book in English to give one a real idea of the religion

as it is held by living men is The Light of Asia, by Sir Edwin Arnold; and another book, which makes a good second to it, is The Soul of a People, by H. Field- ing Hall. Some critics have said that Sir Edwin Arn- old has gone a little beyond the bare literal meaning of the words of the text, and is trying to read Christ- ian ideas into them. I do not think this is so, and I have certainly found that he expresses far more closely the feeling and attitude of the Buddhists than any other writer.
Buddhism is now divided into two great Churches, the Northern and the Southern, and both of them have departed to some extent from the original teaching of the Buddha, though in different directions. The religion is so plain and straightforward, and so obvi- ously common-sense that almost any person may read- ily adapt himself to it, without necessarily giving up the beliefs and practices of other faiths. As a conse- quence of this in the Northern Church we have a form of Buddhism with an immense amount of accretion. It seems to have absorbed into itself many ceremonies and beliefs of the aboriginal faith which it supplanted ; so that in Tibet, for example, we find it including a
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whole hierarchy of minor deities, devas and demons which were entirely unknown to the original scheme of the Buddha. The Southern Church, on the other hand, instead of adding to the teaching of the Buddha, has lost something from it. It has intensified the ma- terial and the abstract sides of the philosophy.
It teaches that nothing but Karma passes over from life to life — that there is no permanent ego in man, but that in his next birth he is in effect a new man, who is the result of the karma of the previous life; and they quote various sayings of the Buddha in sup- port of this. It is true that He often spoke very strongly against the persistence of the personality, and that He assured His hearers again and again that nothing whatever which they knew in connection with a man could pass over to another birth. But He no- where denied the individuality; in fact many of His sayings absolutely affirm it. Take for example a text which occurs in the Samannayhalasutta of the Digha- Nikaya. When first mentioning the condition and training of the mind that are necessary for success in spiritual progress, the Buddha describes how he sees all the scenes in which he was in any way concerned passing in succession before his mind's eye. He illus- trates it by saying:
"If a man goes out from his own village to another and thence to another, and from there comes back again to his own village, he may think thus: 'I in- deed went from my own village to that other. There I stood thus; I sat in this manner; thus I spoke, and thus I remained silent. From that village again I went to another, and I did the same there. The same 'I am' returned from that village to my own village.' In the very same way, 0 King, the ascetic, when his mind is pure, knows his former births. He thinks:
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'In such a place I had such a name. I was born in such a family, such was my caste, such was my food, and in such and such a way I experienced pleasure and pain, and my life extended through in some other place, and there also I had such and such conditions. Thence removed, the same T am now born here.' "
This question shows very clearly the doctrine of the Buddha with regard to the reincarnating ego. He gives illustrations also in the same Sutta of the manner in which an ascetic can know the past births of others — how he can see them die in one place, and after the sorrows and joys of hell and heaven the same men are born again somewhere else. It is true that in the Brahmajala Sutta He mentions all the various aspects of the soul, and says that they do not absolutely exist, because their existence depends upon "contact," that is to say upon relation. But in thus denying the abso- lute reality of the soul He agrees with the other great Indian teachers, for the existence not only of the soul but even of the Logos Himself is true only relatively.
Untrained minds frequently misunderstand these ideas, but the careful student of oriental thought will not fail to grasp exactly what is meant, and to real- ize that the teaching of the Buddha in this respect is exactly that now given by Theosophy. It is not diffi- cult to see how various texts might be so emphasized or distorted as to seem to contradict one another, and the Southern Church has chosen to cling rather to the denial of the permanence of the personality than to the assertion of the continuity of the individuality, just as in Christianity some people have acquired the habit of laying stress on particular texts, and ignor- ing others which contradict them.
Another point as to which there is a very similar
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misunderstanding is the constantly repeated assertion that nirvana is equivalent to annihilation. Even Max Mueller, the great Oxford Sanskritist, was under this delusion for many years, but later in his life with fur- ther and deeper study he came to understand that in this he had been mistaken. The description which the Lord Buddha Himself gives to nirvana is so far above the comprehension of any man who is trained only in ordinary and worldly methods of thought that it is little wonder that it should have been misunder- stood at first sight by the European orientalists; but no one who has lived in the East among the Buddhists can for a moment suppose that they regard annihila- tion as the end which they are striving to reach.
It is quite true that the attaining of nirvana does involve the utter annihilation of that lower side of man which is in truth all that we know of him at the pres- ent time. The personality, like everything connected with the lower vehicles, is impermanent and will dis- appear. If we endeavour to realize what man would be when deprived of all which is included under these terms we shall see that for us at our present stage it would be difficult to comprehend that anything re- mained, and yet the truth is that everything remains — that in the glorified spirit which then exists, all the essence of all the qualities which have been developed through the centuries of strife and stress in earthly in- carnation will inhere to the fullest possible degree. The man has become more than man, since he is now on the threshold of Divinity; yet he is still himself, even though it be a so much wider self.
Many definitions have been given of nirvana, and naturally none of them can possibly be satisfactory; perhaps the best on the whole is that of peace in omnis- cience. Many years ago when I was preparing a sim-
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pie introductory catechism of their religion for Budd- hist children, the chief Abbot Sumangala himself gave me as the best definition of nirvana to put before them that it was a condition of peace and blessedness so high above our present state that it was impossible for us to understand it. Surely that is far removed from the idea of annihilation. Truly all that we now call the man has disappeared, but that is not because the individuality is annihilated, but because it is lost in divinity.
The Buddha Himself once said: "Nirvana is not being, but also it is not non-being."
Another difference between the Northern Church of Buddhism and the Southern is that they adopt differ- ent versions of the scriptures. It is usually stated that the Northern Church adopts the Mahayana and the Southern the Hinayana, but whether even this much may be safely said depends upon the shade of meaning which we attach to a much-disputed word. Yana means vehicle, and it is agreed that it is to be applied to the dhamma or law, as the vessel which con- veys, us across the sea of life to nirvana, but there are at least five theories as to the exact sense in which it is to be taken.
1. That it refers simply to the language in which the law is written, the greater vehicle being by this hypothesis Sanskrit, and the lesser vehicle Pali — a the- ory which seems to me untenable. It is true that the Northern Church uses the Sanskrit translation, while the Southern scriptures are in Pali, the language which the Lord Buddha spoke when on earth. It is stated that the Pali scriptures which we now possess are not in the original form, but that all the originals ex- isting (in Ceylon at least) were carefully destroyed by the Tamil invaders, so that the Pali scriptures which
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we now have are a retranslation made from a copy in Elu, then the vernacular language of Ceylon.
2. Hina may apparently be taken as signifying mean or easy, as well as small. One interpretation therefore considers that the Hinayana is the meaner or easier road to liberation — the irreducible minimum of knowledge and conduct required to attain it, while the Mahayana is the fuller and more philosophical doc- trine, which includes much traditional knowledge about higher realms of nature. Needless to say, this inter- pretation comes from a Mahayana source.
3. That Buddhism, in its unfailing courtesy towards other religions, accepts them all as ways to liberation, though it regards the method taught by its founder as offering the shortest and surest route. According to this view Buddhism is the Mahayana, and the Hina- yana includes Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, and any other religions which were existing at the time when the definition was formulated.
4. That the two doctrines are simply two stages of one doctrine — the Hinayana for the Sravakas or hear- ers, and the Mahayana for more advanced students.
5. That the word Yana is to be understood not ex- actly in its primary sense of Vehicle,' but rather in its secondary sense, nearly equivalent to the English word 'career.' According to this interpretation the Maha- yana puts before the man the 'grand career' of becom- ing a Bodhisattva and devoting himself to the welfare of the world, while the Hinayana shows him only the smaller 'career' of so living as to attain nirvana for himself.
There has also been much discussion as to the exact meaning of the terms Adi-Buddha and Avalokitesh- wara. I have made no special study of these things from the philosophical standpoint, but so far as I have
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been able to gather ideas from discussion of the mat- ter with the living exponents of the religion, Adi- Buddha seems to be the culmination of one of the great lines of superhuman development — what might be called the abstract principle of all the Buddhas. Avalo- kiteshwara is a term belonging to the Northern Church, and seems to be the Buddhists' name for their concep- tion of the Logos. European scholars have translated it : "The Lord who looks down from on high," but this seems to have in it a somewhat inaccurate implication, for it is clearly always the manifested Logos; some- times the Logos of a solar system and sometimes higher than that, but always manifest. We must not forget that while the founders of the great religions see and know the things which They name, Their followers us- ually do not see; they have only the names, and they juggle with them as intellectual counters, and build up much which is incorrect and inconsistent.
The Buddhism of the Southern Church, which in- cludes Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Cambodia, has on the whole kept its religion free from the accretions which have become so prominent in the Northern divi- sion of Japan, China and Tibet. In Burma no image appears in the temples except that of the Buddha, though of Him there are in some cases hundreds of images, of different material, in different positions, presented by various worshippers. In Ceylon a cer- tain concession seems to have been made to popular feeling, or perhaps to a foreign government during the time of the Tamil kings, for the images of certain Hindu deities are often to be seen in the temples, though they are always placed in a subordinate position and considered as a kind of attendants upon the Buddha. We need not however blame the Tibetans very much for the fact that certain superstitions have crept into
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their Buddhism. The same thing happens in all coun- tries, and with all religions, as time goes on. In Italy, for example, numbers of the peasants in the hills still follow what they call the old religion, and continue even in the present day the worship of Bacchus, under an Etruscan name which antedates even the time of the Roman Empire. The Catholic priests quite recog- nize the existence of this older faith, and set themselves against it, but without avail.
In Southern Buddhism there is remarkably little ceremony of any kind — practically nothing indeed that in any way corresponds to the Christian service. When the people pay their morning visit to the temple they usually call upon the monks to recite for them the three guides and the five precepts, which they then repeat after him, but even this can hardly be called a public service, for it is recited not once at a set time, but for each group of people as they happen to arrive. There is another ceremony called Paritta or Pirit (which means 'blessings') but this is not performed in the temple itself nor at any stated times, but it is considered a good work on the part of the laity to cele- brate any special occasion by giving a Pirit ceremony — that is to say by erecting and elaborately decorat- ing a temporary building in which the ceremony is held. It consists of the chanting of benedictory verses from the sacred scriptures, and is carried on for a certain number of days, usually a fortnight, by relays of monks who relieve one another every two hours.
Sometimes when a man falls ill one of these Pirit ceremonies is arranged for him, with the idea that it will promote his recovery. It is in reality a mesmeric ceremony, for the monks sit in a circle and hold in their hands a rope which runs round the circle, and they are instructed to recite their texts, keeping clearly
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in their minds all the time the will to bless. Naturally this rope becomes very strongly magnetized as the ceremony progresses, and strings run from it to a huge pot of water, which of course also becomes highly charged with magnetism. At the conclusion of the ceremony this water is distributed among the people, and the sick man often holds a thread which is con- nected with the rope.
The Southern Buddhists give a list of five psychic powers which may be gained by the man who is mak- ing progress on the Path. (1) The ability to pass through the air and through solid objects, and to visit the heaven-world while still alive. It is however pos- sible that this may mean nothing more than ability to function freely in the astral body, because it is quite likely that in speaking of the heaven-world they do not really mean the mental plane, but only the higher levels of the astral. (2) Divinely clear hearing — which is evidently merely the astral faculty of clairaudience. (3) The ability to comprehend and sympathize with all that is in the minds of others — which appears to be thought-reading, or perhaps telepathy. (4) The Power to remember former births. (5) Divinely clear vision — that is to say, clairvoyance. To this is added in some lists the attainment of deliverance by wisdom. This must of course mean the attainment of freedom from the necessity of rebirth, but it does not seem to be of the same nature as the other powers, and per- haps should hardly appear in the same category.
Ananda is said to have been the favourite disciple of the Lord Buddha, just as John is spoken of as the beloved disciple of the Christ, and no doubt in both cases the special intimacy was the result of relation- ship in previous lives. Ananda was certainly not so chosen because he was the most advanced, for even
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after the death of the Buddha we hear that when the first great council was held in a cave within the liv- ing rock, and the condition of taking part in it was that none should enter who could not pass through the rock, Ananda found himself shut out from it be- cause he had not yet attained this power. But it is said that his grief at this exclusion from a grand op- portunity of serving his departed Master was so great that by a supreme effort of will he then and there de- veloped the power which had been lacking, and passed in triumphantly to take his place among his brothers, though a little late.
This shows us that even those who are the most highly advanced of all humanity have still their special friendships, and that therefore to love one person more than another cannot be improper. It is true that such affection as you now feel for your nearest and dear- est you will feel later on for the whole world, but at that time you will feel a thousand times more affec- tion for those who are nearest to you. Your love will never be the same for all, although all will be included within it. It is impossible that we should feel towards another as we do towards our Master, for when He becomes a Logos we shall be part of His system, and even when far later on we ourselves become Logoi we shall still be part of Him, for He will represent some far greater system. Although there will always be greater love for some than others, we shall help those whom we love less just as fully as those whom we love more. We shall always do our best for all, just as a doctor equally helps his patient whether he be a friend or not, for anything like dislike or hatred will have ceased aeons before.
At the time of the Lord Buddha many other spirit- ual teachers were sent forth to the world. We find for
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example Lao-tse, Confucius and Pythagoras, all work- ing in their different spheres. Advantage was taken of the stupendous outpouring of spiritual force at the time to send forth teachers into many parts of the world.
Christianity
There is nothing in the principles of Theosophy which is at all in opposition to the true primitive Christianity, though there may be statements which cannot be reconciled with some of the mistakes of mod- ern popular theology. This modern theology attaches immense importance to texts ; in fact it appears to me to be based upon one or two texts almost entirely. It takes these and gives to them a particular interpre- tation, often in direct opposition to the plain meaning of other texts from the same bible. Of course there are contradictions in the Christian scripture just as there must 'necessarily be in any book of that size, the various parts of which were written at such widely separated periods of the world's history, and by people so unequal in knowledge and in civilization.
It is impossible that all the statements made in it can be literally true, but we can go back behind them all, and try to find out what the original teacher did lay before His pupils. Since there are many contra- dictions and many interpretations it is obviously the duty of a thinking Christian to weigh carefully the different versions of his faith which exist in the world, and decide between them according to his own reason and common-sense.
Every Christian does, as a matter of fact, decide for
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himself now ; he chooses to be a Roman Catholic, or a member of the Church of England, or a Methodist, or a Salvationist, though each of these sects professes to have the only genuine brand of Christianity, and justifies its claim by the quotation of texts. How then does the ordinary layman decide between their rival claims? Either he accepts blindly the faith which his father held, and does not examine the matter at all, or else he does examine it, and then he decides by the exercise of his own judgment.
If he is already doing that, it would be absurd and inconsistent for him to refuse to examine all texts, instead of basing his belief only upon one or two. If he does impartially examine all texts, he wTill certainly find many which support Theosophical truth. He will find also that the creeds can be rationally interpreted only by Theosophy. Of course in order to make an intelligent comparison between these different systems it will be necessary for him to make some enquiries into the history of his own religion, and to see how the Christian doctrine came to be what it now is.
He will find that in the early Christian Church there were three principal divisions or parties. There were first of all the Gnostic Doctors or teachers, wise and cultured men who held that the Christian Church had its system of philosophy of the same nature as the great Greek and Roman systems which existed at that time. They said that this system, while thoroughly comprehensive and very beautiful, was difficult to un- derstand, and therefore they did not recommend its study to the ignorant. They spoke of it as the Gnosis or knowledge — the knowledge which was possessed by those who were full members of the church, but was not given out to the world at large, and not even told to the more ignorant members of the church while they
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were in that preliminary stage when they could not receive the sacraments.
Then there was the second division, a body of re- spectable middle-class people, who troubled themselves not at all about the philosophy, but simply were content to take the words of the Christ as their guide in life. They used as a sacred book a collection of His sayings, some leaves of which have recently been discovered by antiquarians.
Then there was unfortunately a great mass of ignor- ant and turbulent people who never had any grasp whatever of Christian doctrine, but became members of the church merely because of the prophecies, given by the Christ, of a good time to come. He was very much moved by the sufferings of the poor, and full of compassion and pity for them. He told them con- stantly, in His teachings, to take comfort, because the poor man who endures the struggle bravely and well will in the future have a better position and greater advancement than the rich man who misuses his opportunities. One can readily see how that doctrine preached to an exceedingly ignorant people might be taken in a one-sided manner. They would take the promises and not the conditions, and their idea of that good time might easily be that they in turn would be the oppressors and would take advantage of the rich man — something which of course the Christ never preached. So it came to pass that He attracted to him- self a great crowd of men who for various reasons were against the existing government ; and when these ignorant people in turn preached what they called Christianity to others, they naturally intensified and exaggerated their own misconceptions of it. This great mass of the common people, who called them- selves "the poor men," speedily became a vast majority
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of the infant church, and gained so much power that they were eventually able to throw out the Gnostic Doc- tors as heretics ; for the "poor men" resented the idea that any knowledge which they did not possess could be regarded as an essential part of Christianity.
There is yet another point of view from which the Christian may find Theosophy of the greatest use to him. Just now the minds of many orthodox Christians are much exercised with regard to what they call the higher criticism — that is, the attempt to apply ordi- nary common-sense and scientific methods to the exam- ination of the religious teaching — the endeavour to understand religion instead of blindly believing it. For many ages the world has been told that ecclesiastical dogmas must be swallowed like pills, and that to at- tempt to reason about them is impious. There are many men in the world, and they are among the most intellectual of its citizens, who simply cannot accept doctrines thus blindly and uncomprehendingly. Before they can believe they must to some extent understand, and a statement does not become a living fact to them until they can relate it rationally to other facts, and regard it as part of a more or less comprehensive scheme of things.
It is ridiculous to say (as some of the orthodox do) that these people are inherently wicked and that their attitude is inspired by the devil. On the contrary they are precisely the men who truly appreciate God's great gift of reason, and are determined to employ it in the highest of all possible directions — for the elucidation of the truth about religion. The truth is that the critics are of the greatest possible service to religion; they are clearing up points in it which heretofore have been vague ; they are stating with accuracy matters in con- nection with it which were previously very partially
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understood ; they are trying to make a reasonable sys- tem out of what has until now been nothing but a mass of meaningless confusion.
If any of our members have orthodox friends who are disturbed by these efforts, who fear lest this liber- alizing and rationalizing of their faith should refine it altogether out of existence, let them recommend to them the teachings of Theosophy, for that is the very thing which they need. It will teach them to pause before throwing aside ancestral belief, and it will show them that when properly understood that belief has a real meaning and a real foundation, and that, while some of the vagaries of mediaeval ecclesiastical dogma may be incomprehensible and incredible, the original teaching of the Christ was a magnificent presentment of uni- versal truth.
If they have somewhat outgrown the outer form of their religion, if they have broken through the chrysalis of blind faith, and mounted on the wings of reason and intuition to the freer, nobler mental life of more ex- alted levels, Theosophy will show them that in all this there has been no loss, but a great and glorious gain. For it tells them that the glow of devotion which has meant so much to them in their spiritual life is more than justified, that the splendour and beauty and poetry of religious thought exist in fuller measure than they have ever hoped before — no longer as mere pleasant dreams from which the cold light of common-sense may at any time rudely awaken them, but as truths of nature which will bear investigation, which become only brighter and more perfect as they are more accu- rately understood.
Certainly the Christian Bible ought not to be taken literally, for many of its statements are symbolical, and others are simply not true. When we examine clair-
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voyantly the life of the founder of Christianity, for example, we can find no trace of the alleged twelve apostles ; it would seem that as men they never existed, but that they were introduced into the story for some reason — possibly to typify the twelve signs of the zodiac. The disciple Jesus, whose body was taken by the Christ, was not an illegitimate son, as is implied in the gospel, nor was his father a carpenter. He was in reality of the highest aristocracy of the Jews, a de- scendant of their own old royal line. He may however have had a tinge of Aryan blood in him, which would be quite enough to cause the exclusive Jews to say that he was not legitimately of the seed of David, and that statement might very easily be taken to mean such an irregular birth as is suggested by the narrative.
The truth is that the four gospels at any rate were never intended to be taken as in any sense historical. They are all founded upon a much shorter document written in Hebrew by a monk named Matthseus, who lived in a monastery in a desert to the south of Pales- tine. He seems to have conceived the idea of casting some of the great facts of initiation into a narrative form and mingling with it some points out of the life of the real Jesus who was born 105 B. C, and some from the life of another quite obscure fanatical preacher, who had been condemned to death and exe- cuted in Jerusalem about 30 A. D.
He sent this document to a great friend of his who was the chief abbot of a huge monastery at Alexandria, and suggested to him that he, or some of his assistants, might perhaps recast it, and issue it in the Greek lan- guage. The Alexandrian abbot seems to have employed a number of his young monks upon this work, allowing each of them to try the task for himself, and to treat it in his own way. A number of documents of very
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varying merit were thus produced, each incorporating in his story more or less of the original manuscript of Matthaeus, but each also adding to it such legends as he happened to know, or as his taste and fancy dictated. Four of these still survive to us, and to them are at- tached the names of the monks who wrote them, Mat- thew, Mark, Luke and John. The splendid passage with which the gospel of St. John opens was not original but quoted, for we found it in existence many years before the time of the Christ in a manuscript which was even then of hoary antiquity.
It was associated in that manuscript with a quota- tion from the Stanzas of Dzyan, this latter also being translated into Greek.
Sin
You ask what is the real meaning of sin. In the sense in which the word is ordinarily employed, at least by Christian preachers, I think sin may be defined as a figment of the theological imagination. It is popu- larly supposed to indicate a defiance of divine law — the performance of some action which the actor knows to be wrong. It is exceedingly doubtful whether this phenomenon ever occurs. In almost every conceivable case man breaks the law through ignorance or heedless- ness, and not of deliberate intention. When once a man really knows and sees the divine intention he inevitably comes into harmony with it, for two reasons : at an earlier stage because he sees the utter futility of doing otherwise, and later because, seeing the glory and beauty of the design, he cannot but throw himself into its execution with all the powers of his heart and soul.
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One of the most serious of the many misconceptions which we have inherited from the dark ages is that what is called "sin" is a perversity to be met with pun- ishment and savage persecution, instead of what it really is, the result of a condition of ignorance that can only be dealt with by enlightenment and education. It may be objected that in daily life we constantly see people doing what they must know to be wrong, but this is a misstatement of the case. They are doing what they have been told is wrong, which is quite a dif- ferent matter. If a man really knows that an action is wrong, and that it will inevitably be followed by evil consequences, he is careful to avoid it. A man really knoivs that fire will burn him ; therefore he does not put his hand into it. He has been told that the fire of hell will burn him as the result of a certain action — say playing cards on a Sunday — but he does not really know this, and therefore when he feels the inclination to play cards he does so in spite of the threatened con- sequences. It will be found that every one who does wrong justifies the wrong action to himself at the time of its commission, whatever he may think about it afterwards in cold blood. So I say that sin as ordi- narily understood is a figment of the theological imag- ination ; what really exists is an unfortunate condition of ignorance which often leads to infraction of the divine Law. This ignorance it is our duty to endeavour to dispel by the light of Theosophy.
The Pope
A magnificent opportunity is waiting for the Pope who shall be ready and brave enough to take it. In- stead of fulminating rescripts and bulls against The-
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osophy and liberalism, he might himself propound the Theosophical interpretation of Christianity. Remem- ber that the Catholic Church possesses what is called the doctrine of development, and also that it has pro- claimed the Pope to be the infallible exponent of divine doctrine, the vicegerent of God upon earth. He would therefore be perfectly within his rights if, with regard to the Theosophical interpretation, he should pronounce quite boldly:
"Certainly this which you bring forward is the true meaning of Christian doctrine. We have always known this, and we have plenty of manuscripts in the Vatican Library to prove it. We did not tell you this before, because all through the ages until now men have not been fit for such a revelation. They have been too crude, too rough, too undeveloped to understand a phil- osophical and mystical interpretation. The outer husk of the religion has been all that could usefully be offered to them. Now one stage more has been attained and the world is ready for this further revelation. The second and inner meaning of our doctrine is therefore put before you, and while we must not condemn those who are still at the stage when they must cling to the outer husk, neither must they on their part be allowed to condemn those who are ready to take the further step and to receive a higher illumination."
But of course he must indeed be a strong as well as a wise man who should do this, for like all other great personages the Pope is surrounded by enormous masses of thought-forms, and he would find it a matter of extreme difficulty to break through these and make a new departure.
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Ceremonial
The line of ceremonial is one along which many peo- ple come, but of course it must be understood that no religious ceremonial whatever is ever really essential, and the man who wishes to enter upon the Path of Holiness must realize this fully and must cast off belief in the necessity of ceremonies, as one of the fetters which hold him back from nirvana. This does not mean that ceremonies may not be sometimes quite ef- fective in producing the results which are intended, but only that they are never really necessary for any one, and that the candidate for higher progress must learn to do utterly without them. The ceremonial line is an easy road for a certain type of people, and is really helpful and uplifting for them ; but there is an- other type of men who always feel ceremonial as an obstacle between themselves and the deities which they wish to reach.
In Christianity this ceremonial line is the one ap- pointed by its founder, through which his magic is to work. The consecration of the host, for example, is a means by which spiritual force is poured out over the people. There is often a vast amount of devotional feeling at the moment of the consecration, and the working of the magic is assisted by that, though it does not depend upon it. Those who are devotional unques- tionably receive more because they bring with them an additional faculty of reception. On the other hand, there is always the probability that ignorant devotion will degenerate into superstition. In a recent enquiry into these matters from the occult point of view, made in Sicily, I found that there was certainly plenty of superstition, and much harmful interference in family matters on the part of the priests ; but still on the whole
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the country was distinctly better than it would have been without it. We should remember also that in his- tory we usually hear much of the worst effects of relig- ious enthusiasm, whereas the good steady progress of many thousands under its influence makes but little impression.
Prayer
It is difficult to say anything on the question of prayer that would be universally applicable, because there are such very different kinds of prayer and they are addressed to beings who differ very widely in evo- lution. The founders of most great religions never in any way encouraged their followers to pray to them, and as a rule the latter have been far too enlightened to do anything of the kind. Whether a very strong thought directed towards them would reach them or not would depend upon the line of evolution which they have since followed — in fact upon whether they still remain within touch of this earth or not. If they were still so within reach, and if such a thought did reach them, it is probable that if they saw that it would be good for the thinker that any notice should be taken they would turn in his direction the attention of some of their pupils who are still upon earth. But it is quite inconceivable that a man who had any sort of concep- tion of the magnificent far-reaching work done for evo- lution by the Great Ones on higher planes could dream of intruding his own petty concerns upon Their notice ; he could not but know that any kind of help that he required would be far more fitly given to him by some- one nearer to his own level. Even down here on this physical plane we are wiser than that, for we do not
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waste the time of the greatest scholars of our univer- sities in helping babies over the difficulties of the alphabet.
As regards the saints of any of the churches the posi- tion is different, though even with them the ability to hear prayers will depend upon their position in evolu- tion. The ordinary saint, who is simply a good and holy man, will of course take his heaven-life as usual, and will probably take a long one. His life on the astral plane would be likely to be but short, and it would be only during that that it would be possible for a prayer to reach him and attract his attention. If during that time it did so reach him, no doubt he would do anything that he could to satisfy the petitioner; but it is by no means certain that it would attract his attention, for he would naturally be fully occupied with his new surroundings.
When he entered upon his long rest in the heaven- world he would be entirely beyond any possibility of being disturbed by earthly things ; yet even in such a case a prayer to him might not be without effect in con- nection with him. Such a man would almost certainly be pouring out a constant stream of loving thought towards humanity, and this thought would be a real and potent shower of blessing, tending generally to- wards the spiritual helping of those upon whom it fell ; and there is no doubt that the man who was earnestly thinking of or praying to that saint would come into rapport with him, and would therefore draw down upon himself a great deal of that force, though entirely without the knowledge of the saint from whom it came. If the saint were sufficiently advanced to have entered upon a special series of births rapidly following one another the case would be different again. He would then be all the time within reach of earth, either living
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on the astral plane or in incarnation upon the physical, and if the prayer were strong enough to attract his attention at any time when he was for a moment out of his body, he would probably give any help in his power.
But fortunately for the many thousands who are constantly pouring forth their souls in prayer — in the blindest ignorance, of course, but still in perfect good faith — there is something else to depend upon which is independent of all these considerations. Shri Krishna tells us, in the Bhagavad Gita, how all true prayers come to Him, to whomsoever they may have been ignorantly offered ; there is a consciousness wide enough to comprehend all, which never fails in its re- sponse to any earnest effort in the direction of an increased spirituality. It works through many means ; sometimes perhaps by directing the attention of a deva to the suppliant, sometimes through the agency of those human helpers who work upon the astral or mental planes for the good of humanity. Such a deva or helper so used would, if he showed himself, inevitably be taken by the petitioner for the saint to whom he had prayed, and there are many stories which illustrate this.
I myself, for example, have been taken under such circumstances for S. Philip Neri, and a junior helper who was with me on the occasion was supposed to be S. Stanislaus Kostka. Our President, too, has more than once been regarded as an angel by those whom she wras assisting.
The Devil
The devil is non-existent. There are persons who imagine themselves to have made pacts with him, some- times signed with their own blood. The result depends
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largely upon what sort of entity happened to person- ate him for the occasion. There are plenty of creatures of various sorts who would hugely enjoy such a joke at the expense of a man ; but no such entity, whatever he may be, could possibly have any use for the "soul" of a man — nor would the "soul" of anybody foolish enough to make such a compact be likely to be of any use, either to the owner or anybody else. All these absurd superstitions are disproved by the fact that the man is the ego, and therefore cannot sell himself, and also that there are no buyers in such a transaction ; so the whole thing is nothing but foolishness.
There are many entities who may be both willing and able to arrange twenty years of material pros- perity for a person. They are generally willing to do it in return for some material consideration, such as the sacrifice of babies, goats or fowls. The ego has no share in these pacts, either in the rare individual cases, or in general fetish worship. These entities cannot possess the human ego, nor could they use it if it could come into their possession. A human body is some- times convenient for them, and for the sake of being permitted to obsess it they will sometimes enter into an arrangement. The making of a compact of this nature gives the entity a strong hold upon the man ; but as soon as he discovers the folly of his action, the proper course for the man to take is to resist such obsession to the utmost. Childish ceremonies, such as signing with his own blood, would of course make no difference whatever.
There is no hierarchy of evil. There are black magi- cians certainly, but the black magician is usually merely a single solitary entity. He is working for himself, as a separate entity, and for his own ends. You can- not have a hierarchy of people who distrust one an-
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other. In the White Brotherhood every member trusts the others; but you cannot have trust with the dark people, because their interests are built upon self.
You must, however, take care what you mean when you speak of evil. The principle of destruction is often personified, but it is only that old forms are broken down to be used as material for building new and higher ones. Here in India there is Shiva, the De- stroyer, but no one would think of Him as evil ; He is one of the highest manifestations of the deity. The principle of the destruction of forms is necessary in order that life may progress. There is a Great One, a part of whose function it is to arrange when the great cataclysms shall take place — but He works for the good of the world. These things are not to be thought of as in any way evil. The notion of a supposed angel who revolted and was turned out of heaven is very much based upon John Milton. The conception is not at all the same in the Book of Job. In that story the devil is quite a different person from the gloomy hero in the Miltonic conception. Then the Buddhists have Mara — a personification of the karma of the past descending upon the man at once and taking many forms. There is an instant working-out of karma upon the attain- ment of enlightenment.
The statement that all material things, all differences and limitations are evil is misleading. If by evil you mean what is ordinarily connoted by that word, and not some other and quite different notion of an abstract kind, then matter is not evil. Spirit and matter are equal. Matter is not in opposition to spirit. We find matter troublesome because of the bodies we have to use; but we are here in order to learn what without the physical life could not be conveyed to us. The phys- ical plane experiences give a definiteness and precision
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to our consciousness and powers which we could never acquire on any plane unless we had spent the necessary time on this. But why do people bother about evil? There is plenty of good in the world, and it is better to think of that, for your thought strengthens that of which you think. To think and talk so much about black magicians unquestionably attracts their atten- tion to you, and the results are often exceedingly undesirable.
Hinduism
When ignorant missionaries dilate upon the three hundred and thirty million gods of the Hindus they are making a very gross misrepresentation of a religion which is far more scientific than their own. Hinduism, like every other religion, knows perfectly well that there can be only one God, though there may be count- less manifestations of Him. To call these "gods" is of course ridiculous. It is perhaps better to avoid the word "god" altogether, because of the exceedingly un- pleasant ideas which have been associated with it by the Christians ; but if it is to be used, at least it should never be applied to any being lower than the Logos of the solar system. All the good things attributed to the Christian God are true of the Logos ; there is noth- ing in the system that is not He, and yet He is much more than His system. We could not possibly grasp the truth about the Absolute; anything which we are able to grasp must after all be small, since our minds are so small. The advice of the Lord Buddha to His people was always that they should not trouble them- selves about such remote matters, since it was impos- sible to arrive at any conclusion, and nothing useful came from it.
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The images of the Indian deities are usually highly- magnetized, and when they are carried round the streets at the festivals their influence upon the people is unquestionably productive of much good. In many of the Hindu temples there are strong permanent influ- ences at work, as is the case for example at Madura. Once when I visited that city some white ashes from the temple of Shiva were given to me, and also a bright crimson powder from the temple of Parvati, and I found that both of these were so powerfully magnet- ized as to retain their influence for some years and after much travelling.
India is essentially a country of rites and ceremonies. The religion is full of them, and a great many of them are said to have been prescribed by the Manu Him- self, though it is quite obvious that many others have been added at a much later date. Some of them ap- pear to be regulations such as would be quite necessary at the beginning of a new race, but now that it is thor- oughly established it seems clear that they are use- less. In many cases when one watches their perform- ance one can see quite clearly what must originally have been intended, even though now the ceremony has become a mere empty shell, and no result follows upon it. Such things are not without their value for younger souls; indeed there are many who delight in them and obtain great benefit from them ; but of course none of them can ever be really necessary, and all such bondage falls away altogether from the really developed man.
Originally every householder was the priest of his own family, but as the civilization became more com- plex the rites and ceremonies grew more complex also, and therefore a class of specially instructed priests had to spring up, because no one who had anything else
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to do could possibly remember the wealth of unneces- sary detail. In these days it would seem that most people perform them, or have them performed for them, much in the same spirit as they take medicine from a doctor, without understanding what it is, but with the faith that it will somehow do them good. There are, however, many people who cannot put heart and soul into a ceremony unless they do understand it, and these people usually end by breaking away from ceremonies altogether.
It is sad to see priests performing the old ceremonies and using the old forms which once were so effective, and yet producing no result worth mentioning. There seems to be no will in these days. They commence some of their recitations "Om, Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar" ; but nothing whatever happens when they recite the words. In the old days the officiant who said this threw some will into it, and raised his own consciousness, as well as that of those present who were responsive, from one plane to the other as he spoke.
I remember seeing this strongly exemplified in the performance of a striking ceremony, when we were examining one of the earlier lives which occurred many thousands of years ago here in India. The people all entered an inner room and stood in absolute darkness. In the beginning of the ceremony the officiant slowly and solemnly uttered those words, and each produced its due effect upon the majority of those who stood around him. The word "Om" brought all the people in close harmony with him, and with the feelings which filled his mind. Then, at the utterance of the word "Bhur," to their senses the room was filled with ordi- nary light, and they were able to see all the physical objects in it ; when, after an interval, the second word came, astral sight was temporarily opened for them;
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and the third word produced the same effect upon their mental sight, and brought round them all the bliss and power of the higher plane, and that condi- tion persisted during the recitation of the various verses which followed.
Of course these effects were only temporary, and when the ceremony was over the higher consciousness faded away from those who had taken part in it, but nevertheless it remained for them a tremendous ex- perience, and the effect of it was that on another simi- lar occasion this higher consciousness was more read- ily and more fully aroused in them. But now nothing of this sort seems to be done anywhere. Now the priest arranges his fuel and utters a solemn invocation to Agni, and then — lights the fire with a match! In the old days that which is represented by Agni really did come, and the fire fell from heaven, to use an old ex- pression. But all outer husks seem to remain.
There is a quite rational and scientific idea under- lying the practice of pilgrimage. Great shrines are usually erected on the spot where some holy man has lived or where some great event has happened (such as an initiation) or else in connection with some relic of a great person. In any one of these cases a power- ful magnetic centre of influence has been created, which will persist for thousands of years. Any sensitive person who approaches the spot will feel this influence, and its effect upon him is unquestionably good. Where there is a strong vibration at a much higher level than any attained by ordinary humanity, its action upon any man who comes within its influence is to raise his own vibrations for the time towards unison with it.
The pilgrim who comes to such a spot and bathes himself in its magnetism, perhaps for several days to- gether, is certainly the better for it, although differ-
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ent people will be affected in different degrees, accord- ing to their power of receptivity. Such a place of pilgrimage is the Bodhi tree at Buddha-gaya, the spot where the Lord Gautama attained His Buddhahood. This is true although the tree which is there now is not the original one. That fell some time in the middle ages, and the present tree is only an offshoot from it. But nevertheless the tremendously strong magnetism of the spot remains and is likely to do so for many a century yet to come.
Castes
It is said that originally each caste had its distinc- tive colour; indeed, the actual meaning of varna (the Sanskrit word for caste) is colour. I have not studied the question, but at least it is clear that the colours which are usually given do not indicate in any way the auras of the people. Only a young child has a white aura, and even the adepts have various colours in Their tremendous glow; yet for some reason the brahman is traditionally mentioned as white. A kshattriya is said to have some connection with the colour red ; there are several reds in the human aura, from the rose of affection to the scarlet of anger and indignation, and the brown-reds of sensuality. But the kshattriya has no more of these than other men. Yellow is tradition- ally ascribed to the vaishya. But yellow in the aura signifies intellect, and we have no reason to consider the vaishya especially endowed with this quality. A shudra is spoken of as black.
If we adopt the suggestion that these colours had to do with the ancient and primitive races, we shall find
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the facts more tractable. The Aryans, representing the brahman caste, were undoubtedly much lighter in colour than the people amongst whom they came. The reddish Toltec people who were ruling large portions of the land when the Aryan invasion took place may have some connection with the original kshattriya caste. The aboriginals, who were Lemurians, and are now only represented by some of the hill tribes, were almost black in colour. They may be connected with the shudras. Between them and the Toltecs there ap- pear to have been several waves of different Atlantean sub-races who settled down as traders ; and these men were of a yellowish colour, as is the present day China- man. Perhaps they were the original vaishyas.
No doubt as we carry further and further back the investigations which we are making in connection with the lines of past lives which are now being examined, we shall obtain more definite information on the sub- ject of the origin of these castes, and of this question of their relation to colour.
Spiritualism
Never forget that the spiritualists are entirely with us on some most important points. They all hold (a) life after death as an actual vivid ever-present cer- tainty, and (b) eternal progress and ultimate happi- ness for everyone, good and bad alike. Now these two items are of such tremendous, such paramount im- portance— they constitute so enormous an advance from the ordinary orthodox position — that I for one should be well content to join hands with them on such
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a platform, and postpone the discussion of the minor points upon which we differ until we have converted the world at large to that much of the truth. I always feel that there is plenty of room for both of us.
People who want to see phenomena, people who can- not believe anything without ocular demonstration, will obtain no satisfaction with us, while from the spirit- ualists they will get exactly what they want. On the other hand, people who want more philosophy than spiritualism usually provides will naturally gravitate in our direction. Those who admire the average trance-address certainly would not appreciate Theoso- phy, while those who enjoy Theosophical teaching would never be satisfied with the trance-address. We both cater for the liberal, the open-minded, but for quite different types of them ; meantime, we surely need not quarrel.
In what Madame Blavatsky wrote on the subject she laid great stress on the utter uncertainty of the whole thing, and the preponderance of personations over real appearances. My own personal experience has been more favourable than that. I spent some years in ex- perimenting with spiritualism, and I suppose there is hardly a phenomenon of which you may read in the books which I have not repeatedly seen. I have encoun- tered many personations, but still in my experience a distinct majority of the apparitions have been genuine, and therefore I am bound to bear testimony to the fact. The messages which they give are often uninteresting, and their religious teaching is usually Christianity and water, but still it is liberal as far as it goes, and any- thing is an advance upon the bigoted orthodox position.
Not that some spiritualists are not bigoted also — narrow and intolerant as any sectarian — when it comes to discussing (say) the question of reincarnation ! The
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majority of English and American spiritualists do not yet know of that fact, but the French spiritists, the fol- lowers of Allan Kardec, hold it, and also the school of Madame d'Esperance in England. Many students won- der that dead people should not all know and recognize the fact of reincarnation; but after all why should they? When a man dies he resorts to the company of those whom he has known on earth; he moves among exactly the same kind of people as during physical life. The average country grocer is no more likely after death than before it to come into contact with any one who can give him information about reincarnation. Most men are shut in from all new ideas by a host of prejudices; they carry these prejudices into the astral world with them, and are no more amenable to reason and common sense there than here.
True, a man who is really open-minded can learn a great deal on the astral plane ; he may speedily acquaint himself with the whole of the Theosophical teaching, and there are dead men who do this. Therefore it often happens that scraps of Theosophy are found among spirit communications. We must not forget that there is a higher spiritualism of which the public knows nothing, which never publishes any account of its re- sults. The best circles of all are strictly private — restricted entirely to one family, or to a small number of friends. In such circles the same people meet over and over again, and no outsider is ever admitted to make any change in the magnetism ; so the conditions set up are singularly perfect, and the results obtained are of the most surprising character. At public seances, to which any one may be admitted on payment, an altogether lower class of dead people appear, because of the promiscuous jumble of inharmonious mag- netisms.
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Symbology
Symbology is a very interesting study. To a certain type of mind everything expresses itself in symbols, and to some people they are of the greatest possible help. I myself do not happen to be of that type, and therefore I have not paid special attention to them or made any particular study of them. Some of them however are obvious, and readily comprehensible to any one who understands even a little of the principles of their interpretation. Think, for example, of those which appear on the earlier pages of The Book of Dzyan. On the first page is a white disc, signifying the condition of the unmanif ested ; on the second page a spot appears in the centre of the white disc, signifying the first manifestation — the First Logos, or the Christ in the bosom of the Father ; on the third page this spot has expanded into a bar, dividing the disc into two halves and so signifying the first great separation into spirit and matter — also the Second Logos, always spoken of as dual or androgynous ; on the fourth page another bar has appeared at right angles to the first, giving us the forms of a circle divided into four equal parts or quarters, signifying the emergence of the Third Logos, though He is still in a condition of in- activity. On the next page the outer circle falls away, leaving us the equal-armed or Greek cross. This de- notes the Third Logos ready for action, just about to descend into the matter of His cosmos.
The next stage of this activity is shown by various forms of the symbol. Sometimes the arms of the Greek cross widen out as they recede from the centre, and then we get the form called the Maltese cross. Another line of symbology retains the straight arms of the Greek cross, but draws a flame shooting out from the
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end of each arm, to signify the burning light within. A further extension of this idea sets the cross whirling round its centre, like a revolving wheel, and when that is done the flames are drawn as streaming backwards as the cross revolves, and in that way we get one of the most universal of all symbols, that of the svastika, which is to be found in every country in the world, and in connection with every religion.
The symbolic meaning of the ordinary Latin cross, as it is used in the Christian Church, has no connection whatever with this line of thought. Its meaning is entirely different, for it symbolizes the Second Logos, and His descent into matter, and it is also closely con- nected with the initiation rites of ancient Egypt. In the case of The Book of Dzyan the comprehension of the symbol is enormously assisted by the fact that the