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Theosophy House
Commentary on
The Voice of the Silence
By
Annie Besant and
C
Talks on the Path of Occultism - Vol. II
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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Adyar, Madras
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0 020, India Wheaton, III., USA
First Edition 1
FOREWORD
THIS book is merely a record of talks by Mr. C. W. Leadbeater and
myself on
three famous books—books small in size but great in contents. We
both hope that
they will prove useful to aspirants, and even to those above that
stage, since
the talkers were older than the listeners, and had more experience
in the life
of discipleship.
The talks were not given at one place only; we chatted to our
friends, at
different times and places. chiefly at Adyar, London and Sydney. A
vast quantity
of notes were taken by the listeners. All that were available of
these were
collected and arranged. They were then condensed, and repetitions
were
eliminated.
Unhappily there were, found to be very few notes on The Voice of
the Silence,
Fragment I, so we have utilized notes made at a class held by our
good
colleague, Mr. Ernest Wood, in Sydney, and incorporated these into
Bishop
Leadbeater's talks in that section. No notes of my own talks on
this book were
available; though I have spoken much upon it, those talks are not
recoverable.
None of these talks have been published before, except some of
Bishop
Leadbeater's addresses to selected students on At the Feet of the
Master. A book
entitled Talks on "At the Feet of the Master" was
published a few years ago,
containing imperfect reports of some of these talks of his. That
book will not
be reprinted; the essential material in it finds its place here,
carefully
condensed and edited.
May this book help some of our younger brothers to understand more
of these
priceless teachings. The more they are studied and lived, the more
will be found
in them.
ANNIE BESANT
FRAGMENT I: THE VOICE OF THE
SILENCE 1
1.The Preface
2.The Higher and the
Lower Powers
3. The Slayer of the
Real
4. The Real and the Unreal
5.The Warning
Voice
6.Self and
All-Self
7. The Three Halls
8. The World's Mother
9. The Seven Sounds
10. Become the
Path
11. The
12. The Last Steps
13. The Goal
-------
FRAGMENT II: THE TWO
PATHS1
1. The Open Gate.
2.
Head-Learning and Soul-Wisdom
3. The Life of Action
4. The Secret Path
5. The Wheel of
Life
6. The Way of the Arhat
FRAGMENT III: THE
SEVEN PORTALS
1. The
2. Tuning the Heart
3. The First Three Gates
4. The Fourth Gate
5. The Fifth and Sixth Gates
6. The Seventh Gate
7. The Arya Path
8. The Three Vestures
-------
FRAGMENT- I
THE PREFACE
C.W.L.—Even from the superficial and wholly physical point of view,
The Voice of
the Silence is one of the most remarkable books in our Theosophical
literature,
whether we consider its contents, its style, or the manner of its
production;
and when we look a little deeper and call to our aid the power of
clairvoyant
investigation, our admiration is by no means diminished. Not that
we should make
the mistake of regarding it as a sacred-scripture, every word of
which must be
accepted without question. It is by no means that, for, as we shall
presently
see, various minor errors and misunderstandings have crept into it;
but anyone
who on that account regards it as unreliable or carelessly put
together will be
making an even less excusable mistake in the opposite direction.
Madame Blavatsky was always very ready to admit, and even to emphasize,
the fact
that inaccuracies were to be found in all her works; and in the
early days, when
we came across some especially improbable statement of hers we not
unnaturally
laid it reverently aside as perhaps one of those inaccuracies. It
was surprising
in what a number of such cases further study showed us that Madame
Blavatsky was
after all correct, so that presently, taught by experience, we grew
much more wary in this matter, and learnt to trust her
extraordinarily
wide and minute knowledge upon all sorts of out-of-the-way
subjects.
Still there is no reason to suspect a hidden meaning in an obvious
misprint,
as some too credulous students have done; and we need not hesitate
to
admit that our great Founder's profound knowledge in occult matters
did not
prevent her from sometimes misspelling a Tibetan word, or even
misusing
an English one.
She gives us in her preface some information as to the origin of
the
book—information which at first seemed to involve some serious
difficulties, but
in the light of recent investigations becomes much more
comprehensible. Much of
what she wrote has been commonly understood in a wider sense than
she intended
it, and in that way it has been made to appear that she put forward
extravagant
claims; but when the facts of the case are stated it will be seen
that there is
no foundation for such a charge.
She says: '' The following pages are derived from The Book of the
Golden
Precepts, one of the works put into the hands of mystic students in
the East.
The knowledge of them is obligatory in that school the teachings of
which are
accepted by many Theosophists. Therefore, as I know many of these
Precepts by
heart, the work of translating has been relatively an easy task for
me." And,
further on: " The work from which I here translate forms part
of the same series
as that from which the stanzas of The Book of Dzyan were taken, on
which The
Secret Doctrine is based." She also says: " The Book of
the Golden Precepts . . . contains about ninety distinct little
treatises."
In early days we read into this more than she meant, and we
supposed that this
work was put into the hands of .all mystic students in the East,
and that "the
school in which the knowledge of them is obligatory " meant
the school of the
Great White Brotherhood itself.1 Hence when we met with advanced
occultists who
had never heard of The Book of the Golden Precepts we were much
surprised and a
little inclined to look askance at them and doubt gravely whether
they could
have come altogether along the right lines, but since then we have
learnt many
things, and among them somewhat more of perspective than we had at
first.
In due course, too, we acquired further information about the
Stanzas of Dzyan,
and the more we learnt about them and their unique position the
clearer it
became to us that neither The Voice of the Silence nor any other
book could
possibly have in any real sense the same origin as they.
The original of The Book of Dzyan is in the hands of the august
Head of the
Occult Hierarchy, and has been seen by none. None knows how old it
is, but it is
rumoured that the earlier part of it (consisting of the first six
stanzas), has
an origin altogether anterior to this world, and even that it is
not a history,
but a series of directions—rather a formula for creation than an
account of it.
A copy of it is kept in the museum of the Brotherhood,
1 This term is used to denote a great Brotherhood of Adepts, and is
not related
to color. and it is that copy (itself probably the oldest book
produced on this planet)
which Madame Blavatsky and several of her pupils have seen—which
she describes
so graphically in The Secret Doctrine. The book has, however,
several
peculiarities which she does not there mention. It appears to be
very highly
magnetized, for as soon as a man takes a page into his hand he sees
passing
before his eyes a vision of the events which it is intended to
portray, while at
the same time he seems to hear a sort of rhythmic description of
them in his own
language, so far as that language will convey the ideas involved.
Its pages
contain no words whatever—-nothing but symbols.
When we came to know this fully, it was somewhat startling to find
another book
claiming the same origin as the sacred Stanzas, and our first
impulse was to
suppose that some strange mistake must have arisen. Indeed, it was
this
extraordinary discrepancy that first led to our investigating the
question of
the real authorship of The Book of the Golden Precepts; and when
this was done,
the explanation proved to be exceedingly simple.
We read in the various biographies of Madame Blavatsky that she
once spent a
period of some three years in
ah unsuccessful attempt to penetrate into that forbidden land. On
one or other
of these visits she seems to have stayed for some considerable time
at a certain
monastery in the
Master Morya. The place seems to me to be in
is difficult to be sure of this. There she studied with great
assiduity
and also gained considerable psychic development; and it is at this
period of
her history that she learnt by heart the various treatises of which
she makes
mention in the Preface. The learning of them is obligatory upon the
students of
that particular monastery, and the book from which they are taken
is regarded
there as of exceeding value and holiness.
This monastery is of great age. It was founded in the early
centuries of the
Christian era by the great preacher and reformer of Buddhism who is
commonly
known as Aryasanga. I think a claim is made that the building had
already
existed for two or three centuries before his time; but, however that
may be,
its history as far as we are concerned begins with his temporary
occupancy of
it. He was a man of great power and learning, already far advanced
along the
Path of Holiness; He had in a previous birth as Dharmajyoti been
one of the
immediate followers of the Lord Buddha, and after that, under the
name of
Kleinias, one of the leading disciples of our Master Kuthumi in his
birth as
Pythagoras. After the death of Pythagoras, Kleinias founded a
school for the
study of his philosophy at
Theosophical members took advantage. Centuries later He took birth
at
which was then called Purushapura, under the name of Vasubandhu
Kanushika. When
he was admitted to the order of monks He took the name of
Asanga—•" the man
without hindrance "—and later in his life his admiring
followers lengthened this
to-Aryasanga, by which he is chiefly known as author and
preacher. He is said to have lived to a very great age —nearly a
hundred and
fifty years, if tradition speaks truly—and to have died at
Rajagriha.
He was a voluminous writer: the principal work of his of which we
hear is the
Yogacharya Bhumishastra. He was the founder of the Yogacharya
school of
Buddhism, which seems to have begun with an attempt to fuse with
Buddhism the
great Yoga system of philosophy, or perhaps rather to adopt from
the latter what
could be used and interpreted Buddhistically. He travelled much and
was a mighty
force in the reform of Buddhism; in fact, his fame reached so high
a level that
his name is joined with those of Nagarjuna and Aryacleva, and these
men have
been called the three suns of Buddhism, because of their activity
in pouring
forth its light and glory upon the world. The date of Aryasanga is
given vaguely
as a thousand years after the Lord Buddha; European scholars seem
uncertain as
to when he lived, but none assign him a later date than the seventh
century
after Christ. To us in the Theosophical Society he is known in this
life as a
specially kind, patient and helpful teacher, the Master Djwal
Kul—one who has
for us an unique position, in that when some of us had the honour
of knowing him
about forty years ago, he had not yet taken the step which is the
goal of human
evolution— the Aseka Initiation. So that among our Masters he is
the only one
whom we knew in this present incarnation before he became an Adept,
when he was
still the head pupil of the Master Kuthumi. The fact that as
Aryasanga he
carried Buddhism into Tibet may be the
9
reason why in this life he has chosen to take a Tibetan body; there
may have
been karmic associations or links of which he wished to dispose
before taking
the final initiation as Adept.
In the course of one of his great missionary journeys in his life
as Aryasanga
he came to this Himalayan monastery and took up his abode there. He
stayed there
for nearly a year, teaching the monks, organizing the religion
generally over a
very large section of the country, and making this monastery a kind
of
headquarters for the reformed faith, and he left upon the place an
impression
and a tradition which last until the present time. Among other
relics of his is
preserved a book, which is regarded with the greatest reverence;
and this is the
scripture to which Madame Blavatsky refers as The Book of the
Golden Precepts.
Aryasanga seems to have commenced it as a sort of common place
book, or a book
of extracts, in which he wrote down anything that he thought would
be useful to
his pupils, and he began with the Stanzas of Dzyan—not in symbol,
as in the
original, but in written words. Many other extracts he made—-some
from the works
of Nagarjuna, as Madame Blavatsky mentions. After his departure his
pupils added
to the book a number of reports (or perhaps rather abstracts) of
his lectures or
sermons to them, and these are the " little treatises" to
which Madame Blavatsky
refers.
It was Alcyone, in his last life, who prepared and added to The
Book of the
Golden Precepts the reports of the discourses of Aryasanga, three
of which form
Our present subject of study. So we owe this priceless little
volume to his care in
reporting, just as in this life we owe to him our possession of the
exquisite
companion volume At the Feet of the Master. That life of Alcyone
began in A.D.
624, and was spent in Northern India. In it Alcyone entered the
order of
Buddhist monks at an early age and became deeply attached to
Aryasanga, who took
him with him to the monastery in Nepal, and left him there to help
and direct
the studies of the community which he had re-organized—a service
that Alcyone
performed with distinguished success for about two years.1
It is in this sense, and in this sense only, that The Voice of the
Silence
claims the same origin as the Stanzas of Dzyan—that the two are
copied in the
same book. We must not forget also that though we have undoubtedly
much of
Aryasanga's teaching in these treatises, it cannot but be coloured
considerably
by the prepossessions of those who reported it; and it is probable
that at least
in some passages they misunderstood him and failed to convey his
real meaning.
As we examine the work in detail we shall find verses here and
there which
express sentiments that Aryasanga could hardly have held, and show
ignorance
which for him would have been impossible.
It will be noticed that Madame Blavatsky speaks of translating the
precepts—a
remark which raises some interesting questions, since we know that
she was
unacquainted with any Oriental tongue except Arabic. The book is
written in a
script with which I am 1 See The Lives of Alcyone.
11
unfamiliar, nor do I know what language is used. The latter may be
Sanskrit,
Pali, or some Prakrit dialect, or possibly Nepalese or Tibetan; but
the script
is not any of those now commonly employed to write those languages.
It is at any
rate reasonably certain that on the physical plane neither script
nor language
could have been known to Madame Blavatsky.
For one who can function freely in the mental body there are
methods of getting
at the meaning of a book, quite apart from the ordinary process of
reading it.
The simplest is to read from the mind of one who has studied it;
but this is
open to the objection that one gets not the real meaning of the
work, but that
student's conception of the meaning, which may be by no means the
same thing. A
second plan is to examine the aura of the book—a phrase which needs
a little
explanation for those not practically acquainted with the hidden
side of things,
An ancient manuscript stands in this respect in a somewhat
different position
from a modern book. If it is not the original work of the author
himself, it has
at any rate been copied word by word by some person of a certain
education and
understanding, who knew the subject of the book, and had his own
opinions about
it. It must be remembered that copying, done usually with a stylus,
is almost as
slow and emphatic as engraving; so that the writer inevitably
impresses his
thought strongly on his handiwork.
Any manuscript, therefore, even a new one, has always some sort of
thought-aura
about it which conveys its general meaning, or rather, one man's
idea of its
meaning and his estimate of its value. Every time the book is read
by any one an
addition is made to that thought-aura, and if it be carefully
studied the
addition is naturally large and valuable. A book which has passed
through many
hands has an aura which is usually better balanced, rounded off and
completed by
the divergent views brought to it by its many readers; consequently
the
psychometrization of such a book generally yields a fairly full
comprehension of
its contents, though with a considerable fringe of opinions not
expressed in the
book, but held by its various readers.
With a printed book the case is much the same, except that there is
no original
copyist, so that at the beginning of its career it usually carries
nothing but
disjointed fragments of the thoughts of the binder and the
bookseller. Also few
readers at the present day seem to study so thoughtfully and
thoroughly as did
the men of old, and for that reason the thought-forms connected
with a modern
book are rarely so precise and clear-cut as those which surround
the manuscripts
of the past.
A third plan, requiring somewhat higher powers, is to go behind the
book or
manuscript altogether and get at the mind of the author. If the
book is in some
foreign language, its subject entirely unknown, and there is no
aura round it to
give any helpful suggestion, the only way is to follow back its
history, to see
from what it was copied (or set up in type, as the case may be) and
so to trace
out the line of its descent until one reaches its author. If the
subject of the
work is known, a less tedious method is to psychometrize that
subject, get into
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the general current of thought about it, and so find the particular writer
required, and see what he thinks. There is a sense in which all the
ideas
connected with a given subject may be said to be local—to be
concentrated round
a certain point in space, so that by mentally visiting that point
one can come
into touch with all the converging streams of thought about that
subject, though
of course these are linked by millions of lines with all sorts of
other
subjects.
Supposing her clairvoyant powers to have been at that time
sufficient, Madame
Blavatsky may have adopted any of these methods of getting at the
meaning of the
treatises from The Book of the Golden Precepts, though it would be
a little
misleading to describe any of them as translations without
qualifying the
statement. The only other possibilities are somewhat remote. There
is at present
no one in that Himalayan monastery who speaks any European
language, but since
it is probably at least forty years since Madame Blavatsky was
there, there must
have been many changes. It is recorded that Indian students have
occasionally,
though very rarely, come to drink from that fount of archaic
learning, and if we
may assume that the visit of some such student coincided with hers,
it might
also be that he happened to know both English and the language of
the
manuscript, or at least the language of other inmates of the
monastery who could
read the manuscript for themselves, and so could translate for her.
Strangely enough, there is also just a possibility that she may
have been taught
in her own native tongue.
In
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European Russia, on the banks of the Volga, there is a fairly large
settlement
of Buddhist tribes, probably Tartar in their origin; and it appears
that these
people, though so far removed on the physical plane from Tibet,
still regard it
as their holy land and occasionally undertake pilgrimages to it.
Such pilgrims
sometimes remain for years as pupils in Tibetan or Nepalese
monasteries, and as
one of them might very well know Russian as well as his own
Mongolian dialect,
it is obvious that we have here another possible method by which
Madame
Blavatsky may have communicated with her hosts.
In any case it is obvious that we must not expect an exact verbal
reproduction
of what Aryasanga originally said to his disciples. Even in the
archaic book
itself we have not his words, but his pupils' recollection of them,
and of that
recollection we have now before us either a translation of a
translation, or the
recording of a general mental impression of the meaning. It would
of course be
quite easy for one of our Masters or for the author himself to make
a direct and
accurate translation into English; but as Madame Blavatsky
distinctly claims the
work of translation as her own, this evidently was not the plan
adopted.
At the same time, the account which we have from an eyewitness of
the speed with
which it was written down, does certainly seem to suggest the idea
that some
assistance was given to her, even though it may have been
unconsciously to
herself. Dr. Besant writes on this subject:
She wrote it at Fontainebleau, and the greater part was
done when I was with
her, and I sat in the room while she was writing
15
it. I know that she did not write it referring to any books, but
she wrote it
down steadily, hour after hour, exactly as though she were writing
either from
memory or from reading it where no book was. She produced in the
evening that
manuscript that I saw her write as I sat with her, and asked me and
others to
correct it for English, for she said that she had written it so
quickly that it
was sure to be bad. We did not alter in that more than a few words,
and it
remains as a specimen of marvelously beautiful literary work.
Another possibility is that she may have done the translation into
English
beforehand while at the monastery, and that at Fontaineblcau she
may really have
been reading it at a distance, just as Dr. Besant says she appeared
to be. I
have often seen her do that very thing on other occasions.
The six schools of Hindu philosophy to which she refers on the
first page of the
preface are the Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and
Vedanta. She
states that every Indian teacher has his own system of training,
which he
usually keeps very secret. It is natural that he should keep it
secret, for he
does not desire the responsibility of the results that would follow
if it were
tried (as, if known, it certainly would be), by all sorts of
unsuitable,
ill-regulated people. No real teacher in India will take charge of
a pupil
unless he can have him under his eye, so that when he prescribes
for him a
certain exercise, he can watch its effect and check the man
instantly if he sees
that anything is going wrong. That has been the immemorial custom
in these
occult matters, and unquestionably it is the only way in which real
progress can
be made with rapidity and safety. The first and most difficult task
of the pupil
is to reduce to order the chaos in himself—to eliminate the
16
host of minor interests, and control the wandering thoughts, and
this must be
achieved by a steady pressure of the will exercised upon all his
vehicles
through a long period of years.
Our author tells us that if the systems of instruction differ on
this side of
the Himalayas in the
esoteric schools, on the other side they are all the same.
We must emphasize here the
word esoteric, for we know that in the exoteric
religion the corruptions and evil magical practices are worse on
the northern
side of the mountains than on the southern. We may perhaps even understand
the expression " beyond
the Himalayas " rather in a symbolical than in a
strictly geographical sense, and many suppose that it is in the
schools owing
allegiance to our Masters that the teaching does not differ. This is very
true in a certain sense—-the most important of all senses; but capable of
misleading the reader if not carefully explained. The sense in which all are
the same is that all recognize the virtuous life as the only path
leading to
occult development, and the conquest of desire as the only way of
getting rid of
it. There are schools of occult knowledge which hold that the
virtuous life
imposes unnecessary limitations.
They teach certain forms of psychic
development, but they care nothing for the use which their pupils
may afterwards
make of the information given to them. There are others who hold that desire
of all sorts should be indulged to the utmost, in order that
through satiety
indifference may be attained.
But no school holding either of these doctrines
is under the direction of the
17
Great White Brotherhood; in every establishment even remotely
connected with it,
purity of life and nobleness of aim are indispensable
prerequisites.
The next paragraph in the Preface happens to contain two of the
trifling
inaccuracies to which I have referred. Our author mentions "
the great mystic
work called Paramartha, supposed to have been delivered to
Nagarjuna by the
Nagas ". Nagarjuna's great book was not called Paramartha, but
Prajna
Paramita—-the wisdom which brings to the further shore; but it is
very true that
the subject treated in that book is the paramartha satya, that
consciousness of
the sage which vanquishes illusion. Nagarjuna, as already
mentioned, was one of
the three great Buddhist teachers of the earlier centuries of the
Christian era;
he is supposed to have died A.D). 1
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. He is now known to Theosophists under the
name of the Master Kuthumi. Exoteric writers some-times describe
Aryasanga as
his rival, but, knowing as we do their intimate relation in an
earlier birth in
Greece, and now again in this present life, we see at once that
this cannot have
been so. It is quite possible that, after their death, their pupils
may have
tried to set up the teaching of one against that of the other, as
pupils in
their undiscriminating zeal so often do; but that they themselves
were in
perfect accord is shown by the fact that Aryasanga treasured much
of Nagarjuna's
work and copied it into his book of extracts for the use of his
disciples.
It is not, however, certain that the Prajna Paramita was the work
of Nagarjuna,
for the legend seems to be
18
to the effect that the book was delivered to him by the Nagas or
serpents.
Madame Blavatsky interprets this as a name given to the ancient
Initiates, and
that may well be so, though there is another very interesting
possibility. I
have found that the name of Nagas or serpents was given by the
Aryans to one of
the great tribes or clans of the Toltec sub-race of the Atlanteans,
because they
carried before them as a standard when going into battle a golden
snake coiled
round a staff. This may well have been some totem or tribal symbol,
or perhaps
merely the crest of a great family. This tribe or family must have
taken a
prominent part in the original Atlantean colonization of India and
the lands
which then existed to the south-east of it. We find the Nagas
mentioned as among
the original inhabitants of Ceylon, found when Vijaya and his
companions landed
there. So a possible interpretation of this legend might be that
Nagarjuna
received this book from an earlier race— in other words, that it is
an Atlantean
scripture. And if, as has been suspected, certain of the Upanishads
came from
the same source, there would be little reason to wonder at the
identity of
teaching to which Madame Blavatsky refers on the same page.
The Gnyaneshwari (transliterated Dhyaneshwari in the first edition)
is not a
Sanskrit work, but was written in Marathi in the thirteenth century
of our era.
On the next page we find a reference to the Yoga-charya (or more
accurately
Yogachara) school of the Mahayana. I have already mentioned the
attempt made by
Aryasanga, but a few words should perhaps be
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said as to the vexed question of the Yanas. The Buddhist Church presents itself
to us to-day in two great divisions, the Northern and the Southern.
The former
includes China, Japan, and Tibet; the latter reigns in Ceylon,
Siam, Burma and
Cambodia. It is usually stated that the Northern Church adopts the
Mahayana and
the Southern Church the Hlnayana,1 but whether even this much may
be safely said
depends upon the shade of meaning which we attach to a
much-disputed word. Yana
means vehicle, and it is agreed that it is to be applied to the
Dhamma or Law as
the vessel which conveys us across the sea of life to Nirvana, but
there are at
least five theories as to the exact sense in which it is to be
taken:
1. That it refers simply
to the language in which the Law is written, the
Greater Vehicle being by this hypothesis Sanskrit,
and the Lesser
Vehicle
Pali—-a theory which seems to me untenable.
2. Hina may apparently be
taken as signifying mean or easy, as well as small.
One interpretation
therefore considers the Hinayana as the meaner or easier
road to liberation—the irreducible minimum of knowledge and conduct
required to
attain it—while the Mahayana is the fuller
and more philosophical
doctrine which
includes much additional
knowledge about higher
realms of nature. Needless to say, this interpretation comes
from a Mahayana
source.
3. That Buddhism, in its
unfailing courtesy towards other religions, accepts
them all as ways of liberation,
1 Usually known as Theravada. though it regards the method taught
by its Founder as offering the shortest and surest route. According to this
view, Buddhism is the Mahayana, and the Hinayana includes Brahmanism,
Zoroastrianism, Jainism and any other religions which were existing at the time
when the definition was formulated.
4. That the two doctrines
are simply two stages of one
doctrine—the
Theravada for the
Shravakas or hearers, and the Mahayana for more advanced
students.
5. That the word Yana is
to be understood not exactly in its primary sense of
" vehicle," but rather in a secondary sense nearly
equivalent to the English
word " career ".
According to this interpretation the Mahayana puts before a
man the "grand career" of becoming a Bodhisattva and
devoting himself to the
welfare of the world, while the Theravada shows him only the
"smaller career "
of so living as to attain Nirvana for himself.
The Northern and Southern Buddhist Churches are related somewhat as
are the
Catholics and Protestants among the Christians. The Northern
resembles the
Catholic Church. It has added to the teachings of the Lord Buddha.
For instance,
it adopted much of the aboriginal worship which it found in the
country—such
ceremonies as those in honour of nature-spirits or deified forces
of nature.
When Christian missionaries went among the Northern Buddhists, they
found
ceremonies so similar to their own that they said it was plagiarism
due to the
work of the devil, and when it was conclusively proved that these
ceremonies
antedated the Christian era, they said it was " plagiarism by
anticipation " !
21
In the Buddhist, as in all other scriptures, there are
contradictory statements;
so the Southern Church has founded itself on certain texts; anxious
to avoid
excrescences, it ignores the others, or calls them interpolations.
This has made
it narrower in its scope than the Northern Church. To take one
example. The Lord
Buddha preached constantly against the idea that was evidently
prevalent in his
time, of the continuation of the person-alky. That notion is common
also among
Christians—-that our personalities survive to all eternity. But
while he taught
that nothing of all that with which men generally identify
themselves lasts for
ever, he made most unequivocal statements about the successive
lives of men. He
gave examples of preceding lives; and when some King asked him what
it was like
to recover the memory of former lives, he. said it was like
remembering what one
had done yesterday and on preceding days when visiting this village
or that. Yet
the Southern Church now teaches that only karma persists, not an
ego; as though
man in one life made a certain amount of karma, and then died, and
nothing was
left of him, but another person was born, and had to bear the karma
which he did
not make.
Still, while the Southern Buddhists teach that only the karma
survives, they
speak at the same time of the attainment of Nirvana; so that if you
ask a monk
why he wears the yellow robe, he will answer you: "To attain
Nirvana," and if
you say: " In this life? " he will reply at once: "
Oh, no, it will need many
lives." So also, after every sermon that a monk preaches he
blesses
22
his congregation with the words: '' May you attain Nirvana ";
and again, if you
asked him whether they could attain it in this life, he would say,
" No, they
will need many lives." So a practical belief in the continued
existence of an
individual persists, in spite of the formal teaching to the
contrary.
Madame Blavatsky devotes a couple of pages to the question of the
various forms
of writing adopted in the Himalayan monasteries. In Europe and
America the Roman
alphabet is so widely spread, so almost universally employed, that
it is perhaps
well, for the sake of our Western readers, to explain that in the
East a very
different condition of affairs prevails. Each of the numerous
Oriental
languages—Tamil, Telugu, Sinhalese, Malayalam, Hindi, Gujarati,
Canarese,
Bengali, Burmese, Nepalese, Tibetan, Siamese, and many others —has
its own
alphabet and method of writing, and a writer in one of them, when
quoting a
foreign language, expresses that language in his own characters,
just as an
English writer, if he had to quote a German or Russian sentence
would probably
write it not in German or Russian type, but in Roman. So that in
dealing with an
oriental manuscript we have always two points to consider—the
language and the
script, and these two are by no means always the same.
If I take up a palm-leaf book in Ceylon, it is almost certain to be
written in
the beautiful Sinhalese script, but it does not at all follow that
it is in the
Sinhalese language. It is quite as likely to be in Pali, Sanskrit
or Elu. The
same is true of any of the other scripts.
23
So that when Madame Blavatsky says that the precepts are sometimes
written in
Tibetan, she may very likely mean only in Tibetan characters, and
not
necessarily in the Tibetan language. I have not seen any instances
of the
curious cryptographs which she describes, in which colours and
animals are made
to represent letters. She speaks in the same paragraph of the
thirty simple
letters of the Tibetan alphabet. These are universally recognized,
but it is not
clear what is meant by the reference a little later on to
thirty-three simple
letters, since if she takes them without the four vowels there are
but thirty,
while if the vowels are included we should of course have not
thirty-three but
thirty-four. As to the compound letters, their number may be
variously stated; a
grammar which is before me gives over a hundred, but probably
Madame Blavatsky
refers only to those in general use.
I remember an interesting illustration of her statement as to one
of the Chinese
modes of writing. When I was in Ceylon there came one day to visit
us two
Buddhist monks from the interior of China—-men who could speak no
language with
which any of us were acquainted. But fortunately we had some young
Japanese
students staying with us, in pursuance of Colonel Olcott's splendid
scheme that
each Church, the Northern and the Southern, should send some of its
neophytes to
learn the ways and the teaching of the other. These young men could
not
understand a word of what these Chinese monks said, but they were
able to
exchange ideas with them by means of writing. The written symbols
meant the same
24
to them, though they called them by quite different names, just as
a Frenchman
and an Englishman would each perfectly understand a line of
figures, although
one would call them " un, deux, trois," and the other
" one, two, three ". The
same is true of notes of music. Sol had a very curious and
interesting interview
with these monks, at which every question which I put was first
translated into
Sinhalese by one of our members, so that the Japanese student might
understand
it; then the latter wrote it down with a paint-brush in the form of
writing
common to Chinese and Japanese; the Chinese monk read it and wrote
his reply in
the same characters, which the Japanese student then translated
into Sinhalese,
and our member into English. Under these circumstances conversation
was slow and
a little uncertain, but still it was an interesting experience.
CHAPTER 2 THE HIGHER AND THE LOWER POWERS
These instructions are for those ignorant of the dangers of the
lower Iddhi.
C.W.L.—To this opening sentence of the First Fragment there is a
note by Madame
Blavatsky as follows:
The Pali word Iddhi is the equivalent of the Sanskrit Siddhis, or
psychic
faculties, the abnormal powers in man. There are two kinds of Siddhis—
one group
which embraces the lower, coarse, psychic and mental energies,
while the other
exacts the highest training of spiritual powers. Says Krishna in
Shrimad
Bhagavat.
" He who is engaged in the performance of Yoga, who has
subdued his senses and
who has concentrated his mind in me [Krishna], such Yogis all the
Siddhis stand
ready to serve.
There is a vast amount of misunderstanding on this subject of
psychic powers,
and it will save the student a great deal of trouble if he will try
to get a
reasonable conception of it to begin with. First, let him not
26
attach a wrong interpretation to the word " abnormal "
These powers are abnormal
only in the sense that they are at present uncommon—not in the
least in the
sense that they are in any way unnatural. They are perfectly
natural to every
man—-indeed they are latent in every man here and now; a few people
have
developed them from latency into activity, but the majority have as
yet made no
effort in that direction, and so the powers still remain dormant.
The simplest way to grasp the general idea is to remember that man
is a soul,
and that he manifests himself on various planes through bodies
appropriate to
those planes. If he wishes to act, to see or to hear in this
physical world, he
can do so only through a body made of physical matter. Similarly if
he wishes to
manifest in the astral world, he must have an astral vehicle, for
the physical
body is useless there and even invisible, just as the astral body
is invisible
to our physical sight. In the same way a man who wishes to live
upon the mental
plane must use his mental body.
To develop psychic faculty means to learn to use the senses of
these different
bodies. If a man can use only his physical senses, he can see and
hear only
things of this physical world; if he learns to use the senses of
his astral
body, he can see and hear the things of the astral world as well.
It is merely a
matter of learning to respond to additional vibrations. If you will
look at the
table of vibrations in any book of physics, you will see that a
large number of
them evoke no response from us. A certain number appeal to our
ears, and we hear
them
27
as waves of sound; another set impress themselves upon our eyes,
and we call
them rays of light. But in between these two sets, and above and
below them
both, are thousands of other sets of oscillations that make no
impression at all
upon our physical senses. It is possible for a man so to develop
himself as to
become sensitive to all these undulations of the ether, and of
matter even finer
than the ether; we call a man who has done that clairvoyant or
clairaudient,
because he can see and hear more than the undeveloped man can.
The advantages of such an unfolding of the inner sight are
considerable. The man
who possesses it finds himself free of another and far wider world;
or to speak
more accurately, he finds that the world in which he has always
lived has
extensions and possibilities of all kinds of which he has
previously known
nothing. His studies may already have informed him of the presence
all round him
of a vast and complicated non-physical life—of kingdoms of devas
and
nature-spirits, of the enormous army of his fellow-men who have
laid aside their
dense bodies in sleep or in death, of forces and influences of many
sorts which
can be evoked and used by those who understand them; but to see all
these things
for himself instead of merely believing in them, to be able to
contact them at
firsthand and experiment with them—all this makes life far fuller
and more
interesting. He who can thus follow on higher planes the results of
his thought
and action, becomes thereby a more efficient and more useful
person. The gain of
such an unfoldment of consciousness is obvious; but what of the
other side
28
of the story ? Madame Blavatsky writes of the dangers of this
development, and
of two kinds of it, a lower and a higher. Let us take this latter
point first.
All information which reaches man from without comes to him by
means of
vibrations. Vibrations of the air convey sounds to the ears, while
those of
light bring sights to his eyes. If he sees things and creatures of
the astral
and mental worlds, it can only be through the impingement of
vibrations of
astral and mental matter upon the bodies respectively capable of
responding to
them. For man can see the astral world only through the senses of
his astral
body, and the mental world through those of his mental body.
In each of these worlds, as in this, there are coarser and finer
types of
matter, and, roughly speaking, the radiations of the finer types
are desirable,
while those of the coarser kinds are distinctly undesirable. A man
has both
kinds of matter in his astral body, and he is therefore capable of
responding to
both the higher and the lower vibrations; and it is for him to
choose to which
of them he will turn his attention. If he resolutely shuts out all
the lower
influences, and accepts only the higher, he may be greatly helped
by them even
at astral and mental levels. But Madame Blavatsky will have none of
these—not
even as temporary aids; she groups them all together as "
lower, coarse, psychic
and mental energies " and urges us to sweep onward to far
higher planes which
are beyond the illusions of the personality. She evidently regards
the dangers
of ordinary psychic development as outweighing its advantages; but
as a
29
certain amount of this development is sure to come, in the course
of the
evolution of the disciple, she warns us of some points as to which
extreme care
is necessary.
In our own experience during the forty years that have elapsed
since Madame
Blavatsky wrote this, we have seen something of these dangers in
cases of
various students. Pride is the first of them, and it bulks very
largely. The
possession of a faculty which, though it is the heritage of the
whole human
race, is as yet manifested only very occasionally, often causes the
ignorant
clairvoyant to feel himself (or still more frequently herself)
exalted above his
fellows, chosen by the Almighty for some mission of world-wide
importance,
dowered with a discernment that can never err, selected under
angelic guidance
to be the founder of a new dispensation, and so on. It should be
remembered that
there are always plenty of sportive and mischievous entities on the
other side
of the veil who are ready and even anxious to foster all such
delusions, to
reflect and embody all such thoughts, and to fill whatever role of
archangel or
spirit-guide may happen to be suggested to them. Unfortunately it
is so fatally
easy to persuade the average man that he really is a very fine
fellow at bottom,
and quite worthy to be the recipient of a special revelation, even
though his
friends have through blindness or prejudice somehow failed hitherto
to
appreciate him.
Another danger, perhaps the greatest of all, because it is the
mother of all
others, is ignorance. If the clairvoyant knows anything of the
history of his
subject, if
30
he at all understands the conditions of those other planes into
which his vision
is penetrating, he cannot of course suppose himself the only person
who was ever
so highly favoured, nor can he feel with self-complacent certainty
that it is
impossible for him to mistake. But when he is, as so many are, in
the densest
ignorance as to history, conditions and everything else, he is
liable in the
first place to make all kinds of mistakes as. to what he sees, and
secondly to
be the easy prey of all sorts of designing and deceptive entities
from the
astral plane. He has no criterion by which to judge what he sees,
or thinks he
sees, no test to apply to his visions or communications, and so he
has no sense
of relative proportion or the fitness of things, and he magnifies a
copy-book
maxim into a fragment of divine wisdom, a platitude of the most
ordinary type
into an angelic message. Then again, for want of common knowledge
on scientific
subjects he will often utterly misunderstand what his faculties
enable him to
perceive, and he will in consequence gravely promulgate the
grossest
absurdities.
The third danger is that of impurity. The man who is pure in
thought and life,
pure in intention and free from the taint of selfishness, is by
that very fact
guarded from the influence of undesirable entities from other
planes. There is
in him nothing upon which they can play; he is no fit medium for
them. On the
other hand all good influences naturally surround such a man, and
hasten to use
him as a channel through which they may act, and thus a still
further barrier is
erected about him against all which is mean and low and evil. The
man
of" impure life or motive, on the contrary, inevitably
attracts to himself all
that is worst in the invisible world which so closely surrounds us;
he responds
readily to it, while it will be hardly possible for the forces of
good to make
any impression upon him.
But a clairvoyant who will bear in mind all these dangers, and
strive to avoid
them, who will take the trouble to study the history and the
rationale of
clairvoyance, who will see to it that his heart is humble and his
motives are
pure—'Such a man may assuredly learn very much from these powers of
which he
finds himself in possession, and may make them of the greatest use
to him in the
work which he has to do.
The siddhis are enumerated at considerable length in the third
chapter of the
Toga Sutras of Patanjali. He speaks of them as being attained in
five ways—by
birth, by drugs, by mantras, by tapas, and by samadhi.
We have come to birth in a particular kind of body as the result of
our actions
in previous incarnations, and if we find ourselves by nature in the
possession
of psychic powers we may take it for granted that we have worked
for them in
some way in previous lives. Many clairvoyants of the present day,
in whom the
faculty has been easily awakened, but perhaps reaches no great heights
of
spirituality, have been in such positions as those of the vestal
virgins of
Greece and Rome, the minor yogis of India, or even the medicine-men
of various
half-savage tribes or the "wise women" of the middle
ages; there has always been
a very wide range in these matters.
What will happen to such people, how their spiritual lives will be
shaped,
depends largely upon those with whom it is their karma to come into
contact. If
that karma is good enough to lead them to Theosophy, they will have
the
opportunity of learning something about these dawning faculties,
and of being
trained in its Esoteric School in the preliminary qualities of
character and
purity of physical and magnetic life that are prescribed by all
true occultists,
so that a little later on they may develop their psychic powers in
safety, and
become of great service to mankind.
If on the other hand they come into touch with the spiritualistic
school of
thought, they are quite likely to find themselves following a line
which
frequently results in passive mediumship, the very opposite of what
we are
trying to attain.
There are those who turn to pseudo-occultism for the attainment of
magical
powers in order to gratify personal ambition. That path is full of
the most
serious dangers. Sometimes such people sit in a passive condition
and invite
unknown entities of the astral world to work upon their auras and
organisms and
to adapt them to their purposes; sometimes they practise various
forms of
Hatha-yoga, consisting mainly of peculiar kinds of breathing, which
have
unfortunately been widely taught in the Western world in recent
years. As a
result of such proceedings mental and bodily disorders of a serious
character
often arise, while at best the contact which is gained with the
inner worlds
seldom extends beyond the lower astral
33
levels, from which nothing can come that is uplifting to mankind.
As to the second method—-the use of drugs—there is a note by Vyasa,
in his
commentary upon the Yoga Sutras, to the effect that these are used
" in the
houses of the asuras " for the purpose of awakening the
siddhis. The asuras are
the opposite of the suras, and the word may roughly be translated
as " the
ungodly "; the suras are the beings on God's side, those who
work for His plan
of upward-evolving life.
Patanjali does not recommend this method; he is merely enumerating
the ways in
which the siddhis can be acquired. A study of the Sutras shows very
clearly that
he favours only the last of his list of five methods— that by means
of samadhi
or contemplation.
We can understand to some extent the action of drugs on the body,
when they are
used as a means of awakening psychic powers, if we remember that in
the fourth
root race clairvoyance through the sympathetic nervous system was
quite common.
Then the astral sheath, not yet properly organized into a body or
vehicle of
consciousness, responded in a general way to the impressions made
upon it by the
objects of the astral plane. Those impressions were then reflected
in the
sympathetic centres in the physical body, so that consciousness in
that body
received astral and physical impressions together, and often
scarcely
distinguished between them. Indeed, in the earlier days of that
race, and in the
Lemurian race, the activity of the sympathetic system was far
greater than that
of the cerebro-spinal system, so that the astral experiences were
more prominent than the physical. But since then the cerebro-spinal system has become the dominant
mechanism of consciousness in the
physical body, and man in consequence has paid more and more attention
to the physical-plane experiences, as
they have grown stronger and more insistent.
Therefore the sympathetic system as a purveyor of impressions has
gradually
lapsed, its business now being to carry on in an involuntary manner
many bodily
functions to which the man need not attend, because his life is mental,
emotional and spiritual rather than physical.
The objection to the use of drugs, therefore, is not only that they
upset the
healthy working of the body and bring the sympathetic system once
more into a
prominence which it ought not to have, but even from the point of
view of the
psychic powers attained they merely re-awaken that system and bring
again into
the physical consciousness indiscriminate impressions from the
astral world.
These come generally from the lower part of the plane, in which are
aggregated
all the astral matter and all the elemental essence concerned with
exciting the
lower passions and impulses. Sometimes they come from slightly
higher regions of
sensuous delight, such as are described in the visions of the Count
of Monte
Cristo in Dumas' famous novel, or in De Quincy's Confessions of an
Opium Eater;
but these are scarcely better than the others.
All that is entirely contrary to the plan of evolution laid down
for humanity.
We are all intended to unfold clairvoyance and other cognate
powers, but not in
That \way. First there should be a development of the astral and
mental bodies, so
that they may be definite vehicles of consciousness on their own
planes; then
may come the awakening of the chakras in the etheric double by
means of which
the valuable knowledge gained through those higher bodies may be
brought down to
the physical plane consciousness. But all this should be done only
when and as
the Master advises; remember, in At the Feet of the Master the
Teacher said:
"Have no desire for psychic powers."
The third method mentioned is by the use of mantras. The term
mantra is applied
to certain words of power which are used in meditation or in
ceremonial rites,
and are often repeated over and over again. These are to be found
in Christian
rituals as well as in the East, as has been explained in The
Science of the
Sacraments. In many religions sounds are thus used, and are
associated with
pictures, symbols, signs and gestures, and sometimes dances.
The term tapas, used to describe the fourth method, is often
associated with
ideas of extreme austerity and even self-torture, such as the
method of holding
the arm extended until it withers, or lying on a bed of spikes.
These practices
certainly develop the will, but there are other and better ways of
doing that.
These Hatha Yoga schemes have the great demerit of making the
physical body
useless for that service of humanity which is above all other things
important
for the Master's work. The will may be just as effectively
developed in dealing
with the difficulties of life that come to us by nature
36
and through karma;
there is no
necessity to make trouble.
In the Gita Shri Krishna speaks strongly against this superstition.
He says, "
The men who perform severe austerities, which are not prescribed by
the
Scriptures, wedded to vanity and egoism, impelled by the force of
their desires
and passions., unintelligent, tormenting the aggregated elements
forming the
body, and Me also, seated in the inner body—know these as asuric in
their
resolves." Such antics
cannot be the real tapas. The word means literally "
heat," and perhaps the nearest English equivalent to that when
it is applied to
human conduct is " effort ". The real meaning of the
teaching with regard to it
seems to be: " Do for the body what you know to be good for
it, disregarding
mere comfort. Do not let laziness, selfishness, or indifference
stand in the way
of your doing what you can to make your personality healthy and
efficient in the
work that it ought to be doing in the world." 2 Shri Krishna
says in the Gita'.
" Reverence to the Gods, the elders, the teachers and the
wise, purity,
straightforwardness, continence and harmlessness are the tapas of
the body;
speech truthful, pleasant and beneficial, and study of the sacred
words are the
tapas of speech; cheerfulness, balance, silence, self-control, and
being true to
oneself are the tapas of mind." 3 These descriptions, given by
one whom most of
the Hindus regard as the greatest incarnation of
1 Op. cit., xvii, 5-6.
2 See Raja Yoga, by Ernest Wood.
8 -Op. cit., xvii, 14-16.
Deity, certainly do not indicate any of the dreadful developments
of which we
sometimes see such sad examples.
It is the fifth means, that of samadhi, that the Book of the Golden
Precepts
advocates, and, as in the Toga Sutras and other standard works of
the kind, this
is preceded by dharana and dhyana, which are commonly translated as
concentration and meditation, while samadhi is interpreted as
contemplation.
These one-word translations from the Sanskrit are, however, often
rather
unsatisfactory; the Sanskrit words, coming down to us through the
ages, have
acquired a marvellous complexity, have added to themselves many
fine shades of
meaning which are not to be found in any modern English expression.
The only way
really to understand them is to study the terms in their context in
the ancient
books.
The siddhis may be divided into two classes, not only as higher and
lower, but
also as faculties and powers. The world acts upon us through the
senses, through
our faculties of sight, hearing and the rest; but we also act upon
the world.
This duality applies also with regard to super-physical
accomplishments. We
receive impressions through the newly unfolded powers of our astral
and mental
vehicles; but we can also act through them. It is usual in Hindu
books to speak
of eight siddhis: (1) anima, the power to put oneself in the
position of an
atom, to become so small as to be able to deal with that tiny
thing; (2) mahima,
the power to be as if of monstrous size, so as to deal with huge
things at no
disadvantage; (3) laghima, the power to become as light as cotton
borne
on the wind; (4) garima, the power to become as dense and heavy as
anything can be; (5) prapti, the power of reaching out, even as far
as the moon;
(6) prakamya, the will power with which to realize all wishes and
desires; (7)
ishatwa, the power to control and create; and (8) vashitwa, the
power of command
over all objects. These are called " the great powers ",
but others are
mentioned, such as steadiness and effulgence in the body, control
of the senses
and appetites, beauty and gracefulness, and so on.
We students of these later days approach all these problems from a
point of view
so totally different from that of the Hindu writers of thousands of
years ago,
that it is sometimes difficult for us to understand them. We are
the product of
our age, and the quasi-scientific training through which we all
pass makes it a
mental necessity for us to try to classify our knowledge. Each man
endeavours to
build for himself some kind of scheme of things, however crude it
may be, and
when any new fact is presented to him he tries to find a niche in
his scheme for
it. If it fits in comfortably he accepts the fact; if he cannot
make it fit in,
he is quite likely to reject it, even though it may come to him
with the
weightiest evidence. Though some people seem capable of holding,
quite happily,
beliefs which are mutually contradictory, there are others who
cannot do this,
and it is often a painful process for them to reconstruct their
thought-edifice
to admit a new fact—-so painful that they not infrequently avoid it
by
conveniently forgetting or denying the fact. Our ancient Indian
brethren seem to
me to have catalogued their observations and left them there —-to
have made no
special attempt to relate them to one another or to classify them
by the planes
on which they occurred or the kind of faculty which they required.
We have no difficulty in recognizing the first and second powers on
this list of
siddhis; they are instances of the alteration of the focus of the
consciousness;
we sometimes call them powers of magnification and reduction. They
mean the
adaptation of the consciousness to the objects with which it has to
deal—a feat
which presents no difficulty to the trained occultist, though it is
not easy on
the physical plane to explain exactly how it is done. The third and
fourth
mention the possibility of becoming light or heavy at will; this is
achieved by
the comprehension and use of the repulsive force which is the
opposite of
gravity. I am not so sure about the fifth; it may refer merely to
the power of
travelling in the astral body, since the limit of astral migration
is indicated
by the mention of the moon; but I rather suspect that it means the
power of
producing a definite result at a distance by 'an effort of will.
The sixth and
eighth are only developments of will-power, though very remarkable
developments;
the seventh is the same, with the addition of the special knowledge
required for
the dematerialization and rematerialization of objects. In this
list there seems
to be no direct reference to clairvoyance at all, either in space
or in time.
It is to be noted that The Voice of the Silence does not say that
the lower
iddhis, those belonging to the astral and mental bodies, are to be
neglected
altogether; it merely points out that there are serious dangers
connected with them. We
shall have to deal with them a little further on, for he who would
climb the
ladder must step on every rung.
He who would hear the voice of Nada, the " Sound-less
sound," and comprehend it,
he has to learn the nature of Dharana.
To this there are two footnotes, as follows:
The " Soundless Voice," or the " Voice of the
Silence." Literally perhaps this
would read " Voice in the Spiritual Sound,''' as Nada is the
equivalent word in
Sanskrit for the Senzar term.
Dharana is the intense and perfect concentration of the mind upon
some one
interior object, accompanied by complete abstraction from
everything pertaining
to the external universe, or the world of the senses.
The word that is here translated concentration comes from the root
dhri, to
hold. The word dharana, with a short final vowel, means holding or
supporting in
general, but here we have a special feminine substantive, with the
long terminal
vowel, as a technical term signifying concentration or holding of
the mind.
It is described in some places as a kind of pondering or dwelling
upon a given
thought or object, and it is said in the Hindu books that meditation
and
contemplation will not be successful unless this is practised
first. It is
obvious that while the mind is responding to
41
the appeals of the physical, astral and lower mental planes, it is
not likely to
hear the message that the ego is trying to transmit to the
personality from his
own higher planes.
Concentration is requisite, that attention may be given to the
chosen object,
not to the restless activity of the lower vehicles. It is usual to
begin the
practice of concentration with simple things. On a certain occasion
some people
came to Madame Blavatsky, and asked her upon what they should
meditate; she
threw a matchbox down on the table, and said: " Meditate on
that! " It startled
them somewhat, because they had expected her to tell them to
meditate upon
Parabrahman or the Absolute. It is very important that this
concentration should
be done without strain to the body. Dr. Besant has told us that,
when Madame
Blavatsky first instructed her to try it, she began with great
intensity; but
her teacher interrupted her, saying: " My dear, you do not
meditate with your
blood-vessels! "
What is required is to hold the mind quiet, so that one looks at
the object of
thought with perfect calmness, just as one would look at one's
watch 'to see the
time, except that one keeps on looking for the length of time
prescribed or
decided upon for the period of concentration. People often complain
of headaches
and other pains as a result of meditation; there should never be
any such
result; if they will take care to keep the physical body calm and
free from
tension of any kind, even in the eyes, they will probably find
their
concentration much easier and more successful, and free from
physical trouble and danger. Various books have been written on
this subject,
and some of them offer exceedingly dangerous suggestions. Anyone
wishing further
information on this should read Professor Wood's book,
Concentration—-a
Practical Course, of which Dr. Besant wrote: '' There is nothing in
it which,
when practised, can do the striver after concentration the least
physical,
mental or moral harm."
In her footnote, H.P.B. associates dharana with the higher mental
plane, for she
says the mind must be fixed upon an interior object and abstracted
from the
world of the senses; that is, from the physical, astral and lower
mental worlds.
That is a prescription for the candidate who is already on the
Path, and is
aiming at the samadhi of the nirvanic or atmic plane. But the three
terms
concentration, meditation and contemplation are also used in a
general way. To
fix one's thought on a verse of scripture—-that is concentration.
To look at it
in every possible light and try to penetrate its meaning, to reach
a new and
deep thought or receive some intuitional light upon it—that is
meditation. To
fix one's attention steadily for a time on the light received—•
that is
contemplation. Contemplation has been defined as concentration at
the top end of
your line of thought or meditation. It is usual for the Oriental
student to
begin his practice on some simple external object, and from that to
carry his
thought inward or upward to higher things.
CHAPTER s THE SLAYER OF THE REAL
Having become indifferent to objects of perception, the pupil must
seek out the
Raja of the senses, the Thought-Producer, he who awakes illusion.
The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real. Let the Disciple slay the
slayer.
This refers to what has to be done during the practice of
concentration. In the
Hindu books on the subject it is explained that prior to the actual
concentration the student who sits for the practice must withdraw
his attention
from the objects of sensation; he must learn to take no notice of
any sights or
sounds that may come within his range; he must not be attracted by
anyone or
anything that comes within his view, or affects his sense of touch.
He will then
be ready to observe what thoughts and feelings rise in the mind itself,
and to
deal with them.
As I have already explained, in most persons the mental and astral
bodies are in
a constant state of activity, full of vortices, which must be
removed before
real progress can be made. It is these that create the mass of illusions
which beset the average man, and render it exceedingly difficult
for him to get a true view of anything at all. It is an axiom of
Shri
Shankaracharya's teaching that just as the physical eye can see
things well when
it is steady, but not when it is roaming about, so the mind can
understand
things clearly when it is still. But if it is full of vortices they
are sure to
distort the vision and so create illusion.
The mind is called the raja or king of the senses. Sometimes it is
spoken of as
one of them, as in the Gild:
A portion of Mine own Self transformed in the world of life into an
immortal
Spirit, draweth round itself the senses, of which the mind is the
sixth, veiled
in matter.
1 That the mind does act as a kind of sense is obvious, since it
corrects the
evidence of the five senses and also indicates the presence of
objects beyond
their reach; for example, when a shadow falls across your
threshold, you may
infer that somebody is there.
What is the mind, that has to be dealt with so severely by the
aspirant?
Patanjali speaks of it when he defines yoga practice as
chitta-vritti-nirodha,
which means restraint (nirodha) of the whirlpools (vritti) of the
mind (chitta).
Among the Vedantins, or in Shri Shankaracharya's school, the term
antahkarana is
not used as we generally employ it, but indicates the mind in its
fullest sense.
It means with, them literally the entire internal organ or
instrument between
the innermost Self and the outer world, and is always described as
of
1 Op. cit., v, 7.four parts: the "I-maker" (ahamkara);
insight, intuition or pure reason
(buddhi); thought (manas); and discrimination of objects (chitta).
It is these
last two that the Western man usually calls his mind, with its
powers of
abstract and concrete thought; when he thinks of the other
processes he imagines
them to be something above the mind.
The Theosophist ought to recognize in these four Vedantic divisions
his own
familiar atma, buddhi, manas and the lower mind. Madame Blavatsky
called the
last kama-manas, because it is the part of manas that works with
desire and is
therefore interested in material objects. Kama is to be taken not
only as
relating to low desires and passions, but also to any sort of
desire or interest
in the external world for its own sake. The whole of the triple
higher self is
from this point of view nothing but the antahkarana (or internal
agency) between
the monad and the lower self. It has become a tetrad, because manas
is dual in
incarnation.
The three parts of the higher self are considered as three aspects
of a great
consciousness or mind; they are all modes of cognition. Atma is not
the Self,
but is this consciousness knowing the Self; buddhi is this
consciousness knowing
the life in the forms by its own direct perception; manas is the
same
consciousness looking out upon the world of objects, and kama-manas
is a portion
of the last immersed in that world and affected by it. The true
self is the
Monad, whose life is something greater than consciousness, which is
the life of
this complete mind, the Higher Self. Therefore Patanjali and
Shankara are quite in agreement; it is the chitta, the kama-manas,
the lower mind, which is the slayer of the real, and has to be
slain.
Much that is now called the astral body by Theosophists must be
included in the
Indian idea of kama-manas or chitta. Madame Blavatsky also speaks
of four
divisions of the mind. First there is manas-taijasi, the
resplendent or
illuminated manas, which is really buddhi, or at least that state
of man when
his manas has become merged in buddhi, having no separate will of
its own. Then
there is manas proper, the higher manas, the abstract thinking
mind. Then there
is the antahkarana, a term used by Madame Blavatsky merely to
indicate the link
or channel or bridge between higher manas and kama-manas during
incarnation.
Finally there is kama-manas, which is on this theory the
personality.
Sometimes she calls manas the deva-ego, or the divine as
distinguished from the
personal self. Higher manas is divine because it has positive
thought, which is
kriya-shakti, the power of doing things. Really all our work is
done by
thought-power; the sculptor's hand does not do the work, but
thought-power
directing that hand does it. The higher manas is divine because it
is a positive
thinker, using the quality of its own life, which shines from
within it; that is
what is meant by the word divine, from div, to shine. But the lower
mind is only
a reflector; like all other material things, it has no light of its
own; it is
something through which the light comes, or through which the sound
comes—merely
persona, a mask.
THE SLAYER OF THE
REAL
The antahkarana is usually considered in the Theosophical works as
the link
between the higher self or the divine ego, and the lower self or
personal ego
The chitta in that lower self puts it at the mercy of things, so
that our life
down here may be compared to the experience of a man struggling to
swim in a
maelstrom. But this will be followed sooner or later after death by
a period in
the heaven-world. The man has been whirled about; he has seen many
things; he
has not dwelt upon them, however, with a calm, steady mind, but
with kama-manas;
therefore he has not understood their significance for the soul.
But in the
heaven-world the ego can widen out the antahkarana, because all is
now calm; no
new experiences are to be gathered. The old ones can be quietly
turned over and
dwelt upon, and their essence taken up, as it were, into the deva
ego, as being
of interest to him. So, very often, the ego really begins his
personal
life-cycle with the entry into the heaven-world, and pays a minimum
of attention
to the personality during its period of collecting materials.
In that case the aspect of mind that is antahkarana (in Madame
Blavatsky's
classification) functions but little before the period of the
heaven-life. But
if a man is to become expert on the astral and mental planes during
the life of
the physical body, he must bring the positive powers of the higher
Self down
through that channel, by the practice of dharana or concentration,
and so make
himself entire master of his personality. In other words he must
clear out the
astral and mental whirlpools. A man who is genius on some line may
find
it easy to apply tremendous concentration to his particular kind of
work, but
when he relaxes from that, his ordinary life may quite possibly be
still full of
these whirlpools. That is not what we want; we are aiming at
nothing less than
the complete destruction of the whirlpools, so as to comb out the
lower mind and
make it the calm and obedient servant of the higher Self at all
times.
These whirlpools may and do constantly crystallize into permanent
prejudices,
and make actual congestions of matter closely resembling warts upon
the mental
body. Then if the man tries to look out through that particular
part of that
body he cannot see clearly; everything is distorted, for at that
point the
mental matter is no longer living and flowing, but stagnant and
rotten. The way
to cure it is to acquire more knowledge, to get the matter into
motion again,
and then one by one the prejudices will be washed away and
dissolved.
It is in this way that the mind is the great slayer of the real,
for through it
we do not see any object as it really is. We see only the images
which we are
able to make of it, and everything is necessarily coloured for us
by these
thought-forms of our own creation. Notice how two persons with
preconceived
ideas, seeing the same set of circumstances, and agreeing as to the
actual
happenings, will yet make two totally different stories from them.
Exactly this
sort of thing is going on all the time with every ordinary man, and
we do not
realize how absurdly we distort things. The disciple must conquer
this; he must
" slay the slayer ". He must not of course destroy his
mind,
for. he cannot get along without it, but he must
dominate it; it is his, but it is not he, though it tries to make
him think so.
The best way to overcome its wandering is to use the will; its
efforts are just
like those of the astral body, which is always trying to persuade
you that its
desires are yours; you must deal with them both in a precisely
similar manner.
Even when the whirlpools that fill the mind with prejudice and
error are gone,
much illusion still remains. The translation of the Sanskrit word
avidya as
ignorance is perhaps not very fortunate, though it is universally
accepted. So
often in Sanskrit there are delicate shades of meaning which it is
difficult to
convey in English. In this case perhaps what is intended is rot so
much
ignorance as unwisdom. A man may have vast stores of knowledge, and
yet be
unwise, for knowledge is concerned with objects and their relations
in space and
time, whereas wisdom is concerned with the soul or consciousness
embodied in
those things. The wise politician understands the people's minds;
the wise
mother understands her children's minds. However much one may know
about
material things, if one has only the matter-sight and not the
life-sight, one
has in reality only unwisdom or avidya. "It is at the expense
of wisdom that
intellect generally lives," said Madame Blavatsky. Then, out
of that unwisdom or
ignorance spring four other great obstacles to spiritual progress,
making five
altogether, which are called the kleshas. If avidya be the first
obstacle the second is asmita, the notion that " I am
this " or what a Master once called "
self-personality". The personality is
developed through life into quite a definite thing, with decided
physical,
astral and mental form, occupation and habits; and there is no
objection to that
if it be a good specimen. But if the indwelling life can be
persuaded to think
that he is that personality, he will begin to serve its interests,
instead of
using it merely as -a tool for his spiritual purposes.
In consequence of this second error men seek inordinate wealth and
power and
fame. When a man looks over his country houses and his town houses,
his yachts
and cars, his farms and factories, he swells with pride; thinking
himself great
because he is called the owner of these things; or he hears his
name on
everybody's lips, and feels that thousands of people are thinking
of him with
praise (or even with condemnation, for notoriety is often pleasing
to men who
cannot attain fame) and he thinks himself a very great person
indeed. That is "
self-personality ", one of the greatest superstitions in the
world, and a great
source of trouble for one and all. The spiritual man, on the other
hand, counts
himself fortunate if he can be the master of his own hand and
brain, and he
wishes to hold the images of thousands of others in his own mind
that he may
help them, rather than to rejoice in the thought that his image is
multiplied
and magnified in their minds. Hence self-personality is the
greatest obstacle to
the use of the personality by the higher Self, and so to spiritual
progress.
The third and fourth obstacles may be taken together. They are
raga. and dwesha,
liking and disliking, or attraction and repulsion. These too spring
from this
same self-personality. That it should show its likes is
inappropriate; it is as
though a motor-car should have a voice of its own, and should raise
it in great
discontent when its master drives over a broken road, or in a purr
of delight
when he goes over a good road. The road may be a bad one for the
car, but from
the point of view of the driver it is a good thing that there is a
road at all,
because he wants to get somewhere, which would be a difficult
matter without a
road. It is nice to have our armchairs and fires and electric light
and steam
heat, but he who would make progress has to go over new country,
sometimes
materially, and always in thought and feeling. People like the
things that
consort with their settled conveniences and habits; anything that
disturbs those
is " bad "; anything that fits in with them and enhances
them is " good ". Such
an outlook upon life does not harmonize with spiritual progress; we
do not
refuse comfort when it comes, but we must learn to be indifferent
to it, and to
take things as they come: this emphasis upon liking and disliking
must go, and
the calm judgment of the higher Self as to what is good and what is
bad must
take its place.
The fifth obstacle is abhinivesha, the outcome of the last, the
state of being
fixed, settled in, attached to a form or mode of life, or to the
personality.
From this arises fear of old age and of death—events which can
never exist for
the man himself, but must come in due course to the personality.
A veritable death in life may arise out this of fifth
trouble; people -waste their youth in preparation for comfort and
safety in
age,- and then waste their age in seeking for their lost youth, or
are afraid to
use their bodies, lest they should wear out. They are like a man
who buys a
beautiful motor-car, and sits in his garage, enjoying his new
possession, but
unable to bring himself to run it out on the road, lest it should
be spoiled.
Our business is to do what the higher Self wants, and to be utterly
willing to
die in his service if need be.
All the whirlpools arise from these five obstacles. Concentration
and meditation
are the means to dispel them completely. When the kama-manas no
longer
gravitates downwards, the manas can turn upwards, to become
manas-taijasi.
Another Sanskrit word connected with this self-personality is mana,
sometimes
translated pride, but perhaps better rendered by conceit. This root
appears in
the word nirmanakaya, which means a being who is beyond this
illusion—nirmana.
Madame Blavatsky said that there were three kinds or modes of
incarnation:
first, that of the avatar as, those who descend from higher
spheres, having
reached them in a cycle of evolution prior to ours; secondly, those
of an
ordinary kind, when a person passes through the astral and mental
worlds and
then takes up a new body; and thirdly, that of nirmanakayas, who
incarnate again
without interlude, sometimes perhaps after only a few days. In The
Secret
Doctrine she cites the Cardinal de Cusa as an instance of this,
he having been born again quickly, as Copernicus; and she says
that such rapid rebirth is not an uncommon thing. She speaks of
such people as
adepts, not using the word quite as we employ it now, but meaning
that they are
adept or expert on the astral and lower mental planes; she says
that they
sometimes act as spirits at seances, and that they are particularly
opposed by
the Brothers of the Shadow, presumably because of the progress that
they are
making for themselves and also for mankind in general.
She explains that there are two kinds of nirmana-kayas: those who
have renounced
the heaven-world, as above explained, and those who at a later and
higher stage
renounce what she calls absolute Nirvana, in order to remain to
help the
progress of the world. Modern Theosophical literature confines the
term to this
latter class, but here we are concerned with the lower class. The
man who has
slain the slayer has largely destroyed the five obstacles, and has
become the
servant of the higher Self, with nothing in him but what is
favourable to its
purposes. He has his antahkarana widened out so that during his
bodily life he
is in full touch with the higher Self, and all the time that self
is taking what
it needs; the bee can visit the flower when he will, for there is
no storm
raging: and when the physical body is dead, the subtle part of the
personality
can be used again in the next incarnation, because it is not full
of whirlpools
which represent fixed desires and rigid opinions, and selfish
habits of feeling
and thought.
CHAPTER 4 THE REAL AND THE UNREAL
For when to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all
the forms he
sees in dreams; when he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern
the One—the
inner sound which kills the outer.
C.W.L.—The simile of dreaming and waking is frequently used in
Oriental
philosophy. It has its use, but we must take care that it does not
lead us into
a misapprehension. When we wake from an ordinary dream we realize
that our
senses have been deceived, that what we thought at the time to be a
real
experience was in truth nothing of the kind. But this is not
exactly what
happens when we wake to a perception of spiritual reality. We
awaken to a higher
and broader life; we perceive for the first time the crushing yet
entirely
unsuspected limitations under which we have hitherto been living.
But that does
not mean that our life before that time was nothing but a useless
deception. The
awakening to higher things causes our previous state of mind to
appear
irrational, but, after all, it was only relatively so. We were
acting then
according to our lights, upon such information as we had; now we
have so much
more that all our lines of thought and action are completely
changed.
Even the Vedantist does not deny that this physical plane dream of
ours has its
value for the production of enlightenment. A man may dream that a
snake is
threatening him, and be much alarmed thereby; at last in his dream
the snake
strikes him, and with that shock he wakes, and is much relieved to
find that the
whole experience was an illusion. Yet it was the blow of the
illusory snake that
awoke him to a more real life. Similarly, in the Gild, Shri Krishna
tells His
pupil that wisdom is better than worldly goods, because, He says,
" All actions
in their entirety culminate in wisdom." 1 That great Teacher
did not deprecate a
life of activity, but encouraged it to the utmost; yet He said that
one should
not be attached to the activities and the things with which they
deal, but
should seek only the wisdom that can be obtained from them. It is
in the wisdom
that man has his own true being, as he is a part of the Logos. If
he listens to
the voice of wisdom he will become increasingly the master of
himself and his
life; the inner sound will thus put a stop to the outer clamour
which directs
the feverish activities of ordinary men.
It is very true that a man should cease to give his attention to
the many things
which surround and play upon him, and should turn it inwards to the
one witness
of all these things; but he is not entirely free to do this until
he has fully
performed his dharma in the outer world. Any man at any time, whatever
his
duties may 1 Op. cit., iv, 33. be, may set his affection upon
things above,
and not upon things of the earth.
But he may not be at liberty to devote his whole life to higher
work until he
has satisfied the demands of the karma which he has made in past
lives, or in
the earlier part of his present life. He may certainly feel
vairagya, but while
any physical duties Still remain to him, he must retain sufficient
interest in
them to do them as perfectly as they can be done.
If his desire for liberation is strong enough, and unless his karma
places some
insuperable obstacle in his way, he will probably find that the
path to freedom
will soon open before him. I myself had an experience of that kind;
I received
a, message from my Master offering me certain opportunities which I
most
thankfully accepted. But if that gracious offer had been made a
little earlier,
I should have been unable to accept it, because I should not have
been free;
there lay upon me a clear duty which I could not possibly have
neglected.
Vairagya has two parts; there is the apara or lower vairagya, and
the para or
higher vairagya.
There are three stages in the abandonment of attachment to external
things.
First, the man becomes tired of the things which used to give him
pleasure, yet
he is sorry that he is tired of them; he desires still to enjoy
them, but he
cannot. Then, because of that satiety, he seeks elsewhere for
satisfaction.
Finally, when he has caught a clear glimpse of the higher things
his spiritual
desires awaken, and they prove so attractive to him that he thinks
of the others
no more. Or else, having learnt of the existence of the higher
things and
decided to follow them, he in the second stage either sets
himself to observe the defects of the lower things, so as to
create a sort of artificial disgust for them, or he fixes
his will in rigid determination to reject their attractiveness and
starve out
desire for them. Finally, as in the former case, perhaps only after
many
fluctuations, the man sees the higher; he hears the inner sound
which kills the
outer. Then he has the higher vairagya.
In the middle stage of struggle, it often happens that the man
conceives a
positive repugnance for the things of his erst-while pleasure; that
is usually a
sign that he has only recently escaped from bondage to them and he
still fears
their attractiveness; he feels that he is liable to be tainted by
their
proximity, so he shudders and avoids them, or he attacks and tries
to destroy
them with unreasoning vehemence. All these different aspects of the
second stage
are forms of the lower vairagya.
Then only, not till then, shall he forsake the region of Asat, the
false, to
come onto the realm of Sat, the true.
Let us be careful here not to misunderstand. Many have supposed
that this
passage implies that the lower planes are mere illusion, but that
is by no means
what is intended. I have already written on the real and the unreal
and have
explained that each plane is real to the consciousness which
functions upon it.1
What is true is that until a man is able to hear the inner voice
and to look
upon life from the standpoint of the higher planes
1 " The Occult Path and the Interests of the World " in
the first Volume of
Talks on the Path of Occultism. he has no real grasp of the
truth which lies behind all this complexity of manifestation that
surrounds us.
Before the Soul can see, die harmony within must be attained, and
fleshly eyes
be rendered blind to all illusion.Before the Soul can hear,
the image (man) has to
become as deaf to roarings as
to whispers, to cries of bellowing elephants as to the silvery
buzzing of the golden fire-fly.
Before the Soul can comprehend and may remember, she must onto the
Silent
Speaker be united, just as the form to which the clay is modelled
is first
united with the potter's mind.
The harmony within is that between the ego and his vehicles, and
also, of
course, between those vehicles themselves. In the average man there
is a
perpetual strain going on between the astral body and the mental
body, between
the desires and the mind; and neither of these bodies is in the
least in tune
with the ego, or pre- : pared to act as his vehicle. The
personality must be
purified, and the channel between it and the ego must be opened and
widened.-
Until this is done the personality sees everything and everybody
from its own
very limited point of view. The ego cannot see what is really going
on; he
perceives only the distorted picture in the personality, which is
like a camera
with a defective lens that distorts the light rays, and a faulty
plate or film
which makes the result all blurred, indistinct and unequal.
That is why in most people the ego cannot derive any satisfaction
from the
personality until it is in the heaven-world. The ego knows the true
from the
false, he recognizes the true when he sees it, and rejects the
false; but
generally when he casts an eye downwards into the personality he
finds so crazy
a confusion of inconsequent thought-forms that he can distinguish
nothing
definite; he turns away in despair, and decides to wait for the
quietude of the
heaven-world before attempting to pick the fragments of truth out
of this
unseemly chaos. Under those more peaceful conditions, as the
emotions and
thoughts of the recent physical life come up one by one and
envisage themselves
in the vivid light of that world, they are examined with clear
vision, the dross
is thrown away and the treasure is kept. The disciple must try to
bring about
this condition while still in the physical body, by purifying the
personality
and harmonizing it with the soul.
The possibilities of personal error are almost infinite. Suppose
that a worm, a
bird, a monkey, and a traveller simultaneously look at a tree. The
first will
think of it as food, the second as a house, the third as a
gymnasium, the fourth
as a kind of umbrella; the pictures will all be different from one
another, and
different again from the tree's conception of himself.
While seeing has reference to looking outward, hearing refers to
what comes from
within. The man must become quiet if he is to hear the still small
voice.
Dharana or concentration will produce this quietness. If the soul
is to hear the
inner voice with certainty
and accuracy, the outer man must
be unshaken by all external things—by the clamour of the big
breakers
of life that dash against him, as well as by the delicate murmur
of the softer ripples. He must learn to be very still, to have no
desires and aversions.
Intuition can scarcely ever be invoked except when the man is
utterly willing to
receive its behests as the best and most acceptable guide, without
intruding his
personal desires. It would be of little use to ask from the
intuition any
solution of a problem of conduct, if at the same time the man
wished that the
answer should be this or that. Except on rare occasions when it is
unusually
strong, it is only when personal desires and aversions have ceased
to exist when
the voice of the outer world can no longer command him, that a man
can hear the
inner voice which should be his unfailing guide.
Before the soul can fully comprehend the drift of all the tuition
which comes to
him from without, and the intuition that comes from within, another
harmonizing
process must take place, in which the manas gradually becomes
attuned to the
will, which gives direction to his life.
There are three stages in the development of consciousness. On the
probationary
path the man's highest consciousness works upon the higher mental
plane; after
the First Initiation and until the Fourth, it is climbing steadily
through the
buddhic plane; at the end of that stage it enters on the atonic or
spiritual
plane. He has then become united with the will, the directing
agent, controller of his destiny. While in the middle stage he
might have said:
"Thy Will, not mine, be done," but now he says: "Thy
Will and mine are one."
Just as the design of the pot that is to be made is first in the
potter's mind,
and just as the model for a race of men is in the Manu's mind, He
having
received it from above, so is the goal of achievement for every one
of us
already marked out by the Monad, and then brought down into the
evolving life of
the conscious man by the spiritual principle within him.
There is thus a reason for the use of the word soul in these three
verses. It is
the soul that treads the path of progress, not the personality. On
the first
half of the path it unites itself more and more completely with the
buddhi,
forming the spiritual soul, manas-taijasi. But all the work is done
under the
direction, of the atma, the voice of the silence.
CHAPTER 5 THE WARNING VOICE
For then the Soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the
inner ear will
speak.
THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE, and say:
If thy Soul smiles while bathing in the sunlight of thy life; if
thy Soul sings
within her chrysalis of flesh and matter; if thy Soul weeps inside
her castle of
illusion; if thy Soul struggles to break the silver thread that
binds her to the
Master; know, O disciple, thy Soul is of the earth.
C.W.L.—In occult books we have frequent reference to the voice of
the silence,
and we often find that what is said in one place does not agree
with what
appears in others. In the early days of the Society we used to
puzzle over its
exact significance, trying to make it always mean the same thing.
Only after
much study did we discover that the term is general. The voice of
the silence
for anyone is that which comes from the part of him which
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is higher than his consciousness can reach, and naturally that
changes as his
evolution progresses. For those working with the personality the
voice of the
ego is the voice of the silence, but when one has dominated the personality
entirely and has made it one with the ego so that the ego may work
perfectly
through it, it is the voice of the atma—-the triple spirit on the
nirvanic
plane. When this is reached there will still be a voice of the
silence—that of
the Monad on the plane above. When the man identifies the ego and
the Monad and
attains Adeptship, he will still find a voice of the silence coming
down to him
from above, but then it will be the voice, perhaps, of one of the
Ministers of
the Deity, one of the Planetary Logoi, as They are called. Perhaps
for Him in
turn it will be the voice of the Solar Logos Himself; and if even
for Him there
is such a thing as that, it must be the voice of a higher Logos.
But who can
say?
" The sunlight of thy life " refers to those periods in
our personal existence
when fortune smiles upon us, and everything seems bright and fair.
The ego who
basks in that pleasure, and mistakes it for the true happiness of
the higher
Self, has not yet the higher vairagya which kills the outer sounds.
In The
Ancient Wisdom Dr. Besant has explained how the man who feels that
nothing on
earth can satisfy him, not even those things that give the greatest
delight to
ordinary mortals, may through a strong but calm effort of the will
rise to and
unite himself with the higher consciousness and find himself free
of the body;
but that is only for those who
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obey the first condition, who cannot be satisfied with anything
less than that
union.
The three bodies, physical, astral and mental, which with their
habits
constitute the personality, are in truth a chrysalis, in which a
butterfly is
gradually being formed. In our present caterpillar state the soul
must be in the
body and the world; yet it must not be of them; it must not accept
that life as
its own, but must realize that it is independent of its vehicles.
Here again we
must be careful not to misunderstand. It is indeed well, it is even
necessary
that the soul should rejoice on its upward path, that it should
smile, that it
should sing within its chrysalis; there is no harm in that—there is
even much
good in it. What it must not do is to sing because of the
chrysalis, or of
anything that happens to that outer shell. It would be wrong,
terribly wrong,
that the soul should weep within its castle of illusion, because
depression and
sadness are always wrong. But that, true as it is, is not what is
meant here.
What Aryasanga is trying to tell us in his graceful poetical
language is that
the soul must neither rejoice nor sorrow because of anything
whatever that is
connected with the chrysalis or the castle, or any outer form; it
must be
indifferent to that form, unaffected by what happens to it. If it
is not
indifferent, it is still of the earth, still entangled with this
lower world,
and so not yet ready for perfect freedom.
All around us eternal change is taking place; but the soul must
press forward on
its way resistless, undeterred by change, for to be influenced by
these outer
things
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shows weakness. Remember
how Shakespeare writes in his Sonnets:
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of
outworn
buried age When sometime lofty towers I see down-raze And brass
eternal slave to
mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on
the kingdom of
the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing
store with loss
and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or
state itself
confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That
Time will come
and take my love away,
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have
that which it
fears to lose.
Since brass, nor stone nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad
mortality
o'er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a
plea, Whose
action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer's honey
breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks
impregnable are not so
stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays? 1
But time is really the friend of the aspirant, for it is precisely
the finer,
the higher, the inner things which are least subject to its
ravages. This truth
the occultist learns as a matter of certain experience and
knowledge, so the
changes in outside things at last come to trouble him not at all.
Silver is the thread—as befits an emblem of purity— that binds the
soul to the
higher Self; every traffic that the soul has with impurity of body,
emotions or
thought, is a struggle to break that silver thread, a temptation to
ignore the
still, small voice.
1 Sonnets, xliv, xlv.
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Madame Blavatsky adds the following footnotes:
The "great Master " is the term used by chelas to
indicate the Higher Self. It
is the equivalent of Avalokiteshvara, and the same as Adi-Buddha
with the
Buddhist occultists, Atma with the Brahmanas, and Christos with the
ancient
Gnostics.
Soul is used here for the human Ego or Manas, that which is
referred to in our
occult septenary division as the human Soul in contradistinction to
the
spiritual and animal Souls.
Madame Blavatsky here employs the word Master in an unusual sense,
saying that
it is so used by the chelas or pupils. In later Theosophical
literature this
title has been reserved for that limited number of members of the
Great White
Brotherhood who accept pupils from among those who are still living
in the
world. That number is small; it would seem that one Adept on each
of the rays is
appointed to attend to that work, and all those who are coming
along his
particular ray of evolution pass through his hands. No one below
the rank of
Adept is permitted to assume full responsibility for a pupil,
though those who
have held the position of pupil for a number of years are often
employed as
deputies, and receive the privilege of helping and advising
promising young
aspirants. These older pupils are gradually being trained for their
future work
when they in turn shall become Adepts, and they are learning to
take more and
more of the routine work off the hands of their Masters, so that
the latter may
be set free for higher labours which only
I
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they can undertake. The preliminary selection of candidates for
chelaship is now
left to a large extent in the hands of these older pupils, and the
candidates
are temporarily linked with such pupils rather than directly with
the great
Adepts. But the pupils and the Master are so wonderfully one that
perhaps this
is almost " a distinction without a difference ".
The terms which Madame Blavatsky uses in these footnotes will be
better
understood if we study a little the various trinities in the
universe and in
man. It is in the experience of everybody that there is a duality
of the knower
and the known, of the one who sees and the things that are seen, of
the subject
and the object. This is the old division of the world of experience
into two
parts, spirit and matter, using those words in a general or common
sense. Spirit
or consciousness and matter are a pair of opposites—-the spirit is
an active
principle, the matter a passive one; the spirit has a centre but no
circumference, the matter has a circumference but no centre; the
spirit is
self-moving, the matter is moved from outside. In these two we have
also the
division of reality into the divine and the material; the free and
the bound;
that which shines with its own light and that which has only
reflected light.
When one looks closer still, one sees that those two are playing,
as it were, on
the stage in one's presence, that they are not No. 1 and No. 2
principles, as
many people think, but they are No. 2 and No. 3; for the one that
now witnesses
their interplay is No. 1. No. 2 is the God who is seen, but No. 1
is the God who
is
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the real Self, who is the cause of all the interplay between No. 2
and No. 3.
In Christian terminology, Christ is the God who is seen. " No
man hath seen God
at any time." 1 Yet said Christ: " I and my Father are
One." 2
That brings us to the term Avalokiteshvara. This word is a compound
of avalokita
(seen), and Ishvara (God, the Ruler). It thus means the Higher Self
in the
duality of spirit and matter in the universe. " There are
three that bear record
in heaven," said St. John,. "the Father, the Word and the
Holy Ghost."3 The
Word, the Logos, Avalokiteshvara, is the Second. He is the
Christos, the God
that is seen. This is the universal spirit, or purusha, as
distinguished from
the matter, or prakriti. Man is consciousness looking at matter,
and this God is
glorified or universal Man, the supreme subject. Analyze yourself,
and you will
find the reflection of this—the inner God in yourself. Still, that
God that is
seen only bears witness to the real God—in man to the Self, the
" I " which
embraces both the subject and the object.
This " I " is not a new subject, witnessing the old
subject and object, put
together and now made into one new compound object. It is " I
"—that is all
there is to say. Every thinking man can look at his own body, and
in some cases
his astral and mental bodies as well, and call it "it",
that is, he can look
upon it as an
11 John, 4, 12.
I St. John, x, 30.
I1 John, 5, 7.
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object. He can also have a conception of the consciousness or
subject in his
neighbour, and infer that it is of the same nature as that
consciousness
(containing will, feeling and thought) which he finds in himself.
But on this
point he now makes a great mistake, by giving two different names
to one
thing—-he calls the same thing " you " when he sees it in
his neighbour, but " I
" when he looks at it in himself! Let him look upon the
consciousness or subject
within himself (all of it) as he does upon that in others, and call
it " you ",
regarding it as just one of the great sea of " yous "
that make up the Logos, as
drops of water make up the ocean, and he will be ready to transcend
consciousness and reach the real " I ", the Self or God
that is not seen.1 The
consciousness, the " you ", is a portion of
Avalokiteshvara, the God that is
seen, the Christ, the light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world,
just as much as the bodies are parts of the ocean of cosmic matter;
and both
equally are not the Self. No one hath seen the supreme God at any
time—not even
the Son.
This trinity has been considered in various ways: Avalokiteshvara
has been
described as follows by Swami T. Subba Rao: " Parabrahman by
itself cannot be
seen as it is. It is seen by the Logos with a veil thrown over it,
and that veil
is the mighty expanse of Cosmic Matter." And again:
"Parabrahman, after having
appeared on the one hand as the Ego, and on
1 This argument is expounded in The Seven Rays, by Ernest Wood, Ch.
xxi.
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the other as Mulaprakriti, acts as the one energy through the
Logos". The danger
of all such descriptions is immense; the use of the word " it
" alone in this
connection can undo everything. In oneself deliverance, the truth,
must be
sought—only I being I can solve this mystery, which is so easy, but
that people
will not see. There is also the strongest objection even to the
word God as
applied to Parabrahman—for to think of God is to think of the seen,
that is, of
Avalokiteshvara; and that God is, after all, a " you ",
or rather all " yous ".
The conception of a subject or " you " involves a time
limitation; that of an
object or " it" involves a space limitation. But motion
in both time and space
is a mystery. Some ancients argued that nothing could really move,
" because it
cannot move in the space where it is, and it certainly cannot move
in the space
where it is not." But subjects can move in time, and objects
can move in space,
because all move in Parabrahman. Both time and space are secondary
to motion,
properly conceived.1
" And these three are one." 2 Mulaprakriti, the root of
manifestation, basic
matter, external being, is not something other than Parabrahman,
but is the
same, as seen through the time limitations of consciousness.
Parabrahman is
beyond that time limitation, and therefore seems to be still, and
from that
arises the appearance-of space, the characteristic of Mulaprakriti—which
is in
reality a space containing everything which ever existed
1 See The Seven Rays, Ch. viii. 2
I John, 4, 12.
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or will exist in all of the three periods of time—past, present and
future. Then
universal consciousness, the great Man, also called Daiviprakriti
(the divine
manifestation), as against Mulaprakriti (the material
manifestation), is
Avalokiteshvara, the Ishvara or Ruler or God who is seen, in
contradistinction
to Parabrahman, the first member of the Trinity, who is not seen
directly even
by him.
Now, in the higher triad in the consciousness of man we have a
reflection of
this great Trinity. Therefore Madame Blavatsky says that the Higher
Self, by
which she means buddhi or the intuitional love, is the equivalent
of
Avalokiteshvara. Any confusion in thought of the universal reality
with atma,
buddhi and manas— the three modes of consciousness in man—would
result in
serious error, but there is an analogy between the two. The great
Trinity is
reflected in man in various ways, and appears in one form in those
three aspects
of his consciousness. So atma, buddhi and manas reflect in their
smaller sphere
the characteristics of the universal trinity. Atma is the
consciousness of Self,
and also the will, which gives self-direction. Manas, at the other
pole, is
consciousness of the world, and its thought-power does all our
work, even that
which is effected through the hands. But buddhi, between the two,
is the very
essence of consciousness, of subjectivity. Thus the greater Trinity
is
reproduced in the consciousness of the ego.
Beyond this middle member, triple in character, is the Monad in
man,
representative in him of Parabrahman,
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the state of his true and absolute nirvana, beyond consciousness.
The atma is
the state of his false and relative nirvana of the nirvanic plane, his
last
illusion, that persists between the Fourth and Fifth Initiations.
As the Monad
lies above the trinity of consciousness, so the personal bodies lie
outside or
beneath it—they are known only in reflection in manas. On the first
half of the
Path (from the First to the Fourth Initiation) the man is busy
shaking himself
free from those personal limitations, from the illusion of "
it ". On the second
half he is engaged in releasing himself from the illusion of
"you".
There are still a few more points to consider in Madame Blavatsky's
notes. Her
reference to Adi-Buddha and Atma requires some comment, though that
to the
Christos of the Gnostics will be abundantly clear from what has
been said above.
The " Atma of the Brahmanas " is rather what the Buddhists
thought that the
Brahmanas meant by the term (and what perhaps many of the Brahmanas
who missed
the true point of their philosophy really did think); it is that
spiritual soul
in man which the Buddha declared to be not utterly permanent. Yes,
even the
Christ (the higher self) in man is at last mortal. Beautiful and
wonderful, and
far beyond the vision of ordinary men as it lies, it must at last
give up its
life, to be one with the Father. It is the " you "
masquerading as the " I " in
spiritual men —just as, far earlier in evolution, the absurd
personality, the "
it " pretended to be " I ". But when he says that
their belief in atma is wrong,
the orthodox Buddhist has
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not understood the height of true Brahmana thought, and especially
the teaching
on this point of Shri Shankara-charya, who was really one with the
Buddha in His
anatma doctrine, because by atma He meant the Monad, the
indescribable
Parabrahmic aspect of man. The Buddha saw that people called "
you " the atma,
the Self, and tried to dislodge them from that error by saying that
what they
called " I " was perishable.
In the footnote Madame Blavatsky says that Avalokiteshvara is the
same as
Adi-Buddha. She amplifies her statement on the subject in The
Secret Doctrine,
as follows:
In the esoteric, and even exoteric Buddhism of the North,
Adi-Buddha, . . . the
One Unknown, without beginning or end, identical with Parabrahman,
emits a
bright Ray from its Darkness. This is the Logos, the First, or
Vajradhara, the
Supreme Buddha, also called Dorjechang. As the Lord of all
Mysteries he cannot
manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his Heart—the
" Diamond
Heart," Vajrasattva or Dorjesempa. This is the Second Logos of
Creation.1
In this extract she clearly shows that the First and Second Logos
are
respectively Adi-Buddha and Avalokiteshvara, for the latter is the
same as
Vajrasattva. Therefore when she speaks of them as one it can only
be as the
Christians speak of the Christ as one with the Father. I wrote as
follows on
this subject in The Inner Life, Section II:
There has been much discussion as to the exact meaning of the terms
Adi-Buddha
and Avalokiteshvara. I have made no special study of these things
from the
philosophical standpoint, but so far as I have been able to gather
ideas from
discussion of the matter with the living exponents of the religion,
Adi-Buddha
seems to be the culmination of one of the great lines of superhuman
development—-what might be called the abstract principle
1 Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 624.
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of all the Buddhas. Avalokiteshvara is a term belonging to the
Northern Church
and seems to be the Buddhists' name for their conception of the
Logos. European
scholars have translated it: " The Lord who looks down from on
high," but this
seems to have in it a somewhat inaccurate implication, for it is
clearly always
the manifested Logos; sometimes the Logos of a solar system and
sometimes higher
than that, but always manifest. We must not forget that-while the
founders of
the great religions see and know the things which They name, Their
followers
usually do not see; they have only the names, and they juggle with
them as
intellectual counters, and build up much which is incorrect and
inconsistent.1
We have already seen that by the term Higher Self Madame Blavatsky
means the
buddhi in man, the central member of the trinity of his immortal
consciousness.
That is the wisdom in man. But it is a reflection of the universal
wisdom,
without which there could be no human wisdom. Similarly, without
the
Dhyani-Buddha Avalokiteshvara, the " centre of energy'' of the
ultimate wisdom,
Adi-Buddha, no human Buddha could become. The Illumination of the
sage Gautama
was therefore not essentially the flowering of a man into a god,
but the union
of a perfected human consciousness with the wisdom of the Logos.
The second of the footnotes under consideration speaks not only of
the manas as
the human Soul, but refers also to the animal soul in man. This is
the lower
manas, the kama-manas. On its plane reside the group-souls of
animals, while
those of the vegetable kingdom are on the plane beneath it, and
those of the
mineral lower still. To these meanings of the terms Soul, Higher
Self, etc.,
Madame Blavatsky keeps with perfect consistency right through the
book. 1 Op.
cit., Vol. 1, p. 1
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CHAPTER 6 SELF AND ALL-SELF
When to the world's turmoil thy budding Soul lends ear; when to the
roaring
voice of the great illusion thy soul responds; when frightened at
the sight of
the hot tears of pain, when deafened by the cries of distress, thy
Soul
withdraws like the shy turtle within the carapace of selfhood,
learn, O
disciple, of her silent God thy Soul is an unworthy shrine.
When waxing stronger, thy Soul glides forth from her secure
retreat; and
breaking loose from the protecting shrine, extends her silver
thread and rushes
onward; when beholding her image on the waves of space she
whispers. " This is
I"—declare, O disciple, that thy Soul is caught in the webs of
delusion.
C.W.L.—At the beginning of this passage, in the expression "
budding Soul " we
have a suggestion of the idea of evolution. For many centuries in
Europe people
did not think of evolution; they had the idea that the world and
all the various
creatures in it had been created quite suddenly, and they did not
suppose that
the more
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complex forms had evolved out of inferior ones, and would evolve
further into
something more perfect. Then came the idea, within about the last
century and a
half, that the material forms of living creatures were undergoing
evolution, an
unfoldment which has been believed by some to be due to an impulse
of the
indwelling life, and by others merely to the selective agency of
natural
environment.
But long ago there existed a theory of evolution of the Soul, which
has all
along been a central doctrine of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions,
and has been
spread extensively in the Western world by Theosophists along with
the doctrine
of reincarnation. This is put forward as the most logical and
ethical theory of
human destiny, once it has been established, on scientific or
religious grounds,
that the Soul of a man survives the death of his body. The soul
incarnates many
times for the sake of experience, and each one will thereby become
at last not
merely a genius in some field of human thought or work, but a
perfect man, ready
for full conscious divinity.
There are two great stages on the path of the soul's evolution—-the
first is
called the pravritti marga, the way of forth-going, and second the nivritti
marga, the way of return. In the former the development of
personality takes
place, accompanied by the accumulation of much karma as the soul
pursues its
restless career of seeking the satisfaction of its multitudinous
desires in the
external world. In the latter the soul little by little turns its
back upon the
world, and with its face towards
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the divine, its source and goal, proceeds with the task of
perfecting itself so
as to finish up the human stage of its evolution.
It is this second stage, the nivritti marga, that is divided up
into the
probationary path and the Path of Initiation, which have been fully
described in
The Path of Discipleship, Initiation, The Perfecting of Man; and
The Masters and
the Path. This marga implies a course of voluntary evolution, in
which the
candidate is deliberately training himself in the higher qualities
of character;
the evolution of the lower creatures and of men on the pravritti
marga is
involuntary, they seek and respond to experience, and learn without
clear
realization of what is happening to them.
In a footnote to the word illusion, Madame Blavatsky calls it
Maha-Maya, the
great illusion, the objective universe. The meaning of the term
illusion, as
applied to the external world, has already been discussed. It is
not the same
idea as that referred to in the text as " webs of
delusion," which has
reference, as another footnote says, to " Sakkayaditthi, the
delusion of
personality ".
When the Lord Buddha revealed to men the Noble Eightfold Path, the
way to
liberty, the practical means to bring sorrow to an end, He told
them about the
ten fetters which the candidate must cast off—one after another.
The first of
these was called Sakkayaditthi, the delusion of personality. Let us
see how this
arises. A child is born subject to karma—the result of its deeds in
previous
lives. It has a certain kind of body, and
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various things happen to it. In course of time it hears what people
say of it,
and it finds out what it can and what it cannot do. It sees itself
in these
things as in a mirror—one of those distorting mirrors which are
sometimes set up
in exhibitions to amuse people with their grotesquely flattened or
elongated
images. It thus obtains ideas about itself—that it is clever or
stupid,
beautiful or ugly, weak or strong. As its education proceeds it
acquires social
standing or position or character, assumes the habits of body and
mind of
doctor^ lawyer, house-wife—whatever it may be—and thus acquires a
settled
personality. When it thinks itself to be that personality, it has-
what has been
called " self-personality "—exactly the same delusion
that obsesses the
unfortunate people in the lunatic asylums, who imagine themselves
to be
tea-pots, ear-drums, north poles, Queen Elizabeths and Napoleons.
A definite well-trained set of bodies and personality, with useful
habits, is,
of course, a good thing, just as is . a good set of tools, or a
good motor-car.
We do not want to have weak or nondescript personalities. But
however good our
personality may be we should not think it to be ourself, and we
should be able
to enjoy all our native will-power, love-power and thought-power
while using it
for our purposes, for our spiritual life in the material world.
These
personalities should not set themselves up as candidates for
immortality, and
try to intrench themselves against the ravages of use and time that
beset all
material things. A middle-aged gentleman once said to his son, who
volunteered
to relieve him of
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some work: " No, no, my boy. Always use up the old ones first!
" The
personalities must be willing to be used, to be adapted to the
spiritual
purposes of the moment, to be worn out—and must be content with the
sole reward
of a long and glorious devachan, that will follow the death of the
outer body in
the case of all those who have thus served the divine indwelling
self, except,
of course, the servants of the Masters who renounce this reward and
take speedy
rebirth in order to work for the world.
This earth, disciple, is the hall of sorrow, wherein are set along
the path of
dire probations, traps to ensnare thy Ego by the delusion called
"great heresy
".
That the physical plane is a place of sorrow is a widespread
Buddhist and Hindu
thought. Uncongenial and often disfiguring or debilitating labour,
oppression,
disease, indignity and dread fall to the lot of the majority of
mankind. Those
whose fortune has set them in places of ease may say that they find
much
pleasure in it; but Patanjali says: " To the enlightened all
is misery." There
are many things that give no trouble to the relatively
unevolved—-such as the
smell of alcohol, meat or onions, the noise of factory sirens or
coarse music,
gross manners, hideous clothes and buildings, and a thousand other
things that
afflict those who are more sensitive. In addition to these there is
hunger to
gain what we want, and fear to lose it when it is in hand, and
suffering for
others all round us, if not for ourselves. Surely men must be made
to hug such
chains as these. Surely this
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world is indeed a hall of sorrow.
Think how poor is its best in the sight of
those who know the higher planes.
But it is so chiefly because man has made it so. Think of the vast
sea of life
that fills the mineral, the vegetable and the animal kingdoms of
nature, and how
all that is throbbing with pleasure. Even the dreadful picture of
the poet, of "
nature, red in tooth and claw with ravin " loses most of its
lurid colour when
we realize that the animals do not " think before and after
" as men do, with
painful longing and fear, and that while their battles are on, and
the blood and
wounds distress the human beholder, the excitement of the animal
consciousness
is at its greatest height and is often experiencing its greatest
pleasure. Earth
is a hall of sorrow only for man, who with his greed and anger,
born of a strong
imagination that feeds the flames of hot desire, has poisoned with
innumerable
horrors both his personal and his social life.
Yet it only needs the conquest of selfishness to remove every one of
these
horrors, and open to all mankind the joys of this world—the thrill
and deep
strong peace of beauty, of discovery, of creative work; of social
and bodily
well-being.
Madame Blavatsky's footnote then speaks of:
Attavada, the heresy of the belief in Soul, or rather in the
separateness of
Soul or Self from the one universal, infinite Self.
Attd is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit atma, and vada means
doctrine. The
doctrine of atma, which we
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have already considered, is the great source of cleavage between
the Hindus and
Buddhists, but as a matter of fact the distinction is merely one of
words,
because when the Hindu says that the Self or atma in man is one
with the
universal Self, he does not mean by the word what people usually
mean when they
think or speak of themselves, but something altogether deeper,
which only the
advanced yogi can even imagine. There is a passage in the Shri
Vakya Sudha which
warns the aspirant that when he repeats the great religious formula
" I am
That", he must take care what he means by " I " j it
explains that the separate
individual should be understood as threefold, and that it is the
union with
Brahman only of the highest of these three that is proclaimed by
" Thou art That
" and such sayings. As already explained, the personality is
not " I", and even
the " you " in me is not " I", but the " I
", is something indistinguishable
from the universal Self in which the many and the One are one. The
Lord Buddha's
teaching denies the permanency of the "you" that men call
" I " It is an
unfortunate thing that two such great religions as Hinduism and
Buddhism should
be separated mainly by so small a misunderstanding, and also that
because of it
the modern Theosophical movement has spread very slowly among the
Buddhists. We
have developed a large Theosophical literature, in which the words
atma and Self
figure extensively, and this has alienated a good many Buddhists
who have not
taken the trouble to clear away this obstacle of words which we
have
inadvertently put in their path.
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This earth, O ignorant disciple, is but the dismal entrance leading
to the
twilight that precedes the valley of true light—that light which no
wind can
extinguish, that light which burns without a wick or fuel.
In this and some later verses we have poetical names for the planes
of nature.
As previously stated, it was common among oriental occultists to
bunch together
the astral and lower mental planes, and Madame Blavatsky often
followed that
plan in- her teaching. This combining of the two is indicated in this
picture of
a " twilight that precedes the valley of true light ".
That description of the
valley of true light shows it to be the region of the Soul and the
Higher Self,
the planes where buddhi and higher manas have their habitat.
If we divide the planes by a line separating the lower from the
higher mental,
we find that there is a radical difference between those which lie
below the
line and those which are above. In the former, matter is dominant;
it is the
first thing that strikes the eye; and consciousness shines with
difficulty
through the forms. But in the higher planes life is the prominent
thing, and
forms are there only for its purposes. The difficulty in the lower
planes is to
give the life expression in the forms, but in the higher it is
quite the
reverse—to hold and give form to the flood of life. It is only
above the
dividing line that the light of consciousness is subject to no
wind, and shines
with its own power. The symbol of a spiritual fire is very fitting
for
consciousness at
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those levels, as
distinguished from the lower planes,
-where the symbol of
fire burning fuel is more appropriate.
Saith the great Law: "In order to become the knower of
All-Self, thou hast first
of Self to be the knower." To reach the knowledge of that
Self, thou hast to
give up self to non-self, being to non-being.
In a foot-note Madame Blavatsky distinguishes between the Atmajnani
who is
mentioned here, and the Tattvajnani. In Hindu literature generally
the
distinction is slight and is usually ignored, but she says: "
The Tattvajnani is
the knower or discriminator of the principles in nature and in man;
and
Atmajnani is the knower of Atma, or the universal One Self."
Jnani means a
knower and tattva means the truth or the real nature of things.
It has always been a teaching of Theosophy that to make progress we
must apply
the old Greek formula " Know thyself". In consequence, a
very large part of our
modern Theosophical literature deals with the constitution, history
and destiny
of man. It is by the study of the various principles and bodies of
man that we
are able gradually to distinguish what he is, and to separate him
in thought
from the vehicles that he uses, until at last we arrive at the real
Self. Then,
through that real Self in us, we shall realize the universal Self;
in fact, the
two are one.
But to know the real Self in oneself, the lower self must be set
aside, must
become as naught. As we have
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already seen, the utter destruction of " self-personality
" is the very first
task of the Initiate on the Path proper, since sakkayaditthi, the
delusion of
the personal self, is the first fetter which must be cast off.
And then thou can'st repose between the wings of the Great Bird.
Aye, sweet is
rest between the wings of that which is not born, nor dies, but is
the Aum
throughout eternal ages.
On the Great Bird, which occupies a prominent place-in Oriental
religious
symbolism, Madame Blavatsky has the following foot-note:
Kala Hamsa, the bird or swan. Says the Nada-vindupanishat (Rig
Veda) translated
by the Kumba-konam Theosophical Society—" The syllable A is
considered to be the
bird Hamsa's right wing, U its left, M its tail, and the Ardhamatra
(half metre)
is said to be its head."
The word Aum, generally pronounced Om, is used at the commencement
of every good
work or thought, because it is a word of power, symbolizing divine
creation.
Innumerable Sanskrit books repeat the statement that hearing,
touch, sight,
taste and smell are correlated respectively with the orders of
matter named
akasha. (ether or sky), vayu (air), tejas or agni (fire), apas or
jala (water),
and prithivi (earth), which are our familiar five planes of human
manifestation,
the atmic, buddhic, mental, astral and physical. These planes were
created in
this order, beginning with the atmic, where sound was applied as
the. creative
power. Of course, that could
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not be the same thing as our physical sound, which is a pulsation
in the air or
some other physical substance; It was of the nature of the voice of
the silence,
the will of atma. Yet even on our physical plane sound is a great
builder of
forms, as every student of elementary science knows, who has made
Chladni's
figures or performed similar experiments. There is a great deal of
symbolism in
the Hindu Scriptures connected with this idea that the world was
created by
sound.
The word Aum is said to have special value as a mantra because it
is the most
complete human word. It begins with the vowel A in the back of the
mouth,
continues with the vowel U sounded in the centre of the mouth, and
closes with
the co sonant M, with which the lips are sealed. It thus runs
through the whole
gamut of human speech and so represents in man the entire creative
word. Its
three parts are also taken as symbolical of the manifestation of
the Trinity, in
a variety of ways, to explain which one might fill a book. Thus we
have
Parabrahman, Daiviprakriti and Mula-prakriti; Shiva, Vishnu and
Brahma; will,
wisdom and activity; ananda, chit and sat, or happiness,
consciousness and
being; atma, buddhi and manas; tamas, rajas and sattva; and many
another. Aum is
thus a constant reminder of this triplicity running through all
things; it is a
key therefore to the solution of many mysteries, as well as a word
of power. The
head of the bird is then taken as the unmanifested origin of the
triple word.
Kala, a word which means " time " is one of the names of
Vishnu or
Avalokiteshvara. Kala-hamsa
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therefore means the swan of time or in time, hamsa being a swan.
This symbol of
a bird contains the implication of time, since it is proceeding
through space.
It is a characteristic of consciousness that it progresses or
evolves, and so
exists in time. The consciousness of the Logos is time, it does not
begin nor
end in time, and is therefore without birth or death.
This bird is thus a symbol of the Second Logos, which is also the
great Wisdom.
There is a well-known Hindu fable which connects the hamsa or swan
with this
idea of wisdom also, for it relates of that bird that when a
mixture of water
and milk is placed before it, it can separate the milk from the
water. So does
wisdom operate even in human life, selecting from our mixed
experience the
essential nutriment of the soul. Wisdom remains in the spiritual
soul of man
when experiences have died away, since, as the Bhagavad-Gita says:
" All actions
in their entirety culminate in wisdom."1
A man on the Path who has passed the Third Initiation is also
called a Hamsa, or
swan. He is busy getting rid of raga and dvesha the fourth and
fifth fetters,
which are liking and disliking and is therefore especially
practising wisdom.
People in the world are full of likes and dislikes, and they
therefore suffer
greatly from their own opinions about things. Throwing these two
fetters off,
the Hamsa becomes like the sage described in the Gita as one
satisfied with
wisdom and knowledge, to whom a lump of earth, a stone and gold are
the same,
who regards impartially friends and foes, the righteous 1 Op. cit.,
iv. 33.
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and the unrighteous. It is not that this man does not value gold
and friends; he
does, but he values also clay and foes. The wise man can profit
from every kind
of experience; all are useful for the soul. Epictetus asserted this
when he
declared: "There is only one thing for which God has sent me
into the world— to
perfect my own character in virtue; and there is nothing in all the
world that I
cannot use for that purpose."
Again, Hamsa is also a form of the saying " Aham Sah " or
" I am That," or, as
it is frequently used, " Soham," which consists of the
same words reversed. So
when the aspirant repeats this sentence he also remembers that the
way to
bestride the Hamsa or bird of life is to realize that he is the
Self. It is said
that the devout yogi utters this formula with every breath, of
which there are
said to be 21,
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0 in a day and night, for the air is considered to come in with
the sound of" sah " and go out with that of" ha
".
As long as the bird is flying, the creative word is sounding, time
exists.
Although this time has neither beginning nor ending it is nevertheless
a
measurable period—which is a great mystery. On this point Madame
Blavatsky has
the following note:
Eternity with the Orientals has quite another signification than it
has with us.
It stands generally for the 100 years or age of Brahma, the duration
of a
Maha-Kalpa or a period of 311,040,000,000,000 years.
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This part of the subject is concluded with the words:
Bestride the Bird of Life, if thou would'st know. Give up thy Life,
if thou
would'st live.
To these are appended the following notes:
Says the same Nadavindu, " A Yogi who bestrides the Hamsa,
(thus contemplates on
Aum) is not affected by karmic influences or crores of sins."
Give up the life of the physical personality if you would live in
Spirit.
A crore is ten millions. It must not, however, be assumed that the
yogi is
permitted to perform these sins; if he did he would not be a yogi.
This
expression is only an Oriental way of indicating that he is utterly
free from
taint by the material world. The man who thinks and works without
personal
desire, with utter unselfishness, suffers no karmic consequences.
The fruit of
all his efforts goes into the great reservoir of spiritual force
for the helping
of the world, as has already been explained.
CHAPTER 7 THE THREE HALLS
Three halls, O weary pilgrim, lead to the end of toils. Three halls, O
conqueror of Mara, will bring thee through three states into the
fourth, and
' thence into the seven worlds, the worlds of rest eternal.
If thou would'st learn their names, then hearken, and remember.
The name of the first hall is Ignorance—Avidya.
It is the hall in which thou saw'st the light, in which thou livest
and shalt
die.
The name of hall the second is the Hall of Learning. In it thy Soul
will find
the blossoms of life, but under every flower a serpent coiled.
The name of the third hall is Wisdom, beyond which stretch the
shoreless waters
of Akshara, the indestructible fount of omniscience.
C. W. L.—The three halls may be interpreted in two ways: as
objective planes, or
as the subjective condition of man.
90
In the former case the hall of ignorance is the physical plane, and
the hall of
learning, described in a foot-note as " the hall of
probationary learning " is
what may perhaps be called the astro-mental plane (the astral and
lower mental
planes taken together). When I wrote The Inner Life it seemed to me
probable
that by the term hall of learning Madame Blavatsky meant the astral
plane, and
by the hall of wisdom the lower mental plane, but having thought
the matter over
and discussed it many times since then, I now lean to the opinion
that we shall
more accurately represent her thought if we take the hall of
learning to include
not only the astral but also the lower mental, and if we raise the
hall of
wisdom so as to include within it the planes of higher manas and
buddhi.
That Aryasanga was not thinking of the astral plane as the hall of
learning and
the lower mental world as the hall of wisdom is shown a little
further on, when
he speaks of the latter hall as one " wherein all shadows are
unknown, and where
the light of truth shines with unfading glory". The lower
mental world does not
answer to this description; far more glorious and delicate than the
astral plane
as it is, it is still a material world and the habitat of the
personalities of
men. Further, the Teacher also says that that which is un-create
abides in the
hall of wisdom, and it is the ego, not the personality, which is
uncreate. And
in the lower mental plane, as well as in the astral, there is a
serpent coiled
under every flower; for if passion and foolish desires infest the
one, pride and
prejudices inhabit the
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other. In the higher mental plane, though there may be much that
the ego does
not know, what it does know it knows correctly; but the lower
mental is a region
of personality and error.
The extent to which the lower planes are worlds of illusion is also
seen in the
way in which our senses and powers work in them. To take sight as
an instance—we
see because our sight is obstructed. If one could see perfectly
through the wall
one could not see the wall. It is the same with walking; we have
some freedom to
move about, because the earth resists the free motion of our feet.
In the higher
planes one lives in the light.
The combination of the astral and mental planes is not uncommon in
the Oriental
schools of occult training. The Vedantins speak, of one body
(called the
manomayakosha, the body made of mind),1 where our Theosophical
literature
usually distinguishes the two (the astral and the mental), and to
that body when
awakened and functioning they ascribe the experiences proper to
both planes. The
candidate for the path of yoga in the Raja Yoga schools was always
trained to
work from the mental down to the astral. This very cautious
procedure is also
shown in the teaching of Patanjali, who makes his first two steps
moral, and
requires definite progress in these before the practices leading to
the siddhis
or yoga powers are taken. In Raja Toga: The Occult Training of the
Hindus, Prof.
Wood had called these first steps " The ten
1 See The Secret Doctrine, Vol. I, p. 1
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.
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commandments ", and has translated them as the five
restraints: " Thou shalt not
injure, lie, steal, be incontinent, be greedy ", and the five
observances:" Thou
shalt be clean, content, self-controlled, studious and
devoted." These methods
were in full force long before the time of Aryasanga; Pandit N.
Bhashyacharya
and some other Sanskrit scholars maintain that Patanjali, who in
turn was not
the originator of the system, gave his famous Sutras to the world
as far back as
in the ninth century B.C.
In The Masters and the Path I have explained that; in the old
Initiations it
often happened that much time was taken in instructing the
candidate in astral
work, as the awakening of the pupil to work at that level was left
to a
relatively later stage than is customary among the modern
Theosophists, who
often have already done much astral work and have thus learnt the
detail of the
astral world long before Initiation.
If we think of the three halls subjectively, as stages of progress
in human
development, we have the following familiar divisions: (1) The man
who lives
ignorantly in the world, attracted and repelled by the things
around him,
impelled to action by his own uncontrolled passions and
desires—-this is the
ignorant stage. (2) The man who is learning that nature has
definite laws, and
is realizing that by working with them he can gain much more power
than he had
in the days of his ignorance— this is the hall of learning. (3) The
man who has
realized that there are spiritual laws, and is learning to obey
them. He knows
about reincarnation and karma.
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and the ethical and moral laws that govern the progress of his own
soul and
those of others. He is aware that outer things exist only for the
purposes of
the evolving soul, and lives according to this knowledge. He is in
the hall of
wisdom.
Madame Blavatsky describes the four stages of consciousness :
The three states of consciousness, which are Jagrat, the waking;
Svapna, the
dreaming; and Sushupti, the deep-sleeping state. These three Yogi
conditions
lead to the fourth—the Turiya, that beyond the dreamless state, the
one above
all, a state of high spiritual consciousness.
These states of consciousness are not fixed, but may be correlated
to the sets
of planes or objective halls above mentioned, in the case of the
candidate who
is being prepared for the Arhat Initiation. In this case the waking
state may be
the physical, the dreaming state the astro-mental, the sleeping
state the higher
mental and buddhic, and the turiya state, the atmic.
The rather curious terms waking, dreaming and sleeping seem to have
been
selected from a physical plane point of view to name the heights of
consciousness reached by the candidate at different times. When the
man was
going about his business in the physical plane, with all his
faculties awake to
this world, he was in the first state. To understand the second
state we have to
remember that there are two kinds of dreams—the often nonsensical
productions of
the brain (physical and
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etheric), and the true experiences of the man away from his
physical body,
working and learning in the astro-mental regions. It is to these latter that
this term dreaming applies. The candidate sleeping, or almost going to
sleep in a day-dream, would afterwards remember some such
experiences, and then
ascribe them to the " consciousness of the dream state
". Suppose, however,
that the aspirant out of the body should at any time go into what
may be called
a second sleep, and rise into the next set of planes, to be
conscious for a time
at that higher level.
Probably on waking physically he would remember nothing
of what had been happening out of the body—his brain not being
attuned to record
the experiences coming from planes higher than his "dreaming
state ". So it
would seem to him that he had had deep dreamless sleep, and usually
his only
feeling would be one of great satisfaction and well-being. The " sleeping
state" is therefore consciousness in that still higher region.
Now, the fourth
state is sometimes called trance, for the following reason. It has often been
explained that an aspirant when out of the body can rise a stage
higher than
when in it. It is possible
also in deep meditation for the disciple to rise
in trance to the higher state and afterwards bring that experience
down into the
waking memory. Thus the
Arhat can touch the buddhic level while in the
physical body, and the atmic or nirvanic plane when out if it, or
in deep
meditation or trance. The term akshara, which is here applied to
this fourth
region, means simply that which does not melt away; it is the
undecaying.
THE THREE HALLS
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The same set of terms may be used as a relative series for less
advanced occult
students. One may have his waking consciousness on the physical
plane, his
dreaming state on the astral plane, his deep sleep on the mental;
another, who
is able to use his astral faculties in his physical waking
consciousness, will
have his dream consciousness on the lower mental, and his sleep
state on the
higher mental, and so on. The turiya is a higher state reached in
every case by
a special effort of will and meditation, which is a means to
ultimately raising
the whole set of three states to a higher level than before. While
the
transition is in progress, before the new level is established,
there will
always be this fourth stage.
This is seen in meditation. The candidate will sit and fix his
waking
consciousness on some object—suppose it is a cat. Then he will rise
to the "
dream state ", and try to realize the astral aspect of the
animal. Next he will
ascend to the " sleep stage ", and give his attention to
the mental being of the
creature. The fourth step would be samadhi—or contemplation—an
attempt to
realize its significance and reality for the ego, to go beyond the
three forms
of the cat into its subjective meaning. The fixing of the mind on
the cat in the
first case is concentration; the process of elevation of the
consciousness is
meditation; the final concentration in a higher field of vision,
beyond what was
reached before, is contemplation (or samadhi). The last effort may
be like
piercing a cloud or fog, out of which the new vision will gradually
form itself,
or from which it may come
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like a flash of lightning. In either case the practitioner must
hold himself
very still in order to retain the impression as long as
possible—one thought of
self, of the old personal relativity, can dismiss the whole thing,
so that there
remains not even a memory of what it was like.
The three halls, it is said, lead to the end of toils— not to the
end of work,
it must be observed. In these lower worlds we have a sense of work
which is
certainly quite different from that of higher levels. To us down
here the word
is almost synonymous with toil, and often with drudgery, but from a
higher point
of view work is really play. Drudgery is merely action; it does not
create the
man who does it. But the least bit of work done occultly, done
heartily "as to
God and not unto men ", done better than ever before, is good
for the evolution
of him who does it. If, in writing a letter, for example, one is at
pains to do
it neatly, even beautifully and to express oneself briefly, clearly
and
gracefully, one has developed hand, eye and brain, thought-power,
love-power and
will-power. True work, such as that of an artist, is full of
creative influence
and of joy. We find some toil even in these things, however,
because of the
obstructions of the lower planes. Yet even down here there is no
clear dividing
line between toil and play. If one goes out, for example on a long
ride, the
earlier part of the journey will be full of delight for both man
and horse, but
insensibly that passes away as fatigue increases, until suddenly
the man
realizes that the ride which was play in the beginning has now
become work, or
rather drudgery. In other cases, there may be a task,
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not prolonged, but a little beyond our strength; then there is a
sense of toil.
But all work in reality is play when there is willingness and no
fatigue or
overstrain.
We have much to learn from the animals, and even from the plants,
in this
respect. " Grow as the flower grows," says Light on the
Path, " opening your
heart to the sun." Said the Christ: " Consider the lilies
of the field, how they
grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you,
that even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." 1
It is deadly fear
of the morrow that makes men's work a toil, that makes them sweat
in bitterness.
But the Law says: " Do the wise and right thing today, and
leave the result to
take care of itself." This is not a doctrine of idleness, but
of work that is
play instead of toil.
An illustration of this is also to be seen in the way in which
different people
take a long journey. One man will get into the train at Chicago,
and remain in a
fever of impatience for the time which the train takes to go to San
Francisco,
his destination. He has fixed his mind on something that he wants
to do there;
in the meantime his journey is a toil and a misery. Another finds a
thousand
things of interest on the way— the scenery, the people, the train
itself; for
him the journey is a happy holiday. And in the end he has
accomplished much more
than the other man. The Hindu villager lives very near to nature,
and certainly
grows as the flower grows. A man will set out from his village to
get the mail
from the Post Office or to post 1 St. Matthew, vi, 7.
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some letters there, perhaps sixteen or twenty miles away. He does
not tramp
along stolidly and painfully, jarring his nerves with the graceless
movements
that spring from a discontented or impatient mind. The vision of
his mail is not
a mania that shuts out all other interests, and makes him curse the
length of
the track. No; there are insects, birds, flowers, trees, streams,
clouds in the
sky, fields, houses, people and animals, and lastly the blessed
earth itself, to
lie on which for awhile is to be on velvet in the divine arms. How
little the
white man knows of life, how much of toil!
The Hindus have long held that God plays. The Lila or play of Shri
Krishna, as
it is called, is the great work of evolution, which looks so
toilsome to us that
we shudder at the long ages of work that lie in front, and cry out
for rest.
Think of the 311,040,000 million years of our mahakalpa. What an
illusion! When
we come to the end of toils life will be all play, all happiness.
The end of toils, though not of work, comes with the entry of the
candidate, on
the fourth Path, into the nirvanic plane. He has finished the toil
of casting
off the first five fetters—self-personality, doubt, superstition,
liking and
disliking—all of which marked his bondage to material things, with
which his
life was one long struggle on an up-hill road. But now his
remaining five
fetters are internal; he has to conquer them, truly, but his weapon
will be
serenity, quietness, calmness— the use of the will, which is the
quietest thing
in the world. These fetters are: desire for life in form and
formless life,
pride, agitation and ignorance. Little
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profit is to be derived from examining these in detail in this
place; it is
enough to notice their internal character, and to say that to
destroy them the
man must quieten himself and his vehicles above the line that
divides the
personality from the ego.
At earlier stages, before the end of toils, the student will do
well to organize
his life wisely, so that his work for the Master may be as far as
possible play.
It should be pure delight, unmixed happiness—such a condition wou\d
make for the
swiftest progress. Toil is not meritorious, nor especially
profitable, though
sometimes it may be necessary. How often a student does meditation,
feeling it
an irksome thing, but regarding it as a duty to be done, though
with travail and
suffering. Do it happily and rejoicing, as play, or at least look
forward to the
time when you can do so. Some men sink luxuriously into the arms of
the present,
and say, " We will enjoy ourselves now, and let the future
take care of itself."
Others stand aloof in proud strength and say, " We refuse to
respond to that
which can distress us." But the disciple must bare his back to
the strokes of
time, rejoicing in the long future, in the game in which every move
can be a
dancing poem of delight.
On the subject of the seven worlds, Madame Blavat-sky says:
Some Oriental mystics locate seven planes of being, the seven
spiritual Lokas or
worlds within the body of Kala Hamsa, the swan out of time and
space,
convertible into the swan in time, when it becomes Brahma instead
of Brahman.
1OO
All the manifestations of seven in Nature, such as the seven
principles in man,
or the seven planes in the world, come from a sevenfold division
arising from
Parabrahman. Three of the seven principles are manifest in the
universal
consciousness, and three more in mulaprakriti. One remains at its
source and
includes all the others, for the presence of many does not mar the
unity of That
which is truly One. So, at his lower level, the man who transcends
his middle
set or principles (atma-buddhi-manas), and rises into the first
(the Monad),
though he escapes from the worlds or planes, finds them all present
in that new
state of real nirvana, which is beyond the consciousness-state as
much as that
is beyond the mere matter-state. We speak thus of it, in the third
person, only
as a concession to ignorance, and must point out that what has been
said should
be translated into terms of " you " for consciousness and
" I " for the true
life of super-conscious nirvana, if it is to be understood. These
" worlds",
however, are not entered by the Arhat, but by the full Adept.
There are several other ways in which the Arhat may be thought of
as entering
the seven worlds of rest eternal:
In one way those worlds are the sub-planes of the atomic plane,
through which
the Arhat begins to climb. The characteristic of the man who dwells
in them is a
changeless serenity, for everything is seen as in the One Self, and
where that
is realized, fear and anxiety can have no place. As the Gita says:
"For the sage
101
enthroned in yoga, serenity is called the means."1 It is not
that there is any
lack of activity in those regions —it is one vast wave of
ever-moving life—-but
there are no obstructions to the will of the One. On the buddhic plane
we have
still duality in a sense, since there one sees others, though the
same Self is
seen dwelling in them as in ourselves. But buddhi has to be
transcended, for
love implies a duality.
The serenity that the Arhat increasingly acquires puts a new face
on the common
planes of our existence. He enjoys in them a liberty that others do
not know; he
has found that work is play. Having touched the vale of bliss, he
has discovered
that life not only there but on all planes is pure delight. He not
only sees and
loves the advancing life behind the perishing forms, but feels and
rejoices in
the Divine Will behind the changing life. The rest eternal that he
enjoys is not
idleness, but the utter internal peace of one who knows that all is
well, that
the Divine Will is present even in what may to others seem the
obstructions to
progress, as well as in the apparent progress itself. A philosopher
once caught
a glimpse of this idea when he said: "Be serene; for if you
fail through no
fault of your own, the failure is a success better than you knew,
since the
Divine Will is being done." The Arhat knows something of the
peace that passes
understanding, because he is beginning to dwell in the Eternal.
This is, Madame
Blavatsky says, " The region of the full
1 Op. cit., vi, 3.
102
spiritual consciousness, beyond which there is no longer danger for
him who has
reached it."
If thou would'st cross the first hall safely, let not thy mind
mistake the fires
of lust that burn therein for the sunlight of life.
If thou would'st cross the second safely, stop not the fragrance of
its
stupefying blossoms to inhale. If freed thou would'st be from the
karmic chains,
seek not for thy Guru in those mayavic regions.
The wise ones tarry not in pleasure-grounds of senses.
The wise ones heed not the sweet-tongued voices-of illusion.
Seek for him who is to give thee birth in the Halt of Wisdom, the
hall which
lies beyond, wherein all shadows are unknown, and where the light
of truth
shines with unfading glory.
The Guru here spoken of is the Master, the Teacher. Madame
Blavatsky puts it:
The Initiate who leads the disciple, through the knowledge he
imparts, to his
spiritual, or second birth, is called the father, Guru or Master.
A statement of the lives and work of the Gurus or Masters has been
given in The
Masters and the Path. A glimpse of the marvel of Their exalted
powers is seen in
the account there given of a meditation of the Master Kuthumi. As
he sits in his
garden or his room, He seems to be meditating, but is, in fact,
giving
103
attention to some millions of people, dealing with each one as
individually as
an ordinary man could if he were to give his full attention to that
one.
Every ego is being helped by one of the Masters, so the man who can
vivify the
link in himself between the lower self and the higher may receive
that help in
his personal life. The gurus who are to be met with on the physical
plane are
generally Initiates, advanced pupils of the full Adepts, as stated
before.
That which is uncreate abides in thee, disciple, as it abides in
that hall. If
thou would'st reach it and blend the two, thou must divest thyself
of thy dark
garments of illusion. Stifle the voice of flesh, allow no image of
the senses to
get between its light and thine, that thus the twain may blend in
one. And
having learnt thine own Ajnana flee from the Hall of Learning. This
hall is
dangerous in its perfidious beauty, is needed but for thy
probation. Beware
Lanoo, lest dazzled by illusive radiance thy Soul should linger and
be caught in
its deceptive light.
This light shines from the jewel of the great ensnarer (Mara). The
senses it
bewitches, blinds the mind, and leaves the unwary an abandoned
wreck.
That which is uncreate refers to the higher triad, atma-buddhi-manas,
as
distinguished from the personality and its bodies. The statement
that the hall
of learning is needed but for probation applies to the hall of
104
ignorance as well. The set of material planes, physical, astral and
lower
mental, are but the buildings and equipment of a school for man, in
which he is
taught by means of toys. There is no experience that does not
modify the soul
and give it some wisdom; but he who is alive to the educative
purpose of it all,
and is eager to learn and to extract from the experience of
embodied life
lessons of eternal value, will not find the toys attractive in
themselves. He
will be like the bee that takes the honey from the flower and goes
away, not
intoxicated by its scent and colour.
Mara is a personification of the attractiveness of external things.
Madame
Blavatsky describes him as follows:
Mara is in exoteric religions a demon, an Asura, but in esoteric
philosophy it
is personified temptation through men's vices, and translated
literally means "
that which kills " the soul. It is represented as a king (of
the Manas) with a
crown in ; which shines a jewel of such lustre that it blinds those
who look at
it, this lustre referring of course to the fascination exercised by
vice upon
certain natures.
In The Light of Asia1 Sir Edwin Arnold has given us a vivid picture
of this
prince of darkness, as he came forth leading the ten chief sins,
his angels of
evil, against the Lord Buddha, as He sat under the Bodhi Tree, when
nearing His
Illumination.
1 Op. cit., Book vi.
105
The moth attracted to the dazzling flame of thy night-lamp is
doomed to perish
in the viscid oil. The unwary Soul that fails to grapple with the
mocking demon
of illusion, will return to earth the slave of Mara.
Behold the hosts of Souls. Watch how they hover o'er the stormy sea
of human
life, and how, exhausted, bleeding, broken-winged, they drop one
after another
on the swelling waves. Tossed by the fierce winds, chased by the
gale, they
drift into the eddies and disappear within the first great vortex.
The subject of " lost souls " is very complex. Some are
like the children in a
class at school who are not ready to pass on with the bulk of their
fellow-students into the next grade at the end of the year, either
because they
are too young or because they have been lazy. Then, too, there are
cases where
the personality has become so inmeshed in matter during bodily life
that it has
nothing to give to the ego, and it may then be cut off. Thirdly,
there are the
terrible fruits of the practice of black magic. It would take too
long to
discuss the subject here; I have dealt with it at some length in
the article on
Lost Souls in Volume I of The Inner Life.
Some of the expressions in these passages have all the strength of
Oriental
imagination. We must not think too literally of abandoned wrecks
and broken
wings. He who falls from the Path on account of material
106
desires certainly does wreck his spiritual prospects for the time
being, but
even in that case he has learnt something which will be useful to
the soul later
on. In all cases it is best for a man to learn with wise thought;
only when that
is neglected will bitter experience be necessary to take its place.
It is by no means requisite that any human being shall go through
every kind of
experience. The more advanced and the wiser a man becomes, the more
he will see
in everything, and he will learn much from trifles that others
might pass by as
insignificant. It is said that a fool cannot learn even from a wise
man, but a
wise man can always learn, even from a fool. To know that fire is
hot it is not
necessary to put one's hand into it; a fool may do so, but the wise
man has
other ways of learning the fact that fire burns. Yet it is a great
blessing that
those who will not think and thus learn willingly, should be taught
in the stern
school of experience, without which they would learn nothing at all
and make no
progress.
The law of karma, that brings to men the experiences that they have
given to
others, is thus a benefactor and ultimately a liberator, not an
instrument of
vengeance or punishment. Suppose, for example, that a foot-pad
waylaid a
gentleman, knocked him down, perhaps killed him, and took his
money. Under the
law he would have to meet with some such painful experience
himself, sooner or
later. The robber was capable of such an act because he himself was
a coarse
being, lacking sensitiveness and imagination; otherwise he would
have thought
107
of the feelings of his victim or of the latter's wife and family,
and such
thought would have stayed his hand. Because he is coarse, crass,
unimaginative,
the foot-pad needs the violent kind of experience that he gives to
others;
nothing less will stir him. Later, when through karmic retribution
he has had
some suffering, he will remember it when he is about to strike
another, and will
say to himself: " That is not a very nice thing for that poor
man." He will then
begin to reform, thanks to the law, which is always educative,
never punitive.
CHAPTER 8 THE WORLD'S MOTHER
If through the Hall of Wisdom thou would'st reach the vale of
bliss, disciple,
close fast thy senses against the great dire heresy of
separateness, that weans
thee from the rest.
C.W.L.—Herbert Spencer came very near to a revelation of the
spiritual truth
about evolution, when he described it as a progressive change from
a state of
incoherent homogeneity to one of coherent heterogeneity of
structure and
function. To him evolution meant that things which in the beginning
were similar
and separate, later become different but united. This
specialization is seen in
the human body, which has different organs which work for the
whole; thus the
digestive system digests food for the whole body, and the hands
grasp, the feet
walk, the eyes look, not for the sake of the hands, the feet and
the eyes, but
for the whole body. Similarly, society becomes more and more highly
organized as
time goes on. Men become more and more differentiated from one
another, as the
professions in life advance in knowledge and skill. The doctor
cures all, the
teacher teaches all, the bridge-builder builds bridges for all. One
man works
for the benefit of many, and the work of many flows back to benefit
him.
109
When men get the organic sense and feeling for their fellows they
cease to be a
mob of incoherent homogeneous human beings and become heterogeneous
and
coherent. A man with that spirit will do his best for his
community, or nation,
or humanity, leaving it to the law of unity to bring him what he
needs from the
other organs of the great body. The incoherent homogeneous elements
of matter or
of society cannot organize themselves; it is the inner principle
that draws them
together and makes swift progress possible for them through mutual
help. The
unity is love, the force behind evolution, the energy of life; it
is buddhi, the
greatest wisdom. There is a profound difference between
co-operation and
brotherhood —the former springs from an intelligent appreciation of
the mutual
relations of men, the latter from a realization in feeling that the
same life is
dwelling in all.
In the evolution of an individual it is usually the spirit of
co-operation that
develops first; the business of the world brings people together,
then by
contact the divine fire of buddhi is struck. Two men, for example,
go
prospecting together, and support each other in the work. True
friendship
supervenes. But if it should chance, as it sometimes does, that brotherhood
comes first, it will not develop into perfect and useful
co-operation unless the
intelligence is also awakened and applied to the business of life.
An instance
in point was the beautiful love between David Copperfield and his
impractical
wife Dora, whom the novelist was constrained to kill in order to
make room for
the
110
more practical Agnes, and so give the story a happier termination.
In the occult life candidates who have developed the higher
intelligence so that
they have a keen appreciation of the principle of co-operation and
of spiritual
laws, often still find themselves dull and apparently incapable of
rapid
progress. They await the awakening in themselves of true love,
buddhi. That is
the burning energy of the inner man. Still, in this second of the
stages of true
spiritual unfoldment there will often be much agitation and
trouble; the divine
energy gushes forth irregularly and not always in the wisest way,
causing much
sorrow to its possessor—-until the third spiritual stage, the place
of serenity,
has been reached. As that serenity is the goal to which the voice
of the silence
is directing the candidate, he is told to pass through the Hall of
Wisdom into
the vale of bliss. Even in the buddhic plane there is a certain
duality, or
separateness. We cannot love ourselves; love needs an object, even
though it be
not a material object, but the divine life manifested in many
spiritual souls.
Buddhi is the first veil, the Avalokiteshvara of the Higher Self,
not the
Parabrahman. The " dire heresy of separateness " has to
be disposed of on every
plane in turn, the physical, the astral, the mental and even the
buddhic.
Let not thy " heaven-born," merged in the sea of Maya,
break from the universal
Parent (Soul), but let the fiery power retire into the inmost
chamber, the
chamber of the heart, and the abode of the world's Mother.
111
Then from the heart that power shall rise into the sixth, the
middle region, the
place between thine eyes, when it becomes the breath of the
One-soul, the voice
which filleth all, thy Master's voice.
The " heaven-born " is chitta, the lower mind. It is born
from the soul above,
when manas becomes dual in incarnation. The planes of
atma-buddhi-manas are
typified by heaven, while those of the personality are spoken of as
earth. We
have already observed the distinction of character which divides
the five planes
of human manifestation into two. The monadic and divine planes,
beyond these
five, taken together form a third division. So the seven worlds can
also be
grouped as three. The lowest division is in the region of sattva or
law. Here we
find everything regulated, but man has some freedom because the
" heaven-born "
is in him—• so much of the energy of the Law-maker works through
him. It is
because man has this liberty and power to go his own way that his
life is
usually more disorderly, less regulated, than that of the lower
kingdoms of
external nature.
The middle set of planes contains those of spiritual energy, the
indwelling
life, without which the rest would be dead and motionless. They are
the planes
of the divine, the shining, the Avalokita, or " seen",
God—the life seen by
wisdom, not the form seen by knowledge.
The highest group of planes is that of the Monad, the Self that is
bliss and
freedom, where are the realities behind every human ideal and the
ecstasy beyond
consciousness that is the extracted quintessence of beauty,
112
goodness, truth, harmony, comprehension, union and freedom.
What is here called the fiery power is the force named kundalini in
Sanskrit.
This may be described as a latent fire, coiled up like a sleeping
serpent at the
base of the spine in all men except those few in whom it has been
specially
awakened, and is actively working in the etheric body. It should
not be
difficult to realize the existence of such a fire, since it is well
known that
the breath in our lungs constantly feeds a slow fire, and that
digestion also is
a kind of fire. Kundalini is more like electrical fire—a force
developing heat
where there is resistance— than fire that burns fuel, but it is not
of the same
order of force as electricity.
I have written on this subject in the articles on the Serpent-Fire
and the
Force-Centres in The Inner Life and that on Vitality in Chapter IV
of The Hidden
Side of Things, and I hope to publish shortly a somewhat fuller
study,
illustrated with coloured plates.1 There is also aft extensive, if
somewhat
obscure, literature on the subject in Sanskrit, including the
Shat-chakranirupana, the Ananda Lahari, and many other works. There
is an
excellent translation of the first of these, with a commentary, by
Arthur
Avalon, called The Serpent Power, published by Ganesh & Co.,
Madras.
The following is a very brief summary of the subject.
Kundalini is the lower end of a stream of a certain
kind of the force of the Logos, and it commonly lies
sleeping in the chakra or force-centre at the base of the
1 Book on Chakras has been since issued by T.P.H., Adyar.
113
spine. If it is awakened prematurely, that is, before the man has
purified his
character of every taint of sensual impurity and selfishness, it
may rush
downwards and vivify certain lower centres in the body (used only
in some
objectionable forms of black magic), and irresistibly carry the
unfortunate man
into a life of indescribable horror; at best, it will intensify all
that the man
has in him, including such qualities as ambition and pride.
Kundalini should be
wakened only under the personal direction of a Master, who will
instruct the
student in the use of the will to arouse it, in the manner in which
it should be
moved when aroused, and in the spiral course along which it must be
carried
through the chakras or force-centres, from that near the base of
the spine, to
those which lie on the surface of the etheric double at the
spleen,1 the navel,
the heart, the throat, between the eyebrows, and at the top of the
head. This
course differs with different types of people, and it is quite a
definite
physical thing, for the force has literally to burn a pathway for
itself through
the impurities of the etheric double.
There are chakras in the astral body also, which are already
aroused by
kundalini working in that plane in all fairly evolved people. The
process of
developing those centres has rendered the astral body sensitive to
the plane,
awakening its feeling, its power to travel about, its sympathetic
response to
other entities
1 Hindu works usually mention the chakra at the root of the genital
organs as
the second. We recognize the existence of such a centre, but we
follow the
ancient Egyptians in thinking it eminently undesirable that it
should be stirred
into activity.
114
there; its vision and hearing, and astral faculties generally. But
the memory of
those experiences or the use of the astral faculties while in the
physical body
becomes possible in a definite and well-controlled way only when
kundalini in
the etheric double has been carried through the corresponding
centres.
The special mention of the place between the eyes in our text has
reference to
the pineal gland and the pituitary body. The forces from both the
sixth and
seventh astral centres (which are between the eyebrows and on top
of the head)
usually converge on the pituitary body, when the etheric centre is
aroused, and
then vivify it and act through it. But there is a certain type of
people (who
are being addressed in our text) in whom the seventh astral chakra
vivifies the
pineal gland instead of the pituitary body, and it in that case
forms a line of
communication directly with the lower mental plane, without
apparently passing
through the astral plane in the ordinary way. Through that channel
come for them
the communications from within, while for the other type of people
they come
through the pituitary body.
When kundalini awakens of itself, which it rarely does, or is
accidentally
aroused, it usually tries to pass up the interior of the spine,
instead of
following the spiral course in which the occultist is trained to
guide it. In
this case it will probably rush out through the head, and the man
will suffer
from, nothing worse than a temporary unconsciousness.
The Hindu books hint at, rather than explain, what happens. They
make no
references to the chakras on
115
the surface of the etheric double, but speak of their roots, which
are in the
spine. In the spine, running from its base to the top is what is
called
Merudanda, the rod of Meru, the central axis of creation. In that
rod is the
channel called sushumna, and in that again is the channel called
chitrini, which
is "as fine as a spider's thread ". Upon that are
threaded the chakras, like the
knots on a bamboo rod. The lowest of the chakras, called muladhara,
lies at the
base of the spine, and in it kundalini sleeps, closing the mouth of
the
merudanda.
The aim of the aspirant is to raise kundalini through all the
chakras till she
reaches that which is between the eyebrows. Then the candidate will
find that
he, as it were, remains behind, while she leaps forward into the
sahasrara, the
great " thousand-petalled " lotus at the top of the head.
If he goes with her,
it will take him out of the body and put a stop for the time being
to his
practice of meditation in the body. She rises up chitrini little by
little as
the candidate uses his will in meditation. In one practice he may
not get very
far, but in the next he will go a little further, and so on. When
she comes to
one of the chakras or lotuses she pierces it and the flower, which
was turned
downwards, now turns upwards. The candidate meditates upon her in
some form, and
upon her associates, seated in that lotus. An elaborate dhyana or
meditation,
full of rich symbology, is prescribed for each lotus. When the
meditation is
over, the candidate leads kundalini back again by the same path
into the
muladhara; but in some schools she is
116
brought back only as far as the heart chakra, and there she enters
what is
called her chamber.
Kundalini can be awakened by various methods, but it should be done
only under
the direction of a guru or competent teacher, the Master who is
responsible to
the Brotherhood for the training of the candidate. He is not likely
to conduct
this awakening until the first three fetters on the Path have been
destroyed by
the candidate's own power, so that he is no longer in serious
danger of being
stirred by sensuous or material things. Then his " heaven-born
", closely united
or harmonized with the higher manas, can remain master of the
triple house of
personality, and when the energy of kundalini" is set free in
the body it will
be likely to run in pure channels of service to the higher self.
Hence the
awakening of kundalini will take place usually somewhere near the
Third
Initiation, or, in the present kali yuga, or dark age, it is said,
even later.
Even then it is awakened in various layers, so that in the early
stages it may
give nothing more than a general sensitiveness to the higher
planes.
Kundalini is thought of as a goddess. She is what is called the
shabdabrahman in
the body. Shabda means sound. Sound is the creative force, as
before described.
Speech is considered to be the most outward form of it. It is an
expression of
thought, which in its true active form is kriyashakti. Certain
letters of the
alphabet, which are the foundation of human speech, are said to
reside in each
of the chakras, and the power of those letters (their portion of
the creative
word) is awakened
117
when kundalini enters them after her union with Shiva in the
highest centre,
causing them to shine brilliantly with her light. The creative
speech of Brahma,
the Third Logos, has four forms or stages; hence He is called the
four-faced
one. When kundalini represents him in the body she also exhibits
those four
forms, as she rises through the chakras.
Kundalini is called the world's mother because the •outward action
of the powers
of consciousness is always regarded as feminine. Thus will, wisdom
and activity
are feminine, being shaktis or powers, outward turned aspects of
the divine. She
is the representative of all these, as they were expressed in the
creation of
the world, in the activity of Brahma, the Third Logos. It has also
been said
that she is the world's mother because it is through her that the
various planes
are brought into conscious existence for the occultist.
The following footnote by Madame Blavatsky will also throw light on
the
foregoing explanations.
The inner chamber of the heart, called in Sanskrit, Brahma-pura.
The " fiery
power " is Kundalini.
The "power" and the "world-mother" are names
given to Kundalini—-one of the
mystic Yogi powers. It is Buddhi considered as an active instead of
a passive
principle (which it is generally, when regarded only as the
vehicle, or casket,
of the supreme spirit, Atma). It is an electro-spiritual force, a
creative power
which when aroused into action can as easily kill as it can create.
118
It is by no means certain what Madame Blavatsky meant by saying
that kundalini
is active buddhi, but several speculations may be offered:
In normal men buddhi is not positively active in the outer life,
but when the
first three fetters have been cast off, the personality is so
purified that the
astral J body will no longer
be active merely on its own account, but will
faithfully respond to buddhi, now active. At or near this stage kundalini is
often aroused, as we have seen, and when the faculties of the
astral body are
then laid open to the candidate while in his physical body it is an
astral body
reflecting buddhi, which now becomes a veritable fire of love in
the man's life.
That clairvoyance and other
psychic powers need not
be awakened in the
physical brain even at this advanced stage of human progress, is
also indicated
by Dr. Besant. in her Initiation, the Perfecting of Man. She there says that
before a man can come to the Third Initiation he must learn
to bring the
spirit of intuition (buddhi)
down to
his physical consciousness, so
that it may abide on him and guide him. Then she adds: " This process is
usually called ' the development of psychic faculties,' and it is
so, in the
true meaning of the word ' psychic'. But it does not mean the development of
clairvoyance and clairaudience, which
depend on a different process."
The entire higher triad (atma-buddhi-manas) is but the central
member or the
buddhi of the still more inclusive triad of Monad, ego and
personality. That
119
larger buddhi is triple (will, wisdom and activity), and now its
third aspect
(activity, kriyashakti) comes into operation in the body, to awaken
its organs
and liberate its latent powers.
'Tis only then thou canst become a "walker of the sky,"
who treads the winds
above the waves, whose step touches not the waters.
On this, Madame Blavatsky says:
Kechara, " sky-walker " or " goer ". As
explained in the 6th Adhyaya of that
king of mystic works, the Jnaneshvari—the body of the Yogi becomes
as one formed
of the wind; as "a cloud from which limbs have sprouted
out," after which—"he
[the Yogi] beholds the things beyond the seas and stars; he hears
the language
of the Devas and comprehends it, and perceives what is passing in
the mind of
the ant."
The term " walker of the sky " has various grades of
meaning. In Indian story it
is, for example, applied to the great Rishi Narada, as an emissary
of the Logos,
who could travel through the pure akasha from globe to globe. On
the lower
planes, the astral body or the mayavi-rupa may be taken as an
illustration, as
they can be used to travel in what is the air or sky to ordinary
people.
In the astral world the ordinary man is a kind of cloud, a being
full of kama,
that is, desire and emotion, but not by any means a definite entity
such as he
is on the physical plane. But when he masters his kama,
120
and gives it definiteness, the astral body is organized as a
vehicle; it is no
longer kama but kamarupa. Still further, about the time when the
first three
fetters are dispensed with, the mayavi-rupa is formed, and that
enables the man
to operate with his mental body in the astral as well as the lower
mental plane.
This may be taken as one interpretation of the statement that his
step " touches
not the waters ", which are a symbol for the astral plane.
CHAPTER 9 THE SEVEN SOUNDS
Before thou sett'st thy foot upon the ladder's upper rung, the
ladder of the
mystic sounds, thou hast to hear the voice of thy inner God in
seven manners.
C.W.L.—It has already been mentioned that The Voice of the Silence
is intended
to guide the candidate as far as the Fourth Initiation. At that
point his
consciousness is raised to the seventh principle and begins to
function in the
atmic or nirvanic plane. The man is then ready to commence treading
what is here
called the ladder's upper rung, to go through the course of
training which
prepares for the Fifth Initiation, that of the Asekha Adept. The
Path has two
equal divisions, which may be called the ladder's lower and upper
rungs.
It is said that the Initiate on the ladder's lower rung must hear
the voice of
his inner God in seven manners. That inner God at his present stage
is the
higher Self, the buddhi, the second principle. In his meditation
the aspirant
may or may not hear a series of seven sounds, marking his
attainment of the
seven sub-planes of the buddhic plane; that depends upon his
psychic
122
temperament. But what he must do, in all cases, is to bring the
influence of
buddhi down into his life on each of the lower planes, so that the
activity of
all his principles will be governed by it, and thus his inner God
will be
ever-present in his life.
The latter stage is called the ladder of the mystic sounds; this is
perhaps
because they are the sounds of the voice of the silence, hidden in
the atma or
Self. One must not push too far the exact interpretation of any
English word in
our text, as it is only a translation; though every Sanskrit and
Pali word in it
is rich with technical significance. Still, the word mystic, coming
from a root
that means to close the eyes, indicates here certain sounds which
do not mingle
in the outward life at all, but give direction as from above, in
the ex cathedra
manner of pure conscience. It is implied that the sounds about to
be mentioned
are more accessible, are not " mystic " at all events to
the candidate at the
stage under consideration. True conscience does not tell you what
to do, as is
commonly supposed, but it commands you to follow that which you
already really
know to be best, when your mind is trying to invent some excuse to
do otherwise.
It speaks with the authority of the spiritual will, determining our
path in
life. It is not the atma, but the buddhi, the second principle,
that gives
intuitive knowledge as to right and wrong. Manas gives inspiration,
buddhi
intuition as to right and wrong, atma the directing conscience.
The first is like the nightingale's sweet voice,
chanting a song of parting to its mate.
THE SEVEN SOUNDS 123
The second comes as the sound of a silver cymbal of the Dhyanis,
awakening the
twinkling stars.
The next is as the plaint melodious of the ocean-sprite imprisoned
in its shell.
And this is followed by the chant of the vina.
The fifth like the sound of bamboo-flute shrills in thine ear.
It changes next into a trumpet-blast.
The last vibrates like the dull rumbling of a. thunder-cloud.
The seventh swallows all the other sounds."
They die, and then are heard no more.
The series of seven sounds mentioned here has caused much
puzzlement among those
who meditate upon this little book. We must notice first of all the
character of
the sounds; then we shall see that there are several
interpretations of them.
They are increasing in materiality and losing, in penetrating
quality in the
order here given. One may notice, for example, the difference
between the vina
and an Indian trumpet of the old-fashioned kind. It is nearly
always a surprise
to the European, when he first hears the wonderfully delicate music
of the vina,
perhaps in a large and crowded hall, how, without any exhibition of
force, it
reaches every corner, and how it gives the impression of sound
half-removed from
our material planes.
The highest sound in the series is likened to a certain chant of
the
nightingale. It is said
that there are occasions when the voice of this bird
rises higher and higher
124
in pitch until it is beyond the range of human hearing, although
one may still
see the throat of the warbler trembling with song. That such high
sounds exist
is well known to students of science. The note of a siren, for
example, can be
raised by increased pressure of air or steam, until one after
another of those
who are listening declare that they can no longer hear it. There is
a certain
kind of whistle with which German police dogs can be called. When
one blows upon
this instrument, which looks like an ordinary whistle, no man can
hear the
slightest sound, but the dog, in another room or some distance
away, will
instantly prick up its ears, and come leaping and bounding to the
exact spot
where what is presumably to it the sound originated.
The interpretations of the sounds fall into two groups. The first
mentioned in
the list may represent the last heard by the candidate. The sounds
are
enumerated downwards in the order of their creation, after the
Oriental manner,
so that the first sound in creation is the seventh when the
aspirant is
approaching the Lord of that creation. So, first comes the dull
rumbling of a
thunder-cloud, a sound representing or correlated to the physical
principle in
man, in the middle is the vina, representing the antahkarana
(according to
Madame Blavatsky's classification), and lastly there is the
nightingale's
melody, associated with atma, the silence. That well typifies the
seventh, the
soundless sound, into which all the others have to be raised, until
they die
away and are heard no more. The candidate must learn to hear God in
the dull
rumbling sound of the physical plane,
125
then in the trumpet-blast of the astral, then in the sound of the
lower mental
that is likened to the music of a bamboo-flute, and so on right up
to the world
of his highest principle.
The same sounds may be taken in another way as typical of the
intensity with
which the aspirant hears the voice of the higher Self. It is one
voice, but is
heard in seven manners. At first it is delicate and sweet, like the
nightingale's song, and it often disappears into silence; next it
becomes
stronger, like " the silver cymbal of the Dhyanis ".
Louder and louder it
becomes, until at last it is constantly heard, as filling all the
air, like the
dull rumbling of a thunder-cloud. In the early stages of our
progress the voice
of the higher Self may seem thin and faint, but later it will have
for us all
the reality of thunder.
Again, in the text the description of these sounds follows upon the
mention of
kundalini, which is carried through the chakras. That force awakens
in seven
layers, or degrees, and so gives the psychic results already
mentioned in
increasing power. The voice that is heard when kundalini rises to
the place
between the eyes will therefore be heard with seven degrees of
intensity,
typified by the seven sounds here mentioned.
Once more, it is natural that in the densest plane the candidate
should hear the
inner voice but faintly, like the nightingale's voice. When he
rises to the next
plane, where the covering of the inner Self is not so dense, its
voice will be
more easily heard; until finally, when he reaches the highest
principle it will
be like the rumbling
126
of a thunder-cloud. It is only the illusion of the lower planes
that causes us
to ascribe delicacy to the higher things. Ultimately we shall find
that they
have the full body and reality of thunder.
These interpretations are not mutually exclusive. All the
experiences which they
suggest are possible for the candidate at the same time.
I remember that on one occasion a question about these sounds was
asked in one
of our talks on the roof at Adyar. The President and I respectively
answered as
follows:
A.B.—In meditation, one of the sounds that you begin to hear (for
instance, one
thing that I heard quite distinctly) was a sound which was like the
beating of a
tom-tom in a Indian village. I described that to H.P.B., who said:
"That is very
good, go on." Next I heard some strains of beautiful music,
and then something
like silver chimes. . Another sound was like the ringing of a
temple bell, such
as you hear in Benares. I never found out that these sounds meant
anything more
than that I was becoming able to hear in the astral world.
In India there is a school formed by a man of whom the Master M.
spoke highly.
The people who belong to that, after a certain amount of practice,
hear sounds
quite clearly in the brain, but I have never found that any of them
got further
on that account. Many people come to me in the North, asking what
the sounds
mean. I reply: " I think it is nothing more than that you are
becoming
clairaudient."
These seven sounds mentioned by H.P.B. I have never been able to
sort out. They
may mean that you have to wake your consciousness in plane after
plane, and that
each is meant to symbolize the note of a particular plane, just as
down here Fa
is the combination of the countless sounds in the physical plane
blended
together. But that does not really explain matters.
C.W.L.—I cannot make them exactly correspond with the planes; they
may possibly
be sub-planes. They may also be intended to symbolize the sounds
which accompany
the awakening of the seven centres by the Kundalini, for sound is
one of the
expressions that take place in that particular case. I have never
felt at all
certain of what she meant. One would be inclined to
127
say that the silver cymbal in different tones would do for all The
thunder
certainly does not seem to fit in very well.
A.B.—-Of course there are a certain number of sounds in the head
which belong
entirely to the vascular system. If a person hears such sounds very
strongly it
means that he is getting into a dangerous state of anaemia.
The sounds are not progressive. H.P.B. put things very often in a
circle; she
sometimes begins with number four and then works round on the two
sides. It may
also be that she gives these sounds in no sort of order. You might
possibly
begin with the thunder, then the trumpet blast, and next the ocean
sprite; then
you might come to the cymbal for the fourth, the flute for the
fifth and the
vina, which is a more delicate sound, for the sixth, and then the
nightingale
for the seventh, the top.
C.W.L.—-If we are allowed to turn them round like that, they will
begin to mean
something definite.
A.B.—H.P.B., when consulted astrally said: "What fools you all
were to take them
in that way: you might have arranged them before: thunder, trumpet,
ocean-shell,
cymbal, flute, vina, nightingale." She said that we were
abominably literal.
C.W.L.—.Similar lists of sounds are to be found in various Sanskrit
works. We
have taken the following example from the Shiva Samhita:
The first sound is like the hum of the honey-intoxicated bee, next
that of a
flute, then of a harp; after this, by the gradual practice of Yoga,
the
destroyer of the darkness of the world, he hears the sounds of
ringing bells;
then sounds like the roar of thunder. When one fixes his full
attention on this
sound, being free from fear, he gets absorption, O my beloved! When
the mind of
the Yogi is exceedingly engaged in this sound, he forgets all
external things,
and is absorbed in this sound." 1
When the six are slain and at the Master's feet are laid, then is
the pupil
merged into the One, becomes that One and lives therein.
Madame Blavatsky speaks of the six as:
The six principles; meaning when the lower personality is destroyed
and the
inner individuality is merged into and lost in the seventh or
Spirit.
1 Op. cit., v, 27-8.
128
And of the One here spoken of she says: The disciple is one with
Brahman or
Atma.
When the six principles are " slain", in other words,
when they no longer assert
their independence, but have become entirely obedient to the will
of the Self,
the aspirant lives in that One. The seventh voice of buddhi will
carry him up
into Atma. Madame Blavatsky applies the term Brahman to the human
atma by
analogy. Brahman (neuter) is the One containing the Three; so does
atma contain
buddhi and manas within itself, when the man has become an Arhat,
and learned to
live in the triple spirit.
Before that path is entered, thou must destroy thy lunar body,
cleanse thy
mind-body, and make clean thy heart.
To the term " lunar body " Madame Blavatsky adds the
note:
The astral form produced by the kamic principle, the Kama Rupa, or
body of
desire.
On the term " mind-body " she comments:
Manasa Rupa. The first refers to the astral or personal self; the
second to the
individuality, .or the reincarnating Ego, whose consciousness on
our plane, or
the lower Manas, has to be paralysed.
Madame Blavatsky did not think in planes so completely as do most
of the
Theosophists of today. She had her eye more on the principles, and
saw the
matter of different levels taking form under their influence.
129
Here she speaks of " our plane", meaning the region of
personal
existence—physical, astral and lower mental. The " astral form
" is by no means
necessarily the astral body, but rather the personal form built up
in the
subjective regions of our personal life (the astral and lower
mental planes) on
account of our bodily form and the personal feelings and thoughts
connected with
it. In my little book The Devachanic Plane and in Dr. Besant's
Ancient Wisdom an
account is given of the four types of life in the heaven-world: (1)
personal
friendship, (2) personal devotion, (3) the true missionary spirit,
and (4) human
achievement. They are all emotive—though unselfish, they are not
impersonal, but
kamic. They take their form from the character of the physical
plane experience.
But the pure lower manas would be the antahkarana—it would be the
soul's mind,
not the body's mind. It would have its activity stimulated only
from above. It
must now be cleansed from all the kama, to become a pure channel
for the soul.
Think of the condition of the astral body of an advanced person. It
gives
practically no direct response to impacts from outside. It is, by
itself, dead
to the world. It has no independent life of its own; it has been
" slain ". If
some one went up to the average man and struck him, probably his
astral body
Would burst instantly into flames of anger; that is its immediate
response. Not
so that of the advanced man. The impact in his case would go
inwards through the
astral to the buddhic vehicle. That would respond in its own way.
Then its
impact upon the astral would call
130
forth the beautiful colours of the love emotions which are its
correspondences
in the astral body. Dr. Besant has often explained that the astral
aura of an
advanced man is colourless, or rather, slightly milky-white, when
in repose, but
that all the most lovely colours which the , plane can exhibit
flood through it
in response to the great man's buddhic response to the world.
Eternal life's pure waters, clear and crystal, with the
monsoon tempest's
muddy torrents cannot mingle.
Heaven's dew-drop glittering in the morn's first sunbeam within the
bosom of the
lotus, when dropped on earth becomes a piece of clay; behold, the
pearl is now a
speck of mire.
Strive with thy thoughts unclean before they overpower thee. Use
them as they
will thee, for if thou sparest them and they take root and grow,
know well,
these thoughts will overpower and kill thee. Beware, disciple,
suffer not even
though it be their shadow to approach. For it will grow, increase
in size and
power, and then this thing of darkness will absorb thy being before
thou hast
well realized the black foul monster's presence.
There are some people in the world who imagine that It is possible
to carry on
the lower things and still make progress on the Path. Sometimes
they actually
think that by various forms of vicious excitement they can generate
a great deal
of energy which will help to carry them onward and upward. They are
afraid of
becoming
131
colourless, should they repress the lower activities entirely. It
has been said,
of course, that the colourless person, the feeble good man, cannot
make
progress. " I would thou wert cold or hot," says the
Spirit in Revelation, and "
Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue
thee out of my
mouth."1
This very well represents the facts. The most promising persons, in
order of
preference, are (1) the vigorous good man, (2) the vigorous bad
man, (3) the
ordinary good man. No man can be an effective criminal unless he
has a strong
development of some divine quality. His badness is the result of
unbalance—-such
as great will-power and courage, or great intelligence, without
love for his
fellow-beings. Or great love and willpower, without intelligence,
can make an
equally dangerous and harmful man, for he may become a fanatical
leader of
forces of discontent and disruption. The mere good man, weak in all
qualities—in
will, intelligence and love—makes little progress, though it may be
steady.
Great men have great faults, but they may get rid of them quickly;
little men
have little faults, which often seem to last for ever.
There is in all this no recommendation to evil living. It indicates
that mere
repression of lower tendencies will not make for rapid progress,
but that there
must be positive and- vigorous exertion in the expression of what
is high and
good. While making that effort a person may possibly fall. The very
will-power
or knowledge or love that he has gained by his exertions will make
the
1 Revelation 3, 15-16.
132
man's fall deep and terrible, should he become unbalanced. Thus the
magnitude of
a man's sin may be a sign of possible rapid future progress for
him; but that
progress will begin only when the man through karmic suffering has
realized his
error and purged away the impurities incidental to his fall.
Nothing much can be
done, however, until that purification has taken place. Madame
Blavatsky deals
vigorously with this point in her First Steps in Occultism, as
follows:
There are those whose reasoning powers have been so distorted by
foreign
influences that they imagine that animal passions can be so
sublimated and
elevated that their- fury, force and fire can, so to speak, be
turned inwards;
that they can be stored and shut up in one's breast, until their
energy is, not
expanded, but turned towards higher and more holy purposes: namely,
until, their
collective and unexpanded strength enables their possessor to enter
the true
Sanctuary of the Soul and stand therein in the presence of the
Master—the HIGHER
SELF. For this purpose they will not struggle with their passions
nor slay them.
They will simply, by a strong effort of will, put down the fierce
flames and
keep them at bay within their natures allowing the fire to smoulder
under a thin
layer of ashes. They submit joyfully to the torture of the Spartan
boy who
allowed the fox to devour his entrails rather than part with it.
Oh, poor, blind
visionaries!
As well hope that a band of drunken chimney-sweeps, hot and greasy
from their
work, may be shut up in a Sanctuary hung with pure white linen, and
that instead
of soiling and turning it by their presence into a heap of dirty
shreds, they
will become masters in and of the sacred recess, and finally emerge
from it as
immaculate as that recess. Why not imagine that a dozen skunks
imprisoned in the
pure atmosphere of a Dgon-pa (a monastery), can issue out of it
impregnated with
all the perfumes of the incense used? Strange aberration of the
human mind.
This portion of our text concludes with the following
uncompromising passages:
Before the mystic power can make of thee a God, Lanoo, thou must
have gained the
faculty to slay thy lunar form at will.
133
The Self of matter and the Self of Spirit can never meet. One of
the twain must
disappear; there is no place for both.
Ere thy Soul's mind can understand, the bud of personality must be
crushed out,
the worm of sense destroyed past resurrection.
The mystic power is once more kundalini, the representative in the
body of" the
great pristine force which underlies all organic and inorganic
matter ". Madame
Blavatsky's note on the subject is as follows:
Kundalini, the serpent power or mystic fire; it is called the
serpentine or the
annular power on account of its spiral-like working or progress in
the body of
the ascetic developing the power in himself. It is an electric
fiery occult or
fohatic power, the great pristine force which underlies all organic
and
inorganic matter.
CHAPTER 10 BECOME THE PATH
Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become that Path
itself.
C.W.L.—To this the following foot-note is appended:
This Path is mentioned in all the mystic works. As Krishna says in
the
Jnaneshvari; " When this path is beheld . . . whether one sets
out to the bloom
of the east, or to the chambers of the west, without moving, O
holder of the
bow, is the travelling in this road. In this path, to whatever
place one would
go, that place one's own self becomes." " Thou art the
path," is said to the
Adept Guru, and by the latter to the disciple, after Initiation.
" I am the way
and the path," says another Master.
It has already been explained (in the commentary on At the Feet of
the Master)
that the thoughts and feelings which are at first difficult to
grasp and
maintain become quite easy in the course of time. When the aspirant
has so
trained and developed himself that the buddhic outlook and response
to life
become perfectly natural and spontaneous to him, we may say he has
become the
Path itself. Sometimes such a consequence
135
of continued effort and practice is called " second nature
". That expression,
however, gives one something of a feeling that the new qualities
have been put
on, and afterwards become habitual. That is unfortunate. It is our
original and
best nature, our higher nature, that shows itself in the higher
life; it seems
to be something new to us only because it has heretofore been
obscured by our
material integuments and the pressure of circumstances in the
worlds of our
personal being.
An interesting metaphysical truth is indicated in the foot-note.
Our evolution
is not a transit, nor even a growth. It is not a process of going
somewhere, nor
an increase of size. It is an unfoldment of the powers potential in
our lives.
As already stated, in the planes of the ego materiality takes
second place, the
powers of consciousness—-will, "wisdom and activity (or will,
love and
thought)—-dominate almost completely the matter of the planes.
Therefore space
is not the jailor which it is down here, and consciousness need not
travel
through it in order to appear in another place. The following
conversation
between a Guru and his pupil has been related to illustrate this
point. The Guru
told the pupil to walk across the room, and then asked:
" What were you doing? Were you moving? "
After meditating upon the matter, the disciple gave the following
answer, which
was declared to be correct:
" No, I was not moving.
I was watching the body move. I
was thinking,
feeling and willing; the body alone was moving." 1 The Seven
Rays.
136
This fact is true for all of us; we know of the body's motion
merely on account
of observing it by means of the senses, just as we do that of any
other object.
The sensation of rushing along, in an open motor-car, for example,
resolves
itself, when one shuts one's eyes, into an actual feeling of air
rushing by, and
a sense of power which, acting through the imagination, exhilarates
the body.
The same experience could be reproduced by suitable apparatus,
composed of wind
and motion machines, without any transportation of the body. Again,
most people
who have travelled at night in Pullman berths have had the
experience of waking
and wondering whether they were going head first or feet first, or
even whether
the train was moving or not, and they have usually settled the
question by
slipping up the blind and inferring their direction from an
observation of
passing lights and shadows.
The fact that, in order to go from one place to another, travelling
is not
necessary for the ego, is shown also in the way in which it can
simultaneously
appear in the devachanic images of a number of people in the lower
mental plane
in different parts of the world.
Though, at the stage of development presupposed in this teaching,
the candidate
is working at the perfection of his personality, at the same time
his inner work
is particularly concerned with the development of buddhi, the
spiritual soul. To
put it in other words, he is climbing through the buddhic plane.
Hence his
becoming the Path is shown in a great development of
137
sympathy and love
for others, as
indicated in the following verses:
Let thy Soul lend its ear to every cry of pain like as the lotus
bares its heart
to drink the morning son.
Let not the fierce sun dry one tear of pain before thyself hast
wiped it from
the sufferer's eye.
But let each burning human tear drop on thy heart and there remain;
nor ever
brush it off until the pain that caused it is removed.
These tears, O thou of heart most merciful, these are the streams
that irrigate
the fields of charity immortal. "Tis on such soil that grows
the midnight
blossom of Buddha, more difficult to find, more rare to view, than
is the flower
of the Vogay tree. It is the seed of freedom from rebirth. It
isolates the Arhat
both from strife and lust, it leads Mm through the fields of being
unto the
peace and bliss known only in the land of silence and non-being.
When Christ said, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life:
no man cometh
unto the Father, but by me," He declared a mystic truth, for
the Christ is one
with the buddhic aspect of the world-consciousness. There is only
one
consciousness; on full recognition of this fact the Initiate can
become an
Arhat—but unless he goes through that Christ-principle he cannot
reach the
Father, the atma, above. That truth, explained with
S. John, 14, 6
138
wonderful inspiration and clarity in Dr. Annie Besant's Esoteric Christianity,
is, however, only" one aspect of the matter, for the Christ
incarnate embodied
the same principle in his outward life in Palestine, which has
moved millions of
men—-because he did not shrink from pain. Most men try to escape
pain as much as
possible, but Christ accepted his own and added to it that of all
other people
as well. Men who follow the buddhic path instinctively say, when
trouble comes
to them: " Many are suffering; why should I desire to be
exempt?" More than
that, in the fullness of their sympathy, they feel that other
suffering to the
breaking point, before they reach the serenity of Arhatship, the
illumination
that puts death under them, that makes them glow with the joy of
liberty,
whatever pain may betide. Such liberty would lead to careless rest,
could men
have it before experiencing the suffering of the Christ, in which
the pain of
the cross is as nothing beside that of his compassionate response
to the cry of
a world in pain. Then comes the point at which the man says: "
What does it
matter whether I suffer or not? " His mind is so busy with
service that he can
scarcely attend to himself.
Such an expression as " the peace and bliss known only in the
land of silence
and non-being" can be understood only by those who are willing
to think of
metaphysical realities. Most of such Oriental expressions as this
are based on
the fundamental idea that the universal God expresses himself as
sat, chit and
ananda, that is, as being, consciousness and bliss.
139
Being is well understood; people see it all around them;
consciousness they also
know by experience; but happiness they seek. All seek themselves.
Happiness is
not something that we shall gain, obtain and possess; it is our
true state of
Self. But beyond both matter and consciousness is the real inner
life, which is
silence and non-being from the standpoint of the external, and yet
is the bliss
of true being.
Kill out desire; but if thou killest it, take heed lest from the
dead it should
again arise.
Kill love of life; but if thou slayest Tanha, let this not be for
thirst of life
eternal, but to replace the fleeting by the everlasting.
Desire nothing. Chafe not at Karma, nor at nature's changeless
laws. But
struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and
the
perishable.
Common desire is the love of external things for the sake of astral
or sensuous
enjoyment. We have already seen that the disciple must not seek the
satisfaction
of such desires, but must give up all the energy of his personality—physical,
emotional, and mental—to the work of spiritual evolution and the
service of the
inner life in himself and other men.
Tanha is the root of these desires, because it is the thirst for
sentient life.
The ego on its own plane is far from being fully conscious, but
what
consciousness it has gives it a feeling of great pleasure, and
arouses a kind of
hunger for a fuller realization of life. It is that
340
which is behind the world's great clamour for a fuller life. As
before
explained, the forces of the higher mental plane pass through the
causal body
for the most part without affecting it in the case of ordinary
persons, as the
ego is not yet developed and trained so as to respond to more than
a few of the
vibrations of its own level. There are no coarse vibrations on that
plane, such
as it can respond to in its younger days, so it descends to the
lower planes for
the sake of feeling more fully alive. For a long time therefore its
consciousness is most vivid when things of the physical plane are
presented to
it, but later, when the astral nature is awakened, the pleasures of
that plane
prove to be still more intense.
It is not possible in the physical body to realize how keen are the
delights of
the astral life. So much is that the case that they often turn
aside and delay
persons who have overcome the same sort of pleasure of the physical
plane. Yet
that danger is not great for those who in physical life are
definitely seeking
the things of the Path, if they are persons of advanced type, as
they are in a
position to realize still higher delights, which have a far greater
attraction.
The same thing is true of each plane in turn.
Still, the disciple must be on guard not to give up the lower pleasures
merely
for the sake of relatively higher ones, but always to keep his eye
upon his
ideal goal, beyond all transitory pleasures. He must not thirst to
enjoy the
age-long pleasures of the heaven-world, but must give up all that
is transitory
and personal. While, on
141
the one hand, he will not seek to obtain the objects of desire, on
the other he
will not shrink from the lessons that karma places before him; he
will not wish
that his field of experience should be other than it is. He knows
that it is
because nature's laws are unchanging that he can use experience for
growth. Were
it not for the orderly nature of the world, it would be impossible
for the
intellect to grow or for man to use his powers at all. So he has no
resentment
against karma, which is the embodiment of the Law.
Help nature and work on with her; and nature will regard thee as
one of her
creators and make obeisance.
And she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret
chambers, lay bare
before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure
virgin
bosom. Unsullied by the hand of matter, she shows her treasures
only to the eye
of Spirit —the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is
no veil in all
her kingdoms.
Then will she show thee the means and way, the first gate and the
second, the
third, up to the very seventh. And then, the goal; beyond which
lie, bathed in
the sunlight of the Spirit, glories untold, unseen by any save the
eye of the
Soul.
All students of the material sciences arc familiar with the fact
that " nature
is conquered by obedience ". All the forces that we employ in
modern life, such
as the pressure of steam or electricity, are examples of our
142
working with nature. It is perhaps rather unsympathetic to use the
word
conquered, when the fact is that all our power in the world is the
result of
harmony between man and nature. The man in a boat who sets his sail
so that he
may go against the wind is not overcoming the wind, but is
harmonizing his
affairs with its laws. By working with the laws man gains in power,
not by
fighting against them.
The occultist knows that the same principle is true on every plane,
and not only
with regard to the matter of each world but also to the forms of
life that dwell
there, high or low in the scale of evolution. Therefore the
knowledge of
nature's mechanical laws, which has led to so much power and wealth
for mankind,
represents only one aspect of the harmony that should subsist
between the two. A
feeling of friendly sympathy towards the animal, the plants and
even the
minerals, and towards the nature spirits and the devas, is equally
important, if
not more so, for the progress of man. Nature is composed of life as
well as
matter, and it is through sympathetic feeling that that life
becomes known, and
harmonized with human life. To look upon the world as a place full
of forbidding
entities is the unfortunate custom of our age, but the man who
faces life with a
feeling of kindliness to all living things will not only see and
learn more than
others, but will have a smoother passage on life's sea. There is a
tradition in
India of the " lucky hand " of certain persons who have
this sympathy, and for
whom plants will grow well when for others they ail. It has also
been explained
143
many times by authorities in occult science that because of his
love for all
beings the true yogi or sannyasi may wander among the mountains and
in the
jungle quite without danger from wild animals or reptiles.
In ordinary human life this sympathy works in many-ways. The modern
business man
knows that the first requisite for his success is to establish
friendliness with
those with whom he wants to deal. The same quality is necessary for
teaching
children, who often regard grownup people as strange, arbitrary
beings, not all
of their own class, but somewhat foreign, as an earth man might
regard one of
Mr. Wells' fanciful men from Mars. But when sympathy is
established, all that
strangeness goes, and real education becomes possible.
The nature spirits are in the same position as the children, except
that they
are not dependent upon us and can easily avoid our vicinity, as the
more
pleasing kinds of them usually do when modern civilized man
arrives, with his
noisy, clumsy and cruel ways, and his unclean, repellant aura and
cloud of
thought-forms. It is a fact that were men sympathetic with the
other kingdoms,
did they plant forests and not only destroy them, and did they feel
kindly
towards nature in general, we should enjoy more equable climate and
more
successful cultivation. It must, of course, be said that the modern
movement in
favour of gardens round houses, and trees and flowers even in the
roads of our
cities, all tends in the right direction, and that in special ways
of
cultivation of the earth and of particular flowers and fruits and
grains and
trees, and even animals, men have done much
144
to help the work of the nature-spirits. But with more sympathy still better
results would have accrued.
This sympathy has occasionally been shown, especially by the poets.
Dr.
Rabindranath Tagore's essays and poems exhibit it in a very high
degree; in
fact, the spread of this quality may be regarded almost as his
special
contribution to modern civilization. Another well known instance is
that of the
philosopher Emerson who, on returning from his winter lecture tours
to his home
at Concord, used to shake hands with the lower branches of his
trees. He
declared that he could feel that the trees were glad at his return,
and no doubt
that quality of sympathy was a great aid to his inspiration.
Men who live in their gardens, like Luther Burbank of California,
often say that
they are distinctly conscious of the feeling that comes to them
from certain
plants bushes and trees. Men in Canada, whose duty calls them to
live constantly
in the forests—to inspect them, mark trees and do other work—have
told me that
they feel a life in the woods distinct from that elsewhere, that
they know that
there are some places and trees which like men, and others which do
not.
Such sympathy is perfectly natural. If you feel special love and
admiration for
a certain human being, there is a tendency on his part to become
interested in
you and to return the affection. A stage lower, if you are
affectionate with an
animal it becomes strongly attached to you. Still lower, in the
vegetable and
mineral kingdoms, the same rule obtains, though its effects are
less obvious.
From this arises the tradition that flowers and
145
plants will grow better for some persons than for others, other
things being
equal. It is personal magnetism that calls it out; and that is what
at a higher
level we call affection.
There is no need to say anything here about the seven gates
mentioned in this
passage, for the whole of the third Fragment of this book is taken
up with the
seven portals, and there we shall study them in detail.
CHAPTER 11 THE ONE ROAD
There is but one road to the Path; at its very end alone the Voice
of the
Silence can be heard. The ladder by which the candidate ascends is
formed of
rungs of suffering and pain; these can be silenced, only by the
voice of virtue.
Woe then to thee, disciple, if there is one single vice thou hast
not left
behind; for then the ladder will give way and overthrow thee; its
foot rests in
the deep mire of thy sins and failings, and ere thou canst attempt
to cross this
wide abyss of matter thou hast to lave thy feet in waters of
renunciation.
Beware lest thou should'st set a foot still soiled upon the
ladder's lowest
rung. Woe unto him who dares pollute one rung with miry feet. The
foul and
viscous mud will dry, become tenacious, then glue his feet unto the
spot; and
like a bird caught in the wily fowler's lime, he will be stayed
from further
progress. His vices will take shape and drag him down. His sins
will raise their
voices, like as the jackal's laugh and sob after the sun goes down;
his thoughts
become an army, and bear him off a captive slave.
147
C.W.L.—We have seen, in The Masters and The Path, that there are
four ways of
coming to the beginning of the probationary path: by contact with
those •who are
already on the Path; by deep thought; by hearing and reading the
sacred word;
and by the practice of virtue.1 Then, on the probationary path,
there are four
qualifications to be attained, of which the last is given in At the
Feet of the
Master as Love, and it is said that without this the other
qualifications are in
vain.2
This, then, is the one road to the path proper—the way of love, of
unselfishness
in thought, word and deed.
All the old selfish habits of body and mind must be overcome, by
positive
virtue. The word virtue as used here cannot mean mere passive
goodness or
absence of wrongdoing; it must be taken in its old meaning of
strength. Virtues
are forms of strength of" the soul. When the soul dominates
the personal life it
will be seen to be full of such virtue. In the mean time a great
battle is
necessary. In very many cases the candidate for the Path must bring
forth all
his determination to stamp out completely any fault of selfishness
that he may
find in himself in the course of his daily self-examination. This
can best be
done by picturing a scene in which the fault has been exhibited,
and then
reconstructing it in the imagination, so that in it the
corresponding virtue is
shown; then one may dwell on that for a little while, and resolve
that
henceforth, under such circumstances, the virtue, not the fault,
will be
expressed.
1 Op. cit., Ch. vi.
2 Volume I, Ch. 24, Liberation, Nirvana and Moksha.
148
It is sometimes very hard to overcome habitual faults; hence the
frequent
mention of suffering and pain. It gives great pain, for example, to
the
drunkard, to resist "just one more, one last drink ". But
if he holds firm to
his resolves never to take strong drink again, not even once, in
time the
suffering will disappear, and he will know a higher kind of
pleasure than that
which he obtained from the stimulus of drink. It is exactly the
same with impure
or selfish emotions and thoughts; many a man fails because he
dwells upon an
unworthy thought "just once more ". It is just that one
that he must give up,
and refuse to harbour in his mind. To give up their faults people
have sometimes
to suffer great wounds to their pride. In all these cases humility
is a great
help, because it makes men willing to change themselves.
Still, there are many whose lives have already been considerably
purified, who
feel little or nothing of this pain. It has, indeed been suggested
that in this
passage Aryasanga has exaggerated the suffering. That is not so,
but he has
expressed it in extreme terms, so that no one will meet with
suffering on the
Path, expecting the reverse, and all will be ready to pay toll to
the past, to
face what suffering there is, and to bring it to an end for ever by
the practice
of virtue. We may remember here the encouraging words of the Gita:
" Even if
thou art the most sinful of all sinners, yet shalt thou cross over
all sin by
the raft of wisdom. As the burning fire reduces fuel to ashes, O
Arjuna, so doth
the fire of wisdom reduce all karmas to ashes."1 And again:
Op. cit., iv, 36-37.
149
" Never doth any
who worketh righteousness, O beloved, tread the
path of woe."1
The necessity of getting rid of vices at the very beginning has
been emphasized
in all yoga systems, as mentioned before.2 Only when the virtues
were firmly
established in his character could the student be allowed to pass
on to the
later steps of the Path, including practices of posture, breathing,
control of
the senses and meditation. The reason for this demand is that as
the pupil
advances on the Path the forces of his will and thought become much
more
powerful than ever before, and there will come times when the ego
pours his
energy down into the body. If there be still remnants of any vice in
the body
that energy will give it new strength, so that the fall of the
aspirant will be
far greater than anything that is possible for one not so far
advanced. Powers
are powers, for good or ill, so the candidate should purify himself
before
seeking them, lest he injure others and himself. There is one place
on the Path,
just after the Second Initiation, where the danger is greatest of
all,
especially from the vice of pride, as has been explained at length
in The
Masters and The Path.
Kill thy desires, Lanoo, make thy vices impotent, ere the first
step is taken on
the solemn journey.
Strangle thy sins, and make them dumb for ever, before thou dost
lift one foot
to mount the ladder.
1 Ibid., vi, 40. 2 Ante, p.
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150
Silence thy thoughts and fix thy whole attention on thy Master,
whom yet thou
dost not see, but whom thou feelest.
Merge into one sense thy senses, if thou would'st be secure against
the foe.
'Tis by that sense alone which lies concealed within the hollow of
the brain,
that the steep path which leadeth to thy Master may be disclosed
before thy
soul's dim eyes.
Aryasanga's repetition of the injunction to get rid of desires and
vices shows
the importance which he attached to this part of the work. Not only
are any such
defects enormously intensified as the powers of the candidate
develop, but also
his responsibility increases, and he becomes capable of making far
more karma
than before.
The sixth sense, the mind, has its physical organ in the brain.
People do not
usually employ this, when faced by the various objects and
experiences of life.
They live too much in their astral bodies. They "like"
certain things, and
"dislike" others, quite without reason, quite without
considering what they are,
and which are really good and bad, or useful and useless. That will
not do, of
course, for anyone who wants to tread the occult path. He must
consider all
things dispassionately, and revalue them according to their
usefulness to the
soul.
In the brain there are' also the organs by means of which direct
perception of
things beyond the reach of
151
the physical senses may be had. The pituitary body is a link
between the
physical body and the astral body, and so on. In the same hollow in
the brain,
but a little further back, lies the pineal gland, which is
connected directly
with the mental body, and serves to bring impressions down from the
mental
plane. Some people develop the pituitary body first, some the
pineal gland— each
must follow the method prescribed by his own guru.
Long and weary is the way before thee, O disciple. One single
thought about the
past that thou hast left behind will drag thee down, and thou wilt
have to start
the climb anew.
Kill in thyself all memory of past experience. Look not behind or
thou art lost.
Once more we find Aryasanga emphasizing the worst aspect of the
matter, so that
none shall find the path harder than he may have thought it to be
before
entering upon it. Relatively, that path is not long, when one
considers that it
is only the last fourteen lives, out of a series of many hundreds
or even
thousands, which are usually spent between the First and Fifth
Initiations.
Further, in many cases the work of those fourteen lives is done in
but few,
taken consecutively, without devachanic interludes—which makes the
time short
indeed.
It is true that " the road winds uphill all the way", but
it need not
necessarily be weary. It is when one thinks only of the goal that
the journey is
weary. A student entering college will find his three or four yean
there
intensely weary if he is thinking only of getting
152
his degree and going out into the world with it, and is not really
interested in
his studies. But if he has planned out his work, which will bring
him naturally
to his degree if properly carried out, and if he is really
interested in the
subjects of his study, he may then forget all about the years that
lie ahead,
and may have a fascinating time. So also on the Path the work is
full of
interest for heart and mind, and he who finds it so will make it
shorter in fact
as well as in appearance than he who cares only for reaching a
certain
prescribed goal.
It is the same in meditation; some who practise it faithfully feel
it to be a
tedious thing, but do it all the same, for the sake of its results.
Others find
it full of interest, and therefore gain much more from it. Let the
candidate not
think of his own progress on the Path; as so often recommended, let
him forget
himself and work for the world, and his progress will take care of
itself.
Self-examination and self-training are necessary, but that is only
like
preparing and oiling machinery; it should not take much time, the
work being the
important thing.
It is true that sometimes people find it necessary to force
themselves at first
along certain lines of work and thought, or meditation, which they
feel that
they ought to take up. Very well, go on with the dreary task, if
such it appears
to be, and if the motive is pure, you will soon find that the
dreariness
departs, a new interest arises, and the work becomes full of
delight.
The statement that one single thought about the past can drag the
candidate
right down to earth again should certainly give pause to anyone who
proposes to
enter
153
the Path, and yet is unwilling to give up some pet vice, however
trifling. It is
not the act so much as the thought of it that drags one down.
Madame Blavatsky
says, in The Secret Doctrine:
Purity of mind is of greater importance than purity of body.
. . An act may be
performed to which little or no attention is
paid, and it is of comparatively small importance. But
if thought
of, dwelt on in the mind,
the effect is a thousand times greater.
The thoughts must be kept pure.1
I recollect a story about Colonel Olcott which illustrates this
point. A young
man who much wanted to live the higher life came to him one day and
asked him if
he must give up smoking. The Colonel replied: " Well, if you
can't you must, but
if you can you needn't." Certainly strength of will and purity
of thought are of
paramount importance, and there is no progress without them, no
matter how clean
the body; and the Colonel emphasized the fact very successfully.
But it might be
added also that smoking is a dirty habit; it befouls the bodies,
and often
causes much annoyance and discomfort to others. The worst of its
dirty
selfishness physically is that the smoke is made damp with saliva
and then sent
off to enter other people's lungs. It is a horrible feature of
modern life that
we are often compelled to contact and breathe smoke which has been
so treated.
As to the effect of a thought of a quality belonging to the past,
Madame
Blavatsky also says:
The student must guard his thoughts. Five minutes' thought may undo
the work of
five years; and though the five years' work will be run through
more rapidly the
second time, yet time is lost.*
1 Op. cit., Vol. III, 5
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154
A distinction must be made here between a thought which is merely a
floating
form which has entered the mind, and thought proper, which is a
deliberate act.
It is the latter that can do so much harm. An unworthy thought may
drift into
the mind, but if it is not dwelt upon, encouraged and strengthened,
little harm
is done.
That one who falls thus may quickly rise again is encouraging. That
old Greek
allegory in which every time that the hero falls to earth, worsted
in the
conflict, he gains new strength from it, applies to man. Better
that he should
win the battle once and for all without falling; but in any case he
is destined
to triumph ultimately. Much may be learned by the intelligent and
willing pupil
without bitter experience, just as one may learn that fire is hot
without
putting one's hand into it; but all that is necessary will be
learnt sooner or
later in one way or another.
Do not believe that lust can ever be killed out if gratified or
satiated, for
this is an abomination inspired by Mara. It is by feeding vice that
it expands
and waxes strong, like to the worm that fattens on the blossom's
heart.
The rose must re-become the bud, born of its parent stem, before
the parasite
has eaten through its heart and drunk its life-sap.
The golden tree puts forth its jewel-buds before its trunk is
withered by the
storm.
The pupil must regain the child-state he has lost ere the first
sound can fall
upon his ear.
155
Sir Edwin Arnold speaks of Mara, as he is understood by the
Buddhists, in
vigorous and graphic terms, in connection with the temptation of
Buddha just
before
His illumination:
But he who is the Prince Of Darkness, Mara—knowing this was Buddha
Who should
deliver men, and now the hour When he should find the Truth and
save the worlds—
Gave unto all his evil powers command. Wherefore there trooped from
every
deepest pit The fiends who war with Wisdom and the Light, Arati,
Trishna, Raga,
and their crew Of passions, horrors, ignorances, lusts, The brood
of gloom and
dread; all hating Buddh, Seeking to shake his mind.1
Still, Madame Blavatsky says: " But Mara is also the
unconscious quickener of
the birth of the Spiritual." The resistance that Mara opposes
to the aspirant
enables him to develop his strength. An athlete might move his arms
up and down
much easier without dumbbells than with them, yet he would not
develop the same
strength so quickly, if at all. That even evil is made use of for
good was once
illustrated by the remark of a very spiritual man who took a high
Initiation.
For some time before it he had been terribly maligned, and the
important work on
which he had set his heart had been spoiled. One day someone
offered him a word
of sympathy, which was quite unnecessary, for he said: "The
fact is, I owe a
debt of gratitude to those people who tried to injure me, though I
did not
realize it at the time; for without their aid I should not yet have
taken that
Initiation." An ordinary man would have been full of anger or
of depression, but
in such a man as this 1 The Light of Asia, Book the Sixth.
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Mara calls out an equal strength only of loving sorrow or
compassion. Thus may
even the greatest enemy become our friend while we are in the way
with him.
It is, of course, not the ignorance but the innocence of childhood
that is
requisite for real spiritual progress. Mere goodness is not
progress; it is only
preparatory purification. Progress is the development of the ego on
its own
planes, which, when shown in the personality, appears as strength
of
character—in will and love and thought. In the three stages of the
relation of a
pupil to his Master, it is the third and highest that contains the
idea of
childhood, for he is first a probationary pupil, then an accepted
one, and
thirdly a Son of the Master.
CHAPTER 12 THE LAST STEPS
The light from the one Master, the one unfading golden light of
Spirit, shoots
its effulgent beams on the disciple from the very first.
Its rays thread through the thick, dark clouds of matter.
Now here, now there, these rays illumine it, like sun-sparks light
the earth
through the thick foliage of the jungle growth. But, O disciple,
unless the
flesh is passive, head cool, the Soul as firm and pure as flaming
diamond, the
radiance will not reach the chamber, its sunlight will not warm the
heart, nor
will the mystic sounds of the akashic heights reach the ear,
however eager at
the initial stage.
C.W.L.—As the sun is always shining behind the clouds, so is the
higher self
constantly shedding its beams on the aspirant. The flashes of
inspiration and
intuition that come now and again into the darkness of our minds in
what we call
our best moments are derived from that
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high source. It is a wise policy to try to capture those best
moments, to hold
them in imagination, and to dwell upon them in meditation, and thus
to bring the
whole life into that diamond-like condition that is mentioned in
the text.
With reference to the " mystic sounds of the akashic heights
" Madame Blavatsky
adds the following footnote:
The mystic sounds, or the melody, heard by the ascetic at the
beginning of his
cycle of meditation, called Anahatashabda by the Yogis. The Anahata
is the
fourth of the Chakras.
The fourth centre or chakra is that at the heart. When the
consciousness is
centred in the heart during meditation it is most susceptible to
the influence
of the spiritual soul or higher Self. The heart is the centre in
the body for
the higher triad, atma-buddhi-manas. The head is the seat of the
psycho-intellectual man; it has its various functions in seven
cavities,
including the pituitary body and the pineal gland. He who in
concentration can
take his consciousness from the brain to the heart should be able
to unite
kama-manas to the higher manas, through the lower manas, which,
when pure and
free from kama, is the antahkarana. He will then be in a position
to catch some
of the promptings of the higher triad. That higher consciousness
tries to guide
him, through the conscience; he cannot guide it until he is one
with
buddhi-manas. The foregoing explanation is condensed from notes on
some oral
teachings
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of Madame Blavatsky, appended to the third volume of The Secret
Doctrine.1
Indian tradition on the subject says that when kundalini rises she
dissolves the
qualities of the various chakras through which she passes and
carries their
essence upwards. When she reaches the fourth, the heart chakra, the
yogi hears
the sound from above, called anahata-shabda. Shabda is sound;
an-ahata means*'
not beaten "; so it is—that sound which is made without
beating things together.
The term is therefore symbolical of that which is above the planes
of
personality. The practitioner's touch with the higher triad begins
at this
point. Those who want to increase the contact between the higher
and lower manas
should not dwell in meditation on anything below it. The following
meditation,
translated from the Gheranda Samhita, is one of those prescribed
for the heart
centre. It illustrates the way in which the yogi gradually
withdraws his
attention from his surroundings and concentrates it upon his Ideal.
Let him find in his heart a broad ocean of nectar,
Within it a beautiful island of gems, Where the sands are bright
golden and
sprinkled with jewels,
Fair trees line its shores with a myriad of blooms, And within it
rare bushes,
trees, creepers and rushes,
On all sides shed fragrance most sweet to the sense.
Who would taste of the sweetness of divine completeness Should
picture therein a
most wonderful tree,
On whose far-spreading branches grow fruit of all fancies— The four
mighty
Teachings that hold up the world,
There the fruit and the flowers know no death and no sorrows, While
to them the
bees hum and soft cuckoos sing.
1 Op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 5
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Now, under the shadow of that peaceful arbour
A temple of rubies most radiant is seen, And he who shall seek
there will find
on a seat rare,
His dearly Beloved, enshrined therein, Let him dwell with his mind,
as his
Teacher defines,
On that Divine Form, with His modes and His signs.1
Unless thou hear'st thou canst not see. Unless thou seest, thou
canst not hear.
To hear and see, this is the second stage.
We have already considered the significance of seeing and hearing.2
Unless the
candidate is responsive to the inner voice, that is, unless he
understands
spiritual laws, he will never see the outer things as they are. He
must learn to
look at the things of matter with the eyes of the spirit, as a
Master once
expressed it. When he sees the material or outward things in that
way, he will
more and more understand the inner voice. This is like the
alternation which is
necessary between meditation and experience. To go through life in
a busy way,
without stopping to meditate upon it, is to miss much of the
significance of its
events; one should spare a little time each day to let the inner
light play upon
them. On the other hand, to shut oneself in one's study and give
one's whole
time to thought would yield little profit; in that wav a man would
acquire
endless misconceptions, for experience is required to correct and
enlarge our
meditation. It is the balanced interplay of the inner and the outer
that the
pupil must seek. He must aim to be
1 See Concentration, Ch. x. 2 Ante, p.
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161
harmonized—to use the expression repeated again and again in the
Gita.
The inner and outer worlds correspond perfectly to one another,
point for point
in God's system. Says Madame Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine:
In the realm of hidden forces, an audible sound is but a subjective
colour, and
a perceptible colour, but an inaudible sound.1
Colour is spoken of here, not form; it makes the statement more
accurate, for we
really see only colours, not forms.
It is impossible to say with any certainty why this state of
hearing and seeing
harmonized together is called the second stage; We cannot tell what
system of
stages Aryasanga was expounding, for a veil is drawn over his
instructions at
this point. The line of stops marks a missing portion dealing with
the third
stage. When the teaching emerges again (after this hiatus) we find
Aryasanga
dealing with later stages exactly as the Toga Sutras give them,
namely (5)
pratyahara, entire control of the senses, (6) dharana,
concentration, (7)
dhyana, meditation, and (8) samadhi, contemplation.
When the disciple sees and hears, and when he smells and tastes,
eyes closed,
ears shut, with mouth and nostrils stopped; when the four senses
blend and ready
are to pass into the fifth, that of the inner touch—then into stage
the fourth
he hath passed on.
1 Of. cit, Vol. III, p. 508.
162
There are some yogis who do literally stop the mouth and nose when
going into
meditation or trance. The fingers are so placed as to keep the
eyes, the
nostrils and the mouth closed, and these men have also trained the
tongue so
that they can turn it upwards and backwards into the cavity above
the mouth, and
thus prevent the inlet of air. This is called khechari mudra, as
practised by
certain hatha yogis. It is not done by the raja yogis, and is not
recommended
here. There is a stage at which the pupil can close his eyes and
reproduce
within himself or experience in the astro-mental region the
sensations of smell,
taste, sight and touch. Now, in order to withdraw himself to a
still higher
state he must attend to the inner touch, which is hearing. By
giving his
attention to the sound within, and tracing it into its finer and
finer recesses,
he brings himself to the point where he may practise pratyahara,
the restraint
of all sensation, the inner as well as the outer, that of the hall
of learning
as well as that of the hall of ignorance. This practice is
described in the next
verse:
And in the fifth, O slayer of thy thoughts, all these again have to
be killed
beyond re-animation.
The attention is quite commonly withdrawn to a large extent by most
people when,
for example, they are especially interested in a book; they do not
then respond
to the impressions made upon the senses by the various odours,
sights and sounds
surrounding them. To put oneself into that condition at will is
pratyahara, and
it is a preparation for really successful meditation. The
163
killing beyond re-animation means nothing more than that the
senses, like good
dogs, will lie down when told to do so, and will not get up again
until they are
called. There is a foot-note at this point, as follows:
This means that in the sixth stage of development which in the
occult system, is
Dharana, every sense as an individual faculty has to be "
killed " (or
paralysed) on this plane, passing into and merging with the seventh
sense, the
most spiritual.
Dharana is the sixth step of yoga, as given in the Toga Sutras. It
is that
concentration of mind which we have already studied,1 and it
follows upon
pratyahara. Since mind or chitta is regarded as a sixth sense, when
dharana is
complete and that mind thereby ceases to function in relation to
the things of
the external world, intuition, here called the seventh sense,
arises. Life
teaches us in two ways, by tuition that the world gives us, and by
intuition,
the working of the inner self. As men proceed on their evolutionary
pilgrimage,
their intuition increases and they do not depend so much as before
on the
instruction that the world gives. This is only another way of
saying that the
man who uses his inner powers can learn much more from a little
experience than
other men can from a great deal. Because of the activity "of
his innate
intelligence the developed man is able to see the great
significance of even
small things; but the undeveloped mind is full of curiosity. It is
constantly
eager for novelty, because, not being
1 Ante, p. 40.
164
good at thinking, it soon exhausts the obvious significance of
common place
things. This mind is the one that craves miracles in connection
with its
religious experiences as it is blind to the countless miracles that
surround it
all the time.
Withhold thy mind from all external objects, all external sights.
Withhold
internal images, lest on thy Soul-light a dark shadow they should
cast.
Thou art now in Dharana, the sixth stage.
In the practice of concentration it is always necessary to consider
both the
external and the internal sources of interruption. One must prevent
the mind
from taking an interest in any external thing, for if this is not
done, the
slightest sound will awaken its curiosity and spoil the
concentration. Also one
must stop the mind from bringing up within itself images relating
to the past or
the future; during the practice one must be completely uninterested
in what
happened yesterday or what is likely to happen to-morrow. When this
concentration has been successfully achieved, the next and seventh
stage of
practice begins, which is called dhyana, that: is, meditation.
When thou hast passed into the seventh, O happy one, thou shalt
perceive no more
the sacred Three, for thou shalt have become that Three thyself.
Thyself and
mind, like twins upon a line, the star which is thy goal burns
overhead. The
Three that dwell in glory and in bliss ineffable, now in the world of
Maya have
lost their names.
165
They have become one star, the fire which is the Upadhi of the
flame.
And this, O Yogi of success, is what men call Dhyana, the right
precursor of
Samadhi.
Passing from dharana to dhyana, from concentration to meditation,
the aspirant
on this Path enters the buddhic consciousness. That is then "
thyself". The mind
here spoken of is the higher manas, for the lower manas has been
silenced. The
manasic principle has been raised into that of buddhi, so the two
are like "
twins upon a line ", the two lower corners of a triangle, as
is indicated by the
following footnote:
Every stage of development in Raja Yoga is symbolized by a
geometrical figure.
This one is the sacred triangle and precedes Dharana. The A is the
sign of the
high chelas, while another kind of triangle is that of high
Initiates. It is the
symbol " I " discoursed upon by Buddha and used by Him as
a symbol of the
embodied form of Tathagata when released from the three methods of
the Prajna.
Once the preliminary and lower stages passed, the disciple sees no
more the A
but the—, the abbreviation of the—, the full septenary. Its true
form is not
given here, as it is almost sure to be pounced upon by some
charlatans and
desecrated in its use for fraudulent purposes.
The star that burns overhead is the atma. But it refers also, as
Madame
Blavatsky says in another footnote, to the star of Initiation,
which shines over
the head
166
of the Initiate. As the object to be attained is the Fourth
Initiation, that of
the Arhat, it is the star of that Initiation, which leads to the
atmic or
nirvanic plane, that is his goal.
At this stage, instead of looking upwards in thought, and regarding
the higher
triad (atma-buddhi-manas) as above oneself, as was the case
heretofore, one
finds oneself to be in the buddhic state, manas being united with
buddhi as
manas-taijasi. The " meditation" of the Initiate at this
stage will ultimately
lead on to a further union of buddhi and atma. Upon the attainment
of that union
the higher triad will have become one star, described in a
foot-note as " the
basis, Upadhi, of the ever unreachable flame, so long as the
ascetic is still in
this life ". The fuel is the personality; the fire is this
triple spirit; the
flame is the Monad. Even the Adept, while remaining in physical
incarnation,
does not enter fully into the state of the Monad. Says Madame
Blavatsky:
Dhyana is the last stage before the final on this earth unless one
becomes a
full Mahatma. As said already, in this state the Raja Yogi is yet
spiritually
conscious of self, and the working of his higher principles. One
step more, and
he will be on the plane beyond the seventh, the fourth according to
some
schools. These, after the practice of Pratyahara—a preliminary
training, in
order to control one's mind and thoughts—count Dharana, Dhyana and
Samadhi, and
embrace the three under the generic name of Sannyama. Samadhi is
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the state in which the ascetic loses the consciousness of every
individuality,
including his own. He becomes the All.
It is significant that the three should lose their names. They are
not forms,
for their region is that of consciousness. The lower planes of the
personality
are planes of form; then come the planes of name or " meaning
", but the Monad
is beyond name, beyond what men call consciousness.
The text goes on to indicate that, having attained to the practice
of samadhi,
the aspirant has now become an Arhat, and has reached the goal of
the endeavour
discussed in this Fragment.
CHAPTER 13 THE GOAL
And now thyself is lost in Self, thyself onto Thyself, merged in
that Self from
which thou first didst radiate.
Where is thy individuality, Lanoo, where the Lanoo himself? It is
the spark lost
in the fire, the drop within the ocean, the ever-present ray become
the All and
the eternal radiance.
And now, Lanoo, thou art the doer and the witness, the radiator and
the
radiation, light in the sound, and the sound in the light.
C.W.L.—As a man rises in life to a realization that the personality
is merely
"it", and thus raises his centre of consciousness to the
higher Self, so there
comes the time when he discovers as a fact of experience that that
consciousness
is only "you", not "I".1 When that comes about,
at or about the Fourth
Initiation, the lower self becomes lost in the true Self, and what
the man has
thought or felt to be his individuality goes. And just as he who
has achieved
the buddhic state recognizes and accepts the Consciousness of
others as
1 See ante, pp.
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his own, and feels their joys and sorrows as his own; so now does
this man find
only one true " I " in all.
The distinction between the realization obtained by the initiate of
lower
degree, and that of the Arhat, between the consciousness of the
buddhic plane
and that of the atmic, has been given in the Bhagavad-Gita. In the
former state
the man sees the same Self equally dwelling in all beings; in the
latter he sees
that all are in the one Self.
This, according to Toga Sutras, is the state of kaivalya, of "
oneness ", of
freedom, on the full attainment of which the distinction between
seer and seen,
between subject and object, is destroyed.
Thou art acquainted with the five impediments, O blessed one. Thou
art their
conqueror, the master of the sixth, deliverer of the four modes of
truth.
The light that falls upon them shines from thyself, O thou who wast
disciple,
but art Teacher now.
And of these modes of truth:
Hast thou not passed through knowledge of all misery—truth the
first?
Hast thou not conquered the Maras' king at Tu, the portal of
assembling—truth
the second?
Hast thou not sin at the third gate destroyed, and truth the third
attained?
Hast thou not entered Tau, the path that leads to knowledge—the
fourth truth?
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Madame Blavatsky adds:
The four modes of truth are, in Northern Buddhism: Eu, suffering or
misery; Tu,
the assembling of temptations; Mu, their destructions; and Tau, the
Path. The "
five impediments " are the knowledge of misery, truth about
human frailty,
oppressive restraints, and the absolute necessity of separation
from all the
ties of passion, and even of desires. The " Path of salvation
" is the last one.
There are the Four Noble Truths taught to the world by the Lord
Buddha. These
were Sorrow, Sorrow's Cause, Sorrow's Ceasing and the Way. These
have been put
before the Western world with wonderful beauty and accuracy in Sir
Edwin
Arnold's matchless poem, The Light of Asia, from which the
following verses are
quoted. But all who seek inspiration on the Path should not fail to
read the
whole work.
Ye that will tread the Middle Road, whose course Bright Reason
traces and soft
Quiet smoothes;
Ye who will take the high Nirvana-way, List the Four Noble Truths.
The First Truth is of Sorrow.
Be not mocked!
Life which ye prize is long-drawn agony: Only its pains abide; its
pleasures are
As birds which light and fly.
Ache of the birth, ache of the helpless days,
Ache of hot youth and ache of manhood's prime:
Ache of the chill grey years and choking death, These fill your
piteous time.
Sweet is fond Love, but funeral-flames must kiss
The breasts which pillow and the lips which cling
Gallant is warlike Might, but vultures pick The joints of chief and
King.
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Beauteous is Earth, but all its forest-broods Plot mutual
slaughter, hungering
to liv^;
Of sapphire are the skies, but when men cry Famished, no drops they
give.
Ask of the sick, the mourners, ask of him
Who tottereth on his staff, lone and forlorn,
" Liketh thee life? "—these say the babe is wise That
weepeth, being born.
The Second Truth is Sorrow's Cause. What grief Springs of itself and springs
not of Desire?
Senses and things perceived mingle and light Passion's quick spark
of fire:
So flameth Trishna, lust and thirst of things.
Eager ye cleave to shadows, dote on dreams; A false Self in the
midst ye plant,
and make
A world around which seems;
Blind to the heights beyond, deaf of the sound
Of sweet airs breathed from far past Indra's sky;
Dumb to the summons of the true life kept For him who false puts
by.
So grow the strifes and lusts which make earth's war, So grieve
poor cheated
hearts and flow salt tears:
So wax the passions, envies, angers, hates; So years chase
blood-stained years
With wild ted feet. So,
where the grain should grow
Spreads the biran-weed with its evil root And poisonous blossoms;
hardly good
seeds find
Soil where to fall and shoot;
And, drugged with poisonous drink, the soul departs, And, fierce
with thirst to
drink, Karma returns;
Sense-struck again the sodden Self begins, And new deceits it
earns.
The Third is Sorrow's Ceasing.
This is peace
To conquer love of self and lust of life, To tear deep-rooted
passion from the
breast,
To still the inward strife;
For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close;
For glory to be Lord of self; for pleasure To live beyond the gods;
for
countless wealth
To lay up lasting treasure
.
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Of perfect service rendered, duties done
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days: These riches shall not
fade away in
life, Nor any death dispraise.
Then Sorrow ends, for Life and Death have ceased How should lamps
flicker when
their oil is spent?
The old sad count is clear, the new is clean; Thus hath a man
content.
The Fourth Truth is The Way.
It openeth wide Plain for all feet to tread,
easy and near,
The Noble Eightfold Path; it goeth straight To peace and
refuge. Hear!
Manifold tracks lead to yon sister-peaks
Around whose snows the gilded clouds are curled;
By steep or gentle slopes the climber comes Where breaks that other
world.
Strong limbs may dare the rugged road which storms, Soaring and
perilous, the
mountain's breast;
The weak must wind from slower ledge to ledge, With many a place of
rest.
So is the Eightfold Path which brings to peace;
By lower or by upper heights it goes. The firm soul hastes, the
feeble tarries.
All
Will reach the sunlit snows.1
The five impediments in the way of the candidate for Arhatship may
be taken in
various forms. They are the five mentioned by Madame Blavatsky in
the footnote
just quoted, or they are the first five fetters, or they are the
five kleshas
mentioned in the Toga Sutras, and already discussed.2
And now, rest 'neath the Bodhi tree, which is perfection of all
knowledge, for,
know, thou art the master of Samadhi—the state of faultless vision.
1 Op. cit., Book the Eighth. 2 Ante, pp. 49-52.
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Bebold! thou hast become the light, thou hast become the sound,
thou art thy
Master and thy God. Thou art thyself the object of thy search: the
voice
unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change,
the seven
sounds in one, the Voice of the Silence.
Aura Tat Sat.
The termination Aum Tat Sat is one of the Maha-vakyams or "
great sayings" of
the Hindus. The meaning of Aum we have already considered.1 Tat
refers to the
Supreme. Philosophically, the pronouns he and she are unsuitable to
refer to the
Supreme, so Tat, meaning "That", is employed. Beyond
"it" and "you" is That,
which is "I". So the expression means that it is That
which is the Red. All good
works begin and end with this thought.
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-5.
FRAGMENT II THE TWO PATHS
CHAPTER 1 THE OPEN GATE
C.W.L.—We come now to the second Fragment which Madame Blavatsky
translated from
The Book of the Golden Precepts—entitled The Two Paths. This is not
necessarily
a continuation of the first Fragment, called The Voice of the
Silence, although
it does begin by addressing one who has just reached the goal of
Arhatship.
There is nothing to show that the three Fragments stand in any
special relation
to one another. They are to all intents and purposes three separate
books
dealing in much the same manner with the same subject. It is,
however, a great
advantage to the aspirant to hear the teaching about the Path again
and again in
slightly different forms. It renews his enthusiasm, draws attention
to points
which he may have overlooked, and generally gives him breadth of
vision.
The present Fragment begins by addressing one who has just achieved
the summit
of the Path, and the question arises: Will he go onwards into
nirvanic bliss,
heedless of those who remain behind, or will he turn back at the
threshold and
help others who are climbing; will he take liberation for himself,
or will he
stay to help the world ?
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And now, O Teacher of compassion, point Thou the way to other men.
Behold all
those who, knocking for admission, await in ignorance and darkness
to see the
gate of the sweet Law flung open!
The voice of the candidates:
Shalt not Thou, Master of Thine own mercy, reveal the doctrine of
the heart?
Shalt Thou refuse to lead Thy servants unto the Path of liberation?
The opening paragraph of this Fragment may at first seem a little
strange to us
in these modern days. We are familiar with the thought that the
Path is open to
anyone anywhere, regardless of race, creed, sex, caste or colour,
who lives the
life that is prescribed for it. Why, then, should any people be
waiting in
darkness and ignorance for a gate to be flung open for them?
The fact is that at the time when the Lord Buddha taught in India,
the religion
of the Brahmanas had become very rigid. Originally, that faith had
been
intensely joyous and free, but in course of time 'the caste system
had been
extended by the priests and rulers to all kinds of details. The
plains of India
were thickly populated with Atlanteans and Atlanto-Lemurians when
the Aryans
descended into the country about ten thousand years B.C. So the
Manu found it
necessary to forbid intermarriage, and about 8,000 B.C. he ordained
the caste
system in order that no further admixture might be made, and that
those already
made might be perpetuated He founded at first only three castes—
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Brahmana, Rajan and Vish. The first were pure Aryans, the second
Aryan and
Toltec, the third Aryan and Mongolian.
The castes were hence called the Varnas, or colours— the pure
Aryans white, the
Aryan and Toltec intermixture red, and the Aryan and Mongolian
yellow. The
castes were allowed to intermarry among themselves, but a feeling
quickly grew
up that marriages should be restricted within the caste. Later,
those who were
not Aryan at all were included under the general appellation of
Shudras, but
even here in many cases a certain small amount of Aryan blood may
appear. Many
of the hill tribes are partly Aryan—some few are wholly so, like
the Siaposh
people and the Gipsy tribes.
There are passages in the Hindu scriptures to show that it was
possible for
individuals of exceptional character and ability to be raised in
caste rank, but
it must have been a very rare occurrence, and certainly for some
time before the
advent of the Lord Buddha it had been generally held that only a
Brahmana could
hope for liberation, and anyone who wished to reach that goal must
first
contrive to be born as a Brahmana. This was not a very hopeful
doctrine for the
majority of the people, since the Brahmanas were never numerous and
they did not
allow the lower caste people to study the sacred books.
But the Buddha's teaching flung the gates wide open. He taught that
equal
respect should be shown to one of any caste who lived the life, and
conversely
that a Brahmana who does not live the life was not worthy
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of respect, as in the
following verse from the Vasala-Sutta:
Not by birth does one become low caste, Not by birth does one
become a Brahmana;
By actions alone one becomes low caste, By his actions alone one
becomes a
Brahmana.
Many Brahmanas have told me that they actually feel the truth of
this in
practical life; they find themselves more drawn to those of lower
castes who
live the ideals of the Brahmana life than to members of their own
caste who
neglect its ideals and live at a lower standard.
The aim of the Lord Buddha was not to found a new religion, but to
reform
Hinduism. For a time almost all India called itself Buddhist. There
were
Buddhist Hindus just as at present in the north-west there are many
who call
themselves Sikh Hindus. Buddhism as a religion has long vanished
from India. But
the effect that the Lord Buddha desired to produce still remains to
a large
extent in the Hindu religion of the present day. As an instance of
this one may
mention the effect upon animal sacrifices, against which the Buddha
spoke very
strongly; they were very common before his time, but now they are
quite rare.
Again, in India to-day every holy man is regarded with reverence by
all,
whatever may have been his caste before he became a sannyasi. And
people all
over the country respect the Bhagavad-Gita as of the highest
authority, yet it
is a book of the most liberal character. In it the Lord says:
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The same am I to all beings; there is none hateful to me nor dear.
They verily
who worship me with devotion, they are in me, and I also in them.
Even if the
most sinful worship me, with undivided heart, he too must be
accounted
righteous, for he hath rightly resolved; speedily he becometh
dutiful and goeth
to eternal peace, O Kaunteya; know thou for certain that my devotee
perisheth
never. They who take refuge with me, O Partha, though of the womb
of sin, women,
Vaishyas, even Shudras, they also tread the highest path.1
It must not be assumed that Shri Krishna is here placing women and
others on a
lower level, but that he is refuting a number of popular
superstitions, among
them the idea that those who are in female bodies are necessarily
inferior and
so cannot succeed in high spiritual aims.
Madame Blavatsky explains in a footnote that there are two Schools
of the
Buddha's doctrine, the esoteric and the exoteric, respectively
called the "
heart" and the " eye " doctrine, and that the former
emanated from the Buddha's
heart while the latter was the work of his brain or head. Another
interpretation
that was given to me relates the terms to the eye and heart of the
candidate:
the scheme of things may be learnt by the eye, but the higher path
can be
entered only when the heart is in tune with the inner life.
The whole passage is based upon an alleged hesitation on the part
of the Buddha
as to whether he should preach. It is said that as he sat under the
Bodhi tree
on the morning following his Illumination, he doubted whether the
world would
understand and follow him, until he heard a voice as of the earth
in pain, which
1 Op. cit., ix, 29-32.
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cried: " Surely I am lost; I and my creatures! " And
then, again: "Oh, Supreme,
let Thy great Law be uttered!"1
Quoth the Teacher:
The paths are two; the great perfections three; six are the virtues
that
transform the body into the tree of knowledge.
To this Madame Blavatsky adds the following footnote:
The tree of knowledge is a title given by the followers of the
Bodhidharma
(Wisdom Religion) to those who have attained the height of mystic
knowledge—Adepts. Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika School,
was called
the dragon-tree, the dragon standing as a symbol of wisdom and
knowledge. The
tree is honoured because it is under the Bodhi (wisdom) tree that
Buddha
received His birth and enlightenment, preached His first sermon,
and died.
Swami T. Subba Row had a somewhat different interpretation of this
symbol of a
tree. He said that the body of the candidate had become a channel
of knowledge
(and we may add of force as well), so that it was one of the twigs
on the Tree
which is the total wisdom of the world. We may add, too, the idea
that the
Initiate is part of the great tree that is the Hierarchy, the Great
White
Brotherhood, that has its roots far up in the
1 The Light of Asia, Book the Seventh.
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higher planes, and whose branches ramify into every part of human
life, and even
down to the lower kingdoms. Those who have read the later chapters
of The
Masters and The Path will appreciate this ancient symbol of a tree,
for there it
is shown how the Occult Hierarchy branches outward from one great
Root.
In this statement about the two paths, the three great perfections,
and the six
virtues, we have an instance of the methodical character of the
Buddha's
teaching. He always helped his followers to remember his teaching
by giving it
to them in a tabular form. There were, for example, the Four Noble
Truths, each
represented by a single word which would call to recollection a
quite definite
set of ideas. There were also the Noble Eightfold Path, the Ten
Sins, classed as
three of the body, four of speech and three of the mind, and the
Twelve Nidanas,
or successive causes of material life and sorrow for man.
The transcendental virtues, or Paramitas, are sometimes reckoned as
six,
sometimes seven, but more commonly as ten. When in Ceylon.; I
learned of them as
ten from the High Priest Sumangala: the first six, he said, are
perfect charity,
perfect morality, perfect truth, perfect energy, perfect kindness,
and perfect
wisdom; the other four that are sometimes added especially for the
priests are
perfect patience, perfect resignation, perfect resolution, and
perfect
abnegation. In the Awakening of Faith of Ashvagosha, translated
into English by
Teitaro Suzuki, the Paramitas are thus enumerated: Charity (dana),
morality
(sila), patience (ksanti), energy (virya), meditation (dhyana),
wisdom (prajna),
and the four additional
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ones: expediency (upaya), prayer or vow (pranidhana), strength
(bala), knowledge
(jnana). In the footnote to the Voice of the Silence, 1
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4 edition, a list taken
from Eitel's Chinese Buddhism is given thus: charity, morality,
patience,
energy, contemplation and wisdom; and in addition for the priests:
use of right
means, science, pious vows, and force of purpose.
When in Ceylon I compared the statements of Orientalists with the
feelings and
thoughts of the Buddhists themselves. There is a great difference
between the
two, for the former are generally very wooden, but the latter are
full of life.
Yet the learned monks have an accuracy of knowledge at least equal
to that of
the most erudite Orientalists. Sir Edwin Arnold, in his Light of
Asia, has given
a very remarkably accurate representation of the living side of
Buddhism. Some
have said that he read Christian ideas and feelings into Buddhism,
but that was
not so in the least; I can testify that the sentiments described in
the poem
really exist among the Buddhist people.
Who shall approach them?
Who shall first enter them?
Who shall first hear the doctrine of two paths in one, the truth
unveiled about
the Secret Heart? The law which, shunning learning, teaches wisdom,
reveals a
tale of woe.
Alas, alas, that all men should possess Alaya, be one with the
great Soul, and
that, possessing it, Alaya should so little avail them!
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Behold how, like the moon reflected in the tranquil waves, Alaya is
reflected by
the small and the great, is mirrored in the tiniest atoms, yet
fails to reach
the heart of all. Alas, that so few men should profit by the gift,
the priceless
boon of learning truth, the right perception of existing things,
the knowledge
of the non-existent!
The Secret Heart is the esoteric doctrine. It is a symbol that comes
down to us
from Atlantean days. In the innermost shrine of the great temple in
the City of
the Golden Gate there lay upon the altar a massive golden box in
the shape of a
heart, the secret opening of which was known only to the high
priest. This was
called " the Heart of the World", and signified to them
the innermost mysteries
that they knew. In it they kept their most sacred objects, and much
of their
symbolism centred around it. They knew that every atom beats as a
heart, and
they considered that the sun had a similar movement, which they
connected with
the sun-spot period. Sometimes one comes across passages in their
books which
give the impression that they knew more than we do in matters of
science, though
they regarded it all from the poetic rather than from the
scientific point of
view. They thought, for example, that the earth breathes and moves,
and it is
certainly true that quite recently scientific men have discovered
that there is
a regular daily displacement of the earth's surface which may be
thought of as
corresponding in a certain way to breathing.
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When Aryasanga uses the term " secret heart " he also
means all the inner
mysteries. Madame Blavatsky's footnote says:
The Secret Heart is the esoteric doctrine.
Here the Teacher by " shunning learning " certainly means
that there are times
when we must turn our attention away from the mere gaining of
knowledge from the
outside through the senses, that we may give time to the
development of the
inner learning through intuition. We cannot be wise without having
sufficient
learning or knowledge with regard to the things that we have to
deal with in the
world, in our particular sphere of duty; but on the other hand we
should be much
in error if we thought that the greatest thing in life was to
accumulate great
stores of knowledge, or were even to imagine that such knowledge
had intrinsic
value, apart from the use that we can make of it in the service of
mankind.
In the West there is a tendency to approach things and study them
from the
outside, while the Eastern method is rather to consider them from
within. Both
methods are necessary at our present state of evolution. When the
buddhic
vehicle is developed, and intuition comes down into the physical
brain from that
level, it will give us true wisdom, perfect knowledge, but in very
few people is
it yet sufficiently developed.
Even if we are able to keep our heads among the clouds, it is
necessary that our
feet should rest firmly on the earth, and we must treat impressions
coming from
within with balanced judgment, just as we apply
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common sense to the experiences of everyday life. This is
necessary, because it
is quite easy to mistake impulses, coining from the astral body,
for intuitions
which come from the higher Self. Sometimes it happens, for example,
that a dead
person seeing that we are interested in some particular point,
offers a
suggestion on the astral plane, and this may come down into the
brain and seem
like intuition. Yet, as a matter of fact, that dead person may be a
very
incompetent observer on the astral plane, and may therefore be
giving quite
wrong information.
This advice to shun learning is useful not only to those who are on
the Path,
but also to every one who is at all studious, if we take it to
mean, as it does,
that we should avoid mere learning. A great amount of study of the
mere outside
of things often leads to materialism. Because they see around them
great
cataclysms, sacrifice, oppression, sorrow and suffering, and a vast
amount of
praying to which no answer seems to be vouchsafed, many people come
to think
that conflict and struggle is the law of life, that nature is not
compassionate.
But to study the world as fully as possible, all the time regarding
it as a
great school for the life dwelling in its multifarious forms, leads
to wisdom,
which enables one to see that all things are moving together for
good. When one
develops astral and higher forms of vision this fact that all is
well is no
longer a matter to be understood by careful reasoning; it leaps to
the eyes. No
one with such vision could be a materialist.
The word Alaya means simply a dwelling or house. Esoterically,
Madame Blavatsky
says, it has at least a
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double meaning, as being both the universal soul, and the Self of
an advanced
Adept. It is the real dwelling or home of man, the universal aspect
of that
which is buddhi in the spiritual triad in man. It is the male or
positive aspect
of the universal soul, the Logos. It is the Over-soul of Emerson,
the universal
Higher Self of all beings. It is what Plato called Nous, a
principle free from
matter yet acting with design, the jivatma of the Hindus, the
source of the
divine creative thought. In other words it is in the Second Logos,
the universal
spiritual soul, of which the buddhi in each man is a ray. That one
should have''
knowledge of the non-existent'' must certainly look strange to
those who do not
know the exact philosophical meaning of the last word. To exist
means to stand
outside of, to have external or objective being. The kind of being
that is
called exist' ence belongs to all the world that is seen as outside
ourselves,
but the indwelling life or consciousness has its own state of
being—call it "
istence " if you like, but not " existence ".
Nothing could be more real than
the reality of this conscious life, which we also possess because
we are part of
the same Logos—'and that is the " non-existent " of which
the aspirant must gain
knowledge. Every man is essentially divine; but to realize it he
must stand out
of his own light—then there will be no shadow, no illusion.
CHAPTER 2 HEAD-LEARNING AND SOUL-WISDOM
Saith the pupil:
O Teacher, what shall I do to reach to wisdom?
0 wise one, what, to gain perfection?
Search for the paths. But, O Lanoo, be of clean heart before thou
startest on
thy journey. Before thou takest thy first step, learn to discern
the real from
the false, the ever-fleeting from the everlasting. Learn above all
to separate
head-learning from Soul-wisdom, the " eye " from the
" heart " doctrine.
C.W.L.—-There is nothing that can be said here on the subject of
the real and
the unreal that has not already been dealt with at length in the
comment on "
From the unreal lead me to the real " in At the Feet of the
Master.1
Yea, ignorance is like unto a closed and airless vessel; the Soul a
bird shut up
within. It warbles not, nor can it stir a feather; but the songster
mute and
torpid sits, and of exhaustion dies.
1 Talks on Path of Occultism, Vol. I, Ch. IV.
190
But even ignorance is better than head-learning with no Soul-wisdom
to
illuminate and guide it.
No occult progress at all is possible for a man while he is
extremely ignorant,
however much he may be developed in other ways. Without some
knowedge of the
Truth, and of the Path, he will not move in a definite direction.
Most people
have very little knowledge of what it means to be really a man,
what are the
qualities and actions which make for progress and what for
retrogression, and
they have 110 conception of the great destiny to which all are
slowly moving.
Therefore their progress is very, very slow. We have investigated
clairvoyantly
as many as a hundred successive lives of some second class pitris,
or men of the
second grade, and find scarcely any perceptible growth at the end
of that
series.
There is, however, a steady though slow evolution of the whole mass
of life
going on all the time, and the man has shared in this general
progress.
Absolutely he has gone forward, but relatively he has done little.
Mr. Sinnett
compared this advance to that of a person going round and round a
tower by a
winding staircase; he comes to the same position and outlook again
and again,
but every time just a little bit higher than before. It would seem
almost as
though men were being treated a little better than they deserve,
for we see that
even the ignorant man, whose thoughts are selfish in nine cases out
of ten, is
advancing in this way. But the fact is that even a little force
directed towards
the higher things
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is far more potent than a great deal of force turned towards the
lower things.
If one tenth of a man's thoughts are spiritual he is beyond the
average; even in
such a case the man is taking nine steps backward for one step
.forward, but
fortunately the nine steps backward are very short and the one step
forward is
very long. It takes a bad life to balance good and evil, and to
fall back a man
must be exceptionally bad. Then again, the effect of a little good
is very far
reaching on account of the close association that obtains among
men, and he who
sets it going receives much good karma.
But if ignorance is a great obstacle to progress, knowledge that is
not applied
is little better; it also does not count for very much. Even if a
man is
interested in occult matters he may stay apparently at the same
level life after
life; for if it is not applied the knowledge does little good. To
put knowledge
into practice is an absolutely necessary condition for rapid
progress.
The seeds of wisdom cannot sprout and grow in airless space. To
live and reap
experience, the mind needs breadth and depth and points to draw it
towards the
Diamond Soul. Seek not those points in Maya's realm; but soar
beyond illusion,
search the eternal and the changeless Sat, mistrusting fancy's
false
suggestions.
In her footnote, Madame Blavatsky says that the Diamond Soul,
Vajrasattva, is a
title of the supreme Buddha, the Lord of all mysteries, called
Vajradhara and
Adi-Buddha. In The Secret Doctrine, however.
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she points out the distinction between Vajrasattva and Vajradhara.
Vajra is a
diamond; sattva in such a connection as this means " by
nature", that is, a
character or soul, so Vajrasattva is one whose nature or character
is like a
diamond. Dhara means holding or bearing, so Vajradhara is one who
holds a
diamond. Avalokiteshvara, " the Lord who is seen", is
Vajrasattva, the
Diamond-Soul or Diamond-Heart, and is the synthetic reality of all
the
Dhyani-Buddhas. The First Logos is Vajradhara or Vajrapani, the
Diamond-Holder,
or the Diamond-Handed One, also called Dorjechang in Tibetan. He is
the one
beyond all conditioning or manifestation, but He sends into the
world of
subjective manifestation, the expression of His Heart—Vajrasattva
or Dorjesempa,
the Second Logos.1
That there should be special points required to draw the candidate
into full
touch with That is analogous to what we have seen in the process of
individualization of an animal. In this case, the points are the
finer qualities
that it develops, such as affection and devotion, by means of which
it reaches
up into the human condition of consciousness. The mind of man must
also put out
special points in order that it may unite with the Soul, and for
the Initiate
those points must rise up into buddhi, which is the principle in
the
reincarnating self corresponding to the Vajrasattva at a still
higher level.
Swami T. Subba Row said that
it referred to the atma drawing the ego into the
Monad. The same simile can thus be employed at many different
levels. 1 See
Ante, pp.
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-4.
HEAD-LEARNING AND SOUL-WISDOM 1
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For mind is like a mirror; it gathers dost while it reflects.
This, says Madame Blavatsky, is from the doctrine of Shin-Sien, who
taught that
the human mind is like a mirror which attracts and reflects every
atom of dust,
and has to be, like that mirror, watched over and dusted every day.
Shin-Sien
was the sixth patriarch of North China, who taught the esoteric
doctrine of
Bodhidharma. In The Secret Doctrine she explains the position of
Bodhidharma, as
follows:
When the misuse of dogmatical orthodox Buddhist Scriptures had
reached its
climax, and the true spirit of the Buddha's philosophy was nearly
lost, several
reformers appeared from India, who established an oral teaching.
Such were
Bodhidharma and Nagarjuna, the authors of the most important works
of the
Contemplative School in China during the first centuries of our
era.1
The dust on the mirror typifies the prejudices, illusions and
fancies which are
in the astral and mental bodies; these are clearly visible to the
sight of the
respective planes as decided obstacles to better thought or feeling.
The effects
of these impediments and the means to get rid of them we have
already considered
carefully in the talks on At the Feet of the Master2
It needs the gentle breezes of Soul-wisdom to brush away the dust
of our
illusions. Seek, O beginner, to blend thy mind and Soul.
Shun ignorance and likewise shun illusion. Avert thy face from
world deceptions;
mistrust thy
1 Op. cit., Adyar Ed., Vol. v. p. 410.
2 Ante, Vol. I, Part 4, Chapter 1, Control of Mind.
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senses; they are false. Bat within thy body—the shrine of thy
sensations—seek in
the impersonal for the Eternal Man; and having sought him out, look
inward: thou
art Buddha.
Common experience tells us that the senses must be mistrusted. The
impressions
of sight, for example, must be corrected by careful study of the
facts, and
judgment about them, as in the matter of the apparent movement of
the sun round
the earth. Care must be taken, however, not to read into this
statement the idea
that the senses are not to be used. They must be employed on every
plane for the
gaining of knowledge, and for doing the work and duty without which
there is no
progress.
The eternal man is the reincarnating ego, whose life is age-long as
compared
with that of the personality, persisting as it does through our
complete series
of human births and deaths.
The word Buddha is used in three distinct senses. Sometimes, as in
this case, it
means simply enlightened, illuminated, or wise. Sometimes it is
used as a name
for the Lord Gautama. In other cases it means the high office in
the Occult
Hierarchy of the Head of the Second Ray, the great department of
teaching and
religion, which has been described in The Masters and the Path. The
Buddhists
have a list of twenty-four Buddhas, of whom the present holder of
the office is
the Lord Gautama, who will be succeeded in the far future by the
Lord Maitreya.
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Shun praise, O devotee: praise leads to self-delusion. Thy body is
not Self, thy
Self is in itself without a body, and either praise or blame
affects it not.
Self-gratulation, O disciple, is like unto a lofty tower, up which
a haughty
fool has climbed. Thereon he sits in prideful solitude and
unperceived by any
but himself.
Very many men have been spoiled by undue praise; it leads to pride
in all who do
not see clearly what lies ahead of them or above them. Those pupils
who are
sufficiently clairvoyant to see the Masters frequently are not so
prone to this
danger as many others are, because they cannot but compare their
own littleness
with the Master's greatness, their own farthing rushlight with His
glorious
sunlight. It is the man who is looking downward, and comparing
himself with
those who are beneath himself, who is most likely to fall through
pride.
But the best way of all is not to think of oneself, but to be
constantly
occupied with the work of the Master. There is for all of us every
day far more
of that to be done than we can possibly accomplish; and it is only
taking energy
and time away from that if we spend it in thinking about our little
selves.
There are no doubt several reasons why the Masters do not show
themselves more
than they do to those who are in the earlier stages of their
service. One of
these is that the pupil, seeing the Master so far above him, might
be
overwhelmed with his own, insignificance and lose confidence in his
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own ability to work for the Master. So, while it is necessary to
avoid pride on
the one hand, one must equally avoid the under-estimation of one's
powers on the
other. Here, as ever, the middle path is the right one.
The simile of a tower is indeed a good one, for pride does shut a
man away from
his fellows. If, for example, he is proud of his learning, he will
he anxious to
keep others more ignorant than himself, so as to enjoy his superior
position,
and even when he does give out his knowledge it will only be for
the sake of
displaying it. Such a man is engaged all the time in enlarging the
gulf between
himself and other people, so that he may look down on them from
above.
False learning is rejected by the wise, and scattered to the winds
by the Good
Law. Its wheel revolves for all, the humble and the proud. The
doctrine of the
eye is for the crowd; the doctrine of the heart for the elect. The
first repeat
in pride: " Behold, I know "; the last, they who in
humbleness have garnered
low, confess: "Thus have I heard."
Every religion in course of time gathers round itself many
speculations and
other accretions. For example, in Hinduism, in the Puranas one
reads of dozens
of things that people are told that they must do or must not do;
many of those
have been invented by the priests, either for • their own
convenience and
advantage or because of an excessive estimation of the value of
many
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prayers and ceremonies. Also particular interpretations of earlier
sayings are
developed into dogmas and attached to the original teaching, as,
for instance,
the horrible eternal hell teaching which still persists among many
Christians.
The esoteric teaching at once scatters these to the winds, as it
brings the
attention back to the essential and vital truths. Still, to act
from the heart
is the way only of a strong and advanced man. For the masses,
wandering slowly
along the broad road of evolution which winds gently up the
hillside, the books
are still the main guide. Those people are not yet in the position
that is
described as follows in the Garuda Purana: "Having practised
the Vedas and the
Shastras, and having known the Truth, the wise man can abandon all
the
scriptures, just as one rich in grains abandons the straw."
Every Buddhist scripture begins with, " Thus says
------", or, " Thus have I
heard." It is a humble beginning. It does not say, " This
is absolutely so, and
you must believe it," but, " This is what has been said,
and it would be well to
try to understand it, and so come to a knowledge of the real
facts." It is the
attitude of enquiry, not of dogmatism. Yet, strange to say, there
have been
those who have taken it in another, and quite a wrong sense. They
say, " It is
no use propounding anything different on this subject, for thus it
has been said
with authority "!
" Great Sifter " is the name of the heart doctrine, O
disciple.
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The wheel of the Good Law moves swiftly on. It grinds by night and
day. The
worthless husks it drives out from the golden grain, the refuse
from the floor.
The hand of Karma guides the wheel; the revolutions mark the
beatings of the
karmic heart.
True knowledge is the flour, false learning is the husk. If thou
wonld'st eat
the bread of wisdom, thy flour thou hast to knead with Amrita's
clear waters.
But if thou kneadest busks with Maya's dew, thou canst create but
food for the
black doves of death, the birds of birth, decay and sorrow.
The heart doctrine is called the Great Sifter because as one works
in the world
in the manner which it directs, the mistakes one makes and the
defects one has
are gradually sifted out and removed. If one were doing work
without the ideals
of the inner doctrine, one might go on making the same kind of
mistakes again
and again, life after life. Madame Blavatsky somewhere wrote that
it was one
thing to desire to do good, and another to know what is good to do.
Yet, with
our imperfect knowledge, we must go forth and do the best we can.
It is
something like learning a language. It is a mistake to try to learn
it quite
perfectly from books before one makes any attempt to speak it; one
must plunge
into it, and make mistakes in it, and in the effort one will learn
in due course
to speak without mistakes. But that will come about, of course,
only if one
converses in it with others who already know the language correctly.
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Similarly the Master, though he may be unseen, will guide the pupil
who is
sincerely trying to do his best, into the experiences that will
sift out his
faults and mistakes. Keep in mind the conviction that the final
good will
inevitably come, and let the heart be full of love; then you may
work without
fear of mistakes. They will become smaller and smaller, and fewer
and fewer, and
will eventually die away.
There is a moral to be drawn from the analogy of flour and bread.
The true
knowledge that you gain does not give you bread, but merely the
flour with which
the bread of wisdom has to be made. The kneading is the action of
the higher
Self, which works upon experiences and converts them into real
wisdom. In
ordinary men most of this kneading is done during the devachanic
period, but the
pupil of the Master has so broadened the channel between the higher
and the
lower self that he is gaining wisdom all the time.
He who takes only external knowledge, and studies it over with the
lower mind,
in the light of mere personal necessity and pleasures, is certainly
kneading
husks with maya's dew. He is not preparing for the triumph of the
higher Self;
he is not treading the Path, but is preparing the karma of future
births and
deaths, for the future vehicles and personalities that will decay
and die.
CHAPTER 3 THE LIFE OF ACTION
If thou art told that to become Arhan thou hast to cease to love
all beings—tell
them they lie.
If thou art told that to gain liberation thou hast to hate thy
mother and
disregard thy son; to disavow thy father and call him householder;
for man and
beast all pity to renounce—tell them their tongue is false.
Thus teach the Tirthikas, the unbelievers.
If thou art taught that sin is born of action and bliss of absolute
inaction,
then tell them that they err. Non-permanence of human action,
deliverance of
mind from thraldom by the cessation of sin and faults, are not for
Deva Egos.
Thus saith the doctrine of the heart.
C.W.L.—-To call a man a householder is to say that his interests
are still
centred in worldly things, but to do this with contempt, as is implied
in the
text, would certainly indicate the proud and austere qualities of
the left-hand
path, leading up to the heights of the black magicians, who regard
the best of
human love as nothing but mere sentimentality. Even though the
candidate
201
may have risen above personal desires, he cannot despise those who
are still at
the earlier stage of evolution, nor can he ignore them. Compassion
and eagerness
to help are the qualities of his nature.
That the expression householder must be taken in a metaphorical
sense is
indicated in a footnote by Madame Blavatsky, as follows:
Rathapala, the great Arhat, thus addresses his father in the legend
called
Rathapala Sutrasanne. But as all such legends are allegorical
(e.g., Rathapala's
father had a mansion With seven doors) hence the reproof to those
who accept
them literally.
Madame Blavatsky describes the Tirthikas as " ascetic
Brahmanas, visiting holy
shrines, especially sacred bathing-places." A Tirtha is
literally a "
crossing-place ". It is thus a landing or bathing place, or
any shrine, which is
a crossing place to the other worlds or the higher life. A shrine
is thus a
place where there is a special connection between the inner and the
outer
worlds. Probably the orthodox Brahmanas and Hindus in general who
visit such
Tirthas as, for example, Benares or Hardwar, were called
unbelievers because
they did not in most cases follow the Buddha in His assertion that
" within
oneself deliverance must be sought."
In the talks on At the Feet of the Master we have considered at
length the
necessity for action, and how there may be intense activity of the
body, and yet
the
202
man within may be calm, steady, serene and strong. The Deva Egos
means the
reincarnating egos, according; to Madame Blavatsky, but Swami T.
Subba Row
explained the term as meaning those who aspire to work with the
Devas and for
the helping of the world.
The teaching of the Book of the Golden Precepts is obviously
intended for those
who wish to follow that line of work. At present there are not very
many egos in
incarnation who are ready for special teaching and training—it
would be of
little use, for example, to seek among the dwellers in the east end
of London
for people who are ready to become pupils of the Masters. But as
time goes on
the numbers requiring attention will increase very rapidly, and
within a few
hundred years-there must be many Arhats prepared to teach them.
Thus a large
number of helpers will be needed, and it is to that work that many
of us are
called.
The Dharma of the eye is the embodiment of the external and the
non-existing.
The Dharma of the heart is the embodiment of Bodhi, the permanent
and
everlasting.
The word dharma may here be translated " form of religion
" or " belief", and
bodhi is simply " wisdom".
The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean. To make them
clean a cleaner
is required. The flame feels not the process of the cleaning.
" The branches of
a tree are shaken by the wind; the trunk remains unmoved."
THE LIFE OF ACTION 203
Both action and inaction may find room in thee; thy body agitated,
thy mind
tranquil, thy Soul as limpid as a mountain lake.
Whatever suffering there may be on the path of progress is
experienced only by
the lower self. The Self seated within knows the value even of the
painful
experience and is therefore quite satisfied. Many people do not
understand that
suffering is very largely a question of attitude; in Esoteric
Christianity Dr.
Annie Besant has explained how some of the great martyrs were
filled with joy
while undergoing what would be terrible pain to others, because
they were
thinking of the great honour that was theirs to suffer so for the
sake of their
Lord. So it is true that at last wrong ideas or ignorance are the
basis of all
suffering.
Physical suffering is the most difficult to deal with. We may be
able sometimes
to draw away from the physical body when it is in pain, but that does
not mean
that we have conquered the pain. If it is the result of a
particular disease in
which a microbe has to run its course, no amount of assertion will
enable an
ordinary person to drive it away; but in all cases a cheerful
attitude makes a
big difference. Most people can conquer astral pain, if they set
themselves the
task; they can refuse to permit their feelings to dwell upon the
idea that gives
them sorrow. Undesirable-emotions, such as jealousy, envy, pride
and fear, may
be described as astral diseases; they can always be eradicated by
persistent
effort to feel the opposite emotions. Mental suffering, chiefly
worry, is even
easier to control.
204
In the causal body a man might have an uneasy sense of
incompleteness or
insufficiency—but nothing more than that. Though he may feel
disappointment at
the defects of his lower representative, he knows enough to be
patient and to
persevere. He is not ignorant; but it is ignorance that makes our
suffering so
poignant down here. In childhood, when we were still more ignorant,
a trouble
lasting one day seemed a terrible tragedy; if we failed to pass an
examination
the idea of waiting a whole year for the next opportunity seemed to
us a
calamity, though in later life a year does not seem a long period
of time. To
the personality a life's failure may .seem a tragedy, but to the
ego, who has
known hundreds or thousands of incarnations, it may not appear so
vastly
important.
The ego has put ;down a personality much as a fisherman makes a
cast. He does
not expect that every cast "will be successful, and he is not
deeply troubled if
one proves a failure. To look after a personality is only one of
his activities,
so he may very well console himself with successes in other lines
of activity.
In any case, it is the loss of a day, and he may say, " Oh,
well, we will hope
to do better tomorrow." Often the personality would like more
attention from the
ego above him, and he may be sure that he will receive it as soon
as he deserves
it, as soon as the ego finds it worth while. Mr. Sinnett put
forward this desire
of the personality in a humorous way by saying that what was needed
was a school
for teaching egos to pay attention to their personalities.
205
One stage further on, in the buddhic plane, the man begins to touch
the
intensity of bliss that is the life of the Logos. At the same time
he comes
closer into touch with other men; on the lower planes he begins to
share their
suffering, but on the higher side he knows them as sparks of the
divine, and
that gives indescribable bliss, which makes the suffering seem as
naught. Thus
sorrow and suffering are for the personality only, and they exist
merely while
the consciousness is fixed in the lower planes.
Would'st thou become a Yogi of time's circle? Then, O Lanoo:
Believe thou not that sitting in dark forests, in proud seclusion
and apart from
men; believe thou not that life on roots and plants, that thirst
assuaged with
snow from the great Range—believe thou not, O devotee, that this
will lead thee
to the goal of final liberation.
Think not that breaking bone, that rending flesh and muscle unites
thee to thy
silent Self. Think not that when the sins of thy gross form are conquered,
O
victim of thy shadows, thy duty is accomplished by nature and by
man.
Aryasanga is here once more preaching against the seeking of
liberation as mere
escape from the wheel of births and deaths. The yogi of time's
circle is the one
who is willing to remain within the process of time, for the sake
of helping
others. When one considers the
206
vast period of time for which the Lord Buddha and the Lord Maitreya
had been
preparing themselves for their great work, which has been explained
in The
Masters and the Path,1 one cannot but feel oppressed by the thought
of such
enormous periods of incarnate existence. Undoubtedly, however, time
cannot be to
them exactly what it is to us. Even if "a thousand ages in Thy
sight are like ah
evening gone " does not apply to Them, Their sense of time
must be vastly
different from ours. Certainly They are also intensely happy in
Their work, and
where there is happiness, as everybody knows by experience, time is
of no
account-—in fact, under those circumstances we always wish that it
could be
lengthened.
Very wrong ideas have arisen in most of the religions on the
subject of
asceticism. In the original Greek the word asketes meant simply one
who
exercises himself as an athlete does. But ecclesiasticism impounded
the word and
changed its sense, applying it to the practice of self-denial in
various ways
for the purpose of spiritual progress, on the theory that the
bodily nature with
its passions and desires has been the stronghold of the evil
inherent in man
since the fall of Adam, and that it must therefore be suppressed by
fasting and
penance. In the Oriental religions we sometimes encounter a similar
idea, based
on the conception of matter as essentially evil, and following from
that the
deduction that an approach to ideal good or an escape from the
miseries of
existence can be effected only by subduing or torturing the body.
1 Op. cit., Ch. xiv.
207
In both these theories there is dire confusion of thought. The body
and its
desires are not in themselves evil or good, but it is true that
before real
progress can be made they must be brought under the control of the
higher Self
within. To govern the body is necessary, but to torture it is
foolish.
There appears to be a widespread delusion that to be really good
one must always
be uncomfortable-—that discomfort in itself is directly pleasing to
the Logos.
Nothing can be more grotesque than this idea. In Europe this
unfortunately
common theory is one of the many horrible legacies left by the
ghastly blasphemy
of Calvinism. I myself have actually heard a child say: " I
feel so happy that I
am sure I must be very wicked " —a truly awful result of
criminally distorted
teaching.
Another reason- for the gospel of the uncomfortable is a confusion
of cause and
effect. It is observed that the really advanced person is simple in
his habits
and often careless about a large number of minor luxuries that are
considered
important and really necessary by the ordinary man. But such
carelessness about
luxury is the effect, not the cause of his advancement. He does not
trouble
himself about these small matters because he has largely outgrown
them and they
no longer interest him—not in the least because he considers them
as wrong; and
one who, while still craving for them, imitates him in abstaining
from them does
not thereby become advanced.
It is true that our duty to the world is not accomplished when we
have purified
ourselves. Then
208
indeed does it become really possible for us to do our best work for
our fellow
men, and since in the higher life the maxim " From, each
according to his power,
to each according to his need " prevails, our most serious
duty begins at this
point, when the shadows, the lower bodies, have been mastered.
The silent Self in this passage, refers, says Madame Blavatsky, to
the seventh
principle, which is atma. Our studies in the first Fragment have
already shown
how this idea of silence is attached to that part of the higher
Self.
The blessed ones have scorned to do so. The Lion of the Law, the
Lord of Mercy,
perceiving the true cause of human woe, immediately forsook the
sweet but
selfish rest of quiet wilds. From Aranyaka he became the Teacher of
mankind.
After Julai had entered the Nirvana, he preached on mount and
plain, and held
discourses in the cities, to Devas, men and Gods.
All the Northern and Southern Buddhist traditions agree in the
statement that
the Buddha quitted His solitude as soon as He had reached inner
enlightenment
and had solved the problem of life, and that He at once began
teaching publicly.
The term Aranyaka means a forest dweller. The books relate that
Gautama went
into the forest in order to meditate, and there He seated Himself
under the
bodhi tree and resolved to attain illumination. When that was
achieved, He
considered whether He would give His
209
teaching to the world; he knew that most of the people would not
understand it,
and that it might therefore do harm.- But then, as was remarked at
the beginning
of our study of this Fragment, the voice of the earth came to him,
and begged
him to teach. I do not know exactly what was meant by the voice of
the earth,
but it is said that that led him to decide to teach mankind on the
physical
plane.
In this passage there are several titles given to the Buddha. He is
called
Julai. That is the Chinese name for Tathagata, which is the title
given to every
Buddha. Tathagata means literally " he who has gone
likewise", he has followed
in the steps of his predecessors.
It is a fact that when the Buddha preached, others besides men
gathered round to
listen to his teaching and enjoy his aura.
Sow kindly acts and thou shalt reap their fruit. Inaction in a deed
of mercy is
action in a deadly sin.
I have already quoted this in commenting on At the Feet of the
Master. Each man
has the responsibility for exercising the powers of consciousness
that he has so
far developed. If he fails to exert himself and neglects to use
them, he is
guilty of sins of omission, which are just as serious as sins of
commission. For
example, it is our duty to interfere, when we can do so without
doing more harm
than good, in cases of wrong or cruelty, such as cruelty to animals
or children.
The wise man, seeing such things, will not let indignation master
him.
210
He must feel also for the man who is guilty of the cruelty. His
state is. in
many ways more pitiable than that of his victim, and he will have
to suffer in
turn, on account of karmic law. So, if we can induce him to see the
error of his
ways and stop his cruelty, we have done good to both. When it is
our duty to
interfere, and we fail to do so, we share the karma of the wrong
doing. The same
is true when we allow others to injure ourselves, without
resistance. We are
making it easy for them to do wrong; we are tempting them, and
assisting them,
and the karma is partly ours.
Thus saith the Sage:
Shalt thou abstain from action? Not so shall thy Soul gain her
freedom. To reach
Nirvana one mast reach Self-knowledge, and Self-knowledge is of
loving deeds the
child.
It is not until we begin to work for others that we can acquire
real knowledge
of life. In the attempt we learn where we stand, and what qualities
must be
developed. There was an old blind man living in the south of India,
who said
that his blindness had been indirectly a source of great happiness
to him. He
was also in the deepest poverty, and had spent his life in
wandering from
village to village, where he used to advise the people in their
difficulties,
and also assist them in some cases with his yoga powers. He used to
tell how, by
meditation, he had managed to awaken the memory of his past lives;
and he
remembered that, some hundreds of years before, he had been a very
rich and
powerful man, and had used
211
his power to injure those who happened to do what he did not like.
He recognized
that his blindness and poverty were due to his wrong deeds in that
former life.
He said he was sure that if he had gone on being a rich man he
might never have
learned to love his fellows, as he had been quite set in a selfish
path of life.
But now he had had to mingle with others, most of whom knew
suffering; they had
been very kind to him, and he had learned to love them. The
happiness of that
love, he said, as compared with his previous condition, was
something so great
and incomparable that no suffering was in his opinion too great to
purchase it.
This man claimed to be a pupil of one of our Masters, and lie
certainly was an
illustration of the teaching that self-knowledge is of loving deeds
the child.
Have patience, candidate, as one who fears, no failure, courts no
success. Fix
thy Soul's gaze upon the star whose ray thou art, the flaming star
that shines
within the lightless depths of ever-being, the boundless fields of
the unknown.
The disciple fears no failure because he knows that the plan of the
Logos will
be carried out; no one's failure can make any difference to that.
We may have
the opportunity to do a piece of His work. If we should fail to do
it, it will
be done in some other way through someone else. It makes no
difference to the
Logos, though it may make a very great difference to ourselves. It
happens
constantly that people miss their opportunities, but the great
plans are made in
view of every
212
contingency. Our Masters never appear to notice when we lose an
opportunity, but
I think that they are quite aware of it. Madame Blavatsky used
sometimes to say
about some person: " He has earned the right to have his
chance." The Masters
always assume that we are going to take our opportunities.
The student who has tried to do some good work and has found the
opposing forces
too great for him, will not be disappointed or lose patience if he
understands
that all efforts put forth for good must produce a proportionate
result in some
way, though the results may be unseen and though there may be for
the
personality none of the satisfaction which conies from seeing the
good that has
been done. It is the same in the case of astral work at night. That
work is none
the less good and effective when done by those who are not able to
bring any
memory of it back into the physical brain. The laws of nature do
not cease to
operate because we cannot see the result, or do not remember what
we have done.
Usually the people who have done the greatest work in the world do
not see the
result of it. Take, for instance, the example of the Christ's three
years of
preaching. He died as a malefactor, execrated by the populace, and
at his death
the number of his followers was only a hundred and twenty; now
there are many
millions. William Wilberforce, who worked steadily for over forty
years against
the greatest odds for the abolition of slavery in the British
Colonies, heard
only three days before his death that total abolition of slavery
had at last
become law. Impatience and depression would
213
have lost his cause. We are all in the same position, in our lesser
ways. There
is none who cannot take up some good work, and push on with it with
tireless and
endless patience, regardless of immediate success or failure.
" The star whose ray thou art " is always that which
shines above us; for one it
is the Ego, for another, more advanced, the Monad, and so on to the
Planetary
Logos, and even the Logos of our system. To know our own star is
also to know
the ray to which we belong—which of the seven great rays is the one
that
especially connects us with the Logos. These seven rays are
indicated in the
chapter dealing with the Ghohans of the Rays in The Masters and the
Path, and
also in The Seven Rays, by Prof. Ernest Wood. When the higher self
is the master
of the personality, it becomes possible for the disciple to
specialize in the
work of the ray to which that higher self belongs, and then he can
make very
rapid progress in power and usefulness.
Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure. Thy shadows
live and
vanish; that which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee
knows (for it
is knowledge) is not of fleeting life: it is the Man that was, that
is, and will
be, for whom the hour shall never strike.
Besides patience we need perseverance, and nothing can develop this
quality in
us better than a clear perception of the fact that we endure all
through the
ages, and that death is only a passing incident, with no power to
deflect us
from our path. Sometimes people say: " Why
214
should I take up such and such work? I cannot possibly finish it in
this life."
But the fact is that there is only one real life-time—that of the
ego, which
endures for ever, for all practical purposes. It is wise to begin
any work in
which you are interested, or the great task of eliminating faults,
even in old
age, for all the good that is done is carried forward to the next
body, and in
it the impulse to continue the work will be felt while it is young.
If one
postpones the work to a future life, once more old age may arrive
before one has
the opportunity that will draw attention to it. If you are now ninety,
and you
have just heard of Theosophy, and you want to hear of it in your
youth in your
next life, throw yourself into it now with whatever vigour you may
have. There
is also the great benefit to be derived from the stay in devachan
(unless you
happen to be one of those who have the privilege of being able to
renounce that
period) for in that state whatever work you have done is dwelt upon
and worked
up into faculty which will be a great help in the next incarnation.
Perseverance is necessary also because no great work can be
completed in a short
time. Think, for example, of the artist who is painting a great
picture; he will
have very little to show for it in the first few days, perhaps even
weeks, and
it is also quite possible that he may not be pleased with what he
has been able
to achieve at the end of a few weeks, so that he has to begin all
over again.
A very useful lesson in perseverance may be derived from a study of
the history
of the Theosophical Society
215
in the early days. The two great founders, Madame Blavatsky and
Colonel Olcott,
could not have succeeded in establishing the Society permanently,
and giving it
the material for future growth, had they not had a clear vision of
the inner
side of things, a realization that their work was part of a plan
lasting
throughout eternity, and was therefore sure to succeed. They
founded the Society
in New York in 18
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, and worked prodigiously at Isis Unveiled, which was duly
published. Still, some five years later they were almost alone in
the work, and
they found it necessary to go to India, to some friends there, to
make a new
start. Even then there were endlessly varied troubles, year after
year, which
would have crushed almost anybody else. Madame Blavatsky, with a
body seldom
free from pain, could still work tirelessly, could produce The
Secret Doctrine
and other great works, because of her knowledge of the Masters and
the inner
side of things.
CHAPTER 4 THE SECRET PATH
If thou would'st reap sweet peace and rest, disciple, sow with the
seeds of
merit the fields of future harvests.
Accept the woes of birth.
C.W.L.—Aryasanga is all-the time endeavouring to persuade the
disciple to follow
the higher path of renunciation, and not to accept the peace of
nirvana. Life in
the atmic or nirvanic plane has been defined as rest in
omniscience, but we must
understand that it is rest only in the sense that there is no
consciousness of
exertion followed by fatigue. There is on that plane the most
tremendous
activity; that is the very essence of the nature of being on that
plane, as I
have already tried to explain.1
People want rest because they feel fatigue, but when one is out of
the body in
full consciousness one finds that the fatigue is gone, and then one
no longer
desires rest. In such conditions we look upon rest rather as we do
upon death
down here; we do not want less but more of the power and energy
that we enjoy.
The Solar Logos 1 Ante, p.
-------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK. CF24-1DL
.
217
does not rest, even for a moment. If He did so, even for a second,
we should all
cease to be.
Many of those who have reached nirvana have nothing further to do
with the
world's evolution; yet it does not seem possible for anyone to have
reached that
level and not to be pouring forth glory and splendour on those
below. Even in
the case of one so devoted that he continually turns all his
thought upwards,
and none downwards, one would think he could not help shedding
devotion on those
below.
There are seven paths open to the Adept, and most of them take the
candidate
away from the earth, yet they are all equally ways of serving the
Logos.
Presumably every Adept is willing to go where he is most needed and
can be most
serviceable, but at least it seems necessary to be perfectly
willing to remain
and accept " the woes of birth", if called upon. Any
other attitude, and
especially the idea of selfish escape from the world, liberation
for one's
separate self, could not carry the aspirant so high. To us it may
seem that to
stay with and help our humanity is the kindest thing to do, and
that is very
natural, for if we cannot thus love those who are already near and
known to us,
how shall we love others who are not known? Still, we must not
forget that if
the Lords of the Flame from Venus had not left their system and come
down into
ours to help us, we should be at least one round behind the
position that we
have so far achieved. It may be the duty of some of us in the
future to go to
the help of some other system less advanced than ours.
218
At the same time, there is no question that more and more advanced
pupils of the
Masters will be needed to carry on their work on earth. It is open
to the Arhat
to; take no more physical births if he so chooses; but it is
evident that our
Masters wish us to continue taking birth for the sake of the work.
Step out of sunlight into shade, to make more room for others. The
tears that
water the parched soil of pain and sorrow bring forth the blossoms
and the
fruits of karmic retribution. Out of the furnace of man's life and
its black
smoke, winged flames arise, flames purified, that soaring onward,
'neath the
karmic eye, weave in the end the fabric glorified of the three
vestures of the
Path.
The opening portion of this passage seems to imply-that there is not
enough
sunlight for all; but that is surely not so. All can be happy. We
make our own
shadow, as the earth does. Sorrows and trouble are of our own
making; they are
our own karma, as is everything that comes to us. What Aryasanga
means is that
one should always be ready to help others, even at the cost of
trouble or loss
to oneself.
There are few kinds of action that bring great karmic suffering.
Cruelty does,
of course, and there are some others. But most of people's actual
suffering
comes from the way in which they take the inconveniences of life
that karma
brings to them. The suffering is then very distinctly "
ready-money karma ".
Such, for example, is the selfish mourning for those who have
passed
THE SECRET PATH 219
on to a happier state of existence, which causes suffering to
everybody
concerned, often including the dead, who feel the depression and
sorrow very
greatly. What karma brings to a man is never more than he can bear,
and bear
easily; but that is not the case with what he adds to it of foolish
thought, and
feeling and action.
These vestures are: Nirmanakaya, Sambhogakaya and Dharmakaya, robe
sublime.
The three vestures will be discussed fully in our study of the
third Fragment.
They represent three possibilities which lie open to the man who
has attained
Adeptship. He can at once accept nirvana, or take it after having
gone through
other high spiritual experiences, or remain in touch with the earth
as a
Nirmanakaya in order to fill the spiritual reservoir, or he can
take up work in
other globes or systems. This last choice is by no means selfish,
of course; it
is an impossible supposition that and selfishness could be possible
at such a
level.
There was a reference in the first edition of this book to "
selfish Buddhas ",
but Madame Blavatsky, after her death, asked Dr. Besant to remove
the passage
which contained it, because it was causing so much dangerous
misunderstanding.
It referred to those who are called the Pratyeka Buddhas. These are
great Adepts
at the level of the Buddha, but on the first ray. Because "
eka " means "one",
some Northern Buddhists have thought that a Pratyeka Buddha is one
who works for
himself alone, which appears a blasphemous idea to anyone who knows
where they
stand. The three Lords of the
220
Flame, who are the pupils of the Lord of the World, are Pratyeka
Buddhas. They
came to the earth to serve it and hasten its evolution along the
line of the
first ray, while the Buddha works on the second. It is foolish to
criticize them
for not doing work which is not theirs. It would be as sensible to
find fault
with a magistrate for not being a schoolmaster, saying, " See
how little he
cares about the education of children! " Of these great Beings
I have tried to
give some slight account in The Masters and the Path.1
The Shangna robe, 'tis true, can purchase light eternal. The
Shangna robe alone
gives the Nirvana of destruction; it stops rebirth, but O Lanoo, it
also kills
compassion. No longer can the perfect Buddhas, Who don the
Dharmakaya glory,
help man's salvation. Alas! shall selves be sacrificed to self;
mankind, unto
the weal of units?
Know, O beginner, this is the open path, the way to selfish bliss,
shunned by
the Bodhisattvas of the Secret Heart, the Buddhas of compassion.
The Shangna robe is something very far beneath any of the three
vestures above
mentioned. It means here the balancing of karma, and the
destruction of the
personality by quenching all desires, including that for life. It
implies an
evolution of the causal body far higher than most men have
attained, but without
the development of love and compassion and the desire to help the
world. A man
who has thus freed himself from the necessity of
1 Op. cit., Ch. XV,
221
rebirth may live as an ego on the higher levels of the mental world
for an
enormously long time.
In this passage, it is almost as though Aryasanga were complaining
against those
who take the Dharmakaya vesture, and retire to distant planes or
systems. But it
would be really impossible for Him to do that. He could not have
thought that
there were selfish Buddhas. The Pratyeka Buddhas certainly are at
the same level
of attainment as the Lord Buddha; They have the same quality of
compassion that
he has, but it is not their duty to fill the office. For thousands
of years
before their attainment of such heights these Great Ones must have
been utterly
incapable of anything like selfishness. We must remember that The
Voice of the
Silence was written down by a disciple of Aryasanga after the death
of the
latter, so he is not wholly responsible for it, and it appears that
here the
disciple must have allowed his own misconception to colour the
ideas, of his
Teacher.
To live to benefit mankind is the first step.
To practise the six glorious virtues is the second.
To don Nirmanakaya's humble robe is to forego eternal bliss for
self, to help on
man's salvation. To reach Nirvana's bliss but to renounce it, is
the supreme,
the final step—the highest on renunciation's path.
Know, O disciple, this is the secret path, selected by the Buddhas
of
perfection, who sacrificed the Self to weaker selves.
222
The six glorious virtues are the paramitas, already considered in
Chapter I of
Fragment II. They represent one of the systems of travelling on the
path.
Another is given in the set of qualifications expounded in At the
Feet of the
Master, followed by the four stages of the Path proper.
It is not quite true that the Nirmanakaya gives up bliss, for
Adeptship is
itself the attainment of bliss. What is true is that the Adept
could remain
always on the stupendous levels which he has reached but instead he
comes down
to help. By doing that, however, he does not forego the eternal
bliss which is
inherent in him; He merely decides to work at lower levels.
Yet, if the doctrine of the heart is too high-winged for thee, if
thou needest
help thyself and fearest to offer help to others—then, thou of
timid heart, be
warned in time: remain content with the eye doctrine of the Law.
Hope still. For
if the secret Path is unattainable this day, it is within thy reach
to-morrow.
Learn that no efforts, not the smallest—whether in right or wrong
direction—can
vanish from the world of causes. E'en wasted smoke remains not
traceless. " A
harsh word uttered in past lives is not destroyed, but ever comes
again." The
pepper plant will not give birth to roses, nor the sweet
jessamine's silver star
to thorn or thistle turn.
Thou canst create this day thy chances for thy morrow. In the great
journey,
causes sown each hour bear each its harvest of effects, for rigid
justice
223
rules the world. With
mighty sweep of never-erring , action it brings to
mortals lives of weal or woe,, the karmic progeny of all our former
thoughts and
deeds.
Take then as much as merit hath in store for thee, O thou of
patient heart. Be
of good cheer and rest content with fate. Such is thy Karma, the
Karma of the
cycle of thy births, the destiny of those who, in their pain and
sorrow, are
born along with thee, rejoice and weep from life to life, chained
to thy
previous actions.
If one cannot rise immediately to the resolve to be utterly
unselfish there is
no need to despair. One must work on in the right direction until
one reaches
the position where that ideal will seem perfectly natural and
comparatively easy
of accomplishment. Sometimes people feel that because they cannot
fulfil a great
ideal that is put before them there is nothing that they can do
which is worth
doing. They collapse, and do nothing at all, in consequence. But
that is a great
mistake. The Lord Buddha was very wise in dealing with all kinds of
people, and
he took care to avoid this kind of discouragement, by speaking of
the highest
path to his monks alone. He preached the middle path to the general
public, and
told them to live the highest and noblest life of which they were
capable, so
that later on they would be in a position to enter his Order. He
said that they
were to-day creating their opportunities for to-morrow, that is for
their next
incarnation. There is
224
no need to despair, for the man who takes one opportunity receives
tenfold more
opportunities, and he who uses what powers he has as fully as
possible, without
overstraining himself, certainly develops those powers at a
surprising rate.
The last paragraph makes reference to those who are born together.
It is fact
that people evolve in groups, the same people coming closely together
in
different relationships again and again. What happens to one in any
such group
reacts very much upon the others, for both good and ill. It should
be an
additional incentive to those who are aspiring to realize that
whatever they are
able to attain will be of great benefit to a number of people whose
destinies
are thus bound up closely with their own.
I
CHAPTER 5 THE WHEEL OF LIFE
Act thou for them to-day, and they will act for thee to-morrow.
'Tis from the bud of renunciation of the self, that springeth the
sweet fruit of
final liberation.
To perish doomed is he who out of fear of Mara refrains from
helping man, lest
he should act for self. 'The pilgrim who would cool his weary limbs
in running
waters, yet dares not plunge for terror of the stream, risks to
succumb from
heat. Inaction based on selfish fear can bear but evil fruit.
The selfish devotee lives to no purpose. The man who does not go
through his
appointed work in life has lived in vain.
Follow the wheel of life; follow the wheel of duty to race and kin,
to friend
and foe, and close thy mind to pleasures as to pain. Exhaust the
law of karmic
retribution. Gain Siddhis for thy future birth.
C.W.L.—There are people who feel that because they cannot do great
things or
make rapid advance no effort
226
is worth making. That is a great mistake. At least they can live to
help those
with whom karma has brought them into contact. They will never find
themselves
in a better position until they make the most of their present
environment. If
they will do this, when the time comes for them to make the great
effort
involved in taking the First Initiation, loving friends will be
there to help.
Real friends are those who are the friends of the ego. These never
bind one down
for the satisfaction of their own very limited and human, and often
really
selfish emotions. They always give one the freedom that is required
to follow
the higher path.
Some good people refrain from helping others, fearing that they
themselves may
be prompted by a selfish motive. Very often charity is bestowed
upon the
unfortunate not really with the desire to help them, but to relieve
the giver of
the unhappiness that he feels at the sight of suffering. Such a
person would
never go out of his way to find people in trouble, in order that
they might be
helped. Again, there are others who systematically give a portion
of their large
incomes to charitable organizations, so that they may enjoy the
remainder with
no qualms of conscience. Knowing this, a disciple sometimes
questions himself as
to whether his own motive is pure. But to refrain from helping
because he doubts
his own motive is surely a form of selfishness. Whatever our motive
may be, we
must help, though only that counts for real progress on the Path
which is done
purely to help the sufferer, without thought of self.
227
It is necessary to use discrimination in helping. As the Hindus
say, help should
be given to the right person, at the right time, and in the right
place. Yet the
necessity for thought should not cause hesitation. We may not
always be certain
which is the wiser of two courses of action, but we must
nevertheless decide
upon one of them, so that the opportunity to do good may not be
entirely
overlooked. Sometimes it is only by thought that we can help, but
that, as I
have said before, is very important.1 The strength of many a man
who is doing
vigorous work in the world comes largely from others who are
engaged in
radiating spiritual force in meditation.
The wheel of duty to race and kin, to friend and foe, does, as a
matter of fact,
offer the best of opportunities for progress. The Lords of Karma
see to it that
each person is given the conditions which are suited to his growth.
They give a
man the particular work that is likely to develop the qualities
that he needs.
At a low level of development there may be ten thousand places
where a man can
have the conditions needed for his progress. But when a man is more
highly
evolved his environment has to be chosen with the greatest care,
for everyone
must be put absolutely in the position where he can best advance.
It is
therefore quite inaccurate to say that a man succeeds in spite of
his
circumstances; difficulties are put in his way in order that he may
transcend
them, and that his character and powers may grow.
The man who does his daily duties well, will soon be trusted with
higher ones.
Every one who can be trusted
l Ante, Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 2, 5; Part IV, Ch. 1; Part V, Ch. 6.
228
to do good and conscientious work is eagerly wanted by those who
guide the
destiny of mankind. Be faithful in small things, and you will be
made ruler over
many things, as the Bible says. To be ruler over many things is a
responsible
position, and in occultism it is given only to those who have
proved themselves
faithful in the small things. That is the test that the Master
gives. Many
people neglect plain everyday duty for some visionary work in the
future,
perhaps of doubtful utility, and not intended specially for them.
Many also
regret the ties that they formed before they knew of Theosophy,
when they now
find them hampering. But they do their duty. Unsuitable ties will
drop away when
the time comes, when that freedom will be most useful for the
aspirant's
development, and what is more important, for the world's work. But
if they are
broken prematurely they will only entangle the man again and much
trouble and
pain will be caused.
If sun thou canst not be, then be the humble planet. Aye, if thou
art debarred
from flaming, like the noon-day sun upon the snow-capped mount of
purity
eternal, then choose, O neophyte, a humbler course.
Point out the way—however dimly, and lost among the host—as does
the evening
star to those who tread their path in darkness.
Behold Migmar, as in bis crimson veils his eye sweeps over
slumbering Earth.
Behold the fiery aura of the hand of Lhagpa extended in protecting
229
love over the heads of his ascetics. Both are now servants to
Nyima, left in his
absence silent watchers in the night. Yet both in Kalpas past were
bright
Nyimas, and may in future days again become two suns. Such are the
falls and
rises of the karmic law in nature.
Be, O Lanoo, like them. Give light and comfort to the toiling
pilgrim, and seek
out him who knows still less than thou; who in his wretched
desolation sits
starving for the bread of wisdom and the bread which feeds the
shadow, without a
Teacher, hope or consolation, and let him hear the Law.
In a foot-note, H.P.B. says:
Nyima, the sun in Tibetan astrology. Migmar or Mars is symbolised
by an eye, and
Lhagpa, or Mercury, by a hand.
There are here several points of interesting analogy. The two
planets mentioned
give their light at night, when the sun is out of sight, and all is
dark. It is
so with us. We have to help those who are in greater darkness than
ourselves;
there is no one who cannot find someone more ignorant than himself
whom he may
teach. Even if those around us are not ready to enter the Path, we
can lead them
in the right direction towards it.
At the time of the transference of life from the moon to the earth,
the planets
glowed and shone like small suns. But Mars is mainly a desert now,
and that is
why
230
he reflects the yellow or reddish light. From the standpoint of the
poetic
author of these verses, they are doing their best work in giving
light to man
now. The idea illustrates the fact that we are not necessarily
doing our best
work when we shine most. Also, when a building; has to be erected,
the
foundations must be put in first. They do not count for anything in
the matter
of appearance, being hidden out of sight, but on them the building
will be
erected. So in the common work of every day the candidate is
performing useful
service to society, and at the same time developing the higher
siddhis which are
the spiritual powers of the ego.
The Teacher now tells the candidate what to say to those whom he is
trying to
bring to the Path.
Tell him, O candidate, that he who makes of pride and self-regard
bond-maidens
to devotion; that he, who cleaving to existence, still lays his
patience and
submission to the Law as a sweet flower at the feet of
Shakya-Thub-pa, becomes a
Srotapatti in this birth. The Siddhis of perfection may loom far,
far away; but
the first step is taken, the stream is entered, and he may gain the
eye-sight of
the mountain eagle, the hearing of the timid dove.
Tell him, O aspirant, that true devotion may bring him back the
knowledge, that
knowledge which was his in former births. The (Jew-sight and
deva-hearing are
not obtained hi one short birth.
231
Shakya-Thub-pa is the Lord Buddha.
The Srota-patti is, as has been explained,
" he who enters the stream ". An analogy can be drawn between the outward
act
of laying one's service at the feet of the Teacher, and the inner
change when
the well-developed manas realizes the presence of buddhi, and bows
down before
that higher principle, resolving henceforth to use all its powers
in obedience
to its behests. In the
ordinary life of men it is generally the mental nature
that is allowed to have the last word. For example, in the
matter of
vivisection,1 many people
whose feelings shrink from the practice with
loathing, still decide that it must go on, because they think it is
the only way
to obtain certain knowledge which will help humanity.
But the minority, who
are in the right, say:
"No, it is impossible that vivisection can lead to
good. Our higher nature
says with a clear voice that it is utterly wrong."
If these people were in the majority they would stop it, and then
some other way
would be found to secure human health; the mind would be set to
work in
obedience to the higher intuition to find a better way.
Every one who feels enthusiasm on hearing about the Path is sure to
have worked
for it in a former birth, perhaps in many previous lives. It is
encouraging to
know this, for then one may expect to recover quickly the
attainments of former
lives, the deva-sight and deva-hearing which are the faculties of
responding to
the inner voice and of seeing life and the world with the eyes of
the spirit. 1
See ante, Vol. I, Part V, Chapter 4.
232
Be humble, if thou would'st attain to wisdom: be humbler still,
when wisdom thou
hast mastered.
Be like the ocean which receives all streams and rivers. The
ocean's mighty calm
remains unmoved; it feels them not.
Restrain by thy divine thy lower self. Restrain by the eternal the
divine.
Aye, great is he who is the slayer of desire: still greater he in
whom the Self
divine has slain the very knowledge of desire.
Guard thou the lower lest it soil the higher.
As I have said before, he who stands in the presence of the Masters
cannot but
be humble, conscious as he is of the great gulf that exists between
them and
himself. Not that even the physical presence of the Master,
however, causes any
uneasiness or depression; on the contrary, in his presence we feel
at our best
and we realize that we can achieve because he has achieved. It is
so also with
the gaining of knowledge. The man who can grasp some big ideas can
also see what
remains to be learned that he does not yet know, and how much
mystery there is
in familiar things that others think to be quite simple and well
understood. So
he who has much knowledge is likely to be humble, and the aspirant
is warned
that when pride rises in him, it is a sign that he is unconsciously
shutting in
front of himself the door to further and higher knowledge.
The candidate must also practise moving among the disturbances of
the world,
which play upon him all the
time—physically, astrally and mentally—without permitting them to
agitate him.
He must so train the lower vehicles that they will respond not to
these outer
calls, but to the inner commands. The ego is divine; with its aid
the lower self
must be controlled; and when that is done even the ego will have to
be
controlled by the Monad, the eternal Self. That all this may be
done, the pupil
must constantly guard the vehicles attending to purity of food and
drink and
magnetism, of words and feelings and thoughts, as has been fully
explained in
The Masters and the Path.
The way to final freedom is within thy Self. That way begins and
ends outside of
self.
Unpraised by men and humble is the mother of all rivers in
Tirthika's proud
sight; empty the human form, though filled with Amrita's sweet
waters, in the
sight of fools. Withal the birth-place of the sacred rivers is the
sacred land,
and he who wisdom hath is honoured by all men.
The orthodox Christian usually considers that there are three
stages in the
growth of a soul. First, the man acts rightly for fear of hell.
Secondly, he
does so with the desire of reaching heaven. Thirdly, he does right
for love of
Christ, who sacrificed himself to bring men to that condition of
feeling. There
is, however, a fourth stage, when the way is found by realizing
ourselves as one
with the Self. Then the man does right because it is right, not
even for the
sake of making the Master happy or of expressing gratitude to him.
Our
deliverance
234
is thus from within. No external consideration can; determine our
steps of
progress on the Path. It is not a question of how long we have been
at a certain
level; we shall take the next step when we have developed the
necessary
qualities and powers within ourselves. No one need be anxious about
this, for as
the Tamil proverb says: " Ripe fruit does not remain upon the
branch."
The Tirthika, as we saw before, is the Brahmana ascetic who visits
the sacred
shrines, -and is evidently regarded here as feeling somewhat proud
of having
done so. Just so, some of the Hadjis—the Muhammadans who have made
a pilgrimage
to Mecca—are proud because they have done that. Such men are
somewhat like the
society people of our own day who are proud to say they have seen
the latest
play or have read the book of the day—though what they have learned
in the
process it may be difficult to say. Perhaps Aryasanga's scribe,
being a
Buddhist, was not above sectarian feeling