Theosophy as Divine Wisdom - Gandhi and Theosophy -

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Spiritual Evolution

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:55:18 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION

The universe is even as a great temple.
Claude de St. Martin

The central tenets of Theosophia are not derived from any ancient or modern sect but represent the accumulated wisdom of the ages, the unrecorded inheritance of humanity. Its vast scheme of cosmic and human evolution furnishes all true seekers with the symbolic alphabet necessary to interpret their recurrent visions as well as the universal framework and metaphysical vocabulary, drawn from many mystics and seers, which enable them to communicate their own intuitive perceptions. All authentic mystical writings are enriched by the alchemical flavour of Theosophical thought. Theosophy is an integrated system of fundamental verities taught by Initiates and Adepts across millennia. It is the Philosophia Perennis, the philosophy of human perfectibility, the science of spirituality and the religion of responsibility. It is the primeval fount of myriad religious systems as well as the hidden essence and esoteric wisdom of each. Man, an immortal monad, has been able to preserve this sacred heritage through the sacrificial efforts of enlightened and compassionate individuals, or Bodhisattvas, who constitute an ancient Brotherhood. They quietly assist in the ethical evolution and spiritual development of the whole of humanity. Theosophia is Divine Wisdom, transmitted and verified over aeons by the sages who belong to this secret Brotherhood.

The supreme presupposition of theosophical thought is an eternal substance-principle postulated as the ineffable Ground of all being. It is called a substance-principle because it becomes increasingly substantial and differentiated on the plane of manifestations while it essentially remains a homogeneous principle in abstract space and eternal duration. The perceived universe is a complex mirroring of this Unknown Source, all finite conceptions of which are necessarily incomplete. It is the Absolute Negation of all that exists. It is Be-ness or Sat, the Secondless Reality, the No-thing of ancient philosophy, the Boundless Lir, the Unknown Beginning of Celtic cosmogony. Compared with It, all manifestation is no more than an impermanent illusion or maya, a kaleidoscopic medium through which the one Reality shows itself in a series of reflections. Spirit and matter are the two facets of this indivisible principle, and only seem to be separate during a vast period of cosmic manifestation. They radiate from this transcendent source, yet are not causally related to It, since neither quality nor mode may properly be ascribed to It. They appear periodically on the objective plane as the opposite poles of this Reality yet they are not inherently separate, but mutually coexist as spirit- matter. In manifestation this substratum differentiates itself into seven planes of increasing density, reaching towards the region of sense data. Everywhere the root essence of homogeneous substance is the same, transforming itself by minute degrees from the most ethereal to the most gross.

The seven planes of manifestation may be seen as condensations of rarefied matter and also as living streams of intelligences – primordial rays proceeding from an invisible Spiritual Sun. All modes of activity in the universe are internally guided by powers and potencies arrayed in an almost endless series of hierarchies, each with its exact function and precise scope of action. They are called Dhyan Chohans in Tibetan cosmogony and bear many other titles in the rich panoply of religious traditions – Angels, Devas, Gods, Elohim, etc. All these are transmitting agents of cosmic Law (Rta) which guides the evolution of each atom on every plane in space, the hierarchies varying enormously in their respective degrees of creative consciousness and monadic intelligence. As an aggregate, this immense host of forces forms the manifesting Verbum of an unmanifest Presence, constituting simultaneously the active Mind of the cosmos and its immutable Law. The idea of myriad hierarchies of intelligences animating visible Nature is a vital key to understanding all true mysticism. Many flashes of intuitive perception reveal multitudes of radiant beings elaborating the interior architecture of matter. Great mystics show a reverential recognition of the Logos or Verbum, the Army of the Voice, operating behind the screen of surface events as the noumenal cause of natural phenomena. This involves deciphering the signs of these intelligent forces by following the traces of their effects. The natural world bears the signatures of a divine archetypal world. With proper keys to archaic symbolism, the true seeker can read these signatures and recover the lost knowledge which would restore a primeval state of gnosis equivalent to that of the gods. The letters composing the Sanskrit language are the phenomenal expressions of these finer forces, and by understanding them one could discover the root vibration, the ineffable Word, reverberating throughout the sentient world of visible Nature.

The arcane teaching concerning the Great Chain of Being in the supernatural realm continually reappears in human history as the inexhaustible fountain-head of aesthetic expression, heroic action and mystic illumination. The Candle of Vision, the Magician of the Beautiful, the Mount of Transfiguration, the Mighty Mother, are all different faces of the divine Logos. The diverse expressions of creativity in the arts, religion and philosophy stem from this common unseen source, and the search for its origin is the hallowed mission of many a mystic and artist. The problem of tracing particulars to universals is as crucial to art as to psychology. The sevenfold classification of man’s inner constitution corresponds to seven cosmic planes of being. Man is truly a microcosm and miniature copy of the macrocosm. Like the macrocosm, the individual is divine in essence, a direct radiation from the central Spiritual Sun. As pure spirit, every human being needs the vestures through which life may be experienced on differentiated planes of existence, so that one can become fully conscious of individual immortality and one’s indissoluble identity with the whole. Every person is a complete reflection of the universe, revealing oneself to oneself by means of seven differentiations. In one’s deepest self, the individual is Atman, the universal Spirit which is mirrored in the luminous soul or Buddhi. The light of Buddhi is focussed through manas or impersonal intellect the source of human individuation. These three together constitute the imperishable fire in man, the immortal Triad that undertakes an immense pilgrimage through successive incarnations to emerge as an effortlessly self-conscious agent of the divine will, the Light of the Logos, Brahma Vach.

Below this overbrooding Triad is the volatile quaternary of principles drawn from the lower planes of cosmic matter: they are kama, the force of blind passion and chaotic desire shared by man with animal life; prana, the life-current energizing the whirling atoms on the objective plane of existence; the astral paradigmatic body (linga sarira) the original form around which the physical molecules shape themselves, and hence the model for the physical frame (sthula sarira). This quaternary of principles is evanescent and changeable, established for man’s use at the time of incarnation and dissolved at death into its primary constituents on their corresponding planes. The real man, the higher Triad, recedes from the physical plane to await the next incarnation. The function of each of these sheaths differs from one individual to another according to the level of spiritual development of the incarnated soul. The astral body of the Adept is of a much higher degree of resilience and purity than that of the average man. In visionaries and mystics, the sheaths intervening between the spiritual man and the brain-mind are sufficiently transparent so that they can receive communications from the overbrooding Triad in a relatively lucid manner. Man is a compound being simultaneously experiencing two worlds, inner and outer. Each person’s present life-experience is but a minute portion of what was witnessed by the immortal individuality in previous incarnations. Thus if men and women assiduously search within themselves, they can recover a vast heritage of knowledge spanning aeons. These memories are locked in mansions of the soul which only ardent desire and strong discipline can penetrate.

Memory is integral to consciousness, and since all matter is alive and conscious, all beings from cells to deities have memory of some type. In man, memory is generally divided into four categories: physical memory, remembrance, recollection and reminiscence. In remembrance, an idea impinges upon the mind from the past by free association; in recollection, the mind deliberately searches it out. Reminiscence, however, is of another order altogether. Called “soul-memory”, it links every human being to previous lives and assures each that he or she will live again. In principle, any man or woman may recover the knowledge gained in previous incarnations and maintain continuity with the sutratman, the thread-soul, the eternal witness to every incarnation. There are also types of memory which are indistinguishable from prophecy, since the more one progresses towards homogeneous and rarefied planes of existence, the more past, present and future collapse into eternal duration, within the boundless perspective of which an entire cycle of manifestation may be surveyed. Such was the level of insight reached by the great seers who recorded their findings in what is known as Gupta Vidya or the Secret Doctrine. Some mystics have penetrated deeply into the realms of reminiscence bringing back the fruits of knowledge in previous lives. Greater still is the ability to enter into former and more spiritual epochs of humanity and to make those visions come alive for those who had lost all but a faint intuition of a larger sense of self.

The source and destiny of the soul’s inward life fundamentally involve the entire scope of evolution. Coeval with the manifestation of the seven worlds of the cosmic plenum is the re-emergence of beings who assume once more the evolutionary pilgrimage after an immense period of rest. The emanation of matter and spirit into the objective plane of existence is but half the cycle. Its return brings all beings and forms to the bosom of absolute darkness. The period of manifestation covering trillions of years is called a manvantara and the corresponding period of rest, called pralaya, lasts for an equal duration. They are the Days and Nights of Brahma, which were reckoned with meticulous precision by the ancient Aryans. The whole span of the manvantara is governed by the law of periodicity, which regulates rates of activity on all planes of being. This is sometimes spoken of as the Great Breath which preserves the cosmos. The essence of life is motion, growth and expansion of awareness in every atom. Each atom is at its core a monad, an expression of the highest self (Atman), and its vesture is the spiritual soul (Buddhi). Prior to the monad’s emergence in the human family, it undergoes aeons of experience in the lower kingdoms of Nature, developing by natural impulse (metempsychosis) until the latent thinking faculty of manas is awakened by the sacrificial efforts of beings who have risen far above the human state in manvantaras past. They kindle the spark of self-consciousness, making the unconscious monad a true man (Manushya), capable of thought, reflection and deliberate action. The soul embarks upon a long cycle of incarnations in human form to prepare itself for entry into still greater planes of existence.

The evolutionary tide on earth is regulated by the unerring hand of cyclic law. Man passes through a series of Rounds and Races, which allows him to assimilate the knowledge of every plane of existence, from the most ethereal to the most material. Man’s planetary evolution describes a spiral passing from spirit into matter and returning to spirit again with a wholly self- conscious mastery of the process. Each Round is a major evolutionary period lasting many millions of years. Each Race in turn witnesses the rise and fall of continents, civilizations and nations. An earlier Race than our own, the Lemurian, lived in an idyllic Golden Age, an epoch ruled by natural religion, universal fraternity and spontaneous devotion to spiritual teachers. Many of the myths regarding an era of childlike purity and unsullied trust in humanity’s early flowering preserve the flavour of this period. As man evolved more material vestures, kama or passion tainted his power of thought and inflamed his irrational tendencies. The nightmare tales of Atlantean sorcerers are the heavy heirloom of contemporary humanity. The destruction of Atlantis ushered in the Aryan race of our own epoch. The Indian Sages who inaugurated this period are among the torch-bearers for the humanity of our time. Intuitive mystics recognize the sacred role of ancient India as mother and preserver of the spiritual heritage of present humanity. The classical Indian scriptures resonate with the authentic voice of the Verbum, uncorrupted by time and human ignorance.

Pertinent to historical insight is the doctrine of the yugas, the cycle of four epochs through which every Race passes: the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron ages. The yugas indicate a broad sweep of karmic activity at any point in the life of an individual or collection of individuals. The entire globe may not be undergoing the same age simultaneously nor may any one individual be necessarily in the same epoch as his social milieu. According to Hindu calculations, Kali Yuga began over five thousand years ago and will last altogether for a total of four hundred thirty-two thousand years. This Dark Age is characterized by widespread confusion of roles, inversion of ethical values and enormous suffering owing to spiritual blindness. A.E. celebrated the myth of the Golden Age as extolling the plenitude of man’s creative potential. The doctrine of the yugas is not deterministic. It merely suggests the relative levels of consciousness which most human beings tend to hold in common. Thus a Golden Age vibration can be inserted into an Iron Age to ameliorate the collective predicament of mankind. The Golden Age surrounded human beings as a primordial state of divine consciousness, but their own pride and ignorance precluded its recovery. In the wonder of childhood, in archaic myths, in the sporadic illuminations of great artists and in mystical visions, one may discern shimmering glimpses of the Golden Age of universal eros, the rightful original estate of humanity.

The progress of man in harmony with cyclic law is facilitated by a mature grasp of karma and rebirth. These twin doctrines of responsibility and hope unravel many of the riddles of life and Nature. They show that every person’s life and character are the outcome of previous lives and thought–patterns, that each one is his or her own judge and executioner, and that all rise or fall strictly by their own merits and misdeeds. Nothing is left to chance or accident in life but everything is under the governance of a universal law of ethical causation. Man is essentially a thinker, and all thoughts initiate causes that generate suffering or bliss. The immortal Triad endures the mistakes and follies of the turbulent quaternary until such time as it can assume its rightful stature and act freely in consonance with cosmic order and natural law. As man is constantly projecting a series of thoughts and images, individual responsibility is irrevocable. Each person is the centre of any disturbance of universal harmony and the ripples of effects must return to him. Thus the law of karma or justice signifies moral interdependence and human solidarity. Karma must not be seen as a providential means of divine retribution but rather as a universal current touching those who bear the burden of its effects. This has been called the law of spiritual gravitation. The entire scope of man’s affairs – his environment, friends, family, employment and the like – are all dictated by the needs of the soul. Karma works on the soul’s behalf to provide those opportunities for knowledge and experience which would aid its progress. This concept could be expanded so as to encompass all connections with other human beings of even the most casual kind, seeing them as karmically ordained not for one’s own progress but for the sake of those who struggle with the dire limitations of ignorance, poverty or despair. A deeply moving account of this trial is given in The Hero in Man, wherein, while walking among the wretched outcasts of Dublin, A.E. rejoiced in the conviction that the benevolence he felt for each benighted soul would forge a spiritual bond through which he might help them in the future. Karma means a summons to the path of action and duty. As one cannot separate one’s own karma from that of one’s fellow-men, one may determine to devote one’s life to the remission of the karmic burden of others.

At death the true Self or immortal Triad casts off the physical and astral bodies and is released from the thraldom of passions and desires. Its natural tropism to gravitate upwards allows it to enter the rarefied plane of consciousness where its thoughts are carried to culmination, clothed in a finer body suited to that sublime existence. This state, Devachan, is a period of rest and assimilation between lives and the basis of the popular mythology of heaven. On the other hand, the lower quaternary languishes after death in Kamaloka, the origin of theological dogmas concerning hell and purgatory. There it dissolves by degrees back into its primary elements at a rate determined by the cohesion given them by the narcissistic personality during life on earth. Inflamed passions and poisonous thoughts sustained for long periods of time endow this entity with a vivid, vicarious and ghoulish existence. This plane of consciousness, termed “the astral light” by Eliphas Levi, is intimately connected with the lives and thoughts of most of mankind. It is the vast slag-heap of Nature into which all selfish and evil thoughts are poured and then rebound back to pollute and contaminate human life on earth. This plane of carnalized thought tends to perpetuate the horrors of the Iron Age and condemn man to a state of spiritual darkness.

The crucial difference between individuals lies in whether they are enslaved by the astral light (the region of psyche) or whether they are capable of rising above it to a calm awareness of the wisdom and compassion latent in their higher nature, the realm of nous. Beyond the region of psychic action lies the pristine sphere of noetic awareness called Akasha, from which empyrean individuals could derive the inspiration needed to go forth and inaugurate a Golden Age by laying down the foundations of a regenerated civilization. Sages, past and present, have accomplished the arduous transformation of their own natures, overcoming every vice and limitation and perfecting themselves in noetic ideation and sacrificial action. Mahatmas or Hierophants renounce everything for the sake of suffering humanity. Solitary mystics on the ancient path of service salute them as guides and preceptors and acknowledge their invisible presence behind their own modest labours for mankind. These wise beings are the noble trustees of the Philosophia Perennis and the compassionate Teachers of the human family. The mystical pilgrimage of mankind is an authentic reflection of their ageless Wisdom.

For countless generations hath the adept builded a fane of imperishable rocks, a giant’s Tower of INFINITE THOUGHT, wherein the Titan dwelt, and will yet, if need be, dwell alone, emerging from it but at the end of every cycle, to invite the elect of mankind to co-operate with him and help in his turn enlighten superstitious man.

MAHATMA K. H.

by Raghavan Iyer

Hermes, August 1979

Published by permission of theosophytrust.org.

In the same Sub-Category

Spiritual Evolution

Theosophy and Universal Brotherhood

The Word Theosophy

The Ocean of Theosophy

Cycles

Law of Correspondences

Spirit, Mind and Matter

Man as Microcosm

Bhagavad Gita

The Dhammapada

Fundamental Unity

The Changeless

Eye and Heart Doctrines

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Theosophy and Universal Brotherhood

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:40:40 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

THEOSOPHY AND UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD

Theosophy—the Wisdom Religion

Universal Brotherhood

Theosophy is “Divine Wisdom”, that bedrock of Truth which underlies and unites all of life. It is the Philosophia Perennis, the philosophy of human perfectibility, the science of spirituality and the religion of responsibility. It has been expressed in different ages by great teachers such as Krishna and Buddha, and Lao Tzu in the East, and by Pythagoras, Plato, and Jesus in the West. It was the sustaining spiritual arc of Mahatma Gandhi. Theosophical teachings recognize that there have always been Great Masters of Wisdom and Teachers of Humanity in every age and culture who have presented Theosophia as an integrated system of knowledge. Theosophical teachings describe cosmic and human evolution, the interconnectedness of Man, Nature and the Cosmos, and the operation of universal laws, visible and invisible. Theosophy illuminates the vast pilgrimage of the Immortal Soul.

Theosophy makes the connection between universal brotherhood and divine wisdom. The Four Golden Links expressed in The Key to Theosophy focus on unity (essential oneness of all) and universal causation (all life is interconnected), human solidarity, karma, and reincarnation. These principles are inclusive of the “Golden Rule” found in all universal religions. As Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (H.P.B.), the modern messenger of the Theosophical Movement pointed out, Theosophy is “a philosophy which can bind the whole of humanity into one Brotherhood.”

Philosophy

A Mahatma wrote that “If you wish to know us, study our philosophy. If you wish to serve us, serve our Humanity”. The philosophy can be summarized briefly under three great ideas or principles:

The SELF as the transcendent, unitary ground and universally immanent origin of all Life — the eternal basis of Universal Brotherhood.
The LAW of cycles and of Karma governing all of manifestation, and
The process of spiritual, intellectual, and material evolution, giving spiritual meaning, purpose, and direction to every link in the great chain of BEING.

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The Word Theosophy

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:34:04 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

THE WORD “THEOSOPHY”

Enquirer: Theosophy and its doctrines are often referred to a new-fangled religion. Is it a religion?

Theosophist: It is not. Theosophy is Divine Knowledge or Science.

Enq: What is the real meaning of the term?

Theosophist: “Divine Wisdom” (Theosophia), or Wisdom of the Gods, as (theogonia), genealogy of the gods. The word means a god in Greek, one of the divine beings, certainly not “God” in the sense attached in our day to the term. Therefore, it not “Wisdom of God,” as translated by some, but Divine Wisdom such as possessed by the gods. The term is many thousand years old.

Enq: What is the origin of the name?

Theosophist: It comes to us from the Alexandrian philosophers, called lovers of truth, Philaletheians, from (phil) “loving” and (aletheia) “truth”. The name Theosophy dates from the third century of our era, and began with Ammonius Saccas and his disciples, who started the Eclectic Theosophical system.

Enq: What was the object of this system?

Theosophist: First of all to inculcate certain great moral truths upon its disciples, an all those who were “lovers of the truth.” Hence the motto adopted by the Theosophical Society: “There is no religion higher than truth.” The Chief aim of the Founders of the Eclectic Theosophical School was one of the objects of its modern successor, the Theosophical Society, namely, to reconcile all religions, sects and nations, under a common system of ethics, based on eternal verities.

H.P. BLAVATSKY,

The Key to Theosophy

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Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

THE WORD “THEOSOPHY”

Enquirer: Theosophy and its doctrines are often referred to a new-fangled religion. Is it a religion?

Theosophist: It is not. Theosophy is Divine Knowledge or Science.

Enq: What is the real meaning of the term?

Enq: What is the origin of the name?

Enq: What was the object of this system?

H.P. BLAVATSKY,

The Key to Theosophy

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The Ocean of Theosophy

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:22:11 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

THE OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY
W.Q. Judge
Chapter I
THEOSOPHY AND THE MASTERS

Theosophy is that ocean of knowledge which spreads from shore to shore of the evolution of sentient beings; unfathomable in its deepest parts, it gives the greatest minds their fullest scope, yet, shallow enough at its shores, it will not overwhelm the understanding of a child. It is wisdom about God for those who believe that he is all things and in all, and wisdom about nature for the man who accepts the statement found in the Christian Bible that God cannot be measured or discovered, and that darkness is around his pavilion. Although it contains by derivation the name God and thus may seem at first sight to embrace religion alone, it does not neglect science, for it is the science of sciences and therefore has been called the wisdom religion. For no science is complete which leaves out any department of nature, whether visible or invisible, and that religion which, depending solely on an assumed revelation, turns away from things and the laws which govern them is nothing but a delusion, a foe to progress, an obstacle in the way of man’s advancement toward happiness. Embracing both the scientific and the religious, Theosophy is a scientific religion and a religious science.

It is not a belief or dogma formulated or invented by man, but is a knowledge of the laws which govern the evolution of the physical, astral, psychical, and intellectual constituents of nature and of man. The religion of the day is but a series of dogmas man-made and with no scientific foundation for promulgated ethics; while our science as yet ignores the unseen, and failing to admit the existence of a complete set of inner faculties of perception in man, it is cut off from the immense and real field of experience which lies within the visible and tangible worlds. But Theosophy knows that the whole is constituted of the visible and the invisible, and perceiving outer things and objects to be but transitory it grasps the facts of nature, both without and within. It is therefore complete in itself and sees no unsolvable mystery anywhere; it throws the word coincidence out of its vocabulary and hails the reign of law in everything and every circumstance.

That man possesses an immortal soul is the common belief of humanity; to this Theosophy adds that he is a soul; and further that all nature is sentient, that the vast array of objects and men are not mere collections of atoms fortuitously thrown together and thus without law evolving law, but down to the smallest atom all is soul and spirit ever evolving under the rule of law which is inherent in the whole. And just as the ancients taught, so does Theosophy; that the course of evolution is the drama of the soul and that nature exists for no other purpose than the soul’s experience. The Theosophist agrees with Prof. Huxley* in the assertion that there must be beings in the universe whose intelligence is as much beyond ours as ours exceeds that of the black beetle, and who take an active part in the government of the natural order of things. Pushing further on by the light of the confidence had in his teachers, the Theosophist adds that such intelligences were once human and came like all of us from other and previous worlds, where as varied experience had been gained as is possible on this one. We are therefore not appearing for the first time when we come upon this planet, but have pursued a long, an immeasurable course of activity and intelligent perception on

* Essays on some Controverted Questions. London 1891

other systems of globes, some of which were destroyed ages before the solar system condensed. This immense reach of the evolutionary system means, then, that this planet on which we now are is the result of the activity and the evolution of some other one that died long ago, leaving its energy to be used in the bringing into existence of the earth, and that the inhabitants of the latter in their turn came from some older world to proceed here with the destined work in matter. And the brighter planets, such as Venus, are the habitation of still more progressed entities, once as low as ourselves, but now raised up to a pitch of glory incomprehensible for our intellects.

The most intelligent being in the universe, man, has never, then, been without a friend, but has a line of elder brothers who continually watch over the progress of the less progressed, preserve the knowledge gained through aeons of trial and experience, and continually seek for opportunities of drawing the developing intelligence of the race on this or other globes to consider the great truths concerning the destiny of the soul. These elder brothers also keep the knowledge they have gained of the laws of nature in all departments, and are ready when cyclic law permits to use it for the benefit of mankind. They have always existed as a body, all knowing each other, no matter in what part of the world they may be, and all working for the race in many different ways. In some periods they are well known to the people and move among ordinary men whenever the social organization, the virtue, and the development of the nations permit it. For if they were to come out openly and be heard of everywhere, they would be worshipped as gods by some and hunted as devils by others. In those periods when they do come out some of their number are rulers of men, some teachers, a few great philosophers, while others remain still unknown except to the most advanced of the body

It would be subversive of the ends they have in view were they to make themselves public in the present civilization, which is based almost wholly on money, fame, glory, and personality. For this age, as one of them has already said, “is an age of transition,” when every system of thought, science, religion, government, and society is changing, and men’s minds are only preparing for an alteration into that state which will permit the race to advance to the point suitable for these elder brothers to introduce their actual presence to our sight. They may be truly called the bearers of the torch of truth across the ages; they investigate all things and beings; they know what man is in his innermost nature and what his powers and destiny, his state before birth and the states into which he goes after the death of his body; they have stood by the cradle of nations and seen the vast achievements of the ancients, watched sadly the decay of those who had no power to resist the cyclic law of rise and fall; and while cataclysms seemed to show a universal destruction of art, architecture, religion, and philosophy, they have preserved the records of it all in places secure from the ravages of either men or time; they have made minute observations, through trained psychics among their own order, into the unseen realms of nature and of mind, recorded the observations and preserved the record; they have mastered the mysteries of sound and color through which alone the elemental beings behind the veil of matter can be communicated with, and thus can tell why the rain falls and what it falls for, whether the earth is hollow or not, what makes the wind to blow and light to shine, and greater feat than all—one which implies a knowledge of the very foundations of nature—they know what the ultimate divisions of time are and what are the meaning and the times of the cycles.

But, asks the busy man of the nineteenth century who reads the newspapers and believes in “modern progress,” if these elder brothers are all you claim them to be, why have they left no mark on history nor gathered men around them? Their own reply, published some time ago by Mr. A. P. Sinnett, is better than any I could write.

“We will first discuss, if you please, the one relating to the presumed failure of the ‘Fraternity’ to ‘leave any mark upon the history of the world.’ They ought, you think, to have been able, with their extraordinary advantages, to have ‘gathered into their schools a considerable portion of the more enlightened minds of every race.’ How do you know they have made no such mark? Are you acquainted with their efforts, successes, and failures? Have you any dock upon which to arraign them? How could your world collect proofs of the doings of men who have sedulously kept closed every possible door of approach by which the inquisitive could spy upon them? The prime condition of their success was that they should never be supervised or obstructed. What they have done they know; all that those outside their circle could perceive was results, the causes of which were masked from view. To account for these results, men have, in different ages, invented theories of the interposition of gods, special providences, fates, the benign or hostile influences of the stars. There never was a time within or before the so-called historical period when our predecessors were not moulding events and ‘making history,’ the facts of which were subsequently and invariably distorted by historians to suit contemporary prejudices. Are you quite sure that the visible heroic figures in the successive dramas were not often but their puppets? We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that crisis in spite of the general drift of the world’s cosmic relations. The cycles must run their rounds. Periods of mental and moral light and darkness succeed each other as day does night. The major and minor yugas must be accomplished according to the established order of things. And we, borne along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor currents.”*

* The Occult World London 1888.

It is under cyclic law, during a dark period in the history of mind, that the true philosophy disappears for a time, but the same law causes it to reappear as surely as the sun rises and the human mind is present to see it. But some works can only be performed by the Master, while other works require the assistance of the companions. It is the Master’s work to preserve the true philosophy, but the help of the companions is needed to rediscover and promulgate it. Once more the elder brothers have indicated where the truth—Theosophy—could be found, and the companions all over the world are engaged in bringing it forth for wider currency and propagation.

The Elder Brothers of Humanity are men who were perfected in former periods of evolution. These periods of manifestation are unknown to modern evolutionists so far as their number are concerned, though long ago understood by not only the older Hindus, but also by those great minds and men who instituted and carried on the first pure and undebased form of the Mysteries of Greece. The periods, when out of the Great Unknown there come forth the visible universes, are eternal in their coming and going, alternating with equal periods of silence and rest again in the Unknown. The object of these mighty waves is the production of perfect man, the evolution of soul, and they always witness the increase of the number of Elder Brothers; the life of the least of men pictures them in day and night, waking and sleeping, birth and death, “for these two, light and dark, day and night, are the world’s eternal ways.” *

In every age and complete national history these men of power and compassion are given different designations. They have been called Initiates, Adepts, Magi, Hierophants, Kings of the East, Wise Men, Brothers, and what not. But in the Sanskrit language there is a word which, being applied to them, at once thoroughly identifies them with humanity. It is

* Bhagavad- Gita, Chapter viii.

Mahatma. This is composed of Maha great, and Atma soul; so it means great soul, and as all men are souls the distinction of the Mahatma lies in greatness. The term Mahatma has come into wide use through the Theosophical Society, as Mme. H. P. Blavatsky constantly referred to them as her Masters who gave her the knowledge she possessed. They were at first known only as the Brothers, but afterwards, when many Hindus flocked to the Theosophical movement, the name Mahatma was brought into use, inasmuch as it has behind it an immense body of Indian tradition and literature. At different times unscrupulous enemies of the Theosophical Society have said that even this name had been invented and that such beings are not known of among the Indians or in their literature. But these assertions are made only to discredit if possible a philosophical movement that threatens to completely upset prevailing erroneous theological dogmas. For all through Hindu literature Mahatmas are often spoken of, and in parts of the north of that country the term is common. In the very old poem the Bhagavad-Gita, revered by all Hindu sects and admitted by the western critics to be noble as well as beautiful, there is a verse reading, “Such a Mahatma is difficult to find.” *

But irrespective of all disputes as to specific names, there is sufficient argument and proof to show that a body of men having the wonderful knowledge described above has always existed and probably exists today. The older mysteries continually refer to them. Ancient Egypt had them in her great king-Initiates, sons of the sun and friends of great gods. There is a habit of belittling the ideas of the ancients which is in itself belittling to the people of today. Even the Christian who reverently speaks of Abraham as “the friend of God,” will scornfully laugh at the idea of the claims of Egyptian rulers to the same friendship being other than childish assumption of dignity and title. But the truth is, these great Egyptians were Initiates, mem-

* Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter vii.

bers of the one great lodge which includes all others of whatever degree or operation. The later and declining Egyptians, of course, must have imitated their predecessors, but that was when the true doctrine was beginning once more to be obscured upon the rise of dogma and priesthood.

The story of Apollonius of Tyana is about a member of one of the same ancient orders appearing among men at a descending cycle, and only for the purpose of keeping a witness upon the scene for future generations.

Abraham and Moses of the Jews are two other Initiates, Adepts who had their work to do with a certain people; and in the history of Abraham we meet with Melchizedek, who was so much beyond Abraham that he had the right to confer upon the latter a dignity, a privilege, or a blessing. The same chapter of human history which contains the names of Moses and Abraham is illuminated also by that of Solomon. And thus these three make a great Triad of Adepts, the record of whose deeds can not be brushed aside as folly and devoid of basis.

Moses was educated by the Egyptians and in Midian, from both of which he gained much occult knowledge, and any clear-seeing student of the great Universal Masonry can perceive all through his books the hand, the plan, and the work of a master. Abraham again knew all the arts and much of the power in psychical realms that were cultivated in his day, or else he could not have consorted with kings nor have been “the friend of God”; and the reference to his conversations with the Almighty in respect to the destruction of cities alone shows him to have been an Adept who had long ago passed beyond the need of ceremonial or other adventitious aids. Solomon completes this triad and stands out in characters of fire. Around him is clustered such a mass of legend and story about his dealings with the elemental powers and of his magic possessions that one must condemn the whole ancient world as a collection of fools who made lies for amusement if a denial is made of his being a great character, a wonderful example of the incarnation among men of a powerful Adept. We do not have to accept the name Solomon nor the pretense that he reigned over the Jews, but we must admit the fact that somewhere in the misty time to which the Jewish records refer there lived and moved among the people of the earth one who was an Adept and given that name afterwards. Peripatetics and microscopic critics may affect to see in the prevalence of universal tradition naught but evidence of the gullibility of men and their power to imitate, but the true student of human nature and life knows that the universal tradition is true and arises from the facts in the history of man.

Turning to India, so long forgotten and ignored by the lusty and egotistical, the fighting and the trading West, we find her full of the lore relating to these wonderful men of whom Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Solomon are only examples. There the people are fitted by temperament and climate to be the preservers of the philosophical, ethical, and psychical jewels that would have been forever lost to us had they been left to the ravages of such Goths and Vandals as western nations were in the early days of their struggle for education and civilization. If the men who wantonly burned up vast masses of historical and ethnological treasures found by the minions of the Catholic rulers of Spain, in Central and South America, could have known of and put their hands upon the books and palm-leaf records of India before the protecting shield of England was raised against them, they would have destroyed them all as they did for the Americans, and as their predecessors attempted to do for the Alexandrian library. Fortunately events worked otherwise.

All along the stream of Indian literature we can find the names by scores of great adepts who were well known to the people and who all taught the same story ―the great epic of the human soul. Their names are unfamiliar to western ears, but the records of their thoughts, their work and powers remain. Still more, in the quiet unmoveable East there are today by the hundred persons who know of their own knowledge that the Great Lodge still exists and has its Mahatmas, Adepts, Initiates, Brothers. And yet further, in that land are such a number of experts in the practical application of minor though still very astonishing power over nature and her forces, that we have an irresistible mass of human evidence to prove the proposition laid down.

And if Theosophy ―the teaching of this Great Lodge ―is as said, both scientific and religious, then from the ethical side we have still more proof. A mighty Triad acting on and through ethics is that composed of Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus. The first, a Hindu, founds a religion which today embraces many more people than Christianity, teaching centuries before Jesus the ethics which he taught and which had been given out even centuries before Buddha. Jesus coming to reform his people repeats these ancient ethics, and Confucius does the same thing for ancient and honorable China.

The Theosophist says that all these great names represent members of the one single brotherhood, who all have a single doctrine. And the extraordinary characters who now and again appear in western civilization, such as St. Germain, Jacob Boehme, Cagliostro, Paracelsus, Mesmer, Count St. Martin, and Madame H. P. Blavatsky, are agents for the doing of the work of the Great Lodge at the proper time. It is true they are generally reviled and classed as impostors—though no one can find out why they are when they generally confer benefits and lay down propositions or make discoveries of great value to science after they have died. But Jesus himself would be called an impostor today if he appeared in some Fifth Avenue theatrical church rebuking the professed Christians. Paracelsus was the originator of valuable methods and treatments in medicine now universally used. Mesmer taught hypnotism under another name. Madame Blavatsky brought once more to the attention of the West the most important system, long known to the Lodge, respecting man, his nature and destiny. But all are alike called impostors by a people who have no original philosophy of their own and whose mendicant and criminal classes exceed in misery and in number those of any civilization on the earth.

It will not be unusual for nearly all occidental readers to wonder how men could possibly know so much and have such power over the operations of natural law as I have ascribed to the Initiates, now so commonly spoken of as the Mahatmas. In India, China, and other Oriental lands no wonder would arise on these heads, because there, although everything of a material civilization is just now in a backward state, they have never lost a belief in the inner nature of man and in the power he may exercise if he will. Consequently living examples of such powers and capacities have not been absent from those people. But in the West a materialistic civilization having arisen through a denial of the soul life and nature consequent upon a reaction from illogical dogmatism, there has not been any investigation of these subjects and, until lately, the general public has not believed in the possibility of anyone save a supposed God having such power.

A Mahatma endowed with power over space, time, mind, and matter, is a possibility just because he is a perfected man. Every human being has the germ of all the powers attributed to these great Initiates, the difference lying solely in the fact that we have in general not developed what we possess the germ of, while the Mahatma has gone through the training and experience which have caused all the unseen human powers to develop in him, and conferred gifts that look god-like to his struggling brother below. Telep-athy, mind-reading, and hypnotism, all long ago known to Theosophy, show the existence in the human subject of planes of consciousness, functions, and faculties hitherto undreamed of. Mind-reading and the influencing of the mind of the hypnotized subject at a distance prove the existence of a mind which is not wholly dependent upon a brain, and that a medium exists through which the influencing thought may be sent. It is under this law that the Initiates can communicate with each other at no matter what distance. Its rationale, not yet admitted by the schools of the hypnotizers, is, that if the two minds vibrate or change into the same state they will think alike, or, in other words, the one who is to hear at a distance receives the impression sent by the other. In the same way with all other powers, no matter how extraordinary. They are all natural, although now unusual, just as great musical ability is natural though not usual or common. If an Initiate can make a solid object move without contact, it is because he understands the two laws of attraction and repulsion of which “gravitation” is but the name for one; if he is able to precipitate out of the viewless air the carbon which we know is in it, forming the carbon into sentences upon the paper, it is through his knowledge of the occult higher chemistry, and the use of a trained and powerful image making faculty which every man possesses; if he reads your thoughts with ease, that results from the use of the inner and only real powers of sight, which require no retina to see the fine-pictured web which the vibrating brain of man weaves about him. All that the Mahatma may do is natural to the perfected man; but if those powers are not at once revealed to us it is because the race is as yet selfish altogether and still living for the present and the transitory.

I repeat then, that though the true doctrine disappears for a time from among men it is bound to reappear, because first, it is impacted in the imperishable center of man’s nature; and secondly, the Lodge for-ever preserves it, not only in actual objective records, but also in the intelligent and fully self-conscious men who, having successfully overpassed the many periods of evolution which preceded the one we are now involved in, cannot lose the precious possessions they have acquired. And because the elder brothers are the highest product of evolution through whom alone, in cooperation with the whole human family, the further regular and workmanlike prosecution of the plans of the Great Architect of the Universe could be carried on, I have thought it well to advert to them and their Universal Lodge before going to other parts of the subject.

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Cycles

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:12:55 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

CYCLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WILLIAM QUAN JUDGE,

Address at Parliament of Religions, 1893

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Law of Correspondences

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:10:11 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

LAW OF CORRESPONDENCES

“Law of Correspondences” is a greater subject than people are liable to suspect; yet we all know something of correspondences in the simple facts of nature—the seven colors of the spectrum, the seven notes of the scale. Each color of each octave corresponds to the same color of another octave. We see only a certain number of rates of vibration, but above the number perceptible to us are those too fine for us to perceive with our physical senses, and, also below, are vibrations too coarse for our perception. ‘We stand in the middle, as it were, of a great range of perceptions, aware of only a portion of the universe in which we live. The same is true with regard to sounds——from the note do up to Si; do corresponds to every other do in the seven octaves which we are able to perceive physically; but these seven octaves are merely a portion of all the great octaves of nature above us and below us. There is correspondence between the high and the low throughout all nature, because the great Center of Life, of Consciousness, of Perception is the same in every being of whatever grade; and because from within that Center proceeds all action. The use of the power to act which is inherent in that Center is the cause of all manifestation.

All things which are visible come from the invisible. In the evolution of a planet there is a beginning in homogeneous, radiant matter—such as composes the Milky Way—the basis of all subsequent forms that are brought about, or produced, by the beings existent in that homogeneous state. Each being is a Center and each Center is the same as the One Great Center. Proceeding from the same Source, necessarily, all beings proceed under the same laws. The same Law rules all beings. The power to act and the subsequent reaction—the law of laws which we know as Karma—is brought into operation by all beings to produce the manifested universe and all the differentiations in forms and substance. Thus there is a connection between each being and every other being. There is a correspondence between each being and every other being. There is a correspondence between the constituents of each being and the constituents of every other being.

The law which rules the atoms of our world as well as the highest spiritual beings in it—that law inherent in the Center of each being—proceeds in a definite, orderly mode. This progress is known to be divided into seven degrees, or the septenary nature, from the states of fine matter down to the matter that we now know in the body. All beings go through forms in the various states, and not only do they go through them but they possess them at the present time. Man possesses every body whichever has existed for him in any stage of matter. But our planet is one of many planets. It exists in a solar system which is one of many solar systems. There are inhabitants of other planets— some of them below us in point of development and others so much higher than we that if we knew the state of their progress we would esteem them divine beings. All beings of each and every planet are of the same Center and proceed under the same universal law of manifestation. Thus, there is a correspondence between each and every planet: we are related to Mars, to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon by certain correspondences in fact, there are organs in our bodies which correspond to the various planets.

At the root of all these correspondences with planets, beings and states of matter, and behind all these points of attachment with everything—the most minute as well as the coarsest—lies a tremendous, almost immeasurable SCIENCE related to all portions of the universe, to every state of matter and every plane of consciousness—a science which by our self-induced and self- devised efforts it is possible for us to attain it ourselves. For knowledge does not exist outside of us, nor does knowledge exist without the knowers of it. Always the knowers of the greater knowledge have achieved it through observation and experience. Those Beings who are greater than we are and who have handed down to us Theosophy—the science of life and the art of living—in the far distant past had to go through similar experiences to those we are now encountering. So again we see there is a correspondence in ourselves with those higher Beings, and, as well, with lower beings. We have to manifest as various classes of beings, some on higher planes and some on lower planes. The forms of the kingdoms below us are embodiments of minor grades of consciousness on their way up to our estate, which they will reach when we have progressed to still higher states, under the law of evolution. For evolution of form is always brought about by the extension of the Consciousness of the being in habiting the form, and our own purpose, as spiritual beings connected with all states of matter, is to evolve a better and better instrument on this plane of being to correspond to, or be accessible to, those inner states of being and higher planes of consciousness which we all in reality possess.

It may seem strange to us that we possess what we know nothing of, and that there are powers latent in us which in our present case we are unable to manifest. But we ought to see that we have the power to learn. We have the power to learn sciences of various kinds, or languages entirely different from those we now know. The power to learn is within us. We could not learn these things if they were new—that is, due to some formation of nature separate from ourselves. There is a power that we may gain over all nature, and use, for in fact nothing is of use by way of knowledge that cannot be practical for the true evolution of man, for the forwarding of humanity. There is a certain knowledge in the possession of some which relates to the occult sciences, to powers which we do not presently possess but which are latent in us—the reason for either latency or possession lying in the fact that this life is the reaping of what has gone on before. As day succeeds day and life succeeds life, as planet succeeds planet and solar system succeeds solar system, so we have come down through the immeasurable past to the present conditions—to conditions, let it be remembered, where spirit and matter conjoin, where man may become higher than any being in our solar system because he is conjoined with the lower kingdoms; because he may so increase his knowledge in connection with those lower kingdoms that lie may raise them up and use the powers that exist there and are produced by beings of every grade. Let us remember, too, that even on this physical plane there are beings other than those we ordinarily see in mineral, vegetable, animal and human embodiments; there are invisible beings existing in what we call our air, in the ether, in electricity, in fire—for it is life everywhere in this universe; there is not a hand’s breadth of vacant “dead” space anywhere.

However minute, visible or invisible, the forms of life may be, they are Centers of Consciousness, beginnings of perception, the beginnings of individuality—ever increasing from form to form until the human form is reached, and then, on and on. For we as human beings are not the product of this earth. Our bodies are; but as spiritual beings we were present before this earth was formed. Once more we have come down through the stairway of the seven worlds from that primal state which is the very Center of being, plus all that we had gained before in other worlds. ‘We bring with us all that we have gained in similar states and planes of substance before, and go on with the world in each stage, just as we go on from day to day with our various occupations. Thus we may see that there is a continuity throughout the entire course of evolution; what we have to learn is that knowledge of it along the line of true correspondences will never be acquired by mere study, nor by information given us by any being or beings whatever.

True knowledge has to be gained through an increasing perception of the universality of all law and the universal line of progress for every being of whatever grade. We have to think and practise altruism before the higher and more recondite powers of the universe can be placed in our possession for our use. The thought and the motive must be that which makes for the good of all beings. What has been given to us in the philosophy of Theosophy is for the purpose of arousing the attention of that Center within us which can see, which can know and which can do, when it resumes its own nature and status. For there is a deep knowledge of all these things in the soul of every human being and the soul knows what it needs; it can understand when the brain cannot understand; it can feel when the senses are not capable of transmitting feeling. This knowledge is open to every human being; but only when the mind that we now possess is in exact accord with the nature of the indwelling Spirit, shall we begin to see, from within outwards, all the lines of correspondence and relation that exist between us and all other beings. Only when we realize that we are a part of the Great Chain of being, that no one of us is unnecessary and no one can drop out, that the development is one for all, that we are all from the same Source and going towards the same goal; only when we shall think and act from that basis, will we move onward with the great force proceeding from the Center in that true direction which leads to enlightenment and power.

The law of correspondences constitutes a science which is perhaps beyond the idea of any one of us. Can we realize that — all beings are forces and all forces proceed from beings? Can we realize that there are forces or beings in nature which can be moved without the lifting of a finger—just by the thought, just by the will of one who knows the law of correspondences? Fortunate, indeed, it is that men as they are now constituted, with the wrong ideas that rule their actions, do not possess these powers which they could use against their fellow men! For is it not true that if we had them we would use them to blot out of existence many human beings who are running counter to our own ideas? And those beings are, just like ourselves, controlled by ideas foreign to the true progress of the whole and must meet the exact results of their wrong course of thought. Even without knowing it, perhaps, we may fight the battle of humanity merely by taking one idea of Theosophy—one universal idea— towards the freedom of the soul, and holding to that help. But we have to go much farther than that, which is but one step on the way. We have to realize within ourselves the kind of bodies, inner and outer, which we possess and the powers that belong to those bodies. We must bring those higher powers into operation through this physical body. We must build a higher and greater civilization than ever yet has existed. Whether it is accomplished in this or in ten million lives, whether we go straight to the goal or through suffering after suffering, it must ultimately be brought about.

We are here for a great purpose. A great mission lies before every one of us, as well as a great knowledge. We are here as knowing, self-conscious beings, buried in, and identified with this body, with this matter. Involved in the very work we had to do on this plane of being, we have forgotten our own true natures. It behooves us to understand what our true nature is and to think and act in accordance with it. Let us remember, too , that “the true nature” is not far away; it is right within us— within our hearts. In the silence of our own hearts there pulsates that One Life, which beats in correspondence in the action of the lungs, the action of the tides, the flux and reflux which is going on all the time and everywhere in nature. Can we not see that the laws of correspondences are the same now that they were millions of years ago? Nor has humanity changed. We have changed the conditions surrounding us, but we ourselves are experiencing the same desires, the same feelings, the same stupidities which were ours millions of years ago. We have not advanced spiritually beyond the civilizations that are dead and gone, but in what we call “advancement” we have made merely another closer bond to physical existence. So there is much for us to do.

We move from death to death until we realize our true natures and take the course pointed out by the Wise Men of all ages—the course by which They gained Their wisdom. Theosophy was brought into the world to wake up the souls who are in the least degree susceptible to an awakening, to join that body of pilgrims moving on their way with their faces turned in the direction of the Masters of Wisdom, regardless of their present conditions, quickly or slowly clearing away their defects that they may be the pioneers and helpers and guides of the humanities that are to follow. Moving on with courage and confidence in the Great Beings, they gradually learn and come to a resumption of those powers which we all possess but do not express. Nor can one express in words the power, the happiness, the freedom from fear of any kind, the realization, while in a body, of immortality which spiritual knowledge brings. This knowledge and these powers are within the reach of all of us. As the ancients said, “The Great Self shines in all beings, but in all it does not shine forth.” We may reach that One Self, the One Spirit, whence come all law, all possibilities—which has the power to produce all changes, but of itself changes not at all— ever the experiencer, the enjoyer or the sufferer of the changes. Power comes from this knowledge, which springs up spontaneously within us because it resides in the innermost parts of our natures.

ROBERT CROSBIE,

The Friendly Philosopher

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Spirit, Mind and Matter

vsadmnthgan — Tue, 03 Nov 2020 02:07:33 +0000

SPIRIT, MIND AND MATTER

The “midway point of evolution” is that stage where the astral prototypes definitely begin to pass into the physical, and thus become subject to the differentiating agencies now operative around us. Physical causation supervenes immediately on the assumption of “coats of skin” – i.e., the physiological equipment in general. The forms of Men and mammalia previous to the separation of sexes are woven out of astral matter, and possess a structure utterly unlike that of the physical organisms, which eat, drink, digest, etc., etc., etc. The known physiological contrivances in organisms were almost entirely evolved subsequently to the incipient physicalization of the 7 Root-Types out of the astral – during the “midway halt” between the two planes of existence. Hardly had the “ground-plan” of evolution been limned out in these ancestral types, than the influence of the accessory terrestrial laws, familiar to us, supervened, resulting in the whole crop of mammalian species. Aeons of slow differentiation were, however, required to effect this end.

The Secret Doctrine, ii 736

Human beings hold within themselves the keys to their own growth, both as individuals and as a species. The chief gain behind the resuscitation of the concept of evolution, since the nineteenth century, is the greater sense of human responsibility towards the whole of Nature. Understood rightly, the idea of spiritual evolution opens up avenues of authentic creativity which are also the means of fulfilment of the sacrificial dharma of humanity. To see the basis of moral responsibility and human freedom in the idea of evolution, however, one must let go the baggage of anthropomorphic religion and materialistic notions of Nature. In the long run, it makes little difference whether one conceives of man as the adventitious special creation of a supernatural god or as the equally adventitious product of a fortuitous concurrence of atoms. In either case, one has divorced quintessential self-consciousness from the root of Nature. One view regards the position of humanity in Nature as a kind of Babylonian captivity, to be resented and endured until the arrival of an unsolicited apocalypse and an undeserved deliverance. The other sees mankind as a transitory quirk of cosmic probabilities, like a wave formed in and out of the waters of the open sea, which seems engaged in a struggle for survival and stasis that is ultimately as meaningless to itself as to the element into which it will again be dissolved. Each of these views distorts the fundamental Teaching of Gupta Vidya.

Ancient wisdom holds that there is a fiery spark of divinity latent in every human being, and that each person can, through the quickening of that fire, rise in consciousness to a condition exalted above but never alienated from all the intelligent hosts and hierarchies of differentiated Nature. This realization of freedom involves no break in the moral solidarity between Man and Nature. Rather, it is accomplished through steps of sacrifice towards all other beings. Nor is there anything accidental about the power which involves Man in differentiated Nature and which makes possible his mastery of it. That power is the radiant light-energy of the Atman, reflected and refracted in all the planes and principles of Nature and Man. Nor is there, according to ancient wisdom, anything fortuitous about the origin of Man. All humanity and all Nature are sprung from the same root substance. That substance is not blind and inert but refulgent with intelligence, suffused with the divine radiant energy of the Atman. Thus, the substantial solidarity of humanity and the rest of Nature is equally a moral and intelligent solidarity with all living beings. There is no gap between the human sense of self-consciousness and purpose and the cooperative and compassionate impulses that guide all of Nature.

Any account of the evolution of Man and Nature which does justice to both must strike a balance between the unique and essential meaning of human existence and the uninterrupted continuity of Man and Nature. Typically, orthodox religious theories of the origin of Man tend to isolate humanity from Nature, whilst modern biological accounts of human evolution tend to obliterate the precise role of human self-consciousness in Nature. Philosophically, both accounts treat human existence as accidental. In the one case, Man is the product of an arbitrary act of an anthropomorphic god superimposed upon Nature; in the other, Man is the result of an arbitrary accident of atoms. Neither view establishes any real connection in principle between Man and Nature. As H.P. Blavatsky remarked:

The occult doctrine, is, we think, more logical. It teaches a cyclic, never varying law in nature, the latter having no personal, “special design”, but acting on a uniform plan that prevails through the whole manvantaric period and deals with the land worm as it deals with man. Neither the one nor the other have sought to come into being, hence both are under the same evolutionary law, and both have to progress according to Karmic law. Both have started from the same neutral centre of Life and both have to re-merge into it at the consummation of the cycle.

Ibid., 261

The term “evolutionary law” may be thought of as a bridge between immortal, divine and unmodified self-existence in eternity and the complex, differentiated realm of time-bound existence and circumstance. Evolutionary law bridges eternity and form, expanding the germinal potential in the neutral centre of Life into a series of manifestations in time and space. Yet the nature and potentiality of that centre cannot be deduced or derived through any enumeration of the forms or transformations of form that arise from it. Instead, it is necessary to rise in consciousness to a direct cognition of that centre through a universalization of one’s consciousness. From that pristine perspective one can survey the vast panoply of forms in Nature, experiencing their continuity from within without. Whilst Gupta Vidya rejects materialized conceptions of biological evolution, it has always held that the human form, and all its parts, originated through a series of transformations that are perfectly continuous with the rest of Nature.

It is not those who teach the transformation of the mineral atom through crystallization – which is the same function, and bears the same relation to its inorganic (so-called) upadhi (or basis) as the formation of cells to their organic nuclei, through plant, insect and animal into man – it is not they who will reject this theory, as it will finally lead to the recognition of a Universal Deity in nature, ever-present and as ever invisible, and unknowable, and of intra-Cosmic gods, who all were men.

Ibid., 255

Perfected human intelligence is an integral part of Nature, inextricably interwoven with all its many processes of transformation. Thus, the differentiations of Nature are by no means incompatible with the uninterrupted solidarity of Man and Nature. In a sense, anthropomorphic religion suffers from a false sense of modesty. Perfected human intelligence is vastly more important in Nature than human beings are readily able to conceive. At the same time, human intelligence is a sacrificial expression of universal divine intelligence, and its purposes are simply part of universal Logoic volition. Whilst nineteenth century evolutionary theorists may have sought to reject the cruder teleologies of medieval religion, they still viewed the categories of volition in narrowly personal terms, and so could not conceive that the impersonal fabric of Nature was the veil of the divine intelligence in Man.

The whole trouble is this: neither physiologists nor pathologists will recognize that the cell-germinating substance (the cytoblastema) and the mother-lye from which crystals originate, are one and the same essence, save in differentiation for purposes.

Ibid.

It is the differentiation and elaboration out of itself of that essence which produces the panoply of gross and subtle forms in Nature. The logic of the process of crystallization in the mineral kingdom is analogous to the logic of the process of the elaboration and formation, out of organic nuclei, of cells. The transformations of primal vital energy into morphological units in the kingdoms of Nature, together with the processes of metamorphosis taking place in those kingdoms, are invariably the expression of a unified law of evolution. That law, however, is not single and simple, but complex and composite. This much should surely suggest itself to even the casual observer of the physical universe. It is still more obvious if one considers all the intricate developments of intelligence on the invisible planes of abstract ideation and astral substance which witness the interplay of potentials and powers that give rise to every possible type of being. Innumerable are the species of being unknown to us at this point in evolution, either because those forms have disappeared or because those beings have withdrawn from the sight of human beings as constituted at present.

When one thinks of the living expression of the philosophic problem of the One and the many, one will naturally become suspicious of any simple linear theory of merely physical evolution. This, of course, was the problem with the early models of evolution developed in the nineteenth century, particularly Darwin’s. Drawing upon a variant of simple Aristotelian teleology, Darwin’s model benefited from the method of classification pioneered by the great Swedish biologist, Linnaeus. Darwin himself, out of his wealth of observation, tried to put all these different species into a single simple theory. He himself was a remarkably curious man, a true naturalist, who became an ardent explorer and a voracious reader. Like other leading thinkers of his day, he was aware that neither geological nor biological formations, neither flora nor fauna, were unchanging. But as soon as he sought to put their present varieties and past transformations into a single theory, he became entangled in gross over-simplification. Unfortunately, Darwinists are strangers to the tentativeness that Darwin himself rightly felt towards his own formulations.

Darwin was primarily concerned to describe a mechanism broad enough to account for the variation among the types of life. This fascination with mechanical processes, and the effort to impose them upon life at every level, was characteristic of nineteenth century thought. Alfred Wallace, who wrote at the same time as Darwin, developed an alternative model of biological evolution somewhat influenced by the thought of Lamarck. Working on the Continent, Lamarck had pointed towards the existence of some kind of inward impulse within living forms which works gradually to transform them. The celebrated paradigm of this process is found in the giraffe, which, by reaching upward over a long period of time, somehow willed itself to lengthen its neck. According to Lamarck, this had to be explained by some internal factor in evolution, something not reducible to the lottery of heredity or to the cruel vagaries of the environment. This innate creative impulse in Nature, Lamarck believed, could be exercised by a creature in its life, thereby affecting subsequent generations. To some extent, these ideas interested Wallace, who attempted to integrate them into his own account of the precarious evolutionary struggle for survival. But all Lamarckian theories of evolution which seek to connect learning with biological transformation must eventually come to terms with the “learner’s paradox” set forth by Plato in the Meno.

Unless one approaches the problem of learning, whether in man or beast, with a philosophic clarity, it will appear that learning is either impossible or unnecessary. As a result of empirical thinking over the past century, very few theorists, however interested in the ideas of Lamarck, have been able to formulate convincingly the idea of an intelligent inward principle in evolution. Instead, they have largely succumbed to reductionist, behavioural accounts of individual learning that cannot do justice to the processes of evolutionary transformation. Darwin himself, though capable of understanding some things outside a model of monistic materialism, was nonetheless not metaphysically inclined. In the end, he had a deep intellectual fascination with the problem of subduing the largest possible amount of empirical evidence to a single general hypothesis which would explain the struggle for existence and survival in an ever-changing environment. Thereby, he unwittingly provided a tremendous brake upon modern man’s reverence for the rich complexity of Nature. It is therefore common for Darwinists to point to the variety of forms of life as a kind of wastage in Nature. Since the variety of Nature is seen as the random result of a mechanical process, it is impossible to attribute meaning to any of its specific products. The appearance and disappearance of species are seen as random incidents in the wastrel career of a prodigal Nature.

Gupta Vidya, by contrast, conceives of evolution as having a unified plan and a unitary logic. But it does not think of that evolution as linear. Instead, it depicts a complex cyclic unfoldment from the invisible to the visible. Based upon a theory of different planes of consciousness and different states of matter, it holds that there must be a continuity between these planes extending from the divine Monad. This source is the Logos in the Divine Darkness, before worlds are emanated, which encompasses all the forms, both subtle and gross, within those worlds. There must be a continuity between the supreme potential of many worlds in that divine pre-existing cosmic Logos and the intelligence that one finds in the smallest insect. Every living and changing creature is connected to the primary differentiations on the plane of Akasha. Given the primal Logoic radiation at the root of the cosmos, there is subsequently an evolutionary process connecting the most spiritual and the most physical, the most abstract and the most concrete, the most eternal and the most ephemeral. It accommodates different rates of growth on different planes of consciousness and matter. This can be understood only if one refuses to imprison oneself within a hard-and-fast dichotomy between ideation and substance, spirit and matter, consciousness and form. One must recognize that there is one unitary essence which, at different levels, generates the polarity and interplay of spirit and matter. In fact,

There are several “protyles” in Nature, corresponding to the various planes of matter. The two sub-physical elemental kingdoms, the plane of mind (manas, the fifth state matter), as also that of Buddhi (sixth state matter), are each and all evolved from one of the six “protyles” which constitute the basis of the Object-Universe. The three “states”, so-called of our terrestrial matter, known as the “solid”, “liquid”, and “gaseous”, are only, in strict accuracy, SUB-states. As to the former reality of the descent into the physical, which culminated in physiological man and animal, we have a palpable testimony in the fact of the so-called spiritualistic “materializations”.

Ibid., 737

Ultimately, spirit is matter in its subtlest sense; matter is spirit in its densest sense. There is One Universal Life, force, energy, essence, which transcends all the dichotomies that arise from the physical senses. Owing to the conditioning of human consciousness through its physical activity, the very means of recognizing what is visible or gross or specific or concrete, in opposition to that which is general, abstract, invisible and ethereal, is distorted and dichotomized. When perception is full, these false divisions are discarded. Instead, one can perceive the multiple and intertwined lines of evolution, understand their relation to each other and to their unmanifest origin. To detect this continuity within the kaleidoscopic variety of living forms is to recognize the meaning of different forms and different rates of progress.

This reflection upon the unreality of the polarity between consciousness and form must not be allowed to ossify into a static idealism. Instead, it should be the starting-point for a meditation upon the possible changes in the relationship between spirit and matter in manifestation. For it is through an understanding of this shifting dynamic balance that one may discover the keys of self-conscious creativity and evolutionary growth. The sense of evolutionary initiative which is involved here is so metaphysical that it must initially be understood in terms of some supremely suggestive metaphor. Hence all those traditions which conceive of Nature as a consummate artist, or the Logos as the grand architect of the universe. Nature is not blind. Nor is it the servant of some capricious and extra-cosmic god. Subject to neither an imposed theology nor an invented teleology, Nature unfolds from within. The potential in invisible Nature includes ideation and subtle energy, the spiritual will to create which is identified with Kamadeva, the creative power of that which was at the very dawn of manifestation. This creative designing energy in the heart of the cosmos does not act arbitrarily and then disappear. Once released, it becomes present in every member of an entire series of transformations. It continues to abide within every spiritual atom and Monad. The atomic energy of the atoms of the physical plane is merely a reflection of the One Universal Life-energy that is inherent in the subtlest planes of substance and ideation. In every subtle atom in Nature, there is memory, will and sensation.

Naturally, these terms should not be understood in the narrow context of mundane human expressions of sensation, memory and will. To do so would be to corrupt philosophic pantheism into crude idolatry. Even during the nineteenth century, vitalism was seen as a major conceptual alternative to mechanism. Whilst contemporary thinkers are little closer to understanding life-atoms and the life principle in universal Nature, microbiologists and particle physicists are becoming progressively impressed by the immense intricacy and complex intelligence that is reflected in every single particle, atom and cell. But still they cannot make sense of this at the micro or at the macro level. How is the intelligence in the atom to be connected to the intelligence in the human brain and heart? By beginning with the metaphor of the artist, the designer and the architect, who marshals matter in line with the designs of intelligence, who produces forms with beauty, merit and function, one can gain some sense of the needed continuity between spirit and matter. It is necessary, however, to go beyond the stage of imaginative metaphor if one would understand the evolution of natural forms of life. One cannot cooperate with Nature until one solves the riddle of that creativity within one’s own inner vestures. If one would become a true creator, then one must first, as the saying goes, “meet one’s Maker”. That Maker does not lie outside oneself.

The design and formation of the living being is a complex process occupying myriads and myriads of years of a gradual descent of spirit into matter, an involvement of consciousness in form. In principle this process is no different from that known to creative human beings who meditate upon some germinal plan. They know that the great work of imagination and creativity extends over many lifetimes. It requires evolving oneself, evolving other human beings and evolving new modes and new possibilities. True human creativity starts at a fluidic proemial level, free of over-elaborate detail. It intensifies the central idea behind the vision until, working in time with the cycles of Nature, there comes a gradual shaping and consolidation. The imagination can be bodied forth into the manifest form of the vision. In order to retain a high degree of fidelity to the original idea while achieving precise degrees of concretion, there must be a continuous purging and purification of the field of motivation and ideation. Above all, there must be a tremendous mastery, through the use of silence and secrecy, over all the invisible forces that are auspicious to gestation. To work in this way is to emulate Nature. Nature works in secret, especially on the causal plane, just as seeds in the soil germinate below the surface. Within these invisible processes there is a mysterious absorption and osmosis of subtle light-energies from the sun and the moon. Living forms on earth are nourished not merely by the visible physical soil, but also by the magnetosphere surrounding the earth.

If this is true of the good gardener of Nature working on the physical plane, it is doubly true of the wisdom of Nature throughout the evolutionary process. Prior to the present Round and to the present physical plane, Nature traced out the astral prototypes of all her kingdoms in subtler fields of matter. Before the shifting balance of spirit and matter reached the mid-point of evolution, Akashic ideation was translated by the Lunar Pitris into the astral matrix that is presently veiled by a thin veneer of physical form.

The fish evolved into an amphibian – a frog – in the shadows of ponds, and man passed through all his metamorphoses on this Globe in the Third Round as he did in this, his Fourth Cycle. The Third Round types contributed to the formation of the types in this one. On strict analogy, the cycle of Seven Rounds in their work of the gradual formation of man through every kingdom of Nature, are repeated on a microscopical scale in the first seven months of gestation of a future human being. Let the student think over and work out this analogy. As the seven months” old unborn baby, though quite ready, yet needs two months more in which to acquire strength and consolidate; so man, having perfected his evolution during seven Rounds, remains two periods more in the womb of mother-Nature before he is born, or rather reborn a Dhyani, still more perfect than he was before he launched forth as a Monad on the newly built chain of worlds. Let the student ponder over this mystery, and then he will easily convince himself that, as there are also physical links between many classes, so there are precise domains wherein the astral merges into physical evolution.

Ibid., 257

It is possible for Man, involved in the highest Promethean demiurgic creativity of Kriyashakti, to emulate this process of Nature. Rooted in the silence and secrecy of the unmanifest, one may self-consciously unite oneself with and draw upon the divine creative agencies that are at the origin of Man and the cosmos. To understand this is to place the entire physical plane in proper perspective, gaining a fresh insight into its aggregate continuity with subtler planes of matter. As soon as one acquires a direct sense of the meaning of the involution of spirit into matter, one’s conception of evolution is transformed. One is no longer concerned with quixotically tracing out physical continuities between fossil forms and questing for missing links. Instead, one’s attention will be redirected from the past towards the future, and towards human possibilities as yet unrealized. This is a tremendous challenge to the imagination. It restores the idea of the plenitude of potential in Nature, and it rescues one from Epimethean empiricism. All too often, the effort to seek explanations amounts to nothing more than a concern to explain away what exists. At best, such efforts may help to codify and classify natural forms imperfectly; never can it help one to create and anticipate the myriad possibilities within the mind of Nature and matter. This much is clear, both philosophically and practically. Those who become classifiers and historians of design are hardly ever those who create or design themselves. To study and serve Nature is not at all the same as classifying and categorizing her. Like the medieval authors of angelologies or the collectors of butterflies, too many people suppose that classification is comprehension. Mutilation of Nature does not amount to mastery over her.

The Promethean task of the future evolution of humanity has nothing to do with such lifeless and destructive misconceptions. It involves the rejection of all linear thinking captivated by exterior forms. One must learn to think of evolution on multiple lines, to distinguish between the spiritual, intellectual and material threads of evolution in Nature. Cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis must be seen in terms of eternal duration and periodic time. Gupta Vidya teaches of seven Rounds or circlings of seven globes, six of which are invisible to perceivers on any one plane. Since present humanity is on the fourth globe of the earth chain, the first three and the last three globes of that chain are invisible to present humanity. Human beings see only that which is consubstantial with the physical senses. Through limits of perception they run the danger of foreclosing the possibilities of Nature. To counter this, one must develop a sense of the larger picture. One must gain some theoretical understanding of the seven Rounds, which extend over millions upon millions of years and provide arenas for gradual evolution to take place on a series of planes of matter. Before the nineteenth century, Western thinkers found it virtually impossible to conceive of either Man or Nature as older than about six thousand years. Nowadays it is becoming easier to contemplate that some anthropoid forms associated with the evolution of man existed nearly eighteen million years ago. All such developments are helpful. They are still, however, far from any clear recognition that human intelligence antedates the origin of the solar system. The entire field of eighteen million years of self-conscious human existence upon this earth is but a tiny fragment in relation to all the Rounds involved in the earth chain and the even vaster expanse of cosmic evolution in general.

Nevertheless, a careful study of the Teachings of Gupta Vidya in regard to the Rounds and Races of humanity on the present earth can be of great help in restoring individual initiative. Unlike any unilinear theory of evolution restricted to the physical plane, the cyclic interplay of spirit and matter in manifestation carries with it an inherent sense of timing and opportunity. Considered broadly, humanity is at the mid-point of an immense evolution. There has been a vast descent of spirit into matter and there will be an equally vast reascent of matter into spirit. If one studies a diagram of the seven globes of the earth chain arranged in a circle, one may intuit something which applies not only to the long period of human evolution but also to the life cycles of a single individual. The same evolutionary logic is equally applicable to the conscious spiritual growth of the individual. Instead of seeing the descent of spirit into matter in terms of some sort of Fall linked to sin, one should come to see human beings as gods who are fallen only in the sense that they have become obscured. They have through the density of matter merely become forgetful. This should be seen as a sacred and sacrificial process necessary for evolution to work itself out fully on the plane of physical matter. To see this, however, is also to understand that there is another side to the process.

If there is an involution of spirit into matter, there must be an evolution of spirit out of matter which carries with it all beings in a conscious return to the source. This return to the source is enacted at a microcosmic level every time a human being meditates, but it can be done much more self-consciously. To do this, to become one with the true “Maker” within oneself, one must die to the cries and pleadings, the fascination and noise, of the exterior physical world. The tragedy of many people is that they find no reason to be glamorized by the world, but at the same time they remain terrified of the inner life. They shy away from the lonely abyss of meditation. Fearful of their own fallibility, lacking confidence in themselves and Nature, they are lost between two worlds.

This confusion may be understood as the collective effect of the reversal of momentum from involution to evolution. If one had a cooler understanding of the logic of the process, one could see that the gradual descent of spirit into matter which occupied the first three Rounds and the first half of the Fourth Round is now being replaced by the opposite process. Because humanity is now in the Fifth Root Race out of seven Races in the Fourth Round, it is already somewhat past the mid-point. If one would serve the evolutionary future of mankind, one must withdraw attention from the creation of the cosmos and man in the past and redirect it to the future. If one would move forward in evolution, one must grasp the fundamental shift that is taking place between the transformations through which man passed on the descending arc – which is centrifugal for spirit and centripetal for matter – and those he prepares to go through, henceforward, on his ascending path, which will reverse the direction of the two forces – viz., matter will become centrifugal and spirit centripetal.

Ibid., 261

During the descending cycles of manifestation, spirit works centrifugally by diffusion of light in every direction. Matter, on the other hand, works by concentration and condensation, becoming harder and denser and absorbing into itself various essences. This process confuses human beings. They experience a distinct gap between spirit and matter, are seemingly caught in what is purely the shadowy side or external aspect of Nature. But having passed the mid-point at which astral potentials are merged into physical forms, humanity is moving towards a comparable future point when physical existence will dissipate and evaporate through a remerging into subtle substance. On the ascending arc of the process, matter will become what spirit was. Matter will become more etherealized, looser and less concrete. It will begin to etherealize itself; spirit, on the other hand, will be characterized by greater freedom in inner concentration. As spirit is freeing itself from confinement in the grossest matter while matter is etherealizing itself, consciousness is becoming more individuated on the plane of ideation yet more universal in its sentient contact with all of manifestation. Spirit is drawing itself more and more inwardly into itself, and so recovering the pristine potential and potency of the Logos that was and is at the heart of all life and Nature. If the descending arc of evolution is compared philosophically to the One becoming the many, then the ascending arc may be viewed as the many rebecoming the One. This applies to universal collective consciousness, spanning all humanity and every kingdom of life, as well as to every human life.

The possibilities of individual growth and refinement of consciousness are coextensive with the evolutionary and involutionary possibilities of Nature as a whole. This will never be grasped by a merely retrospective and materialistic view of evolution. It is the persistent challenge that lies before the pioneers of the humanity of the future. Guided by the brilliant light of the Avataric star, pilgrim humanity is even now embarking upon the long, slow, upward return journey to its divine origins. In the far distant future, in the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round, every unit will reawaken to the divine unity and the divine wisdom that underlies the cosmos and Man will be restored. Even now, for those with an eye to the future, there is a perceptible brightening in the hidden heart of humanity. New modes and models are being gestated in the Akasha. These may be perceived through the silence of devotion and meditation by all those who wish to make themselves the true servants of humanity and the wise custodians of Nature’s rich resources.

BY RAGHAVAN IYER
Hermes, September 1984

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Man as Microcosm

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:05:27 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

MAN AS MICROCOSM

Man . . . is a microcosm, a world in himself, the mirror of an invisible universe that is around and beyond him.

RAGHAVAN IYER,

Hermes, March 1979

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Bhagavad Gita

vsadmnthgan — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:02:12 +0000

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom
⮎ What is Theosophy?

Theosophy as Divine Wisdom

THE BHAGAVAD GITA

Like everything else that a Great Teacher does, it is meant to release in Arjuna authentic representations of an archetypal stance. Whatever part he chose or course of action he took, it was possible for Arjuna to have unconditional help from Krishna. It was also possible for Arjuna—in relation to his world—both to be involved and to stand outside it. This central message of Krishna became a clue for ancient warriors who were torn between deploring the end of what looked like a Golden Age in comparison to what was emerging, and nurturing a deep concern to preserve and maintain something sacred in the New Age. Thus, the Gita became a keynote pointing to a new modulus of growth, a principle of self-reliance not merely grounded in individual human nature but also serving as a basic pattern for social structures.

The Bhagavad Gita with Uttara Gita,

Rendered by Raghavan Iyer

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