chapter let us throw upon that use a ray from the

Secret Science.
Because mind is an active principle, its expres- sion is always dynamic. If one holds in his mind's eye an absent friend or loved one, forthwith the effort causes a vibration in the mental substance of the seven-fold world. Then, guided by the higher mind of the transmitter, this vibration finds the mind of the remembered. Should that vibra- tion contact those peculiar to the physical brain mind of the receiver, in other words, his lower mind, it results that the finer mental vibrations, proper to the act of mental visualizing, are overpowered and even obliterated by the coarser ones of the material mind contacted. Should now the higher mind of the receiver at the time be in rapport with the corresponding mind of the sender, then a drawing near of these two minds will result.
The human material body must of course wholly conform to the laws of time and of space obtaining on the material plane. Not so the mind bodies, especially the higher of the two linked with the material body. This higher is in its own definite aspect of time and space; and, if freed from physi- cal hinderings, it would obey only the law of the high mental plane. As it is, every human material body has more or less of a separative effect on its purely mental associate when the latter would come into conjunction with another of its kind.
If a loved one has passed out of material con-
28
THE DEEP.ER MYSTERIES
ditions, then but a single physical obstacle to conjunction of separated minds remains. Desire to visit the grave, or else some scene where, as earthly beings, friends or lovers have passed unforgettable hours, is an urge originating in the law on which we are touching. These places are potent aids to the yet-incarnated higher mind that would visualize most clearly the being now beyond the veil of the physical, and thus bring about the near approach of both higher minds, those which, in the course of nature, are destined to complete union.
Because in the world, and environed by physical conditions, we can picture heaven and its inhabi- tants only by giving to them certain physical characteristics. By the same law, those who have passed from earth can hold in memory the world and its dwellers only by giving to them certain characteristics of the heavenly places and their peoples.
As the discarnate higher mind rises to more and more appropriate planes of being, memory of the physical world and its contents — because increas- ingly influenced by environment — becomes more and more unlike the original. The belief that, in the last analysis, the physical world is mere delu- sion, no doubt originated with those who, in the profound trance known as samadhi, looked at or remembered it from the super-physical planes.
The law which influences memory in the dis- carnate upon the higher planes, and causes them
29
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
to idealize the physical earth and its inhabitants, is operative in an opposite way in those who, after death, have sunken to the lower divisions of the astral plane. Especially is that law active in those unfortunates who have gravitated to that lowest division of the astral known as the eighth sphere.
As Swedenborg discovered, these remember and even see the sun itself as a black sphere. As for the physical earth, the distorted memory of these makes of it a vile abode of evil beings resembling themselves. Those who yet in physical life remem- ber this class with hatred in their hearts, are in danger of forming the very tie which of all possible ones they would abhor; for let it be emphasized that while love is the potent binder of hearts and destinies, hate is equally efficient in its own field of operations.
TIME AND ETERNITY
ETERNITY is the Past, the Present, and the Future, united in the Divine Mind; whereas that which encompasses these is the Divine Form. To be comprehensible to finite mind. Eternity and its Container manifest as innumerable spheres moving around other spheres, themselves in motion throughout the deeps of space. For every being in ascending scale, this symbol holds until
30
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
he enters Eternity there to unite with the all- inclusive One.
Because a revolving sphere, this Earth is a manifestation of time to its dwellers, and because Time, moving in its orbit, carries with it the suc- cession of events, their re-incarnation so to speak, the human root races and sub-races — progressing through their cycles and minor cycles of timed events, — are, at the beginning of these periods, impelled to move over the Earth in great migra- tions which began with the polar races, and con- tinued throughout Lemurian, Atlantean, and his- toric times, and still continue, as witness the influx of world peoples to that amalgamation which in America, will result in a new sub-race.
To primitive man the earth was fiat; the all- important center around which swung the diminu- tive sun and moon, and the insignificant stars; heavenly lamps all of them, and lighted only for his convenience in day or night. In Atlantean times the Secret Science taught the world's rotun- dity, and its minor place in the universal scheme; but this knowledge was for the few, since the spherical earth, and its axial and orbital revolu- tions, were clews to certain cyclic operations of karmic Law.
Through major and minor karmic cycles, all worlds and creatures approach Eternity, the Divine Vision. Enlarged cycles of sight will be successive until, at the last unveiling of minds and eyes, the
31
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
far off in time and space becomes the Eternal Now, and the Ever Present.
In both the individual and collective building of the temple of Divine Truth, Karma urges to perfect work, since it reveals to man's spiritual understanding that what is builded for Time and Eternity must in every detail be flawless. The lower nature deems Karma a hard taskmaster, but the nobler part of man at times sees Karma as Divine Truth and Compassion; so the dictum of the higher nature rules in a way which the lower never realizes; therefore unconsciously this lower pays its debt to the Law as we shall see.
Retiring from objective life, man the builder reaches higher and higher levels of discrimination in respect to Truth until, at the turning point of his subjective arc, a ray of light from the universal Atma informs his individual seventh principle; whereat he sees time as a spiral in which he must travel toward perfection. Then, though actuated by only a fraction of the Divine Thoroughness, he gladly descends to meet the requirements of karmic Law. Soon a workman on the physical plane, he will tear down and rebuild wherever necessary. In the successive clothings incident to rebirth, the lower nature, because taking to itself a new body and an unremembering brain, may rebel at Karma's decree; still the momentum established at the turning of man's cycle, must be maintained till time and place and condition have
32
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
new inception at the beginning of the next cycle.
Within the objective arc of every human life exist innumerable karmic time cycles which lift one into joy, or plunge him into sorrow, but, in the direst descent, there is no complusion for the higher nature because — as in the greater cycle — at the turning point of this small dark one the Divine Adjudicator of karmic Law informs the spiritual will of man which at once fulfills its office. Thereupon the lower principles, unconscious that they are willed so to do, proceed to self-punishment.
The succession of births into the physical world, a succession uninterrupted for ages, may be likened to a mighty river ever flowing because of its innumerable tributaries. From the lake of Itasca to the Gulf of Mexico the Mississippi sweeps over a flat surface, but, for thirteen hundred miles in direct line from the river's source to its mouth, the curve of the globe is the arc of a circle, complete were the river's course uninterrupted.
In respect to time, the human race moves in a great spiral of which the historic ages are an arc, though seemingly no curve is there. The plane- tary rounds — caused by the sun's revolution in its vast orbit — and that simultaneous great circling of time which really causes the world-pilgrimages of the root races, have their individual correspond- ent in the circling of man the unit through his time orbit.
Evidently time is relative, and is determined
33
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
according to the needs of mankind, whether evolv- ing as root races, sub-races, or individuals. The determiner of time is the atmic principle of man, and the Atma of the globe by him inhabited. From the viewpoint of these Atmas, time is only opportunity perhaps profited by, but almost never wholly so; therefore must man be born again into time until every opportunity has been made the most of.
At the close of Earth's seventh round, a separa- tion of its principles occurs: then the higher, to a great extent purified, but not wholly so, retire to their place as a transparent, luminous and secret planet, while the old body of Earth swims in space a planet in pralaya like the Moon above us. After ages of involution comparable to that of the human soul in Devachan, the secret planet reaches the limit where its atmic principle, enlightened by the Solar Atma, beholds Time as a spiral. There- fore the planet gravitates downward to unite with its old body, and, for the world, time and oppor- tunity begin anew; not on the former level how- ever, because the lowest arc of the karmic time spiral will indicate the place attained in this our present manvantara.
Although Earth's annual revolution is explained by Material Science, and to the satisfaction of its votaries. Occult Science, that seeker for hidden causes, finds that, at the turning of the orbit on December 22nd, the earth's Atma receives an
34
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
impulse from the Atm^ of the Sun then in Capri- cornus.
In passing let it be said that, as regent of the Zodiac, the Sun determines and maintains for every planet the time orbit necessary to its peculiar development. Losing its planetary time orbit, the dead moon received from the astral personal will principle of the earth an imposed time orbit; one not without purpose, but that is another matter. In respect to axial revolution, the earth is impelled and maintained by forces somewhat analogous to those causing orbital motion. The inner impulses affecting the earth are slight indeed, but sufficient for the minute time cycles indicated by axial revolution.
As before said, our earth is time to its dwellers; hence its yearly and daily turnings have fostered in mankind the illusion of past, present, and future. This illusion is far preferable to that of the mindless polar first race who, in the light of the never s nking polar sun, lived in one dimen- sional time, the present.
Year by year the earth arrives at those higher and higher positions in the great time spiral which usher in the sub-races, and the root races of a planetary round. This fact wonderfully strength- ens the hope in the human breast which makes to-morrow better than to-day, and the years to come brighter than those behind. Therefore, ignoring whatever of glamor legend has cast over
35
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
the long ago, we picture the golden age of the race in the world's large and brilliant future.
Viewed from differing angles the Atma of the sun is Time, Karma, Truth, Spiritual Will, and also Christos, in short the Manifested Word, to the worlds in his keeping. In a secondary way the earth's Atma is all these to its dwellers, and, in an individual way, the corresponding Atma of man is therefore ruler and finally perfector of his being. In every instance Atma is the Auric Egg of Akasha enveloping and permeating the lower principles.
M.
THE SECRET OF KARMA
IF the preceding chapter makes plain the aspects under which Atma is active, both in the Microcosm and the Macrocosm, we are now pre- pared for a deeper than surface view of karmic Law as operative in individual and collective man, as well as in the world itself. Sure that our dis- coveries will be of universal application, let us begin with man.
Completing the subjective arc of his incarnation orbit, man, now represented by the ego — Atma, Buddhi, Manas — has reached, almost always unconsciously, the atmic turning point. There his individual Atma, informed by the solar Atma — the Lords of Karma — constructs for the next incar- nation an ideal cycle; not of time as we understand
36
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
it, but of happenings. In constructing this cycle, Atma is Truth and Justice, since in the cycle every happening is the truth of a former happening in that the deeds once done to others, and so really done to oneself, are to react for weal or woe on the doer. In the ordering of this cycle, Atma is Spiritual Will, and in the carrying out it is Karma.
Because of its conjunction with Buddhi and Manas, Atma is the Christos in man, his individual Word which recognizes in the astral personal will, conjoined with Kama and Kama Manas, a reflec- tion of itself, a negative expression of the Word. If the karmic cycle, constructed by Atma for the new birth, were full and complete, then earthly man would be fore-ordained, a mere automaton, a creature of fate, wherefore the real purpose of Karma would prove abortive. Evidently the lower will must be allowed to insert in the karmic cycle many happenings of its own choosing.
Mark well that the karmic cycle is not in time as by us understood; it is but a succession of events whose order cannot be transposed, although between many of these events others may be inserted by the untrammelled lower will. The Spiritual Will would unite this lower with itself, but its only method is the karmic procedure; that ordained by Divine Wisdom. Throughout material life, man's Spiritual Will presides over things inevitable; in this it is Karma. Wheresoever there is volition, personal will is the final factor;
37
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
hence, if a voluntary deed be noble and self- sacrificing, the progress of personal will is thereby revealed.
At this juncture two questions are suggested. First: is man's physical death always indicated in the original cycle, and consequently fore-ordained? Answer: It is indicated and fore-ordained only when, in constructing the original imperative series, the individual Atma — because enlightened from on high — must needs insert a premature or otherwise unnatural death. Second: what results from this death? Answer: Then, whether short or long, the cycle purposely ended leaves many debts to be equalized in another birth. Gradually the karmic cycle has been forced to include deeds done in several births, but now wisely arranged to the best results. If no such fatality is in the original cycle, then, barring reckless disregard of physical law, physical life usually continues until the will to live is exhausted, a natural occurrence at this world-stage of human evolution.
Our first questions answered, a second grows out of them. Is the act of self-destruction in the order of predestined events, or is it wholly voli- tional? We reply that it may be a karmic adjust- ment of a debt incurred long ago, and so included in the original series, or it may be sourced some- where in the present life, or it may originate in a sudden impulse of the personal will, thus, in the last two instances, engendering Karma for a future
38
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
birth. Only a master of wisdom who has largely united his lower and higher will, and so gained atmic sight, can determine in every instance.
Out of this explanation grows a third question. Is not present retribution and reward often the outcome of deeds done in the present life, and, if so, how shall our exposition of karmic procedure be enlarged to cover the facts?
In reply: Atma is unceasingly active. Were its karmic activity confined to a carrying out of the fore-ordained, then the free deeds of this present life would not be recompensed therein; so to the vast majority of men Divine Justice would be non- existent. In its aspect as Karma, Atma rightfully dispenses justice, and incessantly and promptly for evil deeds were it not for the individual Buddhi, a principle wise with the wisdom of compassion.
From the viewpoint of Buddhi, such unfailingly prompt recompense would control man through compulsion, fear of the law; and is it not evident that unfailingly prompt recompense of good would make reward the chief incentive to virtue? In regard to evil: from the viewpoint of the individual Atma the individual Buddhi is too lenient; so the harmonious outcome of these differing views is compromise; not in respect to the fore-ordained of higher powers, but in respect to the time of reckoning for the evil, and the reward of the good deeds of the present life.
In many instances Atma defers karmic action
39
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
that Buddhi, in its aspect as conscience, may admonish the evil doer, and possibly rescue him from greater degradation. This adjustment of the atmic and the buddhic methods is approved by the higher Manas in its moments of purest insight. To maintain equilibrium, both in man and the world, the close connection of action and reaction is often imperative; hence no intervention of Buddhi occurs. In these cases the sequence of action and reaction is obvious to the simplest understanding, and is taken for granted by all.
In a way far larger than above described, the holding back of Karma is possible. The individual Atma has larger and larger correspondents in the collective sub-race and root race Atmas, and that of humanity entire. Karma, operative on man- kind in groups, originates in the solar Atma, and acts through the group Atma. Buddhi, operative on mankind in groups, originates in the solar Buddhi, and acts chiefly through the group Buddhi of the dedicated few who, renouncing the heavenly rest, have vowed service to all mankind during this planetary round and those to succeed.
Always the most saintly believers in the one life theory look for earlly termination of their good labors in this lower vineyard; whereas those who have vowed unending service have registered indelibly, on the Akasha of their individual Atma- Buddhi, the noble truth that they have become sponsors for humanity through the ages. Racial
40
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
and world Karma are of slow accumulation ; con- sequently only these continual workers can offer adequate reason why mature Karma should be dispensed as a rivulet, rather than as a roaring, whelming flood.
Stripped of esoteric dress, the story of Sodom is deeply occult. There the Lord represents mature group Karma, while Lot is a dedicated soul; though by himself unequal to the task of redeeming his city. Karma is to be withheld provided a minimum of ten dedicated ones will join with Lot. These not appearing, the atmic standard of Justice prevails, and destruction overtakes Sodom.
With the beginning of this century, a karmic world-cycle of fore-ordained happenings was inau- gurated. Among the inevitables of that cycle is the world war embodying the delayed Karma of centuries. True, the Napoleonic wars somewhat reduced the volume of overdue Karma, but the lamentable fact is patent that the band of eternally dedicated helpers of humanity is insufficient for the task of bringing the average of the race to the standard which warrants the further delaying of much overdue world Karma.
One object of the Theosophical movement, in fact its most vital object, is to arouse certain advanced souls, the world over, to the needs of the White Lodge. The Buddhic group has indeed been increased through such knowledge of Karma and rebirth as our co-worker H. P. B. brought to
41
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
the western world; but, as offset, due to the schem- ing of our age long enemies, mutual jealousies and consequent disruption inimical to the buddhic grouping have appeared in quarters where least they should be.
Fortunately for our cause — that of our god- children everywhere — the cycle of perfected hap- penings contains the Avatar, a being of free and dedicated will, our visible head and mouthpiece in the wide arena of human events. That through his buddhic presence, and his present day message to prepared peoples, the buddhic group shall be vastly increased, there are internal evidences obvious to those who can read. Unfortunately such readers exist among the dark hosts now aroused to frenzied opposition. Many of these have vowed eternal hostility to the good; which vow is registered not in the indestructible Akasha, but in its opposite, the deteriorating astral and kamic principles of their lower natures.
M.
THE OLD ORDER AND THE NEW
IN "Arcane Science," page 93, also in "The Heart of Things," in the chapter "Jehovah," it was explained that the "God of Nations" was united to the Jews through the ray proper to the astral principle of personal will, in fact their violet
42
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
racial ray, and that of Jehovah himself as the summit of the astral, lunar evolution.
Though in many ways no better than others, the Isrealites were fortunate in that the ray tie between Abraham their father and Jehovah, then regent of this planet, had resulted in a posterity peculiarly favored, because in a peculiar way the children of Jehovah. That this favoring was not mere partiality we may be sure.
That the Hebrew prophets and inspired singers have much vitiated their message with the prej- udices and arbitrary ideas of justice inseparable from their time and their evolution in their racial ray, the Old Testament everywhere shows, as witness the following taken at random: "I the Lord am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." "God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revenge th and is furious." Often a more temperate tone is heard in such sayings as "The Lord of hosts shall be exalted in judgment." " For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercy will I gather thee." "The Lord is slow to anger and great in power."
In the light just thrown upon the procedure of Karma, it is evident that the Hebrew writers con- founded atmic judgment with wrath and revenge. In the milder passages above quoted, Mercy — Buddhi — intervenes not against the administra-
43
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
tion of atmic justice, but against supposed anger, that mere human frailty.
To form adequate estimate of Jehovah, whom his prophets have invested with contradictory human emotions, we must consider that He repre- sents personal will purified and merged in Divine Will. This union results in a two-foldness foreign to single Divine Will. Jehovah is Karma, not from the atmic, but in fact from the astral-atmic stand. In the prophets we see no purely imper- sonal administration of Law, but everywhere a personal note of authority. The difficulty of interpreting the mandates of such a God and in such a time inevitably led the Hebrew mouth- pieces of Jehovah to exaggeration of his personal Will aspect.
That His name might be known upon the earth, and His law promulgated, Jehovah — the earth's sole regent — set apart or chose, through Abraham, about two- twelfths of the people of the violet ray, in fact those saved from the Atlantean doom anciently meted to the practicers of infernal arts.
In the appointed time these chosen people were fortunate in opportunity when earth's rightful sovereign appeared among them to perfect his astral and kamic principles, also a certain sub- stratum of the physical, preparatory to assuming kingship. That this event was the turning point in human history, a certain secret instruction shows.
44
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
As received from those celestial teachers the Higher Kumaras, this instruction declares that while this earth chain is now in its fourth manvan- tara, the moon chain has finished its fourth. During the first two moon manvantaras, the great sixth or light blue hierarchy of the Solar Logos guided the destinies of the simple moon humanity. During the third moon manvantara, Jehovah the moon sovereign was perfected and assumed author- ity. During the first three earth manvantaras, the great seventh or orange hierarchy of the Solar Logos ruled our planet, but, at the beginning of the present manvantara, the lunar sovereign began his regentship which terminated at the cruci- fixion on Calvary.
Because for a great purpose the Jewish race ray was kept pure through isolation of its children, it followed that the Jews looked askance at the children of the Orange, the Red, and the Green, those heathen worshippers of false gods epitomiz- ing their own human limitations; and it also fol- lowed that when the greatest of the prophets appeared as representative of a ray not Jewish, and therefore as exponent of another system, he was rejected, and finally killed. In this there is much to mitigate the otherwise intolerable karmic debt of the Jews now almost paid; wherefore the cycle of necessity, newly inaugurated, holds for them a high place among the nations.
We are now prepared to deal with the central
45
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
mystery touching the real status of that great one Jesus the Christ, who, in an earlier instruction of this series, was called the Master of the Yellow Ray, and again the Master of all rays.
Every planetary ruler takes name and authority from the dominating ray of his planet. For this earth that ray is the basic Orange. As H. P. B. once said, "there is no hard and fast scale, no fixed order of the human and the planetary principles." Thus for the moon chain, and its sovereign, the perfected Astral was supreme over the other five principles. For the Martian chain, and its sover- eign, perfected Kama is supreme over the other four. For Saturn, and its sovereign, purified Kama-Manas is supreme over the other three. Through the carrying out of this law, will eventually result the equalizing of all human and all planetary principles, from so-called highest to so-called lowest. Such equalization long since obtained in the Solar Hierarchies.
For this world and its ruler, all principles or rays are tinted by the dominating Orange. For Mars and its ruler, the dominating Red performs like office. For Saturn and its ruler, it is the Green, and so on. Evidently Truth has a planetary aspect impossible to surmount until the solar view is arrived at; so, however much the buddhic ray and view may appeal to our planetary ruler, the truth by him discerned in the Orange will seem
46
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
greater ; hence the perfecting of the Orange physical vesture will ever engage his chief efforts.
In the esoteric classification of the human, planetary, and universal Tatwas or forces, or rays, Adi Tatwa is given as the highest. We will now mention a human and planetary Tatwa which from our planetary viewpoint is supreme; one whose positive pole is in the great seventh or Orange Hierarchy of the Solar Logos. In man this Tatwa originates those refinable divisions of physical body matter from which the great Master of physical life perfected, as his chief possession, that physical vehicle in which he ascended on high , or, more correctly, departed to his sacred and secret place.
Concerning that place, a most arcane truth can now be revealed. Every Tatwa is divisible into seven, and while exoterically Prithivi is the lowest of the seven Tatwas, its highest division contains a secret Tatwa which, for this earth, is the supreme one.
Since every Tatwa creates both the human and the planetary plane corresponding with it, and since every division of a Tatwa creates both the human and the planetary sub-plane corresponding with it, evidently the sub-plane proper to the secret Tatwa is the appropriate abode of the Master of physical life. Moreover he, of all the human race, has a body fit for that sub-plane. At death every other representative of mankind
47
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
leaves behind his entire seven-fold physical body, and passes to some division of the astral plane.
Evidently the Master of the Orange stands between the physical life and the posthumous life of his lesser brethren, and so reaches both up and down. Though near to his own in heaven, he is equally so to those on earth. This most precious and comforting truth could not be made clear without some knowledge of the seven-foldness both of man and the planet ; hence for the world at large this knowledge awaited the fullness of time now drawing near.
Hoping to come after death into the visible presence of his Lord, the devout believer will find in this arcane teaching food for thought, and good reason for modifying his expectation. Neverthe- less, let him remember the saying of the initiate Apostle, "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." Through repeated purifications, the Adamic body of this devout one shall become the purified and eternal body of the resurrection; in other words it shall become the body commonly possessed at the close of a certain great cycle fair in the future of this progressive world.
Said the risen Christ to the company of the faithful, "Lo, I am with you even unto the end of the age," and have we not made clear the truth within his dark saying? Concerning the body in which the Lord proved himself to Thomas, there
48
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
is a mystery which may be touched upon. Evi- dently the permanent physical of the risen Lord would not show the stigmata; neither would it perform such a physical act as the eating described by Luke. Plainly, for the time being that per- manent body was by some means clothed with coarser particles.
In ordinary materialization it is possible, under circumstances unusually favorable, to build upon the astral model a semi-solid but transient facsimile of the original ; one which persists only through the will of the entity plus the will of another, or, better, plus the combined wills of several, or, best, in conjunction with the wills of all present. As for the scriptural instances of Jesus' bodily appear- ing, the astral model was not the body clothed upon but, instead, the permanent physical already described.
That after his resurrection the Master appeared first to the faithful, was in accord with the law to large extent governing that occurrence; a law which should obtain at the supreme event for which the world is preparing. To facilitate this event, a company of believers in its early taking place should exist as force centers in different sections of the globe, and especially in this western land. To be effective, these groups should under- stand the real nature of the Avatar; at least they should be wholly above ignorant fanaticism, and that literal interpretation which associates the
49
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
Second Advent with the ending of things terrestrial.
Concerning the body of the Avatar, its charac- teristics are derived from the masculine Manas and the feminine Buddhi. The risen Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene because she, of all his followers, best represented the purified feminine principle of Kama in conjunction with Buddhi. Since, in the risen body of our Lord, this purified dual principle somewhat dominated the duad of purified Kama-Manas in conjunction with higher Manas, the event was in accord with the inner laws of being, and could not have been otherwise.
Here is a clew to the great materialization due at the end of this culminating age. Even as in the old historic time, so again may it be. If so, the Master shall first appear not to the chief leaders of spiritual progress, the men and women of spot- less life, the keepers of the law from their youth up, but to the feminine Kama-Buddhi purified in some humble and obscure disciple far from the highways of the world.
H.
POLARITY
/^N pages 201-2 of "The Heart of Things," it is ^^^ in substance stated that the concentrated Spiritual Will or Atma of the Jovian beings allows them to penetrate knowingly only to the densest division of the manasic plane of the Venusian
50
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
evolution. Again on page 222 it is said that upon this earth, a planet of seven principles, human spiritual will is necessarily circumscribed both in knowledge and power until the lower principles of man, personal jvill especially, have been harmon- ized with it. In seeming contradiction to these statements the contents of those preceding chapters : "Time and Eternity" and "The Secret of Karma" reveal the operations of Spiritual Will on all planes of the world, and in every human principle.
Supplementing the statements on pages 201-2 of "The Heart of Things" let us say that while the Jovian humanity contacts and aids the spiritual will of every planet, and its every being in the septenary series, and even in the tenary scheme, the Mercurians contact and aid the buddhic prin- ciple in every lower planet, and its every devolving life. The Venusians contact and aid the manasic principle in every lower planet, and its progeny. The Saturnian humanity performs its peculiar office to the lower Manas of all in every humbler planet.
The Martian humanity aids the kamic principle in every lower planet, and its every life. Also the lunar Hierarchy is an aid to every manifesta- tion of the personal will principle in all planets below. As for our Earth; already many among us recognize the brotherly tide binding man to the lower species; those which yet shall pass to their respective planets, there to form that connecting
51
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
link because of which our humanity can aid the basic physical evolution of Uranus, Neptune, and the planet beyond. Because of this universal contact and mutual aid, spiritual will becomes increasingly active on every plane, throughout the solar system.
Owing to the contact of Atma and Buddhi on Mercury, the duad there is wholly unified. So also is the trinity of Atma, Buddhi, Manas, on Venus. This trinity is conjoined in every other planet in the descending series, but always in a less and less perfect manner.
In the four-fold Saturn evolution we discover the first pair of opposites existing among the principles which in the lower planets are increased to seven, and even to ten. Because of the nearly unified Saturnian trinity of Atma, Buddhi, Manas, and especially because of the affinity of Manas for lower Manas, its negative pole, the humanity of the green planet has developed intellectually; not however to the pure intelligence of the Venusian beings; but, as compensation, to a mental grasp of many matters quite outside the purview of their lofty brethren.
In the five-fold Martian evolution we discover two pair of opposites to wit, higher and lower Manas, and Buddhi-Kama. Because of these polar opposites, the Martians have developed intellectually, but even more so in respect to the transforming of desire, their basic principle. While
52
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
not approaching the pure love proper to the Mercurians, these have as compensation that compassion which comes only through triumph over the passional nature.
The finished six-fold Moon evolution gave to the lunar fathers three pairs of opposites to wit, higher and lower Manas, Buddhi-Kama, and spiritual and personal will. Because of the affinity of spiritual will for personal will, the basic principle of the lunar scheme, evolution in that scheme was wonderfully quickened, and so brought to consummation ages ago. The personal will of the perfected lunar Hierarchy is by no means the equal of Spiritual Will, but, as compensation, it reaches down and is capable in the very abysm of matter. Hence the lunar Jehovah is said to have created the world over which he in fact presided as regent until the rightful ruler came into his own.
The humanity of this world has for principles three pairs of opposites like those of the lunar scheme, and, besides, a negative physical principle peculiar to this planet; a principle having its positive pole in the seventh Hierarchy of the Logos, those beings who well-high transcend human conception. Fortunately that Logos has given to us a way-shower, one who exemplified by his resurrection the possibilities latent in the human physical.
The dominant principle of any planet is negative to the solar source of that principle, but positive
53
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
to its correspondent in every lower planet. Hence man's physical principle is positive to its corre- spondent in each of the three outer planets. A more material principle, peculiar to Neptune, is negative to its solar source, but positive to its correspondent on Uranus and the outmost planet. Again, a yet more material principle proper to Uranus is negative to its solar source, but positive only to its correspondent on the outmost planet. Finally, a material principle, the densest trans- mutable in the tenary system, is evolving on the outmost planet. While negative to the tenth solar Hierarchy, that principle is positive to its corresponding principle on the outmost planet of a solar system one degree below our own. See chapter: "The Chain of Suns." page 189 of ''The Heart of Things."
In the stupendous descent from the spiritual and positive pole of the universe to its material and negative opposite, man's position is indeed a humble one, but, as compensation, his environ- ment demands the expansion of faculties whose like is useless and so unknown in many abodes of loftier being. The human physical body neces- sarily is more complex than any other yet evolved in any other world ruled by our solar Logos. Moreover, the human physical brain will yet compass that amazing variety which thus far the manifested assumes only on this planet, and which necessarily is outside the purview of many beings
54
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
seemingly more gifted than man. Nor could it be otherwise in a universe expanded from the spiritual point to a material circle bounding more than ever the telescope can reveal.
The manifested universe tends towards per- manence in all its parts; and while it is undeniable that the circumference of the Kosmic Circle shall be drawn toward the central point, it is not true that in to to that circumference shall disappear in the unknowable. One can conceive of a time when durability shall be stamped on the trans- formed negative pole of creation. But even in those remote aeons to be, a new negative pole may exist in what now is the unexplored abysm of space.
M.
THRONES
SHOULD the average person think of God's Throne, at once his mind soars to the firma- mental regions, perhaps to a distant star or con- stellation, or, more likely, to a secret and universal Center invisible because of human limitations.
Somewhere in those heights, popular imagina- tion has throned Jehovah King of kings and, upon his right hand, the Son manifest to Earth as the child of Mary, but to the heavens as the Only Begotten before all worlds. In that somewhat inferior place the left hand of the Father, sits the Holy Spirit the mysterious other in that all-
55
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
governing group the Triune God, the Three in One.
Many passages of scripture lend themselves to this view, thus: "For unto us a child is bom, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the ever- lasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Here the Son and the Father are interchangeable, or, more precisely, the essential unity of the Messiah and Jehovah is announced. With this unity our view accords; in fact the Secret Science teaches the inner oneness of all beings.
Saith the Psalmist: "The Lord said unto me, thou art my son: this day have I begotten thee." In Hebrews, Paul the Initiate says of Jesus the Christ: "Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, sat down on the right hand of Majesty on high." From this last the literalist gathers that but one throne exists, that of Jehovah: but, finding an inner interpreta- tion, the occultist knows that, while many spiritual thrones exist in many degrees of glory, interiorly they are unified.
Concerning these thrones let us condense a teaching from the Secret Science. There are two orders of spiritual thrones, the solar and the plane- tary. The planetary thrones are seven, that of Jupiter being in position the loftiest. This is the throne of Spiritual Will, and from it the Spiritual Will principle of every other planet has inner
56
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
impulse. That its influence may best reach down- ward, this throne is in the lowest of the seven divisions of the Jovian Atma. Next in position is the throne of Mercury, the throne of Buddhi. It has place in the lowest of the seven divisions of Buddhi the dominating principle of the planet. The influence of this throne is over the buddhic principle of every lower planet.
Next in position is the throne of Venus, that of Manas the dominant planetary principle. This throne has place in the lowest save one of the seven planetary divisions of Manas. That one is residuum for a future manvantara. The influence of the Venusian throne is over the Manas of every lower planet. The throne of Saturn is in the lowest division save two of its Kama-Manas. The excluded two divisions are to be residuum. The influence of the Saturnian throne is over the Kama- Manas of all lower planets. The throne of Mars is in the middle or fourth division of its dominant Kama. The excluded three divisions are to be residuum. The influence of the Martian throne is over the Kama of all lower planets.
The lunar throne, that of Jehovah, is in the secret lunar Sphere, and in that division of the Astral which, in its ancient septenary, was fifth in the ascending series. The lower four of the old seven are now in pralaya with the Moon's physical shell. Theoretically the influence of this throne is over the Astral of our lower planet but, during
57
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
the regentship of Jehovah, it undertook in this world a far broader scope. The throne of Earth, that of the great Master of physical life, is in the highest division save one of the seven-fold physical. In after ages its influence will extend to the eighth planet. Concerning the three planets included in the tenary scheme, their thrones are not yet established.
The solar thrones are ten in number; the lowest in order being that of the violet Astral Hierarchy of Personal Will whose polar opposite — as explained on page 11, Arcane Science — is the Jupiter throne of Spiritual Will. This solar throne is in the fifth, ascending the septenary division of the solar Astral. It influences directly both the Jupiter Spiritual Will, and the Personal Will of the Lunar Sphere. Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the red Kamic Hierarchy whose polar opposite is the Mercurian throne of Buddhi. This solar throne is in the fourth, ascending the septenary division of the solar Kama. It influences directly both the Mercurian Buddhi, and the Martian Kama.
Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the green Kama-Manasic Hierarchy whose polar opposite is the Venusian throne of Manas. This solar throne is in the third, ascending the septenary division of the solar Kama Manas. It influences directly both the Manas of Venus, and the Kama- Manas of Saturn. Next in the order of solar
58
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
thrones is that of the indigo Manasic Hierarchy whose polar opposite is the Saturnian throne of Kama-Manas. This solar throne is in the second, ascending the septenary division of the solar Manas. It influences directly both the Kama- Manas of Saturn, and the Manas of Venus. Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the yellow Buddhic Hierarchy whose polar opposite is the Martian throne of Kama. This solar throne is in the basic division of the septenary of solar Buddhi. It influences directly both the Kama of Mars, and the Buddhi of Mercury. Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the light blue Atmic Hier- archy whose polar opposite is the throne of Jehovah in the secret Lunar Sphere. This solar throne is in the basic division of the seven-fold solar Atma. It influences directly both the astral of the secret Lunar Sphere, and the Jovian Atma.
Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the orange, refined physical Hierarchy whose polar opposite is the throne of Messiah, that of this Earth. This solar throne is high in the seventh sub-division of the seventh, ascending the sep- tenary of the solar Physical. It influences directly the physical of this planet. It is the throne of Majesty indicated by Paul as already quoted. It is the throne of the Father to whom Jesus ever looked for strength and guidance, and without Whom he could do nothing. The Initiate Apostle declares the Son to be the express image of the
59
The deeper mysteries
Father, and evidently his seat "at the right hand" is a throne of great prominence.
Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the higher orange, eighth Physical Hierarchy. It has middle place in the seventh sub-division of the seventh, ascending the septenary of the solar Physical. It influences directly the physical of the planet Neptune. Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the highest orange, ninth Physical Hierarchy. It is placed lower in the seventh sub- division of the seventh, ascending the septenary of the solar Physical. It influences directly the physical of the planet Uranus. Next in the order of solar thrones is that of the beyond orange, tenth Physical Hierarchy. It has basic place in the seventh sub-division of the seventh, ascending the septenary of the solar Physical. It influences directly the physical of the tenth planet.
Ignoring precedent we have placed the three great culminating solar Hierarchies and thrones above the Atma of the septenary division. Our reason is a deeply occult one to be explained in the next chapter.
We saw that the six planets, from Jupiter to the Lunar Sphere inclusive, each receives the direct influence of but two solar thrones. Also we saw that the Earth, and the three planets of the tenary scheme, each receives the direct influence of but one solar throne. From this it should not be supp>osed that any planet is deprived of indirect
60
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
influences from certain solar thrones; neither should it be inferred that direct solar influence is due to partiality. Direct and indirect thronal influences are in harmony with certain laws of cosmic affinity which are basic indeed, and will not be touched upon at this stage of our teachings.
These thronal influences operate through the solar rays which, let it be said, are only the vehicles of thronal influence.
The orange physical ray proper to the seventh hierarchy, carries physical light, and indirect physi- cal thronal influence, to the other planets in the septenary series, but direct thronal influence to this planet only. This orange hierarchial ray should not be confounded with the orange of the spectrum, for in fact it is the synthesis of the seven hierarchial colors. In this arc of our planet- ary round, and because of our deep immersion in matter, this hierarchial orange is invisible. The grosser white alone appeals to physical vision.
In the Secret Science the true color peculiar to the physical sun corresponds with gold, and pro- ceeds from the photosphere shorn of that gross and intense physical fire which results in the white. The hierarchial orange mentioned was a charac- teristic color of self-luminous Earth in her first round, and will be that of her self-luminous seventh round. Also, that orange was the color peculiar to the first and deathless root race of the present
61
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
planetary round, and is the color of the undying seventh root race to be.
As vehicle of the six other solar rays, the hier- archial orange carries the hierarchial astral ray, and its indirect thronal influence, to this Earth, and its direct thronal influence to the violet planet. This scheme the student should apply to the other planets of the septenary series. The rays from the eighth, ninth, and tenth hierarchies, carry to their respective planets the indirect thronal influence of all other solar hierarchies. H.
THE BASIC PHYSICAL
WHEN certain teachers of the Ancient Wis- dom gave to the outer world the esoteric classification and scale of the human and the planetary principles, they gave their order and importance as obtaining at this stage of the uni- versal scheme of development; an order and importance beginning with Atma, and ending with the basic physical.
From these teachings, then much veiled, it was inferred that ultimately the six lower principles would be drawn into the primal Atma; the result being infinite variety in Unity. This inference overlooked or ignored the fact that infinite variety demands degrees of density below the incon- ceivably tenuous Atma.
H. P. B. more than once denied the fixed superi-
62
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
ority of any principle over another, and her con- tention was logical since no final and true Unity can consist of unequals. Somehow the naturally lowest must develop qualitites lifting it to the level of worth occupied by the highest. That the Kosmic scheme renders this possible, it now behooves us to make plain.
The number 10, representing our planetary series, is the true Kosmic number, the one con- cealed in the zodiacal 12, and in every twelve-fold scheme of evolution. For its infinite variety in Unity, the perfected universal scheme demands ten degrees of density from Atma down to a cer- tain division of the physical, for which reason among others, 10 is the perfect number. To bring about this Unity, it is given to every solar system to perfect some one of the ten principles, or, more • precisely, some fraction thereof. Solar systems exist in each of which the basic principle is far more ethereal than our planetary Manas; and in the consummation of those systems all below Manas will be residuum. These systems, together with the host of those somewhat lower — all of course unknown to ordinary vision — occupy the interstellar spaces, and with their vast circum- ferences narrow the gulf separating star from star.
The opposite of these ethereal systems exists in physical systems like that over which our sun presides; systems almost the lowest in the uni- versal scheme.
63
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
In an earlier volume of this series it was inti- mated, as a blind, that the evolution proper to our solar system is that of the personal will principle; nevertheless our arrangement of the solar Hier- archies made the violet basic, whereas the orange physical four were placed above Atma. This arrangement was a clue to the truth whose unveil- ing was at that time deemed unwise, since it would reveal prematurely certain matters touching the Avatar.
Let it now be said that, in the real order of principles and Hierarchies for any solar system, the dominant Hierarchy — the one representing the principle differentiating that system from another — is given first prominence. Inasmuch as our solar system is to develop the principle which in the exoteric order lies below the violet, we have emphasized the importance of the orange Hier-. archies by placing them above that of Atma.
Since the secret of the orange principle and the orange Hierarchies is now divulged, let it be said that Personal Will is developing as the dominant principle in a solar system only a few links above our own in the mighty chain of suns whose lower end, just below us, terminates in a system that emphasizes the physical more than does our evolution.
Even in that lowest link of the chain of systems, a certain physical residuum will remain to be refined if possible in greater systems yet unborn.
64
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
During physical life, we often tread under foot a residuum destined to remain as such to the close of the Kosmic Maha Manvantara. Since in the Kosmic scale this world is near the limit of the assimilable physical, we can understand that limit; whereas beings at the upper end can under- stand the fact of a spiritual limit transcending the highest division of our solar Atma.
In the sublime ascent to the Kosmic Logos, and even in the solar system whose evolution is based as we have said upon the Astral, death, because always largely a matter of the physical, is probably unknown despite the fact that that Astral is normally far denser than any Astral known to our system of planets. In any event, death, as experi- enced on this planet, is unknown in solar systems only a little higher in the series.
No wonder that death and passing weigh heavily upon the human heart doomed to bear a burden unfelt within the charmed circles of countless suns at first thought more favored than that under which man was born a thing seemingly of perish- able flesh doomed to dissolution in its every part. No wonder he clings to physical life as a surety worth more than every theory of what the future holds in store.
To offset this dull view of human destiny, how often has backward and drooping faith been refreshed by the dews of heavenly intuition! How often have seers of the high and pure vision pic-
65
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
tured for us the wide millennial earth of harmless living and deathless life, no figment of heated imagination, but sober fact believeable in the light of such knowledge of physical being as in this open cycle we are permitted to impart!
Inasmuch as the physical holds within certain of its seven divisions the positive principle of our solar system, and of this world chain in particular, man must be drawn from posthumous life into re-birth to prepare both himself and the physical earth for the future just mentioned. To remain in the subjective arc of his cycle longer than to assimilate the experience of the objective arc, means time lost, and position delayed in the pro- gressing race, and sub-race.
In successive life cycles, all earnest souls will shorten their subjective arcs until the minimum necessary to recuperation is reached. On the other hand, a master in his six-fold vesture will for a long period remain on the astral plane, provided he there can the better labor for the world's wel- fare. But even he must clothe himself in the basic physical at the beginning of those astronomi- cal cycles which most favor his progress toward acquisition of that body of which the great Master of physical life furnished the pattern.
H. P. B.
66
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
THE SECRET IN PRANA
FOR the enlightenment of students of the Ancient Wisdom, H. P. B. arranged the seven human principles to correspond with the sun and six of the planets. In that scheme, Prana the life principle is not to be confounded with that Prana of exoteric occultism with which we dealt in the chapter "Prana", page 67, "Special Teachings." The Prana meant by H. P. B. cor- responded with the Sun, that giver of life physi- cally and spiritually, and its color was said to be orange. The Linga Sharira or astral model body corresponded with the Moon; color violet. The kamic principle or body corresponded with Mars; color red. The kama-manasic body corresponded with Saturn; color green. The manasic body cor- responded with Venus ; color indigo. The buddhic body corresponded with Mercury; color yellow. The Auric Egg, enveloping and with its emanations penetrating all below, corresponded with Jupiter; color light blue.
The physical body was not in this category; in fact H. P. B. declared it to be no principle, but a mere shell discarded at death, and so it is, if con- sidered in its almost universal aspect. Elsewhere she announced what to the discerning student was really a clue to the secret hidden in Prana, to wit, that it is not a human principle, but in fact a
67
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
universal one capable of manifesting as Jiva the One Life. A little reflection shows that the One Life, wherein we live and move and have our being, does not submit to modification. Evidently if Jiva be colorless as she declared, and Prana be orange, then Prana takes color from the finer atoms of the physical, even as water takes color from the glass containing it. Since the human principles should be seven, we have in the orange a hidden principle; the physical orange of our preceding teaching.
At death the physical body is cast out of the Auric Egg, but the foundation atoms, those pre- siding over the physical organs and parts, in fact the master workmen of that body, pass into pralaya and are retained as extremely minute particles within the Auric Egg. At the same time the Linga Sharira or model body dividing, the coarser par- ticles associate themselves with the dead physical, and decay with it.
Next, when the Linga Sharira proper is dis- carded, the coarser parts of the kamic body asso- ciate themselves with it, while the foundation atoms of the Linga Sharira experience Pralaya within the Auric Egg. The kamic body next discarded, the coarser particles of the kama- manasic body stay with it, but the basic atoms of the kamic body remain in pralaya within the Auric Egg. The kama-manasic body afterward discarded, its basic atoms experience pralaya
68
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
within the Auric Egg. Little or nothing of the manasic body adheres to the dead kama-manasic body.
The resurrection of the outer body of the great Master of physical life was accomplished through expansion of its permanent foundation atoms which, though suffering from the shock of the painful death of the coarser physical particles, were not paralyzed as in every other instance. Why then have the saints and martyrs of all the ages failed to resurrect their foundation physical atoms? For several reasons, some of which will now be explained. H. P. B. once said that the mere materialist impresses upon his astral brain the belief that physical death ends all, and, as result, in posthumous life that brain is obsessed with a notion that it ought to be dead, that it is dead. The outcome is a semi-conscious astral condition lasting for an indefinite period.
The belief is almost universal that the physical body dies in all its parts, and so it seems to do, but largely because of that very belief which Jesus sought to refute through his numerous appearances after the resurrection. Men like St. Simeon Stylites have hated and tortured their flesh; thus at death paralyzing its foundation atoms for many centuries, and so delaying the progress so desper- ately desired. This despite the fact that the life of Jesus offers no warrant for such stupidity. The Son of man came eating and drinking with publi-
69
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
cans and sinners, but always with that restraint which safeguards the wise. Maltreatment of the flesh is sourced in gross misunderstanding of the purpose of the sacrifice on Calvary.
Another reason why none have risen as did Jesus: The physical is the most obstinate of the seven principles; while the three next in ascent are decreasingly so. Because the most tractable of the seven, the upper three have fully attained immortality. To perfect the orange principle is the most difficult task ever allotted to the human race. Certain masters have to some extent per- fected a thin and transient physical not to be compared with the outer robe of the risen Christ. Touching the Christ physical, there is a mystery. Despite its attainment, may it not be subject to a certain diminution of power so that its full immortality requires a fresh descent into matter?
Another reason why Jesus became the first fruit of physical immortality: As master of the orange ray, he received much from his Father in Heaven; not Jehovah, but the great head of the Orange Solar Hierarchy. Concerning what he received, that is a mystery not to be understood until one is on the threshold of attainment.
H. P. B.
70
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
BAPTISM
IN respect to the efficacy of baptism, widely dif- fering views have long obtained. In both the Roman and the Greek Catholic Communion, baptism is a sacrament essential to salvation, whereas, to certain other confessedly Christian denominations, it is only a symbol, and of itself non-effective. Between these extremes there is an intermediate but little-known view which we would present in a brief way, since thorough explanation would require our delving deep into matters revealable only during initiation into a certain Lodge degree.
As now understood and practiced, baptism does not ante-date the days of John the Proclaimer of the Messianic Age. Jesus himself was baptised by John, thus showing ordinary baptism to be the first and necessary part of a double process. Of the second and more vital process John said: "he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." So much as preliminary; and now let us hint at certain forces which, because of baptism, become operative on the hidden side of things.
As used by John, water corresponded with the purified principle of personal will proper to the violet planet, the whereabouts of which remains a secret in the custody of the Initiates until the time when that astral sphere shall be visible to at least
71
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
the worthier portion of the human race. Con- cerning the orbit of the invisible planet, let a hint suffice. Its aura to some considerable extent penetrates that of our own seven-fold globe.
When the regent-ship of Jehovah ended, and Earth's rightful ruler came into his own, the violet planet ceased not its aid to this world, but were it not for certain requirements complied with, that aid henceforth would be far less direct and dis- coverable. That aid was to man's personal will during the difficult task of its purification.
Baptism is an occult ceremony affecting the human personal will; in fact it is a direct appeal to the Luna Chohans for the special aid that, because of certain laws which are indeed basis, these great beings must render. In infant baptism the appeal is made by the child's sponsors; and in adult baptism it is made by the individual himself. In either case, this appeal is from the Ego; conse- quently the outer personality is ignorant of the matter.
Even as John announced, Jesus, the Christ, came to baptise with fire; again an occult ceremony, but operative on the human spiritual will, since it is an appeal to the sublime Jovian Hierarchy, the highest in the planetary worlds. Because the Master had not as yet received that greater bap- tism which only he could give to others, he dele- gated to his disciples the preliminary water bap- tism of his converts. This fiery baptism, which
72
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
never before was bestowed on any of our race, began in the Garden, and was finished on Calvary.
Evidently the Baptism of Fire received by cer- tain of the Christian martyrs, and which, in her excessive zeal for the salvation of heretics. Mother Church forced upon them, is not the one proclaimed by John. When the personal will of the Master Jesus became wholly harmonized with its spiritual other, and consequently his principle of earthly desire was brought to at-one-ment with that polar opposite his buddhic principle of Divine Love, he became the great High Priest empowered to bestow on all worthy ones the fiery baptism; not as a seal of their perfection, but rather as the surety that eventually they would attain the similitude of the Christ body; one deathless, though laid in the tomb. As elsewhere we have said, since he was way-shower to the human race, the attainment of that body by Jesus was the sacred, secret, and central object of his life on earth, for, to para- phrase Paul's teaching: As in the Adamic body all die, so in the Christ body shall all be made alive. For mankind the means necessary to attainment are many. Thus far we have touched upon two, the Eucharist, and Baptism. For the first of these see "Arcane Science," p. 75.
Of John, the Master uttered the enigmatic words: "Among men that are born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Baptist; notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of
73
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
heaven is greater than he." Evidently an explana- tion of the words: "the kingdom of heaven" would throw much light on this dark saying. We teach that this "kingdom" is to be established on the earth, and in the New Jerusalem which the Revelator saw coming down from God out of Heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Entrance into the city whose length and breadth and heigh th are equal, in fact the cubical city, is for the elect only, the twelve times twelve thou- sand; in other words the square, or, to speak plainer, those who will fill the length and breadth of the city. Baptism by water and afterward by fire, are necessary preliminaries to citizenship. As John had not then received the fiery baptism, he was less than the least among the one hundred forty and four thousand visioned by the Revelator.
H.
MATERIAL RICHES
THEN said Jesus unto his disciples. Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 19:23.
When a dying man surrenders his material riches, rarely is the act prompted by generosity. Almost always the man is succumbing to the inevitable; especially if his riches were accum-
74
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
mulated through life-long endeavor. Passing out, such a man soon finds himself well and strong, and quite capable of enjoying his wealth were it but of a spiritual rather than of a material kind.
If now this man's interest centered in money- getting, he realizes that still his money bags are somehow a part of himself. Watching over them, he grieves at each unwise loss, and perhaps he is filled with impotent anger at the squanderings of his idle and careless relatives. Evidently such a man is very near the earth. For an indefinite period he is self-barred from the kingdom of heaven. Even if this man had devised large sums to various charities, he nevertheless is held to a comparatively low level until assured that his wishes are wisely carried out.
On the other hand, if during his earthly life the man had given generously to worthy ends, he then saw the outcome, and in posthumous life was at once able to enter into his reward. Such a sequel was in the mind of Jesus when he said to the young man of great possessions: "Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasures in heaven."
If riches honorably acquired, but left intact to be distributed after the death of their possessor, often prove a weight in his posthumus life, what must be the heaviness of ill-gotten gain?
Certain pirates and buccaneers of the Spanish Main are yet standing guard over their buried
75
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
treasure; and, as a result of centuries of vigil, they have acquired the power of turning away almost every seeker even when on the verge of discovery. If one could see the frenzy of demoniac rage with which the near approach of treasure-hunters fills these miserable creatures, he would realize what hellish conditions are. Not until a good angel causes some one to unearth the spoil of raping and murder, can these earth-bound beings approach anything like agreeable conditions.
TO THE WOULD-BE PUPIL OF THE MASTERS
NEARLY every earnest student of the Secret Science hopes that some time, somehow, he shall be brought into direct touch with the Masters of the White Lodge, or, rather, with that Master to whom he is drawn by love and reverence. Now while the wish is a prophecy, there may be, and often are, certain obstacles that defer fulfilment of his desire even for one or more incar- nations. Of various hindrances, some are unmen- tioned in open instructions; so of these we would speak, especially to those who imagine that occasionally partiality is a factor in the choice of the candidate for Lodge affilliation.
It is well-known that for special work on a large scale, the Lodge at times uses men by no means perfect morally; but it is not known, save to the
76
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
few, that Masters do in rare instances receive to themselves, and fit for special duties, candidates who in some ways have not yet attained the standard of many who in vain seek entrance to the halls pf initiation. To avoid misunderstand- ing, let us add that no Master receives such a pupil unless that pupil's past and present indicate that certain faults are being overcome, or soon will be in the process of cleansing.
Some lines of Lodge work demand such unusual aptitude that the Master presiding over that work must perforce select among many would-be pupils not the most virtuous, but rather the only capable one. This explanation is for those who doubt the wisdom of the Lodge in singling out one who, from their limited viewpoint, seems unworthy of preferment.
Service faithfully performed is the golden key admitting to the presence of the Masters of the White Lodge; but service begun only in the present life is not enough. The servant must have been a probationer during two former lives. The first life was the shaper of resolve, and the second was its test. The third life sets the seal of success on service which is to continue during the future ages of the world.
Were the aspirant accepted during the first life of service, he might fail in the second or test life, and, since reaction is the equal of action, event- ually he might fall into the company of the black
77
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
brotherhood, and become one of its most vindi- cative members. This sometimes happened until the law governing affilliation with the Lodge was made more stringent. As it is, failure is possible to some who in the second life withstood its test, and in the third life have received the first or probationary Lodge degree, and even have passed to the second or test degree; but no initiate of the third degree has ever proved false to his vows and duties.
On the other hand, some who in the second life failed in a measure, have in the third life redeemed themselves sufficiently to warrant acceptance by a Master, but never in this third life are these allowed to progress beyond the second or test degree. The above statement should both warn and encourage those determined ones for whom the golden portals have not opened, and to whom no inspiring voice has sounded a welcome to the halls of initiation.
It is evident of those who crave preferment for its mere prestige, and the awe, respect, admira- tion, or else the envy induced in their companions, it is evident, we repeat, that these vain self-seekers are creating a well-nigh impassable barrier which for more than one earth-life will stay them from the goal.
78
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
THE EARTH CHAIN
MASTER M. once said to a certain pupil: "Since first appearing here, you have seemed to live many lives, but truly you have lived only one. In each re-birth you looked upon that one from a certain angle. Some day you will know your total of lives as bright deeds made permanent, and dark ones erased by karmic action. You will see these many lives not as an extended chain, nor as a great circle of links, but as countless irridescent spheres all interpenetrating, and enclosed in one large and radiant sphere which is your self and your one life."
Our seven-fold planet is the abode wherein is lived the one life of each human being. Every seeming life of the seeming many, whose total is this one real life, is in a circle extending from the atmic plane of the planet to the physical and return. This circle, without a resting point, is divisible into twelve arcs; six in the descent from the turning point of the atmic plane to the turning point of the physical, and six from that line to the atmic line of descent to the renewed physical.
Evidently the septenary globe, or globe chain so-called, is to man a habitation in which he glimpses Truth from seven viewpoints. Innum- erable other viewpoints of Truth exist, but not for man until he outgrows the limitations of this
79
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
planet, or, like certain advanced representatives of the race, he gains in part, the viewpoint of other planets in the septenary series. To no human mind is the solar viewpoint of Truth communi- cable except at certain astronomical cycles. Then the great Avatars, the world teachers, the enlight- eners of the race, receive their messages, and are sent forth.
Since every globe-chain must develop a certain dominant principle, that principle is for that globe- chain the one to which all others are subordinate. For the Martian globe-chain that principle is Kama; for the lunar chain that principle was the Astral, while for our chain it is the orange physical.
The perfecting of the orange physical being the supreme task and desideratum both for man and his world, why did the revealers of the Ancient Wisdom seemingly depreciate the physical, and even exclude it from the septenary series? The answer is not difficult, as we shall show.
When as a simple mindless creature of but one discernible principle, man began his evolution in the first planetary round, that principle or body was the orange unmixed with grosser elements. Later he received from the lunar pitris other principles, among which was the untaught desire principle of Kama, and the just discernable mind principle of Kama Manas. In conjunction with the original orange, these brought about what the Ancient Wisdom denominates the first fall, that
80
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
which in after times was duplicated by Adam, the generic name of the first root race of this fourth round. Descending into a lower than their native orange division of matter, the first race thus were eaters of the tree of good and evil ; therefore they experienced death as the second race.
During ages many and long, the orange in man became increasingly mixed with gross material elements. At the middle of the fourth round, that lowest arc of human progress, man's spiritual forces began their upward pull on the lower quater- nary. Therefore his slow rise toward the purity of the original orange plus that experience which is the fulness of human wisdom. The history of the race proves that the lower quaternary lacks buoyancy necessary to its rise into the pure regions of the spirit; hence the necessity of emphasizing the office of the higher triad.
The revealers of the Ancient Wisdom deemed it unsafe to depart from this emphasis during that era of materialism and material philosophy, the last quarter of the nineteenth century. However, that Truth might have its witness, in place of the orange physical they inserted in the septenary series of human and planetary principles the great Kosmic principle of Jiva, giving thereto the name Prana, one proper to a substance but little removed from terrestrial matter.
Perhaps the inaugurators of the Theosophical Movement overrated the preception of their
81
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
students, or, what is more likely, the hiding of the orange beneath the guise of Prana was a touch of skill worthy of those who in their teaching habitu- ally employ such methods.
H. P. B.
RESURRECTION
THE doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh is an ancient one. In the Zoroastrian faith, after the final discomfiture of Ahriman, Ormuzd will re-assemble the scattered material atoms of every human body in the great all-inclusive resur- rection still believed in by the faithful Parsees.
The Jews borrowed from the Persians certain beliefs concerning the resurrection. The Old Testament contains some references to the Jewish conception, thus Job: "though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in the flesh shall I see God." Both the Talmud and the Targums contain abundant evidence of faith in a fleshly resurrection.
Retaining many dogmas of its parent Judaism, primitive Christianity held literally to a bodily resurrection, as witness the church Fathers in its exposition and defence. Thus Justin Martyr, Ter- tuUian, Chrysostom, Augustine, and even the Greek philosopher Athenagoras. To quote from Augustine: "every man's body however dispersed here, shall be restored perfect in the resurrection.
82
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
Every body shall be complete in quantity and quality."
Into his composite doctrine, taken from several sources, Mohammed incorporated the Persio- Jewish doctrine of the resurrection. The theolo- gians of the middle ages, and especially the Scholastics, speculated minutely on every imagin- able detail of a gross physical resurrection. They defended their most absurd deductions with the argument that to Infinite Being all is possible. True the Manicheans of the first centuries, like the earlier Sadducees, had denied a bodily resur- rection, but always such doubters and denier s were in the minority as afterward in the middle ages when, in matters of religion, faith and reason had little in common.
Notwithstanding the arguments of common sense, and the drastic criticism of modern Science, and also the fairly definite teachings of Paul who, as an Initiate of the Mysteries, surely knew the inner truth, and yet who, because an Initiate, could not wholly reveal that truth, the doctrine of corporeal resurrection has always been endorsed by the Papal, the Greek, and certain of the Protest- ant churches. Moreover, consistent theologians of these churches yet cling to this dogma as a mystery transcending human understanding. In fact they have at no time repudiated these words of Augustine: "the resurrection of the flesh was once regarded as incredible, but now we see the
83
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
whole world believing that Christ's earthly body was borne into heaven."
Unquestioning acceptance of the doctrine of physical resurrection, or its rejection in to to, is an extreme which, down the Christian centuries, should have been avoided for a rational inter- mediate view, that of the thoughtful minority who hold that in the risen body of the Lord a profound change must have taken place, because he entered freely through closed doors. Moreover, a body of ponderable physical substance, however purified, could little adapt itself to realms wholly spiritual.
The permanent body described in preceding chapters, and there denominated "the orange physical," has no weight determinable by physical balances, however delicately they are constructed and poised. Therefore to move naturally on the dense and gravitative physical earth, such a body would take to itself weighable particles, the throw- ing off of which would result in its ascension.
Not necessarily having in mind the Jewish tradition of the indestructible bone Luz around which, in the fulness of time, the old flesh would gather, Paul the Initiate hides, under the symbol of a grain of wheat sowed, what we understand to be the truth concerning the Resurrection. That his symbol has been interpreted to signify that every human body contains a minute but inde- structible nucleus or seed of flesh or bone which in the grave awaits germination, is not strange in the
84
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
absence of knowledge concerning the seven-fold constitution of man.
As made known on page 122, "Special Teach- ings," and also in the chapter "The Secret of Prana," Occult Science teaches that during post- humous life, the permanent foundation atoms of the physical body exist in pralaya — seeming death — within that highest of man's bodies the auric envelope. At the culmination of man's progress, or possibly somewhat earlier, these atoms, having been wholly purified, are to expand into a body resembling that of the risen Master of physical life.
To Paul the Resurrection was the supreme event in the world, and naturally the central theme of his message to the Gentiles. Certainly the Resurrection was the unique event in human history and, as St. Augustine declared, a thing once regarded as unbelieveable. Tradition it is true had given to both Enoch and Elijah a paradise whence in the physical body they would descend to earth in the last great day, but this was mere popular belief, nothing more.
In his brief epistle, Jude touches on a matter taken from an apocalyptial book: "The Ascension of Moses." This matter, bearing on our teaching as to the nature of the body of the resurrection, deals with the contention of Michael and the devil for the body of Moses. To one acquainted with Eastern methods of imparting truth, Michael
85
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
there symbolizes a resurrection like that after- wards consummated by the Master. On the other hand, Satan symbolizes the death of the entire physical as a heritage which, according to the ancient Eastern Wisdom, was received from the first or deathless Adamic race when, having fallen from the pure orange physical into gross matter, they became the mortal second race.
If — as we have argued and expounded — the orange physical is to be the universal possession of the purified human race, and if — as generally con- ceded— that consummation had glorious begin- ning in the risen body of the Master, it is but reasonable to suppose that, prior to his day, some faint likeness of that glory was attained by the great forerunners of regenerate mankind.
Of all representatives of the race whereinto the Master incarnated at the beginning of the great cycle of Pisces, Moses was most capable of winning the immortal physical vesture as an indisputable possession. To one familiar with Eastern methods of teaching, it is evident that the dispute of those opposites Michael and Satan, signifies that Moses at best had attained only to an imperfect and perishable vehicle formed from the higher division of the physical.
In arguing for the Master a permanent physical vehicle, we relegate him to no remote and undis- coverable center of the astronomic universe, but locate him here in close touch with his younger
86
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
brethren of the human family. Unsensed by the gross faculties of the lower nature, but known and proven to the higher man, he awaits our growing toward his own seven-fold perfection of body, soul, and spirit; that millennial condition of mankind on the renovated globe which is symbolized as the new Jerusalem, the Holy City that lieth four square, its comers resting in fact on Earth's cardinal points; the city of equal length and breadth and heigh th; the cube whose interpreta- tion is the world itself.
H. P. B.
THE NEW BIRTH
IN the third chapter of St. John are found the memorable words of Jesus to Nicodemus con- cerning the new birth. The light which our previous chapters throw upon the orange principle, discovers a new meaning in the teaching which so perplexed the Master of Isreal, though he was learned in the doctrines of Moses and the inspired utterances of the prophets. Our contention is that the great Way-Shower came not only to per- fect in himself the body of the resurrection, but also to enlighten others as to the slow but sure methods necessary to its attainment.
Jesus' saying: "Except a man be bom again he cannot see the kingdom of God," embodies a two-
87
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
fold proposition, to wit, that he can be born again, and that consequently he can see the kingdom of God. Let us now build a brief teaching upon the new birth and the Kingdom.
The resurrection of the Master was a new birth ; one inaugurating an era of possibilities which, however long in the perfecting, did actually begin on Easter Morn. His teaching that man must be bom of water and of the spirit is not contrary to our view for, as Jesus said, what is born of mere flesh is flesh. Powerless of itself, the flesh must be raised and purified to the requisite degree by the Spirit and by water.
To the word water the Church has given only a literal interpretation; but, in the arcane symbology, water represents the lower astral element of per- sonal will; while, in this instance, spirit signifies that divine Astral Light the Spiritual Will. Water is the medium in which fluids of differing specific gravity can be made to mingle; so, at bottom, the baptismal water symbolizes the union in man of both his personal and spiritual will. In brief, the body that is to be is ever perfecting through the combined powers of the entire man.
"The Kingdom of God" of which Jesus spake to Nicodemus, what is it? We must take exception to the almost universal reply that Heaven alone is that Kingdom. Heaven is really the place of rest and recuperation ; but the true abode of man is on the renovated earth mentioned by Isaiah. It is
88
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
in the new Jerusalem of the Revelator. It is in the orange physical world whose components are to correspond with the orange physical of man.
As for the resurrected body of the Lord, its coarser physical particles were thrown off. So, as we have said elsewhere, from the perfected sub- stratum of the earth, the dying shell shall be dis- carded to swing in space as a dead world, or else to be drawn from its orbital path to become a mere satellite of some planet and its evolving races.
In verses 14 and 15 of the chapter here dealt with, Jesus says: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth on him should not die, but have eternal life." Evi- dently the Master is speaking of his crucifixion, and its effect upon his following, but, like all in- spired teachers, he, the greatest among them, hid meaning within meaning. Thus that lifting up signified the acquisition of a body whereto his followers should look as their divine pattern.
This body, to shape and cohere in the faithful, and for the furtherance of which the sacrament of the Lord's supper was in part instituted, was ardently desired of Paul, and this desire was breathed into all his epistles as not for himself alone, but for the faithful whom he admonishes thus: "My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." Voicing his personal aspiration, he also says: "If by any
89
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Again, speaking for all believers: "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body?"
Paul the optimist perhaps underestimated the difficulties for himself, and especially for his fol- lowers, of early attainment to what Jesus in his answer to Nicodemus called eternal life. To the Initiate Apostle that life was the fulness of being due to the possession of the Christ body. The incomplete condition of the faithful without that body, Paul has symbolized in the much misunder- stood verse from 1st Thessalonians, chapter 4, "But I would not have you to be ignorant, Breth- ren, concerning them which are asleep." We hold that only the physical is indicated as sleeping, since as yet it had acquired no vital force where- with it could rise from the grave. Paul however gives assurance that this end shall be attained: "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him."
In view of the words of Jesus to the Sadducees: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living;" it is unbelieveable that the divinely commissioned Apostle would subscribe to a theory so at variance with the unswerving spirit of the Master's teaching as is that of the sleep of the dead. Neither could he, the Initiate of the Greater Mysteries, have shared in that popular belief of the Jews which
90
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
relegated the souls of the disembodied to the dark regions of the underworld.
The Gospels give manifold sayings of Jesus which contain other than surface meanings. Let us quote some of many inwardly relating to the body of the new birth. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "As the Father that raise th up the dead quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will." "For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given the Son to have life in himself."
Certain sayings inwardly recognize the mystic efficacy of the Lord's supper in furthering the body of the new birth. Thus: "I am the bread of life;" "Whoso eateth of my flesh hath eternal life." "This is the bread which came down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die." "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me and I in him." Lest a gross inter- pretation should be given to this last, Jesus said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. "
We contend that to Peter, and to Paul especially, and even to the church of the first three centuries, the chief event in the life of Jesus the Christ, and in fact the very crowning of his work, was rather his resurrection than his death; and that Paul in this foresaw for the Christian world its greatest boon. Did he not say: "If Christ be not raised
91
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins." Our view is of course remote from that of Augustine and Calvin and his kind, and is by no means in harmony with certain dogmas gradually raised on the death of the Master.
In answering the question as to the Lord's death the Apostle says: "That through death he might destroy the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." This bondage was the inherited race fear of Sheol, that dreary abode soon to rob them of physical life and its fulness, and to imprison them, as it did father Adam, as mere joyless shades no better than those peopling the Greek and Roman Hades which, in its lowest division, touched the gulf of Tartarus that abode of unquenchable misery.
Now however, the resurrection of Christ proved to the faithful the possibility of a body fit to inhabit brighter spheres, and in fact the brightest. The exact constitution of that body was not known, and little inquired into. Enough that rescue was possible through this body of deliverance and of the new birth.
Because of the prevailing belief in the soul's descent to Sheol, a belief inherited from Judaism, itself a borrower, speculation was rife in the early Church concerning the whereabouts of Jesus dur- ing the time between his death and his resurrection. According to Peter, he went and preached to the
92
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
spirits in prison; those who were sometime dis- obedient in the days of Noah.
In "The H6art of Things," and in the chapter "The Resurrection," it was said that the founda- tion atoms of the physical body of the great Master of physical life suffered on the cross a profound shock, but not actual pralaya, that which is com- monly understood as death. What before had been universal experience, unless we accept as true the traditional ascent of Elijah, was not for the Master, for within three days the foundation physical atoms recovered tone, and repaired and revitalized the broken body. Hence we conclude that notwithstanding his descent to the under- world, the chain binding his soul to his physical body was unbroken.
Concerning the foundation atoms and their office in the new birth both of men and things, a teaching more ample and particularized than any preceding one, is next in order.
H.
THE FOUNDATION ATOMS
IN the chapter "The Physical ^ody" page 121 of "Arcane Science," it was explained that man's physical body is a temple of many rooms in each of which are countless little workmen, tran- sient atomic lives under one master workman;
93
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
while over all is one supreme architect the " Hiram " of that body. Also it was said that every organ and part is built up and maintained by these transient lives; whereas the master workmen and the architect are permanent through all life cycles; their period of activity in each physical life of the individual being commensurate with the life term of his physical body. Moreover it was said that the operation of the foundation atoms in man is clue to the activity of the foundation atoms in worlds, and in all lesser organisms.
Let us begin the exposition of our subject by examining into conditions proper to one of the lowest rungs of the evolutionary ladder; in other words, into conditions proper to the insect family. There the group-soul is the source and center of life for its myriad output. This group-soul has in charge the fertilized eggs, whether in the body of the mother, or whether expelled to develop else- where. Not being a physical substance, the group- soul is in the fourth spacial dimension; hence, however widely separated, its progeny are never outside its care. Far below the level of self- consciousness, the units of the lower orders of life are at death blotted out, and the infinitessimal experience of each is added to the collective experi- ence of the group-soul which thus progresses towards self-consciousness.
That the units of even the lowest orders con- form physically to a model, is due primarily to the
94
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
image in the mind of the group-soul. This arche- typal model in its little way corresponds with the archetypal model of creation existing in the Divine Mind. In the "Heart of Things," and in the chapter "Images," was explained the office of images in the reproduction of the human creature whose foundation atoms reproduce the composite image resulting from the effect of both the paternal and the maternal image on the model furnished by the reincarnating entity.
Since in the lower species the unit is blotted out by death, such permanent physical atoms as alone insure the rebirth of individualized physical life, cannot there exist. However, because the short life and the vast progeny of the lower species oblige the atoms proper to each class to toil unre- mittingly, it results that they are able to follow the group-soul model, and also to meet the require- ments of the idealizing group-soul in its efforts to lift its output in the evolutionary scale.
Originally the group-soul of the lowest order of life on this planet was vast and nebulous, but eventually internal differences brought about its division. This, repeated many times during the geological ages, has in certain instances greatly narrowed the output of each evolving group-soul, and brought about the differentiation of species. In the first round of our Earth's first and lowest manvantara, that which would become physical man was but a unit proper to a group-soul whose
95
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
output numbered many thousands, and possibly millions, of lives each blotted out by death.
When, in the Earth's present or fourth manvan- tara, and in the first round thereof, the luna pitris descended to occupy the physical bodies of our humanity, original conditions were far higher than in the first world period ; in fact an individualized physical body belonged to every unit pf the race. Then it was that the foundation physical atoms in man began their office as such, thus insuring his rebirth as an individual being, despite the fact of what we misname death.
Domestication of the higher animals has brought about for some the final division of the animal group-soul, and so insured their individual rebirth through the foundation physical atoms hence- forth associated with each. To the domestic animals this is a compensation offsetting the cruelty suffered from man their natural protector.
When our shaping solar system turned on its axis, a vast and nebulous bulk, the seven-fold mass was but one primitive group-soul. As sponsors for all life beneath their exalted rank, the Solar Hierarchies first separated the Sun, and it became an individual existence whose permanent foundation atoms, those proper to the several planes, were established in the solar centers and sub-centers. From the residue was next built the original four planets which, because afterward dividing, became increased to ten. Thus did the
96
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
original group-soul become eleven whose founda- tion atoms insured reincarnation to each after its eons of pralaya.
In passing let it be said that the many divisions whereby each fragment of the group-soul proper to any of Nature's orders becomes a personal posses- sion, originates in what are to become the founda- tion atoms of the individual being. The division of the primal human, whereby the entity became male and female, was an event allegorized in the story of Eve created from Adam's rib. In this instance two dominant atoms, in fact two archi- tects, had been evolved. Division of the group- soul of any species always results from a corre- sponding event. A colony of bees well illustrates the operation of the group-soul. The hive is the progeny of the queen, the center of life until a new queen is developed. Then comes division that two group centers may fulfill their office.
The invisible astral planet holds in its envelop- ing sheath the foundation atoms of the physical Moon. These atoms are vehicles of the skandas, the karmic seeds which, in eons to come, will germinate moon-ward, drawing with them the violet planet. Then the cold shell of the Moon, not dead but in pralaya, is to be vitalized into a new birth. Fulfilling their office, the Solar Hier- archies will then sow the seeds of a new evolution higher than that of the last moon manvantara.
Considering next the possibility of our globe as
97
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
the purified abode of a purified race of beings, we will touch briefly upon the means to that prophesied outcome which, with Isaiah, was the holy mountain of the Lord, while with John it was the new Jeru- salem that would certainly supplant the old, thus making this footstool the abode of deathlessness and peace. Nor was this outcome unknown to the formulators of the Ancient Wisdom. In their cosmogony it had definite place, not as a miracle to be, but as the work of methodical law; in fact it would result from a separative process analogous to those everywhere discoverable in the prodigious descent from suns to things.
Purification of the foundation atoms proper to the Earth's physical, astral, kamic, and kama- manasic principles, has not kept pace with the slow purification of the corresponding atoms in man which, even from this planet's beginning, were on a far higher level. Therefore the looked for Millennium is not, as the ignorant suppose, to be an early and direct act of God, but rather is it a far-off bringing about through an orderly evolu- tionary process.
For the physical foundation atoms of this globe, always on the plane of the orange, even as are those of man and the higher animals, that purifica- tion means their separation from the lower and fluctuating physical atoms. Then will the more evolved orange atoms gather around the permanent ones located at the seven or, precisely, at the forty-
98
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
nine centers, and at many more minor centers of what is to become the new Earth; in fact that earth withdrawn from its gross material shell, even as the violet planet withdrew from the Moon shell.
The more evolved orange atoms then will have acquired a degree of stability far exceeding that of the ordinary physical atoms as now existing. Still these orange atoms must fall far short of per- manency. As for the foundation atoms, since they are to carry the karmic seeds of another planetary birth, their term of separation from the earth -shell will, after the lapse of ages, come to an end.
Because the foundation orange atoms in man, and even the secondary orange, ever have been and ever shall be far more evolved than the corre- sponding globe atoms, we prophesy of him that in th^ millennial season his immortality and freedom from rebirth shall be assured.
H. P. B.
A MYSTERY OF RE-EMBODIMENT
IN "The Heart of Things," in the Chapter "The Specific Influence of the Sexes in Reproduc- tion," and again in the Chapter "Images," certain mysteries of the generative process were explained. This explanation ended thus: "We have for the present spoken our last word concerning that great secret of Nature, the reproduction of kind." In
99
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
this third volume of the series we shall here give out a few additional facts.
In the chapters mentioned it was in substance said that the one chief atom and the six associate atoms peculiar to each of the four lower human principles, exist in pralaya in the auric egg while posthumous man moves to more and more interior planes. As the nucleus of a principal, these four chief atoms awaken each to creative activity only when, in its descent to re-embodiment, the ego reaches the plane proper to that atom.
The new teaching is as follows: In their unalter- able arrangement, the seven chief permanent atoms proper to the seven principles of man are a mina- ture seven-fold globe chain. From the astral to the atmic, these atoms are more and more tenuous, and of larger and larger circumference; besides they interpenetrate like the globes of our seven- fold world. The vibration which the male imparts to the spermatozoon (itself one of a group dis- tinguishable from six other groups) and the vibra- tion which the female imparts to the ovum, attract the re-incarnating entity as a whole, but largely they attract the lower quarternary by means of its four chief permanent atoms. However, com- pulsion ensues only through the triple vibration caused by the entrance of the spermatozoon into the ovum.
Having drawn the quarternary to the ovum, this triple material vibration bends that quarter-
100
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
nary to the requirements of pre-natal life. There- fore it condenses to an infinitesimal sphere which, entering the ovum, unites with the spermatozoon the basic material of its future human body. As for those three chief atoms the nucleus of the higher triad, conforming only in a degree to the double vibration, they envelope the growing foetus with a protecting influence.
After the sixth month of foetal growth, the first faint influence of these chief triad atoms is dis- coverable by one who has developed keen psychic sense. Henceforth, during the first six years of childhood, that influence increases and, at about the seventh year, the chief permanent atoms of the triad, having come more and more under the influence of the material organism, condense into the heart center, and therefrom influence the higher brain centers, even as the Spiritual Sun influences that triad of planets Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus.
H.
THE RAISING OF THE DEAD
COMPULSION ensues only through the triple vibration caused by the entrance of the spermatozoon into the ovum." The quotation from the previous chapter may well be the basis of another teaching, as follows: The male and the female vibrations proceed from the positive
101
.THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
and the negative components of the Creative Word, and require and compel the presence of that third component the entity awaiting re-embodiment. From this coming together results the union, in one being, of the father vibration, the mother vibration, and the son vibration.
Evidently every child in the womb is a new manifestation of the triple Word; one largely material however, until the incorporation of the permanent triad atoms at about the seventh year. Thereafter, the growing child more and more manifests this Word in both its material and its spiritual aspects; the process being completed in three cycles of seven years each; in other words, when the adult reaches the age of twenty-eight years.
From man's many re-embodiments results the evolution of the triple Word as by him expressed. Originally a simple trinity, the Word is becoming one of exceeding complexity. All re-embodiment, whether of worlds or beings, signifies progress toward the complex Word that everywhere approaches the infinitely complex Word which we name God; The Creator; The First Cause.
When Jesus the Christ would draw Lazarus from the dead, he uttered mentally not only the father and the mother vibrations which had drawn Lazarus to the womb, but also the vibration proper to Lazarus himself. Therefore the coming forth from the grave was a new birth of the triple Word
102
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
for, as a posthumus being on the borders of the Unseen, Lazarus, obedient to that call, renounced the period of rest to which the so-called dead are entitled. Only a Master who had developed in himself the universal Father and Mother vibra- tions, could perform this crowning deed of adept- ship.
The Grecian myth concerning Orpheus' attempt to draw Eurydice from the under world with the music of his lyre (vibration) is profoundly esoteric, and, freed from blinds, it tells the failure of a Master who did not maintain the intense con- centration necessary to success. As John the Baptist, Elijah acknowledged himself inferior to the great Master of physical life. Nevertheless, when a prophet under the old dispensation, he raised the widow's son by means of the triple Word. Lacking the power of Jesus the Christ, Elijah must needs reinforce his mental utterance with physical contact; therefore he stretched him- self upon the child when uttering mentally the Father vibration, and again when uttering the Mother vibration, and yet again when uttering the vibration proper to the child when he entered the womb. Then, as with Lazarus, renunciation of the post-mortem state resulted, and also a new birth.
By the raised widow's son, and by the son of the Shunamite woman, (2 Kings, 4:34) and also by Lazarus, is foreshown the condition of the human
103
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
race when mankind shall no more be born of woman in that Eternal City — the New Jerusalem — come down from God, out of Heaven, upon the peaceful and purified Earth.
As for other stories of the raising of the dead, whether in the Bible or elsewhere, most of these "dead" were really in profound trance, that counterfeit of death. In conclusion: after the third day the dead, retiring upward or rather inward, have passed the boundaries which render impossible their return to the old body.
H.
THE PLACE OF HIS APPEARING
THERE is an occult teaching to the effect that the atoms which for ages have built the bodies of the different species, from man down- ward, have become wholly specialized. As result, an atom efficient in the human body would be inefficient elsewhere. This is increasingly true of the atoms proper to the highest species below the human.
Specialization of the atoms associated with man has come to this: those which build the bodies of the various races; the white, the black, the red, the yellow, and the brown, are gathered into groups each of which is wholly capable only in its division of the human family. While the anatom- ical structure of the human creature is almost
104
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
identical throughout the globe, there are many delicate differences deeper than the cuticle; dif- ferences which these atoms, intelligent on their own plane, are wonderfully sensitive to. Hence their affinity for this race, or that, or the other. Moreover, there are grouped atoms more evolved than these, and whose predilection is for nations, and almost for individuals.
The above truths in mind, let us consider further a matter with which certain of our teachings have dealt; the where and when of the approaching Avatar. By some it is believed and taught that the East, in fact India, will first behold him. In arguing that every world-teacher has been an Oriental, these ignore the fact that, with the Western world unknown, and Africa a dark conti- nent, and Europe benighted in all save its southern parts, the great spiritual enlighteners of the world perforce have been of Eastern birth.
Now all is changed. As the destined home of the forming sub-race, America must receive the swarming millions who, because of the great war, are looking hither from the shores of exhausted and impoverished Europe. It is to the resulting amalgamation of races and race interests that the Avatar should naturally come. However, let us consider certain factors perhaps unfavorable to his appearing in America.
Some believers in the Avatar would defer his coming to a time when a fair majority, or at least
105
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
a respectable minority of Earth '« peoples, have evolved to something like that high physical con- dition which will enable them to behold him as he is. Truly there will be such an Avatar in Satya Yuga; nevertheless we contend for the Kali Avatar, but, in this age of iron and spiritual dark- ness, men must be aided to see, yet how unless the Avatar take to his finer physical body certain coarser atoms?
This view allowed, the question arises concern- ing both the whereabouts of fit atoms, and the race to which they rightly belong. Coming to all peoples, the Avatar should properly conform to no race type; his physical body should represent a composite model. So much for theory. As a matter of fact, preponderance of fit atoms proper to any one race would perforce ally him physically to that race, and perhaps fix his advent with them, even if outside the Americas.
Because the present disturbed equilibrium of the world has everywhere profoundly afi"ected the atomic groups of the lower planes, we argue that the fit time for the Aquarian Avatar is not in the midst of it all. The Pisces Avatar came at a time of temporary world peace, a lull in the strife of nations. Nevertheless, it is best to be at all times ready. "Watch therefore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come." "Therefore be ye also ready ; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." jl
106
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
"jTHE AVATAR
The ancient truth sufficeth for a season;
Meanwhile, in Truth's behalf, I wait an ampler view. Prizing the olden, 'tis the better way of reason
That freely I exchange it for the larger new.
So, whether Christ descend in power and glory To summon Earth before his final judgment seat.
Or, in the land of hallowed memories and hoary.
He deign to tread once more with humble human feet,
I rest in the supreme event contented,
Nor set my faulty scheme against his perfect plan.
Unto his purpose hath my willing soul consented
Ere dawns the Sun of Promise, and the Hope of man.
Perchance beneath Himalaya's summit splendor
Of glittering ice-peaks, and far-sparkling domes of snow.
He turns the wheel of faith, or else the Truth-Defender Expounds where broadening Ganges laves the valleys low.
What if he choose the loud and teeming city?
Or, like to John, emerge from out the quiet wild? Whichever, still his voice is peace and love and pity.
And recognition beams upon his lowliest child.
If so decreed, the West shall first revere him.
Fair-haired and Saxon even as the Northmen be;
If best, the sweet, persuasive, human shall endear him, A swarthy Buddha to our wide humanity
Who strengthens mightily by his endeavor.
As man's strong brother wholly given to his part.
The bond by color, race, and creed, quite sundered never; The brother bond within the universal heart.
THE NEW AGE
It draweth nigh, that glorious consummation. Which prophets told, and seeing men foresaw.
When nation nevermore contends with nation. But, peaceful, turns from all the olden war.
107
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES ^
Ah ! not till then descends the Once-Rejected ;
He hath no message for a wrangling race. Prepare the highways of the King expected;
Make straight his path in every troubled place.
So doing, ye shall further that appearing
Too long withheld, from wistful eyes too long.
If slothful, ye delay the sight heart-cheering. And die untuned to Earth's Hosanna song.
Upon the Holy Mount your feet are pressing;
Its curve beneath them is the rounded world Whose allied peoples shall have earned a blessing
When in their midst defiant flags are furled.
Then on encrimsoned fields the harvests growing Shall hide the carnage of the years before ;
And of good deeds the wide and plenteous sowing Shall yield its fruitage into Victory's store.
Then shall the humble creatures be uplifted Who raven now by carnal man obsessed.
Then shall the wheat from out the chaff be sifted In judgment due, where all must meet the test.
Soon may it come, that glorious consummation
Which filled with hope the prophet's deathless page!
When Love has welded nation unto nation. Then dawns on Earth the better Golden Age.
CHRISTIAN ROSENKREUZ
THAT our Earth is a living creature, a member of a family of giants inhabiting the sky, has been touched upon in "Arcane Science," Page 186, and in "The Heart of Things," Page 69. Concern- ing the Earth Entity, much is known that for sufficient reasons is withheld from all but initiates
108
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
of high degree. Were certain secrets generally accessible, their use might bring catastrophe to whole areas of the Earth's surface, and death to the dwellers there. As it is, enough of these secrets have become known to the hordes of dark- ness to keep the hosts of light on the alert.
Having proved himself wholly trustworthy, Christian Rosenkreuz was empowered to initiate certain others into the mysteries relating to the Earth Entity. His order, in imitation of which many spurious ones have since arisen, had for central purpose the bringing about of better and better terrestrial conditions through the influence which these initiated ones could bring to bear upon the Earth Entity. The Rosecrucian Order, in conjunction with its ancient Eastern original, would establish throughout the known world branches at those many force centers concerning which Rosenkreuz had been fully informed.
Rosenkreuz claimed instruction direct from the great head of the order, Jesus the Christ, who, on the Cross of Calvary, received that final initiation which made him the ruler of this World, and the mightiest influence in it to bend the Earth Entity to his bidding, which influence would be greatly augmented at his second coming, and finally made complete during a certain astronomical cycle; one indicated by John the Revelator. Already during his life, Jesus had controlled the winds and waves, and afterwards, at his death, the shuddering
109
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES ^
Earth Being had revealed its displeasure by the phenomena mentioned in Matthew 27: 51-53.
Rosenkreuz taught his initiates that, like man, the Earth is a trinity of body, soul, and spirit, and that should man keep pure his own bodily temple, the Earth would respond with fairer and fairer conditions; but should man defile that temple, the Earth would respond with drought, and famine, and pestilence. Should men unsheath the sword of war, the soul of the Earth would raise within her, and flood, and earthquake, and volcanic out- burst would result. Evidently the Rosecrucian Order had much in common with that founded by Melchizedek, the object of which was the bringing about of permanent world peace.
Rosenkreuz taught his high initiates that each component of the Earth trinity is itself a trinity, even as is each component of the trinity called man. In an age of Christ worship, he announced the divinity of Jesus the Christ, but not his deity. While limiting the authority of the Master to this planet, Rosenkreuz held that ultimately his influence would extend to the limits of the solar system. No wonder that, in an age of persecution, an order holding such hetrodox views was a secret one.
Concerning the New Jerusalem seen of John, Rosenkreuz taught many things; for instance, that it symbolized the purified Earth, the future abode of the perfected and therefore deathless
110
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
human race, each member of which would possess the Christ body; and that this purification would result from seven causes: first, the purification of man; second, the maturing of the Earth Entity, now in the youth of its fourth incarnation; third, the influence of the great Sun Entity upon it; fourth', the lesser influence of the planetary entities; fifth, the zodiacal influence; sixth, the stellar influence upon the Earth as it accompanies the Sun in his stupendous orbit around a magnetic center which Rosenkreuz believed to be the Pleaidic seven; and, seventh, the influence of that remote Star Group.
Rosenkreuz made the human influence upon the Earth Entity the most potent of the seven, and this influence he symbolized as the "philosopher's stone" able to transmute the baser metals into gold. Every Rosecrucian knew that this change should begin with man himself, and that the baser components of the physical earth could be refined and made indestructable only as a whole. Hence to the initiated, the alchemist's crucible was known as a mere blind to protect the central mystery of Rosecrucianism from the world at large.
We have revealed somewhat of the deepest teachings of Rosenkreuz, because to-day multi- tudes are fit to profit by them. Never in its entire life has the Earth undergone such a cleans- ing as now it is experiencing. Those who at the end of the next decade look back to the year 1914,
111
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES '
will realize that then began the greatest advance ever known in the history of this planet.
THE TASKS OF EMBODIED AND OF DISEMBODIED MIND
TIME and space are the flexible containers of deeds and events and, in the final analysis, exist only that these may be harmonized through karmic Law. This truth is apparent to the observer capable of comparing certain views of time and space peculiar to both embodied and dis- embodied mind. To such an observer it is plain that these views constitute the chief distinction between mind when functioning on the physical plane, and when functioning elsewhere.
It is taught that the idea of time and space now obtaining on the earth's physical plane, is one which has crystallized apace with the slow solidify- ing of that plane. Nevertheless, there is an idea of time and space proper to our globe chain as a whole; an idea to which we must attain without losing sight of certain other ideas of these, all of them true from their respective viewpoints.
There is an idea of time and space proper to the astral lunar scheme, or, more precisely, to the scheme of the secret violet planet. Moreover, every planetary chain of the solar system has an
112
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
idea of time and space to which it progresses, or else to which it has arrived. This being so, how are the majority of these various ideas to be made comprehensible to our humanity? That our seven- fold globe chain contains the means to this neces- sary end, let us proceed to show.
First let it be said that physical plane time and space, as understood at this stage of our progres- sive world, is for us a necessary idea since evolu- tions, whose outcome is more densely physical than our own is to be, exist in the three outer planets, and, ere the final unification of all views, we must have taught the peoples of those planets, and, in turn, we must have learned from them the views peculiar to their abodes.
Passing from physical plane time and space to astral plane time and space, man, as a disembodied mind, fails to comprehend their real nature; hence, instead of Lunar truth, he encounters astral delusion. Through many posthumous lives he must slowly conquer this delusion, even as has nearly every white Master, or else — as an accepted chela of the White Lodge — he may in a certain initiation receive information which will greatly accelerate his progress toward Lunar truth. Pass- ing to the kamic plane of our earth chain, the disembodied mind next encounters delusion in respect to Martian time and space. These in turn must be pierced to their hidden truth, a slow process unless one is enlightened during the cere-
113
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
mony of an initiation somewhat higher than the other.
Thus the disembodied mind ascends through the planes and their delusions in respect to time and space, until it reaches its limit of progress some- where on the buddhic level. Ere the ego of man can attain to perfection, it must through its lower personalities conquer the truth of time and space on every plane up to that of the higher Manas. Meanwhile its own special task is to reach the truths of time and space existing on the higher manasic, the buddhic, and the atmic planes of our globe chain. The ten conceptions of time and space above mentioned, will bring man into full understanding of conditions on every planet of our solar system.
The crowning work of the human mind, when unhampered by the gross physical body proper to the present stage of world progress, will be to conquer the solar conception of time and space. The accomplishing of this means full union with the solar Logos. As indicated in what was said touch- ing the outer planets, the task of unifying dis- similar ideas of time and space is not peculiar to our world. Every planetary humanity has its special duty in this direction.
Inasmuch as the humanity of the violet planet knows nothing of the time and space obtaining below the astral level, and the humanities of suc- cessively higher planets are more and more circum-
114
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
scribed in their outlook, it is evident that the special duty of our own perfected humanity will be to initiate not only the lowest planets, but even these six, into the truths of time and space proper to our physical plane. Also it is evident that every pknetary humanity in the series must aid in the scheme of universal enlightenment.
M.
SOME ASPECTS OF POSTHUMOUS LIFE
BECAUSE there is an aspect of Time proper to each planetary and each solar plane, evi- dently to the dwellers on each there should be a rational order of events. Since for posthumous man this seldom is true, let us now discover some- thing of the cause.
Students and investigators of the occult are aware that for our globe chain the physical is the plane of happenings, while the planes beyond are those of assimilation largely. Evidently almost all posthumous happenings have their equivalents in the earth life just preceding.
The mind of perfected man may be compared to a flawless sphere, in circling which one would encounter neither depressions nor protuberances. When functioning upon any inner plane, such a mind, and only such, offers no obstacles to the order of events proper to that plane; and, as result,
115
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
this mind would be in harmony with the idea of time proper to that plane.
Our statement gives rise to a query which it were well to answer before proceeding: What of the fact that, when functioning on the physical plane, the most ordinary mind is aware of the current of events? The answer is that the physical plane is that of karmic action, and, because the methodical procedure of Karma so requires, the rational order of terrestrial events is imposed upon all physical life. This results through the atmic principle, the Spiritual Will, that unseen ruler of man and all below him.
Because in all but rare instances, the mind of man is comparable to a most irregular sphere, one of numerous depressions and protuberances, it follows that in the flow of posthumous happenings over that mind, some sink almost unnoticed, while others collide with obstacles which impede their progress, with the result that the event is repeated perhaps many times, thus greatly disturbing the sequence of events, and therefore the idea of time proper to the plane. Nevertheless, there is a compensation in this recurrence, since because of it, often a needed lesson can be impressed on the lower principles during the next incarnation.
On the posthumous planes, certain events are often joined because of their inner similarity; thus a deed of youth may be coupled with one of middle or later life. In this union, posthumous man is
116
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
permitted a hint touching buddhic time, and the events therein. On the buddhic plane, all deeds interiorly alike are seen to be one. When, on the lower posthumous planes, disagreeable and even painful events are thus united, the hint neverthe- less exists. In larger way, interiorly related events proper to several incarnations often are joined during an earthly life. The resulting hint is for the benefit of the ego that, in some more advanced incarnation, will impress this hint upon the lower personality.
The earthly blending of certain experiences proper to several incarnations reveals that, beneath seeming conformity, the order of events on the physical plane is subordinate to any special require- ment of karmic law.
From the above teaching it appears that, on the ascending planes of our planet, one exists where the climber reaches adequate understanding of its order of events, and the nature of the time in which they occur. The place is that of the higher Manas, from whose lofty vantage the illuminated mind looks around and beneath with a depth of under- standing unknown to certain beings who, on their planets, have never functioned, and never will, below the manasic level.
Once the higher manasic plane is gained, there is for its conqueror no more delusion, whether he be out of the physical body, or in it. This manasic plane is that of the profoundly analytical mind
117
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
which yet must reach the buddhic level ere it can comprehend the possibilities of all-binding and all-unifying Love. Attaining this level, one gains the Nirvana henceforth his own, whether for a season he fraternized with his fellow men, or whether on the super-physical plane he remain to labor for the world's good.
That a certain Master of the White Lodge has recently attained this level is known to his disciples. Having been associated with the races and sub- races of the fourth planetary round, this manasic Master has learned in succession to control the forces of the lower manasic, the higher manasic, and even the buddhic planes. Having unified all his powers through love, he will in the next decade, and in all future decades, exert an uplifting power on the entire human family, who in turn will raise the vibration of the world itself.
H. P. B.
THE MESSAGE OF A BUDDHIC MASTER
ANY great teacher coming to the world, will conform his message to the idea of life proper to the plane which he represents. Thus the message of a manasic teacher would be prolific of details much appealing to the inquiring mind. His dominant tendency would appear in treating those abstruse matters which require of his immedi-
118
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
ate followers far more than ordinary penetration. Through these followers he might eventually reach the ordinary mind. To this type of teachers Socrates belonged, and so even Plato, that inter- mediate but for whom the elder sage would have survived only as a mere name.
Jesus the Christ gave to the world no cosmogony, but Swedenborg is always constructing and explain- ing; and yet Jesus said: " I and the Father are one." Thus he declared that knowledge of the Divine Mind which proved his superiority to those who, in their cosmogonies, would reveal somewhat of its workings. None but a buddhic master of first rank would utter, from more than theory, the quoted words in the way Jesus did. Theosophists usually hold that the "Father" of Jesus was the Ego. While correct, they fall short of that full explanation which requires an even greater Father, to wit, the Solar Logos, or, more precisely, a cer- tain hierarchy thereof.
In his message, a buddhic Master seldom descends to particulars. Nevertheless, as above instanced, his epitome of any large subject reveals profound knowledge of its components. To one of buddhic vision, the furtherance of that compre- hensive unity which it is the great office of Love to bring about, is the supreme end; one to compel his every effort. Hence, in gathering his immediate followers, Jesus chose those best fitted to promul- gate a gospel of Love. As for the choosing of
119
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
Judas, that is a matter of far-reaching import. Enough that the choice was his whose spiritual vision reached beyond the confines and destiny of this planet.
Concerning Saul of Tarsus, it is said that in Atlantean times he was linked to some extent with the dark hosts. Gradually disentangling himself from them, he afterward became well-nigh free; but, in the karmic cycle of Pisces, Saul the zealot reaped the fruit of certain karmic seeds of his own sowing. Therefore, under the obsession of his old leader, he became a fanatic breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the incipient church. Miraculously released from this thrall- dom, Paul rose to be the great Apostle faithful unto death. From his rise we learn the unwisdom of condemning for all time even the one known to the Christian church as that basest of mankind the betrayer of his Lord.
Because a buddhic Master, Jesus appealed to the heart, rather than to the intellect; hence they who heard him gladly were those of whom an old and wise soul once said that the Lord must love the common people since he has made so many of them. Condescending to their comprehension, Jesus did not hesitate to illustrate his teaching with many current ideas which later scientific investigation has shown to be crude, or even false.
A great manasic teacher might have formulated an abstruse philosophy, or perhaps have antici-
120
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
pated many discoveries of physical science; or he might have dilated on the then unknown wonders of the astronomic universe, thus gaining the adherence of the eminently intellectual few; whereas, adopting a simpler method, Jesus would bind the world with the bonds of Love. So, for like reason, while taking for granted the theory of rebirth universally held by Hindu peoples — a theory which Jesus never contradicted — Gautama, in his buddhic doctrine of the noble Eight-Fold Path leading to Nirvanic bliss and union with the Divine, is as free from the abstruse as is the Sermon on the Mount; but, like that immortal discourse, the Buddha's doctrine contains the gist of pro- found philosophy.
The message given out by H. P. B. and which embodied the philosophy of Universal Brother- hood, emanated from certain manasic and buddhic Masters. Supplementing and more fully inter- preting this message, much teaching has since appeared, and more is to follow. Inasmuch as the approaching Avatar is essentially buddhic, one coming to his own, the incipient sixth sub-race, the unparticularized buddhic method will undoubtedly be in order; but, until men generally are weary of disrupting warfare, how can the Master begin the remolding and solidifying necessary to the stability of a unified world?
H. P. B.
121
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
THE EGOLESS BEING
HUMAN intelligence is by no means keen enough to reach Truth at a single effort. Its approach is only by narrow degrees. Attaining a degree, one often deems his desire accomplished, but further investigation proves the inadequacy of his truth ; so, if of progressive mind, he is impelled to a wider and deeper seeking. Eventually he realizes that his latest truth is only relative; in fact a milestone on the journey to ultimate reality. The Eastern method of imparting occult truth adapts itself to the natural processes of the mind.
As a light-bringer from the East, H. P. B. adhered to the manner of instruction sanctioned by her Masters. Hence many of her expositions have since been more or less unveiled, or even re-stated. In respect to a certain doctrine, one long carefully guarded, but finally taught as a veiled truth to a small group, and by them com- municated to others; that doctrine yet exists as originally given out. We refer to the doctrine which deals with the condition of the human ego, and the fate of man's lower quarternary, when the two have been wholly sundered. This doctrine contains certain statements which do not dovetail into the current conception of septenary man. Hence our desire to unveil still more, and thus
122
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
show somewhat of truth hidden beneath the exterior.
If the student has assimilated certain teachings of Volumes I and II of our series (the teachings in respect to seven-fold man) he is familiar with their departure from the more exoteric doctrine in vogue. We regard man as a compound being, a seven-fold group-soul built, not from the base upward, but from the top downward, in a gradual evolution from Jupiter to the Earth where he acquired his seventh and basic soul or vehicle, the physical peculiar to this planet. On the other hand, the usual teaching makes man a triad of real and imperishable higher principles which reflect them- selves downward as an illusionary triad function- ing in an illusionary envelope.
We maintain that while the lower quarternary is negative to the upper triad, and dependent thereon for spiritual uplifting, it is as real as the planets with which it corresponds. In fact it is a permanent entity capable of widening the outlook of the upper triad, and therefore joined to it by a community of interests. If we declare for the usual Theosophical conception of the lower and the higher man, we are forced to admit that the sev- erance of the cord or bridge binding the two, means the death of the lower and illusionary. Should the oil be drawn from a lamp, the saturated wick burns for a while. So, in analogous way, the lower man often persists through several incarnations, each
123
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
baser than the former, until he disappears because no longer a self-conscious being. So much for the old instruction in respect to the quarternary.
Considering the separated ego, we discover a flaw in the teaching as to the procedure now open to its choice. Should the ego retire forever to its own proper level, this procedure would mean the complete stay of its evolution. If adopting the theory that the ego can put forth a new personality, another difficulty confronts us. All our great Teachers agree that an incarnated being is the sum of tendencies and aptitudes acquired in many past lives, and in him many karmic seeds should come to harvest. Allowing, as we must, that the quarternary has for ages been associated with the ego, it is evident that a newly-formed quarternary would be an anomaly, a being without inherited tendencies and aptitudes; also without karmic seeds many of which would be undesirable, while others would be the reverse. It is difficult to imagine just what that nondescript being would seem to his parents and friends and the world at large. Evidently the teaching is a substitute and nothing more.
If, during its ages of union with the ego, the quarternary has produced nothing that can be assimilated by the other, then the severance of upper and lower will become total; but such an unfruitful quarternary it is difficult to imagine. The inner teaching is that whatever the ego has
124
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
acquired from its assbciate, constitutes an imperish- able tie. The base quarternary may sink even to the loss of self-consciousness, but, in a future manventara, or perhaps in an outer planet, it yet will rise to a receptive condition. Then the wait- ing ego will reform the old tie, and with almost certain prospect of successful outcome, inasmuch as bitter experience will have implanted in the quarternary an abhorrence of all that wrought its downfall. It is taught that some of the great egos of our race have redeemed their associates from a debased condition induced in a former world period.
SPIRIT GUIDES
TO the average Spiritualist, a "spirit guide" is that peculiarly gifted being whose high office is to establish communication between the living and the so-called "dead," that the people who walk in the darkness of this material world may see a great light of truth. Now, as a matter of fact, a "spirit guide" is usually a being who in the earth condition practised mediumship, and whose conscienceness then shifted constantly from normal to abnormal; one who in this respect has not changed.
Since the medium has a certain vogue while in the flesh, why not when out of it? From what we have learned of post mortem conditions, it seems
125
THE DEEPER MYSTERIES
that passing out has not greatly changed the human being either in his mental make up, or in his personal peculiarities; but, as for the medium, we find that the special knowledge obtained in his new organism and environment, enables him, in communication, to be the operator, whereas once he was the receiver.
Despite this, should a more positive spirit take