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MAY 10 1918
THE \^/<v., .vv'!
ANCIENT WISDOM
Ad Outline of Theosophical Teachings
BY
ANNIE BESANT
THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
Adyar, Madras, India
1897
Krotona, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Reprinted 1918
DEDICATED
WITH GRATITUDE, REVERENCE, AND LOVE
TO
H. P. BLAVATSKY,
WHO SHOWED ME THE LIGHT.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface,
vii
Introduction,
. 1
I. The Physical Plane, ....
. 40
II. The Astral Plane, ....
. 57
III. Kamaloka,
. 83
IV. The Mental Plane
. 107
V. Devachan,
. 137
VI. The Buddhic and Nirvanic Planes, .
. 163
VII. Reincarnation,
. 179
VIII. Reincarnation (continued).
. 208
■ IX. Karma,
. 242
X. The Law of Sacrifice,
. 275
XI. Man's Ascent, . . . • .
. 291
XII. Building a Kosmos, ....
. 311
PREFACE
This book is intended to place in the hands of the
general reader an epitome of theosophical teachings,
sufficiently plain to serve the elementary student, and
sufficiently full to lay a sound foundation for further
knowledge. It is hoped that it may serve as an intro-
duction to the profounder works of H. P. Blavatsky,
and be a convenient stepping-stone to their study.
Those who have learned a little of the Ancient
Wisdom know the illumination, the peace, the joy,
the strength, its lessons have brought into their lives.
That this book may win some to con its teachings,
and to prove for themselves their value, is the prayer
with which it is sent forth into the world.
Annie Bksant.
August, 1897.
THE ANCIENT WISDOM
INTRODUCTION
THE UNITY UNDERLYING ALL RELIGIONS.
Right thought is necessary to right conduct, right
understanding to right living, and the Divine Wis-
dom— whether called by its ancient Sanskrit name
of Brahma Vidya, or its modern Greek name of
Theosophia, Theosophy — comes to the world as at
once an adequate philosophy and an all-embracing
religion and ethic. It was once said of the Christian
Scriptures by a devotee that they contained shallows
in which a child could wade and depths in which a
giant must swim. A similar statement might be
made of Theosophy, for some of its teachings are so
simple and so practical that any person of average
intelligence can understand and follow them, while
others are so lofty, so profound, that the ablest
strains his intellect to contain them and sinks ex-
hausted in the effort.
In the present volume an attempt will be made to
place Theosophy before the reader simply and clearly,
in a way which shall convey its general principles
and truths as forming a coherent conception of the
2 The ancie:nt wisdom
universe, and shall give such detail as is necessary
for the understanding of their relations to each other.
An elementary text-book cannot pretend to give the
fulness of knowledge that may be obtained from
abstruser works, but it should leave the student with
clear fundamental ideas on his subject, with much
indeed to add by future study but with little to
unlearn. Into the outline given by such a book the
student should be able to paint the details of further
research.
It is admitted on all hands that a survey of the
great religions of the world shows that they hold in
common many religious, ethical, and philosophical
ideas. But while the fact is universally granted,
the explanation of the fact is a matter of dispute.
Some allege that religions have grown up on the
soil of human ignorance tilled by imagination, and
have been gradually elaborated from crude forms of
animism and fetichism; their likenesses are referred
to universal natural phenomena imperfectly observed
and fancifully explained, solar and star worship be-
ing the universal key for one school, phallic worship
the equally universal key for another; fear, desire,
ignorance, and wonder led the savage to personify
the powers of nature, and priests played upon his
terrors and his hopes, his misty fancies, and his be-
wildered questionings ; myths became scriptures and
symbols facts, and as their basis was universal the
likeness of the products was inevitable. Thus speak
the doctors of "Comparative Mythology," and plain
INTRODUCTION 3
people are silenced but not convinced under the rain
of proofs ; they cannot deny the likenesses, but they
dimly feel : Are all man's dearest hopes and loftiest
imaginings really nothing more than the outcome of
savage fancies and of groping ignorance? Have the
great leaders of the race, the martyrs and heroes of
humanity, lived, wrought, suffered, and died de-
luded, for the mere personifications of astronomi-
cal facts and for the draped obscenities of bar-
barians ?
The second explanation of the common property
in the religions of the world asserts the existence of
an original teaching in the custody of a Brotherhood
of great spiritual Teachers, who — Themselves the
outcome of past cycles of evolution — acted as the
instructors and guides of the child-humanity of our
planet, imparting to its races and nations in turn the
fundamental truths of religion in the form most
adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the recipients. Ac-
cording to this view, the Founders of the great relig-
ions are members of the one Brotherhood, and were
aided in Their mission by many other members,
lower in degree than Themselves, Initiates and dis-
ciples of various grades, eminent in spiritual insight,
in philosophic knowledge, or in purity of ethical
wisdom. These guided the infant nations, gave them
their polity, enacted their laws, ruled them as kings,
taught them as phiosophers, guided them as priests ;
all the nations of antiquity looked back to such
mighty men, demigods and heroes, and they left
4 The ancie^nt wisdom
their traces in literature, in architecture, in legisla-
tion.
That such men lived it seems difficult to deny in
the face of universal tradition, of still existing Scrip-
tures, and of prehistoric remains for the most part
now in ruins, to say nothing of other testimony
which the ignorant would reject. The sacred books
of the East are the best evidence for the greatness
of their authors, for who in later days or in modern
times can even approach the spiritual sublimity of
their religious thought, the intellectual splendor of
their philosophy, the breadth and purity of their
ethic? And when we find that these books contain
teachings about God, man, and the universe identical
in substance under much variety of outer appear-
ance, it does not seem unreasonable to refer them to
a central primary body of doctrine. To that body
we give the name of the Divine Wisdom, in its Greek
form : Theosophy.
As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot
be the antagonist of any; it is indeed their purifier,
revealing the valuable inner meaning of much that
has become mischievous in its external presentation
by the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions
of superstition; but it recognizes and defends itself
in each, and seeks in each to unveil its hidden wis-
dom. No man in becoming a Theosophist need
cease to be a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu; he
will but acquire a deeper insight into his own faith,
a firmer hold on its spiritual truths, a broader un-
INTRODUCTION 5
derstandlng of its sacred teachings. As Theosophy
of old gave birth to reHgions, so in modern times
does it justify and defend them. It is the rock
whence all of them were hewn, the hole of the pit
whence all were digged. It justifies at the bar of
intellectual criticism the deepest longings and emo-
tions of the human heart ; it verifies our hopes for
man ; it gives us back ennobled our faith in God.
The truth of this statement becomes more and
more apparent as we study the various world-Scrip-
tures, and but a few selections from the wealth of
material available will be sufficient to establish the
fact, and to guide the student in his search for
further verification. The main spiritual verities of
religion may be summarized thus :
i. One eternal Infinite incognizable real Existence.
ii. From That the manifested God, unfolding from
unity to duality, from duality to trinity.
iii. From the manifested Trinity many spiritual
Intelligences, guiding the kosmic order.
iv. Man a reflection of the manifested God and
therefore a trinity fundamentally, his inner and real
Self being eternal, one with the Self of the universe.
V. His evolution by repeated incarnations, into
which he is drawn by desire, and from which he is
set free by knowledge and sacrifice, becoming divine
in potency as he had ever been divine in latency.
China, with its now fossilized civilization, was
peopled in old days by the Turanians, the fourth
subdivision of the great Fourth Race, the race which
6 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
inhabited the lost continent of Atlantis, and spread
its offshoots over the world. The Mongolians, the
last subdivision of that same race, later reinforced
its population, so that in China we have traditions
from ancient days, preceding the settlement of the
Fifth, or Aryan race in India. In the Ching Chang
Ching, or Classic of Purity, we have a fragment of
an ancient Scripture of singular beauty, breatliing
out the spirit of restfulness and peace so character-
istic of the "original teaching." Mr. Legge says in
the introductory note to his translation* that the
treatise —
Is attributed to Ko Yiian. (or Hsiian), a Taoisl of the Wu
dynasty (a.d. 222-227), who is fabled to have attained to the
state of an Immortal, and is generally so denominated. He is
represented as a worker of miracles ; as addicted to intemper-
ance, and very eccentric in his ways. When shipwrecked on
one occasion, he emerged from beneath the water with his
clothes unwet, and walked freely on its surface. Finally he
ascended to the sky in bright day. All these accounts may
safely be put down as the figments of a later time.
Such stories are repeatedly told of Initiates of
various degrees, and are by no means necessarily
'^figments," but we are more interested in Ko Yuan's
own account of the book:
When I obtained the true Tao, I had recited this Ching
[book] ten thousand times. It is what the Spirits of Heaven
practise and had not been communicated to scholars of this
lower world. I got it from the Divine Ruler of the Eastern
Hwa ; he received it from the Divine Ruler of the Golden
Gate ; he received it from the Royal-mother of the West.
Now the "Divine Ruler of the Golden Gate" was
♦ The Sacred Books of the East, vol. xl.
INTRODUCTION 7
the title held by the Initiate who ruled the Toltec
empire in Atlantis, and its use suggests that the
Classic of Purity was brought thence to China when
the Turanians separated off from the Toltecs. The
idea is strengthened by the contents of the brief
treatise, which deals with Tao — literally "the Way'*
— the name by which the One Reality is indicated in
the ancient Turanian and Mongolian religion. We
read :
The Great Tao has no bodily form, but It produced and
nourishes heaven and earth. The Great Tao has no passions,
but It causes the sun and moon to revolve as they do. The
Great Tao has no name, but It effects the growth and main-
tenance of all things (i. 1).
This is the manifested God as unity, but duality
supervenes :
Now the Tao (shows itself in two forms), the Pure and the
Turbid, and has (the two conditions of) Motion and Rest.
Heaven is pure and earth is turbid; heaven moves and the
earth is at rest. The masculine is pure and the feminine is
turbid ; the masculine moves and the feminine is still. The
radical (Purity) descended, and the (turbid) issue flowed
abroad, and thus all things were produced (i. 2).
This passage is particularly interesting from the
allusion to the active and receptive sides of Nature,
the distinction between Spirit, the generator, and
Matter, the nourisher, so familiar in later writings.
In the Tao Teh Ching the teaching as to the Un-
manifested and the Manifested comes out very
plainly :
The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and un-
8 th^ ancient wisdom
changing Tao. The name that can be named is not the endur-
ing and unchanging name. Having no name, it is the Origi-
nator of heaven and earth ; having a name, it is the Mother of
all things. . , . Under these two aspects it is really the same ;
but as development takes place it receives the different names.
Together we call them the Mystery (i. 1, 2, 4).
vStudents of the Kabalah will be reminded of one
of the Divine Names, "the Concealed Mystery."
Again :
There was something undefined and complete, coming into
existence before heaven and earth. How still it was and
formless, standing alone and undergoing no change, reaching
everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted). It may
be regarded as the Mother of all things. I do not know its
name, and I give it the designation of the Tao. Making an
effort to give it a name, I call it the Great. Great, it passes on
(in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remote. Having
become remote, it returns (xxv. 1-3).
Very interesting it is to see here the idea of the
forthgoing and the returning of the One Life, so
familiar to us in Hindu literature. Familiar also
seems the verse :
All things under heaven sprang from It as existent (and
named) ; that existence sprang from It as non-existent (and
not named) (xl. 2).
That a universe might become, the Unmanifest
must give forth the One from whom duality and
trinity proceed :
The Tao produced One ; One produced Two ; Two produced
Three ; Three produced all things. All things leave behind
them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go
forward to embrace the Brightness (into which they have
INTRODUCTION 9
emerged), while they are harmonized by the Breath of Va-
cancy (xlii. 1).
"Breath of Space" would be a happier translation.
Since all is produced from It, It exists in all :
All-pervading is the great Tao. It may be found on the left
hand and on the right. ... It clothes all things as with a
garment, and makes no assumption of being their lord; — It
may be named in the smallest things. All things return (to
their root and disappear), and do not know that it is It which
presides over their doing so ; — It may be named in the great-
est things (xxxiv. 1,2).
Chwang-ze (fourth century b. c.) in his presenta-
tion of the ancient teachings, refers to the spiritual
Intelligences coming from the Tao :
It has Its root and ground (of existence) in Itself. Before
there were heaven and earth, from of old, there It was securely
existing. From It came the mysterious existence of spirits,
from It the mysterious existence of God (Bk. vi., Pt. i., Sec.
vi. 7).
A number of the names of these Intelligences fol-
low, but such beings are so well known to play a
great part in the Chinese religion that we need not
multiply quotations about them.
Man is regarded as a trinity, Taoism, says Mr.
Legge, recognizing in him the spirit, the mind, and
the body. This division comes out clearly in the
Classic of Purity, in the teaching that man must get
rid of desire to reach union with the One :
Now the spirit of man loves purity, but his mind disturbs it.
The mind of man loves stillness, but his desires draw it away.
If he could always send his desires away, his mind would of
itself become still. Let his mind be made clean, and his spirit
of itself becomes pure. . . . The reason why men are not able
10 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
to attain to this is because their minds have not been cleansed,
and their desires have not been sent away. If one is able to
send the desires away, when he then looks in at his mind it is
no longer his; when he looks out at his body it is no longer
his ; and when he looks farther off at external things, they are
things which he has nothing to do with (i. 3,4).
Then, after giving the stages of indrawing to "the
condition of perfect stillness," it is asked:
In that condition of rest independently of place, how can
any desire arise? And when no desire any longer arises there
is the true stillness and rest. That true (stillness) becomes
(a) constant quality, and responds to external things (without
error) ; yea, that true and constant quality holds possession of
the nature. In such constant response and constant stillness
there is the constant purity and rest. He who has this abso-
lute purity enters gradually into the (inspiration of the) True
Tao (i. 5).
The supplied words "inspiration of" rather cloud
than elucidate the meaning, for entering into the
Tao is congruous with the whole idea and with other
Scriptures.
On putting away of desire is laid much stress in
Taoism; a commentator on the Classic of Purity re-
marks that understanding the Tao depends on abso-
lute purity, and
The acquiring this Absolute Purity depends entirely on the
Putting away of Desire, which is the urgent practical lesson
of the Treatise.
The Tao Teh Ching says :
Always without desire we must be found.
If its deep mystery we would sound ;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see (i.3).
INTRODUCTION 11
Reincarnation does not seem to be so distinctly
taught as might have been expected, although pas-
sages are found which imply that the main idea was
taken for granted and that the entity was considered
as ranging through animal as well as human births.
Thus we have from Chwang-ze the quaint and wise
story of a dying man, to whom his friend said :
"Great indeed is the Creator ! What will He now make you
to become? Where will He take you to? W^ill He make you
the liver of a rat or the arm of an insect?" Szelai replied,
"Wherever a parent tells a son to go, east, west, south, or
north, he simply follows the command. . . . Here now is a
great founder, casting his metal. If the meal were to leap
up (in the pot) and say, 'I must be made into a (sword like
the) Moysh,' the great founder would be sure to regard it as
uncanny. So, again, when a form is being fashioned in the
mould of the womb, if it were to say, 'I must become a man,
I must become a man,' the Creator would be sure to regard it
as uncanny. When we once understand that heaven and earth
are a great melting-pot and the Creator a great founder, where
can we have to go that shall not be right for us? We are
born as from a quiet sleep and we d»e to a calm awaking" (Bk
vi., Pt. i.. Sec. vi.).
Turning to the Fifth, the Aryan Race, we have
the same teachings embodied in the oldest and
greatest Aryan religion — the Brahmanical. The eter-
nal Existence is proclaimed in the Chhandogyo-
panishad as "Oneonly, with out a second," and it is
written :
It willed, I shall multiply for the sake of the universe (vi. ii.
1,3).
The Supreme Logos, Brahman, is threefold — Being,
Consciousness, Bliss, and it is said:
12 THS ANCIENT WISDOM
From This arise life, mind, and all the senses, ether, air, fire,
water, earth the support of all {Mundakopanishad, ii. 3).
No grander descriptions of Deity can be found
anywhere than in the Hindu Scriptures, but they
are becoming so familiar that brief quotation will
suffice. Let the following serve as specimens of
their wealth of gems :
Manifest, near, moving in the secret place, the great abode,
herein rests all that moves, breathes, and shuts the eyes.
Know That as to be worshipped, being and non-being, the
best, beyond the knowledge of all creatures. Luminous, sub-
tler than the subtle, in which the worlds and their denizens are
infixed. That this imperishable Brahman ; That also life and
voice and mind. ... In the golden highest sheath is spotless,
partless Brahman; That the pure Light of hghts, known by
the knowers of the Self. . . . That deathless Brahman is be-
fore, Brahman behind, Brahman to the right and to the left,
below, above, pervading; this Brahman truly is the all. This
the best {Mundakopanishad, IL ii. 1, 2, 9, 11).
Beyond the universe. Brahman, the supreme, the great, hid-
den in all beings according to their bodies, the one Breath of
the whole universe, the Lord, whom knowing (men) become
immortal. I know that mighty Spirit, the shining sun beyond
the darkness. ... I know Him the unfading, the ancient, the
Soul of all, omnipresent by His nature, whom the Brahman-
knowers call unborn, whom they call eternal (Shvetdshva-
taropanishad, iii. 7, 8, 21).
When there is no darkness, no day nor night, no being nor
non-being (there is) Shiva even alone ; That the indestructible.
That is to be worshipped by Savitri, from That came forth the
ancient wisdom. Not above nor below, nor in the midst, can
He be comprehended. Nor is there any similitude for Him
whose name is infinite glory. Not with the sight is established
His form, none may by the eye behold Him ; they who know
INTRODUCTION 13
Him by the heart and by the mind, dwelling in the heart, be-
come immortal (ibid., iv. 18-20).
That man in his inner Self is one with the Self of
the universe — "I am That" — is an idea that so thor-
oughly pervades all Hindu thought that man is
often referred to as the ''divine town of Brahman,"*
the "town of nine gates/'f God dwelling in the cav-
ity of his heart.J
In one manner is to be seen (the Being) which cannot be
proved, which is eternal, without spot, higher than the ether,
unborn, the great eternal Soul. . . . This great unborn Soul
is the same which abides as the intelligent (soul) in all living
creatures, the same which abides as ether in the heart ; § in
him it sleeps; it is the Subduer of all, the Ruler of all, the sov-
ereign Lord of all ; it does not become greater by good works
nor less by evil work. It is the Ruler of all, the sovereign
Lord of all beings, the Preserver of all beings, the Bridge, the
LTpholder of the worlds, so that they fall not to ruin (Brihad-
dranyakopanishad, IV. iv. 20, 22, Trs. by Dr. E. Roer).
When God is regarded as the evolver of the uni-
verse, the three- fold character comes out very clear-
ly as Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma, or again as Vishnu
sleeping under the waters, the Lotus springing from
Him, and in the Lotus Brahma. Man is likewise
threefold, and in the Mdndukyopanishad the Self is
described as conditioned by the physical body, the
subtle body, and the mental body, and then rising
* Mimdakopanishad, 11. ii. 7.
t Shvetashvataropanishad, iii. 14.
% Ibid., ii.
§ The "ether in the heart" is a mystical phrase used to inid-
cate the One, who is said to dwell therein.
14 TH^ ANCIEJNT WISDOM
out of all into the One "without duality." From
the Trimurti (Trinity) come many Gods, connected
with the administration of the universe, as to whom
it is said in the Brihaddranyakopanishad :
Adore Him, ye Gods, after whom the year by rolling days
is completed, the Light of lights, as the immortal Life (IV.
iv. 16).
It is hardly necessary to even mention the pres-
ence in Brahmanism of the teaching of reincarna-
tion, since its whole philosophy of life turns on this
pilgrimage of the Soul through many births and
deaths, and not a book could be taken up in which
this truth is not taken for granted. By desires man
is bound to this wheel of change, and therefore by
knowledge, devotion, and the destruction of desires,
man must set himself free. When the Soul knows
God it is liberated.* The intellect purified by
knowledge beholds Him.f Knowledge joined to de-
votion finds the abode of Brahman.J Whoever
knows Brahman becomes Brahman.§ When desires
cease the mortal becomes immortal and obtains
Brahman.||
Buddhism, as it exists in this northern form, is
quite at one with the more ancient faiths, but in
the southern form it seems to have let slip the idea
of the Logic Trinity as of the One Existence from
which They come forth. The Logos in His triple
manifestation is : the First Logos, Amitabha, the
* Shvetash, i. 8. t Mund. IIL i. 8. % Ibid., IIL ii. 4.
§ Ibid. IIL ii. 9. II Kathop. vi. 14.
INTRODUCTION 15
Boundless Light; the Second, Avalokiteshvara, or
Padmapani (Chenresi) ; the Third, Mandjusri— "the
representative of creative wisdom, corresponding to
Brahma."* Chinese Buddhism apparently does not
contain the idea of a primordial Existence, beyond
the Logos, but Nepaulese Buddhism postulates Adi-
Buddha, from Whom Amitabha arises. Padmapani
is said by Eitel to be the representative of compas-
sionate Providence and to correspond partly with
Shiva, but as the aspect of the Buddhist Trinity
that sends forth incarnations He appears rather to
represent the same idea as Vishnu, to whom He is
allied by bearing the Lotus (fire and water, or Spirit
and Matter as the primary constituents of the uni-
verse). Reincarnation and Karma are so much the
fundamentals of Buddhism that it is hardly worth
while to insist on them save to note the way of lib-
eration, and to remark that as the Lord Buddha was
a Hindu preaching to Hindus, Brahmanical doc-
trines are taken for granted constantly in His teach-
ing, as matters of course. He was a purifier and a
reformer, not an iconoclast, and struck at the accre-
tions due to ignorance, not at fundamental truths
belonging to the Ancient Wisdom:
Those beings who walk in the way of the law that has been
well taught, reach the other shore of the great sea of birth and
death, that is difficult to cross (Uddnavarga, xxix. 37).
Desire binds man, and must be gotten rid of:
It is hard for one who is held by the fetters of desire to free
* Eitel's Sanskrit Chinese Dictionary, sub voce.
16 th:^ ancient wisdom
himself of them, says the Blessed One. The steadfast, who
care not for the happiness of deires, cast them off and do soon
depart (to Nirvana). . . . Mankind has no lasting desires:
they are impermanent in them who experience them ; free
yourself then from what cannot last, and abide not in the
sojourn of death (ibid., ii. 6, 8).
He who has destroyed desires for (worldly) goods, sinful-
ness, the bonds of the eye of the flesh, who has torn up desire
by the very root, he I declare, is a Brahmana. (Ibid., xxxiii
68).
And a Brahmana is a man "having his last body,"*
and is defined as one
Who, knowing his former abodes (existences), perceives
heaven and hell, the Muni, who has found the way to put an
end to birth (Ibid., xxxiii. 55).
In the exoteric Hebrew Scriptures, the idea of a
Trinity does not come out strongly, though duality
is apparent, and the God spoken of is obviously the
Logos, not the One Unmanifest:
I am the Lord and there is none else. I form the light and
create darkness ; I make peace and create evil ; I am the Lord
that doeth all these things (Is., xlvii. 7),
Philo, however, has the doctrine of the Logos very
clearly, and it is found in the Fourth Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word [Logos] and the Word was
with God and the Word was God. . . . All things were made
by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was
made (S. John i. 1, 3).
In the Kabalah the doctrine of the One, the
Three, the Seven, and then the many, is plainly
taught :
* Uddnavarga, xxxiii. 41
INTRODUCTION 17
The Ancient of the Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown,
has a form, yet also has not any form. It has a form through
which the universe is maintained. It also has not any form
as It cannot be comprehended. When It first took this form
[Kether, the Crown, the First Logos] It permitted to proceed
from It nine brilliant Lights [Wisdom and the Voice, forming
with Kether the Triad, and then the seven lower Sephiroth].
... It is the Ancient of the Ancients, the Mystery of the
Mysteries, the Unknown of the Unknown. It has a form
which appertains to It, since It appears (through it) to us, as
the Ancient Man above all, as the Ancient of the Ancients,
and that which there is the Most Unknown among the Un-
known. But under that form by which It makes Itself known.
It however still remains the Unknown (Isaac Myer's Qabba-
lah, from the Zohar, pp. 274, 275).
Myer points out that the "form" is "not 'the An-
cient of ALL the Ancients,' who is the Ain Soph."
Again :
Three Lights are in the Holy Upper which Unite as One;
and they are the basis of the Thorah, and this opens the door
to all. . . . Come, see ! the mystery of the word. These arc
three degrees and each exists by itself, and yet all are One
and are knotted in One, nor are they separated one from an-
other. . . . Three come out from One, One exists in Three,
it is the force between Two, Two nourish One, One nourishes
many sides, thus All is One {ihid., 373,375,376).
Needless to say that the Hebrews held the doc-
trine of many Gods — "Who is like unto Thee, O
Lord, among the Gods ?"* — and of multitudes of sub-
ordinate ministrants, the "Sons of God," the "An-
gels of the Lord," the "Ten Angelic Hosts."
Of the commencement of the universe the Zohar
teaches :
* Ex. XV. ii.
18 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
In the beginning was the Will of the King, prior to any ex-
istence which came into being through emanation from this
Will. It sketched and engraved the forms of all things that
were to be manifested from concealment into view, in the
supreme and dazzHng Ught of the Quadrant [the Sacred Te-
tractys] (Myer's Qabbalah, pp. 194, 195).
Nothing can exist in which the Deity is not im-
manent, and with regard to Reincarnation it is
taught that the Soul is present in the divine Idea
ere coming to earth; if the Soul remained quite
pure during its trial it escaped rebirth, but this
seems to have been only a theoretical possibility, as
it is said :
All souls are subject to revolution (metempsychosis a'leen
o'gilgoolah), but men do not know the ways of the Holy One:
blessed be It ! they are ignorant of the way they have been
judged in all time, and before they came into this world and
when they have quitted it (ibid., p. 198).
Traces of this belief occur both in the Hebrew and
Christian exo.teric Scriptures, as in the belief that
Elijah would return, and later that he had returned
in John the Baptist.
Turning to glance at Egypt, we find there from
hoariest antiquity its famous Trinity, Ra, Osiris-Isis
as the dual Second Logos, and Horus. The great
hymn to Amun-Ra will be remembered.
The Gods bow before Thy Majesty by exalting the Souls of
That which produceth them . . . and say to Thee : Peace to
all emanations from the unconscious Father of the conscious
Fathers of the Gods. . . . Thou Producer of beings, we adore
the Souls which emanate from thee. Thou begettest us, O
Thou Unknown, and we greet Thee in worshipping each God-
INTRODUCTION 19
Soul which descendeth from Thee and liveth in us (quoted in
Secret Doctrine, iii. p. 486).
The "conscious Fathers of the Gods" are the
LoGOi, the "unconscious Father" is the One Exist-
ence, unconscious not as being less but as being
infinitely more than what we call consciousness,
a limited thing.
In the fragments of the Book of the Dead we can
study the conceptions of the reincarnating of the
human S'oul, of its pilgrimage towards and its ulti-
mate union with the Logos. The famous papyrus
of "the scribe Ani, triumphant in peace," is full of
touches that remind the reader of the Scriptures of
other faiths; his journey through the underworld,
his expectation of re-entering his body (the form
taken by reincarnation among the Egyptians), his
identification with the Logos :
Saith Osiris Ani : I am the great One, son of the great One ;
I am Fire, the son of Fire. ... I have knit together my
bones, I have made myself whole and sound ; I have become
young once more; I am Osiris, the Lord of eternity (xliii. 1,
4).
In Pierret's recension of the Book of the Dead we
find the striking passage:
I am the being of mysterious names who prepared for him-
self dwellings for milUons of years (p. 22) . Heart, that comest
to me from my mother, my heart necessary to my existence on
earth. . . . Heart, that comest to me from my mother, heart
that is necessary to me for my transformation (pp. 113, 114).
In Zoroastrianism we find the conception of the
One Existence, imaged as Boundless Space, whence
arises the Logos, the creator Auharmazd:
20 THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
Supreme in omniscience and goodness and unrivalled in
splendor; the religion of light is the place of Auharmazd (The
Bundahis, Sacred Books of the East, v. 3, 4, v. 2.)
To him in the Yasna, the chief liturgy of the Za-
rathustrians, homage is first paid:
I announce and I (will) complete (my Yasna [worship] to
Ahura Mazda, the Creator, the radiant and glorious, the great-
est and the best, the most beautiful (?) (to our conceptions),
the most firm, the wisest, and the one of all whose body is
most perfect, who attains his ends the most infallibly, because
of His righteous order, to Him who disposes our minds aright,
who sends His joy-creating grace afar; who made us and has
fashioned us, and who has nourished and protected us, who is
the most bounteous Spirit {Sacred Books of the East, xxxi.
pp. 195, 196).
The worshipper then pays homage to the Ame-
shaspends and other Gods, but the supreme mani-
fested God, the Logos, is not here presented as tri-
une. As with the Hebrews, there was a tendency in
the exoteric faith to lose sight of this fundamental
truth. Fortunately we can trace the primitive
teaching, though it disappeared in later times from
the popular belief. Dr. Haug, in his Essays on the
P arsis (translated by Dr. West and forming vol. v.
of Triibner's Oriental Series), states that Ahura-
mazda — Auharmazd or Hormazd — is the Supreme
Being, and that from him were produced
Two primeval causes, which, though different, were united
and produced the world of material things as well as that of
the spirit (p. 303).
These were called twins and are everywhere pres-
ent, in Ahuramazda as well as in man. One pro-
INTRODUCTION 21
duces reality, the other non-reaUty, and it is these
who in later Zoroastrianism became the opposing
Spirits of good and evil. In the earlier teachings
they evidently formed the Second Logos, duality
being his characteristic mark.
The "good" and "bad" are merely Light and Dark-
ness, Spirit and Matter, the fundamental 'twins" of
the Universe, the Two from the One.
Criticising the later idea, Dr. Haug says:
Such is the original Zoroastrian notion of the two creative
Spirits, who form only two parts of the Divine Being. But
in the course of time this doctrine of the great founder was
changed and corrupted, in consequence of misunderstandings
and false interpretations. Spentomainyush [the "good spirit"]
was taken as a name of Ahuramazda Himself, and then of
course Angromainyush [the "evil spirit"], by becoming entirely
separated from Ahuramazda, was regarded as the constant
adversary of Ahuramazda ; thus the Dualism of God and Devil
arose (p. 205).
Dr. Haug^s view seems to be supported by the
Gat ha Ahiinavaiti, given with the other Gathas by
"the archangels" to Zoroaster or Zarathustra:
In the beginning there was a pair of twins, two spirits, each
of a peculiar activity; these are the good and the base
And these two spirits united created the first (the material
things) ; one the reahty, the other the non-reality. . . . And
to succor this life (to increase it) Armaiti came with wealth,
the good and true mind; she, the everlasting one, created the
material world. . . . All perfect things are garnered up in the
splendid residence of the Good Mind, the Wise and the Right-
eous, who are known as the best beings {Yas. xxx. 3, 4, 7, 10:
Dr. Haug's Trans., pp. 149-151).
22 THE ancie:nt wisdom.
Here the three LoGoi are seen, Ahuramazda the
first, the supreme Life; in and from him the
"twins," the Second Logos; then Armaiti the Mind,
the Creator of the Universe, the Third Logos.*
Later Mithra appears, and in the exoteric faith clouds
the primitive truth to some extent. Of him it is
said :
Whom Ahura Mazda has established to maintain and look
over all this moving world; who, never sleeping, wakefully
guards the creation of Mazda (Mihir Yast., xxvii. 103 ; Sacred
Books of the East, xviii.)-
He was a subordinate God, the Light of Heaven,
as Varuna was the Heaven itself, one of the great
ruling Intelligences. The highest of these ruling
Intelligences were the six Ameshaspends, headed
by the Good Thought of Ahuramazda, Vohuman —
Who have charge of the whole material creation (Sacred
Books of the East, v. p. 10, note).
Reincarnation does not seem to be taught in the
books which, so far, have been translated, and the
belief is not current among modern. Parsis. But we
do find the idea of the Spirit in man as a spark that
is to become a flame and to be reunited to the Su-
preme Fire, and this must imply a development for
which rebirth is a necessity. Nor will Zoroastrian-
ism ever be understood until we recover the Chal-
dcean Oracles and allied writings, for there is its real
root.
* Armaita was at first Wisdom and the Goddess of Wisdom.
Later, as the Creator, She became identified with the earth,
and was worshipped as the Goddess of Earth.
INTRODUCTION 23
Travelling westward to Greece, we meet with the
Orphic system, described with such abundant learn-
ing by Mr. G. R. S. Mead in his work Orpheus. The
Ineffable Thrice-unknown Darkness was the name
given to the One Existence.
According to the theology of Orpheus, all things originate
from an immense principle, to which through the imbecility
and poverty of human conception we give a name, though it is
perfectly ineffable, and in the reverential language of the
Egyptians is a thrice unknown darkness, in contemplation of
which all knowledge is refunded into ignorance (Thomas
Taylor, quoted in Orpheus, p. 93).
From this the "Primordial Triad," Universal
Good, Universal Soul, Universal Mind, again the
Logic Trinity. Of this Mr. Mead writes:
The first Triad, which is manifestable to intellect, is but a
reflection of, or substitute for the Unmanifestable, and its
hypostases are: (a) the Good, which is super-essential; (b)
Soul (the World Soul), which is a self-motive essence; and
(c) Intellect (or the Mind), which is an impartible, immovable
essence (ibid., p. 94).
After this, a series of ever-descending Triads,
showing the characteristics of the first in diminishing
splendor, until man is reached, who
Has in him potentially the sum and substance of the uni-
verse. . . . "The race of men and gods is one" (Pindar, who
was a Pythagorean, quoted by Clemens, Strom, v. 709). . . .
Thus man was called the Microcosm or little world, to distin-
guish him from the universe or great world (ibid., p. 271).
He has the Nous, or real mind, the Logos or ration-
al part, the Alogos or irrational part, the two latter
again forming a Triad, and thus presenting the more
24 THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
elaborate septenary division. The man was also re-
garded as having three vehicles, the physical and
subtle bodies and the luciform body or augoeides,
that
Is the "causal body," or karmic vesture of the soul, in which
its destiny, or rather all the seeds of past causation are stored.
This is the "thread-souL," as it is sometimes called, the "body"
that passes over from one incarnation to.another (ibid., p. 284)
As to reincarnation :
Together with all the adherents of the Mysteries in every
land the Orphics believed in reincarnation (ibid., p. 292).
To this Mr. Mead brings abundant testimony, and
he shows that it was taught by Plato, Empedocles,
Pythagoras, and others. Only by virtue could men
escape from the life-wheel.
Taylor, in his notes to the Select Works of Plo-
tinus, quotes from Damascius as to the teachings of
Plato on the One beyond the One, the unmanifest
Existence :
Perhaps, indeed, Plato leads us ineffably through the one as
a medium to the ineffable beyond the one which is now the
subject of discussion; and this by an ablation of the one in the
same manner as he leads to the one by an ablation of other
things. . . . That which is beyond the one is to be honored in
the most perfect silence. . . . The one indeed wills to be by
itself, but with no other; but the unknown beyond the one is
perfectly ineffable, which we acknowledge we neither know,
nor are ignorant of, but which has about itself super-igno-
rance. Hence by proximity to this the one itself is darkened;
for being near to the immense principle, if it be lawful so to
speak, it remains as it were in the adytum of the truly mystic
silence. . . . The first is above the one and all things, being
more simple than either of these (pp. 341-343).
INTRODUCTION 25
The Pythagorean, Platonic, and Neo-Platonic
schools have so many points of contact with Hindu
and Buddhist thought that their issue from one
fountain is obvious. R. Garbe in his work. Die
Sdmkhya Philosophie (iii. pp. 85 to 105) presents
many of these points, and his statement may be
summarized as follows :
The most striking is the resemblance — or more
correctly the identity — of the doctrine of the One
and Only in the Upanishads and the Eleatic school.
Xenophanes* teaching of the unity of God and
the Kosmos and of the changelessness of the
One, and even more that of Parmenides, who held
that reality is ascribable only to the One unborn,
indestructible and omnipresent, while all that is
manifold and subject to change is but an appear-
ance, and further that Being and Thinking are the
same — these doctrines are completely identical with
the essential contents of the Upanishads and of the
Vedantic philosophy which springs from them. But
even earlier still the view of Thales, that all that
exists has sprung from Water, is curiously like the
Vaidik doctrine that the Universe arose from the
waters. Later on Anaximander assumed as the
basis (dpxv^ ^^ ^^^ things an eternal, infinite, and in-
definite Substance, from which all definite sub-
stances proceed and into which they return — an as-
sumption identical with that which lies at the root
of the Sankhya, vis., the Prakriti from which the
whole material side of the universe evolved. And
his famous saying ndvTa pel expresses the character-
26 THE) ANCIE^NT WISDOM.
istic view of the Sankhya that all things are ever
changing under the ceaseless activity of the three
gunas. Empedocles again taught theories of trans-
migration and evolution practically the same as those
of the Sankhyas, while his theory that nothing can
come into being which does not already exist is even
more closely identical with a characteristically San-
khyan doctrine.
Both Anaxagoras and Democritus also present
several points of close agreement, especially the lat-
ter's view as to the nature and position of the Gods,
and the same applies, notably in some curious mat-
ters of detail to Epicurus. But it is, however, in
the teachings of Pythagoras that we find the closest
and most frequent identities of teachings and argu-
mentation, explained as due to Pythagoras himself
having visited India and learnt his philosophy there,
as tradition asserts. In later centuries we find some
peculiarly Sankhyan and Buddhist ideas playing a
prominent part in Gnostic thought. The following
quotation from Lassen, cited by Garbe on P. 97,
shows this very clearly :
Buddhism in general distinguishes clearly between Spirit
and Light, and does not regard the latter as immaterial; but
a view of Light is found among them which is closely related
to that of the Gnostics. According to this, Light is the mani-
festation of Spirit in matter; the intelligence thus clothed in
Light comes into relation with matter, in which the Light can
be lessened and at last quite obscured, in which case the Intel-
ligence falls finally into complete unconsciousness. Of the
highest Intelligence it is maintained that it is neither Light
nor Not-Light, neither Darkness nor Not-Darkness, since all
INTRODUCTION 27
these expressions denote relations of the Intelligence to the
Light, which indeed in the beginning was free from these con-
nections, but later on encloses the Intelligence and mediates
its connection with matter. It follows from this that the
Buddhist view ascribes to the highest Intelligence the power
to produce light from itself, and that in this respect also there
is an agreement between Buddhism and Gnosticism.
Garbe here points out that, as regards the features
alluded to, the agreement between Gnosticism and
the Sankhya is very much closer than that with
Buddhism, for while these views as to the relations
between Light and Spirit pertain to the later phases
of Buddhism, and are not at all fundamental to, or
characteristic of it as such, the Sankhya teaches
clearly and precisely that Spirit is Light. Later
still the influence of the Sankhya thought is very
plainly evident in the Neo-Platonic writers ; while
the doctrine of the Logos or Word, though not of
Sankhyan origin, shows even in its details that it
has been derived from India, where the conception
of Vach, the Divine Word, plays so prominent a
part in the Brahmanical system.
Coming to the Christian religion, contempora-
neous with the Gnostic and Neo-Platonic systems,
we shall find no difficulty in tracing most of the
same fundamental teachings with which we have
now become so familiar. The threefold Logos ap-
pears as the Trinity; the First Logos, the fount of
all life being the Father; the dual-natured Second
Logos the Son, God-man; the Third, the creative
Mind, the Holy Ghost, whose brooding over the
waters of chaos brought forth the worlds. Then
28 THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
come ''the seven Spirits of God"* and the hosts of
archangels and angels. Of the One Existence from
which all comes and into which all returns, but little
is hinted, the Nature that by searching cannot be
found out; but the great doctors of the Church
Catholic always posit the unfathomable Deity, in-
comprehensible, infinite, and therefore necessarily
but One and partless. Man is made in the "image
of God,"f and is consequently triple in his nature —
Spirit and Soul and body;t he is a "habitation of
God,"§ the ''temple of God,"|| the "temple of the
Holy Ghost,"^ — phrases that exactly echo the Hindu
teaching. The doctrine of reincarnation is rather
taken for granted in the New Testament than dis-
tinctly taught ; thus Jesus, speaking of John the
Baptist, declares that he is Elias "which was for to
<:ome,"** referring to the words of Malachi, "I will
send you Elijah the prophet" iff and again, when
asked as to Elijah coming before the Messiah, He an-
swered that "Elias is come already and they knew
him not.^Jt So again we find the disciples taking re-
incarnation for granted in asking whether blindness
from birth was a punishment for a man's sin, and
Jesus in answer not rejecting the possibility of ante^
natal sin, but only excluding it as causing the blind-
ness in the special instance.§§ The remarkable
phrase applied to "him that overcometh" in Rev.
* Rev. iv. 5. t Gen. i. 26, 27. 1 1 Thess. v. 23.
§ Eph. ii. 22 II 1 Cor. iii. 16. H 1 Cor. vi. 19.
*♦ Mait. xi. 14 tt Mai. iv. 5. Xt Matt. xvii. 12.
§§ John. ix. 1-13.
INTRODUCTION 29
iii, 12, that he shall be "a pillar in the temple of
my God, and he shall go no more out," has been
taken as signifying escape from rebirth. From the
writings of some of the Christian Fathers a good
case may be made out for a current belief in reincar-
nation; some argue that only the pre-existence of
the Soul is taught, but this view does not seem to
me supported by the evidence.
The unity of moral teaching is not less striking
than the unity of the conceptions of the universe
and of the experiences of those who rose out of the
prison of the body into the freedom of the higher
spheres. It is clear that this body of primeval
teaching was in the hands of definite custodians,
who had schools in which they taught, disciples who
studied their doctrines. The identity) of these
schools and of their discipline stands out plainly
when we study the moral teaching, the demands
made on the pupils, and the mental and spiritual
states to which they were raised. A caustic division
is made in the Tao Teh Ching of the types of schol-
ars:
Scholars of the highest class, when they hear about Tao,
earnestly carry it into practice. Scholars of the middle class,
when they have heard about it, seem now to keep it and now
to lose it. Scholars of the lowest class, when they have heard
about it, laugh greatly at it {Sacred Books of the East, xxxix.,
op. cit. xli. 1).
In the same book we read:
The sage puts his own person last, and yet it Is found in the
foremost places; he treats his person as if it were foreign to
him, and yet that person is preserved. It is not because he
30
THE ANCIE:NT wisdom.
has no personal and private ends that therefore such ends are
reaUzed? (vii. 2.) He is free from self-display, and therefore
he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distin-
guished; from self -boasting, and therefore his merit is ac-
knowledged; from self-complacency, and therefore he ac-
quires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving
that therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him
(xxii. 2). There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition;
no calamity greater than to be discontented with one's lot ; no
fault greater than the wish to be getting (xlvi. 2). To those
who are good (to me) I am good; and to those who are not
good (to me) I am also good; and thus (all) get to be good.
To those who are sincere (with me) I am sincere ; and to those
who are not sincere (with me) I am also sincere; and thus
(all) get to be sincere (xHx. 1). He who has in himself abun-
dantly the attributes (of the Tao) is Hke an infant. Poisonous
insects will not sting him; fierce beasts will not seize him;
birds of prey will not strike him (Iv. 1). I have three precious
things which I prize and hold fast. The first is gentleness;
the second is economy; the third is shrinking from taking
precedence of others. . . . Gentleness is sure to be victorious,
even in battle, and firmly to maintain its ground. Heaven
will save its possessor, by his (very) gentleness protecting him
(Ixvii. 2, 4).
Among the Hindus there were selected scholars
deemed worthy of special instruction to whom the
Guru imparted the secret teachings, while the gen-
eral rules of right living may be gathered from
Manu's Ordinances, the Upanishads, the Mahdhhdrata
and many other treatises :
Let him say what is true, let him say what is pleasing ,let
him utter no disagreeable truth, and let him utter no agreea-
ble falsehood; that is the eternal law (Manu. iv. 138). Giv-
ing no pain to any creature, let him slowly accumulate spirit-
ual merit (iv. 238). For that twice-born man, by whom not
INTRODUCTION Si
the smallest danger even is caused to created things, there
will be no danger from any (quarter) after he is freed from
his body (vi. 40). Let him patiently bear hard words, let him
not insult anybody, and let him not become anybody's enemy
for the sake of this (perishable) body. Against an angry man
let him not in return show anger, let him bless when he is
cursed (vi. 47, 48). Freed from passion, fear and anger,
thinking on Me, taking refuge in Me, purified in the fire of
wisdom, many have entered into My Being (Bhagavad Gita,
iv. 10). Supreme joy is for this Yogi whose Manas is peace-
ful, whose passion-nature is calmed, who is sinless and of the
nature of Brahman (vi. 27). He who beareth no ill-will to any
being, friendly and compassionate, without attachment and
egoism, balanced in pleasure and pain, and forgiving, ever
content, harmonious, with the self controlled, resolute, with
Manas and Buddhi dedicated to Me, he, My devotee, is dear
to Me (xii. 13, 14).
If we turn to the Buddha, we find Him with His
Arhats, to whom His secret teachings were given;
while published we have:
The wise man through earnestness, virtue, and purity makes
himself an island which no flood can submerge (Uddnavarga,
iv. 5). The wise man in this world holds fast to faith and
wisdom, these are his greatest treasures ; he casts aside all
other riches (x. 9). He who bears ill-will to those who bear
ill-will can never become pure; but he who feels no ill-will
pacifies those who hate ; as hatred brings misery to mankind,
the sage knows no hatred (xiii. 12). Overcome anger by not
being angered; overcome evil by good; overcome avarice by
liberality; overcome falsehoods by truth (xx. 18).
The Zoroastrian is taught to praise Ahuramazda,
and then:
What is fairest, what pure, what immortal, what brilliant,
all that is good. The good spirit we honor, the good kingdom
we honor, and the good law, and the good wisdom (Yasna,
32 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM.
xxxvii.). May there come to this dweUing contentment,
blessing, guilelessness, and wisdom of the pure (Yasna, lix.).
Purity is the best good. Happiness, happiness is to him :
namely, to the best pure in purity (Ashem-vahu) . All good
thoughts, words, and works are done with knowledge. All
evil thoughts, words, and works are not done with knowledge
(Mispa Kumata). (Selected from the Avesta in Ancient
Iranian and Zoroastrian Morals, by Dhunjibhoy Jamsetji
Medhora).
The Hebrew had his "schools of the prophets"
and his Kabbalah, and in the exoteric books we
find the accepted moral teachings:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and who stand in
His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart;
who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceit-
fully (Pj. xxiv. 3, 4). What doth the Lord require of thee
but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with
thy God? (Micah, vi. 8.) The lip of truth shall be esta-
lished for ever ; but a lying tongue is but for a moment (Prov.
xii. 19). Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the
bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let
the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it
not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the
poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked
that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine
own flesh? (Is. Iviii. 6, 7.)
The Christian Teacher had His secret instructions
for His disciples,* and He bade them:
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye
your pearls before swine (Matt. vii. 6).
For public teaching we may refer to the beati-
tudes of the Sermon on the Mount, and to such doc-
trines as:
* Matt. xiii. 10-17
INTRODUCTION 33
I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you,
do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which de-
spite fully use you and persecute you. ... Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect
(Matt. V. 44, 48). He that findeth his life shall lose it; and
he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it (x.39). Who-
soever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is
greatest in the kingdom of heaven (xviii. 4). The fruit of the
Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law
(Gal. V. 22, 23). Let us love one another; for love is of God;
and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God (1
John iv. 7).
The school of Pythagoras and those of the Neo-
Platonists kept up the tradition for Greece, and we
know that Pythagoras gained some of his learning
in India, while Plato studied and was initiated in the
schools of Egypt. More precise information has
been published of the Grecian schools than of others;
the Pythagorean had pledged disciples as well as an
outer discipline, the inner circle passing through
three degrees during five years of probation. (For
details see G. R. S. Mead's Orpheus^ pp, 263 et seq.)
The outer discipline he describes as follows:
We must first give ourselves up entirely to God. When a
man prays he should never ask for any particular benefit, fully
convinced that that will be given which is right and proper,
and according to the wisdom of God and not the subject of our
own selfish desires (Diod. Sic, ix. 41). By virtue alone does
man arrive at blessedness, and this is the exclusive privilege
of a rational being (Hippodamus, De Felicitate, ii., Orelli,
Opusc. Grcecor. Sent, et Moral., ii. 284). In himself, of his
own nature, man is neither good nor happy, but he may be-
come so by the teaching of the true doctrine (fia^T^creugKal npovolag
3
34 TH^ ANCICNT WISDOM.
noTidierat ) — (Hippo, ibid.). The most sacred duty is filial
piety. "God showers his blessings on him who honors and
reveres the author of his days," says Pampelus (De Paren-
tibus, Orelli, op. cit., ii. 345). Ingratitude towards one's
parents is the blackest of all crimes, writes Perictione (ibid.,
p. 350), who is supposed to have been the mother of Plato.
The cleanliness and dehcacy of all Pythagorean writings were
remarkable (GElian, Hist. Var., xiv. 19). In all that con-
cerns chastity and marriage their principles are of the utmost
purity. Everywhere the great teacher recommends chastity
and temperance ; but at the same time he directs that the
married should first become parents before living a life of ab-
solute celibacy, in order that children might be born under
favorable conditions for continuing the holy life and success-
sion of the Sacred Science (Jamblichus, Vit. Pythag., and
Hierocl., ap. Stob. Serm., xlv. 14). This is exceedingly in-
teresting, for it is precisely the same regulation that is laid
down in the Manava Dharma Shastra, the great Indian
Code. . . . Adultery was most sternly condemned (Jamb.,
ibid.). Moreover, the most gentle treatment of the wife by
the husband was enjoined, for had he not taken her as his
companion "before the Gods"? (See Lascaulx, Zur Geschichte
der Ehe bei den Griechen, in the Mem. de I' Acad, de Baviire,
vii. 107, sq.).
Marriage was not an animal union, but a spiritual tie.
Therefore, in her turn, the wife should love her husband even
more than herself, and in all things be devoted and obedient.
It is further interesting to remark that the finest characters
among women with which Ancient Greece presents us were
formed in the school of Pythagoras, and the same is true of the
men. The authors of antiquity are agreed that this discipline
had succeeded in producing the highest examples not only of
the purest chastity and sentiment, but also a simplicity of
manners, a delicacy, and a taste for serious pursuits which
was unparalleled. This is admitted even by Christian writers
(see Justin, xx. 4.). . . . Among the members of the school
the idea of justice directed all their acts, while they observed
INTRODUCTION 35
the strictest tolerance and compassion in their mutual relation-
ships. For justice is the principle of all virtue, as Polus (ap.
Stob., Serm., viii., ed. Schow, p. 232) teaches: 'tis justice
which maintains peace and balance in the soul ; she is the
mother of good order in all communities, makes concord be-
tween husband and wife, love between master and servant.
The word of a Pythagorean was also his bond. And finally
a man should live so as to be ever ready for death (Hippolytus,
Phiios., vi.). Uhid., pp. 263-267.)
The treatment of the virtues in the Neo-Platonic
schools is interesting, and the distinction is clearly
made between morality and spiritual development,
or, as Plotinus put it, ''The endeavor is not to be
without sin, but to be a God."* The lowest stage
was the becoming without sin by acquiring the
"political virtues" which made a man perfect in
conduct (the physical and ethical being below these),
the reason controlling and adorning the irrational
nature. Above these were the cathartic, pertaining
to reason alone, and which liberated the Soul from
the bonds of generation ; the theoretic, lifting the
Soul into touch with natures superior to itself; and
the paradigmatic, giving it a knowledge of true
being :
Hence he who energizes according to the practical virtues is
a worthy man; but he who energizes according to the cathar-
tic virtues is a demoniacal man, or is also a good defnon.f
He who energizes according to the intellectual virtues alone is
a God. But he who energizes according to the paradigmatic
* Select Works of Plotinus, trans, by Thomas Taylor, ed.
1895, p. 11.
t A good spiritual intelligence, as the daimon of Socrates.
36 the: ancient wisdom.
virtues is the Father of the Gods. (Note on Intellectual
Prudence, pp. 325-332.)
By various practices the disciples were taught to
escape from the body, and to rise into higher re-
gions. As grass is drawn from a sheath, the inner
man was to draw himself from his bodily casing.*
The "body of light" or "radiant body" of the Hin-
dus is the "luciform body" of the Neo-Platonists,
and in this the man rises to find the Self:
Not grasped by the eye, nor by speech, nor by the other
senses (lit., Gods), nor by austerity, nor by religious rites; by
serene wisdom, by the pure essence only, doth one see the
partless One in meditation. This subtle Self is to be known
by the mind in which the fivefold life is sleeping. The mind
of all creatures is instinct with [these] lives; in this, purified,
manifests the Self (Mundakopanishad, III. ii. 8, 9).
Then alone can man enter the region where sepa-
ration is not, where "the spheres have ceased." In
G. R. S. Mead's Introduction to Taylor's Plotinns
he quotes from Plotinus a description of a sphere
which is evidently the Turiya of the Hindus :
They likewise see all things, not those with which genera-
tion, but those with which essence is present. And they per-
ceive themselves in others. For all things there are diapha-
nous; and nothing is dark and resisting, but everything is
apparent to every one internally and throughout. For light
everywhere meets with light; since everything contains all
things in itself and again sees all things in another. So that
all things are everywhere and all is all. Each thing likewise
is everything. And the splendor there is infinite. For every-
thing there is great, since even that which is small is great.
* Kathopanishad, vi. 17.
INTRODUCTION. 37
The sun too which is there is all the stars ; and again each star
is the sun and all the stars. In each, however, a different
property predominates, but at the same time all things are
visible in each. Motion likewise there is pure ; for the motion
is not confounded by a mover different from it (p. Ixxiii,).
A description which is a failure, because the re-
gion is one above describing by mortal language,
but a description that could only have been written
by one whose eyes had been opened.
A whole volume might easily be filled with the
similarities between the religions of the world, but
the above imperfect statement must suffice as a pref-
ace to the study of Theosophy, to that which is a
fresh and fuller presentment to the world of the an-
cient truths on which it has ever been fed. All these
similarities point to a single source, and that is the
Brotherhood of the White Lodge, the Hierarchy of
Adepts who watch over and guide the evolution of
humanity, and who have preserved these truths un-
impaired; from time to time, as necessity arose, re-
asserting them in the ears of men. From otner
worlds, from earlier humanities. They came to help
our globe, evolved by a process comparable to that
now going on with ourselves, and that will be more
intelligible when we have completed our present
study than it may now appear; and They have
afforded this help, reinforced by the flower of our
own humanity, from the earliest times until to-day.
Still They teach eager pupils, showing the path and
guiding the disciple's steps ; still They may be
reached by all who seek Them, bearing in their
38 TH^ ancie:nt wisdom
hands the sacrificial fuel of love, of devotion, of un-
selfish longing to know in order to serve; still They
carry out the ancient discipline, still unveil the an-
cient Mysteries. The two pillars of Their Lodge
gateway are Love and Wisdom, and through its
strait portal can only pass those from whose shoul-
ders has fallen the burden of desire and selfishness.
A heavy task lies before us, and beginning on the
physical plane we shall climb slowly upwards ; but a
bird's-eye view of the great sweep of evolution and
of its purpose may help us, ere we begin our detailed
study in the world that surrounds us. A Logos, ere
a system has begun to be, has in His mind the whole,
existing as idea — all forces, all forms, all that in due
process shall emerge into objective life. He draws
the circle of manifestation within which He wills to
energize, and circumscribes Himself to be the life of
His universe. As we watch we see strata appearing
of successive densities, till seven vast regions are
apparent, and in these centres of energy appear
whirlpools of matter that separate from each other,
until when the processes of separation and of con-
densation are over — so far as we are here concerned
— we see a central sun, the physical symbol of the
Logos, and seven great planetary chains, each chain
consisting of seven globes. Narrowing down our
view to the chain of which our globe is one, we see
life-waves sweep round it forming the kingdoms of
nature, the three elemental, the mineral, vegetable,
animal, human. Narrowing down our view still
further to our own globe and its surroundings, we
INTRODUCTION. 39
watch human evolution, and see man developing
self-consciousness by a series of many life-periods ;
then centring on a single man we trace his growth
and see that each life-period has a threefold division,
that each is linked to all life-periods behind it reap-
ing their results, and to all life-periods before it
sowing their harvests, by a law that cannot be pro-
ken; that thus man may climb upwards with each
life-period adding to his experience, each life-period
lifting him higher in purity, in devotion, in intellect,
in power of usefulness, until at last he stands where
They stand who are now the Teachers, fit to pay to
his younger brothers the debt he owes to Them.
CHAPTER I.
TH^ PHYSICAL PLAN^.
We have just seen that the source from which a
universe proceeds is a manifested Diivne Being, to
whom in the modern form of the Ancient Wisdom
the name Logos, or Word, has been given. The
name is drawn from Greek philosophy, but perfectly
expresses the ancient idea, the Word which emerges
from the Silence, the Voice, the Sound, by which
the worlds come into being. We must now trace the
evolution of spirit-matter, in order that we may un-
derstand something of the nature of the materials
with which we have to deal on the physical plane,
or physical world. For it is in the potentialities
wrapped up, involved, in the spirit-matter of the
physical world that lies the possibility of evolution.
The whole process is an unfolding, self-moved from
within and aided by intelligent beings without, who
can retard or quicken evolution, but cannot trans-
cend the capacities inherent in the materials. Some
idea of these earliest stages of the world's ''becom-
ing" is therefore necessary, although any attempt to
go into minute details would carry us far beyond the
limits of such an elementary treatise as the present.
A very cursory sketch must suffice.
TH^ world's '"bejcoming." 41
Coming forth from the depths of the One Exist-
ence, from the One beyond all thought and all
speech, a Locos, by imposing on Himself a limit,
circumscribing voluntarily the range of His own
Being, becomes the manifested God, and tracing the
limiting sphere of His activity thus outlines the area
of His universe. Within that sphere the universe is
born, is evolved, and dies; it lives, it moves, it has
its being in Him ; its matter is His emanation ; its
forces and energies are currents of His life; He is
immanent in every atom, all-pervading, all sustain-
ing, all-evolving; He is its source and its end., its
cause and its object, its centre and circumference;
it is built on Him as its sure foundation, it breathes
in Him as its encircling space; He is in everything
and everything in Him. Thus have the Sages of the
Ancient Wisdom taught us of the beginning of the
manifested worlds.
From the same source we learn of the Self-un-
folding of theLoGos into a threefold form ; the First
Logos, the Root of all Being; from Him the Sec-
ond, manifesting the two aspects of Life and Form,
the primal duality, making the two poles of nature
between which the web of the universe is to be
woven — Life-Form, Spirit-Matter, Positive-Nega-
tive, Active-Receptive, Father-Mother of the worlds.
Then the Third Logos, the Universal Mind, that in
which all archetypically exists, the source of beings,
the fount of fashioning energies, the treasure-house
in which are stored up all the archetypal forms
which are to be brought forth and elaborated in
42 THK ANCIENT WISDOM.
lower kinds of matter during the evolution of the
universe. These are the fruits of past universes,
brought over as seeds for the present.
The phenomenal spirit and matter of any universe
are finite in their extent and transitory in their du-
ration, but the roots of spirit and matter are eter-
nal. The root of matter* has been said by a pro-
found writer to be visible to the Logos as a veil
thrown over the One Existence, the supreme Brah-
manf — to use the ancient name.
It is this 'Veil" which the Logos assumes for the
purpose of manifestation, using it for the self-im-
posed limit which makes activity possible. From
this He elaborates the matter of His universe, being
Himself its informing, guiding, and controlling life.J
Of what occurs on the two higher planes of the
universe, the seventh and the sixth, we can form but
the haziest conception. The energy of the Logos as
whirling motion of inconceivable rapidity ''digs
holes in space" in this root of matter, and this vor-
tex of life encased in a film of the root of matter is
the primary atom; these and their aggregations,
spread throughout the universe, form all the subdi-
visions of spirit-matter of the highest or seventh
plane. The sixth plane is formed by some of the
* Mulaprakriti. t Parabrahman.
t Hence He is called "The Lord of Maya," in some Eastern
Scriptures, Maya, or illusion, being the principle of form ;
form is regarded as illusory, from its transitory nature and
perpetual transformations, the life which expresses itself under
the veil of form being the reality.
MAKING O? TH^ UNIVERSE. 43
countless myriads of these primary atoms setting up
a vortex in the coarsest aggregations of their own
plane, and this primary atom enwalled with spiral
strands of the coarsest combinations of the seventh
plane becomes the finest unit of spirit-matter, or
atom, of the sixth plane. These sixth-plane-atoms
and their endless combinations form the subdivi-
sions of the spirit-matter of the sixth plane. The
sixth-plane-atom, in its turn, sets up a vortex in the
coarsest aggregations of its own plane, and, with
these coarsest aggregations as a limiting wall, be-
comes the finest unit of spirit-matter, or atom, of the
fifth plane. Again, these fifth-plane-atoms and
their combinations form the subdivisions of the
spirit-matter of the fifth plane. The process is re-
peated to form successively the spirit-matter of the
.fourth, the third, the second, and the first planes.
These are the seven great regions of the universe,
so far as their material constituents are concerned.
A clearer idea of them will be gained by analogy
when we come to master the modifications of the
spirit-matter of our own physical world.*
The word "spirit-matter" is used designedly. It
♦The student may find the conception clearer if he think
of the fifth-plane-atoms as Atma ; those of the fourth plane as
Atma enveloped in Buddhi-matter ; those of the third plane
as Atma enveloped in Buddhi- and Manas-matter; those of
the second as Atma enveloped in Buddhi-, Manas- and Kama-
matter; those of the lowest as Atma enveloped in Buddhi-,
Manas-, Kama- and Sthula-matter. Only the outermost is
active in each case, but the inner are there, though latent,
ready to come into activity on the upward arc of evolution.
44 the: ancie;nt wisdom.
implies the fact that there is no such thing as "dead"
matter; all matter is living, the tiniest particles are
lives. Science speaks truly in affirming: "No force
without matter, no matter without force." They are
wedded together in an indissoluble marriage
throughout the ages of the life of a universe, and
none can wrench them apart. Matter is form, and
there is no form which does not express a life;
spirit is life, and there is no life that is not limited
by a form. Even the Logos, the supreme Lord, has
during manifestation the universe as His form, and
so down to the atom.
This involution of the life of the Logos as the en-
souling force in every particle, and its successive en-
wrapping in the spirit-matter of every plane, so that
the materials of each plane have within them in a
hidden, or latent condition, all the form- and force-
possibilities of all the planes above them as well as
those of their own — these two facts make evolution
certain and give to the very lowest particle the hid-
den potentialities which will render it fit — as they
become active powers — to enter into the forms of the
highest beings. In fact, evolution may be summed
up in a phrase : it is latent potentialities becoming
active powers.
The second great wave of evolution, the evolution
of form, and the third great wave, the evolution
of self-consciousness, will be dealt with later on.
These three currents of evolution are distinguishable
on our earth in connection with humanity; the mak-
ing of the materials, the building of the house, and
THRE^ CONDITIONS 01^ MATTER. 45
the growing of the tenant of the house, or, as said
above, the evolution of spirit-matter, the evolution
of form, the evolution of self-consciousness. If the
reader can grasp and retain this idea, he will find it
a helpful clue to guide him through the labyrinth of
facts.
We can now turn to the detailed examination of
the physical plane, that on which our world exists
and to which our bodies belong.
Examining the materials belonging to this plane,
we are struck by their immense variety, the innu-
merable differences of constitution in the objects
around us, minerals, vegetables, animals, all differ-
ing in their constituents : matter hard and soft,
transparent and opaque, brittle and ductile, bitter
and sweet, pleasant and nauseous, colored and col-
orless. Out of this confusion three subdivisions of
matter em.erge as a fundamental classification : mat-
ter is solid, liquid and gaseous. Further examina-
tion shows that these solids, liquids, and gases are
made up by combinations of much simpler bodies,
called by chemists "elements," and that these ele-
ments may exist in a solid, liquid, or gaseous condi-
tion without changing their respective natures.
Thus the chemical element oxygen is a constituent
of wood, and in combination with other elements
forms the solid wood fibres ; it exists in the sap with
another element, yielding a liquid combination as
water; and it exists also in it by itself as gas. Un-
der these three conditions it is oxygen. Further,
pure oxygen can be reduced from a gas to a liquid,
46 TH^ ANCIEINT WISDOM.
and from a liquid to a solid, remaining pure oxygen
all the time, and so with other elements. We thus
obtain as three subdivisions, or conditions, of mat-
ter on the physical plane, solid, liquid, gas. Search-
ing further, we find a fourth condition, ether, and
minuter search reveals that this ether exists in four
conditions as well defined as those of solid, liquid,
and gas ; to take oxygen again as an example : as it
may be reduced from the gaseous condition to the
liquid and the solid, so it may be raised from the
gaseous through four etheric stages, the last of
which consists of the ultimate physical atom, the
disintegration of the atom taking the matter out of
the physical plane altogether, and into the next
plane above. In the annexed plate three gases are
shown in the gaseous and four etheric states ; it will
be observed that the structure of the ultimate physi-
cal atom is the same for all, and that the variety of
the ''elements" is due to the variety of ways in
which these ultimate physical atoms combine. Thus
the seventh subdivision of physical spirit-matter is
composed of homogeneous atoms ; the sixth is com-
posed of fairly simple heterogeneous combinations of
these, each combination behaving as a unit; the fifth
is composed of more complex combinations, and the
fourth of still more complex ones, but in all cases
these combinations act as units ; the third subdivi-
sion consists of yet more complicated combina-
tions, regarded by the chemist as gaseous atoms or
"elements," and on this subdivision many of the
combinations have received special names, oxygen,
MEANING OF PLANE. 47
hydrogen, nitrogen, chlorine, etc., and each newly
discovered combination now receives its name; the
second subdivision consists of combinations in the
liquid condition, whether regarded as elements such
as bromine, or as combinations such as water or al-
cohol ; the first subdivision is composed of all solids,
again whether regarded as elements, such as iodine,
gold, lead, etc., or as compounds, such as wood,
stone, chalk, and so on.
The physical plane may serve the student as a
model from which by analogy he may gain an idea
of the subdivisions of the spirit-matter of other
planes. When a Theosophist speaks of a plane, he
means a region throughout which spirit-matter ex-
ists, all whose combinations are derived from a par-
ticular set of atoms ; these atoms, in turn, are units
possessing similar organizations, whose life is the
life of the Logos veiled in fewer or more coverings
according to the plane, and whose form consists of
the solid, or lowest subdivision of matter, of the
plane immediately above. A plane is thus a division
in nature, as well as a metaphysical idea.
Thus far we have been studying the results in our
own physical world of the evolution of spirit-matter
in our division of the first or lowest plane of our
system. For countless ages the fashioning of
materials has been going on, the current of the
evolution of spirit-matter, and in the materials
of our globe we see the outcome at the present
time. But when we begin to study the inhabitants
of the physical plane, we come to the evolution
48 THK ANCIENT WISDOM.
of form, the building of organisms out of these
materials.
When the evolution of materials had reached a
sufficiently advanced state, the second great life-
wave from the Logos gave the impulse to the evolu-
tion of form, and He became the organizing force*
of His universe, countless hosts of entities, entitled
Buildersf taking part in the building up of forms out
of combinations of spirit-matter. The life of the
Logos abiding in each form is its central, control-
ling, and directing energy. This building of forms
on the higher planes cannot here be conveniently
studied in detail; it may suffice to say that all forms
exist as Ideas in the mind of the Logos, and that in
this second life-wave these were thrown outwards as
models to guide the Builders. On the third and
second planes the early spirit-matter combinations
are designed to give it facility in assuming shapes
organized to act as units, and gradually to increase
its stability when shaped into an organism. This
process went on upon the third and second planes,
in what are termed the three elemental kingdoms,
the combinations of matter formed therein being
called generally "elemental essence," and this es-
sence being moulded into forms by aggregation, the
* As Atma-Buddhi, indivisible in action, and therefore
spoken of as the Monad. All forms have Atma-Buddhi as
controlling life.
t Some are lofty spiritual Intelligences, but the name covers
even the building Nature-spirits. The subject is dealt with in
Chapter XII.
EVOLUTION OF FORMS. 49
forms enduring for a time and then disintegrating.
The outpoured life, or Monad, evolved through
these kingdoms and reached in due course the physi-
cal plane, where it began to draw together the ethers
and hold them in filmy shapes, in which life-currents
played and into which the denser materials were
builded, forming the first minerals. In these are
beautifully shown — as may be seen by reference to
any book on crystallurgy — the numerical and geo-
metrical lines on which forms are constructed, and
from them may be gathered plentiful evidence that
life is working in all minerals, although much
"cribbed, cabined, and confined.** The fatigue to
which metals are subject is another sign that they
are living things, but it is here enough to say that
the occult doctrine so regards them, knowing the
already-mentioned processes by which life has been
involved in them. Great stability of form having
been gained in many of the minerals, the evolving
Monad elaborated greater plasticity of form in the
vegetable kingdom, combining this with stability of
organization. These characteristics found a yet
more balanced expression in the animal world, and
reached their culmination of equilibrium in man,
whose physical body is made up of constituents of
most unstable equilibrium, thus giving great adap-
tability, and yet which is held together by a combin-
ing central force which resists general disintegra-
tion even under the most varied conditions.
Man's physical body has two main divisions : the
dense body, made of constituents from the three
4
50 THE ANCIENT WISDOM.
lower levels of the physical plane, solids, liquids,
and gases ; and the etheric double, violet-gray or
blue-gray in color, interpenetrating the dense body
and composed of materials drawn from the four
higher levels. The general function of the physical
body is to receive contacts from the physical world,
and send the report of them inwards, to serve as
materials from which the conscious entity inhabit-
ing the body is to elaborate knowledge. Its etheric
portion has also the duty of acting as a medium
through which the life-currents poured out from the
sun can be adapted to the uses of the denser particles.
The sun is the great reservoir of the electrical, mag-
netic, and vital forces for our system, and it pours
out abundantly these streams of life-giving energy.
They are taken in by the etheric doubles of all
minerals, vegetables, animals, and men, and are by
them thansmuted into the various life-energies
needed by each entity.* The etheric doubles draw
in, specialize, and distribute them over their physical
counterparts. It has been observed that in vigorous
health much more of the life-energies are trans-
muted than the physical body requires for its own
support, and that the surplus is rayed out and is
taken up and utilized by the weaker. What is tech-
nically called the health aura is the part of the
etheric double that extends a few inches from the
* When thus appropriated the life is called Prana, and it be-
comes the life-breath of every creature. Prana is but a name
for the universal life while it is taken in by an entity and is
supporting its separated life.
MAKING OP PHYSICAL BODY. 51
whole surface of the body and shows radiating lines,
like the radii of a sphere, going outwards in all di-
rections. These lines droop when vitality is dimin-
ished below the point of health, and resume their
radiating character with renewed vigor. It is this
vital energy, specialized by the etheric double,
which is poured out by the mesmerizer for the res-
toration of the weak and for the cure of disease, al-
though he often mingles with it currents of a more
rarefied kind. Hence the depletion of vital energy
shown by the exhaustion of the mesmerizer who
prolongs his work to excess.
Man's body is fine or coarse in its texture accord-
ing to the materials drawn from the physical plane
for its composition. Each subdivision of matter
yields finer or coarser materials ; compare the bodies
of a butcher and of a refined student ; both have solids
in them, but solids of such different qualities. Fur-
ther, we know that a coarse body can be refined, a
refined body coarsened. The body is constantly
changing; each particle is a life, and the lives come
and go. They are drawn to a body consonant with
themselves, they are repelled from one discordant
with themselves. All things live in rhythmical vibra-
tions, all seek the harmonious and are repelled by
dissonance. A pure body repels coarse particles be-
cause they vibrate at rates discordant with its own ; a
coarse body attracts them because their vibrations
accord with its own. Hence if a body changes its
rates of vibration, it gradually drives out of it the con-
stituents that cannot fall into the new rhythm, and
52 THS ANCIENT WISDOM.
fills Up their places by drawing in from external na-
ture fresh constituents that are harmonious. Nature
provides materials vibrating in all possible ways,
and each body exercises its own selective action.
In the earlier building of human bodies this selec-
tive action was due to the Monad of form, but now
that man is a self-conscious entity he presides over
his own building. By his thoughts he strikes the
keynote of his music, and sets up the rhythms that
are the most powerful factors in the continual
changes in his physical and other bodies. As his
knowledge increases he learns how to build up his
physical body with pure food, and so facilitates the
tuning of it. He learns to live by the axiom of
purification: "Pure food, a pure mind, and constant
memory of God." As the highest creature living on
the physical plane, he is the vicegerent of the Locos
thereon, responsible, so far as his powers extend, for
its order, peace, and good government; and this
duty he cannot discharge without these three re-
quisites.
The physical body, thus composed of elements
drawn from all the subdivisions of the physical
plane, is fitted to receive and to answer impressions
from it of every kind. Its first contacts will be of
the simplest and crudest sorts, and as the life within
it thrills out in answer to the stimulus from with-
out, throwing its molecules into responsive vibra-
tions, there is developed all over the body the sense
of touch, the recognition of something coming into
contact with it. As specialized sense-organs are de-
s^nsj: organs develop. 53
veloped to receive special kinds of vibrations, the
value of the body increases as a future vehicle for a
conscious entity on the physical plane. The more
impressions it can answer to, the more useful does
it become; for only those to which it can answer
can reach the consciousness. Even now there are
myriads of vibrations pulsing around us in physical
nature from the knowledge of which we are shut out
because of the inability of our physical vehicle to
receive and vibrate in accord with them. Unimag-
ined beauties, exquisite sounds, delicate subtleties,
touch the walls of our prison house and pass on un-
heeded. Not yet is developed the perfect body that
shall thrill to every pulse in nature as the oeolian
harp to the zephyr.
The vibrations that the body is able to receive it
transmits to physical centres, belonging to its highly
complicated nervous system. The etheric vibrations
which accompany all the vibrations of the denser
physical constituents are similarly received by the
etheric double, and transmitted to its corresponding
centres. Most of the vibrations in the dense matter
are changed into chemical, heat, and other forms of
physical energy; the etheric give rise to magnetic
and electric action, and also pass on the vibrations
to the astral body, whence, as we shall see later,
they reach the mind. Thus information about the
external world reaches the conscious entity en-
throned in the body, the Lord of the body, as he
is sometimes called. As the channels of informa-
tion develop and are exercised, the conscious entity
54 the: ancient wisdom.
grows by the materials supplied to his thought by
them, but so little is man yet developed that even
the etheric double is not yet sufficiently harmonized
to regularly convey to the man impressions received
by it independently of its denser comrade, or to im-
press them on his brain. Occasionally it succeeds
in doing so, and then we have the lowest form of
clairvoyance, the seeing of the etheric doubles of
physical objects, and of things that have etheric
bodies as their lowest vesture.
Man dwells, as we shall see, in various vehicles,
physical, astral, and mental, and it is important to
know and remember that as we are evolving upwards,
the lowest of the vehicles, the dense physical, is that
which consciousness first controls and rationalizes.
The physical brain is the instrument of conscious-
ness in waking life on the physical plane, and con-
sciousness works in it — in the undeveloped man —
more effectively than in any other vehicle. Its po-
tentialities are less than those of the subtler vehicles,
but its actualities are greater, and the man knows
himself as "I" in the physical body ere he finds
himself elsewhere. Even if he be more highly de-
veloped than the average man, he can only show as
much of himself down here as the physical organism
permits, for consciousness can manifest on the physi-
cal plane only so much as the physical vehicle can
carry.
The dense and etheric bodies are not normally
separated during earth life ; they normally function
together, as the lower and higher strings of a single
dre:am-consciousne;ss 55
instrument when a chord is struck, but they also
carry on separate though co-ordinated activities.
Under conditions of weak health or nervous excite-
ment the etheric double may in great part be ab-
normally extruded from its dense counterpart; the
latter then becomes very dully conscious, or en-
tranced, according to the less or greater amount of
the etheric matter extruded. Anaesthetics drive out
the greater part of the etheric double, so that con-
sciousness cannot affect or be affected by the dense
body, its bridge of communication being broken.
In the abnormally organized persons called medi-
ums, dislocation of the etheric and dense bodies
easily occurs, and the etheric double, when ex-
truded, largely supplies the physical basis for ''ma-
terializations."
In sleep, when the consciousness leaves the physi-
cal vehicle which it uses during waking life, the
dense and etheric bodies remain together, but in the
physical dream-life they function to some extent in-
dependently. Impressions experienced during wak-
ing life are reproduced by the automatic action of
the body, and both the physical and etheric brains
are filled with disjointed fragmentary pictures, the
vibrations as it were, jostling each other, and caus-
ing the most grotesque combinations. Vibrations
from outside also affect both, and combinations often
set up during waking life are easily called into ac-
tivity by currents from the astral world of like na-
ture with themselves. The purity or impurity of
waking thoughts will largely govern the pictures
56 TH^ ANCIKNT WISDOM
arising in dreams, whether spontaneously set up or
induced from without.
At what is called death, the etheric double is
drawn away from its dense counterpart by the es-
caping consciousness ; the magnetic tie existing be-
tween them during earth life is snapped asunder,
and for some hours the consciousness remains en-
veloped in this etheric garb. In this it sometimes
appears to those with whom it is closely bound up,
as a cloudy figure, very dully conscious and speech-
less— the wraith. It may also be seen, after the
conscious entity has deserted it, floating over the
grave where its dense counterpart is buried, slowly
disintegrating as time goes on.
When the time comes for rebirth, the etheric
double is built in advance of the dense body, the
latter exactly following it in its ante-natal develop-
ment. These bodies may be said to trace the limi-
tations within which the conscious entity will have
to live and work during his earth life, a subject that
will be more fully explained in Chapter IX., on
Karma.
CHAPTER 11.
the; astral plane).
The: astral plane Is the region of the universe next
to the physical, if the word "next" may be permitted
in such a connection. Life there is more active
than on the physical plane, and form is more plas-
tic. The spirit-matter of that plane is more highly
vitalized and finer than any grade of spirit-matter in
the physical world. For, as we have seen, the ulti-
mate physical atom, the constituent of the rarest
physical ether, has for its sphere-wall innumerable
aggregations of the coarsest astral matter. The
word "next" is, however, inappropriate, as suggest-
ing the idea that the planes of the universe are ar-
ranged as concentric circles, one ending where the
next begins. Rather are they concentric interpene-
trating spheres, not separated from each other by
distance but by difference of constitution. As air
permeates water, as ether permeates the densest
solid, so does astral matter permeate all physical.
The astral world is above us, below us, on every
side of us, through us ; we live and move in it, but
it is intangible, invisible, inaudible, imperceptible,
because the prison of the physical body shuts us
58 TH^ ANCIENT-WISDOM.
away from it, the physical particles being too gross
to be set in vibration by astral matter.
In this chapter we shall study the plane in its
general aspects, leaving on one side for separate
consideration those special conditions of life on the
astral plane surrounding the human entities who are
passing through it on their way from earth to
heaven.*
The spirit-matter of the astral plane exists in
seven subdivisions, as we have seen in the spirit-
matter of the physical. There, as here, there are
numberless combinations, forming the astral solids,
liquids, gases, and ethers. But most material forms
there have a brightness, a translucency, as compared
to forms here, which have caused the epithet astral,
or starry, to be applied to them — an epithet which
is, on the whole, misleading, but is too firmly estab-
lished by use to be changed. As there are no spe-
cific names for the subdivisions of astral spirit-mat-
ter, we may use the terrestrial designations. The
main idea to be grasped is that astral objects are
combinations of astral matter, as physical objects are
combinations of physical matter, and that the astral
world scenery much resembles that of earth in con-
sequence of its being largely made up of the astral
duplicates of physical objects. One peculiarity,
however, arrests and confuses the untrained ob-
server : partly because of the translucency of astral
* Devachan, the happy or bright state, is the Theosophical
name for heaven. Kamaloka, the place of desire, is the name
given to the conditions of intermediate life on the astral plane.
ASTRAL VISION. 59
objects, and partly because of the nature of astral
vision — consciousness being less hampered by the
finer astral matter than when encased in the terres-
trial— everything is transparent, its back is as visible
as its front, its inside as its outside. Some experi-
ence is needed, therefore, ere objects are correctly
seen, and a person who has developed astral vision,
but has not yet had much experience in its use, is
apt to receive the most topsy-turvy impressions
and to fall into the most astounding blunders.
Another striking and at first bewildering charac-
teristic of the astral world is the swiftness with
which forms — especially when unconnected with
any terrestrial matrix — change their outlines.
An astral entity will change his whole appearance
with the most startling rapidity, for astral matter
takes form under every impulse of thought, the life
swiftly remoulding the form to give itself new ex-
pression. As the great life-wave of the evolution
of form passed downwards through the astral plane,
and constituted on that plane the third elemental
kingdom, the Monad drew round itself combinations
of astral matter, giving to these combinations — en-
titled elemental essence — a peculiar vitality and the
characteristic of responding to, and instantly taking
shape under, the impulse of thought vibrations.
This elemental essence exists in hundreds of varie-
ties on every subdivision of the astral plane, as
though the air became visible here — as indeed it
may be seen in quivering waves under great heat —
and were in constant undulatory motion with chang-
60 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM.
ing colors like mother-of-pearl. This vast atmos-
phere of elemental essence is ever answering to vi-
brations caused by thoughts, feelings, and desires,
and is thrown into commotion by a rush of any of
these like bubbles in boiling water.* The duration
of the form depends on the strength of the impulse
to which it owes its birth ; the clearness of its out-
line depends on the precision of the thinking, and
the color depends on the quality — intellectual, devo-
tional, passional — of the thought.
The vague loose thoughts which are so largely
produced by undeveloped minds gather round them-
selves loose clouds of elemental essence when they
arrive in the astral world, and drift about, attracted
hither and thither to other clouds of similar nature,
clinging round the astral bodies of persons whose
magnetism attracts them — either good or evil — and
after a while distintegrating, to again form part of
the general atmosphere of elemental essence. While
they maintain a separate existence they are living
entities, with bodies of elemental essence and
thoughts as the ensouling lives, and they are then
called artificial elementals, or thought-forms.
Clear, precise thoughts have each their own defi-
nite shapes, with sharp clean outlines, and show an
endless variety of designs. They are shaped by vi-
brations set up by thought, just as on the physical
plane we find figures which are shaped by vibrations
set up by sound. '"Voice-figures" offer a very fair
analogy for "thought-figures," for nature, with all
* C. W. Leadbeater, Astral Plant, p. 52.
ARTIFICIAL ELEMENTS 61
her infinite variety, is very conservative of prin-
ciples, and reproduces the same methods of working
on plane after plane in her realms. These clearly
defined artificial elementals have a longer and much
more active life than their cloudy brethren, exercis-
ing a far stronger influence on the astral bodies (and
through them on the minds) of those to whom they
are attracted. They set up in them vibrations simi-
lar to their own, and thus thoughts spread from
mind to mind without terrestrial expression. More
than this: they can be directed by the thinker tow-
ards any person he desires to reach, their potency
depending on the strength of his will and the inten-
sity of his mental power.
Among average people the artificial elementals
created by feeling or desire are more vigorous and
more definite than those created by thought. Thus
an outburst of anger will cause a very definitely out-
lined and powerful flash of red, and sustained anger
will make a dangerous elemental, red in color, and
pointed, barbed or otherwise qualified to injure.
Love, according to its quality, will set up forms
more or less beautiful in color and design, all shades
of crimson to the most exquisite and soft hues of
rose, like the palest blushes of the sunset or the
dawn, clouds or tenderly strong protective shapes.
Many a mother's loving prayers go to hover round
her son as angel-forms, turning aside from him evil
influences that perchance his own thoughts are
attracting.
It is characteristic of these artificial elementals,
62 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
when they are directed by the will towards any par-
ticular person, that they are animated by the one
impulse of carrying out the will of their creator. A
protective elemental will hover round its object,
seeking any opportunity of warding off evil or at-
tracting good — not consciously, but by a blind im-
pulse, as finding there the line of least resistance.
So, also, an elemental ensouled by a malignant
thought will hover round its victim seeking oppor-
tunity to injure. But neither the one nor the other
can make any impression unless there be in the as-
tral body of the object something akin to themselves,
something that can answer accordantly to their
vibrations, and thus enable them to attach them-
selves. If there be nothing in him of matter cog-
nate to their own, then by a law of their nature they
rebound from him along the path they pursued in
going to him — the magnetic trace they have left —
and rush to their creator with a force proportionate
to that of their projection. Thus a thought of
deadly hatred, failing to strike the object at which
it was darted, has been known to slay its sender,
while good thoughts sent to the unworthy return as
blessings to him that poured them forth.
A very slight understanding of the astral world
will thus act as a most powerful stimulus to right
thinking, and will render heavy the sense of respon-
sibility in regard to the thoughts, feelings, and de-
sires that we let loose into this astral realm. Rav-
ening beasts of prey, rending and devouring, are too
many of the thoughts with which men people the as-
THOUGHTS ANGELS OR DEJVILS 63
tral plane. But they err from ignorance; they know
not what they do. One of the objects of theosophi-
cal teaching, partly lifting up the evil of the unseen
world, is to give men a sounder basis for conduct, a
more rational appreciation of the causes of which
the effects only are seen in the terrestrial world.
And few of its doctrines are more important in their
ethical bearing than this of the creation and direc-
tion of thought-forms, or artificial elementals, for
through it man learns that his mind does not con-
cern himself alone, that his thoughts do not affect
himself alone, but that he is ever sending out angels
and devils into the world of men, for whose creation
he is responsible, and for whose influence he is held
accountable. Let men, then, know the law, and
guide their thoughts thereby.
If, instead of taking artificial elementals sepa-
rately, we take them in the mass, it is easy to realize
the tremendous effect they have in producing
national and race feelings, and thus in biassing
and prejudicing the mind. We all grow up sur-
rounded by an atmosphere crowded with elementals
embodying certain ideas; national prejudices, na-
tional ways of looking at all questions, national
types of feelings and thoughts, all these play on us
from our birth, ay, and before. We see everything
through this atmosphere, every thought is more or
less refracted by it, and our own astral bodies are
vibrating in accord with it. Hence the same idea
will look quite different to a Hindu, an Englishman,
a Spaniard, and a Russian ; some conceptions easy to
64 the: ancient wisdom
the one will be almost impossible to the other, cus-
toms instinctively attractive to the one are instinc-
tively odious to the other. We are all dominated by
our national atmosphere, i.e., by that portion of the
astral world immediately surrounding us. The
thoughts of others, cast much in the same mould,
play upon us, and call out from us synchronous vi-
brations; they intensify the points in which we ac-
cord with our surroundings and flatten away the
differences, and this ceaseless action upon us through
the astral body impresses on us the national hall-
mark and traces channels for mental energies into
which they readily flow. Sleeping and waking, these
currents play upon us, and our very unconsciousness
of their action makes it the more eflfective. As most
people are receptive rather than initiative in their
nature, they act almost as automatic reproducers
of the thoughts which reach them, and thus the
national atmosphere is continually intensified.
When a person is beginning to be sensitive to as-
tral influences, he will occasionally find himself sud-
dently overpowered or assailed by a quite inexplica-
ble and seemingly irrational dread, which swoops
down upon him with even paralyzing force. Fight
against it as he may, he yet feels it, and perhaps re-
sents it. Probably there are few who have not ex-
perienced this fear to some extent, the uneasy dread
of an invisible something, the feeling of a presence,
of ''not being alone." This arises partly from a cer-
tain hostility which animates the natural elemental
world against the human, on account of the various
DR^AD OF THE INVISIBLE 65
destructive agencies devised by mankind on the
physical plane and reacting on the astral, but is also
largely due to the presence of so many artificial
elementals of an unfriendly kind, bred by human
minds. Thoughts of hatred, jealousy, revenge, bit-
terness, suspicion, discontent, go out by millions
crowding the astral plane with artificial elementals
whose whole life is made of these feelings. How
much also is there of vague distrust and suspicion
poured out by the ignorant against all whose ways
and appearance are alien and unfamiliar. The blind
distrust of all foreigners, the surly contempt, extend-
ing in many districts even towards inhabitants of
another country — these things also contribute evil
influences to the astral world. There being so much
of these things among us, we create a blindly hostile
army on the astral plane, and this is answered in our
own astral bodies by a feeling of dread, set up by
the antagonistic vibrations that are sensed, but not
understood.
Outside the class of artificial elementals, the astral
world is thickly populated, even excluding, as we do
for the present, all the human entities who have lost
their physical bodies by death. There are great
hosts of natural elementals, or nature-spirits, divided
into five main classes — the elementals of the ether,
the fire, the air, the water, and the earth; the last
four groups have been termed, in mediaeval occul-
ism, the Salam.anders, Sylphs, Undines, and Gnomes
(needless to say there are two other classes, com-
pleting the seven, not concerning us here, as they are
5
66 THS ANCIENT WISDOM
still unmanifested). These are the true elementals,
or creatures of the elements, earth, water, air, fire,
and ether, and they are severally concerned in the
carrying on of the activities connected with their
own element ; they are the channels through which
work the divine energies in these several fields, the
living expressions of the law in each. At the head
of each division is a great Being, the captain of a
mighty host,* the directing and guiding intelligence
of the whole department of nature which is adminis-
tered and energized by the class of elementals under
his control. Thus Agni, the fire-God, is a great spir-
itual entity concerned with the manifestation of fire
on all the planes of the universe, and carries on his
administration through the hosts of fire-elementals.
By understanding the nature of these, or knowing
the methods of their control, the so-called miracles
or magical feats are worked, which from time to
time are recorded in the public press, whether they
are avowedly the results of magical arts, or are done
by the aid of ''spirits" — as in the case of the late Mr.
Home, who could unconcernedly pick a red-hot coal
out of a blazing fire with his fingers and hold it in
his hand unhurt. Levitation (the suspension of a
heavy body in the air without visible support) and
walking on the water have been done by the aid re-
* Called a Deva, or God, by the Hindus. The student may
like to have the Sanskrit names of the five Gods of the mani-
fested elements ; Indra, lord of the Akasha, or ether of space ;
Agni, lord of fire ; Pavana, lord of air ; Varuna, lord of water ;
Kshiti, lord of earth.
NATURE SPIRITS 67
spectively of the elementals of the air and the water,
although another method is more often employed.
As the elements enter into the human body, one
or another predominating according to the nature of
the person, each human being has relations with
these elementals, the most friendly to him being
those whose element is preponderant in him. The
effects of this fact are often noted, and are popularly
ascribed to "luck." A person has "a lucky hand"
in making plants grow, in lighting fires, in finding
underground water, etc., etc. Nature is ever jost-
ling us with her occult forces, but we are slow to
take her hints. Tradition sometimes hides a truth
in a proverb or a fable, but we have grown beyond
all such "superstitions."
We find also on the astral plane, nature-spirits —
less accurately termed elementals — who are con-
cerned with the building of forms in the mineral,
vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms. There are
nature-spirits who build up minerals, who guide the
vital energies in plants, and who molecule by mole-
cule form the bodies of the animal kingdom; they
are concerned with the making of the astral bodies of
minerals, plants, and animals, as well as with that
of the physical. These are the fairies and elves of
legends, the "little people" who play so large a part
in the folk-lore of every nation, the charming irre-
sponsible children of nature, whom science has cold-
ly relegated to the nursery, but who will be replaced
in their own grade of natural order by the wiser sci-
entists of a later day. Only poets and occultists be-
68 the: ancie;nt wisdom
lieve in them just now, poets by the intuition of their
genius, occultists by the vision of their trained inner
senses. The multitude laugh at both, most of all at
the occultists ; but it matters not — wisdom shall be
justified of her children.
The play of the life-currents in the etheric doubles
of the forms in the mineral, vegetable, and animal
kingdoms, awoke out of latency the astral matter in-
volved in the structure of their atomic and molecular
constituents. It began to thrill in a very limited
way in the minerals, and the Monad of form, exer-
cising his organizing power, drew in materials from
the astral world, and these were built by the nature-
spirits into a loosely constituted mass, the mineral
astral body. In the vegetable world the astral bod-
ies are a little more organized, and their special
characteristic of ''feeling" begins to appear. Dull
and diffused sensations of well-being and discomfort
are observable in most plants as the results of the
increasing activity of the astral body. They dimly
enjoy the air, the rain, and the sunshine, and grop-
ingly seek them, while they shrink from noxious
conditions. Some seek the light and some seek the
darkness ; they answer to stimuli, and adapt them-
selves to external conditions, some showing plainly
a sense of touch. In the animal kingdom the astral
body is more developed, reaching in the higher
members of that kingdom a sufficiently definite or-
ganization to cohere for some time after the death of
the physical body, and to lead an independent exist-
ence on the astral plane.
D^SIR^ KL^ME^NTALS 69
The nature-spirits concerned with the building of
the animal and human astral bodies have been given
the special name of desire-elementals,* because they
are strongly animated by desires of all kinds, and
constantly build themselves into the astral bodies of
animals and men. They also use the varieties of
elemental essence similar to that of which their own
bodies are composed to construct the astral bodies of
animals, those bodies thus acquiring, as interwoven
parts, the centres of sensation and of the various
passional activities. These centres are stimulated into
functioning by impulses received by the dense physi-
cal organs, and transmitted by the etheric physical
organs to the astral body. Not until the astral
centre is reached does the animal feel pleasure or
pain. A stone may be struck, but it will feel no
pain; it has dense and etheric physical molecules,
but its astral body is unorganized; the animal feels
pain from a blow because he possesses the astral
centres of sensation, and the desire-elementals have
woven into him their own nature.
As a new consideration enters into the work of
these elementals with the human astral body, we will
finish our survey of the inhabitants of the astral
plane ere studying this more complicated astral
form.
The desire-bodies,t or astral bodies, of animals
are found, as has just been stated, to lead an inde-
♦Kamadevas, they are called, "desire-gods."
fKamarupa is the technical name for the astral body, from
kama, desire, and rupa, form.
70 the: ancient wisdom
pendent though fleeting existence on the astral plane
after death has destroyed their physical counter-
parts. In "civilized" countries these animal astral
bodies add much to the general feeling of hostility
which was spoken of above, for the organized butch-
ery of animals in slaughter-houses and by sport
sends millions upon millions of these annually into
the astral world, full of horror, terror, and shrinking
from men. The comparatively few creatures that
are allowed to die in peace and quietness are lost in
the vast hordes of the murdered, and from the cur-
rents set up by these there rain down influences
from the astral world on the human and animal
races which drive them yet farther apart and en-
gender ''instinctive" distrust and fear on the one
side and lust of inflicting cruelty on the other.
These feelings have been much intensified of late
years by the coldly devised methods of the scientific
torture called vivisection, the unmentionable bar-
barities of which have introduced new horrors into
the astral world by their reaction on the culprits,*
as well as having increased the gulf between man and
his "poor relations."
Apart from what we may call the normal popula-
tion of the astral world, there are passing travellers
in it, led there by their work, whom we cannot leave
entirely without mention. Some of these come from
our own terrestrial world, while others are visitors
from loftier regions.
Of the former, many are Initiates of various
* See Chapter III., on "Kamaloka."
ASTRAL WORLD VISITORS 71
grades, some belonging to the Great White Lxxige —
the Himalayan or Tibetian Brotherhood, as it is
often called* — while others are members of different
occult lodges throughout the world, ranging from
white through all shades of gray to black.f AH
these are men living in physical bodies, who have
learned to leave the physical encasement at will, and
to function in full consciousness in the astral body.
They are of all grades of knowledge and virtue,
beneficent and maleficent, strong and weak, gentle
and ferocious. There are also many younger aspi-
rants, still uninitiated, who are learning to use the
astral vehicle, and who are employed in works of
benevolence or malevolence according to the path
they are seeking to tread.
After these, we have psychics of varying degrees
of development, some fairly alert, others dreamy and
confused, wandering about while their physical bodies
* It is to some members of this Lodge that the Theosophical
Society owes its inception.
t Occultists who are unselfish and wholly devoted to the
carrying out of the Divine Will, or who are aiming to attain
these virtues, are called "white." Those who are selfish and
are working against the Divine purpose in the universe are
called "black." Expanding selflessness, love, and devotion are
the marks of the one class; contracting selfishness, hatred,
and harsh arrogance are the signs of the other. Between these
are the classes whose motives are mixed, and who have not
yet realized that they must evolve towards the One Self or
towards the separated selves ; these I have called gray. Their
members gradually drift into, or deliberately join, one of the
two great groups with clearly marked aims.
72 THD ANCIEJNT WISDOM
are asleep or entranced. Unconscious of their ex-
ternal surroundings, wrapped in their own thoughts,
drawn as it were within their astral shell, are
millions of drifting astral bodies inhabited by con-
scious entities, whose physical frames are sunk in
sleep. As we shall see presently, the conscious-
ness in its astral vehicle escapes when the body sinks
into sleep, and passes on to the astral plane; but it
is not conscious of its surroundings until the astral
body is sufficiently developed to function indepen-
dently of the physical.
Occasionally is seen on this plane a disciple* who
has passed through death and is awaiting an almost
immediate reincarnation under the direction of his
Master. He is, of course, in the enjoyment of full
consciousness, and is working like other disciples
who have merely slipped off their bodies in sleep.
At a certain stagef a disciple is allowed to reincar-
nate very quickly after death, and under these cir-
cumstances he has to await on the astral plane a
suitable opportunity for rebirth.
Passing through the astral plane also are the hu-
man beings who are on their way to reincarnation;
they will again be mentioned later on,^ and they
concern themselves in no way with the general life
of the astral world. The desire-elementals, how-
ever, who have affinity with them from their past
passional and sensational activities, gather round
* A chela, the accepted pupil of an Adept.
t See Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent."
t See Chapter VII., on "Reincarnation."
THE ASTRAL BODY 73
them, assisting in the building of the new astral body
for the coming earth-life.
We must now turn to the consideration of the hu-
man astral body during the period of existence in
this world, and study its nature and constitution as
well as its relations with the astral realm. We will
take the astral body of (a) an undeveloped man, (b)
an average man, and (c) a spiritually developed man.
(a) An undeveloped man's astral body is a cloudy,
loosely organized, vaguely outlined mass of astral
spirit-matter, containing materials — both astral mat-
ter and elemental essence — drawn from all the sub-
divisions of the astral plane, but with a great pre-
dominance of substances from the lower, so that it is
dense and coarse in texture, fit to respond to all the
stimuli connected with the passions and appetites.
The colors caused by the rates of vibration are dull,
muddy, and dusky — browns, dull reds, dirty greens,
are the predominant hues. There is no play of light
or quickly changing flashing of colors through this
astral body, but the various passions show themselves
as heavy surges, or, when violent, as flashes; thus
sexual passion will send a wave of muddy crimson,
rage a flash of lurid red.
The astral body is larger than the physical, extend-
ing round it in all directions ten or twelve inches in
such a case as we are considering. The centres of
the organs of sense are definitely marked, and are
active when worked on from without; but in quies-
cence the life-streams are sluggish, and the astral
body, stimulated neither from the physical nor men-
74 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
tal worlds, is drowsy and indifferent.* It is a con-
stant characteristic of the undeveloped state that
activity is prompted from without rather than from
the inner consciousness. A stone to be moved must
be pushed ; a plant moves under the attractions of
light and moisture; an animal becomes active when
stirred by hunger; a poorly developed man needs to
be prompted in similar ways. Not till the mind is
partly grown does it begin to initiate action. The
centres of higher activities,! related to the indepen-
dent functioning of the astral senses, are scarcely
visible. A man at this stage requires for his evolu-
tion violent sensations of every kind, to arouse the
nature and stimulate it into activity. Heavy blows
from the outer world, both of pleasure and pain, are
wanted to awaken and spur to action. The more
numerous and violent the sensations, the more he
can be made to feel, the better for his growth. At
this stage quality matters little, quantity and vigor
are the main requisites. The beginnings of this
man's morality will be in his passions ; a slight im-
pulse of unselfishness in his relations to wife or
child or friend, will be the first step upwards, by
causing vibrations in the finer matter of his astral
body and attracting into it more elemental essence
of an appropriate kind. The astral body is con-
* The student will recognize here the predominance of the
tamasic guna, the quality of darkness or inertness in nature.
t The seven chakras, or wheels, so named from the whirling
appearance they present, like wheels of living fire when in
activity.
BUILDING the: BODY 75
stantly changing its materials under this play of the
passions, appetites, desires, and emotions. All good
ones strengthen the finer parts of the body, shake
out some of the coarser constituents, draw into it
the subtler materials, and attract round it elementals
of a beneficent kind who aid in the renovating pro-
cess. All evil ones have diametrically opposite effects,
strengthening the coarser, expelling the finer, draw-
ing in more of the former, and attracting ele-
mentals who help in the deteriorating process. The
man's moral and intellectual powers are so em-
bryonic in the case we are considering that most of
the building and changing of his astral body may
be said to be done for him rather than by him. It
depends more on his external circumstances than on
his own will, for, as just said, it is characteristic of
a low stage of development that a man is moved
from without and through the body much more than
from within and by the mind. It is a sign of con-
siderable advance when a man begins to be moved
by the will, by his own energy, self-determined, in-
stead of being moved by desire, i. e., by a response
to an external attraction or repulsion.
In sleep, the astral body, enveloping the con-
sciousness, slips out of the physical vehicle, leaving
the dense and etheric bodies to slumber. At this
stage, however, the consciousness is not awake in
the astral body, lacking the strong contacts that
spur it while in the physical frame, and the only
things that affect the astral body may be elementals
of the coarser kinds, that may set up therein vibra-
7(i TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
tions which are reflected to the etheric and dense
brains, and induce dreams of animal pleasures. The
astral body floats just over the physical, held by
its strong attraction, and cannot go far away from
it.
(&) In the average moral and intellectual man the
astral body shows an immense advance on that just
described. It is larger in size, its materials are
more balanced in quality, the presence of the rarer
kinds giving a certain luminous quality to the whole,
while the expression of the higher emotions sends
playing through it beautiful ripples of color. Its
outline is clear and definite, instead of vague and
shifting, as in the former case, and it assumes the
likeness of its owner. It is obviously becoming a
vehicle for the inner man, with definite organization
and stability, a body fit and ready to function, and
able to maintain itself, apart from the physical.
While retaining great plasticity, it yet has a normal
form, to which it continually recurs when any pres-
sure is removed that may have caused it to change
its outline. Its activity is constant, and hence it is
in perpetual vibration, showing endless varieties of
changing hues; also the "wheels" are clearly visible
though not yet functioning.* It responds quickly
to all the contacts coming to it through the physical
body, and is stirred by the influences rained on it
from the conscious entity within, memory and im-
agination stimulating it to action, and causing it to
* Here the student will note the predominance of the rajasic
guna, the quality of activity in nature.
sklf-dirkcte:d growth 17
become the prompter of the body to activity instead
of only being moved by it. Its purification pro-
ceeds along the same lines as in the former case —
the expulsion of lower constituents by setting up
vibrations antagonistic to them and the drawing in
of finer materials in their place. But now the in-
creased moral and intellectual development of the
man puts the building almost entirely under his own
control, for he is no longer driven hither and thither
by stimuli from external nature, but reasons, judges,
and resists or yields as he thinks well. By the
exercise of well-directed thought he can rapidly
aflfect the astral body, and hence its improvement
can proceed apace. Nor is it necessary that he
should understand the modus operandi in order
to bring about the effect, any more than that a
man should understand the laws of light in order
to see.
In sleep, this well-developed astral body slips, as
usual, from its physical encasement, but is by no
means held captive by it, as in the former case. It
roams about in the astral world, drifted hither and
thither by the astral currents, while the conscious-
ness within it, not yet able to direct its movements,
is awake, engaged in the enjoyment of its own men-
tal images and mental activities, and able also to re-
ceive impressions through its astral covering, and to
change them into mental pictures. In this way a
man may gain knowledge when out of the body,
and may subsequently impress it on the brain as
a vivid dream or vision, or without this link of
78 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
memory it may filter through into the brain- con-
sciousness.
(c) The astral body of a spiritually developed man
is composed of the finest particles of each subdivi-
sion of astral matter, the higher kinds largely pre-
dominating in amount. It is therefore a beautiful
object in luminosity and color, hues not known on
earth showing themselves under the impulses thrown
into it by the purified mind. The wheels of fire are
now seen to deserve their names, and their whirling
motion denotes the activity of the higher senses.
Such a body is, in the full sense of the words, a
vehicle of consciousness, for in the course of evolu-
tion it has been vivified in every organ and brought
under the complete control of its owner. When in
it he leaves the physical body there is no break of
consciousness ; he merely shakes ofiF his heavier ves-
ture, and finds himself unencumbered by its weight.
He can move anywhere within the astral sphere
with immense rapidity, and is no longer bound by
the narrow terrestrial conditions. His body an-
swers to his will, reflects and obeys his thought.
His opportunities for serving humanity are thus
enormously increased, and his powers are directed
by his virtue and his beneficence. The absence of
gross particles in his astral body renders it incapable
of responding to the promptings of lower objects of
desire, and they turn away from him as beyond their
attraction. The whole body vibrates only in answer
to the higher emotions, his love has grown into de-
votion, his energy is curbed by patience. Gentle,
THE BRIDGE ^ROM EARTH TO SOUL 79
calm, serene, full of power, but with no trace of
restlessness, such a man *'all the Siddhis stand ready
to serve/'*
The astral body forms the bridge over the gulf
which separates consciousness from the physical
brain. Impacts received by the sense-organs and
transmitted, as we have seen, to the dense and ethe-
ric centres, pass thence to the corresponding astral
centres ; here they are worked on by the elemental
essence and are transmuted into feelings, and are
then presented to the inner man as objects of con-
sciousness, the astral vibrations awakening corre-
sponding vibrations in the materials of the mental
body.f By these successive gradations in fineness
of spirit-matter the heavy impacts of terrestrial ob-
jects can be transmitted to the conscious entity; and,
in turn, the vibrations set up by his thoughts can
pass along the same bridge to the physical brain and
there induce physical vibrations corresponding to
the mental. This is the regular normal way in
which consciousness receives impressions from with-
out, and in turn sends impressions outwards. By
this constant passage of vibrations to and fro the
astral body is chiefly developed; this current plays
upon it from within and from without, evolves its
organization, and subserves its general growth. By
this it becomes larger, finer in texture, more defi-
nitely outlined, and more organized interiorly.
* Here the sattvic guna, the quality of bliss and purity in
nature, is predominant. Siddhis are superphysical powers.
t See Chapter IV., on "The Mental Plane."
80 THK ANClEiNT WISDOM
Trained thus to respond to consciousness, it gradu-
ually becomes fit to function as its separate vehicle,
and to transmit to it clearly the vibrations received
directly from the astral world. Most readers will
have had some little experience of impressions com-
ing into consciousness from without, that do not
arise from any physical impact, and that are very
quickly verified by some external occurrence. These
are frequently impressions that reach the astral body
directly, and are transmitted by it to the conscious-
ness, and such impressions are often of the nature
of previsions which very quickly prove themselves
to be true. When the man is far progressed, though
the stage varies much according to other circum-
stances, links are set up between the physical and
the astral, the astral and the mental, so that con-
sciousness works unbrokenly from one state to the
other, memory having in it none of the lapses which
in the ordinary man interpose a period of uncon-
sciousness in passing from one plane to another.
The man can then also freely exercise the astral
senses while the consciousness is working in the
physical body, so that these enlarged avenues of
knowledge become an appanage of his waking con-
sciousness. Objects which were before matters of
faith become matters of knowledge, and he can per-
sonally verify the accuracy of much of the theo-
sophical teaching as to the lower regions of the
invisible world.
When man is analyzed into ''principles," i. e., into
TH^ one: SEL]P MANI^EISTING 81
modes of manifesting life, his four lower principles,
termed the 'Xower Quaternary," are said to func-
tion on the astral and physical planes. The fourth
principle is Kama, desire, and it is the life manifest-
ing in the astral body and conditioned by it; it is
characterized by the attribute of feeling, whether in
the rudimentary form of sensation, or in the com-
plex form of emotion, or in any of the grades that
lie between. This is summed up as desire, that
which is attracted or repelled by objects, according
as they give pleasure or pain to the personal self.
The third principle is Prana, the life specialized for
the support of the physical organism. The second
principle is the etheric double, and the first is the
dense body. These three function on the physical
plane. In H. P. Blavatsky's later classifications she
removes both Prana and the dense physical body
from the rank of principles, Prana as being univer-
sal life, and the dense physical body as being the
mere counterpart of the etheric, and made of con-
stantly changing materials built into the etheric
matrix. Taking this view, we have the grand philo-
sophic conception of the One Life, the One Self,
manifesting as man, and presenting varying and
transitory differences according to the conditions
imposed on it by the bodies which it vivifies ; itself
remaining the same in the centre, but showing dif-
ferent aspects when looked at from outside, accord-
ing to the kinds of matter in one body or another.
In the physical body it is Prana, energizing, con-
trolling, co-ordinating. In the astral body it is
82 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
Kama, feeling, enjoying, suffering. We shall find
it in yet other aspects, as we pass to higher planes,
but the fundamental idea is the same throughout,
and it is another of those root-ideas of Theosophy,
which firmly grasped, serve as guiding clues in this
most tangled world.
CHAPTER III.
Kamaloka.
Kamaloka, literally the place or habitat of desire,
is, as has already been intimated, a part of the astral
plane, not divided from it as a distinct locality, but
separated off by the conditions of consciousness of
the entities belonging to it.* These are human be-
ings who have lost their physical bodies by the
stroke of death, and have to undergo certain purify-
ing changes before they can pass on to the happy
and peaceful life which belongs to the man proper,
to the human soul.f
This region represents and includes the conditions
described as existing in the various hells, purga-
tories, and intermediate states, one or other of
which is alleged by all the great religions to be the
* The Hindus call this state Pretaloka, the habitat of Pretas.
A Preta is the human being who has lost his physical body,
but is still encumbered with the vesture of his animal nature.
He cannot carry this on with him, and until it is disintegrated
he is kept imprisoned by it.
t The soul is the human intellect, the fink between the Di-
vine Spirit in man and his lower personality. It is the Ego,
the individual, the "I," which develops by evolution. In the-
osophical parlance it is Manas, the Thinker. The mind is the
energy of this, working within the limitations of the physical
brain, or the astral and mental bodies.
84 THE ancie:nt wisdom
temporary dwelling-place of man after he leaves the
body and before he reaches ''heaven." It does not
include any place of eternal torture, the endless hell
still believed in by some narrow religionists being
only a nightmare dream of ignorance, hate, and fear.
But it does include conditions of suffering, tempo-
rary and purificatory in their nature, the working
out of causes set going in his earth-life by the man
who experiences them. These are as natural and
inevitable as any effects caused in this world by
wrong-doing, for we live in a world of law and every
seed must grow up after its own kind. Death makes
no sort of difference in a man's moral and mental
nature, and the change of state caused by passing
from one world to another takes away his physical
body, but leaves the man as he was.
The kamalokic condition is found on each sub-
division of the astral plane, so that we may speak of
it as having seven regions, calling them the first,
second, third, up to the seventh, beginning from the
lowest and coimting upwards.'^ We have already
seen that materials from each subdivision of the as-
tral plane enter into the composition of the astral
body, and it is a peculiar re-arrangement of these
materials, to be explained in a moment, which sepa-
rates the people dwelling in one region from those
dwelling in another, although those in the same re-
* Often these regions are reckoned the other way, taking
the first as the highest and the seventh as the lowest. It does
not matter from which end we count, and I am reckoning up-
wards to keep them in accord with the planes and the prin-
ciples.
TB.t INDRAWING OF l.l'^t 85
gion are able to intercommunicate. The regions,
being each a subdivision of the astral plane, differ in
density, and the density of the external form of the
kamalokic entity determines the region to which he
is limited; these differences of matter are the bar-
riers that prevent passage from one region to an-
other; people dwelling in one can no more come
into touch with people dwelling in another than a
deep-sea fish can hold a conversation with an eagle
— the medium necessary to the life of the one would
be destructive to the life of the other.
When the physical body is struck down by death,
the etheric body, carrying Prana with it and accom-
panied by the remaining principles — that is, the
whole man, except the dense body — withdraws from
the "tabernacle of flesh," as the outer body is ap-
propriately called. All the outgoing life-energies
draw themselves inwards, and are "gathered up by
Prana," their departure being manifested by the
dulness that creeps over the physical organs of the
senses. They are there, uninjured, physically com-
plete, ready to act as they have always been ; but
the "Inner Ruler" is going, he who through them
saw, heard, felt, smelt, tasted, and by themselves
they are mere aggregations of matter, living indeed
but without power of perceptive action. Slowly the
lord of the body draws himself away, enwrapped in
the violet-grey etheric body, and absorbed in the
contemplation of the panorama of his past life,
which in the death-hour unrolls before him, com-
plete in every detail. In that life-picture are all the
86 the: ancient wisdom
events of his life, small and great; he sees his am-
bitions with their success or frustration, his efforts,
his triumphs, his failures, his loves, his hatreds ; the
predominant tendency of the whole comes clearly
out, the ruling thought of the life asserts itself, and
stamps itself deeply into the soul, marking the re-
gion in which the chief part of his post-mortem ex-
istence will be spent. Solemn the moment when
the man stands face to face with his life, and from
the lips of his past hears the presage of his future.
For a brief space he sees himself as he is, recognizes
the purpose of life, knows that the Law is strong
and just and good. Then the magnetic tie breaks
between the dense and etheric bodies, the comrades
of a lifetime are disjoined, and — save in exceptional
cases — the man sinks into peaceful unconsciousness.
Quietness and devotion should mark the conduct
of all who are gathered round a dying body, in order
that a solemn silence may leave uninterrupted this
review of the past by the departing man. Clsimor-
ous weeping, loud lamentations, can but jar and dis-
turb the concentrated attention of the soul, and to
break with the grief of a personal loss into the still-
ness which aids and soothes him is at once selfish
and impertinent. Religion has wisely commanded
prayers for the dying, for these preserve calm and
stimulate unselfish aspirations directed to his help-
ing, and these, like all loving thoughts, protect and
shield.
Some hours after death — generally not more than
thirtv-six, it is said — the man draws himself out of
ETHERIC CORPSES 87
the etheric body, leaving it in turn as a senseless
corpse, and the latter, remaining near its dense
counterpart, shares its fate. If the dense body be
buried, the etheric double floats over the grave,
slowly disintegrating, and the unpleasant feelings
many experience in a churchyard are largely due to
the presence of these decaying etheric corpses. If
the body be burnt, the etheric double breaks up very
quickly, having lost its nidus, its physical centre of
attraction, and this is one among many reasons why
cremation is preferable to burial as a way of dispos-
ing of corpses.
The withdrawal of the man from the etheric
double is accompanied by the withdrawal from it of
Prana, which thereupon returns to the great reser-
voir of life universal, while the man, ready now to
pass into Kamaloka, undergoes a re-arrangement of
his astral body, fitting it for submission to the purifi-
catory changes which are necessary for the freeing
of the man himself.* During earth-life the various
kinds of astral matter intermingle in the formation
of the body, as do the solids, liquids, gases, and
ethers in the physical. The change in the arrange-
ment of the astral body after death consists in the
separation of these materials, according to their re-
spective densities, into a series of concentric shells
— the finest within, the densest without — each shell
* These changes result in the formation of what is called by
Hindus the Yatana, or sujffering body, or in the case of very
wicked men, in whose astral bodies there is a preponderance
of the coarsest matter, the Dhruvam, or strong body.
88 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
being made of the materials drawn from one sub-
division only of the astral plane; the astral body
thus becomes a set of seven superimposed layers, or
a seven-shelled encasement of astral matter, in which
the man may not inaptly be said to be imprisoned,
as only the breaking of these can set him free. Now
will be seen the immense importance of the purifica-
tion of the astral body during earth-life; the man is
retained in each subdivision of Kamaloka so long as
the shell of matter pertaining to that subdivision is
not sufficiently disintegrated to allow of his escape
into the next. Moreover, the extent to which his
consciousness has worked in each kind of matter de-
termines whether he will be awake and conscious in
any given region, or will pass through it in uncon-
sciousness, "wrapped in rosy dreams," and merely
detained during the time necessary for the process
of mechanical disintegration.
A spiritually advanced man, who has so purified
his astral body that its constituents are drawn only
from the finest grade of each division of astral mat-
ter, merely passes through Kamaloka without delay,
the astral body disintegrating with extreme swift-
ness, and he goes on to whatever may be his bourne,
according to the point he has reached in evolution.
A less developed man, but one whose life has been
pure and temperate and who has sat loosely on the
things of earth, will wing a less rapid flight through
Kamaloka, but will dream peacefully, unconscious
of his surroundings, as his mental body disentangles
itself from the astral shells, one after the other, to
SUDDIJN DEATH 89
awaken only when he reaches the heavenly places.
Others, less developed still, will awaken after pass-
ing out of the lower regions, becoming conscious in
the division which is connected with the active
working of the consciousness during the earth-life,
for this will be aroused on receiving familiar im-
pacts, although these be received now directly
through the astral body, without the help of the
physical. Those who have lived in the animal pas-
sions will awake in their appropriate region, each
man literally going "to his own place."
The case of men struck suddenly out of physical
life by accident, suicide, murder, or sudden death in
any form, differs from those of persons who pass
away by the failure of the life-energies through dis-
ease or old age. If they are pure and spiritually
minded they are specially guarded, and sleep out
happily the term of their natural life. But in other
cases they remain conscious — often entangled in the
final scene of earth-life for a time, and unaware that
they have lost the physical body — held in whatever
region they are related to by the outermost layer of
the astral body; their normal kamalokic life does
not begin until the natural web of earth-life is out-
spun, and they are vividly conscious of both their
astral and physical surroundings. One man who
had committed an assassination and had been exe-
cuted for his crime was said, by one of H. P. Bla-
vatsky's Teachers, to be living through the scenes
of the murder and the subsequent events over and
over again in Kamaloka, ever repeating his diaboli-
90 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
cal act and going through the terrors of his arrest
and execution. A suicide will repeat automatically
the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his
self-murder, and go through the act and the death-
struggle time after time with ghastly persistence.
A woman, who perished in the flames in a wild con-
dition of terror and with frantic efforts to escape,
created such a whirl of passions that, five days after-
wards, she was still struggling desperately, fancying
herself stiil in the fire and wildly repulsing all
efforts to soothe her; while another woman who,
with her baby on her breast, went down beneath the
whirl of waters in a raging storm, with her heart
calm and fttll of love, slept peacefully on the other
side of death, dreaming of husband and children in
happy lifelike visions. In more ordinary cases,
death by accident is still a disadvantage, brought on
a person by some serious fault,* for the possession
of full consciousness in the lower kamalokic regions,
which are closely related to the earth, is attended by
many inconveniences and perils. The man is full
of all the plans and interests that made up his life,
and is conscious of the presence of the people and
things connected with them; he is almost irresist-
ibly impelled by his longings to try and influence
the affairs to which his passions and feelings still
cling, and is bound to the earth while he has lost all
his accustomed organs of activity; his only hope of
* Not necessarily a fault committed in the present life. The
law of cause and effect will be explained in Chapter IX., on
"Karma."
CLINGING TO EARTH 91
peace lies in resolutely turning away from earth and
fixing his mind on higher things, but comparatively
few are strong enough to make this effort, even with
the help always offered them by workers on the
astral plane, whose sphere of duty lies in helping and
guiding those who have left this world.* Too often
such sufferers, impatient of their helpless inactivity,
seek the assistance of sensitives, with whom they
can communicate and so mix themselves up once
more in terrestrial affairs ; they sometimes seek even
to obsess convenient mediums and thus to utilize
the bodies of others for their own purposes, so
incurring many responsibilities in the future. Not
without occult reason have English churchmen been
taught to pray: "From battle, murder, and from
sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us."
We may now consider the divisions of Kamaloka
one by one, and so gain some idea of the conditions
which the man has made for himself in the interme-
diate state by the desires which he has cultivated
during physical life; it being kept in mind that the
amount of vitality in any given "shell"— and there-
fore his imprisonment in that shell — depends on the
amount of energy thrown during earth-life into the
kind of matter of which that shell consists. If the
lowest passions have been active, the coarsest mat-
ter will be strongly vitalized and its amount will
also be relatively large. This principle rules through
* These workers are disciples of some of the great Teachers
who guide and help humanity, and they are employed in this
special duty of succoring souls in need of such assistance.
92 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
all kamalokic regions, so that a man during earth-
life can judge very fairly as to the future for himself
that he is preparing immediately on the other side
of death.
The first, or lowest, division is the one that con-
tains the conditions described in so many Hindu and
Buddhist Scriptures under the name of ''hells" of
various kinds. It must be understood that a man,
in passing into one of these states, is not getting rid
of the passions and vile desires that have led him
thither; these remain, as part of his character, lying
latent in the mind in a germinal state, to be thrown
outwards again to form his passional nature when
he is returning to birth in the physical world.* His
presence in the lowest region of Kamaloka is due to
the existence in his kamic body of matter belonging
to that region, and he is held prisoner there until
the greater part of that matter has dropped away,
until the shell composed of it is sufficiently disinte-
grated to allow the man to come into contact with
the region next above.
The atmosphere of this place is gloomy, heavy,
dreary, depressing to an inconceivable extent. It
seems to reek with all the influences most inimical
to good, as in truth it does, being caused by the per-
son whose evil passions have led them to this dreary
place. All the desires and feelings at which we
shudder find here the materials for their expression ;
it is, in fact, the lowest slum, with all the horrors
veiled from physical sight, parading in their naked
* See Chapter VII., on "Reincarnation."
SOULS AS THDY AR^ 93
hideousness. Its repulsiveness is much increased
by the fact that in the astral world character ex-
presses itself in form, and the man who is full of
evil passions looks the whole of them; bestial appe-
tites shape the astral body into bestial forms, and
repulsively human animal shapes are the appropriate
clothing of brutalized human souls. No man can
be a hypocrite in the astral world, and cloak foul
thoughts with a veil of virtuous seeming; whatever
a man is that he appears to be in outward form and
semblance, radiant in beauty if his mind be noble,
repulsive in hideousness if his nature be foul. It
will readily be understood, then, how such Teachers
as the Buddha — to whose unerring vision all worlds
lay open — should describe what was seen in these
hells in vivid language of terrible imagery, that seems
incredible to modern readers only because people
forget that, once escaped from the heavy and un-
plastic matter of the physical world, all souls appear
in their proper likenesses and look just what they
are. Even in this world a degraded and besotted
ruffian moulds his face into most repellent aspect;
what then can be expected when the plastic astral
matter takes shape with every impulse of his crimi-
nal desires, but that such a man should wear a
horrifying form, taking on changing elements of
hideousness ?
For it must be remembered that the population —
if that word may be allowed — of this lowest region
consists of the very scum of humanity, murderers,
ruffians, violent criminals of all types, drunkards.
94 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
profligates, the vilest of mankind. None is here,
with consciousness awake to its surroundings, save
those guilty of brutal crimes, or of deliberate per-
sistent cruelty, or possessed by some vile appetite.
The only persons who may be of a better general
type, and yet for a while be held here, are suicides,
men who have sought by self-murder to escape
from the earthly penalties of crimes they had com-
mitted, and who have but worsened their position
by the exchange. Not all suicides, be it under-
stood, for self-murder is committed from many
motives, but only such as are led up to by crime
and are then committed in order to avoid the con-
sequences.
Save for the gloomy surroundings and the loath-
someness of a man's associates, every man here is
the immediate creator of his own miseries. Un-
changed, except for the loss of the bodily veil, men
here show out their passions in all their native hide-
ousness, their naked brutality ; full of fierce unsa-
tiated appetites, seething with revenge, hatred, long-
ings after physical indulgences which the loss of
physical organs incapacitates them from enjoying,
they roam, raging and ravening, through this gloomy
region, crowding round all foul resorts on earth,
round brothels and gin-palaces, stimulating their
occupants to deeds of shame and violence, seeking
opportunities to obsess them, and so to drive them
into worse excesses. The sickening atmosphere felt
round such places comes largely from these earth-
bound astral entities, reeking with foul passions and
THE VARIOUS HELLS 95
unclean desires. Mediums — unless of very pure and
noble character — are special objects of attack, and
too often the weaker ones, weakened still further by
the passive yielding of their bodies for the tempo-
rary habitation of other excarnate souls, are ob-
sessed by these creatures, and are driven into intem-
perance or madness. Executed murderers, furious
with terror and passionate revengeful hatred, acting
over again, as we have said, their crime and re-
creating mentally its terrible results, surround them-
selves with an atmosphere of savage thought-forms,
and, attracted to any one harboring revengeful and
violent designs, they egg him on into the actual
commission of the deed over which he broods.
Sometimes a man may be seen constantly followed
by his murdered victim, never able to escape from
his haunting presence, which hunts him with a dull
persistency, try he never so eagerly to escape. The
murdered person, vmless himself of a very base type,
is wrapped in unconsciousness, and this very uncon-
sciousness seems to add a new horror to its mechan-
ical pursuit.
Here also is the hell of the vivisector, for cruelty
draws into the astral body the coarsest materials and
the most repulsive combinations of the astral mat-
ter, and he lives amid the crowding forms of his
mutilated victims — moaning, quivering, howling (they
are vivified, not by the animal souls but by ele-
mental life) pulsing with hatred to the tormentor —
rehearsing his worst experiments with automatic
regularity, conscious of all the horror, and yet im-
96 the; ancient wisdom
periously impelled to the self-torment by the habit
set up during earth-life.
It is well once again to remember, ere quitting
this dreary region, that we have here no arbitrary
punishments inflicted from outside, but only the in-
evitable working out of the causes set going by each
person. During physical life they yielded to the
vilest impulses and drew into, built into, their astral
bodies the materials which alone could vibrate in
answer to those impulses ; this self-built body be-
comes the prison-house of the soul, and must fall
into ruins ere the soul can escape from it. As in-
evitably as a drunkard must live in his repulsive
soddened physical body here, so must he live in his
equally repulsive astral body there. The harvest
sown is reaped after its kind. Such is the law in
all the worlds, and it may not be escaped. Nor in-
deed is the astral body there more revolting and
horrible than it was when the man was living upon
earth and made the atmosphere around him fetid
with his astral emanations. But people on earth do
not generally recognize its ugliness, being astrally
blind.
Further, we may cheer ourselves in contemplating
these unhappy brothers of ours by remembering that
their sufferings are but temporary, and are giv-
ing a much-needed lesson in the life of the soul.
By the tremendous pressure of Nature's disregarded
laws they are learning the existence of those laws,
and the misery that accrues from ignoring them in
life and conduct. The lesson they would not learn
TH^ world's astral DOUBLE 97
during earth-life, whirled away on the torrent of
lusts and desires, is pressed on them here, and will
be pressed on them in their succeeding lives, until
the evils are eradicated and the man has risen into a
better life. Nature's lessons are sharp, but in the
long run they are merciful, for they lead to the evo-
lution of the soul and guide it to the winning of its
immortality.
Let us pass to a more cheerful region. The sec-
ond division of the astral world may be said to be
the astral double of the physical, for the astral bod-
ies of all things and of many people are largely com-
posed of the matter belonging to this division of the
astral plane, and it is therefore more closely in touch
with the physical world than any other part of the
astral. The great majority of people make some
stay here, and a very large proportion of these are
consciously awake in it. These latter are folk whose
interests were bound up in the trivial and petty ob-
jects of life, who set their hearts on trifles, as well
as those who allowed their lower natures to rule
them, and who died with the appetites still active
and desirous of physical enjoyment. Having largely
sent their life outwards in these directions, thus
building their astral bodies largely of the materials
that responded very readily to material impacts,
they are held by these bodies in the neighborhood
of their physical attractions. They are mostly dis-
satisfied, uneasy, restless, with more or less of suf-
fering according to the vigor of the wishes they
cannot gratify ; some even undergo positive pain
7
98 the: ancient wisdom
from this cause, and are long delayed ere these
earthly longings are exhausted. Many unnecessa-
rily lengthen their stay by seeking to communicate
with the earth, in whose interests they are entan-
gled, by means of mediums, who allow them to use
their physical bodies for this purpose, thus supply-
ing the loss of their own. From them comes most
of the mere twaddle with which every one is familiar
who has had experience of public spiritualistic
seances, the gossip and trite morality of the petty
lodging-house and small shop — feminine, for the
most part. As these earth-bound souls are gener-
ally of small intelligence, their communications are
of no more interest (to those alread}^ convinced of
the existence of the soul after death) than was their
conversation when they were in the body, and — just
as on earth — they are positive in proportion to their
ignorance, representing the whole astral world as
identical with their own very limited area. There,
as here:
They think the rustic cackle of their burgh
The murmur of the world.
It is from this region that people who have died
with some anxiety on their minds will sometimes
seek to communicate with their friends in order to
arrange the earthly matter that troubles them; if
they cannot succeed in showing themselves, or in
impressing their wishes by a dream on some friend,
they will often cause much annoyance by knockings
and other noises, directly intended to draw atten-
VIOLEJNT GRIE:^ 99
tion or caused unconsciously by their restless efforts.
It is a charity in- such cases for some competent per-
son to communicate with the distressed entity and
learn his wishes, as he may thus be freed from the
anxiety which prevents him from passing onwards.
Souls, while in this region, may also very easily
have their attention drawn to the earth, even al-
though they would not spontaneously have turned
back to it, and this disservice is too often done to
them by the passionate grief and craving for their
beloved presence by friends left behind on earth.
The thought-forms set up by these longings throng
round them, beat against them, and oftentimes
arouse them if they are peacefully sleeping, or vio-
lently draw their thoughts to earth if they are al-
ready conscious. It is especially in the former case
that this unwitting selfishness on the part of friends
on earth does mischief to their dear ones that they
would themselves be the first to regret; and it may
be that the knowledge of the unnecessary suffering
thus caused to those who have passed through death
may, with some, strengthen the binding force of the
religious precepts which enjoin submission to the
divine law and the checking of excessive and rebel-
lious grief.
The third and fourth regions of the kamalokic
world differ but little from the second, and might
almost be described as etherealized copies of it, the
fourth being more refined than the third, but the
general characteristics of the three subdivisions being
very similar. Souls of somewhat more progressed
100 thK ancient wisdom
types are found there, and although they are
held there by the encasement built by the activity
of their earthly interests, their attention is for
the most part directed onwards rather than back-
wards, and. if they are not forcibly recalled to the
concerns of earth-life, they will pass on without very
much delay. Still, they are susceptible to earthly
stimuli, and the weakening interest in terrestrial
affairs may be reawakened by cries from below.
Large numbers of educated and thoughtful people,
who were chiefly occupied with worldly affairs dur-
ing their physical lives, are conscious in these re-
gions, and may be induced to communicate through
mediums, and, more rarely, seek such communica-
tion themselves. Their statements are naturallv of
a higher type thon those spoken of as coming from
the second division, but are not marked by any
characteristics that render them more valuable than
similar statements made by persons still in the body.
Spiritual illumination does not come from Kama-
loka.
The fifth subdivision of Kamaloka offers many
new characteristics. It presents a distinctly lumi
nous and radiant appearance, eminently attractive
to those accustomed only to the dull hues of earth,
and justifying the epithet astral, starry, given to the
whole plane. Here are situated all the materialized
heavens which play so large a part in popular relig-
ions all the world over. The happy hunting-grounds
of the Red Indian, the Valhalla of the Norsemen,
the houri-filled paradise of the Muslim, the golden
MATERIALISTIC HEAVENS 101
jewelled-gated New Jerusalem of the Christian, the
lyceum-filled heaven of the materialistic reformer,
all have here their places. Men and women who
clung desperately to every "letter that killeth" have
here the literal satisfaction of their cravings, uncon-
sciously creating in astral matter by their powers of
imagination, fed on the mere husks of the world's
Scriptures, the cloud-built palaces whereof they
dreamed. The crudest religious beliefs find here
their temporary cloudland realization, and literallsts
of every faith, who were filled with selfish longings
for their own salvation in the most materialistic of
heavens, here find an appropriate, and to them en-
joyable, home, surrounded by the very conditions In
which they believed. The religious and philanthropic
busybodies, who cared more to carry out their own
fads and impose their own ways on their neigh-
bors than to work unselfishly for the increase of
human virtue and happiness, are here much to the
fore, carrying on reformatories, refuges, schools, to
their own great satisfaction, and much delighted are
they still to push an astral finger into an earthly pie
with the help of a subservient medium whom they
patronize with lofty condescension. They build as-
tral churches and schools and houses, reproducing
the materialistic heavens they coveted ; and though
to keener vision their erections are imperfect, even
pathetically grotesque, they find them all-sufficing.
People of the same religions flock together and co-
operate with each other in various ways, so that
communities are formed, differing as widely from
102 thd ancient wisdom
each other as do similar communities on earth.
When they are attracted to the earth they seek, for
the most part, people of their own faith and coun-
try, chiefly by natural affinity, doubtless, but also
because barriers of language still exist in Kamaloka,
as may be noticed occasionally in messages received
in spiritualistic circles. Souls from this region often
take the most vivid interest in attempts to establish
communication between this and the next world,
and the "spirit-guides" of average mediums come,
for the most part, from this and from the region
next above. They are generally aware that there
are many possibilities of higher life before them,
and that they will, sooner or later, pass away into
worlds whence communication with this earth will
not be possible.
The sixth kamalokic region resembles the fifth,
but is far more refined, and is largely inhabited by
souls of a more advanced type, wearing out the as-
tral vesture in which much of their mental energies
had worked while they were in the physical body.
Their delay here is due to the large part played by
selfishness in their artistic and intellectual life, and
to the prostitution of their talents to the gratifica-
tion of the desire-nature in a refined and delicate
way. Their surroundings are of the best that are
found in Kamaloka, as their creative thoughts fash-
ion the luminous materials of their temporary home
into fair landscapes and rippling oceans, snow-clad
mountains and fertile plains, scenes that are of fairy-
like beauty compared with even the most exquisite
STUDENTS IN KAMALOKA 103
that earth can show. Religionists also are found
here, of a slightly more progressed kind than those
in the division immediately below, and with more
definite views of their own limitations. They look
forward more clearly to passing out of their present
sphere, and reaching a higher state.
The seventh, the highest, subdivision of Kama-
loka, is occupied almost entirely by intellectual men
and women who were either pronouncedly material-
istic while on earth, or who are so wedded to the
ways in which knowledge is gained by the lower
mind in the physical body that they continue its
pursuit in the old ways, though with enlarged facul-
ties. One recalls Charles Lamb's dislike of the idea
that in heaven knowledge would have to be gained
"by some awkward process of intuition" instead of
through his beloved books. Many a student lives
for long years, sometimes for centuries — according
to H. P. Blavatsky — Hterally in an astral library,
conning eagerly all books that deal with his favor-
ite subject, and perfectly contented with his lot
Men who have been keenly set on some line of in-
tellectual investigation, and have thrown off the
physical body with their thirst for knowledge un-
slaked, pursue their object still with unwearied per-
sistence, fettered by their clinging to the physical
modes of study. Often such men are still sceptical
as to the higher possibilities that lie before them,
and shrink from the prospect of what is practically a
second death — the sinking into unconsciousness ere
the soul is born into the higher life of heaven. Poli-
104 THE ancie;nt wisdom
ticlans, statesmen, men of science, dwell for a while
in this region, slowly disentangling themselves from
the astral body, still held to the lower life by their
keen and vivid interest in the movements in which
they have played so large a part, and in the effort to
work out astrally some of the schemes from which
Death snatched them ere yet they had reached
fruition.
To all, however, sooner or later — save to that
small minority who during earth-life never felt one
touch of unselfish love, of intellectual aspiration, of
recognition of something or some one higher than
themselves — there comes a time when the bonds of
the astral body are finally shaken off, while the soul
sinks into brief unconsciousness of its surroundings,
like the unconsciousness that follows the dropping
off of the physical body, to be awakened by a sense
of bliss, intense, immense, fathomless, undreamed
of, the bliss of the heaven-world, of the world to
which by its own nature it belongs. Low and vile
may have been many of its passions, trivial and
sordid many of its longings, but it had gleams of a
higher nature, broken lights now and then from a
purer region, and these must ripen as seeds to the
time of their harvest, and however poor and few
must yield their fair return. The man passes on to
reap this harvest, and to eat and assimilate its
fruit.*
The astral corpse, as it is sometimes called, or the
"shell" of the departed entity, consists of the frag-
* See Chapter V., on "Devachan."
ASTRAL CORPSi:S 105
merits of the seven concentric shells before de-
scribed, held together by the remaining magnetism
of the soul. Each shell in turn has disintegrated,
until the point is reached when mere scattered frag-
ments of it remain; these cling by magnetic attrac-
tion to the remaining shells, and when one after
another has been reduced to this condition, until the
seventh or innermost is reached and itself disinte-
grates, the man himself escapes, leaving behind him
these remains. The shell drifts vaguely about in
the kamalokic world, automatically and feebly re-
peating its accustomed vibrations, and as the re-
maining magnetism gradually disperses, it falls into
a more and more decayed condition, and finally dis-
integrates completely, restoring its materials to the
general mass of astral matter, exactly as does the
physical body to the physical world. This shell
drifts wherever the astral currents may carry it, and
may be vitalized, if not too far gone, by the mag-
netism of embodied souls on earth, and so restored
to some amount of activity. It will suck up mag-
netism as a sponge sucks up water, and will then
take on an illusory appearance of vitality, repeating
more vigorously any vibrations to which it was ac-
customed ; these are often set up by the stimulus of
thoughts common to the departed soul and friends
and relations on earth, and such a vitalized shell
may play quite respectably the part of a communi-
cating intelligence ; it is, however, distinguishable
— apart from the use of astral vision — by its auto-
matic repetitions of familiar thoughts, and by the
106 THK ANCIE^NT WISDOM
total absence of all originality and of any traces of
knowledge not possessed during physical life.
Just as souls may be delayed in their progress by
foolish and inconsiderate friends, so may they be
aided in it by wise and well-directed efforts. Hence
all religions, which retain any traces of the occult
wisdom of their Founders, enjoin the use of "pray-
ers for the dead." These prayers with their accom-
panying ceremonies are more or less useful accord-
ing to the knowledge, the love, and the will-power
by which they are ensouled. They rest on that uni-
versal truth of vibration by which the universe is
built, modified, and maintained. Vibrations are set
up by the uttered sounds, arranging astral matter
into definite forms, ensouled by the thought en-
shrined in the words. These are directed towards
the kamalokic entity, and, striking against the astral
body, hasten its disintegration. With the decay of
occult knowledge these ceremonies have become less
and less potent, until their usefulness has almost
reached a vanishing-point. Nevertheless they are still
sometimes performed by a man of knowledge, and
then exert their rightful influence. Moreover, every
one can help his beloved departed by sending to them
thoughts of love and peace and longing for their
swift progress through the kamalokic world and their
liberation from astral fetters. No one should leave
his "dead'' to go on a lonely way, unattended by
loving hosts of these guardian angel thought-forms,
helping them forward to joy.
CHAPTER IV.
Thh Mental Plane.
The mental plane, as Its name implies, is that
which belongs to consciousness working as thought;
not of the mind as it works through the brain, but
as it works in its own world, unencumbered with
physical spirit-matter. This world is the world of
the real man. The word ''man" comes from the
Sanskrit root ''man," and this is the root of the San-
skrit verb "to think," so that man means thinkers-
he is named by his most characteristic attribute, in-
telligence. In English the word "mind" has to
stand for the intellectual consciousness itself, and
also for the effects produced on the physical brain
by the vibrations of that consciousness ; but we have
now to conceive of the intellectual consciousness as
an entity, an individual — a being, the vibrations of
whose life are thoughts, thoughts which are Images,
not words. This individual is Manas, or the Think-
er;* he is the Self, clothed in the matter, and work-
ing within the conditions, of the higher subdi-
* Derived from Manas is the technical name, the manasic
plane, Englished as "mental." We might call it the plane of
the mind proper, to distinguish its activities from those of the
mind working in the flesh.
108 the: ancie:nt wisdom
visions of the mental plane. He reveals his pres-
ence on the physical plane by the vibrations he sets
up in the brain and nervous system; these respond
to the thrills of his life by sympathetic vibrations,
but in consequence of the coarseness of their mate-
rials they can reproduce only a small section of his
vibrations, and even that very imperfectly. Just as
science asserts the existence of a vast series of ethe-
ric vibrations, of which the eye can only see a small
fragment, the solar light-spectrum, because it can
vibrate only within certain limits, so can the physi-
cal thought-apparatus, the brain and nervous sys-
tem, think only a small fragment of the vast series
of mental vibrations set up by the Thinker in his
own world. The most receptive brains respond up
to the point of what we call great intellectual power;
the exceptionally receptive brains respond up to the
point of what we call genius ; the exceptionally un-
receptive brains respond only up to the point we call
idiocy; but every one sends beating against his brain
millions of thought-waves to which it cannot re-
spond, owing to the density of its materials, and
just in proportion to its sensitiveness are the so-
called mental powers of each. But before studying
the Thinker, It will be well to consider his world,
the mental plane itself.
The mental plane is that which is next to the as-
tral, and is separated from it only by differences of
materials, just as the astral is separated from the
physical. In fact, we may repeat what was said as
to the astral and the physical with regard to the
MENTAL SPIRIT-MATTER 109
mental and the astral. Life on the mental plane is
more active than on the astral, and form is more
plastic. The spirit-matter of that plane is more
highly vitalized and finer than any grade of matter
in the astral world. The ultimate atom of astral
matter has innumerable aggregations of the coarsest
mental matter for its encircling sphere-world, so
that the disintegration of the astral atom yields a
mass of mental matter of the coarsest kinds. Under
these circumstances it will be understood that the
play of the life-forces on this plane will be enor-
mously increased in activity, there being so much
less mass to be moved by them. The matter is in
constant, ceaseless motion, taking form under every
thrill of life, and adapting itself without hesitation
to every changing motion. "Mind-stuff," as it has
been called, makes astral spirit-matter seem clumsy,
heavy, and lustreless, although compared with the
physical spirit-matter it is so fairy-light and lumi-
nous. But the law of analogy holds good, and gives
us a clue to guide us through this superastral region,
the region that is our birthplace and our home, al-
though, imprisoned in a foreign land, we know it not,
and gaze at descriptions of it with the eyes of aliens.
Once again here, as on the two lower planes, the
subdivisions of the spirit-matter of the plane are
seven in number. Once again, these varieties enter
into countless combinations, of every variety of com-
plexity, yielding the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers
of the mental plane. The word "solid" seems in-
deed absurd, when speaking of even the most sub-
110 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
stantial forms of mind-stuff; yet as they are dense
in comparison with other kinds of mental materials,
and as we have no descriptive words save such as
are based on physical conditions, we must e'en use
it for lack of a better. Enough if we understand
that this plane follows the general law and order of
Nature, which is, for our globe, the septenary basis,
and that the seven subdivisions of matter are of less-
ening densities, relatively to each other, as the phys-
ical solids, liquids, gases, and ethers ; the seventh,
or highest, subdivision being composed exclusively
of the ultimate mental atoms.
These subdivisions are grouped under two head-
ings, to which the somewhat inefficient and unintel-
ligible epithets ''formless" and "form" have been
assigned.* The lower four — the first, second, third,
and fourth subdivisions — are grouped together as
* Vith form ;" the higher three — the fifth, sixth, and
seventh subdivisions — are grouped as "formless."
The grouping is necessary, for the distinction is a
real one, although one difficult to describe, and the
regions are related in consciousness to the divisions
in the mind itself — as will appear more plainly a little
farther on. The distinction may perhaps be best
expressed by saying that in the lower four subdivi-
sions the vibrations of consciousness give rise to
forms, to images or pictures, and every thought ap-
pears as a living shape; whereas in the higher three,
consciousness, though still, of course, setting up vi-
* Arupa, without form ; rupa, form. Rupa is form, shape,
body.
ABSTRACT AND CONCRKT^ THOUGHTS HI
brations, seems rather to send them out as a mighty
stream of living energy, which does not body itself
into distinct images while it remains in this higher
region, but which sets up a variety of forms all linked
by some common condition when it rushes into the
lower worlds. The nearest analogy that I can find
for the conception I am trying to express is that of
abstract and concrete thoughts: an abstract idea of
a triangle has no form, but connotes any plane fig-
ure contained within three right lines, the angles of
which make two right angles; such an idea, with
conditions but without shape, thrown into the lower
world, may give birth to a vast variety of figures,
right-angled, isosceles, scalene, of any color and
size, but all fulfilling the conditions — concrete tri-
angles, each one with a definite shape of its own.
The impossibility of giving in words a lucid exposi-
tion of the difference in the action of consciousness
in the two regions is due to the fact that words are
the symbols of images and belong to the workings
of the lower mind in the brain, and are based wholly
upon those workings; while the "formless" region
belongs to the Pure Reason, which never works
within the narrow limits of language.
The mental plane is that which reflects the Uni-
versal Mind in Nature, the plane which in our little
system corresponds with that of the Great Mind in
the Kosmos.* In its higher regions exist all the
* Mahat, the Third Logos, or Divine Creative Intelligence,
the Brahma of the Hindus, the Mandjusri of the Northern
Buddhists, the Holy Spirit of the Christians.
112 THE ANClE:N'r WISDOM
archetypal ideas which are now in course of concrete
evolution, and in its lower the working out of these
into successive forms, to be duly reproduced in the
astral and physical worlds. Its materials are capa-
ble of combining under the impulse of thought vibra-
tions, and can give rise to any combination which
thought can construct ; as iron can be made into a
spade for digging or into a sword for slaying, so can
mind-stuff be shaped into thought-forms that help
or that injure; the vibrating life of the Thinker
shapes the materials around him, and according to
his volitions so Is his work. In that region thought
and action, will and deed, are one and the same
thing — spirit-matter here becomes the obedient ser-
vant of the life, adapting itself to every creative
motion.
These vibrations, which shape the matter of the
plane into thought-forms, give rise also — from their
swiftness and subtlety — to the most exquisite and
constantly changing colors, waves of varying shades
like the rainbow hues in mother-of-pearl, ethereal-
Ized and brightened to an indescribable extent, sweep-
ing over and through every form, so that each
presents a harmony of rippling, living, luminous,
delicate colors, including many not ever known to
earth. Words can give no idea of the exquisite
beauty and radiance shown in combinations of this
subtle matter, instinct with life and motion. Every
seer who has witnessed it, Hindu, Buddhist, Chris-
tian, speaks in rapturous terms of its glorious beauty,
and ever confesses his utter inability to describe it;
BRILLIANT THOUGHT FORMS 113
words seem but to coarsen and deprave it, however
deftly woven in its praise.
Thought-forms naturally play a large part among
the living creatures that function on the mental
plane. They resemble those with which we are al-
ready familiar in the astral world, save that they are
far more radiant and more brilliantly colored, are
stronger, more lasting, and more fully vitalized.
As the higher intellectual qualities become more
clearly marked, these forms show very sharply
defined outlines, and there is a tendency to a singu-
lar perfection of geometrical figures accompanied
by an equally singular purity of luminous color.
But, needless to say at the present stage of human-
ity, there is a vast preponderance of cloudy and
irregularly shaped thoughts, the production of the
ill-trained minds of the majority. Rarely beautiful
artistic thoughts are also here encountered, and it
is little wonder that painters who have caught, in
dreamy vision, some glimpse of their ideal, oft fret
against their incapacity to reproduce its growing
beauty in earth's dull pigments. These thought-
forms are built out of the elemental essence of the
plane, the vibrations of the thought throwing the
elemental essence into a corresponding shape, and
this shape having the thought as its informing life.
Thus again we have ''artificial elementals" created
in a way identical with that by which they come
into being in the astral regions. All that is said in
Chapter II. of their generation and of their impor-
tance may be repeated of those of the mental plane,
8
114 THE ancie:nt wisdom
with here the additional responsibility on their cre-
ators of the greater force and permanence belonging
to those of this higher world. The elemental es-
sence of the mental plane is formed by the Monad
in the stage of its descent immediately preceding its
entrance into the astral world, and it constitutes
the second elemental kingdom, existing on the four
lower subdivisions of the mental plane. The three
higher subdivisions, the "formless," are occupied by
the first elemental kingdom, the elemental essence
there being thrown by thought into brilliant corus-
cations, colored streams, and flashes of living fire,
instead of into definite shapes, taking as it were its
first lessons in combined action, but not yet assuming
definite limitations of forms.
On the mental plane, in both its great divisions,
exist numberless Intelligences, whose lowest bodies
are formed of the luminous matter and elemental
essence of the plane — Shining Ones who guide the
processes of natural order, overlooking the hosts of
lower entities before spoken of, and yielding sub-
mission in their several hierarchies to their great
overlords of the seven Elements.* They are, as
may readily be imagined, beings of vast knowledge,
of great power, and most splendid in appearance,
radiant, flashing creatures, myriad-hued, like rain-
bows of changing supernal colors, of stateliest im-
* These are the Arupa and Rupa Devas of the Hindus and
the Buddhists, the "Lords of the heavenly and the earthly" of
the Zoroastrians, the Archangels and Angels of the Christians
and Mohammedans.
"invisible helpers" 115
perial mien, calm energy incarnate, embodiments of
resistless strength. The description of the great
Christian Seer leaps to the mind, when he wrote of
a mighty angel : "A rainbow was upon his head, and
his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pil-
lars of fire.'** ''As the sound of many waters" are
their voices, as echoes from the music of the spheres.
They guide natural order, and rule the vast compa-
nies of the elementals of the astral world, so that
their cohorts carry on ceaselessly the processes of
Nature with undeviating regularity and accuracy.
On the lower mental plane are seen many clielas
at work in their mental bodies,f freed for the time
from their physical vestures. When the body is
wrapped in deep sleep the true man, the Thinker,
may escape from it, and work untrammelled by its
weight in these higher regions. From here he can
aid and comfort his fellow-men by acting directly on
their minds, suggesting helpful thoughts, putting
before them noble ideas, more effectively and speedily
than he can do when encased in the body. He
can see their needs more clearly and therefore can
supply them more perfectly, and it is his highest
privilege and joy thus to minister to his struggling
brothers, without their knowledge of his service or
any idea of theirs as to the strong arm that lifts
their burden, or the soft voice that whispers solace
in their pain. Unseen, unrecognized, he works,
* Revelation, x. 1.
t Usually called the Mayavi Rupa, or illusory body, when
arranged for independent functioning in the mental world.
116 the: ancie:nt wisdom
serving his enemies as gladly and as freely as his
friends, dispensing to individuals the stream of be-
neficent forces that are poured down from the great
Helpers in higher spheres. Here also are some-
times seen the glorious figures of the Masters,
though for the most part They reside on the highest
level of the "formless" division of the mental plane;
and other Great Ones may also sometimes come
hither on some mission of compassion requiring such
lower manifestation.
Communication between intelligences functioning
consciously on this plane, whether human or non-
human, whether in or out of the body, is practically
instantaneous, for it is with *'the speed of thought."
Barriers of space have here no power to divide, and
any soul can come into touch with any one by merely
directing his attention to him. Not only is com-
munication thus swift, but it is also complete, if the
souls are at about the same stage of evolution; no
words fetter and obstruct the communion, but the
whole thought flashes from the one to the other, or,
perhaps more exactly, each sees the thought as con-
ceived by the other. The real barriers between souls
are the differences of evolution ; the less evolved
can know only as much of the more highly evolved
as he is able to respond to ; the limitation can ob-
viously be felt only by the higher one, as the lesser
has all that he can contain. The more evolved a
soul, the more does he know of all around him, the
nearer does he approach to realities ; but the mental
plane has also its veils of illusion, it must be remem-
ALL WORLDS AR^ HE^R^ 117
bered, though they be far fewer and thinner than
those of the astral and the physical worlds. Each
soul has its own mental atmosphere, and, as all im-
pressions must come through this atmosphere, they
are all distorted and colored. The clearer and purer
the atmosphere, and the less it is colored by the per-
sonality, the fewer are the illusions that can befall it.
The three highest subdivisions of the mental plane
are the habitat of the Thinker himself, and he
dwells on one or other of these, according to the
stage of his evolution. The vast majority live on
the lowest level, in various stages of evolution; a
comparatively few of the highly intellectual dwell
on the second level, the Thinker ascending thither
— ^to use a phrase more suitable to the physical than
to the mental plane — when the subtler matter of
that region preponderates in him, and thus necessi-
tates the change; there is, of course, no "ascend-
ing," no change of place, but he receives the vibra-
tions of that subtler matter, being able to respond
to them, and he himself is able to send out forces
that throw its rare particles into vibration. The
student should familiarize himself with the fact that
rising in the scale of evolution does not move him
from place to place, but renders him more and more
able to receive impressions. Every sphere is around
us, the astral, the mental, the buddhic, the nirvanic,
and worlds higher yet, the life of the supreme God;
we need not stir to find them, for they are here; but
our dull unreceptivity shuts them out more effec-
tively than millions of miles of mere space. We are
118 THE ANCIKNT WISDOM
conscious only of that which affects us, which stirs
us to responsive vibration, and as we become more
and more receptive, as we draw into ourselves finer
and finer matter, we come into contact with subtler
and subtler worlds. Hence, rising from one level
to another means that we are weaving our vestures
of finer materials and can receive through them the
contrasts of finer worlds; and it means further that
in the Self within these vestures diviner powers are
waking from latency into activity, and are sending
out their subtler thrills of life.
At the stage now reached by the Thinker, he is
fully conscious of his surroundings and is in posses-
sion of the memory of his past. He knows the bod-
ies he is wearing, through which he is contacting
the lower planes, and he is able to influence and
guide them to a great extent. He sees the difficul-
ties, the obstacles, they are approaching — the results
of past careless living — and he sets himself to pour
into them energies by which they may be better
equipped for their task. His direction is sometimes
felt in the lower consciousness as an imperiously
compelling force that will have its way, and that im-
pels to a course of action for which all the reasons
may not be clear to the dimmer vision caused by the
mental and astral garments. Men who have done
great deeds have occasionally left on record their
consciousness of an inner uplifting and compelling
power, which seemed to leave them no choice save
to do as they had done. They were then acting as
the real men; the Thinkers, that are the inner men.
"thk ide:a cam^" 119
were doing the work consciously through the bodies
that then were fulfilling their proper functions as
vehicles of the individual. To these high powers
all will come as evolution proceeds.
On the third level of the upper region of the men-
tal plane dwell the Egos of the Masters, and of the
Initiates who are Their chelas, the Thinkers having
here a preponderance of the matter of this region
in their bodies. From this world of subtlest mental
forces the Masters carry on Their beneficent work
for humanity, raining down noble ideals, inspiring
thoughts, devotional aspirations, streams of spiritual
and intellectual help for men. Every force there
generated rays out in myriad directions, and the
noblest, purest souls catch most readily these help-
ful influences. A discovery flashes into the mind of
the patient searcher into Nature's secrets; a new
melody entrances the ear of a great musician ; the
answer to a long-studied problem illumines the in-
tellect of a lofty philosopher; a new energy of hope
and love suflFuses the heart of an unwearied phil-
anthropist. Yet men think that they are left un-
cared for, although the very phrases they use : ''the
thought occurred to me," "the idea came to me,"
"the discovery flashed on me," unconsciously testify
to the truth known to their inner selves though the
outer eyes be blind.
Let us now turn to the study of the Thinker and
his vesture as they are found in men on earth. The
body of the consciousness, conditioning it in the four
lower subdivisions of the mental plane — the mental
120 the; ancie:nt wisdom
body, as we term it — is formed of combinations of
the matter of these subdivisions. The Thinker, the
individual, the Human Soul — formed in the way de-
scribed in the latter part of this chapter — when he
is coming into incarnation, first radiates forth some
of his energy in vibrations that attract around him,
and clothe him in, matter drawn from the four lower
subdivisions of his own plane. According to the
nature of the vibrations are the kinds of matter they
attract; the finer kinds answer the swifter vibrations
and take form under their impulse ; the coarser
kinds similarly answer the slower ones ; just as a wire
will sympathetically sound out a note — i.e., a given
number of vibrations — coming from a wire similar
in weight and tension to itself, but will remain dumb
amid a chorus of notes from wires dissimilar to itself
in these respects, so do the different kinds of matter
assort themselves in answer to different kinds of vi-
brations. Exactly according to the vibrations sent
out by the Thinker will be the nature of the mental
body that he thus draws around him, and this men-
tal body is what is called the lower mind, the lower
Manas, because it is the Thinker clothed in the mat-
ter of the lower subdivisions of the mental plane
and conditioned by it in his further working. None
of his energies which are too subtle to move this
matter, too swift for its response, can express them-
selves through it; he is therefore limited by it, con-
ditioned by it, restricted by it in his expression of
himself. It is the first of his prison-houses during
his incarnate life, and while his energies are acting
MIND AND F^IJLING 121
within it he is largely shut off from his own higher
world, for his attention is with the outgoing ener-
gies and his life is thrown with them into the
mental body, often spoken of as a- vesture, or sheath,
or vehicle — any expression will serve which con-
notes the idea that the Thinker is not the mental
body, but formed it and uses it in order to express
as much of himself as he can in the lower mental
region. It must not be forgotten that his energies,
still pulsing outwards, draw round him also the
coarser matter of the astral plane as his astral body;
and during his incarnate life the energies that ex-
press themselves through the lower kinds of mental
matter are so readily changed by it into the slower
vibrations that are responded to by astral matter
that the two bodies are continually vibrating to-
gether, and become very closely interwoven; the
coarser the kinds of matter built into the mental
body, the more intimate becomes this union, so that
the two bodies are sometimes classed together and
even taken as one.* When we come to study Re-
incarnation we shall find this fact assuming vital
importance.
According to the stage of evolution reached by
* Thus the Theosophist will speak of Kama-Manas, meaning
the mind as working in and with the desire-nature, affecting
and affected by the animal nature. The Vedantin classes the
two together, and speaks of the Self as working in the mano-
mayakosha, the sheath composed of the lower mind, emotions,
and passions. The European psychologist makes "feelings"
one lection of his tripartite division of "mind," and includes
under feelings both emotions and sensations.
122 the: ancient wisdom
the man will be the type of mental body he forms
on his way to become again incarnate, and we may
study, as we did with the astral body, the respective
mental bodies of three types of men — (a) an un-
developed man; (b) an average man; (c) a spirit-
ually advanced man.
(a) In the undeveloped man the mental body is
but little perceptible, a small amount of unorganized
mental matter, chiefly from the lowest subdivision
of the plane, being all that represents it. This is
played on almost entirely from the lower bodies,
being set vibrating feebly by the astral storms raised
by the contacts with material objects through the
sense-organs. Except when stimulated by these as-
tral vibrations it remains almost quiescent, and even
under their impulses its responses are sluggish. No
definite activity is generated from within, these blows
from the outer world being necessary to arouse
any distinct response. The more violent the blows,
the better for the progress of the man, for each re-
sponsive vibration aids in the embryonic develop-
ment of the mental body. Riotous pleasure, anger,
rage, pain, terror, all these passions, causing whirl-
winds in the astral body, awaken faint vibrations in
the mental, and gradually these vibrations, stirring
into commencing activity the mental consciousness,
cause it to add something of its own to the impres-
sions made on it from without. We have seen that
the mental body is so closely mingled with the as-
tral that they act as a single body, but the dawning
mental faculties add to the astral passions a certain
SDNS^ AND MIND PICTUREIS 123
strength and quality not apparent in them when
they work as purely animal qualities. The impres-
sions made on the mental body are more permanent
than those made on the astral, and they are con-
sciously reproduced by it. Here memory and the
organ of imagination begin, and the latter gradually
moulds itself, the images from the outer world work-
ing on the matter of the mental body and forming
its materials into their own likeness. These images,
born of the contacts of the senses, draw round them-
selves the coarsest mental matter; the dawning pow-
ers of consciousness reproduce these images, and
thus accumulate a store of pictures that begin to
stimulate action initiated from within, from the
wish to experience again through the outer organs
the vibrations that were found pleasant, and to avoid
those productive of pain. The mental body then
begins to stimulate the astral, and to arouse in it the
desires that, in the animal, slumber until awakened
by a physical stimulus ; hence we see in the unde-
veloped man a persistent pursuit of sense-gratifica-
tion never found in the lower animals, a lust, a
cruelty, a calculation to which they are strangers.
The dawning powers of the mind, yoked to the ser-
vice of the senses, make of man a far more danger-
ous and savage brute than any animal, and the
stronger and more subtle forces inherent in the
mental spirit-matter lend to the passion-nature an
energy and a keenness that we do not find in the
animal-world. But these very excesses lead to their
own correction by the sufferings which they cause,
124 THE ancie;nt wisdom
and these resultant experiences play upon the con-
sciousness and set up new images on which the im-
agination works. These stimulate the consciousness
to resist many of the vibrations that reach it by way
of the astral body from the external world, and to
exercise its volition in holding the passions back in-
stead of giving them free rein. Such resistant vi-
brations are set up in, and attract towards, the men-
tal body, finer combinations of mind-stuff, and tend
also to expel from it the coarser combinations that
vibrate responsively to the passional notes set up in
the astral body ; by this struggle between the vibra-
tions set up by passion-images and the vibrations
set up by the imaginative reproduction of past ex-
periences, the mental body grows, begins to develop
a definite organization, and to exercise more and
more initiative as regards external activities. While
the earth-life is spent in gathering experiences, the
intermediate life is spent in assimilating them, as
we shall see in detail in the following chapter, so
that in each return to earth the Thinker has an in-
creased stock of faculties to take shape as his mental
body. Thus the undeveloped man, whose mind is
the slave of his passions, grows into the average
man, whose mind is a battle-ground in which pas-
sions and mental powers wage war with varying
success, about balanced in their forces, but who is
gradually gaining the mastery over his lower nature.
(b) In the average man, the mental body is much
increased in size, shows a certain amount of organ-
ization, and contains a fair proportion of matter
exercise: and disuse 125
drawn from the second, third, and fourth subdivi-
sions of the mental plane. The general law which
regulates all the building up and modifying of the
mental body may here be fitly studied, though it is
the same principle already seen working in the
lower realms of the astral and physical worlds. Ex-
ercise increases, disuse atrophies and finally de-
stroys. Every vibration set up in the mental body
causes a change in its constituents, throwing out of
it, in the part affected, the matter that cannot vi-
brate sympathetically, and replacing it by suitable
materials drawn from the practically illimitable store
around. The more a series of vibrations is repeated,
the more does the part affected by them increase in
development; hence, it may be noted in passing,
the injury done to the mental body by over-special-
ization of mental energies. Such mistaken direc-
tion of these powers causes a lopsided development
of the mental body; it becomes proportionately over-
developed in the region in which these forces are
continually playing and proportionately undeveloped
in other parts, perhaps equally important. A har-
monious and proportionate all-round development
is the object to be sought, and for this are needed a
calm self-analysis and a definite direction of means
to ends. A knowledge of this law further explains
certain familiar experiences, and affords a sure hope
of progress. When a new study is commenced, or
a change in favor of high morality is initiated, the
early stages are found to be fraught with difficulties;
sometimes the effort is even abandoned because the
126 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
obstacles in the way of its success appear to be in-
surmountable. At the beginning of any new men-
tal undertaking, the whole automatism of the mental
body opposes it; the materials, habituated to vibrate
in a particular way, cannot accommodate themselves
to the new impulses, and the early stage consists
chiefly of sending out thrills of force which are frus-
trated, so far as setting up vibrations in the mental
body are concerned, but which are the necessary
preliminary to any such sympathetic vibrations, as
they shake out of the body the old refractory mate-
rials and draw into it the sympathetic kinds. Dur-
ing this process, the man is not conscious of any
progress ; he is conscious only of the frustration of
his efforts and of the dull resistance he encounters.
Presently, if he persists, as the newly attracted
materials begin to function, he succeeds better in
his attempts, and at last, when all the old materials
are expelled and the new are working, he finds him-
self succeeding without an effort, and his object is
accomplished. The critical time is during the first
stage ; but if he trust in the law, as sure in its work-
ing as every other law in Nature, and persistently
repeat his efforts, he must succeed ; and a knowledge
of this fact may cheer him when otherwise he would
be sinking in despair. In this way, then, the average
man may work on, finding with joy that as he
steadily resists the promptings of the lower nature
he is conscious they are losing their power over him,
for he is expelling from his mental body all the
materials that are capable of being thrown by them
A ^DR^ECTED MlSNTAL BODY 127
into sympathetic vibrations. Thus the mental body
gradually comes to be composed of the finer con-
stituents of the four lower subdivisions of the men-
tal plane, until it has become the radiant and ex-
quisitely beautiful form which is the mental body
of the
(c) Spiritually developed man. From this body
all the coarser combinations have been eliminated,
so that the objects of the senses no longer find in it,
or in the astral body connected with it, materials
that respond sympathetically to their vibrations. It
contains only the finer combinations belonging to
each of the four subdivisions of the lower mental
world, and of these again the materials of the third
and fourth subplanes very much predominate in its
composition over the materials of the second and
first, making it responsive to all the higher work-
ings of the intellect, to the delicate contacts of the
higher arts, to all the pure thrills of the loftier emo-
tions. Such a body enables the Thinker who is
clothed in it to express himself much more fully in
the lower mental region and in the astral and physi-
cal worlds; its materials are capable of a far wider
range of responsive vibrations, and the impulses
from a loftier realm mould it into nobler and subtler
organization. Such a body is rapidly becoming
ready to reproduce every impulse from the Thinker
which is capable of expression on the lower sub-
divisions of the mental plane; it is growing into a
perfect instrument for activities in this lower men-
tal world.
128 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
A clear understanding of the nature of the mental
body would much modify modern education, and
would make it far more serviceable to the Thinker
than it is at present. The general characteristics of
this body depend on the past lives of the Thinker on
earth, as will be thoroughly understood when we
have studied Reincarnation and Karma. The body
is constituted on the mental plane, and its materials
depend on the qualities that the Thinker has gar-
nered within himself as the results of his past ex-
periences. All that education can do is to provide
such external stimuli as shall arouse and encourage
the growth of the useful faculties he already pos-
sesses, and stunt and help in the eradication of those
that are undesirable. The drawing out of these in-
born faculties, and not the cramming of the mind
with facts, is the object of true education. Nor
need memory be cultivated as a separate faculty,
for memory depends on attention — that is, on the
steady concentration of the mind on the subject
studied — and on the natural affinity between the
subject and the mind. If the subject be liked — that
is, if the mind has a capacity for it — memory will
not fail, provided due attention be paid. Therefore
education should cultivate the habit of steady con-
centration, of sustained attention, and should be
directed according to the inborn faculties of the
pupil.
Let us now pass into the "formless" divisions of
the mental plane, the region which is man's true
home during the cycle of his reincarnations, into
THE AURIC EGG 129
which he is born, a baby soul, an infant Ego, an
embryonic individuality, when he begins his purely
human evolution.*
The outline of this Ego, the Thinker, is oval in
shape, and hence H. P. Blavatsky speaks of this
body of Manas which endures throughout all his in-
carnations as the Auric Egg. Formed of the matter
of the three highest subdivisions of the mental
plane, it is exquisitely fine, a film of rarest subtlety,
even at its first inception; and, as it develops, it be-
comes a radiant object of supernal glory and beauty,
the shining One, as it has been aptly named.f
What is this Thinker? He is the divine Self, as
already said, limited, or individualized, by this subtle
body drawn from the materials of the ^'formless"
region of the mental plane.J This matter — drawn
around a ray of the Self, a living beam of the one
Light and Life of the universe — shuts off this ray
from its Source, so far as the external world is con-
cerned, encloses it within a filmy shell of itself, and
so makes it "an individual." The life is the Life of
the LoGos^ but all the powers of that Life are lying
latent, concealed; everything is there potentially,
germinally, as the tree is hidden within the tiny
germ in the seed. This seed is dropped into the
* See Chapters VII. and VIII., on "Reincarnation."
t This is the Augoiedes of the Neo-PIatonlsts, the "spiritual
body" of S. Paul.
t The Self, working in the Vignyanamayakosha, the sheath
of discriminative knowledge, according to the Vedantic classifi-
cation.
9
130 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
soil of human life that its latent forces may be
quickened into activity by the sun of joy and the
rain pf tears, and be fed by the juices of the life-soil
that we call experience, until the germ grows into a
mighty tree, the image of its generating Sire. Hu-
man evolution is the evolution of the Thinker; he
takes on bodies on the lower mental, the astral, and
the physical planes, wears them through earthly,
astral, lower mental life, dropping them successively
at the regular stages of this life-cycle as he passes
from world to world, but ever storing up within
himself the fruits he has gathered by their use on
each plane. At first, as little conscious as a baby's
earthly body, he almost slept through life after life,
till the experiences playing on him from without
awakened some of his latent forces into activity;
but gradually he assumed more and more part in the
direction of his life, until, with manhood reached,
he took his life into his own hands, and an ever-
increasing control over his future destiny.
The growth of the permanent body which, with
the divine consciousness, forms the Thinker is ex-
tremely slow. Its technical name is the causal body,
because he gathers up within it the results of all ex-
periences, and these act as causes, moulding future
lives. It is the only permanent one among the bod-
ies used during incarnation, the mental, astral and
physical bodies being reconstituted for each fresh
life; as each perishes in turn, it hands on its harvest
to the one above it, and thus all the harvests are
finally stored in the permanent body; when the
MATE:RIALS Olf TH^ CAUSAL BODY 131
Thinker returns to incarnation, he sends out his en-
ergies, constituted of these harvests, on each succes-
sive plane, and thus draws round him new body
after body suitable to his past. The growth of the
causal body itself, as said, is very slow, for it can
vibrate only in answer to impulses that can be ex-
pressed in the very subtle matter of which it is com-
posed, thus weaving them into the texture of its
being. Hence the passions, which play so large a
part in the early stages of human evolution, cannot
directly affect its growth. The Thinker can work
into himself only the experiences that can be repro-
duced in the vibrations of the causal body, and these
must belong to the mental region, and be highly in-
tellectual or loftily moral in their character; other-
wise its subtle matter can give no sympathetic
vibration in answer. A very little reflection will
convince any one how little material, suitable for the
growth of this lofty body, he affords by his daily
life; hence the slowness of evolution, the little prog-
ress made. The Thinker should have more of him-
self to put out in each successive life, and, when
this is the case, evolution goes swiftly forward.
Persistence in evil courses reacts in a kind of in-
direct way on the causal body, and does more harm
than the mere retardation of growth; it seems after
a long time to cause a certain incapacity to respond
to the vibrations set up by the opposite good, and
thus to delay growth for a considerable period after
the evil has been renounced. Directly to injure
the causal body evil of a highly intellectual and
132 The ancient wisdom
refined kind is necessary, the "spiritual evil" men-
tioned in the various Scriptures of the world. This
is fortunately rare, rare as spiritual good, and found
only- among the highly progressed, whether they be
following the Right-hand or the Left-hand Path.*
The habitat of the Thinker, of the Eternal Man, is
on the fifth subplane, the lowest level of the "form-
less" region of the mental plane. The great masses
of mankind are here, scarce yet awake, still in the
infancy of their life. The Thinker develops con-
sciousness slowly, as his energies, playing on the
lower planes, there gather experience, which is in-
drawn with these energies as they return to him
treasure-laden with the harvest of a life. This Eter-
nal Man, the individualized Self, is the actor in
every body that he wears; it is his presence that
gives the feeling of "I" alike to body and mind, the
"I" being that which is self-conscious and which,
by illusion, identifies itself with that vehicle in which
it is most actively energizing. To the man of the
senses the "I" is the physical body and the desire-
nature ; he draws from these his enjoyment, and he
thinks of these as himself, for his life is in them.
To the scholar the "I" is the mind, for in its exer-
cise lies his joy and therein his life is concentrated.
* The Right-hand Path is that which leads to divine man-
hood, to Adeptship used in the service of the worlds. The
Left-hand Path is that which also leads to Adeptship, but to
Adeptship that is used to frustrate the progress of evolution
and is turned to selfish individual ends. They are sometimes
called the White and Black Paths respectively.
THE PURE REASON 133
Few can rise to the abstract heights of spiritual
philosophy, and feel this Eternal Man as "I," with
memory ranging back over past lives and hopes
ranging forward over future births. The physiolo-
gists tell us that if we cut the finger we do not really
feel the pain there where the blood is flowing, but
that the pain is felt in the brain, and is by imagina-
tion thrown outwards to the place of injury ; the feel-
ing of pain in the iinger is, they say an illusion; it is
put by imagination at the point of contact with the
object causing the injury ; so also will a man feel pain
in an amputated limb, or rather in the space the limb
used to occupy. Similarly does the one "I," the
Inner Man, feel suffering and joy in the sheaths
which enwrap him, at the points of contact with the
external world, and feels the sheath to be himself,
knowing not that this feeling is an illusion, and that
he is the sole actor and experiencer in every sheath.
Let us now consider, in this light, the relations
between the higher and lower mind and their action
on the brain. The mind, Manas, the Thinker, is
one, and is the Self in the causal body; it is the
source of innumerable energies, of vibrations of in-
numerable kinds. These it sends out, raying out-
wards from itself. The subtlest and finest of these
are expressed in the matter of the causal body,
which alone is fine enough to respond to them; they
form what we call the Pure Reason, whose thoughts
are abstract, whose method of gaining knowledge is
intuition; its very "nature is knowledge," and it
recognizes truth at sight as congruous with itself.
134 the: ancient wisdom
Less subtle vibrations pass outwards, attracting the
matter of the lower mental region, and these are the
Lower Manas, or lower mind — the coarser energies
of the higher expressed in denser matter; these we
call the intellect, comprising reason, judgment, im-
agination, comparison, and the other mental facul-
ties; its thoughts are concrete, and its method is
logic; it argues, it reasons, it infers. These vibra-
tions, acting through astral matter on the etheric
brain, and by that on the dense physical brain, set
up vibrations therein, which are the heavy and slow
reproductions .of themselves — heavy and slow, be-
cause the energies lose much of their swiftness in
moving the heavier matter. This feebleness of re-
sponse when a vibration is initiated in a rare me-
dium and then passes into a dense one is familiar to
every student of physics. Strike a bell in air and it
sounds clearly; strike it in hydrogen, and let the
hydrogen vibrations have to set up the atmospheric
waves, and how faint the result. Equally feeble are
the workings of the brain in response to the swift
and subtle impacts of the mind; yet that is all that
the vast majority know as their "consciousness."
The immense importance of the mental workings
of this "consciousness" is due to the fact that it is
the only medium whereby the Thinker can gather
the harvest of experience by which he grows. While
it is dominated by the passions it runs riot, and he
is left unnourished and therefore unable to develop;
while it is occupied wholly in mental activities con-
cerned with the outer world, it can arouse only his
TH^ THINKKR AT WORK 135
lower energies; only as he is able to impress on it
the true object of its life, does it commence to fulfil
its most valuable functions of gathering what will
arouse and nourish his higher energies. As the
Thinker develops he becomes more and more con-
scious of his own inherent powers, and also of the
workings of his energies on the lower planes, of the
bodies which those energies have drawn around
him. He at last begins to try to influence them,
using his memory of the past to guide his will, and
these impressions we call "conscience" when they
deal with morals, and "flashes of intuition" when
they enlighten the intellect. When these impres-
sions are continuous enough to be normal, we speak
of their aggregate as "genius." The higher evolu-
tion of the Thinker is marked by his increasing
control over his lower vehicles, by their increasing
susceptibility to his influence, and their increasing
contributions to his growth. Those who would de-
liberately aid in this evolution may do so by a care-
ful training of the lower mind and of the moral
character, by steady and well-directed effort. The
habit of quiet, sustained, and sequential thought,
directed to non-worldly subjects, of meditation, of
study, develops the mind-body and renders it a bet-
ter instrument; the effort to cultivate abstract think-
ing is also useful, as this raises the lower mind to-
wards the higher, and draws into it the subtlest
materials of the lower mental plane. In these and
cognate ways all may actively co-operate in their
own higher evolution, each step forward making the
136 The ancient wisdom
succeeding steps more rapid. No effort, not even
the smallest, is lost, but is followed by its full effect,
and every contribution gathered and handed inwards
is stored in the treasure-house of the causal body for
future use. Thus evolution, however slow and halt-
ing, is yet ever onwards, and the divine Life, ever
unfolding in every soul, slowly subdues all things to
itself.
CHAPTER V.
DSVACHAN.
The word Devachan is the theosophical name for
heaven, and, literally translated, means the Shining
Land, or the Land of the Gods.* It is a specially
guarded part of the mental plane, whence all sorrow
and all evil are excluded by the action of the great
spiritual Intelligences who superintend human evo-
lution; and it is inhabited by human beings who
have cast off their, physical and astral bodies, and
who pass into it when their stay in Kamaloka is
completed. The devachanic life consists of two
stages, of which the first is passed in the four lower
subdivisions of the mental plane, in which the
Thinker still wears the mental body and is condi-
tioned by it, being employed in assimilating the
materials gathered by it during the earth-Hfe from
which he has just emerged. The second stage is
spent in the "formless" world, the Thinker escaping
from the mental body, and living his own unencum-
* Devasthan, the place of the Gods, is the Sanscrit equiva-
lent. It is the Svarga of the Hindus; the Sukhavati of the
Buddhists; the Heaven of the Zoroastrians and Christians,
and of the less materialized among the Mohammedans.
138 the: ANCIKNT WISDOM
bered life in the full measure of the self-conscious-
ness and knowledge to which he has attained.
The total length of time spent in Devachan depends
upon the amount of material for the devachanic life
which the soul has brought with it thither from its
life on earth. The harvest of fruit for consumption
and assimilation in Devachan consists of all the pure
thoughts and emotions generated during earth-life,
all the intellectual and moral efforts and aspirations,
all the memories of useful work and plans for hu-
man service — everything which is capable of being
worked into mental and moral faculty, thus assist-
ing in the evolution of the soul. Not one is lost,
however feeble, however fleeting; but selfish animal
passions cannot enter, there being no material in
which they can be expressed. Nor does all the evil
in the past life, though it may largely preponderate
over the good, prevent the full reaping of whatever
scant harvest of good there may have been; the
scantiness of the harvest may render the devachanic
life very brief, but the most depraved, if he has had
any faint longings after the right, any stirrings of
tenderness, must have a period of devachanic life in
which the seed of good may put forth its tender
shoots, in which the spark of good may be gently
fanned into a tiny flame.
In the past, when men lived with their hearts
largely fixed on heaven and directed their lives with
a view to enjoying its bliss, the period spent in
Devachan was very long, lasting sometimes for many
thousands of years ; at the present time, men's minds
LENGTH 01? DEVACHANIC LIFE 139
being so much more centred on earth, and so few
of their thoughts comparatively being directed to-
wards the higher life, their devachanic periods are
correspondingly shortened. Similarly, the time spent
in the higher and lower regions of the mental plane*
respectively is proportionate to the amount of thought
generated severally in the mental and in the causal
bodies; all the thoughts belonging to the personal
self, to the life just closed — with all its ambitions,
interests, loves, hopes and fears — all these have their
fruition in the Devachan where forms are found;
while those belonging to the higher mind, to the
regions of abstract, impersonal thinking, have to be
worked out in the "formless" devachanic region.
The majority of people only just enter that lofty
region to pass swiftly out again; some spend there
a large portion of their devachanic existence; a few
spend there almost the whole.
Ere entering into any details let us try to grasp
some of the leading ideas which govern the deva-
chanic life, for it is so different from physical life
that any description of it is apt to mislead by its
very strangeness. People realize so little of their
mental life, even as led in the body, that when they
are presented with a picture of mental life out of the
body they lose all sense of reality, and feel as though
they had passed into a world of dream.
The first thing to grasp is that mental life is far
more intense, vivid, and nearer to reality than the
* Called technically the Arupa and Rupa Devachan — exist-
ing on the arupa and rupa levels of the mental plane.
140 THE ANCIEJNT WISDOM
life of the senses. Everything we see and touch and
hear and taste and handle down here is two removes
farther from the reality than everything we contact
in Devachan. We do not even there see things as
they are, but the things that we see down here have
two more veils of illusion enveloping them. Our
sense of reality here is an entire delusion; we know
nothing of things, of people, as they are; all that we
know of them are the impressions they make on our
senses, and the conclusions, often erroneous, which
our reason deduces from the aggregate of these im-
pressions. Get and put side by side the ideas of a
man held by his father, his closest friend, the girl
who adores him, his rival in business, his deadliest
enemy, and a casual acquaintance, and see how in-
congruous the pictures. Each can only give the im-
pressions made on his own mind, and how far are
they from the reality of what the man is, seen by
eyes that pierce all veils and behold the whole man.
We know of each of our friends the impressions they
make on us, and these are strictly limited by our
capacity to receive; a child may have as his father a
great statesman of lofty purpose and imperial aims,
but that guide of a nation's destinies is to him only
his merriest playfellow, his most enticing story-
teller. We live in the midst of illusions, but have
the feeling of reality, and this yields us content.
In Devachan we shall also be surrounded by illu-
sions— ^though, as said, two removes nearer to real-
ity— and there also we shall have a similar feeling of
reality which will yield us content.
MUTUAL CRITICISM 141
The illusions of earth, though lessened, are not
escaped from in the lower heavens, though contact
is more real and more immediate. For it must never
be forgotten that these heavens are part of a great
evolutionary scheme, and, until man has found the
real Self, his own unreality makes him subject to
illusions. One thing, however, which produces the
feeling of reality in earth-life and of unreality when
we study Devachan, is that we look at earth-life
from within, under the full sway of its illusions,
while we contemplate Devachan from outside, free
for the time from its veil of maya.
In Devachan the process is reversed, and its in-
habitants feel their own life to be the real one and
look on the earth-life as full of the most patent
illusions and misconceptions. On the whole, they are
nearer the truth than the physical critics of theii
heaven-world.
Next, the Thinker — being clad only in the mental
body and being in the untrammelled exercise of its
powers — manifests the creative nature of these pow-
ers in a way and to an extent that down here we
can hardly realize. On earth a painter, a sculptor,
a musician, dreams dreams of exquisite beauty, creat-
ing their visions by the powers of the mind; but
when they seek to embody them in the coarse ma-
terials of earth they fall far short of the mental
creation. The marble is too resistant for perfect
form, the pigments too muddy for perfect color.
In heaven, all they think is at once reproduced in
form, for the rare and subtle matter of the heaven-
142 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
world is mind-stuff, the medium in which the mind
normally works when free from passion, and it takes
shape with every mental impulse. Each man, there-
fore, in a very real sense, makes his own heaven,
and the beauty of his surroundings is indefinitely
increased, according to the wealth and energy of his
mind. As the soul develops his powers, his heaven
grows more and more subtle and exquisite; all the
limitations in heaven are self-created, and heaven
expands and deepens with the expansion and deep-
ening of the soul. While the soul is weak and self-
ish, narrow and ill-developed, his heaven shares
these pettinesses; but it is always the best that is in
the soul, however poor that best may be. As the
man evolves, his devachanic lives become fuller,
richer, more and more real, and advanced souls
come into ever closer and closer contact with each
other, enjoying wider and deeper intercourse. A
life on earth, thin, feeble, vapid, and narrow, men-
tally and morally, produces a comparatively thin,
feeble, vapid and narrow life in Devachan, where
only the mental and the moral survive. We cannot
have more than we are, and our harvest is according
to our sowing. "Be not deceived; God is not
mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that," and
neither more nor less, "shall he also reap.'* Our
indolence and greediness would fain reap where we
have not sowed, but in this universe of law the Good
Law, mercifully just, brings to each the exact wages
of his work.
The mental impressions, or mental pictures, we
OUR ^RIE^NDS IN HEIAV^N 143
make of our friends will dominate us in Devachan.
Round each soul throng those he loved in life, and
every image of the loved ones that live in the heart
becomes a living companion of the soul in heaven.
And they are unchanged. They will be to us there
as they were here, and no otherwise. The outer
semblance of our friend as it affected our senses, wc
form out of mind-stuff in Devachan by the creative
powers of the mind; what was here a mental picture
is there — as in truth it was here, although we knew
it not — an objective shape in living mind-stuff, abid-
ing in our own mental atmosphere; only what is
dull and dreamy here is forcibly living and vivid
there. And with regard to the true communion,
that of soul with soul ? That is closer, nearer, dearer
than anything we know here, for, as we have seen,
there is no barrier on the mental plane between
soul and soul ; exactly in proportion to the reality of
soul-life in us is the reality of soul-communion
there : the mental image of our friends is our
own creation ; his form is as we knew and loved it ;
and his soul breathes through that form to ours just
to the extent that his soul and ours can throb in
sympathetic vibration. But we can have no touch
with those we knew on earth if the ties were only of
the physical or astral body, or if they and we were
discordant in the inner life; therefore into our Deva-
chan no enemy can enter, for sympathetic ac-
cord of minds and hearts can alone draw men to-
gether there. Scparateness of heart and mind
means separation in the heavenly life, for all that is
144 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
lower than the heart and mind can find no means of
expression there. With those who are far beyond
us in evolution we come into contact just as far as
we can respond to them; great ranges of their being
will stretch beyond our ken, but all that we can
touch is ours. Further, these greater ones can and
do aid us in the heavenly life, under conditions we
shall study presently, helping us to grow towards
them, and thus to be able to receive more and more.
There is then no separation by space or time, but
there is separation by absence of sympathy, by lack
of accord between hearts and minds.
In heaven we are with all whom we love and with
all whom we admire, and we commune with them to
the limit of our capacity, or, if we are the more ad-
vanced, of theirs. We meet them in the forms we
loved on earth, with perfect memory of our earthly
relationships, for heaven is the flowering of all
earth's buds, and the marred and feeble loves of
earth expand into beauty and into power there. The
communion being direct, no misunderstandings of
words or thoughts can arise; each sees the thought
his friend creates, or as much of it as he can re-
spond to.
Devachan, the heaven-world, is a world of bliss,
of joy unspeakable. But it is much more than this,
much more than a rest for the weary. In Devachan
all that was valuable in the mental and moral ex-
periences of the Thinker during the life just ended
is worked out, meditated over, and is gradually
transmuted into definite mental and moral faculty,
NOT mi;mory but faculty 145
into powers which he will take with him to his next
rebirth. He does not work into the mental body
the actual memory of the past, for the mental body
will, in due course, disintegrate; the memory of the
past abides only in the Thinker himself, who has
lived through it and who endures. But these facts
of past experiences are worked into mental capacity,
so that if a man has studied a subject deeply the
effects of that study will be the creation of a special
faculty to acquire and master that subject when it is
first presented to him in another incarnation. He
will be born with a special aptitude for that line of
study, and will pick it up with great facility.
Everything thought upon earth is thus utilized in
Devachan; every aspiration is worked up into power;
all frustrated efforts become faculties and abili-
ties; struggles and defeats re-appear as materials
to be wrought into instruments of victory; sor-
rows and errors shine luminous as precious metals
to be worked up into wise and well-directed voli-
tions. Schemes of beneficence, for which power and
skill to accomplish were lacking in the past, are in
Devachan worked out in thought, acted out, as it
were, stage by stage, and the necessary power and
skill are developed as faculties of the mind to be put
into use in a future life on earth, when the clever
and earnest student shall be reborn as a genius,
when the devotee shall be reborn as a saint. Life
then, in Devachan, is no mere dream, no lotus-land
of purposeless idling; it is the land in which the
mind and heart develop, unhindered by g^ross matter
i«
146 THE ancie:nt wisdom
and by trivial cares, where weapons are forged for
earth's fierce battle-fields, and where the progress of
the future is secured.
When the Thinker has consumed in the mental
body all the fruits belonging to it of his earthly life,
he shakes it off and dwells unencumbered in his own
place. All the mental faculties which express them-
selves on the lower levels are drawn within the
causal body — with the germs of the passional life
that were drawn into the mental body when it left
the astral shell to disintegrate in Kamaloka — and
these become latent for a time, lying within the
causal body, forces which remain concealed for lack
of material in which to manifest.* The mental
body, the last of the temporary vestures of the true
man, disintegrates, and its materials return to the
general matter of the mental plane, whence they
were drawn when the Thinker last descended into
incarnation. Thus the causal body alone remains,
the receptacle and treasure-house of all that has
been assimilated from the life that is over. The
Thinker has finished a round of his long pilgrimage
and dwells for a while in his own native land.
His condition as to consciousness depends entirely
* The thoughtful student may here find a fruitful suggestion
on the problem of continuing consciousness after the cycle of
the universe is trodden. Let him place Ishvara in the place
of the Thinker, and let the faculties that are the fruits of a
life represent the human lives that are the fruits of a Universe.
He may then catch some glimpse of what is necessary for con-
sciousness, during the interval between universes.
SELF-CONSCIOUS AT LAST 147
on the point he has reached in evolution. In his
early stages of life he will merely sleep, wrapped in
unconsciousness, when he has lost his vehicles on the
lower planes. His life will pulse gently within him,
assimilating any little results from his closed earth-
existence that may be capable of entering into his
substance; but he will have no consciousness of his
surroundings. But as he develops, this period of
his life becomes more and more important, and oc-
cupies a greater proportion of his devachanic exist-
ence. He becomes self-conscious, and thereby con-
scious of his surroundings — of the not-self — and his
memory spreads before him the panorama of his life,
stretching backwards into the ages of the past. He
sees the causes that worked out their effects in the
last of his life-experiences, and studies the causes
he has set going in this latest incarnation. He as-
similates and works into the texture of the causal
body all that was noblest and loftiest in the closed
chapter of his life, and by his inner activity he de-
velops and co-ordinates the materials in his causal
body. He comes into direct contact with great
souls, whether in or out of the body at the time, en-
joys communion with them, learns from their riper
wisdom and longer experience. Each succeeding
devachanic life is richer and deeper; with his ex-
panding capacity to receive, knowledge flows into
him in fuller tides ; more and more he learns to un-
derstand the workings of the law, the conditions of
evolutionary progress, and thus returns to earth-
life each time with greater knowledge, more effec-
148 THic ancie:nt wisdom
tive power, his vision of the goal of life becoming
ever clearer and the way to it more plain before his
feet.
To every Thinker, however unprogressed, there
comes a moment of clear vision when the time ar-
rives for his return to the life of the lower worlds.
For a moment he sees his past and the causes work-
ing from it into the future, and the general map of
his next incarnation is also unrolled before him.
Then the clouds of lower matter surge round him
and obscure his vision, and the cycle of another in-
carnation begins with the awakenings of the powers
of the lower mind, and their drawing round them,
by their vibrations, materials from the lower mental
plane to form the new mental body for the opening
chapter of his life-history. This part of our sub-
ject, however, belongs in its detail to the chapters on
reincarnation.
We left the soul asleep,* having shaken off the
last remains of his astral body, ready to pass out of
Kamaloka into Devachan, out of purgatory into
heaven. The sleeper awakens to a sense of joy un-
speakable, of bliss immeasurable, of peace that pass-
I eth understanding. Softest melodies are breathing
/ round him, tenderest hues greet his opening eyes,
I the very air seems music and color, the whole being
' is suffused with light and harmony. Then through
the golden haze dawn sweetly the faces loved on
earth, etherealized into the beauty which expresses
their noblest, loveliest emotions, unmarred by the
* See Chapter III., on Kamaloka, p. 83.
THE L0WI:R HDAVliNS 149
troubles and the passions of the lower worlds. Who
may tell the bliss of that awakening, the glory of
that first dawning of the heaven-world?
We will now study the conditions in detail of the
seven subdivisions of Devachan, remembering that
in the four lower we are in a world of form, and a
world, moreover, in which every thought presents
itself at once as a form. This world of form be-
longs to the personality, and every soul is therefore
surrounded by as much of his past life as has entered
into his mind and can be expressed in pure mind-
stufif.
The first, or lowest, region is the heaven of the
least progressed souls, whose highest emotion on
earth was a narrow, sincere, and sometimes unself-
ish love for family and friends. Or it may be that
they felt some loving admiration for some one they
met on earth who was purer and better than them-
selves, or felt some wish to lead a higher life, or
some passing aspiration towards mental and moral
expansion. There is not much material here out of
which faculty can be moulded, and their life is but
very slightly progressive; their family affections
will be nourished and a little widened, and they will
be reborn after a while with a somewhat improved
emotional nature, with more tendency to recognize
and respond to a higher ideal. Meanwhile they are
enjoying all the happiness they can receive; their
cup is but a small one, but it is filled to the brim
with bliss, and they enjoy all that they are able to
conceive of heaven. Its purity, its harmony, play
150 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
on their undeveloped faculties and woo them to
awaken into activity, and the inner stirrings begin
which must precede any manifested budding.
The next division of devachanic life comprises
men and women of every religious faith whose
hearts during their earthly lives had turned with
loving devotion to God, under any name, under any
form. The form may have been narrow, but the
heart rose up in aspiration, and it here finds the ob-
ject of its loving worship. The concept of the Di-
vine which was formed by their mind when on
earth here meets them in the radiant glory of de-
vachanic matter, fairer, diviner than their wildest
dreams. The Divine One limits Himself to meet
the intellectual limits of His worshipper, and in
whatever form the worshipper has loved and wor-
shipped Him, in that form He reveals Himself to
his longing eyes, and pours out on him the sweet-
ness of His answering love. The souls are steeped
in religious ecstasy, worshipping the One under the
forms their piety sought on earth, losing themselves
in the rapture of devotion, in communion with the
Object they adore. No one finds himself a stranger
in the heavenly places, the Divine veiling Himself
in the familiar form. Such souls grow in purity
and in devotion under the sun of this communion,
and return to earth with these qualities much in-
tensified. Nor is all their devachanic life spent in
this devotional ecstasy, for they have full opportuni-
ties of maturing every other quality they may possess
of heart and mind.
HEAVENLY MUSIC 151
Passing onwards to the third region, we come to
those noble and earnest beings who were devoted
servants of humanity while on earth, and largely
poured out their love to God in the form of works
for man. They are reaping the reward of their
good deeds by developing larger powers of useful-
ness and increased wisdom in their direction. Plans
of wider beneficence unroll themselves before the
mind of the philanthropist, and, like an architect,
he designs the future edifice which he will build in
a coming life on earth; he matures the schemes
which he will then work out into actions, and like a
creative God plans his universe of benevolence,
which shall be manifested in gross matter when the
time is ripe. These souls will appear as the great
philanthropists of yet unborn centuries, who will
incarnate on earth with innate dower of unselfish
love and of power to achieve.
Most varied in character, perhaps, of all the
heavens is the fourth, for here the powers of the
most advanced souls find their exercise, so far as
they can be expressed in the world of form. Here
the kings of art and of literature are found, exercis-
ing all their powers of form, of color, of harmony,
and building greater faculties with which to be re-
born when they return to earth. Noblest music,
ravishing beyond description, peals forth from the
mightiest monarchs of harmony that earth has
known, as Beethoven, no longer deaf, pours out his
imperial soul in strains of unexampled beauty, mak-
ing even the heaven-world more melodious as he
152 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
draws down harmonies from higher spheres, and
sends them thrilling through the heavenly places.
Here also we find the masters of painting and of
sculpture, learning new hues of color, new curves
of undreamed beauty. And here also are others
who failed, though greatly aspiring, and who are
here transmuting longings into powers, and dreams
into faculties, that shall be theirs in another life.
Searchers into Nature are here, and they are learn-
ing her hidden secrets; before their eyes are unroll-
ing systems of worlds with all their hidden mech-
anism, woven series of workings of unimaginable
delicacy and complexity; they shall return to earth
as great "discoverers," with unerring intuitions of
the mysterious ways of Nature. In this heaven also
are found students of the deeper knowledge, the
eager, reverent pupils who sought the Teachers of
the race, who longed to find a Teacher, and patiently
worked at all that had been given out by some one of
the great spiritual Masters who have taught hu-
manity. Here their longings find their fruition, and
Those they sought, apparently in vain, are now
their instructors; the eager souls drink in the heav-
enly wisdom, and swift their growth and progress
as they sit at their Masters' feet. As teachers
and as light-bringers shall they be born again on
earth, born with the birth-mark of the teacher's high
office upon them.
Many a student on earth, all unknowing of these
subtler workings, is preparing for himself a place in
this fourth heaven, as he bends with a real devotion
sa?e: home 153
over the pages of some teacher of genius, over the
teachings of some advanced soul. He is forming a
link between himself and the teacher he loves and
reverences, and in the heaven-world that soul-tie
will assert itself, and draw together into communion
the souls it links. As the sun pours down its rays
into many rooms, and each room has all it can con-
tain of the solar beams, so in the heaven-world do
these great souls shine into hundreds of mental
images of themselves created by their pupils, fill
them with life, with their own essence, so that each
student has his master to teach him and yet shuts
out none other from his aid.
Thus, for periods long in proportion to the ma-
terials gathered for consumption upon earth, dwell
men in these heaven-worlds of form, where all of
good that the last personal life had garnered finds
its full fruition, its full working out into minutest
detail. Then, as we have seen, when everything is
exhausted, when the last drop has been drained from
the cup of joy, the last crumb eaten of the heavenly
feast, all that has been worked up into faculty, that
is of permanent value, is drawn within the causal
body, and the Thinker shakes off him the then dis-
integrating body through which he has found ex-
pression on the lower levels of the devachanic world.
Rid of this mental body, he is in his own world, to
work up whatever of his harvest can find material
suitable for it in that high realm.
A vast number of souls touch the lowest level of
the formless world as it were but for a moment.
154 the: ancient wisdom
taking brief refuge there, since all lower vehicles
have fallen away. But so embryonic are they that
they have as yet no active powers that there can
function independently, and they become uncon-
scious as the mental body sHps away into disintegra-
tion. Then, for a moment, they are aroused to con-
sciousness, and a flash of memory illumines their
past and they see its pregnant causes; and a flash of
foreknowledge illumines their future, and they see
such effects as will work out in the coming life.
This is all that very many are as yet able to experi-
ence of the formless world. For here again, as
ever, the harvest is according to the sowing, and
how should they who sowed nothing for that lofty
region expect to reap any harvest therein?
But many souls have during their earth-life, by
deep thinking and noble living, sown much seed, the
harvest of which belongs to this fifth devachanic
region, the lowest of the three heavens of the form-
less world. Great is now their reward for having so
risen above the bondage of the flesh and of passion,
and they begin to experience the real life of man,
the lofty existence of the soul itself, unfettered by
vestures belonging to the lower worlds. They learn
truths by direct vision, and see the fundamental
causes of which all concrete objects are the results ;
they study the underlying unities, whose presence
is masked in the lower worlds by the variety of irrele-
vant details. Thus they gain a deep knowledge
of law, and learn to recognize its changeless work-
ings below results apparently the most incongruous.
THE WORK OF THE STRONG 155
thus building into the body that endures firm un-
shakable convictions, that will reveal themselves in
earth-life as deep intuitive certainties of the soul,
above and beyond all reasoning. Here also the
man studies his own past, and carefully disentangles
the causes he has set going; he marks their inter-
action, the resultants accruing from them, and sees
something of their working out in lives yet in the
future.
In the sixth heaven are more advanced souls, who
during earth-life had felt but little attraction for its
passing shows, and who had devoted all their ener-
gies to the higher intellectual and moral life. For
them there is no veil upon the past, their memory is
perfect and unbroken, and they plan the infusion
into their next life of energies that will neutralize
many of the forces that are working for hindrance,
and strengthen many of those that are working for
good. This clear memory enables them to form
definite and strong determinations as to actions
which are to be done and actions which are to be
avoided, and these volitions they will be able to im-
press on their lower vehicles in their next birth,
making certain classes of evils impossible, contrary
to what is felt to be the deepest nature, and certain
kinds of good inevitable, the irresistible demands of
a voice that will not be denied. These souls arc
born into the world with high and noble qualities
which render a base life impossible, and stamp the
babe from its cradle as one of the pioneers of hu-
manity. The man who has attained to this sixth
156 the: ancie:nt wisdom
heaven sees unrolled before him the vast treasures
of the Divine Mind in creative activity, and can
study the archetypes of all the forms that are being
gradually evolved in the lower worlds. There he
may bathe himself in the fathomless ocean of the
Divine Wisdom, and unravel the problems connected
with the working out of those archetypes, the partial
good that seems as evil to the limited vision of men
encased in flesh. In this wider outlook, phenomena
assume their due relative proportions, and he sees
the justification of the divine ways, no longer to him
"past finding out" so far as they are concerned with
the evolution of the lower worlds. The questions
over which on earth he pondered, and whose an-
swers ever eluded his eager intellect, are here solved
by an insight that pierces through phenomenal veils
and sees the connecting links which make the chain
complete. Here also the soul is in the immediate
presence of, and in full communion with, the greater
souls that have evolved in our humanity, and, es-
caped from the bonds which make "the past" of
earth, he enjoys "the ever-present" of an endless
and unbroken life. Those we speak of here as "the
mighty dead" are there the glorious living, and the
soul enjoys the high rapture of their presence, and
grows more like them as their strong harmony at-
tunes his vibrant nature to their key.
Yet higher, lovelier, gleams the seventh heaven,
where Masters and Initiates have their intellectual
home. No soul can dwell there ere yet it has passed
while on earth through the narrow gateway of Initia-
ONK WILL, one: life: 157
tion, the strait gate that '*leadeth unto Hfe" un-
ending.* That world is the source of the strong-
est intellectual and moral impulses that flow down to
earth; thence are poured forth the invigorating
streams of the loftiest energy. The intellectual life
of the world has there its root; thence genius re-
ceives its purest inspirations. To the souls that
dwell there it matters little whether, at the time,
they be or be not connected with the lower vehicles ;
they ever enjoy their lofty self-consciousness and
their communion with those around them; whether,
when "embodied," they suffuse their lower vehicles
with as much of this consciousness as they can con-
tain is a matter for their own choice — they can give
or withhold as they will. And more and more their
volitions are guided by the will of the Great Ones,
whose will is one with the will of the Logos, the will
which seeks ever the good of the worlds. For here
are being eliminated the last vestiges of separate-
nessf in all who have not yet reached final emanci-
pation— all, that is, who are not yet Masters — and,
as these perish, the will becomes more and more
harmonized with the will that guides the worlds.
Such is an outline of the "seven heavens" into one
or other of which men pass in due time after the
* Sec Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent." The Initiate has
stepped out of the ordinary line of evolution, and is treading
a shorter and steeper road to human perfection.
t Ahamkara, the "I" making principle, necessary in order
that self consciousness may be evolved, but transcended when
its work is over.
158 the; ancient wisdom
"change that men call death." For death is only a
change that gives the soul a partial liberation, re-
leasing him from the heaviest of his chains. It is
but a birth into a wider life, a return after brief
exile on earth to the soul's true home, a passing
from a prison into the freedom of the upper air.
Death is the greatest of earth's illusions ; there is
no death, but only changes in life-conditions. Life
is continuous, unbroken, unbreakable ; "unborn, eter-
nal, ancient, constant," it perishes not with the
perishing of the bodies that clothe it. We might as
well think that the sky is falling when a pot is
broken, as imagine that the soul perishes when the
body falls to pieces.*
The physical, astral, and mental planes are "the
three worlds" through which lies the pilgrimage of
the soul, again and again repeated. In these three
worlds revolves the wheel of human life, and souls
are bound to that wheel throughout their evolution,
and are carried by it to each of these worlds in turn.
We are now in a position to trace a complete life-
period of the soul, the aggregate of these periods
making up its life, and we can also distinguish
clearly the difference between personality and indi-
viduality.
A soul, when its stay in the formless world of
Devachan is over, begins a new life-period by put-
ting forth the energies which function in the form-
world of the mental plane, these energies being the
* A simile used in the Bhagavad Purana.
THE CYCLE OE LIFE 159
resultant of the preceding life-periods. These, pass-
ing outwards, gather round themselves, from the
matter of the four lower mental levels, such mate-
rials as are suitable for their expression, and thus
the new mental body for the coming birth is formed.
The vibration of these mental energies arouses the
energies which belong to the desire-nature, and these
begin to vibrate; as they awake and throb, they at-
tract to themselves suitable materials for their ex-
pression from the matter of the astral world, and
these form the new astral body for the approaching
incarnation. Thus the Thinker becomes clothed with
his mental and astral vestures, exactly expressing
the faculties evolved during the past stages of his
life. He is drawn, by forces which will be ex-
plained later,* to the family which is to provide him
with a suitable physical encasement, and becomes
connected with this encasement through his astral
body. During pre-natal life the mental body be-
comes involved with the lower vehicles, and this
connection becomes closer and closer through the
early years of childhood, until at the seventh year
they are as completely in touch with the Thinker
himself as the stage of evolution permits. He then
begins to slightly control his vehicles, if sufficiently
advanced, and what we call conscience is his moni-
tory voice. In any case, he gathers experience
through these vehicles, and, during the continuance
of earth-life, stores the gathered experience in its
own proper vehicle, in the body connected with the
* See Chapter VII., on "Reincarnation."
160 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
plane to which the experience belongs. When the
earth-life is over the physical body drops away, and
with it his power of contacting the physical world,
and his energies are therefore confined to the astral
and mental planes. In due course, the astral body
decays, and the outgoings of his life are confined to
the mental plane, the astral faculties being gathered
up and laid by within himself as latent energies.
Once again, in due course, its assimilative work
completed, the mental body disintegrates, its ener-
gies in turn becoming latent in the Thinker, and he
withdraws his life entirely into the formless de-
vachanic world, his own native habitat. Thence,
all the experiences of his life-period in the three
worlds being transmuted into faculties and powers
for future use, and contained within himself, he
anew commences his pilgrimage and treads the
cycle of another life-period with increased power and
knowledge.
The personality consists of the transitory vehicles
through which the Thinker energizes in the physi-
cal, astral, and lower mental worlds, and of all the
activities connected with these. These are bound
together by the links of memory caused by impres-
sions made on the three lower bodies ; and, by the
self-identification of the Thinker with his vehicles,
the personal "I" is set up. In the lower stages of
evolution this "I" is in the physical and passional
vehicles, in which the greatest activity is shown;
later it is in the mental vehicle, which then assumes
predominance. The personality, with its transient
TH^ CONFLICT OF LIFE 161
feelings, desires, passions, thus forms a quasi-inde-
pendent entity, though drawing all its energies from
the Thinker it enwraps, and as its qualifications, be-
longing to the lower worlds, are often in direct an-
tagonism to the permanent interests of the "Dweller
in the body," conflict is set up in which victory in-
clines sometimes to the temporary pleasure, some-
times to the permanent gain. The life of a person-
ality begins when the Thinker forms his new mental
body, and it endures until that mental body disin-
tegrates at the close of its life in the form-world of
Devachan.
The individuality consists of the Thinker himself,
the immortal tree that puts out all these personalities
as leaves, to last through the spring, summer, and
autumn of human life. All that the leaves take in
and assimilate enriches the sap that courses through
their veins, and in the autumn this is v/ithdrawn
into the parent trunk, and the dry leaf falls and
perishes. The Thinker alone lives forever; he is
the man for whom "the hour never strikes," the
eternal youth who, as the Bhagavad Gita has it, puts
on and casts oflf bodies as a man puts on new gar-
ments and throws off the old. Each personality is a
new part for the immortal Actor, and he treads the
stage of life over and over again, only in the life-
drama each character he assumes is the child of the
preceding ones and the father of those to come, so
that the life-drama is a continuous history, the his-
tory of the Actor who plays the successive parts.
To the three worlds that we have studied is con-
11
162 the: ancient wisdom
fined the life of the Thinker, while he is treading the
earlier stages of human evolution. A time will come
in the evolution of humanity when its feet will enter
loftier realms, and reincarnation will be of the past.
But while the wheel of birth and death is turning,
and man is bound thereon by desires that pertain to
the three worlds, his life is led in these three regions.
To the realms that lie beyond we now may turn,
albeit but little can be said of them that can be either
useful or intelligible. Such little as may be said,
however, is necessary for the outlining of the
Ancient Wisdom.
CHAPTER VI.
This Buddhic and Nirvanic Planes.
Wt have seen that man is an intelligent self-con-
scious entity, the Thinker, clad in bodies belonging
to the lower mental, astral, and physical planes ; we
have now to study the Spirit which is his innermost
Self, the source whence he proceeds.
This Divine Spirit, a ray from the Logos, partak-
ing of His own essential Being, has the triple nature
of the Logos Himself, and the evolution of man as
man consists in the gradual manifestation of these
three aspects, their development from latency into
activity, man thus repeating in miniature the evolu-
tion of the universe. Hence he is spoken of as the
microcosm, the universe being the macrocosm : he is
called the mirror of the universe, the image, or re-
flection, of God;* and hence also the ancient axiom,
"As above, so below." It is this infolded Deity that
is the guarantee of man's final triumph; this is the
hidden motive power that makes evolution at once
possible and inevitable, the upward-lifting force that
slowly overcomes eVery obstacle and every difficulty.
It was this Presence that Matthew Arnold dimly
* "Let us make man in our image, after our likness." —
Gen. i. 26.
164 the; ANCIKNT WISDOM
sensed when he wrote of the "Power, not ourselves,
that makes for righteousness," but he erred in think-
ing *'not ourselves," for it is the very innermost Self
of all — truly not our separated selves, but our Self.*
This Self is the One, and hence is spoken of as the
Monad,t and we shall need to remember that this
Monad is the outbreathed life of the Locos, contain-
ing within itself germinally, or in a state of latency,
all the divine powers and attributes. These powers
are brought into manifestation by the impacts arising
from contact with the objects of the universe into
which the Monad is thrown; the friction caused by
these gives rise to responsive thrills from the life sub-
jected to their stimuli, and one by one the energies
of the life pass from latency into activity. The hu-
man Monad — as it is called for the sake of distinction
— shows, as we have already said, the three aspects
of Deity, being the perfect image of God, and in the
human cycle these three aspects are developed one
after the other. These aspects are the three great
attributes of the Divine Life as manifested in the
universe, existence, bliss and intelligence,^ the three
LoGOi severally showing these forth with all the
* Atma, the reflection of Paramatma.
t It is called the Monad, whether it be the Monad oi spirit-
matter, Atma ; or the Monad of form, Atma-Buddhi ; or the
human Monad, Atma-Buddhi-Manas. In each case it is a unit
and acts as a unit, whether the unit be one- faced, two-faced,
or three-faced.
t Satchitananda is often used in the Hindu scriptures as the
abstract name of Brahman, the Trimurti being the concrete
manifestations of these.
DUAL BUT INS^PARAT^ 165
perfection possible within the limits of manifesta-
tion. In man, these aspects are developed in the
reversed order — intelligence, bliss, existence — "ex-
istence" implying the manifestation of the divine
powers. In the evolution of man that we have so
far studied we have been watching the development
of the third aspect of the hidden Deity — ^the develop-
ment of consciousness as intelligence. Manas, the
Thinker, the human Soul, is the image of the Uni-
versal Mind, of the Third Logos, and all his long
pilgrimage on the three lower planes is devoted to
the evolution of this third aspect, the intellectual
side of the divine nature in man. While this is pro-
ceeding, we may consider the other divine energies
as rather brooding over the man, the hidden source
of his life, than as actively developing their forces
within him. They play within themselves, unmani-
fest. Still, the preparation of these forces for mani-
festation is slowly proceeding; they are being roused
from that unmanifested life that we speak of as
latency by the ever-increasing energy of the vibra-
tions of the intelligence, and the bliss-aspect begins
to send outwards its first vibrations — faint pulsings
of its manifested life thrill forth. This bliss-aspect
is named in the theosophical terminology Buddhi, a
name derived from the Sanskrit word for wisdom,
and it belongs to the fourth, or buddhic, plane of
our universe, the plane in which there is still duality,
but where there is no separation. Words fail me
to convey the idea, for words belong to the lower
planes where duality and separation are ever con-
166 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
nected, yet some approach to the idea may be gained.
It is a state in which each is himself, with a clear-
ness and vivid intensity which cannot be approached
on lower planes, and yet in which each feels himself
to include all others, to be one with them, inseparate
and inseparable.* Its nearest analogy on earth is
the condition between two persons who are united
by a pure, intense love, which makes them feel as
one person, causing them to think, feel, act, live as
one, recognizing no barrier, no difference, no mine
and thine, no separation.! It is a faint echo from
this plane which makes men seek happiness by union
between themselves and the object of their desire,
no matter what that object may be. Perfect isola-
tion is perfect misery ; to be stripped naked of
everything, to be hanging in the void of space, in
utter solitude, nothing anywhere save the lone indi-
vidual, shut out from all, shut into the separated self
— imagination can conceive no horror more intense.
The antithesis to this is union, and perfect union is
perfect bliss.
As this bliss-aspect of the Self begins to send out-
*The reader should refer back to the Introduction, p. 36, and
re-read the description given by Plotinus of this state, com-
mencing: "They likewise see all things." And he should note
the phrases, "Each thing likewise is everything," and "In each,
however, a different quality predominates."
t It is for this reason that the bliss of divine love has in many
Scriptures been imaged b}^ the profound love of husband and
wife, as in the Bhagavad Purdna of the Hindus, the Song
of Solo7non of the Hebrews and Christians. This also is the
love of the Sufi mystics, and indeed of all mystics.
LOVK BUILDS BLISS 167
wards its vibrations, these vibrations, as on the
planes below, draw round themselves the matter of
the plane on which they are functioning, and thus is
formed gradually the buddhic body, or bliss-body,
as it is appropriately termed.* The only way in
which the man can contribute to the building of this
glorious form is by cultivating pure, unselfish, all-
embracing, beneficent love, love that "seeketh not
its own" — that is, love that is neither partial, nor
seeks any return for its outflowing. This sponta-
neous outpouring of love is the most marked of
the divine attributes, the love that gives everything,
that asks nothing. Pure love brought the universe
into being, pure love maintains it, pure love draws
it upwards towards perfection, towards bliss. And
wherever man pours out love on all who need it,
making no difference, seeking no return, from pure
spontaneous joy in the outpouring, there that man
is developing the bliss-aspect of the Deity within him,
and is preparing that body of beauty and joy inef-
fable into which the Thinker will rise, casting away
the limits of separateness, to find himself himself,
and yet one with all that lives. This is "the house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,"
whereof wrote St. Paul, the great Christian Initiate;
and he raised charity, pure love, above all other vir-
tues, because by that alone can man on earth contrib-
ute to that glorious dwelling. For a similar reason
* The Anandamayakosha, or bliss-sheath, of the Vedantins.
It is also the body of the sun, the solar body, of which a little
is said in the Upanishads and elsewhere.
168 THK ANCIENT WISDOM
is separateness called ''the great heresy" by the
Buddhist, and "union" is the goal of the Hindu;
liberation is the escape from the limitations that
keep us apart, and selfishness is the root-evil, the
destruction whereof is the destruction of all pain.
The fifth plane, the nirvanic, is the plane of the
highest human aspect of the God within us, and this
aspect is named by Theosophists Atma, or the Self.
It is the plane of pure existence, of divine powers in
their fullest manifestation in our fivefold universe —
what lies beyond on the sixth and seventh planes
is hidden in the unimaginable light of G^od, This
atmic, or nirvanic, consciousness, the consciousness
belonging to life on the fifth plane, is the conscious-
ness attained by those lofty Ones, the first fruits of
humanity, who have already completed the cycle of
human evolution, and who are called Masters.*
They have solved in Themselves the problem of
uniting the essence of individuality with non-sepa-
rateness, and live, immortal Intelligences, perfect
in wisdom, in bliss, in power.
When the human Monad comes forth from the
Logos, it is as though from the luminous ocean of
Atma a tiny thread of Hght was separated off from
the rest by a film of buddhic matter, and from this
hung a spark which becomes enclosed in an egg-like
casing of matter belonging to the formless levels of
* Known also as Mahatmas, great Spirits, and Jivanmuktas,
liberated souls, who remain connected with physical bodies for
the helping forward of humanity. Many other great Beings
also live on the nirvanic plane.
LIBERTY IS REACHED 169
the mental plane. "The spark hangs from the flame
by the finest thread of Fohat."* As evolution pro-
ceeds, this luminous egg grows larger and more
opalescent, and the tiny thread becomes a wider and
wider channel through which more and more of the
atmic life pours down. Finally, they merge — the
third with the second, and the twain with the first,
as flame merges with flame and no separation can be
seen.
The evolution on the fourth and fifth planes be-
longs to a future period of our race, but those who
choose the harder path of swifter progress may tread
it even now, as will be explained later.f On that
path the bliss-body is quickly evolved, and a man
begins to enjoy the consciousness of that loftier
region, and knows the bliss which comes from the
absence of separative barriers, the wisdom which
flows in when the limits of the intellect are trans-
cended. Then is the wheel escaped from which
binds the soul in the lower worlds, and then is the
first foretaste of the liberty which is found perfected
on the nirvanic plane.
The nirvanic consciousness is the antithesis of
annihilation ; it is existence raised to a vividness and
intensity inconceivable to those who know only the
life of the senses and the mind. As the farthing
rushlight to the splendor of the sun at noon, so is
the nirvanic to the earth-bound consciousness, and
to regard it as annihilation because the limits of the
* Book of Dzyan, Stanza vii. 5 ; Secret Doctrine, vol. i.
t See Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent."
170 the: ancient wisdom
earthly consciousness have vanished, is as though a
man, knowing only the rushlight, should say that
light could not exist without a wick immersed in
tallow. That Nirvana is has been borne witness to
in the past in the Scriptures of the world by Those
who enjoy it and live its glorious life, and is still
borne witness to by others of our race who have
climbed that lofty ladder of perfected humanity, and
who remain in touch with earth that the feet of our
ascending race may mount its rungs unfalteringly.
In Nirvana dwell the mighty Beings who accom-
plished Their own human evolution in past uni-
verses, and who came forth with the Logos when He
manifested Himself to bring this universe into exist-
ence. They are His ministers in the administration
of the worlds, the perfect agents of His will. The
Lords of all the hierarchies of the Gods and lower
ministrants that we have seen working on the lower
planes have here Their abiding-place, for Nirvana
is the heart of the universe, whence all its life-
currents proceed. Hence the Great Breath comes
forth, the life of all, and thither it is indrawn when
the universe has reached its term. There is the
Beatific Vision for which mystics long, there the
unveiled Glory, the Supreme Goal.
The Brotherhood of Humanity — nay, the Brother-
hood of all things — has its sure foundation on the
spiritual planes, the atmic and buddhic, for here
alone is unity, and here alone perfect sympathy is
brothe;rhood 171
found. The intellect is the separative principle in
man, that marks off the "I" from the ''not I," that
is conscious of itself, and sees all else as outside
itself and alien. It is the combative, struggling
self-assertive principle, and from the plane of the
intellect downwards the world presents a scene of
conflict, bitter in proportion as the intellect mingles
in it. Even the passion-nature is only spontaneously
combative when it is stirred by the feeling of desire
and finds anything standing between itself and the
object of its desire; it becomes more and more ag-
gressive as the mind inspires its activity, for then it
seeks to provide for the gratification of future de-
sires, and tries to appropriate more and more from
the stores of Nature. But the intellect is spontane-
ously combative, its very nature being to assert itself
as different from others, and here we find the root
of separateness, the ever-springing source of divis-
ions among men.
But unity is at once felt when the buddhic plane
is reached, as though we stepped from a separate
ray, diverging from all other rays, into the sun itself,
from which radiate all the rays alike. A being
standing in the sun, suffused with its light, and
pouring it forth, would feel no difference between
ray and ray, but would pour forth along one as
readily and easily as along another. And so with
the man who has once consciously attained the bud-
dhic plane ; he feels the brotherhood that others
speak of as an ideal, and pours himself out into any
one who wants assistance, giving mental, moral,
172 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
astral, physical help exactly as it is needed. He
sees all beings as himself, and feels that all he has is
theirs as much as his; nay, in many cases, as more
theirs than his, because their need is greater, their
strength being less. So do the elder brothers in a
family bear the family burdens, and shield the little
ones from suffering and privation ; to the spirit of
brotherhood weakness is a claim for help and loving
protection, not an opportunity for oppression. Be-
cause They had reached this level and mounted even
higher, the great Founders of religions have ever
been marked by Their overwelling compassion and
tenderness, ministering to the physical as well as to
the inner wants of men, to every man according to
his need. The consciousness of this inner unity, the
recognition of the One Self dwelling equally in all,
is the one sure foundation of Brotherhood; all else
save this is frangible.
This recognition, moreover, is accompanied by the
knowledge that the stage in evolution reached by
different human and non-human beings depends
chiefly on what we may call their age. Some began
their journey in time very much later than others,
and, though the powers in each be the same, some
have unfolded far more of those powers than others,
simply because they have had a longer time for the
process than their younger brethren. As well blame
and despise the seed because it is not yet the flower,
the bud because it is not yet the fruit, the babe be-
cause it is not yet the man, as blame and despise the
germinal or baby souls around us because they have
IDi;NTlTY AND DIFFE:rENC^S 173
not yet developed to the stage we ourselves occupy.
We do not blame ourselves because we are not yet
as Gods; in time we shall stand where our elder
Brothers are standing. Why should we blame the
still younger souls who are not yet as we? The very
word brotherhood connotes identity of blood and in-
equality of development; and it therefore represents
exactly the link between all creatures in the uni-
verse— identity of essential life, and differences in
the stages reached in the manifestation of that life.
We are one in our origin, one in the method of our
evolution, one in our goal, and the differences of our
age and stature but give opportunity for the growth
of the tenderest and closest ties. All that a man
would do for his brother of the flesh, dearer to him
than himself, is the measure of what he owes to each
who shares with him the one Life. Men are shut
out from their brothers' hearts by differences of
race, of class, of country; the man who is wise by
love rises above all these petty differences, and sees
all drawing their life from the one source, all as part
of his family.
The recognition of this brotherhood intellect-
ually, and the endeavor to live it practically, are so
stimulative of the higher nature of man, that it was
made the one obligatory object of the Theosophical
Society, the single "article of belief" that all who
would enter its fellowship must accept. To live it,
even to a small extent, cleanses the heart and puri-
fies the vision; to live it perfectly would be to eradi-
cate all stain of separatencss, and to let the pure
174 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
shining of the Self irradiate us, as a light through
flawless glass.
Never let it be forgotten that this Brotherhood is,
whether men ignore it or deny it. Man's ignorance
does not change the laws of Nature, nor vary by one
hair's-breadth her changeless, irresistible march.
Her laws crush those who oppose them, and break
into pieces everything which is not in harmony
with them. Therefore can no nation endure that
outrages Brotherhood, no civilization can last that
is built on its antithesis. We have not to make
Brotherhood ; it exists. We have to attune our lives
into harmony with it, if we desire that we and our
works shall not perish.
It may seem strange to some that the buddhic
plane — a thing to them misty and unreal — should
thus influence all planes below it, and that its forces
should ever break into pieces all that cannot har-
monize itself with them in the lower worlds. Yet
so it is, for this universe is an expression of spiritual
forces, and they are the guiding, moulding energies
pervading all things, and slowly, surely, subduing
all things to themselves. Hence this Brotherhood,
which is a spiritual unity, is a far more real thing
than any outward organization ; it is a life and not a
form, "wisely and sweetly ordering all things." It
may take innumerable forms, suitable to the times,
but the life is one ; happy they who see its presence,
and make themselves the channels of its living force.
The student has now before him the constituents
PRINCIPLKS IN MAN 175
of the human constitution, and the regions to which
these constituents respectively belong; so a brief
summary should enable him to have a clear idea of
this complicated whole.
The human Monad is Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or,
as sometimes translated, the Spirit, Spiritual Soul,
and Soul, of man. The fact that these three are but
aspects of the Self makes possible man's immortal
existence, and though these three aspects are mani-
fested separately and successively, their substantial
unity renders it possible for the Soul to merge itself
in the Spiritual Soul, giving to the latter the pre-
cious essence of individuality, and for this indi-
vidualized Spiritual Soul to merge itself in the
Spirit, coloring it — if the phrase may be permitted
with the hues due to individuality, while leaving un-
injured its essential unity with all other rays of the
Logos and with the Logos Himself. These three
form the seventh, sixth, and fifth principles of man,
and the materials which limit or encase them, i.e.,
which make their manifestation and activity pos-
sible, are drawn respectively from the fifth (nir-
vanic), the fourth (buddhic), and the third (mental)
planes of our universe. The fifth principle further
takes to itself a lower body on the mental plane, in
order to come into contact with the phenomenal
worlds, and thus intertwines itself with the fourth
principle, the desire-nature, or Kama, belonging to
the second or asfral plane. Descending to the first,
the physical, plane, we have the third, second and
first principles — the specialized life, or Prana; the
176 the: ancii^nt wisdom
etheric double, its vehicle; the dense body, which
contacts the coarser materials of the physical world.
We have already seen that sometimes Prana is not
regarded as a ''principle," and then the interwoven
desire and mental bodies take rank together as Kama-
Manas ; the pure intellect is called the Higher Manas,
and the mind apart from desire Lower Manas. The
most convenient conception of man is perhaps that
which most closely represents the facts as to the one
permanent life and the various forms in which it
works and which condition its energies, causing, the
variety in manifestation. Then we see the Self as
the one Life, the source of all energies, and the forms
as the buddhic, causal, mental, astral, and physical
(etheric and dense) bodies.*
Putting together the two ways of looking at the
same thing, we may construct a table :
Principles. Life Forms.
Atma. Spirit Atma
Buddhi. Spiritual Soul. Bliss-Body
Higher Manas] Causal Body-
Lower Manas j ^uman Soul Utntzl Body.
* Those of our readers who are more familiar with the
Vedantin classification may find the following table of the
form-side useful :
Buddhic body Anandamayakosha.
Causal body Vignyanamayakosha.
Mental body| Manomayakosha.
Astral body j
T-,, . , , , (etheric Pranamayakosha.
Physical body < , . , ,
[dense Annamayakosha.
PRINCIPLES IN BODY 177
Principles. Forms.
Kama. Animal Soul Astral Body
Linga Sharira* Etheric Double
Sthula Sharira Dense Body
It will be seen that the difference is merely a
question of names, and that the sixth, fifth, fourth,
and third "principles" are merely Atma working in
the buddhic, causal, mental, and astral bodies, while
the second and first ''principles" are the two lowest
bodies themselves. This sudden change in the method
of naming is apt to cause confusion in the mind of
the student, and as H. P. Blavatsky, our revered
teacher, expressed much dissatisfaction with the then
current nomenclature as confused and misleading, and
desired others and myself to try and improve it, the
above names, as descriptive, simple, and representing
the facts, are here adopted.
The various subtle bodies of man that we have
now studied form in their aggregate what is usually
called the "aura" of the human being. This aura has
the appearance of an egg-shaped luminous cloud,
in the midst of which is the dense physical body, and
from its appearance it has often been spoken of as
though it were nothing more than such a cloud.
What is usually called the aura is merely such parts
of the subtle bodies as extend beyond the periphery
of the dense physical body; each body is complete
* Linga Sharira was the name originally given to the etheric
body, and must not be confused with the Linga Sharira of
Hindu philosophy. Sthula Sharira is the Sanskrit name for
the dense body.
12
178 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
in itself, and interpenetrates those that are coarser
than itself; it is larger or smaller according to its
development, and all that part of it that overlaps the
surface of the dense physical body is termed the
aura. The aura is thus composed of the overlapping
portions of the etheric double, the desire body, the
mental body, the causal body, and in rare cases the
buddhic body, illuminated by the atmic radiance.
It is sometimes dull, coarse, and dingy; sometimes
magnificently radiant in size, light, and color; it de-
pends entirely on the stage of evolution reached by
the man, on the development of his different bodies,
on the moral and mental character he has evolved.
All his varying passions, desires, and thoughts are
herein written in form, in color, in light, so that "he
that runs may read" if he have eyes for such script.
Character is stamped thereon as well as fleeting
changes, and no deception is there possible as in the
mask we call the physical body. The increase in size
and beauty of the aura is the unmistakable mark of the
man's progress, and tells of the growth and purifi-
cation of the Thinker and his vehicles.
CHAPTER VII.
Rkincarnation.
We are now in a position to study one of the pivo-
tal doctrines of the Ancient Wisdom, the doctrine of
reincarnation. Our view of it will be clearer and
more in congruity with natural order, if we look at
it as universal in principle, and then consider the
special case of the reincarnation of the human soul.
In studying it, this special case is generally wrenched
from its place in natural order, and is considered as
a dislocated fragment, greatly to its detriment. For
all evolution consists of an evolving life, passing
from form to form as it evolves, and storing up in
itself the experience gained through the forms ; the
reincarnation of the human soul is not the introduc-
tion of a new principle into evolution, but the adap-
tation of the universal principle to meet the condi-
tions rendered necessary by the individualization of
the continuously evolving life.
Mr. Lafcadio Hearn* has put this point well in
* Mr. Hearn has lost his way in expression — but not, I think,
in his inner view — in part of his exposition of the Buddhist
statement of this doctrine, and his use of the word "Ego" will
mislead the reader of his very interesting chapter on this sub-
ject, if the distinction between the real and the illusory ego is
not steadily kept in mind.
180 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
considering the bearing of the idea of pre-existence
on the scientific thought of the West. He says :
"Vvilh the acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, old forms
of thought crumbled; new ideas everywhere arose to take the
place of worn-out dogmas; and we now have the spectacle of
a general intellectual movement in directions strangely paral-
lel with Oriental philosophy. The unprecedented rapidity
and multiformity of scientic progress during the last fifty
years could not have failed to provoke an equally unprece-
dented intellectual quickening among the non-scientific.
That the highest and most complex organisims have been de-
veloped from the lowest and simplest; that a single physical
basis of life is the substance of the whole living world; that
no line of separation can be drawn between the animal and
vegetable; that the difference between life and non-life is only
a difference of degree, not of kind; that matter is not less in-
comprehensible than mind, while both are but varying mani-
festations of one and the same unknown reality — these have
already become the commonplaces of the new philosophy.
After the first recognition even by theology of physical evolu-
tion, it was easy to predict that the recognition of psychical
evolution could not be indefinitely delayed; for the barrier
erected by old dogma to keep men from looking backward had
been broken down. And to-day for the student of scientific
psychology the idea of pre-existence passes out of the realm of
theory into the realm of fact, proving the Buddhist explana-
tion of the universal mystery quite as plausible as any other.
'None but very hasty thinkers,' wrote the late Professor Hux-
ley, 'will reject it on the ground of inherent absurdity. Like
the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmigration has its
roots in the world of reahty; and it may claim such support
as the great argument from analogy is capable of supplying'
{Evolution and Ethics, p. 61, ed. 1894)."*
* Kokoro ; Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life.
By Lafcadio Hearn, pp. 237-239 (London, 1896).
THE SECREiT OF E;vOLUTION 181
Let us consider the Monad of form, Atma-Buddhi.
In this Monad, the outbreathed Hfe of the Logos, lie
hidden all the divine powers, but, as we have seen,
they are latent, not manifest and functioning. They
are to be gradually aroused by external impacts, it
being of the very nature of life to vibrate in answer
to vibrations that play upon it. As all possibilities
of vibrations exist in the Monad, any vibration
touching it will arouse its corresponding vibratory
power, and in this way one force after another will
pass from the latent to the active* state. Herein
lies the secret of evolution; the environment acts on
the form of the living creature — and all things, be
it remembered, live — and this action, transmitted
through the enveloping form to the life, the Monad,
within it, arouses responsive vibrations which thrill
outwards from the Monad through the form, throw-
ing its particles, in turn, into vibration, and rearrang-
ing them into a shape corresponding, or adapted,
to the initial impact. This is the action and reaction
between the environment and the organism, which
have been recognized by all biologists, and which
are considered by some as giving a sufficient me-
chanical explanation of evolution. Their patient and
careful observation of these actions and reactions
yields, however, no explanation as to why the organ-
ism should thus react to stimuli, and the Ancient
Wisdom is needed to unveil the secret of evolution,
by pointing to the Self in the heart of all forms,
* From the static to the kinetic condition, the physicist would
say.
182 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
the hidden mainspring of all the movements in na-
ture.
Having grasped this fundamental idea of a life
containing the possibility of responding to every vibra-
tion that can reach it from the external universe,
the actual responses being gradually drawn forth
by the play upon it of external forces, the next funda-
mental idea to be grasped is that of the continu-
ity of life and forms. Forms transmit their pe-
culiarities to other forms that proceed from them,
these other forms being part of their own substance,
separated off to lead an independent existence. By
fission, by budding, by extrusion of germs, by de-
velopment of the offspring within the maternal
womb, a physical continuity is preserved, every new
form being derived from a preceding form and re-
producing its characteristics.* Science groups these
facts under the name of the law of heredity, and its
observations on the transmission of form are worthy
of attention, and are illuminative of the workings
of Nature in the phenomenal world. But it must
be remembered that it applies only to the building
of the physical body, into which enter the materials
provided by the parents.
Her more hidden workings, those workings of life
without which form could not be, have received no
attention, not being susceptible of physical observa-
tion, and this gap can only be filled by the teachings
of the Ancient Wisdom, given by Those who of old
* The student might wisely familiarize himself with the re-
searches of Weissmann on the continuity of germ-plasm.
he:re:dity in action 183
used superphysical powers of observation, and veri-
fiable gradually by every pupil who studies patiently
in Their schools.
There is continuity of life as well as continuity of
form, and it is the continuing life — with ever more
and more of its latent energies rendered active by
the stimuli received through successive forms — which
resumes into itself the experiences obtained by its
incasings in form ; for when the form perishes, the
life has the record of those experiences in the
increased energies aroused by them, and is ready to
pour itself into the new forms derived from the old,
carrying with it this accumulated store. While it
was in the previous form, it played through it, adapt-
ing it to express each newly awakened energy; the
form hands on these adaptations, inwrought into its
substance, to the separated part of itself that we
speak of as its offspring, which, being of its sub-
stance, must needs have the peculiarities of that sub-
stance; the life pours itself into that oflFspring with
all its awakened powers, and moulds it yet further ;
and so on and on. Modern science is proving more
and more clearly that heredity plays an ever-decreas-
ing part in the evolution of the higher creatures, that
mental and moral qualities are not transmitted from
parents to offspring, and that the higher the quali-
ties the more patent is this fact ; the child of a genius
is ofttimes a dolt ; commonplace parents give birth
to a genius. A continuing substratum there must
be, in which mental and moral qualities inhere, in
order that they may increase, else would Nature, in
184 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
this most important department of her work, show
erratic uncaused production instead of orderly con-
tinuity. On this science is dumb, but the Ancient
Wisdom teaches that this continuing substratum
is the Monad, which is the receptacle of all results,
the storehouse in which all experiences are garnered
as increasingly active powers.
These two principles firmly grasped — of the Monad
with potentialities becoming powers, and of the con-
tinuity of life and form — we can proceed to study
their working out in detail, and we shall find that
they solve many of the perplexing problems of
modern science, as well as the yet more heart-
searching problems confronted by the philanthropist
and the sage.
Let us start by considering the Monad as it is first
subjected to the impacts from the formless levels of
the mental plane, the very beginning of the evolu-
tion of form. Its first faint responsive thrillings
draw round it some of the matter of that plane, and
we have the gradual evolution of the first elemental
kingdom, already mentioned.* The great funda-
mental types of the Monad are seven in number,
sometimes imaged as like the seven colors of the
solar spectrum, derived from the three primary.*}*
* See Chapter IV., on "The Mental Plane."
t "As above, so below." We instinctively remember the
three Loggi and the seven primaeval Sons of the Fire; in
Christian symbolism, the Trinity and the ''Seven Spirits that
are before the throne ;" or in Zoroastrian, Ahuramazdao and
the seven Ameshaspentas.
SUBDIVISION Olf MONAD 185
Each of these types has its own coloring of character-
istics, and this coloring persists throughout the
asonian cycle of its evolution, affecting all the series
of living things that are animated by it. Now be-
gins the process of subdivision in each of these types,
that will be carried on, subdividing and ever sub-
dividing, until the individual is reached. The cur-
rents set up by the commencing outward-going
energies of the Monad — to follow one line of evolu-
tion will suffice; the other six are like unto it in
principle — have but brief form-life, yet whatever
experience can be gained through them is repre-
sented by an increasedly responsive life in the Monad
who is their source and cause; and as this responsive
life consists of vibrations that are often incongruous
with each other, a tendency towards separation is
set up within the Monad, the harmoniously vibra-
ting forces grouping themselves together for, as it
were, concerted action, until various sub-Monads,
if the epithet may for a moment be allowed, are
formed, alike in their main characteristics, but differ-
ing in details, like shades of the same color. These
become, by impacts from the lower levels of the
mental plane, the Monads of the second elemental
kingdom, belonging to the form-region of that plane,
and the process continues, the Monad ever adding
to its power to respond, each Monad being the in-
spiring life of countless forms, through which it re-
ceives vibrations, and, as the forms disintegrate,
constantly vivifying new forms ; the process of
subdivision also continues from the cause already
186 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
described. Each Monad thus continually incarnates
itself in forms, and garners within itself as awakened
powers all the results obtained through the forms it
animates. We may well regard these Monads as the
souls of groups of forms ; and, as evolution proceeds,
these forms show more and more attributes, the at-
tributes being the powers of the monadic group-soul
manifested through the forms in which it is incar-
nated. The innumerable sub-Monads of this second
elemental kingdom presently reach a stage of evolu-
tion at which they begin to respond to the vibrations
of astral matter, and they begin to act on the astral
plane, becoming the Monads of the third elemental
kingdom, and repeating in this grosser world all the
processes already accomplished on the mental plane.
They become more and more numerous as monadic
group-souls, showing more and more diversity in
detail, the number of forms animated by each be-
coming less as the specialized characteristics become
more and more marked. Meanwhile, it may be said
in passing, the everflowing stream of life from the
Logos supplies new Monads of form on the higher
levels, so that the evolution proceeds continuously,
and as the more-evolved Monads incarnate in the
lower worlds their place is taken by the newly
emerged IMonads in the higher.
By this ever-repeated process of the reincarnation
of the Monads, or monadic group-souls, in the astral
world, their evolution proceeds, until they are ready
to respond to the impacts upon them from physical
matter. When we remember that the ultimate atoms
"de:sce^nt" o^ th^ monad 187
of each plane have their sphere-walls composed of
the coarsest matter of the plane immediately above
it, it is easy to see how the Monads become respon-
sive to the impacts from one plane after another.
When, in the first elemental kingdom, the Monad had
become accustomed to thrill responsively to the im-
pacts of the matter of that plane, it would soon begin
to answer to vibrations received through the coarsest
forms of that matter from the matter of the plane
next below. So, in its coatings of matter that were
the forms composed of the coarsest materials of the
mental plane, it would become susceptible to vibra-
tions of astral atomic matter; and, when incarnated
in forms of the coarsest astral matter, it would
similarly become responsive to the impacts of atomic
physical ether, the sphere-walls of which are consti-
tuted of the grossest astral materials. Thus the
Monad may be regarded as reaching the physical
plane, and there it begins, or, more accurately, all
these monadic group-souls begin, to incarnate them-
selves in filmy physical forms, the etheric doubles of
the future dense minerals of the physical world.
Into these filmy forms the nature-spirits build the
denser physical materials, and thus minerals of all
kinds are formed, the most rigid vehicles in which
the evolving life incloses itself, and through which
the least of its powers can express themselves. Each
monadic group-soul has its own mineral expressions,
the mineral forms in which it is incarnated, and the
specialization has now reached a high degree. These
monadic group-souls are sometimes called in their
188 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
totality the mineral Monad, or the Monad incarna-
ting in the mineral kingdom.
From this time forward the awakened energies of
the Monad play a less passive part in evolution.
They begin to seek expression actively to some ex-
tent when once aroused into functioning, and to
exercise a distinctly moulding influence over the
forms in which they are imprisoned. As they be-
come too active for their mineral embodiment, the
beginnings of the more plastic forms of the vegetable
kingdom manifest themselves, the nature-spirits aid-
ing this evolution throughout the physical kingdoms.
In the mineral kingdom there had already been
shown a tendency towards the definite organization
of form, the laying down of certain lines* along
which the growth proceeded. This tendency gov-
erns henceforth all the building of forms, and is the
cause of the exquisite symmetry of natural objects,
with which every observer is familiar. The monadic
group-souls in the vegetable kingdom undergo divi-
sion and subdivision with increasing rapidity, in con-
sequence of the still greater variety of impacts to
which they are subjected, the evolution of families,
genera, and species being due to this invisible sub-
division. When any genus, with its generic monadic
group-soul, is subjected to very varying conditions,
i.e., when the forms connected with it receive very
different impacts, a fresh tendency to subdivide is
set up in the Monad, and various species are evolved,
* The axes of growth, which determine form. They appear
definitely in crystals.
ARTIFICIAL SKLDCTION 189
each having its own specific monadic group-soul.
When Nature is left to her own working the process
is slow, although the nature-spirits do much towards
the differentiation of species ; but when man has
been evolved, and when he begins his artificial sys-
tems of cultivation, encouraging the play of one set
of forces, warding off another, then this differentia-
tion can be brought about with considerable rapidity,
and specific differences are readily evolved. So long
as actual division has not taken place in the monadic
group-soul, the subjection of the forms to similar
influences may again eradicate the separative ten-
dency, but when that division is completed the new
species are definitely and firmly established, and are
ready to send out offshoots of their own.
In some of the longer-lived members of the vege-
table kingdom the element of personality begins to
manifest itself, the stability of the organism render-
ing possible this foreshadowing of individuality.
With a tree, living for scores of years, the recur-
rence of similar conditions causing similar impacts,
the seasons ever returning year after year, the con-
secutive internal motions caused by them, the rising
of the sap, the putting forth of leaves, the touches
of the wind, of the sunbeams, of the rain — all these
outer influences with their rhythmical progression —
set up responsive thrillings in the monadic group-
soul, and, as the sequence impresses itself by contin-
ual repetition, the recurrence of one leads to the dim
expectation of its oft-repeated successor. Nature
evolves no quality suddenly, and these are the first
190 the; ancient wisdom
faint adumbrations of what will later be memory and
anticipation.
In the vegetable kingdom also appear the fore-
shadowings of sensation, evolving in its higher mem-
bers to what the Western psychologist would term
''massive" sensations of pleasure and discomfort.*
It must be remembered that the Monad has drawn
round itself materials of the planes through which it
has descended, and hence is able to contact impacts
from those planes, the strongest and those most
nearly allied to the grossest forms of matter being
the first to make themselves felt. Sunshine and the
chill of its absence at last impress themselves on the
monadic consciousness ; and its astral coating, thrown
into faint vibrations, gives rise to the slight massive
kind of sensation spoken of. Rain and drought
affecting the mechanical constitution of the form,
and its power to convey vibrations to the ensouling
Monad — are another of the ''pairs of opposites," the
play of which arouses the recognition of difference,
which is the root alike of all sensation, and later of
all thought. Thus by their repeated plant-reincar-
nations the monadic group-souls in the vegetable
kingdom evolve, until those that ensoul the highest
members of the kingdom are ready for the next step.
This step carries them into the animal kingdom,
and here they slowly evolve in their physical and
astral vehicles a very distinct personality. The ani-
* The "massive" sensation is one that pervades the organism
and is not felt especially in any one part more than in others.
It is the antithesis of the "acute."
Evolution oi? instincts. 191
mal, being free to move about, subjects itself to a
greater variety of conditions than can be experienced
by the plant, rooted to a single spot, and this vari-
ety, as ever, promotes differentiation. The monadic
group-soul, however, which animates a number of
wild animals of the same species or sub-species, while
it receives a great variety of impacts, since they are
for the most part repeated continually and are shared
by all the members of the group, differentiates but
slowly.
These impacts aid in the development of the phys-
ical and astral bodies, and through them the mo-
nadic group-soul gathers much experience. When
the form of a member of the group perishes, the ex-
perience gathered through that form is accumulated
in the monadic group-soul, and may be said to color
it; the slightly increased life of the monadic group-
soul, poured into all the forms which compose its
group, shares among all the experience of the per-
ished form, and in this way continually repeated
experiences, stored up in the monadic group-soul,
appear as instincts, "accumulated hereditary expe-
riences" in the new forms. Countless birds having
fallen a prey to hawks, chicks just out of the egg will
cower at the approach of one of the hereditary ene-
mies, for the life that is incarnated in them knows
the danger, and the innate instinct is the expression
of its knowledge. In this way are formed the won-
derful instincts that guard animals from innumera-
ble habitual perils, while a new danger finds them
unprepared and only bewilders them.
192 the; ancient wisdom
As animals come under the influence of man, the
monadic group-soul evolves with greatly increased
rapidity, and, from causes similar to those which
affect plants under domestication, subdivision of the
incarnating life is more readily brought about.
Personality evolves and becomes more and more
strongly marked; in the earlier stages it may almost
be said to be compound — a whole flock of wild crea-
tures will act as though moved by a single personal-
ity, so completely are the forms dominated by the
common soul, it, in turn, being affected by the
impulses from the external world. Domesticated
animals of the higher types, the elephant, the horse,
the cat, the dog, show a more individualized person-
ality— two dogs, for instance, may act very differ-
ently under the impact of the same circumstances.
The monadic group-soul incarnates in a decreasing
number of forms as it gradually approaches the point
at which complete individualization will be reached.
The desire-body, or kamic vehicle, becomes consid-
erably developed, and persists for some time after
the death of the physical body, leading an indepen-
dent existence in kamaloka. At last the decreasing
number of forms animated by a monadic group-soul
comes down to unity, and it animates a succession of
single forms — a condition differing from human re-
incarnation only by the absence of Manas, with its
causal and mental bodies. The mental matter
brought down by the monadic group-soul begins to
be susceptible to impacts from the mental plane, and
the animal is then ready to receive the third great
BIRTH OF TH^ SOUL. 193
outpouring of the life of the Logos — the tabernacle
is ready for the reception of the human Monad.
The human Monad is, as we have seen, triple in
its nature, its three aspects being denominated, re-
spectively, the Spirit, the spiritual Soul, and the hu-
man Soul, Atma, Buddhi, Manas. Doubtless, in the
course of aeons of evolution, the upwardly evolving
Monad of form might have unfolded Manas by pro-
gressive growth, but both in the human race in the
past, and in the animals of the present, such has not
been the course of Nature. When the house was
ready the tenant was sent down; from the higher
planes of being the atmic life descended, veiling
itself in Buddhi, as a golden thread; and its third
aspect, Manas, showing itself in the higher levels of
the formless world of the mental plane, germinal
Manas within the form was fructified, and the em-
bryonic causal body was formed by the union. This
is the individualization of the spirit, the incasing of
it in form, and this spirit incased in the causal body
is the soul, the indvidual, the real man. This is
his birth-hour; for though his essence be eternal,
unborn and undying, his birth in time as an individ-
ual is definite.
Further, this outpoured life reaches the evolving
forms not directly but by intermediaries. The hu-
man race having attained the point of receptivity,
certain great Ones, called Sons of Mind,* cast into
men the monadic spark of Atma-Buddhi-Manas,
* Manasa-putra is the technical name, being merely the
Sanskrit for Sons of Mind.
13
194 the: ancient wisdom
needed for the formation of the embryonic soul.
And some of these great Ones actually incarnated in
human forms, in order to become the guides and
teachers of the infant humanity. These Sons of
Mind had completed Their own intellectual evolu-
tion in other worlds, and came to this younger world,
our earth, for the purpose of thus aiding in the evo-
lution of the human race. They are, in truth, the
spiritual fathers of the bulk of our humanity.
Other intelligences of much lower grade, men who
had evolved in preceding cycles in another world,
incarnated among the descendants of the race that
received its infant souls in the way just described.
As this race evolved, the human tabernacles im-
proved, and myriads of souls that were awaiting
the opportunity of incarnation, that they might
continue their evolution, took birth among its chil-
dren. These partially evolved souls are also spoken
of in the ancient records as Sons of Mind, for they
were possessed of mind, although comparatively it
was but little developed — childish souls we may call
them, in distinguishment from the embryonic souls
of the bulk of humanity, and the mature souls of the
great Teachers. These child-souls, by reason of
their more evolved intelligence, formed the leading
types of the ancient world, the classes higher in men-
tality, and therefore in the power of acquiring
knowledge, that dominated the masses of less devel-
oped men in antiquity. And thus arose, in our
world, the enormous differences in mental and moral
capacity which separate the most highly evolved
the: ways o^ nature; kqual. 195
from the least evolved races, and which, even within
the limits of a single race, separate the lofty philo-
sophic thinker from the well-nigh animal type of the
most depraved of his own nation. These differences
are but differences of the stage of evolution, of the
age of the soul, and they have been found to exist
throughout the whole history of humanity on this
globe. Go back as far as we may in historic records,
and we may find lofty intelligence and debased igno-
rance side by side, and the occult records, carrying
us backwards, tell a similar story of the early mil-
lennia of humanity. Nor should this distress us, as
though some had been unduly favored and others
unduly burdened for the struggle of life. The lof-
tiest soul had its childhood and its infancy, albeit in
previous worlds, where other souls were as high
above it as others are below it now; the lowest soul
shall climb to where our highest are standing, and
souls yet unborn shall occupy its present place in
evolution. Things seem unjust because we wrench
our world out of its place in evolution, and set it
apart in isolation, with no forerunners and no suc-
cessors. It is our ignorance that sees the injustice;
the ways of Nature are equal, and she brings to all
her children infancy, childhood, and manhood. Not
hers the fault if our folly demands that all souls shall
occupy the same stage of evolution at the same time,
and cries "Unjust!" if the demand be not fulfilled.
We shall best understand the evolution of the
soul, if we take it up at the point where we left it,
when animal-man was ready to receive, and did re-
196 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
ceive, the embryonic soul. To avoid a possible mis-
apprehension, it may be well to say that there were
not henceforth two Monads in man — the one that
had built the human tabernacle, and the one that
descended into that tabernacle, and whose lowest
aspect was the human soul. To borrow a simile
again from H. P. Blavatsky, as two rays of the sun
may pass through a hole in a shutter, and mingling
together form but one ray though they had been
twain, so is it with these rays from the supreme Sun,
the divine Lord of our universe. The second ray,
as it entered into the human tabernacle, blended
with the first, merely adding to it fresh energy and
brilliance, and the human Monad, as a unit, began
its mighty task of unfolding the higher powers in
man of that divine Life whence it came.
The embryonic soul, the Thinker, had at the be-
ginning for its embryonic mental body the mind-
stuff envelope that the Monad of form had brought
with it, but had not yet organized into any possibil-
ity of functioning. It was the mere germ of a men-
tal body, attached to a mere germ of a causal body,
and for many a life the strong desire-nature had its
will with the soul, whirling it along the road of its
own passions and appetites, and dashing up against
it all the furious waves of its own uncontrolled ani-
mality. Repulsive as this early life of the soul may
at first seem to some when looked at from the higher
stage that we have now attained, it was a necessary
one for the germination of the seeds of mind. Re-
cognition of difference, the perception that one thing
BEGINNING 01^ THOUGHT 197
is different from another, is a preliminary essential
to thinking at all. And, in order to awaken this per-
ception in the as yet unthinking soul, strong and
violent contrasts had to strike upon it, so as to force
their differences upon it — blow after blow of riotous
pleasure, blow after blow of crushing pain. The
external world hammered on the soul through the
desire nature, till perceptions began to be slowly
made, and, after countless repetitions, to be regis-
tered. The little gains made in each life were
stored up by the Thinker, as we have already seen,
and thus slow progress was made.
Slow progress, indeed, for scarcely anything was
thought, and hence scarcely anything was done in
the way of organizing the mental body. Not until
many perceptions had been registered in it as men-
tal images were there any material on which mental
action, initiated from within, could be based; this
would begin when two or more of these mental im-
ages were drawn together, and some inference, how-
ever elementary, was made from them. That infer-
ence was the beginning of reasoning, the germ of all
the systems of logic which the intellect of man has
since evolved or assimilated. These inferences
would at first all be made in the service of the desire-
nature, for the increasing of pleasure, the lessening
of pain; but each one would increase the activity of
the mental body, and would stimulate it into more
ready functioning.
It will readily be seen that at this period of his
infancy man had no knowledge of good or of evil ;
198 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
right and wrong had for him no existence. The
right is that which is in accordance with the divine
will, which helps forward the progress of the soul,
which tends to the strengthening of the higher na-
ture of man and to the training and subjugation of
the lower; the wrong is that which retards evolution,
which retains the soul in the lower stages after he
has learned the lessons they have to teach, which
tends to the mastery of the lower nature over the
higher, and assimilates man to the brute he should
be outgrowing instead of to the God he should be
evolving. Ere man could know what was right he
had to learn the existence of law, and this he could
only learn by following all that attracted him in the
outer world, by grasping at every desirable object,
and then by learning from experience, sweet or
bitter, whether his delight was in harmony or in
conflict with the law. Let us take an obvious ex-
ample, the taking a pleasant food, and see how in-
fant man might learn therefrom the presence of a
natural law. At the first taking, his hunger was ap-
peased, his taste was gratified, and only pleasure
resulted from the experience, for his action was in
harmony with law. On another occasion, desiring
to increase pleasure, he ate overmuch and suffered
in consequence, for he transgressed against the law.
A confusing experience to the dawning intelligence,
how the pleasurable became painful by excess.
Over and over again he would be led by desire into
excess, and each time he would experience the pain-
ful consequences, until at last he learned modera-
SLOWLY GROWING. 199
tion, i.e., he learned to conform his bodily acts in
this respect to physical law; for he found that there
were conditions which affected him and which he
could not control, and that only by observing them
could physical happiness be insured. Similar expe-
riences flowed in upon him through all the bodily
organs, with undeviating regularity; his outrushing
desires brought him pleasure or pain just as they
worked with the laws of Nature or against them,
and, as experience increased, it began to guide his
steps, to influence his choice. It was not as though
he had to begin his experience anew with every life,
for on each new birth he brought with him mental
faculties a little increased, an ever-accumulating
store.
I have said that the growth in these early days
was very slow, for there was but the dawning of
mental action, and when the man left his physical
body at death he passed most of his time in Kama-
loka, sleeping through a brief devachanic period of
unconscious assimilation of any minute mental expe-
riences not yet sufficiently developed for the active
heavenly life that lay before him after many days.
Still, the enduring causal body was there, to be the
receptacle of his qualities, and to carry them on for
further development into his next life on earth.
The part played by the monadic group-eoul in the
earlier stages of evolution is played in man by the
causal body, and it is this continuing entity who, in
all cases, makes evolution possible. Without him,
the accumulation of mental and moral experiences,
200 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
shown as faculties, would be as impossible as would
be the accumulation of physical experiences, shown
as racial and family characteristics, without the
continuity of physical plasm. Souls without a past
behind them, springing suddenly into existence, out
of nothing, with marked mental and moral peculiar-
ities, are a conception as monstrous as would be the
corresponding conception of babies suddenly appear-
ing from nowhere, unrelated to anybody, but show-
ing marked racial and family types. Neither the
man nor his physical vehicle is uncaused, or caused
by the direct creative power of the Logos; here, as
in so many other cases, the invisible things are
clearly seen by their analogy with the visible, the
visible being, in very truth, nothing more than the
images, the reflections, of things unseen. Without
a continuity in the physical plasm, there would be
no means for the evolution of physical peculiarities;
without the continuity of the intelligence, there
would be no means for the evolution of mental and
moral qualities. In both cases, without continuity,
evolution would be stopped at its first stage, and the
world would be a chaos of infinite and isolated
beginnings instead of a cosmos continually be-
coming.
We must not omit to notice that in these early
days much variety is caused in the type and in the
nature of individual progress by the environment
which surrounds the individual. Ultimately all the
souls have to develop all their powers, but the
order in which these powers are developed depends
HOW diffi:re:nce:s arise. 201
on the circumstances amid which the soul is placed.
Climate, the fertility or sterility of nature, the life
of the mountain or of the plain, of the inland forest
or the ocean shore — these things and countless others
will call into activity one set or another of the awak-
ening mental energies. A life of extreme hardship,
of ceaseless struggle with nature, will develop very
different powers from those evolved amid the luxu-
riant plenty of a tropical island; both sets of pow-
ers are needed, for the soul is to conquer every re-
gion of nature, but striking differences may thus be
evolved even in souls of the same age, and one may
appear to be more advanced than the other, accord-
ing as the observer estimates most highly the more
"practical" or the more "contemplative" powers of
the soul, the active outward-going energies, or the
quiet inward-turned musing faculties. The perfect-
ed soul possesses all, but the soul in the making
must develop them successively, and thus arises
another cause of the immense variety found among
human beings.
For again, it must be remembered that human
evolution is individual. In a group informed by a
single monadic group-soul the same instincts will be
found in all, for the receptacle of the experiences is
that monadic group-soul, and it pours its life into all
the forms dependent upon it. But each man has his
own physical vehicle and one only at a time, and the
receptacle of all experiences is the causal body,
which pours its life into its one physical vehicle, and
can affect no other physical vehicle, being connected
202 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
with none other. Hence we find differences sepa-
rating individual men greater than ever separated
closely allied animals, and hence also the evolution
of qualities cannot be studied in men in the mass,
but only in the continuing individual. The lack of
power to make such a study leaves science unable to
explain why some men tower above their fellows,
intellectual and moral giants, unable to trace the in-
tellectual evolution of a Shankaracharya or a Py-
thagoras, the moral evolution of a Buddha or of a
Christ.
Let us now consider the factors in reincarnation,
as a clear understanding of these is necessary for the
explanation of some of the difficulties — such as the
alleged loss of memory — which are felt by those un-
familiar with the idea. We have seen that man,
during his passage through physical death, Kama-
loka and Devachan, loses, one after the other, his
various bodies, the physical, the astral, and the men-
tal. These are all disintegrated, and their particles
remix with the materials of their several planes. The
connection of the man with the physical vehicle is
entirely broken off and done with; but the astral and
mental bodies hand on to the man himself, to the
Thinker, the germs of the faculties and qualities re-
sulting from the activities of the earth-life, and
these are stored within the causal body, the seeds of
his next astral and mental bodies. At this stage,
then, only the man himself is left, the laborer who
has brought his harvest home, and has lived upon it
till it is all worked up into himself. The dawn of a
THE PROCESS O^ CLOTHING 203
new life begins, and he must go forth again to \\\s
labor until the even.
The new life begins by the vivifying of the men-
tal germs, and they draw upon the materials of the
lower mental levels, till a mental body has grown up
from them that represents exactly the mental stage
of the man, expressing all his mental faculties as
organs; the experiences of the past do not exist as
mental images in this new body; as mental images
they perished when the old mind-body perished, and
only their essence, their effects on faculty, remain;
they were the food of the mind, the materials which
it wove into powers, and in the new body they reap-
pear as powers, they determine its materials, and
they form its organs. When the man, the Thinker,
has thus clothed himself with a new body for his
coming life on the lower mental levels, he proceeds,
by vivifying the astral germs, to provide himself
with an astral body for his life on the astral plane.
This, again, exactly represents his desire-nature,
faithfully reproducing the qualities he evolved in the
past, as the seed reproduces its parent tree. Thus
the man stands, fully equipped for his next incarna-
tion, the only memory of the events of his past being
in the causal body, in his own enduring form, the
one body that passes on from life to life.
Meanwhile, action external to himself is being
taken to provide him with a physical body suitable
for the expression of his qualities. In past lives he
had made ties with, contracted liabilities towards,
other human beings, and some of these will partly
204 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
determine his place of birth and his family.* He
has been a source of happiness or of unhappiness to
others; this is a factor in determining the conditions
of his coming life. His desire-nature is well disci-
plined, or unregulated and riotous; this will be taken
into account in the physical heredity of the new
body. He has cultivated certain mental powers,
such as the artistic; this mugt be considered, as here
again physical heredity is an important factor where
delicacy of nervous organization and tactile sensibil-
ity are required. And so on, in endless variety.
The man may, certainly will, have in him many in-
congruous characteristics, so that only some can find
expression in any one body that could be provided,
and a group of his powers suitable for simultaneous
expression must be selected. All this is done by
certain mighty spiritual Intelligences,! often spoken
of as the Lords of Karma, because it is their func-
tion to superintend the working out of causes con-
tinually set going by thoughts, desires, and actions.
They hold the threads of destiny which each man
has woven, and guide the reincarnating man to the
environment determined by his past, unconsciously
self-chosen through his past life.
♦This and the following causes determining the outward
circumstances of the new life will be fully explained in Chap-
ter IX., on "Karma."
t Spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky in the Secret Doctrine.
They are the Lipika, the Keepers of the karmic Records, and
the Maharajas, who direct the practical working out of the de-
crees of the Lipika.
BUILDING TH^ BODY 205
The race, the nation, the family, being thus deter-
mined, what may be called the mould of the physical
body — suitable for the expression of the man's qual-
ities, and for the working out of the causes he has
set going — is given by these great Ones, and the
new etheric double, a copy of this, is built within the
mother's womb by the agency of an elemental, the
thought of the Karmic Lords being its motive power.
The dense body is built into the etheric double mole-
cule by molecule, following it exactly, and here
physical heredity has full sway in the materials
provided. Further, the thoughts and passions of
surrounding people, especially of the continually
present father and mother, influence the building
elemental in its work, the individuals with whom the
incarnating man had formed ties in the past thus
affecting the physical conditions growing up for his
new life on earth. At a very early stage the new
astral body comes into connection with the new
etheric double, and exercises considerable influence
over its formation, and through it the mental body
works upon the nervous organization, preparing it
to become a suitable instrument for its own expres-
sion in the future. This influence, commenced in
antenatal life — so that when a child is born its
brain-formation reveals the extent and balance of
its mental and moral qualities — is continued after
birth, and this building of brain and nerves, and
their correlation to the astral and mental bodies, go
on till the seventh year of childhood, at which age
the connection between the man and his physical
206 THlv ANCIENT WISDOM
vehicle is complete, and he may be said to work
through it henceforth more than upon it. Up to
this age, the consciousness of the Thinker is more
upon the astral plane than upon the physical, and
this is often evidenced by the play of psychic facul-
ties in young children. They see invisible comrades
and fairy landscapes, hear voices inaudible to their
elders, catch charming and delicate fancies from the
astral world. These phenomena generally vanish
as the Thinker begins to work effectively through
the physical vehicle, and the dreamy child becomes
the commonplace boy or girl, oftentimes much to
the relief of bewildered parents, ignorant of the
cause of their child's "queerness." Most children
have at least a touch of this *'queerness," but they
quickly learn to hide away their fancies and visions
from their unsympathetic elders, fearful of blame
for "telling stories," or of what the child dreads far
more — ridicule. If parents could see their children's
brains, vibrating under an inextricable mingling of
physical and astral impacts, which the children
themselves are quite incapable of separating, and
receiving sometimes a thrill — so plastic are they —
even from the higher regions, giving a vision of
ethereal beauty, of heroic achievement, they would
be more patient with, more responsive to, the con-
fused prattlings of the little ones, trying to translate
into the difficult medium of unaccustomed words the
elusive touches of which they are conscious, and
which they try to catch and retain. Reincarnation,
believed in and understood, would relieve child-life
THE child's DIFFICULTIES- 207
of its most pathetic aspect, the unaided struggle of
the soul to gain control over its new vehicles, and
to connect itself fully with its densest body without
losing the power to impress the rarer ones in a way
that would enable them to convey to the denser their
own more subtle vibrations.
CHAPTER VIIL
REINCARNATION (Continued).
Tut ascending stages of consciousness through
which the Thinker passes as he reincarnates during
his long cycle of lives in the three lower worlds are
clearly marked out, and the obvious necessity for
many lives in which to experience them, if he is to
evolve at all, may carry to the more thoughtful
minds the clearest conviction of the truth of reincar-
nation.
The first of the stages is that in which all the ex-
periences are sensational, the only contribution made
by the mind consisting of the recognition that con-
tact with some objects is followed by a sensation of
pleasure, while contact with others is followed by a
sensation of pain. These objects form mental pic-
tures, and the pictures soon begin to act as a stimu-
lus to seek the objects associated with pleasure,
when those objects are not present, the germs of
memory and of mental initiative thus making their
appearance. This first rough division of the exter-
nal world is followed by the more complex idea of
the bearing of quantity on pleasure and pain, already
referred to.
At this stage of evolution memory is very short-
TH^ NE:cESSITY for MANY LIV^S 209
lived, or, in other words, mental images are very
transitory. The idea of forecasting the future from
the past, even to the most rudimentary extent, has
not dawned on the infant Thinker, and his actions
are guided from outside, by the impacts that reach
him from the external world, or at furthest by the
promptings of his appetites and passions, craving
gratification. He will throw away anything for an
immediate satisfaction, however necessary the thing
may be for his future well-being; the need of the
moment overpowers every other consideration. Of
human souls in this embryonic condition, numerous
examples can be found in books of travel, and the
necessity for many lives will be impressed on the
mind of any one who studies the mental condition of
the least evolved savages, and compares it with the
mental condition of even average humanity among
ourselves.
Needless to say that the moral capacity is no more
evolved than the mental; the idea of good and evil
has not yet been conceived. Nor is it possible to
convey to the quite undeveloped mind even an ele-
mentary notion of either good or bad. Good and
pleasant are to it interchangeable terms, as in the
well-known case of the Australian savage mentioned
by Charles Darwin. Pressed by hunger, the man
speared the nearest living creature that could serve
as food, and this happened to be his wife; a Euro-
pean remonstrated with him on the wickedness of
his deed, but failed to make any impression ; for
from the reproach that to eat his wife was very bad
14
210 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
he only deduced the inference that the stranger
thought she had proved nasty or indigestible, and
he put him right by smiling peacefully as he patted
himself after his meal, and declaring in a satisfied
way, "She is very good." Measure in thought the
moral distance between that man and S. Francis of
Assisi, and it will be seen that there must either be
evolution of souls as there is evolution of bodies, or
else in the realm of the soul there must be constant
miracle, dislocated creations.
There are two paths along either of which man
may gradually emerge from this embryonic mental
condition. He may be directly ruled and controlled
by men far more evolved than himself, or he may
be left slowly to grow unaided. The latter case
would imply the passage of uncounted millennia, for,
without example and without discipline, left to the
changing impacts of external objects, and to friction
with other men as undeveloped as himself, the inner
energies could be but very slowly aroused. As a
matter of fact, man has evolved by the road of direct
precept and example and of enforced discipline.
We have already seen that when the bulk of average
humanity received the spark which brought the
Thinker into being, there were some of the greater
Sons of Mind who incarnated as Teachers, and that
there was also a long succession of lesser Sons of
Mind, at various stages of evolution, who came into
incarnation as the crest-wave of the advancing tide
of humanity. These ruled the less evolved, under
the beneficent sway of the great Teachers, and the
SENSATION AS RUL^R 211
compelled obedience to elementary rules of right
living — very elementary at first, in truth — much
hastened the development of mental and moral facul-
ties in the embryonic souls. Apart from all other
records the gigantic remains of civilizations that
have long since disappeared — evidencing great engi-
neering skill, and intellectual conceptions far beyond
anything possible by the mass of the then infant hu-
manity— suffice to prove that there were present on
earth men with minds that were capable of greatly
planning and greatly executing.
Let us continue the early stage of the evolution
of consciousness. Sensation was wholly lord of the
mind, and the earliest mental efforts were stimulated
by desire. This led the man, slov/ly and clumsily,
to forecast, to plan. He began to recognize a defi-
nite association of certain mental images, and, when
one appeared, to expect the appearance of the other
that had invariably followed in its wake. He began
to draw inferences, and even to initiate action on the
faith of these inferences — a great advance. And he
began also to hesitate now and again to follow the
vehement promptings of desire, when he found,
over and over again, that the gratification demanded
was associated in his mind with the subsequent hap-
pening of sufifering. This action was much quick-
ened by the pressure upon him of verbally expressed
laws; he was forbidden to seize certain gratifica-
tions, and was told that suffering would follow dis-
obedience. When he had seized the delight-giving
object and found the suffering follow upon the pleas-
212 rut ANCIENT WISDOM
ure, the fulfilled declaration made a far stronger im-
pression on his mind than would have been made by
the unexpected — and therefore to him fortuitous —
happening of the same thing unforetold. Thus con-
flict continually arose between memory and desire,
and the mind grew more active by the conflict, and
was stirred into livelier functioning. The conflict,
in fact, marked the transition to the second great
stage.
Here began to show itself the germ of will. De-
sire and will guide a man's actions, and will has even
been defined as the desire which emerges triumphant
from the contest of desires. But this is a crude and
superficial view, explaining nothing. Desire is the
outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined in its
direction by the attraction of external objects. Will
is the outgoing energy of the Thinker, determined
in its direction by the conclusions drawn by the rea-
son from past experiences, or by the direct intuition
of the Thinker himself. Otherwise put: desire is
guided from without, will from within. At the be-
ginning of man's evolution, desire has complete sov-
ereignty, and hurries him hither and thither; in the
middle of his evolution, desire and will are in con-
tinual conflict, and victory lies sometimes with the
one, sometimes with the other; at the end of his
evolution desire has died, and will rules with unop-
posed, unchallenged sway. Until the Thinker is
sufficiently developed to see directly, will is guided
by him through the reason; and as the reason can
draw its conclusions only from its stock of mental
CONFLICT IS THE RULE 213
images — its experience — and that stock is limited,
the will constantly commands mistaken actions.
The suffering which flows from these mistaken ac-
tions increases the stock of mental images, and thus
gives the reason an increased store from which to
draw its conclusions. Thus progress is made and
wisdom is born.
Desire often mixes itself up with will, so that what
appears to be determined from within is really largely
prompted by the cravings of the lower nature for
objects which afford it gratification. Instead of an
open conflict between the two, the lower subtly in-
sinuates itself into the current of the higher and turns
its course aside. Defeated in the open field, the de-
sires of the personality thus conspire against their
conqueror, and often win by guile what they failed
to win by force. During the whole of this second
great stage, in which the faculties of the lower mind
are in full course of evolution, conflict is the normal
condition, conflict between the rule of sensations and
the rule of reason.
The problem to be solved in humanity is the put-
ting an end to conflict while preserving the freedom
of the will; to determine the will inevitably to the
best, while yet leaving that best as a matter of
choice. The best is to be chosen, but by a self-ini-
tiated volition, that shall come with all the certainty
of a foreordained necessity. The certainty of a com-
pelling law is to be obtained from countless wills,
each one left free to determine its own course. The
solution of that problem is simple when it is known,
214 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
though the contradiction looks irreconcilable when
first presented. Let man be left free to choose his
own actions, but let every action bring about an in-
evitable result; let him run loose amid all objects of
desire and seize whatever he will, but let him have
all the results of his choice, be they delightful or
grievous. Presently he will freely reject the ob-
jects whose possession ultimately causes him pain;
he will no longer desire them when he has experi-
enced to the full that their possession ends in
sorrow. Let him struggle to hold the pleasure and
avoid the pain, he will none the less be ground be-
tween the stones of law, and the lesson will be re-
peated any number of times found necessary; rein-
carnation offers as many lives as are needed by the
most sluggish learner. Slowly desire for an object
that brings suffering in its train will die, and when
the thing offers itself in all its attractive glamour it
will be rejected, not by compulsion but by free
choice. It is no longer desirable, it has lost its
power. Thus with thing after thing; choice more
and more runs in harmony with law. "There are
many roads of error; the road of truth is one;"
when all the paths of error have been trodden,
when all have been found to end in suffering, the
choice to walk in the way of truth is unswerving,
because based on knowledge. The lower kingdoms
work harmoniously, compelled by law; man's king-
dom is a chaos of conflicting wills, fighting against,
rebelling against law; presently there evolves from
it a nobler unity, a harmonious choice of voluntary
KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL 215
obedience, an obedience that, being voluntary, based
on knowledge and on memory of the results of dis-
obedience, is stable and can be drawn aside by no
temptation. Ignorant, inexperienced, man would
always have been in danger of falling; as a God,
knowing good and evil by experience, his choice
of the good is raised forever beyond possibility of
change.
Will in the domain of morality is generally entitled
conscience, and it is subject to the same difficulties
in this domain as in its other activities. So long as
actions are in question which have been done over
and over again, of which the consequences are famil-
iar either to the reason or to the Thinker himself, the
conscience speaks quickly and firmly. But when un-
familiar problems arise, as to the working out of
which experience is silent, conscience cannot speak
with certainty; it has but a hesitating answer from
the reason, which can draw only a doubtful inference,
and the Thinker cannot speak if his experience does
not include the circumstances that have now arisen.
Hence conscience often decides wrongly ; that is,
the will, failing clear direction from either the rea-
son or the intuition, guides action amiss. Nor can
we leave out of consideration the influences which
play upon the mind from without, from the thought-
forms of others, of friends, of the family, of the
community, of the nation.* These all surround
and penetrate the mind with their own atmosphere,
distorting the appearance of everything, and throw-
* Chapter II, on "The Astral Plane."
216 THE ancie:nt wisdom
ing all things out of proportion. Thus influenced,
the reason often does not even judge calmly from
its own experience, but draws false conclusions as it
studies its materials through a distorting medium.
The evolution of moral faculties is very largely
stimulated by the affections, animal and selfish as
these are during the infancy of the Thinker. The
laws of morality are laid down by the enlightened
reason, discerning the laws by which Nature moves,
and bringing human conduct into consonance with
the divine Will. But the impulse to obey these laws,
when no outer force compels, has its root in love, in
that hidden divinity in man which see'ks to pour
itself out, to give itself to others. Morality begins
in the infant Thinker when he is first moved by love
to wife, to child, to friend, to do some action that
serves the loved one without any thought of gain to
himself thereby. It is the first conquest over the
lower nature, the complete subjugation of which is
the achievement of moral perfection. Hence the im-
portance of never killing out, or striving to weaken,
the affections, as is done in many of the lower kinds
of occultism. However impure and gross the affec-
tions may be, they offer possibilities of moral evo-
lution from which the cold-hearted and self-isolated
have shut themselves out. It is an easier task to
purify than to create love, and this is why "the
sinners" have been said by great Teachers to be
nearer the kingdom of heaven than the Pharisees
and scribes.
The third great stage of consciousness sees the
ABSTRACT IDEAS 217
development of the higher intellectual powers; the
mind no longer dwells entirely on mental images ob-
tained from sensations, no longer reasons on purely
concrete objects, nor is concerned with the attributes
which differentiate one from another. The Thinker,
having learned clearly to discriminate between ob-
jects by dwelling upon their unlikenesses, now be-
gins to group them together by some attribute
which appears in a number of objects otherwise dis-
similar and makes a link between them. He draws
out, abstracts, his common attribute, and sets all
objects that possess it apart from the rest which are
without it; and in this way he evolves the power of
recognizing identity amid diversity, a step toward the
much later recognition of the One underlying the
many. He thus classifies all that is around him,
developing the synthetic faculty, and learning to con-
struct as well as to analyze. Presently he takes an-
other step, and conceives of the common property as
an idea, apart from all the objects in which it ap-
pears, and thus constructs a higher kind of mental
image than the image of a concrete object — ^the
image of an idea that has no phenomenal exist-
ence in the worlds of form, but which exists on
the higher levels of the mental plane, and affords
material on which the Thinker himself can work.
The lower mind reaches the abstract idea by rea-
son, and in thus doing accomplishes its loftiest
flight, touching the threshold of the formless world,
and dimly seeing that which lies beyond. The
Thinker sees these ideas, and lives among them
218 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
habitually, and when the power of abstract reasoning
is developed and exercised the Thinker is becoming
effective in his own world, and is beginning his life
of active functioning in his own sphere. Such men
care little for the life of the senses, care little for
external observation, or for mental application to
images of external objects; their powers are indrawn,
and no longer rush outwards in the search for satis-
faction. They dwell calmly within themselves, en-
grossed with the problems of philosophy, with the
deeper aspects of life and thought, seeking to under-
stand causes rather than troubling themselves with
effects, and approaching nearer and nearer to the
recognition of the One that underlies all the diversi-
ties of external Nature.
In the fourth stage of consciousness that One is
seen, and with the transcending of the barriers set
up by the intellect the consciousness spreads out to
embrace the world, seeing all things in itself and as
parts of itself and seeing itself as a ray of the Logos,
and therefore as one with Him. Where is then the
Thinker? He has become Consciousness, and, while
the spiritual Soul can at will use any of his lower
vehicles, he is no longer limited to their use, nor
needs them for this full and conscious life. Then is
compulsory reincarnation over and the man has de-
stroyed death ; he has verily achieved immortality.
Then has he become *'a pillar In the temple of my
God and shall go out no more."
To complete this part of our study, we need to
understand the successive quickenings of the vehicles
QUICKENING THE VEHICLES 219
of consciousness, the bringing them one by one into
activity as the harmonious instruments of the human
Soul.
We have seen that from the very beginning of
his separate life the Thinker has possessed coatings
of mental, astral, etheric, and dense physical matter.
These form the media by which his life vibrates out-
wards, the bridge of consciousness, as we may call it,
along which all impulses from the Thinker may reach
the dense physical body, all impacts from the outer
world may reach him. But this general use of the
successive bodies as parts of a connected whole is
a very different thing from the quickening of each
in turn to serve as a distinct vehicle of conscious-
ness, independently of those below it, and it is this
quickening of the vehicles that we have now to con-
sider.
The lowest vehicle, the dense physical body, is the
first one to be brought into harmonious working
order ; the brain and the nervous system have to be
elaborated and to be rendered delicately responsive
to every thrill which is within their gamut of vibra-
tory power. In the early stages, while the physi-
cal dense body is composed of the grosser kinds of
matter, this gamut is extremely limited, and the
physical organ of mind can respond only to the
slowest vibrations sent down. It answers far more
promptly, as is natural, to the impacts from the ex-
ternal world caused by objects similar in materials
to itself. Its quickening as a vehicle of conscious-
ness consists in its being made responsive to the
220 rut ancie:nt wisdom
vibrations that are initiated within, and the rapidity
of this quickening depends on the co-operation of
the lower nature with the higher, its loyal subordi-
nation of itself in the service of its inner ruler.
When, after many, many life-periods, it dawns upon
the lower nature that it exists for the sake of the
soul, that all its value depends on the help it can
bring to the soul, that it can win immortality only
by merging itself in the soul, then its evolution pro-
ceeds with giant strides. Before this, the evolution
has been unconscious ; at first, the gratification of the
lower nature was the object of life, and, while this
was a necessary preliminary for calling out the ener-
gies of the Thinker, it did nothing directly to render
the body a vehicle of consciousness ; the direct work-
ing upon it begins when the life of the man establishes
its centre in the mental body, and when thought com-
mences to dominate sensation. The exercise of
the mental powers works on the brain and the ner-
vous system, and the coarser materials are gradually
expelled to make room for the finer, which can vi-
brate in unison with the thought-vibrations sent to
them. The brain becomes finer in constitution, and
increases by ever more complicated convolutions the
amount of surface available for the coating of nervous
matter adapted to respond to thought-vibrations.
The nervous system becomes more delicately bal-
anced, more sensitive, more alive to every thrill of
mental activity. And when the recognition of its
function as an instrument of the Soul, spoken of
above, has come, then active co-operation in per-
PERSONALITY AS SERVANT 221
forming this function sets in. The personality be-
gins deliberately to discipline itself, and to set the
permanent interests of the immortal individual above
its own transient gratifications. It yields up the
time that might be spent in the pursuit of lower
pleasures to the evolution of mental powers; day by
day time is set apart for serious study; the brain is
gladly surrendered to receive impacts from within
instead of from without, is trained to answer to con-
secutive thinking, and is taught to refrain from
throwing up its own useless disjointed images, made
by past impressions. It is taught to remain at rest
when it is not wanted by its master; to answer, not
to initiate vibrations.* Further, some discretion
and discrimination will be used as to the food-stuffs
which supply physical materials to the brain. The
use of the coarser kinds will be discontinued, such
as animal flesh and blood and alcohol, and pure food
will build up a pure body. Gradually the lower
vibrations will find no materials capable of respond-
ing to them, and the physical body thus becomes
more and more entirely a vehicle of consciousness,
delicately responsive to all the thrills of thought and
keenly sensitive to the vibrations sent outwards by
the Thinker. The etheric double so closely follows
the constitution of the dense body that it is not neces-
* One of the signs that it is being accomplished is the cessa-
tion of the confused jumble of fragmentary images which are
set up during sleep by the independent activity of the physical
brains. When the brain is coming under control this kind of
dream is very seldom experienced.
222 TH^ ANCIENT WISDOM
sary to study separately its purification and quicken-
ing; it does not normally serve as a separate vehicle
of consciousness, but works synchronously with its
dense partner, and when separated from it either by
accident or by death, it responds very feebly to the
vibrations initiated within. Its function in truth is
not to serve as a vehicle of mental consciousness,
but as a vehicle of Prana, of specialized life-force,
and its dislocation from the denser particles to which
it conveys the life-currents is therefore disturbing and
mischievous.
The astral body is the second vehicle of conscious-
ness to be vivified, and we have already seen the
changes through which it passes as it becomes or-
ganized for its work.* When it is thoroughly organ-
ized, the consciousness which has hitherto worked
within it, imprisoned by it, when in sleep it has left
the physical body and is drifting about in the astral
world, begins not only to receive the impressions
through it of astral objects that form the so-called
dream-consciousness, but also to perceive astral ob-
jects by its senses — that is, it begins to relate the
impressions received to the objects which give rise
to those impressions. These perceptions are at first
confused, just as are the perceptions at first made
by the mind through a new physical baby-body, and
they have to be corrected by experience in the one
case as in the other. The Thinker has gradually to
discover the new powers which he can use through
this subtler vehicle, and by which he can control the
* See Chapter IL, on "The Astral Plane."
THE MENTAL VEHICLE 223
astral elements and defend himself against astral
dangers. He is not left alone to face this new world
unaided, but is taught and helped and — until he can
guard himself — protected by those who are more ex-
perienced than himself in the ways of the astral
world. Gradually the new vehicle of consciousness
comes completely under his control, and life on the
astral plane is as natural and as familiar as life on
the physical.
The third vehicle of consciousness, the mental
body, is rarely, if ever, vivified for independent ac-
tion without the direct instruction of a teacher, and
its functioning belongs to the life of the disciple at
the present stage of human evolution.* As we have
already seen, it is rearranged for separate function-
ingf on the mental plane, and here again experience
and training are needed ere it comes fully under its
owner's control. A fact — common to all these three
vehicles of consciousness, but more apt to mislead
perhaps in the subtler than in the denser, because it
is generally forgotten in their case, while it is so ob-
vious that it is remembered in the denser — is that
they are subject to evolution, and that with their
higher evolution their powers to receive and to re-
spond to vibrations increase. How many more
shades of a color are seen by a trained eye than by
an untrained. How many overtones are heard by a
trained ear, where the untrained hears only the sin-
gle fundamental note. As the physical senses grow
* See Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent."
t See Chapter IV., on "The Mental Plane."
224 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
more keen, the world becomes fuller and fuller, and
where the peasant is conscious only of his furrow
and his plough, the cultured mind is conscious of
hedgerow flower and quivering aspen, of rapturous
melody down-dropping from the skylark and the
whirring of tiny wings through the adjoining wood,
of the scudding of rabbits under the curled fronds
of the bracken, and the squirrels playing with each
other through the branches of the beeches, of all the
gracious movements of wild things, of all the fra-
grant odors of field and woodland, of all the chang-
ing glories of the cloud-flecked sky, and of all the
chasing lights and shadows on the hills. Both the
peasant and the cultured have eyes, both have brains,
but of what diff"ering powers of observation, of what
differing powers to receive impressions. Thus also
in other worlds. As the astral and mental bodies
begin to function as separate vehicles of conscious-
ness, they are in, as it were the peasant stage of re-
ceptivity, and only fragments of the astral and
mental worlds, with their strange and elusive phe-
mena, make their way into consciousness ; but
they evolve rapidly, embracing more and more, and
conveying to consciousness a more and more accurate
reflection of its environment. Here, as everywhere
else, we have to remember that our knowledge is not
the limit of Nature's powers, and that in the astral
and mental worlds, as in the physical, we are still
children, picking up a few shells cast up by the
waves, while the treasures hid in the ocean are still
unexplored.
rut CAUSAL VEHICLE 225
The quickening of the causal body as a vehicle of
consciousness follows in due course the quickening
of the mental body, and opens up to man a yet more
marvellous state of consciousness, stretching back-
wards into an illimitable past, onwards into the
reaches of the future. Then the Thinker not only
possesses the memory of his own past and can trace
his growth through the long succession of his incar-
nate and excarnate lives, but he can also roam at will
through the storied past of the earth, and learn the
weighty lessons of world-experience, studying the
hidden laws which guide evolution and the deep
secrets of life hidden in the bosom of Nature. In
that lofty vehicle of consciousness he can reach the
veiled Isis, and lift a corner of her down-dropped
veil; for there he can face her eyes without being
blinded by her lightning glances, and he- can see in
the radiance that flows from her the causes of the
worlds' sorrow and its ending, with heart pitiful and
compassionate, but no longer wrung with helpless
pain. Strength and calm and wisdom come to those
who are using the causal body as a vehicle of con-
sciousness, and who behold with opened eyes the glory
of the Good Law.
When the buddhic body is quickened as a vehicle
of consciousness the man enters into the bliss of
non-separateness, and knows in full and vivid reali-
zation his unity with all that is. As the predominant
element of consciousness in the causal body is know-
ledge, and ultimately wisdom, so the predominant
element of consciousness in the buddhic body is bliss
15
226 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
and love. The serenity of wisdom chiefly marks the
one, while tenderest compassion streams forth inex-
haustibly from the other; when to these is added the
godlike and unruffled strength that marks the func-
tioning of Atma, then humanity is crowned with
divinity, and the God-man is manifest in all the pleni-
tude of his power, of his wisdom, of his love.
The handing down to the lower vehicles of such
part of the consciousness belonging to the higher as
they are able to receive does not immediately follow
on the successive quickening of the vehicles. In this
matter individuals differ very widely, according
to their circumstances and their work, for this quick-
ening of the vehicles above the physical rarely occurs
till probationary discipleship* is reached, and then
the duties to be discharged depend on the needs of
the time. The disciple, and even the aspirant for
discipleship, is taught to hold all his powers entirely
for the service of the world, and the sharing of the
lower consciousness in the knowledge of the higher
is for the most part determined by the needs of the
work in which the disciple is engaged. It is neces-
sary that the disciple should have the full use of his
vehicles of consciousness on the higher planes, as
much of his work can be accomplished only in them ;
but the conveying of a knowledge of that work to
the physical vehicle, which is no way concerned in
it, is a matter of no importance and the conveyance
or non-conve>'ance is generally determined by the
effect that the one course, or the other would have
* See Chapter XL, on "Man's Ascent."
SHARING knowledge: 227
on the efficiency of his work on the physical plane.
The strain on the physical body when the higher con-
sciousness compels it to vibrate responsively is very
great, at the present stage of evolution, and unless
the external circumstances are very favorable this
strain is apt to cause nervous disturbance, hyper-
sensitiveness with its attendant evils. Hence most
of those who are in full possession of the quickened
higher vehicles of consciousness, and whose most im-
portant work is done out of the body, remain apart
from the busy haunts of men, if they desire to throw
down into the physical consciousness the knowledge
they use on the higher planes, thus preserving the
sensitive physical vehicle from the rough usage and
clamor of ordinary life.
The main preparations to be made for receiving in
the physical vehicle the vibrations of the higher con-
sciousness are : its purification from grosser mate-
rials by pure food and pure life; the entire subjuga-
tion of the passions, and the cultivation of an
even, balanced temper and mind, unaffected by the
turmoil and vicissitudes of external life; the habit of
quiet meditation on lofty topics, turning the mind
away from the objects of the senses, and from the
mental images arising from them, and fixing it on
higher things ; the cessation of hurry, especially of
that restless, excitable hurry of the mind, which keeps
the brain continually at work and flying from
one subject to another; the genuine love for the
things of the higher world, that makes them more
attractive than the objects of the lower, so that the
228 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
mind rests contentedly in their companionship as in
that of a well-loved friend. In fact, the preparations
are much the same as those necessary for the con-
scious separation of "soul" from "body," and those
were elsewhere stated by me as follows : The student
"Must begin by practising extreme temperance in all things,
cultivating an equable and serene state of mind: his life must
be clean and his thoughts pure, his body held in strict subjec-
tion to the soul, and his mind trained to occupy itself with noble
and lofty themes ; he must habitually practise compassion,
sympathy, helpfulness to others, with indifference to troubles
and pleasures affecting himself, and he must cultivate courage,
steadfastness and devotion. In fact, he must live the religion
and ethics that other people for the most part only talk. Hav-
ing by persevering practice learned to control his mind to some
extent, so that he is able to keep it fixed on one line of thought
for some little time, he must begin in more rigid training by
a daily practise of concentration on some difficult or abstract
subject, or on some lofty object of devotion ; this concentration
means the firm fixing of the mind on one single point, without
wandering, and without yielding to any distractions caused by
external objects, by the activity of the senses, or by that of
the mind itself. It must be braced up to an unswerving stead-
iness and fixity, until gradually it will learn so to withdraw
its attention from the outer world and from the body that the
senses will remain quiet and still, while the mind is intensely
alive with all its energies drawn inwards to be launched at a
single point of thought, the highest to which it can attain.
When it is able to hold itself thus with comparative ease it is
ready for a further step, and by a strong but calm effort of the
will it can throw itself beyond the highest thought it can reach
while working in the physical brain, and in that effort will
rise to and unite itself with the higher consciousness and find
itself free of the body. When this is done there is no sense of
sleep or dream nor any loss of consciousness; the man finds
REINCARNATION OR CREATION 229
himself outside his body, but as though he had merely slipped
off a weighty encumbrance, not as though he had lost any part
of himself; he is not really 'disembodied,' but has risen out of
his gross body 'in a body of light,' which obeys his sUghtest
thought and serves as a beautiful and perfect instrument for
carrying out his will. In this he is free of the subtle worlds,
but will need to train his faculties long and carefully for reUa-
ble work under the new conditions."
"Freedom from the body may be obtained in other ways : by
the rapt intensity of devotion or by special methods that may
be imparted by a great teacher to his disciple. Whatever the
way, the end is the same — the setting free of the soul in full
consciousness, able to examine its new surroundings in regions
beyond the treading of the man of flesh. At will it can return
to the body and re-enter it, and under these circumstances it
can impress on the brain-mind, and thus retain while in the
body, the memory of the experiences it has undergone."*
Those who have grasped the main ideas sketched
in the foregoing pages will feel that these ideas are
in themselves the strongest proof that reincarnation
is a fact in nature. It is necessary, in order that the
vast evolution implied in the phrase, "the evolution
of the soul," may be accomplished. The only alter-
native— putting aside for the moment the material-
istic idea that the soul is only the aggregate of the
vibrations of a particular kind of physical matter — is
that each soul is a new creation, made when a babe
is born, and stamped with virtuous or with vicious
tendencies, endowed with ability or with stupidity,
by the arbitrary whim of the creative power. As the
Mohammedan would say, his fate is hung round his
* "Conditions of Life after Death," Nineteenth Century,
November, 1896.
230 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
neck at birth, for a man's fate depends on his char-
acter and his surroundings, and a newly created soul
flung into the world must be doomed to happiness
or misery according to the circumstances environing
him and the character stamped upon him. Predes-
tination in its most offensive form is the alternative
of reincarnation. Instead of looking on men as
slowly evolving, so that the brutal savage of to-day
will in time evolve the noblest qualities of saint and
hero, and thus seeing in the world a wisely planned
and wisely directed process of growth, we shall be
obliged to see in it a chaos of most unjustly treated
sentient beings, awarded happiness or misery,
knowledge or ignorance, virtue or vice, wealth or
poverty, genius or idiocy, by an arbitrary external
will, unguided by either justice or mercy — a veritable
pandemonium, irrational and unmeaning. And this
chaos is supposed to be the higher part of a cosmos,
in the lower regions of which are manifested all the
orderly and beautiful workings of a law that ever
evolves higher and more complex forms from the
lower and the simpler, that obviously ''makes for
righteousness," for harmony, and for beauty.
If it be admitted that the soul of the savage is des-
tined to live and to evolve, and that he is not doomed
for eternity to his present infant state, but that his
evolution will take place after death and in other
worlds, then the principle of soul-evolution is con-
ceded, and the question of the place of evolution
alone remains. Were all souls on earth at the same
stage of evolution, much might be said for the con-
MANY WORLDS IN TURN 231
tention that further worlds are needed for the evolu-
tion of souls beyond the infant stage. But we have
around us souls that are far advanced, and that were
born with noble mental and moral qualities. By
parity of reasoning, we must suppose them to have
been evolved in other worlds ere their one birth in
this, and we cannot but wonder why an earth that
offers varied conditions, fit for little-developed and
also for advanced souls, should be paid only one
flying visit by souls at every stage of development,
all the rest of their evolution being carried on in
worlds similar to this, equally able to afford all the
conditions needed to evolve the souls at different
stages of evolution, as we find them to be when they
are bom here. The Ancient Wisdom teaches, in-
deed, that the soul progresses through many worlds,
but it also teaches that he is born in each of these
worlds over and over again, until he has completed
the evolution possible in that world. The worlds
themselves, according to its teaching, form an evolu-
tionary chain, and each plays its own part as a field
for certain stages of evolution. Our own world
offers a field suitable for the evolution of the min-
eral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms, and
therefore collective or individual reincarnation goes
on upon it in all these kingdoms. Truly, further
evolution lies before us in other worlds, but in the
divine order they are not open to us until we have
learned and mastered the lessons our own world has
to teach.
There are many lines of thought that lead us to
232 THK ANClDNT WISDOM
the same goal of reincarnation, as we study the
world around us. The immense differences that
separate man from man have been already noticed
as implying an evolutionary past behind each soul;
and attention has been drawn to these as differen-
tiating the individual reincarnation of men — all of
whom belong to a single species — from the reincar-
nation of monadic group-souls in the lower king-
doms. The comparatively small differences that sep-
arate the physical bodies of men, all being ex-
ternally recognizable as men, should be contrasted
with the immense differences that separate the low-
est savage and the noblest human type in mental and
moral capacities. Savages are often splendid in
physical development and with large cranial con-
tents, but how different their minds from that of a
philosopher or of a saint!
If high mental and moral qualities are regarded as
the accumulated results of civilized living, then we
are confronted by the fact that the ablest men of
the present are overtopped by the intellectual giants
of the past, and that none of our own day reaches
the moral attitude of some historical saints. Fur-
ther, we have to consider that genius has neither
parent nor child; that it appears suddenly and not
as the apex of a gradually improving family, and is
itself generally sterile, or, if a child be born to it, it
is a child of the body, not of the mind. Still more
significantly, a musical genius is for the most part
born in a musical family, because that form of gen-
ius needs for its manifestation a nervous organiza-
INFANT PRODlGlSiS 233
tion of a peculiar kind, and nervous organization
falls under the law of heredity. But how often in
such a family its object seems over when it has pro-
vided a body for a genius, and it then flickers out
and vanishes in a few generations into the obscurity
of average humanity. Where are the descendants of
Bach, of Beethoven, of Mozart, of Mendelssohn,
equal to their sires? Truly genius does not descend
from father to son, like the family physical types of
the Stuart and the Bourbon.
On what ground, save that of reincarnation, can
the "infant prodigy" be accounted for? Take as an
instance the case of the child who became Dr.
Young, the discoverer of the undulatory theory of
light, a man whose greatness is scarcely yet suffi-
ciently widely recognized. As a child of two he
could read "with considerable fluency," and before
he was four he had read through the Bible twice; at
seven he began arithmetic, and mastered Walking-
ham's Tutor's Assistant before he had reached the
middle of it under his tutor, and a few years later
we find him mastering, while at school, Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, mathematics, book-keeping, French, Ital-
ian, turning and telescope-making, and delighting
in Oriental literature. At fourteen he was to be
placed under private tuition with a boy a year and
a half younger, but, the tutor first engaged failing to
arrive. Young taught the other boy.* Sir William
Rowan Hamilton showed power even more preco-
cious. He began to learn Hebrew when he was
* Life of Dr. Thomas Young, by G. Peacock, D.D.
234 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
barely three, and "at the age of seven he was pro-
nounced by one of the Fellows of Trinity College,
Dublin, to have shown a greater knowledge of the
language than many candidates for a fellowship.
At the age of thirteen he had acquired considerable
knowledge of at least thirteen languages. Among
these, besides the classical and the modern European
languages, were included Persian, Arabic, Sanscrit,
Hindustani, and even Malay. ... He wrote, at the
age of fourteen, a complimentary letter to the Per-
sian Ambassador, who happened to visit Dublin;
and the latter said he had not thought there was a
man in Britain who could have written such a docu-
ment in the Persian language." A relative of his
says: "I remember him a little boy of six, when he
would answer a difficult mathematical question, and
run off gaily to his little cart. At twelve he engaged
Colburn, the American 'calculating boy,' who was
then being exhibited as a curiosity in Dublin, and
he had not always the worst of the encounter."
When he was eighteen. Dr. Brinkley (Royal Astron-
omer of Ireland) said of him in 1823 : "This young
man, I do not say mill be, but is, the first mathe-
matician of his age." "At college his career was
perhaps unexampled. Among a number of com-
petitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in
every subject, and at every examination."*
Let the thoughtful student compare these boys
with a semi-idiot, or even with an average lad, note
how, starting with these advantages, they become
*North British Review. September, 1866.
likEne^ss and unlikeness 235
leaders of thought, and then ask himself whether
such souls have no past behind them.
Family Hkenesses are generally explained as being
due to the 'iaw of heredity," but differences in men-
tal and in moral character are continually found
within a family circle, and these are left unexplained.
Reincarnation explains the likenesses by the fact
that a soul in taking birth is directed to a family
which provides by its physical heredity a body suit-
able to express his characteristics; and it explains
the unlikenesses by attaching the mental and moral
character to the individual himself, while showing
that ties set up in the past have led him to take birth
in connection with some other individual of that
family.* A ''matter of significance in connection
with twins is that during infancy they will often be
indistinguishable from each other, even to the keen
eye of mother and of nurse; whereas, later in life,
when Manas has been working on his physical en-
casement, he will have so modified it that the physi-
cal likeness lessens, and the differences of character
stamp themselves on the mobile features.''^ Phys-
ical likeness with mental and moral unlikeness
seems to imply the meeting of two different lines of
causation.
The striking dissimilarity found to exist between
people of about equal intellectual power in assimi-
lating particular kinds of knowledge is another
"pointer" to reincarnation. A truth is recognized
*See Chapter IX., on "Karma."
"t Reincarnation, by Annie Besant, p. 64.
236 THK ancie:nt wisdom
at once by one, while the other fails to grasp it even
after long and careful observation. Yet the very
opposite may be the case when another truth is pre-
sented to them, and it may be seen by the second
and missed by the first. "Two students are at-
tracted to Theosophy and begin to study it; at a
year's end one is familiar with its main conceptions
and can apply them, while the other is struggling in
a maze. To the one each principle seemed familiar
on presentation: to the other new, unintelligible,
strange. The believer in reincarnation understands
that the teaching is old to the one and new to the
other; one learns quickly because he remembers, he
is but recovering past knowledge; the other learns
slowly because his experience has not included these
truths of nature, and he is acquiring them toilfuUy
for the first time."* So also ordinary intuition is
"merely recognition of a fact familiar in a past life,
though met with for the first time in the present,"!
another sign of the road along which the individual
has travelled in the past.
The main difficulty with many people in the re-
ception of the doctrine of reincarnation is their own
absence of memory of their past. Yet they are
every day familiar with the fact that they have for-
gotten very much even of their lives in their present
bodies, and that the early years of childhood are
blurred and those of infancy a blank. They must
also know that events of the past which have entirely
slipped out of their normal consciousness are yet
♦ Ibid. p. 67. t Ibid. p. 67.
MEMORY Olf PAST LIVES 237
hidden away in dark caves of memory, and can be
brought out again vividly in some form of disease
or under the influence of mesmerism. A dying man
has been known to speak a language heard only
in infancy, and unknown to him during a long life;
in delirium, events long forgotten have presented
themselves vividly to the consciousness. Nothing
is really forgotten; but much is hidden out of sight
of the limited vision of our waking consciousness,
the most limited form of our consciousness, although
the only consciousness recognized by the vast ma-
jority. Just as the memory of some of the present
life is indrawn beyond the reach of this waking con-
sciousness, and makes itself known again only when
the brain is hypersensitive and thus able to respond
to vibrations that usually beat against it unheeded,
so is the memory of the past lives stored up out of
reach of the physical consciousness. It is all with
the Thinker, who alone persists from life to life;
he has the whole book of memory within his reach,
for he is the only "I" that has passed through all
the experiences recorded therein. Moreover, he can
impress his own memories of the past on his
physical vehicle, as soon as it has been sufficiently
purified to answer to his swift and subtle vibrations,
and then the man of flesh can share his knowledge
of the storied past. The difficulty of memory does
not lie in forgetfulness, for the lower vehicle, the
physical body, has never passed through the pre-
vious lives of its owner; it lies in the absorption of
the present body in its present environment, in its
238 THK ANCIENT WISDOM
coarse irresponsiveness to the delicate thrills in which
alone the soul can speak. Those who would re-
member the past must not have their interests cen-
tred in the present, and they must purify and re-
fine the body till it is able to receive impressions
from the subtler spheres.
Memory of their own past lives, however, is
possessed by a considerable number of people who
have achieved the necessary sensitiveness of the
physical organism, and to these, of course, reincar-
nation is no longer a theory, but has become a
matter of personal knowledge. They have learned
how much richer life becomes when memories of
past lives pour into it, when the friends of this brief
day are found to be the friends of the long-ago, and
old remembrances strengthen the ties of the fleeting
present. Life gains security and dignity when it is
seen with a long vista behind it, and when the loves
of old reappear in the loves of to-day. Death fades
into its proper place as a mere incident in life, a
change from one scene to another, like a journey
that separates bodies but cannot sunder friend from
friend. The links of the present are found to be
part of a golden chain that stretches backwards, and
the future can be faced with a glad security in the
thought that these links will endure through days to
come, and form part of that unbroken chain.
Now and then we find children who have brought
over a memory of their immediate past, for the
most part when they have died in childhood and are
reborn almost immediately. In the West such cases
MEMORY AND FACULTY 239
are rarer than in the East, because in the West the
first words of such a child would be met with dis-
belief, and he would quickly lose faith in his own
memories. In the East, where belief in reincarna-
tion is almost universal, the child's remembrances
are listened to, and where the opportunity serves
they have been verified.
There is another important point with respect to
memory that will repay consideration. The memory
of past events remains, as we have seen, with the
Thinker only, but the results of those events em-
bodied in faculties are at the service of the lower
man. If the whole of these past events were thrown
down into the physical brain, a vast mass of experi-
ences in no classified order, without arrangement,
the man could not be guided by the outcome of the
past, nor utilize it for present help. Compelled to
make a choice between two lines of action, he would
have to pick, out of the unarranged facts of his past,
events similar in character, trace out their results,
and after long and weary study arrive at some con-
clusion— a conclusion very likely to be vitiated by
the overlooking of some important factor, and
reached long after the need for decision had passed.
All the events, trivial and important, of some hun-
dreds of lives would form a rather unwieldy and
chaotic mass for reference in an emergency that de-
manded a swift decision. The far more effective
plan of Nature leaves to the Thinker the memory
of the events, provides a long period of excarnate
existence for the mental body, during which all the
240 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
events are tabulated and compared and their results
are classified; then these results are embodied as
faculties, and these faculties form the next mental
body of the Thinker. In this way, the enlarged and
improved faculties are available for immediate use,
and, the results of the past being in them, a decision
can be come to in accordance with those results and
without any delay. The clear quick insight and
prompt judgment are nothing else than the outcome
of past experiences, moulded into an effective form
for use; they are surely more useful instruments
than would be a mass of unassimilated experiences,
out of which the relevant ones would have to be
selected and compared, and from which inferences
would have to be drawn, on each separate occasion
on which a choice arises.
From all these lines of thought, however, the
mind turns back to rest on the fundamental neces-
sity for reincarnation if life is to be made intelligi-
ble, and if injustice and cruelty are not to mock the
helplessness of man. With reincarnation man is a
dignified, immortal being, evolving towards a di-
vinely glorious end; without it, he is a tossing straw
on the stream of chance circumstances, irresponsible
for his character, for his actions, for his destiny.
With it, he may look forward with fearless hope,
however low in the scale of evolution he may be to-
day, for he is on the ladder to divinity, and the
climbing to its summit is only a question of time;
without it, he has no reasonable ground of assurance
as to progress in the future, nor indeed any reason-
LAW OR CHANCE 241
able ground of assurance in a future at all. Why
should a creature without a past look forward to a
future? He may be a mere bubble on the ocean of
time. Flung into the world from nonentity, with
qualities, good or evil, attached to him without reason
or desert, why should he strive to make the best of
them? Will not his future, if he have one, be as
isolated, as uncaused, as unrelated as his present? In
dropping reincarnation from its beliefs, the modern
world has deprived God of His justice and has bereft
man of his security ; he may be 'lucky" or ''unlucky,"
but the strength and dignity conferred by reliance
on a changeless law are rent away from him, and he
is left tossing helplessly on an unnavigable ocean of
life.
CHAPTER IX.
Karma.
Having traced the evolution of the soul by the
way of reincarnation, we are now in a position to
study the great law of causation under which re-
births are carried on, the law which is named Karma.
Karma is a Sanskrit word, Hterally meaning ''action;"
as all actions are effects flowing from preceding
causes, and as each effect becomes a cause of future
effects, this idea of cause and effect is an essential
part of the idea of action, and the word action, or
karma, is therefore used for causation, or for the
unbroken linked series of causes and effects that
make up all human activity. Hence the phrase is
sometimes used of an event, "This is my karma,"
i.e.y "This event is the effect of a cause set going by
me in the past." No one life is isolated; it is the
child of all the lives before it, the parent of all the
lives that follow it, in the total aggregate of the lives
that make up the continuing existence of the indi-
vidual. There is no such thing as "chance" or as
"accident;" every event is linked to a preceding
cause, to a following effect; all thoughts, deeds,
circumstances are causally related to the past and
will causally influence the future; as our ignorance
LAW AND LIBERTY 243
shrouds from our vision alike the past and the
future, events often appear to us to come suddenly
from the void, to be "accidental," but this appear-
ance is illusory and is due entirely to our lack of
knowledge. Just as the savage, ignorant of the
laws of the physical universe, regards physical events
as uncaused, and the results of unknown physical laws
as ''miracles;" so do many, ignorant of moral and
mental laws, regard moral and mental events as un-
caused, and the results of unknown moral and mental
laws as good and bad "luck."
When at first this idea of inviolable, immutable
law in a realm hitherto vaguely ascribed to chance
dawns upon the mind, it is apt to result in a sense
of helplessness, almost of moral and mental paralysis.
Man seems to be held in the grip of an iron destiny,
and the resigned "kismet" of the Moslem appears to
be the only philosophical utterance. Just so might
the savage feel when the idea of physical law^ first
dawns on his startled intelligence, and he learns
that every movement of his body, every movement
in external nature, is carried on under immutable
laws. Gradually he learns that natural laws only
lay down conditions under which all workings must
be carried on, but do not prescribe the workings;
so that man remains ever free at the centre, while
limited in his external activities by the conditions of
the plane on whch those activities are carried on.
He learns further that while the conditions master
him, constantly frustrating his strenuous efiforts, so
long as he is ignorant of them, or, knowing them.
244 mt ANCIENT WISDOM
fights against them, he masters them and they be-
come his servants and helpers when he understands
them, knows their directions, and calculates their
forces.
In truth science is possible only on the physical
plane because its laws are inviolable, immutable.
Were there no such things as natural laws, fhere
could be no sciences. An investigator makes a
number of experiments, and from the results of these
he learns how Nature works ; knowing this, he
can calculate how to bring about a certain desired
result, and if he fail in achieving that result he
knows that he has omitted some necessary condition
— either his knowledge is imperfect, or he has made
a miscalculation. He reviews his knowledge, re-
vises his methods, recasts his calculations, with a
serene and complete certainty that if he asks his
question rightly Nature will answer him with un-
varying precision. Hydrogen and oxygen will not
give him water to-day and prussic acid to-morrow ;
fire will not burn him to-day and freeze him to-
morrow. If water be a fluid to-day and a solid to-
morrow, it is because the conditions surrounding it
have been altered, and the reinstatement of the
original conditions will bring about the original re-
sult. Every new piece of information about the
laws of Nature is not a fresh restriction but a fresh
power, for all these energies of Nature become
forces which he can use in proportion as he under-
stands them. Hence the saying that "knowledge is
power," for exactly in proportion to his knowledge
maste:r by knowledge: 245
can he utilize these forces; by selecting those with
which he will work, by balancing one against an-
other, by neutralizing opposing energies that would
interfere with his object, he can calculate before-
hand the result, and bring about what he prede-
termines. Understanding and manipulating causes,
he can predict effects, and thus the very rigidity of
nature which seemed at first to paralyze human
action can be used to produce an infinite variety of
results. Perfect rigidity in each separate force
makes possible perfect flexibility in their combina-
tions. For the forces being of every kind, moving
in every direction, and each being calculable, a
selection can be made, and the selected forces so
combined as to yield any desired results. The object
to be gained being determined, it can be infallibly
obtained by a careful balancing of forces in the com-
bination put together as a cause. But, be it remem-
bered, knowledge is requisite thus to guide events,
to bring about desired results. The ignorant man
stumbles helplessly along, striking himself against
the immutable laws and seeing his efforts fail, while
the man of knowledge walks steadily forward, fore-
seeing, causing, preventing, adjusting, and bringing
about that at which he aims, not because he is
lucky but because he understands. The one is
the toy, the slave of Nature, whirled along by her
forces; the other is her master, using her energies
to carry him onwards in the direction chosen by his
will.
That which is true of the physical realm of law is
246 THK ancie:nt wisdom
true also of the moral and mental worlds, equally
realms of law. Here also the ignorant is a slave,,
the sage is a monarch; here also the inviolability,
the immutability, that were regarded as paralyzing
are found to be the necessary conditions of sure
progress and of clear-sighted direction of the future.
Man can become the master of his destiny only be-
cause that destiny lies in a realm of law, where
knowledge can build up the science of the soul and
place in the hands of man the power of controlling his
future — of choosing alike his future character and
his future circumstances. The knowledge of karma,
that threatened to paralyze, becomes an inspiring, a
supporting, an uplifting force.
Karma is, then, the law of causation, the law of
cause and effect. It was put pointedly by the
Christian Initiate, vS. Paul : '*Be not deceived : God
is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth that
shall he also reap."* Man is continually sending
out forces on all the planes on which he functions;
these forces — themselves in quantity and quality the
effects of his past activities — are causes which he
sets going in each world he inhabits; they bring
about certain definite effects both on himself and on
others, and as these causes radiate forth from him-
self as centre over the whole field of his activity, he
is responsible for the results they bring about. As
a magnet has its "magnetic field," an area within
which all its forces play, larger or smaller according
to its strength, so has every man a field of influence
* Galatians, vi. 7.
I^ORCES IN THREES WORLDS 247
within which play the forces he emits, and these
forces work in curves that return to their forth-
sender, that re-enter the centre whence they
emerged.
As the subject is a very complicated one, we will
subdivide it, and then study the subdivisions one by
one.
Three classes of energies are sent forth by ma'n
in his ordinary life, belonging respectively to the
three worlds that he inhabits: mental energies on
the mental plane, giving rise to the causes we call
thoughts; desire energies on the astral plane, giving
rise to those we call desires ; physical energies
aroused by these, and working on the physical
plane, giving rise to the causes we call actions.
We have to study each of these in its workings, and
to understand the class of effects to which each gives
rise, if we wish to trace intelligently the part that
each plays in the perplexed and complicated com-
binations we set up, called in their totality "our
karma." When a man, advancing more swiftly than
his fellows, gains the ability to function on higher
planes, he then becomes the centre of higher forces,
but for the present we may leave these out of ac-
count and confine ourselves to ordinary humanity,
treading the cycle of reincarnation in the three
worlds.
In studying these three classes of energies we
shall have to distinguish between their effect on the
man who generates them and their effect on others
who come within the field of his influence ; for a lack
248 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
of understanding on this point often leaves the
student in a slough of hopeless bewilderment.
Then we must remember that every force works
on its own plane and reacts on the planes below it
in proportion to its intensity ; the plane on which it
is generated gives it its special characteristics, and
in its reaction on lower planes it sets up vibrations
in their finer or coarser materials according to its
own original nature. The motive which generates
the activity determines the plane to which the force
belongs.
Next, it will be necessary to distinguish between
the ripe karma, ready to show itself as inevitable
events in the present life; the karma of character,
showing itself in tendencies that are the outcome of
accumulated experiences, and that are capable of
being modified in the present life by the same powei
(the Ego) that created them in the past; the karma
that is now making, and will give rise to future
events and future character.*
Further, we have to realize that while a man makes
his own individual karma he also connects himself
thereby with others, thus becoming a member of
various groups — family, national, racial — and as a
member he shares in the collective karma of each of
these groups.
It will be seen that the study of karma is one of
* These divisions are familiar to the students as Prarabdha
(commenced, to be worked out in the life) ; Sanchita (accumu-
lated), a part of which is seen in the tendencies; Kriyamana,
in course of making.
MAN se:lf-created 249
much complexity; however, by grasping the main
principles of its working as set out above, a coherent
idea of its general bearing may be obtained without
much difficulty, and its details can be studied at
leisure as opportunity offers. Above all, let it
never be forgotten, whether details are understood
or not, that each man makes his own karma, creat-
ing alike his own capacities and his own limitations;
and that working at any time with these self-created
capacities, and within these self-created limitations,
he is still himself, the living soul, and can strengthen
or weaken his capacities, enlarge or contract his
limitations.
The chains that bind him are of his own forging,
and he can file them away or rivet them more
strongly; the house he lives in is of his own build-
ing, and he can improve it, let it deteriorate, or
rebuild it, as he will. We are ever working in
plastic clay and can shape it to our fancy, but the
clay hardens and becomes as iron, retaining the
shape we gave it. A proverb from the Hifopadesha
runs, as translated by Sir Edwin Arnold:
"Look ! the clay dries into iron, but the potter moulds the clay ;
Destiny to-day is master — Man was master yesterday."
Thus we are all masters of our to-morrows, how-
ever much we are hampered to-day by the results of
our yesterdays.
Let us now take in order the divisions already set
out under which karma may be studied.
Three classes of causes, with their effects on their
250 THK ANCIKNT WISDOM
creator and on those he influences. The first of these
classes is composed of our thoughts. Thought is
the most potent factor in the creation of human
karma, for in thought the energies of the Self are
working in mental matter, the matter which, in its
finer kinds, forms the individual vehicle, and even
in its coarser kinds responds swiftly to every vibra-
tion of self-consciousness. The vibrations which
we call thought, the immediate activity of the
Thinker, give rise to forms of mind-stuff, or mental
images, which shape and mould his mental body, as
we have already seen; every thought modifies this
mental body, and the mental faculties in each suc-
cessive life are made by the thinkings of the pre-
vious lives. A man can have no thought-power, no
mental ability, that he has not himself created by
patiently repeated thinkings; on the other hand, no
mental image that he has thus created is lost, but re-
mains as material for faculty, and the aggregate of
any group of mental images is built into a faculty
which grows stronger with every additional think-
ing, or creation of a mental image, of the same kind.
Knowing this law, the man can gradually make for
himself the mental character he desires to possess,
and he can do it as definitely and as certainly as a
bricklayer can build a wall. Death does not stop
his work, but by setting him free from the encum-
brance of the body facilitates the process of working
up his mental images into the definite organ we call
a faculty, and he brings this back with him to his
next birth on the physical plane, part of the brain
Ei^^EJCTS ON othe:rs 251
of the new body being moulded so as to serve as the
organ of this faculty, in a way to be explained pres-
ently. All these faculties together form the mental
body for his opening life on earth, and his brain and
nervous system are shaped to give this mental body
expression on the physical plane. Thus the mental
images created in one life appear as mental char-
acteristics and tendencies in another, and for this
reason it is written in one of the Upanishads : "Man
is a creature of reflection; that which he reflects on
in this life he becomes the same hereafter."* Such
is the law, and it places the building of our mental
character entirely in our own hands ; if we build
well, ours the advantage and the credit; if we build
badly, ours the loss and the blame. Mental char-
acter, then, is a case of individual karma in its
action on the individual who generates it.
This same man that we are considering, however,
aflfects others by his thoughts. For these mental
images that form his own mental body set up vibra-
tions, thus reproducing themselves in secondary
forms. These generally, being mingled with desire,
take up some astral matter, and I have therefore
elsewheref called these secondary thought-forms
astro-mental images. Such forms leave their cre-
ator and lead a quasi-independent life — still keep-
ing up a magnetic tie with their progenitor. They
come into contact with and affect others, in this
way setting up karmic links between these others
* Chhdndogyopanishad, IV., xiv. 1.
^ Karma, p. 25. (Theosophical Manual, No. IV.)
252 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
and himself; thus they largely influence his future
environment. In such fashion are made the ties
which draw people together for good or evil in
later lives; which surround us with relatives, friends,
and enemies ; which bring across our path helpers
and hinderers, people who benefit and who in-
jure us, people who love us without our winning
in this life, and who hate us though in this life we
have done nothing to deserve their hatred. Study-
ing these results, we grasp a great principle — that
while our thoughts produce our mental and moral
character in their action on ourselves, they help to
determine our human associates in the future by
their efifects on others.
The second great class of energies is composed of
our desires — our outgoings after objects that attract
us in the external world ; as a mental element always
enters into these in man, we may extend the term
''mental images" to include them, although they ex-
press themselves chiefly in astral matter. These in
their action on their progenitor mould and form his
body of desire, or astral body, shape his fate when
he passes into Kamaloka after death, and determine
the nature of his astral body in his next rebirth.
When the desires are bestial, drunken, cruel, un-
clean, they are the fruitful causes of congenital dis-
eases, of weak and diseased brains, giving rise to
epilepsy, catalepsy, and nervous diseases of all kinds,
of physical malformations and deformities, and, in
extreme cases, of monstrosities. Bestial appetites
of an abnormal kind or intensity may set up links
e:i?fe:cts of de:sire:s 253
in the astral world which for a time chain the
Egos, clothed in astral bodies shaped by these ap-
petites, to the astral bodies of animals to which these
appetites properly belong, thus delaying their rein-
carnation; where this fate is escaped, the bestially
shaped astral body will sometimes impress its char-
acteristics on the forming physical body of the babe
during antenatal life, and produce the semihuman
horrors that are occasionally born.
Desires, — because they are outgoing energies that
attach themselves to objects, — always attract the
man towards an environment in which they may be
gratified. Desires for earthly things, linking the
soul to the outer world, draw him towards the place
where the objects of desire are most readily obtain-
able, and therefore it is said that a man is born
according to his desires.* They are one of the
causes that determine the place of rebirth.
The astro-mental images caused by desires affect
others as do those generated by thoughts. They,
therefore, also link us with other souls, and often by
the strongest ties of love and hatred, for at the pres-
ent stage of human evolution an ordinary man's de-
sires are generally stronger and more sustained
than his thoughts. They thus play a great part in
determining his human surroundings in future lives,
and may bring into those lives persons and influences
of whose connection with himself he is totally un-
conscious. Suppose a man by sending out a thought
of bitter hatred and revenge has helped to form in
* See Brihadaranyakopanishad, IV., iv. 5-7, and context.
254 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
another the impulse which results in a murder; the
creator of that thought is linked by his karma to the
committer of the crime, although they have never
met on the physical plane, and the wrong he has
done to him, by helping to impel him to a crime,
will come back as an injury in the infliction of which
the whilom criminal will play his part. Many a
"bolt from the blue" that is felt as utterly unde-
served is the effect of such a cause, and the soul
thereby learns and registers a lesson while the lower
consciousness is writhing under a sense of injustice.
Nothing can strike a man that he has not deserved,
but his absence of memory does not cause a failure
in the working of the law. We thus learn that our
desires in their action on ourselves produce our de-
sire-nature, and through it largely affect our physical
bodies in our next birth; that they play a great part
in determining the place of rebirth ; and by their
effect on others they help to draw around us our hu-
man associates in future lives.
The third great class of energies, appearing on
the physical plane as actions, generate much karma
by their effects on others, but only slightly affect
directly the Inner Man. They are effects of his
past thinkings and desires, and the karma they
represent is for the most part exhausted in their hap-
pening. Indirectly they affect him in proportion as
he is moved by them to fresh thoughts and desires
or emotions, but the generating force lies in these
and not in the actions themselves. Again, if actions
are often repeated, they set up a habit of the body
e:ffe:cts of actions 255
which acts as a limitation to the expression of the
Ego in the outer world ; this, however, perishes wnth
the body, thus limiting the karma of the action to a
single life so far as its effect on the soul is con-
cerned. But it is far otherwise when we come to
study the effects of actions on others, the happiness
or unhappiness caused by these, and the influence
exercised by these as examples. They link us to
others by this influence and are thus a third factor
in determining our future human associates, while
they are the chief factor in determining what may
be called our non-human environment. Broadly
speaking, the favorable or unfavorable nature of
the physical surroundings into which we are born
depends on the effect of our previous actions in
spreading happiness or unhappiness among other
people. The physical results on others of actions
on the physical plane work out karmically in repay-
ing to the actor physical good or bad surroundings
in a future life. If he has made people physically
happy by sacrificing wealth or time or trouble, this
action karmically brings him favorable physical cir-
cumstances conducive to physical happiness. If he
has caused people widespread physical misery, he
will reap karmically from his action wretched phys-
ical circumstances conducive to physical suffering.
And this is so, whatever may have been his motive
in either case — a fact which leads us to consider the
law that:
Bvery force works on its otvn plane. If a man
sows happiness for others on the physical plane, he
256 THE ANCIEJNT WISDOM
will reap conditions favorable to happiness for him-
self on that plane, and his motive in sowing it does
not affect the result. A man might sow wheat with
the object of speculating with it to ruin his neigh-
bor, but his bad motive would not make the wheat-
grains grow up as dandelions. Motive is a mental
or astral force, according as it arises from will or
desire, and it reacts on moral and mental character
or on the desire-nature severally. The causing of
physical happiness by an action is a physical force
and works on the physical plane. ''By his actions
man affects his neighbors on the physical plane; he
spreads happiness around him or he causes distress,
increasing or diminishing the sum of human welfare.
This increase or diminution of happiness may be due
to very different motives — good, bad, or mixed. A
man may do an act that gives widespread enjoyment
from sheer benevolence, from a longing to give
happiness to his fellow-creatures. Let us say that
from such a motive he presents a park to a town for
the free use of its inhabitants; another may do a
similar act from mere ostentation, from desire to
attract attention from those who can bestow social
honors (say, he might give it as purchase-money for
a title) ; a third may give a park from mixed mo-
tives, partly unselfish, partly selfish. The motives
will severally affect these three men's characters
in their future incarnations, for improvement, for
degradation, for small results. But the effect of the
action in causing happiness to large numbers of
people does not depend on the motive of the giver;
KARMA IS JUST 257
the people enjoy the park equally, no matter what
may have prompted its gift, and this enjoymentj,
due to the action of the giver, establishes for him a
karmic claim on Nature, a debt due to him that will
be scrupulously paid. He will receive a physically
comfortable or luxurious environment, as he has
given widespread physical enjoyment, and his sacri-
fice of physical wealth will bring him his due reward,
the karmic fruit of his action. This is his right.
But the use he makes of his position, the happiness
he derives from his wealth and his surroundings,
will depend chiefly on his character, and here again
the just reward accrues to him, each seed bearing its
appropriate harvest."* Truly, the ways of karma
are equal. It does not withhold from the bad man
the result which justly follows from an action which
spreads happiness, and it also deals out to him the
deteriorated character earned by his bad motive, so
that in the midst of wealth he will remain discon-
tented and unhappy. Nor can the good man escape
physical suffering if he causes physical misery by
mistaken actions done from a good motive; the
misery he caused will bring him misery in his
physical surroundings, but his good motive, improv-
ing his character will give him a source of perennial
happiness within himself, and he will be patient and
contented amid his troubles. Many a puzzle may
be answered by applying these principles to the facts
we see around us.
These respective effects of motive and of the re-
* Karma, pp. 50, 51.
17
258 the; ancient wisdom
suits (or fruits) of actions are due to the fact that
each force has the characteristics of the plane on
which it was generated, and the higher the plane
the more potent and the more persistent the force.
Hence motive is far more important than action,
and a mistaken action done with a good motive is
productive of more good to the doer than a well-
chosen action done with a bad motive. The motive,
reacting on the character, gives rise to a long series
of effects, for the future actions guided by that char-
acter will all be influenced by its improvement or
its deterioration ; whereas the action, bringing on
its doer physical happiness or unhappiness, accord-
ing to its results on others, has in it no generating
force, but is exhausted in its results. If bewildered
as to the path of right action by a conflict of appar-
ent duties, the knower of karma diligently tries to
choose the best path, using his reason and his judg-
ment to the utmost; he is scrupulously careful about
his motive, eliminating selfish considerations and
purifying his heart; then he acts fearlessly, and if
his action turn out to be a blunder he willingly ac-
cepts the suffering which results from his mistake
as a lesson which will be useful in the future. Mean-
while, his high motive has ennobled his character for
all time to come.
This general principle that the force belongs to
the plane on which it is generated is one of far-
reaching import. If it be liberated with the motive
of gaining physical objects, it works on the physical
plane and attaches the actor to that plane. If it
thre:e: kinds o^ karma 259
aim at devachanic objects, it works on the deva-
chanic plane and attaches the actor thereto. If it
have no motive save the divine service, it is set free
on the spiritual plane, and therefore cannot attach
the individual, since the individual is asking for
nothing.
The three kinds of karma. Ripe karma is that
which is ready for reaping and which is therefore
inevitable. Out of all the karma of the past there
is a certain amount which can be exhausted within
the limits of a single life ; there are some kinds of
karma that are so incongruous that they could not
be worked out in a single physical body, but would
require very different types of body for their expres-
sion ; there are liabilities contracted towards other
souls, and all these souls will not be in incarnation
at the same time ; there is karma that must be
worked out in some particular nation or particular
social position, while the same man has other karma
that needs an entirely different environment. Part
only, therefore, of his total karma can be worked
out in a given life, and this part is selected by the
great Lords of Karma — of whom something will
presently be said — and the soul is guided to incarnate
in a family, a nation, a place, a body, suitable for the
exhaustion of that aggregate of causes which can be
worked out together. This aggregate of causes fixes
the length of that particular life ; gives to the body
its characteristics, its powers, and its limitations ;
brings into contact with the man the souls incarnated
within that life-period to whom he has contracted
260 THE ancie:nt wisdom
obligations, surrounding him with relatives, friends,
and enemies; marks out the social conditions into
which he is born, with their accompanying advan-
tages and disadvantages; selects the mental energies
he can show forth by moulding the organization of
the brain and nervous system with which he has
to work; puts together the causes that result in
troubles and joys in his outer career and that can be
brought into a single life. All this is the "ripe kar-
ma," and this can be sketched out in a horoscope
cast by a competent astrologer. In all this the man
has no power of choice; all is fixed by the choices he
has made in the past, and he must discharge to the
uttermost farthing the liabilities he has contracted.
The physical, astral, and mental bodies which the
soul takes on for a new life-period are, as we have
seen, the direct result of his past, and they form a
most important part of this ripe karma. They limit
the soul on every side, and his past rises up in judg-
ment against him, marking out the limitations which
he has made for himself. Cheerfully to accept these,
and diligently to work at their improvement, is the
part of the wise man, for he cannot escape from
them.
There is another kind of ripe karma that is of
very serious importance — that of inevitable actions.
Every action is the final expression of a series of
thoughts ; to borrow an illustration from chemistry,
we obtain a saturated solution of thought by adding
thought after thought of the same kind, until another
thought — or even an impulse, a vibration, from with-
de:te:rmine:d actions 261
out — will produce the solidification of the whole, the
action which expresses the thoughts. If we persis-
tently reiterate thoughts of the same kind, say of re-
venge, we at last reach the point of saturation, and
any impulse will solidify these into action and a
crime results. Or we may have persistently reiter-
ated thoughts of help to another to the point of
saturation, and when the stimulus of opportunity
touches us they crystallize out as an act of heroism.
A man may bring over with him some ripe karma
of this kind, and the first vibration that touches such
a mass of thoughts ready to solidify into action will
hurry him without his renewed volition, unconscious-
ly, into the commission of the act. He cannot stop
to think ; he is in the condition in which the first
vibration of the mind causes action : poised on the
very point of balancing, the slightest impulse sends
him over. Under these circumstances a man will
marvel at his own commission of some crime, or at
his own performance of some sublime act of self-
devotion. He says : "I did it without thinking,"
unknowing that he had thought so often that he had
made that action inevitable. When a man has willed
to do an act many times, he at last fixes his will irre-
vocably, and it is only a question of opportunity
when he will act. So long as he can think, his free-
dom of choice remains, for he can set the new
thought against the old and gradually wear it out
by the reiteration of opposing thoughts ; but when
the next thrill of the soul in response to a stimulus
means action, the power of choice is exhausted.
262 the: ancient wisdom
Herein lies the solution of the old problem of ne-
cessity and free will ; man by the exercise of free will
gradually creates necessities for himself, and between
the two extremes lie all the combinations of free will
and necessity which make the struggles within our-
selves of which we are conscious. We are continu-
ally making habits by the repetitions of purposive
actions guided by the will ; then the habit becomes
a limitation, and we perform the action automatic-
ally. Perhaps we are then driven to the conclusion
that the habit is a bad one, and we begin laboriously
to unmake it by thoughts of the opposite kind, and,
after many an inevitable lapse into it, the new
thought-current turns the stream, and we regain
our full freedom, often again gradually to make
another fetter. So old thought-forms persist and
limit our thinking capacity, showing as individual
and as national prejudices. The majority do not
know that they are thus limited, and go on serenely
in their chains, ignorant of their bondage; those
who learn the truth about their own nature become
free. The constitution of our brain and nervous
system is one of the most marked necessities in life;
these we have made inevitable by our past thinkings,
and they now limit us and we often chafe against
them. They can be improved slowly and gradually;
the limits can be expanded, but they cannot be sud-
denly transcended.
Another form of this ripe karma is where some
past evil-thinking has made a crust of evil habits
around a man which imprisons him and makes an
SUDDEN CONVERSIONS 263
evil life; the actions are the inevitable outcome of
his past, as just explained, and they have been held
over, even through several lives, in consequence of
those lives not offering opportunities for their mani-
festation. Meanwhile the soul has been growing
and has been developing noble qualities. In one
life this crust of past evil is thrown out by oppor-
tunity, and because of this the soul cannot show his
later developments; like a chicken, ready to be
hatched, he is hidden within the imprisoning shell,
and only the shell is visible to the external eye.
After a time that karma is exhausted, and some
apparently fortuitous event — a word from a great
Teacher, a book, a lecture — breaks the shell and the
soul comes forth free. These are the rare, sudden,
but permanent "conversions," the ''miracles of di-
vine grace," of which we hear; all perfectly intelli-
gible to the knower of karma, and falling within
the realm of law.
The accumulated karma that shows itself as charac-
ter is, unlike the ripe, always subject to modifica-
tions. It may be said to consist of tendencies,
strong or weak, according to the thought-force that
has gone to their making, and these can be further
strengthened or weakened by fresh streams of
thought-force sent to work with or against them. If
we find in ourselves tendencies of which we disap-
prove, we can set ourselves to work to eliminate
them; often we fail to withstand a temptation, over-
borne by the strong outrushing stream of desire,
but the longer we can hold out against it, even
264 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
though we fail in the end, the nearer are we to over-
coming it. Every such failure is a step towards suc-
cess, for the resistance wears away part of the
energy, and there is less of it available for the
future.
The karma which is in the course of making has
been already studied.
Collective karma. When a group of people is con-
sidered karmically, the play of karmic forces upon
each as a member of the group introduces a new
factor into the karma of the individual. We know
that when a number of forces play on a point, the
motion of the point is not in the direction of any one
of these forces, but in the direction which is the re-
sult of their combination. So the karma of a group
is the resultant of the interacting forces of the indi-
viduals composing it, and all the individuals are car-
ried along in the direction of that resultant. An
Ego is drawn by his individual karma into a family,
having set up in previous lives ties which closely
connect him with some of the other Egos composing
it; the family has inherited property from a grand-
father and is wealthy ; an heir turns up, descended
from the grandfather's elder brother, who had been
supposed to have died childless, and the wealth
passes to him and leaves the father of the family
heavily indebted ; it is quite possible that our Ego
had no connection in the past with this heir, to
whom in past lives the father had contracted some
obligation which has resulted in this catastrophe,
and yet he is threatened with suffering by his action,
"accidejnts'" 265
being involved in the family karma. If, in his own
individual past, there was a wrong-doing which can
be exhausted by suffering caused by the family kar-
ma, he is left involved in it; if not, he is by some
"unforeseen circumstances" lifted out of it, per-
chance by some benevolent stranger who feels an
impulse to adopt and educate him, the stranger be-
ing one who in the past was his debtor.
Yet more clearly does this come out in the working
of such things as railway accidents, shipwrecks, floods,
cyclones, etc. A train is wrecked, the catastrophe
being immediately due to the action of the drivers,
the guards, the railway directors, the makers or
employees of that line, who, thinking themselves
wronged, send clustering thoughts of discontent and
anger against it as a whole. Those who have in
their accumulated karma — ^but not necessarily in their
ripe karma — ^the debt of a life suddenly cut short,
may be allowed to drift into this accident and pay
their debt; another, intending to go by the train, but
with no such debt in his past, is "providentially"
saved by being late for it.
Collective karma may throw a man into the troubles
consequent on his nation going to war, and here
again he may discharge debts of his past not neces-
sarily within the ripe karma of his then life. In no
case can a man suffer that which he has not deserved,
but, if an unforeseen opportunity should arise to
discharge a past obligation, it is well to pay it and
be rid of it for evermore.
The "Lords of Karma" are the great spiritual
266 TH^ ancie:nt wisdom
Intelligences who keep the karmic Records and ad-
just the complicated workings of karmic law. They
are described by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret
Doctrine as the Lipika, the Recorders of Karma, and
the Maharajas* and Their hosts, who are "the agents
of Karma upon earth. "f The Lipika are They who
know the karmic record of every man, and who with
omniscient wisdom select and combine portions of that
record to form the plan of a single life; They
give the ''idea" of the physical body which is to be
the garment of the reincarnating soul, expressing
his capacities and his limitations ; this is taken by
the Maharajas and worked into a detailed model,
which is committed to one of Their inferior agents
to be copied; this copy is the etheric double, the
matrix of the dense body, the materials for these
being drawn from the mother and subject to physi-
cal heredity. The race, the country, the parents are
chosen for their capacity to provide suitable mate-
rials for the physical body of the incoming Ego, and
suitable surroundings for his early life. The physi-
cal heredity of the family affords certain types and
his evolved certain peculiarities of material combina-
tions; hereditary diseases, hereditary finenesses of
nervous organization, imply definite combinations of
physical matter, capable of transmission. An Ego
who has evolved peculiarities in his mental and astral
bodies, needing special physical peculiarities for
their expression, is guided to parents whose phys-
* The Mahadevas, or Chaturdevas of the Hindus,
t Op. cit., pp. 153 ad 157.
the; guidance oi? the: lords 267
ical heredity enables them to meet these require-
ments. Thus an Ego with high artistic faculties
devoted to music would be guided to take his phys-
ical body in a musical family, in which the ma-
terials supplied for building the etheric double and
the dense body would have been made ready to
adapt themselves to his needs, and the hereditary
type of nervous system would furnish the delicate
apparatus necessary for the expression of his facul-
ties. An Ego of very evil type would be guided to
a coarse and vicious family, whose bodies were built
of the coarsest combinations, such as would make a
body able to respond to the impulses from his mental
and astral bodies. An Ego who had allowed his as-
tral body and lower mind to lead him into excesses,
and had yielded to drunkenness, for instance, would
be led to incarnate in a family whose nervous sys-
tems were weakened by excess, and would be born
from drunken parents, who would supply diseased
materials for his physical envelope. The guidance
of the Lords of Karma thus adjusts means to ends,
and insures the doing of justice; the Ego brings
with him his karmic possessions of faculties and de-
sires, and he receives a physical body suited to be
their vehicle.
As the soul must return to earth until he has dis-
charged all his liabilities, thus exhausting all his
individual karma, and as in each life thoughts and
desires generate fresh karma, the question may arise
in the mind : ''How can this constantly renewing
bond be put an end to? How can the soul attain his
268 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
liberation?" Thus we come to the "ending of kar-
ma," and have to investigate how this may be.
The binding element in karma is the first thing to
be clearly grasped. The outward-going energy of
the soul attaches itself to some object, and the soul
is drawn back by this tie to the place where that
attachment may be realized by union with the object
of desire; so long as the soul attaches himself to any
object, he must be drawn to the place where that ob-
ject can be enjoyed. Good karma binds the soul as
much as does bad, for any desire, whether for objects
here or in Devachan, must draw the soul to the place
of its gratification.
Action is prompted by desire; an act is done not
for the sake of doing the act, but for the sake of ob-
taining by the act something that is desired, of ac-
quiring its results, or, as it is technically called, of
enjoying its fruit. Men work, not because they
want to dig, or build, or weave, but because they
want the fruits of digging, building, and weaving, in
the shape of money or of goods. A barrister pleads,
not because he wants to set forth the dry details of
a case, but because he wants wealth, fame, and rank.
Men around us on every side are laboring for some-
thing, and the spur to their activity lies in the fruit it
brings them and not in the labor. Desire for the
fruit of action moves them to activity, and enjoyment
of that fruit rewards their exertions.
Desire is, then, the binding element in karma, and
when the soul no longer desires any object in earth
or in heaven, his tie to the wheel of reincarnation
DEiSlRKS ARE BONDS 269
that turns in the three worlds is broken. Action
itself has no power to hold the soul, for with the
completion of the action it slips into the past. But
the ever-renewed desire for fruit constantly spurs the
soul into fresh activities, and thus new chains are
continually being forged.
Nor should we feel any regret when we see men
constantly driven to action by the whip of desire,
for desire overcomes sloth, laziness, inertia,* and
prompts men to the activity that yields them experi-
ence. Note the savage, idly dozing on the grass; he
is moved to activity by hunger, the desire for food,
and is driven to exert patience, skill, and endurance
to gratify his desire. Thus he develops mental
qualities, but when his hunger is satisfied he sinks
again into a dozing animal. How entirely have
mental qualities been evolved by the promptings
of desire, and how useful have proved desires tor
fame, for posthumous renown. Until man is ap-
proaching divinity he needs the urgings of desires,
and the desires simply grow purer and less selfish as
he climbs upwards. But none the less desires bind
him to rebirth, and if he would be free he must de-
stroy them.
When a man begins to long for liberation, he is
taught to practise "renunciation of the fruits of ac-
tion;" that is, he gradually eradicates in himself the
wish to possess any object; he at first voluntarily and
' The student will remember that these show the dominance
on the tamasic guna, and while it is dominant men do not
emerge from the lowest of the three stages of their evolution.
270 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
deliberately denies himself the object, and thus habit-
uates himself to do contentedly without it; after
a time he no longer misses it, and he finds the desire
for it is disappearing from his mind. At this stage
he is very careful not to neglect any work which
is duty because he has become indifferent to the
results it brings to him, and he trains himself in
discharging every duty with earnest attention, while
remaining entirely indifferent to the fruits it brings
forth. When he attains perfection in this, and
neither desires nor dislikes any object, he ceases
to generate karma ; ceasing to ask anything from
the earth or from Devachan, he is not drawn to
either; he wants nothing that either can give
him, and all links between himself and them are
broken off. This is the ceasing of individual
karma, so far as the generation of new karma is
concerned.
But the soul has to get rid of old chains as well as
to cease from the forging of new, and these old
chains must either be allowed to wear out gradually
or must be broken deliberately. For this breaking
knowledge is necessary, a knowledge which can look
back into the past, and see the causes there set go-
ing, causes which are working out their effects in
the present. Let us suppose that a person, thus look-
ing backward over his past lives, sees certain causes
which will bring about an event which is still in the
future; let us suppose further that these causes are
thoughts of hatred for an injury inflicted on himself,
and that they will cause suffering a year hence to
BREAKING OLD CHAINS 271
the wrong-doer; such a person can introduce a new
cause to intermingle with the causes working from
the past, and he may counteract them with strong
thoughts of love and good-will that will exhaust
them, and will thus prevent their bringing about
the otherwise inevitable event, which would, in its
turn, have generated new karmic trouble. Thus he
may neutralize forces coming out of the past by
sending against them forces equal and opposite, and
may in this way ''burn up his karma by knowledge."
In similar fashion he may bring to an end karma
generated in his present life that would normally
work out in future lives.
Again, he may be hampered by liabilities con-
tracted to other souls in the past, wrongs he has
done to them, duties he owes to them. By the use
of his knowledge he can find those souls, whether in
this world or in either of the other two, and seek
opportunities of serving them. There may be a soul
incarnated during his own life-period to whom he
owes some karmic debt; he may seek out that soul
and pay his debt, thus setting himself free from
a tie which, left to the course of events, would have
necessitated his own reincarnation, or would have
hampered him in a future life. Strange and puz-
zling lines of action adopted by occultists have some-
times this explanation — the man of knowledge en-
ters into close relations with some person who is
considered by the ignorant bystanders and critics to
be quite outside the companionships that are fitting
for him; but that occultist is quietly working out a
272 TH^ ANCIEJNT WISDOM
karmic obligation which would otherwise hamper and
retard his progress.
Those who do not possess knowledge enough to
review their past lives may yet exhaust many causes
that they have set going in the present life; they
can carefully go over all that they can remember,
and note where they have wronged any or where
any has wronged them, exhausting the first cases by
pouring out thoughts of love and service, and per-
forming acts of service to the injured person, where
possible on the physical plane also ; and in the second
cases sending forth thoughts of pardon and good-will.
Thus they diminish their karmic liabilities and bring
nearer the day of liberation.
Unconsciously, pious people who obey the precept
of all great Teachers of religion to return good for
evil are exhausting karma generated in the present
that would otherwise work out in the future. No one
can weave with them a bond of hatred if they refuse
to contribute any strands of hatred to the weaving,
and persistently neutralize every force of hatred with
one of love. Let a soul radiate in every direction
love and compassion, and thoughts of hatred can
find nothing to which they can attach themselves.
"The Prince of this world cometh and hath nothing
in me." All great Teachers knew the law and based
on it Their precepts, and those who through rever-
ence and devotion to Them obey Their directions
profit under the law, although they know nothing of
the details of its working. An ignorant man who
carries out faithfully the instructions given him by
VALUE O? BELIE? 273
a scientist can obtain results by his working with
the laws of Nature, despite his ignorance of them,
and the same principle holds good in worlds beyond
the physical. Many w^ho have not time to study,
and who perforce accept on the authority of experts
rules which guide their daily conduct in life, may
thus unconsciously be discharging their karmic lia-
bilities.
In countries where reincarnation and karma are
taken for granted by every peasant and laborer,
the belief spreads a certain quiet acceptance of in-
evitable troubles that conduces much to the calm
and contentment of ordinary life. A man over-
whelmed by misfortunes rails neither against God
nor against his neighbors, but regards his troubles
as the results of his own past mistakes and ill-doings.
He accepts them resignedly and makes the best of
them, and thus escapes much of the worry and
anxiety with which those who know not the law
aggravate troubles already sufficiently heavy. He
realizes that his future lives depend on his own ex-
ertions, and that the law which brings him pain will
bring him joy just as inevitably if he sows the seed
of good. Hence a certain large patience and a philo-
sophic view of life, tending directly to social stabil-
ity and to general contentment. The poor and
ignorant do not study profound and detailed meta-
physics, but they grasp thoroughly these simple prin-
ciples— that every man is reborn on earth time after
time, and that each successive life is moulded by
those that precede it. To them rebirth is as sure
18
274 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
and as inevitable as the rising and setting of the
sun; it is part of the course of nature, against which
it is idle to repine or to rebel. When Theosophy
has restored these ancient truths to their rightful
place in western thought, they will gradually work
their way among all classes of society in Christendom,
spreading understanding of the nature of life and
acceptance of the results of the past. Then too will
vanish the restless discontent which arises chiefly
from the impatient and hopeless feeling that life is
unintelligible, unjust, and unmanageable, and it will
be replaced by the quiet strength and patience which
come from an illumined intellect and a knowledge of
the law, and which characterize the reasoned and
balanced activity of those who feel that they are
building for eternity.
CHAPTER X.
The Law of Sacrii^ice:.
The study of the Law of Sacrifice follows naturally
on the study of the Law of Karma, and the under-
standing of the former, it was once remarked by a
Master, is as necessary for the world as the under-
standing of the latter. By an act of Self-sacrifice
the Logos became manifest for the emanation of the
universe, by sacrifice the universe is maintained, and
by sacrifice man reaches perfection.* Hence every
religion that springs from the Ancient Wisdom has
sacrifice as a central teaching, and some of the pro-
foundest truths of occultism are rooted in the law of
sacrifice.
An attempt to grasp, however feebly, the nature
of the sacrifice of the Logos may prevent us from
falling into the very general mistake that sacrifice
is an essentially painful thing; whereas the very
essence of sacrifice is a voluntary and glad pouring
forth of life that others may share in it; and pain
* The Hindu will remember the opening words of the Bri-
hadaranyakopanishad, that the dawn is in sacrifice; the
Zoroastrian will recall how Ahura-Mazdao came forth from an
act of sacrifice ; the Christian will think of the Lamb — the
symbol of the Logos — slain from the foundation of the world.
276 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
only arises when there is discord in the nature of the
sacrificer, between the higher whose joy is in giving
and the lower whose satisfaction lies in grasping and
in holding. It is that discord alone that introduces
the element of pain, and in the supreme Perfection,
in the Logos, no discord could arise ; the One is the
perfect chord of Being, of infinite melodious con-
cords, all tuned to a single note, in which Life and
Wisdom and Bliss are blended into one keynote of
Existence.
The sacrifice of the Logos lay in His voluntarily
circumscribing His infinite life in order that He
might manifest. Symbolically, in the infinite ocean
of light, with centre everywhere and with circum-
ference nowhere, there arises a full-orbed sphere of
living light, a Logos, and the surface of that sphere
is His will to limit Himself that He may become
manifest. His veil* in which He incloses Himself
that within it a universe may take form. That for
which the sacrifice is made is not yet in existence;
its future being lies in the "thought" of the Logos
alone; to Him it owes its conception and will owe
its manifold life. Diversity could not arise in the
"partless Brahman" save for this voluntary sacrifice
of Deity taking on Himself form in order to emanate
myriad forms each dowered with a spark of His life
and therefore with the power of evolving into His
* This is the Self -limiting power of the Logos, His Maya,
the limiting principle by which all forms are brought forth.
His Life appears as "Spirit," His Maya as "Matter," and these
are never disjoined during manifestation.
the: sacrifice: of the; logos 277
image. *'The primal sacrifice that causes the birth
of beings is named action (karma)," is is said;* and
this coming forth into activity from the bliss of the
perfect repose of self-existence has ever been recog-
nized as the sacrifice of the Logos. That sacrifice
continues throughout the term of the universe, for
the life of the Logos is the sole support of every
separated 'life," and He limits His life in each of
the myriad forms to which He gives birth, bearing
all the restraints and limitations implied in each
form. From any one of these He could burst forth
at any moment, the infinite Lord, filling the uni-
verse with His glory; but only by sublime patience
and slow and gradual expansion can each form be
led upward until it becomes a self-dependent centre
of boundless power like Himself. Therefore does
He cabin Himself in forms, and bear all imperfec-
tions till perfection is attained, and His creature is
like unto Himself and one with Him, but with its
own thread of memory. Thus this pouring out of
His Hfe into forms is part of the original sacrifice,
and has in it the bliss of the eternal Father sending
forth His ofifspring as separated lives, that each may
evolve an identity that shall never perish, and yield
its own note blended with all others to swell the
eternal song of bliss, intelligence, and life. This
marks the essential nature of sacrifice, whatever
other elements may become mixed with the central
idea; it is the voluntary pouring out of life that
others may partake of it, to bring others into life and
* Bhagavad Gita, viii. 3.
278 the: ancie:nt wisdom
to sustain them in it till they become self-dependent,
and this is but one expression of divine joy. There
is always joy in the exercise of activity which is the
expression of the power of the actor; the bird takes
joy in the outpouring of song, and quivers with the
mere rapture of the singing; the painter rejoices in
the creation of his genius, in the putting into form
of his idea; the essential activity of divine hfe must
lie in giving, for there is nothing higher than itself
from which it can receive; if it is to be active at all
— and manifested life is active motion — it must pour
itself out. Hence the sign of the spirit is giving,
for spirit is the active divine life in every form.
But the essential activity of matter, on the other
hand, lies in receiving; by receiving life impulses
it is organized into forms ; by receiving them these are
maintained ; on their withdrawal they fall to pieces.
All its activity is of this nature of receiving, and
only by receiving can it endure as a form. There-
fore is it always grasping, clinging, seeking to hold
for its own ; the persistence of the form depends on
its grasping and retentive power, and it will there-
fore seek to draw into itself all it can, and will
grudge every fraction with which it parts. Its joy
will be in seizing and holding; to it giving is like
courting death.
It is very easy, from this standpoint, to see how
the notion arose that sacrifice was suffering. While
the divine life found its delight in exercising its
activity of giving, and even when embodied in form
cared not if the form perished by the giving, know-
SUFFERING CE:ASE:S with HARMONY 279
ing it to be only its passing expression and the
means of its separated growth; the form which felt
its life-forces pouring away from it cried out in an-
guish, and sought to exercise its activity in holding,
thus resisting the outward flow. The sacrifice di-
minished the life-energies the form claimed as its
own; or even entirely drained them away, leaving
the form to perish. In the lower world of form this
was the only aspect of sacrifice cognizable, and the
form found itself driven to the slaughter, and cried
out in fear and agony. What wonder that men,
blinded by form, identified sacrifice with the agoniz-
ing form instead of with the free life that gave itself,
crying gladly: "Lo! I come to do thy will, O God;
I am content to do it." Nay, what wonder that men
— conscious of a higher and a lower nature, and oft
identifying their self -consciousness more with the
lower than with the higher — felt the struggle of the
lower nature, the form, as their own struggles, and
felt that they were accepting suffering in resignation
to a higher will, and regarded sacrifice as that de-
vout and resigned acceptance of pain. Not until
man identifies himself with the life instead of with
the form can the element of pain in sacrifice be got-
ten rid of. In a perfectly harmonized entity, pain
cannot be, for the form is then the perfect vehicle
of the life, receiving or surrendering with ready
accord. With the ceasing of struggle comes the
ceasing of pain. For suffering arises from jar,
from friction, from antagonistic movements, and
where the whole nature works in perfect harmony
280 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
the conditions that give rise to suffering are not
present.
The law of sacrifice being thus the law of life-
evolution in the universe, we find every step in the
ladder is accomplished by sacrifice — the life pouring
itself out to take birth in a higher form, while the
form that contained it perishes. Those who look
only at the perishing forms see Nature as a vast
charnel-house; while those who see the deathless
soul escaping to take new and higher form hear ever
the joyous song of birth from the up-ward springing
Hfe.
The Monad in the mineral kingdom evolves by the
breaking up of its forms for the production and
support of plants. Minerals are disintegrated that
plant-forms may be built out of their materials ; the
plant draws from the soil its nutritive constituents,
breaks them up, and incorporates them into its own
substance. The mineral forms perish that the plant-
forms may grow, and this law of sacrifice stamped
on the mineral kingdom is the law of the evolution
of life and form. The life passes onward and the
Monad evolves to produce the vegetable kingdom,
the perishing of the lower form being the condition
for the appearing and the support of the higher.
The story is repeated in the vegetable kingdom,
for its forms in turn are sacrificed in order that ani-
mal forms may be produced and may grow ; on every
side grasses, grains, trees perish for the sustenance
of animal bodies; their tissues are disintegrated that
the materials comprising them may be assimilated by
sacri?ice;s and evolution 281
the animal and build up its body. Again the law of
sacrifice is stamped on the world, this time on the
vegetable kingdom; its life evolves while its forms
perish; the Monad evolves to produce the animal
kingdom, and the vegetable is offered up that animal
forms may be brought forth and maintained.
So far the idea of pain has scarcely connected
itself with that of sacrifice, for, as we have seen in
the course of our studies, the astral bodies of plants
are not sufficiently organized to give rise to any
acute sensations either of pleasure or of pain. But
as we consider the law of sacrifice in its working in
the animal kingdom, we cannot avoid the recognition
of the pain there involved in the breaking up of
forms. It is true that the amount of pain caused by
the preying of one animal upon another in "the state
of nature" is comparatively trivial in each case, but
still some pain occurs. It is also true that man, in
the part he has played in helping to evolve animals,
has much aggravated the amount of pain, and has
strengthened instead of diminishing the predatory
instincts of carnivorous animals ; still, he did not
implant those instincts, though he took advantage of
them for his own purposes, and innumerable va-
rieties of animals, with the evolution of which man
has had directly nothing to do, prey upon each
other, the forms being sacrificed to the support of
other forms, as in the mineral and vegetable king-
doms. The struggle for existence went on long be-
fore man appeared on the scene, and accelerated the
evolution alike of life and of forms, while the pains
282 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
accompanying the destruction of forms began the long
task of impressing on the evolving Monad the transi-
tory nature of all forms, and the difference between
the forms that perished and the life that persisted.
The lower nature of man was evolved under the
same law of sacrifice as ruled in the lower kingdoms.
But with the outpouring of divine Life which gave
the human Monad came a change in the way in
which the law of sacrifice worked as the law of life.
In man was to be developed the will, the self-mov-
ing, self-initiated energy, and the compulsion which
forced the lower kingdoms along the path of evolu-
tion could not therefore be employed in his case,
without paralyzing the growth of this new and essen-
tial power. No mineral, no plant, no animal was
asked to accept the law of sacrifice as a voluntarily
chosen law of life. It was imposed upon them from
without, and it forced their growth by a necessity
from which they could not escape. Man was to
have the freedom of choice necessary for the growth
of a discriminative and self-conscious intelligence,
and the question arose : "How can this creature be
left free to choose, and yet learn to choose to follow
the law of sacrifice, while yet he is a sensitive organ-
ism, shrinking from pain, and pain is inevitable in
the breaking up of sentient forms?"
Doubtless aeons of experience, studied by a crea-
ture becoming ever more intelligent, might have
finally led man to discover that the law of sacrifice is
the fundamental law of life; but in this, as in so
much else, he was not left to his own unassisted
SACRIFICES 283
efforts. Divine Teachers were there at the side of
man in his infancy, and they authoritatively pro-
claimed the law of sacrifice, and incorporated it in a
most elementary form in the religions by which
They trained the dawning intelligence of man. It
would have been useless to have suddenly demanded
from these child-souls that they should surrender
without return what seemed to them to be the most
desirable objects, the objects on the possession of
which their life in form depended. They must be
led along a path which would lead gradually to the
heights of voluntary self-sacrifice. To this end they
were first taught that they were not isolated units,
but were parts of a larger whole, and that their lives
were linked to other lives both above and below
them. Their physical lives were supported by lower
lives, by the earth, by plants ; they consumed these,
and in thus doing they contracted a debt which they
were bound to pay. Living on the sacrificed lives
of others, they must sacrifice in turn something
which should support other lives ; they must nourish
even as they were nourished ; taking the fruits pro-
duced by the activity of the astral entities that
guide physical Nature, they must recruit the ex-
pended forces by suitable offerings. Hence have
arisen all the sacrifices to these forces — as science
calls them — to these intelligences guiding physical
order, as religions have always taught. As fire
quickly disintegrates the dense physical, it quickly
restores the etheric particles of the burnt offerings to
the ethers ; thus the astral particles were easily set
284 THE ANCIKNT WISDOM
free to be assimilated by the astral entities concerned
with the fertility of the earth and the growth of
plants. Thus the wheel of production was kept
turning, and man learned that he was constantly
incurring debts to Nature which he must as con-
stantly discharge. Thus the sense of obligation was
implanted and nurtured in his mind, and the duty
that he owed to the whole, to the nourishing mother
Nature, became impressed on his thought. It is
true that this sense of obligation was closely con-
nected with the idea that its discharge was neces-
sary for his own welfare, and that the wish to
continue to prosper moved him to the payment of
his debt. He was but a child-soul, learning his first
lessons, and this lesson of the interdependence of
lives, of the life of each depending on the sacrifice of
others, was of vital importance to his growth. Not
yet could he feel the divine joy of giving; the reluc-
tance of the form to surrender aught that nourished
it had first to be overcome, and sacrifice became
identified with this surrender of something valued,
a surrender made from a sense of obligation and the
desire to continue prosperous.
The next lesson removed the reward of sacrifice
to a region beyond the physical world. First, by a
sacrifice of material goods material welfare was to
be secured. Then the sacrifice of material goods
was to bring enjoyment in heaven, on the other side
of death. The reward of the sacrificer was of a
higher kind, and he learned that the relatively per-
manent might be secured by the sacrifice of the
TRAINING the: BODY 285
relatively transient — a lesson that was important as
leading to discriminative knowledge. The clinging
of the form to physical objects was exchanged for
a clinging to heavenly joys. In all exoteric relig-
ions we find this educative process resorted to by
the Wise Ones — too wise to expect from child-souls
the virtue of unrewarded heroism, and content, with
a sublime patience, to coax their wayward charges
slowly along a pathway that was a thorny and a
stony one to the lower nature. Gradually men were
induced to subjugate the body, to overcome its
sloth by the regular daily performance of religious
rites, often burdensome in their nature, and to
regulate its activities by directing them into useful
channels; they were trained to conquer the form and
to hold it in subjection to the life, and to accustom
the body to yield itself to works of goodness and
charity in obedience to the demands of the mind,
even while that mind was chiefly stimulated by a
desire to enjoy reward in heaven. We can see
among the Hindus, the Persians, the Chinese, how
men were taught to recognize their manifold obli-
gations; to make the body yield dutiful sacrifice of
obedience and reverence to ancestors, to parents, to
elders; to bestow charity with courtesy; and to show
kindness to all. Slowly men were helped to evolve
both heroism and self-sacrifice to a high degree, as
witness the martyrs who joyfully flung their bodies
to torture and death rather than deny their faith or
be false to their creed. They looked indeed for a
''crown of glory" in heaven as a recompense for the
286 the: ancie:nt wisdom
sacrifice of the physical form, but it was much to
have overcome the cHnging to that physical form, and
to have made the invisible world so real that it out-
weighed the visible.
The next step was achieved when the sense of duty
was definitely established; when the sacrifice of the
lower to the higher was seen to be "right," apart
from all question of a reward to be received in
another world; when the obligation owed by the part
to the whole was recognized, and the yielding of ser-
vice by the form that existed by the service of others
was felt to be justly due without any claim to wages
being established thereby. Then man began to per-
ceive the law of sacrifice as the law of life, and
voluntarily to associate himself with it; and he began
to learn to disjoin himself in idea from the form he
dwelt in and to identify himself with the evolving
life. This gradually led him to feel a certain indif-
ference to all the activities of form, save as they
consisted in ''duties that ought to be done," and to
regard all of them as mere channels for the life-
activities that were due to the world, and not as
activities performed by him with any desire for their
results. Thus he reached the point already noted,
when karma attracting him to the three worlds
ceased to be generated, and he turned the wheel of
existence because it ought to be turned, and not be-
cause its revolution brought any desirable object to
himself.
The full recognition of the law of sacrifice, how-
ever, lifts man beyond the mental plane — whereon
ACTIONS AS sacrifice: 287
duty is recognized as duty, as "what ought to be
done because it is owed" — to that higher plane of
Buddhi where all selves are felt as one, and where
all activities are poured out for the use of all, and
not for the gain of a separated self. Only on that
plane is the law of sacrifice felt as a joyful privilege,
instead of only recognized intellectually as true and
just. On the buddhic plane man clearly sees that
life is one, that it streams out perpetually as the free
outpouring of the love of the LoGOS_, that life holding
itself separate is a poor and a mean thing at best, and
an ungrateful one to boot. There the whole heart
rushes upwords to the Logos in one strong surge of
love and worship, and gives itself in joy fullest self-
surrender to be a channel of His life and love to
the world. To be a carrier of His light, a messen-
ger of His compassion, a worker in His realm — that
appears as the only life worth living; to hasten hu-
man evolution, to serve the Good Law, to lift part of
the heavy burden of the world — that seems to be
the very gladness of the Lord Himself.
From this plane only can a man act as one of the
Saviours of the world, because on it he is one with
the selves of all. Identified with humanity where it
is one, his strength, his love, his life, can flow down-
wards into any or into every separated self. He has
become a spiritual force, and the available spiritual
energy of the world-system is increased by the pour-
ing into it of his life. The forces he used to expend
on the physical, astral, and mental planes, seeking
things for his separated self, are now all gathered
288 rut ANCIENT WISDOM
up in one act of sacrifice, and, transmuted thereby
into spiritual energy, they pour down upon the world
as spiritual life. This transmutation is wrought by
the motive which determines the plane on which
the energy is set free. If a man's motive be the
gain of physical objects, the energy liberated works
only on the physical plane; if he desire astral
objects, he liberates energy on the astral plane; if
he seek mental joys, his energy functions on the
mental plane; but if he sacrifice himself to be a
channel of the Logos, he liberates energy on the
spiritual plane, and it works everywhere with the
potency and keenness of a spiritual force. For such
a man action and inaction are the same ; for he does
everything while doing nothing, he does nothing
while doing everything. For him, high and low,
great and small are the same; he fills any place that
needs filling, and the Logos is alike in every place
and in every action. He can flow into any form,
he can work along any line, he knows not any longer
choice or difference; his life by sacrifice has been
made one with the life of the Logos — he sees God
in everything and everything in God. How then can
place or form make to him any difference? He no
longer identifies himself with form, but is self-con-
scious Life. "Having nothing, he possesseth all
things;" asking for nothing, everything flows into
him. His life is bliss, for he is one with his Lord,
who is Beatitude ; and, using form for service with-
out attachment to it, ''he has put an end to pain."
Those who grasp something of the wonderful pos-
PRACTICED OF SACRIFICE 289
sibilities which open out before us as we voluntarily
associate ourselves with the law of sacrifice will
wish to begin that voluntary association long ere
they can rise to the heights just dimly sketched.
Like other deep spiritual truths, it is eminently prac-
tical in its application to daily life, and none who
feel its beauty need hesitate to begin to work with
it. When a man resolves to begin the practice of
sacrifice, he will train himself to open every day
with an act of sacrifice, the offering of himself, ere
the day's works begins, to Him to whom he gives
his life; his first waking thought v/ill be this dedica-
tion of all his power to his Lord. Then each thought,
each word, each action in daily life will be done as a
sacrifice — not for its fruit, not even as duty, but as
the way in which, at the moment, his Lord can be
served. All that comes will be accepted as the ex-
pression of His will ; joys, troubles, anxieties, suc-
cesses, failures, all to him are welcome as marking
out his path of service ; he w^ill take each happily
as it comes and offer it as a sacrifice ; he will loose
each happily as it goes, since its going shows that
his Lord has no longer need for it. Any powers he
has he gladly uses for service; when they fail him,
he takes their failure with happy equanimity; since
they are no longer available he cannot give them.
Even suffering that springs from past causes not yet
exhausted can be changed into a voluntary sacrifice
by welcoming it ; taking possession of it by willing
it, a man may oft'er it as a gift, changing it by this
motive into a spiritual force. Every human life
19
290 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
offers countless opportunities for this practice of the
law of sacrifice, and every human life becomes a
power as these opportunities are seized and utilized.
Without any expansion of his waking consciousness,
a man may thus become a worker on the spiritual
planes, liberating energy there which pours down
into the lower worlds. His self-surrender here in
the lower consciousness, imprisoned as it is in the
body, calls out responsive thrills of life from the
buddhic aspect of the Monad which is his true Self,
and hastens the time when that Monad shall become
the spiritual Ego, self-moved and ruling all his
vehicles, using each of them at will as needed for
the work that is to be done. In no way con prog-
ress be made so rapidly, and the manifestation of all
the powers latent in the Monad be brought about so
quickly, as by the understanding and the practice of
the law of sacrifice. Therefore was it called by a
Master, "The law of evolution for the man." It
has indeed profounder and more mystic aspects than
any touched on here, but these will unveil them-
selves without words to the patient and loving heart
whose life is all a sacrificial offering. There are
things that are heard only in stillness ; there are
teachings that can be uttered only by "the Voice of
the Silence." Among these are the deeper truths
rooted in the law of sacrifice.
• CHAPTER XL
Man's Ascent.
So stupendous is the ascent up which some men
have cHmbed, and some are climbing, that when we
scan it by an effort of the imagination we are apt to
recoil, wearied in thought by the mere idea of that
long journey. From the embryonic soul of the low-
est savage to the liberated and triumphant perfected
spiritual soul of the divine man — it seems scarcely
credible that the one can contain in it all that is ex-
pressed in the other, and that the difference is but a
difference in evolution, that one is only at the begin-
ning and the other at the end of man's ascent. Be-
low the one stretch the long ranks of the sub-human
— the animals, vegetables, minerals, elemental es-
sences ; above the other stretch the infinite grada-
tions of the superhuman — the Chohans, Manus, Bud-
dhas. Builders, Lipikas ; who may name or number
the hosts of the mighty Ones? Looked at thus, as a
stage in a yet vaster life, the many steps within the
human kingdom shrink into a narrower compass,
and man's ascent is seen as comprising but one grade
in evolution in the linked lives that stretch from the
elemental essence onwards to the manifested God.
We have traced man's ascent from the appearance
292 the: anciknt wisdom
of the embryonic soul to the state of the spiritually
advanced, through the stages of evolving conscious-
ness from the life of sensation to the life of thought.
We have seen him re-tread the cycle of birth and
death in the three v^orlds, each world yielding him
its harvest and offering him opportunities for prog-
ress. We are now in a position to follow him into
the final stages of his human evolution, stages that
lie in the future for the vast bulk of our humanity,
but that have already been trodden by its eldest chil-
dren, and that are being trodden by a slender num-
ber of men and women in our own day.
These stages have been classified under two head-
ings— the first are spoken of as constituting "the
probationary Path," while the later ones are included
in "the Path proper" or "the Path of discipleship."
We will take them in their natural order.
As a man's intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature
develops, he becomes more and more conscious of
the purpose of human life, and more and more eager
to accomplish that purpose in his own person. Re-
peated longings for earthly joys, followed by full
possession and by subsequent weariness, have grad-
ually taught him the transient and unsatisfactory na-
ture of earth's best gifts ; so often has he striven for,
gained, enjoyed, been satiated, and finally nauseated,
that he turns away discontented from all that earth
can offer. "What doth it profit?" sighs the wearied
soul. "All is vanity and vexation. Hundreds, yea,
thousands of times have I possessed, and finally have
found disappointment even in possession. These
TH^ CRY I^OT LIBERTY 293
joys are illusions, as bubbles on the stream, fairy-
colored, rainbow-hued, but bursting at a touch. I
am athirst for realities ; I have had enough of shad-
ows ; I pant for the eternal and the true, for free-
dom from the limitations that hem me in, that keep
me a prisoner amid these changing shows."
This first cry of the soul for liberation is the re-
sult of the realization that, were this earth all that
poets have dreamed it, were every evil swept away,
every sorrow put an end to, every joy intensified,
every beauty enhanced, were everything raised to
its point of perfection, he would still be aweary of
it, would turn from it void of desire. It has become
to him a prison, and, let it be decorated as it may, he
pants for the free and limitless air beyond its in-
closing walls. Nor is heaven more attractive to him
than earth ; of that too he is aweary ; its joys have
lost their attractiveness, even its intellectual and
emotional delights no longer satisfy. They also
''come and go, impermanent," like the contacts of
the senses ; they are limited, transient, unsatisfying.
He is tired of the changing; from very weariness he
cries out for liberty.
Sometimes this realization of the worthlessness of
earth and heaven is at first but as a flash in con-
sciousness, and the external worlds reassert their em-
pire and the glamour of their illusive joys again laps
the soul into content. Some lives even may pass,
full of noble work and unselfish achievement, of
pure thoughts and lofty deeds, ere this realization of
the emptiness of all that is phenomenal becomes the
294 the: ancient wisdom
permanent attitude of the soul. But sooner or later
the soul once and for ever breaks with earth and
heaven as incompetent to satisfy his needs, and this
definite turning away from the transitory, this defi-
nite will to reach the eternal, is the gateway to the
probationary Path. The soul steps off the highway
of evolution to breast the steeper climb up the moun-
tain side, resolute to escape from the bondage of
earthly and heavenly lives, and to reach the freedom
of the upper air.
The work which has to be accomplished by the
man who enters on the probationary Path is entirely
mental and moral; he has to bring himself up to the
point at which he will be fit to ''meet his Master face
to face" : but the very words "his Master" need ex-
planation. There are certain great Beings belong-
ing to our race who have completed Their human
evolution, and to whom allusion has already been
made as constituting a Brotherhood, and as guiding
and forwarding the development of the race. These
great Ones, the Masters, voluntarily incarnate in
human bodies in order to form the connecting link
between human and superhuman beings, and They
permit those who fulfil certain conditions to become
Their disciples, with the object of hastening their
evolution and thus qualifying themselves to enter
the great Brotherhood, and to assist in its glorious
and beneficent Vvork for man.
The Masters ever watch the race, and mark any
who by the practice of virtue, by unselfish labor for
human good, by intellectual effort turned to the ser-
A MAN IS OBSKRVED 295
vice of man, by sincere devotion, piety, and purity,
draw ahead of the mass of their fellows, and render
themselves capable of receiving spiritual assistance
beyond that shed down on mankind as a whole. If
an individual is to receive special help he must show
special receptivity. For the Masters are the distrib-
utors of the spiritual energies that help on human
evolution, and the use of these for the swifter
growth of a single soul is only permitted when that
soul shows a capacity for rapid progress and can
thus be quickly fitted to become a helper of the race,
returning to it the aid that had been afforded to
himself. When a man by his ov/n efforts, utilizing
to the full all the general help coming to him
through religion and philosophy, has struggled on-
wards to the front of the advancing human wave,
and when he shov/s a loving selfless, helpful nature,
then he becomes a special object of attention to the
watchful Guardians of the race, and opportunities
are put in his way to test his strength and call forth
his intuition. In proportion as he successfully uses
these he is yet further helped, and glimpses are
afforded to him of the true life, until the unsatis-
factory and unreal nature of mundane existence
presses more and more on the soul, with the result
already mentioned — the weariness which makes him
long for freedom and brings him to the gateway of
the probationary Path.
His entrance on this Path places him in the posi-
tion of a disciple or chela, on probation, and some
one Master takes him under His care, recognizing
296 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
him as a man who has stepped out of the highway
of evolution, and seeks the Teacher who shall guide
his steps along the steep and narrow path which
leads to liberation. That Teacher is awaiting him
at the very entrance of the Path, and even though
the neophyte knows not his Teacher, his Teacher
knows him, sees his efforts, directs his steps, leads
him into the conditions that best subserve his prog-
ress, w^atching over him with the tender solicitude
of a mother, and with the wisdom born of perfect
insight. The road may seem lonely and dark, and
the young disciple may fancy himself deserted, but
a "friend who sticketh closer than a brother" is ever
at hand, and the help withheld from the senses is
given to the soul.
There are four definite ''qualifications" that the
probationary chela must set himself to acquire, that
are by the wisdom of the great Brotherhood laid
down as the conditions of full discipleship. They
are not asked for in perfection, but they must be
striven for and partially possessed ere Initiation is
permitted. The first of these is the discrimination
between the real and the unreal which has been
already dawning on the mind of the pupil, and
which drew him to the Path on which he has now
entered ; the distinction growls clear and sharply
defined in his mind, and gradually frees him to a
great extent from the fetters w^hich bind him, for
the second qualification, indifference to external
things, comes naturally in the wake of discrimina-
tion, from the clear perception of their worthless-
the: real and tiiiv unreal 297
ness. He learns that the weariness which took all
the savor out of life was due to the disappoint-
ments constantly arising from his search for satis-
faction in the unreal, when only the real can con-
tent the soul ; that all forms are unreal and without
stability, changing ever under the impulses of life,
and that nothing is real but the one Life that we
seek for and love unconsciously under its many veils.
This discrimination is much stimulated by the rap-
idly changing circumstances into which a disciple is
generally thrown, with the viev/ of pressing on him
strongly the instability of all external things. The
lives of a disciple are generally lives of storm and
stress, in order that the qualities which are normally
evolved in a long succession of lives in the three
worlds may in him be forced into swift growth and
quickly brought to perfection. As he alternates rap-
idly from joy to sorrow, from peace to storm, from
rest to toil, he learns to see in the changes the un-
real forms, and to feel through all a steady un-
changing life. He grows indifferent to the presence
or the absence of things that thus come and go, and
more and more he fixes his gaze on the changeless
reality that is ever present.
While he is thus gaining in insight and stability
he works also at the development of the third quali-
fication— the six mental attributes that are de-
manded from him ere he may enter on the Path
itself. He need not possess them all perfectly, but
he must have them all partially present at least ere
he will be permitted to pass onward. First he must
298 THIv ANCIENT WISDOM
gain control over his thoughts, the progeny of the
restless, unruly mind, hard to curb as the wind.*
Steady, daily practice in meditation, in concentra-
tion, had begun to reduce this mental rebel to order
ere he entered on the probationary Path, and the dis-
ciple now works with concentrated energy to com-
plete the task, knowing that the great increase in
thought power that will accompany his rapid growth
will prove a danger both to others and to himself
unless the developing force be thoroughly under his
control. Better give a child dynamite as a plaything,
than place the creative powers of thought in the
hands of the selfish and the ambitious. Secondly,
the young chela must add outward self-control to
inner, and must rule his speech and his actions as
rigidly as he rules his thoughts. As the mind obeys
the soul, so must the lower nature obey the mind.
The usefulness of the disciple in the outer world de-
pends as much on the pure and noble example set
by his visible Hfe, as his usefulness in the inner
world depends on the steadiness and strength of his
thoughts. Often is good work marred by careless-
ness in this lower part of human activity, and the
aspirant is bidden strive towards an ideal perfect in
every part, in order that he may not later, when
treading the Path, stumble in his own walk and
cause the enemy to blaspheme.
As already said, perfection in anything is not de-
manded at this stage, but the wise pupil strives
towards perfection, knowing that at his best he is
* Bhagavad Gita, vi. 34.
EACH IN HIS PLACE 299
still far away from his ideal. Thirdly, the candidate
for full discipleship seeks to build into himself the
sublime and far-reaching virtue of tolerance — the
quiet acceptance of each man, each form of exist-
ence, as it is, without demand that it should be some-
thing other, shaped more to his own liking. Begin-
ning to realize that the one Life takes on countless
limitations, each right in its own place and time, he
accepts each limited expression of that Life without
wishing to transform it into something else ; he
learns to revere the wisdom which planned this
world and which guides it, and to view with wide-
eyed serenity the imperfect parts as they slowly work
out their partial lives. The drunkard, learning his
alphabet of the suffering caused by the dominance of
the lower nature, is doing as usefully in his own
stage as is the saint in his, completing his last lesson
in earth's school, and no more can justly be de-
manded from either than he is able to perform.
One is in the kindergarten stage, learning by object-
lessons, while the other is graduating, ready to leave
his university; both are right for their age and their
place, and should be helped and sympathized with
in their place. This is one of the lessons of what is
known in occultism as "tolerance." Fourthly must
be developed endurance, the endurance that cheer-
fully bears all and resents nothing, going straight
onwards unswervingly to the goal. Nothing can
come to him but by the Law, and he knows the
Law is good. He understands that the rocky path-
way that leads up the mountain-side straight to the
300 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
siinimit cannot be as easy to his feet as the well-
beaten winding highway. He realizes that he is
paying in a few short lives all the karmic obligations
accumulated during his past, and that the payments
must be correspondingly heavy. The very strug-
gles into which he is plunged develop in him the fifth
attribute, faith — faith in his Master and in himself,
a serene strong confidence that is unshakable. He
learns to trust in the wisdom, the love, the power
of his Master, and he is beginning to realize — not
only to say he believes in — the Divinity within his
own heart, able to subdue all things to Himself.
The last mental requisite, balance, equilibrium, grows
up to some extent without conscious efifort dur-
ing the striving after the preceding five. The
very setting of the will to tread the Path is a sign
that the higher nature is opening out, and that the
external world is definitely relegated to a lower
place. The continuous efiforts to lead the life of
discipleship disentangle the soul from any remain-
ing ties that may knit it to the world of sense, for
the withdrawal of the soul's attention from lower
obpects gradually exhausts the attractive power of
those objects. They ''turn away from an abstemious
dweller in the body,""^ and soon lose all power to
disturb this balance. Thus he learns to move amid
them undisturbed, neither seeking nor rejecting
any. He also learns balance amid mental troubles
of every kind, amid alternations of mental joy and
mental pain, this balance being further taught by
* Bhagavad Gita, ii. 59
RliADY FOR LIBERATION 301
the swift changes already spoken of through which
his Hfe is guided by the ever-watchful care of his
Master.
These six mental attributes being in some meas-
ure attained, the probationary chela needs further
but the fourth qualification, the deep intense long-
ing for liberation, that yearning of the soul towards
union with Deity that is the promise of its own ful-
filment. This adds the last touch to his readiness
to enter into full discipleship, for, once that longing
has definitely asserted itself, it can never again be
eradicated, and the soul that has felt it can never
again quench his thirst at earthly fountains ; their
waters will ever taste flat and vapid when he sips
them, so that he will turn away with ever-deepening
longing for the true water of life. At this stage he
is *'the man ready for Initiation," ready to definitely
"enter the stream" that cuts him ofif forever from
the interests of earthly life save as he can serve his
Master in them and help forward the evolution of
the race. Henceforth his life is not to be the life of
separateness ; it is to be ofifered up on the altar of
humanity, a glad sacrifice of all he is, to be used for
the common good.*
During the years spent in evolving the four quali-
fications, the probationary chela will have been ad-
vancing in many other respects. He will have beer
receiving from his Master much teaching, teaching
usually imparted during the deep sleep of the body ;
the soul, clad in his well-organized astral body, will
* The student will be glad to have the technical names of
302 THE ANCIIiNT WISDOM
have become used to it as a vehicle of consciousness,
and will have been drawn to his Master to receive
instruction and spiritual illumination. He will fur-
ther have been trained in meditation, and this effec-
tive practice outside the physical body will have
quickened and brought into active exercise many
of the higher powers ; during such meditation he
will have reached higher regions of being, learning
more of the life of the mental plane. He will have
been taught to use his increasing powers in human
service, and during many of the hours of sleep for
the body he will have been working diligently on
the astral plane, aiding the souls that have passed
on to it by death, comforting the victims of acci-
dents, teaching any less instructed than himself, and
in countless ways helping those who need it, thus in
these stages in Sanskrit and Pali, so that he may be able to
follow them out in more advanced books :
Sanskrist (used by Hindus). Pali (used by Buddhists).
1. Viveka; discrimination be- 1. Manodva- the opening of the
tween the real and ravajjana; doors of the mind;
the unreal. a conviction of the
. ,._ X ,1 impermanence of
2. vairagva; indmerence to the ^j^g earthly.
unreal, the tran- 2. Parikamma; preparation for ac-
sitory. tion; indifference
to the fruits of
Slja>}w; control of action.
thought. 3. Upacharo; attention or con-
Daina; control of duct; divided un-
j conduct. der the same
3. Shatsam / Uparati; tolerance, headings as in
p.\TTi. ]Titiksha; endur- the Hindu,
ance.
Shraddha; faith.
Samadhana; bal-
^"c^" 4. Anuloma; direct order or suc-
i. Mumuksha; desire for libera- cession, its attain-
tion. ment following
on the other three.
Tlie man is then the Afihikari. The man is then the Gotrabhu.
SPECIAL re:incarnation 303
humble fashion aiding the beneficent work of the
Masters, and being associated with Their sublime
Brotherhood as a co-laborer in a however modest
and lowly degree.
Either on the probationary Path or later, the chela
is offered the privilege of performing one of those
acts of renunciation which mark the swifter ascent
of man. He is allowed ''to renounce Devachan,"
that is, to resign the glorious life in the heavenly
places that awaits him on his liberation from the
physical world, the life which in his case would
mostly be spent in the middle ariipa world, in the
company of the Masters, and in all the sublime joys
of the purest wisdom and love. If he renounce this
fruit of his noble and devoted life, the spiritual
forces that would have been expended in his Deva-
chan are set free for the general service of the world,
and he himself remains in the astral region to await
a speedy rebirth upon earth. His Master in this
case selects and presides over his reincarnation,
guiding him to take birth amid conditions conducive
to his usefulness in the world, suitable for his own
further progress and for the work required at his
hands. He has reached the stage at which every
individual interest is subordinated to the divine
work, and in which his v/ill is fixed to serve in what-
ever place and in whatever way may be required of
him. He therefore gladly surrenders himself into
the hands he trusts, accepting willingly and joyfully
the place in the v/orld in which he can best render
service, and perform his share of the glorious work
304 THK ANCIENT WISDOM
of aiding the evolution of humanity. Blessed is the
family into which a child is born tenanted by such a
soul, a soul that brings with him the benediction of
the Master and is ever watched and guided, every
possible assistance being given him to bring his
lower vehicles quickly under control. Occasionally,
but rarely, a chela may reincarnate in a body that
has passed through infancy and extreme youth as
the tabernacle of a less progressed Ego; when an
Ego comes to the earth for a very brief life-period,
say for some fifteen or twenty years, he will be
leaving his body at the time of dawning manhood,
when it has passed through the time of early train-
ing and is rapidly becoming an effective vehicle for
the soul. If such a body be a very good one, and
some chela be awaiting a suitable reincarnation, it
will often be watched during its tenancy by the Ego
for whom it was originally builded, with the view
of utilizing it when he has done with it ; when the
life-period of that Ego is completed, and he passes
out of the body into Kamaloka on his way to Deva-
chan, his cast-off body will be taken possession of
by the waiting chela, a new tenant will enter the
deserted house, and the apparently dead body will
revive. Such cases are unusual, but are not un-
knovvU to occultists, and some references to them
may be found in occult books.
Whether the incarnation be normal or abnormal,
the progress of the soul, of the chela himself, con-
tinues, and the period already spoken of is reached
vv'hen he is "ready for Initiation" ; through that
the: key of knowlh:dge 305
gateway of Initiation he enters, as a definitely ac-
cepted chela, on the Path. This Path consists of
four distinct stages, and the entrance into each is
guarded by an Initiation. Each Initiation is accom-
panied by an expansion of consciousness which
gives what is called "the key of knowledge" belong-
ing to the stage to which it admits, and this key of
knowledge is also a key of power, for truly is knowl-
edge power in all the realms of Nature. When the
chela has entered the Path he becomes what has
been called "the houseless man,"* for he no longer
looks on earth as his home, he has no abiding-place
here, to him all places are welcome wherein he can
serve his Master. While he is on this stage of the
Path there are three hindrances to progress, techni-
cally called "fetters," which he has to get rid of,
and now — as he is rapidly to perfect himself — it is
demanded from him that he shall entirely eradicate
faults of character, and perform completely the
tasks belonging to his condition. The three fetters
that he must loose from his limbs ere he can pass
the second Initiation are : the illusion of the per-
sonal self, doubt, and superstition. The personal
self must be felt in consciousness as an illusion, and
must lose forever its power to impose itself on the
soul as a reality. He must feel himself one with all,
all must live and breathe in him and he in all.
* The Hindu calls this stage that of the Parivrajaka, the
wanderer; the Buddhist calls it that of the Srotapatti, he who
has reached the stream. The chela is thus designated after
his first Initiation and before his second.
20
306 THK ANCIENT WISDOM
Doubt must be destroyed, but by knowledge, not by
crushing out ; he must know reincarnation and
karma and the existence of the Masters as facts; not
accepting them as intellectually necessary, but know-
ing them as facts in Nature that he has himself
verified, so that no doubt on these heads can ever
again rise in his mind. Superstition is escaped as
the man rises into a knowledge of realities, and of
the proper place of rites and ceremonies in the
economy of Nature ; he learns to use every means
and to be bound by none. When the chela has cast
off these fetters — sometimes the task occupies several
lives, sometimes it is achieved in part of a single life
— he finds the second Initiation open to him, with
its new "key of knowledge" and its widened horizon.
The chela now sees before him a swiftly shortening
span of compulsory life on earth, for when he has
reached this stage he must pass through his third
and fourth Initiations in his present life or in the
next.*
In this stage he has to bring into full working
order the inner faculties, those belonging to the
subtle bodies, for he needs them for his service in
the higher realms of being. If he have developed
them previously, this stage may be a very brief one,
but he may pass through the gateway of death once
more ere he is ready to receive his third Initiation,
* The chela on the second stage of the path is for the Hindu
the Kutichaka, the man who builds a hut ; he has reached a
place of peace. For the Buddhist he is the Sakridagamin, the
man who receives birth but once more.
the: final stages 307
to become "the Swan," the individual who soars into
the empyrean, that wondrous Bird of Life whereof
so many legends are related.* On this third stage
of the Path the chela casts off the fourth and fifth
fetters, those of desire and aversion; he sees the
One Self in all, and the outer veil can no longer
blind him, whether it be fair or foul. He looks on
all with an equal eye; that fair bud of tolerance that
he cherished on the probationary Path now flowers
out into an all-embracing love that wraps everything
within its tender embrace. He is "the friend of
every creature," the "lover of all that lives" in a
world where all things live. As a living embodi-
ment of divine love, he passes swiftly onwards to
the fourth Initiation, that admits him to the last
stage of the Path, where he is "beyond the Individ-
ual," the worthy, the venerable. f Here he remains
at his will, casting off the last fine fetters that still
bind him with threads however fragile, and keep
him back from liberation. He throws off all cling-
ing to life in form, and then all longing for formless
life ; these are chains and he must be chainless ; he
may move through the three worlds, but not a shred
of theirs must have power to hold him; the splen-
dors of the "formless world" must charm him no
more than the concrete glories of the worlds of
* The Hindu calls him the Paramahamsa, beyond the "I" ;
the Buddhist names him the Arhat, the worthy.
t The Hamsa, he who realizes "I am That," in the Hindu
terms ; the Anagaman, the man who receives birth no more,
in the Buddhist.
308 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
form.* Then — mightiest of all achievements — he
casts off the last fetter of separateness, the "I-mak-
ing" facultyf which realizes itself as apart from
others, for he dwells ever on the plane of unity in his
waking consciousness, on the buddhic plane where
the Self of all is known and realized as one. This
faculty was born with the soul, is the essence of in-
dividuality, and it persists till all that is valuable in
it is worked into the Monad, and it can be dropped
on the threshold of liberation, leaving its priceless
result to the Monad, that sense of individual identity
which is so pure and fine that it does not mar the
consciousness of oneness. Easily then drops away
aught that could respond to ruffling contacts, and
the chela stands robed in that glorious vesture of
unchanging peace that naught can mar. And the
casting away of that same "I-making" faculty has
cleared away from the spiritual vision the last
clouds that could dim its piercing insight, and in
the realization of unity, ignorance^ — the limitation
that gives birth to all separateness — falls away, and
the man is perfect, is free.
Then has come the ending of the Path, and the
ending of the Path is the threshold of Nirvana.
Into that marvellous state of consciousness the
* See Chapter IV., on "The Mental Plane."
t Ahamkara, generally given as Mana, pride, since pride is
the subtlest manifestation of the "I" as distinct from others.
t Avidya, the first illusion and the last, that which makes
the separated worlds — the first of the Nidanas — and that which
drops off when liberation is attained.
IT IS FINISHED 309
chela has been wont to pass out of the body while he
has been traversing the final stage of the Path ;
now, when he crosses the threshold, the nirvanic
consciousness becomes his normal consciousness, for
Nirvana is the home of the liberated Self.* He has
completed man's ascent, he touches the limit of hu-
manity; above him there stretch hosts of mighty
Beings, but they are superhuman ; the crucifixion
in flesh is over, the hour of liberation has struck,
and the triumphant "It is finished!" rings from the
conquerors lips. See ! he has crossed the threshold,
he has vanished into the light nirvanic, another son
of earth has conquered death. What mysteries are
veiled by that light supernal we know not ; dimly
we feel that the Supreme Self is found, that lover
and Beloved are one. The long search is over, the
thirst of the heart is quenched forever, he has en-
tered into the joy of his Lord.
But has earth lost her child, is humanity bereft of
her triumphant son ? Nay ! He has come forth
from the bosom of the light, and He standeth again
on the threshold of Nirvana, Himself seeming the
very embodiment of that light, glorious beyond all
telling, a manifested Son of God. But now His face
is turned to earth, His eyes beam with divinest com-
passion on the wandering sons of men. His brethren
after the flesh ; He cannot leave them comfortless,
scattered as sheep without a shepherd. -Clothed in
the majesty of a mighty renunciation, glorious with
* The Jivanmukta, the liberated life, of the Hindu ; the
Asekha, he who has no more to learn, of the Buddhist.
310 the: ancient wisdom
the strength of perfect wisdom and *'the power of
an endless Hfe," He returns to earth to bless and
guide humanity, Master of Wisdom, kingly Teacher,
divine Man.
Returning thus to earth, the Master devotes Him-
self to the service of humanity with mightier forces
at His command than He wielded while He trod the
Path of discipleship ; He has dedicated Himself to
the helping of man, and He bends all the sublime
powers that He holds to the quickening of the evo-
lution of the world. He pays to those who are ap-
proaching the Path the debt He contracted in the
day of His own chelaship, guiding, helping, teach-
ing them as He was guided, helped, and taught
before.
Such are the stages of man's ascent, from the low-
est savagery to the divine manhood. To such goal
is humanity climbing, to such glory shall the race
attain.
CHAPTER XII.
Building a Kosmos.
It is not possible, at our present stage of evolu-
tion, to do more than roughly indicate a few points
in the vast outline of the kosmic scheme in which
our globe plays its little part. By '*a kosmos" is
here meant a system which seems, from our stand-
point, to be complete in itself, arising from a single
Logos, and sustained by His Life. Such a system
is our solar system, and the physical sun may be
considered to be the lowest manifestation of the
Logos when acting as the centre of His kosmos ;
every form is indeed one of His concrete manifesta-
tions, but the sun is His lowest manifestation as the
life-giving, invigorating, all-pervading, all-control-
ling, regulative, co-ordinating, central power.
Says an occult commentary: Siarya (the sun),
in its visible reflection, exhibits the first or lowest state of
the seventh, the highest state of the universal Presence, the
pure of the pure, the first manifested Breath of the ever un-
manifested Sat (Be-ness). All the central physical or objec-
tive Suns are in their substance the lowest state of the first
Principle of the Breath,*
are, in short, the lowest state of the "Physical Body"
of the Logos.
All physical forces and energies are but transmu-
tations of the life poured forth by the sun, the Lord
* Secret Doctrine, i., p. 309.
312 THK ANCIENT WISDOM
and Giver of life to his system. Hence in many
ancient religions the sun has stood as the symbol of
the Supreme God — the symbol, in truth, the least
liable to misconstruction by the ignorant.
]\Ir. Sinnett well says :
The solar system is indeed an area of Nature including more
than any but the very highest beings whom our humanity is
capable of developing are in a position to investigate. The-
oretically we may feel sure — as we look up into the heavens
at night — that the whole solar system itself is but a drop in
the ocean of the kosmos, but that drop is in its turn an ocean
from the point of view of the consciousness of such half-
developed beings within it as ourselves, and we can only hope
at present to acquire vague and shadowy conceptions of its
origin and constitution. Shadowy, however, though these
may be, they enable us to assign the subordinate planetary
series in which our own evolution is carried on, to its proper
place in the system of which it is a part, or at all events to
get a broad idea of the relative magnitude of the whole sys-
tem of our planetary chain, of the world in which we are at
present functioning, and of the respective periods of evolution
in which as human beings we are interested.*
For in truth we cannot grasp our own position in-
tellectually without some idea — however vague it
may be — of our relation to the whole ; and while
some students are content to work within their ov.'n
sphere of duty and to leave the wider reaches of life
until they are called to function in them, others feel
the need of a far-reaching scheme in which they
have their place, and take an intellectual delight in
soaring upwards to obtain a bird's-eye view of the
whole field of evolution. This need has been recog-
* The System to which we belong, p. 4.
ORIGINS 313
nized and met by the spiritual Guardians of human-
ity in the magnificent delineation of the kosmos
from the standpoint of the occultist traced by their
pupil and messenger, H. P. Blavatsky, in the Secret
Doctrine, a work that will become ever more and
more enlightening as students of the Ancient Wis-
dom themselves explore and master the lower levels
of our evolving world.
The appearance of the Logos, we are told, is the
herald of the birth-hour of our kosmos.
When He is manifest, all is manifested after Him; by His
manifestation this All becomes manifest. "^
With Himself He brings the fruits of a past kos-
mos— the mighty spiritual Intelligences who are to
be His co-workers and agents in the universe now to
be built. Highest of these are "the Seven," often
Themselves spoken of as Logoi, since each in His
place is the centre of a distinct department in the
kosmos, as the Logos is the centre of the whole.
The commentary before quoted says :
The seven Beings in the Sun are the Seven Holy Ones, Self-
born from the inherent power in the matrix of Mother-sub-
stance. . . . The energy from which they sprang into con-
scious existence in every Sun is what some people call Vishnu,
which is the Breath of the Absoluteness. We call it the one
manifested Life— itself a reflection of the Absolute.
This ''one manifested Life" is the Logos, the mani-
fested God.
From this primary division our Kosmos takes its
sevenfold character, and all subsequent divisions in
* Mundako panishad, H. ii. 10.
314 TIIU ANCIENT WISDOM
their descending order reproduce this seven-keyed
scale. Under each of the seven secondary Logoi
come the descending hierarchies of Intelligences that
form the governing body of His kingdom; among
These we hear of the Lipika, who are the Recorders
of the karma of that kingdom and of all entities
therein; of the Maharajas or Devarajas, who super-
intend the working out of karmic law ; and of the
vast hosts of the Builders, who shape and fashion
all forms after the Ideas that dwell in the treasure-
house of the Logos, in the Universal Mind, and that
pass from Him to the Seven, each of whom plans
out His own realm under that supreme direction and
all-inspiring life, giving to it, at the same time. His
own individual coloring. H. P. Blavatsky calls these
Seven Realms that make up the solar system the
seven Laya centres ; she says :
The seven Laya centres are the seven Zero points, using the
term Zero in the same sense that chemists do, to indicate a
point at which, in Esotericism, the scale of reckoning of dif-
ferentiation begins. From the Centres — beyond which Esoteric
philosophy allows us to perceive the dim metaphysical outlines
of the "Seven Sons" of Life, and Light the seven Logoi of the
Hermetic and all other philosophies — begins the differentiation
of the elements w^hich enter into the constitution of our Solar
system.*
This realm is a planetary evolution of a stupendous
character, the field in which are lived out the stages
of a life of which a physical planet, such as Venus,
is but a transient embodiment. We may speak of
the Evolver and Ruler of this realm as a planetary
* Secret Doctrine, i., p. 162.
THE SKVEN GLOBES 315
Logos, so as to avoid confusion. He draws from
the matter of the solar system, outpoured from the
central Logos Himself, the crude materials He re-
quires, and elaborates them by His own life-energies,
each planetary Logos thus specializing the matter of
His realm from a common stock.* The atomic state
in each of the seven planes of His kingdom being
identical with the matter of a sub-plane of the whole
solar system, continuity is thus established through-
out the whole. As H. P. Blavatsky remarks, atoms
change "their combining equivalents on every plan-
et," the atoms themselves being identical, but their
combinations differing. She goes on:
Not alone the elements of our planet, but even those of all
its sisters in the solar system, differ as widely from each other
in their combinations, as from the cosmic elements beyond our
solar limit. . . . Each atom has seven planes of being, or
existence, we are taught, t
— the sub-planes, as we have been calling them, of
each great plane.
On the three lower planes of His evolving realm
the planetary Logos establishes seven globes or
worlds, which for convenience sake, following the
received nomenclature, we will call globes A, B, C,
D, E, F, G. These are the
Seven small wheels revolving.one giving birth to the other,
spoken of in Stanza vi. of the Book of Dzymi:
He builds them in the likeness of older wheels, placing them
on the imperishable centres.
* See Chapter I., on "The Physical Plane," the statement
on the evolution of matter.
t Secret Doctrine, i., pp. 166 and 174.
316
THE ANCIENT WISDOM
Imperishable, since each wheel not only gives birth
to its successor, but is also itself reincarnated at the
same centre, as we shall see.
These globes may be figured as disposed in three
pairs on the arc of an ellipse, with the middle globe
at the midmost and lowest point ; for the most part
globes A and G — the first and seventh — are on the
ariipa levels of the mental plane ; globes B and F —
the second and sixth — are on the rupa levels ; globes
C and E — the third and fifth — are on the astral plane;
globe D — the fourth — is on the physical plane.
These globes are spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky as
"graduated on the four lower planes of the world of
formation,"* i.e., the physical and astral planes, and
the two subdivisions of the mental (riipa and arupa).
They may be figured if
rupa
arupa
astral
physical
0
©
0 0
©0
©
archetypal
creative or
intellectual
formative
physical
* Secret Doctrine, i., p. 176.
t See p. 221 of the Secret Doctrine; the note is important,
that the archetypal world is not the world as it existed in the
THE PLANETARY CHAIN 317
This is the typical arrangement, but it is modified
at certain stages of evolution. These seven globes
form a planetary ring or chain, and — if for a mo-
ment we regard the planetary chain as a v^^hole, as,
so to say, an entity, a planetary life or individual —
that chain passes through seven distinct stages in its
evolution ; the seven globes as a whole form its
planetary body, and this planetary body disinte-
grates and is re-formed seven times during the plane-
tary life. The planetary chain has seven incarna-
tions, and the results obtained in one are handed on
to the next.
Every such chain of worlds is the progeny and creation of
another lower and dead chain — its reincarnation, so to say.*
These seven incarnationsf make up "the planetary
evolution," the realm of a planetary Logos. As
there are seven planetary Logoi, it will be seen that
seven of these planetary evolutions, each distinct
from the others, make up the solar system. J In an
occult commentary this coming forth of the seven
Logoi from the one, and of the seven successive
chains of seven globes each, is described :
From one light seven lights; from each of the seven, 5«;ven
times seven. §
Taking up the incarnations of the chain, the man-
mind of the Planetary Logos, but the first model which was
made.
* Secret Doctrine, i., p. 176.
t Technically called "manvantaras."
t Mr. Sinnett calls these "seven schemes of evolution."
S Secret Doctrine, i., p. 147.
318 TH^ ancie:nt wisdom
vantaras, we learn that these also are subdivisible
into seven stages ; a wave of life from the planetary
Logos is sent round the chain, and seven of these
great life-waves, each one technically spoken of as
"a round," complete a single manvantara. Each
globe has thus seven periods of activity during a
manvantara, each in turn becoming the field of
evolving life.
Looking at a single globe we find that during the
period of its activity seven root-races of a humanity
evolve on it, together with six other non-human
kingdoms interdependent on each other. As these
seven kingdoms contain forms at all stages of evolu-
tion, as all have higher reaches stretching before
them, the evolving forms of one globe pass to an-
other to carry on their growth when the period of
activity of the former globe comes to an end, and go
on from globe to globe to the end of that round;
they further pursue their course round after round
to the close of the seven rounds or manvantaras ;
they once again climb onward through manvantara
after manvantara till the end of the reincarnations
of their planetary chain is reached, when the results
of that planetary evolution are gathered up by the
planetary Logos. Needless to say that scarcely any-
thing of this evolution is known to us ; only the
salient points in the stupendous whole have been
indicated by the Teachers.
Even when we come to the planetary evolution in
which our own world is a stage, we know nothing
of the processes through which its seven globes
ACTIVITY AND SLEEP 319
evolved during its first two manvantaras ; and of its
third manvantara we only know that the globe which
is now our moon was globe D of that planetary
chain. This fact, however, may help us to realize
more clearly what is meant by these successive rein-
carnations of a planetary chain. The seven globes
which formed the lunar chain passed in due course
through their sevenfold evolution ; seven times the
life-wave, the Breath of the planetary Logos, swept
round the chain, quickening iu turn each globe into
life. It is as though that Logos in guiding His
kingdom turned His attention first to globe A, and
thereon brought into successive existence the in-
numerable forms that in their totality make up a
world ; when evolution had been carried to a certain
point. He turned His attention to globe B, and
globe A slowly sank into a peaceful sleep. Thus
the life-wave was carried from globe to globe, until
one round of the circle was completed by globe G
finishing its evolution ; then there succeeded a
period of rest,* during which the external evolution-
ary activity ceased. At the close of this period, ex-
ternal evolution recommenced, starting on its second
round and beginning as before on globe A. The
process is repeated six times, but when the sev-
enth, the last round, is reached, there is a change.
Globe A, having accomplished its seventh life-period,
gradually disintegrates, and the imperishable laya
centre state supervenes ; from that, at the dawn of
the succeeding manvantara a new globe A is evolved
* Technically called a pralaya.
320 the; ancient wisdom
— like a new body — in which the "principles" of the
preceding planet A take up their abode. This phrase
is only intended to convey the idea of a relation
between globe A of the first manvantara and globe
A of the second; the nature of that connection re-
mains hidden.
Of the connection between globe D of the lunar
manvantara — our moon — and globe D of the terrene
manvantara — our earth — we know a little more, and
Mr. Sinnett has given a convenient summary of the
slender knowledge we possess in The System to
which we belong. He says :
The new earth nebula was developed round a centre bear-
ing pretty much the same relation to the dying plant that the
centres of the earth and moon bear to one another at present.
But in the nebulous condition this aggregation of matter occu-
pied an enormously greater volume than the solid matter of
the earth now occupies. It stretched out in all directions so
as to include the old planet in its fiery embrace. The temper-
ature of a new nebula appears to be considerably higher than
any temperatures we are acquainted with, and by this means
the old planet was superficially heated afresh in such a man-
ner that all atmosphere, water, and volatilizable matter upon
it was brought into the gaseous condition and so became
amenable to the new centre of attraction set up at the centre of
the new nebula. In this way the air and seas of the old planet
were drawn over into the constitution of the new one, and thus
it is that the moon in its present state is an arid, glaring
mass, dry and cloudless, no longer habitable, and no longer
required for the habitation of any physical beings. When
the present manvantara is nearly over, during the seventh
round, its disintegration will be completed, and the matter
which it still holds together will resolve into meteoric dust,*
* Op. cii., p. 19.
LUNAR AND SOLAR PlTRIS 321
In the third volume of the Secret Doctrine, in
which are printed some of the oral teachings given
by H. P. Blavatsky to her more advanced pupils, it
is stated :
At the beginning of the evolution of our globe, the moon
was much nearer to the earth, and larger than it is now. It
has retreated from us, and shrunk much in size. (The moon
gave all her principles to the earth.) ... A new moon will
appear during the seventh round, and our moon will finally
disintegrate and disappear.*
Evolution during the lunar manvantara produced
seven classes of beings, technically called Fathers,
or Pitris, since it was they who generated the beings
of the terrene manvantara. These are the Lunar
Pitris of the Secret Doctrine. More developed than
these were two other classes — variously called Solar
Pitris, Men, Lower Dhyanis — too far advanced to
enter on the terrene evolution in its early stages,
but requiring the aid of later physical conditions
for their future growth. The higher of these two
classes consisted of individualized animal-like beings,
creatures with embryonic souls, i.e., they had de-
veloped the causal body; the second were approach-
ing its formation. Lunar Pitris, the first class,
were at the beginning of that approach, showing
mentality, while the second and third had only
developed the kamic principle. These seven classes
of Lunar Pitris were the product the lunar chain
handed on for further development to the terrene,
the fourth reincarnation of the planetary chain.
* Op cii., p. 562.
21
322 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
As Monads — with the mental principle present in
the first, the kamic principle developed in the sec-
ond and third classes, this germinal in the fourth,
only approaching the germ stage in the still less
developed fifth, and imperceptible in the sixth and
seventh — these entities entered the earth-chain, to
ensoul the elemental essence and the forms shaped
by the Builders.*
The nomenclature adopted by me is that of the
Secret Doctrine. In the valuable paper by Mrs. Sin-
nett and Mr. Scott-Elliot on the Lunar Pitris, H. P.
B.'s 'Xower Dhyanis," that incarnate in the third
and fourth rounds, are taken as the first and second
classes of Lunar Pitris ; their third class is therefore
H. P. B.'s first class, their fourth class her second,
and so on. There is no difiference in the statement
of facts, only in nomenclature, but this difiference of
nomenclature may mislead the student if it be not
explained. As I am using H. P. B.'s nomenclature,
my fellow-students of the London Lodge and the
readers of their ''Transaction" will need to remem-
ber that my first is their third, and so on sequen-
tially.
The "Builders" is a name including innumerable
Intelligences, heirarchies of beings of graduated
consciousness and power, who on each plane carry
out the actual building of forms. The higher direct
♦H. P. Blavatsky, in the Secret Doctrine, does not include
those whom Mrs. Sinnett calls first- and second-class Pitris in
the "monads from the lunar chain" ; she takes them apart as
"men," as "Dhyan Chohans." Compare i., pp. 197, 207, 211.
D^CENDING AND ASCENDING. 323
and control, while the lower fashion the materials
after the models provided. And now appears the
use of the successive globes of the planetary chain.
Globe A is the archetypal world, on which are built
the models of the forms that are to be elaborated
during the round ; from the mind of the planetary
Logos the highest Builders take the archetypal
Ideas, and guide the Builders on the arupa levels as
they fashion the archetypal forms for the round.
On globe B these forms are reproduced in varied
shapes in mental matter by a lower rank of Builders,
and are evolved slowly along different lines, until
they are ready to receive an infiltration of denser
matter; then the Builders in astral matter take up the
task, and on globe C fashion astral forms, with details
more worked out; when the forms have been evolved
as far as the astral conditions permit, the Builders
of globe D take up the task of form-shaping on the
physical plane, and the lowest kinds of matter are
thus fashioned into appropriate types, and the forms
reach their densest and most complete condition.
From this middle point onwards the nature of the
evolution somewhat changes ; hitherto the greatest
attention had been directed to the building of the
form ; on the ascending arc the chief attention is
directed to using the form as a vehicle of the evolv-
ing life and on the second half of the evolution on
globe D, and on globes E and F the consciousness
expresses itself first on the physical and then on the
astral and lower mental planes through the equiva-
lents of the forms elaborated on the descending arc.
324 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
On the descending arc the Monad impresses itself as
best it may on the evolving forms, and these impres-
sions appear vaguely as impressions, intuitions, and
so on ; on the ascending arc the Monad expresses
itself through the forms as their inner ruler. On
globe G the perfection of the round is reached, the
Monad inhabiting and using as its vehicles the
archetypal forms of globe A.
During all these stages the Lunar Pitris have
acted as the souls of the forms, brooding over them,
later inhabiting them. It is on the first-class Pitris
that the heaviest burden of the work falls during
the first three rounds. The second- and third-class
Pitris flow into the forms worked up by the first;
the first prepare these forms by ensouling them for
a time and then pass on, leaving them for the ten-
ancy of the second and third classes. By the end of
the first round the archetypal forms of the mineral
world have been brought down, to be elaborated
through the succeeding rounds, till they reach their
densest state in the middle of the fourth round.
"Fire'' is the "element" of this first round.
In the second round the first-class Pitris continue
their human evolution, only touching the lower
stages as the human foetus still touches them to-day,
while the second class, at the close of the round,
have reached the incipient human stage. The great
work of the round is bringing down the archetypal
forms of vegetable life, which will reach their per-
fection in the fifth round. "Air" is the second
round "element."
ARRIVAL OF SOLAR PITRIS. 325
111 the third round the first-class Pitris become
definitely human in form; though the body is jelly-
like and gigantic, it is yet, on globe D, compact
enough to begin to stand upright; he is ape-like
and is covered with hairy bristles. The third-class
Pitris reach the incipient human stage. Second-
class solar Pitris make their first appearance on
globe D in this round, and take the lead in human
evolution. The archetypal forms of animals are
brought down to be elaborated into perfection by
the end of the sixth round, and "water" is the char-
acteristic "element."
The fourth round, the middle one of the seven
that make up the terrene manvantara, is distin-
gtiished by bringing to globe A the archetypal forms
of humanity, this round being as distinctively hu-
man as its predecessors were respectively animal,
vegetable, and mineral. Not till the seventh round
will these forms be all fully realized by humanity,
but the possibilities of the human form are mani-
fested in archetypes in the fourth. "Earth" is the
"element" of this round, the densest, the most ma-
terial. The first-class solar Pitris may be said to
hover round globe D more or less in this round dur-
ing its early stages of activity, but they do not defi-
nitely incarnate until after the third great outpour-
ing of life from the planetary Logos in the middle
of the third race, and then only slowly, the number
increasing as the race progresses, and multitudes
incarnating in the early fourth race.
The evolution of humanity on our earth, globe D,
326 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
offers in a strongly marked form the continual
sevenfold diversity already often alluded to. Seven
races of men had already shown themselves in the
third round, and in the fourth these fundamental
divisions became very clear on globe C, where seven
races, each with sub-races, evolved. On globe D
humanity begins with a First Race — usually called
a Root-Race — at seven different points, "seven of
them, each on his lot."* These seven types side by
side, not successive — make up the first root-race,
and each again has its own seven sub-races. From
the first root-race — jelly-like amorphous creatures —
evolves the second root-race with forms of more
definite consistency, and from it the third, ape-like
creatures that become clumsy gigantic men. In the
middle of the evolution of this third root-race, called
the Lemurian, there come to earth — from another
planetary chain, that of Venus, much farther ad-
vanced in its evolution — members of its highly
evolved humanity, glorious Beings, often spoken of
as Sons of the Fire, from Their radiant appearance,
a lofty order among the Sons of Mind.f They take
up Their abode on earth, as the Divine Teachers of
the young humanity, some of them acting as chan-
nels for the third out-pouring and projecting into
animal man the spark of monadic life which forms
the causal body. Thus the first, second, and third
classes of Lunar Pitris become individualized — the
* Book of Dzyan, 13. Secret Doctrine, ii.
t Manasaputra. This vast hierarchy of self-conscious Intelli-
gences embraces many orders.
THEN COMETH THE END. 327
vast bulk of humanity. The two classes of solar
Pitris, already individualized — the first ere leaving
the lunar chain and the second later — form two low
orders of the Sons of Mind; the second incarnate in
the third race at its middle point, and the first come
in later, for the most part in the fourth race, the
Atlantean. The fifth, or Aryan race, now leading
human evolution, was evolved from the fifth sub-
race of the Atlantean, the most promising families
being segregated in Central Asia, and the new race-
type evolved, under the direct superintendence of a
Great Being, technically called a Manu. Emerging
from Central Asia the first sub-race settled in India,
south of the Himalayas, and in their four orders of
teachers, warriors, merchants, and workmen,* be-
came the dominant race in the vast Indian peninsula,
conquering the fourth-race and third-race nations
who then inhabited it.
At the end of the seventh race of the seventh
round, i.e., at the close of our terrene manvantara,
our chain will hand on to its successor the fruits of
its life ; these fruits will be perfected divine men,
Buddhas, Manus, Chohans, Masters, ready to take
up the work of guiding evolution under the direction
of the planetary Logos with hosts of less evolved
entities of every grade of consciousness, who still
need physical experience for the perfecting of their
divine possibilities. The fifth, sixth, and seventh
manvantaras of our chain are still in the womb of
the future after this fourth one has closed, and then
* Brahmanas, Kshattryas, Vaishyas, and Shudras.
328 THE ANCIENT WISDOM
the planetary Logos will gather up into Himself all
the fruits of evolution, and with his children enter
on a period of rest and bliss. Of that high state we
cannot speak ; how at this stage of our evolution
could we dream of its unimaginable glory; only we
dimly know that our glad spirits shall "enter into
the joy of the Lord," and, resting in Him, shall see
stretching before them boundless ranges of sublime
life and love, heights and depths of power and joy,
limitless as the One Existence, inexhaustible as the
One that is.
Peace to all Beings.
INDEX
Abstract ideas Ill, 217
Accidents 243, 265^
Adi-Buddha 15
Affections the root of moral evolution 216
Agni 66
Ain Soph 17
Ameshaspends 20, 22, 184
Amitabha 14, 15
Amun-Ra, hymn to 18
Ancient of the Ancients 17
Angels 17, 28, 114, 115
Animal kingdom 49, 68, 190-193, 281
Antenatal life 205
Archangels 21, 28, 114
Archetypes 316, 323, 324, 325
Armaiti 22
Aryan race 6, 11, ZZl
Astral body 68-70, 72-81, 87, 89, 96, 97, 104, 122, 123, 161,
176, 191, 202, 203, 222-224, 252, 253, 260, 266,
281,287,301,323
" energy 247, 252-254, 256
" plane, the 57, 80, 117, 186, 223, 247, 302
" vision 59
Atlantis 5, 7
Atoms 42, 43, 44, 57, 109, 110, 187, 315
Auharmazd (Ahura-Mazda, Harmazd) . 19, 20, 21, 22, 31, 184
Aura, health 50, 51
Auric ^z% 129, 168, 169
Avalokiteshavra 15
Barriers between souls 117
Basis of religions, common 2, 4
Body, leaving the 36, 228, 229
Brahma 13, 15, 111
Brahman 11, 12, 13 14, 42, 164, 276
330 INDEX.
Brahmanical religion 11, 14, 15, 27
Bramha-Vidya 1
Breath, the divine 9, 30, 313, 319
Brotherhood of Man 170-174
of Teachers. . . 3, 29, 37, 39, 71, 89, 91, 119, 152,
156, 168, 194, 210, 272, 283, 294-296, 326
Buddhas 327
Buddha, the 15
Buddhi 165
Buddhic body 167, 169, 176, 225, 290
plane 36, 117, 165-168, 171, 175, 287
state 36, 166
Buddhism 14, 15
Buddhist.. 4, 111, 112, 114, 137, 168, 179, 180, 302, 305, 306, 307
Buddhist and Gnostic thought 26
" Greek " 25
Builders, the 48, 314, 322, 323
Building a kosmos. 311-328
Causal body 131, 132, 133, 139, 146, 176, 193, 196, 201
203, 225, 326
Chakras 74, 76, 78
Chenresi 15
Child-life 206, 207
China 5
Chinese Buddhism 15
" religion 9
Christian. .4, 18, 27, 32, 101, 112, 114, 115, 137, 157, 160, 184, 275
Chwang-tze 9, 11
Clairvoyance 54
Colors 73, 76, 78, 102, 112, 114, 223
Common basis of religions 2, 4
Concealed mystery, the 8
Conscience 215
Continuity of forms 182, 200
of life 182-184, 200
Conversions 262, 263
INDEX. 331
Crimes, inevitable 261
Death 56, 85, 86, 87, 89, 158, 199, 252
Dense physical body 49-56, 85, 205, 219-221, 266, 267
Desire-energies 247, 252-254
Desires 211-215, 247, 251-254, 263, 268, 269
Devachan 58, 137-162, 268
stay in 138, 139, 199
Devas 66, 114, 137
Dhruvam, the 87
Disciple 72, 119, 156, 157, 223, 220, 294-308
Discipleship, qualifications for 226, 2%-301
Divine Ruler of the Golden Gate 6
Divine Wisdom, the 1,4
Dreams 55, 76, 77, 99. 221, 222, 228
Effect of belief in Karma 273, 274
" of environment 200, 201
Egypt 18
Elemental essence 48, 59, 60, 73, 113, 114
kingdoms 48, 114, 184-186
Elementals, artificial 60-65, 115
building 275
desire 69, 72, 73
natural 65-69, 75, 95, 283, 284
Elements 45, 46, 67, 114, 324, 325
Etheric double 49-56, 68, 85, 87, 187, 205, 221, 266, 267
Evolution and reincarnation 179, 180
in Devachan 145
monadic 184-193, 280, 281
why possible 40, 44, 163, 240, 241
Factors in reincarnation 202-205
Fairies 67
Family likeness 235
Fetters, casting away 305-308
Fifth race 6, 11
"Form" and "formless" levels of manasic plane.... 110, 111,
139, 153, 307
332 INDEX.
"Formless" levels 128, 133, 137, 154-157, 158, 184, 218
Fourth race 5
Freeing soul from body 36, 228, 229
Freewill and necessity 262
Friends in heaven, our 143, 144
Fundamental truths of religion 5
Genius 108, 232, 233
God manifested as unity 5, 7,%, 12, 17, 22, 41, 313
" duality 5, 7, 8, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22, 41
" trinity. ... 5, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 41
Gods of the elements 66
Greek and Bhuddist thought 25
" Gnostic " 26
" Hindu " 25
Hamilton, Sir William, as child 233, 234
Heavens 100-102, 284, 285
Hebrew 17, 18, 20, 32, 166
Hells 83, 84, 92-97
Heredity 183, 235, 266, 267
Hindu 4, 12, 13, 15, 25, 30, 66, 83, 87, 111, 112, 114. 137,
164, 166, 168, 275, 285, 302, 305, 306, 307, 327
" and Greek thought 25
Holy Spirit 27, 111
Horus 18
Hostility of elemental world 65, 66
Illusions in Devachan 139-144
Illusory "F's 132, 133, 160
Individuality 161, 192. 193, 308
Indra 66
Infant prodigies : 233, 234
Initiates 3, 6, 7, 70, 71, 119, 156
Initiations 304-307
Instinct 192
Kama 69, 81, 82, 175
Kamadevas 69
Kamaloka 58, 83-106, 137. 146. 148
INDEX. 333
Kamaloka, divisions of 91-103
stay in _ 83, 89, 199
Kama-Manas 121, 175, 176
Kamarupa 69
Karma 15, 128, 243-274, 275, 277, 286, 306, 315
" collective 248, 264, 265
" ending of 268-273
" individual 248, 251, 264, 267, 270
" Lords of 204, 205, 259, 265, 267
" three kinds of 248, 259-263
Karmic causes, three kinds of 247, 249-255
Kosmos, building a 311-328
definition of 311
Ko Yiian 6
Kshiti 66
Law inviolable 243-246
Levitation 66
Liberation, longing for 269, 292-294, 300
Life-waves 38, 44, 48, 59, 318
Linking of vehicles 226, 227
Lipika, the 266, 314
Logoi 19, 22, 164, 184, 313, 317
Logos 11, 15, 16, 20, 23, 27, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 48, 52, 128.
157, 163, 168, 170, 175, 181, 200, 218, 275-277, 287,
288,311,314,315
" first 14, 17, 19, 22, 27, 41
" planetary 315, 317, 318, 319, 323, 325, 327, 328
" second 18, 21, 22, 27, 41
" third 15, 22, 27, 41, 111, 165
Lotus 13, 15
Lower Dhyanis 321, 322, 325, 327
Quaternary 81
Lunar Pitris 321, 322, 324-326
Maharajas 266, 314
Mohammedans 114, 137, 229
Manasaputra 193, 326, 327
334 INDEX.
Mandjusri 15, 111
Man's ascent 291-310
Masters. . . .3, 37, 39, 71, 72, 89, 106, 116, 119, 152, 156, 157, 168,
183, 210, 216, 223, 263, 272, 283, 294-296, 300-306,
309, 310. 327
Maya 42, 276
Mayavirupa 115
Mediums 55, 66, 91, 98, 100, 101, 102
Memory 123, 128, 145, 190, 208, 212, 225, 236-240, 254
Mental atmosphere 63-65
attributes, the six 297-301
" bodies 122-127, 130, 137, 139, 153, 154, 160, 176, 196, 197,
202, 203, 223-225, 251, 260-266
" energies 247, 250-252, 256
" images 209, 211, 217, 227, 250-252
" plane, 107-136, 117, 158, 175, 217, 223, 247, 286, 287, 323
Mesmeric energy 51
Mineral kingdom 49, 68, 187, 188, 280, 281
Mithra 22
Monad, the.. ..48, 49, 52, 59, 68, 114, 164, 168, 175, 181, 184-
196,, 280-282, 290, 308, 324
Monads 322
Monadic evolution 184-193. 280, 281
Mongolian 6, 7
Moon 319-321
Motive 248, 256-258, 288
Nature-spirits 65-69
Necessity and freewill 262
Neo-platonic schools 33, 35, 36
Nepaulese Buddhism 15
Nirvana 16, 170, 308, 309
Nirvanic consciousness 169, 170, 309
plane 117, 168, 169, 170, 175
Occultists, white and black 71
One Existence, the 5, 11, 14, 19, 23, 28, 42, 328
One Life, the 5. 8, 81, 176, 313
INDEX. 335
One Reality, the 5, 7
One. the 8, 9. 11, 14, 24, 25, 40, 164, 217, 218. 328
Orphis system 23
Osiris-Ani 19
Osiris-Isis 18
Padmapani 15
Parsis modern 22
Path, probationary, the 296-303
" the 291-310
Pavana 66
Personality 160, 161, 190, 192. 213, 221
Physical body 49-56, 68, 85. 87, 130. 161, 176, 191, 202,
203, 204, 219-222, 226, 227, 260. 266, 267
energies 247. 254, 255
Pitris, lunar 321, 322. 324-326
" solar 321, 322, 325, 327
Plane, astral 58-82, 117, 186. 223, 247, 302
" buddhic 36, 117, 165-168, 171, 175, 287
definition of 47
" mental 107-136, 117. 158, 175, 217. 223, 247, 286
287, 323
" nirvanic 117, 168, 169, 170. 175
" physical 40-56, 247, 251. 258. 287. 323
Planes of universe 42. 43, 248, 255, 256, 258
Planetary chain 315-318, 319, 323, 326, 327
Prana 50. 81, 85, 87, 175, 176, 222
Prayers, protective 61, 106
Predestination 230
Pre-existence of the soul 28
Pretaloka 83
Principles 81, 175-178
Psychics 71 , 12
Purification by vibrations 51, 75. 11
Pythagorean school 25. 33-35
Qualifications for discipleship 296-301
Ra 18
336 iND^x.
Real and unreal 267, 269
Reality of devachanic life 139-144
" the One 5, 7
Regions of Davachan 149-157
of Kamaloka 84, 85
Reincarnation 5, 11, 14, 15, 17, 19, 22, 24, 28, 72, 128, 148,
15&-160, 162, 179-241, 286, 243, 268, 271, 273,
303, 304, 306
proofs of 229-240
Root-races 318, 325, 326, 327
Round, a 318, 327
Sacrifice, definition of 275, 276
law of 275-290
lessons in 283-286
Logos, of the 275-277
practice of 288-290
suffering and 278-280
Sankhyan and Gnostic systems 21
Savage, mental state of 209
Self, the. . . . 5, 12, 13, 36, 71, 107, 129, 132, 133, 141, 163, 164,
166, 168, 172, 176, 181, 250, 290, 309
Shell 104-106
Shells, concentric 87, 88, 91
Shiva 12, 13, 15
Sleep 55, 12, 75, 76, 11, 78
Solar body, the 167
'* pitrls 321, 322, 325, 327
Sons of Mind 193, 194, 210, 326
Sons of the Fire 326
Soul 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 23, 28, 83, 96, 99, 100, 145, 148
153-156, 158, 165, 175, 176, 194, 196-202, 210, 219,
228-231, 249, 260, 266, 268, 291, 301, 304
Souls, earthbound 98
Spiritual Intelligences 5, 9, 35, 48, 114, 170, 194, 204, 266
313, 314, 322, 323
Stages of consciousness, intellectual 216-218
" " " sensational 208-212
INDEX 337
Stages of struggle 212-216
" of unity 218
Students in kamaloka 103
Subdivisions of matter 45.47, 58, 109, 110
Suicide (sudden death) 89-91
Sun, life currents from the 50
the 311^ 312
^^^ 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Teachers 3, 37, 39, 71, 72, 89, 106, 116, 119, 152, 156, 157,
168, 183, 210, 216, 223, 263, 272, 283, 294-296,
300-306, 309, 310, 326, 327
Tendencies 263
Theosophical Society I73
Theosophy 1, 4, 37, 82
Thinker, growth of the 196-202, 208-213
" the 107, 108, 112, 115, 117, 118-121, 124, 127,
128-136, 137, 141, 144, 146-148, 153, 160-162^
165, 167, 196, 197, 202, 203, 206, 208, 209, 210,
215-223, 225, 239, 240
Thought-forms 60-65, 99, 112-114, 250-252
Three worlds, the 158, 160, 269. 286. 292
Toltec empire 7
Triad ........'..' 23
T^^m^^ti 13^ 14^ 1^
Tnmty, man a 5, 9, 164, 175. 193
the manifested God a 5, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18
T • • r. 1 r ^^' 23. 27, 184
1 riviahty, results of 97 gg
Turanian c y
Twins, the pair of 20 21 22
likeness and unlikeness between 235
Universal mind 1 1 1
Vach 27
^^^""^ v.'.'.' *.'**.'.■*'.'.. '.'."22, 66
338 INDEX.
Vegetable kingdom 49, 68, 18&-190, 280, 281
Vegetables sensitive 68
Vehicles of consciousness 218-229
Vibrations.... 51, 52, 53, 60, 74, 75, 11, 79, 105, 108, 110, 112
118, 120, 121, 122, 125-127, 133, 134, 181, 219-
222, 227, 248, 250
Virtues, classification of 35
Vishnu 13, 15
Vivisectors 95, 96
Vohuman 22
White and black occultists , 71
Will 212-216, 262
Wraith, the 56
Yatana, the 87
Young, Dr., as child 233
Zoroaster (Zarathustra) 21
Zoroastrianism 19, 21, 22
Zoroastrians 114. 137, 184, 275
Any one that is interested to become more familiar with
some of the facts for which most of the members of the
T. S. stand will take pleasure in reading the books suggested
in the following list:
ENQUIRERS
An Outline of Theosophy. C. W. Leadbeater.
Popular Lectures. Annie Besant.
Riddle of Life. Annie Besant.
Theosophy for Beginners. C. W. Christie.
First Steps in Theosophy. E. Mallet.
STUDY COURSE NO. 1
Man and His Jodies. Annie Besant.
Man's Life in This and Other Worlds. Annie Besant.
Astral Plane. C. W. Leadbeater.
Devachanic Plane. C. W. Leadbeater.
Reincarnation. Annie Besant.
Karma. Annie Besant.
A Text Book of Theosophy. • C. W. Leadbeater.
Clairvoyance. C. W. Leadbeater.
Dreams. C. W. Leadbeater.
In the Outer Court. Annie Besant.
Devotional
At the Feet of the Master. J. Krishnamurti.
STUDY COURSE NO. 3
The Ancient Wisdom. Annie Besant.
Thought Power. Annie Besant.
ThoughtForms. Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater.
Man: Visible and Invisible. C. W. Leadbeater.
Study in Consciousness. Annie Besant.
Path of Discipleship. Annie Besant.
Man, Whence, How and Whither. Annie Besant and C. W.
Leadbeater.
Inner Life, Vols. I and II. C. W. Leadbeater.
Evolution of Life and Form. Annie Besant.
Introduction to Yoga. Annie Besant.
Devotional —
Light on the Path. Mabel Collins.
SCIENTIFIC
Valency of the Chemical Atom, de Jongh.
The Physics of the Secret Doctrine. Wm. Kingsland.
Scientific Corroborations of Theosophy. Dr. A. Marques.
Esoteric Buddhism; Nature's Mysteries. A. P. Sinnett.
Theosophy and Modern Thought. C. Jinarajadasa.
ETHICAL.
The Way of Service; Brotherhood. G. S. Arundale.
The Path of Discipleship; In the Outer Court; The Laws of
the Higher Life; Three Paths to Union With God; Dharma;
The Path to the Masters of Wisdom; Initiation, the Per-
fecting of Man; The Spiritual Life; Spiritual Life for the
Man of the World; The Doctrine of the Heart; Superhuman
Men; Mysticism. Annie Besant.
The Voice of the Silence. H. P. Blavatsky.
The Secret of Happiness. Irving S. Cooper.
The Heart of the Master. C. Crozier.
In His Name; Christ and Buddha; Flowers and Gardens; The
Lord's Work. C. Jinarajadasa.
RELIGIOUS
Universal Textbook of Religion and Morals; Four Great Re-
lig-ions, Hints on the Study of the Bhagavad-Gita; The
Wisdom of the Upanishads; An Advanced Textbook of
Hindu Religion and Ethics; Buddhist Popular Lectures;
The Relfgious Problem in India; Esoteric Christianity.
Annie Besant.
The Christian Creed. C. W. Leadbeater.
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. G. R. S. Mead.
A Buddhist Catechism. H. S. Olcott.
THE THEOSOPHICAIi SOCIETY
Theosophy and The Theosophical Society. Annie Besant.
The Adyar Album. J. Krishnamurti.
Old Diary Leaves, Vol. IV. H. S. Olcott.
Incidents in the Life of Madam Blavatsky. A. P. Sinnett.
Reminiscences of H. P. B. and the Secret Doctrine. Countess
Wachtmeister.
H. P. Blavatsky, an Outline of Her Life. Herbert White.
GENERAL READING
Invisible Helpers. C. W. Leadbeater.
Other Side of Death, The. C. W. Leadbeater.
London Lectures, 1907. Annie Besant.
Occult World, The. A. P. Sinnett.
Some Glimpses of Occultism. C. W. Leadbeater.
Study in Karma, A. Annie Besant.
Mysticism. Annie Besant.
Hidden Side of Things, The. C. W. Leadbeater.
Five Years of Theosophy.
Evolution and Occultism. Annie Besant.
Practical Occultism and Occultism versus Occult Arts. H. P.
Blavatsky.
Methods of Psychic Development. I. S. Cooper.
ECONOMIC
Some Problems of Life. Annie Besant.
Changing World, The. Annie Besant.
Science of Social Organization, The. Bhagavan Das.
Growth of National Consciousness in the Light of Theosophy.
The. G. S. Arundale.
Theosophy and Human Life. Annie Besant.
FICTION
Dream of Ravan — a Mystery.
Idyll of the White Lotus. Mabel Collins.
Story of Sensa, The. Mabel Collins.
Tear and Smile.
BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Chats With Colorkin. Havrah W. L. Hubbard.
Great Teachers, The. Herbert Whyte. ...
In a Nutshell. Agnes Boss Thomas. :4v«s^. t.~ -
Legends and Tales. Annie Besant.
Talks With Golden Chain Links. Ethel M. Whyte.
Theosophy for Very Little Children, Clara M. Codd.
Send for Catalogue for prices
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