscious God-spark,

and we return to our primal source of being, following the great

cycle of the Maha-Manvantara, a self-conscious God.

Let us say here that we have come at this point to what is

a great puzzle for most of our Occidental Orientalists. They

cannot understand the distinctions that the wonderful old

philosophers of the Orient make as regards the various classes

of the Devas. They say, in substance : " What funny contra-

dictions there are in these teachings, which in many respects are

profound and seem so wonderful. Some of these Devas (or divine

beings) are said to be less than man ; some of these writings even

say that a good man is nobler than any god. And yet other parts

of these teachings declare that there are gods higher even than

the Devas, and yet are called Devas. What does this mean ? "

The Devas or divine beings, one class of them, are the unself-

conscious sparks of Divinity, cycling down into matter in order

io6

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

to bring out from 'within themselves and to unfold or evolve self-

consciousness, the Swabhava of Divinity within. They begin

their reascent always on the luminous arc, which never ends, in a

sense ; and they are Gods, S//-conscious Gods, henceforth, taking

a definite and divine part in the " great work ", as the Mystics

have said, of being builders, evolvers, leaders, of Hierarchies ;

in other words, they are monads which have become their own inner-

most selves ; which have passed the " Ring Pass-Not ", separating

the spiritual from the divine. Remember and reflect upon these

old sayings in our books ; every one of them is pregnant with

meaning, full of thought.

Now this, therefore, is the doctrine of Swabhava : the doctrine

of inner development, of bringing out that particular essential

characteristic, or Individuality, which is within, of self-directed

evolution ; and you must perforce see the immense reach that

it has in the moral world, in the theological world, in the philo-

sophical world, yea, even in the scientific world as regards the

knotty problems of evolution, such as the " evolution of species ",

inheritance, development of root-types, and many more.

We shall one day have to study more carefully, than the mere

sketch we have given here, these divine, very divine, doctrines,

especially in their bearing on questions of human psychology ;

for upon these doctrines depends the further (and a better) com-

prehension of the very tenets which we have outlined this evening

and at former meetings. We cannot understand the universe

nor the working and interplay of the forces therein until we have

mastered at least to some degree, and followed out, the injunction

of the Delphic Oracle, " Man, Know Thyself 1 " A man who

knows himself truly, knows all, because he is, fundamentally, all.

He is every Hierarchy ; he is gods and demons and worlds and

spheres and forces, and matter and c6nsciousness and spirit

everything is in him. He is in one sense built of the roots of

everything, and he is the fruit of everything ; he has endless

time behind him and endless time before him. What a gospel of

hope, what a gospel of wonder, is this ; how it raises the human

soul ; how the inmost part of us aspires when we reflect upon this

teaching ! No wonder that it is called the " teaching (or Wisdom)

of the Gods ", Theosophia that is to say, the teaching which

the Gods themselves study. How does a man become a Mahat-

man or Great Self ? Through self-directed evolution, through

becoming that which he is in himself, in his innermost. This is the

doctrine of SwabMva.

And here we should at least allude to the mystery of individu-

ality. Remember that personality is the mask (persona, as the

Latins said) or reflexion in matter of the individuality ; but being

a material thing it can lead us downward, although it is in essence

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 107

a reflexion of the highest. It is an old saying that those things

are most dangerous which have reality or truth in them ; not

those things which are truly unreal or false, because they of them-

selves fall to pieces and evanish away in time.

Monads, psychologically (we have the four monads, the divine,

intellectual, psychical, and astral, corresponding to the four

basic planes of matter, but all four Monads deriving from the

highest) from the standpoint of generalization, are spiritual atoms,

Buddhic atoms, being universal principles so far as are concerned

the planes below, the Buddhi being perhaps the most mysterious

of the seven principles of man, and, from our present viewpoint,

the most important. But the human monad (as contrasted with

the divine monad above it), the potentially immortal man, com-

prises the three principles, Atman, Buddhi, and the higher Manas.

These three principles are required in order to make a self-

conscious God. Atman and Buddhi alone cannot make a self-

conscious God ; they are a god-spark, an undeveloped or un-

evolved God-spark. We have to use in this connexion human

terms ; we have not the proper terms in English nor in any other

European language properly to express these subtil thoughts.

In conclusion, let us remember that while each man has the

"Christ" within himself, and can be "saved" only by that

" Christ ", he can be saved by that inner " Christ " only when

he chooses to save himself ; the initiative must come from below,

from himself. And while some people, through misunderstanding

of this wonderful doctrine of Swabhava, may speak of " fatalism ",

we can do no more this evening than to say emphatically that this

doctrine is not fatalism ; it is absolutely the contrary of the

fatalistic hypothesis, which asserts that there is a blind or un-

known or conscious or unconscious force outside of man, directing

him, driving him, in his choice, acts, and evolution, to annihilation

or heaven or hell. That is not the doctrine of Swabhava and it

is not taught in the Esoteric Philosophy.

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CHAPTER XI

THE COSMIC PILGRIMAGE. FROM UN-SELF-CONSCIOUS GODSPARK

TO FULLY SELF-CONSCIOUS GOD.

Unveil, O Thou that givest sustenance to the Universe, from whom all

proceeds, to whom all must return, the face of the True Sun, now hidden by a

vase of Golden Light, that we may see the Truth and do our whole duty on our

journey towards thy Sacred Seat,

Paraphrase of The Gdyatri, one of the most

sacred verses of the Hindu Scriptures.

N page 605 of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine

find the following :

^L^^r But one has to understand the phraseology of Occultism

before criticising what it asserts. For example, the Doctrine

refuses (as Science does, in one sense) to use the words " above " and

"below," "higher" and "lower," in reference to invisible spheres, as

being without meaning. Even the terms "East ' ' and ' ' West ' ' are merely

conventional, necessary only to aid our human perceptions. For, though

the Earth has its two fixed points in the poles, North and South, yet

both East and West are variable relatively to our own position on the

Earth's surface, and in consequence of its rotation from West to East.

Hence, when " other worlds " are mentioned whether better or worse,

more spiritual or still more material, though both invisible the

Occultist does not locate these spheres either outside or inside our

Earth, as the theologians and the poets do ; for their location is no-

where in the space known to, and conceived by, the profane. They are,

as it were, blended with our world interpenetrating it and inter-

penetrated by it. There are millions and millions of worlds and

firmaments visible to us ; there are still greater numbers beyond

those visible to the telescopes, and many of the latter kind do not

belong to our objective sphere of existence. Although as invisible

as if they were millions of miles beyond our solar system, they are yet

with us, near us, within our own world, as objective and material to

their respective inhabitants as ours is to us. But, again, the relation

of these worlds to ours is not that of a series of egg-shaped boxes

enclosed one within the other, like the toys called Chinese nests ;

each is entirely under its own special laws and conditions, having no

direct relation to our sphere. The inhabitants of these, as already

said, may be, for all we know, or feel, passing through and around us

as if through empty space, their very habitations and countries being

inter-blended with ours, though not disturbing our vision, because

we have not yet the faculties necessary for discerning them.

This seems to be a very appropriate general text for us to

choose in closing our sketch of the Hierarchies ; and more

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 109

particularly this evening our development of the doctrine of

Swabhava, upon which we touched in our last meeting the

doctrine of the characteristic nature, of the individuality, or type-

essentiality, of each individual monad, growing and manifesting

and becoming itself in the manifested world in which it is itself

the seed of its own individuality. The bearing of this concept on

the doctrine of evolution " rolling out or unfolding of what is

within " and especially on the mooted and knotty problem of

the so-called " origin of species ", is simply immense, for it is

the key thereof.

We can use the word individuality for the meaning of Swabhava,

provided we do not use it in contradistinction with personality.

It is individuality in the sense of signifying the being and the

unfolding of that particular quality or essential characteristic

which distinguishes one monad, one human entity, one cosmos,

one atom, from another of the same kind. Fundamental as

is the doctrine of Hierarchies, and illuminating as is the

light that it throws upon other problems, it itself cannot be

properly understood without its complementary doctrine of

Swabhava ; and, vice versa, we cannot properly understand the

doctrine of Swabhava without understanding the doctrine of

Hierarchies.

We hope this evening to develop the true meaning of Swabhava,

and thus to finish this part of our study, having now reached the

frontiers, as it were, of cosmical manifestation ; and in beginning

our study of it in detail, we are obliged to touch upon a very

essential aspect of the Doctrine, another aspect of it which is

fundamental for the proper understanding of this portion of the

teaching of the Ancient Wisdom ; it is a portion which pertains

to psychology. Indeed, this doctrine of Hierarchies and this its

complementary doctrine of Swabhava, are both in a very large

measure fundamentally psychological.

Swabhava is a Sanskrit term, a noun derived from the root

BM, meaning " to become ", and hence " to be ", a psychological

concord which is found also in several other languages, as in both

Greek and English for instance. In Greek the word is gignomai ;

and in English it is be. In old Anglo-Saxon we have this word

with the essential future sense completely retained and psycho-

logically distinctly felt ; to wit : ic beo, thu bist or byst t he bith or

biath, etc., meaning " I, thou, he will be ", in the future sense of

become. It is obvious that the psychological force of this means

that being is essentially a becoming a growth or evolution or

unfolding of inner faculty.

English, as a matter of fact, had originally and still has only

the two natural grammatical tenses the imperfect tense, or the

tense of imperfect or incomplete action, commonly called the

no

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

" present " ; and the perfect tense of perfected or completed

action, or the past.

Now what constitutes one Hierarchy, as different in essence

or Swabhava from another Hierarchy ? It is its Swabh.va, or

the seed of individuality which is it and is in it. It is that seed,

which developing, makes a Hierarchy, and that seed in developing,

follows the laws (or rather nature] of its own essential being, and

this is its Swabhava. In The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky

often speaks of one particular quality or plane of Universal Being,

which she calls Swabhavat, the neuter present participle of the

same root Bhu (spoken of a moment agone) and used as a noun.

Like Swabhava, it is derived from the same root, with the same

prefix, and means that particular thing which exists and becomes

of and in its own essential essence ; call it the " Self -Existent ",

if you like ; it is, though a Sanskrit word, a Buddhistic term,

and its Brahmanical equivalent in the Vedanta would probably

be the cosmical side of Paramatman ''Supreme SELF", the

individualized aspect of Parabrahman-Mulaprakriti Superspirit-

Rootmatter.

Swabhavat is the spiritual essence, the fundamental root or

Spirit-Substance, the Father-Mother of the beginning of mani-

festation, and from it grow or become all things. It can be

conceived of as Spinoza did the Netherlandish Jewish phil-

osopher, the absolute idealist as God, as the one Underlying

Being or Substance ; though in our studies we have eschewed

most sedulously the use of the term " God ", for a reason herein-

after to be set forth. Or it can be conceived of as Leibnitz did,

as a collective Unity of an infinitude of emanated monads or

" entelechies ", to use Aristotle's term. Spinoza was an absolute

idealist, while Leibnitz was an "objective idealist ", which we

also are, by the way. Swabhava is the characteristic nature, the

type-essence, the individuality, of Swabhavat of any Swab-

havat, each such Swabhavat having its own Swabhava.

Now the main and essential meaning of the doctrine of Swab-

hava is the following and it is so fundamental, so important in

order properly to understand what follows, that we are going

emphatically to urge it upon the attention of everyone. When

cosmical manifestation begins or opens, it does not open helter-

skelter, in disordered confusion, or by chance ; it begins in con-

formity with the characteristic seeds of life, called, commonly,

" laws ", which have been in latent existence through the period

of the maha-pralaya preceding the beginning of the new man-

vantara, and these " laws " we use the term under strong

protest are really the intrinsic and ineluctable karmic habits of

nature to be this or that, its Swabh&vas, in short its hosts of

innumerable entities or essential natures ; and these " laws "

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY in

are actually impressed, stamped, upon ethereal and physical

matter by the monadic essences or the monads. The SwabMvas

of the monads give their Swabhavic natures to Nature ! The

monads are individuals, and conceiving them as collected together

in a unity and forming a body of a still greater Monad, Leibnitz

gave to this greatest Monad the Latin term Manas Monadum

the " Monad of monads 11 . This Monad is, in short, our Hier-

archical summit, of which we have several times spoken before.

But where is there any need to call this " Monad of monads ", this

Hierarchical apex or summit, " God " ? We can conceive of

something still higher, and so forth almost at will. To stop at

any point and call it " God " would simply be creating a deity

a " God " man-made, truly !

However, a man must pause somewhere in thought. So we

begin with Swabhava, which, being an abstract term, is not a

limit or boundary in itself. It is pure Individuality working in

spirit-matter of which it is the highest part, or summit. Now

this essential nature (or Swabhava) of a monad develops and

becomes in matter a Hierarchy, whether that Hierarchy be an

atom, a man, a planet, a sun, a solar system, or a cosmical

universe (or a universal cosmos) such as we find within the

encircling zone of the Milky Way. The monad does so following

the driving essential urge of its own inner essence, its individu-

ality, its Swabhava. Hence it is that as the monads are

individuals, so are the resultant Hierarchies individualized. And

generalizing, as the monad grows into or becomes the Hierarchy,

descending the " shadowy arc " that is, descending into matter

as it becomes matter in its lower parts the upper portion of the

monad remaining always in its own pure unadulterated state it

reaches a certain point which is the end of its cyclical develop-

ment for that period of evolution (or manvantara), and then it

begins cycling upward and back again, and this part of its journey

is called the " luminous arc ", because its tendency is towards

" light ", or spirit, following the phraseology of the ancient

sages.

We studied some time ago in the Hebrew Bible, Chapter I,

verses 25 and 26, how the Elohim (in the translation that we

made) said : " Let us make ' man ' in our own shadowy image

(in our own shadow), and in our archetypal pattern ". These

E16him who so " spoke " were monads, together forming a

Hierarchy, each one of them, again, a Hierarchy by itself. As

each individual man is a subordinate Hierarchy of the greater

Hierarchy of Humanity, so Humanity is a subordinate Hierarchy

of the still greater Hierarchy of the planet, and the planet Terra

a subordinate Hierarchy of the still greater Hierarchy of the

solar system ; and so forth, as long as you care to follow the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

thought. Man is himself composed of less beings ; he himself

is a microcosm, or little universe ; he to these less beings is as a

God he to them is the Monas monadum, the Monad of monads.

We shall later see reasons of great force why we have sedulously

eschewed using this word " God ". It is a colored word, spoiled

with the thoughts which have been tacked on to it, attached to

it ; colored by them all, and it is for these reasons a dangerous

word to use, because both misleading and inadequate.

As this monad in the beginning of manifestation in cosmos

breaks through the laya-center, which you will remember we

have studied before that is to say through the neutral point,

the vanishing-point where spirit becomes matter, or vice versa

(you can call it the Atman of the six lower degrees or principles

which are to follow in sequential evolution) as the descending

monad breaks through the encircling matter of the cosmos around

it, it follows in its course its own inner urge, or, rather, is driven

thereby ; it is self -expressive, but still self-unconscious ; but when

any particular " atomic " part of this cosmic monad reaches

self-consciousness, and becomes a man, the path that its evolution

follows thenceforward is consciously self -directed, as our present

Teacher has so constantly taught us. Up to the time of the

entrance of the S//-conscious mind into man (a matter which we

will explain in a few moments), the evolving entity is under the

impulse, the propulsion, of dire and implacable necessity, which,

however, is most emphatically not fate ; and this is because, up

to this critical point in evolution, the evolving entity is an

imperfect being still : it is not a ^//-conscious thing, but an

unselfconscious godspark. It cannot as yet direct its own

destiny on the planes of manifestation, but automatically follows

the course of the Hierarchy to which it belongs. This spiritual-

mental impotency ceases when the self-conscious state has been

reached, which is in man ; from this moment, in growing degree,

man becomes himself a creator a creator, self-consciously, of

himself ; he reaches upward or inward or outward the adverb

matters not and becomes that which he essentially is within,

continually aspiring toward the Inmost of the Inmost ; and he

finally reaches the point, at the end of this Day of Brahma-

after seven planetary Rounds where he blossoms forth into a

self-conscious god, not yet " God ", or the summit of the Hier-

archy to which he belongs by karmic descent, but a god. No

longer is he a non-self-conscious monad, but a self-conscious

monad, a planetary spirit, a Dhyan-Chohan, to use a beautiful

Buddhistic term, a " Lord of Meditation ", one of that Wondrous

Host of spiritual beings who are the full-blown Flowers of former

World-Periods or Manvantaras. This Wondrous Host are the

Perfect Men of those former World-Periods ; and they guide the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 113

evolution of this planet in its present Manvantara. They are our

own spiritual Lords, Leaders, and Saviors. They supervise us

now in our evolution here, and we follow the path of the general

evolution outlined by them in our own present cyclic pilgrimage.

When we first started on this pilgrimage as un-self-conscious god-

sparks, destined to become self-conscious men in this our Man-

vantara, it was these Dhyan-Chohans Flowers of the former

Manvantara who opened the path for us, who guided our

uncertain steps as we became Men, incarnations of our higher

selves. But when we became self-conscious entities or Men, we

began to guide ourselves ; and to work consciously with them

according to our evolution, to " work with nature ", as H. P.

Blavatsky nobly expressed it, is our highest duty and our brightest

hope. It is our future destiny to become such godlike beings our-

selves, thereafter, in our turn, to inform, inspire, and guide less

evolved entities in future Manvantaras, as we have been informed,

inspired, and guided by them ; and finally, after many kalpas,

after many Days of Brahma each one of such " Days " a period

of seven planetary Rounds we shall become a conscious part

of the Cosmical Logos, the Brahmic Logos, using the phrase

Br&hmic Logos as meaning the highest conscious entitative

intelligence of the solar system ; thence upward and upward

for ever.

We return to our main theme. Now when the monad has

reached the first point of cosmic manifestation, it has already

descended through the first three of the ten planes or degrees or

steps, i.e., through the three planes or degrees or steps forming

the upper triangle or triad of the ten planes, in and on which

the universe is built. It now begins definitely to cycle downward,

and its entrance into cosmic manifestation, as already said, is

the laya-center which is the Atman or universal spirit, no more

belonging to any particular entity or man than does the Atman

of any entity or man in any other planet of any other solar

system. Atman is ourselves merely because it is the link which

connects us with the Higher. As a matter of fact, the human

being or man consists of five principles, because the Atman is

not his except as a " plank of salvation " ; and his gross physical

body is not really a principle at all. This matter of component

principles in man we shall have to go into more fully when we

take up our study of human psychological composition.

Now the upper triangle of the ten above alluded to, actually is

extended or developed out from the monad itself, as the petals and

leaves of a flower are extended or evolved out of its seed : it

draws its life and being from within itself. It is the elemental

world, spiritually speaking ; as the three worlds below our

mineral kingdom are the elemental worlds of ourselves, materially

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

speaking, forming an elemental world, " spiritually " speaking, of

the Hierarchy below our own.

This inner urge driving the monad to express itself in manifesta-

tion and form, is the will of higher beings, working through itself,

of which higher beings it forms an integral part : just as our

brain, or our body, follows the implacable, dire law of necessity,

which we impose upon brain or body by our thoughts and our

will, yet both brain and body are parts of ourself in matter. The

monad must reach self-consciousness in order to " free " itself

and thus become a self-conscious, self-directed god.

These things are so important for properly understanding our

future study that we feel necessitated again and again to return

to them. They are basically fundamental, lying at the very root

of all our teaching. Understand clearly and well that this is

not fatalism. That doctrine runs directly contrary to the doctrine

of Swabhava, the doctrine of s^/-expression.

As an egg unfolds within itself the germ which is to become the

future chick ; or the human egg, the ovum, unfolds the germ

within it which is to become the future child of man, similarly

does the universe develop, similarly does an atom develop, thus

also does a monad develop. It is unfolded within the auric egg.

The human ovum, the seed of the plant, each is nothing but an

egg. The shape may differ, the life-form may differ, but this

has nothing to do with the principle of unfoldment of which we

are speaking. The encasement within the auric egg envelops the

germ of individuality or Swabhava which is destined to follow

its course along its own characteristic line of unfoldment : what

is in the egg or seed comes out, each species according to its own

kind, and this is its Swabhava. The Greek Stoic School taught the

existence both cosmically and infinitesimally of spermatic

logoi, " seed-logoi ", each such spermatic logos producing

creatures after its kind and according to its own essence like the

Hebrew Biblical Elohim and this is again Swabhava.

We saw in our study of the Qabbalah I think it was last

week, or the week before how the highest world unfolded itself

and from itself emanated or evolved the second world, thus

actually becoming the second world : being thus both parent and

child. The second world was thus the child of the first ; the

third was the child of the first and the second ; and the fourth,

the "world of shells " or of beings living in gross bodies, or

" shells " was the child of the first, the second, and the third,

all working together in order to produce this fourth. Note well,

however, that each superior sphere or world remains intact on

its own plane, though evolving from itself the next succeeding

inferior world.

The Stoics had a doctrine of development which in its essence

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 115

is the pure teaching of our own philosophy, though expressed in

different form and under different names. They expressed it

in this wise, following the mechanical mode so agreeable and dear

to the Greek mind. It is curious, by the way, that the Oriental

mind has always preferred to follow the psychological and spiritual

lines of thought, rather than the mechanical, or, as we would

now say, the " scientific ". But the Stoics taught in Greece, and

later in Rome, that the mechanism of the Essential Nature of the

Deity and this essential nature is our Swabhava, what we would

call " Father-Mother " was tension, and slackening of this

tension, this slackening of tension being the first act of World-

Building. They took as an analogy in illustration of the idea the

well known fact that when a metal grows hot it then expands,

and finally is vaporized ; and using this simple matter-of-fact

analogy they said that the " natural " state of Pneuma (" Spirit "

=the Deity) is fire not physical fire, but the seed of that cosmic

element from which physical fire springs. The slackening of this

tension produced the first differentiation of the Primal Substance

or Pneuma =" God " and this differentiation then awoke to

active life the life-seeds, slumbering or latent, which came over

from the previous period of manifested life ; the life-seeds, or

seed-lives their spermatic logoi, alluded to before by us thus

awaking, proceeded to build and guide the forthcoming World

Period and all the entities in it, each such seed-life bringing forth

from itself its essential species, or characteristic essence our

Swabhava. This is the teaching, in miniature, but as the Stoics

gave it, of the Esoteric Philosophy.

Now when the universe was to come forth from its own being,

taught the Stoics, the " tension " of the Primal Substance or

Divine Fire slackened, or contracted as it were, and this con-

traction, by condensation, gave birth to the aether ; next, as the

tension slackened in the aether, this gave birth to " air " ; and

it, next, to " water " ; and it, finally, to " earth ". We are not

speaking of the material fire, air, water, earth, that we see around

us, but we refer to the elements or " seeds " of these, the earth and

the water and the air and the fire that we see around us being

merely material samples or the last progeny, as it were, of the

elemental seeds from which these respectively sprang. " Fire "

gave birth to the " aether ", the latter being its shadow, the

shadow of itself. The " aether " gave birth to its shadow, or

" air ", its encasement or body ; and the " air " to " water " ;

and the " water " to " earth ". The Stoics taught further that

all these things can be respectively transformed one into the

other the dream of the alchemist, and also the dream, psycho-

logically, of initiates in our own School, who aim and strive to

transform the base into the pure, the material into the spiritual.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Returning once more to our main theme, it is to be noted that

naturally, as the Monad the root or the individuality of a

Hierarchy of any kind cycles down into matter, it produces

from itself, it expands outwardly from itself its own shadows (or

lower vehicles) which grow constantly more dense in direct pro-

portion to the greater descent of the Monad. In this connexion

the question arises, that as there are certainly worlds of happiness,

worlds of peace, in the higher spheres, how about those nether

worlds : how about those lowest states of being of which H. P.

Blavatsky speaks as the avichi ? All our Teachers have told us,

and our present Teacher emphasises it constantly, that there is

no hell in the Christian sense. Such a " hell " is a vague bogey

of the imagination ; but there are, in very truth, lower spheres ;

just as there are higher, so there must be lower. There cannot

be good without evil, for the one is the shadow of the other and

balances it in nature. These lowest spheres have a well defined

part to play in the great Cosmic Drama. They are the Cleansing

Houses, so to say, of the souls of those who persist in evil-doing.

Like attracts like. These lower spheres are necessarily entered

into by those who wilfully, through a prolonged series of incarna-

tions, refuse to follow the spiritual light within themselves.

Like attracts like, we repeat it. As a matter of fact, such souls,

so stained and weighted with evil, are actually pursuing their

own cyclical pilgrimage, drawn by attraction to like spheres and

dwellings. As our Teachers have said, during the cyclic pilgrimage

of the atom-souls down into matter many millions and millions

have failed to pass the danger-point and, instead of thereupon

beginning their journey " homeward " up the " luminous arc ",

are swept into the terrible maelstrom of the current that goes

downward farther into matter ! Therefore, into relatively

greater suffering. These must wait until their time comes again

in the next Manvantara, and another chance in the future kalpa

of the earth. For this Day of Brahma, for this manvantara of

seven Rounds, all is ended for them as regards their conscious

journey back to their divine source.

These are doctrines (such as that of the avichi-nirvana, just

hinted at and alluded to in the preceding few sentences) which

were taught in the ancient esoteric schools. From them, by

misunderstanding and corruption of them, have been derived

the bogey-doctrines of a fiery, material Hell in which are, for

eternity, to burn the ethereal souls of wilful sinners ! These souls

are said to be of an asbestos-like nature, forever burning fiercely

yet never consumed, like pitch burning for utter eternity in

utterly endless fire ! What frightful nightmares of a gross and

materialistic " religious " teaching 1 It is amazing how the

mind of man will invent things to torture itself with. But it

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 117

also shows that back of all these fearful, nightmare-doctrines

and dogmas there is some fundamental fact which the untaught

mind sees through thick clouds darkly and falsely, and distorts ;

some element of truth which needs only proper explanation for

understanding.

And how the human heart must melt in pity ! Do we realize

how real these doctrines were to our ancestors of only a few score

years ago ? And that in some backward-looking churches today

these same horrible doctrines are still taught as actualities, though

more or less secretly as if in utter shame, and that there are

misguided and unhappy men who believe them, and on their

death-beds suffer in anticipation the tortures of the damned,

tortures worse, certainly, than any which nature has prepared

for them as guerdon for their mistakes and sins ? Think of the

horror of it ! Think of the duty that we owe to our fellow-men

to teach them the proper explanation and meaning of these

distorted and tortured doctrines in all their sanity, in all their

beautiful hope ! There is a moral element involved in it for us.

People sometimes ask what is the use of studying The Secret

Doctrine ? What is the use of spending so much time in studying

the Rounds and Races ? Here is one of the uses. Essentially

you cannot change men until you have changed their minds.

Teach men properly and nobly to think, and you teach them properly

and nobly to live, and properly and nobly to die. There is nothing

like a noble thought to lift a man. It is sheer folly and egoism

that says, " What is the use of these so-called noble thoughts ?

My thoughts are good enough for me ".

After all that has previously been said, nevertheless, we have

just begun our exposition of Swabhava. We shall not have this

evening the time and opportunity to touch upon the very

important psychological aspects of it which we had hoped to do.

We have still a few moments of time, however. Let us then try to

illustrate more clearly this doctrine of Swabhava on the line of

it chosen before. Imagine, then, an individual monad sending

its ray, or descending, through that sphere which becomes the

spiritual-atomic plane of the six planes below it. It (this ray) forms

it itself into respective principles and planes as time passes, and

it gathers and gleans the experiences of each separate plane.

Leaving that spiritual-atomic or Atmanic plane, it evolves out

of itself its shadow, which is like an encasement, an aura, thus

forming its auric egg there, and this second plane or principle we

call our Buddhi, and as the monadic life or ray passes still farther

down into that shadowy life, this buddhic plane and principle

become to it the Real and the True. As cycles of time pass on,

the descending monadic ray (or seed) evolves another shadow,

another encasement, another subtil body, another aura, another

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

auric egg, out of itself, and this is our Manas. Each of these three

principles as indeed have all the seven has seven degrees,

seven stages, from the " atomic " of any one of the three down

to its lowest, which is its " corpus " or " body ". And so on with

the remaining four lower planes and principles of man. Each one

of these principles is " fully " developed on our globe in the

respective and similar one of the Rounds of the seven of the Day

of Brahma. Further, on each one of the seven globes of the

Planetary Chain, one of the seven principles especially is

developed. Again, as just shown, at the end of each Round, one

plane and one principle of the seven is developed, preparatory to

evolving the succeeding one in another Round. It takes fully

two Rounds, for instance, to bring out two planes and two

principles in full : but during the first and the second Rounds,

for example, the other planes and principles have been coming

up by degrees, evolving little by little, developing step by step.

The chick does not grow in a day : the child does not become a

man in a week ; his soul does not develop within him in a fort-

night. If a man lived the life he should, he would be at his best

and noblest at the time when he thinks it is time for him to draw

up his legs in bed and die. The physical body may be then ready

to die, but the man within, that which is the real being, should be

growing greater and nobler and grander. It is for this that we

really live.

And so runs the course of evolution to the end of the seven

Rounds, each Round bringing out one principle and one plane,

as said ; in each Round, each one of the remaining principles is

brought out or evolved in less degree, there being thus to use

Ezekiel's figure " wheels within wheels ". At the mid-point of

the fourth Round, which is the middle Round, there comes a

time when the monadic ray reaches the very acme of materiality

when the life-wave reaches a point where it branches both

downward and upward, and then, in the words of Ezekiel,

chapter 18, " the soul that sinneth, it shall surely die ", meaning

that the monadic ray courses downward, and loses all chance for

ascent back homeward along the " luminous arc ", for that

manvantara. It follows the downward path. But those others

that can and do follow on, they indeed pass the danger-point.

I have spoken of this twice already this evening, because it will

probably be the matter of our next study.

A Day of Brahma is composed of seven Rounds, a period of

4320 million solar or rather terrestrial years. Seven of these

Days, again, are required to make a Solar Manvantara, which is a

term used in the Esoteric Philosophy in a peculiar sense, because

seven times seven Rounds are needed in order to bring out to

their fullest, each of the seven principles and seven planes of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 119

which the manifesting Hierarchy is composed. Of the life of

Brahma, we are told one-half is already passed, one-half of

311,040,000,000,000, plus some few more billions of our years !

I refer to the Stirya-Siddhanta, an ancient Sanskrit cosmogonical

and astronomical work, which, from the statements and facts

given within it, claims an age of somewhat more than two million

years, according to popular interpretation. I think our modern

Orientalists in their great wisdom give its origin as occurring

more or less around the beginning of the Christian era, or later,

simply on the one ground that the Greeks brought to north-

western India certain forms of computation, which are found in

the Sfirya-Siddhanta, a theory which is purely arbitrary, and

based upon no certainly ascertained fact except the self-evolved

or " Swabhavic " theories of the Orientalists themselves !

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CHAPTER XII

PSYCHOLOGY : ACCORDING TO THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY. IMMOR-

TALITY IS CONDITIONAL I THE LOSS OF THE SOUL.

Stoop not down, for a precipice lies below the earth,

Drawing under a descent of seven steps, beneath which

Is the throne of dire necessity.

Psellus, 6, Plet. 2 ; (CoRY, Chaldean Oracles).

Devilish (asurya) are those worlds called,

With blind darkness (tamas) covered o'er !

Unto them, on deceasing, go

Whatever folk are slayers of the Self.

Hd-Upanishad, 3. (R. E. HUME'S translation, p. 362.)

IN opening our study of the Holy Science which we are

privileged here again tonight to investigate, let us begin

by reading from H. P. Blavatsky's Seer el Doctrine,

Volume I, the last paragraph on page 272 :

(1) The Secret Doctrine is the accumulated Wisdom of the Ages . . .

Next page, second paragraph :

(2) The fundamental Law in that^ system, the central point from

which all emerged, around and toward which all gravitates, and upon

which is hung the philosophy of the rest, is the One homogeneous

divine SUBSTANCE-PRINCIPLE, the one radical cause.

Last paragraph :

(3) The Universe is the periodical manifestation of this unknown

Absolute Essence.

Next page, second paragraph :

(4) The Universe is called, with everything in it, MAYA, because

all is temporary therein, from the ephemeral life of a fire-fly to that

of the Sun.

Last paragraph :

(6) The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards. As

above so it is below, as in heaven so on earth ; and man the micro-

cosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm is the living witness to

this Universal Law and to the mode of its action. We see that every

external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical,

organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or

emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind. As no outward motion

or change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless

provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three func-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 121

tions named, so with external or manifested Universe. The whole

Kosmos is guided, controlled, and animated by almost endless series

of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a missioiji to perform,

and who whether we give to them one name or another, and call them

Dhy&n-Chohans or Angels are " Messengers " in the sense only that

they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely

in their respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence ; and to

call them all pure Spirits without any of the earthly alloy " which time

is wont to prey upon " is only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of

these Beings either was, or prepares to become, a man, if not in the

present, then in a past or a coming cycle (Manvantara). They are

perfected, when not incipient, men ; and differ morally from the

terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only

in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human

emotional nature two purely earthly characteristics.

And on pages 21 and 22, beginning in the middle of the

sentence :

. . . the differentiation of the "germ" of the Universe into the

septenary hierarchy of conscious Divine Powers, who are the active

manifestations of the One Supreme Energy. They are the framers,

shapers, and ultimately the creators of all the manifested Universe,

in the only sense in which the name " Creator " is intelligible ; they

inform and guide it ; they are the intelligent Beings who adjust and

control evolution, embodying in themselves those manifestations of

the ONE LAW, which we know as " The Laws of Nature ".

Resuming our thought from our last study of two weeks ago,

we shall take up this evening an outline of the psychological

nature of man, because, as mentioned before, if man understands

himself, he understands that from which he came, and which he is

he understands the universe proportionately with his own

development of spirit and of mind and of the percipient faculties

that go with the development of spirit and of mind in man. In

order to enable us more easily to understand, and more clearly

to set forth, the essential characteristics of man's psychological

economy, we shall endeavor to show how closely these are

related to two fundamental theorems, or principles, or doctrines,

of the Wisdom-Religion ; and these two are (i) the Law, or

rather the fact of Hierarchies ; and (2) the Law (we use the term

again under strong protest) of the Essential Nature of things,

called Swabhava ; as said before, the latter is a Sanskrit term

meaning self-e volution, s//-formation, s//-development, self-

becoming. In it inheres the foundation of the law of morals. As

is obvious, Man is responsible to himself, and because man is a

part of other things, he is therefore responsible to other things

also. Likewise, as a corollary of the foregoing, after death man

does not " meet his Creator ", but verily he has to meet and to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

reckon with his creature, that which he has built up in himself

during his life, his astral self.

What makes a rose bring forth a rose always ? Why does the

seed of an apple invariably bring forth apples ? Why does it not

bring forth thistles, or daisies, or pansies ? The answer is very

simple ; very profound, however. It is because of the Swabhava,

the essential nature in and of the seed. Its Swabhava can bring

forth only that which itself is, its essential characteristic, its own

inner nature. The Stoics of Greece and Rome expressed this fact

of evolution by saying that in the opening of a period of Manifesta-

tion, it is the Pneuma " Spirit " which relaxes its tension,

condensation or concretion thereupon ensuing of the said Pneuma

or Spirit, and evolution begins, emanation and evolution both

begin, following the causes set up and active in the preceding

period of Manifestation. There spring into life co-ordinately

with the opening of the new period the " spermatic logoi ", the

" seed-logoi ", an expression translated from the Greek sper-

matikoi logoi, spermatic reasons, seed-reasons, " Logos " meaning

" reason ", hence " cause ", among other things. It was these

seed-logoi, or spermatic logoi, which were the fruits or results, the

karmans, as we would say, of former periods of activity. Having

attained a certain stage of evolution or development, or quality,

or characteristic, or individuality in the preceding Manvantara ;

when the next period of evolution came, they could produce

nothing else but that which they were themselves, their own inner

natures, as seeds do. The seed can produce nothing but what it

itself is, what is in it ; and this is the heart and essence of the

doctrine of Swabhava. The philosophical, scientific, and religious

reach of this Doctrine is simply immense ; it is of the first

importance.

The habit, or, if you like the word, the " law " (we use this

word again under protest), of Swabhava can work only in that

which is itself, because only its own vehicle, its own self, is

appropriate for the manifestation of itself obviously ! Hence,

the manner of evolution and emanation, and the progress of

the Hierarchies, are as set forth before ; that is, that from

the highest, evolution and emanation proceed downward into

the more material ; and so on down the line of the " shadowy

arc" into matter, until the turning-point of the descent is

attained; whereupon begins the ascent along the " luminous arc".

We must note well, however, that the higher does not leave

its own sphere in this process ; the higher does not wholly become

the lower, and the lower wholly become the still lower, leaving

a vacuum or an emptiness above. The higher spheres remain

always. It is like the flame of a candle laid at the wick of another

candle ; and from that one candle, as our first great Teacher has

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 123

said, you can light all the candles of the universe, without

diminution of its energy or of its force or of its characteristic

essence. The highest remains always the highest ; it is that

part of itself, as it were, that is the developing energy acting from

within ; its Skandhas it is which you will remember we have

studied before which produce, as the Stoics would have said,

this t( relaxation of tension ", this condensation or concretion of

parts of itself. A perfect analogy is found in the intro-uterine

development of man, and his descent into incarnation. His

spiritual nature does not come down and become his actual body ;

it remains always his spiritual nature ; but from it it throws out

parts of itself, its lower aspects or principles, if we may so put the

idea ; and these, as the manvantaric cycle proceeds, in their

turn, each one in its turn, secretes, protrudes, and excretes

something lower. So that the physical man, the body, is in very

truth the " Temple of the living God ", which is itself the Glory

thereof, hence a part of the Temple ; the Temple, verily, is the

lowest manifestation of the living God within.

Now Swabhava works through the Hierarchies. We have

returned to these two capital matters time after time, because it

is all-important from the philosophic, from the spiritual, and

from the ethical aspects, that these things should be as clear as

possible in our minds. Take, for instance, the cosmogonical

relation. We are not created by an extra-cosmic God ; Karman,

on the other hand, is not an extra-cosmic entity which said,

" I create ", and the world sprang into being. The highest

essence, the inmost of the essence of every Hierarchy, of the

practical infinitudes of Hierarchies, inter-locked and co-related

and working together and forming the universal cosmos in which

we live the highest part of each one of these Hierarchies is a

super-divine monad, which we can call Parabrahman-Milla-

prakriti. And its first manifestation or downward-looking energy,

its first breaking-forth into the plane below, is Brahman acting

in turn through its cosmic veil, Pradhana, as you will remember

we have before studied ; and then comes Brahma-Prakriti, other-

wise called Purusha-Prakriti, which is the cosmic soul or

individual, and the nature or the vehicle in which it manifests ;

the logos and its universe ; the monad, and its sheaths, and so on.

Having these things clearly in mind, we can now take up

directly and more easily, more comprehensibly, the study of what

we mean by the psychology of man. The word is ordinarily used

to signify in our days and in the seats of learning in the Occident

a study more or less cloudy, mostly beclouded with doubts and

hypotheses, actual guess-work, meaning little more than a kind of

mental physiology, practically nothing more than the working

of the brain-mind in the lowest astral-psychical apparatus of the

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human mind. But in our philosophy, as we all know, the word

psychology is used to mean something very different, and of a

nobler character : we might call it pneumatology, or the science

or the study of spirit, because all the inner faculties and powers

of man ultimately spring from his spirit. But as this word

" pneumatology " is an unusual one and might cause confusion,

let us retain the word " psychology ". We mean by it the study

of the inner economy of man, the interconnexion of his principles,

so to speak, or centers of energy or force what the man really is

inwardly.

Man, like everything else in the universe, is founded upon the

dekadic skeleton or numerical framework of being the number

ten. Three of these ten elements or planes or principles belong to

the arupa or formless world, and seven belong to the world of

manifestation and form. These seven latter principles produce

each other on a downward scale in the process of manifestation,

exactly as the Hierarchies do, each one emanating or evolving

a lower, and this lower evolving or emanating a still lower one,

and so down to the seventh or lowest.

Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential

bases ; the Sanskrit term is Upadhi. The meaning of the word

is that which stands forth following a model or pattern, as a

canvas, so to say, upon which the light from a projecting

lantern plays. It is a play of shadow and form, compared with

the ultimate Reality. These three bases or updhis are, first,

the Monadic or spiritual ; second, that which is supplied by the

Lords of Light, the so-called Manasa-Dhyanis, meaning the

intellectual and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that

makes man Man ; and the third basis or Upadhi we can call the

vital-astral-physical, if you please.

Now these three bases spring from three different lines of

evolution, from three different and separate Hierarchies of being.

Remember that each Hierarchy possesses in itself in embryo

everything that the entire universe is and has, the least as the

greatest, if we can say " least " and " greatest " of that which is

endless, at any rate the least and greatest of any period of

manifestation. This is the reason why man is composite. He is

not one sole and unmixed entity ; he is a composite entity, he

is a thing built up of various elements, and hence his principles

are, to a certain extent, separable. Any one of these three bases

can be temporarily separated from the two others, without

bringing about the death of the man physically. But the ele-

ments, so to say, that go to form any one of these bases,

cannot be separated without bringing about physical dissolution

or inner dissolution.

Now these three lines of evolution, these three aspects or

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 125

qualities of man, as said, come from three different Hierarchies,

or states, often spoken of as three different planes of being. The

lowest comes from the earth ; ultimately from the moon, our

cosmogonic mother. The middle, the manasic or intellectual-

intuitional, from the sun. The monadic from the Monad of

monads, the supreme flower, or acme, or rather the supreme

seed of the Universal Hierarchy which forms our Cosmical

Universe or Universal Cosmos.

It depends upon a correct understanding of the general inter-

connexion or the inter-working of these three separate parts of

the economy of the inner man, whether we shall obtain a proper

grasp of our future studies. We meet, as we have seen, at every

step if we have followed our studies properly new ideas, new

thoughts ; new links with the universe of light and being around

us, and of which we also are children. How terrible it would be

if we were to reach the limit of all that it was possible to know !

On the contrary, endless vistas of growing knowledge are always

before us, and we cannot attain them otherwise than by mounting

the steps of knowledge one by one.

We have heard it said by our Teachers that immortality is

conditional. This is a certain Truth. Immortality is not uncon-

ditional, and why ? For the reasons just pointed out. Man is a

composite being, and, as the Buddha said in the closing words

of his life, " Brothers, all that is, is composite and transitory.

Therefore work out your own salvation ". This contains the

core of the whole philosophy of evolution, and occultly designates

ultimate immortality or annihilation for any one manvantara,

for man as a thinking entity.

Immortality is assured if the central principles which compose

the intellectual-intuitional man, have succeeded in rising to the

monadic plane where they become one with the monad, shining

upon them as a spiritual sun. And the loss of a soul for the

manvantara is assured if its Swabhava, its essential, characteristic,

energies, are directed downwards into brute matter.

The Teachers have told us, however, that the loss of the soul

cannot ensue as long as even one sole, single, spiritual aspiration

remains functionally active. Only when the unhappy entity

has arrived at the point where it can say, " Evil, be thou my

God!" when not one single, quivering aspiration spiritward

remains, is it " lost " for the manvantara, when its essence, as it

were, is inverted, and its tendency is downwards, downward into

the avichi, where, as the Teachers have told us, circumstances

may bring about an almost immediate annihilation of it, or,

perhaps, a manvantara of Avichi-Nirvana, a fearful state indeed,

contrasted with the wondrous Nirvana of the Dhyan-Chohans, or

Lords of Mjditation.

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On the one hand we may raise ourselves to become a God, yea,

even while dwelling in the flesh. On the other hand we may

allow ourselves to sink to the eighth sphere, where we pass into the

yawning portals of the " Planet of Death ". Has it ever occurred

to any one of us to ask, Why are we here ? Why, having had

an infinity in which to evolve, are we not higher than we are

now ? Has it ever occurred to any one of us to ask whether we

may not be the " fallen angels ", those very spiritual " athletes "

who in a former great manvantara failed to win onwards to the

goal, failed to rise, failed to make the goal intended for them,

and were " cast down " to work our weary way upward again ?

Again, what do we mean by " soul " as contrasted with

" spirit " ? We speak of the human soul and the spiritual soul,

and we speak of the astral soul, and we speak of the animal soul.

But we do not use those terms in connexion with the word

" spirit ". It is our Teachers who first have used those expressions

in the connexions noted above. Does it not teach us that the

meaning of soul is that of a vehicle, an upadhi, in general ; that

vehicle, or any vehicle, in which the monad, in any sphere of

manifestation, is working out its destiny ? But these vehicles

are conscious vehicles, they are living and sentient vehicles having

each one its own consciousness and its own thinking faculty ;

even these gross physical bodies of ours are not merely insensible

stocks. The physical body has its avenues of dull consciousness

and life ; it can feel, and, after its own poor dull manner, it can

think.

So, then, the loss of the soul is the loss of that which we, through

interminable ages, very, very laboriously have built up as our

inner temple, our home, in which we should rise to meet the Gods,

to become one with them ; and more it is the vehicle through

which we should carry up with us entities below us at present,

but through us approaching our own dignity of humanity

entities of which the soul is actually composed, even as the atoms

in our physical bodies are infant-souls, physical entities, embryonic

things which we are informing and inspiring, if, indeed, we are not

sentencing them to a cycle of woe.

With Knowledge comes responsibility. The moral law will not

be thwarted. It cannot be played with. At every step, with

every morn, at every turn, at every choice, we face the right-

or the left-hand path, and we are forced to choose ; we must see

to it, every time, whether our feet are to be set upon the " lumin-

ous arc ", or upon the " path of shadows " leading us downwards.

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CHAPTER XIII

THE PROCESS OF EVOLUTION. SELF, EGO, AND SOUL : " I AM "

AND " I AM I ".

. . . Nothing in nature springs into existence suddenly, all being

subjected to the same law of gradual evolution. Realize but once the pro-

cess of the mahd cycle, of one sphere, and you have realized them all. One

man is born like another man, one race evolves, develops and declines like another

and all other races. Nature follows the same groove from the " creation " of a

universe down to that of a mosquito. In studying esoteric cosmogony, keep a

spiritual eye upon the physiological process of human birth ; proceed from cause

to effect establishing . . . analogies between the . . . man and that of a world.

. . . Cosmology is the physiology of the universe spiritualized, for there is but

one law.

The Mahatma Letters, pp. 70-71.

E open our study of The Secret Doctrine this evening

by reading from page 178, and a small portion from

page 179, of the first volume of The Secret Doctrine,

as follows :

Now the Monadic, or rather Cosmic, Essence (if such a term be

permitted) in the mineral, vegetable, and animal, though the same

throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the

Deva Kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be

very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity trailing its

slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and after an

incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being ;

in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an

atom of horneblende. Instead of saying a " Mineral Monad," the more

correct phraseology in physical Science, which differentiates every

atom, would of course have been to call it " the Monad manifesting in

that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom."

As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by

Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees

of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad not the

atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through

which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence.

Now, in resuming this evening our study from last week, it will

perhaps be well to preface it by reminding ourselves of the two

general desires which the Teacher had in mind, in inaugurating

our studies ; first, the elucidation of the teachings contained in

H. P. Blavatsky's wonderful work ; and secondly, the providing

of tests, doctrinal tests, as it were, not tests in a dogmatic sense,

but doctrinal or mental tests which each one of us may have in

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

mind to remember and to apply when he takes up some book

treating of the ancient religions of the world, or of the modern

theories concerning those religions as given out by some modern

thinker.

The world at the present day is simply overwhelmed with books

of various sorts treating of quasi-spiritual, and of so-called psychic

and quasi-psychic matters, and to one who does not know the

key-doctrines of Theosophy, who has not, as H. P. Blavatsky had,

at his mental elbow, so to say, the teachings of the Ancient

Wisdom-Religion by which all these various matters may be

tested and proved, there is place for much mental confusion,

indecision, and doubt as to what the real sense or meaning there-

of may be, because many of these books are written very ably ;

but ability in writing well is no sign or proof that an author

understands properly the ancient thought ; such ability is merely

the capacity of presenting certain thoughts the writer's own

views clearly and often very praiseworthily ; but merely praise-

worthy writing is certainly no proof that a writer possesses an

adequate and sufficient criterion of the ancient truth itself.

Having therefore these doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom-

Religion (Theosophy) in mind, and properly understanding them,

we have tests by which we may prove to ourselves whether such

and such a doctrine of any religion, ancient or modern, or such

and such a teaching of any thinker, ancient or modern, is in accord

with that primeval spiritual and natural revelation granted to the

first members of the first human and truly thinking race by the

spiritual beings from whom we likewise derived our inner essence

and life, and who are, really, our own present spiritual selves.

Not being tests in a dogmatic religious sense at all, they are not

" necessary to salvation ". Heavens and hells do not depend for

their reality upon their acceptance or rejection by men, for

instance ; but we mean that Theosophy provides us with tests

which are tests in the same way as are the facts which an expert

in mathematics or in chemistry or in any other branch of science

or natural philosophy is enabled to employ in order to ascertain

when something new comes under his eye, or under his hand,

whether this new thing agrees with the truths already established

by himself and his collaborators in work.

At our last meeting we treated perforce only vaguely, and in a

mere sketch, of the difference existing between the spirit and the

soul. The spirit is the immortal element in us, the deathless

flame within us which dies never, which never was born, and

which retains throughout the entire maha-manvantara its own

quality, essence, and life, sending down into our own being and

into our various planes, certain of its rays or garments or souls

which we are ; and furthermore, that these rays, in descending,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 129

constituted the life-essences of a Hierarchy, whether we treat of

our own selves as individual human beings, or whether we think

of the atom, or of the solar system, or of the universal cosmos.

We have this evening to consider more particularly the nature

and differences of Self and ego ; and if we have time we shall

have need to remark at some length upon a doctrine which is

very strange to Western ears, and yet which contains in itself the

core, the very heart of what emanational evolution is, and which

also shows to us what our destiny is. It is that destiny which

leads us both downwards and then upwards, back to our spiritual

source, but possessing rather being something more than we

possessed or rather were when we began our great evolutionary

pilgrimage.

Now, before we start upon a sketch of the nature of, and the

difference between, self and ego, let us undertake very briefly an

analysis of what we mean when we speak of karman, for it is

necessary here. As we all know, karman is a Sanskrit word, and

it is derived from the Sanskrit root kri, a verb meaning to make

or to do. By adding the suffix ma to the root kri or the stem kar,

which comes, through one of the rules of the Sanskrit grammar,

from the root kri, we have the abstract noun, Karman. Literally

it means doing, making, hence action. It is a technical term,

that is, a term from which hangs a whole series of philosophical

doctrines.

We can consider it best from the standpoint of translating it by

the word results, because this word " results ", or " fruits ",

seems to be its most general application in the technical sense of

the Esoteric Philosophy. Now Karman is not a law ; no God

made it. A human law, let us remember, is a maxim of conduct

or order of right, laid down by a law-giver, forbidding what is

wrong and inculcating and commanding what is right. Karman

is not that. Karman is the habit of universal and eternal Nature,

a habit inveterate, primordial, which so works that an act is

necessarily, by destiny, followed by an ineluctable result, a

reaction from the Nature in which we live. It was called by Mr. A. P.

Sinnett, one of H. P. Blavatsky's early helpers, the " law of

ethical causation ", an inadequate and misleading term, because,

first, Karman is more than ethical, it is both spiritual and material

and all between. It has its application on the spiritual, mental,

psychical, and physical planes. To call it the " law of cause and

effect " is much better, because more general, but even this

does not describe it adequately at all. The very essence of the

meaning of this doctrine is, that when anything acts in any state

of imbodied consciousness, it sets up an immediate chain of

causation, acting on every plane to which that chain of causation

reaches, to which the force extends.

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Human karman is born within man himself. We are its creators

and generators, and also do we suffer from it or are clarified through

it, by our own previous actions. But what is this habit in itself,

das Ding an sich, as Kant would have said, this inveterate,

primordial habit of nature, which makes it react to an arousing

cause ! That is a question which we shall, at some future time,

have to go into more fully than we can do it this evening ; but

we may say this much : that it is the will of the spiritual beings

who have preceded us in bygone kalpas or great manvantaras, and

who now stand as Gods, and whose will and thought direct and

protect the mechanisni and the type and quality of the universe in

which we live. These great beings were once men in some former

great manvantara. It is our destiny ultimately to become like

unto them, and to be of their number, if we run the race of kalpic

evolution successfully.

Man, as our first great Teacher has set it forth, weaves around

himself from birth to death a web of action and of thought

each one of them producing results, some immediately, some

later. Each act is a seed. And that seed inevitably, by the

doctrine of Swabhava, which we have been studying, will produce

the results which belong to it, and none other.

Swabhava, as we remember, is the doctrine of the essential

characteristic of anything, that is, that which makes it what it is,

and not something else : that which makes the lily a lily, and not

a rose or a violet ; that which makes one being a horse, and

another a fly, and another a blade of grass, and so on its essential

nature.

Now in our study of the Hierarchies in former meetings, we

remember that we noticed that each Hierarchy proceeded from

its own seed, its own seed-logos or the highest part of it, its crown

or pinnacle ; and that everything rolled down from it, rolled out

from the seed into being. So the human body grows from a

microscopic seed, as it were, into the man we know, partaking

of the nature around it, because it is a composite being. All

composite things are temporary and transitory. If they were

not composite, they could not manifest in any manner whatever.

It is the compositeness, the compound nature of them which

enables them to learn and to mingle with, and to be one in the

manifested sense with all the manifested universe around us.

You doubtless remember what we mentioned in former studies

of the wonderful doctrine of the ancient Stoics of Greece and

Rome, called the Krasis di' holou, the mingling through every-

thing, the intermingling of all ; when this doctrine was applied

to the Gods, the ancient Stoics called it Theocrasy, not theocracy,

which means something else entirely. Theocrasy means the inter-

mingling of the Gods, even as human thoughts mingle on earth.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 131

Now the Self remains eternally itself on its own plane, but in

manifestation it intermingles, if we may use that term, with the

spheres of matter by raying itself, as does the sun ; by communi-

cating itself as the divine ray ; it shoots down into the spiritual

world, and thence into the intellectual world, and thence into the

psychic world, and thence into the astral world, and thence into

the physical. It creates at each one of these stages, at each plane

of the Hierarchy, a vehicle, a sheath, a clothing, a garment, and

these, just expressed by various names, on the higher plane are

called " souls ", and on the lower plane, " bodies ", and it is the

destiny of these souls " garments " or " vehicles " or " sheaths "

of the spirit ultimately to be raised upwards to divinity.

There is an immense difference which is the strange doctrine

alluded to a short while ago and which we shall have to study

this evening between purely unconscious spirit-life, and fully

self-developed, self-conscious spirituality. The monad starts out

on its cyclic journey, as was said before, as un-self-conscious God-

spark, and ends it as a self-conscious God, but it does this through

assimilation of manifested life and by carrying up with itself

the various souls which it has created in its cyclic pilgrimage, in

them developing its inner essence and through them understand-

ing and coming into relation with other monads and other soul-

selves. It is the raising of the soul (or rather the souls) through

the Self, to divinity, that constitutes the process of evolution, the

unfolding of the potentialities and capacities of the divine Seed.

We may now ask : What is the difference between the Self and

the ego ? The individual Self, we know, is a spiritual or rather

monadic " Atom ". It is that which in all things says " I am ",

and hence is pure consciousness, direct consciousness, not reflected

consciousness. The ego is that which says " I am I " indirect

or reflected consciousness, consciousness reflected back upon

itself as it were, recognising its own mayavi existence as a " separ-

ate " entity. See how marvellous these teachings are, for if we

understand this doctrine aright, it means spiritual salvation for

us ; and if we understand it wrongly, it means our going down-

wards ! For instance, intensity of egoism is the understanding

of it wrongly ; and, paradox of paradoxes, impersonality is the

understanding of it rightly. As Jesus said in the first three

Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, voicing one of the teachings

of the Ancient Wisdom, " He who saves his life shall lose it, but

he who gives up his life for my sake, shall find it."

Here we have the real meaning imbodied in a " dark saying "

of a matter that we studied somewhat at our last meeting : the

doctrine of the " loss of the soul ", which we cannot touch upon

more at length this evening. We shall do so, however, at some

future meeting ; but there, in words ascribed to Jesus and thrice

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repeated, we have the inner meaning of this mystery : the because ,

the why, and the how of it.

We return to the strange doctrine mentioned before, strange

to Western ears, strange to Western thought. You will remember

that H. P. Blavatsky frequently describes the processes of evolu-

tion and of development, as the starting out of the spiritual

essence down the " shadowy arc " into matter, and its growing

more and more dense, compact, and heavy the deeper it goes into

the ocean of the material world, until it passes a certain point

the turning-point of the forces which arising in itself urge it

forward in that Maha-Manvantara ; and that then it begins to

rise again along the upward cycle, the " luminous arc ", back

towards the divinity from which it emanated as a Ray or Rays.

This monadic essence, this monadic stream, passing into evolution,

is, like an army or host, composed of a quasi-infinitude of indi-

vidual monads. We may call them spiritual " Atoms ", un-self-

conscious God-sparks. They gather to themselves as they descend

into matter which is eternally there from the infinitude of evolving

beings in all stages of development which had preceded them

or, rather, they derive reflected or indirect consciousness (self-

consciousness) from that contact and intermingling. They

begin to have more than the mere feeling or rather simple cognition

of " I am ", or pure consciousness ; they begin to feel themselves

self-consciously at one with all that is. The un-self-conscious

God-spark is beginning self-consciously to recognise its own

essential and inherent divinity. It is developing s0//-consciousness,

and this s//-consciousness is what we call the " ego ", the recogni-

tion that " I am / ", a part or ray of the ALL recognising that

wondrous truth.

Now consider the Hierarchy of the human being growing from

the Self as its Seed ten stages, three on the arupa or immaterial

plane ; and seven (or perhaps better, sii) on the plane of matter

or manifestation. On each one of these seven planes (or six

planes), the Self or Paramatman develops a sheath or garment,

the upper ones spun of spirit, or light if you will ; and the lower

ones spun of shadow or matter ; and each such sheath or garment

is a soul ; and between the Self and a soul any soul is the ego.

First in order is the Self, the divine entity or thing, or monad,

behind all ; and growing from within it, like a sun developing

from within its own essence, along the karmic lines or paths of

the memories or " results " or " fruits " brought over from the

preceding great Manvantara, thus developing strictly according

to the Skandhas in its own nature, is the ego, contacting and inter-

mingling with matter and the other hosts of intelligences of this

MahSl-Manvantara. The ego throws out from itself as the seed

will throw out its green blade, developing into the tree with its

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 133

branches and its twigs and its numberless leaves it throws out

from itself its garment or sheath or vehicle spun of light or spun

of shadow, according to the plane or point upon which it is ; and

this ethereal or spiritual or astral garment of the ego is the soul

that is, any soul.

There are many souls in man. There are likewise many egos

in man ; but back of them all, both egos and souls, is the deathless

flame, the Self. Remember that the ancient Egyptians also

taught of the various souls of man, of the manifold selves of man,

of the several egos of man. We have not spoken often as yet of

the ancient Egyptian teachings, because they are exceedingly

difficult on account of being inwrapped in complicate symbol and

allegory ; they are the most hid, perhaps, the most inshrouded

with tropes and figures of speech of any ancient system. But the

old truths are there ; they are the same age-old teachings.

Now evolution is the unfolding, the developing, the bringing out

from the divine Seed within of all its latent capacities, its Swab-

hava in short : its individual characteristics or the essence of its

being. The whole effort of evolution, however, is not merely

to bring out that which is within each individual Seed ; but also

that each individual monad, and each ego, and each soul, shall

gather up from the matter in which it works, other less progressed

entities which become parts of itself, and shall carry them along

with it on the arc of the evolutionary journey upwards.

Each one of us is therefore a potential Christ, a potential

Christos, because while we are, each one of us, a Christos within,

intrinsically, each one of us is, or should be, a " savior " of his

fellow-men likewise, and of all the lower beings under him, under

his guidance and sway. If a man or woman ill-treats or treats

nobly the atoms of his or her body, he or she is held responsible

at the hands of karman, so to say, before the Divine Tribunal of

his own Self ; yea, to the very last farthing, he shall be held to a

strict accounting. Look at the dignity with which this noble

teaching endows and crowns our human species ! What a sublime

meaning do the doctrines of our Teachers have in this light !

Man is responsible ; because when he has achieved self-conscious-

ness even in minor degree he becomes a creator thereby, and

becomes therefore responsible to a co-ordinate extent. He

becomes a collaborator and co-worker with the Gods whom he is

destined to join as one of themselves.

If the life-stream, if the stream of monads, if any individual

monad has passed the lowest point of its manvantaric cycles

safely, has safely swung past the path leading downward at the

mid-point of the fourth Round, and successfully starts out on the

upward way, along the " Luminous Arc ", it is safe to a certain

extent, but not yet wholly so, because that same test comes

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again at the mid-point in each Round. But the mid-point of the

fourth Round is the most critical. We all know what a Round is,

and the seven through which we must pass before we complete

our evolutionary pilgrimage on this planet. But if the monadic

spark passes safely through each of the three Rounds to come,

then in the last Round, on the last or seventh globe, in the last

race of that globe, he shall blossom out as a Dhyan-Chohan, a

" Lord of Meditation ". Already almost a God. And those of

us who shall have made the race successfully, shall, after the

long Nirvana that awaits us after the seven Rounds are completed,

which Nirvana is a period of unspeakable bliss corresponding

to the devachan between two earth-lives ; those of us, I say, who

shall have become these Lords of Meditation, shall become the

forerunners, the makers, the developers, the Gods of the future

planet which shall be the child of this, as this globe, Terra, was

the child of our mother, the Moon ; and so on for ever, but always

advancing higher and higher up the rungs of the wondrous Ladder

of Cosmic Life.

Now this is the strange and wonderful doctrine, strange and

wonderful to Western ears. Endless are the ramifications of

thought which spring from it. Think of the destiny before us !

Yes : and it is also wise, as our Teachers have often told us, to

look at the other side. Let us turn our faces from the morning

sunlight occasionally, and look in the other direction. Remember

that we have innate and ineluctable moral responsibilities where

ethical problems are involved. We have, to a certain extent,

knowledge ; hence power, hence responsibility. Behind us,

trailing upwards, are infinitudes of beings who are less than we.

Each one of them is on the same path whereon we have trodden,

ourselves ; each one of them having to go over that same path,

stained with the blood from our own feet. And shall they fail

for lack of our help ? They shall have to pass the danger-point,

even as we have done ; because the teaching is that at the middle

point of every evolution there is a downward path, leading into

spheres of being grosser and more material than ours.

When our planet first started, or rather first was started, on

its course of emanational evolution, the propelling agents in that

were the Dhyan-Chohans from the lunar chain, i.e., those who

had run the evolutionary race successfully there ; and behind

them, trailing after them, we came, seven classes of us, the most

evolved, the less, the less, the less, the less, the animals, the

vegetables, and the minerals.

Our time is drawing to a close this evening, but there is one

point which it seems incumbent upon us to touch upon at least

slightly. When Leibnitz, the great German philosopher, spoke of

the inherent urge in every monad propelling it into manifestation,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 135

he spoke from the ancient books, from the Pythagorean and the

Neo-Platonic teachings, of which he was a student, and he meant

what we do when we speak of the Swabhava, the essential nature

of a thing. There is, however, one point of his teaching to which

we must allude, where he says in substance that our world is the

best possible world in the universe. Those of you who are acquain-

ted with the great French philosopher, Voltaire, may remember

his book, Candide, or "Optimism", in which Voltaire evidently is

tilting at the optimistic theories of Leibnitz, and in which two of

his characters are the inveterately irrational optimist, Dr. Pan-

gloss, and the young man, Candide, Dr. Pangloss's pupil, a young

philosopher, a thorough-going selfish optimist, who accepted all

the rebuffs of life with great indifference and calmness, and with

a smile at human misery. And Voltaire has a passage commenting

upon these two characters (Candide, Ch. VI), where he says,

with all that pungent, aphoristic point, which is so great an

ornament of the French genius, " Si c'est ici le meilleur des

mondes possibles, que sont done les autres ? " That is, " If this

is the best of all possible worlds, how about the others " ? A very

comprehensive remark indeed, and a very true one. It is not the

best possible of all worlds. Far from it. It were indeed a weary

and hopeless outlook for our human kind, if it were ! Yet the

great German philosopher was right in this sense, that it is the

best possible world which the world's karman has enabled it to be

or to produce ; and if it is not better, we ourselves are largely

responsible for it.

We see in this amusing reference to the theories of Leibnitz

and Voltaire, the true meaning of the word optimism. Our own

majestic philosophy gives us a far wider vision, a more penetrating

insight into things ; a profounder understanding of the so-called

Riddle of Life. Everything is relative, one of the greatest teachings

of the Esoteric philosophy. There are no absolutes (in the usual

European sense of that word) anywhere. Everything is relative,

because everything is interlinked and intermingles with every

other thing. If there were an absolute, in the European sense,

there could be nothing but the barren silence and immutability

of complete and utter perfection, which is impossible, for there

would be in such case, there could be, no growth, no future growth,

no past development, spiritually, mentally, or in any other

wise.

We now close. At our next meeting, upon the Teacher's

direction, we shall take up the study of the so-called Hells and

Heavens, for this branch of our investigation is a very necessary

part of the psychological side of our study which we began at our

last meeting ; and we say this evening only this, that, as before

often remarked, all the doctrines and dogmas and teachings and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

tenets of the great world-religions, are based fundamentally upon

some more or less obscure truth : usually very much obscured

by ignorance or fanaticism, or by both ; and, in conclusion, let

us note well that there are no hells, and there are no heavens, as

these are commonly supposed to be ; but spheres of life and ex-

perience corresponding to each class of the myriad degrees of

entities in being. As Jesus is said to have stated in the Christian

Gospels : " In my Father's house are many mansions ". There

are in the endless Kosmos innumerable appropriate places of

retributive bliss or retributive woe for all grades of souls, and in

these karmically appropriate places, the countless hosts of evolving

entities of all classes find their properly and exactly adjusted

places.

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CHAPTER XIV

" HEAVENS " AND " HELLS " : TEACHINGS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILO-

SOPHY, AND OF THE EXOTERIC RELIGIONS.

The devachan [' heaven '] merges from its highest into its lowest degree by

insensible gradations ; while from the last step of devachan [downwards] the

Ego will often find itself in Avtchi's [' hell's '] faintest state, which, towards the

end of the " spiritual selection " of events may become a bona fide " Avlchi."

The Mahatma Letters, p. 188.

From Kama-Loka then . . . the newly translated " Souls " go all (but the

shells) according to their attractions, either to Devachan or Avlchi.

The Mahatma Letters, p. 199.

Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels. . . .

Light of Asia (ARNOLD).

WE open our study this evening by reading from The

Secret Doctrine, Volume II, page 273, the following :

For the evolution of Spirit into matter could never have

been achieved ; nor would it have received its first impulse,

had not the bright spirits sacrificed their own respective super-ethereal

essences to animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his inner

principles with a portion, or rather, a reflection of that essence. The

Dhy^nis of the Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the

NOUMENOI of the actual and the future Elements, just as the Angels of

the Seven Powers of nature the grosser effects of which are perceived

by us in what Science is pleased to call the " modes of motion " the

imponderable forces and what not are the still higher noumenoi of

still higher Hierarchies.

This is an exceedingly interesting paragraph. It contains, in

small compass, the entire outline of the studies that we have been

pursuing for some weeks past.

In taking up this evening the study of the so-called " heavens "

and " hells ", it may be well first of all to repeat what was said

in the conclusion of our last study : that there are no heavens

and there are no hells, as these are outlined in the exoteric religions.

Those conceptions are based, however, upon teachings which

actually came from the Mystery-doctrines, and, as we have

before said, they contain in themselves the outline of a truth,

indeed, of a great truth, when properly understood. But while

we do not accept the Christian heaven and the Christian hell, nor

the Mohammedan heavens nor the Mohammedan hells, nor the

literal exoteric teachings concerning them as found among the

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Buddhists and the ancient Greeks and the Romans, nevertheless

there actually are in Nature certain spheres of being in which

those portions of man's constitution which survive the death of

the physical body, find appropriate dwelling-places ; they are, in

fact, retributive realms or spheres of being, to which are magneti-

cally attracted those parts of his constitution which in him are

of similar or identical quality.

Jesus, in the Gospel " according to John ", I4th Chapter, the

second verse, says the following : "In my Father's house are

many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go

to prepare a place for you ". He said this in the long final address

which he gave to his disciples before his arrest and appearance

before the authorities, according to the Christian legends.

Now there is no great religion of the ancient time which does

not teach in more or less clear and definite form the existence of

certain forces of " reward " or of retribution, acting after man's

death in appropriate spheres in which the so-called soul of man

meets with retribution, or, as some say, " punishment " or

" reward ", after physical death. Those spheres in which the soul

shall receive appropriate retributive purgation, or " punishment ",

are called hells, in the English tongue ; and those in which the

soul shall receive appropriate retributive repose and reward are

commonly called heavens ; and because these words are familiar

to Europeans, and represent with fair accuracy the general idea

of post mortem retribution prevalent in all great religions, it

may be best for us to use them. But we must positively clear out

of our minds, wash our minds clean of, all ideas that have been

put into them by the miseducation of the dogmatic theologies,

if we are to gain a correct idea of what the Esoteric Philosophy

teaches on these lines.

We must remember that we are studying the occultism of the

archaic ages. Now this word " occultism " meant originally only

the science of things hid ; even in the Middle Ages of Europe,

those philosophers who were the forerunners of the modern

scientists, those who then studied physical nature, called their

science " occultism ", and their studies " occult ", meaning the

things that were hid, or not known to the common run of mankind.

Such a medieval philosopher was Albertus Magnus, a German ;

and so also was Roger Bacon, an Englishman ; both of the

thirteenth century of the Christian Era.

Therefore, " occultism " as we use the term, and as it should be

used, means the study of the hid things of being, the science of

life or universal Nature ; in one sense this word can be used to

mean the study of unusual " phenomena ", which meaning it

usually has today among people who do not think, or who will

not think, of the vastly larger field of causes which " Occultism ",

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 139

properly speaking, investigates. Doubtless mere " phenomena "

have their place in study, but they are on the frontier, as it were,

on the outskirts, and they are the superficialities of occultism.

In studying true occultism we must penetrate deep into the causal

mysteries of being ; and, in very truth, we have been doing this

since the Teacher inaugurated these studies : step by step, have

we been going deeper into the realm of causes.

Now, in order fully to comprehend the destiny of the soul, post

mortem, and before its next rebirth in a physical body on this

plane, it is incumbent upon us first to say that there is a vast field

of teachings with regard to death upon which we do not feel at

present privileged to roam. This is a matter which rests entirely

with the Teacher's discretion, and only upon her explicit instruc-

tions will anything be said regarding that field in these studies.

Yet there are certain things which we can touch upon. The

reason for our necessary reticence and silence with regard to the

forbidden field mentioned, is this, that, as remarked in one of our

former studies, the teachings with regard to the deeper mysteries

of death give keys to mysteries of still greater magnitude and

scope, and in ancient days were communicated only to a chosen

few, at any time. Any one of you who chooses to look into the

religious mystical literatures of the world, can prove this fact for

himself.

In former studies we have traced the peregrination of the monad

from the state of latency into manifestation, as viewed from below.

Now the monad is a spiritual " atom ", so to say ; let us call it

this evening a spiritual radical (radicle), using this word " radical "

in precisely the double sense in which H. P. Blavatsky used the

word " radical " when she spoke of comets as " those long-haired

sidereal radicals " with a touch of real humour in one sense, but

also hinting, by the use of the word, at a great truth of the

Esoteric Philosophy with regard to comets in calling them

" radicals ". You know what radical originally meant. It meant

a (little) root, from the Latin radix, hence its application to a

comet as the root or the germ of a future world. So, also, a monad

is a radical, a radical in both the senses in which she used them,

an " aggressive " (in the sense of self-acting, self-developing)

entity, and also a root, a germ of a future God.

Now this radical, in order to attain self-consciousness, and con-

scious self-consciousness, must pass down the " arc of shadows "

until it reaches the turning-point of the great Cycle in that man-

vantara, and as an integral part of and belonging to the Hier-

archy evolving in that manvantara. By that time, if its Karman

is so, it has reached conscious self-consciousness, and is manifest-

ing on our plane as a man. Thereupon it starts upwards along

the " luminous arc ", or the arc of ascension, and if it is successful

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

in its cyclic pilgrimage, it finally blossoms forth into a God. We

must remember "this general outline if we wish to understand

clearly what we mean by " heavens " and " hells ".

The whole aim of evolution, the entire destiny of the spiritual

radical, is the elevating of the consciously personal into the

consciously impersonal so important a thought that we are

obliged to say that it lies as the very first conception and as the

root of the whole Esoteric Philosophy. A self-conscious God can

be such only because it has a vehicle of self to work through ; and

this is what the spiritual radical lacks when it starts out on its

cyclic pilgrimage. Manhood must be raised to Godhood.

Now we may begin to see here the meaning of what our first

Teacher spoke of as the " loss of the soul ". At every step down-

ward, as its self-consciousness is slowly and gradually evolved in

any manvantara, the monad fabricates into itself, or secretes from

itself, and excretes from itself, vehicles proper for its cognizing

the forces and matter on the various planes through which it

passes, and in which it manifests. Those on the higher planes are

egos, and each ego secretes its own appropriate vehicle, called a

soul. Consequently, there is an ego and a soul for each step down-

ward : a dual vehicle for manifesting the monadic essence on every

plane. Through the whole, as a golden cord, runs the Self, the

innermost consciousness, the spiritual "I am ". The ego-soul

gives to the monad the consciousness " I am I ". The Self, how-

ever, is the same in all of us. " I am I " is the quality only of the

ego. Therefore the important thing is to " save " the ego. The

higher egos are saved because of previous salvation gained in

former manvantaras. But the lower egos and their souls are built

up out of the matter and consciousness of this manvantara, and

they must be " saved ". The state of human consciousness in

which we mankind now live in this epoch and in this man-

vantara, is called in the individual the human soul, the human

ego ; and this human soul and this human ego must be " saved ",

because our self-consciousness is centred therein. We use the

word " saved ", because none better occurs to us : at least the

word is familiar. This " saving " means that the ego-soul must

be rescued from the magnetic attraction of matter.

But what happens if its education is incomplete when at the

bottom of the arc, before beginning the ascent along the " luminous

arc ", and it becomes unable to run the race and fails ? Suppose

that the pull of matter is too strong and that its attraction is

downward. Slowly, in that case, the links with the higher Self are

broken, the golden chain is ruptured, and the whole effort of the

monad in that manvantara is lost. The entity cycling downward

is what is called a " lost soul ".

Now a " lost soul " has naught to do with the " heavens " and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 14*

the " hells ". The state of Nirvana, again, has nothing to do with

the " heavens " and the " hells ". The " heavens " and the

" hells " concern only the truly human entity : that is, the human

ego and the human soul ; only this grade of consciousness, for to

it belong those consciousnesses which can partake of the concep-

tion of, and can experience, felicity or misery. Nirvana is beyond

felicity ; it is, of course, beyond misery ; its opposite pole is

Nirvana-avichi, a subject which we shall have to discuss, if we

have time for it, either this evening or at our next study. Nirvana-

avichi is the utter contrast of Nirvana, it is the lowest point, the

nether pole of conscious being.

Now when the body breaks up at physical death the astral

elements remain in the " shadow- world " with the same conscious

center, as in life, clinging within them, still vitalizing them ; and

certain processes there go on of which our Teachers have more or

less fully told us ; and consequently there is no need for us to

take time this evening in discussing what Kama-Loka is or Deva-

chan is, particularly. But when the " second death ", after that

of the physical body, takes place and there are many deaths,

that is to say many changes of the vehicles of the ego, when the

second death takes place, what becomes of the human center, the

truly human entity ? We have been told that the higher part of it

withdraws into itself all that aspires towards it, and takes that

" all " with it into the devachan ; and that the Atman, with the

Buddhi, and with the higher part of the Manas which is the so-

called human soul, or the mind becomes thereupon the spiritual

monad of man. Strictly speaking, this is the divine monad within

its vehicle Atman and Buddhi combined with the human ego

in its higher manasic element ; but they are joined into one after

death, and are hence spoken of as the spiritual monad.

The human monad " goes " to Devachan. Devachan is a

Tibetan word and may be translated as God-land, God-country,

God-region. There are many degrees in Devachan : the highest,

the intermediate, and the lowest. What becomes of the entity, on

the other hand, the lower human soul, that is so befouled with

earth-thought and the lower instincts that it cannot rise ? There

may be enough in it of the spirit-nature to hold it together as an

entity and enable it to become a reincarnating entity, but it is

foul, it is heavy ; its tendency is consequently downwards. Can

it therefore rise into a heavenly felicity ? Can it go even into the

lower realms of Devachan and there enjoy its modicum of the

beatitude, bliss, of everything that is noble and beautiful ? No.

There is an appropriate sphere, a sphere appropriate for every

degree of development of the ego-soul, and it gravitates to that

sphere and remains there until it is thoroughly purged, until the

sin has been washed out, so to say.

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These are the so-called " hells ", beneath even the lowest parts

of Devachan ; and the " arfipa heavens " are the highest parts of

the Devachan. Nirvana is a very different thing from the

" heavens ". Nirvana is a state of utter bliss and complete, un-

trammelled consciousness, a state of absorption in pure Being, and

is the wondrous destiny of those who have reached superhuman

knowledge and purity and spiritual illumination. It really is

personal absorption into or identification with the Self the

Highest SELF. It is also the state of the monadic entities in the

period that intervenes between minor manvantaras, or Rounds,

of a Panetary Chain ; and more fully so between each seven-

Round Period, or Day of Brahma, and the succeeding Day or new

Kalpa of a Planetary Chain. At these last times, starting forth

from the seventh sphere in the seventh Round, the monadic

entities have passed far beyond even the highest state of Deva-

chan. Too pure and too far advanced even for such a condition

as the devachanic felicity, they go to their appropriate sphere and

condition, which latter is the Nirvana following the end of the

seventh Round.

Now what do the Ancients say in their exoteric religions, about

these so-called " heavens " and " hells " ? Every such ancient

religion taught that the so-called heavens are divided into steps

or grades of ascending bliss and purity ; and the so-called hells

into steps or grades of increasing purgation or suffering. Now the

Esoteric Doctrine, our Occultism, teaches that the one is not a

" punishment ", nor is the other, strictly speaking, a reward. The

teaching is, simply, that each entity after physical death is drawn

to the appropriate sphere to which the karmic destiny of the

entity magnetically attracts it. As a man works, as a man sows,

in his life, that and that only shall he reap after death. Good seed

produces good fruit ; bad seed, tares and perhaps even nothing

of value or of spiritual use follows a negative and colourless life.

There is no " law " of karman ; we repeat, there is no " law " of

karman. There are no " laws " of nature ; we repeat, there are

no " laws " of nature. What is a natural " law " ? Is a natural

" law " a God ? Is it a being ? Is it an entity ? Is it a Force ? Is

it an energy ? If so, what God produces it ? The word " law ",

however, is convenient enough provided we understand what we

mean by it. Perhaps no better word, in our day, could be found

for ordinary usage in writing popularly or in conversation. But

do not let us make the mistake of taking abstractions for realities.

In this study of the marvellous doctrines of our Occultism we shall

never move a step forward towards a proper understanding of

Nature, if we do make this mistake. We must wash our minds

clean, of occidental scientific and theological miseducation. The

so-called " laws of nature " and the " law of Karman " are simply

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 143

the various workings of consciousnesses in Nature : truly and

actually, they are Habits, habits of beings. We replace the abstrac-

tions of occidental science and theology with the action and the

ineluctable results thereof of consciousnesses and wills in the

spheres of being of the Hierarchies of Life. We are simply abus-

ing our intelligence, stultifying our intellects, when we go around

and around the vicious circles of materialistic theory and think we

have satisfied our inquiring minds by replacing the work of end-

less Hosts of Beings in and of Nature with an abstraction called

" law " or " laws ". Think of it ! Do we realize that not one

single great thinker of the ancients, until the Christian era, ever

talked about " laws of Nature ", as if these " laws " were living

beings ; as if these abstractions were actual entities which did

things ? Did the " laws of navigation " ever navigate a ship ?

Does the " law of gravity " pull the planets together ? Does it

unite or pull the atoms together ? Nonsense. This word " law "

is simply an abstraction, an expression for the action of entities in

Nature. The word " law ", as said before, is perhaps a convenient

term, and if we understand what we mean when we use it, then all

right. But we must understand it, The ancients put realities,

living beings, in the place of " laws ", which, as we use the term,

are only abstractions ; they did not cheat themselves so easily

with words. They called them Gods. Very good; call them,

then, Gods. They called them spiritual entities. Very good, then.

Call them so. Call them Dhyanis, or by any other name you

please. But pin your faith, direct your intellects, to actual, living

beings, to realities, not to nothingnesses, not to abstractions, which

have no reality except as modes of speech.

Let us take for example the ancient Brahmanical teachings.

There, we find many divisions of " heavens " and " hells " ; but

the common one is the division into seven lower spheres, or lokas,

or " hells ", or infernal halls ; and the seven superior lokas, which

we may call " heavens ". The Buddhist teaching usually gives

the number as 21 hells, for which the common word is Narakas ;

and the Buddhists also used the word lokas for the higher spheres ;

but note well that in all ancient systems, these higher and lower

spheres or grades were in ascending and descending steps. There

was the highest, and all the others which followed, decreasing in

felicity and purity by degrees, each one growing more material

and less happy with each step downward, until they passed in-

sensibly into the higher hells, and here again still further increas-

ing in materiality downward until the end of the Hierarchy of

these stages was reached.

Now among the very lowest of these hells, the Buddhists placed

Avichi ; this is a Sanskrit word, and its general meaning is " wave-

less ", having no waves, or movement, suggesting the stagnation

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of life and being, in immobility ; it also means " without happi-

ness " ; or " without repose " ; and below that another Hier-

archy begins, a new world ! What endless realms for speculation

open to us here !

We can here but sketch our remaining time this evening is so

short an outline of the doctrines concerning the " heavens " and

the " hells ". In beginning with a general outline, we are pursuing

the general plan of study as it has been authorized by the Teacher.

First, we try to give the general sketch, the general view, later

filling in the necessary details as we pursue our subject, although

frequently alluding to another teaching connected with it, pur-

posely doing so ; and in this way we are following the ancient

system or method of teaching these different subjects. In our

modern Occidental institutions of learning, it is customary,

perhaps a rigorous requirement, that the lecturer shall pursue to

the end all details of a subject embarked upon : opening one line

of investigation and not deviating from it until everything in

theory and practice, or supposed to be there, is known, or thought

to be known ; and when that one line of study is fully exhausted,

and when the intellect is completely crystallized in that form, and

weary, then opening a new line of investigation. This method is

positively contrary to Nature. Neither child nor adult learns life's

lessons in such artificial fashion. The ancients knew better the

psychology of teaching and learning. They built up, first, the

general view, such as has a man on a mountain-top with the

general topographical view before his vision, whence he constructs

a topographical survey which he retains in his mind ; and when

he goes down into the valley, he is enabled easily to fill in all

necessary details. This is Nature's method, if we may so speak of

it ; and it is what is called the Platonic method : first the general,

then the particular. In logic, this is called the deductive system,

as opposed to the Aristotelian or inductive method, on which

modern Western teaching is based.

Now the Egyptians, as we know from their papyri, taught the

existence of many spheres after death, the many planes of felicity

and beatitude and the many planes of suffering or purgation,

spheres which the defunct entity had to pass through before

it reached one or the other of the goals of post mortem life :

" heaven " or " hell ". The teachers of ancient times had a way,

an allegorical way, of expressing the course of life after death, and

in this manner kept the intuition alive and active without touch-

ing upon forbidden matters, secrets or mysteries of the sanctuaries.

Let us take in this connexion, as illustration, the teaching of the

Mithraic religion, which came very close, at one time, to ousting

completely the Christian doctrine. The Mithraists taught the

existence of seven (and nine) heavens, each one preceded and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 145

followed by another one, inferior or superior, respectively ; and

each one was to be attained by a " ladder ", which was only a

graphic, a neat, way of speaking. Of course they meant only that

the " ladder " was a representation of the steps, grades, or

degrees, which the soul had to climb, in order to attain the goal ;

and the " ladder " was likewise a figure of the degrees of the

hierarchy the steps, the planes, the spheres, of which it is com-

posed. They had also their seven degrees of initiation, based upon

the rising scale existent in Nature ; and two other degrees which

were considered as too sacred to speak of openly ; and this makes

nine degrees in all.

How about the ancient Scandinavians ? Take the case of their

Niflheim, a word meaning " cloudy (or misty) dwelling-place ",

" home ", or " mansion ". This nebulous region was the ninth,

the lowest, in their system, and itself was composed of nine minor

worlds or spheres. Very careful indeed were the writers of the

Eddas in the way they taught ; but they give us enough to show

us the same identical teachings as found elsewhere over the world.

I am speaking here more particularly of the Prose Edda, which is

more open in its esoteric allusions than is the poetic Edda, the

Edda of verse. Now the Prose Edda tells us that on one side, the

northern, of the cosmic space, were cold and gloom, and it gives

to this sphere the name Nifl = " nebulous region", which is a

generalizing of the meaning of the name ; Nifl had nine divisions

or degrees ; but more particularly Nifl was the name of the lowest

of the nine ; still, the Edda gave that name to the entire series of

nine spheres, on the north. A middle region was the Ginnungagap,

an Old Norse word which can be translated perhaps as yawning

abyss, or abyss (or Gap) of abysses ; this was the middle or inter-

mediate sphere ; and then came Muspellheim, to the south, a place

of fire and flame and warmth, not necessarily anything like the

Christian hell, for, as a matter of fact, it was nearer like a heaven

than a hell ; elemental or divine beings lived there, a natural

thought to the cold-enduring Scandinavians. Their hell was cold ;

and the hells of Southrons were hot ; these words being merely

appropriate ways of expressing things to be easily apprehended

by the people.

What did the early Christians or the medieval Christians believe

as regards " heaven " and " hell " ? Let us choose the descriptions

of Dante, the great Italian poet, for instance ; for he echoes the

ancient pagan teaching remarkably in some ways ; always in a

distorted manner, it is true ; but you can see the ancient truth

under all that he wrote. How significant it is that he made Vergil,

the great Latin poet, his conductor through his Infernos, or hells,

and through his Purgatory ; but in due deference to his Christian

teachers and the Christian age in which he lived, when he came to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

the heavens, which he describes, he has a Christian guide, his

Beatrice, and of course he had to follow his Christian doctrines.

Dante divides his hells into nine circles. He divides his Purgatory

into seven circles, preceded by the Ante-purgatory, and followed by

the Terrestrial Paradise, which make again nine. In each of these

hells, and in each of these divisions of Purgatory places of

purification he shows the lowest as the most terrible ; the

second above it is not quite so fearful, and the third less so than

the second ; and so on up through the eighteen circles or degrees

of Hells and Purgatory to the topmost one of the Purgatory, which

is scarcely, if at all, unpleasant. Finally, Dante divides his

heavens into nine, and these are topped by the Empyrean, the

dwelling-place of God and his Angels 1 ! Thus, there are nine

hells ; seven divisions of Purgatory, with the Ante-purgatory

and the Terrestrial Paradise again nine ; nine heavens ; the

Empyrean : 9+9+9+1=28, divisions of non-physical life, each

one appropriated to punish certain vices or reward certain virtues

after death. A curiously faithful, curiously distorted, and often

grotesque, parody of the archaic doctrine.

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CHAPTER XV

THE EVOLUTION OF THE " ABSOLUTE ". GENERALIZED PLAN OF

EVOLUTION ON ALL PLANES. SEVEN KEYS TO WISDOM AND

FUTURE INITIATIONS.

Containing all things in the one summit of his own hyparxis, he himself

subsists wholly beyond. PROCLUS . ^ ^^ gf ^^ p ^ (CoRy }

You will not understand it, as when understanding some particular thing.

DAMASCIUS. (CORY.)

Things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand body,

But only as many as are lightly armed arrive at the summit.

PROCLUS : Commentary on the Cratylus of Plato. (CORY.)

N opening our study this evening we read first from The

Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, page 570, the first paragraph :

^ While the Christian is taught that the human soul is a breath

of God being created by him for sempiternal existence, i.e.,

having a beginning, but no end (and therefore never to be called eternal)

the Occult teaching says, " Nothing is created, but is only transformed.

Nothing can manifest itself in this universe from a globe down to a

vague, rapid thought that was not in the universe already ; every-

thing on the subjective plane is an eternal is : as everything on the

objective plane is an ever becoming because transitory/ 1

Now, in resuming our study this evening, you will remember

that at our last meeting, on account of the lack of time, we were

obliged to confine ourselves to a short review of the subject of the

Heavens and Hells as doctrinally held by various exoteric re-

ligions ; and in considering several theological or philosophical or

mythological teachings about them, we had reached the view-

point of the medieval Christian theology, as represented in the

Divina Commedia of the great Italian poet, Dante ; and we found

in that really noble poem that Dante wrote of nine Circles com-

prised in his Inferno or Hell ; seven belonging properly to his

Purgatory, but preceded by the Ante-Purgatory, and the seventh

Circle of the Purgatory followed by his Terrestrial Paradise, thus

forming nine Circles or Departments in that division. Then he

speaks of the nine Heavens, topped finally by the Empyrean, in

which last sits God surrounded by the holy Angels and the spirits

of the Just. So that we find here once again, as we found in the

other systems that we have mentioned, the wonderful number

nine as the root-number of division.

'47

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We also touched briefly upon the ancient Scandinavian beliefs

in regard to this subject as found in the Younger or Prose Edda,

and merely vaguely alluded to the teachings therein contained.

We also spoke of the beliefs of the Greek and Latin Stoics ; and

we might also have pointed out that in an important so-called

" Hermetic " work, supposed to have had its origin in Egypt, but

which has been greatly altered by later Christian hands the work

I refer to being called The Divine Poemandres there are seven

spheres or stages of being spoken of, as also vague allusions to an

eighth, while a ninth is merely hinted at also.

Now turning to ancient Greece again, we find that the great

Greek poet Homer, in the Eighth Book of the Iliad, makes his

Zeus speak, in addressing the gods and goddesses, of the " Golden

Chain ". Zeus tells the other divinities in very masterful language

of his supreme power, and that if they all, the gods and goddesses

of high Olympus, were to drag downward at one end of that

Chain, and he were to hold the other, he Zeus himself, alone,

could drag it upwards with all the gods and goddesses, all the

seas and the earths, and hang that Golden Chain, with them all

at the nether end, to one of the pinnacles of heaven. What is

the meaning of this curious tale ? The following :

This Golden Chain represents the concatenation of the living

Hierarchies which we have studied before. The Golden Chain

of all Being, inward and outward. In the same address to the

assembly of the Divinities of Olympus, Zeus speaks as follows :

" Any one of you who despises my words and will, I shall cast

down into gloomy Tartarus . . . which is as far below Hades as

Earth is below Olympus ". This shows us somewhat of Homer's

representation of the framework of Kosmos, which was somewhat

as follows : Earth, or rather the Universe, was represented as

a sphere : Olympus was placed at the upper or northern side or

pole ; what was called " Earth " was the next part below ;

below Earth was Hades ; and at the nether pole from Olympus

was placed Tartarus. Homer, through his Zeus, tells us that as

far below Olympus as Earth is, so far below Hades is Tartarus.

The Greek poet Hesiod, in his Theogony, beginning with Verse

721, also tells us that if a brazen anvil were allowed to fall from

Olympus to Earth it would take nine days to fall, and would

reach the Earth on the tenth ; and if that same brazen anvil, in

continuing its course, were to fall from Earth to Tartarus, it

would again take nine days to fall, and would reach Tartarus

on the tenth. So the Latin poet Vergil, Aeneid, vi, 577-579,

has the same general idea.

We see therefore in Greek and Latin mystical thought the same

principle of Hierarchies and scales of nines and tens that we have

met with before. The theory calls for a continuous succession

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 149

of planes or spheres of being, ranging from higher to lower ;

repeated uninterruptedly throughout the range of any general

hierarchical system of worlds. For instance here, beginning at

Tartarus, there follows a new Sub-Hierarchy, a new sphere, a

new Egg, of Being ; just as the Olympus of any one such system

is the nether pole of a still higher Hierarchy than itself. And so

on throughout the Universe.

Now this " nine days' falling " of Hesiod's " brazen anvil ",

and any other similar figure, is simply the well known mythologic

way of speaking, rendering in an easily understood form for the

general public, with their sleeping minds, the esoteric doctrines,

the doctrines of Occultism, that is to say, the facts of Inner Being,

as those are found in all the mystical teachings of all the ancient

nations.

Now this subject of the Hells and Heavens, as was pointed out

in our last study, rests upon several fundamental esoteric factors

which we have been studying continuously since the Teacher

inaugurated these meetings last January. As said at our last

meeting, there are in very truth no " Hells " and no " Heavens ",

in the ordinary Christian sense, at all. But there are Spheres

of Retribution, Spheres of Probation, which are particular

spheres of being ; and some of these hells, as described for in-

stance in the Brahmanical and in the Buddhist religions, are

actually spheres of near-pleasure, rather agreeable than other-

wise ; they are described as really very pleasant and interesting

places 1 But they are still lower than the heavens, so called.

We might consider the description of some of the so-called

Heavens, on the other hand, as not so exceedingly pleasant ;

the idea being that just as are the conditions among men on

earth, so it is among appropriate spheres of retribution or pro-

bation or purgatorial cleansing : when the compass of man's

life on earth has been brought to its end, everything then moves

according to strict analogy and according to strict gravitational

attraction. Nothing can go to any sphere or go into any state

for which it is unfit. Everything finds its exactly appropriate and

similar goal, or home, or sphere.

These heavens and hells are states, of course ; so is earth-life a

state. But if a thing is a state it is also the state of a thing ;

and if it is a thing, it must have place, or position, or locality.

That is obvious. So, therefore, while these heavens and hells are

states, they are likewise localities, places. The Ancient Wisdom

speaks of them in general, refers to them in general, by the

Sanskrit word meaning " The three worlds " Tri-bhuvana, i.e.,

meaning three briefly generalized abodes or mansions or dwelling-

places ; as Jesus says in the Christian scriptures : "In my

Father's house are many mansions ". As the Teacher has just

ISO

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

pointed out, they are states of mind for the entities who dwell

therein, and it is through these states of mind that the pur-

gatorial cleansing of the soul-nature is accomplished.

Why does a man go to hell ? Because he wants to go to hell.

Why does a man go to heaven ? Because he desires to go to

heaven. A man goes wherever he wills to go. If during his life he

has lived an evil existence, it is because the impulses and attrac-

tions of his being were such ; and can such a soul, inwrapped with

earthly attractions, ascend into spiritual spheres ? Can the

operations of spiritual beings, of the so-called higher " laws of

nature ", attract a man whose soul is absorbed in heavenly

aspirations into one of the lower and pain-racked spheres of

purgation ? Never. Think of the meaning involved in this

thought. We must therefore take warning therefrom, and live

in accordance therewith. Let us hearken to these doctrines,

sublime in their grandeur. Every word of them is pregnant with

profound meanings.

Now let us go a little farther. You may remember that some

months ago we pointed out that in the Ancient Wisdom, in the

ancient Occultism, there was a teaching which actually had

originated a modern scientific doctrine, born nevertheless in a

distorted form of materialism, regarding the operations of nature,

the so-called " conservation of energy ", which is one of the great

pillars of modern materialistic science ; and also its twin dogma,

the so-called " correlation of forces ". Those two scientific

doctrines were born of the supposition that there is nothing in

existence but inert, lifeless, soulless matter, impelled by strange

and unknown and perhaps undiscoverable impulses, which were

called " forces ", springing forth in some unknown and perhaps

undiscoverable way. Science is changing its viewpoints in many

directions, it is quite true, but yet some materialistic ideas still

remain. Now, in our time, everything is supposed to be funda-

mentally force ; matter itself is supposed to be force. The ideas,

as you readily see, still are the same ; the words alone are changing.

It is, however, a step ahead, but we should not let ourselves be

carried away by mere words, providing the thought behind the

words is the same and as fully materialistic as ever.

But there are signs that other changes also are rapidly taking

place in scientific realms. Within three weeks, the present

speaker read the report of an address by an eminent English

physicist, an honor and credit to his country, intuitional in some

ways, who tells us what the latest discoveries are demonstrating

to the scientists of the time. What is this new light ? Just what

we pointed out some months ago as a fundamental teaching of

the ancient Occultism, that Force is simply Matter in an ethereal

state ; or, to put it in another and a truer way, Matter is simply

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 151

crystallized Force, so to say, Force and Matter being in essence

one. This scientist further tells us that modern thinkers are

now beginning to believe that Matter is not eternal. Of course,

we also believe that, provided that by " Matter " we mean merely

physical matter, the basic may a or " illusion " of physical

being. But if we mean by " Matter " the substratum, the

essential substance of being, we differ instantly, for indeed That

is eternal. IT is Mula-prakriti, root-substance, the Garment of

Parabrahman.

Now again, what do we mean when we speak of Parabrahman

and Mula-prakriti, Essential Consciousness, and Essential Nature

or Essential Substance or " Matter " ? We mean this : that

Parabrahman-Mtilaprakriti can be for any human intellect

merely the absolute state of the Hierarchy, the highest portion,

its Flower, its Principle, its Root, its Seed That from which the

rest evolves, or goes out and becomes the manifested universe we

live in and know and are a part of. As Paul says in the Christian

Gospels, " In him [that is, in It the Greek allows this transla-

tion] we live and move and have our being ", i.e., we are It, in

other words ; that is, in the sense of being essentially a part of

the Flower of our Hierarchy, the highest to us, for IT is the Root

of Consciousness of and in our Kosmical Universe or Universal

Kosmos, which latter is all that is comprehended within the

zone of the Milky Way, that is, the Universal Kosmos that we

know of. The Summit of it, is this Root from which all these

numberless inferior worlds or universes inside it have come

forth, have evolved forth ; its children the solar systems, the

suns, the stars, the planets : all the living beings, all the atoms,

all the worlds or universes ; in short, the Kosmos ; all come

forth from IT. It is the Summit, the Flower, the Acme, as also

the Seed ; it is the Absolute Paramatman, Supreme Self, which

you will remember we have studied before, as we have more or

less all the teachings that we are now passing briefly in review,

because this is, as the Teacher has told us this evening, the last

of our present studies until her return from Europe.

Now what do we mean by the word " Absolute " ? Do we

mean " God " ? If you like that word. If you really wish to

call it " God ". But do you know anything about " God " ?

Don't we see that the instant in which we stultify our intellects,

cripple our intuition, limit the soaring of our interior faculties by

speaking of bounds, whether inferred in thought or word, then we

reach ends and halt ? Now, remember always in this connexion,

that beyond and beyond and beyond the Kosmical Universe,

beyond our ken, beyond our imagination, there is always endless

life, endless being, for there is no end anywhere ; and this thought

is what was meant in the ancient Occultism when its teachers

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

spoke of that "* circle whose circumference is nowhere and whose

center is everywhere ", the " Boundless ", the " Without Bounds ".

This Latin word " Absolute ", misused as it is in modern philosophy

and even among our own selves, is the exact translation of the

Sanskrit Mukti, or Moksha, which I will allude to in a moment.

" Absolute " is the modern English form of the past participle

passive of the Latin word absolvere, meaning " to loosen ", " to

set free ", "to release ", and hence " perfected ". Not utter,

limitless perfection like the immortal gods in some religions were

supposed to have, which is always impossible. But the relative

perfection, the Summit, the Acme, the Flower, the Root, the

Seed, of any Hierarchy ; and particularly for us of that Hier-

archy which is for us the highest our Kosmical Universe, of

which we have spoken.

Now the Sanskrit words Mukti or Moksha : the former comes

from the Sanskrit root much, meaning " to release ", " to set

free'', as said. Moksha from the Sanskrit Moksh, with an almost

identical meaning, and probably a desiderative of the same root

much. The meaning is that when a spirit, a monad, or a spiritual

radical, has so grown in manifestation that it has first become a

man, and is set free interiorly, inwardly, and from a man has

become a Planetary Spirit or Dhyan-Chohan, or Lord of Medita-

tion, and has gone still higher, to become interiorly a Brahman,

and from a Brahman the Parabrahman for its Hierarchy, then it

is absolutely perfected, free, released : perfected for that great

period of time which to us seems almost an eternity, so long is it,

virtually incomputable by the human intellect. Now this is the

" Absolute " ; limited in comparison with things still more

immense, still more sublime ; but so far as we can think of it,

"released " or " freed " from the chains or bonds of material

existence.

When the great period of the Universal Kosmic Pralaya

occurs, and the universe is indrawn (following the Oriental

metaphor) into the bosom of Parabrahman, what then happens ?

The spiritual entities then enter into their Para-Nirvana, which

means exactly for them what is meant for us when we speak of

the death of the human being. They are drawn by their spiritual

gravitational attractions into still higher Hierarchies of being,

into still higher spiritual realms, therein still higher rising and

growing and learning and living ; while the lower elements of

the Kosmos, the body of the universe (even as does our physical

body when the change called death comes, Death, the " Twin

Sister of Life ", to follow our Teacher's beautiful metaphor, her

beautiful trope of speech), .follow their own particular gravita-

tional attractions : the physical body to dust ; the vital breath

to the vital breath of the Kosmos ; dust to dust, breath to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 153

breath : so with the other Kosmic principles, as with man's

principles at his decease : the kama of our nature to the universal

reservoir of the kamic organism ; our manas into its Dhyan-

Chohanic rest ; our monads into their own higher life. Then

when the clock of eternity points once again for the Kosmos to

the hour of " coming forth into light " which is " death " for

the spiritual being, as death for us is life for the inner man when

the Manvantara of material life comes around again (the period

of spiritual death for the Kosmos is the material life of manifesta-

tion) then in the distant abysms of space and time the Kosmic

Life-Centers are aroused into activity once more : first the stage

of the nebular fiery cloud; then the whirling nebula; then

the spiral nebula ; then the ringed nebula ; then the sun and the

planets, and finally the human and other beings that grow on the

last ; each one of these planets having its seven Rounds to fulfil

in the forthcoming Planetary Periods, time after time, during

endless life. Endless hope and experience lie in this marvellous

scheme ; but always at every step on the Path there is a dividing

of the ways for those Entities which have attained moral respon-

sibility, an up and a down, for the " moment of choice " is really

continuous.

At the present period (for our great Maha-manvantara we have

lived somewhat more than half of the maha-manvantaric cycle)

we are, for the Maha-manvantara of our Kosmical Solar System,

at the point where matter has already reached its ultimate degree

of development in our Hierarchy. We have lived, according to

the ancient numerical teaching, one hundred and fifty-five

trillion, five hundred and twenty odd billion solar years. One-half

of our Maha-manvantara is gone ; and there still remain nearly

one hundred and fifty-five trillion, five hundred and twenty

billion solar years. More accurately, we have slowly passed the

actual lowest point of the great Universal Kosmical Cycle. That

lowest point, where matter reached its greatest degree of physical

manifestation for us, for our great Wave of Life was when the

moon had reached the middle point of its Fourth Round, which

was ages and aeons before it became our physical satellite. The

ancient teachings are that as the great Parabrahman of our

hierarchical System has one hundred (Divine) Years of life to

live, each year having three hundred and sixty Days, and each

Year being divided into twelve months, and as Fifty Divine

Years have passed, therefore on this planet Terra, on this Earth,

we have attained to or reached the first (Divine) Day of the

first Divine Month of the ascending cycle of the second Period of

Fifty Divine Years. We have, then, come down the cycles for

the last one hundred fifty-five trillion", five hundred twenty odd

billion years, cycling down, in and through our Hierarchy, to the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

lowest point of it in the moon ; and have, since that point was

reached ages agone, slowly and painfully begun our climb upwards

again towards the Ineffable, the Summit of our hierarchical

System, our " Absolute ". Please remember very carefully that

we use this word "Absolute" only in the sense and meaning

hereinbefore explained.

How did the " Absolute " become the " Absolute " ? By

chance ? There is no " chance ". There is nothing but endless

life and endless consciousness and endless duration, working

according to the Principles and Elements of inherent nature,

which is called Swabhava in our Sanskrit works. The root-

meaning of this word Swabhava is " self-generation ", " self-

becoming ". We generate ourselves throughout all times : give

ourselves our own bodies ; climb our own ladders, step by step ;

seek our own hells and find our own heavens. And, the whole

purpose, the whole effort, of universal evolution, according to the

teaching of this Ancient Wisdom, is this : raising personality

into Individuality ; substance into divinity ; matter into spirit ;

grossness into purity.

Whence then came the " Absolute ", the " supreme self ", or

" spirit " or Paramatman, of which we are sparks ? By growth

from within outwards ; and from without inwards. It was once

in incalculable aeons gone by, a Man. Think of the sublimity

involved in this teaching ; consider the almost endless aeons of

the past ; and that what in its far, far-away origin was a spark

of divinity, a spark of another and former " Absolute ", is now

our " God ", our Paramatman, our " Supreme Self ", of which

we are verily the children, and " in which we move and live and

have our being ". What is the main lesson that we may draw

from this ? What was the psychological mystery hinted at by

us in our last meeting, and to which allusion was then but slightly

made, because the Teacher had to close our evening's study before

we had ended our theme ? It is this and we touch but lightly

upon it here, because it belongs to a higher degree than this

present one. Our human souls are gods in embryo ; our human

souls were formerly animal souls ; our present animal souls will

in a future manvantara become human souls. Our human souls

in a future manvantara will become Monads. Man, if he make the

manvantaric race successfully, is destined to be the composite

Logos of a forthcoming Hierarchy ; as he now in fact is, in the

inferior Hierarchy of himself, the Logos of the quasi-infinitude

of less beings composing his personal nature. Reflect long over

this mystery, wonderful, sublime !

Are these teachings not thought-compelling and wonderful ?

No wonder we have held them secret and sacred in the Ancient

Wisdom. Why ? For many reasons. First, because they

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 155

could not be understood without the necessary spiritual and intel-

lectual training ; and yet it is remarkable, it is truly astonishing,

how often and how, in so many ways, we see allusions to them in

the ancient exoteric teachings of the various religions. Remember

that " exoteric ", in the ancient religions, does not mean " false ".

The word merely means those teachings for which the key has

not been openly given.

I have noticed and read in some of the translations from the

Welsh made for us by our own Theosophical Welsh scholar,

Professor Kenneth Morris, teachings that I believe to be taken

from the ancient Welsh books, which have caused me to gasp

in amazement, that these teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, so

sacred and occult, should have been so boldly put forth by the

ancient bards in open language. But I looked again, and I saw

how a Master-hand had worked, disguising and hiding while

openly teaching. The arrangement, the very beauty, of the

imagery used, misled the too inquiring and the too clever mind.

But for him who has the key, as we students have, it is easy to

follow. Likewise have I found the same method not only in the

wonderful Celtic teachings, but also in the teachings of ancient

Egypt, and of other countries.

The Teacher has told me that at a former meeting I touched too

slightly upon the " much vexed question ", as some people call

it, of good and evil. That is a subject which properly comes at the

close of the studies concerning " Purgatory ", " Hells and

Heavens ", which end this evening, and which we shall now

briefly treat of. Christian thinkers have found it impossible to

solve this problem satisfactorily to any thinking and reflective

mind. But though it is to them and others a " much vexed

question ", to a student of the Ancient Wisdom it is really very

simple. How can a Christian who believes that his God, that his

Creator of all that is, One who therefore must be likewise the

creator of evil how can he reconcile this necessary conclusion

with his other teachings concerning his Deity, for instance that

God is all good, and from Him proceeds necessarily therefore

nothing but good ? Is evil then the work of the Devil ? What

child would not then ask, Whence then the Devil and the evil

proceeding from him ? From God ? But is God not all good ?

Hence the inevitable deduction that God is either not all-good

or not all-powerful. Evil would not be, could not be, by their

theory, unless a fruit of God's wisdom, because if the case were

otherwise, it would exist without the divine permission, i.e.,

contrary to God's will, which ex hypothesi is impossible, since

God is all-powerful. The logical difficulty under their theory is

complete and unanswerable by it.

Now what then really is the origin of what is called " good "

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and " evil " ? The explanation lies in the teaching we have

spoken of more clearly this evening than previously. Good and

evil arise out of the conflicting action of the multimyriad wills in

manifestation. Good is relative ; there is no absolute good. Evil

is relative ; there is no absolute evil. If good were absolute, its op-

posite, its shadow, or nether pole evil, must also be absolute. Both,

however, are relative things. They offset and balance in Nature

the one the other, like all other " pairs of opposites ", such as

heat and cold, high and low, day and night, north and south, etc.

They arise, as just said, out of the conflict of wills, conscious and

unconscious. All the innumerable, multitudinous beings in mani-

festation, are, each one of them, more or less " selfish ", more or

less seeking its own, hungering and thirsting for sensation of

various kinds. Even spiritual evil exists ; and there are high

agents of " spiritual wickedness ", of which the Christian Apostle

Paul has spoken, forming the opposite agencies to the high

agents of good. The latter ones, agents of spiritual wickedness,

are called by us the " Brothers of the Shadow ", and the others

are called by us the " Brothers of the Light ". The Brothers of

the Shadow work in and with matter, for material and selfish

purposes. The Brothers of the Light work in and with Nature

for spirit, for impersonal purposes. They contrast one with

another.

These two bodies represent two fundamental Paths in Nature,

the one the Right-Hand Path, the other the Left, and are so called

in the Ancient Occultism. The Sanskrit name for one, the " Left-

Hand Path ", is Pratyeka-Yana. Ydna means " Path " or

" Road ", and also " Vehicle " ; and we can translate Pratyeka

in this connexion by the paraphrase " every one for himself ".

Our first Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, as you will well remember,

has spoken of the Pratyeka-Buddhas, high and in one sense holy

beings indeed, but craving spiritual wisdom, spiritual enlighten-

ment, for themselves alone, selfishly, in indifference to the sorrow

and pain of the world, yet so pure withal that they are actually

Buddhas of a kind.

The other body follow the Path which in Sanskrit is called

Amrita-Ydna, the Immortal Vehicle or Path of Immortality.

The one, the former, is the path of the personality ; the other,

the latter, is the path of the individuality ; the one is the path

of matter ; the other is the path of spirit ; the one leads down-

ward, the other Path loses itself in the ineffable glories of conscious

immortality in " eternity ".

Now these are the two bodies of entities representing the two

sides of Nature, and the conflicts or oppositions of these two

sides of Nature, together with the battles of will with will, of the

hosts of beings in manifested existence, produce the so-called evil

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 157

in the world, arising out of the selfish activities of the inferior

or less developed or evolved entities. Selfishness, therefore, is the

root of all evil. The old teaching is true, and that is all there is

to it. On the highest planes of being, there is neither good nor

evil ; there is neither life in our sense, nor death ; there is neither

beginning nor end of personal action of any kind. But there is

what is called in the wonderful ancient Brahmanical teachings,

Sat, Chit, Ananda ; Sat meaning " pure being " ; Chit, " pure

thought " ; Ananda, " bliss " ; and this is the state of what one

may call the " Absolute ".

In closing our study this evening, let us remember that the

Kosmic work of the Monad, the spiritual radical, is so important

that we refer to it again here. It itself can evolve only by raising

inferior souls and psychological vehicles into self-conscious

entities, which thus in turn themselves become Monads. THIS

IS THE GENERALIZED AND ENTIRE PLAN OF EVOLUTION ON ALL

PLANES. This is our Great Work. This is our high destiny. Our

Supreme Self, our Paramatman, our Supreme Monad, our Highest

Self, the Summit of our Hierarchy, is doing that work con-

sciously ; we as self-conscious humans are doing it in our smaller

way ; and this is the whole plan of manifested being, the general-

ized outline of kosmic evolution, as said just now. No man

can live unto himself alone ; no man can rise to spirit alone. It

is of the very essence of Nature, that he must, willy nilly, carry

with him, up or down, innumerable other entities and inferior

selves, along the upward or the downward path.

Now a few words more on a very important subject. The

Ancient Wisdom tells us that there are seven doctrinal Keys to

Wisdom and future Initiations, With the Teacher's instruction

and permission, during the studies which we began last January,

of those seven Keys we have briefly alluded to five. What are

they ? These seven keys, the ancients called the Sapta-Ratndni,

the " Seven Jewels " or " Gems ", or " Treasures ", and they are

as follows. First, that operation of Nature using Nature in the

sense of the absolute, total aggregation of all that is : inside and

outside, backwards and forwards, up and down, right and left,

everything, everywhere that is, that operation of Nature

which in Man manifests as Reimbodiment, or Reincarnation, and

which can be briefly expressed as the change of his vehicle or

body when his inner state or condition changes ; for by the

operations of Nature he is finally called to gravitate towards, or

must go to, another state or condition and place. This is called

death, but it is another form of life. There is the first Key.

Apply it to our teachings in its many and various reaches.

The second Key is the doctrine of Action and Reaction, called

Karma. These first two Keys we have but briefly touched upon

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

in these preparatory studies. In future studies we shall find it

necessary to go into them more in detail.

The third Key is the doctrine of interpenetrating Beings or

Existences, otherwise called the doctrine of Hierarchies, which

are also inseparable and universally interpenetrating Planes or

Spheres. EVERYTHING EXISTS IN EVERYTHING ELSE. There are,

in strict truth, no absolute divisions, anywhere, neither high nor

low, neither within nor without, neither right nor wrong, nor up

nor down. Fundamentally, there is naught but an eternal Is

and an eternal Now. As the ancient Stoics said so finely, Every-

thing interpenetrates everything else. The very atmosphere we

breathe, for instance, is vibrant and living with the multitudinous

Lives ; they are in the air we breathe ; the monadic essences or

lives are in the air we breathe, in our bones, in our blood, in our

flesh, in everything. Think of it, then ; let your thought go

free, release yourself inwardly. Let your imagination carry

you into the wonders that these Keys open up to our minds.

Conscientious study of the Ancient Wisdom and a pure and

unselfish life will be your unfailing guides.

The fourth Key is the doctrine of Swabhava, the doctrine of the

essential characteristic of any entity, of any spiritual radical ;

the doctrine also of self-generation or self -becoming, in manifesta-

tion, thus affirming one's responsibility in and for oneself. This is

the most abstruse, the most mystic, of the four Keys, hitherto

mentioned, for actually it is the Key to the other three Keys !

The fifth is the key to self-conscious Being and Existence, a

subject to which we have alluded this evening and also in our

last study ; for the entire aim, method, and operation of Universal

Being is the raising of the inferior to the Superior ; and this

Great Work cannot ever be achieved by following the " Path

for Oneself ", the Pratyeka-Ydna, but by following the Amrita-

Ydna, the Immortal Vehicle, or the Path of self-consciousness in

Immortality. Make your thought free, I repeat ; let it go out

released !

As regards the other two Keys, I ought to say, perhaps, that

they belong to high degrees of Initiation. I know but very little

of the seventh. The Teacher has told me almost nothing ; and

my studies have taught me very little about it, so closely is it hid.

I know this, however, that understanding and use of this seventh

Key can be reached by very few men on this earth. As regards

the sixth Key, we are taught that it can be reached by great

effort in the higher degrees of Initiation, the lower degrees of

which we all have the opportunity of undergoing in the Teacher's

presence.

This evening closes the last of our preparatory studies. We

shall go to higher themes in the future.

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CHAPTER XVI

AXMA-VIDVA : HOW THE ONE BECOMES THE MANY. " LOST SOULS "

AND "SOULLESS BEINGS ". MAN, A COMPOSITE BEING: NO

ABIDING PRINCIPLE IN MAN.

Thus, therefore, the doctrine of the Egyptians concerning principles, proceed-

ing from on high as far as to the last of things, begins from one principle and

descends to a multitude which is governed by this one ; and everywhere an

indefinite nature is under the dominion of a certain definite measure, and of the

supreme unical cause of all things.

IAMBLICHUS, on The Mysteries, Section viii, 3. (THOMAS TAYLOR.)

. . . But at the close of the minor cycle, after the completion of all the seven

Rounds, there awaits us no other mercy but the cup of good deeds, of merit,

outweighing that of evil deeds and demerit in the scales of Retributive Justice.

Bad, irretrievably bad must be that Ego that yields no mite from its fifth Prin-

ciple, and has to be annihilated, to disappear in the Eighth Sphere. A mite, as

I say, collected from the Personal Ego suffices to save him from the dreary Fate.

Not so after the completion of the great cycle : either a long Nirvana of Bliss

(unconscious though it be in the, and according to, your crude conceptions) ;

after which life as a Dhyan-Chohan for a whole Manvantara, or else " Avichi-

Nirvdna " and a Manvantara of misery and horror as a you must not hear

the word, nor I pronounce or write it. But " those " have nought to do with

the mortals who pass through the seven spheres. The collective Karma of a

future Planetary is as lovely as the collective Karma of a is terrible.

Enough. I have said too much already.

The Mahatma Letters, p. 171.

E open our evening studies, taking them up to-

night at the point where we left them last summer,

by reading extracts from The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I,

pages 206-7-8.

There are four grades of initiation mentioned in exoteric works. . . .

Three further higher grades have to be conquered by the Arhan who

would reach the apex of the ladder of Arhatship. . . . The Arhats of

the " fire-mist " of the 7th rung are but one remove from the Root-

Base of their Hierarchy the highest on Earth, and our Terrestrial

chain. This " Root-Base " has a name which can only be translated

by several compound words into English " the ever-living-human-

Banyan." This " Wondrous Being " descended from a " high region/ 1

they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separation of

the sexes of the Third Race.

... It was not a Race, this progeny. It was at first a wondrous

Being, called the " Initiator/' and after him a group of semi-divine

and semi-human beings. " Set apart " in Archaic genesis for certain

purposes, they are those in whom are said to have incarnated the

highest Dhynis . . . to form the nursery for future human adepts,

on this earth and during the present cycle. These " Sons of Will and

i6o

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Yoga " born, so to speak, in an immaculate way, remained, it is ex-

plained, entirely apart from the rest of mankind.

The " BEING " just referred to, which has to remain nameless, is the

Tree from which, in subsequent ages, all the great historically known

Sages and Hierophants . . . have branched off. As objective man,

he is the mysterious (to the profane the ever invisible) yet ever-

present Personage about whom legends are rife in the East, especially

among the Occultists and the students of the Sacred Science. It is he

who changes form, yet remains ever the same. And it is he again who

holds spiritual sway over the initiated, Adepts throughout the whole

world. He is, as said, the " Nameless One " who has so many names,

and yet whose names and whose very nature are unknown. He is the

" Initiator ", called the ' ( GREAT SACRIFICE ". For, sitting at the thres-

hold of LIGHT, he looks into it from within the circle of Darkness, which

he will not cross ; nor will he quit his post till the last day of this

life-cycle. Why does the solitary Watcher remain at his self-chosen

post ? Why does he sit by the fountain of primeval Wisdom, of which

he drinks no longer, as he has naught to learn which he does not

know aye, neither on this Earth, nor in its heaven ? Because the

lonely, sore-footed pilgrims on their way back to their home are never

sure to the last moment of not losing their way in this limitless desert

of illusion and matter called Earth-Life. Because he would fain show

the way to that region of freedom and light, from which he is a volun-

tary exile himself, to every prisoner who has succeeded in liberating

himself from the bonds of flesh and illusion. Because, in short, he has

sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, though but a few Elect

may profit by the GREAT SACRIFICE.

We have here read one of the most sublime passages in this won-

derful book ; and the beautiful words that we have heard read from

our Teacher's manuscript, lead up to them in a manner which is

appropriate and which opens the way for what we have to say

this evening.

It is hoped to comment upon and illustrate, if possible, the

matters spoken of in what we have just read from The Secret

Doctrine. We cannot do this altogether directly ; the subject is

too profound and no sufficient preparatory study has been made ;

but we can do so indirectly to some extent. It is necessary to do

so to some degree because this sublime subject is the seventh of

the seven Jewels (counting upwards) which, you will remember,

we spoke of in one of our late meetings. You will remember that

these seven Jewels or Gems or Treasures were given as follows,

counting from below upwards : The first or lowest is Rebirth,

or rather Reimbodiment, better still, perhaps, Regeneration.

In Sanskrit it is called Punarjanman ; and in Greek it is called

Palingenesis ; both words representing practically the same

thought : the first element in each word meaning " again " or

" anew ", and the second element in each meaning " generation "

or " birth " " coming into being ".

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 161

The second Jewel, counting upwards, is the doctrine or fact in

Nature called Karman, the doctrine of " Results ". The third

Jewel, counting again upwards, is the doctrine of " Hierarchies ",

of which the Sanskrit term is Lokas. The fourth, again upwards,

is the doctrine of " Swabhava ", which we have studied some-

what, as you will remember, in former meetings, this Sanskrit

word having two general philosophical meanings : first, self-

begetting, self-generation, self -becoming, the general idea being

that there is no merely mechanical or soulless activity of Nature

in bringing us into being for we brought ourselves forth, in and

through and by Nature, of which we are a part of the conscious

forces, and are our own children.

The second meaning is that each and every entity that exists is

the result of what he actually is in his own higher nature ; he brings

forth that which he is in himself interiorly, nothing else. A par-

ticular Race, for instance, remains and is that Race as long as the

particular Race-swabhava remains in the racial Seed and mani-

fests thus ; and so forth. Likewise is the case the same with a

man, a tree, a star, a god what not !

The fifth Jewel, counting still upwards, is the doctrine of

" Evolution ", which we have already very briefly studied in the

Theosophical sense. This esoteric teaching is not the doctrine

of transformism, which is, properly speaking, the correct name

for the materialistic doctrine of Darwin, and of the Frenchman

Lamarck from whom, doubtless, he drew the idea ; but the

theosophical idea of unfolding, or unwrapping ; a doctrine with

its corollary, " Involution " expressed by two words, these

Sanskrit words being first, Pravritti, meaning the unfolding-forth

of the spirit-entity into matter, or of matter-lives into spirit-

entities, as the case may be ; and the other word is Nirvritti,

meaning the infolding of spirit-entities into matter, or of matter-

lives into spirit-entities, as the case may be.

Now the sixth and the seventh Treasures, or Jewels, were

touched upon very slightly at one of our recent meetings. We

venture now to add a few more ideas to what was said before.

The sixth Jewel is the doctrine expressed here also by two com-

pound words of contrasted sense : first Amrita-Yana, a Sanskrit

word meaning " Immortality- vehicle ", " carriage " or " bearer ",

or rather " Path ", of Immortality, and referring to the individual

man ; and the other word is Pratyeka-Yana, a Sanskrit word

meaning (in paraphrase) the " Path of each one for himself ".

It is impossible to translate this latter compound word into

English by a single word. Both the idea and the vocable do not

exist in English, It may perhaps be approached by the Theosophic

idea latent in the word personality ; and the mysterious relation of

Individuality to personality is included in these two compound

i6a

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" catch-words " or technical terms ; and therefrom hangs an

entire doctrine or department of thought of the wonderful

philosophy of Occultism, the Esoteric Doctrine. With it as

also with the seventh Jewel are connected closely the doctrines

of the Ancient Wisdom relating to the Monads of the various

classes : Whence they came, How they came, yes, and Why they

came.

We are touching upon all these profound subjects very lightly

at present, because they will all recur again and again in future

studies, and will in due course be more fully illustrated and

explained more clearly as far as we may go in this Group.

Now, the last or the seventh Jewel, counting upwards, is called

Atma-Vidya, literally meaning the " Knowledge of the Self " ; this

compound is only a catchword as are the others ; but it imbodies

and hides a doctrine which is truly sublime. You will remember

that the present speaker, in connexion with this seventh Jewel,

stated that he knew little, or almost nothing, of it. This phrase

was badly chosen, and perhaps produced a misleading impression.

It was not the intention, if so, to give that impression. It

is well understood that any earnest and devoted student of this

Esoteric School can understand at least appropriate parts of this

mysterious doctrine something at least the degree of his

apprehension thereof depending upon his inner state of enlighten-

ment, his fidelity to his Teachers, his loyalty to the principles of

the Esoteric School, and his ability in understanding and pene-

trating somewhat into the depth of the teachings of this School.

But while this is the case with the students, each one according

to his capacity, others higher than we are can understand more

of it ; naturally, the Teachers understand more of it than we do.

Probably, however, there are not ten men to-day on earth who

can understand this doctrine in its fullness. It is a Wonder-

teaching that even our Masters have probably not solved utterly.

The Masters of the Masters know more of it than the latter do,

i.e., the Chohans, as they are called " Chohans ", a Tibetan word

meaning " Lord ", used in the sense of Preceptor, or Teacher.

But the main and essential meaning of this wondrous doctrine,

running all through it, is this, which is its keynote : How THE

ONE BECOMES THE MANY : and this is the most difficult problem

that the human spirit has ever attempted to solve !

Take as an analogy, for instance, the Monad. To speak of the

Monad as " descending " into matter, is to speak wrongly, though

constantly this phrase is used, because it is a convenient method

of expression ; and if this fact is understood, it is probably per-

missible as a phrase. But actually, when we come to study the

facts, very soon we see and we know that the Monad does not

" descend " into matter. Similarly, the One, though it is appro-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 163

priate and convenient to speak of it as " becoming the Many ",

never becomes many, remains eternally itself, the Summit of the

Hierarchy, its Root-base, which is this Wondrous Being, the

Supreme Initiator, on whatever plane it may be placed. Yet

the Many flow forth from It ; and It is their Supreme Self, their

Param&tman.

This, then, is the general theme of our discourse this evening ;

but because we have no time now to make a complete resume of

our studies during the course of last Spring and Winter, the

Teacher has permitted me this evening to go over very shortly

a few doctrines which were touched upon in former studies, for the

sake of brushing up our recollection of them. The first one that

we turn back to, then, is the doctrine of Swabhdva, as contrasted

in meaning with the ideas involved in the kin-expression, Swa-

bhavat. This difference in meaning, which is very great, is not

generally understood, and the two words often have been sadly

confused by students. They are very different in meaning,

though both come from the same Sanskrit root Bhu : Swabhdva ;

Swabhavat. Let me tell you here that the Sanskrit sound repre-

sented in English as " a ", is pronounced like the " u " in but or

tub ; but when the " a " is written as " a ", with the circumflex

accent, it is pronounced a h, as in father. This difference of pro-

nunciation is very important.

Now Swabhdva means what has before been explained, this

evening and also at former meetings. As just said, these two

words are both nouns derived from the same Sanskrit word B/wJ,

meaning " to become " not "to be " in the passive sense so

much, but " to become ", to " grow into " something. The quasi-

pronominal prefix Swa y means " self" ; hence the noun means

" self-becoming ", " self-generation ", " self-growing " into some-

thing. Yet the essential or fundamental or integral Self, as said

before, does not do so. Like the monads, like the One, the Self

Fundamental sends down a Ray from itself, as the sun sends a

ray from itself into the darkness of matter ; and it is this spiritual

Ray which " descends " into matter ; self-generating or self-

becoming a self-conscious entity in its turn ; the solar light, the

sun itself, remaining ever in its own integrity or ens, never

descending, never commingling integrally as an entity, with the

multitudinous hosts of matter-lives, its own children !

Now, Swabhavat is called by H. P. Blavatsky, " Father-

Mother ". It is a state or condition of Kosmic consciousness-

substance, where spirit and matter, which you know are funda-

mentally one, no longer are dual as in manifestation, but one :

that which is neither manifested matter, nor manifested spirit,

alone, but both are the primeval Unity ; spiritual AkaSa ; where

matter merges into spirit, and both now being really one, are called

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" Father-Mother ", the spiritualization, so to say, of spirit-

substance. See how we have to hunt for adequately expressive

words in our wretchedly imperfect European languages ! The

Sanskrit word expresses the idea, if you understand it, instantly.

These two nouns, then, as you see, are from the same root, and

the two words are closely connected in origin, but they are not

the same in meaning at all. Swabhdva is the self-generation of

anything, of any entity, of any monad. Swabhavat is the Father-

Mother, the kalpic akaic Spirit-Substance, never descending

from its own state or condition, or from its own plane, but the

quasi-infinite reservoir of being, of consciousness, of light, of life,

and the source of what science, in our day, so ridiculously calls

the " Forces " of Nature Universal.

These deeply mystical and very profound themes we shall have

to go into more fully in the future ; but for the present it will

suffice to remember that Swabhavat is Kosmical Spirit-Substance,

the Reservoir of Being and of Beings. The northern Buddhists

call it Swabhavat, more mystically Adi-Buddhi " Primeval

Buddhi " ; the Brahmanical scriptures call it " Akaa " ; and

the Hebrew Old Testament refers to it as the Kosmic

" Waters ".

Now the next subject which needed a little illustration, was the

very solemn question of " lost souls ", as contrasted with " soul-

less " beings. It may be well to say that these three or four

subjects are briefly again touched upon this evening because it

has come to attention that these matters have been mistaken

by some of our hearers. There is an immense difference between

" lost souls " and " soulless " beings. A " lost soul " is one in

whom the " golden thread " uniting the lower thinking entity

with its Higher Self is completely ruptured, broken off from its

higher essence or root, its true Self. The case here is hopeless,

virtually ; there can be no more union for that lower self, which,

at the moment of final rupture, commences sinking immediately

into the " Eighth Sphere ", the so-called " Planet of Death ".

A " soulless " being, a " soulless " man, is one in whom the

thread has been worn, so to speak, very thin ; or, rather, where

the spiritual and impersonal aspirations in this life and in other

lives have been so few, the attempts to unite with the higher

part of the self have been so weak, that slowly the spiritual ray

has been withdrawing itself from the lower part ; but it is not

yet ruptured completely. It still remains ; and even one single

holy and impersonal aspiration may cause reunion. It is not a

" lost soul " ; but so far as the human entity is practically con-

cerned, it is properly called a " soulless " being, for the entity

lives almost wholly in his lower principles. " Soulless " beings

furnish those cases which are popularly spoken of among men as

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 165

" men and women without conscience ". They seem to have no

moral sense, although their mental and psychical faculties may

still be strong and keen.

These are the worst cases of " soulless " human beings. Other

cases are those of men and women who merely do not seem to

care for anything that is good and beautiful and true, noble and

high and lofty ; their desires are of the earth, earthly ; their

passions are strong and their intuitions are weak. These cases

are very common indeed ; so much so that our first great Teacher,

H. P. Blavatsky, says in her I sis Unveiled that we " shoulder

soulless men " every day of our lives. Look into the faces of the

men and the women whom you see on the streets. Remember

that our present Teacher has been telling us for years about the

men and women whom she sees or has met and talked with in

her functions as Teacher and philanthropist. Go to town ; go

anywhere ; go into the streets of a great city. Look even into the

eyes of those of your own fireside, perhaps ; I do not allude,

necessarily, to any one here ; but I am speaking generally. The

situation actually is a terrible one. There is a full possibility that

a weak-souled human being, perhaps beginning merely in giving

way to the lusts of the will, and to the passions of the mind, and

to the instincts of the lower nature, may, little by little, but

inevitably and surely, starve out, or wear away by attrition, all

the attachments of the higher Ray which bind it into the lower

nature, and which, if they were fully strong and active, would

make the man (or woman) a walking god among us ; verily, a

god in the flesh. Instead of this, in the worst cases of the

" soulless " being, you would have before you little more than a

human shell (alive, but spiritually almost dead) in the man or the

woman, as the case may be. A " soulless " being was once an

ensouled man or woman ; who, before the former state, had the

same chance successfully to run the race that we all have. This is

indeed a solemn verity, and one which our first Teacher has told

us should be taught and reiterated in our teaching, because it is

truly helpful as a warning. Not one of us is absolutely safe at this

midway stage of our evolutionary journey ; for not one of us

knows what he is capable of, either for good or ill. I have

listened to our Teacher speaking, hinting at these truths, and I

have read her words in print and in manuscript, and I have

wondered sometimes how many have caught the thought her

warning.

There is the truth ; and it is no trifling matter. Is there any

reason for wonder that all our teachers have told us repeatedly

that every teaching that is given in our School is founded upon

what men commonly call " ethical principles of conduct ", and

must be studied in that light ? It is the only thing that, put into

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

sincere practice, will save us surely ; for these principles come

first and in the middle and at the end of our studies.

Now, in future studies we shall have to trace to the end the

destiny of these two classes of beings ; but it may be well to say

a few words now of the fate of the " lost soul ". There are two

general classes of these : the lower, but not the worse ; and the

higher, the worse. In order to make the meaning of this very

difficult subject more clear, I shall have to go into a new but

collateral thought, which is the key. MAN is A COMPOSITE

BEING. On this fact of human nature reposes a most wonderful

truth which is at the foundation of the marvellous psychological

doctrines of the Lord Gautama-Buddha. It is as follows, a

corollary of the immediately preceding statement. There is no

abiding principle whatsoever in " man ". Fix this like steel into

the core of your minds. It will save you from myriad dangers

if rightly understood, " Man " is not his higher nature ; " man "

is that which is called the " human nature ". Do you realize how

greatly men and women live in what the Hebrews call the Nefesh,

i.e., live in their astral souls ? We do so realize it, as students of

this School, probably every one of us. To a certain extent such

unison with our lower principles is necessary ; but to follow the

beautiful old simile of the ancient philosophers, the astral soul

should be our vehicle, our <( bearer " ; so to say it should be

made a " horse " to carry us on our journey ; or, to change the

figure, a chariot in which we should ride ; a " horse " which we

must drive. We, the inner Self, should govern and drive our

astral steed ; but should never allow it to control us.

In order to make this more clear, examine the diagram opposite.

You will notice that man's seven Principles and Elements

are divided into three separate parts : a lowest triad, purely

mortal and perishable ; an intermediate duad, psychical, com-

posite, and mostly mortal : Kama-manas, the " man" proper, or

" human nature " ; and a Higher Duad, Atma-buddhi ; immortal,

imperishable ; the Monad. At the death of the human being, this

Higher Duad carries away with it all the spiritual essence, the

aroma, of the lower or intermediate duad ; and then the Higher

Duad is the Higher Self, the Reincarnating Individuality, or

Egoic Monad. Man's ordinary consciousness in life at this stage

of evolution is almost wholly in the lower or intermediate duad ;

when he raises his consciousness to become one with the Higher

Duad, he becomes a Mahatman, a Master.

Now this lower part of the nature is composite. There is

nothing permanent per se in it whatever ; as an entity, nothing

abides. It is ordinary " man " as he is to-day, and in him there

is no abiding self-principle whatsoever. If you fasten your

thoughts and your affections to the things of the lower nature,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 167

you will de facto, of necessity, follow it, and become it, as outlined

and shown in and by the doctrine of Swabhava. As a man thinks,

so is he ! Now the Hebrew words in this old saying, which is

taken from Proverbs, Chapter 23, verse 7, are Englished : " As he

thinketh in his heart (Nefesh), so is he ", but the Hebrew word

nefesh used here really means " As he thinks in his lower nature,

that he is (becomes] ". A Sanskrit commentator, Yaska (Nirukta,

x, 17), in his glossary on a certain Vedic text, has the following

remark, exactly to the point on the same subject : Yad yad

fe

ATMAN

BUDDHI

Higher Duad. Monad

per se.

Immortal. Divine Soul

when united with the

" aroma " from lower

duad.

MANAS

KAMA

LINGA-ARIRA

STHULA-$ARlRA

Lower or Intermediate

Duad. " Man " or

" human being ". Con-

ditionally immortal.

Astral soul.

Lowest triad. Body.

Mortal. Physical

"soul".

rdpam kdmayate devatd, tat tad devatd bhavati, that is : Whatever

body (or form, or shape] a divine being (divinity] longs for (that is,

wants, desires, i.e., gives himself up to], that very thing the divine

being becomes. Here is the secret of the whole thing. We are

what we make ourselves, our own children. Nothing but that.

And, if our thoughts are upwards, we come finally into the com-

panionship of the divinities ; and, before reaching them, come

into the companionship of the Holy Teachers, because we make

ourselves such, we become like them ; and they, in turn, answer

the call.

But if, on the contrary, our thoughts are running downwards,

i68

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

and we wear away the " silver thread " or the " golden thread "

which binds us to our Higher Nature, we then naturally gravitate

or go downwards : down, down, down ; until at last the final

rupture of the Golden Chain or Thread comes, and the soul

becomes the " lost soul ", a lost astral soul ; and its destiny is as

follows. There are two classes of this kind of soul, as remarked

before. The first class is the lower but not the worse ; the first

class, then, consists of those human beings on this planet (or on

any other planet which possesses a humanity similar to ours)

who through native weaknesses of soul and from lack of spiritual

attraction upwards, go to pieces after a certain interval of time,

long or short as the case may be : the lower part of the nature

being composite and impermanent and non-enduring, following

" natural laws " finally simply breaks up and vanishes much as

the human body dies and decays. That is the end of it ; it is

finally annihilated.

The monad of such a soul, meanwhile, there being nothing, no

" aroma " of aspiration or yearning upwards, to take away from

that life or from those lives because, mind you, it is perfectly

true that " lost souls " as well as soul-beings can reincarnate.

They can indeed. There are children born " lost souls " ; as a

fact it is very rare, perhaps ; but the fact can and does take

place the Monad, I say, of such a " lost soul ", in due course of

time " reincarnates " again ; and the " lost soul " episode is like

a blank page in its " book of Lives ".

Now the second class, and the worse by far, are those in which

the soul is vitally strong. They are those who are spiritually

evil, paradoxical as it may sound ; those which the Christian

teachers have spoken of in the New Testament as beings of

spiritual wickedness and iniquity. One may wonder how it can

come to pass that a being which has ruptured the Golden Thread

can still have spiritual qualities or parts. That is one of the dark

and solemn mysteries which we may have to go into in more detail

later.. We have no time this evening to do so, beyond pointing

out that the explanation lies in an understanding of esoteric

psychology, and of the nature of high astral matter. But let me

point out this : if a soul can receive an impress, can receive an

impulse, and it most certainly does, that impress or impulse will

carry it on until its initial strength is exhausted, until the impulse

no longer exists, until the impulse has worked itself out. Now,

through many, many, lives of spiritual evil-doing, these beings

who have eventuated as " lost souls " have built up through the

intensity of their will a bank account, so to speak, of certain

forces of nature, impulses of evil, of pure matter, running hot

and strong. And when I say ' ' hot " I do no t mean in the ordinary

emotional sense, as when one speaks of the " heat of passion ".

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 169

All such passion is dead. Nay. But running hot like the fires of

hell : revenge, hatred, and antagonism to anything that is highly

good or nobly beautiful, and all such things. These impulses here

exist, and they have a spiritual source, for they are degraded

spiritual energies, spirit fallen and crystallized into matter, so to

speak. Very difficult to explain, indeed, is this abstruse subject ;

but this is the gist of it. Lastly, I might add that these beings

can (and do), under certain conditions, go far lower : they enter

the Lower Path, and go still farther down : and if the evil be

strong enough in certain rare cases, their terrible destiny is what

our Teachers have called an avtchi-nirvdna (avichi being a

generalized term for what is popularly called " hell "), aeons of

unspeakable misery, self-imposed, until final dissolution ensues,

and Nature knows them no more.

Of course you remember that we have studied the subject of

Hells and Heavens before, but as yet we have had no time to go

into this matter at length. Avichi is a generalized term for places

of evil realizations, but not of " punishment " in the Christian

sense ; where the will for evil, and the unsatisfied evil longings

for pure selfishness, find their chance for expansion and final

extinction of the entity itself. Avichi has many degrees, or

grades. Nature has all things in her ; if she has Heavens where

good men and true men find rest and peace and bliss, so has she

other spheres and states, where go or gravitate those who must

find an outlet for the evil passions burning within. They, at the

end of their avichi-nirvana, go to pieces and are ground over and

over, and vanish away finally like a shadow before the sunlight in

the air ground over in Nature's laboratory.

Now, you remember that we spoke in other studies of the

so-called " laws of Nature ", and it was pointed out that in our

esoteric teachings there are no " laws of Nature ", and this for

two reasons : first, because there is no such thing as " Nature ".

Nature is not an entity ; it is an abstraction. Nature is not a

goddess or a god ; it is not a being or a planet ; it is not a sphere

or a universe. Nature is the abstract aggregate, so to speak, the

immense aggregate, of all beings and things, interblending and

acting and interacting upon each other : spiritual, inter-

mediate, and lower ; and their interblending and interconnexion

produce what we call " Nature ". The beings here referred to, of

course, are of all grades, from the most material, the most degraded,

up to the highest, of any Hierarchy. And the second reason is

that these aggregated beings that we call very conveniently by

the term of Nature, are not " ruled " by " law ". Who or what

makes any laws that Nature shall or must follow or does follow ?

No one, neither devil nor god. But the query may and ought to

arise : Does not Nature follow certain courses, and when the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

circumstances arid conditions are identical, are not those courses

always the same, which are what we call laws ? Of course, yes ;

nobody denies a fact. We deny the explanation. Explanations

are important. If a man comes to you and says something to you

and you find that he is merely talking, giving you words when

you want the bread of life, are you going to take what he says

for truth ? Are you going to take the words only, and be satisfied

with husks ? Or are you going to think, and say : " My dear

Sir, I have looked into what you tell me ; what you say is merely

words ; nobody denies the facts that are ; but I want an explana-

tion of those words and of those facts. I want something that

will feed my soul ". Do you get any food for your soul when you

hear mere talk about mechanical, incomprehensible " laws of

Nature " ? Do you realize that no great thinker in antiquity at

any time ever used such empty language as "laws of Nature "with

the concomitant ideas or lack of ideas ? Never. The expression

containing the notion " laws of Nature " is a modern product

derived from two sources : first from the Christian religion ; and

second from modern scientific materialism. Men, during all the

ages, have been fully aware that " Nature " pursued certain very

regular courses, modernly called " laws ", and always followed the

same courses ; but our forebears had other and wiser explanations

of these regular courses in natural phenomena, for they knew

more of the inner mysteries of being, because they had true

Religion behind and within themselves ; they had a universal

philosophy ; and last but not least they had what were called

Initiates, who personally could go behind and into Nature, enter

into her and know her at first hand.

Now what causes Nature to act as she does ? The modern

scientist will tell you that he means by the " laws of Nature "

those sequences of events which always happen in the same way

when the circumstances and conditions are the same ; the

regular order of phenomena and forces. The Christian theologian

tells you what he means by the " laws of Nature " probably

somewhat as follows : " Well, brother, it is probably the Will

of God Almighty, who, it is true, has not vouchsafed to us a full

explanation of these difficult problems ; but it is fundamentally

the Divine Will which has once and for all time created the machine

of Nature and has set it in running ". About two or three or four

or five or six hundred years ago these gentlemen had another

explanation, somewhat different from the above, because modern

science had not yet begun to be aggressively vocal with views

or a view of its own ; and this other theological explanation was

that it was God Almighty Himself who personally and actively

guided and ordered these things which " Nature " produces.

" He sent his rain upon the iust and the uniust : he caused the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 171

sun to shine, and the rain to fall ", and much more to the same

tune. But then came along certain sceptical thinkers and they

said, " Ha, ha, God the Creator ! Then He created diseases ; He

creates the evils in men's hearts. It must be so, not otherwise,

because He created man and all things else, and, being all-wise,

He must have known what He was doing. Therefore, why

punish a man for doing what he cannot avoid doing, because God

created man and his mind and his heart and his will ? "

So the theologians' later idea, apparently, was that God manu-

factured the world with His own Almighty Hand, and set it to

spinning, and set the various elements thereof each to running

in its own way, and let it go forth with a primal impress of the

Divine Intelligence upon it.

I think that I am quoting correctly the early modern theo-

logical idea.

Now the Initiates, knowing Nature's arcana, had words fitted

to express exactly what they desired to say ; words which are

impressive and which are not mere abstractions ; although when

convenient they too used abstractions ; they used such words

as " Principles " and " Elements " of Nature. It is quite true

that such words are catchwords, technical words ; but they

knew precisely what they meant by them. They also spoke

mystically and theologically of the " gods ". It is one of the most

lamentable things for scholars to-day, that owing to the deliberate

and wilful suppression by the Christian Church of so many of the

truths of antiquity, the average scholar or student has no more

idea of what the ancients meant by the " gods " and their actions,

than he has of what is taking place at this moment on the star

Sirius. Yet, when understood and properly explained, Poly-

theism is seen to be a wonderful and a sublime teaching. It

does not mean, for instance, that each god is as great and as single

as, or omnipotent and omniscient like, the Christian theological

notion of their God. Not at all. The gods, i.e., spiritual entities,

are the higher inhabitants of Nature. They are an intrinsic part

of Nature itself, for they are its informing Principles ; they are

as much subject to the wills of still higher Beings call these

wills the " laws " of higher beings, if you will as we are, and as

are the animals below us. We are gods to the beings composing

our bodies. The atoms in our body are, in their way, conscious,

and we are like gods to them. And what they might call the

" laws of Nature " are what we think and what we will. Nature is

conscious from beginning to end, in varying degrees ; although

in reality there is no " beginning " and no " end ", which are

vain dreams.

Furthermore, Nature has two aspects, a positive aspect and a

negative aspect. Please understand that I am using the word

I 7 2

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

" Nature ", with the meaning pointed out before, because the

ordinary expression is convenient, the term is understood ; if a

speaker has to spend some three minutes or more in order to

explain each time anew an already explained use of a word, he

will never arrive at the end of what he wishes to say ; so, once

having made an explanation of what we mean by " Nature " and

" laws ", we may use these or other common words because they

are convenient. Our Teachers also have used these words con-

stantly ; and H. P. Blavatsky constantly speaks of the " laws

of Nature ", and the " fundamental law of Karma " ; so again

does our present Teacher, Katherine Tingley, constantly speak

of the " Higher Law ". Who has not heard highly educated

people say that the sun " rises in the east " ? Of course they

and we know that the sun does not " rise in the east ". Men very

frequently find it useful and convenient to use ordinary language

in order intelligently to voice a thought. But this does not mean

that they should be held to rigid literal account for what every

sane man should know perfectly well is merely a convenient mode

of expression. The so-called " laws of Nature ", therefore, are

the action and interaction and interplay of consciousnesses and

wills in the Kosmos not so much considered as personalized

consciousnesses and wills, but by us those words are used more

as abstractions, meaning the combined and aggregate action-

results of all consciousnesses and wills in the Kosmos. Yet

actually, when traced to causes, to their sources, these " laws " are

the consciousnesses and wills in action of the multimyriad hosts

of beings that compose and are " Nature " itself, working through,

in, and by, " matter ", their vehicles abstract ly called " Nature ".

" Nature " has these two poles or sides : the positive pole or side

and the negative pole or side. Examine yourself closely, and you

will find that even your mind is dual, like everything else, for it

mirrors Nature. It has its passive side, its " unconscious re-

flexes ", just as the body has, just as Nature has. It has also its

positive or active side. There is a great difference between the

conscious will and the unconscious will. Take the body as an

instance of what I am trying to say ; e.g., the beating of the

heart, the automatic winking of the eyes, the processes of

digestion. These are unconsciously performed acts, under the

control of unconscious or semi-conscious elemental entities ; when

normally functioning, man's will has nothing self-consciously to

do with them. They represent the passive side of his will as

expressed through those elemental minds. But he also has an

active or positive side in which he wills and thinks, and acts

accordingly, and for these latter things he is held responsible, he

incurs karmic responsibility.

So is it exactly the same, in Nature ; as is illustrated by this

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 173

example of the passive and active wills in man's own mind and

body. The " laws of physical nature " are the action-results of

the passive side of the beings and consciousnesses who and which

compose what is called " Nature " ; and the higher those beings

are, the less is their active or positive side manifest on the lower

planes.

Work therefore with Nature, and not against her ; violate none

of her laws, if you desire health and happiness. Remember what

H. P. Blavatsky says in The Voice of the Silence : Let us para-

phrase it : Work with nature and follow her ; become one with

her, and she will make obeisance unto you as an active, self-

conscious Co-worker a Master. Happiness can be found only

in obedience to this fundamental truth of inseparable unity.

There is no happiness in unbrotherhood, in acting solely for your-

self, in trying to impose your personal will on others. It is by

giving, that life is found in all its beauty, by giving the self to the

ALL. There is no happiness like it ; there is no way for inner

development to come so quickly and so siirely and so safely to

the student as that which lies in giving up the personal self

to nobly impersonal aims. It is the Way to Peace and Power.

The Teacher whispers to me to continue for a few moments

longer and we have as yet not even begun our evening's study 1

Let us, then, occupy the few more minutes of time that the

Teacher has given us, in referring to an interesting phenomenon

of Nature that took place during this last summer. I refer to the

near approach of the planet Mars to Earth ; and I speak of this

with intent, because it is going to illustrate a point in the substance

of our theme.

You will doubtless have heard how our scientists have concluded

they say that their theory is true, but it is absolutely false

according to Theosophy that the planet Mars is older than the

Earth ; and the sole reason for their saying this is because when

they examine what they can see of the surface of Mars through

their telescopes, they see no sign, certain and convincing to all, of

even vegetable life. Apparently, they see no particular organic

activity of any kind on that ruddy sphere ; and they at once

jump to the conclusion, like a lot of thoughtless fellows, that

Mars is dead, in a state something like that of the moon, and that

therefore it is very much older than our planet Earth. Now, in

the first place, to the student of the Ancient Wisdom, the " age "

of a planet may be of two kinds. Does it mean older in spiritual

experience because, remember, a planet is an " animal " in the

Greco-Latin sense, and " animal " means " living being ", for it

is a hierarchy of lives or does it merely mean that the physical

sphere is older than ours ?

Now the teaching of the Ancient Wisdom is that Mars is

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

younger than the Earth. Its body, its physical sphere, is younger ;

but, at the present time, it is in a state of " obscuration ". It is

what we may call asleep ; it is more than merely asleep, actually,

for the vastly larger part of its hosts of lives, of its living entities,

have left it in order to go to higher spheres or globes of the

Martian Planetary Chain. But this again does not mean one has

to be very careful in the use of expressions in our studies that

there is no life on Mars. When our own physical body is asleep,

does it mean that it is in decay, that it is dead ? Are there no

vital processes going on in the sleeping human body ? Of course

there are, many : recuperation ; reinforcing of the bonds of the

inner nature. Not of the inner nature itself ; but there is the

strengthening of the bonds connecting the vital astral entity

with it.

Now there are and this will illustrate another point there are

on the planet Mars in its present state of obscuration certain

beings left there by the receding Life-Wave of Mars when that

planet went into obscuration ; and these beings are called in the

Sanskrit language tishtas, meaning " remainders ", or " remains ",

i.e., those whose duty it is to keep the Seeds of Life on that planet

until the incoming flow of the returning Life- Wave in the new

Manvantara to come, shall find these bodies ready for them and

in all ways appropriate. Now these tishtas are of seven kinds :

three elemental ; the mineral ; the " plant " ; the " beast "-

type there, which represented the human on Mars ; and one

other. There are certain ones of these sishtas which are not at

all of the lower types ; they must have been higher than the

average of its humanity when that planet went into obscuration,

in order to provide for the more evolved humanity coming down

on its succeeding Round, fit and appropriate vehicles for the new

Life-Cycle, or Manvantara, there. Generally, then, the Sishtas

are those superior classes each of its own kind and kingdom

left behind on a planet when it goes into obscuration, in order to

serve as the seeds of life for the inflow of the next incoming

Life- Wave when the dawn of the new manvantara takes place on

that planet.

Venus, on the contrary, is now actively engaged in its last

Round. The planet Mercury, on the other hand, is just beginning

its last Round. Both these planets are far older than the Earth.

Mars is younger I am not here talking of the spiritual age ; I

am talking only of the age of the physical body, the sphere. You

will find it generally the "law" and I am using this term

" law ", remember, because it is convenient you will find it,

generally speaking, a physical fact of Nature in our Solar System

that the farther a sphere (or planet) is from the sun, the physically

younger it is. Mars, as a matter of fact, has ended its Third

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 175

Round. We of the Earth are in our Fourth ; Venus is in its

Seventh and last ; and Mercury is just beginning its Seventh.

I have brought up this matter, because there are some who

have misunderstood H. P. Blavatsky's teaching in The Secret

Doctrine regarding the six companion-globes of the Planetary

Earth-Chain, saying that we came to Earth from the planet Mars

which is thus made one of the globes of the Planetary Earth-

Chain ; that we are now on Earth ; and that we shall in the

future (next) manvantara go to Mercury, which is also made one

of the Planetary Earth-Chain.

This is utterly wrong. Now, as we have just said, Mercury is

in its Seventh Round ; we are in our Fourth, and our next round

will be our Fifth. It is true that Mars has ended its third Round ;

but while the planets farther from the sun generally are the

younger, physically, than those nearer it, this does not mean that

they are necessarily the younger spiritually. For instance, you

may take the planet Saturn. The planet Saturn, spiritually, is

farther advanced than is the planet Mars, or than is our planet

Terra.

If you take up a book of astronomy and compare the varying

density of the planets as there given in the tables, you will have

a rough-and-ready, and very generally accurate, rule by which

to go in order to find out which of the physical planets are

physically older than others. But then this does not refer to

spiritual age or evolution ; and this fact shows the complexity

that confronts the student in his study of these doctrines, which

really are very simple, but seem complex to us because our minds

are matter-minds and not spirit-minds. It is difficult to think

about such things with the minds we have, because they are

matter-built. They go to pieces at our death ; and these subjects

are based on spiritual facts. Hence the confusion under which

Mr. Sinnett, and others who followed his lead, have labored

even to the extent of denying their own teachers !

The planet Saturn is surrounded with belts and I am in very

deep water here and 1 wish to speak slowly so as not to give a

mistaken impression. I did at the last meeting, when I said that

the present speaker knew little or nothing of the Seventh " Jewel. 11

It was not my intent to give that idea. My intent was to say that

he knew little or nothing of the higher teachings regarding that

Seventh " Jewel " the planet Saturn is the last, counting out-

wards from the sun, of the " Seven Sacred Planets " of the

ancients. As regards our Solar System, Uranus and Neptune,

certainly not the latter, really do not belong to it. Actually,

physically, they do, because they are under that system's influence,

somewhat like visitors entertained in a home ; but they do not

belong to or form a part of the septenary of the " seven sacred

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

planets " of antiquity of which you all doubtless have read. Those

" seven sacred planets " provisionally may be named as follows :

Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. I say

above " provisionally/ 1 because there is much more behind this

matter of the " Seven Sacred Planets " than appears openly. For

instance, the sun and the moon are reckoned in the above list as

two substitutes for the two real planets ; and Mars to a certain

extent is in the same category. We can say no more of

this here.

Now shall we say that the sun and moon represent two other

planets ? Let us take provisionally the list as usually given,

including the sun and the moon ; each one of these seven globes

is a body like our own earth in that each is a septenary Chain,

sevenfold in composition : six other superior globes of finer

matter above the physical sphere or globe ; just as we humans

have our six principles above this " bearer " or " carrier "

miscalled a " principle/' which we call our body. This does not

apply in toto to the moon, because the moon is dead ; yet even

the moon has its six companion-globes. The mysteries concerning

the moon, I may remark in passing, are more than interesting,

and if the Teacher permits it, we shall sometime go into them as

far as we can properly do so ; but excepting the moons, all the

other globes and planets of the Solar System have, each one, six

companion-globes of finer matter, all fully alive ; unless in

" obscuration " ; and in the planetary life these form a peculiar

analogy with man's seven principles ; for if we could see our own

principles, could see what the plan of each principle is, we should

find that it is an actual rupa or form. Yet let me here enter a

caveat : the six companion-globes of any planet or other sidereal

body are not, really, the six principles of such a body, for each

one of these seven globes forming part of a Chain, has its own

individual seven principles and elements. So each planet or

sidereal body has its six companion-globes, forming together a

Planetary Chain ; and only those globes which are on the same

Kosmic Plane of nature or being, are physically visible to each

other. For instance, we can see only the fourth (planetary) plane

globes of each of the other Planetary or Sidereal Chains, because

we are on the fourth planetary Plane, as they are. If we were

on the Kosmic Plane above us, we should see two Jupiters, two

Saturns, and so forth.

The sun also is septenary, as said just now. A wonderful

teaching lies here in that connexion. The moon, dead as it is,

has also six companion-globes ; and when we leave this earth in

" obscuration " at the close of this earth-Round, and go to the

globe above this, we shall see then the two lunar bodies belonging

to that plane, and also two suns.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 177

We now close our evening's study ; and express the hope that

at the next meeting which the Teacher may call, we shall have

more opportunity and a clearer field to go at some length into the

truly sublime subject which H. P. Blavatsky has set down for us

in The Secret Doctrine in the extracts first read this evening.

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CHAPTER XVII

THE SILENT WATCHER.

. . . For countless generations hath the adept buildecl a fane of imperishable

rocks, a giant's Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will

yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to

invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten

superstitious man. And we will go on in that periodical work of ours ; we will

not allow ourselves to be baffled in our philanthropic attempts until that day

when the foundations of a new continent of thought are so firmly built that no

amount of opposition and ignorant malice guided by the Brethren of the Shadow

will be found to prevail.

But until that day of final triumph someone has to be sacrificed though we

accept but voluntary victims. The ungrateful task did lay her [H.P.B.] low

and desolate in the ruins of misery, misapprehension, and isolation : but she will

have her reward in the hereafter for we never were ungrateful. As regards the

Adept not one of my kind, good friend, but far higher you might have closed

your book with those lines of Tennyson's " Wakeful Dreamer "you knew

him not

1 ' How could ye know him ? Ye were yet within

The narrower circle ; he had well nigh reached

The last, which, with a region of white flame,

Pure without heat into a larger air

Up-burning, and an ether of black blue,

Invests and ingirds all other lives. . . ."

The Mahatnia Letters, p. 51.

E open our study this evening by reading a part of

the passages of The Secret Doctrine that were read

at our last meeting, that is to say from Volume I,

pages 207 and 208. Page 207 first :

The Arhats of the " fire-mist " of the 7th rung are but one remove

from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy the highest on Earth, and

our Terrestrial chain. This " Root-Base " has a name which can only

be translated by several compound words into English " the ever-

living-human-Banyan." This " Wondrous Being " descended from a

"high region," they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before

the separation of the sexes of the Third Race.

And then we pass over without reading it again, the paragraph

at the bottom of that page, beginning " The ' BEING ' just

referred to ", and ending with " but a few Elect may profit by

the GREAT SACRIFICE ", on page 208, and read now the last

paragraph on that page :

It is under the direct, silent guidance of this MAHA [which means

" great "] GURU [which means " Teacher "] that all the other less divine

Teachers and instructors of mankind became, from the first awakening

of human consciousness, the guides of early Humanity. It is through

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 179

these " Sons of God " that infant humanity got its first notions of all

the arts and sciences, as well as of spiritual knowledge ; and it is they

who have laid the first foundation-stone of those ancient civilizations

that puzzle so sorely our modern generation of students and scholars.

As we noted at our last meeting, we are approaching a part of

our studies where, to use the words of the old thinkers, we feel

almost that we should remove our foot-gear, because we stand on

holy ground. The sublime passages which were read at our last

meeting and now again at this one, contain, in fact, the outline

of the meaning of the seventh of the seven Jewels or Treasures

of Wisdom, which has the catch- word or technical name of Atma-

Vidya. This phrase literally signifies " self-knowledge ".

Now this Sanskrit word Atman is exceedingly difficult to trans-

late, but the English word " self " seems to come nearest to an

adequate rendering of it. Atma-Vidya means much more than

ordinarily we might understand by the words " Knowledge of

the self " ; yet, were we to know the Self in its fullness, we should

know all knowledge that it is possible for man to know ; hence,

that title or technical name is given to it as descriptive of the

entire branch of the Esoteric Philosophy which this seventh

Jewel contains. As it is, we can know only parts of this branch

of the Esoteric Philosophy. We are told that it is hinted in the

ancient writings, particularly in the Sanskrit, that even the most

spiritual beings on earth in this our age know not fully all that

is contained in this Treasure. There are possibly not a dozen

thinking beings on earth to-day, who of course would comprise the

very highest and holiest men that the earth has brought forth up

to the present period of evolution, who can in any sense fully

understand it. But we can have and understand appropriate

parts of this sublime Wisdom-mystery ; and it is these that we

are going to attempt to try to elucidate, to the best of our

capacity, this evening.

Now we stated at our last meeting that this seventh Treasure

or Jewel can be considered as a study of the problem of how the

One becomes the Many ; but it was also said that, as a matter of

fact, the One essentially never becomes the many. One might

as well say that the sun which gives us our light comes down to

earth in order to do it ; but it does not ; it sends out its rays,

emanations from itself, which illuminate, vitalize, and quicken

our world of matter ; and similarly is the case with the One.

Further, what do we mean by " the One " ? Obviously, we do

not mean the personal God of any exoteric theology. No matter

how great, how vast in compass spiritually, we may consider this

One to be, it is still a unity, a being, and therefore it is finite.

Therefore, in order to elucidate our problem, we turn to another

l8o

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

one of these seven Treasures, and we find an illustration of this

particular branch of our problem in the lokasa technical word

for the Hierarchies, as is also Brahmdnda, or " Egg of Brahma ",

of which the One is the Root-base if we consider it as the origin

of all the beings and things in that Hierarchy ; or the Flower or

Summit or Acme, if we consider it as the aim and end of our

evolution. This, therefore, is the One. But there are other Ones,

Ones innumerable, in the Kosmical Universe ; some higher than

our highest, or lower than our lowest degree.

You doubtless remember that in studying the Doctrine of

Hierarchies we showed that these Hierarchies are endless in

number. They themselves, each one of them, can be considered

as a unit ; and there are many above us and many below us :

innumerable ones above us and innumerable ones below us ;

innumerable ones within and innumerable ones without our

Kosmical Hierarchy. They are endless in number in all direc-

tions. From this One of our hierarchy, however, and we mean

in this instance the Universal Kosmos or the Kosmical Universe,

comes all our life, all our being, all that we are without and

within. It is the Source and Origin of everything that we can be

and know, working in and upon that background of the Bound-

less which comprises the limitless aggregate of all other Hier-

archies whatsoever.

The most extended, the vastest, and the most immense

Hierarchy of our unfettered imagination is but as a mote of dust,

as a single Atom, in comparison with the Boundless. The Bound-

less cannot ever nor in any sense be considered as one, as a mere

unity. One implies the finite, the beginning of computation, or

enumeration ; and we must think of the Boundless as a zero,

signifying endless and limitless infinitude, with no qualifications

whatsoever that belong to all that is manifested or limited ; and,

on the other side of the illustration, signifying the all-encompass-

ing, endless, boundless, Fullness of the ALL. This is SPACE ;

which is either the unlimited Fullness of the ALL, or the unlimited

Emptiness of the All, according as we view it. The latter view

is the profoundly spiritual bunyatd of the Buddhist philosopher.

Let us turn for a moment to another kindred subject. Have

you ever thought doubtless you have ; but I remember that, as

the Teacher has asked me to point out, these studies are pursued

not so much for ourselves as for those students not resident here

who have not the chance that we here have, and who will read

them have we ever considered and pondered over the meaning

of the word immutable when people use it as sometimes happens

when speaking of such subjects as Space, the Boundless, etc. ?

Has it ever occurred to us to try to realize that if the Boundless

were " immutable " even for the minutest fraction of a second,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 181

the entire fabric of universal kosmical being would vanish away

in the twinkling of an eye, like a shadow on a wall ! All that we

can know or mentally figurate of so limitlessly vast a subject as

the Boundless, is such thoughts as we vaguely express in words or

phrases like " Boundless Life ", etc., which is Motion : endless

and beginningless Activity. " Immutability " is a phantom of

the imagination ; a mere reflexion in our minds of finite pause.

There is ceaseless Motion, ceaseless and endless and beginningless

Life in the horizonless Fields of the Boundless.

But when we consider the One, the Summit, or the Root-base

of our own Hierarchy, or of any other Hierarchy we can by

spiritual intuitions grasp the Truth concerning It ; but if we go

beyond that Hierarchy, going up step by step from lower to higher

spheres, we shall always, we must always, reach a point where our

understanding and imagination fall powerless before the immensity

of the (to us] non-understandable ; because we can in nowise en*

compass or comprehend it ; only can we see that in IT and from IT

is the Infinite Life, which in its ceaseless unending motion is" immut-

ably " the same always. Only in this paradoxical sense is the word

" immutable " permissible. So much, then, for the Boundless.

But as regards the One, it is analogically " immutable " only for

its own period of activity as Source of a Hierarchy, and only for

those below it ; and hence you will find our Teacher occasionally

speaking of the " immutable law ", that which for the " seven

eternities " during which our period of manifestation endures,

" varies not, and knows no shadow of turning ". And why ?

Because that highest Summit, that One, is the Supreme Silent

Watcher, the Supreme Life-Giver, the Great Supreme Sacrifice,

to use H. P. Blavatsky's terms, of our own great Kosmic Hier-

archy, which is the highest that our imagination can attain to.

But do not confuse this Supreme Silent Watcher with the Silent

Watcher of the less Hierarchy of the Teachers.

When our Hierarchy goes into pralaya which means the

release of its entirety of lives and life for higher and spiritual

things of greater value and of nobler compass than those we now

have or can even conceive of when that happens, I say, it is but

as the passing, as it were, of a cloud hitherto over the " face of the

Boundless ", and hosts of other universes are then coming equally

into manifested life as ours will then be passing out of it for its

pralayic rest. Try and form some simple concept of the meaning

of endless and beginningless Eternity and of the Boundless, and

drop it there : unceasing life, endless activity, never-ending life

and consciousness in unceasing motion everywhere. It is only

" parts " which, as compared with the Totality which is the

Boundless, are as nothing only such " parts ", so to say, this, that,

or another, " part ", which in its may a of manifested life and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

unmanifested repose, alternately is active or passive ; which

passes away and then returns again. The wise ancients never

bothered their heads much about any foolish attempt to fathom

the Boundless or the limitless Eternal. They recognised the

Reality of Being, and let it go at that, knowing well that an ever-

growing knowledge of the Universal Life was and is all that

human intelligence could ever attain to, by an ever-expanding

Consciousness.

This alternate appearing and disappearing of worlds or Hier-

archies, is the teaching imbodied in the first of the seven Jewels

or Treasures of Wisdom. As the human spirit sends down its ray

and reincarnates by means of that ray into a human being of

astral matter and of mind-matter and of flesh, so similarly, when

the time comes for a Hierarchy to re-imbody itself, to undertake

its task anew of Palingenesis or repeated self-generation, the same

relative course is run. Never let us forget the ancient axiom of

the Esoteric Wisdom which the Hermetists so beautifully

expressed : As above so below. What happens in heaven is

mirrored on earth, mutatis mittandis. Man's palingenesis, as a

microcosm, is but a faithful copy of the palingenesis of worlds ;

of his own kosmic Hierarchy as the Macrocosm.

Let us now turn to our main theme for to-night, after the

preliminary observations first made. As the Summit of our

Hierarchy is One, the Root of our ens, in which we " move and

live and have our being ", as the Christian Apostle Paul puts it ;

so similarly in the spiritual-psychological Hierarchy there is a One

in whom we are all rooted, in whom psychologically and mystically

and religiously, yea and aspirationally, we live. This One is the

Great Initiator, the Great Sacrifice, the Wondrous Being referred

to by H. P. Blavatsky ; the Supreme Head of the Hierarchy of

the Teachers. From it originally come our noblest impulses

through our own Higher Selves ; from it come the life and

aspiration we feel, stirring oft in our minds and hearts ; from it,

through our higher natures, come the urge to betterment, the

sense of loyalty and troth, all the things which make life holy and

bright and high and well worth living.

It was during the Third Race of Humanity of this Fourth

Round on this globe, when the incarnate ray in each of the units

of the then mankind had evolved forth its vehicle (by generating

from within itself this vehicle, fit for the expression of itself, of the

divine spirit within) ; and then that vehicle, or soul, was become

self-conscious. Then, as time passed, there came a period when an

Interpreter, a Guide, a Teacher, of the Race of mankind, was

needed, because the race was rapidly sinking with every sub-cycle

of the Great Age more totally into matter and consequent

illusion and spiritual defilement, for such is produced by the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 183

evolving of matter. The Dhyan-Chohans, the " Lords of Medita-

tion ", who were men from a former great Period of Activity of

our Planet Terra, beings from a former Manvantara, were then

leaving or withdrawing from this earth ; they had already done

their cyclical work, done all they could, in informing, inspiring,

and illuminating the then Mankind ; but they now needed

successors more like the sinking Men of the period. By reason

of a Mystery which we cannot elucidate here, the noblest repre-

sentatives of the then humanity became the direct and willing

vehicles of self-conscious Rays from these Dhyan-Chohans,

" Lords of Meditation ". It was not exactly what is called in

Brahmanism an Avatara a " descent " which means the over-

shadowing incarnation of a portion of a high spirit in a high human

being ; but it was the actual indwelling (fully conscious on both

sides, and relatively complete) of a portion of the essence of a

Dhyan-Chohan in a fully conscious, willing, and utterly self-

sacrificing, Man of high degree. Now, please mark well : the

highest one of these incarnations, the noblest Man-fruit of human

evolution produced up to that time, became the head of this

spiritual-psychological Hierarchy literally, and in very truth, in

his case, was a Man infilled with a Dhyan-Chohan : what might

actually be called an incarnate god. This was and still Is the

Silent Watcher, the Initiator, the Wondrous Being, the Great

Sacrifice " sacrifice " for a reason which I explain elsewhere.

Pause a moment. Let us think away for a moment from the

thread of our theme. Let us consider the immense hope, the

profound intellectual splendor, and the spiritual beauty which

we find in these teachings. They are well worth thinking over,

indeed ! If anything, Theosophy, the Esoteric Wisdom, is a vast

doctrine of hope, not of mere " optimism " as the word is

ordinarily understood ; but a doctrine of vitalizing hope and

interior illumination. Ah, there, in these wonder-teachings, is the

Path along which we may ascend. More particularly, it depends

on ourselves whether our ascent along the stairway of that Ray

which is living and working in each one of us is achieved or not ;

and pray listen carefully whether or not we ascend by our

being consciously linked through that Being with the Highest.

That Being, that Wondrous Being, does not " come down " and

" descend " into us ; because for It this would be pollution of a

sort not to be tolerated ; yet we are linked with It by and through

the Ray within us. As the sun sends forth innumerable rays, yet

remains ever the sun ; so through this Being pours, as the Root-

base of our spiritual-psychological Hierarchy, a Ray which is

instinct and alive in every normal child that comes into the world.

Now it depends upon us whether we follow along that Ray

upwards or, as pointed out at our last meeting, abandon our

i84

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

divine birthright, and follow the lure of Chaos and the Pit

respond to the exhalations from " hell/' There are people,

perhaps, who may not have understood the meaning of the word

" annihilation " as we use it. Let us understand that annihila-

tion, strictly speaking, exemplifies what our present Teacher

Katherine Tingley calls the " infinite mercy of the Higher Law ".

There is no such nightmare as " eternal suffering ". Those human

beings who have forfeited their divine birthright, go to pieces ;

they lose their personal entity ; but when that has happened, there

remains but an empty psychic shell. When we lay our body down

at death and it goes to pieces and its atoms are returned to the

earth which gave it birth, is there anything very dreadful in that ?

Take the same rule and apply it to the case of the " lost souls ",

of which we were speaking at a former meeting.

If anyone desires to get a masterly outline of this subject, let

him turn to The Key to Theosophy, pages 77 and 92 and 93, and he

will there find what H. P. Blavatsky tells her readers of " annihila-

tion ", and more particularly in connexion with the Buddhist

teaching as taught by the Lord Gautama the Buddha. Why I

say the " Lord " Buddha, will be explained in a moment.

This Wondrous Being is the Chief, the Master-Initiate, the

Head and Leader of the spiritual-psychological Hierarchy of

which our Masters form a part. He is the " Ever-living-human-

Banyan " Tree from which they hang as leaves and fruits,

spiritually speaking. So also do we, spiritually speaking. On

every globe, on every man-bearing planet of every sun in the

infinitudes of Space, we are taught that as far as great spiritual

seers know, the same thing exists there. There is over each one a

Master-Teacher, and in each case he merits the term which H. P.

Blavatsky gives him, taking it from her own Teachers, of The

Great Sacrifice. Why is he so called ? Because, from boundless

compassion for those lower in the scale of Evolution than he is,

he has renounced all hope and opportunity in this Manvantara of

himself going higher, out of this sorrow-laden world, and remains

behind among us as our Great Inspirer and Teacher ; he himself

can learn nothing more of this Hierarchy, for all knowledge

pertaining to it or possible in it is his already. He has sacrificed

himself for all below him.

Now there are some people who talk of sacrifice of that sort as

if it were something gruesome or evil ! Why, is there anything

more sublimely beautiful than the giving of self in noble service to

others to all ? Is there anything which actually can lead man

higher ? Is there anything which opens the heart more ? Is there

anything which opens more the doors of inspiration ? And, on the

other hand, is there anything which more quickly closes these

doors, or more fully belittles man, which more quickly shrivels the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 185

self, than does its opposite : personality, selfishness, egoism ? Ay,

there is a joy, an unspeakable joy, in self-sacrifice of this high

kind. The Wondrous Being is technically called " The Great

Sacrifice " because, having reached the pinnacle of evolution in

this our Hierarchy, he can learn nothing more in or from that

Hierarchy. He has deliberately renounced further progress for

himself in our Manvantara ; and this truly is the greatest of

sacrifices ; and he has renounced it in order to live for those less

beings who are weary, and who stumble on the Upward Way ;

following the dictates inherent in that noble cry : " How can I

live in heaven when one single being on earth must suffer ? " You

are reminded of the old story of the Scotsman who, when told by

his Dominie that his dog could not go to heaven with him,

answered instantly: "Oh, Dominie, if my dog cannot go to

heaven with me, then shall I stay here on earth with my faithful

dog ; for he never would abandon me I " That is a touch of the

same spirit of devotion.

In the great Indian Epic, The Mahdbhdmta, we find a closely

similar tale of one of the great heroes of that work, who, having

met with severe trials of many kinds, on his way to Swarga or

Heaven, successfully passed them all ; but when he finally reached

the confines of Heaven he was met by the Devas, who told him :

" Brother, your faithful dog enters not here ". And he said :

" Oh, then shall I go back with my dog, my faithful companion

who loved me and who has followed me everywhere. Shall I

abandon him and leave him outside ? " And the Devas, accord-

ing to the beautiful legend, then opened wide the gates of Heaven,

and the heavenly choristers began to sing a paean of welcome and

praise to the faithful hero-heart, who would have renounced his

own unspeakable bliss for the sake of a loving and faithful creature

less evolved than he.

This is the spirit of renunciation of self for others, as exemplified

in legend and story. Is there anything more beautiful than it ?

Now let us go a step farther. Let us leave our theme for a few

moments and take up again a matter which we feel was not fully

understood, perhaps, due to our insufficient exposition of it at our

last meeting. We spoke then of there being two classes of " lost

souls ". That is quite correct. But we must also point out that

there are likewise two sub-divisions, in the second of these two

classes, and these two sub-divisions of the second class are those

who fully merit the old Christian term " workers of spiritual

iniquity ". The first sub-division comprise those who are com-

monly called conscious sorcerers ; and the second comprise the

same type of beings but include those who have reached such a

point of inner power, yea, of evil spiritual strength, that they are

able even to defeat Nature's call to dissolution for the entire term

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

of the Manvantara. They merit truly the old mystic saying,

" workers of spiritual evil ".

In order to make this difficult subject somewhat clearer, consult

and reflect over the subjoined diagram, giving a brief outline of

the various consciousnesses in a Hierarchy :

Dhyan-Chohans

SahSans ' ' ' The " Awakened "' f Vari US

Chelas

degrees.

Good Men

Soulless Men .... Very numerous. The " Living

Dead ".

Class i. Men thoroughly evil . Very few.

Class 2

(Spiritual Sorcerers.

Sub. div. I

Chohans of Conscious Evil.

Sub. div. 2

Lost Souls : actu-

ally, or to be. Des-

tined, all, for anni-

hilation. Class 2 are

extremely few.

The entire system hangs like a Chain from the Primeval Seed, the

Root-base of the Hierarchy.

The first sub-division comprises those who are annihilated when

this globe goes into its " obscuration " ; but to the second sub-

division belong they who are almost human incarnations of what

the Tibetans called the Lhamayin ; or sometimes they may even

be overshadowed by the Mamo-Chohans, which preside at the

Pralayas. These last, however, are not exactly " devils " or evil

entities, but rather beings whose destiny it is for the time in view

to carry on the work of destruction, of desolation. As regards the

higher spiritual sorcerers and workers of evil, the second sub-

division, their final destiny is truly terrible, for there awaits them

at the close of the Manvantara the avichi-nirvdna, the absolute

contrast and nether pole of the Nirvana of spirit ; and then a

Manvantara of unparalleled misery. They arc the polar opposites

of the Dhyan-Chohans. Final and utter annihilation is their end.

Nature is bi-polar ; and as is the action, so is the reaction.

Now annihilation, as it is used in the Esoteric Philosophy, and

as it is commonly understood by educated thinkers of our School,

does not mean what people commonly imagine it to be. It means

the breaking up, the dissolution, of a personal entity, but never of

the immortal Individuality, which is impossible. We speak, and

speak correctly, of the dissolution or the annihilation of an army,

or of the annihilation of a flock of sheep. When the separate

entities are gone, killed, or whatever it may be, the flock of sheep

is no more, the flock is dissolved. It is annihilated as a flock, as an

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 187

entity. And similarly, annihilation in its psychological sense, does

not mean that it is the immortal spirit which is annihilated. That

idea is perfectly ludicrous. An immortal spirit cannot be anni-

hilated. Its residence, its dwelling-place, is infinite space ; and

its time is eternity. But as our body dissolves, is annihilated as a

body, is resolved and dissolved into its component elements ; so

with the " lost soul " which is at first a mere psychic shell, when

the impulses which came to it in the time when it was linked with

an incarnate spirit, have spent their force ; then its term comes,

it is dissolved, it is annihilated, it ceases, it passes out of being.

There is nothing left of it, for like a dead physical body, it is

resolved into its component elements. But in the first stages, it

becomes spiritually dead, though mentally alive. It is a psychic

corpse, from which the immortal element has fled. That is what

a " lost soul " is.

We students of the Esoteric Philosophy, of this School, know

what happens to the kama-rupa of a man after the death of the

physical body. It is finally dissolved, or annihilated. It is in

nature's course that it must be so. I tell you that when we spoke

at our last meeting of the ancient wisdom-teachings of the Lord

Buddha, to the effect that there is " no abiding principle in man ",

using the words of Rhys Davids, the eminent Welsh scholar, who

is a bright literary honor to his country despite the mistakes that

he makes in misunderstanding much of the inner sense of the

Buddhist teaching, we mean simply this, and you all know it :

that the only abiding thing in man's nature is from and in his Higher

Self, his higher nature. His body ; his vital force ; his astral

double, the linga-sarira ; the kamic principle ; the manas ; all

these pass away at death. Nothing of an abiding principle in the

combination of these five. Yet while these five component parts

of man's psychology hang together in physical life, they form the

" man ". Is there any one of you so egoistic as to think that this

poor being of clay now speaking before you is the immortal spirit ?

Or the life which informs it ? Or this poor mind of matter, which

I am using as an instrument wherewith to speak to you ? No !

The thought just expressed is commonly supposed and rightly

supposed to be a Buddhist teaching ; it is also the teaching of

the Ancient Wisdom ; it was likewise the teaching of the Stoics,

and also of Plato. Why, it is likewise the teaching of the scriptures

of Judaism and of Christianity. You doubt it ? Turn to the Book

of Ecclesiastes, one of the so-called sacred canonical works of the

latter two religions. We have made our own translation of

the following passages, for we trust not the translation of the

theological scribes. They are too harsh on the one hand, and

insufficiently clear on the other. We find, then, in this Book of

Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verses 18 to 21, the following ; and please

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

remember that this book is supposed to have been written by the

so-called " wisest man in the world ", Solomon. Whatever we

may think of that notion, those who accept this book believe it.

It is old-fashioned and popular theology.

" Said I in my heart, concerning the nature of the sons of man

(Addm) (it is) that the Elohim may form them, and to show that

they are beasts, they themselves. For the destiny of the sons of

man (Addm) and the destiny of the beast is one destiny to them :

as dies the one, so dies the other ; and the thinking faculty [the

Hebrew word is R&ahh, very extraordinary indeed !] is one for all ;

and the superiority of man over the beast is nothing, because all

are illusion. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and all

return to the dust/' But now listen to the following, showing that

the writer of this, although he certainly was not that mythical

figure " Solomon ", was nevertheless a man who knew. Listen !

" Who knows the thinking faculty of the sons of man which, her-

self, ascends above ; and the thinking faculty of the beast which,

herself, descends under the earth ? " There we have the age-old

teaching regarding psychology, and when properly understood, it

will easily be seen that every word of it is true. And when the

Key- Wisdom behind this brief exposition is understood, it will be

seen to be unutterably beautiful. What vain illusions did those

misguided men of the early sects of Christendom foist upon the

early western European world ; what irreligious folly, to teach

that the physical body of man is such a permanent and necessary

thing, that it will be resurrected, and, if the life of the indwelling

soul was good, shall sit with multitudes on the " right hand of

God Almighty ". What unbelievably crass materialism ! More

spiritual harm was done to the European races by teachings such

as this than anything, perhaps, that history records. Like many

other teachings of early Christianity, this one was a horribly

mistaken and distorted tenet of the Ancient Wisdom concerning

the Regeneration of the Personality into an immortal Individu-

ality one of the ancient Mystery-Doctrines which we explain

briefly elsewhere. But, on the other hand, it is necessary to teach

a man of his dual nature, a subject which our present Teacher calls

to our attention almost daily, begging us to think about it and to

try to understand it. Teach him that he is in his higher nature

really an essential spirit, verily, an incarnate god, and that he can

become consciously that god in the flesh if he will. And teach him

that if he chooses to follow the beast-nature he becomes as a beast,

for the inner Self tolerates not this latter course. The silver thread

(which is golden above) is in that case broken ; and instead of the

man we have the man-beast, for from the man-beast the Soul

departs, Nature's merciful liberation of the self-conscious in-

dwelling Individuality.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 189

There is no " endless torture " or punishment anywhere.

Now, my time for this evening is drawing to a close. I have

not said one-tenth part of what the Teacher has instructed me to

say concerning this subject of the seventh Treasure in its connexion

with the " Wondrous Being " ; yet I wish to add a few more

words to-night before ending. First, as to my reason for using the

term " The Lord Buddha ". This is the reason. This Wondrous

Being overshadowed about twenty-five hundred years ago, a pure

and noble-minded youth born in the north of India. The vehicle,

this youth, was in all ways receptive, and the Wisdom-teaching

coming from him was given to the world. This chosen vehicle was

called Siddhartha as his personal name ; his clan-name was

Gautama ; and he was later given the title " Sakyamuni " mean-

ing the Sdkya " sage " ; he was also later called by the title of the

" Buddha ". This word Buddha is a title meaning the " Awak-

ened " ; just as the word Christos or Christ, is a title meaning the

" Anointed ". The Wondrous Being overshadowed, yea, and

partly entered into, this young man who had come strictly in

accordance with the law of cycles, at the cyclically appointed time

in the World's course ; for an Awakened One, a full Christ, that is

to say a Buddha, was cyclically destined to come at that time. He

was in the line of the successively-coming Buddhas, and he was

the noblest, he was the highest, of the Mystic Hierarchy of his

period, as also he was then the nearest to this Wondrous Initiator,

of any of our race. We know that our Teachers themselves speak

of the Lord Buddha as their Teacher. That young man, we are

taught, came directly from the Lodge : not his body ; but the

Holy Entity infilling it. He was one of their greater ones. Con-

cerning all these profound and wonderful doctrines there is vastly

more that simply cannot be uttered here, for obvious reasons ;

there is an entire department of the Esoteric Philosophy involved

which treats of some of the most carefully guarded secrets of

Nature and Being. We merely, then, hint, and pass on.

H. P. Blavatsky herself, you may remember, took Pansil, a

Pali word meaning the Five Qualities or Vows (in Sanskrit,

PaHcha-tila), and thereby became a formal Buddhist. Why ?

Because, as the Messenger from the Lodge, she knew perfectly

well that back of the outward teachings, behind the exoteric

doctrines of Gautama-Buddha, there is the Inner Truth, there is

the Esoteric Buddhism, as well as the Esoteric Budhism : the

former word spelled with two ds, meaning the teachings of Gau-

tama the Buddha ; and the other word spelled with one d, and

meaning Wisdom. And they are truly one when " Buddhism " is

properly explained and understood. She knew exactly what she

was about. Look, for instance, at the way in which she writes of

the Buddha.

IQO

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But, while all the above is strict and accurate truth, I must

enter here another caveat. Are we Buddhists ? No. Not more so

than we are Christians, except perhaps in this sense, that the

religious philosophy of the Buddha- Sakyamuni is incomparably

nearer to the Ancient Wisdom, the Esoteric Philosophy. Its main

fault to-day is that its later teachers carried its doctrines too far

along merely formal or exoteric lines ; and yet with all that, and

to this day, it remains the purest and holiest of the exoteric

religions on earth, and its teachings even exoterically are true.

They need but the esoteric key in interpretation of them. As a

matter of fact, the same may be said of all the great ancient World-

religions. Christianity, Brahmanism, and others, all have the

same esoteric Wisdom behind the outward veil of the exoteric

formal faith.

You will remember that H. P. Blavatsky says somewhere that

of the two branches of Buddhism, i.e., the Southern and the

Northern, the Southern still retains the teachings of the " Buddha's

brain ", the " Eye-doctrine ", that is to say his outer philosophy

for the general world ; and that the Northern still retains his

" Heart-doctrine ",

Now understand those two expressions. They are Buddhist

terms : " Eye-doctrine " and " Heart-doctrine " are real Buddhist

terms. They are also Esoteric Wisdom terms, The " Eye-

doctrine " is that which is seen ; it may be false and it may be

true ; but in the technical sense it is a true exotericism lacking

only the key. The " Eye-doctrine " is sometimes called the

doctrine of forms and ceremonies, that is, the formal outward

presentation. Whereas the " Heart-doctrine " is that which is

hid, but which is the inner life, the heart-blood, of the religion.

As the eye is seen and also sees ; so, conversely, the heart is un-

seen, but is the life-giver, and applied to religion the expression

means the doctrine of the inner heart of the Teaching. As a

secondary thought, it also gives the idea that it contains the

nobler part of human conduct, what people call kindliness,

humanity, compassion, pity.

We hope to resume our studies concerning this Wondrous Being

when the Leader calls us together again. It depends upon our-

selves as to how long our studies are to last. It is for the Teacher

to judge of this, and I think that we all of us I know I so feel

should bow our heart in gratitude to the Masters' representative

here among us for giving us this chance to purify our souls with

the thoughts which come to us not merely from ancient times, but

from those high Souls who stand back of her, and who, if they do

not actually " guide " this movement, at least, we are told, they

" watch over it and protect it ", providing always that we in our

turn do our full duty by her who sits among us, their representative.

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CHAPTER XVIII

THE SPIRITUAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL HIERARCHY OF ADEPTS. THE

"WONDROUS-BEING," THE BUDDHAS, NIRMANAK&YAS,

DHVAN-CHOHANS.

Then the Blessed One spake, and said :

' Know, Vasettha, that (from time to time) a Tathagata is born into the

world, a fully Enlightened One, blessed and worthy, abounding in wisdom and

goodness, happy, with knowledge of the world, unsurpassed as a guide to erring

mortals, a teacher of gods and men, a Blessed Buddha. He, by himself,

thoroughly understands, and sees, as it were, face to face this universe the

world below with all its spirits, and the worlds above, of Mara and of Brahma

and all creatures, Samanas and Brahmans, gods and men, and he then makes

his knowledge known to others. The truth doth he proclaim both in its letter

and in its spirit, lovely in its origin, lovely in its progress, lovely in its consum-

mation : the higher life doth he make known, in all its purity and in all its

perfectness.'

(The Sacred Books of the East.) Tevigga Sutta t pp. 186-7.

OUR study this evening begins with reading once more

a part of the matter from the first volume of The Secret

Doctrine, which was read at our last meeting, three

weeks ago, I believe ; namely, on page 207, the end of

the first paragraph :

The Arhats of the " fire-mist " of the 7th rung are but one remove

from the Root-Base of their Hierarchy the highest on Earth, and our

Terrestrial chain. This " Root-Base " has a name which can only be

translated by several compound words into English " the ever-living-

human -Banyan." This " Wondrous Being'' descended from a "high

region," they say, in the early part of the Third Age, before the separa-

tion of the sexes of the Third Race.

This evening we are going to make a step forward, in some

respects, far and away beyond any distance that we have travelled

on a similar occasion. Our preceding two studies have been for

the purpose, mainly, of illustrating some of the preliminary ideas

connected with this wonderful doctrine of the " Wondrous Being ".

First, then, let us note that the key-word of this teaching is the

word " Banyan ". Doubtless you all know what a banian-tree is,

a well-known tree in India, and called the Ficus bengalensis, the

" Bengal Fig ", because it is a relative of the fig-tree. It grows

rapidly, and soon attains to very respectable dimensions. From

its branches there hang down tendrils, which, when they reach the

soil, they strike into the ground and become roots there. And the

tendril which grew down and rooted itself in the ground becomes

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

another tree-trunk, in its turn sending forth branches, these

branches anew sending forth other tendrils, becoming in their turn

new roots, which again become new trunks, sending forth other

branches, developing in their turn new tendrils, and so on. It is

a wonderful figure of speech to have been chosen for this subject.

Now this " Wondrous Being " is a spiritual Banian. To say

that it is " our Higher Self ", would be using a misleading phrase ;

it would be doing violence to the facts. Notwithstanding this,

however, in one sense it is our Higher Self, our Paramatman.

From it we spiritually spring ; and when, in the course of the

cycles, the Life-Wave shall have run its Rounds on this Planetary

Chain, into the Hierarchical Banian again we shall be withdrawn.

It is in very truth, so far as this planet is concerned, and so far as

its thinking entities more particularly are concerned, our " Father

in Heaven ". The " Wondrous Being " referred to here must not

be confused with its lower copy, the Supreme Initiator, the Great

Sacrifice, the Head of the Spiritual-psychological Hierarchy of

Adepts, the more immediate subject of our present study.

You will remember that in our former studies we pointed out

that the course of the evolution of man, more particularly of his

psychological nature, was a copy in miniature of the development

not merely of worlds of the Macrocosmic Scale, but also of various

high Spiritual Beings who form the directing Intelligences of the

Kosmos, and of their Vehicles in the universe. First, when the

time comes for manifestation, for the sending forth of a life-wave,

it begins, rounds out, and then completes its evolutionary course

on the first " plane " of its downward and forward journey. Then,

passing from that " plane ", to use the ordinary term, and going

to a lower one, it leaves on the plane or sphere to and into which

it had first penetrated, vehicles of various sorts, remaining more

or less active, though the main vigor of the Life- Wave has passed

on. And so through and in all of the seven planes or spheres of

manifestation. First in the spiritual world ; then in the psychical ;

then in the astral ; and lastly in the physical ; thus reaching the

limit which the active impulse or force of the Evolutionary Wave

attains in that particular manvantara, which is what we call

" absolute matter " for that particular Life- Wave : four planes

from its beginning, counting downwards. Three more planes

upwards round out the Manvantaric Cycle.

Remember here that our Teaching allows of no such things as

" Absolutes " in the ordinary sense, for actually all " Absolutes "

are relative. The Absolute Self, our " Father in Heaven ", is but

the " Absolute " of our Hierarchy, its crown, its summit, its glory ;

or, considering it as the beginning of manifested beings, the Root

or the Seed thereof. And, as all nature works in bi-polar phases,

" absolute matter ", therefore, is the ultimate depth to which a

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 193

spiritual impulse can reach in that particular manvantaric cycle.

Below it are other complete Hierarchies ; while above our hier-

archical (not individual) " Father in Heaven " is the lowest plane

of another but superior Hierarchy, one of innumerable multitudes

of Hierarchies, which in their aggregate comprise the Universal

Kosmos.

In our last study we spoke of the care that we should have when

we speak of the " One " ; the reason is that there are infinite

multitudes of such " Ones ", a necessary implication of what we

have said this evening and elsewhere.

Now, as the Monad descends into matter, or rather as its Ray

one of other innumerable Rays proceeding from it is propelled

into matter, it secretes from itself and then excretes on each one

of the seven planes through which it passes its various vehicles,

all overshadowed by the Self, the same Self in you and in me, in

plants and in animals, in fact in all that is and belongs to that

Hierarchy. It is the One Self, the Supreme Self or Paramatman

of the Hierarchy. It illumines and follows each individual Monad

and all the latter's hosts of Rays. Each such Monad is a Spiritual

Seed from the previous Manvantara, which manifests as a Monad

in this Manvantara ; and this Monad through its Rays throws out

from itself by secretion and then excretion all its vehicles ; and

these vehicles are, first, the Spiritual Ego, the reflexion or copy in

miniature of the Monad itself, but individualized through the

Manvantaric Evolution, " bearing " or " carrying " as a vehicle

the Monadic Ray. The latter cannot directly contact the lower

planes, because it is the monadic essence itself, the latter a still

higher Ray of the infinite Boundless composed of infinite multi-

plicity in unity.

The next vehicle is the spiritual soul, the " bearer " of the

Spiritual Ego. On its own higher plane, this vehicle is, as it were,

a sheaf or pillar of light. Similarly with the various Egos and

their related vehicle-souls on the inferior planes, all growing

constantly more dense, as the planes of matter gradually thicken

downwards and become more dense, into which the monadic Ray

penetrates until the final " soul ". The " final soul " is the

physical body, the general vehicle or " bearer " or " carrier " of

them all. " Soul ", as the term is here used, is seen to be a general

expression for any " bearer " or " carrier " of an egoic center, or

" ego ".

When we call this Hierarchical Wondrous Being our " Highest

Self ", we mean that it is the Primeval or Originating Seed from

which we grow and develop into composite entities, the immortal

divine part of our nature and being. We can consider it, in one

aspect, as a sheaf of Divine Light separating into innumerable

individuals or entities (Monads and Monadic Rays) in a Man-

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vantara ; and when the Pralaya comes, again withdrawing and

drawn back into Itself, enriched and ennobled, however, through

its countless Hosts of Manifested Monads and Monadic Rays,

with the individualizing experience that these latter have gained ;

because, though at first unconscious " god-sparks ", they are

now self-conscious divinities. The innumerably various individual

consciousnesses increase in power and glory and self-cognition by

means of the life and lives through which It (and they) have

passed. Hence the Wonder-Teaching flowing forth from this.

Listen carefully :

Last spring, it will be remembered, by the Teacher's in-

structions, we pointed out that the one end and aim of all Man-

vantaric Evolution is the raising of the mortal into Immortality ;

and we mentioned as an illustration of the idea the beautiful

Invocation of Katherine Tingley, our present Teacher, " that

from the corruptible I may become Incorruptible ; that from

darkness I may go forth in Light ". That, indeed, is the aim and

end of Kosmic evolution. Have we reached as yet such a state,

you and I ? We have not ; and our immortality as men is non-

existent or rather conditional, and will so be until we have

" raised the corruptible into Incorruptibility ".

In order to make things more clear, please note the following :

No Student or Hearer of these Studies should feel discouraged

at what may seem to him to be the " confusion " caused by using

such words as " spiritual ", " divine ", " Wondrous Being ",

" the One ", " hierarchy ", and many more, in various places

which seem different from other places or conditions. The fact

is, that such usage is really unavoidable. No European language

has evolved terms or expressions suitable to these majestic and

often (to us) complex doctrines ; and hence a speaker is obliged

to do the best he can in this respect. But please mark this well :

There need be no confusion whatsoever, and in time there will be

none, if the student or reader will constantly bear in mind the

following facts. The entire framework of Kosmos, or Nature, is

builded throughout in scalar fashion, and on " correspondences "

and " repetitives " ; so that, actually, the same descriptive words

are properly applied to any theme of a repetitive character ; for

the reason that there are no " absolutes " anywhere, and every-

thing is strictly " relative " to everything else. The only differ-

ences are those of evolutionary development ; and the relative

and varying greater or less degree in which " spirit " or " matter "

is evolved or manifesting. The " divine " of one Hierarchy is

actually " grossest matter " to another far superior Hierarchy ;

but within one and the other the " repetitive " rules apply very

strictly ; because Kosmos or Nature follows one GENERAL

COURSE and ONE " LAW ", and has one general and throughout-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 195

repeated course of action, which applies as strictly and fully to a

Kosmos as to the less kosmos, the Atom.

Hence, the " Wondrous Being " of our own Planetary Spiritual-

Psychological Hierarchy of Adepts, etc., is a correspondence in

small of the Kosmical ONE of the Universal Kosmical Hierarchy

of the Solar System, etc.

Bearing this rule ever in mind, confusion will gradually fade

away into dazzling light of Illumination. It is well worth trying !

Some perhaps may think it a remarkable thing that in our last

two studies we contrasted the case of the " lost soul " with the

case of the Children of this Wondrous Being the Buddhas.

Naturally the former are the other or nether pole of the Buddhas ;

as these " lost souls " are, like the Buddhas, cases of extreme

rarity of occurrence. In our present state of evolution, in which

these " lost souls " occur, equally rare is the other occurrence :

the raising of the mortal into Immortality, of the corruptible

into Incorruptibility.

Let us go into this a little farther. What is it that is " lost " ?

It is the " soul ". Now what is " soul " ? As I have explained

before, by our use it is a vehicle on the higher planes manifesting

as a sheaf or pillar of light ; and on the lower planes, depending

upon the spirituality of the plane, or its materiality, a more or

less physically corporeal body. These " souls " in all cases are

living, more (or less) conscious, sentient entities ; living beings ;

composite ; each one of them composed of innumerable multitudes

of less (inferior) entities, as our body itself is composed of quasi-

infinite numbers of atomic cosmoi, tiny cosmoses, minute

universes.

Now such a soul becomes " lost ", annihilated truly, when it

has lost its touch or rather union with that which gives it immor-

tality or the promise of it. For, if and when, the impulse, all

impulses or aspirations, towards the indwelling divinity, towards

its closer union therewith, have faded out or ceased completely,

then there is nothing left in it to hold it together, for it is wholly

a compounded thing, as said before, and it then disintegrates,

falls to pieces, as the physical body will disintegrate in the fire,

or in the earth. What then happens to the immortal Monad

which had informed it ? Its career in that vehicle is violently

checked. The course of nature, of destiny, in that particular

instance, has been violated and interrupted. Yet all the previous

spiritual gleanings from the former lives of that Monad in other

former vehicles, still remain ; and, after a certain period, it (the

Monad) shoots forth another Ray, another Ego ; although the

page of the " lost soul " remains blank, so to say it is, as it

were, non-existent, completely wiped out. Immortality has no

record of it. It is truly a terrible thing, not only spiritually, but

xg6

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

for the higher soul, the spiritual ego, itself (see diagram p. 203).

I cannot say more of this at present.

On the contrary, on the other side, when once in many, many

generations the Flower of Spirituality blooms full in a Soul, and

mortality is raised into Immortality, we have the opposite case :

a Master is born, consciously immortal, linked for ever with his

Higher Individual Self. As the one case is one pole, so is the other

case the other pole of Nature's course.

But when the former soul is " lost ", there is then for it no

more pain, no more sorrow ; it is wiped out, and vanishes, even

as a shadow which passes along a wall and is gone.

Now listen ! Modern science tells us in its hypotheses built

upon its new recent discoveries, that every physical atom is

composed first, of a central nucleus which is called a " proton " ;

and, second, that around it go circling, cycling, revolving

precisely as the planets and many comets in the solar system

do around the sun other corpuscular bodies called " electrons ".

We will use these facts as illustrative of our theme because the

conception is so closely similar in outline to that of the Ancient

Wisdom. The next idea to grasp is that mere bulk, mere magni-

tude, is no proof or criterion of greatness, either in spiritual

grandeur or in physical power. The fact is that every atom in

the manifested universe is a " bearer " and a " carrier " of lives.

Our bodies are actually composed and builded up of innumerable

hosts of such atoms, every one a miniature cosmos or solar system,

every one of them carrying its hosts of astral-psychic and even

spiritual infinitesimals. Over all, through all, permeating all,

controlling all, giving connected and inhering life to all, are the

predominant life, power, and characteristic of our own personality,

of our own personal ego as man ; the Paramatman, the spiritual

Self, the " Father in Heaven " of these infinitesimal beings,

We are not necessarily greater in essence than any one unit of

these innumerable hosts of infinitesimals which live, and move,

and have their being, in one or another or another or another

atom of our body. There may be entities among them very much

farther advanced than we are, paradoxical as the statement may

sound ; and therefore I repeat : " Break the molds of your

minds ; let in the light ! " Because a thing may be strange to

the mind and because it may sound new, is it therefore necessarily

untrue ? How dare you or I or anyone say : " This or that is the

only truth, the only thing that can be ? " What is the criterion

of truth here ? What, indeed, is truth, as judged by such

standards ?

Let us go a step farther. In our body, or, for instance, in its

organs : the heart, the liver, the brain, and others, each one

receiving from the predominant personal ego of the man certain

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 197

particular rays of force, and each one a kosmical universe or a

universal kosmos for the hosts of atomic infinitesimals composing

it ; in this connexion, I say, has it ever struck you, has it ever

occurred to you, that our solar system is such an atomic

infinitesimal as compared with the Universal Kosmos ; formed

of its proton the Sun, and of its electrons the planets, each planet

bearing its hosts of lives, and forming a part of the vehicle or

body, if you will, of some immense Titanic Entity, utterly

beyond our sphere of comprehension ? " God " ? But why

" God " ? What assurance have we that such a Titanic Entity

is better than you or I, as " God " is supposed to be ? Mere

magnitude or bulk, mere material magnitude, is absolutely no

criterion of anything. Our picture may or it may not be true.

But the point to get here is this, that as our body is held together

by the forces driving through it, and coming from us, secreted

and excreted by you and by me ; so does the One of the Universal

Kosmos or of any inferior Hierarchy to it send forth and

control the many. Thus, then, the Universal Kosmical " Won-

drous Being " is our Highest Self ; which in no way whatever

contradicts or interferes with the other fact, that each one of us has

his own monadic Higher Self, a Spark thereof, destined in its turn

to become in future Manvantaras, the Highest Self of a Kosmos !

Profound, sublime thought ! And the Wondrous Being of inferior

scope and splendor, who is the Root-Base of our own Planetary

Spiritual-Psychological Hierarchy of Adepts, a miniature as it

were of the Kosmical, is the one spoken of in the passage of The

Secret Doctrine which forms our present theme.

Promises made on the Teacher's instructions, in our School, are

sacred. Following those instructions, it was promised in the

spring of last year that it would be our duty, if these meetings

were continued, to simplify and if possible to explain and illustrate

to the best of our ability and no man can do more the Esoteric

Wisdom as it was secretly taught in the ancient sanctuaries,

universally over the archaic world, and as it is taught to-day, as

far as we know it, by our own Masters and their representatives,

for that Wisdom is one, the same ages ago as now ; the same on

another planet as here. There cannot be two Truths in the

universe. That promise has been carried out, up to the present

time, under great difficulties, not the least of which is that the

Teacher's instructions were that these studies should be con-

ducted in such fashion that when the time came for their publica-

tion, no one reading them shall comprehend or shall receive the

full key, excepting only those who have been initiated in this

group, or who are members of this School. " Initiated " means

those who have begun a study, as you and I are " beginners ", who

have begun this sublime study ; and our older students here

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

know it well, for doubtless they have the key to understand it.

They have received their esoteric instructions, which enable

them to follow the threads of our difficult themes ; but one

" outside " could not do so. And this may be said, that upon

looking over the stenographic reports of such of our studies as

we have been enabled to obtain and correct, very few changes

were required to render the thought closed to outsiders, at least

in part. Those changes which are required are simply in order

better to illustrate meanings, or changes of the phrasing, or the

choice of a more appropriate and clearer word, So far, then, our

task has been successful.

Now, the Hierarchical Wondrous Being has been deliberately

spoken of in our last two studies and also in this our present

study, as an Entity, because, generalizing the conception, it is

an Entity. But there are three forms in which, or planes upon

which, this Entity manifests ; and for the sake of perspicuity

and convenience, just here, we are going to use the Buddhist

phraseology, the phraseology of Buddhism and Tibet, as expressed

in the Sanskrit language. The highest aspect, or the highest

sub-Entity of the Wondrous Being is called Adi-Buddha, Adi

meaning primeval (or the highest). This Adi-Buddha is in the

Dharma-icaya-state you all know what this word means : a

Sanskrit compound of two words meaning the " Continuance-

Body ", sometimes translated equally well or ill the "Body

of the Law ", both very inadequate expressions, for the difficulty

in translating these extremely mystical terms is very great ; a

mere " correct " dictionary translation misses the esoteric

meaning entirely ; and just there is where Occidental scholars

make such ludicrous errors at times. The first word comes

from the root Dhri, meaning to support, to sustain, to carry, to

bear ; hence to continue ; also human laws are the agencies

supposed to carry, support, sustain, civilization ; the second

element, kdya, means " body " ; the noun thus formed may be

rendered the " body of the Law ", but this phrase does not give

the idea at all. It is that spiritual body or state of a high spiritual

being in which the sense of soulship and egoity has vanished

into a universal (hierarchical) sense, and remains only in the

seed, i.e., latent if even so much. It is pure consciousness, pure

bliss, pure intelligence, freed from all personalizing thought.

The second aspect or sub-Entity is called the Dhyani-Buddha,

" Contemplation-Buddha ", a great descent from the former, so

far as mere impersonal spirituality goes. This is carried by the

Sambhoga-kaya, two Sanskrit words meaning " Enjoyment-

Body ", or rather " Participation-Body ", because the Buddha

in the Sambhoga-kaya state still participates in, still retains, its

consciousness as an individual, its egoship and its soul, though it is

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 199

still too far above material or personal concerns to care about or

to meddle with them ; and therefore it would be powerless here

on our material earth. As H. P. Blavatsky once said, a god from

the spheres celestial, living solely in its own nature, and without

a material body to manifest in material spheres, would be utterly

powerless there.

The third, and lowest, yet in one sense the highest aspect or

sub-Entity (highest on account of the immense, willing, self-

sacrifice involved in its incarnation in human flesh) is the

Manusha-Buddha, meaning " human Buddha ", because born

in a human body for compassionate work among men. The

Manusha-Buddha at will or need, lives and works in the Nirmana-

kaya, " Form-Body ", about which a very wonderful doctrine

exists, to be explained later.

Now, the Dhyani-Buddhas are one of the ten classes of beings

which came to our globe from the preceding Planetary Man-

vantara. Shortly, we will recite them, as follows : three Ele-

mental Kingdoms, the lowest ; the Mineral-Kingdom ; the Plant-

Kingdom ; the Beast-Kingdom. I pause a moment in order to

make a remark. Please do not say " animal " in this connexion.

We must have precision here. " Animal " means any being

which has an anima, or vital soul. Man is an " animal " in that

sense, but he is not a " beast ". His vital-astral-physical body

is a " beast ", and he works in and with a human soul through

a beast- or vital, soul, enlightened by a spiritual Soul. We hope

to have time later to illustrate this point more fully this evening.

Then another Kingdom after the Beast-Kingdom : the

Manusha-Kingdom or Human-Kingdom. So far, then, we have

three Elemental Kingdoms, 3 ; then the mineral, 4 ; plant, 5 ;

beast, 6 ; human, 7. Then begin the Dhyan-Chohans of three

classes. Man in his higher nature is an embryo Dhyan-Chohan,

an embryo " Lord of Meditation ". It is his destiny, if he run

the race successfully, to blossom forth at the end of the seventh

Round, as a " Lord of Meditation " ; if you like, as a spiritual

Planetary, or a Planetary Spirit, when this planetary manvan-

taric kalpa is ended, this Day of Brahma, which are the seven

Rounds in seven stages each. But there are three classes of

Dhyan-Chohans, as said ; these three classes in their turn are

each divided into seven, as you know. Now of these three the

lowest class being divided into seven, of these seven the fourth

is that Dhyan-Chohan who is our " God in Heaven ", for this

Fourth Round. Its spiritual Primary is the Adi-Buddha of the

Fourth Round. It itself is a Dhyani-Buddha. Let us try to make

this clearer. On each planet or globe of the seven globes forming

the Planetary Chain, as the Life- Wave touches it in a Round

and similarly through all the seven Rounds there is evolved, or

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rather appears, a Buddha, it might be better to say a Mahsl-

Buddha ; one at the commencement of a globe's awakening to

life again ; and another Maha-Buddha when the Life-Wave

leaves the planet after completing its Round there. Likewise,

for each Race during such a globe-Round there appears another

Buddha, who, so to say, is a Ray from the Maha-Buddha of the

planet, and is called the Race-Buddha ; and he in his turn, at the

middle of the Race, or when the central point of the race is

nearing, overshadows a chosen human vessel of purity and

nobility, or spiritual grandeur, this last becoming the Buddha

preparing the spiritual way for the great Race-Buddha of the

succeeding Root-Race, who appears shortly before the close of

the preceding Root-Race. Such a one (as this last) was the

Lord Sakyamuni, Gautama-Buddha, of whom we spoke during

our last study, who is now living on earth, as the Teachers tell us,

a Nirmanakaya, A Nirmanakaya is the lowest of the three

mystical vehicles, as we explained a little while ago. It exists in

seven degrees or kinds, the lowest being the case where the entity,

the spiritual entity, retains all his human principles except the

physical body. All. He is a man in every respect, except for the

physical body, which he has discarded.

Now all these Buddhas, and we have no time this evening to

illustrate the wonderful mysteries connected with this doctrine,

no time this evening, at least all these Buddhas of a Round

derive from the Dhyani-Buddha of that Round. They form part

of the spiritual-psychological Hierarchy of that Round. It is this

Dhyani-Buddha, of our Fourth Round, our " Father in Heaven ",

who is the " Wondrous Being ", the Great Initiator, the Sacrifice,

spoken of before. The name and titles are sometimes likewise

applied to that spiritual Entity, the Race-Buddha, who comes

shortly before or at the beginning of a Root-Race ; and who at

certain epochs during the course of that Race, chooses a fit

human vehicle, usually one of the Great Lodge, overshadows

this chosen vessel or incarnates in it, as the case may be

depending upon the materiality of the Race and Round and

many other factors and so overshadowed the Chosen Vessel

becomes the Manusha or human Buddha. Strictly speaking,

the Race-Buddha himself is a Manusha, or human Buddha, also.

As remarked before, probably none of these titles or names are

hard and fast as limited to one sole entity ; they are often applied,

mutatis mutandis, to more than one sole Entity or class. This is

extremely suggestive.

It is in this manner that this subject of the " Wondrous Being ",

which seems so intricate, but which is actually so simple, is

explained. It seems intricate on account of its subtilty, but

it is very simple indeed. It is our brain-minds of matter which

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 201

prevent us from seeing it easily and clearly. The Ray running

through all our individual being, from which we draw our spiritual

life and spiritual sustenance, comes direct to us from this Hier-

archical Wondrous Being in whom we all are rooted. He to us,

psychologically and spiritually, holds exactly the same place

that the human ego, the man-ego, holds to the innumerable

multitudes of Elemental entities which compose his bodyr

atomic infinitesimals, before referred to, are not meant here.

But listen :

The analogy is correct also in this respect, that if we made it

universal, kosmic, we would say that that Inexpressible ONE,

which is the Utmost of the Utmost, and the Inmost of the

Inmost, of our Kosmical Universe, comprising the greatest

boundaries of the Milky Way : corresponds to all within the

Milky Way as our human ego corresponds to the infinitesimal

atomic universes which compose its own physical body. The

symbology is there ; the correspondence is there ; and it is by

the correspondence that we are striving to explain somewhat of

the Mystery, how the One becomes the Many ; not because the

One " descends into matter " or becomes " many " materially

and literally. Not at all. But in the same way that the sun is

an immense and exhaustless reservoir of vital, psychic, and

spiritual rays, sending them out through billions of years,

exhaustlessly ; in the same way this Hierarchical Wondrous

Being of Kosmic magnitude, through Its inferior but high Wondrous

Beings of various degrees, enlightens us and uplifts us and inspires

us, and leads us onward and upward towards immortality, for

aye doing its best, through Its own spiritual Ray within us, to

illumine and lighten our material corruptibility, in order to make

it incorruptible ; that from Personality we may enter Individu-

ality ; " that from darkness, we may go forth in Light ! " And

the time will come when we shall do this Work and become

incorruptible consciously, working with Nature and becoming

one with her ; for, just as this Wondrous Being is the foundation-

force back and behind of all that we call Nature, so that same

Wondrous Being in far-gone former Manvantaras was then a

Man, even as you and I now are. Such we shall also become,

if we run the Kosmic race successfully I Wonderful, inspiring

thought !

Now, I wish to read a citation from our present Teacher,

Katherine Tingley, taken from one of her recent lectures, because

it is so appropriate to our present studies on this point, that if we

come here with pure hearts and a sincere motive, learning from

each other in the spirit of true comradeship and brotherly love,

we shall all get something high and fine, something to urge us

upward and onward. It will be a holy thing, a benediction. I

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

tell you, the opening of these studies by our Teacher has a deeper

meaning than appears on the surface. She has told you herself

that the time had not before come when we could study together,

and that each one takes from these meetings what he wills to

take. Listen : "A man gets what he works for, and if he does

not work for it, he does not get it. But when one wants truth so

much that he is actually hungry for it, he gets it. It is the wine

of life, so to speak, the revelation of the book of life. No language

can describe it ". And again : " Those who desire the truth,

those who have the courage to enter the new life, those who have

the desire to be reborn in a sense, must throw overboard every-

thing that has held them down in their limitations, in their doubts,

in their fears, their dislikes, and their passions. Man is a majestic

being if he knows his own spiritual nature, and works assiduously

to become that which he was intended to be ".

We are cutting brief our lecture to-night ; it is already very

long ; we have still more to say, and our time for closing is

drawing near.

Another thought that must be hinted at tonight is, that our

wonderful book here, H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, is both

an exoteric book and an esoteric book. It contains doctrines

which were esoteric before this book was printed. Now they are

" exoteric ". But if anyone thinks I never did, thank the

immortal Gods ! if anyone thinks that he knows The Secret

Doctrine by reading it once or even a dozen times, or a score of

times, he mistakes greatly the situation. It must be read not

only between the lines, but within the words. I have found the

value of the following rule : never take a single statement in it

and allow your mind to mold itself around it, never let a single

idea crystallize ; break the molds, let in the light. It is an

excellent rule. As soon as a man says : "I have the truth. I

do not agree with such a one of our teachers : I think such and

such a teacher was wrong ", look out for him, for he is probably

blind. The molds of his mind are crystallized, and he cannot see

the light.

I have learned these lessons, and I speak as a witness. Every

evening, before I go to sleep, I go over the events of the day, and

I try to find one or more things in which I have allowed my mind

to crystallize around a thought or a fact ; and I am merciless to

myself if I catch it or them. Not for a minute do I temporize.

When I find molds of mind, I break them, for I know too well

what they mean.

These things, these thoughts that we study, are serious, there

is no playing with them ; it means going up or going down ; and

you have the choice of paths daily, momently, instantly. Forgive

me for seeming a bit personal. I do not mean that as a preach-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 203

ment. I speak from my heart, for I have found the truth of what

I say, and its great value.

Now to illustrate by a diagram or paradigm this question of

souls and egos alluded to this evening :

Archetypal

World.

Divine Soul or

Monadic

Envelope.

Spiritual Soul

or Individual

Monad: Buddhi:

Fruit and Seed

of Manas.

Higher Human

Soul. Lower

Buddhi and

Higher Manas.

Human Soul, or

Man. Manas,

Kama, and

Prana.

Beast-Soul, or

Vital-Astral

Soul: Kama and

Prana.

Physical Soul or

Body: Sthula-

8artraandPr4na

ancj Linga-

sarlra.

Paramatman

or Supreme

Self.

Atman,

Divine Ego.

k Jlvatman,

\ Spiritual Ego.

Bhutatman,

Human Ego.

Pranatman,

Personal Ego.

Beast-Ego.

Body.

Please note here what is intended to be an egg-shaped design.

It is not a graphic representation, that is, a picture ; it is a

paradigm. A paradigm is a graphic symbol, but not a picture of

a thing.

Let the three parallel lines drawn above the egg represent, if

you will, the Artipa-world, the formless world ; and the seven

planes comprised within the Egg, the RApa- World, seven being

the number of the principles always in manifestation, held in union

as an individual by the Higher Triad, the arupa-triad, its Root

above.

Now, the three higher of the seven within the Egg are also

called Arftpa, " formless ", but only relatively so. Please remember

one of the first lessons of our Esoteric Wisdom : There are no

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

absolutes. We speak indeed of " absolutes ", but only as relative

" absolutes ". The popular, ordinary sense of this word as

11 limitless or endless completions ", is utterly inadmissible, for

there are no absolutes, of that kind, for every thing is relative in

quality and space and time to some thing else, and it must be so

unless we cast logic and common sense to the winds.

Just think of it : if any thing were " Absolute " in the old

popular sense, it would be everything, and there could be nothing

but that in manifestation, hence no change for betterment, no

progress, no evolution. Relativity which means universally

occurring relationships in space and time is the very heart of the

conception of the Kosmos as an aggregate of evolving entities, the

offspring of infinite Motion, infinite Life, infinite Progress always.

To continue our discussion of the paradigm : Now, through this

egg-shaped paradigm falls the Ray, from the Arfipa-world,

represented by this vertical line signifying the Self, universally

manifesting in every atom it touches in this Kosmos, and it

permeates them all as the self individual, the self egoic, the

human self, the astral self, etc. These three highest divisions,

the Arfipa-Triad, collectively are also called the Paramatman, a

Sanskrit word meaning the " Supreme Self ", the Summit or

Flower of the Hierarchy, the Root-Base or Source of that Self.

Please always keep in mind that there is another Hierarchy above

our highest division, this division beginning with the lowest, the

" absolute matter ", of that higher Hierarchy. Everything is

relative. " Absolute matter " even of our own Hierarchy would

be intangible, invisible, to us. Why ? Because our present

physical senses do not belong to its plane, and therefore have

not been trained by evolution to take cognisance of it ; our senses,

eye-sight, smelling, tasting, hearing, touching, can cognise only

those things, and all those things, which they have been built to

cognise through experience in and through ourselves. We have

not descended in this Manvantara into the " absolute matter " of

any other Hierarchy than our own ; we have gone down only

as far as the stages of this Hierarchy would let us go. I do not

here mean our Kosmical Hierarchy. I do mean our Planetary

Hierarchy. Do not be absolute in the application of terminology,

for the reasons already set forth. We must, when we hear a

" Hierarchy " spoken of, immediately question which one. When

we hear the " Self " spoken of, we must immediately question

which one. When we hear the " soul " spoken of, let us imme-

diately ask ourselves which soul. This is a safe rule and guide

to follow in interpretation of any and all passages.

Now, as just said, these three highest planes represented by

these three horizontal lines paradigmatically represent the

Paramatman or Supreme Self of the Hierarchy, in the Archetypal

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 205

World. If you please, let this topmost circle inside the Egg

represent the Monadic Envelope or the Divine Soul, which is

called, from another standpoint, the Atman or Divine Ego. The

circle on the horizontal plane below the Monadic Envelope let

us call the Spiritual Soul or the Individual Monad. The Self

corresponding to it is the Jivatman. Next comes the third circle

in this Egg, and corresponding to it is the higher Human Soul,

composed of the lower Buddhi and the higher Manas ; and the

Self corresponding to it is the Bhutatman, meaning the " Self of

that which has been ", or the Reincarnating Ego. The fourth still

lower, is the lower Human Soul or Man, Manas and Kama ; and

the self corresponding to it is Pranatman, or Personal Ego. The

next circle, still lower growing progressively darker like all the

others, which I have attempted to illustrate by increasing the

shading is the Beast-Soul, Kama-Prana. And the self corre-

sponding to it may be simply called the Beast-Ego. Finally, the

lowest " soul " of all, is the physical body or " soul." Remember

that the word " soul ", in our ancient Wisdom, means " vehicle " ;

and, of course, this lowest vehicle, the physical body, also com-

prehends the Prana, and the Linga-arira or Model-body which

is its background and seed and root. These three are inseparable.

Now please notice in this diagram the role played by the Self,

represented roughly by the line dropped from the highest and

running through and permeating all the planes below its Arche-

typal Origin. I wish to call to your attention the fact that not

merely Plato, but the entire Greek school of mystic philosophies,

spoke of the Self as immanent in Kosmos, and as a Sacrifice,

which Christian mystics call sometimes the " Christ crucified in

matter " ; and, if we care to make the application to the exoteric

Christian religion of the doctrine of the Wondrous Being which

we have been studying, we shall discover that the whole Christian

mythos or story was actually drawn from it, the entire thing, and

distortedly called the " incarnation of the Logos ". In old Greek

philosophy, the word " logos " was used in many ways, which the

Christians sadly misunderstood. The Dhyan-Chohan, of which

we have spoken this evening, is our spiritual logos, the Planetary

Logos, so far as this Fourth Round is concerned. The spiritual

entity behind the sun is the Solar Logos of our Solar System.

Small or great as every Solar System may be, each has its own

Logos, the Source or Fountainhead of almost innumerable logoi

of less degree in that system. Every man has his own spiritual

logos ; every atom has its own logos ; every atom has its own

Paramatman and Mulaprakriti, for every entity everywhere has

its own highest. These things and the words which express them

are relative. Bulk and magnitude have nothing whatsoever to

do with it ; it is quality, spiritual quality, which is the true

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

criterion. This is a great and useful thing to remember. I have

found inestimable help in that one rule.

We have only a few minutes more of time this evening. I have

been asked by the Teacher, briefly to speak of another matter,

and that is in connexion with the recurring cycles of the year, and

especially as regards the New Year. H. P. Blavatsky somewhere,

I think it was in an old issue of her magazine Lucifer at the begin-

ning of the New Year of 1890, says, among other things in a very

interesting article, that Theosophists and Esotericists particularly

should hold the fourth day of January as the beginning of the

New Year. Now that is an extremely interesting statement ;

and in general connexion with it, I wish to call your attention

to one very important fact, which is that our Esoteric Wisdom is

based entirely on Nature and her fundamental operations.

Nature, as we understand that word, does not mean only the

physical, visible universe. That is merely the shell or body of

Nature the Real. Nature, with us, as has been often stated

before, means the entire aggregate of everything that is, inwards and

outwards, of all planes in all spheres throughout the Boundless.

Now the significance of this in the present connexion is that the

esoteric method of reckoning time is a natural method based

wholly on recondite operations of Nature. It is not an artificial

method. You will find that none of the real anniversaries in our

School is based on man-made ideas or on chance, such as the

artificial scheme used by the French during the French Revolu-

tion, for instance ; or dating from the founding of a city, like

Rome, for instance ; or from the death of some great man, like

Jesus, for instance. Such methods, as a matter of fact, are un-

known in the Esoteric Chronology ; though parallels do exist,

but are based on natural cycles. The Ancient Wisdom bases all

its chronological reckonings upon the kosmic clock which Nature

gives us, and which is majestic, infallible, and a perfect time-

keeper. That clock is the heavenly vault ; and the sun, the moon,

the seven planets (as the ancients reckoned them), and the stars,

are the " hands " marking time-cycles. The year mostly used

in reckoning time, by the ancients, is what astronomers call the

" tropical year ", so called from the change of the seasons.

Winter, spring, summer, autumn ; winter, spring, summer,

autumn ; recurring regularly ; and recurring regularly because

based on the movement of the earth around the sun, like a hand

on the dial of the kosmical clock. The so-called anomalistic year

and the sidereal year were both known to ancient astronomy,

but were not used except for purely astronomical (not astro-

logical) calculations, or only rarely for astrological reckoning.

Mark the difference between astrology and astronomy. As-

tronomy is the science of the movements, and the relations to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 207

each other, of the stars and planets. That is all. It simply tells

us what they are "made of, where they move, and when they

move, and how long it takes them to move along certain orbits or

paths, and is purely exoteric. But " astrology ", mind you,

which means the science of the stars (while " astronomy " proudly

calls itself the " Law of the Stars "), just as " geology " means

the science of the earth : ancient astrology, mind you not the

pasteboard-science which passes under that name to-day, but the

ancient spiritual-astral astrology, a true and profound wisdom

about the evolution of divinity into and through matter, and

about the human soul and the human spirit taught the science

of the relations of the parts of Kosmic Nature among themselves,

and more particularly as that science applied to man and his

destiny as timed by the celestial orbs. From that great and noble

science sprang up, as said, an exoteric pseudo-science, derived

from the Mediterranean and Asian practice, eventuating in the

modern schemes of so-called " astrology " a poor, degraded,

and worn-out remnant of Ancient Wisdom.

Now, all nations had ways of reckoning the year and fixing the

beginning of the year. Not all nations put the opening of the

year at the same date ; some nations reckoned from the winter

solstice, that is when the sun has attained its southernmost

point, before beginning its slow course northwards again. I am

speaking as an inhabitant of the northern hemisphere of the

earth. Of course, in South America and in lands below the

equator, the conditions are reversed. But now we are speaking

of the northern hemisphere. Other nations reckoned the begin-

ning of the year at the summer-solstice, about June 2ist or 22nd ;

while the winter-solstice takes place on or about December 2ist.

Other nations again reckoned the opening of the year at the

spring equinox, March 2ist or 22nd. Other nations began the

reckoning of the year at the autumnal equinox, six months later,

on September 2ist or 22nd. The Jews, for instance, had two years :

a civil year, beginning in September, at the autumnal equinox,

and a religious year, beginning with the spring equinox. The

ancient Germanic nations of northern Europe before the time of

Caesar, began the year at the winter-solstice, on December 2ist ;

the ancient Greeks began their year at different times of the

annual cycle, but most often, probably, in the autumn ; and

the ancient Romans began it in the spring. The ancient Egyptians

began it in the summer ; and the ancient Persians, and the

Syrians, and other nations, had each its own period for opening

the year.

The Mediterranean civilizations were already on the downward

path for many centuries before what in Europe is popularly called

the year " i A.D." They were slowly losing a great deal of the

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Ancient Wisdom, and an understanding of its great secrets, and

it was shown not merely in the manner in which the Eleusinian

Mysteries were modified and changed, but also in the constant

shifting and remodeling of their calendars, and in their methods

of computing time, of calculating chronological periods, the

beginnings and ends of various cycles, etc. The Romans were

particularly blameworthy in this regard. They were perhaps

worse in that respect than any other nation known to us. If

some dictator or political chieftain wished to have a few days

more of power, or to prevent or to postpone an election, he would

begin to meddle with the Calendar, a course of conduct carried on

with the connivance or through the ignorance or negligence of the

Pontiffs. And so finally it came about that, on account of the

disorder of the Calendar, at the time of Julius Caesar to be

exact in the year 46-47 B.C. the calends of January, that is the

first day of January, fell on the day of the season which now

corresponds to the I3th of October ; and if the confusion had

continued indefinitely, the first of January would in due course

have taken place in all the months of the year, wandering through

them, and finally completing its course around the year somewhere

in March, having completed the cycle. It should be added that

the old standard Roman year was lunar, consisting of about

354 days.

Julius Caesar deserves credit for having stopped this confusion

by his reformation of the Roman Calendar. I do not mean to say

that Caesar did it all himself ; he did not ; for though he was a

clever man and an amateur astronomer, yet he had the services

of an Egyptian or Alexandrian Greek astronomer, a man of

great ability, called Sosigcnes ; and in the year 47 B.C., when,

as I say, the calends of January, the first day of January, fell on

what would now be the I3th of October just exactly as if our

own " first of January " this year had occurred two or three

months before in the late autumn, on the season-day properly

belonging to the I3th of October these two eminent gentlemen

or perhaps three, if we include M. Flavius put their heads

together and shuffled the Calendar into conformity with the

seasons again. Caesar was Pontifex Maximus at that time, and it

was his duty to take charge of or oversee the correct computing of

chronological periods, etc. This he did, inserting two extra

months (one to have 33 days and the second 34 days) between

November and December of that year, 47, and adding an inter-

calary period or " month " of 23 days to the preceding February,

making an addition of 90 days to that year in order to harmonize

the Calendar with the seasons. That year, then, was 445 days

long ; and because it was such a long year, and ordinary people

were so puzzled as to the way in which business, etc., was going to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 209

be done, it was called the " Year of Confusion ", but Macrobius

neatly calls it the " last year of confusion " ! Then Caesar fixed

the new Calendar to have a mean year of 365 J days, with a leap-

year each fourth year of 366 days ; an arrangement that has

lasted to our own time in Europe, but slightly modified. This

arrangement of the Calendar, of course, abolished the old Roman

lunar year. But, instead of beginning the year as he should have

done, according to the ancient reckonings, the old reckoning of the

Ancient Wisdom, at the beginning of one of the four seasons of

the year, and when the moon was new ; at the winter-solstice, or,

if you please, at the spring equinox, or the autumnal, or the

summer-solstice, if he had taken the old beginning of the year

of his own people, the Romans, as it had been before in the early

days, that is to say, on December 2ist, or 22nd, at the winter-

solstice ; or at the spring equinox in March, of Numa ; every-

thing would have been " all right ". But now mark what

happened. Watch carefully. He had Sosigenes whispering in his

ear, and Sosigenes knew more than Csesar, but he forgot one little

thing. He said, " Brother Csesar, Imperator ! " This is an

imaginary conversation, but something like it, I think, must

have taken place " Brother Caesar, Imperator ! According to

the old way, the way of our noble ancestors, the year ought to

begin not merely at the winter-solstice but also at new moon.

Now the new moon this year does not fall on the day when the

winter-solstice takes place, but it falls seven days later, for the

solstice this year falls on December 24th." " That is right ", said

Caesar. " We will begin the year seven days later than the

solstice. We will call that day the calends of January ", or, as

we should say, the first of January. Caesar made December to

have 30 days ; later changed to 31 days. And that is how our

habit of putting the beginning of the year on the first of January

instead of on the day of the solstice, December 21, arose. Had

Caesar (he had it in his power to do so as Pontifex Maximus)

proclaimed in his Edict that the Calendar as reformed by him

would commence running on the first occasion when the winter-

solstice and a new moon coincided ; or at one of the other three

beginnings of a Season which coincided with a new moon, it would

have been exactly right, according to the Ancient Wisdom ;

because, mark you, all these ancient methods of chronological

reckoning were not based merely on the fact of somebody founding

a city, or on the fact of somebody happening to die on a certain

day, but on co-ordinated astronomical and terrestrial events.

The ancient methods were based on the time-dial of the Kosmos.

Caesar should have waited till a new moon coincided with one of

the two solstices, or with one of the two equinoxes, beginning the

New Year at the moment the moon was new on that night.

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Evidently, Caesar felt that he could not wait ; or, perhaps, did

not desire to wait ; or did not know.

Now, then, as time went on and Christianity in later years

came into vogue, people naturally kept the beginning of the year

as on January first, the month-day established in the Julian

Calendar ; but finally the Christians began to think that they

ought to have their own day for beginning the new year in a

religious sense, connected with the supposed birth of Jesus ; and

so, early in the history of Christianity, eastern Christians took the

I2th day after December 25, the 6th of January, in celebration

of the mystical epiphany and birth (and baptism) of Jesus. It was,

in a religious sense, the beginning of their year. The English call

this festival " Twelfth Day ", as being the twelfth day after

December 25th. What a curiously confused mess of ancient ideas

and new dogmas ! His " birth-day " was later transferred to

December 25.

Now why was the 6th of January chosen, instead of the 4th ?

For this reason. The winter-solstice, when Caesar and Sosigenes

made their corrections of the Calendar, according to their correc-

tions was made to fall on the 24th of December. The next new

moon fell, then, on the first of January, which was why Caesar

said the new year was to begin on that day, the " calends of

January ". Then, many years later, 14 days after the day which

the Christians thought the solstice, in their time, December

23-24, December then having 31 days and not 30 days, as

arranged by Caesar, was the sixth of January, which the Chris-

tians called the " Epiphany ", copying an ancient pagan word and

idea. " Epiphany " is a Christian word which originally belonged

to the Mysteries of the old pagan Greek religion, and to the

Ancient Wisdom ; it means, " appearance " of a god, and was

adopted and adapted to the Christos-mythos.

Now let us return to H. P. Blavatsky and her article in Lucifer,

mentioned before. We see that calendars can be changed ; that

calendars can be made by men ; that the Roman Calendar was

also changed and was made by men ; and that the Julian

Calendar, with modifications, has come down to us, and is the

one used in Europe and America to-day. It is no proper calendar

for Theosophists and especially for Esotericists to use, in order

to compute the esoteric cycles or the beginning of the true

esoteric year.

Why did H. P. Blavatsky choose the fourth of January of the

current Calendar for the beginning of the esoteric year ? Listen,

Comrades. The true Esoteric Year should begin on the I4th day

after the winter-solstice, provided that the winter-solstice coincide

with a new moon. The I4th day thereafter, would, of course, be

a full-moon day. The day of the winter-solstice could be used as

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 211

a beginning of the civil year, if so desired ; and the I4th day

thereafter as the beginning of the Esoteric Year. Caesar, had he

wished, or, rather, had he known more, could have so arranged

his Calendar to fit, either for the new moon at a winter-solstice

or a summer one, or at one of the equinoxes. But H. P. Blavatsky

chose January 4, because it was the I4th day after the winter-

solstice not because it was the " 4th " or any other month-day.

Now January fourth is 14 days after the winter-solstice on

December 2ist, and when coinciding with a full moon, it is an

astrological date. It is not a man-made date. It does not depend

upon a man-made calendar. It falls fourteen days after the

festival of the true winter-solstice ; and when the winter-solstice

also coincides with a new moon, a secret cycle opens. Put the

winter-solstice where it belongs, and ten days will bring you to

the first of January by our present Calendar. Notice the number

ten. H. P. Blavatsky also says in her article that the celebration

of the new year by Esotericists, should be in connexion with the

Budha-wisdom, a word coming from the same root from which

Buddha, the Lord Gautama's title, was taken, the root meaning

" to awaken ". Now, again, what is Budha, from the same root ?

Budha is the Sanskrit name for the planet Mercury, which the

Greeks called Hermes, and the Latins Mercurius, and which many

European peoples, adopting the Latin name, call Mercury.

Hermes has always been the particular overseer of Mystics in

many, perhaps all, nations. In ancient Greece, he was given the

titles of " Psychagog " and " Psychopomp ", meaning " Con-

ductor of Souls " to the " Nether World ", likewise the Mysteries.

No matter what form the interpretation of the Ancient Wisdom

may have taken in ancient times, one invariably finds the planet

Hermes, or Mercury, associated closely with the teachings of the

Mysteries dealing with the Afterworld. In India, Hermes was

named Budha, as just said ; and he was called the Son of Sorna,

or the Moon.

For instance, in Homer's Odyssey, you read how Hermes led the

souls of the dead suitors, " gibbering like bats ", to the " meads

of asphodel ". Bk. XXIV. This allusion to the work of Hermes

the Psychopomp, the " Helper," is a " mystery " which was

taken directly from the Eleusinian Mysteries, or, perhaps, from

still earlier Mysteries.

Mark then, that our new year should begin 14 days after the

winter-solstice, provided that day is a Mercury-day. Now how are

we going to know whether it is a Mercury-day or not ? " There

is the rub ". Have you any idea how the days of the week came

to be named in the order that they now have, and have had for

ages, in many parts of the world widely separated from each

other ? Why one day is called Sun's Day, and another Moon's

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Day, and another Tuesday Tiw's (Mars's) Day ? Do you know

the old Anglo-Saxon names for these, by the way ? Wodnesdaeg,

Wednesday, for Mercury-day ; and Frigedaeg, Friday, or Venus-

Day ; Thunresdaeg, Thursday, or Jupiter-day ; Saeternesdaeg,

Saturday for Saturn's day, and so forth. The system was as

follows : The first hour of a day beginning when the central point

of the sun is on the eastern horizon of that day, according to the

ancient system, it was said to be under the direct rule of one of the

seven sacred planets. Now if the planet Mercury, for instance,

was the one in control of that first hour, the whole day which

followed that first hour was called Mercury-day. Every succeed-

ing hour of that same day was said to be under the control of one

or the other of the seven planets, following each other in a certain

order, as follows : Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury,

Moon the Sun and the Moon, however, being substitutes for two

secret planets. The day has 24 hours ; beginning with Mercury,

for instance, and counting the seven planets in the order just

given through all the 24 hours, would bring the 25th hour, which

is the first hour of the next day, in with Jupiter in control, and

that day would then be Thursday ; and so on throughout till we

come to Mercury again one week of seven days. You can easily

prove this for yourself. As regards the real esoteric Budha-day,

or Wednesday, or Mercury-day, I say here only this : If the

winter-solstice is coincident with a new moon, plus something

else, that day is a real astrological Budha-day ; and, of course,

14 days later, or two weeks, is likewise a Budha-day, but at full

moon. Verb, sap !

Now let us go another step farther. The fourth of January,

1890, fell on a Saturday, although H. P. Blavatsky, in that

article, had been speaking of Hermes. But that was merely

because she of necessity used the week-names and month-days of

the current Calendar, spoiled and ungeared as it is. So it is

perfectly obvious that the year she is alluding to was the esoteric

astrological year, and not the popular one of the current Calendar.

This manner, above given, of computing cycles of time, following

the hour of the Kosmical Clock, is the one that was always

followed in the Ancient Wisdom. They rejected any other way,

because it is the method or the way in which Nature herself works

in the Rounds, in the Races, in the Kalpas, etc.

Our time is ended for this evening. We shall resume at our

next meeting the study of the Wondrous Being, which we have

done our best further to illustrate this evening by taking the

further step forward that was promised.

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CHAPTER XIX

THE SEVEN JEWELS AND THE SEVEN STAGES OF INITIATION.

These Portals lead the aspirant across the waters on "to the other shore."

Each Portal hath a golden key that openeth its gate ; and these keys are :

1. DANA, the key of charity and love immortal.

2. &LA, the key of Harmony in word and act, the key that counterbalances

the cause and the effect, and leaves no further room for Karmic action.

3. KSHANTI, patience sweet, that nought can ruffle.

4. VIRAGA, indifference to pleasure and to pain, illusion conquered, truth alone

perceived.

5. ViRYA, the dauntless energy that fights its way to the supernal TRUTH, out

of the mire of lies terrestrial.

6. DHYANA, whose golden gate once opened leads the Naljor toward the

realm of Sat eternal and its ceaseless contemplation.

7. PRAJNA, the key to which makes of a man a god, creating him a Bodhisattva,

son of the Dhyants.

Such to the Portals are the golden keys.

The Voice of the Silence (" The Seven Portals "). Fragments from The

Book of the Golden Precepts, selected and annotated by H. P. Blavatsky.

WE resume our studies this evening from the point at

which we left them last week, and the main text that

we shall have to consider is that which was before

chosen, namely, on page 207 of Volume I of The

Secret Doctrine, which has already been read twice, the part,

to wit, dealing with the " Ever-living-Human-Banyan."

As our studies this evening will also include a paragraph on

page 424 of the same volume, this latter I shall read. It is

Section XII, called " The Theogony of the Creative Gods " :

To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient

cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all

the great religions of antiquity ; as it is only by this method that

the root-idea will be made plain. Exact science could the latter

soar so high, while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate

and original sources would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces.

The original, transcendental and philosophical conception was one.

But as systems began to reflect with every age more and more the

idiosyncrasies of nations ; and as the latter, after separating, settled

into distinct groups, each evolving along its own national or tribal

groove, the main idea gradually became veiled with the overgrowth of

human fancy. While in some countries the FORCES, or rather the

intelligent Powers of nature, received divine honours they were hardly

entitled to, in others as now in Europe and the civilized lands the

very thought of any such Force being endowed with intelligence seems

absurd, and is proclaimed unscientific.

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As preliminary to our observations to-night, it seems a bounden

duty to make one remark to the effect that the Teacher has told

me that I am over-cautious, over-conscientious, and therefore too

apologetic in the manner in which I have spoken. I recognize

that the admonition is well-founded and perhaps needed. I am,

likewise, very grateful for the opening that it gives me for some-

what plainer and more direct speech. So hereafter, instead of

speaking in a manner so detached as to give the impression that

anything said could be considered by anyone as " apologetic ",

we shall pursue a different tactic, follow a different tactic, and

declare, affirm ; and, if necessary, speak with the authority of

our School behind us.

Now then, first, has it ever occurred to us to consider, to ask,

why the doctrines which we have been studying for the past

months have always been held so secret ? There are three

general reasons for this, two rather ; the third being a corollary

of the second. The first is that these teachings have from time

immemorial been considered the noble reward, the sublime

reward, for those who give themselves heart and soul and irre-

trievably to the Teachers and to the Terrestrial-Celestial Body

that they represent. That is the less reason for the silence. The

greater is the following, that these doctrines from their very

nature being so abstruse, so subtil that our poor minds of matter

find difficulty in comprehending them, would almost of necessity

be misunderstood without a preliminary training and education.

It requires literally years of study and training to bring the mind

into such a state that it can receive these glorious teachings, these

sublime doctrines that we have been studying, with some modicum

at least of intelligent comprehension. If they were given out to

the world indiscriminately, what would be the consequence ?

Intuitive but otherwise untrained minds would worship our

Teachers, Masters, as gods ; or the stupid heads in the multitudes

would persecute them and try to do them to death as " devils ",

were they to appear publicly and openly live among ordinary

men. And a third party of the public, the skeptics, would deride,

would mock, not only the Teachers themselves but their holy

Message.

These rules of secrecy are based on natural " law ", and on a

keen understanding of the workings of the human mind. These

doctrines, Fellow-students, were formulated in the dawn of time

by giant intellects, and by god-like minds. He indeed must be

blind and perverse of will who can look upon them after study

and close examination as speculations or as mere theorizings.

What a compliment was paid to H. P. Blavatsky by those who

in their blind ignorance, said that she had invented them ! Think

of what that means, what a wonderful woman, according to them,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 215

she must have been ! And obviously, the truth is the direct

contrary. Did she ever claim that they were originated and

formulated by her ? No ; from the beginning she said : "I am

but a voice speaking for Those who sent me/ 1

These reservations of secrecy, caution, and prudence, are not

the singular and otherwise unknown rule of the Trans-Himalayan

School to which we belong. They were the invariable rule of all

the great Mystery-Schools of past times. Why, even in the latest

of the exoteric faiths, in the Christian religion, a poor, tattered,

faded fragment of the Ancient Wisdom you find the same thing,

and conceived in words, by the way, which are as unkind as it is

possible to put them in almost cruel in the haughty reserve that

they signify. Yet they are not so when properly understood.

I refer to certain words of the so-called Jesus in the ''Sermon

on the Mount ". You remember them ? But let us read them.

These warnings were uttered by the mythical Jesus in the

" Sermon on the Mount " ; and remember, that Sermon is

prefaced by the words of explanation that he went up onto a hill

in order to escape from the crowds thronging and pressing him>

when he then called his disciples unto him and delivered unto

them, his disciples, the so-called " Sermon on the Mount ",

evidently a Mystery-teaching. More of this hid meaning we shall

point out to you this evening. But here are the warnings :

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls

before the swine, lest haply they trample them under their feet, and

turn and rend you.

Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock,

and it shall be opened unto you ; for every one that asketh receiveth ;

and he that seeketh fmdeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be

opened.

Found in the so-called Gospel of Matthew,

Chapter vii, verses 6-9.

Our Esoteric School never used language of that kind. It is

extremely doubtful if the real Jesus, the center around which

were collected the legends of the mystery-figure Jesus, ever used

them ; but they represent the spirit of esotericism and are a true

echo of the esoteric methods of the Near East, leaving the frame-

work of the words aside. They show the immense prudence and

caution that always surrounded the giving out of any part of

the ancient mystery-teachings. From immemorial time was it

always so.

And, another thing. The penalty for betrayal of the Mysteries,

in later times, was death. Now, before we can pursue our study

this evening, we must explain that statement. Never in any

circumstances has the power or the force of the Lodge, has the

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hand of a Teacher, been raised in violence or in hatred against a

betrayer, against the unfaithful, no matter how grave the crime

might have been. Their punishment was in this : they were

left strictly to themselves ; and the inner penalty was the withdrawal

of the Deathless Watcher, the Higher Self within, which had been

consciously and successfully invoked upon entrance into the

Mysteries, and, in the higher degrees of initiation had been faced,

literally face to face. The early and automatic penalty was

inner death by the soul-loss. The betrayer lost his soul. Let me

tell you further, in passing, that practically all the civil institu-

tions of ancient times, punishments among others, were based

upon what took place in the Mystery-Schools. Such, for instance,

was the crucifixion of the Romans, taken direct from one of the

ceremonies of initiation, the " Mystic Death " ; taken from it,

stolen from it ; and made an instrument of legal murder by the

State, in later, degenerate times. Another instance, also taken

from the ceremony of the " Mystic Death ", was the " Cup ",

in India the Somadraft ; in Greece we find Socrates punished by

drinking from the Cup of Hemlock ; and we are reminded of Jesus,

praying that the " cup " might pass from him. Numerous other

very different instances could be cited.

And similarly in Egypt and in other countries, when the

periods of " spiritual barrenness " of which Plato tells us, had

succeeded to the period of " spiritual fertility " ; when those

periods came upon the world, the State then undertook to punish

in its own name the betrayal of the Mysteries, which by those

times had become merely a State-institution, and nothing much

else, merely a part of the religious establishment. Two or three

instances have come down to us so far as Athens in Greece alone

is concerned. One was Socrates, IVth-Vth century B.C., who

unwittingly betrayed some of the secrets of the Mysteries ; and

despite his innocence of conscious wrong-doing, they unwillingly

killed that great man. Another was the philosopher-poet

Diagoras, Vth century B.C., who was accused of impiety, of

so-called " atheism ", and who fled from Athens. A third was the

dramatist-poet ^Eschylus, Vth century B.C., who had to flee to

Italy in order to escape death. He was accused on the same

grounds, of what was called profanation or impiety.

Another instance which we might mention, of a quite different

type, is that of the wearing of a crown, or a diadem, by civil

rulers, formally enacted in the " coronation " of a king a

ceremony adopted from the Mysteries. Some of the earliest

crowns which they wore had outstanding spikes, reminding one of

the " crown of thorns " of Jesus ; or it may have been in the

form of the Greek diadem, representing, in Greece, the crown of

the central and west and north-west part of Europe. As just

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 217

hinted, this also was a symbol of one of the ceremonies of one of

the stages of initiations, a ceremony signifying what occurred

when the one undergoing trial was in a state of samddhi, as the

Hindus say, and his head was surrounded with a glory or aura

radiating from the brain like the spikes of the early crown ; in

which state, also, a nimbus or aura surrounded the body as well

as the head, but far less strongly.

Now these are the things that it seemed necessary to speak of

tonight, as part of an introduction to our studies.

Now we embark more particularly upon our main theme. It

will be recalled, as has been already suggested several times, that

we have been studying from the time the Teacher inaugurated

these meetings last year, or about a year ago now, the so-called

Seven Treasures or Jewels which we have enumerated before ;

and we are now studying certain aspects of the Seventh or highest,

more especially in its relation to the Wondrous Being, called the

Great Initiator, the Lonely Watcher, the Silent Witness, and by

other such names. And we called attention last week to certain

of the analogies which our own human life bore to the Kosmic

Wondrous Being for instance, particularly the analogy of the

infinitesimals, the lives infinitesimal, living in and upon the

kosmoi or universes comprised in our own physical body,

the atomic infinitesimals, and how our personal self was the

Supreme Self of that host of those almost innumerable atoms.

That it was the self which held that infinitesimally immense

Kosmos together, and permeated all in it, and reached through

all in it, like a mystic Fire. And we also pointed out how, never-

theless, each one of those atoms, being a universe in itself, had its

own entire hierarchy, its own series of ten degrees or stages,

counting from its own supreme, its own parabrahman and

mulaprakriti, down to its own " absolute matter ".

Similarly, our own Universal Kosmos can be considered as an

imbodied soul or rather Self, made up of almost innumerable

Kosmic Atoms or solar and planetary bodies, living with number-

less Companions on the face of the Boundless. We began to have

some intelligent comprehension from this study of the Self, how,

in a sense, the " One " might become the Many, yet remaining

forever the " One ", merely calling it the " One ", because it is

the Summit or SELF of that Most Great Hierarchy which our

imaginations can attain to. But beyond its boundaries there are

innumerable other such Ones ; and beyond all such Ones, there

are innumerable hosts of indefinitely greater ONES : and so ad

infinitum ! The best way by which to represent the Boundless,

in which they all move and live and have their being, is by the

age-old symbol of the Zero Limitless Boundlessness.

That symbol is remarkable also in another respect, that it so

2i8

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

clearly and beautifully exemplifies the teaching of the Void, the

Emptiness, called in Buddhism Stinyata, meaning the " empty ",

the " void ". It is really extraordinary how our Western scholars

will misunderstand and therefore misrepresent these things.

They are such literalists that they will take a word and drive that

word to literal death. They take the form of the thought, the

body, and see little or nothing of the Soul behind it. They seem

to have no realization of the mystic meaning behind this wondrous

thought, the Void, the Emptiness. Do you remember that in a

former study we spoke of a mediaeval mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux

in France I think it was, who said that the state a student of

mysticism should aspire to was that of emptying himself, utterly

casting out everything that was personal or limiting, everything

that was bound and finite ? This is a remarkable thought for a

Christian ; but quite Oriental. Such a state of mind lets the free

winds of Infinity blow through one, as it were !

Let us pause a moment over this. The Void is a symbol of the

Boundless ; hence, it is everything because it is no thing. " No-

thing " if you like. Not " nothing " in the Christian theological

sense, but no Thing, no manifestation. It is not a consciousness,

because it is all consciousness, which is unconsciousness in every

personal and limited sense ; " consciousness " is a human term.

Yet it is not " unconsciousness ", because it is all " unconscious-

ness " of any personal or limited sense, and " unconsciousness "

is a human term. It is both the limited and the illimitable time,

and eternity ; everything and therefore no thing. Call it by

anything and you limit it. It is that which Is and WAS and in

the utter eternity ever shall BE. And because it is nothing

finite, because it is not a thing, because it is not one, or two, or

three, but beyond all numeration ; because it is beyond all

human thought and similitude and comparison and expression,

it is called that, which the human mind reaches when it opens to

its utmost for an abstraction, the VOID, which is likewise utter

FULLNESS.

Our study this evening calls to us to move forward. Each

one of our studies lately has been dealing with very difficult

subjects ; and each one, if properly understood, means a great

stride forward for us along the Esoteric Path. Tonight, let us

be more particular in our remarks. At our meeting of last week

we generalized our theme, as was necessary, in trying to give the

general view. Tonight we shall particularize.

These seven Treasures, then, represent in doctrinal form the

seven stages of initiation. Now we are told that there are ten

stages or degrees of initiation ; which means that there are three

more than the above named seven of these Treasures. But we

need not consider these three others. They are utterly beyond

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 219

our capacity. They belong, we are told, to Beings who have

advanced so far beyond us that they can no longer truly be called

human entities, although they do belong to our Planetary Chain

by reason of past evolutionary karman.

Each stage or degree of initiation after the third of the seven,

we are taught, is marked by something more than teaching. The

first three initiations, or stages or degrees in initiation, we are

taught, are composed of teachings. With the fourth degree, there

begins another method. What is this method ?

It is one of the fundamental teachings of Occultism and of our

Esoteric School, that nothing can be truly known which is not

experienced, lived through. As a matter of fact, we all know this,

as it is common experience. One of the so-called laws of our being,

one of the fundamental conditions of our human nature is this,

that thoroughly to know a thing, thoroughly to enter into it,

thoroughly to understand it, you must be it, you must become it.

You cannot tread the Path until you become and are that Path.

Thus, therefore, the different stages or degrees of initiation are

really a kind of " forcing-process ", for certain chosen spirits,

certain chosen souls, who have proved themselves worthy : a

" forcing " or developing-process enabling them through actual

experience, individual experience, to pass through and realize

the hid secrets of being which the slow processes of evolutionary

development would have brought to them as the ages rolled by.

It is, in fact, a quickening or awakening of the man to inner

knowledge and power. These different stages or degrees of

initiation are marked by preparatory purifications, first. Then

came the " death ", a mystic death. The body and lower prin-

ciples, so to say, are paralysed, and the soul is temporarily freed.

And, to a certain extent, it (the freed inner man) is guided and

directed and helped by the initiators while it passes into other

spheres and to other planes and learns the nature of these by

becoming them, which is the only way by which knowledge thereof

roots itself into the soul, i.e., into the ego : by becoming the thing.

The " initiant " is one undergoing initiation and remember

that " initiation " means " beginning " ; an " initiant " is a

" beginner/ 1 while a person initiated, an initiate, is one who has

begun an undertaking. Please also note that " adept " means

one who is " skilled " ; hence, even in our ordinary life, a chemist,

a physician, a theologian, a mechanic, an engineer, a teacher of

languages, an astronomer, are all " adepts ", persons who are

" skilled ", each in his own profession. Those two words have,

generally speaking, the same meaning also in the Esoteric School :

an " Adept " is one who is skilled in the esoteric Wisdom, in the

teachings of life ; and an " initiant " is one who is beginning

to learn them. To say that you and I are " beginners ", i.e.,

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" initiants ", is merely stating the obvious truth. It is likewise a

convenient word, for it tells you nothing definite as to degree or

stage ; it is a generalization. Hence one could properly ask :

" Beginning where and what ? " I may be at the bottom rung of

the ladder of initiation ; and you may be at the top ; yet each

one of us is beginning, for progress is endless.

Let us then closely examine all these or any other similar state-

ments, for our own sakes. We are taught strictly to examine,

strictly to search into, everything that is told us. Our Teacher

here now, Katherine Tingley, herself works night and day in

order to awaken us to the realization of things, trying to have us

live the life, to be it, to become it ; for such is the old teaching of

uncounted ages gone by.

Now, the passage from The Secret Doctrine to which we have

alluded this evening, which we also read last week, and again at

our meeting before that, and which forms our main theme at

present, in which H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the " Ever-living-

Human-Banyan ", refers also to the Arhats (a Sanskrit word

meaning " worthies ") who belong to the seventh rung of the

spiritual-psychological Hierarchy, being only one remove from

the Root-Base of their Hierarchy, which is the Wondrous Being

of our present study, therefore on the eighth plane of the ten

composing that Hierarchy. There is a still greater and more

Wondrous Being on the ninth plane ; the highest of all, the Summit

of all, is on the tenth.

Let us make a step still farther forward. We are taught that at

the fifth initiation, part of the wonderful experience that the initiant

of that Degree must go through, is that after due and sufficient

preparation and purification of the lower self and of the soul

within, the one under trial in the Mystic Path, meets his Higher

Self, his own inner god, face to face for " a passing moment ".

Woe unto him if there be anything in him which cannot support

the trial ! The warnings given to us in this respect are solemn

indeed. The Deathless Watcher knows all, and accepts no ex-

cuses. Those who fail, have indeed another chance in another life,

or in other lives ; but no base metal either now or then can be

accepted in this Dread Test. The inner nature must be pure

gold tried in the fire, nothing counterfeit, nothing that is weak

and will break or fail when the test comes upon it. You must then

be fully ready to take your place in the Guardian Wall ; no

weakling can stand there.

We are further told that in the sixth Degree, instead of one's

own Higher Self, the initiant meets another One, a matter which

we will to-night pass over in silence. And in the seventh Degree,

the same proceeding takes place as part of the Mystic Death, and

the aspirant can we say " meets face to face " ? No, he becomes

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 221

JOY a passing moment the Wondrous Watcher himself ; and either

returns among men as a , or vanishes and is seen no more.

In the former case, he knows, because he has become !

We have spoken tonight of the Christian mythos. We deliber-

ately have chosen this term, for truly it is a mythos. The entire

story of Jesus as it is given in the so-called Gospels is a Mystery-

story. No such man or being as the Jesus of the Gospels ever

lived. Remember what a mythos is. It is a tale or allegory im-

bodying some secret truth. In this case, it is the story of the

Mysteries partly told in symbol and allegory, partly told with

some degree of later ignorant embroidery ; but, as a whole,

representing almost, as it were picturing, what took place in the

Mysteries of Asia Minor. The manner and style of narrative, in

all such cases, depended upon the national custom of celebrating

them, and on the cast of minds of the peoples among whom such

or another scheme or system of initiation prevailed. But the

Jesus of the Gospels is a mystery-figure only : a composite figure

based on mystical teaching. Undoubtedly there did exist a

young Syrian initiate of that time, around whom were grouped

these various tales and stories taken more or less bodily from the

Mystery-Schools of Asia Minor and especially of Alexandria ;

because Alexandrian mysticism is the main origin of theological

Christianity, for in that city it had its rise theologically. This

Syrian initiate, probably a young Jewish rabbi, was possibly

actually called Yeshua, lesous in Greek, Jesus in Latin. The

Hebrew word Yeshua itself, means " savior ", and the later

Christians of course seized upon this name or later conferred it

upon their supposed founder and wove a mystical tale about his

name, thus symbolizing his mission on earth as a " savior ". We

all know the Christian tale. But from the very beginning of it as

the " Gospels " give it : from the story of the Magi following the

star, to the mystical death by crucifixion, and the rising again on

the third day from the tomb, it is nothing but a copy, more or less

denatured and faded and poorly woven together, of great actual

Mysteries, the Mysteries of some of the ceremonies of initiation,

of which the earliest Christians certainly had some knowledge ;

see Origen and Clement of Alexandria, for instance. But the

story in its various imperfections shows clearly that it is only

a feebly constructed allegory, or mythos, of actual initiatory

occurrences.

Apollonius of Tyana, the Greek, was probably as noble a

character as was the Syrian Yeshua, or " Jesus ". " Jesus " is

merely the Roman form of the name. We read of the marvels of

Apollonius of Tyana, of his works and life, in the mystic " Life "

written by Philostratus. But Apollonius is a historical character,

and " Jesus " is not. The story of Apollonius is an interesting

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one. We read of his " vanishing away " before Domitian, when

he was on trial before that eccentric and severe monarch ; and

much more. Why was it that Jesus was said to have been

" crucified " ? But he was not actually crucified. It is a Mystery-

story, as I have said ; and not necessarily a Jewish Mystery-

Story, nor a Greek Mystery-story. Each nation had its own

Mysteries, greatly resembling one another, but varying in detail ;

but in all, there was always the " Mystical Death ". There was

always the " descent into Hades " or " Hell " ; there was always

the " Resurrection ", the Rising, usually after " three days " ;

and the " Glorification " at the end of the Trial.

Very many of the things that occurred in the Mysteries were

taken over into civil functions of the State, and they thus formed

the types of many institutions in civil life in ancient times. The

King and his Ministers or Servants, as officers or functionaries of

the State, were taken over from the ancient Mysteries, as copies

of the Teacher and his disciples or officials. This is one reason (of

two reasons) why the ancients wrote of their " Divine Dynasties "

of primeval times ; and on this also was originally founded the

idea of the " divine right of kings " in later ages so greatly mis-

understood and abused. Why, the very calendars of the ancient

nations were based upon the same thing : they were derived,

taken over, from the Mysteries. Originally, they were based on

actual astrological truths, real knowledge of time-periods ; and

later were misunderstood and misapplied. For instance, have you

realized that the Christian commemorative holy days of Good

Friday, and Easter three days later, are practically the same

thing as the Winter Solstice of December 21-22, and Christmas,

December 25, three days later ? Both are based on the same

original idea of the " mystic death ", and the " birth ", or " resur-

rection ", three days later, of the " unconquered Sun/' exemplified

in the " death " and " resurrection " of the successful neophyte

in the mysteries, three days later ! Why was it, I ask you, that

the Christians adopted both the ancient pagan festival of the

winter-solstice, and the ancient pagan " Resurrection "-mythos,

and made an Easter out of the latter ? One being the alleged

anniversary of their Jesus's birth (Christmas), and the latter the

anniversary of his " Resurrection " ! Because they wanted very

much to connect and bind together their newfangled religion

with the personality of the great Jewish prophet or initiate later

called Jesus ; and, at the same time, to connect him with the

archaic Mystery-teachings of the School of Wisdom. Now, as the

Jewish or rather Syrian festival took place in the month of the

spring equinox, or rather on the day of the full moon following the

spring equinox, they copied the ancient Mysteries again here,

as follows : They, as it were, severed the symbol into two parts,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 223

and called one " Christmas ", commemorating the birth of the

physical body of their supposed Jesus ; and the other part they

called Resurrection, or Easter, commemorating the " birth " of

the Transcending Christos. It was a curious tour de force, as the

French say, a curious feat of " mystical gymnastics ", as the

Teacher so neatly puts it. But, and please mark this, these two

dates were actually in very truth closely connected in the ancient

Mysteries, and very much in the line the Christians followed !

What copyists !

Now, if you take the mystic calendar that guardedly we spoke

of last week, it is remarkable how it fits in with the Mystery-

teachings connected with this Wondrous Being, the Great

Initiator. As to the article in Lucifer, January 1890, referred to

last week by us, in which H. P. Blavatsky speaks of the date which

the Esotericists should call the New Year, i.e., January 4th does

anyone really think that she meant that " January 4th " per se

has any especially magical or mystical properties or influences ?

No ; she did not. Our calendar-day for January 4th is a date

of a purely mechanical Calendar, with nothing mystical or hid in

it at all. If we were to fall into a period of universal ignorance

such as the Mediterranean nations fell into after Christianity

became powerful, we should forget even how to take care of our

merely mechanical Calendar, and find ourselves unable to make

it conform to the changing seasons. We should then be in the

same troubled case as the European peoples were in, in the

sixteenth century, when Pope Gregory XIII, had certain con-

temporary mathematicians reform the old Julian Calendar

because of the disorder it had fallen into through the pure ignor-

ance of Gregory's predecessors. They did not know how to

intercalate the necessary days at the proper time, and in February

1582, when the Julian Calendar was reformed by Papal Bull or

Edict, they were eleven to twelve days behind the true year.

Similar was the case when Julius Caesar reformed the Calendar

in the year 47 B.C., only much worse, for owing to political

machinations, doubtless, of the different Pontifices Maximi, the

Calendar of the Romans, as I remarked last week, had fallen so

far behind the natural year of the seasons that the Calendar

" January the first ", fell on what was really October 13 th,

according to nature ; and the Calendar " winter-solstice ",

December 2ist or 22nd, fell on October 3rd, or thereabouts ;

and if Caesar had not corrected the growing disorder and confusion,

the constant loss of the days through wrong or omitted inter-

calations would have let the Calendar-year fall continually

backwards all through the natural year, perhaps. So you see

that when speaking of H. P. Blavatsky and the astrological

Calendar, most certainly we do not mean merely the mechanical

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Calendar of common use ; nor did H. P. Blavatsky mean it.

But she meant a date depending upon real astrological facts ;

and we adverted briefly to what she really did mean in our study

of last week.

Remember that astronomy is merely the mechanical aspect of

true, ancient astrology, and for that reason, astronomy deals

only with the positions, movements, and physical conceptions of

planetary and solar and stellar bodies. It is in real fact, merely

one branch of the ancient Astrology, a sublime " Science of the

Celestial Bodies ", and we do not mean what modern writers

miscall " astrology " a " paper-science " at best. We have

spoken sufficiently strongly against such a misconception at other

meetings.

Now our real year, our Mystic Year, is quite a different one from

the civil, or ordinary chronological year. The civil chronological

year could begin on the true date of the winter-solstice, that is to

say on the day and moment when the sun is farthest south, and

just as it begins its journey northwards again. That is one of the

natural periods of time and season-division ; and it is also an

astrological time-period, if we wish to form a time-cycle ; but

with one important change. Now what would be that astro-

logical cycle ? We could start our Civil Year at the winter-

solstice when the moon is new just why new, is something I am

not authorized here and now to say. But fourteen days after the

true solstice, or on what is now January 4th, according to our

present Calendar, the moon is full ; and that day opens under the

control of the planet Mercury or Hermes, the particular leader,

guide, and director, of initiations and the Teachers. This is the

case, mark well, when that planet is in " inferior conjunction "

at sunrise ; or more particularly when Sun, Mercury, Earth, and

Moon are all in " syzygy " : all along a straight line ; Mercury

being between Sun and Earth, and the Moon full. The planet

Mercury then controls the first hour of the I4th day after the

winter-solstice ; but that solstice must concur with the new moon,

and Mercury on that I4th day afterwards must be in inferior

conjunction at sunrise. The I4th day (January 4th) is then a

true " Wednesday ", or Mercury-day. Thus opens the cycle.

How long that cycle lasts, I have not had opportunity to investi-

gate. Our astronomers here can work it out. But thus we should

have two years : one for what we may call the Civil Year (funda-

mentally an astrological year) for the purposes of civil chronology,

by which ordinary time would be reckoned ; and the Buddhic-

Cycle Year. The civil year would then begin with the day of the

winter-solstice, let us say December 21-22, in the night between

December 2ist and 22nd. The next day therefore would be the

first day of the first month of the new civil year ; but our Mystig

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 225

Year, our Buddhic Year, would begin fourteen days after that

at full moon, on a true Wednesday, or Budha-day .

We turn now to another matter, which, because it is of real

importance, the Leader has authorized me to take a few more

minutes this evening for the purpose of attempting more fully to

explain it. I refer to the diagram which was discussed somewhat

at our last meeting, and which we then had no time to explain in

detail.

Archetypal

World.

Divine Soul or

Monadic

Envelope.

Spiritual Soul

or Individual

Monad: Buddhi:

Fruit and Seed

of Manas.

Higher Human

Soul. Lower

Buddhi and

Higher Manas.

Human Soul, or

Man. Manas,

Kama, and

Pi-Ana.

Beast-Soul, or

Vital-Astral

Soul: Kama and

Prana.

Physical Soul or

Body; Sthula-

arira and Prana

and Linga-

arlra.

Paramatman

or Supreme

Self.

Atman

Divine Ego.

~-\ Jtvatman

x Spiritual Ego.

Bhtitatman

Human Ego.

Pranatman

Personal Ego.

Beast-Ego.

Body.

This paradigm, this symbol, can refer either to man, or mutatis

mutandis to the universe of any full Hierarchy, it matters not

which Hierarchy. Note then, first, that we have at the top of

the diagram, the Archetypal World, which is the Root or Seed,

if we look upon it as the origin or commencement of things, as the

locus of the initiation of Kosmic evolution and progress ; or

which is the Flower, the End, the Consummation of things, if we

look upon it as the full-blown Flower of the Kosmic Evolutionary

Cycle. It may be divided into three " planes ", so to say, forming

the Highest Triad or Divine Triad ; the second of these " planes "

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is called the Paramatman or Supreme Self. The first " plane "

represents the Parabrahman, with its field of Mulaprakriti ; this

Highest Triad, as represented, applies to any Hierarchy : this

Hierarchy, that Hierarchy, any Hierarchy ; as this paradigm is

representative of all. The Paramatman likewise represents the

first or Unmanifested Logos. The third " plane ", or lowest of the

Triad, represents the third or Manifested Logos, or Brahma-

Purusha-Prakriti. Then, following the diagram downwards, we

reach the seven Principles and Elements in manifestation, formed

of the three quasi-arupa or " formless " planes, and of the four

rupa-planes, or planes of form. The egg-shaped envelope of the

Hierarchy is divided into these seven planes, if you please, and

six centers of consciousness, with their inseparable six vehicles

or " souls ". The vertical line running up and down through the

Egg, represents the indwelling Self : that Self which in you and

me and in all, is One ; that which in all of us says " I am ". It

does not differ in you nor in me, for it is One, the Universal Self

of the Hierarchy. But what is it in you and me or in any one

which says " I am /, not yo u " ? that which is s//-consciousness ?

That, is the ego ; the " I ", but not the Self ; for the Self is beyond

and outside of all such limitation of consciousness. It recognises

no distinction between Thee and Me. You remember the beautiful

Sfifi legend, how the Soul, wandering in search of Truth, came

finally to the House of God and knocked at the portal. Then in

answer to the knock, thunder reverberated through the spaces of

Heaven, and God called out, " Who art thou ? " And the Soul

replied : " I ". And God answered : "I know not / ". Then

the Soul wandered again for many ages in tribulation and sorrow ;

and finally it came anew, and once more knocked at the portal

of the House of God. And the voice of God called out and said :

" Who art thou ? " And the Soul replied, and said : " Thou ".

And the voice of God then answered and said : " Enter into

thine own, for we are One ". No distinction there of / and Thou

a beautiful legend imbodying one of the profoundest concepts

of the Ancient Wisdom.

Further, we have attempted to represent paradigmatically the

decreasing consciousness, understanding, power, potency, force,

expansion, comprehension, by the six circles gradually decreasing

in size downwards, along the central line representing the Self.

It is impossible to represent adequately on a flat surface a purely

metaphysical subject ; but our wish in so doing is to show that the

higher the circle or sphere is, the more spiritual the sphere or

center is ; the larger and the more comprehending it is in both

quality and potency, not necessarily in magnitude. Further, we

have attempted to show the increasing materiality in these

centers or spheres as they go farther downwards, by thicker and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 227

thicker shading of these centers in the diagram. The highest

center is the Divine Soul or Monadic Envelope. It is the first or

highest vehicle of the Atman ; and as an egoic center it is the

Divine Ego. The next one downwards is the Spiritual Soul or

the Individual Monad. This, and the one above it, combined,

are the Inner Christ ; and corresponding to the Spiritual Soul

or Individual Monad is the Jivatman or Spiritual Ego. It is that

portion of our spiritual economy which is deathless as an indi-

vidualized Ego ; deathless until the end of the Maha-Manvantara

of the Solar System. When the Solar Pralaya arrives in the grand

fullness of Time, there comes a moment, a final instant which is

the utter completion or consummation of all things in that system ;

and in the twinkling of an eye, literally, and instantly, all the

planets and the sun itself are " blown out ", as it were. The last

one of all manifested beings has at that instant gone to higher

planes ; and there being nothing whatsoever left to hold physical

matter together anywhere within the Solar System, that System

immediately falls to pieces and vanishes away (as I have said

before) like an instantaneous shadow passing over a wall.

The second center is comprised of Buddhi, both the fruit and

the Seed of Manas. This is the center or seed or root or base of

the Reincarnating Ego. Then below it comes in our diagram the

Higher Human Soul, composed of the lower Buddhi, and the

Higher Manas : with the Self permeating it, as said above.

Corresponding to it as egoic center is the Bhutatman, explained

at our last meeting, otherwise the Human Ego. Next comes the

Human Soul or Man. This is formed of Manas, Kama, Prana ;

and the egoic center corresponding to it is the Pranatman, or the

personal ego, which is mortal.

There is no abiding principle from and including this, down-

wards ; no abiding principle in " man " whatsoever. The next

below is the Beast-Soul, or the Vital-Astral Soul, the Kama-

Prana ; its quasi-egoic center being the Beast-ego, if you like :

that elementary principle of egoship in the beast which holds it

together during its existence. Our teachings do give to every

animate thing a soul ; not a " human soul " or a " divine soul "

or a " spiritual soul " ; but a soul corresponding to its type. What

it is, what its type is, comes from its soul ; hence we properly

may speak of the different beasts as having, one or the other, a

" duck-soul ", an " ostrich-soul ", a " bull-" or a " cow-soul ",

a " chicken-soul ", or a " nightingale-soul ", and so on. The

lower entities, considered as a Kingdom, are differentiated into

these different families of animate beings by the different " souls "

within each ; and of course behind the soul from which it springs,

there are in each individual entity all the other principles that

likewise inform Man ; but all the higher principles are latent in the

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beast. That is why man belongs to another the Human Kingdom,

for there is in him the Buddhi-principle more or less active.

Manas springs forth from the Buddhi as the fruit from the flower ;

but manas itself is mortal, goes to pieces at death. All of it that

lives after death, is only what is spiritual in it, and that can be

squeezed out of it, so to say. H. P. B. calls it the " aroma " of

the manas ; much as the chemist takes from the rose the Attar

or Essence of Roses.

The last is the physical " soul " or body, the sthftla-Sarira, the

gross body, pr&na, and the linga-arira.

We have spoken before of the " lost soul " as being at one pole,

and of the Master at the other pole, of consciousness. It is between

the higher human soul, and the human soul (or man proper) that

lies the psychological frontier over which one must pass forwards

or upwards ; backwards or downwards ; into regeneration or

degeneration. If you go " upwards " and continue to go " up-

wards " or rather " inwards " please remember that we are

obliged to use human language in all such descriptions ; we actu-

ally do not go " up " in space ; it is quality that we are speaking

of, the refining of the quality of the human ego ; the penetrating,

the breaking into, as it were, of the final sheaths of our inner

being that makes the distinction if we continue to go " upwards "

or " inwards ", we attain finally to Masterhood. But, contrari-

wise, if we go " downwards ", if our egoic soul-quality wholly

deteriorates, then at last we lose the ego-center, the soul-center,

which divorced from its upper life-thread, is dissipated, and, as

said, is at last annihilated. There is the cause of a " lost soul "

at one pole of consciousness ; and of the Master at the other pole.

When mortality becomes Immortality ; when the corruptible

becomes the Incorruptible, then do we attain to full and complete

conscious Masterhood a Lord of Life.

As said before, when the conscious center which we now are is

given over to full attraction or gravitation towards matter, the

momentum increases with time and use, and, through attrition

as it were, that part of us where our egoic consciousness then

resides, called " soul ", is worn away and finally vanishes. It is

wiped out, annihilated ; nothing is left of it. It sinks into the

" Eighth Sphere ", the " Planet of Death ", where it meets finally

its fearful fate. As to the monadic (the spiritual) essence of our

being, it then has to evolve a new conscious center or egoic

vehicle, for future reincarnations. That is where the seriousness

of this thing comes in. It has to develop or evolve the new soul-

center, the new egoic center, in order to take up again the link in

the series of lives ; and it may be that in certain circumstances

ages upon ages may pass before the newly evolved vehicle of

monadic consciousness is able to make up the lost time and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 229

opportunities. In the meanwhile, the racial Life-Wave has swept

far along the Pathway of Destiny ; leaving the " failures " far

in the rear.

At our next study, we will continue the same general theme

that we have been studying.

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CHAPTER XX

THE HIGHER ASPECT OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. INITIATION AND THE

MYSTERIES : AVATARAS. BUDDHAS AND BODHISATTVAS. THEIR

RELATION TO GLOBES, ROUNDS, AND RACES.

Truly, " for the salvation of the good and the destruction of wickedness," the

personalities known as Gautama, Sankara, Jesus and a few others were born each

in his age, as declared " I am born in every Yuga " and they were all born

through the same Power.

There is a great mystery in such incarnations and they are outside and beyond

the cycle of general rebirths. Rebirths may be divided into three classes : the

divine incarnations called Avataras ; those of Adepts who give up Nirvana for

the sake of helping on humanity the Nirmanakayas ; and the natural succession

of rebirths for all the common law. The Avatara is an appearance, one which

may be termed a special illusion within the natural illusion that reigns on the

planes under the sway of that power, Maya, ; the Adept is reborn consciously,

at his will and pleasure ; l the units of the common herd unconsciously follow the

great law of dual evolution.

What is an Avatara ? for the term before being used ought to be well under-

stood. It is a descent of the manifested Deity whether under the specific name

of iva, Vishnu, or Adi-Buddha into an illusive form of individuality, an appear-

ance which to men on this illusive plane is objective, but it is not so in sober fact.

That illusive form, having neither past nor future, because it had neither previous

incarnation nor will have subsequent rebirths, has naught to do with Karma,

which has therefore no hold on it.

The Doctrine of Avataras (H. P. Blavatsky), " S.D. Ill," 364.

PLUNGING directly into our subject this evening : it

will be remembered that we have been studying the

nature of the " Wondrous Being " of whom H. P.

Blavatsky writes in the first volume of The Secret

Doctrine, on pages 207 and 208 ; and it will be remembered that

the key-words by which we may gain some appreciation of the

way this Wondrous Being works in humanity, and more particu-

larly in the psychological Hierarchy, through the cycles of the

Mysteries and of initiation these key- words were the " human

Banyan ".

Also we read on page 424 of the same volume, under section the

I2th, " The Theogony of the Creative Gods ", H. P. Blavatsky's

words concerning the Hierarchy of Forces, where she points out

how these Forces were originally understood in their proper

sense, as Intelligences and Consciousnesses working in Nature ;

but that each nation, as the cycles of time passed by, understood

1 A genuine initiated Adept will retain his Adeptship, though there may be

for our world of illusion numberless incarnations of him. The propelling power

that lies at the root of a series of such incarnations is not Karma, as ordinarily

understood, but a still more inscrutable power. During the period of his lives

the Adept does not lose his Adeptship, though he cannot rise in it to a higher

degree.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 231

these Forces and Intelligences in the same way indeed, but gave

to them different names, and developed a philosophical under-

standing of the machinery, so to say, of the Kosmos in slightly

differing manners or forms, and that these different philosophical

forms were the various Schools of the Mysteries ; for instance, in

Samothrace and in Eleusis, in Greece, and similar schools in other

countries.

Now up to the present time we have been talking in more or

less generalizing terms regarding this Wondrous Being ; but

tonight, within the time that our Teacher has set for us, we are

going to try to particularize, asking ourselves definitely who and

what this Wondrous Being is.

Now to do that, we are undertaking, as was pointed out before,

an extremely difficult task, on account of the subtil nature of the

subjects which in their entirety expose the truth about this

Wondrous Being. We cannot understand who and what this

Wondrous Being is without understanding something of the

initiations of the Mystery-Schools ; and to understand those we

must understand something of the higher aspect of human

psychology ; and, again, to understand that, we must understand

the other doctrines which we have been studying, such as the

Hierarchies, and the doctrine of the Swabhava, and so forth.

Please understand that these seven Jewels, these seven Trea-

suries of Wisdom, comprehend in small compass all possible

human knowledge during this Kalpa ; that is to say, the key-

teachings which form those seven Treasuries. They comprise

everything that man has known, that humanity now knows, and

that humanity can know, in this Kalpa. They are, really, a short

synopsis in the form of philosophical principles these seven

Jewels of all possible human knowledge ; and it depends upon

each one of us how much of that knowledge we can understand.

You probably also have noticed that not one of these Jewels

can be fully understood if considered alone. They complement

each other and explain each other. Every one of them is explained

by the other six. Each one of them explains the other six and

complements them. Please do not imagine for a moment that

they are separate and distinct compartments of knowledge in the

materialistic sense. There is but one Knowledge, one Truth, as

there is but one Life, and one ultimate Being ; but these various

Jewels, these seven Jewels, are different facets, so to say, of that

Truth ; different pillars, to change the figure, in the Temple of

Divine Wisdom.

It will be remembered that at our last study we spoke of two

main reasons why the Teachers have kept these and other doc-

trines so secret, and why the penalties for betrayal of this know-

ledge were so great. First, because these teachings that we have

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

been studying, and many others, derivatives from them, are the

sublime reward of those who have proved themselves worthy of

them, and of going farther in behind the veil of life. But the

greater reason is that they could not be understood by the

untrained mind even were they told ; they simply could not be

understood. Great minds would understand more than would

little minds, of course ; but on account of the imperfect spiritual

development of men's minds so far in this Fourth Round, men

simply cannot understand them without at least some training,

and the result of unlawful exposure of them would be degradation

of the teachings, which originally were given to men by the gods

in the early ages of the human race.

This statement is no vain remark ; these teachings have been

betrayed in some degree at different times, and they have always

resulted in what we call " black magic ", the natural result of a

misunderstanding and of a misapplication of them, and of the

principles of truth which are in them. Even today we find men,

and women too, although they know nothing whatever of these

secret doctrines, going up and down the land, charging for their

teachings on what they call spiritual realities, and professing to

know everything in heaven and on earth. Note well that no

true spiritual Teacher ever charges a money, or any other fee

for spiritual truths.

Now we all know what H. P. Blavatsky said about such action.

" I would liever starve in the gutter than take a penny for teach-

ing spiritual truths." That is the test by which one may know,

one of the tests at least, the true Teacher from the false. That

is one way in which a teaching may be degraded. Our Teachers

have no desire to have these glorious doctrines misunderstood

and degraded, and, perhaps, human souls in relatively large

numbers misled and their feet set upon the path which leads

downward.

Now in Greece we will take this case first as an example in

Greece there were two bodies of the Mysteries, the Less and the

Greater. The Less, in Attica, were celebrated in the spring-time ;

and the Greater were celebrated at about the period of the

autumnal equinox, in September, at Eleusis. The Less consisted,

first, of purifications of the soul and mind outwards and inwards,

mostly inwards, for that is the real purification ; and, second, of

dramatizations of that which was to take place in actuality later

in the Greater Mysteries. They represented in dramatic, pictorial

form, that which the Greater Mysteries were to bring to the

candidates.

The Mysteries of Samothrace, also a Greek institution, and like

those of Attica a state-institution in the later days, were probably

the oldest in Greece. But these two schools of the Mysteries,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 233

while teaching the same fundamental verities, and the same

ultimate truths, did not teach the same things. For instance,

the Mysteries of Samothrace were what we to-day would rather

call scientific. They dealt with the nature and operations of the

Kabeiroi, who belonged to the class of spiritual entities called

the " Builders ", the lower Septenary ; whereas at Eleusis and

this name Eleusis means the " Advent " or the " Coming ", and

the Eleusinia " Things that Are to Come " at Eleusis were taught

the more theological and mystical doctrines, more particularly

that which will happen to man after death. Hence the name of

the place, Eleusis, where they were celebrated, and the name of

the Mysteries themselves, the Eleusinia, i.e., the things which

shall be, or shall come.

Each country had its own mystical jargon or dialect or manner

of speaking of and in the various Mysteries ; and with regard to

the Mysteries in Greece and in Syria and in Palestine, these

jargons or technical words nearly resembled each other. For

instance, in Syria, outsiders were called " swine " and " dogs " ;

betrayers were called " wolves ". Those of you who remember

your New Testament will probably remember the instances in

which " swine " and " dogs " and, I think, also " wolves " are

spoken of. " Foxes " was a term for those who tried to enter

the Mysteries unlawfully. All these terms are taken from the

attributes of certain animals, which man in unlawful action

copied ; the fox on account of its cunning ; the wolf on account

of its bold cruelty and lack of conscience that is the reputation

it has, at least ; swine and dogs on account of the reputation that

these beasts have always had in the Orient.

But while these terms were a part of the jargon of the Mysteries

of those countries in those days, as was pointed out at our last

meeting, it is not the jargon or the dialect or the language used

in our School. I do not believe, as was said at our last meeting,

that Jesus ever called those who were not initiates in the Mysteries

of his time " swine and dogs ". If he did this, the presumption

becomes a certainty that he did not belong to our School ; but

as he did so belong, we must conclude that such language came

from his disciples living probably in Alexandria, where the

Gospels were almost certainly composed and written in the form

in which we now have them.

Next and now we turn to the direct subject of our study, to

our main theme, our main thought. Open wide your hearts ;

cast out for a short time from your minds all thoughts which are

personal and unworthy of the atmosphere into which we are now

entering. At our last study we took four technical words in

order to explain somewhat by them our present great subject,

talking around it rather than talking of it, four words used in

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

the Trans-Himalayan Buddhism, because, first, they are the words

which H. P. Blavatsky used ; secondly, because they are the

words which are in the esoteric books of the East belonging to

our School. Three of these are, Adi-Buddha, the primal Wisdom ;

as a Greek would say, it is the Logos ; then the Dhyani-Buddha,

or Buddha of Meditation or Contemplation, of which Buddhas

there are seven ; then the Manushya, the human Buddha. But

these three are all connected : the Adi-Buddha as the Logos, the

Dhyani-Buddha as the Causal Buddha, the Manushya-Buddha as

the Agent on our plane of the Celestial Hierarchy. These Buddhas

belong to the Celestial Hierarchy, as contrasted with the Kosmic

Hierarchy or Builders. The fourth word is Bodhisattva.

At former meetings we have spoken of the Planetary Spirits,

using this term in a general sense as equivalent to Dhyani-

Chohans or Lords of Meditation. Now this evening we go a step

farther. The Planetaries are the Builders of the astral-material

world, and they draw their plan, and they draw their higher life,

and they draw their wisdom (outside of that which they them-

selves have won) from the Celestial Hierarchy, the upper Sep-

tenary ; and this Celestial Hierarchy originates in Adi-Buddha,

primordial Buddha, or the Logos.

Now for each Round of our Septenary Planetary Cycle (that is

of this Kalpa, or Day of Brahma comprising all the seven Rounds)

there is a presiding Dhyani-Buddha, a Buddha of Contemplation,

a Causal Buddha ; and all the events of all the seven globes of

our Planetary Chain are under the overseeing or supervision of

the particular Dhyani-Chohan of that Round. Our present

Round, being the fourth, is under the supervision of the Dhyani-

Buddha belonging to the fourth degree of the Celestial Hierarchy.

For each globe of the Planetary Chain there is what the Buddhists

call a Bodhisattva, a Sanskrit word meaning " He whose essence

is Wisdom ".

Now this Bodhisattva is a mind-born son, so to say, of the

Dhyani-Buddha of that Round. There is a Dhyani-Bodhisattva

for this globe, and also one for each one of the three globes which

precede this globe on the downward arc, and likewise a Bo-

dhisattva for each of the three globes which follow this globe on

the upward arc one Bodhisattva for each. This Dhyani-Bo-

dhisattva is the spiritual head of the Spiritual-psychological Hier-

archy of each globe. Take our globe, for instance. Our Dhyani-

Bodhisattva is the Wondrous Being, the Great Initiator, the

Silent Watcher of our globe ; in one sense an emanation from the

Dhyani-Buddha overseeing all the Round, but not merely an

exudation or prolongation, so to say, of the Dhyani-Buddha.

Each Bodhisattva is an entity in himself. He is, so to say, as a

ray of that Dhyalni-Buddha.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 235

Next, during evolution on our earth (and on the other seven

globes correspondentially) the life- wave runs through seven stages

called Root-Races. Each one of these Root-Races is ushered in

by a Manushya-Buddha, a human Buddha, who is the " son " of

the globe-Bodhisattva in the same way as the globe-Bodhisattva

is a " son " of the Dhyani-Buddha of the Round. Each one of

these seven Root-Races is furthermore divided at its middle point,

so to speak. When half of its cycle is run, then the racial cata-

clysm ensues, for that is the way in which nature operates ; and

preceding that cataclysm there is another human Buddha, or

Manushya-Buddha, of less degree.

Now, is this Wondrous Being a man ? He is. Is he more than

a man ? He is. Is he a septenary entity ? He is. How is the

influence of this Wondrous Being communicated to his agents,

the human Buddhas and the human Bodhisattvas ?

Let us study for a moment an allied subject, a psychological

one, before we go farther. We cannot understand what comes to

our theme farther on until we have at least sketched out this

psychological subject. Man, as you know, is sevenfold. Man

may be divided in a triform way : a spiritual man, an intermediate

or highly ethereal man, and an astral-physical man. In other

words and in " psychological " terms : (i) Divine man, (2)

spiritual man, (3) personal man. Now, then, what is an Avatara ?

An Avatara, as commonly supposed, is the descent of a god into

a human form. That idea is exoteric. It is not false, but simply

put in that way and with nothing more added in explanation, it

is very misleading.

You remember what Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita : "I

incarnate in period after period in order to destroy wickedness

and re-establish righteousness/' Now Krishna there represents

the Logos, or rather, perhaps, the Logoic Ray ; and the Logos

or its Ray or Influence on our plane would be utterly helpless,

inactive, and have no possible means of communication with us

and our sphere, because that Logoic Ray lacks an intermediate

and fully conscious vehicle or carrier, i.e., it lacks the intermediate

or highly ethereal mechanism, the spiritual-human in us, which

in ordinary man is but slightly active. An Avatara takes place

when a direct Ray from the Logos enters into, fully inspires, and

illuminates, a human being, through the intermediary of a Bo-

dhisattva who has incarnated in that human being, thereby supply-

ing the fit, ready, and fully conscious intermediate vehicle or

carrier. This " human being " has no karmic ego of its own. The

egoity, the ego, the intermediate part, the highly ethereal and fully

conscious intermediary, the spiritual-human element, is supplied

by the incarnating Bodhisattva ; that is to say, the highly evolved

personal principles of a Buddha, otherwise a Nirmanakaya not

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

the highest element of that Buddha, which is in Nirvana ; but

the spiritual-personal element of the Buddha, glorious, pure, and

great, the spiritual-personal ego enters into the body of that

utterly pure human being before or shortly after its birth, and

thus supplies the intermediate vehicle appropriate for the incar-

nation of the Logoic Ray. That is an Avatara.

For instance, a child is born. That child has an inner psycho-

astral nature of transparent purity and beauty and it attracts

magnetically, if you like, but spiritually, actually, a Ray from

the Logos. Its own Higher Self is fully active, of course, and the

Logoic Ray which is ITSELF manifests in It. Furthermore, a

Bodhisattva, under the conditions which prevail when an Avatara

is required on earth, enters that body also, thus supplying the

egoic element. So, then, we have this marvelous thing : a pure

human body with its prana and astral model-body ; but with no

true karmic ego incarnating, a Bodhisattva supplying that egoic

element of still greater purity than possible to ordinary men, and

evolved to the degree required for the incarnation of the Logoic

or Atmic Ray, that Logoic Ray and the Higher Self of the born

child really being One. But this mystery in life is a very

exceptional circumstance.

Now let us turn to another facet of the same psychological

subject. Take the case of the Lord Buddha. Please notice that

we here speak of the " Lord Buddha ", although we speak of the

great Man as Siddhartha, his personal name, and of the Sage

Gautama, or Gautama-Sakyamuni. Gautama was his family

name; Sakya, his Clan-name; the title of " Sakyamuni" the

akya Sage was the title given to him in later life and after.

When Sakyamuni entered Nirvana during life, he is then exoteric-

ally said to have " died ", at the age of eighty years ; but our

teachings show him actually to have lived to one hundred years

before he gave up his physical body and remained on earth as a

Nirmanakaya. Now we all know what a Nirmanakaya is ; it is

a complete man minus the physical body only. But is that all

there is of this wondrous Mystery ? It is not. The higher portions

of the Buddha were in Nirvana ; yet the spiritual-personal ego

remained on earth, active, an active entity, a force for spiritual

good as a Nirmanakaya, overshadowed by the Nirvnic element,

and this Nirmanakaya was, please note carefully, a human Bo-

dhisattva. It is the teaching that this Bodhisattva, the egoic

element of the Buddha-Gautama, as was the case with previous

Buddhas, was a spiritual-human Ray from the globe Dhyani-

Bodhisattva.

You perceive the difficulty, the extreme difficulty, in making

these subtil and highly spiritual subjects clear to minds untrained

in our metaphysic. Actually they require years of deep thought.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 237

Let us look at it from another aspect again. Who was Jesus ?

What was Jesus ? Who was Apollonius of Tyana ? What was

he ? The teaching is that both were incarnations of a Nirmana-

kaya, and both had the same mysterious connexion with the

Bodhisattva of the Buddha-Gautama. Please understand that

Apollonius was not an Avatara, though Jesus was. There are

close psychological similarities between these two wonder-cases

of history ; but they are not identically the same mystery. I

merely note here in passing that mystically a Buddha stands

higher than an Avatara, for reasons which will be explained in

due course of our study.

Let us go a step farther. You all have read of the incarnations

of the Buddhas in Tibet. We are now speaking in exoteric

language, such as you will read in Sven Hedin or various others

of the European explorers. Some of them have seen these so-called

incarnations of the Buddha. Please understand once for all that

our School is not Lamaism ; our School is representative of the

Archaic, Esoteric, Wisdom of the World, although it is true on

the other hand that the esoteric side of Tibetan Lamaism, properly

understood, is the nearest doctrinal approach to the doctrines, in

large degree, of our School ; with all the faults that the Tibetans

may have, with all the various drawbacks, that we Westerners

may consider them as having, in one way or another, nevertheless

the esoteric teaching in Tibet is nearer to that of our School than

any other.

But how did this very curious and interesting doctrine of the

continued reincarnations of the Buddha in the Tibetan Tashi-

Lama and the Dalai-Lama, and in various others of the Buddhist

hierarchy in various monasteries in Tibet, originate ? It origin-

ated in the mother-doctrine that we are now studying. You will

remember that H. P. Blavatsky speaks in the passage in The

Secret Doctrine that we are now studying, of an event that hap-

pened before the separation of the sexes in the Third Root-Race,

when a certain " spiritual being " incarnated in men ; and she

says that this was not a race, but, after this Wondrous Being,

became a succession of great spiritual entities. It is actually,

Comrades, the passing on of the inner self, the ego if you like, the

ethereal man, of that original Wondrous Being that came to

humankind from superior spheres in order to enlighten and to

save mankind, beginning with the Third Root-Race passing on

down through the ages thereafter in vehicles of human flesh and

mentality even to our present time. You will remember how she

speaks of this Wondrous Being as a man, and yet not a man, one

concerning whom legends are rife in the Orient. In all ages there

have been mysterious allusions to the Master-Initiate, to the

Great One, to the Head of all Teachers, to the Silent Watcher, to

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

the Great Initiator, and so forth and so forth. Tibetan LSlmaism

drew this teaching of the continued reincarnations of the Buddha

from that fact. This is an interesting question, and perhaps some

day, if the Teacher permits, we shall investigate it more fully ; but we

cannot touch upon Tibetan Lamaism at greater length this evening.

It is necessary, however, to understand that the difference

between the transmission of an egoic element as in the Buddhaic

line in Tibet, and those exceptional incarnations called the

Avataras, is in one sense great ; and in another sense they are

very much alike. They are very much alike in this, that in both

cases the Upadhi (or vehicle) chosen for the manifestation of the

superior entity is a human being. Also in both cases the psycho-

ethereal Upadhi is a Bodhisattva ; that is to say, in the case of

an Avatara, the Bodhisattva is the glorified personal man of a

Buddha, of a Manushya-Buddha ; the lamaic succession is also

bodhisattvic, but of inferior intensity, so to say a bodhisattvic

influence, rather than a full incarnation of a Bodhisattva, as in

the case of an Avatara.

The doctrines that students of Buddhism set forth in the books

which they publish on Buddhism, in the West, are of course those

which they derive from the Buddhist books themselves, usually

with very inadequate understanding of the subtil points of that

most spiritual of all religions ; and unquestionably these scholars

strive to understand and truthfully and honestly to set forth that

which they believe to be the real meaning of Buddhist teachings.

But it is an amazing thing that they do not succeed better ; and

the reason is that they come to their study with materialistic

Western minds, materialistic Western preconceptions and preju-

dices. They come to their study in an attitude of mind which

they themselves do not recognise as existing, and hence talk

sagely when they fail to grasp meanings of the " superstitious

extravagances of Oriental imagery ", etc. etc. Now how is it

possible to understand the real nature or the real essence of any-

thing if you begin your study with the prepossessing idea that you

know better and more than did the persons who wrote the things

which you are studying ? Such egoism destroys sympathy and

obscures true vision ; and if your study be of religious subjects,

all statements made or doctrines formulated inevitably you will

look upon as " monkish vagaries ". But, as was pointed out in

other studies, there is no exoteric doctrine belonging to the great

ancient world-religions which is intrinsically false. The fact is

that the exoteric teaching is the truth, but it needs a key in order

to explain it ; and without the key it actually can be, and usually

is, misunderstood and misinterpreted, and degraded in a manner

very similar to that of which we spoke upon opening our study

this evening.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 239

Let us now turn to another subject connected with this, col-

lateral, and showing another facet of the Jewel. They tell us that

the human Buddha, the Manushya-Buddha Gautama- Sakyamuni,

was born 643 years before the first year of the accepted beginning

of the Christian era. Our doctrine tells us further that a human

Racial Buddha comes at the beginning of, and a minor one pre-

ceding the middle point of, a Root-Race. I call your attention

to the fact that we are now approaching the middle point of our

Fifth Root-Race. We are in the fourth Sub-Race of that Fifth

Root-Race, not in the fifth Sub-Race thereof. Please get this

point clear in your minds. It will be between sixteen thousand

and twenty thousand years yet before the Racial Cataclysm will

ensue which will cut our Fifth Root-Race in two, exactly as

happened to the Fourth-Race Atlanteans and to the Third-Race

Lemurians who preceded them ; and as it will happen to the two

Root-Races which will follow ours, the Sixth and Seventh.

Now the reason why some of our former students supposed that

racially we are now in the fifth Sub-Race, is on account of a mis-

interpretation, very pardonable it is true, because we all know

that the subject of cycles and numbers is always closely veiled ;

this misinterpretation or misconception appears to have arisen

from what H. P. Blavatsky writes in Volume II of The Secret

Doctrine on pages 435 and 445 ; and I desire to call your attention

to the fact that one of the commonest " blinds " that a Teacher

is obligated to make when writing of esoteric matters in a public

work is using the same word in varying senses. There is an esoteric

obligation to do so when it is necessary, in order to tell the truth

for those who can and who may read, and yet to hide it from the

" dogs " and " swine " and " foxes ", if you will forgive my use

here of the New Testament or Syrian " jargon ". I call your

attention in the above connexion to The Secret Doctrine, Volume I,

page xliii. This I will read now : " Each Round being com-

posed of the Yugas [that is, the Ages] of the seven periods [Root-

Races] of Humanity ; four of which are now passed in our life

cycle, the middle point of the fifth being nearly reached ". I call

your attention also to page 610 of the same volume of The Secret

Doctrine where H. P. Blavatsky says : " But as we are in the

mid-point of our Sub-Race of the fifth Root-Race the acme of

materiality in each therefore the animal propensities, though

more refined ", etc. The " acme of materiality in each " means

only one thing : the middle point of the fourth of any cyclical series :

for instance, the fourth Primary Sub-Race ; the fourth Sub-Race

of the Fourth Primary Sub-Race of the Fifth Root-Race, and

so forth.

Suppose that for convenience* sake we divide the Races in the

following way " Root "-Race really meaning the first or root- or

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originating Primary Sub-Race, but commonly applied to all the

seven successive Primary Sub-Races of a " Root "-Race and all

the many other smaller sub-races included in those seven. The

first " Root "-Race then is the First Primary Sub-Race, of which

Primary Sub-Races there are seven in the great Racial Cycle ;

then the Secondary Sub-Race, seven of them in each Primary

Sub-Race ; then seven Family-Races in each Secondary Sub-

Race ; then seven National Races in each Family-Race. We

need go no farther. A few steps more in the series and you will

come to the unit-entity, or individual man. But please also

examine page 147 and page 710 of Volume II, for they will well

repay your close study of them,

In another part of The Secret Doctrine you will remember that

H. P. Blavatsky, in speaking of the Precessional Cycle of 25,920

years, here giving the ancient figures, calls it the cycle of a Family-

Race, that is to say, the Race including seven National Races.

Our European Race is a Family-Race ; and hence when she

speaks of the lifetime of our Family-Race she says it has about

16,000 more years to run. So you see that from our ordinary

human viewpoint we are not yet very near the great Racial

Cataclysm ; but from the standpoint of the cycles of the age of

a Root-Race so short a period as 16,000 years is like saying

" to-morrow ", or even the " next hour ". A short period of

16,000 or 20,000 years is insignificant in duration in the drama

of the soul.

And H, P. Blavatsky somewhere I think it was in her maga-

zine Lucifer in 1887, or 1888 alludes very graphically to the

earthquakes then reported in the newspapers as occurring, and

she calls them the forerunners of that which is going to happen to

us as a Race. But is America the home to be of the " 6th Sub-

Race " ? Yes. Which Sub-Race ? " Sub-Race " is vague

enough 1 Is it to be a sixth Family-Race ? But if America is

then to be in about 16,000 years, or the latter part of a preces-

sional cycle of 25,920 years from now, the home of the Sixth

Family-Race, H. P. Blavatsky goes on immediately, in a masterly

way, just as any initiate would, to lead the mind on, and she says

that America is also to be the seed-land, the nursery, of the sixth

Root-Race, a statement also true, but including a vast period of

years between the two points ! When that latter far-distant day

dawns America will then no longer be. Much of the land of the

Americas that is now above the waters will then be under them,

and new land, now forming the sea-bottom, will have arisen above

its surface. For alljwe know, North and South America may be

more widely united. New land (as the Teacher here present calls

to me to say) will rise out of the present Pacific, thus raising the old

Lemurian beds again, to be joined to us here on our Western coasts,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 241

So when we read of " sub-races " let us beware, let us be careful,

lest the molds of our minds, misleading us, lead us astray after

mere words which are " blinds ". Break the molds of your minds

at all costs ! Free your minds, keep them plastic 1 Refuse to

take as the sole truth any isolated statement whatsoever, wherever

you may find it. Take it, but not alone ; contrast it, compare it,

study it and analyse it if you want the truth. Especially is this

necessary when it is a question of cycles, and of the words dealing

with cycles. Watch carefully when you see the word " sub-race ",

watch carefully when you read of the " Buddha ". Which

Buddha ? Or of the " Bodhisattva ''which one ?

So we postpone for a later and more extended study the subjects

which we have attempted this evening to outline. Much more

should, and with our Teacher's permission will, be said about

this Wondrous Being. But, in conclusion, I beg two things, first

that my words be not misunderstood. We feel deeply the heavy

responsibility that the Teacher has laid upon us in our studies

here. I think it a wonderful thing to come here and look at the

faces of my comrades in the Teacher's presence, and to realize

the beautiful spirit of fraternal unity that is here ; to realize that

each one to the best of his or her power is in fullest sympathy

with all the other comrades. It is a blessing, and personally I

feel it is as a benediction. But, in closing, do not misconstrue

my words about this Wondrous Being. Remember the series.

First the Logos, the Adi-Buddha ; then the seven Dhyanis, each

one of the seven inspiring and overseeing one of the seven Rounds,

who is the Causal Buddha, the sun if you like, emanating out

innumerable inferior beings. Then the Dhyani-Bodhisattvas, for

each globe of the Planetary Chain, seven of them ; and seven

Manushya-Buddhas, one such for each one of the seven Root-

Races on each globe during each Round. There are probably

almost numberless cases where a Bodhisattva, a Buddhic ray, as

the cycles of time pass, reaches out from the Lodge of our Masters,

where the Great Initiator, the Highest One, is, the Man-Emanation

of the Wondrous Being, and inspires and instils the Ancient

Wisdom into the soul of some great and pure human being, such

as was Jesus of Nazareth, and Apollonius of Tyana, and many,

many others whose names are not familiar to us Westerners.

And in the initiations and we recollect this only at the present

moment, and it must be said before finishing in the initiations

there are three things that take place. They are directly con-

nected with the subject of the Wondrous Being and the Bodhi-

sattvas. Remember that initiation is the quickening or enlivening

of the soul of one who is prepared. It is a quickening-process of

evolution, for producing a more rapid evolving of the inner man,

which otherwise an ordinary man would achieve only after many

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ages. In these initiations, and in the fifth, to particularize, there

occurs what is called the Theophany. The Christians use that word

and also Epiphany, which is a minor form of the same thing, and

they say it should be celebrated on the 4th-6th of January, the

matter having direct relation with the calendar of the solar year

of which we spoke in our last study, but which we have no time to

go into tonight. Theophany originally meant the appearance of

a god. It actually is the following mystery : in the fifth initiation,

the human being under trial, the chela under trial, meets his own

god-self face to face, and for a longer or shorter time becomes one

with it. He then knows truth ; you will remember that the only

way of really understanding a thing, is to become that thing. And

that is the real meaning of what takes place in the true, real

initiations, and the Epiphany is a minor manifestation of the

Theophany. It is a Greek word meaning shining upon, or illumin-

ating ; whereas Theophany means the shining forth visibly of a

god the man's own inner Higher Self.

If the Theophany is more or less complete upon the ending of

the initiation or the trial, the chela then has Theopneusty } meaning

divine inspiration. He is consciously united with his inner god,

his Higher Self. Literally, the inner god of the candidate breathes

down into him, for a longer or shorter time, depending upon his

advancement, the wisdom and the knowledge of all the universe, so

to say, in degree greater or less, depending upon the candidate's

advancement and receptivity.

The highest of all the ancient initiation-achievements, in

Greece was called the Theopathy, meaning " suffering a god ", not

a god who suffers, but one who suffers the conscious entrance

into him of a god. This is not, of course, an Avatara, which is

something else entirely, as we have shown above ; but it means

that at initiation and for a less or greater time afterwards, accord-

ing to the spiritual power and receptivity of the initiate, he

becomes, through that holy presence in him, a walking, living

god, his own Inner Self. Finally, our Teachers tell us that in some

rare cases the Theophany, the Theopneitsty , and the Theopathy

last as long as does the life on earth of the Initiate.

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CHAPTER XXI

INITIATIONS AND THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. ROOT-RACES AND

THEIR SUBDIVISIONS. GLOBE ROUNDS. PLANETARY ROUNDS.

SOLAR KALPAS : HOW CALCULATED. RACIAL CATACLYSMS.

" As to the Philosophy, by whose assistance the Mysteries were developed

(and which, we may say, they were designed to teach), it is coeval with the

Universe itself ; and, however its continuity may be broken by opposing systems,

it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long as the sun himself

shall continue to illuminate the world. It has, indeed, and may hereafter be

violently assailed by delusive opinions ; but the opposition will be just as imbecile

as that of the waves of the sea against a temple built on a rock, which majestically

pours them back, broken and vanquished, foaming to the main. However it

may be involved in oblivion in barbarous and derided in impious ages, it will

again nourish through all the infinite revolutions of time."

Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, by THOMAS TAYLOR.

Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands :

" The Superior agrees with the Inferior ; and the Inferior with the Superior ;

to effect that one truly wonderful Work " which is MAN. For the secret work

of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabala, " one in Essence, but three in Aspect,"

is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret

Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line ; the union of the three

elements is the Occult Solvent in the " Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul or

Astral Light, at the other ; . . .

The Secret Doctrine (H. P. BLAVATSKY), II, 113.

" The intention of all mystic ceremonies is to conjoin us with the world of

the Gods." SALLUST.

" The design of the Mysteries is to lead us back to the perfection from which,

as a Principle, we first made our descent." PLATO

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall sec God " [i.e., their own Inner

God]. JESUS (in the Sermon on the Mount).

" I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye secth thee."

JOB (a Story of Initiation).

WE continue our study of the subjects which we have

been treating of for some weeks past ; but this

evening we are going to speak of another matter

collateral with our main theme yet very important ;

and at our next meeting we shall endeavor to take up the

scattered threads which we have unloosened, both in generaliza-

tion and in particular, and gather them together and weave them

into a consistent whole, making as nearly as possible a clearer

picture for our brain-minds of what we can understand at present

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

of the Seventh Treasury of Wisdom. Also, if we have time this

evening, we shall endeavour very briefly to treat of a matter left

incomplete at our last meeting, that is to say, the question of the

seven Root-Races of mankind through which the human wave of

life passes during the present Fourth Round on our globe.

We open our study this evening in reading from Volume I of

The Secret Doctrine, page 424, the extract which we have read

before, but it is convenient to read it again this evening :

To thoroughly comprehend the idea underlying every ancient

cosmology necessitates the study, in a comparative analysis, of all the

great religions of antiquity ; as it is only by this method that the root-

idea will be made plain. Exact science could the latter soar so high,

while tracing the operations of nature to their ultimate and original

sources would call this idea the hierarchy of Forces. The original,

transcendental and philosophical conception was one. But as systems

began to reflect with every age more and more the idiosyncrasies of

nations ; and as the latter, after separating, settled into distinct

groups, each evolving along its own national or tribal groove, the

main idea gradually became veiled with the overgrowth of human

fancy. While in some countries the FORCES, or rather the intelligent

Powers of nature, received divine honors they were hardly entitled to,

in others as now in Europe and the civilized lands the very thought

of any such Force being endowed with intelligence seems absurd, and

is proclaimed unscientific.

Note the calm but trenchant irony in this extract. I merely

call attention to it before passing on. Now this extract, though

dealing with the various aspects which the ancient religions took

as the ages passed, leading to their differentiations into the

so-called great religions of the world, nevertheless fits in very well

by analogy and by comparison with the subject which we are

going to treat in particular, although briefly, this evening, that is

to say the question of initiations and the ancient Mysteries,

and also a much misunderstood fact in nature closely connected

with the ancient Mysteries, which was evolved into a doctrine by

the ancients and called by them the Succession of Teachers

guruparampard in Sanskrit, and distortedly and faintly reflected

in the " Apostolical Succession " in the Christian scheme.

The Christian Church very early took over that doctrine of the

Succession of Teachers, with much other theological timber, from

the old religions of the countries bordering the Mediterranean

Sea ; and the doctrine which it took over became for that

Church the so-called " Apostolic Succession " of the Church of

Rome, the popes succeeding one another and claiming to be the

" successors " of the fisherman-apostle of Galilee, Simon Peter.

We do not care to go into this aspect of the matter, for it is useless

for our present purpose, and no benefit can be gained by it ; but

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 245

wherever we look and whatever line of human social or religious

activity we may choose to take for our study, we shall always

find that there is a passing on of authority or a passing on of

teachings, or of both. The various heads of even our political

bodies succeed one another, and usually carry on a political

tradition. " Big businesses " succeed one another, and usually

pass on, from man to man, a tradition of commercial policy and

expansion ; and so forth, and so forth. It is simply an exempli-

fication in ordinary practical life of a rule of nature ; that is to

say, that man, being a mortal being, having to die, but being an

entity of thought and of heart, does not want to see that which

he feels to be good, or which he believes to be good, lost ; and so

he transfers either authority or teaching, or both, to another

whom he considers fit and capable to carry on his teaching or

authority, or both.

It is in the religious field of human activity that this system is

most marked, and where the feeling is the strongest. A succes-

sion of " prophets " succeeding each other in the ancient

Mysteries ; a succession of hierophants succeeding each other

therein, is a fact well known to us, even ordinary knowledge such

as you may find in an encyclopedia or in school-books.

In Greece, for instance, in taking the Eleusinian Mysteries as an

example, we know that the Hierophants were drawn from one

family, the Eumolpidae, living in Athens, and the Torchbearers

were drawn from another family, the Lycomidae, living in Athens ;

and we have reason to believe that the Mysteries of Samothrace,

the seat of an older rite, and which were, like the Mysteries of

Eleusis, a state-function, were also conducted in the same manner

by the passing on of the tradition held sacred and incommunicable

to outsiders ; and the bond of union between the initiates of these

so-called Mysteries, was considered indissoluble, impossible of

dissolution, for death merely strengthened the tie.

Now outside of the fact that men like to pass on what they

think and believe to be good, whence arose throughout the

various countries of the world of which we have some knowledge,

the remarkable mystic similarities we know of, whence came to

them all the closely similar knowledge and authority which were

passed on from one Head to another ? It must have come from

somewhere. Men no longer believe in the empty philosophico-

scientific theory or fallacy of fifty years ago, to the effect that, for

instance, six men, living in six different isles, will inevitably and

infallibly tread six more or less identical paths of mental and

physical thought and ceremony. It was once a scientific heresy

to doubt that theory. It was called a " fact ", though there

were no facts to prove it ; it was a theory merely, having no

other foundation than imagination overworked in order to

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find an explanation of similarities and identities such as the

above.

Let us say here that a Theosophist looks with respect and

reverence upon the discoveries of the many great and noble-

minded men who have given us brighter views into the shell of

nature, the outward physical shell, and whose lives often are

models of self-sacrifice ; but while we recognise that every new

light shed into our minds, showing us new views into the heart

of nature, is good for us, and furthermore will tend finally

to prove our own doctrines, nevertheless every thinking

Theosophist, and particularly every Esotericist, every Occultist,

every member of this School, draws a sharp line of distinc-

tion between Science, the noble knowledge of classified truth,

and the theories of scientists. We accept a theory if it is

good, but only as a theory ; and it must be corroborated by

Nature herself before any Theosophist will accept it as a fact, as a

part of Science per se.

So, then, we receive the following bit of knowledge from our

Teachers our Masters have told us that this particular doctrine

which in the Church of Rome is called the " Apostolic Succession ",

and in the ancient Mysteries was called the Passing of the Word,

the Passing of the Knowledge, the Passing of the Authority, or by

some similar expression, originated in this our own Order, but

obviously not in our lifetime. We are merely a generation, one

of many, carrying on the tradition of the Knowledge which

originated in the final ages of that vanished continent, Lemuria,

and was more particularly developed in Atlantis, where were first

established the Ancient Mysteries of which we are to-day the

ultimate and outward sign of the inward and spiritual truth.

As in the highest of our Lodges, we are taught, the Truth is

passed from the great Master-Initiator to his successor to the

Truth and the Authority, so in the inferior Lodges, the same

system is followed ; and we in our Work merely carry on the same

tradition. It is saddening to see how learned ignoramuses with

high-sounding names, or possibly with an alphabetical string of

academic titles after their names, sometimes talk about the

Mysteries of which they can really know nothing outside of the

scattered data found imbodied in old literature. They are mere

bookmen, readers, and not understanders ; it is also truly

pathetic to hear some folk talk about the non-necessity of having

a leader, because they believe that one man is as good as another,

and that no man can be very much better than another, and to see

their opinion that all this talk about spiritual, inner light and

illumination passed on from Initiate to Initiate is just thingum-

bobbery !

Are they wise ? But ask them for proof of their theory, and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 247

they can give you none. No proof whatsoever ; it is pure specula-

tion. On the contrary, point out to them even such facts as we

know, or the things of which history has left certain records in her

annals, where invariably you will find the same old tradition

coming down the ages of the passing down of the knowledge and

of the authority and of the doctrine.

Now when we speak of Mysteries and initiations we use those

words in a sense which to us is sacred, and with no wish or desire,

far less with any attempt, to create a false and mischievous atmo-

sphere of emotionalism. We speak of facts. You know that every

member of our School is more or less a scientist, i.e., a knower and

researcher. We are taught to use our brains and our minds and

our wills first of all for self-conquest, and then to analyse properly

ourself and the world we live in. Has not our present Teacher

told us again and again that we must consult our consciences

before we accept anything ? In order to do that, we have to

think ; we also know that even if in doing so we should, through

our own blindness, or incapacity, reject a truth offered to us, we

shall nevertheless have done aright, because we have been faithful

to ourselves, to our consciences, and also faithful to our Teacher,

and that the karman of that rejection will be merely temporary,

because the inner man understands, and the truth in time will

dawn in faithful hearts. After all, how greatly preferable it is to

do so in all honesty and purity of soul, than to be like some who

have entered this sacred body from improper motives, and with

envy and jealousy in their hearts and perhaps honeyed words on

their lips. Heaven help them !

We are taught that the Mysteries we take those of Greece for

an example were divided into two parts. Let us particularize :

take those of Eleusis. You will remember, as was pointed out at

our last meeting, that Eleusis as a word means Advent, The

Coming, that which is coming, the promise. As the Mysteries of

Samothrace were rather what we would call scientific, dealing more

with the operations of Nature, and the origin of those operations

and the method of controlling them, and teaching what they led

to in other words what we would to-day call science ; so the

teachings at Eleusis were rather those religious and philosophic

doctrines of esotericism giving to men what the great Roman

orator, Cicero, called a brighter view of life and a livelier hope as

regarded death, because they taught of the things which are to be,

more particularly the so-called, and thoughtlessly so-called,

" dark mysteries of death ". These Eleusinia were divided into

two parts, as said above, the Less Mysteries and the Greater

Mysteries. The Less Mysteries were celebrated in the early

springtime, more or less about the time of the Anthesteria, the

Flower-Festival, and the celebrations took place at a small town

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

called Agrae. Those Mysteries were mainly dramatic in form,

with this one object in view : to prepare him or her who was

initiated into these Less Mysteries, better to understand, more

quickly to apprehend, and more easily to seize with the mind,

that which he was to go through in the Greater Mysteries of

Eleusis, providing that in the interim and during the time of

trial he proved himself true and fit and clean.

Even in the days when early Christianity had superseded the

degenerate and corrupt religions of the Mediterranean countries,

even then, fallen as the Eleusinia were from their former high

state, yet they were considered so highly that initiations still

took place in them. They were actually finally stopped on the

initiative of the Pagans themselves, the school closed by an order

of the Christian Emperor Justinian in Constantinople, but closed

on the petition of the better of the so-called Pagans themselves.

The truth is that the Mysteries were not overcome by Christianity,

but fell because of intrinsic degeneracy. Can we imagine what

those men must have felt in the day when they saw that which was

dearer to them than life closed and ended by their own will,

invaded and degraded by degenerate rites and beliefs, and, doubt-

less, also by the Christian fanatics ?

Now the dramatizations in the Less Mysteries were not what

we would call " plays ", exactly ; they were " plays " in one

sense because they were dramas. But they were enacted in the

form of spectacles in which the would-be disciple, the initiant or

the one to be initiated, had to take the main part himself or

herself. Let us give a concrete example, which at least will be

interesting, and perhaps illuminating, remembering that there

were various kinds of styles of initiations and of Mysteries existing

in the different countries ; but fundamentally they were all one

and still today are one in the great secret sodalities ; but in each

country the initiations and Mysteries took on different aspects,

as it were ; as for instance in Hindusthan as compared with

Greece. The initiator and the neophyte might use a different

language, and wear different clothing, etc., and perhaps go

through a different rite, and so on and so on. But fundamentally

the idea was the same the world over. It must be remembered

that the Smaller Mysteries were preparations for the Greater. In

the former, the candidate was taught, and enacted as a drama

what he would have to experience psychically and spiritually

in the Greater Initiations.

Now one of these rites was the drama, or the trial rather, that

the neophyte would have to pass through in actuality later, in the

Greater Initiation, and it was the meeting with his Inner Self, his

own Inner Self, not in the vague and abstract way in which we

today speak of a man as having " found his true self " ; but in

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 249

the Less Initiation the neophyte was actually put through training

and purification in order to fit him to undergo the real Test, in

which he met his own Inner Self face to face, as another individual

apparently, at first, but at a still higher Initiation to be blended

with that other Self, his own Self, his Higher Self.

Now this rite is one of the Smaller Mysteries, those of purifi-

cation and training, and was enacted at the town of Agrae, not far

from Athens, where the Less Mysteries were held, and it was

enacted dramatically. The neophyte was then and there taught

to anticipate and understand what was coming to him if he was

successful later in the Greater Rite. He was frankly and openly

told at the last what he was there to meet if he desired to go to

the end of the path. And similarly with the other stages or

degrees of initiation.

Now it is not certainly known how many degrees or secret stages

there were of the Eleusinia, but we know that there were several ;

and we know that to the very end, before they were finally closed

on account of their degeneration, they were so carefully guarded,

so faithfully kept hid, that to this day scholars are mentally

running around in bewilderment, in an endeavor to find out

what really was taught in the Eleusinia, in these Mysteries which

aroused the admiration of the greatest men of antiquity ; in those

of Samothrace likewise the circumstances of secrecy and degree

were very similar.

Take Egypt. The Pyramids, we are taught, were simply the

Great Pyramid especially majestic Initiation-Temples. There

too the Mysteries and the initiations were most sacredly guarded

and kept secret. They were kept only for those who had proved

themselves worthy, not by talk but by act, and who had been tried

and tested in many different ways. And why ? Because it was

a dangerous matter for unprepared minds. Our Teachers tell us

plainly that there were three results of an initiation : one success ;

another failure, which often meant death ; and the third (a

partial failure) often meant madness. But success meant glory

unspeakable. Why was it that madness and death sometimes

ensued ? Through any outward punishment ? No. The results

were wholly from within the candidates themselves. They were

plainly told, these neophytes : " Come with a clean heart, and

glory unspeakable and knowledge of the gods shall be yours ; but

come with a perverse and wicked heart, with your mind untrained

and with your will unset, and you will never be able to face that

which you will have to meet in the other world ". Because that

is what the Greater Mysteries were, a passing behind the veil of

this physical shell. No wonder that the training was severe,

arduous ! Those ancient men had high hearts in their bodies and

wise old minds.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Now those Mysteries are not dead today. We are taught

distinctly that the same ancient truths, the same entrance into

glory, the same beautiful realization of the highest hopes that

man bears in the secret recesses of his heart, the same surpassing

knowledge of life and being : all can be had by him who wills and

who dares and who knows how to keep silent : and we are told that

the true Esoteric Pathway is here, in this our own Holy Order.

That is what the Masters have taught us through their repre-

sentatives, the third one of whom, in our age, sits among us this

evening. They also have taught us another great truth, that it is

not a sine qua non for success to have a mighty brain-mind, for

they have told us plainly that even some of their own Brothers,

some of the Masters themselves, arc such by virtue of their

spiritual grandeur, and not by virtue of any brain-mind eminence

alone nor of any particular mental power ; and they have told us

further that such of the Masters, spiritual sons of glory, may

stand high even among themselves. We are further taught that

this brain-mind of ours is very often a hindrance to us ; it is

indeed a most useful servant if we keep it a servant, but it is a

master which will inevitably put our feet upon the left-hand path

unless illumined and guided by the spiritual nature, because all its

thoughts are thoughts of self, and all its thinking is for gratifica-

tion of its own desires ; its horizons are limited, and its outlook

is short ; its self-born inspirations are few and far between ; and

it is mortal and dies with the body. It depends upon ourselves

as to which side of our nature, the higher or the lower, we shall, as

William Quan Judge used to say, nail our faith, pin it there and

keep it there.

The other matter mentioned at the beginning of our study this

evening we shall have to treat very briefly. It is that of the Races

through which mankind, as a Life- Wave, passes in its journey

from the beginning of evolution on this globe to its end. You will

remember that there are seven such Root-Races which form the

evolutionary Cycle, in this Fourth Round, which is what we call

one Globe-Round ; and we are at the present time, as said before,

in the fourth Sub-Race of our present Fifth Root-Race. There is

confusion about these Races in the minds of some students, because

our first Teacher, H. P. Blavatsky, as was pointed out at our last

meeting, was under the necessity when she wrote, of keeping quiet,

or rather hid, certain teachings which she was not then empowered

publicly to give out. Had there been the proper appeal from her

students, perhaps she would have done so then. At any rate, our

present Teacher, Katherine Tingley, has permitted us to give a

short outline, which we shall use in an attempt to illustrate this

rather difficult subject. Let each line of the following diagram

represent a Root-Race.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 251

There are seven lines (or Root-Races), and you will notice that

the junction-line, beginning one Root-Race out of the preceding

Root-Race, is at the middle point of the former, that is, at the

fourth Sub-Race of the preceding or Mother-Race. It is so in all

the lines (or Root-Races). Now we are at present in the Fifth

Root-Race, two races short of the completion of our globe-cycle

or globe-Round, and our present Fifth Root-Race is almost at the

point, the middle of our Fifth Root-Race, where the Sixth Root-

Race to come will branch off. Each Root-Race, each of the seven,

is divided in our teachings into seven minor Races as follows.

Notice the recurrence of the number seven :

" i. Primary Sub-Race (7 minor divisions of it).

2. Secondary Sub-Race (7 ,, ).

3. Family Race (7 ,, ).

One 4. National Race (7 ,, ,, ).

Root- < 5. Tribal Race (7 ,, ,, ).

Race. (Another name may be suggested which is better than

this and the following.)

6. A Tribal Generation (7 minor divisions of it).

7. Individual man (say 72 years).

We say 72 years, because the average man, barring accidents

and malignant diseases which may carry him off before his time,

usually lives about 72 years. Some human beings live much

longer, of course. If we took count of all human deaths : of the

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babies who die in such numbers in infancy, and of all who die

in shipwreck, and of all the men killed in wars, and of all the

murders and of all the diseases, and of the train and of

the automobile wrecks, and of all such accidents, probably the

average length of human life to-day would not be more than 15

or 20 years ; but those cases, after all, are exceptional. Man

lives to-day, on a natural average, about 72 years, barring all

accidents, etc., as above suggested.

The following is an interesting calculation, offered only as a

suggestive thing. Suppose that you desire to calculate the length

of time of a Root-Race, and please understand that what we are

saying now is only a rough approximation. Take then 72 years,

the famous three score years and ten in the Bible a mystery-

figure, a round number for 72 and multiply it by seven : we get

one Tribal Generation ; multiply it by seven again, we get one

Tribal Race ; multiply that by seven and we get one National

Race, and your figure will come to about 25,920 years, the length

of the Precessional Cycle ; multiply that by seven again, and you

get one Family Race ; multiply that again by seven and you get

a Secondary Sub-Race ; and multiply that by seven once more

and you get a figure which is really the entire time-period of a

Root-Race. This calculation is very rough numerically, and is so

intended to be ; but it is suggestive.

You see we do not count the Root-Race as one of the seven

here, but make it the all-inclusive one, and why ? Because if we

did so count it, we should be counting the Primary Sub-Race

twice. A " Root "-Race really ought to mean the race which

originates a thing, or is its " root ". It is therefore, strictly

speaking, from the first Primary Sub-Race that all the others

of the series grow, exactly as the root of a tree sends up its

trunk, and the trunk its branches, the branches their smaller

branchlets, the smaller branchlets still smaller branchings, they

the twigs, which bear the leaves. Therefore, according to the

above series, it is the Primary Sub-Race which really is the

" Root "-Race.

Now there are seven (please mark again, seven) Root-Races in

one Globe-Round, that is to say a Planetary Round as it passes

through our Globe. Seven Globe-Rounds equal one Planetary

Round ; seven Planetary Rounds equal one Kalpa or Manvantara

or Day of Brahma, and seven Kalpas plus seven Planetary

Pralayas (or seven periods of planetary rest) equal one Solar Kalpa.

7 Root-Races = i Globe-Round.

7 Globe-Rounds = I Planetary Round.

7 Planetary Rounds = i Kalpa =4, 320,000 of our years

(plus several more ciphers).

7 Kalpas + 7 Planetary Pralayas =i Solar Kalpa.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 253

Now these figures are given because they are fundamental.

They are accurate as far as they go. We shall have to deal with

them in future studies.

Please note in conclusion that the drawing on page 251 above,

illustrating the birth of Root-Races from each other at the middle

point of each, equally well can represent a Primary Sub-Race or

a Secondary Sub-Race, or a National Race, or a Tribal Race, etc.,

and the reason is obvious, because there are no perfectly unique

and singular things in Nature anywhere. Nature does nothing

but repeat itself, and the man who said that Nature never repeats

itself uttered a titanic fallacy. Nature does nothing but repeat

itself. Did you ever see a thing perfectly unique utterly

different in all respects from everything else ? On the contrary,

you see everything everywhere repeating itself : the seasons year

in and year out : day and night year in and year out : the

planets circling around the sun continually ; their satellites

circling around their primaries in more or less the same way ; and

so forth. There is constant repetition everywhere. A tree in

putting forth its foliage, puts forth its own leaves ; it does not

put forth something unique and unheard of pumpkin-pies or

chairs or temples or houses ; it puts forth that which belongs to

it, as all trees do.

Cycles can be found in every branch of life ; for instance,

children are born on the average at the end of ten lunar months

or nine solar months. A child can live and be perfectly healthy

and successful, if born at seven months after conception, but it

is a child of great sensitiveness, high-strung, of nervous tempera-

ment, and it needs the most anxious and loving care, because it

has to finish its growth in the cold outside, and Nature takes two

other months to do it normally.

Now, as said before, we shall endeavor at our next study to

link together into one consistent and more easily understood whole,

the various threads of thought which we have gathered up out of

our teachings, both in generalization and in particular, and to

weave them into a whole so consistent, so coherent, that even our

brain-minds can grasp at least some message, some notion, of what

the sublime theme that we have been studying within the last few

weeks treats of.

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CHAPTER XXII

THE HIERARCHY OF COMPASSION. THE INCARNATION OF THE

MlNASAPTJTRAS.

Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge and the Deva- Wisdom thou

hast won must from thyself, the channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another

bed.

Know, O Naljor, thou of the Secret Path, its pure fresh waters must be used

to sweeter make the Ocean's bitter waves that mighty sea of sorrow formed of

TnA -f*oi-o r\f rvt^n

Now^bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva Compassion speaks and

saith : " Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer ? Shalt thou be saved

and hear the whole world cry ? "

The Voice of the Silence (" The Seven Portals ").

Chosen Fragments from the Book of the Golden Precepts. For the daily use

of Lanoos (disciples). Translated and annotated by H. P. BLAVATSKY pp

70-71, 76. ' **'

TN opening our study this evening let us read from The Secret

Doctrine, Volume II, pages 281-2 :

u As the " coats of skin " of men thickened, and they fell more and

'* ma*f o physical sin, the intercourse between physical and

me wi,Vn^Vi ^ S st PP ed - The veil of matter between the two

SL ^ d^selor ^^-Kier ^n to penetrate. The

mysteries of Heaven and Earth, revealed to the TElft^KS PY tteir^es-

tial teachers in the days of their purity, became a great focus of light,

the rays from which became necessarily weakened as they were diffused

and shed upon an uncongenial, because too material soil. With the

masses they degenerated into Sorcery, taking later on the shape of

exoteric religions, of idolatry full of superstitions, and rnan-, or hero-

worship. Alone a handful of primitive men in whom the spark of

divine Wisdom burnt bright, and only strengthened in its intensity

as it got dimmer and dimmer with every age in those who turned it to

bad purposes remained the elect custodians of the Mysteries revealed

to mankind by the divine Teachers . . . and tradition whispers,

what the secret teachings affirm, namely, that these Elect were the

germ of a Hierarchy which never died since that period :

" The inner man of the first . . . only changes his lodyjrom time to

time ; he is ever the same, knowing neither rest nor Nirvana, spurning

Devachan and remaining constantly on Earth for the salvation of mankind.

. . ." " Out of the seven virgin-men (Kum&ra) four sacrificed themselves

for the sins of the world and the instruction of the ignorant, to remain

till the end of the present Manvantara. Though unseen, they are ever

present. When people say of one of them, ' He is dead ' ; behold, he

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 255

is alive and under another form. These are the Head, the Heart, the

Soul, and the Seed of undying knowledge. . . ."

. . . Higher than the " Four " is only ONE on Earth as in Heavens

that still more mysterious and solitary Being described in Book I.

the Wondrous Being of whom we have spoken before.

Would that I had our Teacher's profound and capacious mind

and her capacity for exposition, because tonight we are going to

do our best to illustrate in as simple terms as possible the sublime

subjects that we have been studying for some weeks past, gather-

ing up the stray threads of thought and trying to weave them

into a consistent and logical whole.

Plunging then directly into our study, let us first ask ourselves

one question. Whither are we as a Race, as men, as thinking

entities, traveling, in what direction ? The Ancient Wisdom tells

us that we are traveling inwards, not " up ", not " down ", not to

" right " nor to " left ", not " forward " nor " backward ", but

inwards, leaving the realms of matter, taking them with us in fact

by spiritualizing the inferior coatings : traveling inwards on that

Path which began with our " descent " (if you like the term) into

matter, into manifestation, and henceforward raising matter

towards spirit, its real source or root, following the path which we

ourselves inwardly are, and marching inwards, ever more inwardly,

until at the consummation of all things we shall attain a goal, an

end, even more supernal than that which we left in commencing

our peregrination downwards into experience.

The next thought that occurs is, Are our Higher natures separate

from ourselves, paradoxical as it may sound ? Are they our-

selves ? What are they ? We all know, as students, the teachings

concerning the seven principles of man ; but when we stop to ask

ourselves what are these seven principles really : do they form a

unity, or is each one of them an entity in itself, then we enter upon

very difficult subjects indeed. Let us say first that the four lower

principles are borrowed or rather, perhaps, evolved out of ourselves

in combination with elements drawn from the common store-

house of Nature, as man takes into his body for his nutrition his

food formed of atoms, yet each one of those atoms in itself is the

vehicle of a monad, manifesting in that sphere or plane of life.

But our three higher principles are each one a separate entity but

conjoined into an inseparable unity during the Manvantaric cycle.

And we see the reason why this is so in studying the seventh of

the seven Treasuries of Wisdom, which seventh is the supreme Key

of all the other six.

We begin to form some conception of what lies before us in this

study : how unity becomes multiplicity and how multiplicity

resolves itself back into unity. Note first the difference between

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

one, unity, and union. Union is an assemblage of things straitly

united together ; Unity is an assemblage of things but with a

common head or source, the summit of a hierarchy for instance ;

whereas one is a monad, an individual, and therefore indivisible.

Now we are a union in our four lower principles ; we are a unity

in our three higher principles, our " upper triad " ; and we are one

in the three highest, the "highest triad", so called for easy

comprehension.

Now the three principles forming the " upper triad " exist each

on its own plane, and we feel their influence, because we are in

spiritual rapport with them. Nevertheless each one exists on its

own plane in consciousness and power ; we know of each only

what we have so far evolved ; all we know, for instance, of the

third principle (counting from the top), the Manas, is what we have

so far assimilated of it in this Fourth Round. It, as you know,

will not be fully developed until the end of the next Round. What

we call our " Manas " is a generalizing term for the reincarnating

ego I am now speaking of the higher Manas.

Now turning a moment to a collateral subject, we must realize

that all our consciousness, i.e., the consciousness of the ordinary

man, pertains to this our present plane, but that there are in-

numerable other planes of the Kosmos surrounding us, inter-

penetrating us, and of these other planes each has its own entities,

its own beings, thinking and unthinking, as our plane has, each

class appropriate to its own sphere or plane, and that our very

earth interpenetrates them as they interpenetrate us, and that the

reason we do not see their habitations and them, and their

dwellings, and the lower creatures living there, is because our

senses are not yet fitted to cognise them, have not been evolved or

trained to know them or see them, for our physical senses have but

a very limited perception of things. But there indeed they are !

Some of these planes belong to our own Hierarchy, and some do

not. Those which do not, belong to other Hierarchies each having

its own series of planes or worlds. As in a chord of music each

note may be distinctly heard, each being separate from the other,

but together they form a chord, a musical harmony, so it is with

these planes. It is, if you like, all a matter of differing vibrations,

this word being used here in its scientific sense. If the vibrations

are such that our senses can cognise them, we see them then, or

hear them, or touch them, or taste them, or smell them, as sense-

perceptions ; and if our senses are incognisant of them, we know

nothing of them. Yet they are there !

Similarly with our three higher principles, the " upper triad ".

The ego exists with its own consciousness, and its own forces, and

its own dwelling which is a " soul ", and we feel its effects, we feel

its flux, which to us is an influx ; and similarly with the Buddhic

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 257

principle, and with the Atmic ray. We say that the Atman is

universal, and so it is ; but it belongs (so far as we are concerned

in our present stage in evolution) to the fourth Kosmic plane, though

it is our seventh principle.

What I am trying to say is that the destiny of man is to raise

his focus of consciousness from the lower to the higher ; and with

each step that he makes "upwards'', or more properly inwards,

he finds a new world , with its own inhabitants, as said above, with

its own conditions and " laws ", with the " habitations " of its

inhabitants ; and following the ancient axiom of the Hermetists,

" As above, so below ", we can see the perfect truth, the perfect

fidelity to fact, in stating that these various planes or rather

Worlds some of which are immensely higher than ours, some

only a little higher, some immensely lower than ours, some only a

little lower each one of these planes or Worlds, I repeat, has its

own life and thinking beings, its own trees, and its own stones,

and its own storms, and its own fire, its own inhabitants, and its

own animals, and all the rest of the manifold and various things

and entities, similar to but not identical with the beings we see

around us on our plane. Think of the vastness of the spaces of

consciousness and being which this thought brings home to us,

the illimitability of life, its utter and perfect endlessness, promising

endless evolution before us, as there have been endless experiences

and evolution behind us ! The reflexion is an ennobling one.

Now, the summit of every Hierarchy, as so often said, is one :

and may be considered as one in three or three in one, a philo-

sophical conception of the ancients whence the Christians got their

dogma of their Trinity. This is the Uppermost Triad. Next comes

a unity of what we call our Upper Triad, three separate principles

per se, yet bound together in a compact unity in the seventh or

highest principle, the Atman, which is the Self, the " universal

selfhood ", not our ego, but that feeling or consciousness of self-

hood which is the same in you and in me and in every human

being, and even in all the inferior beings of the Hierarchy, yea,

even in those of the beast-kingdom under us, and dimly perceptible

even in the plant-world, and which is latent even in the minerals.

This is the pure cognition, the abstract idea of Self. It differs not

at all throughout the Hierarchy, except in degree of self-recogni-

tion. When you say self, you mean the same thing that I do ; but

when you say myself, I am I and not another, that is the conscious-

ness of your ego, and it is not the same as when I say / am L When

this ego is raised from the lower planes to the higher, it comes

naturally in touch with higher things. From the inferior con-

sciousness we become by evolution conscious of ourself as a man,

or subconscious ; and from the man we become a Buddha or a

Christ, reaching full expanded ^^//-consciousness. And there are

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

thereafter other planes still higher than this, of which we now say

no more. Finally, the four lowest principles form a union, non-

permanent, transitory, and dissoluble at death.

Remember that these planes or Worlds extend as such in both

directions : inwards and outwards one reaching ever into greater

superiority to us, from our standpoint ; and the other direction

going, as we expressed it, downwards, or, as it is sometimes

expressed, along the Path of the Left Hand.

Now let us read here another extract, as our next subject, from

The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 572 :

Esoterically the teaching differs : The divine, purely Adi-Buddhic

monad manifests as the universal Buddhi (the Mahd-buddhi or Mahat

in Hindd philosophies) the spiritual, omniscient and omnipotent root

of divine intelligence, the highest anima mundi [or soul of the world]

or the Logos. This descends " like a flame spreading from the eternal

Fire, immoveable, without increase or decrease, ever the same to the

end" of the cycle of existence, and becomes universal life on the

Mundane Plane. From this Plane of conscious Life shoot out, like

seven fiery tongues, the Sons of Light (the logoi of Life) ; then the

Dhy^ni-Buddhas of contemplation : the concrete forms of their

formless Fathers the Seven Sons of Light, still themselves, to whom

may be applied the Br^hmanical mystic phrase : " Thou art ' THAT '

Brahm." It is from these Dhyctni-Buddhas that emanate their

chhdyds (Shadows) the Bodhisattvas of the celestial realms, the proto-

types of the sw/>^-terrestrial Bodhisattvas, and of the terrestrial

Buddhas, and finally of men. The " Seven Sons of Light " are also

called " Stars."

Oh, sublime beyond ordinary human comprehension are the

truths of life and the mysteries of being ! We are taught that there

exists a Hierarchy of Compassion, which H. P. Blavatsky some-

times called the Hierarchy of Mercy or of Pity. This is the Light-

Side of nature as contrasted with its Matter-Side or Shadow-Side,

its Night-Side. It is from this Hierarchy of Compassion that came

those semi-divine entities about the middle period of the third

Root-Race of this Round, and incarnated in the semi-conscious,

quasi-senseless men of that period, those advanced entities other-

wise known as the Solar Lhas, as the Tibetans call them, the solar

spirits, who were the men of a former kalpa who during the third

Root-Race thus sacrificed themselves in order to give us intel-

lectual light ; incarnating in those senseless psycho-physical shells

in order to awaken into a divine flame of egoity and ^//-conscious-

ness the sleeping egos which we then were. They are ourselves

because belonging to the same spirit-ray that we do ; yet we, more

strictly speaking, were those half-unconscious, half-awakened egos

whom they touched with the divine fire of their own being. This

our " awakening " was called by H. P. Blavatsky, the incarnation

of the Mdnasaputras, or the Sons of Mind, or Light. Had that

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 259

incarnation not taken place, we indeed should have continued our

evolution by merely " natural " causes, but it would have been

slow almost beyond comprehension, almost interminable ; but

that act of self-sacrifice, through their immense pity, their immense

love, though, indeed, acting under Karmic impulse, awakened the

divine fire in our own selves, gave us light and comprehension and

understanding ; so from that time we ourselves became the " Sons

of the Gods " ; the faculty of self-consciousness in us was awak-

ened, our eyes were opened, responsibility became ours ; and our

feet were set then definitely upon the path, that inner path, quiet,

leading inwards back to our spiritual home.

In speaking of initiations at our last meeting, you remember it

was pointed out by our Teachers that initiation is in fact a quick-

ening process, but it is also something else ; it is a copy, an

endeavor to copy, what was done by the incarnation of those

Lords of Understanding, Sons of Light. It is an attempt to

stimulate, to awaken into activity, the inner spiritual Self, to

enliven us more quickly, to enable us to see and understand, saving

those who successfully pass through the tests aeons and aeons of

suffering and strife, and, noblest of all, enabling those whose minds

have become enlightened, themselves to do the same for their

brothers who are less progressed than they.

Why is it that our Teachers from the very beginning, all our

Teachers who have appeared among men, as also our three latest,

H. P. Blavatsky, W. Q. Judge, and Katherine Tingley : why is it,

I say, that they continually teach us the duty as well as the need

of self-control, and of pity and of compassion and of spiritual

understanding ? Why ? Because these things verily are the keys,

these are the " Open Sesames ", these are the things which unlock

the portals, not merely to let in the Light, but when the light is

seen, to give it again to others, for who is the man who would not

follow it ?

Let us write down the following names, cited in the above

extract from The Secret Doctrine, and reduce them to hierarchical

form so that they will more easily remain in the memory.

1. Adi-Buddhi.

2. The second is Maha-Buddhi, which is in fact Mahat. It is

likewise the First Logos, adopting the Greek method of nomen-

clature.

3. The third is Universal Light which is also Life, also called in

the Sanskrit, Divine Matter, Divine Nature, Daivi-Prakriti. The

Second Logos.

4. The Sons of Light, called the Logoi of Life, the Third Logos.

5. The Dhyani-Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contemplation or

Meditation.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

6. The Celestial Bodhisattvas, a Sanskrit word meaning " he

whose nature is essentially Celestial Wisdom or Bodhi ".

7. The super-terrestrial or superhuman Bodhisattvas.

8. The Mnushya-Buddhas, or the human Buddhas.

9. Men.

This is the Hierarchy of Compassion, emanating or evolving

from the supernal regions, and they are the flowers of the evolu-

tionary course ; and these regions themselves form the first (or

the tenth) or the root, if you like, of the Hierarchy of Compassion,

counting upwards or downwards.

Now the essential aim of this Hierarchy : the whole purpose

and strife, if you like the word, of evolution, is to raise the cor-

ruptible into Incorruptibility, to raise imperfection to Perfection,

to raise the mortal so that it shall put on Immortality, or, in other

words, to raise the personal man to be the individual man, to make

of the human a divine being. The average man has of course not

yet reached that sublime stage, and hence, as was pointed out

before, there is no abiding principle whatsoever in personal man,

because he is composed only of the five lower principles ; and when

we say " personal " man we mean the man of this period, of this

epoch, the evolving entity of the present time, the person. But,

" overshadowing " this person, incarnating in this person (if we

can use the term incarnating) there is the Divine Flame, there is

the Divine Seed, there is the constant impulse from the God

within, telling us always " Come up higher, come to me. Be the

Path and walk it. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life " in the

" heart " of each one of us. It is there ; and as soon as the

personal man consciously allies himself with this Divine Spark, he

becomes thereby impersonal and immortal in his inner conscious-

ness and therefore incorruptible, at least until the end of this

Maha-Kalpa ; and then his sublime destiny is to enter into that

ineffable Nirvana where he will remain in indescribable bliss and

universal understanding until the next Kalpa begins, whence he

starts out anew but on a far more elevated plane. He starts out

as a Leader of that new humanity. He then finds it his turn to

become one of that band or company or body of Sons of Mind or

Light, himself in his turn to endow with self-consciousness and

future spiritual immortality the semi-conscious beings of that

cycle to come.

Bodhisattva : this is a key-word. You will remember that it

was pointed out at a former study that the Dhyani-Buddhas, who

are fifth in the enumeration of this Hierarchy of Compassion, of

these Lords of Contemplation, are seven in number, and each one

of them has governance or rather has the overseeing of one of our

Rounds. Remember that there are seven Rounds in a Kalpa. He

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 261

is its head, the constant stimulator behind, that force in Nature

which we feel always within us. That " force " is the divine urge,

as philosophers might call it. It is not, however, yet truly divine ;

because noble, great, as these spiritual beings truly are, they have

not yet reached the summit of their own Hierarchy ; but their

great Work is what we may call the divine urge, the push, behind

the evolutionary process. Further, each of these Dhyani-Buddhas

in himself is a Hierarchy, just as we pointed out that every atom

is a hierarchy, every man is a hierarchy, and, indeed, every entity

is a hierarchy of greater or of inferior degree, because everything

that is composite is necessarily divisible into degrees of spiritual

and intellectual excellence.

How else could the evolving beings learn ? If man existed in

nothing but the pristine purity of his divine essence, what would

there be for him to learn, how could he learn ? Each one of these

Dhyanis has, or gives birth to, so to say, or emanates or evolves

from himself, seven " sons ", called Celestial Bodhisattvas, and

each Celestial Bodhisattva has charge of one of the globes of our

Planetary Chain, so that not only each Planetary Round, but each

globe also has its spiritual Head. It is a hierarchy in that sense

again, as well.

Furthermore, let us take our earth, the fourth globe, as a further

example. The Celestial Bodhisattva of our globe in his turn gives

birth to seven superhuman Bodhisattvas, and these superhuman

Bodhisattvas or super-terrestrial Bodhisattvas has, each one,

charge of one Race of the seven Root-Races in each Round, and

gives birth by a wonderful process which we shall shortly describe,

to seven human Buddhas each one, each superhuman Bodhi-

sattva, to a Race-Buddha. A Bodhisattva, as explained exoteri-

cally, means one who in another incarnation or in a few more

incarnations will become a Buddha. That is true, but it is an

exoteric teaching, that is to say, it is incomplete, and therefore

misleading. A Bodhisattva from the standpoint of our Occult

teachings, our esoteric teachings, is more than that. When a man,

a human being, has reached the point where his ego becomes

conscious, fully so, of its inner divinity : becomes clothed with

the Buddhic Ray ; where, so to say, the personal man has put on

the garments of inner immortality in actuality, on this earth, here

and now, that man is a Bodhisattva. His higher principles have

nearly reached Nirvana. When they do so finally, such a man is

a Buddha, a human Buddha, a Manushya-Buddha. Obviously, if

such a Bodhisattva were to reincarnate, in the next incarnation or

in a very few future incarnations thereafter, he would be a Manu-

shya-Buddha. A Buddha, in the esoteric teaching, is one whose

higher principles can learn nothing more ; they have reached

Nirvana and remain there ; but the spiritually awakened personal

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

man, the Bodhisattva, the person made semidivine, to use popular

language, instead of choosing his reward in the Nirvana of a less

degree, remains on earth out of pity and compassion for inferior

beings, and becomes what is called a Nirmanakdya. A Nirmana-

kaya is a Bodhisattva, a personal man made semidivine. He

clothes himself in a nirmanakayic vesture. The Nirmanakaya, you

will remember, is one who is a complete, thinking, spiritual entity,

minus the physical body only.

Let us take an example of how this works. Remember, please,

apropos of our subject, that we are studying the nature of the

" Wondrous Being " only incidentally at present, as being an

illustration truly sublime of the seventh Treasury of Wisdom, the

Atma-Vidya, the Knowledge of Self. Now let us take our illustra-

tion. Some time after Gautama-Buddha died, there was born in

the south of India a man who made a great mark in the Indian

world thereafter. His name was Sankaracharya. Acharya is a

Sanskrit word meaning Teacher or Master ; and the name of the

man himself was Sankara ; the two words joined together make

Sankaracharya, " Sankara the Teacher ", as the Hindu Vedantists

of the Ad wait a or non-dualistic school put it. He was born in

Southern India as already stated. Now here again is a very inter-

esting thing, briefly alluded to before. Sankaracharya was an

Avatara, which means an incarnation of a " God ", and yet he

stood less high than the Buddha (Gautama) who had preceded

him, although the latter was a man. How shall we explain that

wonder ? Easily. The Buddha Gautama became a Buddha

through his own efforts, throughout innumerable ages ; whereas

^ankaracharya was in one mystical sense what may truly be called

an illusion from the standpoint of esoteric manhood. Sankara was

a man, there was a physical body, there was the great spiritual

essence within ; but there had been no previous Sankardchdrya.

Sankaracharya per se, spiritually, was a divine ray. The Atman

and the Buddhi, born in the body of this Brahmana, were there,

also the kama, the prana, the astral model-body, and the physical

body but no illuminated personal ego ; and in order that that

Avatara at that time in history might do its work, the Bodhisattva

of the Buddha entered into that body and gave it light, provided

the illuminating ego, thus repeating the aeon-old mystery of self-

sacrifice, taking on the " sins " (or Karmic heritage from parents)

such as they may have been, if any, of that body, thus giving the

chance for that divine ray, that Avatara, to work in the world :

providing the vehicle through which it, the divine ray, might

manifest to and in the world of man. That is the secret of an

Avatara ; but not every Bodhisattva is necessarily the vehicle of

an Avatara, for the Avataras come at particular and specified

periods. Buddhas also come at particular and specified periods,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 263

but leave behind them a Bodhisattva, their ego, their illuminated

thinking part, the Nirmanakaya, devoted to the work of saving

the race, for of such is the conscious part of the Hierarchy of

Compassion on our globe.

This was one of the ancient mystery-teachings in the old

Mystery-Schools.

But that is not all there is to this true and wondrous mystery.

This same Bodhisattva, we are taught, also provided some

centuries later the conscious vehicle, the egoic power, in the person

called Jesus, in Palestine. These are subjects, however, which we

cannot go into more deeply tonight. They are only an illustration

how this Hierarchy of Compassion works on earth in its sublime

overseeing and protective work of and for the human race.

We turn now to some questions which have been handed in to

us, and which we shall call " hypothetical questions ", four of them

in number, which, before we close this evening, we shall read and

do our best to answer, with the Teacher's permission. I mention

this now before continuing our subject, because the very theme

upon which we have touched in connexion with the Buddha

Gautama and Jesus, is mentioned in these questions, questions

which all of us probably have asked ourselves, and have hunted

for answers to them.

We have now gained some idea of what we mean by self-

knowledge, of our unity with all, of how our individuality was

born, as it were, of heaven and of earth : the inner divine ray and

the lower personal man, the latter raised upwards until he becomes

one with that divine ray, thus becoming a fit and purified vehicle

for it. We have also seen that the study of the " Wondrous Being "

is a most sublime illustration of the exalted spiritual state to which

we should attain, and shall attain, run we successfully the race.

Now let us go a little farther in our thought in connexion with

this " Wondrous Being ". We have seen that He, or It, is both

as H. P. Blavatsky said, using popular language of heaven and

of earth. His roots are the Dhyani-Buddha of this Round, and the

ray reaches him as a man through the celestial Bodhisattva

emanated by the Dhyani-Buddha, and also through the super-

terrestrial or superhuman Bodhisattva in ultimate charge of our

Root-Race. The " Wondrous Being " is here considered in his (or

its) racial aspect. Note well, however, that there is also a

" Wondrous Being " for our globe ; also one for the entire

Planetary Chain, etc.

There is a tradition, and our Teachers tell us that it is a tradition

founded on truth, that even unto this day, there exists in Central

Asia a certain mystical and mysterious land, or district if you like.

It is called Sambhala. This is a word known in Sanskrit literature,

but because the sayings and legends regarding it are connected

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

with what our self-sufficient European Sanskritists and Orienta-

lists call " pagan superstition " and the " love of the Orientals for

imagery " and so forth, our European scholars say that it is a

" myth ". Blind men ! It is an actual district on earth, in a

certain part of Tibetan territory, and has been for ages the subject

of much mystical speculation, and remains so to this day. It is

the " home " of our exalted Teachers. It is likewise the " home "

of the " Wondrous Being " considered as man, or in his racial

aspect. This " Wondrous Being " incarnates himself from age to

age at will and at pleasure, but never leaves the duty he has taken

upon himself, nor will he ever drop it until his Work is done. He

is the spiritual bond and link of the various Bodhisattvas and

Buddhas of the Hierarchy of Compassion that we have mentioned,

with superior worlds and with us and the lower beings of our

Round. This land of Sambhala is described as a place of great

beauty, surrounded by a high range of mountains. It is said that

no human eye will ever see it unless permitted to see it. It is said

that to this land of Sambhala go those who are " called " there,

sometimes to return and sometimes to remain ; and that there,

supreme over all the Masters, reigns the human aspect of this

" Wondrous Being ", the great Initiator, the great Sacrifice.

These are the teachings ; and it is further said that from this

land, spiritually, continually, and also in actual physical shape at

cyclical critical periods, go forth Masters into the world. Can any

thoughtful and spiritual mind read H. P. Blavatsky's story and

history, what she says and what she did, without reading between

the lines and behind the words ? Have we ever taken it into our

hearts how much it meant for her, and to her, when she spoke of

her " going home " ? Have we ever considered what might have

been incarnate in that woman-body ? The Saviors take up bodies,

sometimes, in this manner, as they please from age to age, and

sex itself matters little, though usually man-bodies are selected.

Such physical body-instruments as are most appropriate for the

work to be accomplished are the ones chosen.

We are further told, that these four Kumaras of whom we

have read this evening " higher than the Four is only ONE "

are spiritually and originally the four Celestial Bodhisattvas of

the four Globes of our Round, and by correspondence of the four

completed Root-Races of our earth, higher than who there is

none on earth except this ONE. Oh ! let us take these wonderful

teachings into our hearts and make them a part of us. There is

infinite beauty in them, hope unspeakable ; there is spiritual life,

there is intellectual health. What is the matter with men's

minds ? Does not every one of us know that the average human

being won't take truth when he sees it, unless it accord with his

preconceptions ? And why ? Because his mind is so full of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 265

and so confused with his own brain-mind ideas, with his own

opinions, which he thinks are so much superior to anything that

comes to him from any other source, especially if from an

impersonal source. We are all in the same mental condition ; we

are all cursed with these molds of mind which blind us. Every

one of us, in different degrees, doubtless, some less than others ;

but we are all cursed with it by our own will, and all we need to do

is to exercise our will as our Teachers tell us to do, and break these

molds of mind, in order to let in the light, and the spiritual life,

and the understanding, yea, and holy compassion. What keeps

all these out of our minds and hearts as an active force except

these molds of mind ? " Give up your life if ye would find it ! "

Sometimes men may accuse you and say that you are

" atheists " because you do not believe in a " personal God ".

Let me read just here what a great Greek thinker said on that

subject when he was accused of " atheism ". And let me say,

before reading : " atheist " meant among the Greeks one who

did not accept the gods of the multitude, the mythologic gods

of the State. It was no such term of opprobrium and hatred as

it has become under the Christian theological dispensation. It

meant rather " You are a radical ! " not much if anything more.

But the Christians have turned that perfectly legitimate word

which meant one who accepted not the gods of the State into

an expression of hatred, signifying moral degradation. Remem-

ber that the Christians themselves were called " atheists " by the

" Pagans ", simply because they did not accept the mythologic

gods of the State ; and the Christians, when they became power-

ful, retaliated in kind, and called the " Pagans " " atheists ",

because they refused to accept the Jewish-Christian God, Jehovah.

But what said Epicurus, called by later ages than his own an

atheist, and a sensationalist, and possibly by every other evil-

sounding epithet which men in hatred can heap upon one whom

they dislike ? " The Gods are, yet they are not what the multi-

tude imagine them to be. The man who denies the existence of

the gods worshipped by the multitude is neither an infidel nor an

atheist ; but he who thinks the gods are what the multitude hold,

is an atheist and impious/'

Now, our time for this evening is drawing to a close. We take

up, with the Teacher's suggestion and permission, the four

" hypothetical questions " above spoken of. These questions

may have occurred, doubtless have occurred, to each one of us ;

and perhaps we have searched for answers. I will give them as

if they had been asked from the floor here.

" I understood you to say in the Thursday meeting, one week ago,

that Jesus and Apollonius were Nirmdnakdyas : in I sis Unveiled,

Volume II, page 159, H, P. B. says that while Jesus and others were

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

united to their spirits permanently, Apollonius and others of his class

were so united only at intervals. I should think a NirmdnakAya

would be permanently united to his spirit, when working on this

earth. 1 '

This question has been largely answered by what we have

already explained to be the meaning of a Bodhisattva. A

Nirmanakaya is a state assumed by or entered into by a Bo-

dhisattva. When that state is ended the Nirmanakaya ends.

Kdya means " body ", " vehicle ". Therefore, Sankaracharya

Krishna, Laotse, Jesus, were Avataras in differing degrees.

There was a divine ray which came at the cyclic time of each such

incarnation, and the connecting link, the flame of mind, was

provided in each such case by a member of the Hierarchy of

Compassion. But these Avataras were not all equally great.

Apollonius, while not an Avatara, was a Nirmanakaya a Bo-

dhisattva ; as said before, the Bodhisattva stands actually, in the

Hierarchy of Compassion, higher than an Avatara, in the same

way as a man who has gained divinity through his own efforts,

and remains behind in the world of men out of compassion for

it, and in order to help it spiritually, really stands higher than the

devas or gods in their crystallized cold purity.

Jesus, and others such as Krishna and Laotse, were united

to their spirits permanently : obviously this means not the

physical bodies of those great men ; but that the particular

Atma-Buddhic ray which was called on earth Jesus, or Krishna,

or Laotse, informed men who naturally were always united to

their spirits, though each manifested through a Bodhisattva-

Nirmanakaya. They could be nothing else. They could not be

an Avatara through a being inferior to a Bodhisattva. Apollonius

and the Bodhisattva -Gautamaand others of his noble type, were

not permanently allied to their spirits, or rather were not merely,

solely, Atma-Buddhic rays, because they were men made perfect

through experience : personal men become semi-divine, and

actually, as said, such a being stands far higher than a spiritual

Ray or Monad per se, because such as the Bodhisattvas are the

Fine Flowers of evolution.

Next question :

" At one Thursday evening meeting, it was declared that the words

of The Sermon on the Mount were not the words of Jesus, but gatherings

of Ancient Wisdom compiled by some later writer. I don't understand

just how in Kathcrine Tingley's addresses, etc., this Sermon and Jesus

are always placed together as one being the author of the other. I got

the impression at this meeting that Jesus was merely an Initiate Jew,

but not nearly of such grand stature as to command the adoration of

all Christians. However, perhaps I did not hear correctly."

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 267

Now our hypothetical question is here framed in a most careful

manner. In the first place, then, it is not to be said, and it was

not said, that the Sermon on the Mount was not the logia or words

of Jesus. What was said, inadequately doubtless on account of

the shortness of time, was that the Sermon on the Mount, as we

now have it in the New Testament, was doubtless in all pro-

bability composed in much the same manner as the four canonical

Gospels were composed. Doubtless it is based on the logia and

sayings of the Master, Jesus. Unquestionably a man, Jesus,

lived. Unquestionably he had a School. Unquestionably he had

his disciples. Unquestionably he taught them and his sayings

were treasured by his disciples ; but as time went on, much was

forgotten, and they were revised and edited, and we now have

them in the form in which they appear in the New Testament.

This was rendered easy enough by the fact that a good deal in

those writings was on matters of more or less common philo-

sophical, or even esoteric, knowledge ; more or less current in the

thought of the day ; and it required but little skill to weave

together these ideas into a more or less logical whole. The very

fact that the well known contradictions and incongruities in the

four Gospels when compared, prove various redactions by different

writers, shows that they were compiled from differing bases of

theory. For the Theosophist, certain expressions used therein

show him that the esotericism of Syria played a large part in their

compilation, as was natural enough. Jesus taught our own

universal truths ; his half-instructed followers misunderstood

much. Those expressions and terms were used in the Mystery-

Schools of the eastern Mediterranean world of that period, but

do not belong to our School ; and as Jesus certainly belonged to

our School, the presumption is, as said, that his sayings had been

" touched up " and with extraneous matter formed into the four

Gospels. Somebody or rather somebodies doubtless thought the

scattered Sayings of the Teacher could be improved upon made

" more clear and easy ". Such has occurred even in our own

Society.

Such seems to be the fate of nearly all great teachings. There

is absolutely no preventive of it except the faithful hearts of men

and women who stand to the death for the pure teachings of the

one who gave them light and an awakened inner life. That is

what this our own School is for. Let us never forget it !

Our questioner was correct in the impression he received that

Jesus was stated to be an Initiate Syrian a Jew if you like. We

speak now of Jesus the man ; but I do not think that we ever

said that he should command, in any circumstances, the " adora-

tion " of the Christians or of anybody else, because such worship

is a thing precisely forbidden to all followers of the Truth

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Impersonal and Ineffable. That idea is a misunderstanding of

our meaning by our questioner.

Here is another hypothetical question :

" Another perplexing thing to me is the many different ways in

which the 7, 9, and 10 principles of man and the Universe are enumer-

ated. [I must say that our questioner has brains J] In Instructions Nos.

I and II, by H. P. Blavatsky, it is said that Atman is not really a

principle of man at all, but that the Auric Envelope makes up the

seventh. But yet in our esoteric meetings, Atman is often spoken of

as belonging to man. The esoteric and exoteric enumeration of these

principles differ, and often Manas is called but one principle, then

again divided into two and the Lower Manas joined with the Kma

principle, etc. 1 '

These well-taken points, of course, are something that each one

must solve for himself, by studying the literature which we already

have, so ably written by our older students. Of necessity the

seven principles are subject to different methods of enumeration,

because each method of enumeration or presentation in dia-

grammatic or paradigmatic form, merely shows another vista of

the truth, shows another facet or way of looking at the one Jewel.

So a man, if he were in India, who desired to study that wonderful

monument of beauty, the Taj Mahal, would not merely look at it

from the front and then go away, but would go inside of it, and

study it in detail ; and go to the back of it ; and to the right and to

the left, thus seeing all sides of it, meanwhile gathering all infor-

mation possible from authorities. In much the same way the

seven principles, or the ten, are subject to different methods of

presentation. As a matter of fact, Atman is put as the seventh

principle, because it is the permanent root of our being ; but if

we knew the Kama-principle were that root, then it should be

called the seventh, or rather the first or highest, as being the root

of our being ; or the Manas, under similar conditions, should be

called the seventh. The Atman is put as the first or highest

because the seven principles of man are considered in a generaliz-

ing way, and the Atman or Self being the root or the highest

element of being is considered as one of the seven principles,

though in reality it is a universal principle.

Our third hypothetical question shows how deeply our ques-

tioner has thought :

" The doctrine of cycles, and the exact number of years the human

race will take in one Manvantara or a Day and Night of Brahm& to

reach the 7th Race and 7th Round, taken in conjunction with the

doctrine of free will, always somewhat puzzles me ; why does not man's

free will and failures continually keep upsetting the exact number of

years it takes him to reach to certain future Rounds and Races ? In

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 269

Theosophy, The Path of the Mystic, Katherine Tingley says that

Humanity has passed the worst point, the crucial point, in its evolution,

and that no powers in heaven and hell can stay its progress, but yet

she keeps on talking to Humanity as if it were on the brink of destruc-

tion."

Certainly our questioner is a thinker, and that is an excellent

thing. In the first place, in the large sweep of things, taking the

seven Rounds as a Kalpa or as a whole, and even more strongly

so as regards the Solar Kalpa, that is, the cycle of the Solar

System, the exact number of years of even a human's many

incarnations is definite and set, in much the same way as the

number of turns (or days and nights) which our globe, the Earth,

makes in one year, or one revolution around the sun. In other

words, the number of days is set and determined in a year, or the

number of days in a lunar cycle or month. But while that is so

in the general sweep of things, the doctrine of free will which

man has, is a very real truth, and man's failures or successes do

work to retard or to hasten the number of a human being's

incarnations, for instance, which briefly covers the question our

questioner has asked.

The total number is set ; but just as the bodies of the solar

system, the planets, as is known to astronomers, sometimes due

to their perturbations are occasionally a little behind or a little

ahead in time, nevertheless in the long run they " arrive on time ",

as if they were endowed with consciousness, and had to arrive at

the goal at the time when the hour is set therefor. So man's free

will can alter the course or time-periods of his incarnations but

not their number. In any Round, in any Root-Race, he can

change them in that respect, but he will have to pay for it by

Karmic retribution, for a reaction sets in ; and there will be an

adverse current running the other way. Shall we say, finally, that

man has no free will because he is bound to a globe which he

cannot voluntarily leave ? Of course not, although he is, nolens

volens, carried around the sun by our globe's annual course.

There is much more that might be said to clarify this point ; but

it is too strictly esoteric to speak of here.

As regards our Teacher's words, permit me to point out that our

questioner has quoted the Teacher exactly, as far as the sense

goes. It is a fact that we have passed the worst point, the crucial

point, in our evolution. It was the middle of the Fourth Race

of this Fourth Round. Things could not have been worse from

the spiritual viewpoint, in our entire Manvantara. It was the

midmost or lowest point of several cycles. We, as a racial body,

passed through it successfully, but many, many entities fell and

took the " downward path ", of which we have so often spoken.

" But yet she keeps on talking to Humanity as if we were on the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

brink of destruction ". Do not you know that even in this Fifth

Root-Race, as was pointed out in the last two or three meetings,

we have not yet reached the middle point of the Fourth Primary

Sub-race thereof its middle and therefore dangerous point ?

And that the great racial catastrophe due for our Fifth Root-Race

has therefore not yet come upon us ? As H, P. Blavatsky pointed

out in 1887 or 1888, the great tidal waves and earthquakes occur-

ring in the last few thousand years seem to be premonitions of

what a few more thousands of years will bring upon us with

augmented force.

The last question is :

" The names given to the Absolute in its different manifestations

are confusing to me (or perhaps just hard to remember), [Our ques-

tioner has justice on his side. They are not only confusing, but hard

to remember. The more reason for us to study them.]

" In Patanjali's Yoga Aphorisms man's higher Self is called Iswara,

in the Bhagavad-GM, Purusha ; again it is often called Atman.

In Chapter VIII of the Bhagavad-Git& the names Adhydtman, Adhi-

bhuta, Adhidaivata, Adhiyajna, Brahman, and so forth, are all used

with very subtil differences of meanings/'

They are ; but the meanings are also explained in the first

part of Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter VIII. We may here point out

that even as in the arrangements of the seven principles in the

various books, these names are attempts to show other or different

views of the one thing.

In conclusion, we will translate these five Sanskrit names, which

you will find in Chapter VIII of the Gita. Adhyatman means the

Original Atman or Self, equivalent to Paramatman, or Supreme

Atman, the highest of the Hierarchy. Adhibhuta means that

supreme thing, or the higher egoic principle or original element,

in us coming over from other manvantaras ; it is, so to say, the

incarnating essence of the element. Adhidaivata means more

divine, the highest part of all from the serial standpoint, the

hierarchical standpoint, considering various stages. Adhiyajna

means the greater, the superior, sacrifice. Krishna in the high

spiritual sense was the greater Sacrifice, the Primal Sacrifice, the

first Initiator on the part of the Hierarchy of Compassion, a

sacrifice through pure love and compassion, than which, in men,

there is nothing more sublime, because it makes us as one of the

gods.

And, finally, Brahman, the last word, is, as we all know, a

Sanskrit word of which the essential root means expansion ; it

is that part of the celestial economy which first initiates mani-

festation, the expansion of the one into the many.

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CHAPTER XXIII

THE SUN AND THE PLANETS. THEIR ROLE IN THE

EVOLUTIONARY DRAMA.

The most mystic of discourses inform us, that the wholeness of him (the

sun) is in the supermundane orders : for there a solar world and a total light

subsist, as the oracles of the Chaldaoans affirm.

Unwearied nature rules over the worlds and works,

That heaven drawing downward might run an eternal course,

And that the other periods of the sun, moon, seasons, night, and day, might

be accomplished.

PROCLUS : Commentary on the Tim&us of Plato 264, 4 and 323 (Cory).

PIE SECRET DOCTRINE, Volume I, pages 279 and

280:

Whatever may be the destiny of these actual writings in a

remote future, we hope to have proven so far the following facts :

(1) The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism, except in the Hindu

sense of the word ndstika, or the rejection of idols, including every

anthropomorphic god. In this sense every Occultist is a Ndstika.

(2) It admits a Logos or a collective " Creator " of the Universe ; a

Demi-urgos in the sense implied when one speaks of an " Architect "

as the " Creator " of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never

touched one stone of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the

manual labour to the masons ; in our case the plan was furnished by the

Ideation of the Universe, and the constructive labour was left to

the Hosts of intelligent Powers and Forces. But that Demi-urgos is no

personal deity, i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god, but only the

aggregate of the Dhy&n-Chohans and the other forces.

As to the latter :

(3) They are dual in their character ; being composed of (a) the

irrational brute energy, inherent in matter, and (6) the intelligent soul

or cosmic consciousness which directs and guides that energy, and

which is the Dhydn-Chohanic thought reflecting the Ideation of the

Universal mind. This results in a perpetual series of physical mani-

festations and moral effects on Earth, during manvantaric periods,

the whole being subservient to Karma. As that process is not always

perfect ; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding

intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even

results very often in evident failures therefore, neither the collective

Host (Demi-urgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are

proper subjects for divine honours or worship. All are entitled to the

grateful reverence of Humanity, however, and man ought to be ever

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striving to help the divine evolution of Ideas, by becoming to the best

of his ability a co-worker with nature in the cyclic task. The ever

unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause of all

causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy and ever untrodden

ground of our heart invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save through

" the still small voice " of our spiritual consciousness. Those who

worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified

solitude of their Souls ; making their spirit the sole mediator between

them and the Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests,

and their sinful intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial

victims to the Presence.

We proceed to gather up this evening more of the scattered

threads left over from our former studies. First, let us look a

little more closely into what is meant by a Bodhisattva. It will

be remembered that a Bodhisattva was spoken of as the personal

man relatively perfected ; the case where the personal entity had

become an impersonal entity, as said before ; where mortality

had put upon itself the vesture of Immortality ; in other words,

a case where the personal man has become an Awakened One or

a Buddha short of Buddahood complete by only one stage ; or,

to use the Christian (early Christian-Greek) mystical expression,

a Christ on earth.

Now, a Bodhisattva, being such, practically means what we

might call the Higher Manas, the Higher Self (not the Highest

Self, but the Higher Self) fully developed and in the full radiance

of the dual monad Atma-Buddhi, and thus forms a fit vehicle, a

fit medium, between the divine and the lower selves of man ; and

thus provides an appropriate channel of communication in cases

where an Avatara is due for manifestation on earth. There could

be no such thing as an Avatara among men were it not for this

medium supplying the necessary psycho-spiritual link. Pure

spirit, in endeavouring to act upon earth, can have neither

effect upon, nor chance of communication with, men, because it

is the actual divine essence, so to say, of the Kosmos and needs

the two spiritual qualities or vehicles Buddhi and Manas-taijasa,

in order so to manifest, and the Bodhisattva, in supplying the

spiritual egoic quality, the intermediate quality, furnishes that

necessary medium or vehicle. The Bodhisattva, furthermore, if,

instead of following its own natural karmic higher course in the

Nirvanic state, chooses by virtue of the compassion inherent in

itself, to remain on earth, as a Helper of mankind, in that case

becomes a Nirmdnakdya, a fully conscious thinking entity upon

this our human plane, minus only the physical body. It is stated

in the Esoteric Philosophy that Gautama the Buddha made that

sublime choice, and furnished the intermediate principle for the

Hindft Avatara SankaracMrya, of whom we spoke at our last

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 273

meeting. There is a tradition and a record among us likewise that

the same Bodhisattva furnished the intermediate principle of the

Avat&ric manifestation called Jesus, as also in two other cases

which we here leave unnamed, the reason being that each race

and each sub-race, as well as every smaller racial cycle of impor-

tance, as we know, is under the particular guidance of a Buddha,

or of minor incarnations or overshadowings by him.

Now Gautama the Buddha was himself an Avatara plus,

i.e., in a larger sense ; that is to say, instead of furnishing an inter-

mediate vehicle from himself, in a minor cycle, he was that

intermediate vehicle himself in his psycho-spiritual totality,

inspired by his own divine nature, and with his own physical body

as the " temple " thereof, differing in that respect from an

Avatara per se, in which the intermediate vehicle is furnished

by the Bodhisattva-Nirmanakaya of the Buddha under whose

governance or rather overseeing the particular race in which the

Avatara appears, runs its course as a minor cycle of the Greater

Racial Cycle of that Buddha himself. An Avatara, therefore,

requires the Bodhisattva of the Racial Buddha as a vehicle in

order to manifest upon earth at the time he is due to appear. A

Buddha does not, because, although an Avatara in the sense of

being under the direct and fully actual illumination of his own

Divine Self (which is a Superterrestrial Bodhisattva, studied at

our last meeting), he has Karman behind him. It is the direct and

actual reincarnation of a Divine Man, which an Avatara is not.

An Avatara is, in a sense, an illusion or maya, because the inter-

mediate or egoic quality the offspring metaphysically of Karman

is lacking there and has to be furnished by the Bodhisattva-

quality or vehicle.

An Avatara, formally only, stands higher than a Bodhisattva,

but it is a higher stage merely of form of and in a hierarchy, and

not from the evolutionary viewpoint. A Buddha becomes such by

self-directed evolution, the great truth that our Teacher Katherine

Tingley so often tells us of. An Avatara comes by karmic

racial necessity at certain epochs in the world's history ; a Buddha

does so likewise, but also by personal choice out of an immense

compassion for his inferior fellow-beings still involved in the toils

of material existence. There is the difference, and a very impor-

tant one it is to remember for our future studies.

We might say in passing that (as our Teacher, I believe, once

said here) these our studies are doing more for us in a spiritual

and intellectual sense in these present meetings than has been

done for any similar body of students for thousands of years in

the immediate past. We can see at least one reason for it. That

reason is as follows. At about our present period, what is called

a " Messianic cycle " is ending, and, naturally, a new one is

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opening a Messianic cycle running 2160 years, in definite, exact

figures. These cycles succeed one another continuously. So if

we choose to count backwards, we can say, if we like, that the

European Messianic cycle which is ending, or out of which we

are emerging, is that inaugurated for Europe by Jesus, the Avatara.

Interesting thoughts come up in this connexion which we may

safely leave for consideration at another time.

So much for those threads.

Please remember that evolution comprises two lines of action,

as it were, two forces running collaterally, that is to say the

spirit or the developed side of existence, on the one hand, and

that of the undeveloped side on the other hand : otherwise

darkness and light, or the selfish and the compassionate, which,

you will remember, is a subject that we alluded to somewhat in

studying the fifth of the seven Treasuries of Wisdom of the

Hierarchy of Compassion which is the unselfish or immortal side

of existence, which we studied more or less fully at our last

meeting last week.

Now the action and interaction of these two lines of energy

supply the motive forces behind evolution, behind progress ;

and the course which evolution takes, really arises in, springs out

from, and is inaugurated by, the impulses at the opening of the

Manvantaric Cycle given to the dark or matter-side of existence

by the Dhyani-Chohans, I mean by the higher parts or Entities

of this Hierarchy of Compassion studied at our last meeting.

It is the keynotes furnished by them, the primal and original

impulses depending of course upon destiny (or karman) which

give the originating plan and the driving power behind everything

that happens in that Manvantara throughout its cycle of evolution

until its close ; and while free-will exists in man as soon as he has

learned to obey the spiritual statutes of self-consciousness, this

free will itself, being a divine energy _ and in a sense springing

itself from the general Dhyan-Chohanic impulse, can in no

circumstances militate against, be contrary to, or adversely

affect, the general evolutionary current which bears the manifold

hosts of entities of manifestation always towards the ultimate goal,

signalized by H. P. Blavatsky in the ancient saying, " The Day

Be With Us ", the end of a Manvantara or the opening of Pralaya.

Thus, then, these two lines of energy are eternally co-active

using the word " eternally " in the sense of lasting throughout the

Solar Kalpa : on one side, the " dark ", undeveloped forces of

matter ; and on the other side, the Hierarchy of Compassion

with its innumerable units urging the hosts of evolving beings

forward in one direction, the whole effort of the Hierarchy of

Compassion being to raise other less developed beings or units

from the matter-side up into the " light-side ". The entities of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 275

the Hierarchy of Compassion in past Manvantaras were them-

selves thus so raised by other Hierarchies of Compassion, now by

this time far, far ahead of us in evolution ; and it is our sublime

destiny in the future Kalpa ourselves so to guide the entities

behind us now, a process called the " Passing on of the Light ",

as the Greek and Latin poets put it.

Furthermore, as briefly alluded to at our last study, please

remember that the ancient initiations, and the Mystery-Schools

in which those initiations took place, were established solely for

the purpose of " forcing " or quickening the evolution of fit and

proper candidates. They were established from the same motives

of Compassion that presided over the acts of the Great Actors of the

Primal Drama, the opening acts of our Manvantara. They copied,

as it were in miniature, what took place in those primordial times,

and what took place in actual life in the Hierarchy of Compassion

on our earth, or that section, rather, of the Hierarchy of Compassion,

which we call the Great White Lodge.

Now, let us turn a moment from these loose threads of thought

which we have here gathered up and woven more neatly into our

theme, to another collateral and very important matter upon

which we have touched but lightly, because the questions involved

are so profound that it was impossible in treating of one subject,

adequately to make the meaning clear without temporarily

dropping our main theme ; but it is likewise necessary not to go

too far ahead and leave these loose threads behind : we must

gather them in also and weave them into the fabric, into the

picture, which we are endeavoring to make.

We refer more particularly to the role which the sun and the

planets of our Solar System play in the evolutionary drama.

There are great mysteries connected with this, and we are told

very plainly that not merely the ultimate Word but even speci-

fying explanations in no circumstances are given out except

to those who have pledged themselves irretrievably and irre-

vocably to the Lodge ; and even then they are given out only with

" mouth to ear ", and " at low breath ". And, furthermore, only

to those, says H. P. Blavatsky, who have passed successfully

their fourth initiation, which consists very largely in the personal

and individual experiencing of the teachings given in the three

preceding stages three stages of preliminary teaching and training,

leading to actual personal experience thereof in the fourth ini-

tiation, in which, we are told, the candidate must leave the body

of flesh, yea, even the brain-mind, behind, and become that of which

he was taught ; because only by being can he know. But never-

theless a great deal has been openly said that is, to the student,

very illuminating as regards these subjects.

First, at various times we have spoken of the sun, of our solar

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orb, as the central locus of our Solar System. So it is, not merely

physically but also in other ways. The sun, paradoxically but

truly, supplies most of our material, vital powers ; and it is

interesting to note that the nearer the planets are to the sun, as a

general rule, the more dense they are. Mark well that Mercury,

the planet of Bodha and of Wisdom, the particular guardian and

initiator in the Mysteries, is the nearest to the sun (but one) of

our seven planets, i.e., the seven Mystery-planets. Note the words

" but one ". You will remember that the ancients spoke of seven

" Mystery-Planets ", Saturn, Jupiter, Mars I give them in the

old order Sun, Venus, Mercury, and Moon. This matter we

shall develop somewhat in diagrammatic form later this evening

if we have the time.

The intra-mercurial planet, as it is called, according to our

teaching became practically invisible to the physical eye during

the Third Root-Race, after the fall of man into physical generation.

On March 26, 1859, a body was seen crossing the solar disk,

making what astronomers call a transit. That body has not been

seen again ; but there are other reasons which have induced some

astronomers to believe that there actually is an intra-mercurial

planet (although they cannot find it again despite the search for

it) such as the perturbations of Mercury. An attempt at ex-

planation of these perturbations has been recently made, based on

the relativity-doctrines of Einstein, and that explanation is now

in fashion ; nevertheless our teachers say that there is an intra-

mercurial planet ; we may call it " Vulcan ", as the astronomers

so called it.

Now, even if Vulcan became invisible during the Third Root-

Race, it could yet become visible in transit, that is in crossing the

sun's disk, as this body was actually in 1859 seen to do, because

although invisible to our unaided sight, yet through the lens of a

telescope when turned upon the unsurpassed illumination of the

sun's disk, its body could probably be seen against the great

brilliance of the solar orb. The immensely great illumination

provided by the sun would readily throw into shadow, or make

appear as a shadow, any body of less brilliance, or any body

normally too ethereal to be seen otherwise.

The seventh planet, our teaching is, is a planet which under

proper conditions is sometimes seen apparently near the Moon.

It is said that it has a retrograde motion, and that it is slowly

dying. It has reached the end of its cycle. I think it erroneous to

say that the moon " hides "it. That may be a good way, perhaps,

of expressing a certain appearance, but I think it is a misleading

one. Let us keep the facts just as they were given us, that it is

sometimes " seen apparently near the moon ", that it has a

retrograde motion, and that it is slowly dying.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 277

Now Vulcan is in one mystic sense the highest of the seven

sacred planets ; perhaps not the least dense, but in one sense the

highest psychologically ; and we have reason to believe that the

other planet sometimes seen apparently near the moon is perhaps

the lowest of the seven sacred planets. This does not mean that

our teaching limits the number of the planets of the solar system

to seven. On the contrary, we are taught that there are many more

planets in the solar system than are known to astronomers, some

perfectly invisible, because they are on planes both higher and

lower than our plane. There are planets in our system higher than

ours, higher than any planet visible to us ; there are also planets in

our system much lower than ours, much lower than any planet

visible to us.

These seven especial planets were called " sacred " for a reason

most difficult openly to explain ; but we may say this, that the

seven planets which we on earth (please note the qualification)

call sacred, are those planets (and the earth is not one of them)

which are the Upadhis, a Sanskrit word meaning " bearers " or

" carriers " (to us) of the seven Solar Forces. They are all

" higher " in that sense, or from that point of view, than is the

earth ; and they are all intimately connected with this earth, and

provide this earth not with its principles but with spiritual and

intellectual and psychical and astral and vital powers, so to say.

These seven sacred planets, moreover, are our " Makers 11 , and

oversee our destiny.

Now this is a bit of the genuine ancient astrology. It is not

merely to the physical body of the seven planets that we allude ;

doubtless each physical planet or rather globe has its own astro-

nomical forces, such as gravitation and magnetism, and so forth ;

but we are here speaking of the inner or occult action of them.

Each of the globes of our Planetary Chain, moreover, each of the

seven globes thereof, is under the particular watchfulness or care

of one of these seven Mystery-Planets. Furthermore, each Round

is under the particular overseeing of one of these seven sacred

planets. Furthermore, each race on any one of the globes, is

under the particular care and overseeing of one of these seven

sacred planets. For these reasons, as well as for others still more

important and intimate on account of their strait connexion

with our Planetary Chain, were they called the seven " sacred

planets ".

The Sun and Moon are not two of the seven, although for

purposes of esoteric astrology they were substituted for the real

two, because one is apparently near the moon, and one is so near

the sun. Yet for all that, the sun and moon are both closely

in interaction respectively with those two.

Now, with regard to the sun. What is the sun ? Is the sun a

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

physical body only ? It is not. It is not really a physical body,

for it is not gas, it is not gaseous. It is not solid, nor is it liquid

nor gaseous. The sun is a reflexion. What do we mean when we

say a " reflexion " ? We do not mean the word in the full, com-

plete, and exclusive sense in which it is commonly employed,

as when we speak of the reflexion of an image in a mirror. We

mean it in this sense, that the true sun is a body strange as it

may seem to our present-day scientists of energy or force.

Even our modern science is beginning to understand now that

force and matter are fundamentally one thing. Some years ago

everything in the scientific imagination was matter. Now every-

thing has become force to it. Marvelous, that these scientific

gentlemen do not see how easily they change the bases of their

thought, and how dogmatic they so often are as regards each

new series of bases that they assume I But there the fact is.

Even science today tells us that matter is simply force, which is

true. But it is matter all the same. There is no need of running

to one extreme in trying to pull ourselves out of another. No

need of incurring the perils of Scylla in trying to evade those of

Charybdis. Matter exists, it is, it is the upadhi or carrier of

force, and force is also the intrinsic life of matter. But neverthe-

less matter exists ; it is a maya, an illusion indeed, but it exists.

Maya does not mean illusion in the exclusive and full sense of

non-entity. Not at all. Maya actually implies that something

exists to produce it, but that the seer of it does not know what the

reality is behind ; in other words, our senses do not tell us the truth

about the thing behind the manifestation. That is what maya

means, not that the thing itself is non-entity. That view is an

absurdity.

If you examine photographs of sun-spots, if you look at the

sun through a good telescope and center your gaze upon a sun-

spot when it is near a limb of the sun, near an edge, you will see

that as the spot crosses the solar disk, it seems to be black. Now

why does it appear black ? We know that it is not black in color.

Our scientists have proved that fact, but the visible disk of the

sun is so intensely brilliant that the less brilliance of the part

within the spot, though very brilliant itself, seems dark to our

eyes.

Suppose that we were to say, that the sun we see is simply like

the glow around some electrical machines, merely a " reflexion "

of the electrical current as it were, a mayavi manifestation on our

plane of a force so immense that we can form no proper conception

of it. Suppose that we were to think of the sun as occupying no

space (or dimension) at all, and that what we see, that immense

apparent body of light, were like an electrical spark, apparently

a body, apparently occupying space. Suppose that we go a step

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 279

farther and say that the visible sun which we see is matter in its

sixth state of ethereality, and that what is behind that tremen-

dously brilliant veil or reflexion is an atom, so to say, an infini-

tesimal part of matter-substance, matter in its seventh state. It is

easy to follow this thought. The sun is a mass of force ; as even

the medieval philosophers said : " Brother, when a man tells

you that he has seen the sun, laugh at him. He has not. The

sun is invisible. The true sun, the origin and center of these

high forces, is on higher planes, and we merely see on the sixth

sub-plane of our Kosmic Plane this intense brilliance covering

so vast a space as the apparent sun does/'

Furthermore, while the sun gives us our light on earth, it

probably does not furnish us with 30 per cent of the heat that we

have, and then not by direct physical radiation, but in some-

what the same way in which the electric current furnishes us

with heat, or in a similar way. In the same way would be, perhaps,

too strong a manner of putting the fact. Forces emanate from

the solar heart or center and reach the meteoric veils encircling

the earth, and arouse electro-magnetic currents, producing thus a

part of the meteorological phenomena which we experience in

storms and fair weather and rain and snow and ice. The earth

itself produces probably 70 per cent or more of the heat which we

know ; and such things as storms are caused mostly by electro-

magnetic action and reaction, if I may use that expression,

between the innate prana or vital forces of the earth, and the

meteoric continent which surrounds our globe like a veil. For

we are encircled during our Manvantara, and every other planet

of the solar system is similarly encircled during Us Manvantara,

with a thick veil of meteoric dust, most of it very fine, some of

it of more or less large bodies.

Take Venus, for instance, or Mercury. They are surrounded

each one with its own veil of meteoric or kosmic dust : each one

veils her face, or his face. This meteoric veil acts in one sense as

does a cushion, thus forming a protection to its planet. We do

not see for that reason the real face of the planet. But Mars has no

such veil. Why ? Because the vital essence of that Planetary

Chain has left Mars' physical globe for its other globes.

The Teacher asks me to reserve until next week the diagram

which was to have been shown to you this evening, at which

point of study we have now arrived. Let us briefly point out that

the diagram in question is taken from the mystical Syrian thought

in vogue before the Christian era, and represents the exoteric

astrological ideas that the Syrians then had of the relationship of

the planes of being, and necessarily therefore of the planets and

the mystical positions occupied by each of them in the evolu-

tionary drama. They put it this wise. First and highest was

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the Milky Way", which to them was the utmost limit of this

Hierarchy or Universe. Second came the Nebulae and the

Comets, and they were represented in spiritual hierarchy by

the Seraphim. The third grade still lower were the Fixed Stars,

and they were represented by the Cherubim. Then taking a leap

over the immensities of the space of our universe, these old thinkers

of Babylonia, Assyria, Media, and doubtless Persia, and of course

Phoenicia, and all the other countries of Asia Minor, began the

inferior series with the planets of our solar system. First Saturn,

the seat of the Thrones ; then Jupiter, the seat of the Domi-

nations ; then Mars, the seat of the Virtues ; then the Sun, the

seat of the Powers ; then Venus, the seat of the Principalities ;

then Mercury, of the Archangels ; then the Moon, of the Angels ;

then our earth. They also enumerated five Elements an

enumeration which is exoteric, but it is the same as the esoteric

as far as it goes. Our earth, as well as interplanetary space,

comprises these five Elements, and when we say our " earth "

we mean not merely our physical planetary body of this Element,

upon which we move, but the entire sphere comprehended between

the Moon and the earth. These five Elements were named

Ether, Fire, Air, Water, gross matter or Earth. Outside of this

Hierarchy or Universe or Kosmos, they placed the " Celestial

Waters ", even as the first chapter of the Hebrew book of Genesis

speaks of the " Spirit of the Elohim moving over the Waters ".

" Celestial Waters " was a name frequently given by the ancients

to what the Greeks called Chaos, undeveloped matter, or, as we

to-day would say, " spatial deeps ".

Our time of study this evening is drawing to a close. Let us,

however, point out the interesting fact that this same series of the

planets shows us clearly that the ancients must have understood

perfectly well the mechanism of thfe framework of the visible

Solar System, and that, if their thought was geocentric, making

the earth the center of the Kosmos, it was a natural thought ;

and that as man is instinctively anthropocentric, he cannot

naturally think from another standpoint. So, naturally, the

ancient astrologers and astronomers, with their feet on earth,

calculated from the earth, and saw from the earth, and placed

man, looking up towards the spheres of the Solar System, on earth

as the center of observation, even as we do today, not meaning

at all that they knew nothing of the heliocentric system, which

we know they did know.

Look then, what can this mean ? This cannot mean anything

but one thing, and that is, that these planets were so placed on

account of and because of the relative time occupied by each in

making the circuit of its orbit, to wit : Saturn, practically 30

years ; Jupiter, the next " lowest ", practically 12 ; Mars, the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 281

next " lowest ", practically two ; the Sun (or the Mystery-

planet, the sun supplying its place) one year ; Venus, the next

one, 7 months ; Mercury, 3 months ; the Moon, i month. We

would like to point out also that the days of our own common

week are based upon this series, and then we shall close for this

evening.

Why, in putting the planets in the order Saturn, Jupiter, Mars,

Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, did they not make their week of seven

days follow that order ? Why ? Because, dividing the day and

night into 24 hours, each day, beginning at sunrise, opens with

its first hour under the governance of some particular planet.

If you calculate through the 24 hours, beginning with Saturn,

(there being seven planets, seven sacred planets) during the

24 hours they go into 24 three times, with three over. Three

times seven is 21 hours, with three over : 22, 23, 24, the 25th hour

being the first hour of the next day. Three times seven running

through the 24 hours, we find that if the first hour began with

Saturn as presiding planet, the 8th hour would also be under

Saturn, the I5th would be under Saturn, the 22nd would be under

Saturn, the 23rd then would be under Jupiter, the 24th under

Mars, and the 25th hour, the first of the next day, would be Sun

or Sunday. So by taking this list and counting each 4th, begin-

ning with the one just ended, as the first (or adding 3 more to the

hour just ended), gives you the days of the week. Thus : Saturn,

Jupiter, Mars, Sun, SUNDAY. Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon,

MONDAY. Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, TUESDAY (Mars 1 Day) ;

Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, WEDNESDAY, being the Anglo-Saxon

Woden, corresponding to the Latin and Greek terms. Mercury,

Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, THURSDAY (Thor's Day). Jupiter, Mars,

Sun, Venus, FRIDAY. Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, SATURDAY,

again beginning the second or following week.

So the order and names of the days of our week are ultimately

based upon a very interesting and occult reason ancient astrology

explained and given to the world only in the Mysteries as we know

them. The order and names of the days of the week were the

same in India and in Northern Europe, and in some parts of

Asia, a matter which has never yet been satisfactorily explained

by our calendarists and astronomers. The reason is found in the

fundamentally identical astrological system common to the

entire ancient world.

PART II

PART II

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CHAPTER XXIV

THE TEN STAGES OF BEING ACCORDING TO THE SYRIAN SYSTEM.

ESOTERIC METHOD OF TEACHING .* PARADOXES I INTUITION.

Their writings also [i.e., of the Pythagoreans], and all the books which they

published, most of which have been preserved even to our time [i.e., to the time of

lamblichus], were not composed by them in a popular and vulgar diction, and

in a manner usual with all other writers, so as to be immediately understood,

but in such a way as not to be easily apprehended by those that read them. For

they adopted that taciturnity which was instituted by Pythagoras as a law, in

concealing after an arcane mode, divine mysteries from the uninitiated, and

obscuring their writing and conferences with each other.

Life of Pythagoras, p. 56 (lamblichus).

Philosophy, according to his (Plato's) acceptation, being not merely a set of

doctrines but the perfecting of the whole spiritual life.

Plato and the Older Academy, p. 160 (Zeller).

It moves. It moves not.

It is far, and It is near.

It is within all this,

And It is outside of all this.

Isd Upanishad, p. 363 (Hume).

Eus open our study this evening by reading from The

Secret Doctrine, Volume I, pages 435-6, as follows :

Mor Isaac shows the ancient Syrians defining their world of

the " Rulers " and " active gods " in the same way as the Chal-

deans. The lowest world was the SUBLUNARY our own watched by the

" Angels " of the first or lower order ; the one that came next in rank,

was Mercury, ruled by the " ARCHANGELS " ; then came Venus, whose

gods were the PRINCIPALITIES ; the fourth was that of the SUN, the

domain and region of the highest and mightiest gods of our system, the

solar gods of all nations ; the fifth was Mars, ruled by the " VIRTUES " ;

the sixth that of Bel or Jupiter was governed by the DOMINIONS ;

the seventh the world of Saturn by the THRONES. These are the

worlds of form. Above came the four higher ones, making seven

again, since the three highest are " unmentionable and unpronounceable."

The eighth, composed of 1,122 stars, is the domain of the Cherubs;

the ninth, belonging to the walking and numberless stars on account

of their distance, has the seraphs ; as to the tenth Kircher, quoting

Mor Isaac, says that it is composed " of invisible stars that could be

taken, they said, for clouds so massed are they in the zone that we

call Via Straminis, the Milky Way " ; ... That which comes after

and beyond the tenth world (our Quaternary, or the Artipa world),

u 285

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

the Syrians could not tell. " All they knew was that it is there that

begins the vast and incomprehensible ocean of the infinite, the abode

of the true divinity without boundary or end."

Champollion shows the same belief among the Egyptians.

We continue our study tonight from the point where we stopped

last week. The main thought this evening that seems to call first

for further illustration is the subject of the bi-polar nature of

being, that is to say, that there are two interacting energy-

substance lines in the Kosmos, which together comprise the

totality of all evolutionary processes : first, the lower, the Kosmo-

kratores, or World-Builders ; and second, the higher, the Intelli-

gences impelling the former into action and overseeing their

evolutionary ways. The second class is of course the higher, and

comprises what we, following H. P. Blavatsky, have called the

Hierarchy of Compassion.

Now these two lines of action, or classes, may also be called

(a) the Left-Hand or Matter-Side, and (b) the Right-Hand or

Spirit-Side, i.e., (a) the Builders, the Kosmokratores, who are in

fact (in one sense) the lower principles of (b) the Dhyani-Buddhas,

who are the Right-Hand, or Spirit-Side, of being, which latter are

of the Inner Kosmos, as the Kosmokratores or Builders, also

called Planetary Spirits or Dhyani-Chohans of a lower grade, are

of the Outer or Material Kosmos, i.e., as said above, the left-hand

side, the matter-side, the night-side, the dark side.

From the interaction of these two quasi-opposing Forces (or

Elements) in Nature come into self-consciousness the innumerable

monads of Inner and Outer Space, because this night-side or

matter-side, is made up of the lower principles of the Light-Side,

as it were ; and these lower principles are composite, formed of

simply innumerable numbers of monads in almost infinitely vary-

ing degrees of development. The higher monads form the vehicles

of the Dhyani-Buddhas, the Hierarchy of Compassion ; but there

are monads, hosts of them, of intermediate and lower degrees, and

of still lower and of the lowest degree ; and the lowest form the

material world, which we see around us. As said above, from the

interaction of the indwelling force and of the vehicle in which it

works, or, in other words, from the informing spiritual powers

impelling and urging these monads in various states of evolution

towards further progress, spring the various degrees of conscious-

nesses in Nature. We are some of these monads, both our Higher

Egos and our personal egos. We ourselves are monads in the

particular state of evolution in which we find ourselves ; and we

are on our way to becoming conscious co-workers with Nature :

or, in other words, slowly evolving out (or into) the Dhyani-

Chohans or Lords of Contemplation, the Manasaputras, of future

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 287

Manvantaras. We were, in former Kalpas, or Manvantaras,

monads in a still lower state of evolution than that in which

we are now, forming then the vehicles of Those who are still ahead

of us, and who now still work through us, through our higher and

our personal egos, and who thus inspire us to progress upwards,

and who are, in fact, our Inner Gods : our very Selves, yet

different !

The work of evolution is, in fact, as so often said in these

meetings under the Teacher's explicit instructions, the raising of

the personal into the Impersonal ; the raising of the mortal to

put on the garments of Immortality ; the raising of the beast to

become a man ; the raising of a man to become a god ; and the

raising of a god to become still more largely divine. When we

say " raising a beast to become a man ", we do not, however,

thereby mean the scientific hypothesis miscalled " evolution "

and properly called transformism. The Theosophic doctrine of

evolution is immensely greater, infinitely (if we can use that

expression) more profound, than those scientific theories. A

beast never becomes a self-conscious, thinking man according to

the scientific merely mechanical doctrine of materialistic trans-

formism, any more so than a pile of mortar and bricks self-develops

into a mansion, or a rough block of marble into a noble statue. It

is the inner monad, the indwelling fire, which continually urges

or brings forth into action the latent lives and forces in the atoms.

Each atom in itself is a sleeping soul, and this, awakened, is what

evolves or develops, not the merely physical body. Remember

the threefold category that H. P. Blavatsky gives us : Gods,

first ; Monads, second ; Atoms, third : Gods, the divine or

highest triad ; Monads, the upper triad of the septenary ; and

the Atoms, the lower quaternary of the septenary. Each one of

those atoms, which are simply incalculably great in numbers,

forming the lower quaternary as already said, is a sleeping god,

an embryo god rather. Its inner nature must be brought out,

and that bringing out is evolution, the bringing out of inner

capacities, each atom-entity making, as it does so, its own vehicles.

This is the doctrine of Self-directed Evolution, following the urge,

the primordial impress, of the Dhyani-Chohans. All this has been

set forth by us before, in other studies.

In past studies we have spoken of the Initiations (and of the

doctrine of Evolution taught anciently therein) as being a

" Forcing-School ". We are grateful to our Teacher for reminding

us that this word " forcing " is ambiguous. The word is subject to

misinterpretation. Let us then put in its place the word quicken-

ing, or awakening, the word " quickening " meaning " life " in

contrast with what is inert or dead ; therefore, it was the quicken-

ing, the enlivening, the bringing out of that which is within.

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This idea is the key-thought of the Theosophical doctrine of

evolution.

A beast no more develops mechanically into a man than do

pieces of ivory, and cupfuls of polish, and pieces of wood and rolls

of wire, naturally fall together and take proper form and " trans-

form " themselves into a piano. Impossible 1 What makes a

piano is the architect of it, the man, the thinker ; so evolution

is the working upon and in matter of the spiritual entity which

takes and forms and urges onwards the material vehicles in which

it is. This is the key of the Theosophical doctrine of Evolution.

When we speak of the incarnation of the Manasaputras, the

thinking entities, the " Sons of Mind ", it is of course understood

that they are parts of, or entities from, the Hierarchy of Com-

passion, from the Light-side of Nature ; and while evolution,

the natural evolving (with the primordial spiritual or Dhyani-

Chohanic impress behind it) of Nature into higher beings would

take place and actually takes place continuously, as already

pointed out, that process would be almost interminable in length

of time were it not for the higher beings who give us of their

light and their life, and thereby much more quickly lead us on.

That is what is meant by the Manasaputras 1 " descent into

incarnation ". They are our higher natures, and, paradoxical as

it is, are more largely evolved beings than we are ; they were the

spiritual entities who " quickened " our personal egos, which were

thus evolved into self-consciousness, relatively small though

that yet be. One, and yet many ! As you can light an infinite

number of candles from one lighted candle, so can you, from a

spark of consciousness, quicken and enliven innumerable other

consciousnesses, lying, so to speak, in sleep, or latent, in the

atoms.

This brings us directly to another matter. We all possibly have

heard of " contradictions " in The Secret Doctrine, or in our

esoteric teachings. There are no contradictions there ; there are

apparent contradictions, if you like, but an apparent contradiction

is really the figure of speech called a paradox. It is the famous old

way of the ancient Schools of Occultism, to teach by paradoxes

or by parables, as Jesus is said to have done. There is manifest

a profound knowledge of human psychology in basing teachings

on this principle. The aim is deliberately to arouse the mind, to

astonish, to make the hearer think for himself. You cannot teach

a child to eat or to walk by walking for it or by feeding yourself

for it. It must learn to feed itself. It must itself learn to walk.

Similarly, students, neophytes, must learn to think for them-

selves, to stand upon their own feet. It is, I repeat, a very

profound knowledge of psychology, of human thinking, which

made the ancient Teachers, and makes our Masters of Wisdom

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 289

today, to follow the same old principles, a method which our

Teacher here has instructed us to follow when these studies were

begun. You will have noticed that in no case has any subject

been at first openly and fully stated or followed to its ultimate, first

because it is impossible ; second, because it was obviously neces-

sary to say certain things first, trying to arouse attention, trying

to arouse honest objections not merely criticisms but honest

objections in your own mind which you yourselves must solve ;

and then later other aspects of the subject were brought out and

other sides of the teachings were given. Some of you know this

fact, of course ; but I am speaking more particularly of our

younger and newer members. This method is a system of teaching

diametrically opposite to that pursued in the Western world

since the downfall of the Mediterranean civilizations. The

popular method today is that of the pure brain-mind, of that

mind which is mortal and goes to pieces with the death of the

body. Its forte is the mere memorizing of times, places, names,

dates, etc., in short, everything that can be memorized from

books or daily occurences, and stuffed into the brain ; and this

mind dies. That is one reason why we do not remember our past

incarnations, because our minds were puny and dealt with little

and evanescent things. But, Comrades, the memory of our past

incarnations nevertheless inheres and remains in our higher

natures, for this nature deals only with principles and generals ;

and some day, when we shall have passed out of and beyond our

planet, we shall remember those past lives, unless indeed they be

those cases of incarnations of a lost soul, in which cases there

remain only blank pages, as it were, in the spiritual Volume of

Life.

We are picking up stray threads of thought this evening,

threads which it is necessary, as said before, to weave into the

picture which the Teacher has instructed us to attempt to outline

and to define. Let us illustrate some of these so-called " contra-

dictions " by a few examples. Thus : The moon is older than the

sun ; the sun is older than the moon. No contradiction is here,

but there is a paradox. Again : the sun is older than any of its

planets ; the planets are older than their sun. No contradiction

again, but a paradox. Let us explain these paradoxes at once.

Tracing the evolution of the solar system according to the Esoteric

Philosophy, we point out first that the Milky Way is the store-

house of celestial bodies to be ; as it were, the nursery from

which seeds of future suns go forth to begin their manvantaric

courses. When the time comes for such an event to happen, a

comet, in its primordial ethereal robes, starts forth to enter upon

its peregrinations, and after circling around and passing through

what is to us illimitable Space for long aeons of time, it, driven

2QO

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

by karma, or drawn by karma, or under the guidance of karma,

if you will, reaches that particular region in Space which was

actually the spot or region occupied by itself in a former imbodi-

ment as a sun, and it settles there, and awakens and enlivens and

quickens the solar dust around it (for Space is full of it), and we

then have a nebula. Furthermore, it gathers around itself larger

ethereal remnants of its former self, when it was also a sun ;

and these accrete to themselves other particles " wandering in

Space ", as we can say ; and in due course these other bodies,

with their accretions, become the planets of the new solar system.

What is a planet ? What its origin ? A sun runs through its

kalpic course, its manvantaric period, which is a Solar Manvan-

tara ; and when its time comes to go into pralaya, into its Rest,

its internal force is weakened and it dies. This is not an event

of a day, but an event requiring much time ; and what was its

lowest principle (corresponding to our physical body) disintegrates

into literally innumerable particles. Call them " atoms " if you

like. Remember, please, that the sun is neither solid nor will

it be then, when it dies nor is it liquid, nor is it gaseous. After

its death, it dissolves into innumerable " atoms " or particles,

and these particles begin their long peregrinations through the

fields of Space, wandering in the immense solitudes for long, long

aeons ; until that indwelling entity of the former sun, which has

its own inspiring inner presence, comes again under the form of a

comet and reawakens what is now the solar dust of its former

vehicle-self in the space where it formerly was that dust being the

remnants of its own former body. And these particles of the sun

that was, are attracted to it again, and form its suite of planets.

Thus, in a sense, the planets of a sun are its " moons ".

So, you see, as an entity, the sun is older than any one of its

planetary system, remnants of its former body ; but the planets

are older than the sun that now is, because they actually are

particles of the former sun that was of this plane. Where is the

contradiction ? A paradox, truly, which we had to solve ; for

the solving quickens our intuition, and that is one of the main

aims and purposes of this system of teaching, the quickening of

the intuition. Our brain-mind is a most admirable servant when

under direction, but it should never be our master. It is not even

a good servant ; it has no self-respect. It has no discrimination,

judgment, intuition, nor understanding.

And similar to the above is the paradox concerning the moon.

Perhaps at some future study we may have time to explain it.

Also similar is the case of the planetoids, or the so-called asteroids,

of which there are so many between the planets Jupiter and Mars.

They are remnants of a former solar manvantara.

Further, all the planets not in " obscuration " or sleeping (as

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 291

Mars is) are surrounded with thick and often greatly condensed

clouds of the kosmic dust which they have accreted unto them-

selves ; it actually is the former solar dust of now disintegrated

moons and planets. For over our own heads and over and

around every one of the non-sleeping planets of our solar system,

there is a continent, literally a continent, of this kosmic dust,

so thick is that solar dust and so numerous are the bodies or

particles of various sizes which compose it. It acts as a veil pro-

tecting us from the terrific energy of the sun, acting not merely

as a veil of protection against his rays alone, but also against

other accidents that might happen to us, were there no such

protecting veil surrounding our globe in thick folds.

Mars has at present none or very little of such a protecting

veil, simply because its life-energies have gone to another globe

of the Martian planetary system the Martian Planetary Chain

and the attractive magnetic force which holds together such a

veil therefore is largely absent. But Venus and Mercury, for

instance, have, as we have, such a protecting veil, although much

thinner in Mercury's case than in that of Venus, because Mercury

is just emerging from " obscuration ", and it is what the astrono-

mers see when they look at those planets through their telescopes,

when they see the " clouds ", and note that they cannot see the

face of the planet itself. They really see the veil. We are not

conscious of the veil protecting us. Somewhat like a man in a

room with one of those white net curtains over his window he

can see outwards, and discern what passes in the street beyond ;

but the man in the street cannot easily see him.

As a final example this evening of the use of the paradox in our

study, I take the following. At a former study we said that

Nature never repeats herself. We repeat it this evening : Nature

never repeats herself. In a later study we stated that Nature

does nothing but repeat herself. We repeat it this evening :

Nature does nothing but repeat herself. Contradiction ? No.

Paradox ? Yes. Let us see if we can make this apparent con-

tradiction a little clearer. What are cycles ? Repetitions. What

are hierarchies ? Repetitions. What are the main repetitions

of a general type ? Principles, forces, planets, suns, orbs, atoms,

monads, gods all are manifold repetitions of primal spiritual

impresses. Nature works in no other way than by repeating

herself repetitions on inferior planes of primordial principles

or root- types.

Now, what mean we in saying that Nature never repeats

herself ? Let us here use our common sense. We are not here to

amuse each other with folly. Nature likewise never repeats

herself, because you will never find two principles identical, no

two cycles are identical, no two men are identical, no two monads,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

no two suns, no two planets, no two souls, no two egos are

identical. Our paradox then is solved by remembering that

Nature's method is Unity in endless diversity.

We return now to our main theme. The Syrians had the

following method or system of describing the stages of being

which we represent in the accompanying diagram : I, The Milky

Way, or the first principle. II, Nebula and comets, or Seraphim,

v. Thrones \

Dom/nct+fons

Virtues

ft

Powers

^FORM

0)

Prin c /P o ///ye S

Rrchan gels

I k

1 />

flnqe/3

sphere 2, counting downwards. Ill, The fixed stars, or Cherubim.

These three were the " Formless World ". Then the planets.

IV, Saturn, Thrones ; V, Jupiter, Dominions ; VI, Mars,

Virtues ; VII, Sun, Powers ; VIII, Venus, Principalities ; IX,

Mercury, Archangels. X, Moon, Angels. Earth, Men. These

eight were the " World of Form ".

Then we will draw, if you please, a circle which will represent

a sphere, and let it be our earth ; and we will divide this earth

into five zones, the topmost one being that of Ether ; the one

underneath it being Fire ; the one underneath that being Air ;

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 293

the one underneath that being Water ; and the lowest one being

Earth.

Please understand also that the Syrians conceived of this

World-System as a sphere, as a Kosmos ; hence, our design

must have a circle surrounding it a conventional figure, it is

true, and not implying any particular limitations, but signifying

the bounding circle of that particular Kosmos or Hierarchy. The

Syrians further said that outside of this Hierarchy, of this Kosmos,

there were the " Celestial Waters ", meaning thereby what the

Greeks called Chaos, or Kosmic Matter undeveloped for us, the

Waters of Space, in other words. As regards this metaphor,

" Celestial Waters ", you will remember what the Hebrew Bible

also says about the " spirit of the Elohim " or gods, moving on

the face of the " waters ".

Now, the three highest planes are what we call arupa, or

formless ; and the other seven (or eight) planes are riipa, or

formed. They taught that in the beginning of things, i.e., when

Kosmic Evolution began, the Primordial Essence evolved forth

the most subtil and the most spiritual Element, and this naturally

was the highest, the Milky Way, where all things begin in this

system ; and that the next step in evolution downwards was the

comets and the nebulae ; and then the "1122 fixed stars " ;

and then the various solar systems our own solar system, as an

example, bringing us thus to the first of the seven planetary

regions. Any other solar system would have answered, but ours

naturally was chosen, being ours. Each of these steps down-

wards represents the stage that the evolving Wave of Life had

to pass through before it finally culminated in material existence

as on our earth, for instance ; finally passing through the last

seven stages, the surrounding planes of the globe. First of these

last seven was what we may call the Nameless Element ; then

the Superether ; then the Ether ; and then the Fire ; and then

the Air ; and then the Water ; and then the Earth ; these

elements not being the material things familiar to us by those

names, but, so to say, the spirits of the elements, the primordial

matter of which our " elements " are merely the material repre-

sentation.

You will notice and we point this out in concluding our study

this evening that the Christian Apostle, Paul, speaks of several

of these powers or Elements pertaining or belonging to the

various planets as above described in the Syrian system, such as

the Dominions, and the Virtues, the Thrones, the Principalities,

the Archangels, and the Angels. You will also remember that in

a former study we pointed out that really all Christian mysticism

was founded by Dionysius, the so-called Areopagite, who also used

these same names ; so that in addition to the thoughts which

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Christianity drew from NeoPlatonism, and Neo-Pythagoreanism,

it also drew from (through Paul himself who was a Syrian) these

ancient mystery-teachings as exoterically expressed in the Hier-

archy as shown hi the diagram this evening. But behind this

outward expression there was the same exposition, there was the

same esoteric system and truth, that we have been studying for

some months past.

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CHAPTER XXV

THE MYSTERIES OF SEPTENARY NATURE. CORRESPONDENCES I

GLOBES, ELEMENTS, HUMAN PRINCIPLES. THE SEVEN SACRED

PLANETS OF THE ANCIENTS. RACIAL TIME-PERIODS AND

CATASTROPHES.

But upon this one of those more ancient priests (of Egypt) exclaimed, O Solon,

Solon, you Greeks are always children, nor is there any such thing as an aged

Grecian among you. But Solon when he heard this, What (says he) is the motive

of your exclamation ? To whom the priest : Because all your souls are juvenile ;

neither containing any ancient opinion derived from remote tradition, nor any

discipline hoary from its existence in former periods of time. But the reason

of this is the multitude and variety of destructions of the human race, which

formerly have been and again will be ; the greatest of these indeed arising from

fire and water ; but the lesser from ten thousand other contingencies.

But whatever has been transacted either by us, or by you, or in any other

place, beautiful or great, or containing any thing uncommon, of which we have

heard the report, every thing of this kind is to be found described in our temples,

and preserved to the present day.

The Tim&us of Plato, pp. 446, 447 (THOMAS TAYLOR).

ET us open our study this evening by reading from the

first volume of The Secret Doctrine, pages 611-12,

section 15, entitled " Gods, Monads, and Atoms ".

The exact extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries

of Nature are to be found only in Eastern esoteric sciences. So vast and

so profound are these that hardly a few, a very few of the highest

Initiates those whose very existence is known but to a small number of

Adepts are capable of assimilating the knowledge. Yet it is all there,

and one by one facts and processes in Nature's workshops are per-

mitted to find their way into the exact Sciences, while mysterious help

is given to rare individuals in unravelling its arcana. It is at the

close of great Cycles, in connection with racial development, that such

events generally take place. We are at the very close of the cycle of

5,000 years of the present Aryan Kaliyuga ; and between this time and

1897, there will be a large rent made in the Veil of Nature, and material-

istic science will receive a death-blow.

. , . From the very beginning of Mons in time and space in our

Round and Globe the Mysteries of Nature (at any rate, those which

it is lawful for our races to know) were recorded by the pupils of those

same now invisible ' ' heavenly men," in geometrical figures and symbols.

The keys thereto passed from one generation of " wise men " to the other.

At our last meeting we discussed a diagram showing the Syrian

views, from an exoteric standpoint, of the external and internal

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structure of the Kosmos ; and some of you, who perhaps observed

carefully, will have noticed that this diagrammatic Hierarchy

seemed to be represented as all on one plane. Now that is true,

in a certain sense ; but there is much in connexion with that

fact that we could not then and now cannot speak of, for the

simple reason that we have not as yet laid the foundations for

properly understanding it. Let it then suffice this evening to say

that, as a matter of real fact, the Hierarchies interact and inter-

mingle cross each other in all directions, as it were.

As remarked in a former study, the direction of our evolution

is " outwards " at first, and " inwards " secondly. On descending

the Shadowy Arc or the Arc of Matter in the beginning of the

Manvantara of this our Planetary Chain, the direction which we

followed, as members of our planetary Life- Wave, was from

within outwards, i.e., from inner planes, from inner worlds, con-

stantly proceeding " downwards " that is, into ever-increasing

materiality ; and when we reached the middle of the Fourth

Round on this our Globe, which is the central or turning-point

of the Manvantara of this Planetary Chain, the impulse slackened

and finally reached its close in what we call the Fourth Root-

Race, the Atlantean Race. Thereafter the reverse process began

its action, and progress, advancement, development, retraced

its steps, as it were, in a spiral, the direction thenceforward being

from without inwards, or an ascent in ever-increasing spirituality.

This process of a primal " descent " into materiality, followed by

a " reascent " into spirituality, is the course followed not merely

in the construction, development, and consummation of the

destiny of a Planetary Chain, and of all Planetary Chains, but

also is the course followed in the larger cycles of evolution, such

as the Solar Kalpas, for instance, which comprise, each one,

seven of the Planetary Manvantaras. Seven Planetary Man-

vantaras make one Solar Kalpa ; in other words, seven " Days

of Brahma " or seven Planetary Cycles, each cycle consisting

of seven Rounds, form one Solar Kalpa (or Manvantara).

Now, in order to assist our minds in understanding our study

this evening, in order to help us in conceiving the idea, let us

draw seven circles representing seven globes : three on the down-

ward cycle or Shadowy Arc, one at the bottom or turning-point,

and three on the ascending or Luminous Arc or Cycle. We may

number with the letters of the alphabet (on opposite page).

Now, these circles represent, if you will, the globes of the Plane-

tary Chain, and the evolution of the Life- Wave beginning in Globe

A and running there through its appointed cycles, completing

them, and then entering B ; after completing its course in B,

then entering C ; and then, on ending its course for the Round

in C, entering D, where we are now, and also in the Fourth Round,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 297

We are thus half-way around the course for our Round, the

Fourth, and somewhat more, because we are the Fifth Root-Race

of our Globe D, on which seven Root-Races must run their

course.

Each of these globes, furthermore, is builded out of, and has its

correspondence with, what the ancients called the " Elements ",

that is to say, the bases of the seven Principles of Nature. They

are furthermore called " Rudiments ", not in the sense of some-

thing incomplete, but in the original sense of root-things, origin-

ants. The Sanskrit word for the Principles is Tattwa, meaning

" a reality ", not the Uttermost Reality, the Absolute of any

Hierarchy, but its root-differentiations in manifestation ; and

the word for the Elements is Bhfitas, each Element springing from

its predecessor or superior and giving life and birth to another,

its inferior. The ancients always reckoned four Elements, and

sometimes five ; our School reckons seven in all. The usual

enumeration of the ancients, is as follows : " ^Ether ", " Fire ",

" Air ", " Water ", and, lastly, " Earth ". The last two Principles

to be enumerated, and the last two Elements, the bases of the

former two, have been given no names exoterically, because they

are not yet known by our present senses. Human consciousness

does not yet recognise them, but they are recognised, taught of,

and named, in the Esoteric Philosophy nevertheless ; and they

are called, for the second, Anupapddaka-tattwa, a Sanskrit word

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very difficult to explain in English. The general meaning is that

it does not proceed from anything else, i.e., " parentless ". It

proceeds from itself. Finally, the first of all the seven, the upper-

most on the descending arc of nature, is called Adi-Tattwa or

" original tattwa ", for the Principle ; and Adi-BMta for the

corresponding Element, because it belongs to the same plane of

being of the Kosmos as the Principle Adi-Tattwa, but in a some-

what lower degree, being the base or vehicle of the former, the

Principle.

These Elements, of course, are not the familiar things which

we know under these names, " fire ", " water ", " air ", or

" earth " but these familiar things are their correspondences

on our Earth, in a mystic sense. Now, although the seven Globes

of the Planetary Chain are not the seven Elements respectively,

each to each, yet each Globe is builded up out of them all, and

one of the seven Elements predominates, furthermore, in each

one of the Globes respectively. All this will be elucidated in our

future studies, when we come to study the Lokas and Talas. For

instance, on Globe A : the fire-quality would not be our material

earth-fire : it would there be the spirit of fire, so to say, the root

of fire ; because in the Esoteric Philosophy " Fire " is not merely

the result of combustion, according to modern scientific ideas,

but is an actual Element, a Rudiment, a Base. And similarly

with "Air", proceeding from "Fire", born from "Fire".

And similarly with the Element " Water ", proceeding from

" Air ", born from it ; and again " Earth " born from " Water ",

i.e., the Element " Water ".

It is likewise the old Stoic doctrine, that the Elements give

birth one to another. Manifestation begins on the spiritual plane,

and as the life-impulses reach forth into grosser forms, into

" matter " (to use the popular expression), the succeeding

Elements (Bases, Rudiments) are born, each one from the

preceding one, and from all preceding ones. For instance, " Earth "

is born not merely from the Element " Water ", but likewise

from " Fire ", and " Air ". Furthermore, the seven Rounds of

a Planetary Chain, the seven Globes of a Planetary Chain, and the

seven Root-Races of any Globe thereof, has each its predominating

correspondence with one of these seven Elements. Please under-

stand that we mean not at all the familiar things we know on our

Earth by those names, but the Bases, the Originants, the "spirits "

of them, as it were : the causes, the tattwas, the Real Things

which produce what we see here on our Earth.

Furthermore, the seven " sacred planets ", to which we have

alluded in former studies, are, each one of them, a manifestation,

an incorporealization, of the powers of one of the seven Solar

Logoi, or spiritual Forces of our Solar Kosmos, of which Force-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 299

Elements we may see a faint manifestation, or, if you will, an

adumbration, in the seven colors of the solar spectrum. We

reserve further clearer explanation of this for future studies.

Please note also that our own human seven " principles ",

correspond each one, respectively and relatively, with one of these

Elements. The seven principles and elements of man are a

duplication in him of the seven Principles and Elements of the

Kosmos. The seven Elements, or Bases, or Rudiments, are the

seven Vehicles of the seven Principles of the Kosmos. These

elements are at the same time substance and energy or force,

because energy and substance fundamentally are the same thing.

Matter and force are fundamentally the same thing. It is, as it

were, the upper and the lower side, the inward and outward, the

impulse and its results or fruits.

And furthermore, with regard to the seven sacred planets

mentioned above : when the Esoteric Science of the ancients

spoke of seven sacred planets, certain ones especially were

designated, because, as a matter of fact, each of the planets

known to us is itself connected with seven other planets who are

to it its seven sacred planets. Our earth is not one of the seven

sacred planets of the ancients. Those seven sacred planets were

Saturn ; Jupiter ; Venus ; Mercury ; the planet very near to the

sun, at present invisible but suspected, and called by some

modern astronomers Vulcan ; a sixth which we merely mention,

at present ; and a seventh sometimes seen near the moon by

those who " have eyes to see " I

It will be recollected that it was remarked at a former study

that the Vulcan-planet was first discovered, or supposed to be

discovered, on March a6th, 1859, when it was seen in transit across

the solar disk, and astronomers since then have searched for it and

have not been able to find it. The teaching with reference to that

planet, the highest (in one sense) of our seven sacred planets, is

this, that it became invisible to our physical senses at about the

middle point of the third Root-Race ; but as we have now reached

again, on the upward Arc, the plane corresponding to the degree

of plane-development of the third Root-Race ; in a relatively

short cyclic period, it should begin again to show itself ; but even

today, while it might be generally invisible on account of what

we may call its ethereality, if searched for by telescope it might

nevertheless be seen, under favorable conditions, crossing the

solar disk. And why ? Because the truly indescribable brilliance

of the sun throws anything that appears before it, into visibility,

so to speak, as a darker body, and it could thus be seen as such a

shadowy body crossing the solar disk. At least that is one reason,

probably, why astronomers have searched for this planet and

have or have not yet found it.

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With regard to the seventh mentioned above, which is the

" lowest " of our seven sacred planets, the one esoterically spoken

of as " near the moon ", that planet is in its last or seventh Round,

and is therefore dying. The probability is that it also, to our

present physical senses, is more or less ethereal, and therefore

practically invisible, except in certain very favorable conditions.

Before our planet shall have reached its last or seventh Round,

our Moon will have disintegrated into stellar dust, but by that

time this secret or mystery-planet " near the moon " and now

dying, will be dead, and will be to us as a moon ; not a true moon

in the sense of our lunar mother, but rather a satellite. It will

appear to us as a moon ; and, indeed, will be a " moon ", because

it will be a dead body.

There is a great deal that simply cannot be said at least not

yet about these seven sacred or mystery-planets, for the simple

reason that these studies, by the Teacher's instructions, are to be

published, and we understand perfectly that there are certain

things that the public has no right to know. But we have pointed

out before that the seven principal Dhyani-Chohans, or Lords

of Meditation, are very intimately connected, each, to each,

respectively, with the seven mystery-planets or sacred planets, that

is, the seven which are the sacred planets for the earth. There

are many other planets in our solar system ; but only seven of that

number are our seven sacred planets.

Each other planet, Jupiter, let us say for instance, has its own

seven sacred planets, and all belonging to our solar system, but

not all of them would necessarily be our seven sacred planets. Yet

each one, by the interconnexion or intermingling of the elements

of Kosmic construction, each one of them, I say, is a solar locus.

Here again is something that we must touch upon before we pass

on farther.

Man is higher than the globe he lives on. Man is higher than

the sun. You and I sitting here, occupy a status spiritually

higher than the sun, although it is the spiritual and vital locus

of the solar system. The sun we see is not the true sun. The sun

we see is merely the focus of the titanic forces playing on the

other side, through it. And man is higher than it, and yet comes

from it, from the inner side of it, so to say. Further, as pointed out

in another study, do not be carried away by scientific theories, for

science is absolutely no criterion of spiritual knowledge, which is,

as yet, far beyond its scope or reach. Our physical bodies, i.e., the

body of each one of us, is a kosmos, even, relatively speaking,

a universal kosmos. Even our modern science is beginning to

suspect this truth, and the scientists now speak of the atom,

formed of its electrons and protons, as composing a miniature

solar system. There is no particle of substance or matter which is

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 301

free from life, barren of intelligent life and lives ; and there are

beings in and on the electrons of the atoms of our body which are

higher than the personal self of us is. A sublime thought to think

about ! We have, indeed, higher responsibilities inherent in us

than we dream of. Our body, in very truth, is a Temple of Life !

It may be said by some few who think they know our views, and

who do not, that we speak somewhat harshly of scientific men.

We do not admit the charge, for it is false ; but we have said, and

we now repeat it, that we have no hesitancy in rejecting scientific

theories when we honestly cannot accept them, or believe them

untrue. A f act, per se, is a divine thing. We are grateful for the noble

and often self-sacrificing labors of scientific workers ; nobody, no

people on earth today, is more grateful to science, when it means

classified and ordered knowledge, than are the Theosophists. But

the mere scientific theories of scientific men are another thing

entirely ; and we have no more patience with them when we

believe them untrue, than with any other untruth ; we have

such degree of gratitude and of patience, on the other hand, for

what we conceive that they possess of truth. No more. We

attack no honest man, whatever be his private opinions. We

attack no facts. Every real fact is a friend to us ; and we welcome,

we applaud, we laud, the magnificent efforts of the researches

and researchers into nature ; but to take wholesale and to swallow

at a gulp something that some scientific bigwig may dangle before

our eyes, merely because he attempts to foist his personal opinion

or hobby upon the world, is another thing entirely.

I have received a letter from a friend which is well worth reading

in this connexion at this point. I cite a portion of it with an

included quotation concerning the planet Vulcan : " ' Seeliger

has conclusively shown that there is enough of the cosmic dust

which forms the Zodiacal Light to account for all the discrepancies

in the movements of Mercury ', and so make a ' Vulcan ' unneces-

sary.

" This was written about twelve years ago, and was supposed

to settle the whole difficulty of Mercury's 42 seconds per century

change in perihelion position ". Note first : the perturbations

in the movements of Mercury were first explained by an unknown

planet called Vulcan. Well, Vulcan could not be found again, so

the theorists said that it must be cosmic dust which produces

these perturbations. Second theory : I quote again from the

letter : " Then comes friend Einstein and starts explaining it in

an entirely different way ", and " cosmic dust " in its turn is

scientifically made away with. Then comes " Professor Poor, of

Columbia University and shows that Einstein's theory about

Mercury upsets the positions of the other planets more than it

helps Mercury so there you are !

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" I admire their .wonderful ingenuity in making theories for the

marvels they have discovered under the limited conditions at

their disposal, but we certainly must keep an open mind on the

things which are subject to such various interpretations ".

Very well put. It covers the ground very neatly.

We are nearing the conclusion of our study for this evening, but

meanwhile there is a matter which requires some treatment before

we close, and that is with regard to the Root-Races of any globe

of our Planetary Chain. Take the Races, for instance, of our

own Globe D, of our Planetary Chain, Globe D being the lowest

in the Chain, as you know. Now these Root-Races occupy vastly

more time in their evolution than is commonly supposed. Time

runs into millions of years for any and for each Root-Race. It is

commonly supposed by some who have not read H. P. Blavatsky's

Secret Doctrine with the attention that they should have given to

it, that our Root-Race, the Fifth, is only about one million years

old now. That idea is not true, and H. P. Blavatsky says nothing

of the sort. In Volume II, page 435, of The Secret Doctrine, she

says that our Fifth Root-Race is about one million years old, as

a race sui generis and quite free from its parent-stem. How many

more million years did it require to reach even that point, born as

a Root-Race at about the central point of the Mother-Race ? It

required millions of years for our Race to reach the central point

of its career, where we are now. Our great racial catastrophe,

which will come upon us as their own came in due time upon all

other former Root-Races, and as such a catastrophe will come

upon the two Races which are to succeed our Fifth Race, i.e., the

Sixth and Seventh Root-Races, has not yet reached us, but it is

coming. And we shall then have work to do if we are faithful to

our Teachers, and to our School, during those trying epochs, aeons,

periods, of the far future.

And another thing: While each Root-Race is destroyed

alternately by fire and by water, let us not forget that the other

elements likewise are at work at the same time ; but it is fire

and water more particularly which affect and cause the displace-

ments of continents or rather their submergence ; and the

emergence or rising of the new lands. There is an interesting

point of our doctrines in this connexion, and I now briefly allude

to it.

The teaching is that the First, the Third, the Fifth, and the

Seventh Root-Races, are what may be called aqueous ; and the

Second, the Fourth, and the Sixth those with even numbers-

are what we may call the terreous Races ; in other words, those

with uneven numbers, i, 3, 5, and 7, flourish on our Globe at

times when the oceans cover more of its surface than does the

land ; and the conditions are reversed in the Second, Fourth, and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 303

Sixth Root-Races, when there is more land than water on the

Globe's surface. Fire destroyed the First Race, as it destroyed

the Third Race also ; water destroyed the Second and also the

Fourth Race ; and fire will destroy the Fifth, water the Sixth,

and fire again the Seventh. Now, geologically speaking, it is

this alternation in extent of land or water which brings about this

cyclical condition. Let us try to make this matter a little more

clear. The Third Race perished by fire, which means the action of

subterrene earthquakes and of volcanoes, principally, followed

by submergence. Now the Third Race was an " aqueous " Race,

that is to say, there was then more water on the face of the

earth than land. So today, in our Fifth Race, at about the

middle period of our Race's life-cycle, there is one-fourth as much

land as of water on the surface of the globe, i.e., three times as

much water as land. When our Root-Race shall be drawing

towards its end, the coming catastrophe will be shown by immense

systemic and minor seismic and volcanic disturbances, announc-

ing the submergence of our continental system and the emergence

of new lands for the following Sixth Root-Race, the working of

fire. When the Atlantean system fell, when the Atlantean

continental system had its catastrophe which slowly overwhelmed

it with flood, it was water which caused it. There was then more

land than water ; nature sought a readjustment, a better balance,

and that great system perished by floods. The water came and

submerged the land, of course also accompanied by earthquakes

and the action of volcanoes. We must not imagine that when

a Root-Race perishes through fire or water as the chief causative

agent, that there is then no aqueous or terrene-fire disturbance.

On the contrary, fire and water work together, but the one or the

other then predominates. The Fourth, the Atlantean, was a

terreous period, and Nature followed her usual course in cases of

disturbed equilibrium " and the waters came and overwhelmed

the land/ 1 Whence the " waters came ", is a most fascinating

subject for study, but we have no time to go into it tonight.

Ours is an aqueous period ; and in due course the waters will

slowly tend to disappear, giving place to new lands in the future,

the dwelling-places to be of the next, the Sixth Root-Race.

Katherine Tingley ;

I would like to ask Professor de Purucker if he will make an

explanation which I think would be satisfactory to you, and

which he could do much better than I and show what will be

the state of civilization, what will be the state of humanity, at

the ending of these different races when the end comes ? How

will evolution be marked ? Will not those people who will seem

to be the " victims " of the terrible catastrophe which comes at

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the end of every race, have the knowledge of the secrets of death,

and look upon rebirth as a glorious release ?

Prof, de Purucker :

I think certainly so ; yes, it is so. The end of every race brings

with it a perfection of what that race was striving to accomplish.

And I dare say that if we could look back and know what took

place when the continent of Atlantis sank, we should realize

that even those comparatively few who by death left the physical

body during that catastrophe, had the realization that what they

had to undergo was no more and no less than merely one form of

death inevitable to all men sooner or later. They knew better

than we do now, although far more sunken in matter, that life is

eternal, for, actually, there is nothing but life everywhere ! And

their physicians could have told them, and did tell them, for they

knew, that every disease of our bodies comes about from an

excess of life, particularly what we may call the malignant or

wasting diseases. In these cases it is life running riot in the body,

and that is what causes death. They knew it better than we.

Furthermore, no one should think that in these racial catastro-

phes, every one is swept away in a moment in a fearful confusion

and chaos, and that there is no hope, and that everything is but

wild despair. Not at all. These catastrophes come on slowly.

The continents sink through the ages. Man migrates and leaves

the sinking lands behind, and moves to higher and better ones, new

ones, fresh ones, where new races are born out of what we justly

may call the death of the old.

Nothing, I suppose, that I might mention, could equal the

horror of the catastrophe of Lisbon years ago, when tens of

thousands of people perished in an earthquake ; or the fearful

catastrophe at Messina, in Sicily, only a few years ago ; and other

earthquakes and tidal-waves which you all may remember. We

are in our own great cyclical catastrophe now, though it is but

beginning. How much worse is the agony of heart, let us say, of

one who is at the bedside of one whom he loves ! Ah ! There

you have anguish ! But sudden catastrophes, when they do occur,

occur mostly on a relatively small scale. When the races near

their ends, the continents sink slowly. There are much worse

things than merely losing the physical body, for those whose

destiny it is to be in a racial catastrophe. They will know the

beautiful secrets of death. At the end of our race we shall know

it far better than the Atlanteans did. But not one so perishes

individually, unless it is his personal Karma. How about the tens

of thousands who perish yearly in steamer, train, automobile, mine

and various other accidents ? Pray reflect.

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CHAPTER XXVI

THE MICROCOSM, A MIRROR OF THE MACROCOSM. ELEMENTS,

PRINCIPLES, MANIFESTATIONS OF THE ONE LIFE. RELATIVITY :

A FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTION OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM.

" Man," says Van Helmont, " is the mirror of the universe, and his triple

nature stands in relationship to all things." r . Tr .. , T

I sis Unveiled, I, 213.

. . . there is but one element. . . . This element then is the to speak meta-

physically one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the

phenomenal universe. The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of

ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uniniti-

ates) the sixth principle of the universe call it Punish akti, while to speak of

the seventh outside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five

are but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so

is the universe the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm

but as the drop of rain water is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither

in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many

tendencies for the evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down

to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate

their productive potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of being.

The Mahatma Letters, p. 91.

ET us open our study this evening by reading from The

Secret Doctrine, Volume I, section 16, pages 638-9.

In ancient Symbolism it was always the SUN (though the

Spiritual, not the visible, Sun was meant), that was supposed

to send forth the chief Saviors and Avat^ras. Hence the connecting

link between the Buddhas, the Avataras, and so many other incarna-

tions of the highest SEVEN. The closer the approach to one's Prototype,

" in Heaven/' the better for the mortal whose personality was chosen,

by his own personal deity (the seventh principle), as its terrestrial

abode. For, with every effort of will toward purification and unity

with that " Self-god/' one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual

entity of man is drawn higher and ever higher to the ray that super-

sedes the first, until, from ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the

one and highest beam of the Parent-SuN.

That is a superb passage. It contains in embryo the substance

of our studies for some weeks past. It will be remembered that at

our last meeting, the Teacher spoke of our School as being a

Hierarchy. Verily it is so, because while we form the outermost

circle, as it were, of the Hierarchy of Compassion, we do belong

to it nevertheless, as distinguished from the bulk of humanity,

whose inner fires have not been lighted, as ours have been, at least

in some degree, by our Teachers. We form a body ; and as our

Teacher, sitting here present, is our highest link among ourselves

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

with the Masters, so one of them more particularly is our link

with the spiritual Hierarchy from which we draw our inner life,

spiritual and mental, the one whose duty, self-assumed, it is to

light our fires, so that we in turn may quicken, enliven, and light

the fires of others, who know even less of the Ancient Wisdom than

we do. Our supreme chief is that wondrous Being, who, in his

spiritual capacity, is the Dhyani-Buddha of this Fourth Round,

whose human representative is the Chief of what we commonly

call the great White Lodge, he to whom our own Masters look up

for quickening and enlightenment, he who lights their fires as

they light and quicken ours.

How is this quickening and lighting done ? How was it that

the Manasaputras worked, in their incarnations in the hitherto

senseless humanity, to raise man if we can give to the humanity

of that time that name from spiritually and mentally senseless

beings to self-conscious humanhood ?

Listen. Every one of the seven principles of man, as also

every one of the seven elements spoken of at our last meeting

(corresponding in the Kosmos to the seven principles in man), is

itself a mirror of the universe, that is, it contains in itself every-

thing that the Boundless All contains. Everything is in the

microcosm that exists in the Macrocosm ; the one, the less,

mirrors the other, the greater. In other words, each of the

elements, each of the principles, each of the rudiments to blossom

forth later into divinity, is itself a septenary or sevenfold entity,

existing on its own septenary plane, which to it is as palpably

certain, real, and substantial as this our physical plane is to us

as seen through our physical eyes and heard through our physical

ears, or sensed by the media of the other senses, two more of

which, by the way, are still to be developed.

Now each one being a septenary, each one of these Principles

or Elements is a copy in miniature, if we may use that word, of

the Whole. For instance, the principle of Manas is septenary.

It has its own atman, its buddhi, and its manas the Manas-

manas, which is its own particular essence, or swabhava ; next,

its kama or desire-principle ; then its vital essence ; then its

garment, its linga Sarira, or model-body, so to say, that which

gives it its own particular shape and conformation, according to

the qualities of that plane ; and finally its sthtila-sarira, or

lowest portion or vehicle or carrier or bearer.

Now, these Manasaputras or " Sons of Mind ", children of

Mahat, are said to have quickened and enlightened the Manas-

manas of the manas-septenary, because they themselves are

typically manasic in their essential characteristic or Swabhava.

Their own vibrations, so to say, could cause that essence of manas

in ourselves to vibrate in sympathy, much as the sounding of a

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 307

musical note will cause sympathetic response in something like

it, a similar note in other things.

Who are these Manasaputras ? They are ourselves in a sense,

but we are rather and more particularly those who were quickened

and enlivened. They are a mystery ; they are at once our higher

selves not our highest selves but our higher selves, and yet

different. We have shown in past studies that from the One

springs all the manifold differentiations of a Kosmic (or any other)

Hierarchy, and that there is a perfect kinship or unity of being

throughout. These sublime thoughts can be very clearly under-

stood if we awaken in ourselves that portion of our nature to

which they are native and familiar. We can do it, and it depends

upon us to do it. Why is it that the Masters choose, from time

to time, a certain one or certain ones, and take him or them to

themselves ? Because they see in those so selected the inner

Master already quickened, enlivened, at least to some extent.

Would they take a beast ? No. Why not ? Because the beast

is not quickened. Would they take an ordinary man ? No.

Why ? Because the man is not quickened, he is not awakened,

he is not yet conscious in himself of the inner essential Buddha,

the Awakened One. There is no question of arbitrary choice

about this fact. It is a selection and an election of the fit and

proper ones ; it is therefore just, it is therefore right.

Let us pursue this thought a little more. Let us take Nature

and consider her Elements. Now this word " Element " is from

the Latin and it means one of the rudiments of things, the word

" rudiment " in its original sense. The Sankhya especially, one

of the six accepted schools of philosophy of India, and also even

the Vedanta perhaps the noblest of the six Indian Schools

both speak of the six original " producers " or Elements of Nature

as Prakritis, the six prakritis derived from the primal Prakriti, or

root-Prakriti, the first and highest. The Sankhya also speaks of

them and so do many students of the Vedanta, as the six Tattwas

or real elements. Now what is the difference between the six

Elements or prakritis, and the six tattwas ? The prakriti is the

vehicular or bearer or carrier-side, so to say, the substantial side,

and the Tattwa is the analogic or force-side. And these two

fundamentally are one, because, please remember, matter and

force, spirit and substance, are both fundamentally one. Matter

can be called crystallized spirit. We have to hunt for words in

any attempt to describe these things ; hence this is an inadequate

expression, but it perhaps conveys the meaning. Para-Brahman

and Mtila-Prakriti, or " beyond-Brahman " and " root-nature "

of the Vedanta and the Sankhya, represent the same thought, and

these two fundamentally are one. Root-nature is the veil, as it

were, of the primordial energy, the primordial consciousness ; and

3 o8

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

these prakritis in the Sankhya, these six or seven prakritis, stand

for the six or seven Elements of Nature, corresponding to our

human seven principles or six principles. And these are born, or

issue rather, one from the other, as pointed out in our study of

the seven globes in our study last week. That prakriti which is

the higher plane is the parent of the prakriti which is the lower

plane. First the primordial one gives birth to the second ; Atman,

let us say, gives birth to Buddhi. And Atman and Buddhi com-

bined give birth to Manas, issuing from the two former, and con-

taining the qualities of the preceding two as well as its own. And

Atman, Buddhi, Manas then give birth to Kama, the fourth in

order ; and so on down to the seventh or lowest.

Similarly Globe A, the first on the descending arc, gives birth

to Globe B, and Globe B gives birth to Globe C ; but it does so

with the swabhavic tattwa of Globe A also working in it. And

Globe C gives birth to Globe D, our earth, but with the tattwas

or intrinsic individualities or swabhavas of A and B in it also.

Globe D thus has the tattwas of Globes A, B, and C inherent in

it in addition to its own individual characteristic or swabhava.

When the evolutionary impulse has reached its limit in any

one manvantara and the limits vary in every manvantara,

because there is no absolute point or position in space, nor any

one particular plane where every evolutionary manvantaric

impulse in the Boundless must stop, for so many monads, so many

hierarchies have so many respective evolutionary impulses and

their respective ends : that is, when that outrushing impulse that

comes from above, carrying these prakritis and principles down

into greater manifestation of matter, has reached the limit

possible for that particular manvantara, it then turns, as it were,

around the goal and begins the reascent.

Now we in our Planetary Chain have passed that goal or turning-

point of the Rounds. In each of the races on any globe of the

Chain, furthermore ; in each of the globes during any Round ;

and for each of the Rounds passing through all the seven globes ;

there is a mid-point in its respective evolutionary course, and

that mid-point is its respective goal or turning-point, where the

respective cycle begins a reascent. Hence, there will then be a

sudden rising of the evolving monads or entities ; and corre-

spondentially senses hitherto latent and undeveloped will be

developed, and the principles in nature which we now do not

cognise will then be cognised and known. Ether, for instance, of

which we have a mere presentiment today at the middle-point

of our Fifth Race in the Fourth Round, recognised even by science

and spoken of, will, during the Fifth Round become an actuality

in what will then be the atmosphere, as palpable and plain to the

senses as air is today to us.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 309

So, then, when speaking of the Elements or the Prakritis, we

do not mean that the " earth " and " water " and " air " and

" fire " spoken of by the ancients as " elements ", are the real

Elemental Prakritis of Nature. That is absurd. The ancients

used those words symbolically. These four (or five things, includ-

ing ether) are merely manifestations four of them so far

developed of four or five out of the seven sub-prakritis or sub-

principles belonging to the lowest prakritic Element as manifest

at this stage on our fourth globe, corresponding to the seventh

or lowest Kosmic Plane or Prakriti.

As each Principle is itself a sub-septenary and mirrors the

Boundless, so does each Element mirror all the other Elements ;

and from each Element can be drawn the life and nature and

characteristic, in minor degree, of course, of all the other six.

The above-named qualities of the matter of the seventh or lowest

prakriti of our Globe, that is to say, solidity, fluidity, air (there

seems to be no corresponding adjective in English for air, or for

the following one), fire, are merely the correspondences of the

similar sub-prakritis of the four Kosmic Elements or Prakritis in

which our Planetary Chain exists now. Ether as an " element "

will come next ; and in the sixth Round will be developed the

sixth element ; and during the seventh Round will be developed

the seventh. None of the ancient philosophers of the Mediter-

ranean countries, when speaking of " earth ", " water ", " air ",

" fire ", " ether ", nor the Hindus, when speaking, for instance

of Akaia or of Adi-Tattwa, meant the material things which we

can sense, such as earth and water. They meant the Root-

Elements of Nature, of which these four or five things that we

sense, are, as it were, presentments or symbols.

Now, the Greeks called the Elements " Stoicheia " a plural

diminutive of the word " stoichos ", meaning a series, in other

words a hierarchy. The singular " Stoicheion " would be an

entity of a hierarchy, a part of it, one of the composite parts of

the hierarchy, although modern scholars can trace no ostensible

reason for giving this name to what they recognise as being the

ancient conception of the Element of Nature. But our philosophy

shows why, and explains that the stoicheia are the seven Prak-

ritis of the Kosmos. Each of the globes of our Planetary Chain

is an imbodiment of all these Elements or seven Prakritis, but

in the manner outlined above, of each Element containing in

parvo all the others. Our earth, for instance, is an imbodiment or

representation of the lowest Prakriti, but there is water and there

is air and there is fire, and we know that there is ether in develop-

ment. We know four and recognise five, an exemplification

of what has just been said. Nevertheless, the seven globes

of our Planetary Chain are not the respective correspondences

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

of the seven Kosmic Elements. This would be a " false

analogy ".

Each one of the grades of initiation, of which we have spoken

before, corresponds to one of these seven Kosmic Elements ; and

the trials through which the initiant or candidate must pass in

order to prove his capacity, are regulated and governed by the

nature of each one respectively of the seven Prakritis. There are,

as a matter of fact, ten grades or degrees of initiation and ten

Kosmic Prakritis seven in manifestation, and three Root-

Prakrit is or the highest ; but as so often pointed out, in our

studies, the uppermost three are so far beyond our utmost

capacity of understanding now that we can do no more than

mention the fact. Always ten three arupa or formless (to us,

please understand) and seven in manifestation ; and of these

seven the upper triad is, relatively speaking, also arupa.

Now let us here point out something very important that is,

that all the teaching of the Ancient Wisdom is given from our

plane, so that when we say arupa or " formless ", it does not

mean that in themselves, an sick, per se, these higher planes or

entities are formless, which would be absurd. But to us they

are formless, exactly as ether is formless, because it is not yet

(for us) developed. We have as yet but a mere presentiment of

it in this Fourth Round, and only because we are in the Fifth

Root-Race, corresponding in element to that fifth element,

"ether". And as a corollary to that, and it is an important

deduction, as regards the beings inhabiting each element, each

principle, of the universal Kosmos : their habitations, their

countries, all that therein exists, to them are as real and palpable

as are palpable and material things on our plane to us. Force,

to us, is substance in motion. Do you realize that our most

dense and rigid matter is force to beings in the hierarchy below

us ? Do we realize that what we call the density and the rigidity

of matter are merely such to our senses, and that this very

density and this rigidity show and prove that our dense and

rigid matter is but a balancing of opposing forces ? Why, even

many modern scientists today, making a right-about-face from

what was utter truth to science some fifty years ago, now say

that there is no such thing as matter per se, that there is nothing

but " force ". Matter is therefore to it a maya, an illusion, and

so it is. But so is force a maya, because it is merely matter to

something higher than it. All tilings are relative, a statement which

is one of the fundamental conceptions of the Ancient Wisdom.

So when we speak of these various Prakritis and Principles,

let us recognise first that these Elements, these Tattwas or

Principles, from whatever viewpoint we may look at them, are

all manifestations of the one Universal Life, which is likewise

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 31*

Universal Substance in its lower aspect. Spirit and substance

are fundamentally one, two sides to the same thing. Force and

matter are fundamentally one, two sides to the same thing.

This, that is so important, we fain would dwell upon much

longer and give illustrations of its application to our studies.

Let us make a final application tonight. What is the difference

between a Master, and me and you ? The former has his higher

principles awakened and lives in them. And we do not. From

the scientific standpoint, that is all there is to it ; from the

philosophic standpoint, we may say that a Master has become,

as far as he can be, more at one with the Universal Life ; and from

the religious standpoint or the spiritual standpoint, we may say

that a Master has developed an individual consciousness, or

recognition, of his oneness with the Boundless. This is the very

foundation of the ethics without which there is nothing worthy

of the Ancient Wisdom and of our School. No man can miscon-

duct himself without injecting inharmony, disharmony, into the

human hierarchy of which he is a part, and for this he shall pay,

yea, to the uttermost farthing. But this is no " vengeance ", no

punishment, by Nature, which merely readjusts the disturbed

equilibrium, or disharmony. It arose out of the exercise of free

will. And the Masters have learned to govern their wills and to

co-operate with Nature as a whole ; thence they grow in strength

of soul, and live in unity with the Divine. That is the difference

between them and us : they live " at one " with the spiritual

summit of our hierarchy. We can do it likewise. We can do the

same. It is simply a matter of opening our inner eyes, of cleansing

our souls, of clearing out from our brains the trash which we eat

mentally, the husks which the " swine feed upon ", and letting

in the pure, clear life, the " wine of life ". It is only the molds

of mind that impede us, nothing but the molds of mind ; and

when we say the " molds of mind " we do not exactly mean the

molds of sub-mental matter in which the mind works. That is, I

think, a wrong way to put it. We mean the crystallization of the

mind itself, when mental force becomes mental matter. Therefore

break these molds ; no one can do it for you but yourself. The

molds of man's mind are his greatest enemy, his worst foe, his

strongest opponent, because these molds are living substance.

Your mind is matter, but it is " living " matter ; and every

thought you think clings to the mind and inheres in it, and

becomes what the Ancient Wisdom calls an " elemental ", and

it will finally turn and torture you unless you break them i.e.,

transmute them. What man would do otherwise, when there are

freedom and light and wisdom and peace and glory and know-

ledge unspeakable for the having, for the taking, providing that

we do indeed " take the Kingdom of Heaven by violence " 1

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CHAPTER XXVII

THE TWO FUNDAMENTAL KOSMICAL HIERARCHIES : MATTER

AND SPIRIT-CONSCIOUSNESS. CHAOS-THEOS-KOSMOS : GODS-

MONADS-ATOMS.

There are, assuredly, two forms of Brahma : the formed and the formless.

Now, that which is the formed is unreal ; that which is the formless is real, is

Brahma, is light.

That light is the same as the sun [the spiritual Sun, not our visible sun which is

only a reflexion, a veil, a form].

Verily, that came to have Om as its soul (atman). He divided himself (atma-

nam) threefold. Om is three prosodial units (a-f-w-fw). By means of these

the whole world is woven, warp and woof, across Him.

Maitri Upanishad, 6, 3, p. 425 (HUME).

An exuberance of power is always present with the highest causes, and at the

same time that this power transcends all things, it is equally present with all

with unimpeded energy. Hence, conformably to this, the first illuminate the

last of things, and immaterial are present with material natures immaterially.

Nor should it be considered by any one as wonderful, if we say that there is a

certain pure and divine matter. For matter being generated by the father and

demiurgus of wholes, receives a perfection adapted to itself, in order to its

becoming the receptacle of the Gods. At the same time nothing prevents more

excellent beings from being able to impart their light to subordinate natures.

Neither, therefore, is matter separated from the participation of better causes ;

so that such matter as is perfect, pure, and boniform, is not unadapted to the

reception of the Gods. For, since it is requisite that terrestrial natures should

by no means be destitute of divine communion, the earth also receives a certain

divine portion from it, sufficient for the participation of the Gods.

lamblichus on The Mysteries, p. 265, 6 (TAYLOR).

IT is nearly fifty years since our first Teacher brought

Theosophy to us nearly half a century has passed, and

those of us who have had the opportunity of studying

Theosophy during that period, or at least during part of it,

realize the great changes that have taken place in the thought of

the world, changes such that we can only ascribe them to the

spiritual impulses given to the world by H. P. Blavatsky, and

Those behind her.

At the close of our study this evening we shall point to a

number of facts, showing how Theosophists, penetrating the

secrets of the Ancient Wisdom through Theosophy, have fore-

shadowed, prophesied, if you like, some of the greatest of the

scientific discoveries, so-called, that have been made during these

last fifty years.

These are real revolutions in thought, and it is only just that

we should place the merit where the merit is due, for there is no

other cause of such revolutions which are not merely still

taking place, but which have hardly yet reached their maximum

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 313

than the work done by the first Theosophical Leader, and the

spiritual impulse which she brought into the world at that time.

No other society or no other organization can show anything

similar in the annals of known history.

We open our study this evening by reading once again the

latter part of what we read at our last study from The Secret

Doctrine, Volume I, page 638-9, as follows :

The closer the approach to one's Prototype, "in Heaven," the better

for the mortal whose personality was chosen, by his own personal

deity (the seventh principle), as its terrestrial abode. For, with

every effort of will toward purification and unity with that " Self-god, "

one of the lower rays breaks and the spiritual entity of man is drawn

higher and ever higher to the ray that supersedes the first, until, from

ray to ray, the inner man is drawn into the one and highest beam of

the Parent-SuN.

Two fundamental lines of thought, we trust, have been brought

out in our studies with at least sufficient clearness for present

purposes. Those lines are respectively the exposition of the night-

side, the matter side, the vehicular side, of nature ; and secondly

of the light-side, the spiritual side, the divine side, of nature, the

latter also being in our System called the Hierarchy of Com-

passion. The former hierarchy which pervades and really ^'s the

space, the matter-space, or the space-matter, in which the second

Hierarchy works, is composed of the Hierarchy of the Builders,

the Masons of the World, the Kosmocratores or world-makers,

of mystic Greek philosophy. They are the inferior Hierarchy

spiritually, but have relative dominion over their sub-hierarchies

from their beginning down to their lowest plane, which forms the

mere elemental or nature-forces on the lowest plane of their

kosmic Hierarchy. Such words as " elemental " or " lowest "

are mere adjectives describing psychological mysteries. As

hinted, the seven grades of them run up to the lowest of the

Hierarchy of Compassion, forming the divine side. There is no

break between them ; actually, they interblend and inter-

penetrate each other. As the spirit works in the soul of man,

and the soul of man works in his lower vehicle, so does the Hier-

archy of Compassion work in and through the Hierarchy of the

Builders.

This thought is so important for the understanding of the

Ancient Wisdom, that we call attention to it again and again,

because it provides the philosophical and scientific framework,

the structural carpentry, not merely of the universe, but of man's

own consciousness, and is the groundwork against which we must

place the picture of what takes place in the processes of Kosmic

evolution and in that of man, as outlined in the ancient initiations

and Mystery schools.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

It was said at a former meeting that man is spiritually higher

than the sun. So he is ; but it was not said which man pur-

posely not said. The sun is the vital locus of his system, and so

terrific are the forces of that same inwardly divine entity, even

on our plane, that were one of us, a man, to approach within the

range of those forces, he would be simply annihilated, not merely

broken up and dispersed as the physical body is at death, but

reduced to nothing, wiped out. Why ? Because the first five

(counting upwards), i.e., the five lower principles of his psycho-

logical economy, would be dissipated into their component atoms,

each to each on its own plane, and drawn, sucked, into the stellar

body, and only his higher part, the divine part, the spiritual part,

belonging to the Hierarchy of Compassion, the Christ part, the

Buddha part, would remain intact. Why ? Because the latter

part itself is of the same substance as the hid sun, of which our

physical sun is merely the reflexion or the manifestation on this

plane of the divine being behind it. Consequently, when we said

that man is greater than the sun, we meant that his progress

along the path of evolution has proceeded farther than that

entity (considered as a reflexion) which is the sun. He un-

doubtedly is farther along the path of evolution than is his solar

locus a paradox, indeed, but true ! It was the entry into the

senseless " shadows " of his being, i.e., the four lowest of his

seven principles, by the manas-principle, inferior to the two

highest, during the middle of the Third Root-Race, in this Fourth

Round, that made of him the being that he now is, self-conscious ;

and thereby he became literally an incarnation of the divine.

It now remains with him to bring into activity those inner

forces, his higher principles, which form his inner spiritual nature,

and which are not indeed inert, but only sleeping, as it were. We

speak of the higher principles as " sleeping " in a man, a form of

speech which is perhaps correct as a manner of expression, but

really it is the lower ones which are asleep spiritually and need

awakening. The very root budh, from which we have Buddhi,

and Buddha and Budha with one d, means " to awaken ", hence

derivatively " to enlighten ". Our higher principles are actual

entities living on their own planes, individual beings, fully

conscious and thinking entities. Fix that thought firmly in your

minds, if you please. Our higher parts are not inchoate, un-

co-ordinated, un-developed, sleeping things. They are a unity of

entities, a spiritual Kosmos in miniature.

The Great Awakening of the lower elements in Third-Race

Man that was accomplished by the incarnation of these Mana-

saputras, was repeated, partly dramatically and partly actually,

as said so often before, in the ancient Mysteries and in the

initiations, which were thus a copying of what still takes place in

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 315

nature, and took place in nature pre-eminently during the third

Root-Race. And by those Initiations the attempt was still

further to stimulate, still more to awaken, still more greatly to

enliven and bring forth that inner and higher nature of man.

That great purpose formed the core, the heart and the meaning,

of the ancient initiations. Yet, please mark, initiation and

Mystery do not ihean the same thing exactly. Though very

closely similar in purpose and running on parallel lines, of the

two, initiation meant teaching, awakening, opening the mind.

The Mysteries were the dramatized forms of what took place in

the higher degrees. There were three dramatizations, training

and educating the neophyte for what he must be, and go through,

in the four higher degrees. He was directed and helped in those

higher degrees as far as was made permissible by his karma ; but

the very heart and essence of the trial was a test, and he had to face

it alone, and himself to prove his spirit-power, to prove the soul-

nature of him. If he came through the first Trial triumphant, he

was granted the privilege, and he had the inner strength, to

undertake the higher degrees. There could, under such con-

ditions, be no full protection, no mollycoddling. Just the contrary

of that took place. His teacher watched over his senseless body

while his inner nature was out exploring the realms of space, yea,

entering into the sun, entering into the planets, and into the

moon, and into other things and beings, becoming, losing his selj

and becoming, that which he had to face and conquer, or fail.

Glorious were the privileges of victory ; and at the end, at the

seventh Trial, if and when the final triumph came, he rose a

glorified Buddha, a glorified Christ, truly a master of men. Then

he knew, because he had been. This was no mere sensual experi-

ence, sensual in the sense of being an experience of the senses ;

hearing, seeing, touching, feeling, smelling, tasting but it was

being the things and beings of which he had been taught i.e.,

complete knowledge of Life in this Hierarchy.

Such was the meaning of the higher initiation, of those higher

degrees which went beyond the scope and meaning of the

Mysteries, which latter were the dramatizations of the processes

of kosmical life, the preparation for whatever it was that the

candidate had to face in the four higher initiatory degrees.

In order to make the matter more clear, let us write down a

symbolic outline of the two lines of growth or development of

the two fundamental kosmical hierarchies.

On the left or matter- On the right or divine side, the

side : light-side :

CHAOS GODS

THEOS MONADS

KOSMOS ATOMS

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

corresponding each to each ; and psychologically, so far as man

is concerned, i, the divine ; 2, the spiritual or human ; and 3,

Kosmic-astral.

Chaos is a Greek word, and is usually thought to mean a sort

of helter-skelter treasury of original principles and seeds of

beings. Well, so it verily is, in one profound sense ; only it is

most decidedly and emphatically not " helter-skelter ". It is the

Kosmic storehouse of all the latent or resting seeds of beings

and things from former manvantaras. Of course it is this, simply

because it contains everything. It means space, not the highest

Space, not the Parabrahma-Mulaprakriti, the Boundless not

that. But the space of any particular hierarchy descending into

manifestation, i.e., what space for it is at that particular period

of its beginning of development. Remember the principle of

relativity. There are no utter absolutes anywhere and never have

been and never will be. The directive principles in Chaos are the

gods of the corresponding column.

Theos is a Greek word meaning god. Corresponding to it are the

monads.

Kosmos is a Greek word meaning arrangement. Kosmos was

also used for a woman's paraphernalia, decoration, and all that

kind of thing : cosmetics and robes and jewelry. It meant that

which was arranged and kept along the lines and rules of harmony

i.e., the arrangement of the universe ; and corresponding to

it in the other column are the Atoms. Note the three corre-

spondences : Chaos, Gods or divine beings, the kosmic Archi-

tects ; then Theos, for the builders, the Kosmocratores, corre-

sponding to the Monads, the spirit-beings ; then Kosmos, the

universe, arranged as we see it ; and the Atoms, or Vital-Astral

seeds, on the divine side.

We do not speak here of chemical atoms, please understand.

These belong to the Kosmos. As used in this outline, Gods,

Monads, and Atoms, we mean i, the divine ; 2, the spiritual-

human ; and 3, those ultimate particles of substance which

inflame, which inspire, which vitalize, the material kosmos. Each

to each : the Gods work in the Chaos ; the Monads work in and

through the Theos, the Theoi, the Builders ; and the Atoms as

the semi-conscious, ultimate entities of matter, work through the

Kosmos or the manifested universe, as prepared according to

what is popularly called natural law, in other words the essential

and inherent operations of Nature, deriving from the Gods and

Monads.

Such an Atom, according to these parallel columns (which are

H. P. Blavatsky's, of course) signifies the ultimate particle of

matter, which ultimate particle is its (matter's) seventh principle,

its highest principle ; and for that reason the sun is called an

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Atom, because it is the seventh or highest degree of matter

or prakriti on this plane. Prakriti means nature or the developing

power, that which has brought forth manifestation. There are

seven Kosmical Prakritis, and we are in the first or lowest ; the

seventh as you count downwards, the first if you count upwards.

Each of these again has seven sub-planes. The sun as an entity

is the highest entity of the kosmical system, the solar system.

But what we see is merely its vehicle, its seventh or lowest or

material Element or Principle, counting downwards. The so-

called " solar flames " are not flames. The sun is not burning ;

it is not in combustion ; it is not hot ; what we see is the aura

of the sun, the sixth sub-element or sub-principle of the first or

lowest Prakriti. That aura therefore is the sun's material buddhic

aura, and looked at from the scientific standpoint it is a globe of

kosmic forces. Please remember, as so often said before, that

force and matter fundamentally are the same ; they are simply

different degrees of manifestation of spirit-substance. Matter is

crystallized force ; or, if you like, though it is not so good a

method of describing it, spirit or force or energy is etherealized

matter. Much better is it to put it the other way.

Matter on our plane is crystallized light. Light is substance-

energy or energy-substance, either will do. Call it force. And

light, this force, again is the matter of something still higher

than it, the Prakriti above it.

Now our time has nearly expired, and we wish to call attention

to what was spoken of at the beginning of our study this evening

i.e., certain very important and fundamental principles of

thought, which the scientists call discoveries of our era made by

them (or at least in the making by them) but which were antici-

pated in time by us members of this School, and by others who

were members and are now dead, anticipated and proclaimed by

us, and found out from the study of our Theosophical doctrines.

We have pointed out time and again our relationship to science

and scientific men in such manner that it would seem impossible

to misunderstand our meaning ; but perhaps we have been

misunderstood. Please therefore understand that we of our

school, the true Theosophists, look upon science, ordered know-

ledge, ordered and co-ordinated knowledge, as the greatest friend

and ally we have. But when it comes to the theories or specula-

tions or dogmas of scientific men, we accept them or reject them

exactly in proportion as we think that they contain or do not

contain truth not my truth or your truth, but as they contain

(or do not contain) those fundamental principles which, by their

coherency and consistency and appeal to the best in us, announce

themselves as facts of being, in other words, the principles

taught in our Theosophical philosophy.

3x8

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We have drawn up a list of a few such anticipations a quarter

of an hour's work ; and doubtless any one of you could have

extended the list to thrice or four times its length ; but listen to

this ! And please let the ideas sink into your minds if they have

not already occurred to you, and realize what we have done for

the world outside, if nothing else. We have changed the world's

thought. Practice without theory is emptiness of mind ; theory

without practice is folly. A man who has a beautiful theory, and

does no act to carry it into operation or fact, is a drone, for he was

not born to be a sloth ; but on the contrary, a man who has no

theory, whose ideas are not co-ordinated and directed by

principles, is a mad-man, and acts like a fool. The noblest thing

that we can do is so to change the thought of the world that men

will realize their Oneness with the inner beings on the various

planes of Life Universal, and govern themselves accordingly, not

merely in the legislatures, but in their teachings and in their

personal conduct of life, and in their care for their brothers, and

in their sense of loyalty and fidelity to their teachers, those whom

they know and believe to have that truth.

It indeed is a Great Work, and in doing it we are carrying out to

the world that " Lost Word " of which we hear so much, and of

which so little is known, for it is a phrase and even a word taken

from the Ancient Mysteries the Greek Logos, which means word,

the lost logos of man's heart and brain we are indeed bringing it

back : and rightly, for we are parts, individual units, responsible

members, of the Hierarchy of Compassion. Ours is a profound

and heavy responsibility. Our Teachers have told us that those

who take upon themselves this responsibility, but prove false

and treacherous to their Pledge, better were it for them, as Jesus

would say, that they were dead. But enough of this.

We have here sixteen examples. We had no time to draw up

more. Here they are.

1. That simple Materialism, comprising fortuity, chance, and

dead matter, producing life and consciousness, as an explanation

of life and being, is unscientific, unphilosophical, and impossible,

because contrary to nature and reason ; therefore absurd.

2. That other planets are inhabited by intelligent beings, or are

not so, as the case may be ; and that this is denied not from

knowledge but from ignorance only of such planets ; the only

planet that we do know, our earth, bearing intelligent beings. The

denial therefore is irrational, purely speculative and theoretical,

and based solely on supposedly true facts concerning atmosphere,

cold or heat, etc., as these are known on our planet only.

3. The unreal nature of the physical universe, or sphere, i.e.,

that all we see and know with sensational perceptions, is its purely

phenomenal appearances.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 319

4. That " Force " is etherealized " matter " ; or, preferably,

that " matter " is equilibrated or " crystallized " forces.

These last two have now been fully admitted by exoteric

scientists.

5. That electricity and magnetism are particular, i.e., cor-

puscular : formed of particles or corpuscles, and therefore

" matter ". They are the phenomenal effects of noumenal Causes

matter or rather matters.

6. That the so-called " modes of motion ", when H. P.

Blavatsky first brought her message to the world, i.e. forces, of

whilom scientists, as a definition of forces, is a childish effort to

explain forces by ticketing them in a new manner which explains

nothing at all ; all forces being simply moving matters.

7. That all matter is radiant, i.e., " radio-active ", that is, it

radiates ; some forms or states of matter more than others.

Compare the work and discoveries of Becquerel, Rontgen, the

Curies, Rutherford, and Sully, etc., and the work on similar lines

of great thinkers in other countries.

8. That light is corpuscular, because a matter, or substance,

that is, light is a material radiance, in fact.

9. That transmutation of matters, hence of metals, is a fact in

nature, occurring hourly, momently, instantly ; and continuously

through time.

10. That the atom is a divisible body i.e., the chemical or

physical atom ; it is, so to say, merely a smaller molecule.

Numbers 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 have all been admitted by science,

or practically admitted in some cases in full, in other cases verging

on full admission.

11. That the physical atom is a tiny " solar system " ; each

member of such a system being in its own turn compounded of

physical infinitesimals, or of sub-atoms, or of infra-atoms. That

also is admitted.

12. That the nebular hypothesis as commonly accepted was

incomplete, insufficient, as a workable hypothesis, although

containing certain elements of natural, that is, of occult, truth.

That also is admitted.

13. That the sun is neither burning, nor even hot, though it is

glowing in one sense, superficially, i.e., on its " surface " ; nor

does it recuperate its heat and other forces, as alleged, by

shrinkage of volume, nor does radium account for its expenditure

of energy, is practically admitted.

14. That storms rain, hail, snow, wind and droughts ; like-

wise most of the earth's heat, are not caused by or derived from

solar energy, but result from electro-magnetic interplay of forces

between the earth's mass and the meteoric mass, or " veil ", above

our atmosphere ; such phenomena or effects being accompanied,

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partly casually, partly effectually, by periodic expansion or

dilatation of the atmospheric body and by periodic contraction

thereof ; and that the " glacial periods ", so-called, are largely

due to the same causes.

A few months ago, let me interpolate, some eminent scientists

in the northern part of California were investigating the upper

regions of the atmosphere, and to a certain extent they have come

to this conclusion, at least in part and in degree.

15. That Darwinism and Haeckelism are inadequate to explain

and account for the mass of biological phenomena ; and neither

Darwin's " Natural Selection " nor Spencer's " Survival of the

Fittest ", are other than minor or secondary operations of Nature ;

that " transformism " as taught by the modern speculative

scientist is not Evolution which is what the Ancient Wisdom

does teach and is both uncertain as a theory because purely

speculative, and unscientific because as a theory it is based on

data too few ; therefore it is incomplete and insufficient.

We all know what remarkable changes have taken place in tha

theories of the Transformists even since H. P. Blavatsky died.

And lastly (16) : That all things and operations in the Kosmos

are relative, not absolute, in nature ; there being no " absolutes "

except in the sense of relativity of relationships ; our teachings

thus anticipating the fundamental concept of Dr. Albert Einstein

on this point.

At our next meeting, we shall take up the study of the atom.

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CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ADVENTURE QF AN ATOM. LAYA-CENTERS : SUN, COMETS,

AND PLANETS I SOUL AND MONAD. THE KEYNOTE OF

OCCULTISM.

The Occult Science is not one in which secrets can be communicated of a

sudden, by a written or even verbal communication. If so, all the " Brothers "

should have to do, would be to publish a Handbook of the art which might be

taught in schools as grammar is. It is the common mistake of people that we

willingly wrap ourselves and our powers in mystery that we wish to keep our

knowledge to ourselves, and of our own will refuse "wantonly and deliberately "

to communicate it. The truth is that till the neophyte attains to the condition

necessary for that degree of Illumination to which, and for which, he is entitled

and fitted, most if not all of the Secrets are incommunicable. The receptivity

must be equal to the desire to instruct. The illumination must come from within.

Till then no hocus-pocus of incantations or mummery of appliances, no meta-

physical lectures or discussions, no self-imposed penance can give it. All these

are but means to an end, and all we can do is to direct the use of such means

as have been empirically found by the experience of ages to conduce to the

required object. And this was and has been no secret for thousands of years.

The Mahatma Letters, pp. 282-3.

ET us open our study this evening by reading an extract

from Volume I of The Secret Doctrine, page 567, as follows :

As to the " elemental atoms," so called, the Occultists refer to

them by that name with a meaning analogous to that which

is given by the Hindu to Brahm& when he calls him ANU, the " Atom."

Every elemental atom ... is ... a SOUL ; not necessarily a disem-

bodied soul, but a jiva, as the Hindus call it, a centre of POTENTIAL

VITALITY, with latent intelligence in it, and, in the case of compound

Souls an intelligent active EXISTENCE, from the highest to the lowest

order, a form composed of more or less differentiations.

Majestic, sublime, are the thoughts involved in the study which

we begin this evening. It ought to be said, perhaps, by way of

preface, that the frequent interruptions of our studies necessitated

by circumstances, have prevented us before from entering upon

this new departure in our studies ; and unless the Teacher, the

Outer Head, so instructs us explicitly, we shall not, except by

inference, embark upon our present line of thought more fully

than we shall do this evening, until she informs us that our studies

can be continued more definitely. And why ? Because from

immemorial time our School has set apart a certain portion of the

year, at certain specified times, of never less than three months, in

which the studies were pursued daily for hours at a time, with

intervals of rest ; and these were called periods of initiation. The

reason for this method was that frequent interruptions, the inroad

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

or ingress into the thought of daily occupations, so distracted the

mind, so tore it away from the higher nature, that it could not

successfully meet and understand the things which it was then

supposed to undertake and to try to comprehend.

But doing the best we can, we shall begin this evening, very

shortly, to undertake a study of the atom, and of what H. P.

Blavatsky calls its " adventures ", by referring to collateral and

almost identical subjects : the laya-centers, the sun and planets

and comets, and the soul and the monad by contrast with the

above.

As we read in The Secret Doctrine this evening, an atom is a

soul. A soul is an entity which is evolved by experiences ; it is

not a spirit, it is a vehicle of the spirit. It manifests in matter

through and by being a substantial portion of the lower essence of

the spirit. Touching another plane below it, or it may be above

it, the point of union allowing ingress and egress to the conscious-

ness is a laya-center. A laya-center is, therefore, a center in

" homogeneous " substance. It will be remembered that in a

former study, we derived this word " laya " from the Sanskrit

word It, meaning to dissolve. The word " Pralaya " comes from

the same root, as follows : laya is the noun-form from the root /,

with a prepositional prefix pra, meaning towards, forwards, hence

continuous. In other words, " pralaya " means continuous

dissolution. A laya-center is that part of an entity, of an atom,

which, as said, being relatively homogeneous substance, matter

" dissolved " into homogeneity, allows ingress and egress for

passing consciousness and consciousnesses.

Let us take the laya-center as manifested in the sun. The sun

at its core is a laya-center. Each planet likewise has at its central

point, and is in its central point, a laya-center ; each comet is in

building around a laya-center, its heart or core. Dimensions or

positions in space have nothing to do with it, because a laya-

center is not of a physical and material nature. It is the dis-

appearing-point for all things below it, and the entering-point for

all things above it, for any one particular entity, be it an atom,

a sun, a planet, a human being.

The sun, as we see it, is a reflexion, as we have often before said.

Suppose that we call it a veil, which is perhaps a better word,

though reflexion is just as good, because it actually is a reflexion

the sun we see, that is. What do we see when we look at the sun ?

We see a titanic splendor. That is a reflexion. The sun itself, its

core, could be held in the palm of your hand, and I mean the part

of the sun which is behind that splendorous reflexion. That part

which could be held in the palm of your hand is itself of the

seventh or highest stage of the lowest prakriti-stage, a particle of

matter-substance of the lowest cosmic grade, the prakriti. The

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 323

splendor that we see is the aura of that laya-center, its aura or

emanations, and these emanations are forces. The sun is a body

of unimaginable forces springing from, pouring down through,

this laya-center, from the true sun which is behind the outer veil.

And the golden disk that we see is but the auric manifestation to

our physical eyes on this plane of the true sun, pouring through

the sun at the center of the visible orb.

So it is in a human being. There is a center in his nature

through which pour the forces from above, and through which

he himself ascends higher ; and that center is the laya-center of

his inner nature.

In speaking of the Monad, we must not confuse it with the

laya-center. A laya-center is the channel, the point, the dis-

appearing-point, the neutral center, in matter or substance,

through which consciousness passes and the center of that

consciousness is the monad. For the present moment we need

not pause to consider on what plane the monad is acting ; on any

plane on which it may be acting when it passes from one plane of

consciousness to another it does so through a laya-center. It will

be remembered that in our last study or two we pointed out the

parallelisms running in nature, such as matter and spirit-

consciousness. Please remember that these words are used

generalizingly, not defining any particular matter or any par-

ticular spirit, but only to show, on the one hand, the mass of

kosmic substance acted upon by the great forces above it, who are

the beings of life, the hierarchies of universal nature ; and in this

kosmic body, in this kosmic substance, there are innumerable

laya-centers, because they are really the " critical points ", the

translation-stages, by which as individuals we gain access to our

Higher Self, and by which the divine and spiritual forces entering

into us from above, pass. The sun is the vital focus of its system,

outside of other activities far greater still ; but the physical sun is

that something which we can see with our physical eyes ; and

further it is a thing of matter, although it is in the sixth degree of

our stage of Prakriti, counting upwards, the Buddhic stage of the

lowest prakriti. But the true sun, the spiritual sun, is that divine

being behind the sun, an entity, a god. The physical sun is its

body or garment. Just as in ourselves our Higher Nature is a

god, a divine spark, and that divine spark is a monad. The soul in

contradistinction with the monad, as pointed out in former

studies, is its vehicle for manifestation on any one plane. It

really means vehicle. The spirit manifests in seven vehicles, and

each one of these vehicles is a soul ; and that particular point

through which the divine influence passes in the soul is the

laya-center, and it is, so to say, the heart of the soul, or rather the

summit thereof homogeneous soul-substance, if you like.

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It is very necessary to have these preliminary conceptions clear

and definitely outlined in our minds. The mysteries behind these

words are sublime, unimaginably beautiful ; but we cannot

understand them properly without knowing the words which we

use, and how we use them, and the implications of thought which

are involved in them when we use them.

All the sectarian departures from the great foundation-

religions of antiquity have grown out of the lack of following

that one rule. Understand your terms and use them rightly.

Disputes have arisen about the meaning of terms, due perhaps to

the fact that in the origin of any particular religion, those terms

were not defined in such clever and appropriate manner that later

dogmatists could not fasten upon them in order to misuse them.

It is actually a most difficult problem. We are always between

the " devil and the deep sea ". On the one hand we have the

people who will insist upon literalisms, such as " Pythagoras, the

Master, said so ". A beautiful sense of loyalty to the Teacher in

some cases, perhaps ; but see how it can be misused by the would-

be dogmatists, who insist on taking the letter and losing the

spirit I And, on the other hand, there are those who think that the

letter has no importance, which is likewise wrong ; this class thinks

that they have the spirit and they try to force the letter to conform

to their conceptions of what the Master taught, or the Masters

taught, Pythagoras or any other.

So it is necessary that we have these and other similar words

clearly outlined in our minds. When we undertake the study of

the atom we embark upon new and vast fields of consciousness,

and pass in our minds over to other planes ; and our only

salvation is, as H. P. Blavatsky has told us time and time again,

to cling like grim death to the fundamental principles of her

teachings which are the Masters' teachings. We cannot so cling

unless we know exactly to what we should cling. If we were to say

that an atom is a god, we would say wrongly. If we were to say

that the atom contains a god, we should speak only partly rightly.

If we were to say that the atom manifests a god, we approach a

step nearer to the truth.

Now comes another thought. What do we mean by atom ? Do

we mean a kosmical atom, an astral atom, a psychical atom, a

Buddhic atom, an atmic atom ? Our studies of Theosophy show

us that all these atoms are variously " souls ", existent on divers

planes, in various degrees of consciousness ; and we realize then

that the atom in its essence, in its inmost of its inmost, is a monad,

a divine spark, a being from former manvantaras, which monad

has " learned its lessons " so fully that it needs to learn nothing

more in this manvantara. But it is trailed by a train of skandhas,

resident in the life-atoms, and which are karmic impressions.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 325

These life-atoms are inferior beings, trailing after it, making up

its bodies, so to say, as certain elements make up our bodies,

beings for which it is responsible because it affected them in former

kalpas, former manvantaras, former life-cycles : responsible for

them because it has soiled them in some instances, and in other

instances it has cleansed them from the soil.

What are these inferior things that follow in the track of a

monad ? They are parts of its being, thoughts of its thought,

children of its soul, offspring of its heart. Sublime thought, in

which we have the secret of manifestation in the universe, and

also the secret of the Hierarchy of Compassion ; the secret why

one-half of nature is what we call matter, crystallized and so-called

inert ; and why the other half of nature is will and consciousness,

intelligence and love, understanding and life. And these two

opposites work eternally together during the manvantaras. At

every moment in Space and Time, units of this train of inferior

things, themselves reach comprehension and understanding, and

pass through their particular laya-center into spheres above

themselves having meanwhile developed or evolved other inferior

beings trailing after them.

The processes of kosmic life and evolution are outlined in what

has just been said. So that when we use H. P. Blavatsky's

expression and speak of the " adventures of an atom ", we obtain

some glimpse of the study now before us. Do you realize (I dare

say you do) that under the Teacher's instruction, in the studies

which we have followed as faithfully as we have been able to do so,

there has been laid down the outline, at least the skeleton-frame-

work, of a system of philosophy entire and complete, so majestic

in its reaches, so wide in its subject, having such grandeur in its

possibilities, such profundity in its inmost nature, that nothing

like it is known in the exoteric literature of the world today ?

This we have accomplished. Even the magnificent systems of

exoteric philosophy of the Orient and the best efforts of European

philosophy which, by the way, are mostly mere verbiage cannot

compare with it. Their light is as a mere rushlight before the

blaze of the noonday sun, when we compare them with the

Esoteric System.

And why is this so ? Because we have outlined the teachings

of the gods, the teachings formerly taught in the ancient Mystery-

Schools. Nor have they been more than hinted at. We have not

said the one-thousandth part of what remains to be said, if it is

the will and the intention of the Teacher for us to develop these

noble themes. And mind you, what could be said in our studies

to come, is not, either in extent or in scope, what could be said, if

the Teacher so willed, in what we may call strictly esoteric

meetings. The Teacher has told us that these studies shall some

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day go to other students of our School. We have been obliged, not

only by the Teacher's explicit orders, but by the voice of our

own conscience, to tell, to set forth, to bring together, these ancient

thoughts of the Mystery-Schools in such fashion that you who are

members can understand and follow them with comparative ease ;

and yet if the transcript of what is here said fell into the hands

of an outsider, he would merely read what might to him be an

interesting expose of philosophical thought, and perhaps no more.

If the Teacher should so instruct us to speak on deeper themes

and this is not for me to say but if the Teacher should so will it

that we, or some of us, might undertake a study of what we might

call the life in the heart of our teachings, we should there find

keys of thought brilliantly illuminating our understanding.

Seven are the keys, our first Teacher has told us, which open

wide the portals of the Ancient Wisdom. These seven keys we

have touched but lightly, of necessity lightly, in our allusions to

the seven Treasuries of Wisdom. In one or another of these seven

Treasuries, or in one or another of these seven Jewels, lies every

department of human thought, every thought that human mind

can give birth to. These seven Treasuries were given and

explained to the ancient races by members of the Hierarchy of

Compassion, and by their pupils, and they have been passed down

to us. But remember that these seven Treasuries, as we have

already said very plainly, under the names they go by, are mere

key-words, catch-words, reminding-terms. Beautifully was it said

by one or more of our Comrades, at a former meeting and it

showed at least that those Comrades had grasped the heart

of our thought these sublime ideas make a man " feel at home

in any part of the universe ". It warms one's heart to hear this,

because all of you who have heard and understood what the

Teacher has permitted us to study here together, will have felt

that this is the very keynote of Occultism, the being one with

the Universal Life, " at home everywhere ". Occultism is the

exposition of the essence of life, of the essence of being, and of the

essence of living. Let us never confuse it with the so-called

" occult arts ", arts which are strictly forbidden to us as students

of this School. The Brothers of the Shadow lead on their helpless

victims with the occult arts, enticing them thereby, and their end

is non-entity. But our Masters, our Teachers, have told us

plainly : first learn discipline, first learn the Law. Then the

powers which you may crave, you will crave only as spiritual

powers, and only to give yourself and them to others. In the

Path, our Path, the so-called " occult arts " drop away even from

the imagination, because their deluding enticements and their

allurements are clearly seen. I do not imagine for a moment that

any one of us here needs to be reminded of this, but there are

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 327

other reasons for saying it, because, as has often been mentioned,

these studies shall go out to others who know perhaps less than

we do. They are our brothers and sisters in our divine mission, and

they need the help which we can give them, and it is our duty to

warn them.

Our present Teacher, perhaps even more than were the two

preceding ones, Has been insistent upon the necessity of first

learning the Law and the learning of the Law means the

development of the spiritual nature ; and it is the royal road, the

royal union. Having it, you have everything in the universe ;

boundless knowledge, for instance, and the powers commensurate

with it then will come naturally ; but any attempt to cultivate

them prematurely, any mere longing for them, will pull you down

as surely as the sun will rise over the eastern horizon tomorrow

morning ; because it is the personal coloring of the mind, it is

the personal wish, it is desire and appetite for power and novelty

that want these things. The divine-human entity, the Buddha,

the member of the Hierarchy of Compassion by divine right,

knows these things and wants them not, for he has passed far

beyond them. The constant urge with him is to go above matter,

to cleanse the heart from soil, to cast off the garments of the

mortal man and to put on the robes of immortality which, in fact,

inwardly are yours already, awaiting simply for each individual

to recognise them, and to become, as the ancient Egyptian

expressed it, a " son of the Sun ", a holy initiate.

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CHAPTER XXIX

SPACE : THE BOUNDLESS ALL. INFILLED WITH INTERLOCKING,

INTERPENETRATING UNIVERSES. ONE ACTION, ONE HIER-

ARCHICAL INTELLIGENCE, ONE COURSE OF OPERATION

THROUGHOUT NATURE I ONE ORGANISM, ONE UNIVERSAL

LIFE.

Either an ordered universe, or else a welter of confusion. Assuredly then, a

world-order. Or think you that order subsisting within yourself is compatible

with disorder in the All ? And that too when all things, however distributed

and diffused, are affected sympathetically.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself, IV, 27 (KENDALL).

Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and

one soul ; and observe how all things have reference to one perception, the

perception of this one living being ; and how all things act with one movement ;

and how all things are the co-operating causes of all things which exist ; observe

too the continuous spinning of the thread and contexture of the web.

Ibid., IV, 40 (LONG).

IN continuing our study this evening, the Teacher asks me

once more to introduce our subject by calling attention to

the fact that the teachings of Occultism are based on a

foundation of ethics and morals ; and, as has so often been

said, there is the distinction which marks the division-line, as it

were, between the Hierarchies on the one side, the ascending, or

Luminous Arc, and those Hierarchies on the other side, the

Shadowy Arc, or those beings and intelligences which are descend-

ing into matter for the experience needed in order to enable them

to take their march on the upward rise. Morals and ethics lie at

the basis of our own Order.

Ethics is not a subject which is disputable, as between men ;

only the forms of ethics are ; but the fundamental principles of

right as contrasted with wrong, of duty as contrasted with selfish-

ness, of the joy of renunciation and self-abnegation, as contrasted

with the shrivelling influence of the opposite theories of being

and there are many in the world in these lies the distinction

between the Sons of Light and the Children of the Shadow.

It will be remembered that our subject in closing our last series

of studies was the inauguration of an exposition, as best we could

set it forth, of the teachings imbodied in the word " atom ". Mark

first, please, that this does not mean the atom of science. The

" atom of science " is a more or less clear conception of funda-

mental material particles which has arisen in the minds of

scientists in an attempt to explain the phenomena of physical

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 329

nature as those phenomena have been studied during the last

hundred years or so ; and the scientific doctrines concerning the

atom are based, furthermore, largely on misunderstood teachings

of certain Greek philosophers.

But if we understand the atom as the doctrine concerning it is

imbodied in the teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, we shall find

that it is an intelligence and a living being of its kind. Let us then

open our studies this evening by reading from The Secret Doctrine,

Volume I, pages 107 and 106 ; from page 107 first :

. . . every atom in the Universe has the potentiality of self-con-

sciousness in it, and is, like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself

and for itself. It is an atom and an angel.

Not a Christian angel ; not a being with wings, etc., but a

spiritual intelligence. Then from page 106 :

The doctrine teaches that, in order to become a divine, fully conscious

god, aye, even the highest the Spiritual primeval INTELLIGENCES

must pass through the human stage. And when we say human, this

does not apply merely to our terrestrial humanity, but to the mortals

that inhabit any world, i.e., to those Intelligences that have reached

the appropriate equilibrium between matter and spirit, as we have now,

since the middle point of the Fourth Root-Race of the Fourth Round

was passed. Each Entity must have won for itself the right of becoming

divine, through self-experience.

These words " self-experience " comprise the thought which our

present Teacher so frequently emphasises in her instructions to

us self -directed evolution, a doctrine imbodying the necessity of

using our spiritual will and our spiritual intelligence for noble and

altruistic and impersonal aims. Let us say here again that for

man there is always a choice of paths : the right-hand, the

Luminous Arc, upward and upward for ever ; and the left-hand,

the Shadowy Arc, leading down into those spheres concerning

which we have knowledge, of course, and of which we have already

several times spoken in these our present meetings, but of which

the Teacher has not as yet allowed us to say very much in our

present exposition. That permission may come some day.

Further explaining our present study, be it noted that this term

or word " atom " is really a " catch- word ". We say " atom ",

but we actually mean a multitude of thoughts connected with

cosmogony and evolution. For instance, Gods, Monads, Souls,

Atoms, are words jointly and separately involved in profound

doctrines explaining cosmogonical and evolutionary processes.

And connected therewith very closely is what is called in Occultism

the " laya-center ", to which we have briefly alluded in former

studies. In Part III of this volume of The Secret Doctrine, H. P.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Blavatsky, in section 15, devotes one of the most beautiful parts

of her great work to developing the doctrines comprised in what

she called " Gods, Monads, and Atoms ".

Please understand first, that in these studies, questions of

spirituality, ethics, religion, are deeply involved. They go to the

very foundation of our being. They are not mere questions of

brain-mind disputation, nor mere mental exercises in clever speak-

ing. These teachings lead directly to the setting of our feet on the

path of the Luminous Arc ; and we who belong to this Order, and

have had the benefit already of three Teachers teaching the same

doctrine, should have some realization, at least, that if there is one

primal aim and object towards which we look, it is to become more

fully, more heartfeltly, one with that glorious army of which our

own Masters are the outer vanguard, as it were, and of which our

present Teacher is their representative to us.

Now what do we mean by Space ? Look into the dictionary and

you will find the following definition, probably : " The general

receptacle of things ". This is a definition of Space which we

reject. Scholars talk about " infinite space ", and yet call Space

a " receptacle " a curious commentary upon the loose thinking

of our age. Obviously, if it is a receptacle it is a finite thing : and

besides that, the definition entirely misses the heart-meaning of

the word Space. Understand what we mean by Space, and we

have a key by which to open much of the nobler teachings hid

deeply in the elementary studies. Space, as understood in our own

school of true Occultism, means that all that is is a fullness, perfect

and continuous absolutely, endless and beginningless ; not a mere

receptacle, not a mere container, nothing finite ; but the Bound-

less ALL. Further, Space Is ; it is not merely on or in one plane,

but on and in seven planes, the seven kosmic planes of our Uni-

verse, besides penetrating inwards infinitely, endlessly ; and also

outwardly endlessly. It is the infinite Pleroma of the Greeks, the

Greek word Pleroma meaning Fullness.

Now, obviously, everything that is, is a part of Space. Space

not being a mere container, an abstraction of the mind, or a mere

receptacle, shows why H. P. Blavatsky in her teachings speaks of

the only " God " we recognise as THAT using the word of the old

Vedas i.e., Space, the Boundless ALL. This All obviously con-

tains all things, everything that is ; as shown before in our study

of that wonderful doctrine of Hierarchies, which is the third of the

seven " Jewels " or " Treasuries " of Wisdom, which we have

briefly studied before. Space is infilled with an infinite multitude

of self-contained universes, interlocking and interpenetrating each

other. These universes, again, are themselves infilled with end-

lessly multitudinous beings of all and various kinds, the high and

the low, the inner and the outer. We cannot say " the highest "

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 331

and " the lowest ", because that form of expression would imply ^

limits or bounds, frontiers, and Space is limitless. Only within the*

confines or boundaries of any one universe or Hierarchy may we

use the superlative form of these adjectives, and say the highest or

the lowest.

Now, take any one universe or Hierarchy as an instance of the

general rule. Any universe is infilled with beings finding their

origin and taking their rise in the Summit, the Acme, the Seed in

another sense, which is, so to say, the god of that Hierarchy ; and

this god, at the beginning of any period of manifestation, this

spiritual, elementary Being, casts off from itself, or throws forth

from itself, evolves from itself, brings out from itself, a multi-

tudinous series of hierarchies consisting of less or inferior beings ;

beings less in spirituality and dignity than itself. They are, as it

were, the thoughts that the God or " Kosmic Primal Thinker "

thinks. Take the instance of a thinking human being, as an

analogy. He thinks thoughts. Each thought has its own life, each

thought has its own essence, each has its own course to run. Each

thought is based on a particular vibration, as it were, using words

common to our understanding to-day. Each has its own particular

swabhava or intrinsic essential nature, which is its individuality.

So this Summit of the Hierarchy " thinks thoughts ". Now

I do not mean to say that this Summit is a human being or a god-

being, which thinks thoughts as we do. The figure here used is

an analogy only. As a man thinks thoughts, and thus fills his

atmosphere around him with these living beings, these winged

messengers called thoughts, so the Primordial Elementary Being,

the Summit, the Seed, the First to issue forth from the bosom of

the infinite Mother, casts forth from itself these parts of itself ;

these monadic aggregations, these kosmic " thoughts ".

And what are these first emanations ? They are what the

Ancient Wisdom called the gods. And these gods in their turn

send forth from themselves other multitudinous series of beings,

less than they less in dignity, less in grandeur, less in under-

standing. And these secondary emanations or evolutions are the

monads. And these monads, as they pursue their way down the

Shadowy Arc, in the beginning of a manvantara, in their turn cast

forth from themselves, in identically the same way and on the

same line of action, other entities, less than they, forming still

more outward Hierarchies, more material intelligences ; and these

tertiary emanations are the souls. And the souls, as they pursue

their way down, exactly as their higher progenitors did, cast forth

from themselves, think forth from themselves, send forth from

themselves, evolve forth from themselves, beings still less in

wisdom and spirituality and dignity and power than they. And

these are the atoms but not the physical atom. Let us cast that

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

idea out of our minds instantly. The atoms of physical science are

really molecular aggregations of atomic elements only, existing on

the borderland of the astral plane.

The time will come when we shall set forth more clearly than we

have time to do tonight, the relation of the atom to the phe-

nomenal physical world. What we need to do this evening in the

introductory study now in hand, is to show one action, one

Hierarchical Intelligence, one course of operation, throughout

Nature. Please remember that these operations of Nature are what

the scientists and Christian theologians, in their ignorance, call

the " laws of Nature ". Now there are no " laws of Nature ", as

we have set forth and explained before. There are no mechani-

cally acting " laws ", so-called, because there are no law-givers :

consequently there are no such "natural laws". But there are

operations of Nature, and these operations of Nature are what our

thinkers see, and from lack of understanding the Ancient Wisdom,

and perhaps from lack of properly descriptive words, they follow

the analogy of human operations, and say the " laws of Nature ".

But they are the spiritually automatic operations of Beings in

that vast aggregate of entities and intelligences, which is called the

Universe, which is but one of infinite multitudes of others in Space.

All that is, is one vast organism. There is no void and no empti-

ness anywhere all is infilled and is one boundless fullness. If we

can fix that thought in our minds, and think of ourselves as linked

in a chain of beings, an endless chain what Homer called the

" golden chain " we shall realize the force, the philosophical pro-

fundity, and the deep meaning of what our teachings set forth

when they speak of " Universal Brotherhood " the fundamental

unity of all that is. Every one of us has in himself the potentiality

of becoming a god, and of advancing from godhood still higher

into what is now to us inexpressible spheres of divinity. But it

depends upon ourselves. At each instant the choice lies before us :

the path to the " right hand ", and the path to the " left hand ",

adopting the old Buddhist nomenclature.

These two arcs, the Shadowy Arc, the Arc of Matter ; and the

Luminous Arc, or the Arc of Light, or of Spirit, exemplify in those

two phrases the duality of nature in manifestation ; and the beings

on the Luminous Arc are what our own Teachers call the Dhyani-

Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contemplation, those who once in long

past kalpas were men as we are now, human beings. The other

Arc contains the hierarchies which are " descending into matter "

in order to learn the lessons that we of this kalpa have learned

in the past ; as the Dhyani-Buddhas, the Sons of Light, did, long,

long aeons agone, but who now are the Summit of the Buddhic

Hierarchy of which we in this Order at present form a part, if our

hearts are sincere and our souls are strong.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 333

The beauty and the splendor of these teachings fill the soul with

awe. It needs but the proper comprehension of them, so firmly to

fix the mind and the soul to the eternal Truth that nothing will

ever shake them in future. Ay, if we can but see, there lies un-

folded the Great Mystery of evolution. Those who have advanced

along the path have left their records behind them ; and there

they stand, those glorious entities, armies of them ; the lowest are

those just beyond us, the chelas, and then higher still are the

Masters, and the Masters of the Masters ; and then the Chohans ;

and the Maha-Chohans ; and then the Dhyani-Chohans ; and then

the DhySni-Buddhas ; and thus endlessly, on and up ; for infinity

is limitless and endless. And this process of hierarchical develop-

ment has been going on from eternity in the past, and will con-

tinue into eternity in the future.

The reason why men, perhaps some even of our own Order, find

it difficult to accept this sublime teaching is the fact that their

minds are so full of other thoughts that it is difficult for them to

drive in and find place and fix in their memory these sublime

truths. Men will not willingly give up their prejudices ; they

break not willingly their mind-molds. How many of us, as the

Teacher has told me, how many of us come to a meeting like this,

with minds made up on what we " know to be the truth ", be-

cause, forsooth, we have so read it somewhere, and our minds are

crystallized in that setting. I speak of no one in particular ; my

mind is running back into memories of the past and of other

Comrades with whom I have spoken. I know what they felt ; and

I know how difficult it is for each one of us, for every one of us, to

keep the mind always free and plastic, always ready to accept the

truth, no matter what our own prejudices, religious, philosophic,

or scientific, may be. I have seen those Comrades come into a

meeting in a critical spirit, forgetting that the critic is not the wise

man. The critic unconsciously to himself sees his own littleness ;

the wise man, the man who knows, will say rather " I will think,

I will examine this that the Teacher has given me, or allows me to

hear. This is an opportunity ; I will not reject it because it seems

difficult for me to believe, or because I have read that H. P.

Blavatsky at such a passage said so and so ". Remember what

the present speaker was authorized to say at some former meet-

ing : pray do not take any one passage of H. P. Blavatsky 's or

Katherine Tingley's or William Q. Judge's, and build an iron wall

of prejudice about it, because you think you have understood it.

Keep the mind fluid and open and plastic ; hold fast to that which

your soul, your conscience, tells you is good ; and, if necessary,

wait I Thebes was not builded in a day ; and in our Sublime Work,

the noblest that ever man had to do, we, the true " Masons of the

Ancient Order " if there ever was one, are building the " Guardian

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

Wall ". We cannot afford to fail through prejudices, our own

prejudices. Look within, know yourselves. If you fail within the

ranks, the work is not merely harder for those who remain, and

doubly hard for the Teacher ; but there is the loss to ourselves,

to each one of us.

I could tell you stories, if it were permissible and it is not of

my own experiences, of my own life, that of the present speaker

who is here but an impersonal voice ; but I cannot do this : it

would be importing into this meeting something which I am not

authorized to do ; and I merely bring it to your attention in order

to show you that I at least for one realize that the Teacher was

wise in asking this voice to bring it to your attention and for your

consideration. Keep then your minds open : hold to that which

is good ; wait, and trust.

Before concluding, there is one thing to which the Teacher asks

me to devote three minutes ; it is a question which must have

arisen in every thoughtful theosophical mind, and it has been

thusly phrased by a Comrade : "If every one is under the

guidance of the Dhyani-Chohans, how does it happen that, as

H. P. Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine, Volume I, page 412,

end of the second paragraph, ' cruelty, blunders, and but too-

evident injustice ', are to be found in Nature ? And H. P.

Blavatsky quotes the saying that Nature is a ' comely mother

but stone cold ' ".

This question involves more than could properly be answered

in three minutes, but the principles upon which this thoughtful

question has been based are very simple indeed. In the first place,

the Dhyani-Chohans do not " guide Nature " ; not any more than

man's inner Dhyani-Chohan guides the circulation of his blood, or

the processes of his own digestion. Those things belong to the

lower spheres of Nature. There is a Dhyani-Chohan at the head

of every department of Nature ; but direct interference, the old

theological idea of an Almighty God interfering with the mess he

has himself created, is not accepted in our teachings. The Dhyani-

Chohans do not " guide " the material processes of Nature. They

are the summit of the Hierarchy and form the " laws " according

to which Nature works ; but every entity, every monad, every

atom, every soul, has the power of free will and choice, in more or

less limited degree, depending upon its intelligence, and must

exercise it or go down. And there is the key, the answer to the

question. Man does not control by his thought the beating of his

heart or the processes of his digestion, or the time it takes him to

grow from babyhood to youth, from youth to manhood, and from

manhood to sink into decrepitude. Those things are ruled by what

are properly called the " nature-forces " ; and the " laws " upon

which the nature-forces work, are those superior operations which

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 335

represent the automatic spiritual activities of the Dhy&ni-Chohans ;

but to say that they " guide " Nature is untrue ; the idea is a relic

of the old theological Christian dogmas, which remains in our

minds ; and we must wash our intellects clean of such thoughts if

we wish to understand the heart, the essence, of the ancient teach-

ings, which show one organism, one universal life, in diversified

action everywhere! And in this one organism, in this one beating

heart, in this one universal life, there are these multitudinous and

countless and endless and infinite series of intelligences, each

working out its own destiny from inward impulses, controlled by

various higher entities in which they " move, and live, and have

their being".

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CHAPTER XXX

THE INTERRELATION OF GODS, MONADS, ATOMS A KEY TO

THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. SUCCESSIVE EMANATIONS :

SHEATHS. HIGHER BEINGS EMANATING AND CLOTHING THEM-

SELVES IN HOSTS OF LOWER BEINGS. MORALITY BASED ON

THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE.

But the other medium, which is suspended from the Gods, though it is far

inferior to them, is that of daemons, which is not of a primarily operative nature,

but is subservient to, and follows the beneficent will of the Gods. It likewise

unfolds into energy the invisible good of the Gods, being itself assimilated to it,

and gives completion to its fabrications conformably to it. For it renders that

which is ineffable in the good of the Gods effable, illuminates that which is

formless in forms, and produces into visible reasons (or productive forms) that

which in divine good is above all reason. Receiving also a connascent participa-

tion of things beautiful, it imparts and transfers it, in unenvying abundance,

to the genera posterior to itself. These middle genera, therefore, give completion

to the common bond of the Gods and souls, and cause the connexion of them to

be indissoluble. They also bind together the one continuity of things from on

high as far as to the end ; make the communion of wholes to be inseparable ;

cause all things to have the best, and a commensurate mixture ; in a certain

respect, equally transmit the progression from more excellent to inferior natures,

and the elevation from things posterior to such as are prior ; insert in more

imperfect beings order and measures of the communication which descends from

more excellent natures, and of that by which it is received ; and make all things

to be familiar and coadapted to all, supernally receiving the causes of all these

from the Gods.

lamblichus on The Mysteries, pp. 32-33.

TO " keep alive in man his spiritual intuitions ", describes

very well the work of the Theosophical Society in the

outside world, and also in our own holy Order here.

But beyond that fine thought we must go if we are to

understand and fully to put the teachings, which have been given

us in trust, into our lives, and thereby to develop the moral, the

ethical, sense which these teachings are first and foremost meant

to develop and to make living in us, if we are to carry out the

purpose and aim set before us by those who have brought us

together into this Order.

Our present Teacher time and again has insisted upon the fact

that mere disquisitions on philosophic, religious, and scientific

subjects, impart nothing of permanent worth, are fruitless, bear

no fruit, unless the spirit of the Lodge is behind them ; and that

Lodge-spirit cannot exist without the spiritual intuitions which

exist in the core, in the central part, of every human being. You

will notice that the entire tendency of our studies has been to

develop the higher nature of us ; and you know that these studies

have been strictly laid down for us first by H. P. Blavatsky, as

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 337

she derived them from her Teachers, and as carried on thereafter

by William Quan Judge, and now by our own present beloved

Teacher.

These teachings of the Esoteric Philosophy, now being given to

the students of this Body, have stood, and will stand the test of

time and of the human heart. Here is a fact, surely, for which we

may give heartfelt thanks : that here among us at least is pre-

served the ancient Wisdom in its purity, and that not one of us

would fail to risk his life, and that which he holds dearest, in order

to preserve them pure and undefiled.

Now, this evening we are approaching the end of the elementary

studies which we have been briefly considering for the last two or

three years ; and soon it will be our duty to take up more concrete

aspects of the ancient Wisdom, or Wisdom-Religion ; and, in fact,

we have already approached these more detailed doctrines in our

present subject gods, monads, souls, atoms, and bodies. The

necessity for a clear understanding of those former studies, which

to some may appear somewhat abstract, is this : their reach into

the realms of human thought as represented by religion, philo-

sophy, and science, is immense ; they form, as it were, the

foundation-stones upon which the ancient Wisdom rests.

It will be remembered at our last study in The Secret Doctrine,

Volume I, page 107, we read the following : " . . . every atom in

the universe has the potentiality of self-consciousness in it, and is,

like the Monads of Leibnitz, a Universe in itself, and for itself. It

is an atom and an angel " that is, a spiritual being. Let us give

our utmost attention to what our Teacher has authorized the say-

ing of, this evening. We are going to speak more plainly on this

present subject than we have ever spoken before, although these

matters have been alluded to frequently ; and the reason for it,

at least one reason for it, is that the proper understanding of the

doctrine of Evolution of development and growth rests upon a

correct vision of the real meaning and interrelation of these three :

gods, monads, and atoms.

First, it will be remembered that in speaking of Space, we

rejected the idea that Space was merely a container. Now this is

not a mere abstraction of thought ; it is an absolutely important

thing to understand that all Being is one immense organism,

through which beats one Universal Heart, so to say. You see

there immediately the basis of morals ; there is no absolute empti-

ness, no absolute vacuum, anywhere ; all beings are closely related

and interchained in the strongest bonds of union : spiritual,

divine, intellectual, mental, astral, physical. Nothing can exist

without all other things ; for the Kosmos, deprived of a single

atom, would crumble into impalpable dust. No metaphor this ;

it is an actuality.

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Now a monad is often spoken of as " descending " into matter.

This is a fashion of speaking, a method of speech, as once pointed

out before. The monad itself does not " descend ", no more than

does a god drive our streetcars or blacken our boots. How, then,

does the monadic influence extend itself throughout the different

planes of Nature, so that in ordinary parlance, it is in fact correct

to speak of the " mineral monad ", of the " afiimal monad ", of

the " astral monad ", of the " human monad ", of the " spiritual

monad ", of the " divine monad " ? In the following way : But

first as an interpolation concerning the monad, let me read

something that H. P. Blavatsky says (The Secret Doctrine,

Vol. II, pages 185-6) :

The terms " mineral/' " vegetable " and " animal " monad are meant

to create a superficial distinction : there is no such thing as a Monad

(jiva) other than divine, and consequently having been, or having

to become, human. And the latter term has to remain meaningless

unless the difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of

the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within the plane of prime-

val differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower

condition the adjectives " higher " and " lower " being used for lack

of better words and a monad it remains at all times, save in the

Nirv^nic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms.

There you have the matter unequivocally stated.

It was pointed out at our last meeting that when the thrill of

life in the Boundless All first occurs in cyclical duration, the pri-

mordial beings issue forth as what are called the " gods ", and

that these gods, as the ages passed, during the progressive man-

vantaric periods, sent forth from themselves, or cast forth from

themselves, or cast out from themselves, or gave birth to, less

beings, less meaning inferior, of less divinity, or less sublimity, less

grandeur ; and these beings are the monads. In exactly the same

way the monads sent forth from themselves (or gave birth from

themselves to) the souls ; and, please understand, just as the

monad was in the god, so was the soul in the monad. These

entities remained latent in the monads as karmic fruitage from the

previous maha-manvantara. Just as the life remains in the seed

when cast forth from the plant, and sends forth its green blade in

the spring-time ; so, when the manvantaric thrill passes over these

spaces, after the long pralayic rest, the gods send forth the monads,

and the monads send forth the souls, and the souls send forth the

atoms. And the atoms similarly send forth from themselves our

vehicles, our bearers, our bodies.

Let us see if we can illustrate this by a diagram. Let us take an

immense circle to represent the Boundless All, which of course is

merely a representation for Space ; then place a point in its

center. This point represents the first germ of the kosmic life.

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This point also has its meaning in the sense of a kosmic seed. Now

it is not one point only in the Kosmos that springs into activity,

but innumerable such points, such seeds. The number is limitless,

practically ; and each one of such points

represents an individuality from the previous

maha-manvantara. But these points as

represented in ttte diagram are symbols ;

and the one stands diagrammatically for all.

If you please, this point in the quasi-infini-

tude of a hierarchy, of a universe, is the

beginning of that hierarchy, and it represents

the god of that hierarchy. This god

itself is a synthetic aggregation of multitudinous other gods, as

man's body is an aggregation, a synthesis, of multitudinous less

or inferior lives.

Now this god clothes itself in its emanations, in its pranic aura,

if you like ; it sends forth from itself pranic or vital effluvia, and

thus it clothes itself in garments, in sheaths of vitality, flowing

forth from itself, and these sheaths or garments are its " clothing ".

Any such god naturally casts its own individuality into its sheath,

into its clothing : seven degrees or states of it ; its individuality

is its SwabMva, which we have studied before, an important idea

to which we have drawn your attention, and on which we have

laid emphasis. The swabhava of an entity is its individuality, the

characteristic of it, the essentiality of what it is, as contrasted with

some other swabhava. In ordinary language we may call it

" individuality ". That which makes a rose bring forth always a

rose, and not a lily ; that which makes a man bring forth always

a man and not some other sort of entity ; that which makes a god

a god and not a monad, is its swabhava. This is a Sanskrit com-

pound meaning self-generation, self-pouring out, the pouring out of

that which is within, and, therefore derivatively its individual and

own characteristic. Please remember in this connexion that

always more within, infinitely, boundlessly, more within, are the

vast states of consciousness living on the equally vast fields of the

spaces of Space ; the possibilities to be evolved in a man's evolu-

tion, and the eternities through which he has passed, and the lives

which he has lived through in the past, are endless.

But passing on. This god sends forth its sheaths, and these

sheaths consist of less (or inferior) beings. If the god is a pri-

mordial entity let us call these latter primal. As man clothes

himself in physical flesh, so the god clothes itself in a garment or

body, and this garment or body is composed, if you like, of atoms

divine. Now these divine atoms are the monads. Compared with

the god they are the mere clothing of it, just as the synthesis, the

aggregation, of physical lives which compose a man's body and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

which form his. physical " coat of skin " or clothing, are, as it were,

the physical monads or the atoms, of the man himself. Similarly,

let us, then, advance a point farther. The germ, the seed, the

point above mentioned let us now call a monad one of the almost

infinite number of monads in each god, forming the clothing of

each god, the sheaths, the garments of light, that in which a god

lives, which it has sent forth from itself, its outpouring of indi-

vidual life.

Similarly acts the monad as did its father-god ; and its sheath

and its clothing are the souls, as yet latent, most of them, but some

forming the more active part in which it manifests at any one

particular time. The same course of action occurs with the soul.

The soul clothes itself in atoms, the emanations from itself and the

outpouring of its own vitality, its own prana. And then the atoms

pour forth from themselves the effluvium of physical-astral life,

and these vital effluvia form the physical body of man, his astral

body and his physical body.

So you see just what our first great Teacher means by saying that

an atom is an " atom and an angel " or a soul. Through all these

hosts of beings streams the flow of the Self, entering into every

one, forming in fact the very root of its being, not however the

personalized entity or the ego, but the impersonal Self, that which

is the same in you and in me ; the same in the inhabitants of dis-

tant stellar spaces, as it is in us : the one Self, limitless, boundless,

the ideation of selfhood, Remember that the ego is the sense of

'-' I am I ", not " you " ; and here immediately the conception of

personality enters in. But, as our Teachers have told us, it is in

raising the personality into impersonality, the ego into divinity,

the corruptible into the Incorruptible, that consists the whole

effort and purpose and aim of the divine part of evolution ; and

that divine part, that particular activity, is that of the higher

range of the Luminous Arc, of the Buddhic Hierarchy, of which

the summit are the Dhy&ni-Buddhas, the Buddhas of Contem-

plation ; and the material on which they work is these other

monads, souls, atoms, which form the matter-side of nature,

called the Shadowy Arc.

You will remember that all these things have been alluded to

by us before ; but tonight remember this one important point,

that the monad does not " descend into matter ". It casts forth

from itself its life, as the sun pours forth its vitality in rays ; and

its life manifests first as a monadic entity of inferior grade, as

a soul ; and the soul in its turn pours forth Us vitality, manifesting

in almost innumerable atoms. The monad itself is but one of

innumerable others, emanated, cast forth, breathed forth, if you

like to use an oriental metaphor, from Brahm&, the god, the summit

of our Hierarchy.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 341

As said, these garments or sheaths of light are those monadic

entities which must, during the course of evolutionary progress,

become denser, darker, thickened, with the passage of time, until

the ultimate result is the last energy, the last expenditure of the

divine or monadic force as manifested in the physical body.

When equilibrium between matter and spirit is finally reached,

when the lowest point in that kalpa, i.e., in that Day of Brahm&,

in that period of seven Rounds, has been reached, then step in

upon the scene the Manasaputras, the " Sons of Mind ", entities

from the Buddhic Hierarchy, from the Luminous Arc of evolving

Nature, those who had been men before in former kalpas, and

who have watched over us, under the guidance of the Silent

Watcher, their supreme Head, ever since our present kalpa or

manvantara began, aeons ago.

The monad, in one sense, may be called the active god of the

Hierarchy ; or, in man's especial case, man's divine Ego, sheathed

in its garments of light composed of inferior monadic entities

called souls : and the soul may be called an inferior monad, part

of the sheaths or the garments of the monad proper. These

respective garments are cast forth, somewhat as the tree puts

forth its leaves, its branches, its stems, its fruits. Similarly the

atoms are born from the pranic or vital essence of the souls, and

they form our bodies. So we see that every man, in his inmost

essence that is, inmost for the Hierarchy to which he belongs

is a divine being, a god ; and his spiritual nature is the monad ;

and his soul-nature is the ego, that particular entity hovering

between the pit and the sun, which must be raised from personality

into impersonality, from corruptibility into Incorruptibility ;

because in the soul resides that particular part of the psycho-

logical processes of intellection, which makes a man self-conscious,

a s^/-conscious being, capable of the ideation of individualized

being,

Oh, what wonderful thoughts are these ! How they do uplift

the soul ! Man feels his native divinity, his interior spiritual

strength ; he feels the power of divinity within his own heart,

the power for goodness and truth. And how small, how in-

significant, how unworthy, seem those things that lie apart from

the path of duty, of right I

How many have been hungry for truth, and have searched for

it, and yet have found only the husks of a pseudo-esotericism ?

But they also should have it. Human beings, they have a right

to it ; but they are not going to get it unless they " work for it ",

the Teacher calls out to me to say, for such is the archaic Law of

our Holy Order. The case is exactly as was pointed out in* a

former one of our study-meetings in this group : these teachings

have formed the reward, the reward of those who have been

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

faithful. It is delightful to a speaker to look into the faces of our

Comrades here, and see the quick flash of intelligence and of

understanding that illumines those faces when such or another

point has been reached in our study. It is more than gratifying ;

and it must be for our present Teacher encouraging beyond words

to express, that it is so. For, surely, her life of self-sacrifice and

labor, unremitting and unchanging, has in 'this its own fine

reward.

I have but three minutes more for speaking, this evening, and I

must soon close our study tonight. But there is one subject

which for certain reasons must now be touched upon briefly.

It is a subject which has been deliberately avoided by me hitherto

for obvious reasons ; I refer to the matter of sex. Such a matter

would be intolerable, such thoughts would be intolerable, in a

meeting of this kind, unless the purpose were absolutely right and

our study demanded its consideration. At our present stage of study,

it is necessary then to point out this fact, that man, at a certain

former period of his evolution, was without sex, was sexless, and

also that in the next coming Root-Race, the Sixth Root-Race, he

will be without sex as we now understand it. Sex is but a passing

phase in evolutionary development, and has no more value in

one sense, to man, than an evil dream has to a man under certain

conditions. Nature has followed that line, as it were, under

protest, through the evil doing involved in our past karma, as the

only way by which souls can find incarnation at present ; but as

the race grows in spiritual strength and in spiritual knowledge,

and looks with closer self-analysis into its own inner being,

children will come into the world without fathers ; and from

being at first an unheard of, and presumably to be called a portent

or a prodigy when it first appears, this procedure of generation

will become the natural course of things in the Sixth Root-Race.

Our present sexually separated men and women, the present

method of generation of human beings, of animals, and of some

plants, will, in those far distant times of the future, be looked upon

very much as we now look upon the procreative acts of the beasts.

In conclusion : you have heard of the Ancient Mysteries, and

of the doctrine of the " virginal birth ", as was pointed out in a

former meeting here. After the fourth degree of initiation, or

rather beginning with the fourth degree or stage of initiation,

the future was outlined in the Ancient Mysteries to the candidate

both by teaching and more especially by causing the candidate to

pass through himself what was to come to pass in the future ages

of racial development ; that is to say the initiant had to go

through, to live through, what the race was to live through for

the next two Root-Races. Previous to the fourth degree, he was

taught what the race had already been through, with allusions

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 343

to the future. When we read, therefore, of the " virgin birth " of

Christ, for instance, it is true that this has its religious explana-

tion, its philosophical explanation, its mystical explanation, etc.,

etc. ; but it has also its physiological explanation. You will re-

member what H. P. Blavatsky says about the seven keys which

belong to and open each one of these inmost sevenfold mysteries ;

of which two werg held as particularly secret : the physiological,

and the spiritual. The physiological key to this aspect of the

mystery-teaching was, as said, that the initiant had to symbolize

in his person and had to pass through, or live through what was

coming ; and he was therefore said, in view of the future racial

action along the lines of generation, to have been " born from a

virgin ". Obviously, I cannot say more here about this subject ;

I merely point to it, and cease.

It is a comforting thing, especially in the present stage of the

world when humanity is doing its best to throw off the evil

shackles of Atlantean and Lemurian sin (if we may use this word),

i.e., to throw off the horrible karma which holds the world in its

evil grip, to know the causes which brought it to be. This gives

us knowledge and power to stem this evil stream of human sin

and misery. And, finally, those who will not accept the truth and

work with the Law, certainly, as Jesus might have said, will not

" sit at my table with me when I partake of the wine of the

spirit in the House of my Father". "Those who have ears to

hear and to understand, let them hear " and be wise 1

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CHAPTER XXXI

THE BUILDING OF THE KOSMOS. THE SAME FUNDAMENTAL LAW

THROUGHOUT LIFE AND BEING : AN ENDLESS LADDER OF

PROGRESS. ANALOGICAL PROCESSES OF KOSMICAL AND PSYCHO-

LOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. THE RIVER OF LIFE,

And by the circulations of the soul being merged in a profound river and

impetuously borne along, we must understand by the river, not the human body

alone, but the whole of generation (with which we are externally surrounded)

through its swift and unstable flowing. For thus, says Proclus, Plato in the

Republic calls the whole of generated nature the river of Lethe, which contains

both Lethe and the meadow of Ate, according to Empedocles ; the devouring

jaws of matter and the light-hating world, as it is called by the gods ; and the

winding rivers under which many are drawn down, as the oracles assert. But

by the circulations of the soul the cogitative and opiniative powers are signified ;

the former of which, through the soul's conjunction with the body, is impeded

in its energies, and the latter is Titanically torn in pieces under the irrational life.

Introduction to Plato's The Timcsus, pp. 424-425 (TAYLOR).

In consequence of a reasoning process, therefore, he found that among the

things naturally visible, there was nothing the whole of which if void of intelli-

gence could ever become more beautiful than the whole of that which is endued

with intellect : and at the same time he discovered, that it was impossible for

intellect to accede to any being, without the intervention of soul. Hence, as

the result of this reasoning, placing intellect in soul and soul in body, he fabricated

the universe ; that thus it might be a work naturally the most beautiful and the

best. In this manner, therefore, according to an assimilative reason, it is neces-

sary to call the world [or universe] an animal, endued with intellect, and generated

through the providence of divinity.

Plato's The Timaus, pp. 457-458 (TAYLOR).

IN explanation of what was said in the final part of our

meeting last week, it is certainly advisable to extend the

explanation to a certain extent. For this reason : the

idea of bringing in the subject which was then so lightly

touched upon, was to connect it with the general scheme of evolu-

tionary development that we shall later have to study more

fully, and to show that throughout the entire universe of beings,

there runs one general plan. This is a very important subject

that we shall have to go into more in detail, later. The present

allusion to it is merely in order to connect a link which we might

otherwise pass over.

You all know, of course, that there are seven races all told on

this planet, in this Round on globe D, and that each of these races

has its own continent, follows its own course of evolution ; has

bodies that is, the individual units of the race have bodies

co-ordinated to and in harmony with the physical surroundings

in which they live.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 345

But as regards the question of the division of the human racial

stream, that is, the later third Root-Race, into the sexual human-

ity which has evolved into the men and women of to-day, the

point to be emphasized at present is that what we call sex is but

a passing phase in racial evolution, and, strictly speaking, is not

normal to mankind on Globe D of our planetary chain. This

method of procreation actually was copied from the beasts,

which " separated " before " man ". Please understand this

clearly : sex is a transitory phase, a passing phase, in racial

evolution, and that it has no more importance than that ; and

further : as we are now evolving on the ascending arc, as we

have already passed in fact beyond the first steps of the Luminous

Arc, of the arc of ascent, we shall find as the ages pass that our

present physiological status as men and women is to be outgrown.

As a matter of fact, the Atlantean and Atlanto-Lemurian karma

has weighed so heavily upon us, the fifth race, that we are actually

belated, and have not at the present date, the middle point of the

fifth race, reached that stage as regards the evolving of the physical

body which otherwise we should have reached.

As it stands, however, the teaching tells us that at the end of

our own fifth race, men and women will be disappearing as oppo-

site sexes ; and that by the middle of the Sixth Root Race (the

race to come) men and women as separate sexes shall be no longer.

The race will consist of beings who are physiologically neither men

nor women ; and, as hinted just now, the first examples of

parthenogenetic reproduction are already due, and would have

shown themselves already, were it not for our being belated, as

already said, by the heavy weight of our Atlantean karma,

which we have been carrying, or rather " working off ".

About the middle of the Sixth Race (the race to come) humanity

then no longer " men " and " women ", but humanity will

procreate their kind, if we can here properly use this word,

f ' procreate " at any rate will evolve or give birth to their own

genus by a process similar to that which took place in the early

Third Race, a process called in the Esoteric Wisdom " creating

sons by passive Yoga"; that is to say, by meditation and by

unconscious will, at first, later to be succeeded by conscious will

in the Seventh or following Root-Race. The humans of that

period (the Sixth Root-Race) will produce children by meditation

and by will ; during the Seventh Root-Race, the last to come on

this Globe, during this Fourth Round a race which to us now

would seem glorious the humans of that race will produce their

kind in the same general manner ; but by consciously exercised

will and meditation, but still more impersonally and still more

ethereally than the Sixth Race will do. The Sixth will do so, much

as the flowers grow from the plants, almost unconsciously as it

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were, hence by " passive Yoga " ; not so much unconsciously from

the mental standpoint but physiologically almost unconscious of

any " procreative " act, or any creative act. The Seventh will

" create " their offspring with conscious and fully active imagi-

nation, a force called kriydiakti in Sanskrit. The difficulty is in

finding words to explain something which to us^of the Fifth Root-

Race is non-existent, almost, and hence speculative or " unreal ".

The main point then, here, is to realize that this present

physiological state of sex is a passing racial evolutionary phase ;

and that every abuse, every misuse, no matter of what kind or

what the world may think about it, is a reaction contrary to the

evolutionary " law ", to use the popular phraseology ; and that

while it is true that the present method is the one which nature

has evolved at the present time, as said before it is not really the

method which primordial humanity might have followed. Even

the Hebrew Bible alludes to this matter in a passage which you all

may recall.

We of the Fifth Race now are on the ascending arc ; and we

especially, members of the Esoteric School, should at least attempt

to lead the race towards a nobler life as pioneers of Nature's

forthcoming stages, being as we are members of the Buddhic

Hierarchy, otherwise called the Hierarchy of Compassion.

Our main theme to-night, as you will recollect, is the building

of the Kosmos, the building of worlds, and the building of man.

Throughout the vast extent of manifested being, there prevail

fundamental operations of nature, which men to-day call the

" laws of nature ", because they do not understand their origin.

Men personify " nature ", which is a mere generalizing term ;

and they use the word " law " which is merely a word adapted

from human action in order to give a name to those fundamental

movements of Being. But there are operations of " nature ",

and these fundamental operations of nature are actually the

life-currents in the spiritual essence governing our hierarchy, as

the life-currents in man are they which govern the atoms, astral

and physical, which compose his body.

Remember that space is not a vacuum, space is not a mere

container ; if so, there would have to be a container of that

container, and so ad infinitum ; but space is the infinite fullness

of everything ; it is the Boundless All, without beginning and

without end ; it is one vast organism ; it is a unity ; everything

is interlocked and interchained with everything else, and through

all there runs the one Universal Life ; there is the beating, as

said before, of the one Universal Heart. This thought is so

important for a proper understanding of our Philosophy, that its

repetition surely will be forgiven. There are no vacuum-separa-

tions, there is no absolute division anywhere. There is no real

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 347

vacuum ; everything is full ; everything is full with and of

beings ; and these beings with which the Boundless All is filled,

are space itself. Therefore, when we speak of space, we mean not

merely the vast, boundless extension of any one plane, but more

particularly the invisible spheres, the planes within, ascending as

it were, going inwards, and inwards, and inwards forever ; and

outwards likewise/

The next thought is that through the action and interaction of

the gods, monads, souls, and atoms, we conceive a world as spring-

ing forth in the beginning of its manvantara, from and through

the invisible deeps of space, and extending itself as it were,

casting itself, projecting itself, forward, in its descent down the

Shadowy Arc of matter-manifestation. And how ? Not by a

something or a somebody which existed before itself was there,

but by making itself its own world, evolving out its own Kosmos,

which thus becomes its garment or body.

The gods and please do not think of human forms when we

speak of the gods ; we mean the arupa, the formless, entities,

beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences,

pure spirits, formless as we conceive form through that imper-

sonal (and may we say inevitable ?) energy, at any rate, by

reason of the karmic impulses behind them, project from them-

selves less bodies, inferior bodies, which are the monads ; and the

monads do precisely likewise and project the souls ; and the souls

do precisely likewise, and project the atoms. Each springs from

each. Through all, furthermore, there runs the boundless Self,

the boundless soul of the upper realms ; but each one of these

atoms, each one of these souls, each one of these monads, each

one of these gods, is its own hierarchy, the supreme part, the head,

the seed, from which its own following hierarchy springs. Wheels

within wheels, lives within lives, consciousnesses within conscious-

nesses, beings within beings a vast and endless congeries of

interlocked and interrelated and inter-living things. Pray get

this thought ! It is the very foundation of the Ancient Wisdom.

All questions of theology that have so embarrassed and perplexed

the minds of men are solved just by these few simple principles

of the Ancient Wisdom-Religion. Think upon them for your-

selves, and make your own deductions therefrom.

Now let us briefly follow the evolutionary course of one hier-

archy, one solar system. The same " law ", if you like the word,

the same fundamental operation of nature, runs through all that

which we find done in the case of a solar system, and is also that

which takes place in the case of a universe, is that which takes

place in the case of a sun, of a planet, and of the beings which

overrun that planet. Suppose then that we figurate a god, a

divine seven-principled being, starting into activity after its

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pralayic sleep, bringing with it the karmic seeds, the impulses

from the previous Maha-Manvantara, everyone of those seeds

having its karmic Swabhava, its karmic characteristic or essential

nature ; and starting into immediate activity when the life-wave

first arouses the sleeping spheres all comprised within the one

immense entity which we have agreed to call a " god ". We do

not exactly mean what the Hindus call a deva, which is some-

thing else ; but a god. But not God, not the Christian God. We

mean a god, one of the supreme intelligences, each one of which

is the head of a hierarchy, the hierarchies themselves being

numberless and " filling space ", being, in fact, space itself.

We simply must keep several ideas in our heads at once in essay-

ing an exposition of these intricate subjects. There is one of the

secrets of understanding the Ancient Wisdom : to retain in the

mind more than one conception at the same time ; it is our safe-

guard against mental biasses, and it is easy. Let me illustrate :

A man is driving an automobile : he may be at the same time

watching the road, watching for other automobiles, while in the

back of his mind there may be forming some plan of work ; and

he may also be talking to a friend. Let us keep these various

thoughts, all that has been spoken of so far this evening, in our

mind, as we consider this present matter.

Now this god is seven-principled, as said, and each principle

has its own work to do in the building of its kosmos ; each one acts

according to karmic impulses originating in the previous man-

vantara particularly, and in all previous manvantaras in general ;

and each one of these gods moves into manifestation according to

the lines traced out for it by its own past consciousness and

actions ,in former epochs of manvantaric activity. Therefore

when these seeds of beings start into active existence, the in-

numerable monads or divine souls divine seeds which form the

clothing of each one of these seven principles : when all these

principles spring into activity, each undertakes its own particular

work, a division of labor as it were, in the divine realms. First

the highest sends forth from itself a host of less beings, inferior

beings ; and they find their habitat, their habitation and their

realm of activity, in the plane next " below ", which is that of its

second principle. That second principle then begins its own

especial activity and does likewise ; and thus two of the seven

principles and realms of being are now working ; and so on down

the scale until we reach the lowest, the Prithiwl-tattwa, of the

divine series or scale.

When the astronomer looks into the ethery spaces and sees

those starry clouds, those nebulous masses, in some cases (though

not in all, for these nebulae are not all the same, but in those which

are) destined for the beginning of worlds, he sees there what has

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 349

so far taken place in material manifestation of a hierarchy through

the activity of the sub-seven degrees of the lowest or seventh

principle of a divine entity or " god " informing an otherwise

invisible life-center, informed by that god's vital essence, which

is the fundamental life of that hierarchy, the fundamental

impulse, or what men call the fundamental " law ", the funda-

mental operation of its nature, the fundamental characteristic,

the Swabhava. In such manner, then, the vital essence creates its

own dwelling a sun, a planet, which cycles down, as it were, into

visible evolution. But mark : each Head of a hierarchy retains its

own place, powers, and nature ; but its offspring thicken or

condense ; its offspring thus forming its garments on the several

planes of being. Each of these garments is a host of living beings,

atoms, souls the name matters little providing we understand

the thought. We must use analogies derived from our human

vocabulary, because we have as yet evolved no words which can

adequately explain these spiritual things ; therefore remember

that by the law of analogy such words are applicable, mutatis

mutandis, as the Latin phrase goes, " making the necessary

allowances for circumstances ", to various spheres of being.

When this thickening and grossening of the fabric (which takes

place from each entity shooting forth from itself, emanating from

itself, other less entities, " less " here meaning " inferior ")

reaches its lowest degree, then we have a sun and planets. Let us

take our planet as an instance. When such a planet has reached

its lowest point of evolution driven by the karmic impulse in-

hering in it, which is at the middle point of its Fourth Round

(which we on our planet have passed), then begins the reaction,

the reversal of the kosmic operation, and the life-currents begin

to withdraw inwards, thenceforth following the Luminous Arc

" upwards " : not leaving its " garments " behind altogether ;

but as they were sent forth, so are they now withdrawn inwards.

This, then, is an outline of the process of the evolution of spirit,

and the involution of matter ; just as the processes of projection

or casting forth were the involution of spirit and the evolution of

matter on the downward or Shadowy Arc. Thus is the Kosmos

built.

Now another thought. Each one of these gods, each one of

these monads, each one of these souls, each one of these atoms, is

an exhaustless reservoir of consciousness, of force, and of

matter. Let us take the atmic (or seventh or highest) of the god

whom we have chosen as example. Such atmic plane or sphere

is a " laya-center ". A laya-center is a nirvanic center, that

part, or place, or condition rather or state of being, where homo-

geneity of substance is, where heterogeneity has ceased, or has

not yet begun. When such laya-center begins its activity towards

2A

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

evolution, it casts forth, as said, from itself ceaselessly, hosts and

multitudes of these inferior beings ; but its own inner strength is

in nowise diminished. It is an exhaustless reservoir, a creative

center ; precisely as the sun, which is one of the finest analogies

that we have, casts forth from itself ceaselessly, during a man-

vantara, practically illimitable hosts of solar rays, yes, and also

of beings. Each one of these beings has its future cyclic course

to run ; and from being originally an unconscious god-spark, as

said in the beginning of these our studies, it has to develop into a

self-consciotis god, and do the same kosmic work that its own great

progenitor did or is doing.

We ourselves, when we were not men as yet, unevolved rays

only, belonged to the lower realms of spiritual being ; then

pursued our evolutionary course up to self-conscious manhood ;

and we who are now men, humans, are destined on the future

planet which shall follow this our present globe the offspring of

the earth to attain a development greater than manhood here ;

and those inferior lives which are now trailing after us on the

evolutionary journey, the beasts, the plants, and the minerals,

will have then their turn to pass through the human stage. Life

and being form an endless chain, an endless ladder of progress ;

yet when manhood has been attained comes moral responsibility :

at any moment there lies the path before us : the path to the right,

up the Luminous Arc ; or the path to the left, downwards along

the Arc of Shadows.

As said before, the Teacher does not permit me to speak fully as

yet of the subject comprised in the words " downward path " ;

though it forms half of the teaching, and she certainly will permit

it one of these days. It is a very important study, because without

it we cannot understand one half of the processes of evolution

and involution.

Our time this evening is drawing to a close, but it is necessary

for us to call attention to the following diagram :

I.

2.

3-

4-

5-

6.

7-

8.

9-

10.

ESOTERIC Brahmanic Elements Mystic

LINE Tattwas Greek

DHYANI-

* CHOHANS

V PlTRIS

Swabhawat

Adi-Buddhi (a)

Gods

Monads

Souls

Atoms

Bodies

Adi-tattwa

Anupapadaka-

tattwa

Akaa-tattwa

Taijasa-tattwa

V&yu-tattwa

Apas-tattwa

Prithiwi-tattwa

The ONE

Spirit

Aether

Fire

Air

Water

Earth

First Logos

Second Logos

Gods. Third

Logos (Mahat)

Daimones

Heroes

Men

Beasts

ELEMENTAL WORLD

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 351

Here we have six columns representing analogical cases of

cosmical and psychological development. First we have what we

may call the Esoteric Line ; to the left of that we have placed the

numbers, I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, representing the full hierarchy

of ten stages or degrees. The next column gives the Brdhmanic

Tattwas. Tattwa is a Sanskrit word, which may be translated as

element, meaning fhe substantial " reality " back of the pheno-

menal appearance, upon which the seed-consciousness works ;

the garment or bearer of the inworking consciousness. Then

come in the next column the Elements, as commonly understood

everywhere in ancient times. Then comes the Mystic Greek

system, as found mostly in the nee-Platonic and neo-Pythagorean

philosophies. And lastly comes the division of the beings com-

posing the evolving Life- Wave, or River of Life, into two generic

(general) forms, Dhydni-Chohans, and Pitris.

i. In the Esoteric Line we have first Swabhawat, a Sanskrit

word meaning, as you know, the self -evolving, the self -developing,

even translated sometimes as the self -existent. Corresponding to

this is the Adi-tattwa in the next column, Adi is a Sanskrit word

meaning original, primordial. Corresponding to this among the

elements is The ONE. We have no word for this element. The

ancients referred to it in various ways. We will simply call it

The ONE, as it is the Seed from which the others spring in

" descent ", that is to say in thickening and grossening during

the evolutionary course. The Mystic Greek has the First Logos,

to correspond.

^ 2. The planes below are next given, reading from left to right.

Adi-Buddhi, original, or primordial Buddhi ; and when the thought

is somewhat changed, and a slightly different hierarchy is to be

followed, it is called Adi-Buddha, individualizing the Hierarchy

in tracing the development of the Hierarchy of Compassion,

though when we speak of Adi-Buddhi, we refer rather to the action

of the principles than to the entities imbodying those principles.

Corresponding to it in the Tat t was is Anupapddaka-tattwa,

another Sanskrit word meaning " parentless ", that which does

not follow an individualized progenitor, therefore " parentless ",

not that it has no source or origin, but that it itself is the primal

seed of individuality, which in this particular Hierarchy first

springs into manifestation in it. The case is like the entrance of

the manas into man, thereby giving him self-consciousness and

individuality, which he does not get from his parents. Among

the elements we may call it spirit. The Mystic Greek has it as the

Second Logos.

3. The third plane below is the Gods, corresponding of course to

the Mdnasaputras in man, the sons of Mind. Its Tattwa is Akdta-

tattwa t the word Akdfa meaning brilliant, shining, luminous. Let

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

me point out here parenthetically that strictly speaking Swabhavat

is the proper correspondence of Akaa ; but the way in which this

diagram is arranged, is an attempt to show corresponding intelli-

gences and activities in the several individual hierarchies here set

forth ; and therefore AkaSa-tattwa corresponds in it to the Gods

in the Esoteric Line. Among the elements it is Aether, but not

the ether of science. The ether of science is* merely one of its

lower principles. The Mystic Greek has likewise the Gods, other-

wise composing the third logos. In Brahmanic philosophy this

plane is called Mahat, a word which means " great ". Mahat

is a technical term in the Brahmanic system, and is the " Father-

Mother " of Manas ; it is the " mother " of the Manasaputras

or " sons of mind ", if you like, or that element from which

they spring, that element which they breathe and of which they

are the children.

4. The Monads, corresponding to Taijasa-tattwa, meaning the

shining, the brilliant, tlie fiery, the sparkling. Among the Elements

it is Fire. The Mystic Greek has the Daimones corresponding to

it, beings whom the Christians, with their usual intelligence,

have turned into " demons " or " devils ". It simply means

spiritual beings of a certain class ; but this thought is too intricate

to go into at any length this evening. I may merely point out

that the Daimones belong to the hierarchy of Consciousness, as

shown in the diagram, and not to the hierarchy of the Shadowy

Arc. Socrates, as you know, frequently alluded to his Daimonion,

meaning his " guardian-angel ". As he said : " My daemon told

me always never what to do, but always what to refrain from

doing ". It is, as it were, the " conscience " of later thought.

Now these four classes are grouped under the general heading of

the Dhydni-Chohans, the " Chohans of Meditation ", the " Lords

of Meditation ". The following three classes belong to the Pitris

beings of lower degree, whom you will remember as mentioned

in The Secret Doctrine, and there called " Fathers ", because they

are more particularly the actual progenitors of our lower prin-

ciples ; whereas the Dhyani-Chohans are actually in one most

important sense our own selves. We were born from them ;

we were the monads, we were the atoms, the souls, projected, sent

forth, emanated, by the Dhyanis, as pointed out before.

5. Now the Fifth degree downward comprises in this particular

diagram what are called souls in the Esoteric Line. In the Brah-

manic Tattwas we see Vdyu-tattwa. Vdyu means airy, aerial. In

the Elements, Air ; in the Mystic Greek, the Heroes. These are

the highest class of the Pitris.

6. The sixth are the Atoms. Please remember, as said before,

that atom as here used does not mean the atom of science, but

what we may call the Astral Monad, of which the atoms of the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 353

physical world are the emanations, the projections. The atoms,

the astral atoms, clothe themselves in the physical world, which

is their garment-offspring. The Brahmanic Tattwa is Apas-

tattwa ; the Elements show here Water ; and the Mystic Greek,

Men.

7. The seventh is the Bodies, vehicles merely, corresponding to

Prithiwi-tattwa. Prithiwi is a Sanskrit word meaning extension,

i.e., wide, spacious. It is common to speak of Prakriti as " mat-

ter ", but really Prithiwi is the word better corresponding to

what we call matter. Prakriti is rather " Nature " and the living

garment of spirit. The Element is Earth : and the Mystic Greek

in this hierarchy of entities, shows the Beasts.

These last three classes are the Pitris : and below these seven,

comes the Elemental world, in three planes. One of these elemen-

tal planes or worlds we may mention in passing, as it is the

" Interior Realm " which has its locus or habitation at the center

of any globe.

Now, the evolution of mankind depends upon and follows that

of the respective elements in each instance that is to say that

the human life-wave evolves in each of the seven elements one

after the other, from the highest downwards to the last ; and

then on the turn of the Grand Cycle, ascending through them

all to the highest again. Each globe of the seven of the Planetary

Chain, each of the seven Root-Races on every globe, partakes of

the nature and qualities of the kosmic Element it happens to be

evolving in and through, whether it be what is technically called

"Earth", or " Water ", or "Air", or "Fire 1 ', or ".Ether",

or " Spirit ", or the " Nameless One ". Man's seven principles

likewise correspond to and are derived from the seven kosmic

Elements, each to each. And mere bulk of body, or size, has noth-

ing to do with the nature of man and his powers, with the building

of man, or his destiny.

For instance : the First and Second Root-Races were gigantic

beings as far as mere size was concerned, but they were otherwise

mere shells, mere phantom-creatures, so to say, the offspring of

the Pitris alone, as yet not filled with the divine fires of self-

consciousness and intellect. They were ethereal on what was

then an ethereal earth, our present gross planet " Terra ". They

had no physiological organs, properly speaking, and their shapes

were different from ours, although the general human skeletal

frame-work as we now know it was within them, evolved from

the previous Round on this earth.

In Races the Fifth and the Sixth still to come, humanity will

evolve bodies corresponding to the surroundings they will then

be in ; and in very truth, those surroundings themselves will be

developed or made by the humanity evolving therein, actually

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

evolving their own surroundings, which will be their own emana-

tions. We may conceive of them, if you like, as very small beings,

Lilliputian in size, perhaps, but nevertheless of gigantic intellects,

and of immense spiritual powers. If we will only once realize, as

even our scientists are beginning to do, the almost limitless forces

locked up in an atom, a thing so small that it as yet is merely a

figment of the scientific imagination, which' no one has ever

seen, or knows anything about except certain deductions which

have been more or less gradually made by studying the workings

of the atoms, through the physical phenomena of beings, we can

realize that if even physical matter contains forces or powers as

great as even one atom has, what may not man, upon evolving

that which is within himself, evolving the unspeakable grandeur

of his inner nature, as he is going to do at least those who will

pass the " critical periods " we may understand, I repeat, that

mere size of body does not mean possession of power or of know*

ledge, or of intelligence or of compassion. As a matter of fact,

it is perhaps rather the contrary : mere volume or rather mass

weighing the inner spirit rather heavily down.

And it is quite permissible to conceive of gods so small, that an

atom, one of our physical atoms, would be a cosmical universe to

it. And to use the old Brahmanic terms, there sits at the Heart

of Being a god, thinking divine thoughts, and ruling its universe.

So when we speak of men at the end of the Fifth Race in future

ages as evolving physical vehicles out from themselves, which

nevertheless will preserve the same general skeleton outline as

at present ; when we say that their shape will be neither that of

man nor of woman, we simply mean that man himself, through

suffering and experience, and through the evolving of that which

is lying latent within him, and even now ready to appear, will

bring forth into exteriorization from within himself his own inner

nature : a sexless being. From that time forwards, men and

women will be no more, replaced by far nobler Humans.

You will remember that at our last meeting it was said that

the time had even now come when children might be produced

without fathers ; but the race is belated in its evolutionary

course, and probably ages will yet pass before this partheno-

genetic process begins. Yet even this process is merely the first

step to a still more different process to come later ; but it will

take place before this our Fifth Root-Race ends ; it will come to

pass partly because men and women are growing more alike , instead

of more unlike. Clean instinct will then rule instead of the beast-

impulse. However, as long as marriage lasts, it ought to be

what every Theosophical Teacher, and what every true The-

osophist too, feels it should be .* a union of mutual respect and

kindness, in which each helps the other to grow morally and

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 355

intellectually, and anything under this or less than it, is

degrading.

At the end of this Fifth Root-Race, man and woman as sexes

will have nearly passed away ; and in the Sixth Race, naturally,

at certain specified times, without passion, by meditation and by

passive will and thought, humans will evolve forth their offspring,

much in the " unconscious " way (though the term " uncon-

scious " is incorrect) that the flowers bring forth their blooms ;

and in the Seventh Race of this Round on this planet the humans

of that splendid time will bring forth from within themselves,

glorious creations of the active will and of the imagination, their

" children " ; and there will then be a race of Adepts, of incarnate

devas upon earth. This will be in the Seventh Race on this

planet during this present Fourth Round. As said several times

before, it is only because we have sunken morally and are belated

that the phenomenon of virginal birth has not yet appeared on

earth as a physical fact ; though, as pointed out at our last

meeting, it has been " prophesied " in religious mysteries, and the

initiation-ceremonies contained one where the initiant, after

certain conditions had been complied with you will forgive me,

this is dangerous ground was said to be " born of a virgin ", thus

anticipating, or rather forecasting, what was to come to the entire

Race in the future ; this being, as said before, a reward for noble

service rendered in behalf of mankind. Here is a wondrous

Truth, concealed and kept hid for fear of the profanation which

would be sure to follow if these divine mysteries, if these divine

teachings, fell into unworthy hands directed by scheming brains 1

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CHAPTER XXXII

OUT OF THE INVISIBLE INTO THE VISIBLE. FROM THE VISIBLE

INTO THE INVISIBLE. THE MAGNUM OPUS.

5. This (universe) existed in the shape of Darkness, unperceived, destitute

of distinctive marks, unattainable by reasoning, unknowable, wholly immersed,

as it were, in deep sleep.

6. Then the divine Self-existent (Svayambhu, himself) indiscernible, (but)

making (all) this, the great elements and the rest, discernible, appeared with

irresistible (creative) power, dispelling the darkness.

19. But from minute body (-framing) particles of these seven very powerful

Purushas springs this (world), the perishable from the imperishable.

20. Among them each succeeding (element) acquires the quality of the

preceding one, and whatever place (in the sequence) each of them occupies,

even so many qualities it is declared to possess.

21. But in the beginning he assigned their several names, actions, and con-

ditions to all (created beings), even according to the words of the Veda.

22. lie, the Lord, also created the class of the gods, who are endowed with

life, and whose nature is action ; and the subtile class of the Sadhyas, and the

eternal sacrifice.

51. When he whose power is incomprehensible, had thus produced tho

universe and me, he disappeared in himself, repeatedly suppressing one period

by means of the other.

52. When that divine one wakes, then this world stirs : when he slumbers

tranquilly, then the universe sinks to sleep.

53. But when he reposes in calm sleep, the corporeal beings whose nature

is action, desist from their actions and mind becomes inert.

54. When they are absorbed all at once in that great soul, then he who is

the soul of all beings sweetly slumbers, free from all care and occupation.

57. Thus he, the imperishable one, by (alternately) waking and slumbering,

incessantly revivifies and destroys this whole movable and immovable (creation).

The Laws of Manu (Sacred Books of the East, Edited by MAX MOLLER).

AFAR-SEEING hope and a bright peace abide in the

hearts of all faithful students of our Order ; in those at

least who have learned to perceive that behind the

mask of visible things there is a splendor of life and

consciousness which is theirs for the taking ; and also that it

depends upon themselves entirely to what extent they may advance

along the pathway which ascends ever upwards and onwards along

the Luminous Arc, upon which we, as a race, have been (and are

now) marching ever since the middle part of the Fourth Root-Race.

The Mystery-Schools of antiquity made the one great aim and

object of their studies and initiatory ceremonies the bringing forth

into actuality in each candidate or initiant, of his immortal

nature, of that part of him which belongs to, or rather is the

offspring of, the inner monad ; that which in fact makes him a

conscious part of the Buddhic Hierarchy, of the Hierarchy of

Compassion. It is the union of the personal man with these

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 357

higher principles of his own nature that produces the " living

Christ ", or the fully Awakened One called the Buddha. It was

the object of initiation, as said, not merely to make man con-

scious of this higher life within him, of these splendors within ;

but also to enable him to become ready and fit to teach others

of that life which he himself felt within himself. That was the

main object and* aim of all the Mystery-Schools the world over,

however much they may have differed in forms and in the words

in which they clothed their thoughts. It was, in other words, to

make each initiant or candidate a living follower and example

of the Silent Watcher of whom we have spoken in other studies.

Now, there are many Silent Watchers, as has been pointed out.

The Silent Watcher, in fact, is the Hierarch or supreme hier-

archial head of any one particular hierarchy of the numberless

hierarchies in the Kosmos ; the one spoken so inspiringly of by

II. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine is the chief of the Dhyani-

Buddhas governing this Fourth Round on this planet.

It would seem a curious thing to refer to in this connexion ;

and yet it seems a necessary thing to do, to speak of the different

vagaries of thought, quasi-philosophic, quasi-scientific, quasi-

religious, which are being spread abroad in the world today.

Many are the teachings of Theosophy, which are now so

familiar and beautiful, which in the beginning were not easily

received by many in the world, because they were strange and

conflicted with the prejudices religious, scientific, and other

that men had at the time.

How many people objected to the teaching of reincarnation

when it was first promulgated ! What said one once to the

present speaker : " I do not want to be reborn a cab-horse ; 1

do not want to be reborn a flea ; I am a man ! " Obviously, there

was here no objection to the doctrine of reincarnation which

teaches no such metempsychosis as that ; the objection was to

his own prejudices, and he did not know it !

Similar is the case with some of the doctrines which, with the

Teacher's permission, will have to be developed and unfolded in

our studies here. I will not say that among ourselves these

teachings will meet with misunderstanding ; but among others

to whom these teachings may go out, they may meet with

objectors ; the root-thoughts or bases of them will be mis-

understood at first, and the objectors will not wait for time and

reflexion to confer an understanding of them. Meanwhile, let us

remember that the utmost vigorous exercise of the intuitional

and of the intellectual powers of each student is absolutely

necessary, and is actually demanded by the rules of our Order,

We take nothing on blind faith ; but while that is the fact, on

the other hand there likewise remains for us the duty to cultivate

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

the spiritual and meditative faculty within our beings, the

immortal part of our natures, which tells us first that this Order

is the link with the Hierarchy of Compassion, and that if we come

here honestly and sincerely, not hypocritically, not merely in

order to find out what is being done or said, then we must believe

that our Teacher knows her business, and that she would not

tolerate the minutest deviation or divagation frbm the doctrines

which her heart and intellect tell her are true.

Let us now take up the study which we temporarily closed at .

our last meeting Gods, Monads, and Atoms, as regards their

respective work in the building of a world, in the building of a

Cosmos, and in the building of Man. We refer not only to his

body of flesh, but this noble doctrine includes also the Why and

the How, yea, and the When of his descent through spiritual

spheres into incarnation and his existences in those spheres. Let

us read first from The Secret Doctrine, Volume II, page 267 :

The doctrine teaches that the only difference between animate

and inanimate objects on earth, between an animal and a human frame,

is that in some the various " fires " are latent, and in others they are

active. The vital fires are in all things and not an atom is devoid of

them. But no animal has the three higher principles awakened in him ;

tkey-are simply potential, latent, and thus non-existing. And so would

the animal frames of men be to this day, had they been left as they

came out from the bodies of their Progenitors, whose shadows they

were, to grow, unfolded only by the powers and forces immanent in

matter.

Out of the invisible into the visible, from the deeps of inmost

space, when the time comes, the life-wave sends forth its Sowings

into the exterior and into the outer spheres, making for itself as

it advances, creating for itself, through the beings which represent

that wave, its own garments, which kosmically are its planes, its

worlds. These several stages of evolution or progression, as

before said, are (i) the gods, whose garments are the (2) monads,

whose garments are the (3) souls, whose garments are the (4)

atoms, whose garments are (5) bodies. Refer the order to worlds,

and the doctrine is true. Refer the order to man, and the doctrine

is true. Refer the order to the Elemental, mineral, vegetable,

beast, and human kingdoms of this earth, and the doctrine is

again analogically true. Stage by stage, degree by degree, as the

living wave advances, it projects from itself at each stage, it

casts forth from itself at each stage, innumerable entities inferior

to itself, which form its vehicles, which we may also call its

garments, its bodies, or its planes and its worlds. Each god of

the great host, for instance, from within itself produces multitudes

of monads ; each monad produces from within itself multitudes

of souls ; each soul produces from within itself multitudes of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 359

atoms ; and these clothe themselves in vehicles of matter, or

bodies, and all run through their long evolutionary course. Then,

when the lowest point of the great round of life has been reached,

the upward cycle begins : there is a re-entering of the vital forces,

a gathering up, a gathering withinwards, of the hosts of beings ;

the visible passes back by degrees into the invisible, plus the

growth and experiences gained during the journey by each

individual entity. Each one has advanced one plane upwards in

its evolution ; each one has gone so many milestones farther

along the path ; and, finally, the Life- Wave enters the divinity

from which it went forth, but nobler, higher, in every respect. It

began its long evolutionary course after its equally long pralayic

sleep, obeying the karmic impulses awakening it to a new life-

period ; and now having completed it, it is once more ready to

issue forth again to form a new manvantara, and in order to do

this, once again develops from within itself new planes, new

elements, new principles, new hosts of beings as it did before, but

now nobler, ever new ones going forth, growing ever higher and

higher in grandeur and power. Such is a general outline of the

evolutionary course.

You know the old Hermetic saying : " As it is above, so it is

below ". That saying is found in an ancient writing said to have

been engraved on an emerald table ; according to the legend,

it was called the " Emerald Table of Hermes ", and is undoubtedly

based on one of the ancient Hermetic teachings. I will quote

the first few lines of it :

True, without error, certain, most true ; That which is above is

as that which is below ; and that which is below, is as that which is

above, for performing the marvels of the Kosmos. As all things are

from the [Primordial] One, by the mediation of One [the Logos

that is to say the host of Dhy^n-Chohans] so all things arose out of this

One Thing by evolving. . . .

And that " one thing " is the summit of any hierarchy, the

divinity already spoken of in giving the general outline of the

evolutionary procession.

Turning to the Zoroastrian faith, we find the following verses

in an ancient work (which modern scholars, for reasons best

known to themselves, try to bring down to late times, but which

unquestionably contains very archaic thought) called The

Desdtir, in the chapter called The Book of Shet the Prophet

Zirtusht, " Zirtusht " being one of the forms of the name which

in English is called Zoroaster, following the Greco-Latin form :

they are verses 29, 30, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, as follows :

29. Know, my Friend ! that the essence of the Self-Existent is

one, and without limits or conditions.

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30. Being is like light ; and light becometh visible. [Mark

that !]

35. Whatsoever is on earth is the reflexion and the shadow of

something that is in the [spiritual] World-Sphere.

36. While that resplendent something remaineth in its native

condition, it is well also with its shadow.

37. When that resplendent thing removeth away from its shadow,

life removeth to a distance.

38. Again, that light [that resplendent thing] is the shadow of some-

thing still more resplendent than itself. [Note the hierarchical teaching

here.]

39. And so on up to Me, who am the Light of Lights [the Hier-

archical Head.]

It probably has occurred to every thoughtful Theosophical

mind, that if man has within himself a quasi-divine monad, and

seated within that divine monad a divinity, a god, it is strange

that our consciousness of this unity with the Divine through

this monadic link is not stronger in us than it is today. The

Christians speak of their " guardian angel ", and so do the

Mohammedans ; and other peoples, such as the Greeks, spoke

as did Socrates of the Daimon, the guardian-Self ; but why is

it that our conscience that of you and of me, and of all other

human beings is not stronger and more vocal than it is ? Why

is it that we have to work and struggle inwardly to get this

interior illumination consciously, which, even according to the

Christian teachings, must be " taken by violence " ? Is the

reason not here ? Man is composite ; he is a complex, a com-

pound being, and lives on different planes, and these planes are

the seven elements of nature ; and the seven elements of nature

are its seven principles ; and the seven principles of man can

otherwise be called man's seven elements.

The monad lives in its own world, in its own logoic activity,

with its quasi- or semi-divine powers in full action, far more

self-conscious on its own plane than you are or I am on this our

plane of consciousness. And similarly with the god within us,

seated within the monad.

But further. You will remember that in discussing (briefly at

the time, because we had not yet laid the foundation for it) the

teaching referring to the Silent Watcher, we pointed out that

it was based on the fact of the many and the one how man and

the universe are both, respectively, many and one, many in the

lower nature, and one in the higher. Now, then, please note

carefully the following : Our consciousness is no higher than it is

because we are (each of us) a person ; and it is the raising of this

person, of this personal self, of this personal soul, into the imperson-

ality and individuality of the monad, that is the great work, the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 361

magnum opus, of life. Here is the answer in brief to the question

propounded above. The purpose of all initiatory ceremonies

to put the answer in another form the aim of all initiatory

teachings of the ancient Mystery-Schools, was, as said in the begin-

ning of our study this evening, the evocation of the higher self, of

this inner being ; and it is possible to do it. A strong and in-

domitable will is *the first requisite. Purity of life is the second,

mental purity above everything else. And absolute loyalty and

devotion to the teachings of the Esoteric Wisdom and to the

Teacher, is the third ; and these three principles of life and con-

duct are true Raj a- Yoga ; and this " kingly union " is the union

with the god within, our divine Self. When this union takes

place, then you have what the Greeks called in their Ancient

Mysteries, " Theopneusty ", the breathing into the personal of the

Impersonal Essence.

Yet, preceding this stage or degree of initiation, the second or

intermediate, there came the first of these initiations, the actual

and real meeting face to face with the god within, your own

Higher Ego-Self ; and this degree was called " Theophany ", a

Greek compound word meaning the " appearance of a god " i.e.,

of that god which is within you, your own inner self. Further,

when the two preceding unions were achieved, when the high

degrees of Theopneusty and Theophany had been won, there

came a third and last stage, which the Greeks called " Theopathy ",

a Greek compound word meaning " suffering a god ", " enduring

a god " a meaning later to be more fully explained. Such an

initiate became even in life an evolved Christos, or as the Bud-

dhists call it, an " Awakened One ", a Buddha, the awakening

to the living Buddhic entity within the man, the last stage of

human knowledge possible on this earth on this Round, the

Fourth. Very few indeed are they who attain to this supreme

stage of Incarnate Wisdom ! Such a one was the Lord Buddha,

Gautama-Sakyamuni, Prince of Kapilavastu. He it is, we are

told, who today as a Nirmanakaya, forms the summit (or Silent

Watcher) of the Hierarchy of Sages forming our own Holy Order,

living among them invisible to those of lower degree and visible

to those of higher degree ; in what the Buddhists of the north

call the " sacred land of Sambhala ", that mysterious locality

which is placed north of the Himalayas, and not so far from what

is called the desert of Gobi or Shamo. And, that wondrous

Thing, that wondrous entity, that wondrous being, which was in

H. B. Blavatsky and worked through her, came from Sambhala

came from this hierarchy. I do not here refer merely to the

woman, to the physical body ; no, nor even to the personality

born in Russia ; but to that wonderful Thing who incarnated in

hat body, and who left part of " herself " behind there and who

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went forth into the world crippled psychically, obeying in this

respect an archaic law, which was the cause of so much mis-

understanding about her. This Entity did its work in the world

at the proper cyclic time for its appearance among men : the

opening of a new " Messianic Cycle ".

You know the warning about " false Christs " which is given in

the Christian Gospels, in Matthew and in Mark in Matthew,

chapter 24, verses 23, 24, and 25, and in Mark, chapter 13, verses

21, 22, and 23. They are practically the same in sense and words,

and they evidently are both Mark and Matthew taken from

a former, earlier, Christian Gospel, possibly the so-called Gospel

" according to the Hebrews ", of which scholars know ; but which

they have never yet found. At any rate, the writer of the above

warning spoke truly when, using the alleged words df Jesus, he

said in substance : " Many shall come after me, teaching false

Christs, who will try to lead you astray, saying ' Lo here he is ! '

and ' Lo, there he is ! ' Believe it not ". Now, these words are

not necessarily of solely Christian application it is the warning

against imposture contained in them that we quote. They could

apply equally well to Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, ancient Americans,

Scandinavians, to any people living anywhere in the world, for

the warning could apply to all. Why ? Because there are in

fact cyclic crises or periods when real " saviors " of men do

appear, as also " false prophets " and " false Christs ", They

come always whenever the time is ripe. After every period of

2160 years, the length of the " messianic cycle ", there comes a

recrudescence of spiritual faith into the world at times of material

growth and spiritual decadence ; in those times that Plato calls

the " barren periods ", a Messenger " comes " from Sambhala,

and gives his doctrine to men and establishes it, and then passes.

And instantly copyists, or perhaps false disciples those who

perhaps are seeking prominence for themselves, or who are

deceived, or who perhaps are even misled by their own prejudices,

by the weaknesses of their own human minds let us put it in

the most charitable way possible begin making sects, begin

preaching " false Christs n , begin to make an appeal to the

wonder-loving appetite of the people. And a new sect is born,

and either dies out or lives on for a time, and the world is priest-

ridden and man-hierarchy ridden for another series of centuries,

until by his own spiritual vigor and his mental strength, man

frees himself again ; and after turbulence and achings of the

heart there comes a new real light, a new real Christos, a new

light from the Hierarchy of Compassion. It is the working of the

same old appeal to men's spiritual inner fires, by the spiritual

Dhyanis who incarnated primarily in the Third Root-Race on

this planet in this Round as the Mdnasaputras, and who thereby

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 363

saved us from aeons of animality and unspeakable degradation,

and untold ages of lightless wandering.

There is the situation. We must follow either the "right-

hand " or the " left ", as the ancient Buddhists said. " Keeping

the link unbroken " means following the " right-hand " path.

Each one of us as individuals has the choice. None other can

choose for us. All our Teacher can do is to appeal and to teach.

Each one of us has his conscience, which he must follow, and with

which no interference is ever tolerated in our Order. But mark

you, be sure that the path you choose is the path of conscience

and wisdom. Be sure you are not led along the left-hand path

by wiles and guile of many kinds.

These are old and trite sayings, but they have always a proper

application. Their truth is not lessened by the fact that we are

all familiar with them.

At our next meeting we shall have to undertake more definitely

the study of how the life-wave passes into imbodiments, making

its own vehicles by projection from itself by bringing forth from

within its own focus of vitality innumerable inferior entities,

giving them forth as man gives forth his thoughts ; and then in

future studies show how the life-wave passes down the " Shadowy

Arc " into ever grosser manifestation, until the critical period is

reached, when the ascending cycle of the " Luminous Arc "

begins. We shall have to refer to a wonderful old Greek and

Roman philosophic school, the Stoic, and show how true were

their teachings regarding the evolution of the elements, these

elements following each other down into manifestation, each

giving form to each. For in this teaching we may find a proper

understanding of how the Kosmos is built, and how man is

constructed, and the Why and the How of his evolution, and why

he is here on earth now and not elsewhere, either farther along

the path or not so far.

All these are matters which are directly connected with the

scientific researches of our own day, for modern scientific discovery

is making great strides forward, and will sooner or later need

guidance, or it too will take the " left-hand path ". H. P.

Blavatsky has told us plainly that it is through the Theosophical

Movement that will come the light which is to enlighten the

world and guide the footsteps of man on the path along the

Luminous Arc ; and it is our duty to aid in this noble work with

all our strength ; and if we do not understand our own philosophy

properly and rightly, so that we can meet others and talk with

them convincingly, we are failing in our duty. But those of us

who have an indomitable will and who have awakened the inner

Christos within us, even to such a small extent that we can see

even something of that wonderful Light within which gives us

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

far-seeing hope and abiding peace : those of us who have felt it

even in slight degree, will realize that in it and nowhere else on this

earth, nor in any other sphere, visible or invisible, lies the Path, the

ancient Path, the small, old Path of which the Hindu Upanishads

speak, that leads to the Heart of the Universe.

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CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LIFE-WAVE AND THE SEVEN ELEMENTS. THE ESOTERIC

PHILOSOPHY AS TAUGHT BY THE STOICS.

If, out of the material portion of the ether, by virtue of the inherent restless-

ness of its particles, the forms of worlds and their species of plants and animals

can be evolved, why, out of the spiritual part of the ether, should not successive

races of beings, from the stage of monad to that of man, be developed ; each

lower form unfolding a higher one until the work of evolution is completed on

our earth, in the production of immortal man ?

Isis Unveiled, (H. P. BLAVATSKY), I, 340.

The most positive of materialistic philosophers agree that all that exists was

evolved from ether ; hence air, water, earth, and fire, the four primordial ele-

ments, must also proceed from ether and chaos the first Duad ; all the imponder-

ables, whether now known or unknown, proceed from the same source. Now, if

there is a spiritual essence in matter, and that essence forces it to shape itself

into millions of individual forms, why is it illogical to assert that each of these

spiritual kingdoms in nature is peopled with beings evolved out of its own

material ? Chemistry teaches us that in man's body there are air, water, earth,

and heat, or fire air is present in its components ; water in the secretions ;

earth in the inorganic constituents ; and fire in the animal heat. The Kabalist

knows by experience that an elemental spirit contains only one, and that each

one of the four kingdoms has its own peculiar elemental spirits ; man being

higher than they, the law of evolution finds its illustration in the combination

of all four in him.

Ibid. I, 343.

FOR thousands of years, our present Teacher has told us,

there has been no such attempt as there is at present,

on the part of our Masters, our Elder Brothers, to bring

forth to the attention of mankind, the doctrines which

we have been studying at these meetings for the past few years ;

and that the attempt is such and so great, any student of Antiquity

may assure himself. The reason is that at about the time of the

discovery of America there came the end of one of the racial

cycles, and the inauguration of another, which has culminated

at the present time into the various spiritual, psychical, and

physical disturbances both of man and of the earth, such as we

have been experiencing in the last ten or twelve years.

You remember what Cicero, the Roman orator, tells us of those

who never had had the immense advantages conferred by initia-

tion : he tells us, in the metaphorical language of his day, that

those who were initiated lived and died with a brighter hope

and a deeper knowledge of man and things ; and that those who

did not have the supreme advantages of the secret teachings of

the Ancient Wisdom given through initiation, lived, more par-

ticularly after death, in what he described as the shades and mud

2B 365

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

and degradation and sorrow and filth. Words which well merit

our attention, because Cicero, like most men of his time, had

indeed passed through the Eleusinian Rites, a fact which we

know because he himself so tells us.

Now the main subject which we have to study more fully this

evening is the procedure followed by Nature in the building of

worlds and of the Kosmos and of man ; and directly connected

with this our subject, are the different views of the gods, the

monads, the souls, the atoms, and the bodies, which we have been

studying this winter.

You remember that the ancient Greeks and Romans had a

school which they called the Stoic, from the Stoa Poikile or

Painted Porch, in Athens, Where the Stoic teachers taught. This

school was founded by Zeno of Citium, in the Island of Cyprus, at

about the end of the fourth century before our present era ; and

it formed at about the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire,

the religious science or scientific religion of the most advanced

thinkers of that era. There is no question that Zeno had been

initiated, probably in the Samothracian, as well as in the

Eleusinian, Mysteries ; because we know that the doctrines that

he taught are not only practically identical as far as they go-

please note the qualification with our own, but there are

allusions and hints here and there scattered throughout these

teachings, which show us very plainly that these doctrines of

Stoicism did not originate with him, according to the views of the

modern scholars, but must have taken their origin in a far past,

in an antiquity originating far beyond anything of which history

has preserved annals.

Among the doctrines of Stoicism was that of the genesis or birth

of the elements of the Kosmos. Five were spoken of, and two

more were vaguely hinted at. The five were JEther, beginning

with the highest ; then what was called Fire ; then Air ; then

Water ; and then Earth. Now these kosmical elements are not

the familiar things which we know by those names, for they were

taken merely to symbolize, through certain appropriate qualities

which they possess, the actual Elements of Kosmical being.

Now these Elements of nature, which the Brahmanical

philosophy called the Tattwas, which you will remember we

studied very briefly at our last meeting may also be called the

Principles of Kosmos, precisely as man's seven principles may be

called the elements of his being. We can say the elements of

Kosmos, or the principles of Kosmos ; and it means for present

purposes the same thing ; and we may say the elements of man

or the principles of man, and it means for present purposes

precisely the same thing. Seven different qualities or states or

conditions of Prakriti or nature call it also substance or matter

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 367

for the present, if you like. The present is not an appropriate

time to go into a too detailed distinction of the difference which

does exist between matter and prakriti. At any rate, the

Elements are seven different states or conditions or qualities of

prakriti, the manifested side of kosmical being.

Now these seven Elements or Principles five, as openly

taught according to the Stoic philosophy were derived one from

the other, in order as follows : first the Nameless One ; second,

its progeny or offspring, or child, which is the second element

lower in the scale ; the third was ^Ether, the progeny or offspring

of the second, combining in itself, at the same time, the qualities

or powers of the second, its parent, and of the first, its grand-

parent, so to say. Then came Fire, containing in itself the

elements of the three preceding, and also its own particular

swabhdva or essential characteristic. You will remember what

Swabhdva means from our former studies of it : it is the par-

ticularity, the essential nature, the real characteristic, of a thing,

which makes it different from some other thing. The swabhava

of a rose makes the rose-plant bring forth a rose always, and not

a lily or a violet ; and the swabhava of a man brings forth as

offspring a man always and not a gooseberry or an acorn. This

is swabhava, or self-nature. Call it " individuality ", if you like ;

it is the special or germinal individuality.

Then from Fire, as a parent, sprang Air. We are using these

familiar terms, with a warning, as said before, that they do not

really mean the familiar material things which we know by those

names. However, this Element called Air contains in itself the

qualities of its own nature, likewise those of fire, its parent, and of

aether, its grandparent, and the qualities of the second and the

first Elements as well. Then comes Water, containing in itself its

own qualities and also the qualities of the five which precede it.

Finally comes the seventh or last, gross matter, or concreted

substance, containing in itself the qualities of all the six which

precede it ; each Element giving birth to each following one as

the Life- Wave ran its course down the Shadowy Arc of manifesta-

tion, or the building of the framework of the Kosmos.

Thus, said the Stoics, is the Kosmos built enunciating an

exactly similar doctrine to our own, indeed, identical, as so far

outlined. Simply change the names : use gods, monads, souls,

atoms, bodies, or bearers, and add life-force, and the kosmical

Self as the first, and our seven kosmical Principles are there. Then,

said the Stoics (expressing here their doctrine in our own terms),

when the impulse of the evolutionary life-wave had reached its

ultimate cycle of descent, i.e., had reached its lowest point on the

Fourth Round, then began the period of ascent ; and Water drew

into itself, as the Life-Wave advanced upward, Earth, and

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mingled it with itself ; and Air, following in turn, drew within

itself the Water containing the Earth, and mingled it with itself.

Then fire drew into itself the Air containing the two lower Elements

in itself ; and the ^Ether then in its turn drew into itself the Fire,

with its elemental containments ; and the Second Element,

counting downwards, drew into itself the ^Ether ; and finally

the first, or Nameless One, then drew into itself the Second,

containing the elemental qualities of all the others : and then,

using the Stoic language, the " tension " of the divine Essence was

restored to its own quality and kind, as far as that Essence had

emanated a Life- Wave of innumerable living particles or Monads,

and there was repose and bliss and utter peace and ineffable rest,

until the cyclic time came for the next evolutionary outpouring

of the innumerable lives. This is, as seen, a doctrine precisely

similar to our own, as shown in the teaching setting forth the

evolution of lives during the Rounds of a Planetary Chain.

Descending along the Shadowy Arc into manifestation through

matter, the Life- Wave advances downwards until it reaches its

lowest cyclical point, then rises along the Luminous Arc until all

is withdrawn again into the Essence which sent it forth, or rather

from which it went forth ; individual experience gained, many

stages in evolution passed through, by every unit or Monad of the

Life- Wave which had come down into matter, for the purpose of

gaining soul-experience there, and incidentally giving to the

circumambient matter itself an upward impulse. For matter

is nothing but " crystallized " spirit ; or, if you like, spirit is

etherealized matter ; though the former statement is the better

way by far in which to express the fact.

Now, as pointed out in our last meeting, all this of course

happens in what is called space. Space is not a mere container or

receptacle of things, as our modern dictionaries define it, for in

that case it would be a thing finite in itself ; and, as said before,

in such case we should have to find or conceive of a container to

contain the container, and so ad infinitum. But space is the

endless and beginningless Pleroma, Fullness, as the Greek

philosophers said : the Boundless All, the field of action of the

Universal Life, the endless and beginningless fullness. Space is

the vast, truly incalculable, aggregation of the innumerable

hierarchies forming manifested Being. We live and move and

have our being in Space, as the beings living in and upon the

atoms which compose our bodies, live in our bodies, which to

them is practically endless space, the illimitable Pleroma.

Break the molds of your minds ; allow your thought to lead

you into the vast expanse of the universal consciousness which

these sublime ideas must open to you. Imagine, if you will,

please, that Life is endless ; that, as said before, throughout all

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 3*9

runs the beating of the Universal Heart ; and, furthermore, that

there is nothing great, nothing small, except by comparison,

except relatively so, We bring forward again here the thought

which we have often before expressed, an axiom which is one

of the fundamental truths of the Esoteric Wisdom, the Ancient

Wisdom of the olden times, and this fundamental truth or

principle is that 6f Relativity. Everything is relative ; there are

no absolutes anywhere, except relatively so ; there are no

" jumping-off places " ; there are no ultimates ; there are no

bounds beyond which the evolving spirit may not go. Every-

thing is related to everything else. How can a thinking man talk

of infinites, and at the same time speak of absolutes ? Why, the

very word " absolute ", as pointed out in a former study, means

what the Hindu word Mukta means, released, free. " Absolute "

means released, unchained, unbound ; freedom.

You remember that when Paul, the apostle of the Christians,

during one of his missionary journeys, spoke to the men of Athens

from Mars' Hill, i.e., from the Areopagus, he used words which are

unquestionably, I think, the finest in the Christian New Testa-

ment, for they are purely pagan philosophy, and they are as

follows below. In addressing the men of Athens, he told them

that when he disembarked, on coming up to Athens he found an

altar dedicated to the " Unknown God " to thed agnosto. Now

he must have disembarked at the old port of Phalerum, the port

of Athens which was used before (and after) the building of the

Piraeus. We know also, from the Greek historian and traveler,

Pausanias, in chapter one, book one, of his work, that there were

altars in that port dedicated to the " Unknown Gods ". Now this

word, translated into English as " Unknown " (" agnostos "),

means in Greek not so much " unknown " as " unknowable "

unknown in the sense of unknowable ; unknown because it was

unknowable.

Now Paul, in speaking to the Athenians in his sermon to them,

used the following words, as given in the Christian writing,

" Acts ", chapter 17, verse 28. " For in him we live, and move,

and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said,

for we are also his offspring/ 1 I may also point out in passing

that the Greek of this passage allows us to translate the Greek

word " auto " just as well " it " as " him " : " For in It we

move, and live, and have our being." The Christians of modern

days, having in mind their personal, active, monotheistic deity,

in translating this passage naturally took the word as of the

masculine gender ; but the neuter gender is grammatically correct

also and philosophically better by far.

Ay, Paul, the " Christian " (shall we so call him ? at any rate

he was an initiate), Paul, the " Wise master-builder ", as he calls

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himself, thus hinting at his esoteric affiliations, not only tells us

that in It we live and move and have our being, but makes

constantly reference to matters of initiation. The many mystical

allusions to various matters which occur throughout the writings

ascribed to him, show very plainly how far the Christianity of

today has wandered from its first founders.

Now these poets of whom Paul here speaks, af e unquestionably

the two famous Stoic philosophers, Aratus (a countryman, by the

way, of Paul, both he and Aratus being probably natives of

Tarsus in Cilicia) and Cleanthes of the Troad, who wrote, by the

way, one of the finest examples of Greek religious poems extant,

greatly admired even by Christian writers, because they believe

they see in it what they would probably call a nascent monotheism,

in the Christian sense ! But it was simply a hymn of reverence

to the Stoic Divine Essence, the Hierarch of the grand Hierarchy

of our universe, its supreme head, which in the poem Cleanthes

called " Zeus ". Please always remember that though Zeus may

be called the Supreme Hierarch of a Universe, or Kosmos, or

Hierarchy, he is but the Head of one of innumerable other similar

hierarchies, hierarchies of the vast aggregate, endless and

beginningless, which compose manifested Being.

Now, in him in It we live, and move, and have our being.

And this It, is what we very rightly call Space, which is the vast,

endless and beginningless congeries of living beings. There is no

vacuum, no vacuity, no emptiness, no " nothing ", anywhere.

Everything is full, not merely of life, but of living and conscious

things, and of beings of infinitely varying degrees of consciousness,

such as you and I are, for example. Think of it ! Open your

minds, and let the thoughts which this divine idea gives to you,

stream in. Let them find a habitation in your souls 1 They bring

endless comfort and peace, and lead to further illumination.

Yea, verily, such is Space, seven-fold Space, more particularly

the vast spaces of Space inwards, inwards, inwards, endlessly.

In opening our more particular study for this evening, after

having thus for the time being finished our study left incomplete

at our last meeting, let us read from The Secret Doctrine, Volume II,

page 492, the second paragraph :

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind,

collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle

(a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal differentia-

tion ; and (b) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from that One

BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with its

many mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever

increasing in materiality. The primary Breath informs the higher

Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on the constantly descending

planes.

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 371

A wonderful passage ! Note particularly the reference to the

" many mankinds ", concerning which matter we shall speak

at greater length in a future study.

Now during our last study we traced very briefly the evolution

from a god (one of infinite multitudes of divinities, call them

" gods ", we will not quibble about names ) of other multitudes

of inferior beings ; of monads springing from that god and

forming its luminous garment, its vehicle, its carrier, its bearer,

its body. Each one of those innumerable multitudes of monads,

in its turn, sends forth from itself, projects from itself, other

innumerable multitudes of souls, which form its garment, Us

bearer, its carrier, its vehicle, its body. Again, every one of such

souls in its turn sends forth from itself other innumerable multi-

tudes of atoms, pranic-astral entities not the physical atom of

science, please and these atoms form the garment, the carrier,

the vehicle, the bearer, the body of such a soul.

Each one of these atoms, in its turn, concretes around itself,

gathers to itself, the life-atoms waiting over for it from previous

cycles of activity, which are the skandhas belonging to that plane

of manifestation, and thus forms its physical vehicle, in which all

the other principles (mostly latent) reside.

Now this vast collection of entities : gods, monads, souls, atoms,

passed down through the kosmical Elements which we have

described, using the Stoic formulae rather than the Brahmanic

which are not so well known to European readers, but which

equally well could have been used ; and as these courses of life, as

this life-wave, travels downwards into matter, through each

element, through each one of the seven elements, it gives birth to

one class of these entities which we have been describing. The

god lives on the plane of the Nameless One ; the monads live on

the plane of the second Element, likewise unnamed in the

literature of the ancients ; the souls live on the plane of ^Ether,

akaSa ; and the atoms live on the plane of Air, the fourth plane,

the pranic-astral world.

Thus, the Elements of the Stoics, seven in number, but only

five openly named, form the principles of nature ; and the life-

wave in passing through these Elements, builds its appropriate

habitations in each one of them. At certain appropriate planes,

these habitations take the form of globes, and these globes are the

seven forming our planetary chain ; they are globes built of these

innumerable, multitudinous hosts of atoms, of souls, of monads ;

some " awakened ", some partly " awake ", some still sleeping in

the lower spheres.

Then when the hosts of beings composing the life-wave the

life-wave being composed of the entities derived from a former

but now dead planet in our case the moon find that the time

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has arrived for them to enter upon their own particular evolu-

tionary course, they cycle downwards along the planetary chain

that has been prepared for them by the three hosts of elementary

beings, of the three primordial elementary worlds, the forerunners

of the life- wave yet integral parts of it. Remember, a hierarchy

consists of ten degrees or states ; three, as the Pythagoreans

would have said, remaining in the silence and darkness to us

of divinity, and seven entering into manifestation. This life-wave

passes seven times in all around the seven spheres of our planetary

chain, at first cycling down the Shadowy Arc through all the seven

Elements of the Kosmos, gathering experience in each one of

them ; each particular entity of the life-wave, no matter what its

grade or kind, spiritual, psychic, astral, mental, divine, in it,

advancing, advancing, advancing downwards, advancing until

at the bottom of the Arc, when the middle of the Fourth Round is

attained, they feel the end of the downward impulse. Then begins

the upward impulse. According to the Stoic doctrine, everything

passes by degrees back towards the divine, through the Elements

again, the lower being withdrawn into the higher, until at last

the great cyclic round is finished, and the cycling beings re-enter

divinity, man being in the front ranks. As so often said before,

" Man " begins his evolutionary journey an un-self-conscious god-

spark, and ends it as a self-conscious god.

And when we say " man " of the later stages of that journey,

we mean the thinking entity. The personal, by that time, will have

become the impersonal : the mortal will have been raised into

immortality. These two ideas which our Teacher has included

among others in her beautiful Invocation, comprise two of the

most sublime teachings of the Ancient Wisdom, which we have

but briefly alluded to at various times, but which we shall have

to study more fully at some future time. The main thing to

realize at the present time is that Space is a vast, beginningless

and endless Fullness ; it is the Boundless All ; and, further, that

it is composed of the numberless Hierarchies, which actually are

Space itself, the spaces of Space ; and, still further, that these

Hierarchies in their turn are composed of incalculable numbers

of evolving beings in all the seven stages of development ; and

that each such being has its own Grand Cycle to perform I first

down the Shadowy Arc, and then when the end of that particular

evolutionary wave or course has been reached, the reascent along

the Luminous Arc upwards, towards the Source from which it

originally came. Then, finally, the long pralayic sleep. At its

end, comes the kosmic re-awakening, obeying the karmic impulses

from the preceding manvantara and manvantaras, the opening

of a new evolutionary course through the spheres of Life, but on

higher and far sublimer levels than before.

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CHAPTER XXXIV

THE SPACES OF SPACE. THE SECRET DOCTRINE, A UNIFIER I

UNIVERSAL KEYS. DOCTRINES OF " THE VOID " AND OF

" THE FULLNESS " CONTRASTED.

Mme. Blavatsky, speaking on this subject in her Secret Doctrine, quotes from

the old Book of Dzyan thus :

" An army of the Sons of Light stands at each angle, the Lipika in the middle

wheel."

The four angles are the four quarters, and the " middle wheel " is the center

of space ; and that center is everywhere, because as space is illimitable, the

center of it must be wherever the cognizing consciousness is. And the same

author, using the Disciple's Catechism, writes :

" What is it that ever is ? Space, the Anupddaka. What is it that ever was ?

The germ in the Root. What is it that is ever coming and going ? The great

Breath. Then there are three eternals ? No, the three are one. That which

ever is is one ; that which ever was is one ; that which is ever being and becoming

is also one ; and this is Space."

In this parentless and eternal space is the wheel in the center where the

Lipika are, of whom I cannot speak ; at the four angles are the Dhyan-Chohans,

and doing their will among men on this earth are the Adepts the Mahatmas.

The harmony of the spheres is the voice of the Law, and that voice is obeyed

alike by the Dhyan-Chohan and the Mahatma on their part with willingness,

because they are the law ; on the part of men and creatures because they ar

bound by the adamantine chains of the law which they do not understand.

Echoes from the Orient (W. Q. JUDGE), ch. vi. p. 15.

Thou hast to study the voidness of the seeming full, the fullness of the

seeming void.

Voice of the Silence, " The Seven Portals/' selected

and annotated by H. P. BLAVATSKY.

N opening our study tonight, let us again read the passage

on page 492 of the second volume of The Secret Doctrine,

read at our last meeting :

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind,

collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the vehicle

(a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal differentiation;

and (b) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from that One BREATH in

its secondary and further differentiations, as Nature with its many

mankinds proceeds downwards toward the planes that are ever in-

creasing in materiality. The primary Breath informs the higher

Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on the constantly descending

planes.

We have here in brief compass not only the outline of the hier-

archical teaching, but also of the entire building of the Kosmos,

which, repeated in the small, means likewise the building of the

microcosm or man.

Now, this evening we are going to advance a step farther. You

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will remember that at our last meeting we discussed, more or

less briefly on account of the shortness of the time, the question of

the nature of Space, and what Space was, and what Space was

not. We endeavored to point out that " space ", in the ordinary

conception of things, means a receptacle or a container, in other

words, it usually means place. Space is used almost synony-

mously with place ; but this is not the use which is authorized or

taught in the esoteric teachings, wherein it is shown that Space

is the illimitable series of Hierarchies, which do not merely

fill, but which are the Boundless All, beginningless and endless ;

and that Space, as the old Greeks put it, was an endless fullness,

endless and beginningless, and they called it the Pleroma, or the

Fullness ; one Universal Life, one Heart, so to say, pulsating or

beating throughout.

We also speak of and please mark this carefully the spaces

of Space, the inwards of Space, the inward parts, bearing to

Space the same relation that man's own inner principles bear to

his outer vehicle.

Now then, tonight we are going to execute an apparently

complete right-about-face ; after thus having pointed out in

former studies what Space was considered to be in certain branches

of the Ancient Wisdom, as among the Stoics, and among the

Brahmans, and in other schools of thought alluded to merely,

we shall now take up very briefly likewise the manner in which

Space is looked upon more particularly by our own Esoteric

School, and especially by the holders of the esoteric doctrines of

Gautama the Buddha.

We are now going to say, and prove, that the Secret Doctrine

of the ages is above everything else a unifier ; that, as said in the

beginning of these studies which our Teacher has given us the

privilege to participate in, we are learning, we are beginning to

understand, a series of doctrines which give us the keys to the

great religions of the past ages ; and that these keys are universal

in their proper application, each depending solely upon the inner

capacities of the individual as to how much he may gain by

turning a key once around, or twice, or three times, mayhap even

seven times.

There is a doctrine of the northern Buddhism and we are going

to choose it in order to illustrate the esoteric teachings regarding

Space called the Doctrine of the Void, the Doctrine of the

Empty, likewise found in other schools in past times, such as

were illustrated by the Greek Atomists, Democritus, Leucippus,

and Epicurus, and by the great Roman poet Lucretius ; and

even spoken of by some of the Stoical philosophers, who otherwise

taught the Doctrine of the Fullness. We have an illustration

here that may be a lesson to us, as will appear later on this

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 375

evening, that things which may seem to be or form a contra-

diction in The Secret Doctrine or elsewhere in our teachings, are

not really contradictions, though they may be paradoxes. A

paradox, please understand, is a statement which appears to be

or contain a contradiction, but which actually is not one.

Now the word used in the Buddhist Sanskrit writings to describe

this Emptiness is Sfinyata. Sfinya means empty or void. The td

is the same grammatical suffix in Sanskrit as tas is in the Latin,

unitas, trinitas, vacuitas, and is found in English as the ty in

eternity, or unity, or vacuity, and so forth : therefore Sunyata

is to be translated vacuity.

These Buddhist philosophers teach that the only reality, the

only fundamental thing, so to say, of Being, is the Illimitable

Void. From it in the beginning, or in time, springs forth a

Kosmos, or spring forth the universes ; and to it they return

when their cycle of manifestation is ended. This Doctrine of the

Void please mark is of a far more spiritual nature than the

Doctrine of the Fullness. It is much more difficult to understand

than the latter, because our European minds are not trained to

the thinking required easily to understand thoughts such as these.

We can much more easily, much more quickly, comprehend and

understand the fullness of things, than we can the thought that

out from the illimitable and perfect void, spring into life all the

infinite manifestations of Kosmic being ; and that back into the

void they sink again when their life-cycle is run. In other words,

our European minds find it easier to understand the mystical and

the religious rather than the truly philosophic and the truly

scientific. Yet this Doctrine of the Void was taught by the

grandest intellect, the most titanic spiritual power, known to

mankind in the annals of recorded and unrecorded history, I

mean by him whom we call the Lord Buddha, in other words

Gautama Sakyamuni.

This does not mean that we are Buddhists, as has been pointed

out before in former studies ; but the doctrines which the Buddha

taught are also ours, when we apply to them the key which we

have. You will remember that two kinds of doctrine were taught

by the Buddha, i.e., the Doctrine of the Eye, very faithfully

preserved by the southern school of Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and

so forth ; and what is called the Doctrine of the Heart, that is,

the hid doctrine, the Mystery-doctrine ; respectively so called

because the eye can see outward or visible things ; but the heart

is not seen, and in it, according to the old thought, flow the

fountains of life. This Doctrine of the Heart is the Esoteric

Wisdom, the unseen part of the teaching, its Core or Heart, that

which is not given out to all.

Practically all the religions and philosophies of the Occident,

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even in Greek and Roman times, have preferred to demonstrate

their tenets on the background, or on the foundation, of the

Doctrine of the Fullness ; i.e., that the universe is infinitely full,

and that this fullness is composed of infinite multitudes of beings.

Now that doctrine is true we repeat it, repeat it emphatically ;

but likewise is truer still the Doctrine of the Void. No contra-

diction exists here, as will be shown.

What do we mean when we speak of the Void, then ? We

must touch upon this very briefly, because our limited time

obliges us to pass on to other subjects ; but the Doctrine of the

Void means, or rather can be illustrated by, two things. When we

look into what people popularly call the infinitudes of space, what

do we see ? We see what to us is emptiness. But, as pointed

out in a former study, this so-called ether (these ethery spaces),

even according to the theories recently taught by our modern

scientists, is more rigid than steel, denser than our densest

matter ; and, as pointed out in a former study, the hard and

dense material stuff that we know on this earth, the hard rocks,

the harder metals, etc., are like floating foam, foamy bubbles,

holes, as it were, floating in and on the infinite vast expanses of

the Kosmic void.

The other way by which to approach our subject is the follow-

ing : What is that which is not matter ? Spirit. Can you put

spirit into a container ? Can it be encompassed or measured ?

No. Why not ? Because it cannot be contained, in our sense of

the word. It, to us, is emptiness, void. It is that which infills the

vast ethery spaces, and it is merely the feebleness of our senses

and the weakness of our understanding causing us to live in the

external, which make us foolishly to believe that this which we

see is the real, and that the so-called ethery spaces are unreal or

empty in the popular sense.

The Void then, is the higher planes of the Boundless All ; that

which to us is void, and which therefore was so expressed by the

ancient philosophers ; teaching as they did the usual sort of

men, they used simple language so that men could more easily

understand ; just exactly as in the case of the much misunder-

stood geocentric system so much mocked at by our wise modern

.natural philosophers. And yet, is it not true that every point in

Space is its center ? Why, the idea is a common thought among

thinking men. Even the rather orthodox French philosopher

Pascal, copying an ancient Greek figure of expression, says that

space or infinity is that which has its center everywhere, and its

circumference nowhere.

Naturally, then, the Ancients looked upon our earth as the

center of Space, and so would the inhabitants of Venus, or of

Mars, or of Jupiter, or of the Moon, or of the Sun, or of any other

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 377

body or point in space. They spoke and taught anthropocentrjc-

ally, as pointed out in one of our earlier studies, i.e., from the

human standpoint of comprehension.

And likewise and this is a passing thought when our own

ancient esoteric philosophers spoke of the planets, spoke of

Venus, or of Mars, for instance, as a " constellation " f they

knew perfectly well what they were saying, and they did not

speak in ignorance. Why did they speak of a planet as a " con-

stellation ", which in ordinary astronomical terminology or

parlance means a collection or a gathering of stars ? Why,

because every one of the visible planets we see is but one of seven,

six of them invisible to our physical eyes ; the seven forming a

" Planetary Chain ". And, furthermore, these planetary chains

are composed of seven distinct and separate globular bodies,

forming, to the eye of the seer, a true constellation ; and further-

more still, each one of these seven globes has fourteen different

lokas (or rather seven lokas and seven talas) or " worlds ",

attached to it, making thus, counting all the seven globes, forty-

nine " worlds " or planes or lokas and forty-nine talas. As hinted

at in our former two or three studies, where we spoke of the

Life- Wave coming down and passing through the seven Elements

of Nature, we implied that the Life- Wave formed and built in

each one of the seven Elements its appropriate habitat or habita-

tion. Each one of these seven globes or spheres is built for the

development of one of the seven principles of man ; and each

one of these seven globes has its own seven sub-principles or

sub-elements to boot ; precisely as the interior nature of man has

built corresponding upddhis or vehicles as his own seven sub-

principles in each one of his seven greater principles, therefore 49 ;

and as each principle is bipolar, there are 49x2=98 conditions

or states all told. Each principle of Kosmos or of man must

have its chance for manifestation in its own " home ", or Element,

in its own vibratory surroundings, in its own particular magnetic

sphere ; and a proper understanding of all this can be obtained

in no other way than by following the hierarchical evolutionary

course of the great titanic intellects and spirits which govern

our kosmos.

The Doctrine of the Void, then, is actually identic with the

Doctrine of the Fullness. There is a distinction, however, and

the distinction is, as pointed out, that the Doctrine of the Void

is the more spiritual of the two, and treats of the upper or superior

nature of the Kosmos ; of the inwards and the yet more inwards

and of the still more inwards, infinitely, of the spaces of Space.

Whereas the Doctrine of the Fullness treats of the Kosmoi, the

Kosmoses, as they are in manifestation. But the same thought,

precisely the same idea, lies back of both doctrines.

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This opens the avenue for a further brief explanation of what

was pointed out in our last study or two. Some perhaps may

have thought that there was a radical difference between the

principles of man and the elements of man, or the Principles of

Space and the Elements of Space. The difference is not radical,

it does not go to the root of the case. But there is a distinction.

Fundamentally the elements and the principles are one. As

explained before, force and matter are essentially one. Spirit

and substance are essentially one. Spirit may be called ethereal-

ized matter, or matter crystallized spirit ; but the latter is the

better form of expression ; it is permissible to make a distinction

between a force and its material vehicle, its material self, so to

say.

The seven great Elements of the Kosmos are the vehicles of the

seven great Forces of the Kosmos ; and those seven great Forces

are the Principles of the Kosmos ; hence, the seven great Elements

in which they work are the vehicles of the Kosmic Principles.

The Principles are the energy-consciousness side, and the Ele-

ments are the matter-prakriti side of being. There is the sole

distinction. But, as said, there is no radical difference between

them. It is rather a distinction of states or conditions. A force,

however spiritual it may be, is matter to a still higher force.

Matter concreted, as we may think it to be, is force to a matter

inferior to it. The explanation of the paradox lies in pointing

out the relationship of the planes of being each to each, as these

work, or are worked upon, in the great Kosmic Void-Fullness.

We would like to point out further that in speaking of principles

and elements as is here done the seven principles and elements

of man may be instanced the teaching as above given is accurate

in every particular. The point to remember is that these so-called

seven "principles" of man or of the Kosmos, considered as

descriptive words, are generalizing terms. You could not, for

instance, separate man into seven naturally distinct pieces and

lock each piece into a separate receptacle. And why ? Because

these seven principles are to be thought of much as if we were to

speak of consciousness and force and matter and energy and

element, etc. They are generalizing terms. They are the con-

sciousness-substance, the matter-force, of the Boundless All in

which man " moves, and lives, and has his being ". Great

intellects of the past have analysed this matter-force or spirit-

substance and have shown that it consists in manifestation of

seven apparently discrete, seven separate, parts, which yet

essentially are one the One Life, universal and boundless. They

are, first, the Self ; then the vehicle of the Self, the vehicle or

fountain of pure impersonal individuality. Then, third, the

capacity for personal or limited thought, egoity; then the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 379

principle of " hate and love " or " attraction and repulsion " in

the Kosmos or in man, called Kama. Then the vitality or life-

principle, derived directly from the first ; and then the astral

and physical bodies, vehicles.

Now you see that these are general principles of being. But

when we undertake to analyse man more particularly, for pur-

poses of accurate esoteric study, we shall find, when we come to

that part of our investigations, that we shall have to be far more

particular in the terms we use if we are to get a proper under-

standing of what man is, how he is built, his relationship to other

beings in the Kosmos, why he evolves as he does, and his final

destiny. The greatest questions of the spirit-side of nature, the

greatest questions of psychology, the great problem of psycho-

physical evolution, are bound up in just this thought that we have

here enunciated.

Our time is so short at any one of our meetings that we can do

little more in that time than briefly hint at certain things, taking

them up at later meetings for further consideration. But mark

you it is better so. Such was always the method of the ancient

schools. Never did they teach according to our modern boasted

system of turning and twisting and hammering at a subject until

the life went out of it, and the brains of their pupils wearied and

became set in mental molds. This brain-mind method has no

element of inspiration in it whatsoever. That method cripples

the thinking entity. On the contrary, the ancient teaching was

by proper suggestion, making the disciple to do his thinking for

himself, on a hint or at an allusion, making his mind to catch the

holy fires of inspiration, so that he should lighten up his own

inner temple with the thoughts that his own divine monad

infused or inspired into him. Parables, hints, suggestions, were

the Teacher's method ; and then always, at a later date, catching

up the thought again, opening the door a little wider, raising the

" Veil of Isis " a trifle more ; rendering help in this manner.

Thus, then, we have seen that the elements and the principles

are essentially one, dual only in manifestation. We have seen

that the principles of nature and of man are the energy-con-

sciousness side of nature and of man ; and that the elements in

the Kosmos or in man are the matter-prakriti side of nature and of

man. But remember always that force and matter, spirit and

substance, consciousness and its vehicle or upddhi, are essentially

one. As said before, a force or a spiritual energy is concreted

matter to another one diviner than it ; and the concreted matter

of our plane is a whirling cyclone of force to the matter inferior to

it. A fact, this, which even our modern scientists are beginning to

realize, as shown in their teaching of the whirling electrons, tiny

bodies, whirling in the molecular aggregate called the physical

38o

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atom a miniature solar system, they say. A true thought that,

and inspired. Inspired by what, or whom ? God ? No. We

know whence comes the inspiration leading to such thoughts as

these : partly from our own teaching as it is given out by

H. P. Blavatsky, and partly from more direct though perhaps

invisible and unknown human help from our Elder Brothers.

Our Teacher has told us this before. Here is the application, an

instance, of the fact.

Remember that SfinyatS,, called the Doctrine of the Void,

refers to the spiritual side of being ; and that the Doctrine of

the Pleroma, the Doctrine of the Fullness, refers to the matter-

prakriti side of being, the side of manifestation, which passes

away when the great manvantara is finished.

But remember also, as said several times already this evening,

that when we speak of substance or of spirit, of force or of matter,

of purusha or of prakriti to use the Brahmanical Sankhya terms

it is only by way of voicing the things which we have learned

through our various inner faculties and outer senses about the

Kosmos, and that fundamentally these respective pairs are one.

Spirit and substance or matter are one, and both will sink back

again into the vast illimitable Void of the Unbounded Divinity

when the time of Universal Pralaya comes. Remember the

ancient mystic saying, so often quoted in our own school, that the

disciple should learn to know the meaning of the statement :

the " fullness of the seeming void, and the voidness of the seeming

full ".

Now, this " seeming full " of matter is truly Sdnya, emptiness,

mostly holes, so to say. Sfinya is the ancient Brahmanical

doctrine of mdyd, a doctrine of the Hindti Veddnta, called the

" end of the Veda ", because it is claimed to be the perfection or

end of the teaching concerning thq esoteric side of the Vedic

poems. Maya means " illusion ". Not that the manifested

kosmos does not exist. It does exist, or it could not be or provide

an illusion. The illusion consists in not properly understanding

it. Why, if matter or substance (or nature, prakriti) did not

exist, you might as well say that spirit does not exist, because

they are fundamentally one. The truth is that matter is not the

substantial, infinite element, the essence of reality, which our

Western minds untaught and undisciplined in these ideas

think it is, merely because it seems solid to us, and therefore

" real ". It is illusion because it is deceptive ; and actually, as

the Buddhists taught, thereby teaching the same thought as the

Brahmanical Adwaita Vedanta, Sftnyata is the doctrine of

emptiness, of the elemental vacuity of the Manifested Universe,

and hence is the doctrine of maya, illusion : illusory because

unreal.

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Even the modern natural philosophers, the physicists, the

chemists, now are beginning to understand that this so-called

apparent universe is mostly vacuity. They have never yet been

able to find out what matter really is ; it is a figment of the

scientific imagination, as commonly explained, and all they know

about it is simply what their own intuitions and scientific

deductions have told them : that back of the seeming, back of the

appearances, there is something concerning which they say

and they should have credit for the frank and truthful acknow-

ledgment " We are learning more about it. What it really is,

we do not know I "

As a final thought tonight, let me point out that although

we have been speaking during recent meetings of the " gods,

monads, souls, atoms, bodies ", which still form our present

subject of study, we have not yet finished it by any means ; we

have barely entered upon it. Using the term " gods ", we use

a term which is familiar. It is a good term, a truthful term ; there

is no reason to reject it ; but yet it is not the term used in our

own esoteric system. Our own esoteric Tibetan teachings use for

it the expression Dhydni-Buddhas, and the lower side of the god-

plane where they belong is occupied by the Dhydni-Chohans.

Dhyani, a Sanskrit word adopted into the Tfbetan terminology,

means " meditation " or " contemplation " ; therefore the

former expression means Buddhas of Meditation or of Con-

templation ; and the latter means Lords of Contemplation or of

Meditation. The latter term, however, is not infrequently used

to include both classes. In the Mystic Greek system, these gods,

these Dhyani-Buddhas, were called logoi, logoses. The word

" logos " is a Greek vocable meaning Word. It also has a

derivative meaning, given as reason. Why ? Because the Greek

philosophers saw that when a man thinks and desires to express

his thought, to convey the thought to another, he must use

words. The word is the carrier of the thought over to another mind :

and from this simple illustration the word logos, meaning " word ",

was adopted into the philosophic language and into the religious

language (and later into Christianity), meaning that power or

energy or entity which carries the divine thought over to lower

planes : carried over from the plane above or behind it, from the

intellect or mind behind it, from the consciousness behind it, to

lower planes ; in our case, the monads occupy this second or

lower plane.

In conclusion, I desire to translate from the original Greek

the first five verses of the Christian gospel ascribed to the disciple

whom Jesus is said to have especially loved, John, called " John

the Divine ", " divine " meaning here " theologian ". He was

thus called " theologian ", we must suppose, because he was

ac

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the only one of the four writers of the four accepted Gospels who

wrote anything resembling in style or in matter the fine, lofty,

theological teachings belonging to the neo-Platonic or neo-

Pythagorean school an unintended compliment to the latter.

These quasi-pagan teachings are found in the first part only of the

" Gospel according to John ". They are as follows and I would

that I had time more fully to explain them than the necessarily

brief commentary on them that I can make this evening.

Verse I.

11 In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was towards

god, and the logos was god."

Verse II.

" This [the logos] was in the beginning towards god/'

(I am making my own translation, if you please. The so-called

" Authorized Version " is a literary farce, translated to suit the

monotheistic prejudices of the Christian exegetes ; and the

" Revised Version " is no better.)

Verse III.

" All things were generated through it. . . ." (The Greek

word egeneto, here translated " generated ", could likewise be

translated " came into being ". The English word " generated "

itself comes from the same Aryan root. I read again) :

" All things were generated through it, and without it not a

single thing was generated [came into being]."

Verse IV.

" That which was generated in it was life, and the life was the

light of men. 11

Verse V.

" And the light shines in the shadow, and the shadow took it

not up."

Don't you see our teachings alluded to there ? Why, the very

words used in the ancient doctrine, ay, even from the Book of

Dzyan, the " spirit and its wing ", the " wing and its shadow ".

" Shadow " is an ancient mystery-term meaning vehicle or

body ; as was pointed out in a quotation by me in a recent study,

read from the Desatir, chapter called The Book ofShet, the Prophet

Zirtusht, or Zoroaster. There the word shadow was used in

exactly the same sense.

Note the thought here ; in the beginning of our manifested

universe existed the logos, being the first entity or thing brought

into manifestation in the beginning ; and this logos was towards

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 383

god. The Greek word here translated " towards ", is pros,

meaning motion towards a thing. Of course, the logos sprang

from the spirit divine, " god ", but the attempt here in this gospel

is to emphasize the thought that its natural aspirations were

towards its parent-fountain. A great secret of Occultism lies in

this thought. " As a man thinketh, so is he", says in substance

a Hebrew writing, Proverbs, thereby uttering a profound truth.

Man follows infallibly the bent of his nature, his desire. He is

magnetically drawn towards that which his heart longs for, and

that which he wants he gets ; if he wants " heaven " he will get it ;

and if he wants hell, he will be magnetically drawn to spheres

infernal. This, in brief expression, is an outline of the whole

mystery of so-called " karmic fruits ", of " heaven " and of

" hell " and much more which we must here leave unsaid.

" And the logos was towards god " aspiring towards its own

divine Source ; and this " god " was Swabhavat, " Father-

Mother " ; not Swabhava, which is an entirely different thing.

As pointed out before, Swabhavat is what certain Asiatic and

other schools call " Father-Mother ", the Great Vacuity, Sfinya,

the Great Emptiness, Akaa in Hindfi writings ; which is the

Great Void to us, but the Great Fullness in another sense. What

we call the Great Fullness is the manifested universe flowing

forth in wondrous procession from the Void, or Swabhavat, or

" Father-Mother ", or Mahafinya, or AkaSa, various names for

the same thing.

Verse II. " This was in the beginning towards god." So

anxious was the writer of this Gospel to point out that the logos

originated in the beginning, and that the aspiration of the logos

was towards its parent-source, that he must need repeat it once

again.

Verse III. " All things were generated through it," that is,

came into being through it. This shows that it is the demiurgus

or world-fashioner, which was in the writer's mind, and this logos

is on the third lower plane only of manifestation, on the third

kosmic plane ; as we say, the third logos from above, which is the

manifest logos or the world-maker, the world-artificer. The writer

continues : " And without it not a single thing was generated."

So anxious, so desirous, was he to show that there was no creating

of souls or worlds or anything else by an extra-kosmic god, that

he has to point out again here that it was the logos, the Kosmic

Word, carrying its force down from its Parent, that from itself

generated things, cast them forth, projected them, evolved them,

exactly as we have been pointing out in our recent meetings as

being the course or method of manifestation. And these things

were the monads, the atoms, the souls, and all the rest.

The writer continues, changing the thought-type somewhat, for

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fear that it will be thought that this generation of the beings

on so high a plane is the mere matter and gross physical things

which we see around us : " That which was generated in it [in

the logos] was life " not stones, trees, stars, planets, etc., men,

and other things, but life. And the life mark this " was the

light of men ", the spiritual light illuminating mankind ; in other

words, man's higher nature, or verily our own,, inner logos, our

own " inner god ", as I hear the Teacher call to me to say our

own inner Christos.

And this logos, the Third, or Manifest Logos, is but the vehicle

of a logos still higher than itself. During the processes of genera-

ting or bringing forth all these things which are less than itself,

every single step brings forth light, for light is one of the first

manifestations of the creative activity remember, creation in its

original sense means formation. This light of the third Kosmic

plane is Daiviprakriti. We borrow the word from the Vedanta

of HindtLsthan ; it means " shining " or " divine prakriti ", of

which Ak&a or Swabhavat is the " crown ". Swabhavat or

Akaa is the first manifest kosmic Element or manifestation of

prakriti, or Essential Nature itself. Remember that there are

seven Natures, one within the other ; seven Elements ; seven

kosmic Forces. " And the life was the light of mankind " our

own higher nature.

And the last verse : " And the light shines in the shadow "

which, as regards man, is its vehicles or our higher minds. " And

the shadow took it not up/' i.e., primordial man had as yet

evolved no vehicle or mind fit to " take it up " or in.

This thought here enables the writer of this Gnostic gospel

Gnostic at least in the first part thereof to introduce his sectarian

teachings : " There was a man who was sent from God, whose

name was John/' to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, the human

logos, the saviour of man. He, Jesus Christ, was this light, who

" became flesh " (!) and came into the world as the " light of

men ". Pathetic ! A beautiful teaching of the ancient Mystery-

religion from the beginning of time, is here taken and adapted,

and applied as pointed out in a previous study to a mere

mystery-figure, a mere type-figure of the ancient Mysteries. Not

that Jesus did not ever live ; a man, a Hebrew rabbi if you like,

called Jesus, did live ; but the Christos of whom the Christian

gospels write, is a type-figure of the Mysteries, but much and

sadly distorted.

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CHAPTER XXXV

OCCULTISM AND' THE MYSTERY-SCHOOLS. SEVEN DEGREES OF

INITIATION ! MAN BECOMES A GOD. SEVEN KOSMIC PLANES :

OUR PLANETARY CHAIN OF SEVEN GLOBES ON THE FOUR

LOWER PLANES : THE PASSAGE OF THE LIFE- WAVE THERE-

THROUGH.

The world meaning that of individual existences is full of those latent

meanings and deep purposes which underlie all the phenomena of the Universe,

and Occult Sciences i.e., reason elevated to supersensuous Wisdom can alone

furnish the key wherewith to unlock them to the intellect. Believe me, there

comes a moment in the life of an adept, when the hardships he has passed through

are a thousandfold rewarded. In order to acquire further knowledge, he has no

more to go through a minute and slow process of investigation and comparison of

various objects, but is accorded an instantaneous, implicit insight into every first

truth. Having passed that stage of philosophy which maintains that all funda-

mental truths have sprung from a blind impulse . . . ; the adept sees and

feels and lives in the very source of all fundamental truths the Universal

Spiritual Essence of Nature, Siva the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Regenerator.

The Mahatma Letters, p. 241.

I say again then. It is he alone who has the love of humanity at heart, who

is capable of grasping thoroughly the idea of a regenerating practical Brother-

hood who is entitled to the possession of our secrets. He alone, such a man

will never misuse his powers, as there will be no fear that he should turn them

to selfish ends. A man who places not the good of mankind above his own good

is not worthy of becoming our chela he is not worthy of becoming higher in

knowledge than his neighbour. ^bid p 252.

There is but one general law of life, but innumerable laws qualify and determine

the myriads of forms perceived and of sounds heard. Ibid., p. 255.

THE search for Truth is the noblest aim that man can pur-

sue. The original principles of Being were uncovered ages

upon ages agone, and were co-ordinated into a complete

and marvellous system. Upon that wonderful system as

a basis, the Teachers of ancient times laid the foundations of the

superstructures of the various philosophic and religious systems

which have come down to us in the world's literatures as now

extant in the present day. These systems contain in greater or

less degree fundamental truths of being, the study of which in

our own time is called " Occultism " the Science of the Kosmos

and of Man as a part thereof ; telling us of the origin, the nature,

and the destiny of the universe and of man, a part thereof. The

Mystery-Schools of antiquity formed the inner focus of the

ancient thought, and the doctrines there studied were called the

" Heart-Doctrine ", because they represented the doctrines that

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were hid ; and the various philosophies that they expounded in

public were called the " Eye-Doctrine ", because they were the

doctrines in exoteric phrasing of the things that were seen and

not the things that were hid. The Heart-Doctrine comprised the

solutions of the enigmas of being, and these solutions were put

forth in exoteric form under the guise of allegory and in mytho-

logical treatment, and formed the Eye-Doctrine, or the exoteric

religions or philosophies.

But all these ancient philosophies were founded on wonderful

and sublime truths, compared with which the philosophies of

modern Europe are mere verbiage, little more than fine words.

The doctrines comprised in Occultism treat, as said, of the real

nature, origin, and destiny of the Kosmos and Man. These

Mystery-Schools taught causal things, and their effects in life ;

they taught of the most intimate and profound relations of the

elementary beings, whatever their degree in the Kosmos, to each

other. They taught man that the way to a complete understand-

ing of the mysteries of being, was by searching within ; that no

man could understand a truth properly which merely entered his

ears, without having developed in himself also first the capacity,

the inner faculty, of comprehension ; and it was the development

of this inner faculty of comprehension or understanding that was

the main aim of the schools of initiation.

The whole effort, then, of these initiating schools was to make

man know himself. Why ? Because the inmost essence of man

is rooted in the inmost essences of the universe, and by following

the small, age-old Path, as the Brahmanical Upanishads said,

which lies within man himself, and to which Jesus alluded when

he said " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light " by following

that small, old Path inwards, man could climb step by step

inwards or " upwards ", inwards and inwards for ever, con-

stantly expanding into greater fields of consciousness. And this

evolving of the inner man is achieved through the evocation of the

spiritual powers latent in man's higher nature. It is, in fact, the

uniting man's soul to his divine monad, his inner god.

As pointed out in former studies, three were the states, after the

fourth degree of initiation, which the initiant or candidate must

win : first came the Theophanic Mystery, which is the appear-

ance at the solemn moment of initiation of man's own inner god

to himself ; and this holy presence was called by the Greeks

Theophany, " the appearance of a god ", i.e., man's own Higher

Self to himself. And while in the average candidate this sublime

moment of intellectual ecstasis and high vision lasted but a short

time, with further spiritual progress of the candidate the Theo-

phanic communion became more enduring and lasting, until finally,

ultimately, man knew himself, not merely as the offspring spiri-

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 387

tually of his own inner god, but as that inner god himself, in his

essential being.

That was the first step, the first realization. The second came

in what the Greeks called Theopneusiy, which is a Greek compound

word meaning " the inbreathing of a god ", and in which man not

merely was conscious by inner senses, and outer senses even, of his

inner divinity, but he felt the inspiration flowing through his

intellectual and spiritual veins, as it were felt the inbreathing

from his own inner god, and became, thus, inspired, the very word

" inspiration " meaning " inbreathing ". With the passing of

time and the greater purification of the soul- vehicle, which is man

himself, this inbreathing or inspiration became permanent.

Finally, there came at the seventh initiation the most sublime

mystery of all, called Theopathy by the Greeks, meaning " the

suffering a god " a technical term ; that is to say, not that the

god suffered, but that the initiant, the candidate, suffered himself

to become, abandoned himself fully to be, a truly selfless channel

of communication of his own inner god, his own Higher Self ; he

became lost as it were in the greater Self of his own Higher Self.

This personal self became absorbed, transmuted ; and its lower

characteristics vanished away like a cloud before the sun ; and

with the passing of time and the greater cleansing of the vehicle,

the soul, the personal man, became blended utterly with his own

inner god. And that was Theopathy.

Now the various degrees of initiation, as pointed out before, in

the ancient Mystery-Schools, comprised, first, three degrees,

which were those of teaching. With the fourth began the personal

experience ; that is to say, the teaching was continued, but in

addition to that the initiant, the candidate, was made to be, to

become, that which before he was taught of, told about ; because

the only way utterly to know a thing, the only way utterly to

understand a thing, is to become it.

Ah, there is vastly more in this thought than appears on the

surface, and more than we have time this evening to enter into !

But let it remain in your minds. And the teaching was continued

with every step higher, up to the seventh, ay, even up to the tenth

degree. We stop at the seventh, because the three highest degrees

are far beyond our comprehension, and pertain only, we are told,

to the highest of our Masters.

Teaching continued even up to the seventh initiation, co-

ordinately with the self-experiencing, the self-becoming ; and in

this way man not merely knew, but felt himself, realized that he

was, one with the Kosmos, not merely its offspring and child in a

detached manner, but verily, in every sense of the word, It Itself.

Then came the realization of that Kosmic Self, the Atman, that

which is the same in you and me, in every dweller on this globe,

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and in every dweller in every one of the planetary or stellar bodies

in Space ; the feeling, the sense, the knowledge, " I am ". That

which separates us is the feeling of " I am 7 ", and " you are you " ;

and this is the action of the ego, egoism.

Yet, mystery of mysteries, know this : It is only through the

passing across of egoity into universality, that man becomes a

god. If there were not the egoic principle enlarged and purified

to contain it and to understand it, there could be no such thing

as the Hierarchy of Compassion, there could be no such thing as

the Luminous Arc. It remains with each one of us, with each

member of our Holy Order, so to live the life, so to purify his inner

sheaths of being, so to transmute his soul-essence, that they may

become fit channels of communication between his own inner god

and himself. When man has accomplished that, he becomes

omniscient for our Kosmic Hierarchy ; omniscient, for all know-

ledge of it and in it is his. And why ? Because his essence of

consciousness, the egoic essence, has become united through his

own inner god with the universal plane, the atmic plane ; and

knowledge and Wisdom then stream through him as the sun-rays

stream through the atmosphere.

We have read from The Secret Doctrine at three or four former

meetings a paragraph which we shall repeat tonight, in Volume II,

on page 492, as follows i

The Secret Doctrine points out, as a self-evident fact, that Mankind,

collectively and individually, is, with all manifested nature, the

vehicle (a) of the breath of One Universal Principle, in its primal

differentiation ; and (b) of the countless " breaths " proceeding from

that One BREATH in its secondary and further differentiations, as

Nature with its many mankinds [please note that] proceeds downwards

toward the planes that are ever increasing in materiality. The primary

Breath informs the higher Hierarchies ; the secondary the lower, on

the constantly descending planes.

We have there, comprised in brief compass as said before, the

entire outline of the study which we have been pursuing this

winter under our Teacher's direction, specifically pointed out by

her to follow along this line ; and at a later moment this evening,

or perhaps at our next meeting, we shall go into this question of

the various mankinds spoken of. There is involved in this a great

and wondrous mystery. Let me merely say at the present

moment that the humanity of which we form a part on earth

to-day, that is to say, the particular life-wave which we call

mankind or humanity or human beings, is not the sole and only

life-stream of intelligent egos traversing the various rounds of

evolution on our Planetary Chain. There are six others, all

evolving contemporaneously with us, some ahead of us, and some

behind us ; and they are evolving in the various lokas or talas

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 389

which we shall try further to elucidate this evening. A most

difficult subject this, but one which we shall do our best to

explain, because it is absolutely necessary, even in small degree,

in order properly to understand the fundamental questions of the

evolution of the evolving ego. " Evolution " is a subject which

is interesting the world very much at the present time, and which

our scientists limit, of course, merely to the physical world, more

especially as concerns man and the beasts, which are two stirpes

(to use the Latin word) only of the vastly numerous families of

evolving beings, some ahead of us and some behind.

Now you will remember that at our last two or three meetings,

we spoke of the Principles and Elements of the Kosmos. The

Elements form thereof the vehicular, or bearer, or carrier-side ;

and the principles form the energy-consciousness side ; and we

shall this evening limit our study (with mere allusions to human

elements and principles) to the Kosmic planes, because our

present endeavor is to get a clear picture, as clear as possible at

the present time, of what we mean when we speak of " Kosmic

planes ", of what we mean when we speak of the seven ' ' globes of

the planetary chain ", and of what we mean when we speak of the

" Rounds ".

It is most interesting to note that these subjects, which so many

people have misunderstood to be merely interesting questions

for intellectual entertainment, are intimately involved with the

moral, and with the spiritual, nature of man ; and no man can

have a proper comprehension of ethics and morals, without under-

standing his proper place in the universe : his origin, his nature,

and his destiny. What morals need in Occidental thought is a

foundation based on science and philosophy. Morals are not

something which is "up in the air " ; they are not something

which man must merely live by they are that, indeed, but they

are much more. The moral sense springs from man's spiritual

consciousness, and no man and we lay it down positively can

really understand a Theosophical doctrine from the intellectual

standpoint only and without having the spiritual light upon it.

And that light, that spiritual light, manifests in man's intellectual

realm of thought as his instinctive moral sense, that which the

great German philosopher Kant spoke of as the one thing which

held him firmly to the belief that our universe was something more

than mere force and matter.

Remember first, that, as pointed out in the old Hindfi Upani-

shads and in the several wonderful Brahmanical philosophies, in

ancient Greek thought, even in Christianity, and pre-eminently

in our own teachings throughout the world, in fact, in the

various ancient philosophies and religions when we speak of

divine things we must understand that we also are a part thereof,

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and that even the physical world itself, the material world itself, is

but the garment of the Divine ; imperfect, because it is builded

by imperfect because evolving hierarchies, by imperfect entities, of

which we also are examples. Remember what Goethe says, in his

Faust, I think,

" Thus, at the roaring loom of Time I ply,

And weave for God the garment thou see'sfc Him by."

And as Paul, the Christian, said, " In It we live and move and

have our being."

Search into yourselves. The teachings given out in these

studies are the keys. Prove them ; examine the literatures of the

world ; search all things ; and, as Paul said (speaking as an

initiate), retain that which is good, retain that which you know

to be true.

Seven, then, as said before, are the Elements of Kosmos ;

seven, then, are its Principles, working through those seven

Elements. From the consciousness-side they are consciousness

on the one hand, vehicle on the other. From the substantial side

they are force on the one hand and matter on the other. Let us

illustrate this first of all by seven horizontal, parallel lines, to

represent the Elements and Principles of Kosmos.

Archetypal

Wor/d

/nfe/lecfual or

Crecrff've World

Astral or

Formative World

Physical Cm World

Please remember that this figure is a diagram. The Elements

the Principles, of the Kosmos are not really one above another,

like a series of steps, or like the rungs of a ladder. This figure is a

diagram only, that is, it is a symbol. The Elements of the Kosmos,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 391

the Principles of the Kosmos, the spheres of the Kosmos, are

within each other, the most spiritual being the inmost. But this

being impossible in representation on a plane surface, we have to

figurate the idea schematically, diagrammatically, paradigmatic-

ally. Therefore this figure merely shows first, that there are seven

planes in kosmos. Let us next represent the evolving and origin-

ating life forces, the gods and the intelligences of the three higher

planes, by a triangle, using the old Platonic and Pythagorean

symbol, a beautiful symbol, because it shows and suggests the

originating point, the kosmic point, the seed, from which all divine

things spring ; and which shows the apex of the triangle also

vanishing, as it were, through the highest plane, through a laya-

center, a neutral center, a Nirvana of all things less or lower than it,

vanishing more inward into something higher. Exactly as a seed,

an acorn, for instance, will bring forth an oak, in its turn shedding

its harvest of acorns, so the Kosmic seed sends forth from itself

these hosts of Hierarchies of beings, themselves producing other

lower hosts on the downward scale. Let us then represent this

process by a triangle.

Now the four lower planes of the figure, which are the four

lower kosmic planes, please understand, represent all the states

that man can reach to in his present period of development. Our

own atmic essence springs forth from the fourth kosmic plane,

counting downwards. Further, let us next represent our planetary

chain in the following manner, that is to say, by inscribing circles,

seven of them, on these planes, two on each plane, with the

exception of the lowest plane, where we inscribe only one circle,

representing our own globe Terra. Then, we number these

circles respectively, beginning with the left and going downwards,

A, B, C, D ; and then going upwards E, F, and G. Please note

that there are two circles or globes on each plane, with the

exception of globe D, our own. These seven " planes " are

really the seven Kosmic Elements respectively.

Now it is extremely tempting to suppose, or to think, that each

one of these seven globes has a respective habitat or locus or

place on or in each one of the kosmic Elements, but it is not so.

That idea is what we call a " false analogy ", a tempting sugges-

tion leading the mind astray. On each plane there are two globes,

we repeat a third time, with the exception of the lowest plane on

which is globe D, which is our earth.

Now, then, when we speak of the seven "Elements" of the

Kosmos, we mean by " Elements " exactly what the ancients

meant, which they described by verbal symbols. They spoke of

four usually, occasionally of five, and they were the same all over

the world Earth, Water, Air, Fire ; sometimes a fifth, ^Ether,

was mentioned ; but these were certainly not the material earth,

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

water, air, or fire that we know. These things of earth were

chosen because they symbolized, by reason of certain attributes

inherent in them, the four planes or rather Elements of nature, on

which the seven globes of our Planetary Chain live and move and

have their being. We can say that Earth represented Kosmic

Matter, concreted substance, the lowest Element of all ; and that

Water represented Chaos in the ancient sense j as the Hebrew

Bible puts it, the " waters " of space, over which brooded the

Elohim, the gods, mistranslated " God ". And we can say that

Air is Spirit. The very word spiritus in Latin means breath, wind,

air. And Fire is the symbol of Divine Light, the first emanation

of the Kosmic Logos, which we call, adopting the Sanskrit-

Buddhist term, " Daivi-Prakriti ", " divine nature ", " divine

light ", light being one of the first emanations in the beginning of

the evolutionary processional period.

Therefore, when we speak of Elements, we mean rather what

the average European mind understands by " spheres of action ",

worlds : the world of kosmic matter, the world of chaos, the

spheres of spirit, and the world of the Divine Light or Daivi-

Prakriti.

The logoic world, which is to us the quasi-divine, the fourth

kosmic plane, counting downwards, comprising the planetary

globes A and G, let us then call the Archetypal World, and we so

write it in our diagram. The world beneath, comprising Globes B

and F, we will call the Intellectual or Creative World. The world

below that, comprising Globes C and E, we will call, if you please,

the Astral World or the Formative World. And the lowest

Element or World of all, on which our sole globe is, our planet

Terra, let us call the Physical World.

You will here recognise at once what we have stated before in

connexion with the doctrines of the Hebrew Qabbalah the four

Worlds that it teaches of. Those of you who have studied the

Qabbalah may remember that its World of Emanations or

Archetypal World, is called Atziluth ; then comes the second,

the world called Beriah, or Creative, following downwards ; and

then the third world, called the World of Formation, Yetzirah ;

and finally the fourth or material world, which the Qabbalists

called the world of shells, Qelippoth, our world, because it is that

of the most concreted matter, the shell holding all the others ; like

the shell of an egg, or the rind of a fruit, and so on, and also

meaning something else in connexion with Kama-Loka, but we

are not treating of that part of the subject tonight, and merely

mention it in passing. These Worlds are, of course, our four

Kosmic Elements.

Furthermore, please remember the next important thought.

Each one of these seven Kosmic Elements, counting from the

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 393

beginning, i.e., counting downwards, comprises in itself all the

others which preceded it, of which it is an emanation. For

instance, the first, the highest, emanates the second, below it, in

which it reflects itself, to boot ; yet this second nevertheless has

its own Swabhdva, to use the Sanskrit term, i.e., its own essential

nature or peculiar characteristic, but it also is the carrier or

vehicle of the one above it, as just said. Next, these two

emanate and reflect themselves into, the third, which yet has its

own essential nature, but nevertheless is the carrier or bearer of

those above it ; and similarly with the fourth or lowest World

or Element.

Every atom, even of the physical world, has everything in it of

the Boundless Kosmos, latent or developed, as the case may be.

Note the optimistic trend of thought in this.

Now, then, these four lower Kosmic Elements or planes comprise

all of us, that is to say, all of us that we have so far developed. The

summit of the Archetypal or Fourth Kosmic plane, is the Element

where the laya-center of our atman is our universal kosmic Self.

Through it stream the divine forces from above, which originate

or rather are our seven principles, our seven elements of being,

manifesting in the four lower Kosmic Elements which likewise

form the seven ranges of Prakriti or nature as we cognise them.

You will remember that every Kosmic Element in itself is sub-

divided into seven sub-Elements, i.e., seven degrees of Prakriti.

So far as we are concerned, the seven sub-degrees of Prakriti or

Nature on each one of these four lower Kosmic planes, comprise

the only degrees of Prakriti of which we can at the present time

have cognisance, because we have not yet evolved the faculties

within us necessary to cognise the higher ones.

Now, as a concluding thought tonight, you will remember from

reading the teachings that H. P. Blavatsky gave us in her wonder

work The Secret Doctrine, that the Life- Wave pursues an evolu-

tionary course through these seven globes, passing from Globe A

after finishing its evolutionary cycle on it, to Globe B, finishing

its cycle on B and passing to Globe C, finishing its cycle on it and

then passing on to Globe D, and so around the chain, making what

we call one " Round ".

But we must be cautious in these matters and avoid leaping to

conclusions. The above does not mean that only when everything

is finished or perfected on Globe A, we then jump to Globe B.

Not at all. Seven sub-life-waves evolve on Globe A. When the

lowest (or the mineral) on Globe A remember that though it is a

spiritual planet, yet the " mineral " of that spiritual planet is as

dense and as gross to its inhabitants as our minerals are to us

has finished its development for that one Round, it feels the impact

or impulse of the incoming vegetable kingdom, and its surplus of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY

life overflows into Globe B ; and when the beast-kingdom in its

turn impacts upon the vegetable, and when this latter has run

its sevenfold course, the vegetable then in its turn overflows into

Globe B downwards, and the mineral in B passes on to Globe C ;

and when the human world impulses into Globe A, then the beast-

world begins to come down into Globe B, the vegetable to pass

into C, the mineral into D, and so on. This is the process during

the first Round ; but beginning with the second Round the process

changes somewhat its order. But we reserve this for future studies.

There is an overflow of the surplus life-forces, as it were, from

every kingdom into the next globe ; and this complicated process

is followed (but changed, beginning with Round No. 2) throughout

all the Rounds, throughout all the seven Globes. When Globe G,

or the seventh, is reached, there ensues for the Life- Wave a

Nirvana, answering to the Devachan or heaven-period between

two human incarnations on earth ; and also between each globe,

there is a smaller time or rest for the evolving Life- Wave.

Now this process alone is enough to set the minds of many

people in bewilderment. It seems so complicated ; in reality it

is very simple. It needs only a little honest thought to under-

stand it half as much thought as most people give to the

material things of life : what shall I eat, what shall I put on, what

theatre shall I go to, how shall I make money, and so forth.

We have spoken of lokas and talas. We shall touch upon that

matter more fully at our next meeting. But remember this fact,

if you please, Comrades, at present : each one of these globes is

divided into fourteen different " worlds ". I do not mean globes ;

I mean conditions or states of matter. For instance, water may be

ice or steam, and yet may be water. Suppose that you had to

explain to a man who had never seen ice, had seen merely water,

what ice is ; and after trying to do so he said : " The man raves ;

he is trying to tell me that water, the most fluid of things, under

certain conditions may become cold stone ".

Secondly, when we say " worlds " (we have to use words in

order to give some idea of the meaning) we do not mean " globes ".

A globe is Globe A, or B, or C, or D, or E, or F, or G ; but each

one of these globes comprises or has seven lokas, or " places ", or

worlds, or conditions, or states, or kinds, of matter sub-worlds,

if you like ; and also seven talas, making fourteen altogether.

Please remember also that these fourteen (or these twice seven)

worlds are not above each other like the steps in a stair. They are

within each other, one more inward than another, not exactly like

the skins of an onion, but each inner one is finer, more spiritual,

more ethereal, than its next outer ; and the most ethereal, the

most spiritual of all, is the inmost.

Now these seven lokas on each globe are the fields of action of

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FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ESOTERIC PHILOSOPHY 395

the ascending sub-waves in the racial cycles : likewise, the

various kinds of bodies, ethereal or physical or spiritual, or

whatever else, that the race uses as it passes along the evolutionary

cycles, correspond in texture and senses with the various lokas

passed through, and the loka which the evolving entity senses is

that particular loka or world correspondent to its bodies. And the

talas are the same thing on the downward sub-waves of the racial

cycles. The lokas and talas are always working together, two

by two, one of each, because matter is bi-polar in manifestation on

the globes ; of the two (one loka and one tala) one is spiritually

positive, attracting one way, and the other is spiritually negative,

attracting the other way.

And, lastly, we point out that we are at the present time in one

of these lokas and in one of these talas ; and that there are six

other humanities or life-waves evolving similarly to our own

course : intelligent, thinking beings on our planet I do not

necessarily say on our Globe D evolving through these lokas and

talas. How this thought stirs the imagination ! If this process

of evolution did not so take place, we say in conclusion, there could

be no completely logical and satisfactory explanation of the

phenomenon that the early writers upon Theosophical subjects

called " Fifth Rounders " and " Sixth Rounders ".