Preface

THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL
*/ SEQUEL TO "ESOTERIC HISM"
BY
A. P. SINNETT
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
THIRD AND REVISED EDITION
LONDON THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
i UPPER WOBURN PLACE, W.C.I. 1918
COPYRIGHT, 1896 BY THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY
PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE PELICAN PRESS
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
THE gulf which lies between the thinking of the ordinary world in reference to matters having to do with the destinies of the human soul, and the position occupied by those students of the school with which I am specially concerned, is widening, year by year. " Current teaching," as Mr. Balfour has called it, stands still; knowledge concerning the conditions of existence in ultraphysical realms of Nature has expanded enormously for those who have sought it the right way during the last fifteen years, and is expanding with ever-increasing rapidity. With the 'first gush of theosophic teaching we were told that knowledge concerning matters generally thought to be unknowable had not only been reached by a few philosophers holding themselves, for reasons of their own, aloof from contact with the world at large, but was acquirable also in the long run by all who took certain prescribed methods for its acquisition — much more rapidly if appropriate qualifications were possessed at the outset. This idea has not lain unfruitful in the minds of those who were the first to appreciate the significance of the theosophical opening. Many are those who have entered, as the phrase goes, on the path of theosophical progress; several have already advanced sufficiently to be themselves in a position to investigate mysteries hitherto regarded as lying beyond incarnate human ken. Much, therefore, that in earlier theosophical books could only be treated as ex cathedra statement — forcibly appealing, perhaps, to reason, but not otherwise susceptible of veri- fication— has come within range of personal observation
M701115
VI.
PREFACE
for several students amongst ourselves. The sources of the earlier teaching have not by any means run dry, but we are now in a position to get corroborative testi- mony concerning the outlines of this teaching, together with an immense amplitude of detailed information from persons who have thus advanced a part of the way on the journey towards genuine spiritual development. Views of Nature which lie wholly beyond the range of ordinary perception have come within the domain of positive and experimental knowledge for those who have best profited by current opportunities.
There is something pathetic, for us who know better, in the attitude of mind of people who treat as matters of ribald incredulity the existence of faculties in daily use amongst some of us in connection with the study, not merely of literary philosophy, but of special conditions of existence. That other world from which, in the old phrase, no traveller returns, has been found accessible to travellers who are going backwards and forwards con- stantly, and in saying this, I am leaving entirely out of account communications from the " next world " pur- porting to come from those who have passed over to it finally.
The explanations given in the present volume con- cerning the principles on which the growth of the soul proceeds, have been rendered possible by the continual expansion in this way of the fundamental teaching put forward in " Esoteric Buddhism." But nothing in this later presentation of the subject has been the fruit of mere intellectual speculation. Readers chiefly familiar with metaphysics in their non-theosophical aspect are used to regarding them as altogether speculative; but, however slowly those outside the central nucleus of
PREFACE
Vll.
theosophical activities may recognise the fact, the^ fact nevertheless is that metaphysical experiment and observa- tion have now become possible for a good many people still in direct relations with ordinary humanity. The human body is not really the prison of consciousness it was once supposed to be; other senses may be developed besides the five faculties of physical perception, and the result is that a great deal may be known concerning aspects of Nature which the familiar five faculties are quite unable to deal with.
The information so attained is essentially necessary to a comprehension of the natural possibilities lying before man in connection with that growth of his soul to which this volume relates. To introduce the subject and show it susceptible even of definite treatment, it will be neces- sary to build a bridge across the widening gulf of which I have spoken, so that, at all events, whoever endeavours to apprehend what I have to say may have before his mind, even if only in the form of a hypothesis, the knowledge concerning ultra-physical nature which has been accumu- lated by theosophical students within the last few years. That which we have to recognise as actually going on in connection with the progress of the human race is a process of growth as regards individual souls not less protracted and elaborate than that evolutionary work going on part passu on the physical plane of life and developing the simplest organic cells into the complicated bodies of the higher animals. The fundamental blunder concerning the inner nature of man which has saddled itself upon many religious systems (as true as they are beautiful in their spiritual essence) is the notion which represents the human soul as going through two simple phases — the physical existence of which we are cognisant on this
viii. PREFACE
«arth, and the uniform unchangeable destiny of sorrow or joy that ensues hereafter as the consequence either of the brief physical life, according to one view, or of a pre- appointed destiny according to another. That which we get at, since we have begun to understand the actual working of Nature, is a scheme in which we see vast amplitudes of time laid out before consciousness as the field of its individualisation, and stupendous possibilities of growth and development, extending as far beyond the heights which human civilisation has yet reached as this has reared itself above the earliest humanity of which geology bears trace.
Occult teaching casts a light to almost immeasurable distances along this path of progress, recognising the continued individuality of every human being as extending through an infinite multiplicity of changes and varied states, the whole process moving in great cycles in which we return ever and anon to the physical plane of existence, and gather from each great sweep of the spiral evolution something which is contributed to the truly permanent entity constituting the individual soul. That is the one unchangeable centre of identity throughout the whole process. The expansion of its consciousness, faculties, and moral grandeur is the subject I have before me for elucida- tion, so far as the resources of our present knowledge extend. And their extent is already so vast — even though the horizon of the unknown lies ever in a widening circle beyond — that it is not possible even to describe the manner in which this growth is accomplished without paving the way for the main idea that has to be developed by a multiplicity of subordinate explanations. In this way it has been necessary to wander sometimes in the progress of this work into many fields of occult inquiry, which at the
PREFACE ix.
first glance may have seemed out of touch with the main object in view; but such collateral surveys have not merely been necessary in themselves, but have been calculated to show that an inquiry into the nature of the soul's growth is really one of even more dazzling magnitude than the simple words would at first suggest.
PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
FEW words are needed to explain the principle on which the present revision of this book has been carried out. In the twenty years that have elapsed since its first publication, the fountains of that teaching which gave rise to " Esoteric Buddhism " have never run dry. The first edition of " The Growth of the Soul " was written some twelve or thirteen years later. It con- tained immensely important additions to the rough sketch of Theosophical Science embodied in the first book. It also contained a great deal of new matter imperfectly comprehended at that period. It was impossible for the Adept Teachers to convey the whole volume of the information and guidance they were willing to give all at once. My attempt to present that which came was embarrassed in many directions for want of deeper know- ledge. And now distant horizons are opening before me which it would be impossible to deal with even in this revised edition of the present book; but, at all events, I think I have cleared it of all misleading passages in the earlier editions, and I have entirely rewritten the chapter relating to the Astral and Manasic planes, which in their earlier form represented a stage of Theosophic research which I have been enabled to leave far in the rear of my present appreciation of those deeply interesting regions. The Astral world especially was, in former years, the subject of a deplorably imperfect conception among Theosophists generally. It includes the purgatorial aspect, on which, at one time, our attention became too exclusively focussed; but, beyond this, glorious possibilities of higher life which to some extent, in the present edition of this work, I have endeavoured to unveil.
TABLE OF CONTENTS