Esoteric Buddhism

1. Esoteric Buddhism

2. Table of Contents

Esoteric Buddhism

Sinnett, A. P. (Alfred Percy), 1840-1921

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Copyright, 1884,Br IIOUGUTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Camhriilge, Mass., U. S. A.Electrotyped and Printed by II. 0. Iloughtou & Company.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE.

The fifth English edition of Esoteric Bud-dhism consists of the text of the fourth Amer-ican edition, together with the larger part of thepreface specially furnished by Mr. Sinnett forthe American edition. He took the opportunityafforded by a new edition, also, to append tosome of the chapters annotations upon pointscalling for explication. These annotations arenow added to the sixth American edition as anappendix. The present edition therefore cor-responds with the latest English edition, andhas besides matter in the author's preface notincorporated in any English edition.

This book was written in the early part of1883, and now that I am venturing to recom-mend it to public notice afresh in the latterpart of 1884, after three English editions havepassed through the press, I find myself in pos-session of much additional information bearingon many of the problems dealt with. But Iam glad to be able to say that such later teach-ing as I have yet received only reveals incom-pleteness in mv original conceptions of the eso-teric doctrine, — no material error so far. In-deed, I am happy enough to have received, fromthe great adept himself from whom I obtainedmy instruction in the first instance, the assur-ance that the book as it now stands is a soundand trustworthy statement of the scheme ofNature as understood by the initiates of occultscience, which may have to be a good deal de-veloped in future, if the interest it excites iskeen enough to constitute an efficient demand

for further teaching of this kind on the part ofthe world at hirge, but will never have to beremodeled or apologized for.

Further than this, the reception of the bookin India has shown that the doctrines thusfor the first time set forth in a coherent andstraightforward Avay are recognized, when thusstated, by various schools of Oriental philoso-phy as consonant with their fundamental views.A Brahman Hindoo, writing in the Indianmagazine, " The Theosophist," for June, 1884,criticises the present volume as departing un-necessarily from accepted Sanskrit nomencla-ture; but his objection merely is that I liavegiven unfamiliar names in some cases to ideaswhich are already expressed in Hindoo sacredwritings, and that I have done too much honorto the religious system commonly known asBuddhism, by representing that as more closelyallied with the esoteric doctrine than an}' other." The popular wisdom of the majority of theHindoos to this day," says my Brahman critic," is more or less tinged with the esoteric doc-trines taught in Mr. Sinnett's book, misnamed* Esoteric Buddhism,' while there is not a sin-gle hamlet or village in the wdiole of India inwhich people are not more or less acquaintedwith the sublime tenets of the Vedanta philoso-phy. . . . The effects of Karma in the next

birth, tlie enjoyment of its fruits, good or evil, ina subjective or spiritual state of existence priorto the re-incarnation of the spiritual monad inthis or any other world, the loitering of theunsatisfied souls or human shells in the earth(Kamaloca), the pralayic and manwantaric pe-riods, . . . are not only intelligible but are evenfamiliar to a great many Hindoos, under namesdifferent from those made use of by the authorof ' Esoteric Buddhism.' " So much the betterfrom the point of view of Western readers, towhom it is a matter of indifference whether theexoteric Hindoo or Buddhist religion is nearestto absolutely true spiritual science, which shouldcertainly bear no name that appears to wed itto any one faith in the external world morethan to another. All that we in the West canbe anxious for is to arrive at a clear understand-ing as to the essential principles of that science,and if we find the principles defined in thisbook claimed by the cultured representatives ofmore than one great Oriental creed as equallythe underlying truths of their different systems,we shall be all the better inclined to believe thepresent exposition of doctrine worth our atten-tion.

In regard to the complaint itself, that theteachings here reduced to an intelligible shapeare incorrectly described by the name this book

bears, I cannot do better than quote tbe noteby which the editor of " The Theosophist " re-plies to his Brahman contributor. He sa5'S:" We print the above letter, as it expresses, incourteous language and in an able manner, theviews of a large number of our Hindoo broth-ers. At the same time it must be stated thatthe name of ' Esoteric Buddhism ' was given toMr. Sinnett's latest publication, not becausethe doctrine propounded therein is meant to bespecially identified with any particular form offaith, but because Buddhism means the doc-trine of the BuddJias, the Wise, i. e. the Wis-dom Religion." For my own part I need onlyadd that I fully accept and adopt that explana-tion of the matter. It would, indeed, be a mis-conception of the design which this book is in-tended to subserve, to suppose it concerned withthe recommendation, to a dilettante moderntaste, of old world fashions in religious thought.The external forms and fancies of religion inone age may be a little purer, in another age alittle more corrupt, but they inevitably adaptthemselves to their period, and it would beextravagant to imagine them interchangeable.The present statement is not put forward inthe hope of making Buddhists from among theadherents of any other S3'Stem, but with theview of conveying to thoughtful readers, as well

in the East as in the West, a series of leadingideas, relating to the actual verities of Nature,and the real facts of Man's progress throughevolution, which have been communicated to thewriter in their present shape by Eastern phi-losophers, and thus fall most readily into anOriental mould. But the value of these teach-ings will perhaps be most fully realized whenwe clearly perceive that they are scientific intheir character, rather than polemical. Spirit-ual truths, if they are truths, may evidently bedealt with in a no less scientific spirit thanchemical reactions. And no religious feeling,of w^hatever color it may be, need be disturbedby the importation into the general stock ofknowledge of new discoveries about the consti-tution and nature of Man on the plane of hishigher activities. True religion will eventuallyfind a way to assimilate such fresh knowledgein the same way that it finally acquiesces in agradual enlargement of knowledge on the phys-ical plane. • This, in the first instance, maysometimes disconcert notions associated withreligious belief, — as geological science at firstembarrassed biblical chronology. But in timemen came to see that the essence of the biblicalstatement does not reside in the literal sense ofcosmological passages, and religious conceptionsgrew all the purer for the relief thus afforded.

In just the same way, when positive scientificknowledge begins to embrace a comprehensionof laws relating to the spiritual developmentof j\Ian, some misconceptions of Nature longblended with religion may have to give way,but still it will be found that the central ideasof true religion have been cleared up and bright-ened all the better for the process. Especially,as such processes continue, will the internal dis-sensions of the religious world be inevitablysubdued. The warfare of sects can only be dueto a failure on the part of rival sectarians tograsp fundamental facts. Could a time comewhen the basic ideas on which religion restsshould be comprehended with the same cer-tainty with which we comprehend some pri-mary physical laws, and disagreement aboutthem be recognized by all educated people asridiculous, then there would not be room forvery acrimonious divergences of religious senti-ment. Externals of religious thought wouldstill differ in different climates and among dif-ferent races, — as dress and dietaries differ, —but such differences would not give rise to in-tellectual antagonism.

Basic facts of the kind that must, when theycome to be widely recognized as such, have atendency in this way to blend together super-ficially divergent views, not to provoke a trial

of strengtli between them, are developed, itappears to me, in the exposition of spiritualscience we have now obtained from our Easternfriends. It is quite unnecessary for religiousthinkers to turn aside from them under theimpression that they are arguments in favor ofsome Eastern, in preference to the more gen=eral Western, creed. If medical science were todiscover a new fact about Man's body, were tounveil some hitherto concealed principle onwhich the growth of skin and flesh and boneis carried on, that discovery would not be re-garded as trenching at all on the domain ofreligion. Would the domain of religion be in-vaded by a discovery, for example, that shouldgo one step behind the action of the nerves,and disclose a finer set of activities manipulat-ing these as they manipulate the muscles? Atall events, even if such a discovery might beginto reconcile science and religion, no man whoallows any of his higher faculties to enter intohis religious thinking would put aside a posi-tive fact of Nature, clearly shown to be such,as hostile to religion. Being a fact, it is inevi-table that it should fit in with all other facts,and with religious truth among the number.So with the great mass of information in refer-ence to the evolution of Man embodied in thepresent statement. Our best plan evidently isj

to ask, before we look into the report I bringforward, not whether it will square in all re-spects with preconceived views, but whether itreally does introduce us to a series of naturalfacts connected witli the growth and develop-ment of Man's higher faculties. If it does this,we may wisely examine the facts first in thescientific spirit, and leave them to exercisewhatever effect on collateral beliefs may bereasonable and legitimate, later on.

Ramifying, as the explanation proceeds, intoa great many side paths, it will be seen bythe readers of this book that the central ideanow presented to us completes and spiritualizesthe great conception of physical anthropology,which accounts for the evolution of Man's bodyby successive and very gradual improvementsof animal forms from generation to generation.That is a very barren and miserable theory, re-garded as an all-embracing account of creation ;but, properly understood, it paves the way fora comprehension of the higher concurrent pro-cess, which is all the while evolving the soul ofMan in the higher spiritual realms of existence.The circumstances under which tliis is donereconcile the evolutionary method with the in-stinctive craving of every self-conscious entityfor perpetuity of individual life. The dis-jointed series of improving forms on this earth

have no individuality, and the life of each inturn is a separate transaction which finds nocompensation for suffering involved, no justice,no fruit of its efforts, in the life of its successor.It is possible to argue on the assumption of anevr independent creation of a human soul,every time a new human form is produced byphysiological growth, that in the after spiritualstate of such soul justice ma}^ be awarded; butthen this conception is itself at variance withthe fundamental idea of evolution, which traces,or believes that it traces, the origin of each soulto the working of highly developed matter ineach case. Nor is it less at variance with theanalogies of Nature, as these come under ourobservation ; but without going into that, it isenough for the moment to perceive that thetheory of spiritual evolution, as set forth in theteaching of esoteric science, is, at any rate, inharmony with these analogies, while at thesame time it satisfactorily meets the require-ments of justice and of the instinctive demandfor continuity of individual life.

This theory recognizes the evolution of thesoul as a process that is quite continuous initself, though carried out partly through theintermediation of a great series of dissociatedforms. Putting aside, for the moment, theprofound metaphysics of the theory which trace

the principle of life from the original firstcause of the Cosmos, we find the soul as anentity emerging from the animal kingdom andpassing into the earliest human forms, withoutbeing at that time ripe for the higher intellec-tual life with which the present state of hu-manity renders us familiar. But through suc-cessive incarnations in forms whose physicalimprovement, under the Darwinian law ofevolution, is constantly fitting them to be itshabitations at each return to objective life, itgradually gathers that enormous range of ex-perience which is summed up in its higher de-velopment. In the intervals between its physi-cal incarnations, it prolongs and works out, andfinally exhausts or transmutes into so much ab-stract development, the personal experiences ofeach life. This is the clue to that apparentdifficulty which besets the cruder form of thetheory of re-incarnation, which independentspeculation has sometimes thrown out. Eachman is unconscious of having led previous lives,therefore he contends that subsequent lives canafford him no compensations for this one. Heoverlooks the enormous importance of the in-tervening spiritual condition, in which he byno means forgets the personal adventures andemotions he has just passed through, and inivhich he distills them into so much cosmic

progress. In the following pages the elucida-tion of this profoundly interesting mystery isattempted, and it will be seen that the view ofevents now afforded us is not only a solutionof the problems of life and death, but of manyvery perplexing experiences on the border landbetween those conditions, — or rather betweenphysical and spiritual life, — which have en-gaged attention and speculation so widely ofrecent years in most civilized countries.

It "was time, in fact, that the esoteric doc-trine should be offered to modern thinkersto assist them in grappling with the enigmaswhich the spasmodic operation of very exaltedspiritual faculties in some cases — the manifes-tation of some extra-physical laws and forcesof Nature in others — have been latterly ac-cumulating on our hands in great abundance.Rather, I imagine, because the conjectures putforward to account for them were unacceptableto the cultivated world at large, than becausethe occurrence of extra-ph3^sical manifestationsof late years has been disbelieved altogether,have most people been nnwilling to pay closeattention to such occurrences. Nor is it neces-sary that they should do so now, in order toreach an intellectual standpoint from which thewhole range of possibilities in regard to com-munications that may be established between

the seen and the unseen worlds may be broadlycomprehended. The higher culture of the Easthas been concerned with the investigation, inits own congenial retirement, of that side of Na-ture, while we in the West have been pushingforward our physical civilization to its presentgreat height. Different races in the world ad-vance in this way along different lines of prog-ress ; or, rather,—to state the idea more sci-entifically in the light of the occult doctrine,— all races have their cyclic progress to accom-plish, at one period of which they are concernedwith physical and at another with spiritual cul-ture. We of the white race in Europe andAmerica — embodying within the last few cen-turies one phase of the progress of our sub-section of humanity—have been concerned al-most entirely, during the historic period, withthe development of our material civilization.Our religions, meanwhile, have had to do ratherwith the maintenance of spiritual aspirations ina potential state, than with the keen investiga-tion of the facts of Nature in the spiritual re-gion. We have keenly investigated these factson the physical plane, for that was the properfunction of our age; but all earnestness of ef-fort on the part of Oriental races, in the mean-while, has been turned in another direction.There, physical civilization has been stngnant,

material progress quite unimportant, but spirit'ual aspirations have been not merely kept upas an underlying sentiment in people's minds,— they have operated to produce the greatestmanifestations of activity with which the racehas been concerned. I do not mean that theIndian or any other Asiatic race has been asactive in writing books and publishing discov-eries in spiritual science as we in the Westhave been with the literature and research ofphysics. That kind of activity is itself a mani-festation of material civilization. But the Asi-atic races have fermented with capacities forgreat spiritual development, and the conse-quence has been that many Eastern peoplehave devoted their lives to spiritual study andresearch, always, of course, pursuing the meth-ods of research and the modes of life appro-priate to a cycle of spiritual progress, — meth-ods which lead the student of — and still morethe adept in — such science into seclusion andsecrecy.

Probably it may be due in some way to anopposite fermentation of causes in the East andthe West now that a certain interchancre ofmethods begins to be possible. I do not meanthat the West is turning away yet from ma-terial civilization, nor the East slackening itsdevotion to spirituality, but we here are cer-

taiuly readier now tlian we were a generationor two iigo to recognize the possibility of ac-quiring real knowledge of spiritual science, andare more generally impressed with the neces-sity of such acquisitions. The East on the otherhand has partially relaxed its hitherto inviola-ble reserve. The important movement of whichthis little book is one outcome constitutes adouble illustration of the new tendency at lastdiscernible. It is discernible in several differ-ent ways to acute observers who once possessthemselves of the key to what is going on. Butit is only of that particular effort in which myown willing services have been engaged that Ineed now speak. A book more or less, in thisocean of books which is constantly welling forthfrom active Western civilization, may seem avery small matter; but to the highly conserva-tive devotees of occult science in the East, abook which sets forth in plain language, whichall who run may read, the hitherto secret in-terpretations of Nature's spiritual design thathave hitherto been communicated only in thedeadliest secrecy to students of long absorptionin the pursuit of such teaching, constitutes aviolation of the old occult usage which is quitebewildering and appalling. As my Brahmancritic above referred to points out, now thatthe esoteric doctrine is once for all plainly

stated, it is seen to be embodied, a bit hereand a bit there, in the various sacred writingsof India. But at the same time it was nowherestated in such terms as to be comprehensiblewithout prolonged and special stud3\ And forthe most part the doctrine, in so far as it wasstated, was wrapped in allegory that Westernreaders have rarely had. the patience to unravel.To all intents and purposes, though the knowl-edge here set forth is no new discovery for thoseby whom it is now revealed, it is a new revela-tion for the whole world, — Eastern and West-ern alike, — in its present explicit distinctness,and has only been prepared for in the West,but I trust prepared for sufficiently, by thatwidespread seething interest in spiritual thingswhich has been working among us for someyears past.

This interest has been stimulated in variousways. The casual occurrence of phenomenalinking our physical perceptions with the un-seen world has kindled an ardent enthusiasmfor inquiry along the path of investigation thuspointed out, but the laws of Nature aifectingthe vast realm of spiritual existence are far toocomplicated to be discovered from an observa-tion of the phenomena of the relatively nar-row subdivision of that realm brought withinour cognizance almost exclusively by casual and

irregaliir occurrences of the kind referred to.It is only with the help of esoteric science —the accumulated experience of a great school ofinquirers, devoting faculties of the highest kind,for a long series of ages, to the explorationof spiritual mysteries — that a sufficiently wide-view of Nature can be obtained to embrace theapparently disorderly phenomena of the astralworld, — the first beyond the physical frontier,— in all-sufficing generalizations that cover thewhole scheme of spiritual evolution. These far-reaching and magnificent conceptions of Natureshould not only recommend themselves, whenproperly understood, to minds that have shrunkfrom crude conclusions based on the imperfectdata of modern spiritual observation in theWest, but should also be recognized by modernspiritualists themselves as calculated to purifyand expand their own doctrines, and guardthem from liability to underrate the grandeurof the region into which they have partlypenetrated, by relying, for its interpretation,too confidently on experiences gathered at itsthreshold. For the theosophic teaching, whichhas been too hastily resented by some spiritual-ists who have conceived it hostile to their ownacquired knowledge, will be discovered, on acloser examination, to include these experi-ences, and only to disconcert some of the con-

elusions derived from them. It must be re-membered that my statements concernhig thephenomena of Kama loca^ — the astral world,from which most of the phenomena of spirit-ualism emanate, — have been the fruit of myown questions and inquiries rather than a por-tion of a carefully adjusted series of lessons inoccult science, dictated by professors applyingthemselves to the art of teaching. That, in-deed, has been the way in which the wholebody of exposition which this book containshas been worked out, and it naturally followsthat some parts of it are less complete thanothers, and that none can be much better thangeneral outlines. In esoteric science, as in mi-croscopy, the application of higher and higherpoAvers will always continue to reveal a grow-ing wealth of detail; and the sketch of an or-ganism that appeared satisfactory enough whenits general proportions were first discerned, isbetrayed to be almost worse than insufficientwhen a number of previously unsuspected minu-tiae are brought to notice. In this way, whileno mistake has been made as regards any state-ment actually put forward in the followingpages on the subject of human evolution afterdeath, there will be more, I apprehend, to addto that part of the explanation in later expan-sions of it, if these become practicable, than to

any other. The points which, meanwhile, Iwill ask spiritualist readers to bear in mindare especially these :

1st. It is already indicated that the dissolu-tion of the human principles after death, thoughone cannot help speaking of the process as oneof dispersion, is not actually a mechanical sepa-ration of parts, nor even a process analogous tothe chemical dissolution of a compound bodyinto elements on the same plane of matter.The discussion of the process as if it were amechanical separation was represented fromthe first as " a rough way of dealing with thematter," and was adopted for the sake of em-phasizing the transition of consciousness fromone principle to another which goes on in theastral world after death. This transition ofconsciousness is, in fact, the struggle betweenthe higher and lower duad.

2d. The struggle just referred to may bereocarded as an oscillation of consciousness be-tween the two duads; and when the return ofconsciousness to the lower principles, duringthis struggle, is stimulated and encouraged bycouAT-erse with still living entities on the earthplane, with the help of mediuraship, the properspiritual growth of the entity in Kama loca is,to that extent,—perhaps to a very consider-able extent, — retarded. It is this considera-

INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION. 23

tion whicli may, in a greater degree than anyother, account for the disapproval with whichthe adepts of occult science regard the activepractice of spiritualistic intercourse with de-parted human beings. Such intercourse, thoughdictated from this side by the purest affection,may seriously retard and embarrass the spirit-ual development of those who have gone inadvance of us.

3d. It is recognized in the following pagesthat intercourse between living human beingsgifted with a very elevated sort of mediumship,or spiritual clairvoyance, and departed friendswith whom they have been closely united insympatliy during life, is possible on the higherspiritual plane, after such persons have passedthrough the struggle of Kama loca and havebeen completely spiritualized. That intercoursemay be of a more subtle kind than can readilybe realized by reference to examples of inter-course on the earth plane, but may evidentlybe none the less exhilarating to the higher per-ceptions.

By dwelling on the points of contact betweenthe theosophic teachings and the experience ofthe higher spiritualism, I think it will be foundthat the alleged incompatibility of theosophyand spiritualism is much less complete than issupposed. It is impossible, I venture to assert.

24 INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDITION.

that there can be any true psychic experiencewhicii the doctrines of theosophy — or, to speakmore accurately, of that esoteric science of whichtheosophy is the study — will fail to interpretand explain. And if this partial exposition ofesoteric science may leave a good deal not 5^etexplained in the vast region of mystery whichseparates death and re-birth, surely the revela-tions which are made here go far enough to es-tablish a good claim on our respectful attentionfor the present, so that some embarrassmentsthey may still leave to trouble our understand-ing may fairly be passed to a suspense account,while we await a further illumination, to be,perhaps, obtainable hereafter.

The teachings embodied in the present vol-ume let in a flood of light on questions con-nected with Buddhist doctrine which havedeeply perplexed previous writers on that re-ligion, and offer the world for the first time apractical clue to the meaning of almost allancient religious symbolism. More than this,the esoteric doctrine, when properly under-stood, will be found to advance an overpower-ing: claim on the attention of earnest thinkers.Its tenets are not presented to us as the in-vention of any founder or prophet; its testi-mony is based on no written scriptures; itsviews of Nature have been evolved by the re-searches of an immense succession of investiga-tors, qualified for their task by the possessionof spiritual faculties and perceptions of a higherorder than those belonging to ordinary human-ity. In the course of ages, the block of knowl-edge thus accumulated, concerning the originof the world and of man, and the ultimate des-

tinies of our race, — concerning also the na-ture of other worlds and states of existence dif-fering from those of our present life, — checkedand examined at every point, verified in alldirections, and constantly under examinationthroughout, has come to be looked on by itscustodians as constituting the absolute truthconcerning spiritual things, the actual state ofthe facts regarding vast regions of vital activ-ity lying beyond this earthly existence.

European philosophy, whether concernedwith religion or pure metaphysics, has so longbeen used to a sense of insecurity in specula-tions outrunning the limits of physical experi-ment, that absolute truth about spiritual thingsis hardly recognized any longer by prudentthinkers as a reasonable object of pursuit; butdifferent habits of thought have been acquiredin Asia. The secret doctrine which, to a con-siderable extent, I am now enabled to expound,is regarded not only by all its adherents, butby vast numbers who have never expected toknow more of it than that such a doctrine ex-ists, as a mine of entirely trustworthy knowl-edge, from which all religions and philosophieshave derived whatever they possess of truth,and with which every religion must coincide ifit claims to be a mode of expression for truth.

This is a bold claim indeed, but I venture to

announce the following exposition as one ofimmense importance to the world, because Ibelieve that claim can be substantiated.

I do not say that within the compass ofthis volume the authenticity of the esotericdoctrine can be proved. Such proof cannotbe given by any process of argument; onlythrough the development in each inquirer forhimself of the faculties required for the directobservation of Nature along the lines indicated.But his 2?rimd facie conclusion may be deter-mined by the extent to which the views ofNature about to be unfolded may recommendthemselves to his mind, and by the reasonswhich exist for trusting the powers of observa-tion of those by whom they are communicated.

Will it be supposed that the very magnitudeof the claim now made on behalf of the eso-teric doctrine, lifts the present statement outof the region of inquiry to which its title re-fers, — inquiry as to the real inner meaning ofthe definite and specific religion called Bud-dhism? The fact is, however, that esotericBuddhism, though b}^ no means divorced fi-omthe associations of exoteric Buddhism, must notbe conceived to constitute a mere imperium inimperioy — a central school of culture in thevortex of the Buddhist world. In proportionas Buddhism retreats into the inner penetralia

of its faith, these are found to merge into theinner penetralia of other faiths. The cosmicconceptions, and the knowledge of Nature onwhich Buddhism not merely rests, but Avhicliconstitute esoteric Buddhism, equally consti-tute esoteric Brahmanism. And the esotericdoctrine is thus regarded by those of all creedswho are " enlightened " (in the Buddhist sense)as the absolute truth concerning Nature, Man,the origin of the Universe, and the destiniestoward which its inhabitants are tending. Atthe same time, exoteric Buddhism has remainedin closer union with the esoteric doctrine thanany other popular religion. An exposition ofthe inner knowledge addressed to English read-ers in the present day, will thus associate itselfirresistibly with famihar outlines of Buddhistteaching. It will certainly impart to these aliving meaning they generally seem to be w^ith-out, but all the more on this account may theesoteric doctrine be most conveniently studiedin its Buddhist aspect; one, moreover, whichhas been so strongly impressed upon it sincethe time of Gautama Buddha, that though theessence of the doctrine dates back to a far moreremote antiquity, the Buddhist coloring hasnow permeated its whole substance. Thatwhich I am about to put before the reader zsesoteric Buddhism, and for European students

approaching it for the first time, any other des-ignation would be a misnomer.

The statement I have to make must be con-sidered in its enth'ety before the reader will beable to comprehend why initiates in the eso-teric doctrine regard the concession involved inthe present disclosure of the general outUnesof this doctrine as one of startling magnitude.One explanation of this feeling, however, maybe readily seen to spring from the extremesacredness that has always been attached bytheir ancient guardians to the inner vital truthsof Nature. Hitherto this sacredness has al-ways prescribed their absolute concealmentfrom the profane herd. And so far as thatpolicy of concealment — the tradition of count-less ages — is now being given up, the new de-parture which the appearance of this volumesignalizes will be contemplated with surpriseand regret by a great many initiated disciples.The surrender to criticism, which may some-times perhaps be clumsy and irreverent, of doc-trines which have hitherto been regarded bysuch persons as too majestic in their import tobe talked of at all except under circumstancesof befitting solemnity, will seem to them a ter-rible profanation of the great mysteries. Fromthe European point of view it would be un^reasonable to expect that such a book as this

can be exempt from the usual rough-and-tumbletreatment of new ideas; and special convictionsor commonplace bigotry may sometimes ren-der such treatment in the present case pecul-iarly inimical. But all that, though a matterof course to European exponents of the doc-trine like myself, will seem very grievous anddisgusting to its earlier and more regular repre-sentatives. They will appeal sadly to the wis-dom of the time-honored rule which, in the oldsymbolical way, forbade the initiates from cast-ing pearls before swine.

Happily, as I think, the rule has not beenallowed to operate any longer to the prejudiceof those who, while still far from being initi-ated, in the occult sense of the term, will prob-ably have become, by sheer force of modernculture, qualified to appreciate the concession.

Part of the information contained in the fol-lowing pages has been thrown out in a frag-mentary form during the last eighteen monthsin " The Theosophist," a monthly magazine,published hitherto at Bombay, but now atMadras, by the leaders of tlie Theosophical So-riety. As almost all the articles referred tohave been my own writing, I have not hesi-tated to weld parts of them, when this coursehas been convenient, into the present volume.A certain advantage is gained by thus showing

how the separate pieces of the mosaic, as firstpresented to pubUc notice, drop naturally intotheir places in the (comparatively) finishedpavement.

The doctrine or system now disclosed in itsbroad outlines has been so jealously guardedhitherto, that no mere literary researches, thoughthey might have currycombed all India, couldhave brought to light any morsel of the infor-mation thus revealed. It is given out to theworld at last by the free grace of those in whosekeeping it has hitherto lain. Nothing could everhave extorted from them its very first letter. Itis only after a perusal of the present explanationsthat their position generally, as regards theirpresent disclosures or their previous reticence,can be criticised or even comprehended. Theviews of Nature now put forward are altogetherunfamiliar to European thinkers; the policy ofthe graduates in esoteric knowledge, which hasgrown out of their long intimacy with theseviews, must be considered in connection withthe peculiar bearings of the doctrine itself.

As for the circumstances under which theserevelations were first foreshadowed in " TheTheosophist," and are now rounded off and ex-panded as my readers will perceive, it is enoughfor the moment to saj^ that the TheosophicalSociety, through my connection with which the

materials dealt with in this volume have comeinto my hands, owes its establishment to certainpersons who are among the custodians of eso-teric science. The information poured out atlast for the benefit of all who are ripe to receiveit has been destined for communication to theworld through the Theosophical Society sincethe foundation of that body, and later circum-stances only have indicated myself as the agentthrough whom the communication could be con-veniently made.

Let me add, that I do not regard myself asthe sole exponent for the outer world, at thiscrisis, of esoteric truth. These teachings are thefinal outcome, as regards philosophical knowl-edge, of the relations with the outer worldwhich have been established by the custodiansof esoteric truth, through me. And it is onlyregarding the acts and intentions of those eso-teric teachers who have chosen to work throughme, that I can have any certain knowledge.But, in different ways, some other writers areengaged in expounding for the benefit of theworld — and, as I believe, in accordance with agreat plan, of which this volume is a part —the same truths, in different aspects, that I amcommissioned to unfold. A remarkable book,published Avithin the last year or two, ^' TliePerfect Way," may be specially mentioned, as

showing how more roads than one may leadto a mountain-top. The inner inspirations of" Tlie Perfect Way" appear to me identical withthe philosophy that I have learned. The sym-bols in which those inspirations are clothed, inmy opinion, I am bound to add, are liable tomislead the student; but this is a natural con-sequence of the circumstances under whichthe inner inspiration has been received. Farmore important and interesting to me than thediscrepancies between the teachings of " ThePerfect Way " and my own, are the identitiesthat may be traced between the cleai' scientificexplanations now conveyed to me on the planeof the physical intellect, and the ideas whichmanifestly underlie those communicated on analtogether different system to the authors ofthe book I mention. These identities are agreat deal too close to be the result either ofcoincidence or parallel speculation.

Probably the great activity at present ofmere ordinary literary speculation on problemslying beyond the range of physical knowledge,may also be in some way provoked by thatpolicy, on the part of the great custodians ofesoteric truth, of which my own book is cer-tainly one manifestation, and tlie volume Ihave just mentioned, probably another. I find,for example, in M. Adolphe d'Assier's recently

published " Essai sur THumanitd Posthume,"some conjectures respecting the destination ofthe higher human principles after death, whichare infused with quite a startling flavor oftrue occult knowledge. Again, the ardor nowshown in " Psychical Research," by the verydistinguished, highly gifted, and cultivated menwho lead the society in London devoted to thatobject, is, to my inner convictions,—knowing,as I do, something of the way the spiritualaspirations of the world are silently influencedby those whose work lies in that dej)artment ofNature, —: the 'obvious fruit of efforts parallel tothose with which I am more immediately con-cerned.

It only remains for me to disclaim, on behalfof the treatise which ensues, any pretension toliigh finish as regards the language in which itis cast. Longer familiarity with the vast andcomplicated scheme of cosmogony disclosed,will no doubt suggest improvements in thephraseology employed to expound it. Twoyears ago, neither I nor any other Europeanliving knew the alphabet of the science herefor the first time put into a scientific shape, —or subject, at all events, to an attempt in thatdirection, — the science of spiritual causes andtheir effects, of super-physical consciousness,of cosmical evolution. Though, as I have ex-

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 35

plained above, ideas had begun to offer them-selves to the world in more or less embarrassingdisguise of mystic symbology, no attempt hadever been made by any esoteric teacher, twoyears back, to put the doctrine forward in itsplain abstract purity. As my own instructionprogressed on those lines, I have had to coinphrases and suggest English words as equiv-alents for the ideas which were presented tomy mind. I am by no means convinced thatin all cases I have coined the best possibleplirases and hit on the most neatly expressivewords. For example, at the threshold of thesubject we come upon the necessity of givingsome name to the various elements or attributesof which the complete human creature is madeup. '' Element" would be an impossible wordto use, on account of the confusion that wouldarise from its use in other significations; andthe least objectionable, on the whole, seemed tome "principle," though to an ear trained in theniceties of metaphysical expression this wordwill have a very unsatisfactory sound in someof its present applications. Quite possibly,therefore, in progress of time the Westernnomenclature of the esoteric doctrine ma}" begreatly developed in advance of that I haveprovisionally constructed. The Oriental no-menclature is far more elaborate, but metaphys-

36 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

ical Sanskrit seems to be painfully embarrassingto a translator, — the fault, my India friendsassure me, not of Sanskrit, but of tbe languagein wliicb they are now required to express theSanskrit idea. Eventually we may find that,with the help of a little borrowing from familiarGreek quarries, English may prove more re-ceptive of the new doctrine — or, rather, of theprimeval doctrine as newly disclosed — thanhas yet been supposed possible in the East.

CHAPTER I.

ESOTERIC TEACHERS.

PAGE

Nature of the Present Exposition. — Seclusion ofEastern Knowledge. —The Arhats and their At-tributes. — The Mahatmas. — Occultists generally.

— Isolated Mystics. — Inferior Yogis. — OccultTraining. — The Great Purpose. — Its IncidentalConsequences. — Present Concessions .... 41

CHAPTER II.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

Esoteric Cosmogony. — Where to Begin.—Workingback from Man to Universe. — Analysis of Man.

— The Seven Principles 60

CHAPTER III.

THE PLANETARY CHAIN.

Esoteric Views of Evolution.— The Chain of Globes.

— Progress of Man round them. — The SpiralAdvance. — Original Evolution of the Globes. —The Lower Kin";doms 75

CHAPTER IV.

THE WORLD PERIODS.

PAGE

Uniformity of Nature. — Rounds and Races. — TheSeptenary Law,— Objective and Subjective Lives.

— Total Incarnations. — Former Races on Earth.

— Periodic Cataclysms. — Atlantis. — Lemuria.

— The Cyclic Law 94

CHAPTER V.

DEVACHAN.

Spiritual Destinies of the Ego. — Karma. — Divis-ion of the Principles at Death. — Progress of theHigher Duad. — Existence in Devachan. — Sub-jective Progress. — Avitchi. — Earthly Connectionwith Devachan. — Devachanic Periods . . . .121

CHAPTER YL

KAMA LOCA.

The Astral Shelh — Its Habitat.—Its Nature.—Surviving Impulses. — Elementals. — Mediumsand Shells. — Accidents and Suicides. — Lost Per-sonalities 150

CHAPTER VIL

THE HUMAN TIDE-WAVE.

progress of the INIain Wave.— Obscurations.— Twi-light and Dawn of Evolution.— Our Neighboring

CONTENTS. 39

PAGE

Planets.—Gradations of Spirituality,—PrematurelyDeveloped Egos. — Intervals of Re-Incarnation .171

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY.

The Choice of Good or Evil. — The Second Halfof Evolution. — The Decisive Turning-Point. —Spirituality and Intellect. — The Survival of theFittest. — The Sixth Sense. — Development ofthe Principles in their Order. — The Subsidenceof the Unfit. — Provision for All. — The Excep-tional Cases. — Their Scientific Explanation. —Justice Satisfied. — The Destiny of Failures. —Human Evolution Reviewed 188

CHAPTER IX.

BUDDHA.

The Esoteric Buddha. — Re-Incarnations of Adepts.

— Buddha's Incarnation. — The Seven Buddhasof the Great Races. — Avalokiteshwara. — AddiBuddha. — Adeptship in Buddha's Time.— San-karacharya.—Yedantin Doctrines.—Tsong-ka-pa.

— Occult Reforms in Tibet 209

CHAPTER X.

NIRVANA.

Its Remoteness. — Preceding Gradations. — Par-tial Nirvana. — The Threshold of Nirvana. — Nir-

40 CONTENTS.

PAGE

vana.— Para Nirvana. — Buddha and Nirvana. —Nirvana attained by Adepts. — General Progresstowards Nirvana. — Conditions of its Attainment.— Spirituality and Religion. — The Pursuit ofTruth 233

CHAPTER XI.

THE UNIVERSE.

The Days and Nights of Brahma. — The VariousManvantaras and Pralayas. — The Solar System.The Universal Pralaya. — Recommencement ofEvolution. — " Creation." — The Great FirstCause. — The Eternal Cyclic Process .... 246

CHAPTER Xn.

THE DOCTRINE REVIEWED.

Correspondences of the Esoteric Doctrine with Visi-ble Nature. —Free Will and Predestination.—The Origin of Evil. — Geology, Biology, and theEsoteric Teaching. — Buddhism and Scholarship.— The Origin of all Things. — The Doctrine asDistorted. — The Ultimate Dissolution of Con-sciousness.— Transmigration.— The Soul and theSpirit. — Personality and Individuality. — Karma 265

ESOTEEIO BUDDHISM.

CHAPTER I.

ESOTEBIC TEACHEKS.

The information contained in the followingpages is no collection of inferences deducedfrom study. I am bringing to my readersknowledge which I have obtained by favorrather than by effort. It will not be foundthe less valuable on that account; I venture,on the contrary, to declare that it will be foundof incalculably greater value, easily as I haveobtained it, than any results in a similar direc-tion which I could possibly have procured byordinary methods of research, even had I pos-sessed, in the highest degree, that which Imake no claim to possess at all, Oriental schol-arship.

Every one who has been concerned with In-dian literature, and still more, any one who inIndia has taken interest in talking with culti-vated natives on philosophical subjects, will be

aware of a general conviction existing in theEast that there are men living who know agreat deal more about philosophy, in the high-est acceptation of the word, — the science, thetrue knowledge of spiritual things, — than canbe found recorded in any books. In Europethe notion of secrecy as applied to science is sorepulsive to the prevailing instinct, that thefirst inclination of European thinkers is to denythe existence of that which they so much dis-like. Bat circumstances have fully assured meduring my residence in India that the convic-tion just referred to is perfectly well founded,and I have been privileged at last to receive avery considerable mass of instruction in thehitherto secret knowledge over which Orientalphilosophers have brooded silently till now;instruction which has hitherto been only im-parted to sympathetic students, prepared them-selves to migrate into the camp of secrecy.Their teachers have been more than contentthat all other inquirers should be left in doubtas to whether there was anything of importanceto learn at their hands.

With quite as much antipathy at startingas any one could have entertained to the oldOriental policy in regard to knowledge, I camenevertheless to perceive that the old Orientalknowledge itself was a very real and important

possession. It may be excusable to regard thehigh grapes as soar, so long as they are quiteout of reach ; but it would be foolish to persistin that opinion if a tall friend hands down abunch, and one finds them sweet.

For reasons that will appear,, as the presentexplanations proceed, the very considerableblock of hitherto secret teaching this volumecontains, has been conveyed to me, not onlywithout conditions of the usual kind, but tothe express end that I might convey it in rayturn to the world at large.

Without the light of hitherto secret Orientalknowledge, it is impossible by any study of itspublished literature, English or Sanskrit, forstudents of even the most scholarly qualifica-tions to reach a comprehension of the innerdoctrines and real meaning of any Orientalreligion. This assertion conveys no reproachto the sympathetic, learned, and industriouswriters of great ability who have studied Ori-ental religions generally, and Buddhism espe-cially, in their external aspects. Buddhism,above p11, is a religion which has enjoyed adual existence from the very beginning of itsintroduction to the world. The real innermeaning of its doctrines has been kept backfrom uninitiated students, while the outerteachings have merely presented the multitude

with a code of moral lessons, and a Yelled,s^niibolical literature, hinting at the existenceof knowledge in the background.

This secret knowledge, in reality, long ante-dated the passage through earth-life of Gau-tama Buddha. Brahnianical philosophy, inages before Buddha, embodied the identicaldoctrine which may now be described as Eso-teric Buddhism. Its outlines had indeed beenblurred, its scientific form partially confused,but the general body of knowledge was alreadyin possession of a select few before Buddhacame to deal with it. Buddha, however, un-dertook the task of revising and refreshing theesoteric science of the inner circle of initiates,as well as the morality of the outer world. Thecircumstances under which this work was donehave been wholly misunderstood, nor would astraightforward explanation thereof be intelli-gible without explanations, which must first befurnished by a survey of the esoteric scienceitself.

From Buddha's time till now the esoteric sci-ence referred to has been jealously guarded asa precious heritage belonging exclusively toregularly initiated members of mysteriously or-ganized associations. Tliese, so far as Bud-dhism is concerned, are the Arahats, or, moreproperly, Arhats, referred to in Buddhist liter*

ature. They are the initiates who tread the" fourth path of holiness," spoken of in esotericBuddhist writings. Mr. Rhys Davids, refer-ring to a multiplicity of original texts andSanskrit authorities, says : " One might fillpages with the awe-struck and ecstatic praisewhich is lavished in Buddhist writings on thiscondition of mind, the fruit of the fourth path,the state of an Arahat, of a man made perfectaccording to the Buddhist faith." And thenmaking a series of running quotations fromSanskrit authorities, he says: " To him whohas finished the path and passed beyond sor-row, who has freed himself on all sides, thrownaway every fetter, there is no more fever orgrief. . . . For such there are no more births,, . . they are in the enjoyment of Nirvana.Their old karma is exhausted, no new karmais being produced ; their hearts are free fromthe longing after future life, and no new yearn-ings springing up within them, they, the wise,are extinguished like a lamp." These passages,and all like them, convey to European readers,at all events, an entirely false idea as to whatsort of person an Arhat really is, as to the lifehe leads while on earth, and what he antici-pates later e»T- But the elucidation of suchpoints may be postponed for the moment.Some further passages from exoteric treatises

may first be selected to show what an Arhat isgenerally supposed to be.

Mr. Rhys Davids, speaking of Jhana andSamadhi, — the belief that it was possible byintense self-absorption to attain supernaturalfaculties and powers, — goes on to say: "Sofar as I am aware, no instance is recorded ofany one, not either a member of the order,or a Brahman ascetic, acquiring these powers.A Buddha always possessed them; whetherArahats, as sucJi, could work the particularmiracles in question, and whether of mendicantsonly, Araliats or only Asekhas could do so, is atpresent not clear." Very little in the sourcesof information on the subject that have hithertobeen explored will be found clear. But I amnow merely endeavoring to show that Bud-dhist literature teems with allusions to thegreatness and powers of the Arhats. For moreintimate knowledge concerning them, specialcircumstances must furnish us with the requiredexplanations.

Mr. Arthur Lillie, in "Buddha and EarlyBuddhism," tells us: " Six supernatural fac-ulties were expected of the ascetic before hecould claim the grade of Arhat. They areconstantly alluded to in the Sutras as the sixsupernatural faculties, usually without furtherBpecification. . . . Man has a body composed

of the four elements. ... In this transitory bodyhis intelligence is enchained. The ascetic find-ing himself thus confused, directs his mind tothe creation of the Manas. He represents tohimself, in thought, another body created fromthis material body, — a body with a form,members, and organs. This body, in relationto the material body, is like the sword and thescabbard, or a serpent issuing from a basket inwhich it is confined. The ascetic then, purifiedand perfected, begins to practice supernaturalfaculties. He finds himself able to pass throughmaterial obstacles, walls, ramparts, etc.; he isable to throw his phantasmal appearance intomany places at once, ... he can leave thisworld and even reach the heaven of Brahmahimself. . . . He acquires the power of hearingthe sounds of the unseen world as distinctly asthose of the phenomenal Avorld, — more dis-tinctly, in point of fact. Also by the power ofManas he is able to read the most secretthoughts of others, and to tell their characters."And so on with illustrations. Mr. Lillie hasnot quite accurately divined the nature of thetruth lying behind this popular version of thefacts; but it is hardly necessary to quote moreto show that the powers of the Arhats and theirinsight into spiritual things are respected bythe world of Buddhism most profoundly, even

though the Arhats themselves have been singu-larly indisposed to favor the world with auto-biographies or scientific accounts of '^ the sixsupernatural powers."

A few sentences from Mr. Hoey's recenttranslation of Dr. Oldenberg's "Buddha: hisLife, his Doctrine, his Order," may fall con-veniently into this place, and then we may passon. We read : " Buddhist proverbial philos-ophy attributes in innumerable passages thepossession of Nirvana to the saint who stilltreads the earth, '- The disciple who has put offlust and desire, rich in wisdom, has here onearth attained deliverance from death, the rest,the Nirvana, the eternal state. He who hasescaped from the trackless hard mazes of theSansara, who has crossed over and reached theshore, self-absorbed, without stumbling andwithout doubt, who has delivered himself fromthe earthly and attained Nirvana, him I call atrue Brahman.' If the saint will even now putan end to his state of being, he can do so, butthe majority stand fast until Nature has reachedher goal; of such may those words be said whichare put in the mouth of the most prominent ofBuddha's disciples, ' I long not for death;I long not for life ; I wait till mine hour come,like a servant who aw-aiteth his reward.' "

A multiplication of such quotations would

merely involve the repetition in various formsof exoteric conceptions concerning the Arhiits.Like every fiict or thought in Buddhism, theArhat has two aspects, that in which he is pre-sented to the world at large, and that in whichhe lives, moves, and has his being. In thepopular estimation he is a saint waiting for aspiritual reward of the kind the populace canunderstand, — a wonder-worker meanwhile byfavor of supernatural agencies. In reality heis tlie long-tried and proved-worthy custodianof the deepest and innermost philosophy ofthe one fundamental religion which Buddha re-freshed and restored, and a student of naturalscience standing in the very foremost front ofhuman knowledge, in regard not merely to themj^steries of spirit, but to the material constitu-tion of the world as well.

Arhat is a Buddhist designation. Thatwhich is more familiar in India, where theattributes of Arhatship are not necessarilyassociated with professions of Buddhism, isMahatma. With stories about the MahatmasIndia is saturated. The older Mahatmas aregenerally spoken of as Rishis ; but the termsare interchangeable, and I have heard the titleRishi applied to men now living. All the at-tributes of the Arhats mentioned in Buddhistwritings are described, with no less reverence,4

in Indian literature as those of the Mahatmas;and this volume might be readily filled withtranslations of vernacular books, giving accountsof miraculous achievements by such of thera asare known to history and tradition b}^ name.

In reality, the Arhats and the Mahatmas arethe same men. At that level of spiritual ex-altation, supreme knowledge of the esotericdoctrine blends all original sectarian distinc-tions. By whatever name such illuminati maybe called, they are the adepts of occult knowl-edge, sometimes spoken of in India now as theBrothers, and the custodians of the spiritualscience which has been handed down to themby their predecessors.

We may search both ancient and modern lit-erature in vain, however, for any systematicexplanation of their doctrine or science. Agood deal of this is dimly set forth in occultwriting ; but very little of this is of the leastuse to readers who take up the subject withoutprevious knowledge acquired independently ofbooks. It is under favor of direct instructionfrom one of their numbers that I am now en'abled to attempt an outline of the Mahatmas'teaching, and it is in the same w^ay that I havepicked up what I know concerning the organ-ization to which most of them, and the great-est, in the present day belong.

All over the world there are occultists of vari-ous degrees of eminence, and occult fraternitieseven, which have a great deal in common withthe leading fraternity now establislied in Tibet.But all my inquiries into the subject have con-vinced me that the Tibetan Brotherhood isincomparably the highest of such associations,and regarded as such by all other associations,— worthy of being looked upon themselves asreally '' enlightened" in the occult sense ofthe term. There are, it is true, many isolatedmystics in India who are altogether self-taughtand unconnected with occult bodies. Many ofthese will explain that they themselves attainto higher pinnacles of spiritual enlightenmentthan the Brothers of Tibet, or any other peo-ple on earth. But the examination of suchclaims in all cases I have encountered would,I think, lead any impartial outsider, howeverlittle qualitied himself by personal developmentto be a judge of occult enlightenment, to theconclusion that they are altogether unfounded.I know one native of India, for example, a manof European education, holding a high appoint-ment under government, of good station insociety, most elevated character, and enjoyingunusual respect with sucli Europeans as areconcerned with him in official life, who willonly accord to the Brothers of Tibet a second

place in tlie world of spiritual enlightenment.The first place he regards as occupied by oneperson, now in this world no longer,—his ownoccult master in life, — whom he resolutelyasserts to have been an incarnation of theSupreme Being. His own (my friend's) innersenses were so far awakened by this Master,that the visions of his entranced state, intowhich he can still throw himself at will, are tohim the only spiritual region in which he canfeel -interested. Convinced that the SupremeBeing was his personal instructor from the be-ginning, and continues so still in the subjectivestate, he is naturally inaccessible to suggestionsthat his impressions may be distorted by rea-son of his own misdirected psycliological de-velopment. Again, the highly cultivated dev-otees, to be met with occasionally in India,who build up a conception of Nature, the uni-verse, and God entirely on a metaphysicalbasis, and who have evolved their systems bysheer force of transcendental thinking, willtake some established system of philosophy asits groundwork, and amplify on this to anextent which only an Oriental metaphysiciancould dream of. They win disciples wlio putimplicit faith in them, and found their littleschool, which flourishes for a time within itsown limits; but speculative philosophy of sucli

a kind is rather occupation for the mind thanknowledge. Such "Masters," by comparisonwith the organized adepts of the highestbrotherhood, are like rowing boats comparedwith oce:in steamships, — helpful conveyanceson their own native lake or river, but not craftto whose protection you can trust yourself on aworld-wide voyage of exploration over the sea.

Descending lower again in the scale, we findIndia dotted all over with Yogis and Fakirs, inall stages of self-development, from that of dirtysavages, but little elevated above the gypsy for-tune-tellers of an English race-course, to menwhose seclusion a stranger will find it very dif-ficult to penetrate, and whose abnormal facul-ties and powers need only be seen or experi-enced to shatter the incredulity of the mostcontented representative of modern Westernskepticism. Careless inquirers are very apt toconfound such persons with the great adepts ofwhom they may vaguely hear.

Concerning the real adepts, meanwhile, Icannot at present venture on any account ofwhat the Tibetan organization is like, as re-gards its highest ruling authorities. ThoseMahatmas themselves, of whom some moreor less adequate conception may perhaps beformed by readers who will follow me pa-tiently to the end, are subordinate by several

degrees to the chief of alL Let us deal ratherwith the earlier conditions of occult training,which can more easily be grasped.

The level of elevation which constitutes aman — what the outer world calls a Mahatmaor " Brother" — is only attained after pro-longed and weary probation, and anxious or-deals of really terrible severity. One may findpeople who have spent twenty or thirty yearsor more in blameless and arduous devotion tothe life-task on which they have entered, andare still in the earlier degrees of chelaship, stilllooking up to the heights of adeptship as farabove their heads. And at whatever age a boyor man dedicates himself to the occult career,he dedicates himself to it, be it remembered,without any reservations and for life. The taskhe undertakes is the development in himself ofa great man}^ faculties and attributes which areso utterly dormant in ordinary mankind, thattheir very existence is unsuspected, the possi-bility of their development denied. And thesefaculties and attributes must be developed bythe chela himself, with very little, if any, help,beyond guidance and direction from his master." The adept," says an occult aphorism, " be-comes : he is not made." One may illustratethis point by reference to a very commonplacephysical exercise. Every man living, having

the ordinary use of his limbs, is quahfied toswim. But put those who, as the commonphrase goes, cannot swim, into deep water, andthey will struggle and be drowned. The mereway to move the limbs is no mystery ; but un-less the swimmer, in moving them, has a fullbelief that such movement will produce therequired result, the required result is not pro-duced. In this case, we are dealing with me«chanical forces merely, but the same principleruns up into dealings with subtler forces. Verymuch further than people generally imaginewill mere " confidence" carry the occult neo-phyte. How many European readers, whowould be quite incredulous if told of some re-sults which occult chelas in the most incipientstages of their training have to accomplish bysheer force of confidence, hear constantly inchurch, nevertheless, the familiar biblical as-surances of the power which resides in faith,and let the words pass by like the wind, leav-ing no impression.

The great end and purpose of adeptship isthe achievement of spiritual development, thenature of which is only veiled and disguisedby the common phrases of exoteric language.That the adept seeks to unite his soul withGod, that he may thereby pass into Nirvana, isa statement that conveys no definite meaning

to the ordinary reader; and tlie more he ex-amines it with the help of ordinary books andmethods, the less likely will he be to realizethe nature of the process contemplated or ofthe condition desired. It wall be necessary todeal first with the esoteric conception of Na-ture, and the origin and destinies of Man,which differ widely from theological concep-tions, before an explanation of the aim whichthe adept pursues can become intelligible.Meanwhile, however, it is desirable, at the veryoutset, to disabuse the reader of one misconcep-tion in regard to the objects of adeptship thathe may very likely have framed.

The development of those spiritual faculties,whose culture has to do with the highest ob-jects of the occult life, gives rise as it pro-gresses to a great deal of incidental knowledge,having to do with physical laws of Nature notyet generally understood. This know-ledge, andthe practical art of manipulating certain ob-scure forces of Nature, which it brings in itstrain, invest an adept, and even an adept'spupils, at a comparatively early stage of theireducation, with very extraordinary powers, theapplication of which to matters of daily lifewill sometimes produce results that seem alto-gether miraculous; and, from the ordinarypoint of view, the acquisition of apparently

miraculous power is such a stupendous acliieve-ment, that people are sometimes apt to fancythe adept's object in seeking the knowledge heattains has been to invest himself with thesecoveted powers. It would be as reasonable tosay of any great patriot of military history thathis object in becoming a soldier had been towear a gay uniform and impress the imagina-tion of the nurse-maids.

The Oriental method of cultivating knowl-edge has always differed diametrically fromthat pursued in the West during the growthof modern science. Whilst Europe has investi-gated Nature as publicly as possible, every stepbeing discussed with the utmost freedom, andevery fresh fact acquired circulated at oncefor the benefit of all, Asiatic science has beenstudied secretly and its conquests jealouslyguarded. I need not as yet attempt eithercriticism or defense of its methods. But atall events these methods have been relaxed tosome extent in my own case ; and, as alreadystated, it is with £he full consent of my teach-ers that I now follow the bent of my own in-clinations as a European, and communicatewhat I have learned to all who may be will-ing to receive it. Later ©«-it will be seen howthe departure from the ordinary rules of occultstudy embodied in the concessions now made,falls naturally into its place in the whole suheme

58 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

of occult philosophy. The approaches to thatphilosophy have always been open, in one sense,to all. Vaguely throughout the world in vari-ous ways has been diffused the idea that someprocess of study which men here and there didactually follow, might lead to the acquisition ofa higher kind of knowledge than that taughtto mankind at large in books or by public relig-ious preachers. The East, as pointed out, hasalways been more than vaguely impressed withthis belief; but even in the West the w^holeblock of symbolical literature relating to astrol-ogy, alchem}^ and mysticism generally has fer-mented in European society, carrying to somefew peculiarly receptive and qualified mindsthe conviction that behind all this superficiallymeaningless nonsense great truths lay con-cealed. For such persons eccentric study hassometimes revealed hidden passages leading tothe grandest imaginable realms of enlighten-ment. But till now, in all such cases, in ac-cordance with the law of those schools, the neo-pliyte no sooner forced his way into the regionof mystery, than he was bound over to the mostinviolable secrecy as to everything connectedwith his entrance and further progress there.In Asia, in the same way, the chela, or pupilof occultism, no sooner became a chela than heceased to be a witness on behalf of the realityof occult knowledge. I have been astonished

ESOTERIC TEACHERS.

59

to find, since my own connection with the sub-ject, how numerous such chelas are. But it isiuipossible to imagine any human act more im-probable than the unauthorized revelation byany such chela, to persons in the outer world,that he is one; and so the great esoteric schoolof philosophy successfully guards its seclusion.

In a former book, "The Occult World," Ihave given a full and straightforward narrativeof the circumstances nnder which I came in con-tact with the gifted and deeply instructed menfrom whom I have sines obtained the teachingthis volume contains. I need not repeat thestory. I now come forward prepared to dealwith the subject in a new way. The existenceof occult adepts, and the importance of theiracquirements, may be established along two dif-ferent lines of argument; firstly, by means ofexternal evidence, — the testimony of qualifiedwitnesses, the manifestation by or through per-sons connected with adepts of abnormal facul-ties, affording more than a presumption of ab-normally enlarged knowledge ; secondly, by thepresentation of such a considerable portion ofthis knowledge as may convey intrinsic assur-ances of its own value. My first book pro-ceeded by the former method; I now approachthe more formidable task of working on thelatter.

CHAPTER II.

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.

A SURVEY of cosmogony, as comprehendedby occult science, must precede any attempt toexplain the means by which a knowledge ofthat cosmogony itself has been acquired. Themethods of esoteric research have grown outof natural facts, with which exoteric science iswholly unacquainted. These natural facts areconcerned with the premature development inoccult adepts of faculties which mankind atlarge has not yet evolved; and these faculties,in turn, enable their possessors to explore themysteries of Nature, and verify the esotericdoctrines, setting forth its grand design. Thepractical student of occultism may develop thefaculties first, and apply them to the observa-tion of Nature afterwards; but the exhibitionof the theory of Nature for Western readersmerely seeking its intellectual comprehension,must precede consideration of the inner senses,which occult research employs. On the otherhand, a survey of cosmogony, as comprehended

by occult science, could only be scientificallyarranged at the expense of intelligibility forEuropean readers. To begin at the beginning,we should endeavor to realize the state of theuniverse before evolution sets in. This subjectis by no means shirked by esoteric students;and later qb^ in the course of this sketch, somehints ^Yill be given concerning the views occult-ism entertains of the earlier processes throughwhich cosmic matter passes on its way to evolu-tion. But an orderly statement of the earliestprocesses of Nature would embody referencesto man's spiritual constitution, which wouldnot be understood without some preliminaryexplanation.

Seven distinct principles are recognized byesoteric science as entering into the consti-tution of man. The classification differs sowidely from any with which European readerswill be familiar, that I shall naturally be askedfor the grounds on which occultism reaches sofar-fetched a conclusion. But I must, on ac-count of inherent peculiarities in the subject,which will be comprehended later -on, beg forthis Oriental knowledge I am bringing home ahearing (in the first instance, at all events) ofthe Oriental kind The Oriental and the Eu-ikOpean systems of conveying knowledge are asunlike as any two methods can be. The West

pricks and piques the learner's controversialinstinct at every step. He is encouraged todispute and resist conviction. He is forbiddento take any scientific statement on autliorit}^Pari passuy as lie acquires knowledge, he mustlearn how that knowledge has been acquired,and he is made to feel that no fact is worthknowing, unless he knows, with it, the way toprove it a fact. The East manages its pupilson a wholly different plan. It no more disre-gards the necessity of proving its teaching thanthe West, but it provides proof of a wholly dif-ferent sort. It enables the student to searchNature for himself, and verify its teachings, inthose regions which Western philosophy canonly invade by speculation and argument. Itnever takes the trouble to argue about any-thing. It says : '' So and so is fact; here isthe key of knowledge; now go and see foryourself." In this way it comes to pass thatteaching per se is never anything else butteaching on authority. Teaching and proofdo not go hand in hand; they follow one an-other in due order. A further consequence ofthis method is that Eastern philosophy employsthe method which we in the West have dis-carded for good reasons as incompatible withour own line of intellectual development, — theBystem of reasoning from generals to particu-

lars. Tlie purposes wliicli European scienceusually has in view would certainly not be an-swered by that plan, but I think that any onewho goes far in the present inquiry will feelthat the system of reasoning up from the de-tails of knowledge to general inferences is in-applicable to the work in hand. One cannotunderstand details in this department of knowl-edge till we get a general understanding of thewhole scheme of things. Even to convey thisgeneral comprehension by mere language is alarge and by no means an easy task. To pauseat every moment of the exposition in order tocollect what separate evidence may be avail-able for the proof of each separate statement,would be practically impossible. Such a methodwould break down the patience of the reader,and prevent him from deriving, as he may froma more condensed treatise, that definite concep-tion as to what the esoteric doctrine means toteach, which it is my business to evoke.

The reflection may suggest, in passing, a newview, having an intimate connection with ourpresent subject, of the Platonic and Aristoteliansystems of reasoning. Plato's system, roughlydescribed as reasoning from universals to partic-ulars, is condemned by modern habits in favorof the later and exactly inverse system. ButPlato was in fetters in attempting to defend his

system. There is every reason to believe thatLis liimiliarity with esoteric science promptedhis method, and that the usual restrictions un-der which he labored, as an initiated occultist,forbade him from saying as much as wouldreally justify it. No one can study even asmuch occult science as this volume contains,and then turn to Plato, or even to any intelli-gent epitome of Plato's S3'stem of thought, with-out finding correspondences cropping out atevery turn.

The higher principles of the series which goto constitute man are not fully developed in themankind with which we are as yet familiar,but a complete or perfect man would be resolv-able into the following elements. To facilitatethe application of these explanations to ordi-nary exoteric Buddhist writings, the Sanskritnames of these principles are given, as well assuitable terms in English.^

1 The nomenclature here adopted differs slightly from that hitupon when some of the present teachings were tirst given out in afragmentary form in The Tliensophist. Later on it will be seen thatthe names now preferred embody a fuller conception of the wholesystem, and avoid some difficulties to which the earlier names giverise. If the earlier presentations of esoteric science were thus im-perfect, one can hardly be surprised at so natural a consequenceof the difficulties under which its English exponents labored. Butno substantial errors have to be confessed or deplored. The con-notations of the present names are more accurate than those of thephrases first selected, but the explanations originally given, as fatss they went, were quite in harmony with those now developed.

1. The Body Rupa.

2. Vitality Prana, or Jlva.

3. Astral Body Linga Sharira.

4. Animal Soul Kama Rupa.

5. Human Soul Manas.

6. Spiritual Soul Buddlii.

7. Spirit Atma.

Directly conceptions so transcendental assome of those included in this analj'-sis are setforth in a tabular statement, they seem to incurcertain degradation, against which, in endeav-oring to realize clearly what is meant, we mustbe ever on our guard. Certainly it would beimpossible for even the most skillful professorof occult science to exhibit each of these princi-ples separate and distinct from the others, asthe pliysical elements of a compound body canbe separated by analysis and preserved inde-pendently of each other. The elements of aphysical body are all on the same plane of ma-teriality, but the elements of man are on verydifferent planes. The finest gases of Avhichthe body may to some extent be chemicallycomposed are still, on one scale at all events,on nearly the lowest level of materiality. Thesecond principle which, by its union Avith grossmatter, changes it from what we generally callinorganic, or what might more properly becalled inert, into living matter, is at once a

something different from the finest example ofmatter in its lower state. Is tlie second princi-ple, then, anything that we can truly call mat-ter at all ? The question lands us, thus, at thevery outset of this inquiry, in the middle of thesubtle metaphysical discussion as to whetherforce and matter are different or identical.Enough for the moment to state that occultscience regards them as identical, and that itcontemplates no principle in Nature as whollyhiimaterial. In this way, though no concep-tions of the universe, of man's destiny, or ofNature generally, are more spiritual than thoseof occult science, that science is wholly freefrom the logical error of attributing materialresults to immaterial causes. The esoteric doc-trine is thus really the missing link betweenmaterialism and spirituality.

The clue to the mystery involved lies ofcourse in the fact, directly cognizable by occultexperts, that matter exists in other states be-sides those which are cognizable by the fivesenses.

The second principle of man. Vitality, thusconsists of matter in its aspect as force; andits affinity for the grosser state of matter is sogreat that it cannot be separated from anygiven particle or mass of this, except by instan-taneous translation to some other particle or

mass. When a man's body dies, by desertionof the higher principles Avhicli have rendered ita living reality, the second, or life principle, nolonger a nnit}^ itself, is nevertheless inherentstill in the particles of the body as this decom-poses, attaching itself to other organisms towhich that very process of decomposition givesrise. Bury the body in the earth, and its Jivawill attach itself to the vegetation which springsabove, or the lower animal forms which evolvefrom its substance. Burn the body, and inde-structible Jiva flies back none the less instan-taneousl}^ to the body of the planet itself fromwhich it was originally borrowed, entering intosome new combination as its afiinities may de-termine.

The third principle, the Astnil Bod}^ orLinga Sharira, is an ethereal duplicate of thephysical body, its original design. It guidesJiva in its work on the physical particles, andcauses it to build up the shape which theseassume. Vitalized itself by the higher princi-ples, its unity is only preserved by the union ofthe whole group. At death it is disembodiedfor a brief period, and, under some abnormalconditions, may even be temporarily visible tothe external sight of still living persons. Undersucli conditions it is taken of course for theghost of the departed person. Spectral appari-

tions may sometimes be occasioned in otherways, but the third principle, when that resultsin a visible phenomenon, is a mere aggregationof molecules in a peculiar state, having no lifeor consciousness of any kind whatever. It isno more a being than any cloud-wreath in tliesky which happens to settle into the semblanceof some animal form. Broadly speaking, theLinga Sharira never leaves tlie body except atdeath, nor migrates far from the body even inthat case. When seen at all, and this can butrarely occur, it can only be seen near where thephysical body still lies. In some very peculiarcases of spiritualistic mediumship, it may for ashort time exude from the physical bod}^ and bevisible near it, but the medium in such casesstands the while in considerable danger of hislife. Disturb unwillingly the conditions underwhicli the Linga Sharira was set free, and itsreturn might be impeded. The second prin-ciple wonld then soon cease to animate thephysical body as a unity, and death wouldensue.

During the last year or two, while hints andscraps of occult science have been finding theirAvay out into the world, the expression '' AstralBody " lias been applied to a certain semblanceof the human form, fully inhabited by its higherprinciples, which can migrate to any distance

from the physical body, projected consciouslyand with exact intention by a living adept, orunintentionally, by the accidental applicationof certain mental forces to his loosened princi-ples, by any person at the moment of death.For ordinary purposes there is no practical in-convenience in using the expression " Astra,!Body" for the appearance so projected; in-deed, an}^ more strictly accurate expression, as•will be seen directly, would be cumbersome,and we must go on using the phrase in bothmeanings. No confusion need, arise; but,strictly speaking, the Linga Sharira, or thirdprinciple, is the Astral Body, and that cannotbe sent about as the vehicle of the higher prin-ciples.

The three lower principles, it will be seen,are altogether of the earth, perishable in theirnature as a single entity, though indestructibleas regards their molecules, and absolutely donewith by man at his death.

The fourth principle is the first of thosewdncli belong to man's higher nature. TheSanskrit designation, kama rufa., is often trans-hited " Body of Desire," which seems rather aclumsy and inaccurate form of words. A closertranslation, havinor reo^ard to meaninirs ratherthan words, would, perhaps, be " Vehicle ofWill," but the name already adopted above.

Animal Soul, may be more accurately sugges-tive still.

In "The Theosophist" for October, 1881,when the first hints about the septenary con-stitution of man were given out, the fifth prin-ciple was called the animal soul, as contra-dis-tinguished from the sixth or " spiritual soul; "but though this nomenclature sufficed to markthe required distinction, it degraded the fifthprinciple, which is essentially the human prin-ciple. Though humanity is animal in its na-ture as compared with spirit, it is elevatedabove the correctly defined animal creation inevery other aspect. By introducing a newname for the fifth principle, we are enabled tothrow back the designation " animal soul" toits proper place. This arrangement need notinterfere, meanwhile, with an appreciation ofthe way in which the fou)th principle is theseat of that will or desire to which the Sanskritname refers. And, withal, the Kama Rupa isthe animal soul, the highest developed principleof the brute creation, susceptible of evolutioninto something far higher by its union withthe growing fifth principle in man, but stillthe animal soul which man is by no means yetwithout, the seat of all animal desires, and apotent force in the human body as well, press-ing upward, so to speak, as well as downward,

and capable of influencing the fifth, for practi-cal purposes, as well as of being influenced bythe fifth for its own control and improvement.

The fifth principle, human soul, or Manas(as described in Sanskrit in one of its aspects),is the seat of reason and memory. It is a por-tion of this principle, animated by the fourth,which is really projected to distant places byan adept, when he makes an appearance in•what is commonly called his astral body.

Now the fifth principle, or human soul, inthe majority of mankind is not even yet fullydeveloped. This fact about the imperfect de-velopment as yet of the higher principles isvery important. We cannot get a correct con-ception of the present place of man in Natureif we make the mistake of regarding him as afully perfected being already. And that mis-take would be fatal to any reasonable anticipa-tions concerning the future that awaits him, —fatal also to any appreciation of the appropri-ateness of the future which the esoteric doctrineexplains to us as actually awaiting him.

Since the fifth principle is not yet fully de-veloped, it goes without saying that the sixthprinciple is still in embryo. This idea has beenvariously indicated in recent forecasts of thegreat doctrine. Sometimes, it has been said,we do not truly possess any sixth principle, we

merely have germs of a sixth principle. It hasalso been said, the sixth principle is not in us;it liovers over us; it is a something that thehighest aspirations of our nature must work uptoward. But it is also said: All things, notman alone, but every animal, plant, and min-eral, have their seven principles, and the high-est principle of all — the seventh itself — vital-izes that continuous thread of life which runsall through evolution, uniting into a definitesuccession the almost innumerable incarnationsof that one life which constitute a complete se-ries. We must imbibe all these various con-ceptions, and weld them together, or extracttheir essence, to learn the doctrine of the sixthprinciple. Following the order of ideas whichjust now suggested the application of the termanimal soul to the fourth principle and humansoul to the fifth, the sixth may be called thespiritual soul of man, and the seventh, there-fore, spirit itself.

In another aspect of the idea, the sixth prin-ciple may be called the vehicle of the seventh,and the fourth the vehicle of the fifth ; but yetanother mode of dealing with the problemteaches us to regard each of the higher princi-ples, from the fourth upwards, as a vehicle ofwhat, in Buddhist philosophy, is called the OneLife or Spirit. According to this view of the

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 73

matter the one life is that which perfects, byinliabiting the various vehicles. In the animalthe one life is concentrated in the kama rupa.In man it begins to penetrate the fifth princi-ple as well. In perfected man it penetrates thesixth, and wlien it penetrates the seventh, manceases to be man, and attains a wholly superiorcondition of existence.

This latter view of the position is especiallyvaluable as guarding against the notion thatthe four higher principles are like a bundle ofsticks tied together, but each having individu-alities of its own if untied. Neither the ani-mal soul alone, nor the spiritual soul alone, hasany individuality at all; but, on the otherhand, the fifth principle would be incapable ofseparation from the others in such a way, thatits individuality would be preserved while boththe deserted principles would be left uncon-scious. It has been said that the finer princi-ples themselves even are material and molecu-lar in their constitution, though composed of ahigher order of matter than the physical sensescan take note of. So they are separable, andthe sixth principle itself can be imagined as di-vorcing itself from its lower neighbor. But inthat state of separation, and at this stage ofmankind's development, it could simj^ly re-in-carnate itself in such an emergency, and grow

a new fiftli principle by contact with a humanorganism; in such a case, the fifth principlewould lean upon and become one with thefourth, and be proportionately degraded. Andyet this fiftli principle, which cannot stand^alone, is the personality of the man ; and itscream, in union with the sixth, his continuousindividuality through successive lives.

The circumstances and attractions under theinfluence of which the principles do divide up,and the manner in which the consciousness ofman is dealt with then, will be discussed lateron. Meanwhile, a better understanding of thewhole position than could ensue from a contin-ued prosecution of the inquiry on these linesnow will be obtained by turning first to theprocesses of evolution by means of which theprinciples of man have been developed.

CHAPTER III,

THE PLANETARY CHAIN.

Esoteric Science, though the most spirit-ual system imaginable, exhibits, as runningthroughout Nature, the most exhaustive systemof evohition that the human mind can conceive.The Darwinian theory of evohition is simplyan independent discovery of a portion — unhap-pily but a small portion — of the vast naturaltruth. But occultists know how to explainevolution without degrading the highest prin-ciples of man. The esoteric doctrine finds it-self under no obligation to keep its science andreligion in separate water-tight compartments.Its theory of physics and its theory of spirit-uality are not only reconcilable with eachother, they are intimately blended together andinterdependent. And the first great fact whichoccult science presents to our notice in refer-ence to the origin of man on this globe will beseen to help the imagination over some seriousembarrassments of the familiar scientific ideaof evolution. The evolution of man is not a

process carried out on this planet alone. It isa result to which many worlds in different con-ditions of material and spiritual developmenthave contributed. If this statement weremerely put forward as a conjecture, it wouldsurely recommend itself forcibly to rationalminds. For there is a manifest irrationality inthe commonplace notion that man's existenceis divided into a material beginning, lastingsixty or seventy years, and a spiritual remain-der lasting forever. The irrationality amountsto absurdity when it is alleged that the acts ofthe sixty or seventy years — the blundering,helpless acts of ignorant human life — are per-mitted by the perfect justice of an all-wiseProvidence to define the conditions of thatlater life of infinite duration. Nor is it less ex-travagant to imagine that, apart from the ques-tion of justice, the life beyond the grave shouldbe exempt from the law of change, progress,and improvement, which every analogy of Na-ture points to as probably running through allthe varied existences of the universe. But onceabandon the idea of a uniform, unvarying, un-progressive life beyond the grave, once admitthe conception of change and progress in thatlife, and we admit the idea of a variety hardlycompatible with any other hypothesis than thatof progress through successive worlds. As we

have said before, this is not hypothesis at allfor occult science, but a fact, ascertained andverified bej^ond the reach (for occuldsts) ofdoubt or contradiction.

The life and evolutionary processes of thisplanet — in fact, all which constitutes it some-thing more than a dead lump of chaotic matter— are linked with the life and evolutionary-processes of several other planets. But let itnot be supposed that there is no finality as re-gards the scheme of this planetary union towhich we belong. The human imaginationonce set free is apt sometimes to bound too far.Once let this notion, that the earth is merelyone link in a mighty chain of worlds, be fullyaccepted as probable, or true, and it may sug-gest the whole starry heavens as the heritageof the human family. That idea would involvea serious misconception. One globe does notafford Nature scope for the processes by whichmankind has been evoked from chaos, but theseprocesses do not require more than a limitedand definite number of globes. Separated asthese are, in regard to the gross mechanicalmatter of which they consist, they are closelyand intimately bound together by subtle cur-rents and forces, whose existence reason neednot be much troubled to concede since the ex-istence of some connection — of force or ethereal

media — uniting all visible celestial bodies isproved by the mere fact that they are visible.It is along these subtle currents that the life-elements pass from world to world.

The fact, however, will at once be liable todistortion to suit preconceived habits of mind.Some readers may imagine our meaning to bethat after death the surviving soul will bedrawn into the currents of that world withwhich its affinities connect it. The real processis more methodical. The system of worlds isa circuit round which all individual spiritualentities have alike to pass; and that passageconstitutes the Evolution of Man. For it mustbe realized that the evolution of man is a proc-ess still going on, and by no means yet com-plete. Darwinian writings have taught themodern world to regard the ape as an ancestor,but the simple conceit of AVestern speculationhas rarely permitted European evolutionists tolook in the other direction and recognize theprobability, that to our remote descendants wemay be, as that unwelcome progenitor to us.Yet the two facts just declared hinge together.The higher evolution will be accomplished byour progress through the successive worlds ofthe system ; and in higher forms w^e shall re-turn to this earth again and again. But theavenues of thought through which we look for-

ward to this prospect are of almost inconceiv-able length.

It will readily be supposed that the chain ofworlds to which this earth belongs are not allprepared for a material existence exactly, oreven approximately resembling our own. Therewould be no meaning in an organized chain ofworlds which were all alike, and might as wellall have been amalgamated into one. In real-ity the worlds with which we are connectedare very unlike each other, not merely in out-ward conditions, but in that supreme character-istic, the proportion in which spirit and matterare mingled in their constitution. Our ownworld presents us with conditions in which spiritand matter are, on the whole, evenly balancedin equilibrium. Let it not be supposed on thataccount that it is very highly elevated in thescale of perfection. On the contrary, it occu-pies a very low place in that scale. The worldsthat are higher in the scale are those in whichspirit largely predominates. There is anotherworld attached to the chain, rather than form-ing a part of it, in which matter asserts itselfeven more decisively than on earth, but thismay be spoken of later.

That the superior worlds which man maycoma to inhabit in his onward progress shouldgradually become more and more spiritual in

their constitution—life there being more andmore successfully divorced from gross materialneeds — will seem reasonable enough at the firstglance. But the first glance in imagination atthose which might conversely be called the infe-rior, but may with less inaccuracy be spoken ofas the preceding worlds, would perhaps suggestthat they ought to be conversely less spiritual,more material, than this eai'th. The fact is quitethe other way, and must be so, it will be seen onreflection, in a chain of worlds which is an end-less chain — i.e., round and round which theevolutionary process ti-avels. If that processhad merely one journey to travel along a pathwhich never returned into itself, one couldthink of it, at any rate, as working from almostabsolute matter, up to almost absolute spirit;but Nature works always in complete curves,and travels always in paths which return intothemselves. The earliest, as also the latest,developed worlds—for the chain itself hasgrown by degrees — the furthest back, as alsothe furthest forward, are the most immaterial,the most ethereal of the whole series ; and thatthis is in all ways in accordance with the fitnessof things will appear from the reflectitm thatthe furthest forward of the worlds is not a rc-gi(^n of finality, but the stepping-stone to thefurthest back, as the month of December leads

US back again to January. But it is not a cli-max of development from which the individualmonad falls, as by a catastrophe, into the statefrom which he slowly began to ascend millionsof years previously. From that which, for rea-sons which will soon appear, must be consid-ered tlie highest world, on the ascending arc ofthe circle to tliat which must be regarded asthe first on the descending arc, in one sense thelowest — z. e., in the order of development —there is no descent at all, but still ascent andprogress. For the spiritual monad or entity,which has worked its way all round the cycleof evolution, at any one of the many stages ofdevelopment into which the various existencesaround us may be grouped, begins its next cycleat the next higher stage, and is thus still ac-complishing progress as it passes from worldZ back again to world A. Many times does itcircle, in this way, right round the system, butits passage round must not be thouglit of merelyas a circular revolution in an orbit. In thescale of spiritual perfection it is constantly as-cending. Thus, if we compare the system ofworlds to a system of towers standing on aplain — towers each of many stories and sym-bolizing the scale of perfection — the spiritualmonad performs a spiral progress round andround the series, passing tlirough each tower,

every time it comes round to it, at a liiglierlevel than before.

It is for want of realizing this idea that spec-uhition, concerned with physical evolution, isso constantly finding itself stopped by deadwalls. It is searching for its missing links in aworld where it can never find them now, forthey were but required for a temporary pur-pose, and have passed away. Man, says theDarwinian, was once an ape. Quite true; butthe ape known to the Darwinian will never be-come a man — i. e., the form will not changefrom generation to generation till the tail dis-appears and the hands turn into feet, and so on.Ordinary science avows that, though changes ofform can be detected in progress within the lim-its of species, the changes from species to speciescan only be inferred ; and to account for these,it is content to assume great intervals of timeand the extinction of the intermediate forms.There has been no doubt an extinction of theintermediate or earlier forms of all species (inthe larger acceptation of the word) — i. e., of allkingdoms, mineral, vegetable, animal, man, etc.— but ordinary science can merely guess thatto have been the fact without realizing the con-ditions which rendered it inevitable, and whichforbid the renewed generation of the interme*diate forms.

It is the spiral character of the progress ac-complished by the life impulses that develop thevarious kingdoms of Nature, which accountsfor the gaps now observed in the animatedforms whicli people the earth. Tlie thread of ascrew, which is a uniform inclined plane in real-ity, looks like a succession of steps when ex-amined only along one line parallel to its axis.Tlie spiritual monads, which are coming roundthe system on the animal level, pass on to otherworlds when they have performed their turnof animal incarnation here. By the time theycome again, they are ready for human incarna-tion, and there is no necessity now for the up-ward development of animal forms into humanforms— these are already waiting for their spir-itual tenants. But, if we go back far enough,we come to a period at which there were nohuman forms ready developed on the earth.When spiritual monads, traveling on the ear-liest or lowest human level, were thus begin-ning to come round, their onward pressure in aworld at that time containing none but animalforms provoked the improvement of the high-est of these into the required form — the much»talked-of missing link.

In one way of looking at the matter, it maybe contended that this explanation is identicalwith the inference of the Darwinian evolution-

ist in regard to tlie development and extinctionof missing links. After all, it may be arguedby a materialist, " we are not concerned to ex-press an opinion as to the origin of the tendencyin species to develop higher forms. We saythat they do develop these higher forms byintermediate links, and that the intermediatelinks die out; and you say just the same thing."But there is a distinction between the two ideasfor any one who can follow subtle distinctions.The natural process of evolution, from the influ-ence of local circumstances and sexual selection,must not be credited with producing intermedi-ate forms, and this is why it is inevitable thatthe intermediate forms should be of a tempo-rary nature and should die out. Otherwise,we should find the world stocked with missinglinks of all kinds, animal life creeping byplainly apparent degrees up to manhood, humanforms mingling in indistinguishable confusionwith those of animals. The impulse to thenew evolution of higher forms is really given, aswe have shown, by rushes of spiritual monadscoming round the cycle in a state fit for theinhabitation of new forms. These superior lifeimpulses burst the chrysalis of the older formon tlie planet they invade, and throw off an ef-florescence of something higher. The formswhich have gone on merely repeating them-

selves for millenniums start afresh into growth ;with relative rapidity they rise through theintermediate into the higher forms, and then,as these in turn are multiplied with the vigorand rapidity of all new growths, they supplytenements of flesh for the spiritual entities com-ing round on tliat stage or plane of existence,and for the intermediate forms there are nolonger any tenants offering. Inevitably theybecome extinct.

Thus is evolution accomplished, as regards itsessential impulse, by a spiral p>fogress throughthe worlds. In the course of explaining thisidea we have partly anticipated the declarationof another fact of first-rate importance as an aidto correct views of the world-system to which"we belong. That is, that the tide of life — the■wave of existence, the spiritual impulse, callit by what name we please — passes on fromplanet to planet by rushes, or gushes, not by aneven continuous flow. For the momentary pur-pose of illustrating the idea in hand, the processmay be compared to the filling of a series ofholes or tubs sunk in the ground, such as maysometimes be seen at the mouths of feeblesprings, and connected with each other by littlesurface channels. The stream from the ^^ring,as it flows, is gathered up entirely in the begin-ning by the first hole, or tub A, and it is only

wlien this is quite full that the continued in^pouring of water from the spring causes thatwhich it already contains to overflow into tubB. This in turn fills and overflows along thechannel which leads to tub C, and so on. Now,though, of course, a clumsy analogy of this kindwill not carry us very far, it precisely illustratesthe evolution of life on a chain of worlds likethat we are attached to, and, indeed, the evolu-tion of the worlds themselves. For the processwhich goes on does not involve the preexistenceof a chain of globes which Nature proceeds tostock with life; but it is one in which the evo-lution of each globe is the result of previous ev-olutions, and the consequence of certain im-pulses thrown off from its predecessor in thesuperabundance of tlieir development. Now, itis necessary to deal with this characteristic ofthe process to be described, but directly we be-gin to deal with it w^e have to go back in imag-ination to a period in the development of oursystem very far antecedent to that which is spec-ially our subject at present — the evolution ofman. And manifestly, as soon as we begintalking of the beginnings of worlds, we aredealing with phenomena which can have hadvery little to do with life, as we understand thematter, and, therefore, it may be supposed, notli-ing to do with life impulses. But let us go

back by degrees. Behind the human harvestof tlie life impulse there lay the harvest ofmere animal forms, as every one realizes; be-hind that, the harvest or growths of mere vege-table forms — for some of these undoubtedlypreceded the appearance of the earliest animallife on the planet. Then, before the vegetableorganizations, there were mineral organizations,— for even a mineral is a product of Nature, anevolution from something behind it, as everyimaginable manifestation of Nature must be,until in the vast series of manifestations themind travels back to the unmanifested begin-ning of all things. On pure metaphysics ofthat sort we are not now engaged. It is enoughto show that we may as reasonably — and thatwe must if we would talk about these mattersat all — conceive a life impulse giving birth tomineral forms as of the same sort of impulseconcerned to raise a race of apes into a race ofrudimentary men. Indeed, occult science trav-els back even further in its exhaustive analysisof evolution than the period at which mineralsbegan to assume existence. In the process ofdeveloping worlds from fiery nebulae, Naturebegins with something earlier than minerals —with the elemental forces that underlie the phe-nomena of Nature as visible now and perceptibleto the senses of man. But that branch of the

subject may be left alone for the present. Letus lake up the process at the period when thcjfirst world of the series, globe A let us call itjis merely a congeries of mineral forms. No\Vit must be remembered that globe A has alreadybeen described as very much more ethereal,more predominated by spirit, as distinguishedfrom matter, than the globe of which we atpresent are having personal experience, so thata lar^re allowance must be made for that stateof Ihinnrs when we ask the reader to think of it,at starting, as a mere congeries of mineral forms.Mineral forms may be mineral in the sense ofnot belonging to the higher forms of vegetableorganism, and may yet be very immaterial aswe think of matter, very ethereal, consisting ofa very fine or subtle quality of matter, in whichthe other pole or characteristic of Nature, spirit,largely predominates. The minerals we aretrying to portray are, as it were, the ghosts ofminerals ; by no means the highly-finished andbeautiful, hard crystals which the mineralogicalcabinets of this world supply. In these lowerspirals of evolution with which w^e are nowdealing, as with the higher ones, there is prog-ress from world to world, and that is the greatpoint at which we have been aiming. There isprof^ress downwards, so to speak, in finish andmateriality and consistency; and then, again,

progress upward in spirituality as coupled withthe finish which matter or materiality renderedpossible in the first instance. It will be foundthat the process of evolution in its higher stagesas regards man is carried on in exactly the sameway. All through these studies, indeed, it willbe found that one process of Nature typifiesanother, that the big is the repetition of the lit-tle on a lar^rer scale.

o

It is manifest from what we have alreadysaid, and in order that the progress of organ-isms on globe A shall be accounted for, thatthe mineral kingdom will no more develop thevegetable kingdom on globe A until it receivesan impulse from without, than the earth wasable to develop man from the ape till it re-ceived an impulse from without. But it willbe inconvenient at present to go back to a con-sideration of the impulses wliich operate onglobe A in the beginning of the system's con-struction.

We have already, in order to be able to ad-vance more comfortably from a far later periodthan that to which we have now receded, p-one

' o

back so far that further recession would changethe whole character of this explanation. Wemust stop somewhere, and for the present itwill be best to take the life impulses behindglobe A for granted. And having stopped

there we may now treat the enormous periodintervening between tlie mhieral epoch on globeA and the man epoch in a very cursor^' way,and so get back to the main problem before us.What has been already said facilitates a cursorytreatment of the intervening evolution. Thefull development of the mineral epoch on globeA prepares the way for the vegetable develop-ment, and as soon as this begins the minerallife impulse overflows into globe B. Thenwhen the vegetable development on globe A iscomplete, and the animal development begins,the vegetable life impulse overflows to globe B,and the mineral impulse passes on to globe C.Then, finally, comes the human life impulse onglobe A.

Now it is necessary at this point to guardagainst one misconception that might arise.As just roughly described, the process mightconvey the idea that by the time the humanimpulse began on globe A tlie mineral impulsewas then beginning on globe D, and that be-yond lay chaos. This is very far from beingthe case, for two reasons. First, as alreadystated, there are processes of evolution whichprecede the mineral evolution, and thus a waveof evolution, indeed several weaves of evolutionprecede the mineral wave in its progress roundthe spheres. But over and above this there is

a, fact to be stated which has such an influenceon the course of events, that, when it is real-ized, it will be seen that the life impulse haspassed several times completely round thewdiole chain of worlds before the commence-ment of the human impulse on globe A. This ^fact is as follows: Each kingdom of evolution,vegetable, animal, and so on, is divided intoseveral spiral layers. The spiritual monads— the individual atoms of that immense lifeimpulse of which so much has been said — donot fully complete their mineral existence onglobe A, then complete it on globe B, and soon. They pass several times round the wholecircle as minerals, and then again several tiuiesround as vegetables, and several times as ani-mals. We purposely refrain for the presentfrom going into figures, because it is more con-venient to state the outline of the scheme ingeneral terms first; but figures in reference tothese processes of Nature have now been givento the world by the occult adepts (for the firsttime we believe in its history), and they shallbe brought out in the course of this explana-tion, very shortly, but as we say the outline isenough for any one to think of at first.

And now we have rudimentary man begin-ning his existence on globe A, in that worldwhere all things are as the ghosts of the corrc'

92 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

sponding things in this world. He is beginninghis long descent into matter. And the life im-pulse of each " round " overflows, and the racesof man are established in different degrees ofperfection on all the planets, on each in turn.But the rounds are more complicated in theirdesign than this explanation would show, if itstopped short here. The process for each spir-itual monad is not merely a passage from planetto planet. Within the limits of each planet,each time it arrives thermit has a complieatc^dprocess of-^jjiplution to "pSRiorm. It is manytimes incarnated in successive races of men be-fore it passes onward, and it even has margin-carnations in each great race. It will be foundwhen we get on further that this fact throws aflood of light upon the actual condition of man-kind as we know it, accounting for those im-mense differences of intellect and moralit}^, andeven of welfare in its highest sense, which gen-erally appear so painfully mysterious.

That which has a definite beginning gener-ally has an end also. As we have shown thatthe evolutionary process under description be-gan when certain impulses first commencedtheir operation, so it may be inferred that theyare tending towards a final consummation, to'wards a goal and a (lonclusion. That is so,though the goal is still far off. Man, as we

THE PLANETARY CHAIN. 93

know him on this earth, is but half-way throughthe evokitionary process to which he owes hispresent development. He will be as muchgreater before the destiny of our system is ac-complished than he is now as he is now greaterthan the missing link. And that improvementwill even be accomplished on this earth, while,in the other worlds of the ascending series,there are still loftier peaks of perfection to bescaled. It is utterly beyond the range of facul-ties, untutored in the discernment of occultmysteries, to imagine the kind of life whichman will thus ultimately lead before the zenithof the great cycle is attained. But there isenough to be done in filling up the details ofthe outline now presented to the reader, with-out attempting to forecast those which have todo with existences towards which evolution isreaching across the enormous abysses of thefuture.

CHAPTER IV.

THE WOELD PEEIODS.

A STRIKING illustration of the uniformitiesof Nature is brought out by the first glance atthe occult doctrine in reference to the develop-ment of man on the earth. The outline of thedesign is the same as the outline of the morecomprehensive design covering the whole chainof worlds. The inner details of this world, asregards its units of construction, are the sameas tlie inner details of the larger organism ofwhich this world itself is a unit. That is tosay, the development of humanity on this earthis accomplished by means of successive wavesof development which correspond to the succes-sive worlds in the great planetary chain. Thegreat tide of human life, be it remembered —for that has been already set forth — sweepsround the whole circle of worlds in successivewaves. These primary growths of humanitymay be conveniently spoken of as rounds. WeT#ust not forget that the individual units, con-Btitutinff each round in turn, are identically the

same as regards their higher principles, that is,that the individualities on the earth duringround one come back again after completingtheir travels round the whole series of worldsand constitute round two, and so on. Butthe point to which special attention should bedrawn here is that the individual unit havingarrived at any given planet of the series, in thecourse of any given round, does not merelytouch that planet and pass on to the next. Be-fore passing on, he has to live through a seriesof races on that phinet. And this fact suggeststhe outline of the fabric which will presentlydevelop itself in the reader's mind and exhibitthat similarity of design on the part of the oneworld as compared with the whole series towhich attention has already been drawn. Asthe complete scheme of Nature that we belongto is worked out by means of a series of roundssweeping through all the worlds, so the devel-opment of humanity on each world is workedout by a series of races developed within thelimits of each world in turn.

It is time now to make the working of thislaw clearer by coming to the actual figureswhich have to do with the evolution of our doc-trine. It would have been premature to beginwith them, but as soon as the idea of a systemof worlds in a chain, and of life evolution on

each through a series of re-births, is satisfac-torily grasped, the further exMinination of thelaws at work will be greatly facilitated by pre-cise reference to the actual nuinber of worldsand the actual number of rounds and races re-quired to accomplish the whole purpose of thesystem. For the whole duration of the systemis as certainly limited in time, be it remem-bered, as the life of a single man. Probablynot limited to any definite number of years setirrevocably from the commencement, but thatwhich has a beginning progresses onward to-wards an end. The life of a man, leaving ac-cidents quite out of the account, is a termina-ble period, and the life of a world system leadsup to a final consummation. The vast periodsof time, concerned in the life of a world sys-tem, dazzle the imagination as a rule, but stillthey are measurable ; they are divisible intosub-periods of various kinds, and these have adefinite number.

By what prophetic instinct Shakespearepitched upon seven as tlie number which suitedhis fantastic classification of the ages of manis a question with wdiich we need not be muchconcerned, but certain it is that he could nothave made a more felicitous choice. In periodsof sevens the evolution of the races of man maybe traced, and the actual number of the objeo

tive worlds which constitute our system, and ofwhich the earth is one, is seven also. Remem-ber the occult scientists know this as a fact,just as the physical scientists know for a factthat the spectrum consists of seven colors, andthe musical scale of seven tones. There areseven kingdoms of Nature, not three, as modernscience has imperfectly classified them. ]\Ianbelongs to a kingdom distinctly separate fromthat of the animals, including beings in ahigher state of organization than that whichmanhood has familiarized us with as yet; andbelow the mineral kingdom there are threeothers which science in tlie West knows noth-ing about; but this branch of the subject maybe set aside for the present. It is mentionedmerely to show the regular operation of theseptenary law in Nature.

Man, returning to the kingdom we are mostinterested in, is evolved in a series of rounds(progressions round the series of worlds), andseven of these rounds have to be accomplishedbefore the destinies of our system are workedout. The round which is at present going onis the fourth. There are considerations of theutmost possible interest connected with preciseknowledge on these points, because each roundis, as it were, specially allotted to the predomi-nance of one of the seven principles in man,

and in the regular order of their upward grada-tion.

An individual unit, arriving on a planet forthe first time in the course of a round, has tpwork through seven races on that planet beforehe passes on to the next, and each of those racesoccupies the earth for a long time. Our old-fashioned speculations about time and eternity,suggested by the misty religious systems of theWest, have brought on a curious habit of mindin connection with problems bearing on theactual duration of such periods. We can talkglibly of eternity, and, going to the other endof the scale, we are not shocked by a few thou-sand years ; but directly years are numberedwith precision in groups which lie in interven-ing regions of thought, illogical Western theo-logians are apt to regard such numbering asnonsense. Now, we at present living on thisearth — the great bulk of humanity, that is tosay, for there are exceptional cases to be con-sidered later — are now going through the fifthrace of our present fourth round. And yet theevolution of that fifth race began about a mill-ion of 3^ears ago. Will the reader, in consid-eration of the fact that the ])resent cosmogonydoes not profess to work with eternity, nervehimself to deal with estimates that do concernthemselves with millions of years, and evencount such millions by considerable numbers?

Eacli race of the seven which go to makeup a round — i. e. which are evolved on tlieearth in succession during its occupation bythe great wave of humanity passing round theplanetary chain — is itself subject to subdivis-ion. Were this not the case, the active exist-ences of each human unit would be indeed fewand far between. Within the limits of eachrace there are seven subdivisional races, andagain within the hmits of each subdivisionthere are seven branch races. Through allthese races, roughly speaking, each individualhuman unit must pass during his stay on eartlieach time he arrives there on a round of prog-ress through the planetary system. On reflec-tion, this necessity should not appall the mindso much as a hypothesis which would providefor fewer incarnations. For, however manylives each individual unit may pass throughwhile on earth during a round, be their num-bers few or many, he cannot pass on until thetime comes for the round wave to sweep for-ward. Even by the calculation already fore-shadowed, it will be seen that the time spentby each individual unit in physical life, canonly be a small fraction of the whole time hehas to get through between his arrival on earthand his departure for the next planet. Thelarger part of the time — as we reckon dura-

tion of time — is obviously, therefore, spent inthose subjective conditions of existence whichbelong to the " World of Effects," or spiritualearth attached to the physical earth on whichour objective existence is passed.

The nature of existence on the spiritual earthmust be considered pari passi* with the natureof that passed on the physical earth and dealtwith in the above enumeration of race incarna-tions. We must never forget that betweeneach physical existence the individual unitpasses through a period of existence in the cor-responding spiritual world. And ifc is becausethe conditions of that existence are defined bythe use that has been made of the opportunitiesin the next preceding physical existence thatthe spiritual earth is often spoken of in occultwritlnof as the world of effects. The earth it-self is its corresponding world of causes.

That which passes naturally into the worldof effects after an incarnation in the world ofcauses is the individual unit or spiritual monad ;but the personality just dissolved passes therewith it, to an extent dependent on the qualifi-cations of such personality, — on the use, that isto say, which the person in question has madeof his opportunities in life. The period to bespent in the world of effects — enormouslylonger in each case than the life which has

paved the way for existence there — corre-sponds to the " hereafter" or heaven of ordi-nary theology. The narrow purview of ordi-nary religious conceptions deals merely withone spiritual life and its consequences in thelife to come. Theology conceives that the en-tity concerned had its beginning in this physi-cal life, and that the ensuing spiritual life willnever stop. And this pair of existences, whichis shown, by the elements of occult science thatwe are now unfolding, to constitute a part onlyof the entity's experience during its connectionwith a branch race, which is one of seven be-longing to a subdivisional race, itself one ofseven belonging to a main race, itself one ofseven belonging to the occupation of earth byone of the seven round waves of humanitywhich have each to occupy it in turn before itsfunctions in Nature are concluded, — this mi-croscopic molecule of the whole structure iswhat common theology treats as more than thewhole, for it is supposed to cover eternity.

The reader must here be warned against oneconclusion to which the above explanations —perfectly accurate as far as they go, but not yetcovering the whole ground—might lead him.He will not get at the exact number of lives anindividual entity has to lead on the earth in thecourse of its occupation by one round, if he

merely raises seven to its third power. If oneexistence only were passed in each branch race,the total number would obviously be 343, buteach life descends at least twice into objectivityin the same branch, — each monad, in otherwords, incarnates twice in each branch race.Again, there is a curious cyclic law which op-erates to augment the total number of incarna-tions be3^ond 686. Each subdivisional race hasa certain extra vitality at its climax, whichleads it to throw off an additional offshoot raceat that point in its progress, and again anotheroffshoot race is developed at the end of the sub-divisional race by its dying momentum, so tospeak. Through these races the whole tide ofhuman life passes, and the result is that theactual normal number of incarnations for eachmonad is not far short of 800. Within rela-tively narrow limits it is a variable number,but the bearings of that fact may be consideredlater on.

The methodical law which carries each andevery individual human entity through the vastevolutionary process thus sketclied out, is in noway incompatible with that liability to fallaway into abnormal destinies or ultimate anni-hilation which menaces the 'personal entities ofpeople who cultivate very ignoble affinities.The distribution of the seven principles at

death shows that clearly enough, but viewed inthe light of these further explanations aboutevolution, the situation may be better realized.The permanent entity is that which livesthrough the whole series of lives, not onlythrough the races belonging to the presentround wave on earth, but also through those ofother round waves and other worlds. Broadlyspeaking, it may in due time, though at someinconceivably distant future as measured inyears, recover a recollection of all those lives,which will seem as days in the past to us. Butthe astral dross, cast off at each passage intothe world of effects, has a more or less depen-dent existence of its own, quite separate fromthat of the spiritual entity from which it hasjust been disunited.

The natural history of this astral remnant isa problem of much interest and importance, buta methodical continuation of the whole subjectwill require us in the first instance to endeavorto realize the destiny oLthe higher and more du-rable spiritual Ego ; and before going into thatinquiry, there is a good deal more to be saidabout the development of the objective races.

Esoteric science, though interesting itselfmainly with matters generally regarded as ap-pertaining to religion, would not be the com-plete comprehensive and trustworthy system

that it is, if it failed to bring all the facts ofearth life into liarmony with its doctrines. Itwould have been little able to search out andascertain the manner in which the human racehas evolved through aeons of time and series ofplanets, if it had not been in a position to ascer-tain also, as the smaller inquiry is included inthe greater, the manner in which the wave ofhumanity with which we are now concerned hasbeen developed on this earth. The faculties, inshort, which enable adepts to read the mys-teries of other worlds, and of other states of ex-istence, are in no way unequal to the task oftraveling back along the life-current of thisglobe. It follows that while the brief recordof a few thousand years is all that our so-calleduniversal history can deal with, the earth his-tory, which forms a department of esotericknowledge, goes back to the incidents of thefourth race which preceded ours, and to thoseof the third race which preceded that. It goesback still further indeed, but the second andfirst races did not develop anything that couldbe called civilization, and of them, therefore,there is less to be said than of their successors.The third and fourth did — strange as it mayseem to some modern readers to contemplatethe notion of civilization on the earth severalmillions of years ago.

Where are its traces ? tliey will ask. Howcould the civilization with which Europe hasnow endowed mankind pass away so completelythat any future inhabitants of the earth couldever be ignorant that it once existed? Howthen can we conceive the idea that any similarcivilization can have vanished, leaving no rec-ords for us ?

The answer lies in the regular routine ofplanetary life, which goes on pari passu withthe life of its inhabitants. The periods of thegreat root races are divided from each other bygreat convulsions of Nature and by great geo-logical changes. Europe was not in existenceas a continent at the time the fourth race flour-ished. The continent on which the fourth racelived was not in existence at the time tlie thirdrace flourislied, and neither of the continentswhich were the great vortices of the civilizationsof those two races are in existence now. Sevengreat continental cataclysms occur during theoccupation of the earth by the human life-wavefor one round period. Each race is cut off inthis way at its appointed time, some survivorsremaining in parts of the world, not the properhome of their race ; but these, invariably insuch cases, exhibiting a tendency to decay, andrelapsing into barbarism with more or lessrapidity.

The proper home of the fourth race, whichdirectly preceded oar own, was that continentof which some memory has been preserved evenin exoteric literature — the lost Atlantis. Butthe great island, the destruction of which isspoken of by Plato, was really but the last rem-nant of the continent. " In the Eocene age,"I am told, " even in its very first part, the greatcycle of the fourth race men, the Atlanteans,had already reached its highest point, and thegreat continent, the father of nearly all thepresent continents, showed the first symptomsof sinking, — a process that occupied it downto 11,446 years ago, when its last island, that,translating its vernacular name, we may callwith propriety Poseidonis, went down with acrash.

"Lemuria" (a former continent stretchingsouthward from India across what is now theIndian Ocean, but connected with Atlantis, forAfrica was not then in existence) " should nomore be confounded with the Atlantis conti-nent than Europe with America. Both sankand were drowned, with their high civilizationsand ' gods,' yet between the two catastrophes aperiod of about 700,000 years elapsed, Lemuriaflourishing and ending her career just aboutthat lapse of time before the early part of theEocene age, since its race was the third. Be-

hold the relics of that once great nation in someof the flat-headed aborigines of your Australia."

It is a mistake on the part of a recent writeron Atlantis to people India and Egypt withthe colonies of that continent, but of that moreanon.

" Why should not your geologists," asks myrevered Mahatma teacher, " bear in mind thatunder the continents explored and fathomedby them, in the bowels of which they havefound the Eocene age, and forced it to de-liver to them its secrets, there may be hiddendeep in the fathomless, or rather unfathomedocean beds, other and far older continentswhose strata have never been geologically ex-plored ; and that they may some day upset en-tirely their present theories. Why not admitthat our present continents have, like Lemuriaand Atlantis, been several times already sub-merged, and had the time to reappear again,and bear their new groups of mankind and civ-ilization ; and that at the first great geologicalupheaval at the next cataclysm, in the series ofperiodical cataclysms that occur from the be-ginning to the end of every round, our alreadyautopsized continents will go down, and theLemurias and Atlantises come up again.

" Of course the fourtn race had its periods ofthe highest civilization." (The letter from

whicli I am now quoting was written in answerto a series of questions I put.) " Greek, andRoman, and even Egyptian civilizations arenothing compared to the civilizations that be-gan with the third race. Those of the secondrace were not savages, but they could not becalled civilized.

" Greeks and Romans were small sub-races,and Egyptians part and parcel of our own Cau-casian stock. Look at the latter, and at India.Having reached the highest civilization, andwhat is more, learning^ both went down; Egypt,as a distinct sub-race, disappearing entirely (herCopts are but a hybrid remnant); India, as oneof the first and most powerful offshoots of themother race, and composed of a number of sub-races, lasting to these times, and struggling totake once more her place in history some day.That history catches but a few stra}^ hazyglimpses of Egypt some 12,000 years back,when, having already reached the apex of itscycle thousands of years before, the latter hadbegun to go down.

"The Chaldees were at the apex of theiroccult fame before what you term the BronzeAge. We hold — but then what warrant canvou give the world that we are right?—thatfar greater civilizations than our own haverisen and decayed. It is not enough to say, as

some of your modern writers do, that an extinctcivilization existed before Rome and Athenswere founded. We affirm that a series of civ-ilizations existed before as well as after theglacial period, that they existed upon variouspoints of the globe, reached the apex of glory,and died. Every trace and memory had beenlost of the Assyrian and Phoenician civiliza-tions, until discoveries began to be made a fewyears ago. And now they open a new thoughnot by far one of the earliest pages in the his-tory of mankind. And yet how far back dothose civilizations go in comparison with theoldest, and even them history is slow to accept.Archaeology has sufficiently demonstrated thatthe memory of man runs back vastly furtherthan history has been willing to accept, andthe sacred records of once mighty nations pre-served by their heirs are still more worthy oftrust. We speak of civilizations of the ante-glacial period, and not only in the minds ofthe vulgar and the profane, but even in theopinion of the highly-learned geologist, theclaim sounds preposterous. What would yousay, then, to our affirmation that the Chinese, —I now speak of the inland, the true Chinaman,not of the hybrid mixture between the fourthand fifth races now occupying the throne,—the aborigines who belong in their unallied na-

tionality wholly to the highest and last branchof the fourth race, reached their highest civili-zation when the fifth had hardly appeared inAsia? When was it? Calculate. The groupof islands discovered by Nordenskiold, of theVega, was found strewn with fossils of horses,sheep, oxen, etc., among gigantic bones of ele-phants, mammoths, rhinoceroses, and othermonsters belonging to periods when man, saysyour science, had not yet made his appearanceon earth. How came horses and sheep to befound in company with the huge antediluvians?" The region now locked in the fetters ofeternal winter, uninhabited by man, that mostfragile of animals, will yery soon be provedto have had not only a tropical climate, some-thing your science knows and does not dispute,but having been likewise the seat of one of themost ancient civilizations of the fourth race,whose highest relics we now find in the degener-ate Chinaman, and whose lowest are hopelessly(for the profane scientist) intermixed with theremnants of the third. I told you before that thehighest people now on earth (spiritually) belongto the first sub-race of the fifth root race, andthose are the Aryan Asiatics; the highest race(physical intellectuality) is the last sub-race ofthe fifth, — yourselves, the white conquerors.The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh

sub-race of the fourth root race,—the above-mentioned Chinamen and their offshoots andbranchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetens,Javanese, etc., etc.), — with remnants of othersub-races of the fourth and the seventh sub-raceof the third race. All these fallen, degradedsemblances of humanity are the direct linealdescendants of highly civilized nations, neitherthe names nor memory of which have survived,except in such books as ' Populvuh,' the sacredbook of the Guatemalans, and a few othersunknown to science."

I had inquired was there any way of ac-counting for what seems the curious rush ofhuman progress within the last two thousandyears, as compared with the relativel}?" stagnantcondition of the fourth round people up to thebeginning of modern progress. This ques-tion it was that elicited the explanations quotedabove, and also the following remarks in regardto the recent " rush of human progress."

" The latter end of a very important cycle.Each round, each race, as every sub-race, hasits great and its smaller cycles on every planetthat mankind passes through. Our fourthround humanity has its one great cycle, and sohave its races and sub-races. * The curiousrush ' is due to the double effect of the former^-the beginning of its downward course —and

of the latter (the small cycle of your sub-race)running on to its apex. Remember you belongto the fifth race, yet you are but a Westernsub-race. Notwithstanding your efforts, whatyou call civilization is confined only to the lat-ter and its offshoots in America. Radiatingaround, its deceptive light may seem to throwits rays on a greater distance than it does inreality. There is no rush in China, and ofJapan you make but a caricature.

" A student of occultism ought not to speakof the stagnant condition of the fourth-roundpeople, since history knows next to nothing ofthat condition, ' up to the beginning of modernprogress,' of other nations but the Western.What do you know of America, for instance,before the invasion of that country by theSpaniards ? Less than two centuries prior tothe arrival of Cortez there was as great a rushtoward progress among the sub-races of Peruand Mexico as there is now in Europe and theUnited States. Their sub-race ended in nearlytotal annihilation through causes generated byitself. We may speak only of the 'stagnant'condition into which, following the law of de-velopment, growth, maturity, and decline, everyrace and sub-race falls during the transitionperiods. It is that latter condition yovw uni-versal history is acquainted with, while it re-

mains superbly ignorant of the condition evenIndia was in some ten centuries back. Yoursub-races are now running toward the apex oftheir respective cycles, and that history goes nofurther back than the periods of decline of afew other sub-races belonging most of them tothe preceding fourth race."

I had asked to what epoch Atlantis belonged,and whether the cataclysm by which it wasdestroyed came in an appointed place in theprogress of evolution, corresponding for the de-velopment of races to the obscuration of plan-ets. The answer was : —

" To the Miocene times. Everything comesin its appointed time and place in the evolutionof rounds, otherwise it would be impossible forthe best seer to calculate the exact hour andyear when such cataclysms great and smallhave to occur. All an adept could do wouldbe to predict an approximate time, whereasnow events that result in great geologicalchanges may be predicted with as mathemat-ical a certainty as eclipses and other revolu-tions in space. The sinking of Atlantis (thegroup of continents and isles) began during theMiocene period, — as certain of your continentsare now observed to be gradually sinking, —and it culminated first in the final disappear-ance of the largest continent, an event coinci-

dent with the elevation of the Alps; and second,with that of the last of the fair islands men-tioned by Plato. The Egyptian priests of Saistold his ancestor Solon, that Atlantis (i. e., theonly remaining large island) had perished ninethonsand years before their time. This was nota fancy date, since they had for millenniumspreserved most carefully their records. Butthen, as I say, they spoke but of the Poseidonis,and would not reveal even to the great Greeklegislator their secret chronology. As thereare no geological reasons for doubting, but, onthe contrary, a mass of evidence for acceptingthe tradition, science has finally accepted theexistence of the great continent and archipel-ago, and thus vindicated the truth of one more' fable.'

" The approach of every new obscuration isalways signaled by cataclysms of either fire orwater. But apart from this, every root racehas to be cut in two, so to say, by either oneor the other. Thus having reached the apexof its development and glory, the fourth race— the Atlanteans — were destroyed by water;you find now but their degenerate fallen rem-.nants, whose sub-races nevertheless, each ofthem, had its palmy days of glory and relativegreatness. What they are now, you will beBome day, the law of cycles being one and im-

miitable. When your race, the fifth, will havereached its zenith of physical intellectuality,and developed its highest civilization (remem-ber the difference we make between materialand spiritual civilizations), unable to go anyhigher in its own cycle, its progress towardabsolute evil will be arrested (as its predeces-sors, the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, themen of the third and fourth races, were arrestedin their progress toward the same) by one ofsuch cataclysmic changes, its great civilizationdestroyed, and all the sub-races of that racewill be found going down their respectivecycles, after a short period of glory and learn-ing. See the remnants of the Atlanteans, theold Greeks and Romans (the modern belong tothe fifth race). See how great and how short,how evanescent were their days of fame andglory. For they were but sub-races of the sevenoffshoots of the root race.^ No mother race,any more than her sub-races and offshoots, isallowed by the one reigning law to trespassupon the prerogatives of the race, or sub-racethat will follow it; least of all to encroachupon the knowledge and powers in store for itssuccessor."

The "progress toward absolute evil," arrested

1 Branches of the subdivisions, according to the nomenclature Ihave adopted previously.

by the cataclysms of each race in turn, setsin with the acquisition, by means of ordinaryintellectual research and scientific advance-ment, of those powers over Nature which ac-crue even now in adeptship from the prematuredevelopment of higher faculties than those weordinarily employ. I have spoken slightly ofthese powers in a preceding chapter, when en-deavoring to describe our esoteric teachers; todescribe them minutely would lead me into along digression on occult phenomena. It isenough to say that they are such as cannot butbe dangerous to society generally, and provo-cative of all manner of crimes which wouldutterly defy detection, if possessed by personscapable of regarding them as anything else buta profoundly sacred trust. Now some of thesepowers are simply the practical application ofobscure forces of Nature, susceptible of dis-covery in the course of ordinary scientific prog-ress. Such progress had been accomplishedby the Atlanteans. The worldly men of sci-ence in that race had learned the secrets ofthe disintegration and reintegration of matter,which few but practical spiritualists as yetknow to be possible, and of control over theclementals, by means of which that and othereven more portentous phenomena can be pro-duced. Such powers in the hands of persons

willing to use them for merely selfish and un-scrupulous ends, must not only be productive ofsocial disaster, but also for the persons who holdthem, of progress in the direction of that evilly-spiritual exaltation, which is a far more terri-ble result than suffering and inconvenience inthis world. Thus it is, when physical intellect,unguarded by elevated morality, runs over intothe proper region of spiritual advancement, thatthe natural law provides for its violent repres-sion. The contingency will be better under-stood when we come to deal with the generaldestinies toward which humanity is tending.

The principle under which the various racesof man as they develop are controlled collec-tively by the cyclic law, however they may in-dividually exercise the free will they unques-tionably possess, is thus very plainly asserted.For people who have never regarded humanaffairs as covering more than the very shortperiod with which history deals, the course ofevents will perhaps, as a rule, exhibit no cycliccharacter, but rather a checkered progress, has-tened sometimes by great men and fortunatecircumstances, sometimes retarded by war, big-otry, or intervals of intellectual sterility, butmoving continually onward in the long ac-count at one rate of speed or another. As theesoteric view of the matter, fortified by the

wide range of observation which occult scienceis enabled to take, has an altogetlier oppositetendenc}^ it seems worth while to concludethese explanations with an extract from a dis-tinguished author, quite unconnected with theoccult world, who nevertheless, from a closeobservation of the mere historical record, pro-nounces himself decisively in favor of the theoryof cycles. In his '-'• History of the IntellectualDevelopment of Europe," Dr. J. W. Draperwrites as follows: —

" We are, as we often say, the creatures ofcircumstances. In that expression there is ahigher philosophy than miglit at first sight ap-pear. . . . From this more accurate point ofview we should therefore consider the courseof these events, recognizing the principle thatthe affairs of men pass forward in a determi-nate way, expanding and unfolding themselves.And hence we see that the things of which wehave spoken as though they were matters ofchoice, were in reality forced upon their appar-ent authors by the necessity of the times. Butin truth they should be considered as the pres-entation of a certain phase of life which nationsin their onward course sooner or later assume.To the individual, how well we know that asober moderation of action, an appropriate grav-ity of demeanor, belong to the mature period

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of life, change from the wanton willfuhiess ofyouth, which may be ushered in, or its begin-ning marked by many accidental incidents ; inone perhaps by domestic bereavements, in an-other by the loss of fortune, in a third by illhealth. We are correct enough in imputing tosuch trials the change of character ; but wenever deceive ourselves by supposing that itwould have failed to take place had those in-cidents not occurred. There runs an irresisti-ble destiny in the midst of all these vicissitudes.. . . There are analogies between the life of anation and that of an individual, who, thoughhe may be in one respect the maker of his ownfortunes, for happiness or for misery, for goodor for evil, though he remains here or goesthere as his inclinations prompt, though hedoes this or abstains from that as he chooses, isnevertheless held fast by an inexorable fate, —a fate which brought him into the w^orld in-voluntarily, as far as he was concerned, whichpresses him forward through a definite career,the stages of which are absolutely invariable, —infancy, childhood, youth, maturity, old age,with all their characteristic actions and pas-sions, — and which removes him from the sceneat the appointed time, in most cases againstjiiswill. So also it is with nations ; the voluntaryis only the outward semblance, covering but

hardly hiding the predetermined. Over theevents of Ufe we may have control, but nonewhatever over the law of its progress. Thereis a geometry that applies to nations an equa-tion of their curve of advance. That no mortalman can touch."

CHAPTER V.DEYACHAN.

It was not possible to approach a considera-tion of the states into which the higher humanprinciples pass at death, without first indicat-ing the general framework of the whole designworked out in the course of the evolution ofman. That much of my task, however, havingnow been accomplished, we may pass on to con-sider the natural destinies of each human Ego,in the interval which elapses between the closeof one objective life and the commencement ofanother. At the commencement of another,the Karma of the previous objective life deter-mines the state of life into which the individ-ual shall be born. This doctrine of Karma isone of the most interesting features of Buddhistphilosophy. There has been no secret about itat any time, though for want of a proper com-prehension of elements in the philosophy wdiichhave been strictly esoteric, it may sometimeshave been misunderstood.

Karma is a collective expression applied to

that complicated group of affinities for good andevil generated by a human behig during hfe,and the character of which inheres in the mole-cules of his fifth principle all through the inter-val which elapses between his death from oneobjective life and his birth into the next. Asstated sometimes, the doctrine seems to be onewhich exacts the notion of a superior spiritualauthority summing up the acts of a man's lifeat its close, taking into consideration his gooddeeds and his bad, and giving judgment abouthim on the whole aspect of the case. But acomprehension of the way in which the humanprinciples divide up at death, will afford aclue to the comprehension of the way in whichKarma operates, and also of the great subjectwe may better take up first, the immediatespiritual condition of man after death.

At death, the three lower principles — thebody, its mere ph^^sical vitality, and its astralcounterpart — are finally abandoned by thatwhich really is the Man himself, and the fourhigher principles escape into that world imme-diately above our own ; above our own, that is,in the order of spirituality; not above it at all,but in it and of it, as regards real locality, — theastral plane, or Karma Loca, according to a veryfamiliar Sanskrit expression. Here a divisiontakes place between the two duads, which the

four higher principles include. The explana-tions already given concerning the imperfectextent to which the upper principles of man areas yet developed, will show that this estimationof the process, as in the nature of a mechanicalseparation of the principles, is a rough way ofdeaUng with the matter. It must be modifiedin the reader's mind by the light of what hasbeen already said. It may be otherwise de-scribed as a trial of the extent to which thefifth principle has been developed. Regardedin the light of the former idea, however, wemust conceive the sixth and seventh principles,on the one hand, drawing the fifth, the humansoul, in one direction, while the fourth draws itback earthward in the other. Now, the fifthprinciple is a very complex entity, separableitself into superior and inferior elements. Inthe struggle which takes place between its latecompanion principles, its best, purest, most ele-vated, and spiritual portions cling to the sixth,its lower instincts, impulses, and recollectionsadhere to the fourth, and it is in a measure tornasunder. The lower remnant, associating itselfwith the fourth, floats off in the earth's atmos-phere, while the best elements, those, be it un-derstood, which really constitute the Ego of thelate earthly personality, the individuality, theconsciousness thereof, follows the sixth and sev-

entli into a spiritual condition, the nature ofwhich we are about to examine.

Rejecting the popular English name for thisspiritual condition, as incrusted with too manymisconceptious to be convenient, let us keep tothe Oriental designation of that region or stateinto which the higher principles of human crea-tures pass at death. This is additionally desir-able because, although the Devachan of Bud-dhist philosophy corresponds in some respectsto the modern European idea of heaven, it dif-fers from heaven in others which are even moreimportant.

Firstly, however, in Devachan, that whichsurvives is not merely the individual monad,which survives through all the changes of thewhole evolutionary scheme, and flits from bodyto body, from planet to planet, and so forth, —that which survives in Devachan is the man'sown self-conscious personality, under some re-strictions indeed, which we will come to direct-ly, but still it is the same personality as regardsits higher feelings, aspirations, affections, andeven tastes, as it was on earth. Perhaps itwould be better to say the essence of the lateself-conscious personality.

It may be worth the reader's while to learnwhat Colonel H. S. Olcott has to say in his" Buddhist Catechism " (14th thousand) of the

intrinsic difference between " individuality"and *' personality." Since he wrote not onlyunder the approval of the High Priest of theSripada and Galle, Sumangala, but also underthe direct instruction of his adept Guru, hiswords will have weight for the student of Oc-cultism. This is what he says in his Appen-dix : —

" Upon reflection, I have substituted ' person-ality ' for ' individuality' as written in the firstedition. The successive appearances upon oneor many earths, or * descents into generation 'of the tanhaically-cohQVQwt parts (Skandhas) ofa certain being, are a succession of personali-ties. In each birth the personality differs fromthat of the previous or next succeeding birth.Karma, the dens ex mdchina^ masks (or shallwe say, reflects?) itself now in the personalityof a sage, again as an artisan, and so onthroughout the string of births. But thoughpersonalities ever shift, the one line of lifealong which they are strung like beads, runsunbroken.

" It is ever that particular line, never anyother. It is therefore individual, an individualvital undulation which began in. Nirvana or thesubjective side of Nature, as the light or heatundulation through ether began at its dynamicsource ; is careering through the objective side

of Nature, under the impulse of Karma and thecreative direction of Tanlia ; and tends throughmany cyclic changes back to Nirvana. Mr.'Rhys Davids calls that which passes from per-sonality to personality along the individualchain, ' character ' or ' doing.' Since ' charac-ter' is not a mere metaphysical abstraction, butthe sum of one's mental qualities and moralpropensities, would it not help to dispel whatMr. Rhys Davids calls ' the desperate expe-dient of a mystery,' if we regarded the life un-dulation as individuality, and each of its seriesof natal manifestations as a separate person-ality ?

*' The denial of ' soul' by Buddha (see ' San-yutto Nikaya,' the Sutta Pitaka) points to theprevalent delusive belief in an independenttransmissible personality; an entity that couldmove from birth to birth unchanged, or go to aplace or state where, as such perfect entit}^ itcould eternally enjoy or suffer. And what heshows is that the ' I am I' consciousness is, asregards permanency, logically impossible, sinceits elementary constituents constantly change,and the ' I' of one birth differs from the ' I' ofevery other birth. But everything that I havefound in Buddhism accords with the theory ofa gradual evolution of the perfect man, viz., aBuddha through numberless natal experiences.

DE VAC HAN. 127

And in the consciousness of that person who atthe end of a given chain of beings attainsBuddhahood, oi* who succeeds in attaining thefourth stage of Dhj^ana, or mystic self-develop-ment, in any one of his births anterior to thefinal one, the scenes of all these serial birthsare perceptible. In the ' Jatakattahavannana,'so well translated by Mr. Rhys Davids, an ex-pression continually recurs which I think rathersupports such an idea, viz., ' Then the blessedone made manifest an occurrence hidden hychange of hirth^ or ' that which had been hid-den by, etc' Early Buddhism, then, clearlyheld to a permanency of records in the Akasa,and the potential capacity of man to read thesame when he has evoluted to the stage of trueindividual enlightenment."

The purely sensual feelings and tastes of thelate personality will drop off from it in Deva-chan, but it does not follow that nothing ispreservable in that state, except feelings andthoughts having a direct reference to religionor spiritual philosophy. On the contrary, allthe superior phases, even of sensuous emotion,find their appropriate sphere of development inDevachan. To suggest a whole range of ideasby means of one illustration, a soul in Deva-chan, if the soul of a man who was passionatelydevoted to music, would be continuously en-

raptured by the sensations music produces.The person whose happiness of the higlier sorton earth had been entirely centred in the ex-ercise of the affections will miss none in Deva-chan of those whom he or she loved. But, atonce it will be asked, if some of these are notthemselves fit for Devachan, how then ? Theanswer is, that does not matter. For the per-son who loved them they ivill he there. It isnot necessary to say much more to give a clueto the position. Devachan is a subjective state.It will seem as real as the chairs and tablesround us; and remember that, above all things,to the profound philosophy of Occultism, arethe chairs and tables, and the whole objectivescenery of the world, unreal and merely transi-tory delusions of sense. As real as the realitiesof this world to us, and even more so, will bethe realities of Devachan to those who go intothat state.

From this it ensues that the subjective isola-tion of Devachan, as it will perhaps be con-ceived at first, is not real isolation at all, as theword is understood on the physical plane of ex-istence ; it is companionship with all that thetrue soul craves for, whether persons, things, orknowledge. And a patient consideration ofthe place in Nature which Devachan occupieswill show that this subjective isolation of each

DEVACnAN. 129

human unit is the only condition wliicli renderspossible anything wliicli can be described as afelicitous spiritual existence after death furmankind at large, and Devachan is as much apurely and absolutely felicitous condition forall who attain it, as Avitchi is the reverse of it.There is no inequality or injustice in the sys-tem ; Devachan is by no means the same thingfor the good and the indifferent alike, but it isnot a life of responsibility, and therefore thereis no logical place in it for suffering any morethan in Avitchi there is any room for enjoy-ment or repentance. It is a life of effects^ notof causes; a life of being paid your earnings,not of laboring for them. Therefore it is im-possible to be during that life cognizant ofwhat is going on on earth. Under the opera-tion of such cognition there would be no truehappiness possible in the state after death. Aheaven which constituted a watch-tower fromwhich the occupants could still survey the mis-eries of the earth, would really be a place ofacute mental suffering for its most sympathetic,unselfish, and meritorious inhabitants. If weinvest them in imagination with such a verylimited range of sympathy that they could beimagined as not caring about the spectacle ofsuffering after the few persons to whom theywere immediately attached had died and joined

them, still they would have a very unhappy pe-riod of waiting to go through before survivorsreached the end of an often long and toilsomeexistence below. And even this hypothesiswould be further vitiated by making heavenmost painful for occupants who were most un-selfish and sympathetic, whose reflected distresswould thus continue on behalf of the afflictedrace of mankind generally, even after their per-sonal kindred had been rescued by the hipse oftime. The only escape from this dilemma liesin the supposition that lieaven is not yet openedfor business, so to speak, and that all peoplewho have ever lived, from Adam downward,are still lying in a deatli-like trance, waiting forthe resurrection at the end of the world. Thishypothesis also lias its embarrassments, but weare concerned at present with the scientific har-mony of esoteric Buddhism, not with the theo-ries of other creeds.

Readers, however, who may grant that a pur-view of earthly life from heaven would renderhappiness in heaven impossible, may still doubtwhether true happiness is possible in the state,as it may be objected, of monotonous isolationnow described. The objection is merely raisedfrom the point of view of an imagination thatcannot escape from its present sunoundiiigs.To begin with, about monotonj'. No one will

complain of having experienced monotoii}^ dar-ing the minute, or moment, or half hour, as itmay have been, of the greatest happiness hemay have enjoyed in life. Most people havehad some happy moments, at all events, to lookback to for the purpose of this comparison ; andlet us take even one such minute or moment,too short to be open to the least suspicion ofmonotony, and imagine its sensations immenselyprolonged without any external events in prog-ress to mark the lapse of time. There is noroom, in such a condition of things, for the con-ception of weariness. The unalloyed, unchange-able sensation of intense happiness goes on andon, not forever, because the causes which haveproduced it are not infinite themselves, but forvery long periods of time, until the efficient im-pulse has exhausted itself.

Nor must it be supposed that there is, so tospeak, no change of occupation for souls in De-vachan, — that any one moment of earthly sen-sation is selected for exclusive perpetuation.As a teacher of the highest authority on thissubject writes: —

"There are two fields of causal manifesta-tions, the objective and subjective. The grosserenergies — those which operate in the densercondition of matter — manifest objectively inthe next physical life, their outcome being the

new personalit}^ of each birth marshahng withinthe grand cycle of the evoluting individuality.It is but the moral and spiritual activities thatfind their sphere of effects in Devachan. And,thought and fancy being limitless, how can itbe argued for one moment that there is any-thing like monotony in the state of Devachan ?Few are the men whose lives were so utterlydestitute of feeling, love, or of a more or lessintense predilection for some one line ofthought as to be made unfit for a proportionateperiod of Devachanic experience beyond theirearthly life. So, for instance, while the vices,physical and sensual attractions, say, of a greatphilosopher, but a bad friend and a selfish man,may result in the birth of a new and stillgreater intellect, but at the same time a mostmiserable man, reaping the Karmic effects ofall the causes produced by the ' old' being, andwhose make-up was inevitable from the pre-ponderating proclivities of that being in thepreceding birth, the intermedial period betweenthe two physical births cannot be, in Nature'sexquisitely well-adjusted laws, but a hiatus ofunconsciousness. There can be no such drearyblank as kindly promised, or rather implied, byChristian Protestant theolog}^, to the ' departedsouls,' which, between death and 'resurrection,'have to hang on in space, in mental catalepsy

awaiting the ' Day of Judgment.' Causes pro-duced by mental and spiritual energy being fargreater and more important than those thatare created by physical impulses, their effectshave to be, for weal or woe, proportionately asgreat. Lives on this earth, or other earths,affording no proper field for such effects, andevery laborer being entitled to his own harvest,they have to expand in either Devachan orAvitchi.i Bacon, for instance, whom a poetcalled

' The brightest, wisest, meanest of mankind,'

might reappear in his next incarnation as agreedy money-getter, with extraordinary intel-lectual capacities. But, however great the lat-ter, they would find no proper field in whichthat particular line of thought, pursued duringhis previous lifetime by the founder of modernphilosophy, could reap all its dues. It wouldbe but the astute lawyer, the corrupt Attorney-General, the ungrateful friend, and the dishon-est Lord Chancellor, who might find, led on byhis Karma, a congenial new soil in the bodi/ ofthe money-lender, and reappear as a new Shy-lock. But where would Bacon, the incompar-able thinker, with whom philosophical inquiryupon the most profound problems of Naturewas his ' first and last and only love,' where

1 The lowest states of Devachan interchain with those of Avitchi

would tliis ' intellectual giant of his race oncedisrobed of liis lower nature, go to ? Have allthe effects of that magnificent intellect to vanishand disajDpear ? Certainly not. Thus his moraland spiritual qualities would also have to find afield in which their energies could expand them-selves. Devachan is such a field. Hence, allthe great plans of moral reform, of intellectualresearch mto abstract principles of Nature —all the divine, spiritual aspirations that had sofilled the brightest part of his life would, inDevachan, come to fruition ; and the abstractentity, known in the preceding birth as FrancisBacon, and that may be known in its subse-quent re-incarnation as a despised usurer — thatBacon's own creation, his Frankenstein, the sonof his Karma — shall in the meanwhile occupyitself in this inner world, also of its own prepa-ration, in enjoying the effects of the grandbeneficial spiritual causes sown in life. Itwould live a purely and spiritually conscious ex-istence— a dream of realistic vividness — untilKarma, being satisfied in that direction, and theripple of force reaching the edge of its sub-cy-clic basin, the being should move into its nextarea of causes, either in this same world or an-other, according to his stage of progression.. . . Therefore, there is ' a change of occupation,'a continual change, in Devachan. For that

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dream-life is but the fruition, the harvest-time,of those ps^^chic seed-germs dropped from thetree of physical existence in oar moments ofdream and hope — fancy-glimpses of bliss andhappiness, stifled in an ungrateful social soil,blooming in the rosy dawn of Devachan, andripening under its ever-fructifying sky. Ifman had but one single moment of ideal expe-rience, not even then could it be, as errone-ously supposed, the indefinite prolongation ofthat * single moment.' That one note, struckfrom the lyre of life, would form the key-noteof the being's subjective state, and work outinto numberless harmonic tones and semitonesof psychic phantasmagoria. There, all unreal-ized hopes, aspirations, dreams, become fullyrealized, and the dreams of the objective be-come the realities of the subjective existence.And there, behind the curtain of Maya, its va-porous and deceptive appearances are perceivedby the Initiate, who has learned the great secrethow to penetrate thus deep into the Arcana ofBeing." . . .

As physical existence has its cumulative in-tensity from infancy to prime, and its dimin-ishing energy thenceforward to dotage anddeath, so the dream-life of Devachan is livedcorrespondentially. There is the first flatter ofpsychic life, the attainment of prime, the grad-

ual exhaustion of force passing into consciouslethargy, semi-unconsciousness, oblivion and —not death but birth ! birth into another person-ality and the resumption of action which dailybegets new congeries of causes that must beworked out in another term of Devachan.

" It is not a reality then, it is a mere dream,"objectors will urge; '* the soul so bathed in adelusive sensation of enjoyment which has noreality all the while is being cheated by Na-ture, and must encounter a terrible shock whenit wakes to its mistake." But, in the nature ofthings, it never does or can wake. The wakingfrom Devachan is its next birth into objectivelife, and the draught of Lethe has then beentaken. Nor as regards the isolation of each soulis there any consciousness of isolation whatever;nor is there ever possibly a parting from itschosen associates. Those associates are not inthe nature of companions who may wish to goaway, of friends who may tire of the friend thatloves them, even if he or she does not tire ofthem. Love, the creating force, has placedtheir living image before the personal soulwhich craves for their presence, and that imagewill never fly away.

On this aspect of the subject I may againavail myself of the language of my teacher; —

" Objectors of that kind will be simply posta

latlng an incongruity, an intercourse of entitiesin Devachan, which applies only to the mutualrelationship of physical existence ! Two sym-pathetic souls, both disembodied, will eachwork out its own Devachanic sensations, mak-ing the other a sharer in its subjective bliss.This will be as real to them, naturally, asthough both were yet on this earth. Neverthe-less, each is dissociated from the other as re-gards personal or corporeal association. Whilethe latter is the only one of its kind that isrecognized by our earth experience as an actualintercourse, for the Devachanee it would be notonly something unreal, but could have no exist-ence for it in any sense, not even as a delusion:a physical body or even a Mayavi-rupa remain-ing to its spiritual senses as invisible as it is it-self to the ph^^sical senses of those who loved itbest on earth. Thus even though one of the' sharers ' were alive and utterly unconscious ofthat intercourse in his waking state, still everydealing with him would be to the Devachaneean absolute reality. And what actual compan-ionship could there ever be other than the purelyidealistic one as above described, between twosubjective entities which are not even as mate-rial as that ethereal body-shadow —the Mayavi-rupa? To object to this on the ground thatone is thus ' cheated by Nature ' and to call it

' a delusive sensation of enjoyment which hasno realit}',' is to show one's self utterly unfitto comprehend the conditions of life and beingoutside of our material existence. For how canthe same distinction be made in Devachan —^. e., outside of the conditions of earth-life — be-tween what we call a reality, and a factitiousor an artificial counterfeit of the same, in tliis,our world ? The same principle cannot applyto the two sets of conditions. Is it conceivablethat what we call a reality in our embodied pliys-ical state will exist under the same conditionsas an actuality for a disembodied entity ? Onearth, man is dual — in the sense of being athing of matter and a thing of spirit; hence thenatural distinction made by his mind — the an-alyst of his physical sensations and spiritualperceptions — between an actuality and a fic-tion ; though, even in this life, the two groupsof faculties are constantly equilibrating eachother, each group when dominant seeing as fic-tion or delusion what tlie other believes to bemost real. But in Devachan our Ego hasceased to be dualistic, in the above sense, andbecomes a spiritual, mental entity. Tluit wliichwas a fiction, a dream in life, and which hadits being but in the region of 'fancy,' becomes,under the new conditions of existence, the onlypossible reality. Thus, for us, to postulate the

DEVACHAN. 139

possibility of any other reality for a Devachaneeis to maintain an absurdity, a monstrous fallacy,an idea unpliilosoplaical to the last degree.The actual is that which is acted or performeddefacto: 'the reality of a thing is proved byits actuality.' And the supposititious and artifi-cial having no possible existence in that De-vachanic state, the logical sequence is thateverything in it is actual and real. For, again,whether overshadowing the five principles dur-ing the life of the personality, or entirely sepa-rated from the grosser principles by the dissolu-tion of the body — the sixth principle, or our* Spiritual Soul,' has no substance — it is everArupa; nor is it confined to one place with alimited horizon of perceptions around it. There-fore, whether in or out of its mortal body, it isever distinct, and free from its limitations ; andif we call its Devachanic experiences 'a cheatv-ing of Nature,' then we should never be allowedto call' reality' any of those purely abstract feel-ings that belong entirely to, and are reflectedand assimilated by, our higher soul — such, forinstance, as an ideal perception of the beautiful,profound philanthropy, love, etc., as well asevery other purely spiritual sensation that dur-ins: life fills our inner beino; with either im-mense joy or pain."

We must remember that by the very nature

of the system described there are infinite va-rieties of well-being in Devachan, suited to theinfinite varieties of merit in mankind. If " thenext world" really were the objective heavenwhich ordinary theology preaches, there wouldbe endless injustice and inaccuracy in its oper-ation. People, to begin with, would be eitheradmitted or excluded, and the differences offavor shown to different guests within the all-favored region would not sufficiently providefor differences of merit in this life. But thereal heaven of our earth adjusts itself to theneeds and merits of each new arrival with un-failing certainty. Not merely as regards theduration of the blissful state, which is deter-mined by the causes engendered during objec-tive life, but as regards the intensity andamplitude of the emotions which constitutethat blissful state, the heaven of each personwho attains the really existent heaven is pre-cisely fitted to his capacity for enjoying it. Itis the creation of his own aspirations and facul-ties. More than this it may be impossible forthe uninitiated comprehension to realize. Butthis indication of its character is enough toshow how perfectly it falls into its appointedplace in the whole scheme of evolution.

" Devachan," to resume my direct quota-tions, " is, of course, a states not a locality, as

DEVACUAN. 141

much as Avitchi, its antithesis (which pleasenot to confound with hell). Esoteric Buddhistphilosophy has three principal lokas so-called— namely, 1, Kama loka ; 2, Ru^pa loka ; and3, Arupa loka; or in their literal translationand meaning — 1, world of desires or passions,of unsatisfied earthly cravings — the abode of'Shells' and Victims, of Elementaries andSuicides; 2, the world of Forms — i. e., ofshadows more spiritual, having form and objec-tivity, but no substance ; and 3, the formlessworld, or rather the world of no form, the in-corporeal, since its denizens can have neitherbody, shape, nor color for us mortals, and in thesense that we give to these terms. These arethe three spheres of ascending spirituality, inwhich the several groups of subjective and semi-subjective entities find their attractions. Allbut the suicides and the victims of prematureviolent deaths go, according to their attractionsand powers, either into the Devachanic or theAvitchi state, which two states form the num-berless subdivisions of Rupa and Arupa lokas— that is to say, that such states not only varyin degree, or in their presentation to the sub-ject entity as regards form, color, etc., but thatthere is an infinite scale of such states, in theirprogressive spirituality and intensity of feeling;from the lowest in the Rupa, up to the highest

142 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

and the most exalted in the Arupa-loka. Thestudent must bear in mind that iiersonality isthe synonym for limitation ; and that the moreselfish, the more contracted the person's ideas,the closer will he cling to the lower spheres ofbeing, the longer loiter on the plane of selfishsocial intercourse."

Devachan being a condition of mere subjec-tive enjoyment, the duration and intensity ofwhich is determined by the merit and spiritual-ity of the earth-life last past, there is no oppor-tunity^, while the soul inhabits it, for the punc-tual requital of evil deeds. But Nature doesnot content herself with either forgiving sins ina free and eas}^ way, or damning sinners out-right, like a lazy master too indolent, ratherthan too good-natured, to govern his houselioldjustl}^ The Karma of evil, be it great orsmall, is as certainly operative at the appointedtime as the Karma of good. But the place ofits operation is not Devachan, but either a newre-birth or Avitchi — a state to be reached onlyin exceptional cases and by exceptional natures.In other words, while the commonplace sinnerwill reap the fruits of his evil deeds in a follow-ing re-incarnation, the exceptional criminal, thearistocrat of sin, has Avitchi in prospect — thatis to say, the condition of subjective spiritualmisery which is the reverse side of Devachan.

DEVACHAN. ^ 143

" Avitchi is a state of the most ideal spirit-ual wickedness, something akin to the state ofLucifer, so superbly described by Milton. Notmany, though, are there who can reach it, asthe thoughtful reader will perceive. And if itis urged that since there is Devachan for nearlyall, for the good, the bad, and the indiffer-ent, the ends of harmony and equilibrium arefrustrated and the law of retribution and ofimpartial, implacable justice, hardly met andsatisfied by such a comparative scarcity if notabsence of its antithesis, then the answer willshow that it is not so. ' £vil is the darkson of Earth (matter) and Good — the fairdaughter of Heaven ' (or Spirit) says theChinese philosopher ; hence the place of pun-ishment for most of our sins is the earth — itsbirth-place and play-ground. There is moreapparent and relative than actual evil even onearth, and it is not given to the hoi polloi toreach the fatal grandeur and eminence of a' Satan ' every day."

Generally, the re-birth into objective exist-ence is the event for which the Karma of evilpatiently waits, and then it irresistibly assertsitself; not that the Karma of good exhaustsitself in Devachan, leaving the unhappy monadto develop a new consciousness with no mate-rial beyond the evil deeds of its last personality.

144 ' ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

The re-birth will be qualified by the merit aswell as the demerit of the previous life, but theDevachan existence is a rosy sleep — a peace-ful night with dreams more vivid than day, andimperishable for many centuries.

It will be seen that the Devachan state isonly one of the conditions of existence which goto make up the whole spiritual or relatively spir-itual complement of our earth life. Observers ofBpiritualistic phenomena would never have beenperplexed as they have been if there were noother but the Devachan state to be dealt with.For once in Devachan there is very little op-portunity for communication between a spirit,then wholly absorbed in its own sensations andpractically oblivious of the earth left behind,and its former friends still living. Whethergone before or yet remaining on earth, thosefriends, if the bond of affection has been suffi-ciently strong, will be with the happy spiritstill to all intents and purposes for him, and ashappy, blissful, innocent, as the disembodieddreamer himself. It is j^ossihle^ however, foryet living persons to have visions of Devachan,though such visions are rare, and only one-sided, the entities in Devachan, sighted by theearthly clairvoyant, being quite unconsciousthemselves of undei-going such observation.The spirit of the clairvoyant ascends into the

LEV AC HAN. 145

condition of Devachan in such rare visions, andthus becomes subject to the vivid delusions ofthat existence. It is under the impression thatthe spirits, with which it is in Devachanicbonds of sympathy, have come down to visitearth and itself, while the converse operationhas really taken place. The clairvoyant's spirithas been raised towards those in Devachan.Thus many of the subjective spiritual commu-nications— most of them when the sensitivesare pure-minded — are real, though it is mostdifficult for the uninitiated medium to fix inhis mind the true and correct pictures of whathe sees and hears. In the same way some ofthe phenomena called psychography (thoughmore rarely) are also real. The spirit of thesensitive getting odylized, so to say, by theaura of the spirit in the Devachan becomes fora few minutes that departed personality, andwrites in the handwriting of the latter, in hislanguage and in his thoughts as they wereduring his lifetime. The two spirits becomeblended in one, and the preponderance of oneover the other during such phenomena deter-mines the preponderance of personality in thecharacteristics exhibited. Thus, it may inci-dentally be observed, what is called rapport^is, in plain fact, an identity of molecular vibra-tion between the astral part of the incarnate

medium and the astral part of the disincarnatepersonality.

As already indicated, and as the commonsense of the matter would show, there are greatvarieties of states in Devachan, and each per-sonality drops into its befitting place there.Thence, consequently, he emerges in his befit-ting place in the world of causes, this earth oranother, as the case may be, when his time forre-birth comes. Coupled with survival of theaffinities, comprehensively described as Karma,the affinities both for good and evil engenderedby the previous life, this process will be seen toaccomplish nothing less than an explanation ofthe problem which has always been regardedas so incomprehensible — the inequalities oflife. The conditions on which we enter life arethe consequences of the use we have made ofour last set of conditions. They do not impedethe development of fresh Karma, whatever theymay be, for this will be generated by the usewe make of them in turn. Nor is it to be sup-posed that every event of a current life whichbestows joy or sorrow is old Karma bearingfruit. Many may be the immediate conse-quences of acts in the life to which they belong— ready-money transactions witli Nature, so tospeak, of which it may be hardly necessar}^ tomake any entry in her books. But the great

DEVACHAN. 147

inequality of life, as regards the start in itwhich different human beings make, is a mani-fest consequence of old Karma, the infinite va-rieties of which always keep up a constant sup-ply of recruits for all the manifold varieties ofhuman condition.

It must not be supposed that the real Egoslips instantaneously at death from the earth-life and its entanglements into the Devachaniccondition. When the division or purificationof the fifth principle has been accomplishedin Kama loca by the contending attractions ofthe fourth and sixth principles, the real Egopasses into a period of unconscious gestation.I have spoken already of the way in which theDevachanic life is itself a process of growth,maturity, and decline; but the analogies ofearth are even more closely preserved. Thereis a spiritual ante-natal state at the entrance tospiritual life, as there is a similar and equallyunconscious physical state at the entrance toobjective life. And this period, in differentcases, may be of very different duration — froma few moments to immense periods of years.When a man dies, his soul or fifth principle be-comes unconscious and loses all remembranceof things internal as well as external. Whetherhis stay in Kama loca has to last but a few mo-ments, hours, days, weeks, months or years;

148 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

whether he dies a natural or a violent death;whether this occurs in youth or age, andwhether the Ego has been good, bad, or indif-ferent, his consciousness leaves him as suddenlyas the flame leaves the wick when it is blownout. When life has retired from the last par-ticle of the brain matter, his perceptive facul-ties become extinct forever, and his spiritualpowers of cognition and volition become for thetime being as extinct as the others. His Ma-yavi-rupa may be thrown into objectivity as inthe case of apparitions after death, but unlessit is projected by a conscious or intense desireto see or appear to some one shooting throughthe dying brain, the apparition will be simplyautomatic. The revival of consciousness inKama loca is obviously, from what has been al-ready said, a phenomenon that depends on thecharacteristic of the principles passing, uncon-sciously at the moment, out of the dying body.It may become tolerably complete under cir-cumstances by no means to be desired, or itmay be obliterated by a rapid passage into thegestation state leading to Devachan. This ges-tation state may be of very long duration inproportion to the Ego's spiritual stamina, andDevachan accounts for the remainder of theperiod between death and the next physical re-birth. The whole period is, of course, of very

DKVACnAS. 149

varying length in the case of different persons,but re-birth in less than fifteen hundred yearsis spoken of as almost impossible, while thestay in Devachan which rewards a very richKarma is sometimes said to extend to enormousperiods.

CHAPTER VI.

KAMA LOCA.

The statements already made in reference tothe destiny of the higher human principles atdeath will pave the way for a comprehension ofthe circumstances in which the inferior remnantof these principles finds itself, after the realEgo has passed either into the Devachanicstate or that unconscious intervening period ofpreparation therefor w^hich corresponds to phj'S-ical gestation. The sphere in which such rem-nants remain for a time is known to occultscience as Kama loca, the region of desire, notthe region in which desire is developed to anyabnormal degree of intensity as compared withdesire as it attaches to earth-life, but the spherein which that sensation of desire, which is apart of the earth-life, is capable of surviving.

It will be obvious, from what has been saidabout Devachan, that a large part of the recol-lections which accumulate round the humanEgo during life are incompatible in their naturewith the pure subjective existence to which the

KAMA LOCA, 151

real, durable, spiritual Ego passes; but theyare not necessarily on that account extinguishedor annihilated out of existence. They inherein certain molecules of those finer ( but not fin-est) principles, which escape from the body atdeath; and just as dissolution separates whatis loosely called the soul from the body, so alsoit provokes a further separation between theconstituent elements of the soul. So much ofthe fifth principle, or human soul, which is inits nature assimilable with, or has gravitatedupwards toward, the sixth principle, the spirit-ual soul, passes with the germ of that divinesoul into the superior region, or state of Deva-chan, in which it separates itself almost com-pletely from the attractions of the earth; quitecompletely, as far as its own spiritual course isconcerned, though it still has certain affinitieswith the spiritual aspirations emanating fromthe earth, and may sometimes draw these to-wards itself. But the animal soul, or fourthprinciple (the element of will and desire as as-sociated with objective existence), has no up-ward attraction, and no more passes away fromthe earth than the particles of the body con-signed to the grave. It is not in the grave, how-ever, that this fourth principle can be put away.It is not spiritual in its nature or affinities, butit is not physical in its nature. In its affinities

it is phj^sical, and hence the result. It remainswithin the actual physical local attraction of theearth — in the earth's atmosphere — or, since itis not the gases of the atmosphere that are spe-cially to be considered in connection with theproblem in hand, let us say, in Kama loca.

And with the fourth principle a large part(as regards most of mankind unfortunately,though a part very variable in its relative mag-nitude) inevitably remains. There are plentyof attributes which the ordinary composite hu-man being exhibits, many ardent feelings, de-sires, and acts, floods of recollections, whicheven if not concerned with a life as ardent per-haps as those which have to do with the higheraspirations, are nevertheless essentially belong-ing to the physical life, which take time to die.They remain behind in association with thefourth principle, which is altogether of theearthly perishable nature, and disperse or fadeout, or are absorbed into the respective univer-sal principles to which they belong, just as thebody is absorbed into the earth, in progress oftime, and rapidly or slowly in proportion to thetenacity of their substance. And where, mean-while, is the consciousness of the individualwho has died or dissolved ? Assuredly in Deva-chan ; but a difficult}^ presents itself to themind untrained in occult science, from the fact

that a semblance of consciousness inheres in theastral portion — the fourth principle with aportion of the fifth — which remains behind inKama loca. The individual consciousness, itis argued, cannot be in two places at once. Butfirst of all, to a certain extent, it can. As may-be perceived presently, it is a mistake to speakof consciousness, as we understand the feelingin life, attaching to the astral shell or remnant;but nevertheless a certain spurious semblancemay be reawakened in that shell, without hav-ing any connection with the real consciousnessall the while growing in strength and vitalityin the spiritual sphere. There is no power onthe part of the shell of taking in and assimilat-ing new ideas and initiating courses of actionon the basis of those new ideas. But there isin the shell a survival of volitional impulses im-parted to it during life. The fourth principleis the instrument of volition though not voli-tion itself, and impulses imparted to it duringlife by the higher principles may run theircourse and produce results almost indistinguish-able for careless observers from those whichwould ensue were the four higher principlesreally all united as in life.

It, the fourth principle, is the receptacle orvehicle during life of that essentially moral con-sciousness which cannot suit itself to conditions

of permanent existence; but the consciousnesseven of the lower principles during life is a verydifferent thing from the vaporous fleeting anduncertain consciousness, which continues toinhere in them when that which really is thelife, the overshadowing of them, or vitalizationof them by the infusion of the spirit, has ceasedas far as they are concerned. Language cannotrender all the facets of a many-sided idea in-telligible at once any more than a plain draw-ing can show all sides of a solid object at once.And at the first glance different drawings ofthe same object from different points of viewmay seem so unlike as to be unrecognizable asthe same; but none the less, by the time theyare put together in the mind, will their diver-sities be seen to harmonize. So with thesesubtle attributes of the invisible principles ofman — no treatise can do more than discusstheir different aspects separately. The vari-ous views suggested must mingle in the read-er's mind before the complete conception corre-sponds to the realities of Nature.

In life the fourth principle is the seat of willand desire, but it is not will itself. It must bealive, in union with the overshadowing spirit,or " one life," to be thus the agent of that veryelevated function of life — will, in its sublimepotency. As already mentioned, the Sanskrit

names of the higher principles connote the ideathat they are vehicles of the one life. Notthat the one life is a separable molecularprinciple itself, it is the union of all—theinfluences of the spirit; but in truth the ideais too subtle for language, perhaps for intellectitself. Its manifestation in the present case,however, is apparent enough. Whatever thewilling fourth principle may be when alive, itis no longer capable of active will when dead.But then, under certain abnormal conditions, itmay partially recover life for a time ; and thisfact it is which explains many, though by nomeans all, of the phenomena of spiritualisticmediumship. The " elementary," be it remem-bered — as the astral shell has generally beencalled in former occult writings — is liable tobe galvanized for a time in the mediumistiocurrent into a state of consciousness and lifewhich may be suggested by the first conditionof a person who, carried into a strange room ina state of insensibility during illness, wakes upfeeble, confused in mind, gazing about with ablank feeling of bewilderment, taking in im-pressions, hearing words addressed to him andanswering vaguely. Such a state of conscious-ness is unassociated with the notions of past orfuture. It is an automatic consciousness, de-rived from the medium, A medium, be it

remembered, is a person whose principles areloosely united and susceptible of being bor-rowed by other beings, or floating principles,having an attraction for some of them or somepart of them. Now what happens in the caseof a shell drawn into the neighborhood ofa person so constituted? Suppose the personfrom whom the shell has been cast died withsome strong unsatisfied desire, not necessarilyof an unholy sort, but connected entirely withthe earth-life, a desire, for example, to com-municate some fact to a still living person.Certainly the shell does not go about in Kamaloca with a persistent intelligent conscious pur-pose of communicating that fact; but, amongstothers, the volitional impulse to do this hasbeen infused into the fourth principle, andwhile the molecules of that principle remain inassociation, and that may be for many years,they only need a partial galvanization into lifeagain to become operative in the direction ofthe original impulse. Such a shell comes intocontact with a medium (not so dissimilar innature from the person who has died as torender a rapport impossible), and somethingfrom the fifth principle of the medium associatesitself with the wandering fourth principle andsets the original impulse to work. So muchconsciousness and so much intelligence as may

be required to guide the fourth principle in theuse of the immediate means of communicationat hand — a slate and pencil, or a table to rapupon — are borrowed from the medium, andthen the message given may be the messagewhich the dead person originally ordered hisfourth principle to give, so to speak, but whichthe shell has never till then had an opportunityof giving. It may be argued that the produc-tion of writing on a closed slate, or of raps on atable without the use of a knuckle or a stick,is itself a feat of a marvelous nature, bespeak-ing a knowledge on the part of the communi-cating intelligence of powers of Nature we inphysical life know nothing about. But theshell is itself in the astral world; in the realmof such powers. A phenomenal manifestationis its natural mode of dealing. It is no moreconscious of producing a wonderful result bythe use of new powers acquired in a highersphere of existence than we are conscious ofthe forces by which in life the volitional im-pulse is communicable to nerves and muscles.

But, it may be objected, the " communicatingintelligence '* at a spiritual sSance will constant-ly perform remarkable feats for no other thantheir own sake, to exhibit the power overnatural forces which it possesses. The readerwill please remember, however, that occult

science is very far from saying that all thephenomena of spiritualism are traceable to oneclass of agents. Hitherto in this treatise littlehas been said of the " elementals," those semi-intelligent creatures of the astral light whobelong to a wholly different kingdom of Naturefrom ourselves. Nor is it possible at presentto enlarge upon their attributes for the simpleand obvious reason, that knowledge concerningthe elementals, detailed knowledge on that sub-ject, and in regard to the way they work, isscrupulously withheld by the adepts of occult-ism. To possess such knowledge is to wieldpower, and the whole motive of the great se-crecy in which occult science is shrouded turnsupon the danger of conferring powers upon peo-ple who have not, first of all, by undergoingthe training of initiates, given moral guaranteesof their trustworthiness. It is by commandover the elementals that some of the greatestphysical feats of adeptship are accomplished ;and it is by the spontaneous playful acts of theelementals that the greatest physical phenom-ena of the seance room are brought about.So also with almost all Indian Fakirs andYogis of the lower class who have power ofproducing phenomenal results. By some means,by a scrap of inherited occult teaching, mostlikely, they have come into possession of a mor«

sel of occult science. Not necessarily that theyunderstand the action of the forces they employany more than an Indian servant in a telegraphoffice, taught how to mix the ingredients of theliquid used in a galvanic battery, understandsthe theory of electric science. He can performthe one trick he has been taught; and so withthe inferior Yogi. He has got influence overcertain elementals, and can work certain won-ders.

Returning to a consideration of the ex-humanshells in Kama loca, it may be argued thattheir behavior in spiritual seances is not cov-ered by the theory that they have had somemessage to deliver from their late master, andhave availed themselves of the mediumshippresent to deliver it. Apart altogether fromphenomena that may be put aside as elementalpranks, we sometimes encounter a continuity ofintelligence on the part of the elementary orshell that bespeaks much more than the sur-vival of impulses from the former life. Quiteso; but with portions of the medium's fifthprinciple conveyed into it the fourth principleis once more an instrument in the hands of amaster. With a medium entranced so that theenergies of his fifth principle are conveyed intothe wandering shell to a very large extent, theresult is that there is a very tolerable revival of

consciousness in the shell for the time being, asregards the given moment. But what is thenature of such consciousness, after all ? Noth-ing more, really, than a reflected light. Mem-ory is one thing, and perceptive faculties quiteanother. A madman may remember veryclearly some portions of his past life ; yet heis unable to perceive anything in its true light,for the higher portion of his Manas (fifth) andBuddhi (sixth) principles are paralyzed in himand have left him. Could an animal — a dog,for instance — explain himself, he could provethat his memory, in direct relation to his ca-nine personality, is as fresh as his master's ;nevertheless, his memory and instinct cannotbe called perceptive faculties.

Once that a shell is in the aura of a medium,he will perceive, clearly enough, whatever hecan perceive through the borrowed principlesof the medium, and through organs in mag-netic sympathy therewith; but this will notcarry him beyond the range of the perceptivefaculties of the medium, or of some one elsepresent in the circle. Hence the often rationaland sometimes highly intelligent answers hemay give, and hence, also, his invariably com-plete oblivion of all things unknown to thatmedium or circle, or not found in the lowerrecollections of his late personality, galvanized

afresh by the influences under which he isplaced. The shell of a highly intelligent,learned, but utterly unspiritual man, who dieda natural death, will last longer than those ofweaker temperament, and (the shadow of hisown memory helping) he may deliver, throughtrance-speakers, orations of no contemptiblekind. But these will never be found to relateto anything beyond the subjects he thoughtmuch and earnestly of during life, nor will anyword ever fall from him indicating a real ad-vance of knowledge.

It will easily be seen that a shell, drawn intothe mediumistic current, and getting into rap-port with the medium's fifth principle, is notby any means sure to be animated with a con-sciousness (even for what such consciousnessesare worth) identical with the personality of thedead person from whose higher principles itwas shed. It is just as likely to reflect somequite different personality, caught from thesufjfrestions of the medium's mind. In thispersonality it will perhaps remain and answerfor a time; then some new current of thought,thrown into the minds of the people present,will find its echo in the fleeting impressions ofthe elementary, and his sense of identity willbegin to waver; for a little while it flickersover two or three conjectures, and ends by go-11

ing out altogether for a time. The shell isonce more sleeping in the astral light, and may-be unconsciously wafted in a few moments tothe other ends of the earth.

Besides the ordinary elementary or shell ofthe kind just described, Kama loca is the abodeof another class of astral entities, which mustbe taken into account if we desire to compre-hend the various conditions under which hu-man creatures may pass from this life to others.So far we have been examining the normalcourse of events, when people die in a naturalmanner. But an abnormal death will lead toabnormal consequences. Thus, in the case ofpersons committing suicide, and in that of per-sons killed by sudden accident, results ensuewhich differ widely from those following nat-ural deaths. A thoughtful consideration ofsuch cases must show, indeed, that in a worldgoverned by rule and law, by affinities work-ing out their regular effects in that deliberateway which Nature favors, the case of a persondying a sudden death at a time when all hisprinciples are firmly united, and ready to holdtogether for twenty, forty, or sixty years, what-ever the natural remainder of his life would be,must surely be something different from thatof a person who, by natural processes of decay,finds himself, when the vital machine stops,

readily separable into his various principles,each prepared to travel its separate way. Na-ture, always fertile in analogies, at once illus-trates the idea by showing us a ripe and anunripe fruit. From out of the first the innerstone will come away as cleanly and easily as ahand from a glove, while from the unripe fruitthe stone can only be torn with difficulty, halftlie pulp clinging to its surface. Now, in thecase of the sudden accidental death or of thesuicide, the stone has to be torn from the un-ripe fruit. There is no question here about themoral blame which may attach to the act ofsuicide. Probably, in the majority of cases,such moral blame does attach to it, but that isa question of Karma which will follow the per-son concerned into the next re-birth, like anyother Karma, and has nothing to do with theimmediate difficulty such person may find ingetting himself thoroughly and wholesomelydead. This difficulty is manifestly just thesame whether a person kills himself, or is killedin the heroic discharge of duty, or dies the vic-tim of an accident over which he has no con-trol whatever.

As an ordinary rule, when a person dies, thelong account of Karma naturally closes itself;that is to say, the complicated set of affinitieswhich have been set up during life in the first

durable principle, the fifth is no longer suscep-tible of extension. The balance-sheet, so tospeak, is made out afterwards, when the timecomes for the next objective birth ; or, in otherwords, the affinities long dormant in Devachan,by reason of the absence there of any scope fortheir action, assert themselves as soon as theycome in contact once more with physical exis-tence. But the fifth principle, in which theseaffinities are grown, cannot be separated in thecase of the person dying prematurely from theearthly principle — the fourth. The elemen-tary, therefore, which finds itself in Kama loca,on its violent expulsion from the body, is not amere shell — it is the person himself who waslatel}^ alive minus nothing but the body.' Inthe true sense of the word he is not dead atall.

Certainly elementaries of this kind may com-municate very effectually at spiritual seances attheir own heavy cost; for they are unfortu-nately able, by reason of the completeness oftheir astral constitution, to go on generatingKarma, to assuage their thirst for life at theunwholesome spring of mediumship. If theywere of a very material sensual type in life, theenjoyments they will seek will be of a kind theindulgence of which in their disembodied statemay readily be conceived even more prejudicial

to their Karma than similar indulgences wouldhave been in life. In such cases facills est de-scensus. Cut off in the full flush of earthly-passions which bind them to familiar scenes,they are enticed by the opportunity which me-diums afford for the gratification of these vica-riously. They become the incubi and succubiof mediaeval writing, demons of thirst and glut-tony, provoking their victims to crime. A briefessay on this subject, which I wrote last year,and from which I have reproduced some of thesentences just given, appeared in "The Theoso-phist," with a note, the authenticity of which Ihave reason to trust, and the tenor of whichwas as follows : —

" The variety of states after death is greaterif possible than the variety of human lives uponthis earth. The victims of accident do notgenerally become earth walkers, only those fall-inor into the current of attraction who die fullof some engrossing earthly passion, the selfishwho have never given a thought to the welfareof others. Overtaken by death in the consum-mation, whether real or imaginary, of somemaster passion of their lives, the desire remain-ing unsatisfied even after a full realization, andthey still craving for more, such personalitiescan never pass beyond the earth attraction towait for the hour of deliverance in happy igno-

ranee and full oblivion. Among the suicides,those to whom the above statement about pro-voking their victims to crime, etc., applies, arethat class who commit the act in consequence ofa crime to escape the penalty of human law ortheir own remorse. Natural law cannot bebroken with impunity ; the inexorable causalrelation between action and result has its fullsway only in the world of effects, the Kamaloca, and every case is met there by an ade-quate punishment, and in a thousand waj's,that would require volumes even to describethem superficially."

Those who " wait for the hour of deliverancein happy ignorance and full oblivion " are ofcourse such victims of accident as have alreadyon earth engendered pure and elevated affinities,and after death are as much beyond the reachof temptation in the shape of mediumistic cur-rents as they would have been inaccessible inlife to common incitements to crime.

Entities of another kind occasionally to befound in Kama loca have yet to be considered.We have followed the higher principles of per-sons recently dead, observing the separation ofthe astral dross from the spiritually durableportion, that spiritually durable portion beingeither holy or Satanic in its nature, and pro-vided for in Devachan or Avitchi accordingly

We have examined the nature of the elemen-tary shell cast off and preservhig for a time adeceptive resemblance to a true entity; wehave paid attention also to the exceptional casesof real four principled beings in Kama loca whoare the victims of accident or suicide. But•what happens to a personality which has abso-lutely no atom of spirituality, no trace of spir-itual affinity in its fifth principle, either of thegood or bad sort ? Clearly in such a case thereis nothing for the sixth principle to attract toitself. Or, in other words, such a personalityhas already lost its sixth principle by the timedeath comes. But Kama loca is no more asphere of existence for such a personality thanthe subjective world; Kama loca may be per-manently inhabited by astral beings, by ele-mentals, but can only be an antechamber tosome other state for human beings. In the caseimagined, the surviving personality is promptlydrawn into the current of its future destinies,and these have nothing to do with this earth'satmosphere or with Devachan, but with that" eighth sphere " of which occasional mentionwill be found in older occult writings. It willhave been unintelligible to ordinary readershitherto why it was called the '' eighth " sphere,but since the explanation, now given out for thefirst time, of the sevenfold constitution of our

planetary system, the meaning will be clearenougli. The spheres of the cyclic process ofevolution are seven in number, but there is aneighth in connection with our earth, our earthbeing, it will be remembered, the turning-pointin the cyclic chain, and this eighth sphere isout of circuit, a cul de sac^ and the bourne fromwhich it may be truly said no traveler returns.

It will readily be guessed that the only sphereconnected with our planetary chain, which islower than our own in the scale, having spiritat the top and matter at the bottom, must it-self be no less visible to the eye and to opticalinstruments than the earth itself, and as theduties which this sphere has to perform in ourplanetary system are immediately associatedwith this earth, there is not much mystery leftnow in the riddle of the eighth sphere, nor asto the place in the sky where it may be sought.The conditions of existence there, however, aretopics on which the adepts are very reserved intheir communications to uninitiated pupils, andconcerning these I have for the present no fur-ther information to give.

One statement though is definitely made,viz., that such a total degradation of a person-ality as may suffice to draw it, after death,into the attraction of tlie eighth sphere, is ofvery rare occurrence. From the vast majority

KAMA LOCA. 169

of lives there is something which the higherprinciples may draw to themselves, somethingto redeem the page of existence just passedfrom total destruction: and here it must beremembered that the recollections of life inDevachan, very vivid as they are, as far as theygo, touch only those episodes in life which areproductive of the elevated sort of happiness ofwhich alone Devachan is qualified to take cog-nizance ; whereas the life from which for thetime being the cream is thus skimmed maycome to be remembered eventually in all itsdetails quite fully. That complete remem-brance is only achieved by the individual atthe threshold of a far more exalted spiritualstate than that which we are now concernedwith, and which is attained far later on in theprogress of the vast cycles of evolution. Eachone of the long series of lives that will havebeen passed through will then be, as it were, apage in a book to which the possessor can turnback at pleasure, even though many such pageswill then seem to him, most likely, very dullreading, and will not be frequently referred to.It is this revival eventually of recollection con-cerning all the long-forgotten personalities thatis really meant by the doctrine of the Resurrec-tion. But we have no time at present to stopand unravel the enigmas of symbolism as bear-

ing upon the teacliings at present under con-veyance to the reader. It may be worth whileto do this as a separate undertaking at a laterperiod; but meanwhile, to revert to the narra-tive of how the facts stand, it may be explainedthat in the whole book of pages, when at lastthe "resurrection" has been accomplished,there will be no entirely infamous pages ; foreven if any given spiritual individuality hasoccasionally, during its passage through thisworld, been linked with personalities so deplor-ably and desperately degraded that they havepassed completely into the attraction of thelower vortex, that spiritual individuality insuch cases will have retained in its own affini-ties no trace or taint of them. Those pageswill, as it were, have been cleanly torn out fromthe book. And, as at the end of the struggle,after crossing the Kama loca, the spiritual indi-viduality will have passed into the unconsciousgestation state from which, skipping the Deva-chan state, it will be directly (though notimmediately in time) re-born into its next lifeof objective activity, all the self-consciousnessconnected with that existence will have passedinto the lower world, there eventually to " per-ish everlastingly; " an expression of which, asof so many more, modern theology has proveda faithless custodian, making pure nonsenseout of psycho-scientific facts.

CHAPTER VILTHE HUMAN TIDE-WAVE.

A GENERAL account has already been givenof the way in which the great evolutionarylife-wave sweeps round and round the sevenworlds which compose the planetary chain ofwhich our earth is a part. Further assistancemay now be offered, with the view of expandingthis general idea into a fuller comprehension ofthe processes to which it relates. And no oneadditional chapter of the great story will domore towards rendering its character intelligi-ble than an explanation of certain phenomenaconnected with the progress of worlds, thatmay be conveniently called obscurations.

Students of occult philosophy who enter onthat pursuit with minds already abundantlyfurnished in other ways are very liable to mis-interpret its earlier statements. Everythingcannot be said at once, and the first broadexplanations are apt to suggest conceptions inregard to details which are most likely to beerroneous with the most active-minded and

intelligent thinkers. Such readers are not con-tent with shadowy outlines even for a moment.Imagination fills in the picture, and if its workis undisturbed for any length of time, the au-thor of it will be surprised afterwards to findthat later information is incompatible with thatwhich he had come to regard as having beendistinctly taught in the beginning. Now inthis treatise the writer's effort is to conveythe information in such a way that hasty weed-growths of the mind may be prevented as faras possible; but in this very effort it is neces-sary sometimes to run on quickly in advance,leaving some details, even very important de-tails, to be picked up during a second journeyover the old ground. So now the reader mustbe good enough to go back to the explanationgiven in Chapter III. of the evolutionary prog-ress through the whole planetary chain.

Some few words were said then concerningthe manner in which the life impulse passed onfrom planet to planet in " rushes or gushes ;not by an even continuous flow." Now thecourse of evolution in its earlier stages is sofar continuous that the preparation of severalplanets for the final tidal-wave of humanitymay be going on simultaneously. Indeed, thepreparation of all the seven planets may, at onestage of the proceedings, be going on simulta»

neonsly, but the important point to rememberis tliat the main wave of evolution — the fore-most growing wave — cannot be in more thanone place at a time. The process goes on intlie way which may now be described, and"which the reader may be the better able to fol-low, if he constructs either on paper or in hisown mind a diagram consisting of seven circles(representing the worlds) arranged in a ring.Calling them A, B, C, etc., it wdll be observedfrom what has been already stated that circle(or globe) D stands for our earth. Now thekingdoms of Nature as known to occultists, beit remembered, are seven in number; three hav-ing to do with astral and elementary forces,preceding the grosser material kingdoms in theorder of their development. Kingdom 1 evolveson globe A, and passes on to B, as kingdom 2begins to evolve on A. Carry out this systemand of course it will be seen that kingdom 1 isevolving on globe G, while kingdom 7, the hu-man kingdom, is evolving on globe A. ButnoAV what happens as kingdom 7 passes on toglobe B ? There is no eighth kingdom to en-gage the activities of globe A. The great pro-cesses of evolution have culminated in the finaltidal-wave of humanity, which, as it sweeps on,leaves a temporary lethargy of Nature behind.When the life-wave goes on to B, in fact, globe

A passes for the time into a state of obscura-tion. This state is not one of decay, dissolu-tion, or anything that can be properly calleddeath. Decay itself, though its aspect is aptto mislead the mind, is a condition of activityin a certain direction, this consideration afford-ing a clue to the meaning of a great deal whichis otherwise meaningless in that part of Hindumythology which relates to the deities presid-ing over destruction. The obscuration of aworld is a total suspension of its activity; thisdoes not mean that the moment the last humanmonad passes on from any given world thatworld is paralyzed by any convulsion, or sub-sides into the enchanted trance of a sleej^ingpalace. The animal and vegetable life goes onas before, for a time, but its character begins torecede instead of advancing. Tlie great life-wave has left it, and the animal and vegetablekingdoms gradually return to the condition inwhich they were found when the great life-wave first reached them. Enormous periods oftime are available for this slow process bywhich the obscured world settles into sleep, forit will be seen that obscuration in each caselasts six times ^ as long as the period of each

1 Or we may say five times, allowing for tlic half period ofmorning which precedes and the half period of evening which fol'lows the dav of full activity.

world's occupation by the human life-wave.That is to say, the process which is accom-plished as above described in connection withthe passage of the life-wave from globe A toglobe B is repeated all along the chain. Whenthe wave passes to C, B is left in obscurationas well as A. Then D receives the life-wave,and A, B, C are in obscuration. When thewave reaches G, all the preceding six worldsare in obscuration. Meanwhile the life-wavepasses on in a certain regular progression, thesymmetrical character of which is very satis-factory to scientific instincts. The reader willbe prepared to pick up the idea at once, inview of the explanations already given of theway in which humanity evolves through sevengreat races, during each round period on aplanet; that is to say, during the occupationof such planet by the tidal wave of life. Thefourth race is obviously the middle race of theseries. As soon as this middle point is turned,and the evolution of the fifth race on an}^ givenplanet begins, the preparation for humanity be-gins on the next. The evolution of the fifth^race on E, for example, is commensurate withthe evolution, or rather with the revival, of themineral kingdom on p, and so on. That is tosay, the evolution of the sixth race on D coin-cides with the revival of the vegetable kingdom

on E; the seventh race on D with the revivalof the animal kingdom on E ; and then whenthe hist monads of the seventh race on D havepassed into the subjective state or world of ef-fects, the human period on E begins, and thefirst race begins its development there. Mean-while the twilight period on the world preced-ing D has been deepening into the night of ob-scuration in the same progressive wa}^, andobscuration there definitely sets in when thehuman period on D passes its half-way point.But just as the heart of a man beats and respi-ration continues, no matter how profound hissleep, there are processes of vital action whichgo on in the resting world even during the mostprofound depths of its repose. And these pre-serve, in view of the next return of the humanwave, the results of the evolution that precededits first arrival. Recovery for the re-awakingplanet is a larger process than its subsidenceinto rest, for it has to attain a higher degree ofperfection against the return of the human life-wave than that at which it was left when thewave last went onward from its shore. Batwith every new beginning, Nature is infusedwith a vigor of its own, — the freshness of amorning, — and the later obscuration period,which is a time of preparation and hopefulnessas it were, invests evolution itself with a new

momentum. By the time the great life-wavereturns, all is ready for its reception.

In the first essay on this subject it wasroughly indicated that the various worlds mak-ing up our planetary chain were not all of thesame materiality. Putting the conception ofspirit at the north pole of the circle and that ofmatter at the south pole, the worlds of the de-scending arc vary in materiality and spiritual-ity, like those of the ascending arc. This varia-tion must now be considered more attentivelyif the reader wishes to realize the whole pro-cesses of evolution more fully than heretofore.

Besides the earth, which is at the lowest ma-terial point, there are only two other worlds ofour chain which are visible to physical eyes, —the one behind and the one in advance of it.These two worlds, as a matter of fact, are Marsand Mercury, — Mars being behind and Mer-cury in advance of us: Mars in a state of en-tire obscuration now as regards the human life-wave, Mercury just beginning to prepare for itsnext human period.^

1 It may be worth while here to remark for the benefit of peoplewho may be disposed, from physical science reading, to objectthat Mercury is too near the Sun, and consequently too hot to be asuitable place of habitation for man, that in the olhcial report ofthe Astronomical Department of the United States on the recent"Mount AVhitney observations" statements will be found thatmay check too confident critici:?ma of occult science along that line.12

The two planets of our chain that are behindMars, and the two that are in advance of Mer-cury, are not composed of an order of matterwhich telescopes can take cognizance of. Fourout of the seven are thus of an ethereal nature,which people who can only conceive matter inits earthly form will be inclined to call immate-rial. But they are not really immaterial at all.They are simply in a finer state of materialitythan the earth, but their finer state does not inany way defeat the uniformity of Nature's de-sign in regard to the methods and stages of their

The results of the Mount Whitney observations on selective absorp-tion of solar rays showed, according to the official reporter, that itwould no longer be impossible to suggest the conditions of an at-mosphere which should render Mercury habitable at the one ex-treme of the scale, and Saturn at the other. We have no concernwith Saturn at present, nor, if it were necessary to explain on oc-cult principles the habitability of Mercury, should the task be at-tempted with calculations about selective absorption. The fact isthat ordinary science makes at once too much and too little of theSun, as the storehouse of force for the solar system, —too much inso far as the heat of planets has a great deal to do with another in-fluence quite distinct from the Sun, an influence Avhich will not bethoroughly understood till more is known than at present about thecorrelations of heat and magnetism, and of the magnetic, meteoricdust, with which inter-planetar}' space is pervaded. However, itis enough — to rebut any objection that might be raised againstIhe explanations now in progress, from the point of view of loyaldevotees of last year's science — to point out that such objectionswould be already out of date. Modern science is very progressive,— this is one of its greatest merits,—but it is not a meritoriouahabit with modern scientists to think, at each stage of its progress,)hat all conceptions incompatible with that stage must necessaril;y^e absurd.

evolution. Within the scale of their subtle"invisibility," the successive rounds and racesof mankind pass through their stages of greaterand less materiality just as on this earth ; butwhoever would comprehend them must compre-hend this earth first, and work out their deli-cate phenomena by correspondential inferences.Let us return, therefore, to the consideration ofthe great life-wave in its aspects on this planet.Just as the chain of worlds treated as a unityhas its north and south, its spiritual and ma-terial, pole, working from spirituality downthrough materiality up to spirituality again, sothe rounds of mankind constitute a similar se-ries which the chain of globes itself might betaken to symbolize. In the evolution of manin fact, on any one plane as on all, there is adescending and an ascending arc ; spirit, so tospeak, involving itself into matter, and matterevolving itself into spirit. The lowest or mostmaterial point in the cycle thus becomes theinverted apex of physical intelligence, which isthe masked manifestation of spiritual intelli-gence. Each round of mankind evolved on thedownward arc (as each race of each round ifwe descend to the smaller mirror of the cosmos)must thus be more physically intelligent thanits predecessor, and each in the upward arcmust be invested with a more refined form of

mentality commingled with greater spiritual in-tuitiveness. In the first round, therefore, wefind man a relatively ethereal being comparedeven on earth w^ith the state he has now at-tained here, not intellectual, bat super-spiritual.Like the animal and vegetable shapes aroundhim, he inhabits an immense but loosely organ-ized body. In the second round he is still gi-gantic and ethereal, but growing firmer andmore condensed in body, — a more physicalman, but still less intelligent than spiritual.In the third round he has developed a perfectlyconcrete and compacted body, at first the formrather of a giant ape than of a true man, butwith intelligence coming more and more intothe ascendant. In the last half of the thirdround his gigantic stature decreases, his bodyimproves in texture, and he begins to be a ra-tional man. In the fourth round intellect, nowfully developed, achieves enormous progress.The direct races with which the round beginsacquire human speech as we understand it.The world teems with the results of intellectualactivity and spiritual decline. At the half-waypoint of the fourth round here the polar pointof the whole seven-world period is passed.From this point outwards the spiritual Egobegins its real struggle with body and mindto manifest its transcendental powers. In

the fifth round the struggle continues, but thetranscendental faculties are largely developed,though the struggle between these on the onehand with physical intellect and propensity isfiercer than ever, for the intellect of the fifthround as well as its spirituality is an advanceon that of the fourth. In the sixth roundhumanity attains a degree of perfection bothof body and soul, of intellect and spirituality,which ordinary mortals of the present epochwill not readily realize in their imaginations.The most supreme combinations of wisdom,goodness, and transcendental enlightenmentivhich the world has ever seen or thought ofwill represent the ordinary type of manhood.Those faculties which now, in the rare efflores-cence of a generation, enable some extraordi-narily gifted persons to explore the mysteriesof Nature and gather the knowledge of whichsome crumbs are now being offered (throughthese writings and in other ways) to the ordi-nary world, will then be the common appanageof all. As to what the seventh round will belike, the most communicative occult teachersare solemnly silent. Mankind in the seventhround will be something altogether too God-like for mankind in the fourth round to fore-cast its attributes.

During the occupation of any planet by the

human life-wave, each individual monad isinevitably incarnated many times. This hasbeen partly explained. If one existence onlybe passed by the monad in each of the branchraces through which it must pass at least once,the total number accomplished during a roundperiod on one planet would be 343, — the thirdpower of seven. But as a matter of fact eachmonad is incarnated twice in each of thebranch races, and also comes in, necessarily, forsome few extra incarnations as well. For rea-sons which are not easy for the outsider to di-vine, the possessors of occult knowledge areespecially reluctant to give out numerical factsrelating to cosmogony, though it is hard for theuninitiated to understand why tliese should bewithheld. At present, for example, we shallnot be able to state what is the actual durationin years of the round period. But a concession,which only those who have long been studentsof occultism by the old method will fully appre-ciate, has been made about the numbers withwhich we are immediately concerned ; and thisconcession is valuable at all events, as it helpsto elucidate an interesting fact connected withevolution, on the threshold of Avhich we havenow arrived. This fact is that while the earth,for example, is inhabited, as at present, byfourth-round humanity, by the wave of human

life, that is to say, on its fourth journey roundthe cu-cle of the worlds, there may be presentamong us some few persons, few in relation tothe total number, who, properly speaking, be-loncr to the fifth round. Now, in the sense ofthe term at present employed, it must not besupposed that by any miraculous process anyindividual unit has actually traveled round thewhole chain of worlds once more often than hiscompeers. Under the explanations just givenas to the way the tide-wave of humanity pro-gresses, it will be seen that this is impossible.Humanity has not yet paid its fifth visit evento the planet next in advance of our own. Butindividual monads may outstrip their compan-ions as regards their individual development,and so become exactly as mankind generally willbe when the fifth round has been fully evolved.And this may be accomplished in two ways:A man born as an ordinary fourth-round manmay, by processes of occult training, converthimself into a man having all the attributes ofa fifth-round man, and so become what we maycall an artificial fifth rounder. But indepen-dently of all exertions made by man in his pres-ent incarnation, a man may also be born a fifthrounder, though in the midst of fourth-roundhumanity by virtue of the total number of hisprevious incarnations.

If X stands for the normal number of incarna-tions which in the course of Nature a monadmust go through during a round period on oneplanet, and y for the margin of extra incarna-tions into which by a strong desire for phys-ical life he may force himself during such aperiod, then, as a matter of fact, 24^ (x -\- y)may exceed 28 x ; that is to say, in 3^ roundsa monad may have accomplished as many in-carnations as an ordinary monad would haveaccomplished in four complete rounds. In lessthan 3i rounds the result could not have beenattained, so that it is only now that we havepassed the half-way point of evolution on thishalf-way planet that the fifth roundel's are be-ginning to drop in.

It is not possible in the nature of things thata monad can do more than outstrip his com-panions by more than one round. This consid-eration, notwithstanding Buddha was a sixth-round man; but this fact has to do with a greatmystery outside the limits of the present calcu-lation. Enough for the moment to say thatthe evolution of a Buddha has to do with some-thing more than mere incarnations within thelimits of one planetary chain.

Since large numbers of lives have been recognized in the above calculations as following oneanother in the successive incarnations of an

individual monad, it is important here, withthe view of averting misconceptions, to pointout that the periods of time over which theseincarnations range are so great that vast inter-vals separate them, numerous as they are. Asstated above, we cannot just now give the act-ual duration of the round periods. Nor, indeed,could any figures be quoted as indicating theduration of all round periods equally, for thesevary in length within very wide limits. Buthere is a simple fact which has been definitelystated on the highest occult authority we areconcerned with. The present race of human-ity, the present fifth race of the fourth-roundperiod, began to evolve about one million ofyears ago. Now it is not yet finished ; butsupposing that a million years had constitutedthe complete life of the race,i how would ithave been divided up for each individualmonad ? In a race there must be rather morethan 100, and there can hardly be 120, incarna-tions for an individual monad. But say eventhere have been already 120 incarnations for

1 The complete life of a race is certainly much longer thanthis; but when we get to figures of this kind we are on very deli-cate ground, for precise periods are very profound secrets, for rea-sons uninitiated students ("lay chelas," as the adepts now say,coining a new designation to meet a new condition of things) canonly imperfectly divine. Calculations like those given above maybe trusted literally as far as they go, but must not rashly be madethe basis of others.

186 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

monads in the present race already, and saythat the average life of each incarnation was acentury ; even then we should only have 12,000years out of the million spent in physical ex-istence against 988,000 years spent in the sub-jective sphere, or there would be an average ofmore than 8,000 years between each incarna-tion. Certainly these intervening periods areof very variable length, but they can hardlyeven contract to anything less than 1,500 years,— leaving out of account, of course, the case ofadepts who have placed themselves quite out-side the operation of the ordinary law, — and1,500 years, if not an impossibly short, wouldbe a very brief, interval between two rebirths.

These calculations must be qualified by oneor two considerations, however. The cases ofchildren dying in infancy are quite unlike thoseof persons who attain full maturity, and forobvious reasons, that the explanations now al-ready given will suggest. A child dying be-fore it has lived long enough to begin to beresponsible for its actions has generated nofresh Karma. The spiritual monad leaves thatchild's body in just the same state in which ifcentered it after its last death in Devachan. Ithas had no opportunity of playing on its newinstrument, which has been broken before evenit was tuned. A re-incarnation of the monad,

THE HUMAN TIDE-WAVE. 187

therefore, may take place immediately, on theline of its old attraction. But the monad sore-incarnated is not to be spiritually identifiedin any way with the dead child. So, in thesame way, with a monad getting into the bodyof a born idiot. The instrument cannot betuned, so it cannot play on that any more thanon the child's body in the first few years ofchildhood. But both these cases are manifestexceptions that do not alter the broad ruleabove laid down for all persons attaining ma-turity, and living their earth lives for good orevil.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEOGRESS OF HUMANITY.

The course of Nature provides, as the readerwill now have seen, for the indefinite prog-ress towards higher phases of existence of allhuman entities. But no less will it have beenseen that by endowing these entities, as theyadvance, with ever-increasing faculties and byconstantly enlarging the scope of their activity.Nature also furnishes each human entity withmore and more decisive opportunities of choos-ing between good and evil. In the earlierrounds of humanity this privilege of selectionis not fully developed, and responsibility of ac-tion is correspondingly incomplete. The ear-lier rounds of humanity, in fact, do not investthe Ego with spiritual responsibility at all, inthe larger sense of the term which we are nowapproaching. The Devachanic periods whichfollow each objective existence in turn disposefully of its merits and demerits, and the mostdeplorable personality which the Ego during thefirst half of its evolution can possibly develop

is merely dropped out of tlie account as regardsthe larger undertaking, while the erring per-sonality itself pays its relatively brief penalty,and troubles Nature no more. But the secondhalf of the great evolutionary period is carriedon on different principles. The phases of exist-ence which are now coming into view cannotbe entered upon by the Ego without positivemerits of its own appropriate to the new devel-opments in prospect; it is not enough that thenow fully responsible and highly gifted beingwhich man becomes at the great turning-pointin his career should float idly on the stream ofprogress; he must begin to swim, if lie wishesto push his way forward.

Debarred by the complexity of the subjectfrom dealing: with all its features simultane-ously, our survey of Nature has so far contem-plated the seven rounds of human development,which constitute the whole planetary undertak-ing with which we are concerned, as a continu-ous series throughout which it is the naturaldestiny of humanity in general to pass. But itwill be remembered that humanity in the sixthround has been spoken of so highly developedthat the sublime attributes and faculties of thehighest adeptship are the common appanage ofall; while in the seventh round the race hasalmost emerged from humanity into divinity.

Now every human being in this stage of devel-opment Avill still be identified by an uninter-rupted connection with all the personalitieswhich have been strung upon that thread oflife from the beginning of the great evolution-ary process. Is it conceivable that the charac-ter of such personalities is of no consequence inthe long run, and that two God-like beingsmight stand side by side in the seventh round,developed, the one from a long series of blame-less and serviceable existences, the other froman equally long series of evil and grovelinglives? That surely could not come to pass,and we have to ask now, How do we find thecongruities of Nature preserved compatiblywith the appointed evolution of humanity tothe higher forms of existence which crown theedifice ?

Just as childhood is irresponsible for its acts,the earlier races of humanity are irresponsiblefor theirs ; but there comes the period of fullgrowth, when the complete development of thefaculties which enable the individual man tochoose between good and evil, in the single lifewith which he is for the moment concerned, en-ables the continuous Ego also to make its finalselection. That period — that enormous period,for Nature is in no hurry to catch its creaturesin a trap in such a matter as this — is barely

yet beginning, and a complete round periodaround tlie seven worlds will have to be gonetbroufrli before it is over. Until the middle ofthe fifth period is passed on this earth, the greatquestion — to be or not to be for the future —is not irrevocably settled. We are comingnow into the possession of the faculties whichrender man a fully responsible being, but wehave yet to employ those faculties during thematurity of our Ego-hood in the manner whichshall determine the vast consequences hereafter.It is during the first half of the fifth roundthat the struggle principally takes place. Tillthen, the ordinary course of life may be a goodor a bad preparation for the struggle, but can-not fairly be described as the struggle itself.And now we have to examine the nature of thestruggle, so far merely spoken of as the selec-tion between good and evil. That is in noway an inaccurate, but it is an incomplete, defi-nition.

The ever-recurring and ever-threatened con-flict between intellect and spirituality is thephenomenon to be now examined. The com-monplace conceptions which these two wordsdenote must of course be expanded to someextent before the occult conception is realized;for European habits of thinking are rather aptto set up in the mind an ignoble image of spir-

ituality, as an attribute rather of the characterthan the mind itself, — a pale p:oody-goodiness,born of an attachment to religious ceremonialand of devout aspirations, no matter to whatwhimsical notions of Heaven and Divinity inwhich the " spiritually-minded" person mayhave been brought up. Spirituality, in theoccult sense, has little or nothing to do withfeeling devout; it has to do with the capacityof the mind for assimilating knowledge at thefountain-head of knowledge itself — of absoluteknowledge — instead of by the circuitous andlaborious process of ratiocination.

The development of pure intellect, the rati-ocinative faculty, has been the business of Eu-ropean nations for so long, and in this depart-ment of human progress they have achievedsuch magnificent triumphs, that nothing in oc-cult philosophy will be less acceptable to Euro-peans themselves at first, and while the ideas atstake are imperfectly grasped, than the firstaspect of the occult theory concerning intellectand spirituality; but this does not arise somuch from the undue tendency of occult scienceto depreciate intellect as from the undue ten-dency of modern Western speculation to depre-ciate spirituality. Broadly speaking, so farWestern philosophy has had no opportunity ofappreciating spirituality ; it has not been made

acquainted with the range of the inner facultiesof man; it has merely groped blindly in thedirection of a belief that such inner facultiesexisted ; and Kant himself, the greatest modernexponent of that idea, does little more thancontend that there is such a faculty as intuition,— if we only knew how to work with it.

The process of working with it is occult sci-ence in its highest aspect, the cultivation ofspirituality. The cultivation of mere powerover the forces of Nature, the investigation ofsome of her subtler secrets as regards the innerprinciples controlling physical results, is occultscience in its lowest aspect, and into that lowerregion of its activity mere physical science may,or even must, gradually run up. But the ac-quisition by mere intellect — physical sciencein excelsis — of privileges which are the properappanage of spirituality is one of the dangersof that struggle which decides the ultimatedestiny of the human Ego. For there is onething which intellectual processes do not helpmankind to realize, and that is the nature andsupreme excellence of spiritual existence. Onthe contrary, intellect arises out of physicalcauses, the perfection of the physical brain,and tends only to physical results, the perfec-tion of material welfare. Although, as a con-cession to " weak brethren ' and '' religion,"

13

on whicli it looks with good-humored contempt,modern intellect does not condemn spirituality,it certainly treats the physical human life as theonly serious business with which grave men, oreven earnest philanthropists, can concern them-selves. But obviously, if spiritual existence,vivid subjective consciousness, really does go onfor periods greater than the periods of intellec-tual physical existence in the ratio, as we haveseen in discussing the Devachanic condition, of80 to 1 at least, then surely man's subjectiveexistence is more important than his physicalexistence, and intellect in error, when all itsefforts are bent on the amelioration of the phys-ical existence.

These considerations show how the choice be-tween good and evil — which has been madeby the human Ego in the course of the greatstruggle between intellect and spirituality — isnot a mere choice between ideas so plainly con-trasted as wickedness and virtue. It is not sorough a question as that, — whether man bewicked or virtuous, — which must really at thefinal critical turning-point decide whether heshall continue to live and develop into higherphases of existence, or cease to live altogether.The truth of the matter is (if it is not impru-dent at this stage of our progress to brush thesurface of a new mystery) that the question, to

be or not to be, is not settled by reference tothe question whether a man be wicked or vir-tuous at all. It will plainly be seen eventuallythat there must be evil spirituality as well asgood spirituality. So that the great questionof continued existence turns altogether and ofnecessity on the question of spirituality, as com-pared with physicality. The point is not somuch " shall a man live ; is he good enough to bepermitted to live any longer? " as " ca7i the manlive any longer in the higher levels of existenceinto which humanity must at last evolve?'Has he qualified himself to live by the cultiva-tion of the durable portion of his nature ? Ifnot, he has got to the end of his tether. Thedestiny which must befall him is annihilation, —not necessarily suffering in a conscious exist-ence, but that dissolution that must befall thesoul which has wholly assimilated itself tomatter. Into the eighth sphere of pure matterthat Ego must descend which is finally con-victed of unfitness to go any further in the up-ward spiral path around the planetary chain.

It need not be hurriedly supposed that occultphilosophy considers vice and virtue of no con-sequence to human spiritual destinies, becauseit does not discover in Nature that these char-acteristics determine ultimate progress in evo-lution. No system is so pitilessly inflexible ia

its morality as the system which occult philos-ophy explores and expounds. But that whichvice and virtue of themselves determine ishappiness and miser}^ not the final problem ofcontinued existence, beyond that immeasurablydistant period, when in the progress of evolu-tion man has got to begin being something morethan man, and cannot go on along the path ofprogress with the help only of the relativelylower human attributes. It is true again thatone can hardly imagine virtue in au}^ decideddegree to fail in engendering, in due time, therequired higher attributes ; but we should notbe scientifically accurate in speaking of it as thecause of progress, in ultimate stages of eleva-tion, though it may provoke the developmentof that which is the cause of progress.

This consideration — that ultimate progressis determined by spirituality irrespective of itsmoral coloring — is the great meaning of the oc-cult doctrine that "to be immortal in good onemust identify one's self with God ; to be immor-tal in evil, with Satan. These are the two polesof the world of souls ; between these two polesveiretate and die without remembrance the use-less portion of mankind." ^ The enigma, like alloccult formulas, has a lesser application (fittingthe microcosm as well as the macrocosm), and1 Eliphas Levi.

m its lesser significance refers to Devachanor Avitchi, and the blank destiny of colorlesspersonalities ; but in its more important bear-ing it relates to the final sorting out of human-ity at the middle of the great fifth round, theannihilation of the utterly unspiritual Egos andthe passage onward of the others to be immor-tal in good or immortal in evil. Precisely thesame meaning attaches to the passage in Reve-lation (iii. 15, 16) : " I would thou wert coldor hot. So then because thou art lukewarm,and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee outof my mouth."

Spirituality, then, is not devout aspiration;it is the highest kind of intellection, that whichtakes cognizance of the workings of Nature bydirect assimilation of the mind with her higherprinciples. The objection which physical intel-ligence will bring against this view is that themind can cognize nothing except by observationof phenomena and reasoning thereon. That isthe mistake, — it can; and the existence of oc-cult science is the highest proof thereof. Butthere are hints pointing in the direction of suchproof all around us if we have but the patienceto examine their true bearings. It is idle tosay, in face, merely for one thing, of the phe-nomena of clairvoj^ance — crude and imperfectas those have been which have pushed them*

selves on the attention of tlie world—thatthere are no other avenues to consciousness butthose of the five senses. Certainly in the ordi-nary world the clairvoyant faculty is an exceed-ingly rare one, but it indicates the existence inman of a potential faculty, the nature of which,as inferred from its slightest manifestations,must obviously be capable in its highest devel-opment of leading to a direct assimilation ofknowledge independently of observation.

One of the most embarrassing difficulties thatbeset the present attempt to translate the es-oteric doctrine into plain language is due reallyto the fact that spiritual perceptiveness, apartfrom all ordinary processes by which knowledgeis acquired, is a great and grand possibility ofhuman nature. ,It is by that method in theregular course of occult training that adepts im-part instruction to their pupils. They awakenthe dormant sense in the pupil, and throughthis they imbue his mind with a knowledgethat such and such a doctrine is the real truth.The whole scheme of evolution, which the fore-going chapters have portrayed, infiltrates intothe regular chela's mind by reason of the factthat he is made to see the process taking placeby clairvoyant vision. There are no wordsused in his instruction at all. And adeptsthemselves, to whom the facts and processes of

Nature are familiar as our five fingers to us,find it difficult to explain in a treatise whichthey cannot illustrate for us, by producing men-tal pictures in our dormant sixth sense, the com-plex anatomy of the planetary system.

Certainly it is not to be expected that man-kind as yet should be generally conscious ofpossessing the sixth sense, for the day of its ac-tivity has not yet come. It has been alreadystated that each round in turn is devoted to theperfection in man of the corresponding princi-ple in its numerical order, and to its prepara-tion for assimilation with the next. The earlierrounds have been described as concerned withman in a shadowy, loosely organized, unintelli-gent form. The first principle of all, the bod}^was developed, but it was merely growing usedto vitality, and was unlike anything we cannow picture to ourselves. The fourth round,in which we are now engaged, is the round inwhich the fourth principle, will, desire, is fullydeveloped, and in which it is engaged in assim-ilating itself with the fifth principle, reason, in-telligence. In the fifth round, the completelydeveloped reason, intellect, or soul, in whichthe Ego then resides, must assimilate itself tothe sixth principle, spirituality, or give up thebusiness of existence altogether.

All readers of Buddhist literature are famil-

iar with the constant references made there tothe Arhat's union of his soul with God. This,in other words, is the premature developmentof his sixth principle. He forces himself rightup through all the obstacles which impede suchan operation in the case of a fourth-round man,into that stage of evolution which awaits therest of humanity — or rather so much of hu-manity as may reach it in the ordinary courseof Nature — in the latter part of the fifth round.And in doing this, it will be observed, he tideshimself right over the great period of danger, —the middle of the fifth round. That is the stu-pendous achievement of the adept as regardshis own personal interests. He has reached thefurther shore of the sea in which so many ofmankind will perish. He waits there in a con-tentment which people cannot even realizewithout some glimmerings of spirituality — ofthe sixth sense — themselves for the arrivalthere of his future companions. He does notwait in his physical body, let me hasten to add,to avoid misconstruction, but when at last jt?nVileged to resign tJiis, in a spiritual condition,which it would be foolish to attempt to describe,while even the Devachanic states of ordinaryhumanity are themselves almost beyond thereach of imaginations untrained in spiritualscience.

But, returning to the ordinary course of hu-manity and the growth into sixth-round peopleof men and women, who do not become adeptsat any premature stage of their career, it willbe observed that this is the ordinary course ofNature in one sense of the expression ; but soalso is it the ordinary course of Nature forevery grain of corn that is developed to fallinto appropriate soil, and grow up into an earof corn itself. All the same a great manygrains do nothing of the sort, and a great manyhuman Egos will never pass through the trialsof the fifth round. The final effort of Naturein evolving man is to evolve from him a beingunmeasurably higher to be a conscious agent,and what is ordinarily meant by a creativeprinciple in Nature herself ultimately. Thefirst acliievement is to evolve free-will, and thenext to perpetuate that free-will by inducingit to unite itself with the final purpose of Na-ture, which is good. In the course of suchan operation it is inevitable that a great dealof the free-will evolved should turn to evil,and after producing temporary suffering be dis-persed and annihilated. More than this, thefinal purpose can only be achieved by a profuseexpenditure of material; and just as this goeson in the lower stages of evolution, where athousand seeds are thrown off by a vegetable

for every one that ultimately fructifies into anew plant, so are the god-like germs of Will,sown one in each man's breast, in abundancelike the seeds blown about in the wind. Is thejustice of Nature to be impugned by reason ofthe fact that many of these germs will perish ?Such an idea could only rise in a mind thatwill not realize the room there is in Nature forthe growth of every germ which chooses togrow, and to the extent it chooses to grow, bethat extent great or small. If it seems to anyone horrible that an " immortal soul " shouldperish, under any circumstances, that impres-sion can only be due to the pernicious habit ofregarding everything as eternity, which is notthis microscopic life. There is room in thesubjective spheres and time in the catenarymanvantara, before we even approach theDhyan Chohan, or god-like period, for morethan the ordinary brain has ever yet conceivedof immortality. Every good deed and elevatedimpulse that every man or woman ever did orfelt must reverberate through aeons of spirit-ual existence, whether the human entity con-cerned proves able or not to expand into thesublime and stupendous development of theseventh round. And it is out of the causesgenerated in one of our brief lives on earththat exoteric speculation conceives itself capa*

ble of constructing eternal results ! Out ofsuch a seven or eight hundredth part of ourobjective life on earth during the present stay-here of the evolutionary life-wave, we are toexpect Nature to discern sufl&cient reason fordeciding upon our whole subsequent career. Intruth, Nature will make such a large return fora comparatively small expenditure of humanwill-power in the right direction that, extrav-agant as the expectation just stated may ap-pear, and extravagant as it is applied to or-dinary lives, one brief existence may sometimessuffice to anticipate the growth of milliards ofyears. The adept may, in the one earth-life,^achieve so much, advancement that his sub-sequent growth is certain, and merely a matterof time ; but then the seed germ which pro-duces an adept in our life, must be very per-fect to begin with, and the early conditions ofits growth favorable, and withal the effort onthe part of the man himself, life-long and farmore concentrated, more intense, more arduous,than it is possible for the uninitiated outsiderto realize. In ordinary cases, the life which isdivided between material enjoyment and spir-itual aspiration — however sincere and beau-tiful the latter — can only be productive of

1 In practice, my impression is that this is rarely achieved inone earth-life ; approached rather in two or three artificial incarna-tions.

a correspondingly duplex result, of a spiritualreward in Devaclian, of a new birth on earth.The manner in which the adept gets abovethe necessity of such a new birth is perfectlyscientific and simple, be it observed, thoughit sounds like a theological mystery when ex-pounded in exoteric writings by reference toKarma and Skandhas, Trishna, and Tanha,and so forth. The next earth-life is as mucha consequence of afiinities engendered by thefifth principle, the continuous human soul, asthe Devachanic experiences which come firstare the growth of the thoughts and aspirationsof an elevated character, which the person con-cerned has created during life. That is to say,the affinities engendered in ordinary cases arepartly material, partly spiritual. Thereforethey start the soul on its entrance into theworld of effects with a double set of attractionsinhering in it; one set producing the subjectiveconsequences of its Devachanic life, the otherset asserting themselves at the close of thatJife, and carrying the soul back again into re-incarnation. But if the person during his ob-jective life absolutely develops no affinities formaterial existence, starts his soul at death wathall its attractions tending one way in the direc-tion of spirituality, and none at all drawing itback to objective life, it does not come back;

it mounts into a condition of spirituality, cor-responding to the intensity of the attractionsor affinities in that direction, and the otherthread of connection is cut off.

Now this exphmation does not entirely coverthe whole position, because the adept himself,no matter how high, does return to incarna-tion eventually, after the rest of mankind havepassed across the great dividing period in themiddle of the fifth round. Until the exaltationof Planetary Spirithood is reached, the highesthuman soul must have a certain affinity forearth still, though not the earth-life of phys-ical enjoyments and passions that we are go-ing through. But the important point to re-alize in regard to the spiritual consequences ofearthly life is that, in so large a majority ofcases that the abnormal few need not be talkedabout, the sense of justice in regard to thedestiny of good men is amply satisfied by thecourse of Nature step by step as time advances.The spirit-life is ever at hand to receive, re-fresh, and restore tlie soul after the struggles,achievements, or sufferings of incarnation. Andmore than this, reserving the question abouteternity. Nature, in the intercyclic periods atthe apex of each round, provides for all man-kind, except those unfortunate failures whohave persistently adhered to the path of evil,

great intervals of spiritual blessedness, farlonger and more exalted in their cliaracterthan the Devachanic periods of each separatelife. Nature, in fact, is inconceivably liberaland patient to each and all her candidates forthe final examination during their long prep-aration for this. Nor is one failure to passeven this final examination absolutel}^ fatal.The failures may try again, if they are notutterly disgraceful failures, but they must waitfor the next opportunity.

A complete explanation of the circumstancesunder which such waiting is accomplishedwould not come into the scheme of this trea-tise ; but it must not be supposed that candi-dates for progress, self-convicted of unfitness toproceed at the critical period of the fifth round,fall necessaril}^ into the sphere of annihilation.For that attraction to assert itself, the Ego musthave developed a positive attraction for matter,a positive repulsion for spirituality^ w^iich isoverwhelming in its force. In the absence ofsuch affinities, and in the absence also of suchaffinities as would suffice to tide the Ego overthe great gulf, the destiny which meets themere failures of Nature is, as regards the pres-ent planetary manwantara, to die, as EliphasLevi puts it, without remembrance. Theyhave lived their life, and had their share of

THE PROGRESS OF HUMANITY. 207

Heaven, but they are not capable of ascendingthe tremendous altitudes of spiritual progressthen confronting them. But they are qualifiedfor further incarnation and life on the planes ofexistence to which they are accustomed. Theywill wait, therefore, in the negative spiritualstate they have attained till those planes of ex-istence are again in activity in the next plan-etary manwantara. The duration of such wait-ing is, of course, beyond the reach of imagina-tion altogether, and the precise nature of theexistence which is now contemplated is no lessunrealizable ; but the broad pathway throughthat strange region of dreamy semi-animationmust be taken note of in order that the sym-metry and completeness of the whole evolution-ary scheme may be perceived.

And with this last contingency provided for,the whole scheme does lie before the reader inits main outlines with tolerable completeness.We have seen the one life, the spirit, animat-ing matter in it lowest forms first, and evokinggrowth by slow degrees into higher forms. In-dividualizing itself at last in man, it works upthrough inferior and irresponsible incarnationsuntil it has penetrated the higher principles,and evolved a true human soul, whicli is thence-forth the master of its own fate, though guardedin the beginning by natural provisions which

debar it from premature shipwreck, which stim-ulate and refresh it on its course. But the ulti-mate destiny offered to that soul is to developnot only into a being capable of taking care ofitself, but into a being capable of taking carealso of others, of presiding over and directing,within what may be called constitutional limits,the operations of Nature herself. Clearly be-fore the soul can have earned the right to thatpromotion, it must have been tried by havingconceded to it full control over its own affairs.That full control necessarily conveys the powerto shipwreck itself. The safeguards put roundthe Ego in its youth — its inability to get intohigher or lower states than those of intermun-dane Devachan and Avitchi — fall from it inits maturity. It is potent, then, over its owndestinies, not only in regard to the developuientof transitory joy and suffering, but in regard tothe stupendous opportunities in both directionswhich existence opens out before it. It mayseize on the higher opportunities in two ways;it may throw up the struggle in two ways; itmay attain sublime spirituality for good or sub-lime spirituality for evil; it may ally itself tophysically for (not evil but for) utter annihila-tion ; or, on the other hand, for (not good butfor) the negative result of beginning the educa-tional processes of incarnation all over again.

CHAPTER IX.

BUDDHA.

The historical Buddha, as known to the cus-todians of the Esoteric Doctrine, is a personagewhose birth is not invested with the quaintmarvels popular story has crowded round it.Nor was his progress to adeptship traced by theliteral occurrence of the supernatural strugglesdepicted in symbolic legend. On the otherhand, the incarnation, which may outwardly bedescribed as the birth of Buddha, is certainlynot regarded by occult science as an event likeany other birth, nor the spiritual developmentthrough which Buddha passed during his earth-life a mere process of intellectual evolution,like the mental history of any other philoso-pher. The mistake which ordinary Europeanwriters make in dealing with a problem of thissort lies in their inclination to treat exotericlegend either as a record of a miracle aboutwhich no more need be said, or as pure myth,putting merely a fantastic decoration on a re-markable life. This, it is assumed, however

14

remarkable, must have been lived according tothe theories of Nature at present accepted bythe nineteenth century. The account whichhas now been given in the foregoing pages mayprepare the way for a statement as to what theEsoteric Doctrine teaches concerning the realBuddha, who was born, as modern investigationhas quite correctly ascertained, G43 years be-fore the Christian era, at Kapila-Vastu nearBenares.

Exoteric conceptions, knowing nothing of thelaws which govern the operations of Nature inher higher departments, can only explain anabnormal dignity attaching to some particularbirth by supposing that tlie physical body ofthe person concerned was generated in a mirac-ulous manner. Hence the popular notion aboutBuddha, that his incarnation in this world wasdue to an immaculate conception. Occult sci-ence knows nothing of any process for the pro-duction of a physical human child other thanthat appointed by physical laws ; but it doesknow a good deal concerning the limits withinwhich the progressive *'one life," or "spiritualmonad," or continuous thread of a series of in-carnations, may select definite child-bodies astheir human tenements. By the operation ofKarma, in the case of ordinary mankind, thisselection is made, unconsciously as far as the

antecedent, spiritual Ego emerging from De-vaclian is concerned. But in those abnormalcases where the one life has already forced it-self into the sixth principle — that is to say,where a man has become an adept, and has thepower of guiding his own spiritual Ego, in fullconsciousness as to what he is about, after hehas quitted the body in which he won adept-ship, either temporarily or permanently — it isquite within his power to select his own nextincarnation. During life, even, he gets abovethe Devachanic attraction. He becomes one ofthe conscious directing powers of the planetarysystem to which he belongs; and great as thismystery of selected re-incarnation may be, it isnot by any means restricted in its applicationto such extraordinary events as the birth of aBuddha. It is a phenomenon frequently repro-duced by the higher adepts to this day, andwhile a great deal recounted in popular Ori-ental mythology is either purely fictitious orentirely symbolical, the re-incarnation of theDalai and Teshu Lamas in Tibet, at whichtravelers only laugh for want of the knowledgethat might enable them to sift fact from fancy,is a sober scientific achievement. In such casesthe adept states beforehand in what child, whenand where to be born, he is going to re-incar-nate, and he very rarely fails. We say very

rarely, because there are some accidents of pliys-ical nature which cannot be entirely guardedagainst; and it is not absolutely certain that,with all the foresight even an adept may bringto bear upon the matter, the child he may chooseto become, in his re-incarnated state, may attainphysical maturity successfully. And, mean-while, in the body^ the adept is relatively help-less. Out of the body he is just what he hasbeen ever since he became an adept; but asregards the new body he has chosen to inhabit,he must let it grow up in the ordinary course ofNature, and educate it by ordinary processes,and initiate it by the regular occult methodinto adeptship, before he has got a body fullyready again for occult work on the physicalplane. All these processes are immensely sim-plified, it is true, by the peculiar spiritual forceworking within ; but at first, in the child's body,the adept soul is certainly cramped and embar-rassed, and, as ordinary imagination might sug-gest, very uncomfortable and ill at ease. Thesituation would be very much misunderstood ifthe reader were to imagine that re-incarnationof the kind described is a privilege which adeptsavail themselves of with pleasure.

Buddha's birth was a mystery of the kinddescribed, and by the light of what has beensaid it will be easy to go over the popular story

of his miraculous origin, and trace the symbolicreferences to the facts of the situation in someeven of the most grotesque fables. None, forexample, can look less promising as an allu-sion to anything like a scientific fact than thestatement that Buddha entered the side of hismother as a young white elephant. But thewhite elephant is simply the symbol of adept-ship,— something considered to be a rare andbeautiful specimen of its kind. So with otherante-natal legends pointing to the fact that thefuture child's body had been chosen as the hab-itation of a great spirit already endowed withsuperlative wisdom and goodness. Indra andBrahma came to do homage to the child at hisbirth; that is to say, the powers of Naturewere already in submission to the Spirit withinhim. The thirty-two signs of a Buddha, whichlegends describe by means of a ludicrous phys-ical symbolism, are merely the various powersof adeptship.

The selection of the body known as Siddhar-tha, and afterwards as Gautama, son of Sud-dhodana, of Kapila-Vastu, as the human tene-ment of the enlightened human spirit, who hadsubmitted to incarnation for the sake of teach-ing mankind, was not one of those rare failuresspoken of above; on the contrary, it was asignally successful choice in all respects, and

nothing interfered with the accomplishmentof adeptship by the Buddha in his new body.The popidar narrative of his ascetic strugglesand temptations, and of his final attainmentof Buddhahood under the Bo-tree, is nothingmore, of course, than the exoteric version of hisinitiation.

From that period onward, his work was of adual nature; he had to reform and revive themorals of the populace and the science of theadepts, — for adeptship itself is subject to cyclicchanges, and in need of periodical impulses.The explanation of this branch of the subject,in plain terms, will not alone be important forits own sake, but will be interesting to all stu-dents of exoteric Buddhism, as elucidating someof the puzzling complications of the more ab-struse " Northern doctrine."

A Buddha visits the earth for each of theseven races of the great planetary period. TheBuddha with whom we are occupied was thefourth of the series, and that is why he standsfourth in the list quoted by Mr. Rhys Davids,from Burnouf, — quoted as an illustration ofthe way the Northern doctrine has been, as Mr.Davids supposes, inflated b}^ metaphysical sub-tleties and absurdities crowded round the sim-ple morality which sums up Buddhism as pre-sented to the populace. The fifth, or Maitreya

Buddha, will come after the final disappear-ance of the fifth race, and when the sixth racewill already have been established on earthfor some hundreds of thousands of years. Thesixth will come at the beginning of the seventhrace, and the seventh towards the close of thatrace.

This arrangement will seem, at the firstglance, out of harmony with the general designof human evolution. Here we are in the mid-dle of the fifth race, and yet it is the fourthBuddha who has been identified with this race,and the fifth will not come till the fifth race ispractically extinct. The explanation is to befound, however, in the great outlines of theesoteric cosmogony. At the beginning of eachgreat planetary period, when obscuration comesto an end, and the human tide-wave in its prog-ress round the chain of worlds arrives at theshore of a globe where no humanity has existedfor milliards of years, a teacher is required fromthe first for the new crop of mankind about tospring up. Remember that the preliminaryevolution of the mineral, vegetable, and animalkingdoms has been accomplished in preparationfor the new round period. With the first infu-sion of the life-current into the " missing link "species the first race of the new series will beginto evolve. It is then that the Being, who may

be considered the Buddha of the first race, ap-pears. The planetary spirit, or Dhyan Cho-han, who is — or, to avoid the suggestion of anerroneous idea by the use of a singular verb,let us defy, grammar and say, who are — Bud-dha in all his or their developments, incarnatesamong the young, innocent, teachable forerun-ners of the new humanity, and impresses thefirst broad principles of right and wrong andthe first truths of the esoteric doctrine on a suf-ficient number of receptive minds to insure thecontinued reverberation of the ideas so im-planted through successive generations of menin the millions of years to come, before the firstrace shall have completed its course. It is thisadvent in the beginning of the round period ofa Divine Being in human form that starts theineradicable conception of the anthropomorphicGod in all exoteric religions.

The first Buddha of the series in which Gau-tama Buddha stands fourth is thus the secondincarnation of Avaloketiswara, — the mysticname of the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans, orplanetary spirits, belonging to our planetarychain; and though Gautama is thus the fourthincarnation of enlightenment by exoteric reck-oning, he is really the fifth of the true series,and thus properly belonging to our fifth race.

Avaloketiswara, as just stated, is the mystic

name of the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans ; theproper meaning of the word is manifested wis-dom, just as Addi-Buddha and Amitabha bothmean abstract wisdom.

The doctrine, as quoted by Mr. Davids, that*' every earthly mortal Buddha has his pure andglorious counterpart in the mystic world, freefrom the debasing conditions of this materiallife, or rather that the Buddha under materialconditions is only an appearance, the reflection,or emanation, or type of a Dhyani Buddha," isperfectly correct. The number of Dhyani Bud-dhas, or Dhyan Chohans, or planetary spirits,perfected human spirits of former world periods,is infinite, but only five are practically identifiedin exoteric and seven in esoteric teaching; andthis identification, be it remembered, is a man-ner of speaking which must not be interpretedtoo literally, for there is a unity in the sublimespirit-life in question that leaves no room forthe isolation of individuality. All this will beseen to harmonize perfectly with the revelationsconcerning Nature embodied in previous chap-ters, and need not in any way be attributed tomystic imaginings. The Dhyani Buddhas, orDhyan Chohans, are the perfected humanity ofprevious Manwantaric epochs, and their collec-tive intelligence is described by the name " Addi-Buddha," which Mr. Rhys Davids is mistaken

in treating as a comparatively recent inventionof the Northern Buddhish. Addi-Buddha meansprimordial wisdom, and is mentioned in theoldest Sanskrit books. For example, in the phil-osophical dissertation on the " Mandukya Upan-ishad," by Gowdapatha, a Sanskrit author con-temporary with Buddha himself, the expressionis freely used and expounded in exact accord-ance with the present statement. A friend ofmine in India, a Brahmin pundit of first-rateattainments as a Sanskrit scholar, has shownme a copy of this book, which has never yet,that he knows of, been translated into English,and has pointed out a sentence bearing on thepresent question, giving me the following trans-lation : " Prakriti itself, in fact, is Addi-Buddha,and all the Dharmas have been existing frometernity." Gowdapatha is a philosophical wri-ter respected by all Hindu and Buddhist sectsalike, and widely known. He was the guru, orspiritual teacher of the first Sankaracharya, ofwhom T shall have to speak more at lengthvery shortly.

Adeptsliip, when Buddha incarnated, was notthe condensed, compact hierarchy that it hassince become under his influence. There hasnever been an age of the world without itsadepts; but they have sometimes been scat-tered throughout the world; they have some<

times been isolated in separate seclusions ; theyhave gravitated now to this country, now tothat; and finally, be it remembered, theirknowledge and power has not always beeninspired with the elevated and severe moralitywhich Buddha infused into its latest and high-est organization. The reform of the occultworld by his instrumentality was, in fact, theresult of his great sacrifice; of the self-denialwhich induced him to reject the blessed condi-tion of Nirvana to which, after his earth-life asBuddha, he was fully entitled, and undertakethe burden of renewed incarnations in order tocarry out more thoroughly the task he hadtaken in hand, and confer a correspondinglyincreased benefit on mankind. Buddha re-in-carnated himself, next after his existence asGautama Buddha, in the person of the greatteacher of whom but little is said in exotericworks on Buddhism, but without a considera-tion of whose life it would be impossible toget a correct conception of the position in theEastern world of esoteric science,—namely,Sankaracharya. The latter part of this name,it may be explained— acharya — merely meansteacher. The whole name as a title is perpet-uated to this day under curious circumstances,but the modern bearers of it are not in thedirect line of Buddhist spiritual incarnations.

Sankaracharya appeared in India — no atten-tion being paid to bis birtb, wbich appears tohave taken place on tbe Malabar coast — aboutsixty years after Gautama Buddha's death.Esoteric teaching is to the effect that Sankara-charya simply was Buddha in all respects, in anew body. This view will not be acceptable touninitiated Hindu authorities, who attribute alater date to Sankaracharya's appearance, andregard him as a wholly independent teacher,even inimical to Buddhism, but none the lessis the statement just made the real opinion ofinitiates in esoteric science, whether these callthemselves Buddhists or Hindus. I have re-ceived the information I am now giving from aBrahmin Adwaiti, of Southern India, — notdirectly from my Tibetan instructor, — and allinitiated Brahmins, he assures me, would saythe same. Some of the later incarnations ofBuddha are described differently as overshad-owings by the spirit of Buddha, but in the per-son of Snnkaracharya he reappeared on earth.The object he had in view was to fill up somegaps and repair certain errors in his own pre-vious teaching; for there is no contention inesotoric Buddhism that even a Buddha can beabsolutely infallible at every moment of hiscareer.

The position was as follows : Up to the time

of Buddha, the Brahmins of India had jeal-ously reserved occult knowledge as the appan-age of their own caste. Exceptions were oc-casionally made in favor of Tshatryas, but therule was exclusive in a very high degree. Thisrule Buddha broke down, admitting all castesequally to the path of adeptship. The changemay have been perfectly right in principle, butit paved the way for a great deal of trouble,and as the Brahmins conceived for the degrada-tion of occult knowledge itself ; that is to say,its transfer to unworthy hands,—not unworthymerely because of caste inferiority, but becauseof the moral inferiority which they conceivedto be introduced into the occult fraternit}^ to-gether with brothers of low birth. The Brah-min contention would not by any means bethat because a man should be a Brahmin it fol-lowed that he was necessarily virtuous andtrustworthy; but the argument would be : It issupremely necessary to keep out all but the vir-tuous and trustworthy from the secrets andpowers of initiation. To that end it is neces-sary not only to set up all the ordeals, proba-tions, and tests we can think of, but also totake no candidates except from the class which,on the whole, by reason of its hereditary advan-tages, is likely to be the best nursery of fit can-didates.

Later experience is held on all hands now tohave gone far towards vindicating the Brah-min apprehension, and the next incarnation ofBuddha, after that in the person of Sankara-charya, was a practical admission of this ; butmeanwhile, in the person of Sankaracharya,Buddha was engaged in smoothing over, before-hand, the sectarian strife in India which be sawimpending. The active opposition of the Brah-mins against Buddhism began in Asoka's time,when the great efforts made by that ruler tospread Buddhism provoked an apprehension ontheir part in reference to their social and polit-ical ascendency. It must be remembered thatinitiates are not wholly free in all cases fromthe prejudices of their own individualities.They possess some such god-like attributes thatoutsiders, when they first begin to understandsomething of these, are apt to divest them, inimagination, even too completely of humanfrailties. Initiation and occult knowledge heldin common is certainly a bond of union amongadepts of all nationalities, which is far strongerthan any other bond. But it has been foundon more occasions than one to fail in obliterat-ing all other distinctions. Thus the Buddhistand Brahmin initiates of the period referred towere by no means of one mind on all questions,and the Brahmins very decidedly disapproved

of the Buddhist reformation in its exoteric as-pects. Chandragupta, Asoka's grandfather, wasan upstart, and the family were Sudras. Thiswas enough to render his Buddhist policy unat-tractive to the representatives of the orthodoxBrahmin faith. The struggle assumed a veryembittered form, thougli ordinary history givesus few or no particulars. The party of primi-tive Buddhism was entirely worsted, and theBrahmin ascendency completely reestablishedin the time of Vikramaditya, about 80 B. C.But Sankaracharya had traveled all over Indiain advance of the great struggle, and had estab-lished various mathams^ or schools of philoso-phy, in several important centres. He wasonly engaged in this task for a few years, butthe influence of his teaching has been so stu-pendous that its very magnitude disguises thechange wrought. He brought exoteric Hindu-ism into practical harmony with the esoteric" wisdom religion," and left the people amus-ing themselves still with their ancient mytholo-gies, but leaning on philosophical guides whowere esoteric Buddhists to all intents and pur-poses, thougli in reconciliation with all thatwas ineradicable in Brahmanism. The greatfault of previous exoteric Hinduism lay in itsattachment to vain ceremonial and its adhesionto idolatrous conceptions of the divinities of the

Hindu pantheon. Sankaracliarya empbasized,by his commentaries on the Upanishads, and byhis original writings, the necessity of pursuinggnyanam in order to obtain moksha; that isto say, the importance of the secret knowledgeto spiritual progress, and the consummationthereof. He was the founder of the Yedantinsystem, — the proper meaning of Vedanta beingthe final end or crown of knowledge, — thoughthe sanctions of that system are derived byhim from the writings of Yyasa, the author ofthe " Mahabharata," the " Puranas," and the" Brahmasutras." I make these statements,the reader will understand, not on the basis ofany researches of my own, — which I am notOriental scholar enough to attempt, — but on theauthority of a Brahmin initiate who is himself afirst-rate Sanskrit scholar as well as an occultist.The Vedantin school at present is almost co-extensive with Hinduism, making allowance, ofcourse, for the existence of some special sectslike the Sikhs, the Valhibacharyas, or Mahara-jah sect, of very unfair fame, and may be di-vided into three great divisions, — the Adwai-tees, the Vishislita Adwaitees, and the Dwaitees.Tlie outline of the Adwaitee doctrine is thathrahmum or purush, the universal spirit, actsonly through prakritl^ matter ; that everytliingtakes place in this way through the inherent

energy of matter. Braliraum, or Parabnihni, isthus a passive, incomprehensible, unconsciousprinciple, but the essence, one life, or energyof the universe. In this way the doctrine isidentical with the transcendental materialism ofthe adept esoteric Buddhist philosophy. Thename Adwaitee signifies not dual, and hasreference partly to the non-duality or unityof universal spirit, or Buddhist one life, asdistinguished from the notion of its operationthrough anthropomorphic emanations; partlyto the unity of the universal and the liumanspirit. As a natural consequence of this doc-trine, the Adwaitees infer the Buddhist doctrineof Karma, regarding the future destiny of manas altogether depending on the causes he him-self engenders.

The Vishishta Adwaitees modify these viewsby the interpolation of Vishnu as a consciousdeity, the primary emanation of Parabrahm,Vishnu being regarded as a personal god, capa-ble of intervening in the course of human des-tiny. They do not regard T/ocf, or spiritualtraining, as the proper avenue to spiritualachievement, but conceive this to be possiblechiefly by means of Bhakti, or devoutness.Roughly stated in the phraseology of Europeantheology, the Adwaitee may thus be said to be-lieve only in salvation by works, the Vishishta

16

Adwaitee in salvation by grace. The Dwaiteediffers but little from the Vishishta Adwaitee,merely affirming, by the designation he as-sumes, with increased emphasis, the duality ofthe human spirit and the highest principle ofthe universe, and including many ceremonialobservances as an essential part of Bhakti,

But all these differences of view, it must beborne in mind, have to do merely with the ex-oteric variations on the fundamental idea, intro-duced by different teachers with varying im-pressions as to the capacity of the populace forassimilating transcendental ideas. All lead-ers of Vedantin thought look up to Sankara-charya and the Mathams he estabUshed withthe greatest possible reverence, and their innerfaith runs up in all cases into the one esotericdoctrine. In fact, the initiates of all schools inIndia interlace with one another. Except asregards nomenclature, the whole system of cos-mogony as held by the Buddhist-Arhats, and asset forth in this volume, is equally held b}^ in-itiated Brahmins, and has been equally heldby them since before Buddha's birth. Whencedid they obtain it ? the reader may ask. Theiranswer would be, From the Planetary Spirit, orDhyan Ciiohan, wlio fii-^t visited this planet atthe dawn of the liiinian race in the presentround period, — more millions of years ago than

I like to mention on the basis of conjecture,while the real exact number is withheld.

Sankaracharya founded four principal Math-ams: one at Sringari, in Southern India, whichhas always remained the most important; oneat Juggernath, in Orissa; one at Dwaraka, inKathiawar; and one at Gungotri, on the slopesof the Himalayas in the North. The chief ofthe Sringari temple has always borne the desig-nation Sankaracharya, in addition to some in-dividual name. From these four centres othershave been established, and Mathams now existall over India, exercising the utmost possibleinfluence on Hinduism.

I have said that Buddha, by his third in-carnation, recognized the fact that he had, inthe excessive confidence of his loving trust inthe perfectibility of humanity, opened the doorsof the occult sanctuary too widely. His thirdappearance was in the person of Tsong-ka-pa,the great Tibetan adept reformer of the four-teenth century. In this personality he wasexclusively concerned with the affairs of theadept fraternity, by that time collecting chieflyin Tibet.

From time immemorial there had been a cer-tain secret region in Tibet, which to this dayis quite unknown to and unapproachable byany but initiated persons, and inaccessible to

the ordinary people of the country as to anyothers, in which adepts have always congre-gated. But the country generally was not inBuddha's time, as it has since become, thechosen habitation of the great brotherhood.Much more than they are at present were theMahatmas in former times distributed aboutthe world. The progress of civilization, en-gendering the magnetism they find so trying,had, however, by the date with which we arenow dealing — the fourteenth century — al-ready given rise to a very general movementtowards Tibet on the part of the previouslydissociated occultists. Far more widely thanwas held to be consistent wdth the safety ofmankind was occult knowledge and power thenfound to be disseminated. To the task of put-ting it under the control of a rigid system ofrule and law did Tsong-ka-pa address himself.

Without reestablishing the system on theprevious unreasonable basis of caste exclusive-ness, he elaborated a code of rules for the guid-ance of the adepts, the effect of which was toweed out of the occult bod}^ all but those whosought occult knowledge in a spirit of the mostsublime devotion to the highest moral prin-ciples.

An article in the " Theosophist " for ]\Iarch,1882, on " Re-incarnations in Tibet," for the com-

plete trustworthiness of which in all its mysticbearings I have the highest assurance, gives agreat deal of important information about thebranch of the subject with which we are nowengaged, and the relations between esoteric Bud-dhism and Tibet, which cannot be examined tooclosely by any one who desires an exhaustivecomprehension of Buddhism in its real signifi-cation.

" The regular system," we read, " of theLamaic incarnations of ' Sangyas ' (or Buddha)began with Tsong-kha-pa. This reformer isnot the incarnation of one of the five celestialDhyans, or heavenly Buddhas, as is generallysupposed, said to have been created by SakyaMuni after he had risen to Nirvana, but that ofAmita, one of the Chinese names for Buddha.The records preserved in the Gon-pa (lamasery)of Tda-shi Hlum-po (spelt by the English TeshuLumho') show that Sangyas incarnated himselfin Tsong-kha-pa, in consequence of the greatdegradation his doctrines had fallen into. Untilthen there had been no other incarnations thanthose of the five celestial Buddhas and of theirBuddhisatvas, each of the former having cre-ated (read overshadowed with his spiritual wis-dom) five of the last named. ... It was be-cause, among many other reforms, Tsong-kha-paforbade necromancy (which is practiced to this

day, with the most disgusting rites, by theBhons, — the aborigines of Tibet, with whomthe Red Caps, or Shammars, had always fra-ternized) that the latter resisted his authority.This act was followed by a split between thetwo sects. Separating entirely from the Gya-lukpas, the Dugpas (Red Caps), from the firstin a great minority, settled in various parts ofTibet, chiefly its borderlands, and principallyin Nepaul and Bhootan. But, while they re-tained a sort of independence at the monasteryof Sakia-Djong, the Tibetan residence of theirspiritual (?) chief, Gong-sso Rimbo-chay, theBhootanese have been from their beginning thetributaries and vassals of the Dalai Lamas.

"The Tda-shi Lamas Avere always morepowerful and more highly considered than theDalai Lamas. The latter are the creation ofthe Tda-shi Lama, Nabang-lob-sang, the sixthincarnation of Tsong-kha-pa, himself an incar-nation of Amitabha, or Buddha."

Several writers on Buddhism have enter-tained a theory, which Mr. Clements Mark-ham formulates very fully in his " Narrative ofthe Mission of George Bogle to Tibet," thatwhereas the original scriptures of Buddhismwere taken to Ceylon by the son of Asoka, theBuddhism, which found its way into Tibetfrom India and China, was gradually overlaid

BUDDHA. 231

with a mass of dogma and metaphysical spec-ulation. And Professor Max Miiller says:"The most important element in the Buddhistreform has always been its social and moralcode, not its metaphysical theories. That moralcode, taken by itself, is one of the most perfectwhich the world has ever known ; and it wasthis blessing that the introduction of Buddhismbrought into Tibet."

" The blessing," says the authoritative articlein the " Theosophist," from which I have justbeen quoting, "has remained and spread allover the country, there being no kinder, purer-minded, more simple or sin-fearing nation thanthe Tibetans. But for all that, the popular la-maism, when compared with the real esotericor Arahat Buddhism of Tibet, oifers a contrastas great as the snow trodden along a road inthe valley, to the pure and undefiled masswhich glitters on the top of a high mountainpeak."

The fact is that Ceylon is saturated withexoteric, and Tibet with esoteric, Buddhism.Ceylon concerns itself merely or mainly withthe morals, Tibet, or rather the adepts of Tibet,with the science, of Buddhism.

These explanations constitute but a sketch ofthe whole position. I do not possess the argu-ments nor the literary leisure which would be

required for its amplification into a finished pic-ture of the relations which really subsist betweenthe inner principles of Hinduism and those ofBuddhism. And I am quite alive to the pos-sibility that many learned and painstaking stu-dents of the subject will have formed, as theconsequences of prolonged and erudite research,conclusions with which the explanations I amnow enabled to give may seem at first sight toconflict. But none the less are these expla-nations directly gathered from authorities towhom the subject is no less familiar in its schol-arly than in its esoteric aspect. And theirinner knowledge throws a light upon the wholeposition which wholly exempts them from thedanger of misconstruing texts and mistakingthe bearings of obscure symbology. To knowwhen Gautama Buddha was born, what is re-corded of his teaching, and what popular leg-ends have gathered round his biograph}- is toknow next to nothing of the real Buddha, somuch greater than either the historical moralteacher or the fantastic demi-god of tradition.And it is only when we have comprehended thelink between Buddhism and Brahmanism thatthe greatness of the esoteric doctrine rises intoits true proportions.

CHAPTER X.NIRVAKA.

A COMPLETE assimilation of esoteric teach-ing up to the point we have now reached willenable us to approach the consideration of thesubject which exoteric writers on Buddhismhave generally treated as the doctrinal starting-point of that religion.

Hitherto, for want of any better method ofseeking out the true meaning of Nirvana, Bud-dhist scholars have generally picked the wordto pieces, and examined its roots and fragments.One might as hopefully seek to ascertain thesmell of a flower by dissecting the paper onwhich its picture was painted. It is difficultfor minds schooled in the intellectual processesof physical research — as all our Western nine-teenth-century minds are, directly or indirectly— to comprehend the first spiritual state abovethis life, that of Devachan. Such conditions ofexistence are but partly for the understanding ;a higher faculty must be employed to realizethem; and all the more is it impossible to force

their meaning upon another mind bywords. Itis by first awakening that higher faculty in hispu23il, and then putting the pupil in a positionto observe for himself, that the regular occultteacher proceeds in such a matter.

Now there are the usual seven states of Dev-achan, suited to the different degrees of spirit-ual enlightenment which the various candidatesfor that condition may obtain ; there are rupaand arupa locas in Devachan, — that is to say,states which take (subjective) consciousness ofform, and states which transcend these again.And yet the highest Devachanic state in arupaloca is not to be compared to that wonderfulcondition of pure spirituality which is spoken ofas Nirvana.

In the ordinary course of Nature during around, when the spiritual monad has accom-plished the tremendous journey from the firstplanet to the seventh, and has finished for thetime being its existence there, — finished all itsmultifarious existences there, with their respec-tive periods of Devachan between each, — theEgo passes into a spiritual condition differentfrom the Devachanic state, in which, for pe-riods of inconceivable duration, it rests beforeresuming its circuit of the worlds. That condi-tion may be regarded as the Devachan of itsDevachanic states,— a sort of review thereof, —

a superior state to those reviewed, just as theDevachanic state belonging to any one exist-ence on earth is a superior state to that of thehalf-developed spiritual aspirations or impulsesof affection of the earth-life. That period —that intercyclic period of extraordinary exalta-tion, as compared to any that have gone before,as compared even with the subjective conditionsof the planets in the ascending arc, so greatlysuperior to our own as these are — is spokenof in esoteric science as a state of partial Nir-vana. Carrying on imagination through im-measurable vistas of the future, we must nextconceive ourselves approaching the period whichwould correspond to the intercyclic period ofthe seventh round of humanity, in which menhave become as gods. The very last most ele-vated and glorious of the objective lives havingbeen completed, the perfected spiritual beingreaches a condition in which a complete recol-lection of all lives lived at any time in the pastreturns to him. He can look back over thecurious masquerade of objective existences, asit will seem to him then, over the minutest de-tails of any of these earth-lives among thenumber through which he has passed, and cantake cognizance of them and of all things withwliicli they were in any way associated; for inregard to this planetary cham he has reached

omniscience. This supreme development ofindividuality is the great reward which Naturereserves not only for those who secure it pre-maturely, so to speak, by the relatively briefbut desperate and terrible struggles which leadto adeptship, but also for all who by the dis-tinct preponderance of good over evil in thecharacter of the whole series of their incar-nations have passed through the valley of theshadow of death in the middle of the fifthround, and have worked their way up to it inthe sixth and seventh rounds.

This sublimely blessed state is spoken of inesoteric science as the threshold of Nirvana.

Is it worth while to go any farther in specu-lation as to what follows ? One may be toldthat no state of individual consciousness, eventhough but a phase of feeling already identifiedin a large measure with the general conscious-ness on that level of existence, can be equal inspiritual elevation to absolute consciousness inwhich all sense of individuality is merged in thewhole. We may use such phrases as intellect-ual counters, but for no ordinar}^ mind — dom-inated by its physical brain and brain-born in-tellect — can they have a living signification.^ All that words can conve}^ is that Nirvana is

• a sublime state of conscious rest in omniscience.It would be ludicrous, after all that has gone

before, to turn to the various discussions wliichhave been carried on by students of exotericBuddhism as to whether Nirvana does or doesnot mean annihilation. Worldly similes fallshort of indicating the feeling with which thegraduates of esoteric science regard such a ques-tion. Does the last penalty of the law meanthe highest honor of the peerage? Is a woodenspoon the emblem of the most illustrious pre-eminence in learning ? Such questions as thesebut faintly symbolize the extravagance of thequestion whether Nirvana is held by Buddhismto be equivalent to annihilation. And in some,to us inconceivable, way the state of para-Nir-vana is spoken of as immeasurably higher thanthat of Nirvana. I do not pretend myself toattach any meaning to the statement, but itmay serve to show to what a very transcenden-tal realm of thought the subject belongs.

A great deal of confusion of mind respectingNirvana has arisen from statements made con-cerning Buddha. He is said to have attainedNirvana while on earth ; he is also said to haveforegone Nirvana in order to submit to renewedincarnations for the good of humanity. Thetwo statements are quite reconcilable. As agreat adept, Buddha naturally attained to thatwhich is the great achievement of adeptship onearth, — the passing of his own Ego-spirit into

the ineffable condition of Nirvana. Let it notbe supposed that for any adept such a passageis one that can be lightly undertaken. Onlystray hints about the nature of this great mys-tery have reached me, but putting these to-gether I believe I am right in saying that theachievement in question is one which only someof the high initiates are qualified to attempt,which exacts a total suspension of animation inthe body for periods of time compared to whichthe longest cataleptic trances known to ordinaryscience are insignificant, the protection of thephysical frame from natural decay during thisperiod by means which the resources of occultscience are strained to accomplish ; and withalit is a process involving a double risk to thecontinued earthly life of the person who un-dertakes it. One of these risks is the doubtwhether, when once Nirvana is attained, theEgo will be willing to return. That the returnwill be a terrible effort and sacrifice is certain,and will only be prompted by the most devotedattachment on the part of the spiritual travelerto the idea of duty in its purest abstraction.The second great risk is that, allowing the senseof duty to predominate over the temptation tostay,— a temptation, be it remembered, that isnot weakened by the notion that any conceivablepenalty can attach to it, — even then it is al-

ways doubtful whether the traveler will be ableto return. In spite of all this, however, therehave been many other adepts besides Buddhawho have made the great passage, and forwhom, those about them at such times havesaid, the return to their prison of ignoble flesh— though so noble ex hypothesi compared tomost such tenements — has left them paralyzedwith depression for weeks. To begin the wearyround of physical life again, to stoop to earthafter having been in Nirvana, is too dreadfula collapse.

Buddha's renunciation was in some inexpli-cable manner greater, again, because he notmerely returned from Nirvana for duty's sake,to finish the earth-life in which he was engagedas Gautama Buddha, but when all the claimsof duty had been fully satisfied, and his rightof passage into Nirvana, for incalculable jeonsentirely earned under the most enlarged viewof his earthly mission, he gave up that reward,or rather postponed it for an indefinite period,to undertake a supererogatory series of incarna-tions, for the sake of humanity at large. Howis humanity being benefited by this renuncia-tion ? it may be asked. But the question canonly be suggested in realit}^ by that deep-seatedhabit, we have most of us acquired, of estimat-ing benefit by a physical standard, and even

in regard to this standard of taking very sliortviews of human affau-s. No one will have fol-lowed me through the foregoing chapter on theProgress of Humanity without perceiving whatkind of benefit it would be that Buddha wouldwish to confer on men. That which is neces-sarily for him the great question in regard tohumanity is how to help as many people as pos-sible across the great critical period of the fifthround.

Until that time everything is a mere prepa-ration for the supreme struggle, in the estima-tion of an adept, all the more of a Buddha.The material welfare of the existing generationis not even as dust in the balance in such a cal-culation ; the only thing of importance at pres-ent is to cultivate those tendencies in mankindwhich may launch as many Egos as possibleupon such a Karmic path that the growth oftheir spirituality in future births will be pro-moted. Certainly it is the fixed conviction ofesoteric teachers — of the adept co-workers withBuddha — that the very process of cultivatingsuch spirituality will immensely reduce the suraof even transitory human sorrow. And thehappiness of mankind, even in any one gener-ation only, is by no means a matter on whichesoteric science looks with indifference. So theesoteric policy is not to be considered as some-

thing so hopelessly up m the air that it willnever concern any of us who are living now.But there are seasons of good and bad harvestfor wheat and barley, and so also for the de-sired growth of spirituality amongst men; andin Europe, at all events, going by the experi-ence of former great races, at periods of devel-opment corresponding to that of our own now,the great present uprush of intelligence in thedirection of physical and material progress isnot likely to bring on a season of good harvestsfor progress of the other kind. For the mo-ment the best chance of doing good in coun-tries where the uprush referred to is mostmarked is held to lie in the possibility thatthe importance of spirituality may come to beperceived by intellect, even in advance of be-ing felt, if the attention of that keen thoughunsympathetic tribunal can but be secured.Any success in that direction to which theseexphmations may conduce will justify the viewsof those — but a minority — among the esotericguardians of humanity who have conceived thatit is worth while to have them made.

So Nirvana is truly the keynote of esotericBuddhism, as of the hitherto rather misdirectedstudies of external scholars. Tlie great end ofthe whole stupendous evolution of humanity isto cultivate human souls so that they shall be

16

ultimately fit for that as yet inconceivable con-dition. The great triumph of the present raceof planetary spirits wlio have reached that con-dition themselves will be to draw thither asmany more Egos as possible. We are far asyet from the era at which we may be in seriousdanger of disqualifying ourselves definitivelyfor such progress, but it is not too soon evennow to begin the great process of qualification;all the more as the Karma, wbich will prop-agate itself through successive lives in thatdirection, will carry its own reward with it, sothat an enlightened pursuit of our highest in-terests in the verj^ remote future will coincidewith the pursuit of our immediate welfare inthe next Devachanic period, and the next re-birth.

Will it be argued that if the cultivation ofspirituality is the great purpose to be followed,it matters little whether men pursue it alongone religious pathway or another ? This is themistake which, as explained in a former chap-ter, Buddha as Sankaracharya set himself es-pecially to combat, — namely, the early Hindubelief that mokslia can be attained by hliaktiirrespective of gnyanam; that is, that salva-tion is obtainable by devout practices irrespec-tive of knowledge of eternal truth. The sortof salvation we are talking about now is not

escape from a penalty, to be achieved by cajol-ing a celestial potentate ; it is a positive andnot a negative achievement, — the ascent intoregions of spiritual elevation so exalted thatthe candidate aiming at them is claiming thatwhich we ordinarily describe as omniscience.Surely it is plain, from the way Nature habit- yually works, that under no circumstances willa time ever come when a person, merely byreason of having been good, will suddenly be-come wise. The supreme goodness and ivisdomof the sixth-round man, who, once becomingthat, will assimilate by degrees the attributesof divinity itself, can only be grown by degreesthemselves; and goodness alone, associated aswe so often find it with the most grotesque re-ligious beliefs, cannot conduct a man to morethan Devachanic periods of devout but unin-telligent rapture, and in the end, if similar con-ditions are reproduced through many existences,to some painless extinction of individuality atthe great crisis.

It is by a steady pursuit of and desire forreal spiritual truth, not by an idle, howeverwell-meaning acquiescence in the fashionabledogmas of the nearest church, that men launchtheir souls into the subjective state, preparedto imbibe real knowledge from the latent om-niscience of their own sixth principles, and to

244 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

re-incarnate in due time with impulses in tliesame direction. Nothing can produce moredisastrous effects on human progress as regardsthe destiny of individuals than the very preva-lent notion that one religion, followed out in apious spirit, is as good as another, and that ifsuch and such doctrines are perhaps absurdwhen you look into them, the great majority ofgood people will never think of their absurdity,but will recite them in a blamelessly devotedattitude of mind. One religion is by no meansas good as another, even if all were productiveof equally blameless lives. But I prefer toavoid all criticism of specific faiths, leaving thisvolume a simple and inoffensive statement ofthe real inner doctrines of the one great re-ligion of the world which — presenting as itdoes in its external aspects a bloodless and in-nocent record — has thus been really produc-tive of blameless lives throughout its wholeexistence. Moreover, it would not be by a ser-vile acceptance even of its doctrines that thedevelopment of true spirituality is to be culti-vated. It is by the disposition to seek truth, totest and examine all which presents itself asclaiming belief, that the great result is to bebrought about. In the East, such a resolutionin the highest degree leads to chelaship, to thepursuit of truth, knowledge, by the develop.

NIRVANA. 245

ment of inner faculties by means of which itmay be cognized with certainty. In the West,the realm of intellect, as the w^orlcl is mappedout at present, truth unfortunately can only bepursued and hunted out with the help of manywords and much wrangling and disputation.But at all events it may be hunted, and, if it isnot finally captured, the chase on the part ofthe hunters will have engendered instincts thatwill propagate themselves and lead to resultshereafter.

CHAPTER XL

THE UNIVERSE.

In all Oriental literature bearing on the con-stitution of all the cosmos, frequent referenceis made to the days and the nights of Brahma;the inbreathings and the outbreathings of thecreative principle, the periods of manvantara^and the periods of pralaya. This idea runsinto various Eastern mythologies, but in itssymbolical aspects we need not follow it here.The process in Nature to which it refers is ofcourse the alternate succession of activity andrepose that is observable at every step of thegreat ascent from the infinitely small to the in-finitely great. Man has a manvantara and pra-laya every four-and-twenty hours, his periodsof waking and sleeping ; vegetation follows thesame rule from year to year as it subsides andrevives with the seasons. The world too has its

1 As transliterated into English, this word ma}' be written eithermanwantara or manvantara; and the proper pronunciation issomething between the two, with the accent on the second sylla-ble.

manvantaras and pralayas, when the tide-waveof humanity approaches its shore, runs throughthe evolution of its seven races, and ebbs awayagain ; and such a manvantara has been treatedby most exoteric religions as the whole cycle ofeternity.

The major manvantara of our planetarychahi is that which comes to an end when thelast Dhyan Chohan of the seventh round ofperfected humanity passes into Nirvana. Andthe expression has thus to be regarded as oneof considerable elasticit3^ It may be said in-deed to have infinite elasticity, and that is oneexplanation of the confusion which has reignedin all treatises on Eastern religions in their pop-ular aspects. All the root-words transferred topopular literature from the secret doctrine havea seven-fold significance, at least for the initiate,while the uninitiated reader, naturally suppos-ing that one word means one thing, and trjdngalways to clear up its meaning by collating itsvarious applications, and striking an average,gets into the most hopeless embarrassment.

The planetary chain with which we are con-cerned is not the only one which has our sunas its centre. As there are other planets be-sides the Earth in our chain, so there are otherchains besides this in our solar system. Thereare seven such, and there comes a time when

all these go into pralaya together. This isspoken of as a solar pralaya, and within theinterval between two such pralayas the vastsolar manvantara covers seven pralayas andmanvantaras of our — and each other — plan-etary chain. Thought is baffled, say even theadepts, in speculating as to how many of oursolar pralayas must come before the great cos-mic night in which the whole universe, in itscollective enormity, obeys what is manifestlythe universal law of activity and repose, andwith all its myriad systems passes itself intopralaya. But even that tremendous result,says esoteric science, must surely come.

After the pralaya of a single planetary chainthere is no necessity for a recommencement ofevolutionary activity absolutely de novo. Thereis only a resumption of arrested activity. Thevegetable and animal kingdoms, which at theend of the last corresponding manvantara hadreached only a partial development, are notdestroyed. Their life or vital energy passesthrough a night or period of rest; they alsohave, so to speak, a Nirvana of their own, aswhy should they not, these foetal and infant en-tities ? They are all like ourselves, begotten ofthe one element. As we have our Dbyan Cho-hans, so have they, in their several kingdoms,elemental guardians, and are as well taken care

of in tlie mass as humanity is in the mass. Theone element not only fills space and is space,but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic mat-ter.

When, however, the hour of the solar pralayastrikes, though the process of man s advance onhis last seventh round is precisely the same asusual, each planet, instead of merely passingout of the visible into the invisible, as he quitsit in turn, is annihilated. With the beginningof the seventh round of the seventh planetarychain manvantara, every kingdom having nowreached its last cycle, there remains on eachplanet, after the exit of man, merely the mayaof once living and existing forms. With everystep he takes on the descending and ascendingarcs, as he moves on from globe to globe tlieplanet left beliind becomes an empty chrysa-loidal case. At his departure there is an out-flow from every kingdom of its entities. Wait-ing to pass into higher forms in due time, theyare nevertheless liberated, and to the day of thenext evolution they will rest in their lethargicsleep in space, until brought into life again atthe new solar manvantara. The old elementalswill rest till they are called on to become intheir turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable, andanimal entities on another and a higher chain ofglobes on their way to become human entities,

while the germinal entities of the lowest forms— and at tliat time there will remain but fewof such — Avill hang in space, like drops ofwater suddenly turned into icicles. They willthaw at the first hot breath of the new solarmanvantara, and form the soul of the futureglobes. The slow development of the vegeta-ble kingdom, up to the period we are now deal-ing with, will have been provided for by thelonger interplanetary rest of man. When thesolar pralaya comes, the whole purified human-ity merges into Nirvana, and from that inter-solar Nirvana will be reborn in the higher sys-tems. The strings of worlds are destroyed,and vanish like a shadow from the wall whenthe light is extinguished. " We have everyindication," say the adepts, '' that at this verymoment such a solar pralaya is taking place,while there are two minor ones ending some-where."

At the beginning of the solar manvantarathe hitherto subjective elements of the materialworlds, now scattered in cosmic dust, receivingtheir impulse from the new Dhyan Chohans ofthe new solar system (the highest of the oldones having gone higher) will form into pri-mordial ripples of life, and, separating into dif-ferentiating centres of activity, combine in agraduated scale of seven stages of evolution.

Like every other orb of space, our earth has, be-fore obtaining its ultimate materiality, to passthrough a gamut of seven stages of density.Nothing in this world now can give us an ideaof what an ultimate stage of materiality is like.The French astronomer Flammarion, in a bookcalled " La Resurrection et la Fin des Mondes,"has approached a conception of this ultimatemateriality. The facts are, I am informed,■with slight modifications, much as he surmises.In consequence of what he treats as secular re-frigeration, but which more truly is old ageand loss of vital power, the solidification anddesiccation of the earth at last reaches a pointwhen the whole globe becomes a relaxed con-glomerate. Its period of child-bearing has goneby ; its progeny are all nurtured; its term oflife is finished. Hence its constituent massescease to obey those laws of cohesion and aggre-gation which held them together. And becom-ing like a corpse, which, abandoned to the workof destruction, leaves each molecule composingit free to separate itself from the body, andobey in future the sway of new influences, " theattraction of the moon," suggests M. Flamma-rion, " would itself undertake the task of demo-lition by producing a tidal wave of earth parti-cles instead of an aqueous ti(U'." This last ideamust not be regarded as countenanced by oc-

cult science except so far as it may serve toillustrate the loss of molecular cohesion in thematerial of the earth.

Occult physics pass fairly into the region ofmetaphysics, if we seek to obtain some indica-tion of the way in which evolution recommencesafter a universal pralaya.

The one eternal, imperishable thing in theuniverse, which universal pralayas themselvespass over without destroying, is that whichmay be regarded indifferently as space, dura-tion, matter, or motion ; not as something hav-ing these four attributes, but as somethingwhich is these four things at once, and always.And evolution takes its rise in the atomic po-larity which motion engenders. In cosmogonythe positive and the negative, or the active andpassive, forces correspond to the male and fe-male principles. The spiritual efflux entersinto the veil of cosmic matter; the active isattracted by the .passive principle, and if wemay here assist imagination by having recourseto old occult symbology, the great Nag, theserpent emblem of eternity, attracts its tail toits mouth, forming thereby the circle of eter-nity, or rather cycles in eternit3^ The oneand chief attribute of the universal spiritualprinciple, the unconscious but ever active life-giver, is to expand and shed; that of the uni-

versal material piinciple is to gather in andfecundate. Unconscious and non-existing whenseparate, they become consciousness and lifewhen brought together. The word Brahmacomes from the Sanskrit root hrih^ to expand,grow, or fructify, esoteric cosmogony being butthe vivifying expansive force of Nature in itseternal revolution. No one expression can havecontributed more to mislead the human mindin basic speculation concerning the origin ofthincrs than the word "creation." Talk of ere-ation and we are continually butting against thefacts. But once realize that our planet and our-selves are no more creations than an iceberg, butstates of being for a given time, — that theirpresent appearance, geological and anthropolog-ical, are transitory and but a condition concom-itant of that stage of evolution at which theyhave arrived, — and the way has been preparedfor correct thinking. Then we are enabled tosee what is meant by the one and only princi-ple or element in the universe, and by the treat-ment of that element as androgynous ; also bythe proclamation of Hindu philosophy that allthings are but maija., transitory states, exceptthe one element which rests during the maha-pralayas only, — the nights of Brahma.

Perhaps we have now plunged deeply enoughinto the fathomless mystery of the great First

Cause. It is no paradox to say that simplyby reason of ignorance do ordinary theologiansthink they know so much about God. And itis no exaggeration to say that the wondrouslyendowed representatives of occult science, whosemortal nature has been so far elevated andpurified that their perceptions range over otherworlds and other states of existence, and com-mune directly with beings as much greaterthan ordinary mankind as man is greater thanthe insects of the field, — it is the mere truth,that they never occupy themselves at all Tvithany conception remotely resembling the God ofchurches and creeds. Within the limits of thesolar system, the mortal adept knows, of hisown knowledge, that all things are accountedfor by law, working on matter in its diverseforms, ^Zws the guiding and modifying influenceof the highest intelligences associated with thesolar system, the Dhyan Chohans, the perfectedhumanity of the last preceding manvantara.These Dhyan Chohans, or planetary spirits, onwhose nature it is almost fruitless to ponderuntil one can at least realize the nature of dis-embodied existence in one's own case, impartto the reawakening worlds at the end of aplanetary chain pralaya such impulses that ev-olution feels them throughout its whole prog-ress. The limits of Nature's great law restrain

their action. They cannot say, Let there beparadise throughout space, let all men be bornsupremely wise and good ; they can only workthrough the principle of evolution, and theycannot deny to any man who is to be investedwith the potentiality of development himselfinto a Dhyan Chohan the right to do evil ifhe prefers that to good. Nor can they preventevil, if done, from producing suffering. Ob-jective life is the soil in which the life-germsare planted; spiritual existence (the expressionbeing used, remember, in contrast merely togrossly material existence) is the flower to beultimately obtained. But the %^uman germ issomething more than a flower-seed ; it has lib-erty of choice in regard to growing up or grow-ing down, and it could not be developed with-out such liberty being exercised by the plant.This is the necessity of evil. But within thelimits that logical necessity prescribes, theDhyan Chohan impresses his conceptions uponthe evolutionary tide, and comprehends the ori-gin of all that he beholds.

Surely as we ponder in this way over themagnitude of the cyclic evolution with whichesoteric science is in this way engaged, it seemsreasonable to postpone considerations as to theorigin of the whole cosmos. The ordinary manin this earth-life, with certainly some hundred

many earth-lives to come, and then very muchmany important intcr-incarnation periods (moreimportant, that is, as regards duration and theprospect of happiness or sorrow) also in pros-pect, may surely be most wisely occupied withthe inquiries whose issue will affect practicalresults than with speculation in which he ispractically quite uninterested. Of course fromthe point of view of religious speculation rest-ing on no positive knowledge of anything be-yond this life, nothing can be more importantor more highly practical than conjectures as tothe attributes and probable intentions of thepersonal, terrible Jehovah, pictured as an om-nipotent tribunal into whose presence the soulat its death is to be introduced for judgment.But scientific knowledge of spiritual thingsthrows back the day of judgment into a verydim perspective, the intervening period beingfilled with activity of all kinds. Moreover, itshows mankind that certainly, for millions andmillions of centuries to come, it will not be con-fronted with any judge at all, other than thatall-pervading judge, that seventh principle, oruniversal spirit, which exists everywhere, and,operating on matter, provokes the existence ofman himself, and the world in which he lives,and the future conditions towards which he ispressing. The seventh principle, undefinable,

incomprehensible for us at our present stagesof enlightenment, is of course the only Godrecognized by esoteric knowledge, and no per-sonification of this can be otherwise than sym-bolical.

And yet in truth esoteric knowledge, givinglife and reality to ancient symbolism in onedirection as often as it conflicts with moderndogma in the other, shows us how far fromabsolutely fabulous are even the most anthro-pomorphic notions of Deity associated by ex-oteric tradition with the beginning of tlie world.The planetary spirit, actually incarnated amongmen in the first round, was the prototype ofpersonal Deity in all subsequent developmentsof the idea. The mistake made by uninstructedmen in dealing with the idea is merely one ofdegree. The personal God of an insignificantminor manvantara has been taken for the Cre-ator of the whole cosmos,— a most natural mis-take for people forced, by knowing no more ofhuman destiny than was included in one ob-jective incarnation, to suppose that all be^^ondwas a homogeneous spiritual future. The Godof this life, of course, for them, was the God ofall lives and worlds and periods.

The reader will not misunderstand me, Itrust, to mean that esoteric science regards theplanetary spirit of the first round as a god.17

As I say, it is concerned with the working ofNature in an immeasurable space, from an im-measurable past, and all through immeasurablefuture. The enormous areas of time and spacein which our solar system operates is explor-able by the mortal adepts of esoteric science.Within those limits they know all that takesplace and how it takes place, and they knowthat everything is accounted for by the con-structive will of the collective host of theplanetary spirits, operating under the law of ev-olution that pervades all Nature. They com-mune with these planetary spirits, and learnfrom them that the law of this is the law ofother solar systems as well, into the regions ofwhich the perceptive faculties of the planetaryspirits can plunge, as the perceptive facultiesof the adepts themselves can plunge into thelife of other planets of this chain. The lawof alternating activity and repose is operatinguniversally; for the whole cosmos, even thoughat unthinkable intervals, pralaya must succeedmanvantara, and manvantara pralaya.

Will any one ask. To what end does thiseternal succession work? It is better to con-fine the question to a single system, and ask. Towhat end does the original nebula arrange itselfin planetary vortices of evolution, and developworlds in which the universal spirit, reverber.

ating tlirougli matter, produces form and lifeand those higher states of matter in which thatwhich we call subjective or spiritual existenceis provided for ? Surely it is end enough to sat-isfy any reasonable mind that such sublimelyperfected beings as the planetary spirits them-selves come thus into existence, and live a con-scious life of supreme knowledge and felicitythrough vistas of time which are equivalent toall we can imagine of eternity. Into this un-utterable greatness every living thing has theopportunity of passing ultimately. The spiritwhich is in every animated form, and whichhas even worked up into these from formswe are generally in the habit of calling inan-imate, will slowly but certainly progress on-wards until the working of its untiring influencein matter has evolved a human soul. It doesnot follow that the plants and animals aroundus have any principle evolved in them as yetwhich will assume a human form in the courseof the present manvantara; but though thecourse of an incomplete revolution may be sus-pended by a period of natural repose, it is notrendered abortive. Eventually every spiritualmonad, itself a sinless unconscious principle,will work through conscious forms on lowerlevels, until these, throwing off one after an-other higher and higher forms, will produce that

in which the God-like consciousness may befully evoked. Certainly it is not by reason ofthe grandeur of any human conceptions as towhat would be an adequate reason for the ex-istence of the universe that such a consumma-tion can appear an insufficient purpose, not evenif the final destiny of the planetary spirit him-self, after periods to which his developmentfrom the mineral forms of primeval worlds is buta childhood in the recollection of the man, is tomerge his glorified individuality into that sumtotal of all consciousness, which esoteric meta-physics treat as absolute consciousness, whichis non-consciousness. These paradoxical expres-sions are simply counters representing ideas thatthe human mind is not qualified to apprehend,and it is waste of time to haggle over them.

These considerations supply the key to eso-teric Buddhism, a more direct outcome of theuniversal esoteric doctrine than any otlier pop-ular religion ; for the effort in its constructionhas been to make men love virtue for its ownsake and for its good effect on their futureincarnations, not to keep them in subjectionto any priestly sj^stem or dogma by terrifyingtlieir fancy with the doctrine of a personaljudge waiting to try them for more than theirlives at their death. Mr. Lillie is mistaken,admirable as his intention has been, and syrai

THE UNIVERSE. 261

pathetic as his mind evidently is with the beau-tiful morality and aspiration of Buddhism, indeducing from its temple ritual the notion of apersonal God. No such conception enters intothe great esoteric doctrine of Nature, of whichthis volume has furnished an imperfect sketch.Nor even in reference to the farthest regions ofthe immensity beyond our own planetary sys-tem does the adept exponent of the esotericdoctrine tolerate the adoption of an agnosticattitude. It will not suffice for him to say,"As far as the elevated senses of planetaryspirits, whose cognition extends to the outer-most limits of the starry heavens, — as far astheir vision can extend Nature is self-sufficing ;as to what may lie beyond we offer no hypoth-esis." What the adept really says on this headis, " The universe is boundless, and it is a stul-tification of thought to talk of any hypothesissetting in beyond the boundless, — on the otherside of the limits of the limitless."

Tliat which antedates every manifestation ofthe universe, and would lie beyond the limit ofmanifestation, if such limit could ever be found,is that which underlies the manifested universewithin our own purview, — matter animatedby motion, its parabrahm, or spirit. Matter,space, motion, and duration constitute one andthe same eternal substance of the universe.

There is nothing else eternal absolutely. Thatis the first state of matter, itself perfectly un-cognizable by physical senses, which deal withmanifested matter, another state altogether.But though thus, in one sense of the word, ma-terialistic, the esoteric doctrine, as any readerof the foregoing explanations will have seen, isas far from resembling the gross narrow-mindedconception of Nature, which ordinarily goes bythe name of materialism, as the north polelooks away from the south. It stoops to ma-terialism, as it were, to link its methods withthe logic of that system, and ascends to thehighest realms of idealism to embrace and ex-pound the most exalted aspirations of spirit.As it cannot be too frequently or earnestly re-peated, it is the union of science with Religion,— the bridge by which the most acute and cau-tious pursuers of experimental knowledge maycross over to the most enthusiastic devotee, bymeans of which the most enthusiastic devoteemay return to eai'th and yet keep heaven stillaround him.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DOCTKINE KEVIEWED.

Long familiarity with the esoteric doctrinewill alone give rise to a full perception of themanner in which it harmonizes with facts ofNature such as we are all in a position to ob-serve. But something may be done to indi-cate the correspondences that may be tracedbetween the whole body of teaching now setforth and the phenomena of the world aroundus.

Beginning with the two great perplexities ofordinary philosophy, —the conflict between free-will and predestination and the origin of evil,—it will surely be recognized that the systemof Nature now explained enables us to dealwith those problems more boldly than they haveever yet been handled. Till now the most pru-dent thinkers have been least disposed to pro-fess that either by the aid of metaphysics orreligion could the mystery of free-will andpredestination be unraveled. The tendency ofthought has been to relegate the whole enigma

to the region of the unknowable. And strangeto say this has been done contentedly by jDeo-pie who have been none the less contented toaccept as more than a provisional hypothesisthe religious doctrines which thus remained in-capable of reconciliation with some of theirown most obvious consequences. The omnis-cience of a personal Creator, ranging over thefuture as well as the past, left man no room toexercise the independent authority over hisown destinies, which nevertheless it was ab-solutely necessary to a.llow him to exercise inorder that the policy of punishing or rewardinghim for his acts in life could be recognized asanything but the most grotesque injustice. Onegreat English philosopher, frankly facing theembarrassment, declared in a famous posthu-mous essay that by reason of these considera-tions it was impossible that God could be all-good and all-potent. People were free to in-vest him logically with one or other of theseattributes, but not with both. The argumentwas treated with the respect due to the greatreputation of its author, and put aside with thediscretion due to respect for orthodox tenets.

But the esoteric doctrine conies to our rescuein this emergency. First of all it honestly takesinto account the insignificant size of this worldcompared to the universe. This is a fact of

Nature, which the early Christian church fearedwith a true instinct, and treated with thecruelty of terror. The truth was denied, andits authors were tortured for many centuries.Established at last beyond even the authorityof paj^al negations, the church resorted to the"desperate expedient," to quote Mr. RhysDavids' phrase, of pretending that it did notmatter.

The pretense till now has been more success-ful than its authors could have hoped. Whenthey dreaded astronomical discovery, they w^erecrediting the world at large with more remorse-less logic than it ultimately showed any in-clination to employ. People have been foundwilUng, as a rule, to do that which I have de-scribed esoteric Buddhism as not requiring usto do, — to keep their science and their relig-ion in separate water-tight compartments. Solong and so thoroughly has this principle beenworked upon that it has finally ceased to bean argument against the credibility of a relig-ious dogma to point out that it is impossible.But when we establish a connection betweenour hitherto divided reservoirs and requirethem to stand at the same level, we cannotfail to see how the insignificance of the earth'smagnitude diminishes in a corresponding pro-portion the plausibility of theories that require

US to regard the details of our own lives aspart of the general stock of a universal Crea-tor's omniscience. On the contrary, it is un-reasonable to suppose that the creatures inhab-iting one of the smaller planets of one of thesmaller suns in the ocean of the universe, wheresuns are but water-drops in the sea, are exemptin any way from the general principle of gov-ernment by law. But that principle cannot co-exist with government by caprice, which is anessential condition of such predestination asconventional discussions of the problems beforeus associate with the use of the word. For,be it observed that the predestination whichconflicts with free-will is not the predestina-tion of races, but individual predestination,associated with the ideas of divine grace orwrath. The predestination of races, under lawsanalogous to those which control the generaltendency of any multitude of independentchances, is perfectly compatible with individualfree-will, and thus it is that the esoteric doc-trine reconciles the long-standing contradictionof Nature. Man has control over his own des-tiny within constitutional limits, so to speak ;he is perfectly free to make use of his naturalrights as far as they go, and they go practicallyto infinity as far as he, the individual unit, isconcerned. But the average human action,

under given conditions, taking a vast multiplic-ity of units into account, provides for the un-failing evolution of the cycles which constitutetheir collective destiny.

Individual predestination, it is true, may beasserted, not as a religious dogma having to dowith divine grace or wrath, but on purely met-aphysical grounds ; that is to say, it may beargued that each human creature is fundamen-"tally, in in fan C}^, subject to the same influenceby similar circumstances, and that an adult lifeis thus merely the product or impression of allthe circumstances which have influenced such alife from the beginning, so that if those circum-stances were known the moral and intellectualresult would be known. By this train of reason-ing it can be made to appear that the circum-stances of each man's life may be theoreticallyknowable by a sufficiently searching intelli-gence ; that hereditary tendencies, for example,are but products of antecedent circumstancesentering into any given calculation as a pertur-bation, but not the less calculable on that ac-count. This contention, however, is no less indirect conflict with the consciousness of human-ity than the religious dogma of individual pre-destination. The sense of free-will is a factorin the process which cannot be ignored, and thefree-will of which we are thus sensible is not a

mere automatic impulse, like the twitching of adead frog's leg. The ordinary religious dogmaand the ordinary metaphysical argument bothrequire us to regard it in that light; but theesoteric doctrine restores it to its true dignity,and shows us the scope of its activity, the lim-its of its sovereignty. It is sovereign over theindividual career, but impotent in presence ofthe cyclic law, which even so positive a philos-opher as Draper detects in human history, —brief as the period is which he is enabled to ob-serve. And none the less does that collateralquicksand of thought which J. S. Mill discernedalongside the contradictions of theology — thegreat question whether speculation must workwith the all-good or all-potent hypothesis —find its explanation in the system now dis-closed. Those great beings, the perfected efflo-rescence of former humanity, w^ho, though farfrom constituting a supreme God, reign never-theless in a divine way over the destinies of ourworld, are not only not omnipotent, but, greatas they are, are restricted as regards their ac-tion by comparatively narrow limits. It wouldseem as if, when the stage is, so to speak, pre-pared afresh for a new drama of life, they areable to introduce some improvements into theaction, derived from their own experience inthe drama with which they were concerned,

but are only capable, as regards the main con-struction of the piece, of repeating that whichhas been represented before. They can do ona large scale what a gardener can do with dah-lias on a small one ; he can evolve considerableimprovements in form and color, but his flow-ers, however carefully tended, will be dahliasstill.

Is it nothing, one may ask in passing, in sup-port of the acceptability of the esoteric doctrine,that natural analogies support it at every turn ?As it is below, so it is above, wrote the earlyoctult philosophers; the microcosm is a mirrorof the macrocosm. All Nature lying withinthe sphere of our physical observation verifiesthe rule, so far as that limited area can exhibitany principles. The structure of lower animalsis reproduced with modifications in higher ani-mals, and in man ; the fine fibres of the leaframify like the branches of the tree, and themicroscope follows such ramifications, repeatedbeyond the range of the naked eye. The dust-laden currents of rain-water by the roadsidedeposit therein " sedimentary rocks" in thepuddles they develop, just as the rivers do inthe lakes and the great waters of the world overthe sea-bed. The geological work of a pondand that of an ocean differ merely in theirscale, and it is only in scale that the esoteric

doctrine shows the sublimest laws of Naturediffering, in their jurisdiction over the manand their jurisdiction over the planetary family.As the children of each human generation aretended in infancy by their parents, and growup to tend another generation in their turn, soin the whole humanity of the great manvantaricperiods the men of one generation grow to bethe Dhyan Chohans of the next, and then yieldtheir places in the ultimate progress of time totheir descendants, and pass themselves to higherconditions of existence.

Not less decisively than it answers the ques-tion about free-will does the esoteric doctrinedeal with the existence of evil. This subjecthas been discussed in its place in the precedingchapter on the Progress of Humanity, but theesoteric doctrine, it will be seen, grapples withthe great problem more closely than by themere enunciation of the way human free-will,which it is the purpose of Nature to grow, nndcultivate into Dhyan Chohanship, must by thehypothesis be free to develop evil itself if itlikes. So much for the broad principle in oper-ation ; but the way it works is traceable in thepresent teaching as clearly as the principle it-self. It works through physical Karma, andcould not but work that way except by a sus-pension of the invariable law that causes can-

not but produce effects. The objective manborn into the physical world is just as muchthe creation of the person he last animated asthe subjective man who has in the interim beenliving the Devachanic existence. The evil thatmen do lives after them, in a more literal senseeven than Shakespeare intended by those words.It may be asked, How can the moral guilt of aman in one life cause him to be born blind orcrippled at a different period of the world's his-tory several thousand years later, of parentswith whom he has had, through his former life,no lack of physical connection whatever ? Butthe difficulty is met by considering the opera-tion of affinities more easily than may be im-agined at the first glance. The blind or crip-pled child, as regards his physical frame, mayhave been the potentiality rather than the prod-uct of local circumstances. But he would nothave come into existence unless there had beena spiritual monad pressing forward for incarna-tion, and bearing with it a fifth principle (somuch of a fifth principle as is persistent, ofcourse) precisely adapted by its Karma to in-habit that potential body. Given these circum-stances, and the imperfectly organized child isconceived and brought into the world, to be acause of trouble to himself and others — aneffect becoming a cause in its turn — and a liv-

ing enigma for philosophers endeavoring to ex-plain the origin of evil.

The same explanation applies, with modifica-tions, to a vast range of cases that might becited to illustrate the problem of evil in theworld. Incidentally, moreover, it covers a ques-tion connected with the operation of the Karmiclaw that can hardly be called a difficulty, asthe answer would probably be suggested by thebearings of the doctrine itself, but is none theless entitled to notice. The selective assimi-lation of Karma-laden spirits with parentagewhich corresponds to tbeir necessities or desertsis the obvious explanation which reconcilesrebirth with atavism and heredity. The childborn may seem to reproduce the moral andmental peculiarities of parents or ancestors aswell as their physical likeness, and the factsuggests the notion that his soul is as much anoffshoot of the family tree as his physical frame.It is unnecessary to enlarge here on the multi-farious embarrassments by Avhich that theorywould be surrounded, on the extravagance ofsupposing that a soul thus thrown off, like aspark from an anvil, without any spiritual pastbehind it, can have a spiritual future before it.The soul, which was thus merely a function ofthe body, would certainly come to an end withthe dissolution of that out of which it arose

The esoteric doctrine, however, as regards trans-mitted characteristics, will afford a completeexplanation of that phenomenon, as well as allothers connected with human life. The familyinto which he is born is to the re-incarnatingspirit what a new planet is to the whole tideof humanity on a round along the manvantaricchain. It has been built up by a process ofevolution workini^j on a line transverse to thatof humanity's approach; but it is fit for human-ity to inhabit when the time comes. So withthe re - incarnating spirit: it presses forwardinto the objective world, the influences whichhave retained it in the Devaclianic state havingbeen exhausted, and it touches the spring ofNature, so to speak, provoking the developmentof a child which without such an impulse wouldmerely have been a potentiality, not an actualdevelopment, but in whose parentage it finds— of course unconsciously by the blind opera-tion of its aflfinities — the exact conditions ofrenewed life for which it has prepared itselfduring its last existence. Certainly we mustnever forget the presence of exceptions in allbroad rules of Nature. In the present caseit may sometimes happen that mere accidentcauses an injury to a child at birth. Thus acrippled frame may come to be bestowed on aspirit whose Karma has by no means earned18

that penalty, and so with a great variety of ac-cidents. But of these all that need be said isthat Nature is not at all embarrassed by heraccidents; she has ample time to repair them.The undeserved suffering of one life is am23lyredressed under the operation of the Karmiclaw in the next or the next. There is plentyof time for making the account even, and theadepts declare, I believe, that, as a matter offact, in the long run undeserved suffering oper-ates as good luck rather than otherwise, therebyderiving from a purely scientific observationof facts a doctrine which religion has benevo-lently invented sometimes for the consolation ofthe afflicted.

While the esoteric doctrine affords in thisway an unexpected solution of the most per-plexing phenomena of life, it does this at nosacrifice in any direction of the attributes wemay fairly expect of a true religious science.Foremost among the claims we may make onsuch a system is that it shall contemplateno injustice, either in the direction of wrongdone to the deserving, or of benefits bestowedon the undeserving ; and the justice of its oper-ation must be discernible in great things andsmall alike. The legal maxim, de minimis noncurat lex^ is means of escape for human fallibil-ity from the consequences of its own im per fee-

tions. There is no such thing as indifferenceto small things in chemistry or mechanics.Nature in physical operations responds with ex-actitude to small causes as certainly as to great,and we may feel instinctively sure that in herspiritual operations also she has no clumsy habitof treating trifles as of no consequence, of ig-noring small debts in consideration of payingbig ones, like a trader of doubtful integrity con-tent to respect obligations which are seriousenough to be enforced by law. Now the minoracts of life, good and bad alike, are of necessityignored under any system which makes the finalquestion at stake, admission to or exclusionfrom a uniform or approximately uniform con-dition of blessedness. Even as regards thatmerit and demerit which is solely concernedwith spiritual consequences, no accurate re-sponse could be made by Nature except bymeans of that infinitely graduated conditionof spiritual existence described by the esotericdoctrine as the Devachanic state. But thecomplexity to be dealt with is more serious thaneven the various conditions of Devachanic ex-istence can meet. No system of consequencesensuing to mankind after the life now underobservation can be recognized as adapted sci-entifically to the emergency, unless it respondsto the sense of justice, in regard to the multi-

farious acts and habits of life generally, includ-ing those which merely relate to physical ex-istence, and are not deeply colored by right orwrong.

Now, it is only by a return to physical exist-ence that people can possibly be conceived toreap with precise accuracy the harvest of theminor causes they may have generated, whenlast in objective life. Thus, on a careful exam-ination of the matter, the Karmic law, so unat-tractive to Buddhist students, hitherto, in itsexoteric shape, — and no wonder,— will be seennot only to reconcile itself to the sense of justice,but to constitute the only imaginable methodof natural action that would do this. The con-tinued individuality running through successiveKarmic re-birtbs once realized, and the corre-sponding chain of personal existences interca-lated between each borne in mind, the exquisitesymmetry of the whole system is in no wayimpaired by that feature wdiich seems obnoxiousto criticism at the first glance, — the successivebaths of oblivion, through which the re-incar-nating spirit has to pass. On the contrary,that oblivion itself is in truth the only conditionDu which objective life could fairly be startedafresli. Few earth-lives are entirely free fromshadows, the recollection of which would darkena renewed lease of life for the former personal-

ity. And if it is alleged that the forgetfulnessin each life of the last involves waste of experi-ence and effort and intellectual acquirements,painfully or laboriously obtained, that objectioncan only be raised in forgetfulness of the Deva-chanic life, in which, far from being wasted,such efforts and acquirements are the seedsfrom which the whole magnificent harvest ofspiritual results will be raised. In the sameway, the longer the esoteric doctrine occupiesthe mind the more clearly it is seen that everyobjection brought against it meets with a readyreply, and only seems an objection from thepoint of view of imperfect knowledge.

Passing from abstract considerations to oth-ers partly interwoven with practical matters,we may compare the esoteric doctrine with theobservable facts of Nature in several ways withthe view of directly checking its teachings. Aspiritual science which has successfully divinedthe absolute truth must accurately fit the factsof earth whenever it impinges on earth. Areligious dogma in flagrant opposition to thatwhich is manifestly truth in respect of geologyand astronomy may find churches and congre-gations content to nurse it, but is not worthserious philosophical consideration. How thendoes the esoteric doctrine square with geologyand astronomy ?

It is not too much to say that it constitutesthe only religious system that blends itself ea-sily with the physical truths discovered by mod-ern research in those branches of science. Itnot only blends itself with, in the sense of tol-erating, the nebula hypothesis and the stratifi-cation of rocks; it rushes into the arms of thesefacts, so to speak, and could not get on withoutthem. It could not get on without the greatdiscoveries of modern biology ; as a system rec-ommending itself to notice in a scientific age itcould ill afford to dispense with the latest ac-quisitions of physical geography, and it mayoffer a word of thanks even to Professor Tyndallfor some of his experiments on light, for heseems on one occasion, as he describes the phe-nomenon without knowing what he is describ-ing, in "Fragments of Science," to have pro-voked conditions within a glass tube which en-abled him for a short time to see the elementals.

The stratification of the earth's crust is, ofcourse, a plain and visible record of the inter-racial cataclysms. Physical science is emergingfrom the habits of timidity, which its insolentoppression by religious bigotry for fifteen cen-turies engendered, but it is still a little shy inits relations with dogma, from the mere forceof habit. In that way, geology has been con-tent to say, such and such continents, as thei?

shell-beds testify, must have been more thanonce submersred below and elevated above thesurface of the ocean. It has not yet grown usedto the free application of its own materials tospeculation, which trenches upon religious ter-ritory. But surely if geology were required tointerpret all its facts into a consistent historyof the earth, throwing in the most plausiblehypotheses it could invent to fill up gaps in itsknowledge, it would already construct a historyfor mankind which in its broad outlines wouldnot be unlike that sketched out in the chap-ter on the Great World Periods; and the fur-ther geological discovery progresses, our esotericteachers assure us, the more closely will thecorrespondence of the doctrine and the bonytraces of the past be recognized. Already wefind experts from the Challenger vouching forthe existence of Atlantis, though the subject be-longs to a class of problems unattractive to thescientific world generally, so that the considera-tions in favor of the lost continent are not yetgenerally appreciated. Already thoughtful ge-ologists are quite ready to recognize that inregard to the forces which have fashioned theearth this, the period within the range of his-toric traces, may be a period of comparativeinertia and slow change ; that cataclysmal met-amorphoses may have been added formerly to

those of gradual subsidence, upheaval, and de-nudation. It is only a step or two to the rec-ognition as a fact of what no one could anylonger find fault with as a hypothesis: thatgreat continental upheavals and submergencestake place alternately ; that the whole map ofthe world is not only thrown occasionally intonew shapes, like the pictures of a kaleidoscopeas its colored fragments fall into new arrange-ments, but subject to systematically recurrentchanges, which restore former arrangements atenormous intervals of time.

Pending further discoveries, however, it will,perhaps, be admitted that we have a sufficientblock of geological knowledge already in ourpossession to fortify the cosmogony of the eso-teric doctrine. That the doctrine should havebeen withheld from the w^orld generally as longas no such knowledge had paved the way forits reception can hardly be considered indis-creet for the part of its custodians. Whetlierthe present generation will attach sufficient im-portance to its correspondence with what hasbeen ascertained of Nature in other ways re-mains to be seen.

These correspondences may, of course, betraced in biology as decisively as in geology.The broad Darwinian theory of the Descent ofMan from the animal kingdom is not the only

support afforded by this branch of science tothe esoteric doctrine. The detailed observa-tions now carried out in embryology are espe-cially interesting for the light they throw onmore than one department of this doctrine.Thus the now familiar truth that the succes-sive stages of ante-natal human developmentcorrespond to the progress of human evolutionthrough different forms of animal life is noth-ing less than a revelation, in its analogical bear-ings. It does not merely fortify the evolution-ary hypothesis itself; it affords a remarkableillustration of the way Nature works in theevolution of new races of men at the beginningof the great round periods. When a child hasto be developed from a germ which is so simplein its constitution that it is typical less of theanimal — less even of the vegetable — than ofthe mineral kingdom, the familiar scale of evo-lution is run over, so to speak, with a rapidtouch. The ideas of progress which may havetaken countless ages to work out in a connectedchain for the first time are once for all firmlylodged in Nature's memory, and thenceforththey can be quickly recalled in order, in a fewmonths. So with the new evolution of human-ity on each planet as the human tide-wave oflife advances. In the first round the process isexceedingly slow, and does not advance far.

The ideas of Nature are themselves under ev-olution. But when the process has been ac-complished once it can be quickly repeated.In the later rounds, the life impulse runs upthe gamut of evolution with a facility onlyconceivable by help of the illustration whichembryology affords. This is the explanationof the way the character of each round differsfrom its predecessor. The evolutionary workwhich has been once accomplished is soon re-peated ; then the round performs its own evo-lution at a very different rate, as the child, onceperfected up to the human type, performs itsown individual growth but slowly, in proportionto the earlier stages of its initial development.

No elaborate comparison of exoteric Bud-dhism with the views of Nature which have nowbeen set forth — briefly, indeed, consideringtheir scope and importance, but comprehensive-ly enough to furnish the reader with a generalidea of the system in its whole enormous range— will be required from me. With the help ofthe information now communicated, more ex-perienced students of Buddhist literature will bebetter able to apply to the enigmas that it maycontain the keys which will unlock their mean-ing. The gaps in the public records of Bud-dha's teaching will be filled up readily enoughnow, and it will be plain why they were left.

For example, in Mr. Rhys Davids' book I findthis : " Buddhism does not attempt to solve theproblem of the primary origin of all things;"and quoting from Hardy's "Manual of Bud-dhism," he goes on, " When Malunka asked theBuddha whether the existence of the world iseternal or not eternal, he made him no reply;but the reason of this was that it was consideredby the teacher as an inquiry that tended to noprofit." In reality the subject was manifestlypassed over because it could not be dealt withby a plain yes or no, without putting the in-quirer upon a false scent; while to put him onthe true scent would have required a completeexposition of the whole doctrine about the ev-olution of the planetary chain, an explanationof that for which the community Buddha wasdealing with was not intellectually ripe. Toinfer from his silence that he regarded the in-quiry itself as tending to no profit is a mistakewhich may naturally enough have been madein the absence of any collateral knowledge, butnone can be more complete in reality. No re-ligious system that ever publicly employed it-self on the problem of the origin of all thingshas, as will now be seen, done more than scratchthe surface of that speculation, in comparisonwith the exhaustive researches of the esotericscience of which Buddha was no less prominent

an exponent than he was a prominent teacherof morals for the popuhice.

The positive conckisions as to what Bud-dhism does teach — carefully as he has workedthem out — are no less inaccurately set forthby Mr. Rhys Davids than the negative conclu-sion just quoted. It was inevitable that allsuch conclusions should hitherto be inaccurate.I quote an example, not to disparage the carefulstudy of which it is the fruit, but to show howthe light now shed over the whole subject pen-etrates every cranny and puts an entirely newcomplexion on all its features: —

" Buddhism takes as its ultimate fact the ex-istence of the material world, and of consciousbeings living within it; and it holds that every-thing is subject to the law of cause and ef-fect, and that everything is constantly, thoughimperceptibly, changing. There is no placewhere this law does not operate ; no heavenor hell, therefore, in the ordinary sense. Thereare worlds where angels live, whose existenceis more or less material according as their pre-vious lives were more or less holy ; but theangels die, and the worlds they inhabit passaway. There are places of torment, where theevil actions of men or angels produce unhappybeings ; but when the active power of the evilthat produced them is exhausted, they will

vanish, and the worlds they inhabit are noteternal. The whole Kosmos — eartli and heav-ens and hells — is always tending to renova-tion or destruction, is always in a course ofchange, a series of revolutions or of cycles, ofwhich the beginning and the end alike areunknowable and unknown. To this universallaw of composition and dissolution men andg(^ds form no exception ; the unity of forceswhich constitutes a sentient being must sooneror later be dissolved, and it is only throughignorance and delusion that such a being in-dulges in the dream that it is a separable andself-existent entity."

Now certainly this passage might be taken toshow how the popular notions of Buddhist phi-losophy are manifestly thrown off from the realesoteric philosophy. Most assuredly that phi-losophy no more finds in the universe than inthe belief of any truly enlightened thinker, Asi-atic or European, the unchangeable and eter-nal heaven and hell of monkish legend ; and'Hhe worlds where angels live," and so on,—the vividly real though subjective strata of theDevachanic state, — are found in Nature trulyenough. So with all the rest of the popularBuddhist conceptions just passed in review.But in their popular form they ^re the nearestcaricatures of the corresponding items of eso-

teric knowledge. Thus the notion about indi-viduality being a delusion, and the ultimatedissolution as such of the sentient being, isperfectly unintelligible without fuller explana-tions concerning the multitudinous a^ons of in-dividual life, in as yet, to us, inconceivable butever-progressive conditions of spiritual exalta-tion, which come before that unutterably remotemergence into the non-individualized condition.That condition certainly must be somewhere infuturity, but its nature is something which nouninitiated philosopher, at any rate, has everyet comprehended by so much as the faintestglimmering guess. As with the idea of Nir-vana, so with this about the delusion of indi-viduality, writers on Buddhist doctrine derivedfrom exoteric sources have most unfortunatelyfound themselves entangled with some of theremote elements of the great doctrine, underthe impression that they were dealing withBuddhist views of conditions immediately suc-ceeding this life. The statement, which is al-most absurd, thus put out of its proper place inthe whole doctrine, may be felt not only as nolonger an outrage on the understanding, butas a sublime truth when restored to its properplace in relation to other truths. The ultimatemergence of the perfected man-god, or DhyanChohan, in the absolute consciousness of para^

nirvana has nothing to do, let me add, withthe " heresy of individuality," which relates tophysical personalities. To this subject I recura little later on.

Justly enough, Mr. Rhys Davids says, in ref-erence to the epitome of Buddhist doctrinequoted above: " Such teachings are by nomeans peculiar to Buddhism, and similar ideaslie at the foundation of earlier Indian philoso-phies." (Certainly by reason of the fact thatBuddhism as concerned with doctrine was ear-lier Indian philosophy itself.) " They are tobe found, indeed, in other systems widety sepa-rated from them in time and place ; and Bud-dhism, in dealing with the truth which theycontain, might have given a more decisive andmore lasting utterance if it had not also bor-rowed a belief in the curious doctrine of trans-migration, — a doctrine which seems to havearisen independently, if not simultaneoush^ inthe valley of the Ganges and the valley of theNile. The word transmigration has been used,however, in different times and at differentplaces for theories similai', indeed, but very dif-ferent ; and Buddhism, in adopting the generalidea from post-Vedic Brahmanism, so modifiedit as to originate, in fact, a new hypothesis.The new hypothesis, like the old one, related tolife in past and future bi/ths, and contributed

nothing to the removal here, in this life, of theevil it was supposed to explain."

The present Yolume should have dissipatedthe misapprehensions on which these remarksrest. Buddhism does not believe in anythingresembling the passage backwards and forwardsbetween animal and human forms, which mostpeople conceive to be meant by the principle oftransmigration. The transmigration of Bud-dhism is the transmigration of Darwinian evo-lution scientifically developed, or rather exhaust-ivel}^ explored, in both directions. Buddhistwritings certainly' contain allusions to formerbirths, in which even the Buddha himself wasnow one and now another kind of animal. Butthese had reference to the remote course of pre-human evolution, of which his fully openedvision gave him a retrospect. Never in anyauthentic Buddhist writings will any supportbe found for the notion that any human crea-ture, once having attained manhood, falls backinto the animal kingdom. Again, while noth-ing, indeed, could be more ineffectual as an ex-planation of the origin of evil than such a cari-cature of transmigration as would contemplatesuch a return, the progressive re-births of humanEgos into objective existence, con{)led Avitli theoperation of physical Karma and tlie inevitableplay of free-will within the limits of its privi-

lege, do explain the origin of evil, finally andcompletely. The effort of Nature being to growa new harvest of Dhyan Chohans whenever aplanetary system is evolved, the incidental de-velopment of transitory evil is an unavoidableconsequence under the operation of the forcesor processes just mentioned, themselves una-voidable stages in the stupendous enterpriseset on foot.

At the same time the reader who will nowtake up Mr. Rhys Davids' book and examinethe long passnge on this subject, and on theskandhas, will realize how utterly hopeless atask it was to attempt the deduction of any ra-tional theory of the origin of evil from the exo-teric materials there made use of. Nor was itpossible for these materials to suggest the trueexplanation of the passage immediately after-wards, quoted from the Brahmajala Sutra : —

"After showing how the unfounded beliefin the eternal existence of God or gods arose,Gautama goes on to discuss the question of thesoul, and points out thirty-two beliefs concern-ing it, which he declares to be wrong. Theseare shortly as follows: ' Upon what principle,or on what ground, do these mendicants andBrahmans hold the doctrine of future existence?They teach that the soul is material, or is im-material, or is both or neither; that it will19

have one or many modes of consciousness; thatits perceptions will be few or boundless; thatit will be in a state of joy or of misery, or ofneither. These are the sixteen heresies, teach-ing a conscious existence after death. Thenthere are eight heresies teaching that the soul,material or immaterial, or both or neither, finiteor infinite, or both or neither, has one uncon-scious existence after death. And, finally, eightothers which teach that the soul, in the sameeight ways, exists after death in a state of be-ing neither conscious nor unconscious.' ' Men-dicants,' concludes the sermon, ' that whichbinds the teacher to existence (viz., tanha^thirst), is cut off, but his body still remains.While his body shall remain, he will be seenby gods and men, but after the termination oflife, upon the dissolution of the body, neithergods nor men will see him.' Would it be pos-sible in a more complete and categorical man-ner to deny that there is any soul, — anythingof any kind which continues to exist in anymanner after death ? "

Certainly, for exoteric students, such a pas-sage as this could not but seem in flagrant con-tradiction with those teachings of Buddhismwhich deal with the successive passages of thesame individuality through several incarnations,and which thus along another line of thought

may seem to assume the existence of a trans-missible soul as plainly as the passage quoteddenies it. Without a comprehension of theseven principles of man, no separate utteranceson the various aspects of this question of im-mortality could possibly be reconciled. Butthe key now given leaves the apparent contra-diction devoid of all embarrassment. In thepassage last quoted Buddha is speaking of theastral personality, while the immortality recog-nized by the esoteric doctrine is that of thespiritual individuality. The explanation has^been fully given in the chapter on Devachan,and in the passages quoted there from ColonelOlcott's " Buddhist Catechism." It is onlysince fragments of the great revelation this vol-ume contains have been given out during thelast two years in the '' Theosophist" that theimportant distinction between personality andindividuality, as applied to the question of hu-man immortality, has settled into an intelligibleshape, but there are plentiful allusions in formeroccult writing, which may now be appealed toin proof of the fact that former writers werefully alive to the doctrine itself. Turning to themost recent of the occult books, in which theveil of obscurity was still left to wrap the doc-trine from careless observation, though it wasstrained in many places almost to transparency,

we might take any one of a dozen passages toillustrate the point before us. Here is one ; —

" The philosophers who explained the fallinto generation their own way viewed spirit assomething wholly distinct from the soul. Theyallowed its presence in the astral capsule onlyso far as the spiritual emanations or rays of the' shining one ' were concerned. Man and soulhad to conquer their immortality by ascendingtoward tlie unity, with which, if successful,they were finally linked, and into which theywere absorbed, so to say. The individualiza-tion of man after death depended on the spirit,not on his body and soul. Although the w^ord* personality,' in tlie sense in which it is usuallyunderstood, is an absurdity if applied literallyto our immortal essence, still the latter is a dis-tinct entity, immortal and eternal 2?er se; andas in the case of criminals bej^ond redemption,when the shining thread which links the spiritto the soul from the moment of the birth of achild is violently snapped, and the disembodiedentit}^ is left to share the fate of the lower ani-mals, to dissolve into ether and have its indi-viduality annihilated, — even then the spiritremains a distinct being." ^

No one can read this —scarcely any part, in-deed, of the chapter from which it is taken —

1 Isis Unveiled, vol. i. p. 315.

without perceiving, by the light of the expla-nations given in the present volume, that theesoteric doctrine now fully given out was per-fectly familiar to the writer, though I have beenprivileged to put it for the first time into plainand unmistakable language.

It takes some mental effort to realize thedifference between personality and individual-ity, but the craving for the continuity of per-sonal existence, for the full recollection alwaysof those transitory circumstances of our presentphysical life which make up the personality,is manifestly no more than a passing weaknessof the flesh. For many people it will perhapsremain irrational to say that any person nowliving, with his recollections bounded by theyears of his childhood, is the same individual assome one of quite a different nationality andepoch who lived thousands of years ago, or thesame that will reappear after a similar lapse oftime under some entirely new conditions in thefuture. But the feeling " I am I" is the samethrough the three lives and through all thehundreds; for that feeling is more deeply seatedthan the feeling *' I am John Smith, so high, soheav}^ with such and such property and rela-tions." Is it inconceivable, as a notion in themind, that John Smith, mheriting the gift ofTithonus, changing his name from time to time,

n

marrying afresh every other generation or so,losing property here, coming into possession ofproperty there, and getting interested as timewent on in a great variety of different pursuits,— is it inconceivable that such a person in afew thousand years should forget all circum-stances connected with the present life of JohnSmith, just as if the incidents of that life forhim had never taken place ? And yet the Egowould be the same. If this is conceivable inthe imagination, what can be inconceivable inthe individual continuity of an intermittent Hfe,interrupted and renewed at regular intervals,and varied with passages through a purer con-V_ dition of existence.

No less than it clears up the apparent con-flict between the identity of successive individ-ualities and the '' heresy " of individuality willthe esoteric doctrine be seen to put the " in-comprehensible mystery of Karma, which jNIr.Rhys Davids disposes of so summarily, on aperfectly intelligible and scientific basis. Ofthis he says that because Buddhism " does notacknowledge a soul" it has to resort to the des-perate expedient of a mystery to bridge overthe gulf between one life and another some-where else, — the doctrine, namely, of Karma.And he condemns the idea as " a non-exist-ent fiction of the brain." Irritated as he feela

with what he regards as the absurdity of thedoctrine, he j^et applies patience and great men-tal ingenuity in the effort to evolve somethingthat shall feel like a rational metaphysical con-ception out of the tangled utterances concern-ing Karma of the Buddhist scriptures. Hewrites: —

"Karma, from a Buddhist point of view,avoids the superstitious extreme, on the onehand, of those who believe in the separate ex-istence of some entity called the soul; and theirreligious extreme, on the other, of those whodo not believe in moral justice and retribu-tion. Buddhism claims to have looked throughthe word soul for the fact it purports to cover,and to have found no fact at all, but only oneor other of twenty different delusions whichblind the eyes of men. Nevertheless, Buddhismis convinced tliat if a man reaps sorrow, dis-appointment, pain, he himself, and no other,must at some time have sown folly, error, sin;and if not in this life, then in some formerbirth. Where, then, in the latter case, is theidentity between him who sows and him whoreaps ? In that which alone remains when aman dies, and the constituent parts of the sen-tient being are dissolved, in the result, namely,of his action, speech, and thought, in his goodor evil Karma (literally his doing), which does

not die. We are familiar with the doctrine,* Whatever a man soweth that shall he alsoreap,' and can therefore enter into the Bud-dhist feeling that whatever a man reaps that hemust also have sown ; we are familiar with thedoctrine of the indestructibility of force, andcan therefore understand the Buddhist dogma(however it may contravene our Christian no-tions) that no exterior power can destroy thefruit of a man's deeds, that they must work outtheir full effect to the pleasant or the bitter end.But the peculiarity of Buddhism lies in this:that the result of what a man is or does is heldnot to be dissipated, as it were, into many sepa-rate streams, but to be concentrated together inthe formation of one new sentient being, — new,that is, in its constituent parts and powers, butthe same in its essence, its being, its doing, itsKarma."

Nothing could be more ingenious as an at-tempt to invent for Buddhism an explanationof its " mystery " on the assumption that theauthors of the mystery threw it up originallyas a " desperate expedient" to cover their re-treat from an untenable position. But in re-ality the doctrine of Karma has a far simplerhistory and does not need so subtle an interpre-tation. Like many other phenomena of Naturehaving to do with futurity, it was declared by

Buddha an incomprehensible mystery, and ques-tions concerning it were thus put aside; buthe did not mean that because it was incompre-hensible for the populace it was incomprehen-sible, or any mystery at all, for the initiatesin the esoteric doctrine. It was impossible toexplain it without reference to the esotericdoctrine; but the outlines of that science oncegrasped, Karma, like so much else, becomes acomparatively simple matter,—a mystery onlyin the sense in which also the affinity of sul-phuric acid for copper and its superior affinityfor iron are also mysteries. Certainly esotericscience for its " lay chelas " at all events, likechemical science for its lay chelas, — all stu-dents, that is to say, of its mere physical phe-nomena, — leaves some mysteries unfathomed inthe background, i am not prepared to explainby what precise molecular changes the higheraffinities which constitute Karma are stored upin the permanent elements of the fifth principle.But no more is ordinary science qualified to saywhat it is in a molecule of oxygen which in-duces it to desert the molecule of hydrogenwith which it was in alliance in the raindrop,and attach itself to a molecule of the iron of arailing on which it falls. But the speck ofrust is engendered, and a scientific explanationof that occurrence is held to have been given

when its affinities are ascertained and appealedto.

So with Karma, the fifth principle takes upthe affinities of its good and evil deeds in itspassage through life, passes with them intoDevachan, where those which are suitable tothe atmosphere, so to speak, of that state, fruc-tify and blossom in prodigious abundance, andthen passes on, with such as have not yet ex-hausted their energy, into the objective worldonce more. And as certainly as the moleculeof oxygen brought into the presence of ahundred other molecules will fly to that withwhich it has the most affinity, so will theKarma-laden spiritual monad fly to that incar-nation with which its mysterious attractionslink it. Nor is there in that process any crea-tion of a new sentient being, except in thesense that the new bodily structure evolved isa new instrument of sensation. That which in-habits it, that which feels joy or sorrow, is theold Ego,—walled off by forgetfulness from itslast set of adventures on earth, it is true, butreaping their fruit nevertheless, — the same '' Iam I" as before.

" Strange it is," Mr. Rhys Davids thinks,that "all this" — the explanation of Buddhistphilosophy which esoteric materials have ena-bled him to give-—"should have seemed not

THE DOCTRINE REVIEWED. 299

unattractive, these 2,300 years and more, tomany despairing and earnest hearts; that theyshould have trusted themselves to the so seem-ing stately bridge which Buddhism has tried tobuild over the river of the mysteries and sor-rows of life. . . . They have failed to see thatthe very keystone itself, the link between onelife and another, is a mere word, — this won-derful hypothesis, this airy nothing, this im-aginary cause beyond the reach of reason, —the individualized and individualizing graceof Karma."

It would have been strange indeed if Bud-dhism had been built on such a frail foundation;but its apparent frailty has been simply due tothe fact that its mighty fabric of knowledgehas hitherto been veiled from view. Now thatthe inner doctrine has been unveiled it will beseen how little it depends for any item of itsbelief on shadowy subtleties of metaphysics.So far as these have clustered round Buddhismthey have merely been constructed by externalinterpreters of stray doctrinal hints that couldnot be entirely left out of the simple system ofmorals prescribed for the populace.

In that which really constitutes Buddhismwe find a sublime simplicity, like that of Na-ture herself, — one law running into infiniteramifications; complexities of detail, it is true,

800 ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.

as Nature herself is infinitely complex in hermanifestations, however unchangeably uniformin her purposes, but always the immutable doc-trine of causes and their effects, which in turnbecome causes again in an endless cyclic pro-gression.

NOTE TO CHAPTER I.

The further we advance in occult study, the more ex-alted in many ways become our conceptions of the Ma-hatmas. The complete comprehension of the manner inwhich these persons become differentiated from human-kind at large, is not to be achieved by the help of mereintellectual effort. There are aspects of the adept naturewhich have to do with the extraordinary development ofthe higher principles in man, which cannot be realized bythe application of the lower. But while crude concep-tions in the beginning thus fall very short of reaching thereal level of the facts, a curious complication of the prob-lem arises in this way. Our first idea of an adept whohas achieved the power of penetrating the tremendoussecrets of spiritual nature, is modelled on our conceptionof a very highly gifted man of science on our own plane.We are apt to think of him as once an adept always anadept, — as a very exalted human being, who must neces-sarily bring into play in all the relations of his life theattributes that attach to him as a Mahatma. In this way,while — as above pointed out — we shall certainly fail, doall we can, to do justice in our thoughts to his attributesas a Mahatma, we may very easily run to the oppositeextreme in our thinking about him in his ordinary human

aspect, and thus land ourselves in many perplexities, aswe acquire a partial familiarity with the characteristics ofthe occult world. It is just because the highest attributesof adeptship have to do with principles in human naturewhich quite transcend the limits of physical existence,that the adept of ]\Iahatma can only be such in the high-est acceptation of the word, when he is, as the phrasegoes, "out of the body," or at all events thrown by spe-cial efforts of his will into an abnormal condition. Whenhe is not called upon to make such efforts or to pass en-tirely beyond the limitations of this fleshly prison, he ismuch more like an ordinary man than experience ofhim in some of his aspects would lead his disciples tobelieve.

A correct appreciation of this state of things explainsthe apparent contradiction involved in the position of theoccult pupil towards his masters, as compared with someof the declarations that the master himself will frequentlyput forward. For example, the Mahatmas are persistentin asserting that they are not infallible, that they aremen, like the rest of us, perhaps with a somewhat moreenlarged comprehension of nature than the generality ofmankind, but still liable to err both in the direction ofpractical business with which they may be concerned, andin their estimate of the cliaracters of other men, or thecapacity of candidates for occult development. But howare we to reconcile statements of this nature with thefundamental principle at the bottom of all occult researchwhich enjoins the neophyte to put his trust in the teachingand guidance of his master absolutely and without re-serve ? The solution of the difficulty is found in the stateof things above referred to. AVhile the adept may be aman quite surprisingly liable to err sometimes in the ma-nipulation of worldly business, just as with ourselves some

of the greatest men of genius are liable to make mis-takes in their daily life that matter-of-fact people couldnever commit, on the other hand, directly a Mahatmacomes to deal with the higher mysteries of spiritual sci-ence, he does so by virtue of the exercise of his Mahatma-attributes, and in dealing with these can hardly be recog-nized as liable to err.

This consideration enables us to feel that the trust-worthiness of the teachings derived from such a sourceas those which have inspired the present volume, is alto-gether above the reach of small incidents which in theprogress of our experience may seem to claim a revisionof that enthusiastic confidence in the supreme wisdom ofthe adepts which the first approaches to occult study willgenerally evoke.

Not that such enthusiasm or reverence will really bediminished on the part of any occult chela as his compre-hension of the world he is entering expands. The manwho in one of his aspects is a Mahatma, may rather bebrouglit within the limits of affectionate human regard,than deprived of his claims to reverence, by the consid-eration that in his ordinary life he is not so utterly liftedabove the commonplace run of human feeling as someof his Nirvanic experiences might lead us to believe thathe would be.

If we keep constantly in mind that an adept is onlytruly an adept when exercising adept functions, but thatwhen exercising these he may soar into spiritual rapportwith that which is, in regard at all events to the limita-tions of our solar system, all that we practically meanby omniscience, we shall then be guarded from many ofthe mistakes that the embarrassments of the subjectmight create.

Intricacies concerning the nature of the adept may be

noticed here, which will hardly be quite intelligible with-out reference to some later chapters of this book, butwhich have so important a bearing on all attempts to un-derstand what adeptship is really like that it may be con-venient to deal with them at once. The dual nature ofthe Mahatma is so complete that some of his influence orwisdom on the higher planes of nature may actually bedrawn upon by those in peculiar psj^chic relations withhim, without the Manhatma-man being at the momenteven conscious that such an appeal has been made to him.In this way it becomes open to us to speculate on thepossibility that the relation between the spiritual Ma-hatma and the Mahatma-man may sometimes be ratherin the nature of what is sometimes spoken of in esotericwriting as an overshadowing than as an incarnation in thecomplete sense of the word.

Furthermore as another independent complication ofthe matter we reach this fact, that each Mahatma is notmerely a human Ego in a very exalted state, but belongs,so to speak, to some specific department in the great econ-omy of nature. Every adept must belong to one or otherof seven great types of adeptship ; but although we mayalmost certainly infer that correspondences might betraced between these various types and the seven princi-ples of man, I should shrink myself from attempting acomplete elucidation of this hypothesis. It will be enoughto apply the idea to what we know vaguely of the occultorganization in its higher regions. For some time past ithas been affirmed in esoteric writing that there are fivegreat Chohans or superior Mahatmas presiding over thewhole body of the adept fraternity. When the foregoingchapter of this book was written, I was under the impres-sion that one supreme chief on a different level againexercised authority over these five Chohans, but it now

appears to me that this personage may rather be regardedas a sixth Chohan, himself the head of the sixth type ofMahatmas, and this conjecture leads at once to the fur-ther inference that there nmst be a seventh Chohan tocomplete the correspondences which we thus discern. Butjust as the seventh principle in nature Or in man is a con-ception of the most intangible order, eluding the grasp ofany intellectual thinking, and only describable in shadowyphrases of metaphysical non-significance, so we may bequite sure that the seventh Chohan is very unapproach-able by untrained imaginations. But even he no doubtplays a part in what may be called the higher economyof spiritual nature, and that there is such a personage vis-ible occasionally to some of the other Mahatmas I take tobe the case. But speculation concerning him is valuablechiefly as helping to give consistency to the idea abovethrown out, according to which the Mahatmas may becomprehended in their true aspect as necessary phe-nomena of nature without whom the evolution of hu-manity could hardly be imagined as advancing, not asmerely exceptional men who have attained great spiritualexaltation.

NOTE TO CHAPTER II.

Some objection has been raised to the method in whichthe Esoteric Doctrine is presented to the reader in thisbook, on the ground that it is materialistic. I doubt if inany other way the ideas to be dealt with could so well bebrought within the grasp of the mind, but it is easy, whenthey once are grasped, to translate them into terms ofidealism. The higher principles will be the better suscep-20

tible of treatment as so many different states of the Ego,when the attributes of these states have been separatelyconsidered as principles undergoing evolution. But itmay be useful to dwell for a while on the view of the hu-man constitution according to which the consciousness ofthe entity migrates successively through the stages of de-velopment, which the different principles represent.

In the highest evolution we need concern ourselves withat present — that of the perfected Mahatma — it is some-times asserted in occult teaching that the consciousness ofthe Ego has acquired the power of residing altogether inthe sixth principle. But it would be a gross view of thesubject, and erroneous, to suppose that the Mahatma hason that account shaken off altogether, like a discardedsheath or sheaths, the fourth and fifth principles, in whichhis consciousness may have been seated during an ear-lier stage of his evolution. The entity which was thefourth or fifth principle before, has come now to be dif-ferent in its attributes, and to be entirely divorced fromcertain tendencies or dispositions, and is therefore a sixthprinciple. The change can be spoken of in more generalterms as an emancipation of the adept's nature from theenthralments of his lower self, from desires of the ordi-nary earth-life — even from the limitations of the affec-tions ; for the Ego, which is entirely conscious in his sixthprinciple, has realized the unity of the true Egos of allmankind on the higher plane, and can no longer be drawnb}'^ bonds of sympathy to any one more than to any other.He has attained that love of humanity as a whole whichtranscends the love of the Maya or illusion which consti-tutes the separate human creature for the limited beingon the lower levels of evolution. He has not lost hisfourth and fifth principles, — these have themselves at-tained Mahatmaship ; just as the animal soul of the lower

kingdom, in reaching humanity, has blossomed into thefifth state. That consideration helps us to realize moreaccurately the passage of ordinary human beings throughthe long series of incarnations of the human plane. Oncefairly on that plane of existence, the consciousness of theprimitive man gradually envelops the attributes of thefifth principle. But the Ego at first remains a centre ofthought-activity working chiefly with impulses and desiresof the fourth stage of evolution. Flashes of the higherhuman reason illumine it fitfully at first, but by degreesthe more intellectual man grows into the fuller possessionof this. The impulses of human reason assert themselvesmore and more strongly. The invigorated mind becomesthe predominant force in the life. Consciousness is trans-ferred to the fifth principle, oscillating, however, betweenthe tendencies of the lower and higher nature for a longwhile, — that is to say, over vast periods of evolution andmany hundred lives, — and thus gradually purifying andexalting the Ego. All this while the Ego is thus a unityin one aspect of the matter, and its sixth principle but apotentiality of ultimate development. As regards theseventh principle, that is the true Unknowable, the su-preme controlling cause of all things, which is the samefor one man as for every man, the same for humanity asfor the animal kingdom, the same for the physical as forthe astral or devachanic or nirvanic planes of existence :no one man has got a seventh principle, in the higherconception of the subject ; we are all in the same un-fathomable way overshadowed by tJie seventh principle ofthe cosmos.

How does this view of the subject harmonize with thestatement in the foregoing chapter, that in a certain sensethe principles are separable, and that the sixth even canbe imagined as divorcing itself from its next lower neigh-

bor, and, by relncaruation, as growing a new fifth prin-ciple by contact with a human organism ? There is noincompatibility in the spirit of the two views. The sev-enth principle is one and indivisible in all Nature, butthere is a mysterious persistence through it of certain life-impulses, which thus constitute threads on which succes-sive existences may be strung. Such a life-impulse doesnot expire even in the extraordinary case supposed, inwhich an Ego, projected upon it and developed along itup to a certain point, falls away from it altogether and asa complete whole. I am not in a position to dogmatizewith precision as to what happens in such a case, but thesubsequent incarnations of the spirit along that line ofimpulse are clearly of the original sequence ; and thus, inthe materialistic treatment of the idea, it may be said,with as much approach to accuracy as language will allowin either mode, that the sixth principle of the fallen entityin such a case separates itself from the original fifth, andreincarnates on its own account.

But with these abnormal processes it is unnecessary tooccupy ourselves to any great extent. The normal evo-lution is the problem we have first to solve ; and whilethe consideration of the seven principles as such is, to myown mind, the most instructive method by which the prob-lem can be dealt with, it is well to remember always thatthe Ego is a unity progressing through various spheres orstates of being, undergoing change and growth and purifi-cation all through the course of its evolution, — that it isa consciousness seated in this, or that, or the other, of thepotential attributes of a human entity.

APPENDIX, 309

NOTE TO CHAPTER III.

An expression occurs in this chapter which does notrecommend itself to the somewhat fuller conceptions Ihave heen able to form of the subject since this book waswritten. It is stated that " the spiritual monads — theindividual atoms of that immense life-impulse of whichso much has been said — do not fully complete their min-eral existence on globe A, then complete it on globe B,and so on. They pass several times round the whole cir-cle as minerals, and then again several times round asvegetables, &c." Now it is intelligible to me that I waspermitted to use this form of expression in the first in-stance because the main purpose in view was to elucidatethe way in which the human entity was gradually evolvedfrom processes of Nature going on in the first instancein lower kingdoms. But in truth at a later stage of theinquiry it becomes manifest that the vast process of whichthe evolution of humanity and all which that leads up tois the crowning act, the descent of spirit into matter, doesnot bring about a differentiation of individualities until amuch later stage than is contemplated in the passage justquoted. In the mineral worlds on which the higher formsof plant and animal life have not yet been established,t-here is no such thing, as yet, as an individual spiritualmonad, unless indeed by virtue of some inconceivableunity — inconceivable, but subject to treatment as a the-ory none the less — in the life-impulses which are destinedto give rise to the later chains of highly organized exist-ence. Just as in a preceding note we assumed the unityof such a life-impulse in the case of a perverted humanEgo falling away as a whole from the current of evolu-tion on which it was launched, so we may assume the same

unity backwards to the earliest beginnings of the plane-tary chain. But this can be no more than a protectivehypothesis, reserving us the right to investigate some mys-teries later on that we need not go into at present. Fora general appreciation of the subject it is better to regardthe first infusion, as it were, of spirit into matter as pro-voking a homogeneous manifestation. The specific formsof the mineral kingdom, the crystals and differentiatedrocks, are but bubbles in the seething mass assuming par-tially individualized forms for a time, and rushing againinto the general substance of the growing cosmos, not yettrue individualities. Nor even in the vegetable kingdomdoes individuality set in. The vegetable establishes or-ganic matter in physical manifestation, and prepares theway for the higher evolution of the animal kingdom. Inthis, for the first time, but only in the higher regions ofthis, is true individuality evoked. Therefore it is not tillwe begin in imagination to contemplate the passage of thegreat life-impulse round the planetary chain on the levelof animal incarnation, that it would be strictly justifiableto speak of the spiritual monads as travelling round thecircle as a plurality, to which the word " they" wouldproperly apply.

It is evidently not with the intention of encouragingany close study of evolution on the very grand scale withwhich we are dealing here, that the adept authors of thedoctrine set forth in this volume have opened the subjectof the planetary chain. As far as humanity is concerned,the period during which this earth will be occupied by ourrace is more than long enough to absorb all our specula-tive energy. The magnitude of the evolutionary processto be accomplished during that period is more than enoughto tax to the utmost the capacities of an ordinary imagi-nation. But it is extremely advantageous for students of

the occult doctrine to realize the plurality of worlds inour system once for all — their intimate relations with,their interdependence on each other — before concentrat-ing attention on the evolution of this single planet. Forin many respects the evolution of a single planet followsa routine, as it will be found directly, that bears an ana-logical resemblance to the routine affecting the entire se-ries of planets to which it belongs. The older writingson occult science, of the obscurely worded order, some-times refer to successive states of one world, as if suc-cessive worlds were meant, and vice versa. Confusionthus arises in the reader's mind, and according to the bentof his own inclination he clings to various interpretationsof the misty language. The obscurity disappears whenwe realize that in the actual facts of Nature we have torecognize loth courses of change. Each planet, while in-habited by humanity, goes through metamorphoses of ahighly important and impressive character, the effect ofwhich may in each case be almost regarded as equivalentto the reconstitution of the world. But none the less, ifthe whole group of such changes is treated as a unity,does it form one of a higher series of changes. The sev-eral worlds of the chain are objective realities, and notsymbols of change in one single, variable world. Furtherremarks on this head will fall into their place more nat-urally at the close of a later chapter.

NOTE TO CHAPTERS V., VI.

There is no part of the present volume which I nowregard as in so much urgent need of amplification as chap-

ters V. and YI. The Kama loca stage of existence, andthat higher region or state of Devachan, to which it is butthe antechamber, were, designedly I take it, left by ourteachers in the first instance in partial obscurity, in orderthat the whole scheme of evolution might be the betterunderstood. The spiritual state which immediately fol-lows our present physical life is a department of Nature,the study of which is almost unhealthily attractive forevery one who once realizes that some contact with it —some processes of experiment with its conditions — are pos-sible even during this life. Already we can to a certain ex-tent discern the phenomena of that state of existence intowhich a human creature passes at the death of the body.The experience of spiritualism has supplied us with factsconcerning it in very great abundance. These facts arebut too highly suggestive of theories and inferences whichseem to reach the ultimate limits of speculation, and noth-ing but the bracing mental discipline of esoteric study inits broadest aspect will protect any mind addressed to theconsideration of these facts from conclusions which thatst\idy shows to be necessarily erroneous. For this reason,theosophical inquirers have nothing to regret as far astheir own progress in spiritual science is at stake, in thecircumstances which have hitherto induced them to berather neglectful of the problems that have to do withthe state of existence next following our own. It is im-possible to exaggerate the intellectual advantages to bederived from studying the broad design of Nature through-out those vast realms of the future which only the perfectclairvoyance of the adepts can penetrate, before goinginto details regarding that spiritual foreground, which ispartially accessible to less powerful vision, but liable, ona first acquaintance, to be mistaken for the whole expanseof the future.

The earlier processes, however, through which the soulpasses at death, may be described at this date somewhatmore fully than they are defined in the foregoing chapter.The nature of the struggle that takes place in Kama locabetween the upper and lower duads may now, I believe,be apprehended more clearly than at first. That struggleappears to be a very protracted and variegated process,and to constitute, — not, as some of us may have conjec-tured at first, an automatic or unconscious assertion ofaffinities or forces quite ready to determine the future ofthe spiritual monad at the period of death, — but a phaseof existence which may be, and in the vast majority ofcases is more than likely to be, continued over a consider-able series of years. And during this phase of existenceit is quite possible for departed human entities to mani-fest themselves to still living persons through the agencyof spiritual mediumship, in a way which may go far to-wards accounting for, if it does not altogether vindicate,the impressions that spiritualists derive from such com-munications.

But we must not conclude too hastily that the humansoul going through the struggle or evolution of Kama locais in all respects what the first glance at the position, asthus defined, may seem to suggest. First of all, we mustbeware of too grossly materializing our conception of thestruggle, by thinking of it as a mechanical separation ofprinciples. There is a mechanical separation involved inthe discard of lower principles when the consciousness ofthe Ego is firmly seated in the higher. Thus at deaththe body is mechanically discarded by the soul, which inunion, perhaps (with intermediate principles), may act-ually be seen by some clairvoyants of a high order toquit the tenement it no longer needs. And a very sim-ilar process may ultimately take place in Kama loca it-

self, in regard to the matter of the astral principles. Butpostponing this consideration for a few moments, it is im-portant to avoid supposing that the struggle of Kama locadoes itself constitute this ultimate division of principles,or second death upon the astral plane.

The struggle of Kama loca is in fact the life of the en-tity in that phase of existence. As quite correctly statedin the text of the foregoing chapter, the evolution takingplace during that phase of existence is not concerned withthe responsible choice between good and evil which goeson during physical life. Kama loca is a portion of thegreat world of effects, — not a sphere in which causes aregenerated (except under peculiar circumstances). TheKama loca entity, therefore, is not truly master of hisown acts ; he is rather the sport of his own already estab-lished affinities. But these are all the while assertingthemselves, or exhausting themselves, hy degrees, and theKama loca entity has an existence of vivid consciousnessof one sort or another the whole time. Now a moment'sreflection will show that those affinities, which are gath-ering strength and asserting themselves, have to do withthe spiritual aspirations of the life last experienced, whilethose which are exhausting themselves have to do withits material tastes, emotions, and proclivities. The Kamaloca entity, be it remembered, is on his way to Devachan,or, in other words, is growing into that state which is theDevachanic state, and the process of growth is accom-plished by action and reaction, by ebb and flow, like al-most every other in Nature, — by a species of oscillationbetween the conflicting attractions of matter and spirit.Thus the Ego advances towards Heaven, so to speak, orrecedes towards earth, during his Kama loca existence,and it is just this tendency to oscillate between the twopoles of thought or condition that brings him back occa-gionally within the sphere of the life he has just quitted.

It is not by any means at once that his ardent sympa-thies with that life arc dissipated. His sympathies withthe higher aspects of that life, be it remembered, are noteven on their way to dissipation. For instance, in what ishere referred to as earthly affinity, we need not include theexercise of affection, which is a function of Devachanicexistence in a preeminent degree. But perhaps even inregard to his affections there may be earthly and spiritualaspects of these, and the contemplation of them, with thecircumstances and surroundings of the earth-life, mayoften have to do with the recession towards earth-life ofthe Kama loca entity referred to above.

Of course it will be apparent at once that the inter-course which the practice of spirituaKsm sets up betweensuch Kama-loca entities as are here in view, and thefriends they have left on earth, must go on during thoseperiods of the soul's existence in which earth memoriesengage its attention ; and there are two considerationsof a very important nature which arise out of this re-flection.

1st. While its attention is thus directed, it is turnedaway from the spiritual progress on which it is engagedduring its oscillations in the other direction. It may fairlywell remember, and in conversation refer to, the spiritualaspirations of the life on earth, but its new spiritual ex-periences appear to be of an order that cannot be trans-lated back into terms of the ordinary physical intellect,and, besides that, to be not within the command of thefaculties which are in operation in the soul during its oc-cupation with old-earth memories. The position might beroughly symbolized, but only to a very imperfect extent,by the case of a poor emigrant, whom we may imagineprospering in his new country, getting educated there,concerning himself with its public affairs and discoveries,

philanthropy, and so on. He may keep up an interchangeof letters with his relations at home, but he will find itdifficult to keep them au courant with all that has come tobe occupying his thoughts. The illustration will only fullyapply to our present purpose, however, if we think of theemigrant as subject to a psychological law which draws aveil over his understanding when he sits down to write tohis former friends, and restores him during that time tohis former mental condition. He would then be less andless able to write about the old topics as time went on, forthey would not only be below the level of those to the con-sideration of which his real mental activities had risen,but would to a great extent have faded from his memory.His letters would be a source of surprise to their recip-ients, who would say to themselves that it was certainlyso-and-so who was writing, but that he had grown verydull and stupid compared to what he used to be before hewent abroad.

2dly. It must be borne in mind that a very well-knownlaw of physiology, according to which faculties are invig-orated by use and atrophied by neglect, applies on the as-tral as well as on the physical plane. The soul in Kama-loca, which acquires the habit of fixing its attention onthe memories of the life it has quitted, will strengthenand harden those tendencies which are at war with itshigher impulses. The more frequently it is appealed toby the affection of friends still in the body to avail itselfof the opportunities furnished by mediumship for mani-festing its existence on the physical plane, the more vehe-ment will be the impulses which draw it back to physicallife, and the more serious the retardation of its spiritualprogress. This consideration appears to involve the mostinfluential motive which leads the representatives of The-osophical teaching to discountenance and disapprove of

all attempts to hold communication with departed soulsby means of the spiritual seance. The more such com-munications are genuine the more detrimental they are tothe inhabitants of Kama loca concerned with them. Inthe present state of our knowledge it is difficult to deter-mine with confidence the extent to which the Kama locaentities are thus injured. And we may be tempted to be-lieve that in some cases the great satisfaction derived bythe living persons who communicate, may outweigh theinjury so inflicted on the departed soul. This satisfac-tion, however, will only be keen in proportion to the fail-ure of the still livhig friend to realize the circumstancesunder which the communication takes place. At first, itis true, very shortly after death, the still vivid and com-plete memories of earth-life may enable the Kama locaentity to manifest himself as a personage very fairly likehis deceased self, but from the moment of death thechange in the direction of his evolution sets in. He will,as manifesting on the physical plane, betray no fresh fer-mentation of thought m his mind. He will never, in thatmanifestation, be any wiser, or higher in the scale of Na-ture, than he was when he died ; on the contrary, he mustbecome less and less intelligent, and apparently less in-structed than formerly, as time goes on. He will neverdo himself justice in communication with the friends leftbehind, and his failure in this respect will grow more andmore painful by degrees.

Yet another consideration operates to throw a verydoubtful light on the wisdom or propriety of gratifying adesire for intercourse with deceased friends. We maysay, never mind the gradually fading interest of the friendwho has gone before, in the earth left behind ; while thereis anything of his or her old self left to manifest itself tous, it will be a delight to communicate even with that.

And we may argue that if the beloved person is delayeda little on his way to Heaven by talking with us, he or shewould be willing to make that sacrifice for our sake. Thepoint overlooked here is, that on the astral, just as on thephysical plane, it is a very easy thing to set up a badhabit. The soul in Kama loca once slaking a thirst forearthly intercourse at the wells of mediumship will havea strong impulse to fall back again and again on that in-dulgence. We may be doing a great deal more than di-verting the soul's attention from its own proper businessby holding spiritualistic relations with it. We may bedoing it serious and almost permanent injury. 1 am notaffirming that this would invariably or generally be thecase, but a severe view of the ethics of the subject mustrecognize the dangerous possibilities involved in the courseof action under review. On the other hand, however, itis plain that cases may arise in which the desire for com-munication chiefly asserts itself from the other side : thatis to say, in which the departed soid is laden with someunsatisfied desire — pointing possibly towards the fulfil-ment of some neglected duty on earth — the attention towhich, on the part of sUll living friends, may have an ef-fect quite the reverse of that attending the mere encour-agement of the Kama loca entity in the resumption of itsold earthly interests. In such cases the living friendsmay, by falling in with its desire to communicate, be themeans, indirectly, of smoothing the path of the spiritualprogress. Here again, however, we must be on our guardagainst the delusive aspect of appearances. A wish man-ifested by an inhabitant of Kama loca may not always bethe expression of an idea then operative in his mind. Itmay be the echo of an old, perhaps of a very old, desire,then for the first time finding a channel for its outwardexpression. In this way, although it would be reasonable

to treat as important an intelligible wish conveyed to usfrom Kama loca by a person only lately deceased, it wouldbe prudent to regard with great suspicion such a wish ema-nating from the shade of a person who had been dead along time, and whose general demeanor as a shade did notseem to convey the notion that he retained any vivid con-sciousness of his old personality.

The recognition of all these facts and possibilities ofKama loca will, I think, afford theosophists a satisfactoryexplanation of a good many experiences connected withspiritualism which the first exposition of the Esoteric Doc-trine, as bearing on this matter, left in much obscurity.

It will be readily perceived that as the soul slowlyclears itself in Kama loca of the affinities which retardits Devachanic development, the aspect it turns towardsthe earth is more and more enfeebled, and it is inevitablethat there must always be in Kama loca an enormousnumber of entities nearly ripe for a complete mergence inDevachan, who on that very account appear to an earthlyobserver in a state of advanced decrepitude. These willhave sunk, as regards the activity of their lower astralprinciples, into the condition of the altogether vague andunintelligible entities, which, following the example ofolder occult writers, I have referred to as '* shells " in thetext of this chapter. The designation, however, is notaltogether a happy one. It might have been better tohave followed another precedent, and to have called them"shades," but either way their condition would be thesame. All the vivid consciousness inhering, as they leftthe earth, in the principles appropriately related to theactivities of physical life, has been transferred to thehigher principles which do not manifest at stances. Theirmemory of earth-life has almost become extinct. Theirlower principles are in such cases only reawakened by the

influences of the mediumistic current into which they maybe drawn, and they become then little more than astrallooking-glasses, in which the thoughts of the medium orsitters at the stance are reflected. If we can imagine thecolors on a painted canvas sinking by degrees into thesubstance of the material, and at last reemerging in theirpristine brilliancy on the other side, we shall be conceiv-ing a process which might not have destroyed the picture,but which would leave a gallery in which it took place adreary scene of brown and meaningless backs, and that isvery much what the Kama loca entities become beforethey ultimately shed the very material on which their firstastral consciousness operated, and pass into the whollypurified Devachanic condition.

But this is not the whole of the story which teaches usto regard manifestations coming from Kama loca with dis-trust. Our present comprehension of the subject enablesus to realize that when the time arrives for that seconddeath on the astral plane, which releases the purified Egofrom Kama loca altogether and sends it onward to theDevachanic state — something is left behind in Kamaloca which corresponds to the dead body bequeathed tothe earth when the soul takes its first flight from physicalexistence. A dead astral body is in fact left behind inKama loca, and there is certainly no impropriety in ap-plying the epithet " shell" to that residuum. The trueshell in that state disintegrates in Kama loca before verylong, just as the true body left to the legitimate processesof Nature on earth would soon decay and blend its ele-ments with the general reservoirs of matter of the orderto which they belong. But until that disintegration is ac-complished, the shell which the real Ego has altogetherabandoned may even in that state be mistaken sometimesat spiritual seances for a living entity. It remains for a

time an astral looking-glass, in which mediums may seetheir own thoughts reflected, and take these back, fullybelieving them to come from an external source. Thesephenomena in the truest sense of the term are galvanizedastral corpses ; none the less so, because until they areactually disintegrated a certain subtle connection will sub-sist between them and the true Devachanic spirit; justas such a subtle communication subsists in the first in-stance between the Kama loca entity and the dead bodyleft on earth. That last - mentioned communication iskept up by the finally-diffused material of the originalthird prmciple, or linga sharira, and a study of this branchof the subject will, I believe, lead us up to a better com-prehension than we possess at present of the circum-stances under which materializations are sometimes ac-complished at spiritual seances. But without going intothat digression now, it is enough to recognize that theanalogy may help to show how, between the Devachanicentity and the discarded shell in Kama loca a similar con-nection may continue for a while, acting, while it lasts, asa drag on the higher spirit, but perhaps as an after-glowof sunset on the shell. It would surely be distressing,however, in the highest degree, to any living friend of theperson concerned, to get, through clairvoyance, or in anyother way, sight or cognition of such a shell, and to be ledinto mistaking it for the true entity.

The comparatively clear view of Kama loca which weare now enabled to take, may help us to employ terms re-lating to its phenomena with more precision than we havehitherto been able to attain. I think if we adopt one newexpression, " astral soul," as applying to the entities inKama loca who have recently quitted earth-life, or whofor other reasons still retain, in the aspect they turn backtowards earth, a large share of the intellectual attributes21

that distinguished them on earth, we shall then find theother terms in use already, adequate to meet our remain-ing emergencies. Indeed, we may then get rid entirelyof the inconvenient term " elementary," liable to be con-fused with elemental, and singularly inappropriate to thebeings it describes. I would suggest that the astral soulas it sinks (regarded from our point of view) into intel-lectual decrepitude, should be spoken of in its faded con-dition as a shade, and that the term shell should be re-served for the true shells or astral dead bodies which theDevachanic spirit has finally quitted.

We are naturally led in studying the law of spiritualgrowth in Kama loca to inquire how long a time mayprobably elapse before the transfer of consciousness fromthe lower to the higher principles of the astral soul maybe regarded as complete ; and as usual, when we come tofigures relating to the higher processes of Nature, the an-swer is very elastic. But I believe the esoteric teachersof the East declare that as regards the average run ofhumanity — for what may be called, in a spiritual sense,the great middle classes of humanity — it is unusual thata Kama loca entity will be in a position to manifest as suchfor more than twenty-five to thirty years. But on eachside of this average the figures may run up very consid-erably. That is to say, a very ignoble and besotted hu-man creature may hang about in Kama loca for a muchlonger time for want of any higher principles sufficientlydeveloped to take up his consciousness at all, and at theother end of the scale the very intellectual and mentally-active soul may remain for very long periods in Kama loca(in the absence of spiritual affinities in correspondingforce), by reason of the great persistence of forces andcauses generated on the higher plane of effects, thoughmental activity could hardly be divorced in this way from

spirituality except In cases where it was exclusively asso-ciated with worldly ambition. Again, while Kama locaperiods may thus be prolonged beyond the average fromvarious causes, they may sink to almost inJfinitesimal brev-ity when the spirituality of a person dying at a ripe oldage, and at the close of a life which has legitimately ful-filled its purpose, is already far advanced.

There is one other important possibility connected withmanifestations reaching us by the usual channels of com-munication with Kama loca, which it is desirable to noticehere, although from its nature the realization of such apossibility cannot be frequent. No recent students oftheosophy can expect to know as yet very much about theconditions of existence which await adepts who relinquislithe use of physical bodies on earth. The higher possi-bilities open to them appear to me quite beyond thereach of intellectual appreciation. Xo man is cleverenough, by virtue of the mere cleverness seated in a liv-ing brain, to understand Nirvana ; but it would appearthat adepts in some cases elect to pursue a course lyingmidway between re-incarnation and the passage into Nir-vana, and in the higher regions of Devaehan ; that is tosay, in the arupa state of Devaehan may await the slowadvance of human evolution towards the exalted condi-tion they have thus attained. Now an adept who hadthus become a Devachanic spirit of the most elevated typewould not be cut off by the conditions of his Devachanicstate — as would be the case with a natural Devachanicspirit passing through that state on his way to re-incarna-tion — from manifesting his influence on earth. Hiswould certainly not be an influence which would makeitself felt by the instrumentality of any physical signs tomixed audiences, but it is not impossible that a mediumof the highest type — who would more properly be called

a seer — might be thus influenced. By such an Adeptspirit, some great men in the world's history may fromtime to time have been overshadowed and inspired, con-sciously or unconsciously as the case may have been.

The disintegration of shells in Kama loca will inevi-tably suggest to any one who endeavors to comprehendthe process at all, that there must be in Nature somegeneral reservoirs of the matter appropriate to that sphereof existence, corresponding to the physical earth and itssurrounding elements, into which our own bodies areresigned at death. The grand mysteries on which thisconsideration impinges will claim a far more exhaustiveinvestigation than we have yet been enabled to under-take; but one broad idea eomiected with them may use-fully be put forward without further delay. The stateof Kama loca is one which has its corresponding ordersof matter in manifestation round it. I will not here at-tempt to go into the metaphysics of the problem, whichmight even lead us to discard the notion that astral mat-ter need be any less real and tangible than that whichappeals to our physical senses. It is enough for thepresent to explain that the propinquity of Kama loca tothe earth, which is so readily made apparent by spirit-ualistic experience, is explained by Oriental teaching toarise from this fact,—that Kama loca is just as muchin and of the earth as, during our lives, our astral soul isin and of the living man. The stage of Kama loca, infact, the great realm of matter in the appropriate statewhich constitutes Kama loca and is perceptible to thesenses of astral entities, as also to those of many clair-voyants, is the fourth principle of the earth, just as theKama-rupa is the fourth principle of man. For the earthhas its seven principles like the human creatures who in-habit it. Thus, the Devachanic state corresponds to the

fifth principle of the earth, and Nirvana to the sixthprinciple.

NOTE TO CHAPTER VII.

Later information and study — the comparison, that isto say, of the various branches of the doctrine, and the coUlocation of other statements with those in Chapter VII —show the difficulty of applying figures to the Esoteric Doc-trines in a very striking light. Figures may be quite trust-worthy as representing broad averages, and yet verymisleading when applied to special cases. Devachanicperiods vary for different people within such very widelimits that any rule laid down in the matter must be sub-ject to a bewildering cloud of exceptions. To begin with,the average mentioned above has no doubt been computedwith reference to fully matured adults. Between the quiteyoung child who has no Devachanic period at all and theadult who accomplishes an average period we have to takenote of persons dying in youth, who have accumulatedKarma, and who must therefore pass through the usualstages of spiritual development, but for whom the brieflives they have spent have not produced causes which takevery long to work themselves out. Such persons wouldreturn to incarnation after a sojourn in the world of effectsof corresponding brevity. Again there are such things asartificial incarnations accomplished by the direct interven-tion of the Mahatmas when a chela who may not yet haveacquired anything resembling the power of controlling thematter himself, is brought back into incarnation almostimmediately after his previous physical death, withouthaving been suffered to float into the current of natural

causes at all. Of course in such cases it may be said thatthe claims the person concerned has established on theMahatmas are themselves natural causes of a kind, theintervention of the Mahatmas, who are quite beyond theliability of acting capriciously in such a matter, being somuch fruit of effort in the preceding life, so much Karma.But still either way such cases would be equally with-drawn from the operation of the general average rule.

Clearly it is impossible when the complicated facts of anentirely unfamiliar science are being presented to untrainedmind for the first time, to put them forward with alltheir appropriate qualifications, compensations and abnor-mal developments visible from the beginning. We mustbe content to take the broad rules first and deal with theexceptions afterwards, and especially is this the case withoccult study, in connection with which the traditionalmethods of teaching, generally followed, aim at impress-ing every fresh idea on the memory, by provoking theperplexity it at last relieves. In relation to another mat-ter dealt with in the preceding pages, an important ex-ception in Nature has thus, it seems to me now, been leftout of account. The description I have given of the prog-ress of the human tide-wave is quite coherent as it stands,but since the publication of the original edition of thisbook some criticism was directed, in India, to a compari-son between my version of the story and certain passagesin other writings, known to emanate from a ISIahatma.A discrepancy between the two statements was pointed out,the other version assuming the possibility that a monadactually might have travelled round the seven planets oncemore often than the compeers among whom he mightultimately find himself on this earth. My account of theobscurations appears to render this contingency impossi-ble. The clue to the mystery appears to lie outside the

domain of those facts concerning which the adepts arewilling to speak freely; and the reader must clearly un-derstand that the explanation I am about to offer is thefruit of my own speculation and comparison of differentparts of the doctrine — not authentic information receivedfrom the author of my general teaching.

The fact appears to be that the obscurations are so farcomplete as to present all the phenomena above describedin regard to each planet they affect as a whole. But ex-ceptional phenomena, for which we must be ever on thealert, come into play even in this matter. The greatbulk of humanity is driven on from one planet to the nextby the great cyclic impulse when its time comes for such atransition, but the planet it quits is not utterly denuded ofhumanity, nor is it, in every region of its surface rendered,by the physical and climatic changes that come on, unfitto be the habitation of human beings. Even during ob-scuration a small colony of humanity clings to each planet,and the monads associated with these small colonies fol-lowing different laws of evolution, and beyond the reachof those attractions which govern the main vortex of hu-manity in the planet occupied by the great tide-wave,pass on from world to world along what may be calledthe inner round of evolution, far ahead of the race atlarge. What may be the circumstances which occasion-ally project a soul even from the midst of the great humanvortex, right out of the attraction of the planet occupiedby the tide-wave, and into the attraction of the InnerRound — is a question that can only be a subject for usat present of very uncertain conjecture.

It may be worth while to draw attention, in connectionwith the solution I have ventured to offer as applicableto the problem of the Inner Rounds, to the way in whichthe fact of Nature I assume to exist, would harmonize

with the widely diffused doctrines of the Deluge. Thatportion of a planet which remained habitable during anobscuration would be equivalent to the Noah's Ark of thebiblical narrative taken in its largest symbolical meaning.Of course the narrative of the Deluge has minor sym-bolical meanings also, but it does not appear improbablethat the Kabalists should also have associated with it thelarger significance now suggested. In due time when theobscured planet grew ready once more to receive a fullpopulation of humanity, the colonists of the ark wouldbe ready to commence the process of populating it afresh.

NOTE TO CHAPTER VIII.

The condition into which the monads failing to pass themiddle of the fifth round must fall as the tide of evo-lution sweeps on, leaving them stranded, so to speak,upon the shores of time, is not described very fully in thischapter. By a few words only is it indicated that thefailures of each manwantara are not absolutely annihilatedwhen they reach " the end of their tether," but are destinedafter some enormous period of waiting to pass once moreinto the current of evolution. Many inferences may bededuced from this condition of things. The period ofwaiting which the failures have thus to undergo, is, tobegin with, a duration so stupendous as to baffle the im-agination. The latter half of the fifth round, the whole ofthe sixtli and seventh have to be performed by the suc-cessful graduates in spirituality, and the latter roundsare of immensely longer duration than those of the middleperiod. Then follows the vast interval of Nirvanic rest,which closes the manwantara, the immeasurable Night

APPENDIX. 329

of Brahma, the Pralaya of the whole planetary chain.Only when the next manwantara begins do the failuresbegin to wake from their awful trance — awful to theimagination of beings in the full activity of life, thoughsuch a trance, being necessarily all but destitute of con-sciousness, is possibly no more tedious than a dreamlessnight in the memory of a profound sleeper. The fateof the failures may be grievous first of all, rather onaccount of what they miss, than on account of what theyincur. Secondly, however, it is grievous on account ofthat to which it leads, for all the trouble of physical lifeand almost endless incarnations must be gone throughafresh, when the failures wake up; whereas the perfectedbeings, who outstripped them in evolution during thatfifth round in which they became failures, will havegrown into the god-like perfection of Dhyan Chohanhoodduring their trance, and will be the presiding geniuses ofthe next manwantara, not its helpless subjects.

Apart altogether, meanwhile, from what may be regard-ed as the personal interest of the entities concerned, theexistence of the failures in Nature at the beginning ofeach manwantara is a fact which contributes in a veryimportant degree to a comprehension of the evolutionarysystem. When the planetary chain is first of all evolvedout of chaos — if we may use such an expression as " firstof all" in a qualified sense, having regard to the reflec-tion that ''in the beginning" is a mere fa(;on de parlerapplied to any period in eternity — there are no failuresto deal with. Then the descent of spirit into matter,through the elemental, mineral, and other kingdoms, goeson in the way already described in earlier chapters ofthis book. But from the second manwantara of a planet-ary chain, during the activity of the solar system, whichprovides for many such manwantaras, the course of events

330 APPENDIX.

is somewhat different — easier, if I may again be allowedto use an expression that is applicable rather in a con-versational than a severely scientific sense. At any rateit is quicker, for human entities are already in existence,ready to enter into incarnation as the world, also alreadyin existence, can be got ready for them. The truth thusappears to be, that after the first manwantara of a series —enormously longer in duration than its successors — noentities, then first evolved from quite the lower kingdoms,do more than attain the threshold of humanity. The latefailures pass first into incarnation, and then eventuallythe surviving animal entities already differentiated. But,compared with the passages in the Esoteric Doctrinewhich affect the current evolution of our own race, theseconsiderations, relating to the very early periods of world-evolution, have little more than an intellectual interest,and cannot as yet by any contributions of mine be verygreatly amplified.

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