Section 2

This spirit can only become the ruler when the firm intellectual acknowledgment or admission is first made that IT alone is. And, as stated above, it being not only the person concerned but also the whole, all selfishness must be eliminated from the lower nature before its divine state can be reached. So long as the smallest personal or selfish desire — even for spiritual attainment for our own sake — remains, so long is the desired end put off. Hence the above term "demands of the flesh" really cov- ers also demands that are not of the flesh, and its proper rendering would be "desires of the per- sonal nature, including those of the individual soul."
When systematically trained in accordance with the aforesaid system and law, men attain to clear insight into the immaterial, spiritual world, and their interior faculties apprehend truth as imme- diately and readily as physical faculties grasp the things of sense, or mental faculties those of rea- son. Or, in the words used by some of them, "They are able to look directly upon ideas;" and hence their testimony to such truth is as trustwor-
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thy as is that of scientists or philosophers to truth in their respective fields.
In the course of this spiritual training such men acquire perception of, and control over, various forces in Nature unknown to other men, and thus are able to perform works usually called "mirac- ulous," though really but the result of larger knowledge of natural law. What these powers are may be found in Patanjali's "Yoga Philos- ophy."
Their testimony as to super-sensuous truth, veri- fied by their possession of such powers, challenges candid examination from every religious mind.
Turning now to the system expounded by these sages, we find, in the first place, an account of cos- mogony, the past and future of this earth and other planets, the evolution of life through ele- mental, mineral, vegetable, animal and human forms, as they are called.
These "passive life elementals" are unknown to modern science, though sometimes approached by it as a subtle material agent in the production of life, whereas they are a form of life itself.
Each Kalpa, or grand period, is divided into four ages or yugas, each lasting many thousands of years, and each one being marked by a predom- inant characteristic. These are the Satya-yug (or age of truth), the Tretya-yug, the Dvapara-yug, and our present Kali-yug (or age of darkness), which began five thousand years back. The word "darkness" here refers to spiritual and not mate- rial darkness. In this age, however, all causes bring about their effects much more rapidly than in any other age — a fact due to the intensified mo- mentum of "evil," as the course of its cycle is
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about rounding towards that of a new cycle of truth. Thus a sincere lover of the race can accom- plish more in three incarnations during Kali-Yuga, than he could in a much greater number in any other age. The darkness of this age is not abso- lute, but is greater than that of other ages; its main tendency being towards materiality, while having some mitigation in occasional ethical or scientific advance conducive to the well-being of the race, by the removal of immediate causes of crime or disease.
Our earth is one of a chain of seven planets, it alone being on the visible plane, while the six oth- ers are on different planes, and therefore invis- ible. (The other planets of our solar system belong each to a chain of seven.) And the life- wave passes from the higher to the lower in the chain until it reaches our earth, and then ascends and passes to the three others on the opposite arc, and thus seven times. The evolution of forms is coincident with this progress, the tide of life bearing with it the mineral and vegetable forms, until each globe in turn is ready to receive the human life wave. Of these globes our earth is the fourth.
Humanity passes from globe to globe in a series of Rounds, first circling about each globe, and rein- carnating upon it a fixed number of times. Con- cerning the human evolution on the concealed planets or globes little is permitted to be said. We have to concern ourselves with our Earth alone. The latter, when the wave of humanity has reached it for the last time (in this, our Fourth Round), began to evolute man, subdividing him into races. Each of these races when it has,
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through evolution, reached the period known as "the moment of choice" and decided its future destiny as an individual race, begins to disappear. The races are separated, moreover, from each other by catastrophes of nature, such as the sub- sidence of continents and great natural convul- sions. Coincidently with the development of races the development of specialized senses takes place; thus our fifth race has so far developed five senses.
The Sages further tell us that the affairs of this world and its people are subject to cyclic laws, and during any one cycle the rate or quality of prog- ress appertaining to a different cycle is not pos- sible. These cyclic laws operate in each age. As the ages grow darker the same laws prevail, only the cycles are shorter; that is, they are the same length in the absolute sense, but go over the given limit in a shorter period of time. These laws im- pose restrictions on the progress of the race. In a cycle, where all is ascending and descending, the Adepts must wait until the time comes before they can aid the race to ascend. They cannot, and must not, interfere with Karmic law. Thus they begin to work actively again in the spiritual sense, when the cycle is known by them to be approach- ing its turning point.
At the same time these cycles have no hard lines or points of departure or inception, inasmuch as one may be ending or drawing to a close for some time after another has already begun. They thus overlap and shade into one another, as day does into night; and it is only when the one has com- pletelv ended and the other has really begun by bringing out its blossoms, that we can say we are in a new cycle. It may be illustrated by compar-
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ing two adjacent cycles to two interlaced circles, where the circumference of one touches the center of the other, so that the moment where one ended and the other began would be at the point where the circumferences intersected each other. Or by imagining a man as representing, in the act of walking, the progress of the cycles; his rate of ad- vancement can only be obtained by taking the dis- tance covered by his paces, the points at the mid- dle of each pace, between the feet, being the begin- ning of cycles and their ending.
The cyclic progress is assisted, or the deteriora- tion further permitted, in this way; at a time when the cycle is ascending, developed and progressed Beings, known in Sanscrit by the term "Jnanis," descend to this earth from other spheres where the cycle is going down, in order that they may also help the spiritual progress of this globe. In like manner they leave this sphere when our cycle approaches darkness. These Jnanis must not, however, be confounded with the Mahatmas and Adepts mentioned above. The right aim of true Theosophists should, therefore, be so to live that their influence may be conducive for the dispelling of darkness to the end that such Jnanis may turn again towards this sphere.
Theosophy also teaches the existence of a uni- versal diffused and highly ethereal medium, which has been called the "Astral Light" and "Akasa." It is the repository of all past, present, and future events, and in it are recorded the effects of spirit- ual causes, and of all acts and thoughts from the direction of either spirit or matter. It may be called the Book of the Recording Angel.
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Akasa, however, is a misnomer when it is con- fused with Ether or the astral light of the Kabal- ists. Akasa is the noumenon of the phenomenal Ether or astral light proper, for Akasa is infinite, impartite, intangible, its only production being Sound.*
And this astral light is material and not spirit. It is, in fact, the lower principle of that cosmic body of which akasa is the highest. It has the power of retaining all images. This includes a statement that each thought as well as word and act makes an image there. These images may be said to have two lives. First. Their own as an image. Second. The impress left by them in the matrix of the astral light. In the upper realm of this light there is no such thing as space or time in the human sense. All future events are the thoughts and acts of men; these are producers in advance of the picture of the event which is to occur. Ordinary men continually, recklessly, and wickedly, are making these events sure to come to pass, but the Sages, Mahatmas, and the Adepts of the" good law, make only such pictures as are in accordance with Divine law, because they control the production of their thought. In the astral light are all the differentiated sounds as well. The elementals are energic centers in it. The shades of departed human beings and animals are also there. Hence, any seer or entranced person can see in it all that anyone has done or said, as well as that which has happened to anyone with whom he is connected. Hence, also, the identity of de-
*Akasa in the mysticism of the Esoteric Philosophy is, properly speaking, the female "Holy Ghost;" "Sound" or speech being the Logos — the manifested Verbum of the unmanifested Mother. See Sankhyasara," Preface, page 33, et seq.
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ceased persons — who are supposed to report spe- cially out of this plane — is not to be concluded from the giving of forgotten or unknown words, facts, or ideas. Out of this plane of matter can be taken the pictures of all who have ever lived, and then reflected on a suitable magneto-electrical surface, so as to seem like the apparition of the deceased, producing all the sensations of weight, hardness, and extension.
Through the means of the Astral Light and the help of Elementals, the various material elements may be drawn down and precipitated from the atmosphere upon either a plane surface or in the form of a solid object; this precipitation may be made permanent, or it may be of such a light co- hesive power as soon to fade away. But the help of the elementals can only be obtained by a strong will added to a complete knowledge of the laws which govern the being of the elementals. It is useless to give further details on this point; first, because the untrained student cannot understand; and second, the complete explanation is not per- mitted, were it even possible in this space.
The world of the elementals is an important factor in our world and in the course of the stu- dent. Each thought as it is evolved by a man coal- esces instantly with an elemental, and is then be- yond the man's power.
It can easily be seen that this process is going on every instant. Therefore, each thought exists as an entity. Its length of life depends on two things: (a) The original force of the person's will and thought; (b) The power of the elemental which coalesced with it, the latter being deter- mined by the class to which the elemental belongs.
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This is the case with good and bad thoughts alike, and as the will beneath the generality of wicked thoughts is usually powerful, we can see that the result is very important, because the elemental has no conscience and obtains its constitution and direc- tion from the thought it may from time to time carry.
Each human being has his own elementals that partake of his nature and his thoughts. If you fix your thoughts upon a person in anger, or in criti- cal, uncharitable judgment, you attract to yourself a number of those elementals that belong to, gen- erate, and are generated by this particular fault or failing, and they precipitate themselves upon you. Hence, through the injustice of your merely human condemnation, which cannot know the source and causes of the action of another, you at once become a sharer of his fault or failing by your own act, and the spirit expelled returns "with seven devils worse than himself."
This is the origin of the popular saying that "curses, like chickens, come home to roost," and has its root in the laws governing magnetic affinity.
In the Kali-Yuga we are hypnotized by the effect of the immense body of images in the Astral Light, compounded of all the deeds, thoughts, and so forth of our ancestors, whose lives tended in a material direction. These images influence the in- ner man — who is conscious of them — by sugges- tion. In a brighter age the influence of such im- ages would be towards Truth. The effect of the Astral Light, as thus molded and painted by us, will remain so long as we continue to place those images there, and it thus becomes our judge and our executioner. Every universal law thus con-
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tains within itself the means for its own accom- plishment and the punishment for its violation, and requires no further authority to postulate it or to carry out its decrees.
The Astral Light by its inherent action both evolves and destroys forms. It is the universal register. Its chief office is that of a vehicle for the operation of the laws of Karma, or the progress of the principle of life, and it is thus in a deep spiritual sense a medium or "mediator" between man and his Deity — his higher spirit.
Theosophy also tells of the origin, history, de- velopment and destiny of mankind.
Upon the subject of Man it teaches:
First. That each spirit is a manifestation of the One Spirit, and thus a part of all. It passes through a series of experiences in incarnation, and is destined to ultimate reunion with the Divine.
Second. That this incarnation is not single but repeated, each individuality becoming re-embod- ied during numerous existences in successive races and planets of our chain, and accumulating the experiences of each incarnation towards its per- fection.
Third. That between adjacent incarnations, after grosser elements are first purged away, comes a period of comparative rest and refresh- ment, called Devachan — the soul being therein prepared for its next advent into material life.
The constitution of man is subdivided in a sep- tenary manner, the main divisions being those of body, soul and spirit. These divisions and their relative development govern his subjective con- dition after death. The real division cannot be understood, and must for a time remain esoteric,
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because it requires certain senses not usually de- veloped for its understanding. If the present seven-fold division, as given by Theosophical writ- ers is adhered to strictly and without any condi- tional statement, it will give rise to controversy or error. For instance, Spirit is not a seventh principle. It is the synthesis, or the whole, and is equally present in the other six. The present var- ious divisions can only be used as a general work- ing hypothesis, to be developed and corrected as students advance and themselves develop.
The state of spiritual but comparative rest known as Devachan is not an eternal one, and so is not the same as the eternal heaven of Chris- tianity. Nor does "hell" correspond to the state known to Theosophical writers as Avitchi.
All such painful states are transitory and puri- ficatory states. When those are passed the indi- vidual goes into Devachan.
"Hell" and Avitchi are thus not the same. Avitchi is the same as the "second death," as it is in fact annihilation that only comes to the "black Magician" or spiritually wicked, as will be seen further on.
The nature of each incarnation depends upon the balance as struck of the merit and demerit of the previous life or lives — upon the way in which the man has lived and thought; and this law is inflexible and wholly just.
"Karma" — a term signifying two things, the law of ethical causation (Whatsoever a man sow- eth, that shall he also reap) ; and the balance or excess of merit or demerit in any individual, 'deter- mines also the main experiences of joy and sorrow in each incarnation, so that what we call "luck"
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is in reality "desert" — desert acquired in past ex- istence.
Karma is not all exhausted in a single life, nor is a person necessarily in this life experiencing the effect of all his previous Karma; for some may be held back by various causes. The principle cause is the failure of the Ego to acquire a body which will furnish the instrument or apparatus in and by which the meditation or thoughts of pre- vious lives can have their effect and be ripened. Hence it is held that there is a mysterious power in the man's thoughts during a life, sure to bring about its results in either an immediately succeeding life or in one many lives distant; that is, in whatever life the Ego obtains a body cap- able of being the focus, apparatus, or instrument for the ripening of past Karma. There is also a swaying or diverging power in Karma in its effects upon the soul, for a certain course of life — or thought — will influence the soul in that direction for sometimes three lives, before the beneficial or bad effect of any other sort of Karma can be felt. Nor does it follow that every minute por- tion of Karma must be felt in the same detail as when produced, for several sorts of Karma may come to a head together at one point in the life, and, by their combined effect, produce a result which, while, as a whole, accuratelv representing all the elements in it, still is a different Karma from each single component part. This may be known as the nullification of the postulated effect of the classes of Karma involved.