part is regarded by some as not merely an account of

the processes of the coming into existence of a system, but rather a kind of manual of directions for such an act of creation. Even the copy must be millions of years old.
Another well-known symbol is that of the "Great Bird," which is used to denote the Deity in the act of hovering over His universe, brooding over the waters of space, or darting onward along the line of His evolu- tion. To repose between the wings of the Great Bird means so to meditate as to realize union with the Logos, and it is said that the man who reaches that level may rest there for untold years.
The word Om is another presentation of the same idea ; it is the sacred word of the fifth or Aryan root- race. The Atlantean sacred word was Tau, and it has been said that the sacred words given to the root-races in succession are all of them consecutive syllables of one great word, which is the true sacred Name.
Another obvious symbol, the heart, was prominent in the old Atlantean religion. In the innermost shrine of the great temple in the City of the Golden Gate there lay upon the altar a massive golden box in the shape of a heart, the secret opening of which was known only to the high-priest. This was called "The Heart of the World," and signified to them the innermost mysteries that they knew. In it they kept their most sacred things, and much of their symbolism centred around it. They knew that every atom beats as a heart, and they considered that the sun had a similar movement, which they connected with the sun-spot period. Some- times one comes across passages in their books which give the impression that they knew more than we do in matters of science, though they regarded it all rather
140 THE INNER LIFE
from the poetic than from the scientific point of view. They thought, for example, that the earth breathes and moves, and it is certainly true that quite recently scien- tific men have discovered that there is a regular daily displacement of the earth's surface which may be thought of as corresponding in a certain way to breathing.
Another symbol is that of the lotus, and it is used to signify the solar system in its relation to its LOGOS. There is a real reason for this comparison in the actual facts of nature. The seven Planetary Logoi, although they are great individual entities, are at the same time aspects of the Solar Logos, force-centres as it were in His body. Now each of these great living centres or subsidiary Logoi has a sort of orderly periodic change or motion of his own, corresponding perhaps on some infinitely higher level to the regular beating of the human heart, or to the inspiration and expiration of the breath.
Some of these periodic changes are more rapid than others, so that a very complicated series of effects is produced, and it has been observed that the movements of the physical planets in their relation to one another furnish a clue to the operation of these great cosmic influences at any given moment. Each of these centres has His special location or major focus within the body of the sun, and has also a minor focus which is always exterior to the sun. The position of this minor focus is always indicated by a physical planet.
The exact relation can hardly be made dear to our three-dimensional phraseology; but we may perhaps put it that each centre has a field of influence prac- tically co-extensive with the solar system ; that if a sec- tion of the field could be taken it would be found to be elliptical ; and that one of the foci of each ellipse would
SYMBOLOGY 141
always be in the sun, and the other would be the special planet ruled by the subsidiary Logos. It is probable that, in the gradual condensation of the original glow- ing nebula from which the system was formed, the location of the planets was determined by the forma- tion of vortices at these minor foci, they being auxiliary points of distribution — ganglia as it were in the solar system. All the physical planets are included within the portion of the system which is common to all the ovoids ; so that any one who tries mentally to construct the figure will see that these revolving ovoids must have their projecting segments, and he will therefore be prepared to understand the comparison of the sys- tem as a whole to a flower with many petals.
Another reason for this comparison of the system to a lotus is even more beautiful, but requires deeper thought. As we see them the planets appear as sep- arate globes; but there is in reality a connection be- tween them which is out of reach of our brain-con- sciousness. Those who have studied the subject of the fourth dimension are familiar with the idea of an extension in a direction invisible to us, but it may not have occurred to them that it is applicable to the solar system as a whole.
We may obtain a suggestion of the facts by holding the hand palm upwards bent so as to form a kind of cup, but with the fingers separated, and then laying a sheet of paper upon the tips of the fingers. A two- dimensional being living on the plane of that sheet of paper could not possibly be conscious of the hand as a whole, but could perceive only the tiny circles at the points of contact between the fingers and the paper. To him these circles would be entirely unconnected, but we, using the sight of a higher dimension, can see that each of them has a downward expansion, and that in
142 THE INNER LIFE
that way they are all parts of a hand. In exactly the same way the man using the sight of the fourth dimen- sion may observe that the planets which are isolated in our three dimensions are all the time joined in an- other way which we cannot yet see ; and from the point of view of that higher sight these globes are but the points of petals which are part of one great flower. And the glowing heart of that flower throws up a cen- tral pistil which appears to us as the sun.
It is not wise for the votary of modern science to ridi- cule or despise either the learning of old time or the strange and fanciful symbols in which it was expressed, for many of these ancient symbols are pregnant with meaning — often with meaning showing deeper knowl- edge than the outer world now possesses. The Theo- sophical student at least will avoid the mistake of despising anything merely because he does not yet com- prehend it — because he has not yet learnt the language in which it is written.
Fire
On higher planes everything is what down here we should call luminous, and above a certain level every- thing may be said to be permeated by fire, yet not at all such fire as we know on the physical plane. What we call by that name down here cannot exist without some- thing which either burns or glows, and it is only a kind of reflection or lower expression of a higher abstract thing which we cannot sense. Try to think of a fire which does not burn, but is in a liquid form, something like water. This was known to the followers of the first great Zoroaster, for they had this fire which burned no
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fuel on their altars, a sacred fire by means of which they symbolized divine life.
One way of reaching the Logos is along the line of fire, and the ancient Parsis knew this well, and raised themselves until they were one with the fire, so as to reach Him by way of it. The only way in which it can be done is through the assistance of certain classes of devas, but at this period of the world's history we are so grossly material that very few can stand the ordeal. The first Zoroaster had around him many who were able to take that way ; and, though under present condi- tions our lower vehicles would probably be destroyed if we should make such an attempt, in new races and on other planets we shall be able to take that way again. All this sounds strange and weird and incomprehen- sible, because it deals with conditions which are utterly unknown on the physical plane, but the student of occultism will find that in the course of his progress he has to face many things which cannot at all be ex- pressed in words down here.
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THIRD SECTION
Common Sense
1BOVE all things and under all circumstances the student of occultism must hold fast to common sense. He will meet with many new ideas, with many startling facts, and if he allows the strangeness of things to overbalance him, harm instead of good will result from the increase of his knowledge. Many other qualities are desirable for progress, but a well-balanced mind is an actual neces- sity. The study of occultism may indeed be summed up in this : it is the study of much that is unrecognized by the ordinary man — the acquisition therefore of a great multitude of new facts, and then the adaptation of one's life to the new facts in a reasonable and com- mon-sense way. All occultism of which I know any- thing is simply an apotheosis of common sense.
Brotherhood
The brotherhood of man is a fact in nature ; those who deny it are simply those who are blind to it, be- cause they shut their eyes to actualities which they do not wish to acknowledge. We need waste little time over those who deny it; nature itself will refute their heresy. More subtly dangerous are those who misun- derstand it, and their name is legion.
Remember not only what brotherhood means, but
147
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also what it does not mean. It emphatically does not mean equality, for twins and triplets are compara- tively rare; under all but the most abnormal circum- stances, brotherhood implies a difference in age, and consequently all sorts of other differences, in strength, in cleverness, in capacity.
Brotherhood implies community of interest, but not community of interests. If the family be rich all its members profit thereby; if the family be poor, all its members suffer accordingly. So there is a community of interest. But the individual interests of the brothers not only may be, but also for many years must be, abso- lutely different. What interests has the boy of four- teen in common with his brother of six? Each lives his own life among friends of his own age, and has far more in common with them than with his brother. What cares the elder brother of twenty-five, fighting his way in the world, for all the prizes and anxieties of school-life which fill the horizon of that second brother ?
It is not to be expected, then, that because they are brothers men shall feel alike or be interested in the same things. It would not be desirable, even if it were possible, for their duties differ according to their ages, and the one thing which most promotes the evolution of the human family as a whole is that every man should strive earnestly to do his duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call him, as the Church catechism puts it. This does not in the least imply that every man must always remain in the sta- tion in which his karma has placed him at birth ; if he can honestly and harmlessly make such further karma as will raise him out of it he is at perfect liberty to do so. But at whatever stage he may be, he should do the duties of that stage. The child grows steadily; but
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while he is at a certain age, his duties are those appro- priate to that age, and not those of some older brother. Each age has its duties — the younger to learn and to serve, and the older to direct and protect ; but all alike to be loving and helpful, all alike to try to realize the idea of the great family of humanity. Each will best help his brothers, not by interfering with them, but by trying earnestly to do his own duty as a member of this family.
The brotherhood of our Society ought to be a very real thing. It is important that we should recognize and realize a close fellowship, a feeling of real unity and drawing together. This will be achieved if mem- bers will forget their own personal feelings and think chiefly of the interests of others. The heart of the Society is making for itself a body on the buddhic plane, a channel through which the Great Ones can work. The perfection of the channel as such depends upon the attitude of the earnest and devoted members. As yet it is very imperfect, because of the tendency of each member to think too much of himself as a unit, and too little of the good and well-being of the whole. The stones of the wall must be built each in its own place ; one standing out of place here, or projecting there, causes roughness, and the wall as a whole is a less perfect wall. We form but a little part of a vast scheme, one wheel as it were of a machine. It is for us to make ourselves really fit for our little part; if we do that, though we may be quite unfit to take a leading position in the drama of the world, yet what little we do is well done and lasting, and will honourably fill its place in the greater whole.
You are all aware that in seven hundred years' time our two Masters will commence the founding of the sixth root-race, and that even already They are looking
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about for those who will be suitable assistants for Them in that work. But there is something nearer than that to be done — and it is a work which will afford excellent practice in developing the qualities necessary for that larger work ; and this is the development of the sixth sub-race of the Aryan race, which is now just beginning to be formed in North America. Already signs are to be seen of the preparations for this work ; different races are being welded together in one; and we too have our part to play in this. We all recognize how important it is that a child's early years should be surrounded by good influences, and it is just the same with the childhood of a race. If we can succeed in starting this young race along right lines much will be gained ; and we, even at this distance from America, can be of great help at this critical period of history, if we will.
Part of the scheme very shortly to be realized is the drawing together of the various branches of our fifth sub-race, the Teutonic. Many of us belong to that — the English colonies, the Americans, the Scandina- vians, the Dutch and the Germans; and many also in France and Italy, as for example the Normans, who are the descendants of the Norsemen, and also those in southern countries who are descendants of the Goths and Visigoths. What is desired in order to promote the work of the great plan is that all these races should be drawn into much closer sympathy. This has already been achieved to a great extent in the case of England and America; it is very much to be regretted that it cannot be done in the case of Germany also, but for the present that great country seems disposed to hold aloof from the desired coalition, and to stand out for what it considers its own private interests. It is much to be hoped that this difficulty may be overcome.
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The great purpose of this drawing together is to pre- pare the way for the coming of the new Messiah, or, as we should say in Theosophical circles, the next advent of the Lord Maitreya, as a great spiritual teacher, bringing a new religion. The time is rapidly approaching when this shall be launched — a teaching which shall unify the other religions, and compared with them shall stand upon a broader basis and keep its purity longer. But before this can come about we must have got rid of the incubus of war, which at present is always hanging over our heads like a great spectre, paralyzing the best intellects of all countries as regards social experiments, making it impossible for our statesmen to try new plans and methods on a large scale. Therefore one essential towards carrying out the scheme is a period of universal peace. Many efforts have already been made in various ways to bring about this result — for example the Peace Conference ; but it seems that some other way will have to be tried.
If we of the fifth sub-race can but put aside our prejudices and stand side by side, a great work lies before us in the future. Ours is the latest sub-race, and therefore contains, generally speaking, the high- est egos in evolution. Yet the majority of the people in it are by no means ready to respond to a purely unselfish motive as a means of bringing about the uni- versal peace required.
How then can this best be attained ? By making it to the interest of all these nations to insist upon universal peace. Remember that trade suffers during war. We of these various branches of the Teutonic race are the greatest trading nations of the world, and I hope that we may shortly realize that it is to our interest to bind ourselves together, and to stand for peace. Truly this
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is not a very high motive, for it is merely self-interest ; but still when the rulers and great statesmen are moved to desire unity from the abstract love for humanity, this lower motive may help to bring their less developed fellow-countrymen into line with them, and cause them warmly to support any movement which they may set on foot for that object.
All sorts of events are being utilized to help this binding together of our race. For example, the death of Her Majesty the late Queen Victoria was very decid- edly utilized for that purpose. Her life did very much in drawing the Colonies together into closer bonds with the Mother-country. Those who saw the Jubilee pro- cession from the psychic standpoint were greatly im- pressed with the mighty current of high emotion thereby evoked. In her life she did much, but at her death still more was accomplished. By her death she drew close not only our Colonies, but also the United States. I was in America at the time of her death, and really it might have been their own ruler for whom the Americans were mourning, so spontaneous and so sin- cere were their expressions of the sense of loss. So in her death the great Queen did grand service, as well as in her life.
Each race has its own peculiarities, just as each indi- vidual has. If we wish to co-operate in the great work we must learn to allow for these, to be tolerant of them, and to regard them with a kindly interest, instead of sneering at them or letting them get on our nerves. What then can we do practically to help these great national affairs ? This at least : that when in our pres- ence unkind or sneering remarks are made about other nations, we can make a point of always putting for- ward considerations on the other side, and saying some- thing kindly. We may not always be able to contradict
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the evil thing said, but at least we may supplement it with something that is good.
There are perhaps but few of us, but at least in the course of a year each of us probably meets at least a thousand others, and each of us may to that extent be a centre for helping our own nation to see good in others, and thus, though it may be only in a small way, we may be able to smooth the path and make the way for union easier. Many people are constantly in the habit of speaking with narrow prejudice against the peculiarities of other nations ; let us at least take care not to do this, but always bear in mind the importance of promoting friendly feeling. Do not let us despair when we think how little each one of us can do in the matter ; let us rather remember that every little effort will be used by Those who are working from behind. No doubt the scheme will be carried out whether or not we take the privilege which is offered to us of helping in it; but that is no reason why we should not do our best.
Nor is it only good people who are used in the promo- tion of the scheme. All sorts of forces are being used by the Great Brotherhood that stands behind to for- ward the necessary work. Yes, even the very selfish- ness and the failings of men. ''Blindly the wicked work the righteous will of heaven," as Southey writes in Thalaba. And "All things work together for good to them that love God." This was spoken as regards per- sonal karma, but the same thing holds good in regard to greater and broader schemes. For example, the big- otry of the Christian Church, evil though it is, has not been altogether valueless, for it has helped to develope strength of faith, since the ignorant cannot believe strongly without being bigoted. Self-seeking in com- mercial pursuits is evil also, yet it has in it a certain
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power which can be turned to account by those who stand behind, for it developes strength of will and con- centration, qualities which in a future life may be put to most valuable uses.
We each have an opportunity to help in this scheme, to co-operate on the side of good. If we do not take the opportunity offered to us, another will, and if not that other, then another, but in any case the work will be done.
We know that already some to whom the opportunity has been offered have cast it aside ; but that is only all the more reason why we should work with greater vigour, so as to atone for their defection — to do their share as well as our own. Never for a moment must we fear that because of such defection the work will be allowed to suffer. We cannot but regret that our poor friends should lose their opportunities — that from ig- norance and lack of clear-sightedness they are working so sadly against their own interests. Yet remember that their folly is but temporary; they will awaken to the truth some day — if not in this life, then in some other. Meantime inside all is well, and the Great Work is going forward.
The evolution of the world is, after all, like any other large undertaking. Think of the making of a railway, for instance. It does not matter to the railway com- pany or to the future passengers which workman lays a certain rail or drives a certain bolt, so long as it is well and truly done; and the overseer will attend to that. It matters very much to the workman, for he who works receives the pay, while the other gets noth- ing. The overseer regrets it when a workman goes off in a fit of temper or of drunkenness and refuses to work for a day; but he thinks, "Never mind, he will come back tomorrow," and meantime he employs some one
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else. Many have left the work in just that way in an outburst of personality, but they will return. The question is not as to whether the work shall be done — the Masters will see to that in any case ; it is only as to who will embrace the opportunity of doing it.
Many people who contend bitterly against the right are merely showing that they are not yet fit to pass this test; they have not yet reached the stage where they can forget themselves utterly in the work; their per- sonalities are still rampant, and so they are capable of being shocked and thrown off their balance, if some new fact comes before them. It is sad, of course, but it is only temporary; they have lost a good opportunity for this life, because they are not yet strong enough for it; but there are many lives yet to come. Mean- time others will take their places. Never forget that the one thing of importance is that the Masters' work should be done ; let us at least be among those who are doing it now, even though there are many who cannot yet see clearly enough to help us. They repudiate the Masters for this life, like a naughty little boy who gets angry with his parents, and in a fit of passion runs away and hides himself; but presently hunger brings the naughty little boy home again, and in the same way hunger for the truth which they have once tasted will bring most of them back to the feet of the Masters in their next lives. Meantime let us stand firm, and fill our hearts with peace even in the midst of strife.
If we would rise to our opportunity we must rub down our corners and get rid of our awkward person- alities, and forget them in encouraging good feeling in every possible way. If we hear something said against somebody else let us at once try to put the other side, and this both with regard to nations and individuals. Counterbalance the evil by speaking the good — not to
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give a false impression, but to give the best possible aspect or interpretation of the facts. Our work is to make the machine run smoothly, and neutralize the friction. Our aim is to be a united whole as a Society, and to help towards harmony in the outside world. The scheme is great, the opportunity glorious; shall we take it?
Yet beware lest you should make the idea of prepar- ing yourself for grand work in the future an excuse for neglecting the minor opportunities of every-day life. A good example of what I mean is offered by a letter which I recently received, in which the writer says that he finds himself in the position of having to teach a Theosophical Branch, and that he feels it a great re- sponsibility, of which he cannot think himself worthy because his knowledge is at present so imperfect. Now in reply to this I shall say :
Do not be in the least troubled about your position towards your Branch. Assuredly it is a responsibility to teach, but on the other hand it is a very great priv- ilege. Think of it rather in this way, that here are a number of hungry souls, and Those who stand behind have been so kind to you as to give you the opportunity of being the channel through which these can be fed. You have the broad principles of the teaching clearly in mind, and your own common sense will keep you from going far wrong in details. I admire your ex- treme consciousness, but if you keep these main prin- ciples steadily before your pupils, you are very little likely to go wrong in your teaching.
We all have the responsibility of which you speak, and those of us who have to write the books and give the lectures feel it far more acutely than you can imag- ine. Indeed we have sometimes been told by friends that we ought to have attained adeptship before we
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wrote any books, so that it might be quite certain that there should be no mistakes in them. I can only say that we decided to share our imperfect knowledge with our brothers, even while we still have very much to ac- quire; and I think that the result has justified our de- cision. If we had waited until we attained adeptship, it is true that our books would have been perfect — and they are very far from being perfect now — but then you see you would all have had to wait a thousand years or so for them, which would have made a con- siderable difference to the work of the Society in the present century. It seems to me that the problem that lies before you is an exactly similar one. You also might refrain from teaching until you knew every- thing; but what would become of your Branch in the meantime ?
Helping the World
One of the first qualifications which are required for the treading of the Path is single-mindedness or one- pointedness. Even worldly men succeed because they are one-pointed, and we can learn from them the value of determination on our own line. Our goal is not so tangible as theirs, so we have more difficulty in keep- ing the one-pointed attitude of mind ; but in India the importance of the unseen is more easily realized than in the West. It is good to seek the company of those who are more advanced, to whom the realities of the Path are constantly present ; also to read and hear and think about our purpose frequently, and unwaveringly to practise the virtues by which alone the perfect knowledge can come to us.
This is an age of hurry and scurry ; the tendency is
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for people to do a little of many things, but nothing thoroughly — to flutter from one thing to another. No man now devotes his life to a masterpiece, as was often done in the Middle Ages in Europe, in old days in India.
Occultism changes a man's life in many ways, but in none more than in this; it makes him absolutely one- pointed. Of course I do not mean that it causes him to neglect any duty that he used to do ; on the contrary, the never-ceasing watch to fulfil every duty is its first prescription. But it gives him a keynote of life which is always sounding in his ears, which he never forgets for an instant — the key-note of helpfulness. Why? Because he learns what is the plan of the Logos, and tries to co-operate in it.
This involves many lines of action. To be able to help effectively he must make himself fit to help ; hence he must undertake the most careful self-training, the elimination of evil qualities from himself, the develop- ment of good ones. Also he must maintain a constant watchfulness for opportunities to help.
One special method of helping the world lies ready to the hand of members of our Society — that of spread- ing Theosophic truth. We have no right and no desire to force our ideas on any one, but it is our duty and our privilege to give people the opportunity of know- ing the real explanation of the problems of life. If when the water of life is offered, a man will not drink, that is his own affair; but at least we should see that none perishes through ignorance of the existence of that water.
We have then this duty of spreading the truth, and nothing should be allowed to interfere with it. This is the work that as a Society we have to do, and we must remember that the duty is binding upon each of
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us. Our minds must be filled with it, we must be con- stantly thinking and planning for it, seizing every op- portunity that offers. It is not for us to excuse our- selves because some other member seems to be doing nothing; that is his business, and we are in no wav concerned in it; but if we ourselves neglect to do our very best, we are failing in our duty. It was not to illu- mine our own path that this glorious light came to us, but that we also in our turn might be light-bearers to our suffering brothers.
Criticism
If we wish to make any progress in occultism, we must learn to mind our own business and let other people alone. They have their reasons and their lines of thought which we do not understand. To their own Master they stand or fall. Once more, we have our work to do, and we decline to be diverted from it. We must learn charity and tolerance, and repress the mad desire to be always finding fault with someone else.
It is a mad desire, and it dominates modern life — this spirit of criticism. Every one wants to interfere with somebody else's duty, instead of attending to his own ; every one thinks he can do the other man's work better than it is being done. We see it in politics, in religion, in social life. For example the obvious duty of a Government is to govern, and the duty of its people is to be good citizens and to make that work of gov- ernment easy and effective. But in these days people are so eager to teach their Governments how to gov- ern that they forget all about their own primary duty
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of being good citizens. Men will not realize that if they will but do their duties, karma will look after the "rights" about which they are so clamorous.
How comes this spirit of criticism to be so general and so savage at this stage of the world's history? Like most other evils, it is the excess of a good and necessary quality. In the course of evolution we have arrived at the fifth sub-race of the fifth root-race. I mean that that race is the latest yet developed, that its spirit is dominant in the world just now, and that even those who do not belong to it are necessarily much influenced by that spirit.
Now each race has its own special lessons to learn, its own special quality to unfold. The quality of the fifth-race is what is sometimes called manas — the type of intellect that discriminates, that notes the differ- ences between things. When it is perfectly developed, men will note these differences calmly, solely for the purpose of understanding them and judging which is best. But now, in this stage of half-development most people look for differences from their own point of view not in order to understand them but in order to oppose them — often violently to persecute them. It is simply the point of view of the ignorant and un- evolved man, who is full of intolerance and self-con- ceit, absolutely sure that he is right (perhaps he may be up to a certain point) and that everybody else there- fore must be entirely wrong — which does not follow. Remember that Oliver Cromwell said to his council : "Brethren, I beseech you in the sacred name of the Christ to think it possible that you may sometimes mistake !"
We too must develop the critical faculty; but we should criticise ourselves, not others.
There are always two sides to every question; gen-
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erally more than two. Kritein means to judge; there- fore, criticism is useless and can only do harm unless it is absolutely calm and judicial. It is not a mad attack upon the opponent, but a quiet unprejudiced weighing of reasons for and against a certain opinion or a certain course of action. We may decide in one way, but we must recognize that another man of equal intellect may emphasize another aspect of the ques- tion, and therefore, decide quite otherwise. And yet in so deciding he may be just as good, just as wise, just as honest as we ourselves.
Yet how few recognize that; how few rabid prot- estants really believe Catholics to be good men; how few convinced redhot radicals really believe that an old Tory squire may be just as good and earnest a man as themselves, trying honestly to do what he thinks his duty!
If a man comes to a decision different from our own we need not pretend to agree with him, but we must give him credit for good intentions. One of the worst features of modern life is its eager readiness to believe evil — its habit of deliberately seeking out the worst conceivable construction that can be put upon every- thing. And this attitude is surely at its very worst when adopted towards those who have helped us, to whom we owe thanks for knowledge or inspiration received. Remember the words of the Master: "In- gratitude is not one of our vices." It is always a mis- take to rush madly into criticism of those who know more than we; it is more seemly to wait and think matters over, to wait and see what the future brings forth. Apply the test of time and the result; "By their fruits ye shall know them." Let us make a rule to think the best of every man ; let us do our work and leave others free to do theirs.
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Prejudice
Beware of the beginnings of suspicion : it will distort everything. I have seen it come between friends and noticed how a little suspicion soon grows into a giant misunderstanding. Every harmless word is distorted, and mistaken to be the expression of some unkind or improper motive, while all the time the speaker is utterly unconscious of the suspicion. It is the same when opinions differ about books or religion; a slight difference of opinion is fostered by dwelling upon all that tells on one's own side and against the other side, until the result is an absurdly distorted view. One finds it again with colour prejudice, although those now wearing white bodies have worn brown ones and vice versa, and the habits of one have been or will be the habits of the other. Brotherhood means the get- ting rid of prejudices; knowledge of the fact of rein- carnation ought to help us to overcome our limitations and uncharitableness.
We who are students of the higher life must rise above these prejudices. It is a difficult task, because they are ingrained — prejudices of race, of caste, of religion ; but they must all be rooted out, because they prevent clear sight and true judgment. They are like coloured glass — still more like cheap, imperfect glass ; everything seen through them is distorted, often so much so as to look entirely different from what it really is. Before we can judge and discriminate we must see clearly.
It is always very easy to attribute some evil motive to others whom we have allowed ourselves to dislike, and to discover some evil explanation for their acts. This tendency forms a very serious impediment in the path of progress. We must tear away our own per-
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sonalities, for only then shall we be at all able to see the other person as he is. A prejudice is a kind of wart upon the mental body, and of course when a man tries to look out through that particular part of the body he cannot see clearly. It is in reality a congested spot in the mental body, a point at which the matter is no longer living and flowing, but is stagnant and rot- ten. The way to cure it is to acquire more knowledge, to get the matter of the mental body into motion, and then one by one the prejudices will be washed away and dissolved.
This evil effect of prejudice was what Aryasangha meant when he said, in The Voice of the Silence, that the mind was the great slayer of the real. By that he was drawing attention to the fact that we do not see any object as it is. We see only the images that we are able to make of it, and everything is necessarily coloured for us by these thought-forms of our own creation. Notice how two persons with preconceived ideas, seeing the same set of circumstances, and agree- ing as to the actual happenings, will yet make two totally different stories from them. Exactly this sort of thing is going on all the time with every ordinary man, and we do not realize how absurdly we distort things.
The duty of the Theosophical student is to learn to see things as they are, and this means control, vigi- lance and a very great deal of hard work. In the West, for example, people are very much prejudiced along religious lines, for we are born into a certain religion and sedulously taught that all others are superstitions. Our ideas therefore are biased from the first, and even when we do learn to know a little about other relig- ions and respect them it would be difficult for us to imagine ourselves born into them. Those who are
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Hindus can scarcely think of themselves as being born as Christians or Muhammadans, and just in the same way the Christian or Muhammadan has an equal diffi- culty in thinking of himself as a Hindu or a Buddhist, although it is practically certain that in some past life he has been in one or other of these religions.
Many so-called protestant Christians will not even now trust a Roman Catholic, and the more ignorant people are, the greater is their distrust of that to which they are unaccustomed. The peasantry, for example, have an instinctive distrust of all foreigners, and there are many country places in England where, let us say, a Frenchman, unless in poverty and needing help, would certainly be regarded with suspicion. If he is hungry he will be fed, and treated with com- passion; but let him come as a fellow-workman and all that he does will be criticised, laughed at, and sus- pected. Now of course all this comes from ignorance, and occurs because the peasantry are unaccustomed to meeting with foreigners.
The removal of such prejudice is one of the great advantages gained by an intelligent man when he trav- els. In the Theosophical Society men of different na- tions are being drawn much more closely together; Indians are learning to trust white people, and white people in turn are learning that Indians are much the same as themselves. I was working in Amsterdam during the Boer war, and though in Holland generally there was a strong feeling at the time against Eng- land, there was never the slightest trace of it among the Dutch Theosophical members. It is most inter- esting to attend one of the European Theosophical Conferences, and to see the really hearty good feeling which exists between men of different nations — how unfeignedly glad they are to see one another, and how
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they rejoice in one another's company. One sees at once that if such fellow-feeling as exists between the members of the Theosophical Society could only spread to a majority of their fellow-countrymen in the vari- ous nations, war would at once become a ridiculous impossibility.
As things are now we form opinions on very slight grounds; you meet a person for the first time, and something that he says, or some trivial gesture, arouses in you a little dislike of him, so that there is a slight wall between you and him. This may seem an unim- portant matter, yet if you are not careful that slight bias against the person will grow into a barrier which will for ever prevent you from understanding him. To a certain extent you see him through this thought- form that you have made, and you cannot see him cor- rectly, for it is like looking through a twisted and col- oured glass which distorts everything.
Sometimes, but not so often, a prejudice is in favour of the person, as in the case of a mother who can see no harm in what her child does, even though he may seriously harm others. Now whether they be against a person or in favour of him, both of these are equally prejudices, mental delusions which slay the real. The best way to see truly is to begin determinedly to look always for the good in every one, as our prejudices are generally on the other side, and we are sadly prone to see the evil where none exists. We differ from other people in colour, in dress, in manners and customs, and in outer forms of religion, but all these are merely externals, and all that goes to make up the real man behind and beneath all this is much the same in us all. It is not after all so difficult to learn to look behind the outer shells in which people conceal themselves. Thereby they usually make the worst of themselves,
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for the main faults nearly always lie on the surface, and the real gold is often successfully concealed. One who aspires to make progress must overcome this blind- ness to the worth of others, this tendency to judge by surface characteristics.
Remember that no one who desires to stand on the side of good as against evil can ever be refused the opportunity, no matter how ignorant or bigoted he may be. The Masters always take the good and use it wher- ever it appears, even if there is in the same man much that is bad also ; and Their use of this force for good greatly helps the man who has generated it. For exam- ple, They will use the devotional force which is to be found even in a murderous fanatic, and thus They will allow him to do some good work and consequently to be helped.
We also should imitate the Great ones; we should always try to take the good in everything and every- body. Do not look for and accentuate the evil in any one, but select and emphasize the good. Go on doing your own work to the best of your ability, and do not trouble yourself about the work of another, or about how he is doing it. Even if other people make diffi- culties in your way, climb over them and do not worry ; they are your karma, and after all these things from outside do not really matter. Do not make the mistake of thinking that others are trying to thwart your good purposes. All these people are much like yourself; think of it — would you deliberately choose to do a wicked thing like that?
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Curiosity
Be so centred in your work that you have no time to find fault with others, or to pry into their affairs. If only each man would mind his own business the world would be infinitely happier.
This prying into other people's affairs works much of evil, and it is quite accurate to say that the person who does it is suffering from a disease. The man who is prying is not usually doing it for the purpose of helping, but simply to satisfy his curiosity about some- thing which does not concern him, which is sympto- matic of his disease. Another symptom is that the man cannot keep to himself the information which he has so nefariously acquired, but must everlastingly be pouring it out to others as foolish and as wicked as himself. For it is wicked beyond all doubt, this gossip — one of the wickedest things in the world. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred what is said is an absolute fabrication, but it does an enormous amount of harm.
It is not only the damage done to another person's reputation ; that is the least part of the evil. The gos- sip and his pestilential cronies perpetually make thought-forms of some evil quality which they choose to attribute to their victim, and then proceed to hurl them upon him in an unceasing stream. The natural effect of this will be to awaken in him the evil qual- ity of which they accuse him, if there is anything at all in his nature which will respond to their malicious efforts. In the one case out of a hundred in which there is some truth in their spiteful prattle, their thought-forms intensify the evil, and so they pile up for themselves a store of the terrible karma which comes from leading a brother into sin. Theosophists
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especially should be careful to avoid these evils, be- cause many of them are making some effort in the di- rection of developing psychic powers, and if they should use those for the purpose of prying into other people's affairs or for sending evil thoughts to them, their karma would be of the most terrible nature.
Never speak unless you know, and not even then unless you are absolutely certain that some definite good will come of it. Before you speak ask yourself about what you are going to say: "Is it true? Is it kind? Is it useful?" And unless you can answer these three questions in the affirmative, your duty is to remain silent. I am well aware that an absolute following of this rule would reduce the conversation of the world by about ninety per cent, but that would be an unspeakable advantage, and the world would advance much more rapidly.
When we understand the underlying unity of all we cannot be otherwise than helpful, we cannot stand aside from our brother's sorrow. Of course there may be many cases where physical aid is impossible, but at least we can always give the help of sympathy, compassion and love, and this is clearly our duty. For a man who realizes Theosophy harshness is impossible. Any member who acts roughly or coarsely is failing in his Theosophy, and if he fails in patience he is failing in comprehension. To understand all is to forgive all, to love all. Every man has his own point of view, and the shortest road for one man is not by any means necessarily the best for another. Every man has a perfect right to take his own evolution in hand in his own way, and to do with regard to it what he chooses, so long as he does not cause suffering or inconvenience to any one else. It is emphatically not our business to try to put everybody right, but only
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to see that all is right on our side in our relation with others. Before we undertake an effort to force some- one else into our path it will be best for us carefully to examine his, for it may be better for him. We ought to be always ready to help freely to the fullest extent of our power, but we ought never to interfere.
Know Thyself
The old Greek saying Gnothi seauton, know thyself, is a fine piece of advice, and self-knowledge is abso- lutely necessary to any candidate for progress. And yet we must beware lest our necessary self-examina- tion should degenerate into morbid introspection, as it often does with some of the best of our students. Many people are constantly worrying themselves lest unawares they should be "sliding back," as they call it. If they understood the method of evolution a little better they would see that no one can slide back when the whole current is moving steadily forward.
As a torrent comes rushing down a slope, many little eddies are formed behind rocks, or perhaps where the water is whirling round and round, and therefore for the moment some of it is moving backward; but yet the whole body of water, eddies and all, is being swept on in the rush of the torrent, so that even that which is apparently moving backwards in relation to the rest of the stream is really being hurried forward along with the rest. Even the people who are doing nothing towards their evolution, and let everything go as it will, are all the while gradually evolving, because of the irresistible force of the Logos which is steadily pressing them onwards ; but they are moving so slowly
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that it will take them millions of years of incarna- tion and trouble and uselessness to gain even a step.
The method in which this is managed is delightfully simple and ingenious. All the evil qualities in man are vibrations of the lower matter of the respective planes. In the astral body, for example, selfishness, anger, ha- tred, jealousy, sensuality, and all qualities of this kind are invariably expressed by vibrations of the lower type of astral matter, while love, devotion, sympathy, and emotions of that class are expressed only in mat- ter of the three higher sub-planes. From this flow two remarkable results. It must be borne in mind that each sub-plane of the astral vehicle has a special relation to the corresponding sub-plane in the mental body ; or to put it more accurately, the four lower sub- planes of the astral correspond to the four kinds of matter in the mental body, while the three higher cor- respond to the causal vehicle.
Therefore it will be seen that only higher qualities can be built into the causal body, since the vibrations created by the lower can find in it no matter which is capable of responding to them. Thence it emerges that while any good which the man developes within himself records itself permanently by a change in his causal body, the evil which he does and thinks and feels cannot possibly touch the real ego, but can only cause disturbance and trouble to the mental body, which is renewed for each fresh incarnation. Of course the result of this evil does store itself in the mental and astral permanent atoms, and so the man has to face it over and over again, but that is a very different matter from taking it into the ego and making it really a part of himself.
The second remarkable result produced is that a certain amount of force directed towards good pro-
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duces an enormously greater effect in proportion than the same amount of force directed towards evil. If a man throws a certain amount of energy into some evil quality it has to express itself through the lower and heavier astral matter; and while any kind of astral matter is exceedingly subtle as compared with anything on the physical plane, yet as compared with the higher matter of its own plane it is just as gross as lead is on the physical plane when compared with the finest ether.
If therefore a man should exert exactly the same amount of force in the direction of good, it would have to move through the much finer matter of these higher sub-planes and would produce at least a hundred times as much effect, or if we compare the lowest with the highest, probably more than a thousand times. Re- member that even in addition to what has been said as to the effect of force in different grades of matter, we have the other great fact that the Logos Himself is by His resistless power steadily pressing the whole sys- tem onwards and upwards, and that, however slow this cyclic progression may seem to us, it is a fact which cannot be neglected, for its effect is that a man who accurately balances his good and evil comes back, not to the same actual position, but to the same rela- tive position, and therefore even he has made some slight advance, and is as it were in a position just a little better than that which he has actually deserved and made for himself.
It will be clear from these considerations that, if any one is so foolish as to want to get really backwards against the stream, he will have to work hard and definitely towards evil; there is no fear of "sliding" back. That is one of the old delusions which remains from the times of the belief in the orthodox devil, who was so much stronger than God that everything in
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the world was working in his favour. Really the exact opposite is the case, and everything round a man is calculated to assist him, if he only understands it.
So many of our most conscientious people are just like the child who has a little garden of his own, and constantly pulls up his plants to see how the roots are growing — with the result of course that nothing grows at all. We must learn not to think of ourselves per- sonally, nor of our personal progress, but enter the path of development, go on working for others to the best of our ability, and trust our progress to take care of itself. The more a scientist thinks about himself the less mental energy he has for the problems of science; the more a devotee thinks about himself the less devotion has he to lavish upon his object.
Some self-examination is necessary, but it is a fatal mistake to spend too much time in self-examination; it is like spending all one's time in oiling and tinker- ing at the machinery. We use what faculties we have, and in the use of them others will develope and true progress will be made. If you are learning a language, for example, it is a mistake to try to learn it from books quite perfectly before you make any attempt to speak it; you must plunge into it, and make mistakes in it, and in the effort you will learn in due course to speak without mistake. So in the course of time what is called renunciation will come naturally, and even easily. No doubt when men first attempt to live the higher life they do definitely renounce many things which are pleasures to others — which still have a strong attraction even for them ; but soon the man finds that the attraction of such pleasures has ceased, and that he has neither time nor inclination for the lower en- joyments.
Learn above all things not to worry. Be happy, and
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make the best of everything. Try to raise yourself and help others. Contentment is not incompatible with aspirations. Optimism is justified by the cer- tainty of the ultimate triumph of good, though if we take only the physical plane into account it is not easy to maintain that position. One's attitude in this mat- ter depends chiefly upon the level at which one habit- ually keeps one's consciousness. If it is centred chiefly in the physical plane one sees little but the misery, but when it becomes possible to centre it at a higher level the joy beyond always shines through. I know the Buddha said that life was misery, and it is quite true on the whole with regard to the manifested life down here, yet the Greeks and Egyptians managed to extract much joy even from this lower life by taking it from the philosophical point of view.
We never lose anything by making the best of things, but gain very much in happiness and in the power of making others happy. As our sympathy and our love grow we shall be able to receive within ourselves all the streams of emotion and of thought which come to us from others, and yet we shall remain within our- selves unaffected, calm and joyous, like the great ocean which receives the waters of many rivers and yet remains always in equilibrium.
The inner life of an aspirant ought not to be one of continual oscillation. Outer moods change constantly because they are affected by all sorts of outside influ- ences. If you find yourself depressed, it may be due to any one of half-a-dozen reasons, none of them of any real importance. The physical body is a fertile source of such ills; a trifling indigestion, a slight congestion in the circulation, or a little over-fatigue may account for many conditions which feel quite serious. Even more frequently depression is caused by the presence
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of some astral entity who is himself depressed, and is hovering round you either in search of sympathy or in the hope of drawing from you the vitality which he lacks. We must simply learn to disregard depression altogether — to throw it off as a sin and a crime against our neighbors, which it really is ; but, anyhow, whether we can succeed fully in dispersing its clouds or not we must learn simply to go on as though it were not there.
Your mind is your own mind, into which you should allow entrance only to such thoughts as you, the ego, choose. Your astral body is also your own, and you should not allow in it any sensations except those which are good for the higher self. So you must manage these vibrations of depression, and absolutely decline to give harbourage to them. They must not be allowed to impinge upon you. If they do so impinge they must not be permitted to effect a lodgment. If, to some slight extent, in spite of your efforts, they do hang about you, then it is your duty to ignore them and to let no one else know that they even exist.
Sometimes people tell me they have had moments of splendid inspiration and exaltation, and glowing de- votion and joy. They do not realize that these are precisely the moments when the higher self succeeds in impressing himself upon the lower, and that all that which they feel is there all the time, but the lower self is not always conscious of it. Realize by reason and by faith that it is always there, and it becomes as though we felt it, even in the time when the link is imperfect and down here we feel it not.
But many a man, while admitting the truth of this in the abstract, yet says that he cannot perpetually feel this happiness because of his own defects and constant failures. His attitude in fact is very much that adopted in the litany: "Have mercy upon us miserable sin-
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ners." Now we are all sinners in the sense that we all fall short of what we ought to do, and constantly do what we ought not to do, but there is no need to aggra- vate the offense by being miserable sinners. A miser- able person is a public nuisance, because he is a centre of infection, and is spreading misery and sorrow all round upon his unfortunate neighbours — a thing which no man has a right to do. Any man with just the same feelings, who contrives to keep himself reasonably happy even while making determined efforts to reform, is not injuring others in at all the same way.
People who think and speak of themselves as misera- ble worms are going exactly the right way to make themselves miserable worms, for what a man thinks, that he is. All such talk is usually hypocrisy, as you may easily see from the fact that the man who so readily calls himself a miserable worm in church would feel distinctly insulted if anybody else called him so in ordinary daily life. And whether it is hypocritical or not it is certainly nonsense, for we passed the reptilian stage of evolution long ago, if we ever were in it. Anyone who understands at all the influence of thought will realize that a man who really thinks himself a miserable worm has already deprived himself of any power of rising out of that state, while the man who realizes strongly that he is a spark of the divine life will feel ever hopeful and joyous, because in essence the divine is always joy. It is a great mistake to waste time in repentance ; what is past is past, and no amount of remorse can undo it. As one of our own Masters once said, "The only repentance that is worth anything whatever is the resolve not to do it again."
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Asceticism
Some mistaken ideas seem prevalent among our members upon the subject of asceticism, and it may be worth while to consider what it really is, and how far it may be useful. The word is usually taken to signify a life of austerities and of mortification of the body, though this is somewhat of a departure from the orig- inal meaning of the Greek word asketes, which is simply one who exercises himself as an athlete does. But ecclesiasticism impounded the word and changed its sense, applying it to the practice of all sorts of self-denial for the purpose of spiritual progress, on the theory that the bodily nature with its passions and desires is the stronghold of the evil inherent in man since the fall of Adam, and that it must therefore be suppressed by fasting and penance. In the grander Oriental religions we sometimes encounter a similar idea, based on the conception of matter as essentially evil, and following from that the deduction that an approach to ideal good or an escape from the miseries of existence can be effected only by subduing or torturing the body.
The student of Theosophy will at once see that in both these theories there is dire confusion of thought. There is no evil inherent in man except such as he has himself generated in previous births; nor is matter essentially evil, since it is just as much divine as is spirit, and without it all manifestation of the Deity would be impossible. The body and its desires are not in themselves evil or good, but it is true that before real progress can be made they must be brought under the control of the higher self within. To torture the body is foolish; to govern it is necessary. "The men who perform severe austerities unintelligent,
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tormenting the aggregated elements forming the body, and Me also, seated in the inner body — know these demoniacal in their resolves." (Bhagavad-Gita, xvii. 5, 6.) And again, "The austerity done under a deluded understanding, with self-torture, that is de- clared of darkness." (Ibid, xvii. 19.)
There appears to be a widely-spread delusion that to be really good one must always be uncomfortable — that discomfort as such is directly pleasing to the Logos. Nothing can be more grotesque than this idea, and in the above quoted texts from the Bhagavad-Gita we have a hint that it is perhaps worse than grotesque, for it is there said that they who torment the body are tormenting the Logos enshrined in it. With us in Europe this unfortunately common theory is one of the many horrible legacies left us by the ghastly blasphemy of Calvinism. I myself have actually heard a child say : "I feel so happy that I am sure I must be very wicked" — a truly awful result of criminally distorted teaching.
Our Masters, who are so far above us, are full of joy; full of sympathy, but not of sorrow. We also must feel sympathy with others, but not identify ourselves with their sorrow. A man in great trouble can judge noth- ing clearly. To his vision all the world seems dark, and it appears as if no one should be happy. When he is in great joy, all the world appears bright, and it seems as if no one ought to be unhappy. Yet nothing is changed, not even he himself, but only his astral body. All the world is going on just the same, whether you are happy or unhappy. Do not identify yourself with your astral body, but try to get out of this web of illusion, these personal moods.
No doubt this ludicrous theory of the merit of dis- comfort comes partly from the knowledge that in order
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to make progress man must control his passions, and from the fact that such control is disagreeable to the unevolved person. But the discomfort is very far from being meritorious ; on the contrary, it is a sign that the victory is not yet achieved. It arises from the fact that the lower nature is not yet dominated, and that a strug- gle is still taking place. When the control is perfect there will no longer be any desire for the lower, conse- quently no struggle and no discomfort. The man will live the right life and avoid the lower because it is perfectly natural for him to do so — no longer because he thinks he ought to make the effort, even though it may be difficult for him. So that the discomfort exists only at an intermediate stage, and not it, but its absence, is the sign of success.
Another reason for the gospel of the uncomfortable is a confusion of cause and effect. It is observed that the really advanced person is simple in his habits, and often careless about a large number of minor luxuries that are considered important and really necessary by the ordinary man. But such carelessness about luxury is the effect, not the cause, of his advancement. He does not trouble himself about these little matters because he has largely outgrown them and they no longer interest him — not in the least because he con- siders them as wrong ; and one who, while still craving for them, imitates him in abstaining from them, does not thereby become advanced. At a certain stage a child plays with dolls and bricks ; a few years later he has become a boy and his play is cricket and football ; later again when he is a young man these in turn lose much of their interest, and he begins to play the game of love and life. But an infant who chooses to imitate his elders, who throws aside his dolls and bricks and attempts to play cricket, does not thereby transcend
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his infancy. As his natural growth takes place he puts away childish things ; but he cannot force the growth merely by putting these away, and playing at being older.
There is no virtue whatever merely in becoming uncomfortable for discomfort's sake ; but there are three cases in which voluntary discomfort may be a part of progress. The first is when it is undertaken for the sake of helping another, as when a man nurses a sick friend or labours hard to support his family. The second is when a man realizes that some habit to which he is addicted is a hindrance in his upward way — such a habit, say, as tobacco-smoking, alcohol- drinking, or corpse-eating. If he is in earnest he gives up the habit instantly, but because the body is accus- tomed to that particular form of pollution it misses it, cries out for it, and causes the man a great deal of trouble. If he holds firm to his resolution his body will presently adapt itself to the new conditions, and when it has done so there will be no further discomfort. But in the intermediate stage, while the battle for mastery between the man and his body is still being fought, there may be a good deal of suffering, and this must be taken as the karma of having adopted the vice which he is now forsaking. When the suffering passes the karma is paid, the victory is won, and a step in evolution is achieved.
I am aware that there are rare cases (when people are physically very weak) in which it might be danger- ous to relinquish a bad habit instantaneously. The morphine habit is an instance in point; one who is a victim to its horrors usually finds it necessary gradually to decrease the dose, because the strain of abrupt cessa- tion might well be greater than the physical body could endure. It would seem that there are certain pitiable
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cases in which the same system of gradual decrease must be applied to the flesh-eating habit. Doctors tell us that while the digestion of flesh takes place chiefly in the stomach, that of most forms of vegetable food belongs to the work of the intestines ; and therefore a person in very weak health sometimes finds it advisable to give to these various organs a certain amount of time to adjust themselves to the necessary change, and to practise, as it were, the functions which they are now required to fulfil. The steady pressure of the will, however, will soon bring the body into subjection and adapt it to the new order of things.
The third case in which discomfort may have its use is when a man deliberately forces his body to do some- thing which it dislikes, in order to make sure that it will obey him when necessary. But it must be distinctly understood that even then the merit is in the ready obedience of the body, and not in its suffering. In this way a man may gradually learn indifference to many of the minor ills of life, and so save himself much worry and irritation. In this training himself in will, and his body in obedience, he must be careful to attempt only such things as are advantageous. The Hatha Yogi developes will-power, assuredly, when he holds his arm above his head until it withers; but while he gains enormously in will-power he also loses the use of his arm. The will-power can be developed just as well by some effort the result of which will be per- manently useful instead of permanently hampering — by the conquest, for example, of irritability or pride, impatience or sensuality. It would be well if all who feel a yearning for asceticism would take to heart the words of wisdom in the Bhagavad-Gita:
"Purity, straightforwardness, continence and harm- lessness are called the austerity of the body. Speech
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causing no annoyance, truthful, pleasant and beneficial is called the austerity of speech. Mental hap- piness, equilibrium, silence, self-control, purity of nature — this is called the austerity of the mind." (xvii. 14, 15, 16.)
Note especially that in this last verse mental happi- ness is described as the first characteristic of the austerity of the mind — the first sign of the perfect self-control necessary for one who wishes to make real progress. It is emphatically our duty to be happy; morbidity, gloom or depression mean always failure and weakness, because they mean selfishness. The man who allows himself to brood over his own sorrows or wrongs is forgetting his duty to his fellows. He permits himself to become a centre of infection, spread- ing gloom instead of joy among his brethren ; what is this but the grossest selfishness? If there be any one who feels a yearning for asceticism, let him take up this mental austerity advised in the scripture, and resolve that whatever may be his private troubles or sufferings he will forget himself and them for the sake of others, so that he may ever be pouring forth upon his fellow-pilgrims the radiant happiness which comes from the fuller knowledge of the Theosophist, ever helping them towards the realization that "Brahman is bliss."
Small Worries
Unnecessary worry appears to be the key-note of modern life. Not only those who are making special efforts to progress are making themselves unreasonably uncomfortable, but the same vice is quite common even in ordinary life. The astral body of the average man
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is a sad sight for a clairvoyant. The illustration in Man Visible and Invisible (p. 131) shows what an astral body ought to be — merely a reflection of the colours of the mental, indicating that the man allows himself to feel only what his reason dictates. But if that be too much to expect at this stage of evolution, the picture on p. 102 gives us an assortment of colours which represents an average astral body when com- paratively at rest. In it there are many hues which show the presence of undesirable qualities — qualities which should be weeded out as soon as may be : but that side of the subject is treated in the book, and it is to another feature that I wish now to draw attention.
I have said that the illustration shows what an ordinary undeveloped astral body would look like if comparatively at rest ; but one of the evils of what we have agreed to call civilization is that hardly any astral body ever is even comparatively at rest. Of course it is understood that the matter of an astral body must always be in perpetual vibration, and each of the colours that we see in the drawing marks a different rate of that vibration ; but there should be a certain order in this, and a certain limit to it. The more developed man (on p. 131) has five rates of vibration, but the ordinary man shows at least nine rates, with a mixture of varying shades in addition. That is clearly not so good as the other, but the case of the majority of people in the West is really far worse than that. To have even nine rates of simultaneous vibration is already bad enough, but in the astral body of many a man and woman one might easily observe fifty rates or even a hundred. The body should be divided into a few fairly definite areas, each swinging steadily at its normal rate, but instead of that, its surface is usually broken up into a multiplicity of little whirl-pools and
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cross-currents, all battling one against the other in the maddest confusion.
All these are the result of little unnecessary emotions and worries, and the ordinary person of the West is simply a mass of these. He is troubled about this thing, he is annoyed about that, he is in fear about a third, and so on ; his whole life is filled with petty little emotions, and all his strength is frittered away on them. A really great emotion, be it good or bad, sweeps over the whole of a man's astral body and for the time brings it all to one rate of vibration ; but these small worries make little vortices or centres of local disturbance, each of which persists for a considerable time.
The astral body which thus vibrates fifty ways at once is a blot upon the landscape and a nuisance to its neighbors. It is not only a very ugly object — it is also a serious annoyance. It may be compared to a physical body suffering from some unusually aggravated form of palsy, with all its muscles jerking simultaneously in different directions. But to make the illustration even partially adequate we should have to assume that this palsy was contagious, or that every one who saw its unfortunate results felt an irresistible tendency to reproduce them. For this horrible chaos of catas- trophic confusion produces an unpleasant and most disturbing effect upon all sensitive people who approach it; it infects their astral bodies and communicates to them a painful sensation of unrest and worry.
Only a few have yet unfolded the faculties which enable them to see this maleficent influence in action; a larger number are vaguely conscious of discomfort when they approach one of these fussy persons ; but probably the majority feel nothing definite at the time of meeting, though later in the day they will probably
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wonder why they are so inexplicably fatigued. The effect is there and the harm is done, whether it be immediately perceptible or not.
A person who is so foolish as to allow himself to get into this condition does much harm to many, but most of all to himself. Frequently the perpetual astral dis- turbance reacts through the etheric upon the dense physical vehicle, and all sorts of nervous diseases are produced. Nearly all nerve troubles are the direct result of unnecessary worry and emotion, and would soon disappear if the patient would but hold his vehicles still and possess his soul in peace.
But even in cases where a strong physical body is able successfully to resist this constant irritation from the astral, its effect upon its own plane is no less dis- astrous. These tiny centres of inflammation which thus cover the whole astral body are to it what boils are to the physical body — not only themselves causes of acute discomfort, sore spots the least touch upon which produces terrible pain, but also weak spots through which the life-blood of vitality drains away, and through which also blood-poisoning from without may take place. A person whose astral body is in this dis- tracted condition can offer practically no resistance to any evil influence which he may encounter, while he is quite unable to profit by good influences. His strength flows out through these open sores, at the same time that all sorts of disease-germs find entrance by them. He is not using and controlling his astral body as a whole, but allowing it to break up into a number of separate centres and control him. His little worries and vexations establish themselves and confirm their empire over him until they become a legion of devils who possess him so that he cannot escape from them.
This is a painfully common condition ; how is a man
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to avoid falling into it, and if he is already in it, how is he to get out of it? The answer is the same to both questions ; let him learn not to worry, not to fear, not to be annoyed. Let him reason with himself as to the utter unimportance of all these little personal matters which have loomed so large upon his horizon. Let him consider how they will appear when he looks back upon them from the next life, or even twenty years hence. Let him lay well to heart the words of wisdom, that of all the outward things that happen to a man "nothing matters much, and most things matter not at all." What he himself does or says or thinks is of importance to him, for that forms his future ; what other people do or say or think matters to him nothing whatever. Let him abstract himself from all these little pin-pricks of daily life, and simply decline to be worried by them.
It will need some resolution at first, for it requires effort to conquer a well-established bad habit. He will find his mind muttering to him over and over again: "Mrs. Jones spoke evil of me; perhaps she is doing it now; perhaps other people may believe her; perhaps it may do me harm," and so on ad infinitum. But he must reply: "I don't care what Mrs. Jones has said, though I am sorry the poor woman should make such bad karma. I absolutely decline to think of it or of her. I have my work to do, and have no time to waste in thinking of foolish gossip."
Or it may be that forebodings of coming evil are con- stantly thrusting themselves into his brain : "Perhaps next year I may lose my position ; perhaps I shall be starving; perhaps I shall be bankrupt; perhaps I may lose the affection of some friend." This also should be met firmly : Perhaps all these things may happen, but also perhaps they may not, and it is useless to try to cross a bridge before one comes to it. I shall take all
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reasonable precautions, and when that is done I decline to think further of the matter. Worrying cannot affect whatever may be coming, but it can and certainly will make me unfit to meet it. Therefore I refuse to worry ; I definitely turn my back on the whole subject."
Another common form of worry which leads to the most serious results is the folly of taking offense at something which somebody else says or does. Ordi- narily common-sense would lead a man to avoid this mistake, and yet those who do avoid it are few. It needs only that we should think dispassionately about the matter, and we shall see that what the other man has said or done cannot make any difference to us. If he has said something which has hurt our feelings, we may be sure that in nine cases out of ten he has not meant it to be offensive ; why then should we allow our- selves to be disturbed about the matter? Even in the rare cases when a remark is intentionally rude or spite- ful, where a man has said something purposely to wound another, it is still exceedingly foolish of that other to allow himself to feel hurt. If the man had an evil intention in what he said, he is much to be pitied, for we know that under the law of divine justice he will certainly suffer for his foolishness. What he has said need in no way affect us, for, if we think of it, no effect whatever has really been produced.
The irritating word does not in any way injure us, except in so far as we may choose to take it up and injure ourselves by brooding over it or allowing our- selves to be wounded in our feelings. What are the words of another, that we should let our serenity be disturbed by them ? They are merely a vibration in the atmosphere ; if it had not happened that we heard them, or heard of them, would they have affected us? If not, then it is obviously not the words that have injured us,
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but the fact that we heard them. So if we allow our- selves to care about what a man has said, it is we who are responsible for the disturbance created in our astral bodies, and not he.
The man has done and can do nothing that can harm us; if we feel hurt and injured and thereby make our- selves a great deal of trouble, we have only ourselves to thank for it. If a disturbance arises within our astral bodies in reference to what he has said, that is merely because we have not yet gained control over those bodies; we have not yet developed the calmness which enables us to look down as souls upon all this, and go on our way and attend to our own work without taking the slightest notice of foolish or spiteful remarks made by other men. This is the merest common-sense, yet not one in a hundred will act upon it.
The fact is that any one who wishes to become a student of occultism must not have any personal feel- ings that can be offended under any circumstances whatever. A man who has them is still thinking of himself; whereas our duty is to forget ourselves in order to remember the good of others. Nothing can offend you if you have resolved not to be offended — if you are thinking only how to help the other man, and not at all of yourself.
Another variant of the disease is less personal and therefore is so far less blame-worthy, but hardly less prejudicial to progress. It is the habit of fussing over trifles in business or in household affairs. This always involves a lack of discrimination and of the sense of perspective. It is quite true that a household or a business must be orderly, that things must be done punctually and exactly ; but the way to achieve this is to set up a high ideal and press steadily towards it — not to irritate every one by ceaseless, useless worry. The
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person who is so unfortunate as to be afflicted with a disposition of this kind should make a most determined fight against it, for until he conquers it he will be a force working always for friction and not for peace, and so will be of little real use in the world. His symptoms differ slightly from those of the more personal worrier ; in his case there are fewer of the carbuncular vortices, but there is a perpetual tremor, an unrest of the whole astral body which is equally disquieting to others, equally subversive of happiness and advancement for the fusser himself.
The man must learn to be master of his mind and his feelings, and steadily reject every thought and emo- tion which his highest self does not approve. A chaos of petty emotions is unworthy of a rational being, and it is to the last degree undignified that man, who is a spark of the Divine, should allow himself to fall under the sway of his desire-elemental — a thing that is not even a mineral yet.
I have already said that this disastrous astral con- fusion is often prejudicial to physical health; but it is invariably worse than prejudicial to progress on the path — it is absolutely fatal to it. One of the first great lessons to be learnt on that path is perfect self-control, and a long stage on the way to that is complete absence of worry. At first, from mere habit, the matter of the astral body will still be swept readily into unnecessary vortices, but every time that happens the man must firmly obliterate them, and restore the steady swing of the feelings which he, as an ego, really desires to have.
Let him fill himself so entirely with the divine love that it may be ever pouring from him in all directions in the shape of love for his fellow-men, and then there will be no room for unnecessary vibrations; he will have no time to worry over trifling personal matters
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if his whole life is spent in the service of the Logos, in trying to help forward the evolution of the world. To make any real progress or to do any real work a man must turn from the lower and reach towards the higher; he must come out of our world into Theirs — out of the restlessness into the peace which passeth understanding.
Killing Out Desire
We are often told that we must kill out desire ; but it should be remembered that that is a gradual process. The lower and coarser desires which are meant by the Sanskrit word kama must certainly be killed out en- tirely before any sort of advancement can be made, but in the English sense of the word we all of us still have certain desires, and are likely to have them for a very long time to come. We desire keenly, for example, tc serve the Master ; to become His pupils ; to help human- ity. These also are desires, but they should not be killed. What is necessary is to kill out the lower and reach up to the higher, that is to say, to purify our de- sires and to transmute them into aspirations.
Later on another transmutation will take place. For example, now we desire to make progress ; but a time will come when we shall be so sure of it that we shall cease to desire, because we know that all the time it is going on as rapidly as is possible for us, and because we mean that it shall so go on. Desire is then trans- muted into resolution. At this point there can be no more regret for anything; you do your best and you know that in response to that the best must come. Some people desire earnestly to gain this quality or
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that ; do not waste your power in desiring and wishing, but tv ill instead.
In the same way it is said that we should slay the lunar form, that is to say the astral body. But that does not mean that the astral body must be destroyed or that we must be without feelings and emotions. If that could be so we should have no sympathy and no understanding of others. What is intended is that we should keep it completely under control, that we should have the faculty to slay the lunar form at will. Purity is necessary, but it means not only the abstinence from specified faults, but absolute selflessness. Ambition, for example, is a very common form of desire, but in it there is always a thought of self. The adept cannot be ambitious. His will is one with the will of the Logos, and He wills evolution. We are all parts of the Logos, and our wills are part of His. It is only when we do not realize this that we set up desires in our own separate lines. The regulations for our lives were very well summed up by the Lord Buddha in one little verse of four short lines :
Sabbapapassa akaranam Kusalassa upasampada Sachitta pariyo dapanam Etam Buddhana sasanam.
Cease from all evil;
Learn to do well;
Cleanse your own heart;
This is the religion of the Buddhas.
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The Centre of My Circle
Of all the many obstacles that stand in the way of the aspirant who wishes to enter upon the Path, the most serious, because the most far-reaching and funda- mental, is self-centredness. Note that by this I do not mean the crude and ugly selfishness, which definitely seeks everything for itself even at the cost of others. I am, of course, supposing that that at least has been left behind long ago. But in those who have left it behind, there still lingers this other evil — so subtle and so deeply-rooted that they do not recognize it as an evil at all — indeed, they are not even aware of its existence. But let a man examine himself honestly and impartially, and he will find that all his thought is self- centred ; he thinks often of other people and of other things, but always in their relation to himself; he weaves many imaginary dramas, but he himself occu- pies always a prominent role in them. He must always be in the centre of his little stage, with the limelight playing upon him ; if he is not in that position he at once feels hurt, annoyed, angry, and jealous of any other person who happens for the moment to be at- tracting the attention of those who ought to be worship- ping at his shrine. To change so fundamental a quality is to change for him the root of all things, to make him- self into an altogether different man. Most people cannot for a moment face the possibility of such a radical change because they do not even know that the condition exists.
Now, this attitude is absolutely fatal to any kind of progress. It must be utterly changed, and yet so few are making any attempt to change it. There is one way out of this vicious circle, and only one; and that is the way of love. That is the only thing in the life
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of the ordinary man which ever changes this condition for him, which seizes upon him with a strong hand and for the time being alters his whole attitude. For a time, at least, when he falls in love, as it is called, some other person occupies the centre of his circle, and he thinks of everything in all the world in its relation to her, and not in its relation to himself. The divinity at whose shrine he offers this worship may in truth seem to the rest of the world to be but a very ordinary per- son, but for him she is temporarily the incarnation of grace and beauty ; he sees in her the divinity which is in truth hers, because it lies latent in all of us, though normally we do not see it. It is true that in many cases after a time his enthusiasm fades and he trans- fers it to another object ; but nevertheless for the time he has ceased to be self-centred, for the time he has had a wider outlook.
Now this, which the ordinary man thus does uncon- sciously, the student of occultism must do consciously. He must deliberately dethrone himself from the centre of the circle of his life, and he must enthrone the Mas- ter there instead. He has been in the habit of thinking instinctively how everything will affect him, or what he can make of it, how he can turn it to his profit and pleasure. Instead of that he must now learn to think of everything as it affects the Master, and since the Mas- ter lives only to help the evolution of humanity, that means that he must regard everything from the stand- point of its helpfulness or hindrance to the cause of evo- lution. And though at first he will have to do this consciously and with a certain effort, he must persevere until he does it just as unconsciously, just as instinct- ively as heretofore he centred everything around him- self. To use the words of a Master, he must forget himself utterly only to remember the good of others.
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But even when he has dethroned himself and en- throned the work which he has to do, he must be ex- ceedingly careful that he does not delude himself, that he does not return to the old self-centredness in a sub- tler form. Many a good and earnest Theosophical worker have I known who committed this very mis- take, who identified Theosophical work with himself, and felt that anyone who did not exactly agree with his ideas and his methods was an enemy of Theosophy. So often the worker thinks that his way is the only way, and that to differ from him in opinion is to be a traitor to the cause. But this means only that the self has crept skilfully back into its old place in the centre of the circle, and that the work of dislodging it must be begun all over again. The only power which the dis- ciple should desire is that which makes him seem as nothing in the eyes of men. When he is the centre of his circle he may do good work, but it is always with the feeling that he is doing it, even largely with the object that it may be he that does it ; but when the Master is the centre of his circle he will do the work simply in order that it may be done. The work is done for the sake of the work and not for the sake of the doer. And he must learn to look upon his own work precisely as though it were that of some one else, and upon the work of some one else precisely as though it were his own. The one thing that is important is that the work should be done. It matters little who does it. There- fore, he ought neither to be prejudiced in favour of his own work and unduly critical of that of another, nor be hypocritically depreciatory of his own work in order that others may praise it. To quote the words of Ruskin with regard to art, he ought to be able to say serenely : "Be it mine or yours, or whose else it may, this also is well."
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Another danger there is, too, which is special to the Theosophical worker — the danger of congratulating himself too soon that he differs from the rest of the world. Theosophical teaching puts a new complexion upon everything, so naturally we feel that our attitude is quite different from that of most other people. There is no harm in thinking this obvious truth, but I have found that some of our members are apt to pride them- selves upon the fact that they are able to recognize these things. It does not in the least follow that we, who find ourselves able to recognize them are, there- fore, better than others. Other men have developed themselves along other lines, and along those lines they may be very far in advance of us, though along our line they lack something which we already have. Remember, the adept is the perfect man who is fully developed along all possible lines, and so while we have something to teach these others we also have much to learn from them, and it would be the height of folly to despise a man because he has not yet acquired Theo- sophical knowledge, nor even perhaps the qualities which enable him to appreciate it. Therefore, in this sense also we must take care not to be the centre of our own circle.
A good plan that you may adopt in order to keep yourself from slipping back into the centre may be to remember, as a symbol of what ought to Be your atti- tude, what I have before explained to you with regard to the occult view of the course and influence of the planets. You remember how I explained to you that each planet is a minor focus in an ellipse, the major focus of which is within the body of the sun. You are like that minor focus; you are going upon your own course and doing the work appointed to you, and yet all the time you are but a reflection of the major focus,
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and your consciousness is centred within the sun, for the Master of whom you are a part is a member of the Great Hierarchy which is ever doing the work of the Logos.
While a man is the centre of his own circle he is perpetually making the mistake of thinking that he is the centre of everybody else's. He constantly supposes that in everything which other people say or do they are somehow thinking of him, or aiming their remarks at him, and with many this becomes a kind of obsession, and they seem totally unable to realize that each of their neighbours is as a rule also entirely wrapped up in himself and not thinking of them at all. So the man makes for himself a great deal of totally unnecessary trouble and worry, all of which might be avoided if we would but see things in a sane and rational perspective. Again, it is because he is the centre of his own circle that he is liable to depression, for that comes only to one who is thinking of himself. If the Master be the centre of his circle, and all his energies are centred upon serving Him, he has no time for depression, nor has he the slightest inclination towards it. He is far too eagerly wishing for work that he can do. His atti- tude should be that indicated by our President in her Autobiography — that when a man sees a piece of work waiting to be done he should say, not as the ordinary man usually does : "Yes, it would be a good thing, and somebody ought to do it. But why should I?" — but rather he should say: "Somebody ought to do this. Why should it not be I?"
As he evolves his circle will widen, and in the end there will come a time when his circle will be infinite in extent, and then in a sense he himself will again be its centre, because he has identified himself with the Logos, who is the centre of all possible circles, since
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every point is equally the centre of a circle whose radius is infinite.
Our Duty to Animals
While you are trying to do your best for all those around you, do not forget that you also have a duty towards forms of life lower than the human. In order that you may be able to do that, try to understand your lower brothers, try to understand the animals, just as you try to understand on a higher level the children with whom you have to deal. Just as you learn, if you want to help a child, to look at things from the child's point of view, so, if you want to help the animal evolu- tion, try to see what is the animal's point of view. In all cases and with all forms of life our business is to love and to help, and to try to bring nearer the golden age when all shall understand one another and all shall co-operate in the glorious work that is to come.
There is no reason why our domestic animals should not be trained to help man, and to work in his service, so long as the work is not painful or excessive. But all the creatures around us should be trained in the way best for themselves; that is to say, we should always remember that their evolution is the object of the di- vine Will. So that while we should surely teach our animals all that we can, because that developes their intelligence, we must take care that we instil into them good qualities and not evil. We have various creatures brought among us. We have the dog, the cat, the horse and other originally wild animals given into our care — brought to us for affection and help. Why? That we may train them out of their ferocity, and into a higher and more intelligent state of life — that we may evoke in them devotion, affection and intellect.
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But we must take good care that we help, not hinder ; we must see that we do not increase in our animal the ferocious qualities which it is the business of his evolution to get rid of. For example, a man who trains a dog to hunt and kill is intensifying within him the very instincts which must be eliminated if the animal is to evolve, and in this way he is degrading a creature given into his charge instead of helping him on his way, even though at the same time he may be develop- ing the animal's intelligence ; and thus, though he may do a little good, he is at the same time doing a great deal of harm which far more than counterbalances it. The same thing is true of a man who trains his dog to be ferocious in order that he may be an efficient protector of his property.
A man who treats an animal harshly or cruelly may possibly be evolving his intellect, since the animal may learn to think more keenly in order to see how to avoid the cruelty. But along with whatever evolution may be gained in this way, there is also the development of the exceedingly undesirable qualities of fear and hatred. Thus when, later on, that animal wave of life goes up into humanity, we shall have a humanity start- ing terribly handicapped — starting with these awful qualities of fear and hatred ingrained in it, instead of a humanity all aspiring, devotional, loving and gentle, such as we might have had if the men to whom the animal part of that evolution was committed had done their duty.
We have also our duty towards other and even lower forms of life than that. There is the elemental essence, which is surrounding us everywhere; that elemental essence progresses by means of our thought, and of the action which we produce upon it by our thoughts, pas- sions, emotions and feelings. We need not trouble our-
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selves especially about that, because if we carry out our higher ideals, if we try to see to it that all our thought and all our emotion shall be of the highest pos- sible type, then that also will, at the same time and without further difficulty, be the discharging of our duty towards the elemental essences which are influ- enced by our thought; they will be raised and not de- pressed ; the higher qualities which we alone can reach will be set in motion, vivified and helped at their re- spective levels.
All through evolution the assistance of the higher is expected in the development of the lower, and it is not only by individualizing them that man has helped the members of the animal kingdom. In Atlantean days the very formation of their species was largely given over into his hands, and it is because he failed to do his duty properly that many things turned out rather dif- ferently from what was originally intended. His mis- takes are largely responsible for the existence of carnivorous creatures which live only to destroy one another. Not that he was responsible for all carnivo- rous creatures; there were such among the gigantic reptiles of the Lemurian period, and man was not in any way directly engaged in their evolution ; but it was in part his work to assist in the development from those reptile forms of the mammalia which play so promi- nent a part in the world now. Here was his oppor- tunity to improve the breeds and to curb the undesir- able qualities of the creatures that came under his hands; and it is because he failed to do all that he might have done in this direction that he is to some extent responsible for much that has since gone wrong in the world. If he had done all his duty it is quite conceivable that we might have had no carnivorous mammals.
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Mankind has for so long treated animals cruelly that the whole animal world has a general feeling of fear and enmity towards men. Men have generated in this way an awful karma, which comes back upon them in terrible suffering, in various forms of disease and of insanity. Yet, even after all this bad behaviour on the part of man, few animals will harm him if left alone. A serpent, for example, will not usually do any injury to a human being, unless he is first hurt or frightened ; and the same thing is true of nearly all wild animals, except the very few who may regard man as food, and even they usually will not touch man if they can get anything else. Except when it is absolutely necessary in self-defence or in defence of another the destruction of any form of life ought always to be avoided, as it tends to retard nature's work. That is one of the rea- sons why all consistent Theosophists refuse to share the sin of slaughter by eating meat or fish, or by wear- ing such things as are obtained only by the slaughter of animals, like sealskin or the feathers of birds. Silk used to be obtained by the wholesale slaughter of silk- worms, but I hear that there is now a new way of ob- taining it without destroying the worm.
Sympathy
Never set yourself against the law of nature. Lately, man has gone astray from nature very much, and ma- terialism has become widely spread. Many scientific men who know a great deal more about nature are very much less in sympathy with her than were their less instructed forefathers. In the useful, and indeed nec- essary, study of the exterior many have forgotten the
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interior; but men will pass through this intermediate stage of misunderstanding and come back into sym- pathy. The older people, who had a closer kinship with nature, carried on little of detailed examination, which would have seemed irreverent to them. Because we have become irreverent, have lost the living feeling, we pry remorselessly. We must take care not to lose the precision that we have gained by this intermediate stage, but must recover the sympathy. By sympathy one may find out a great deal which science alone can never discover. In the teaching of children, we need to make them feel that we understand them, even though in doing so we may sacrifice some scholastic ad- vantages. The average child regards grown-up people as foreign entities, strange arbitrary beings.
All this is true also in connection with our studies of nature. The nature-spirits are afraid of us, if we study them too scientifically ; we must go with them into their life, and then they will be interested in the life of hu- manity also. In their blind way, flowers and other things feel joy and friendliness. Emerson said that it appeared to him that when he returned home, the trees in his garden felt glad to see or feel him again, and no doubt it was quite true. The trees and animals do know the people who love them. In India people speak of the "lucky hand" in planting, meaning that things will grow for some people, but not for others. One must be in sympathy with the purpose of the Logos. If we are actively helping in the progress of all, we are living in His will, which penetrates nature, and this is felt by nature at once ; but if we put our- selves in opposition to evolution, nature shrinks back from us like a sensitive child.
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Our Attitude Towards Children
What is your attitude towards your children? Re- member that these are egos, sparks of the divine life. They have been entrusted to you, not that you may domineer over them and brutally ill-treat them, and use them for your own profit and advantage, but that you may love them and help them in order that they may be expressions of that divine life. What an out- pouring of love then you ought to feel ! How beyond all words your patience and compassion should be! How deeply you should feel the honour of being trusted to serve them in this way ! Remember always that you are not the older and they the younger, but that as souls you are all about the same age, and therefore your at- titude must not be that of a selfish and cruel dictator, but of a helpful friend. You do not regard your friend differently when he puts on a new coat; remember therefore that when you meet a child you are meeting a soul wearing a new coat, and you should try by per- fect kindness and love to draw out the best that is in it, and to help it to fit on its new coat. Remember always that true good means good for all, and that good is never gained at the cost of suffering to others. That which is so gained is not really good at all.
The Fear of Death
The fear of death is a stern reality in the minds of many people. A far larger number suffer from it than one would suppose, and still more from the fear of what may happen to us after death. Naturally this is espe- cially to be found among people who have ideas of hell, and of probable punishment if they do not believe this
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or that. It is a gross and degraded form of supersti- tion, but still the suffering is real, and what is even worse is the fear as to the fate of others after death. Many a mother's whole life is embittered by doubts and fears as to what may happen to her son. He goes far away from her, perhaps; he falls into the ordinary habits of men of the world, and does many things con- trary to the narrow religious teaching in which she has been brought up, and so she thinks that he must suffer eternal torture. While it is true that there is no eter- nal hell for him, there is certainly much real earthly suffering for her.
But we know the law of karma, and realize that the states after death are simply a continuation of the life which we are now living, although on a higher plane and without a physical body ; and when in addition we learn that what we commonly call life is only one day in the real and greater life, then all these things assume quite a different perspective. We know then that progress is absolutely certain. A man may stumble, he may set himself against the forces of progress, but he will be carried on by them in spite of himself, though when he resists there will be much of bruising and trouble for him. We see at once that this knowledge eliminates fear.
The so-called loss of a loved one by death is really only a temporary absence, and not even that as soon as a man developes the power to see on the higher planes. Those whom we think we have lost are with us still, even though with our physical eyes we cannot see them ; and we should never forget that, although we may sometimes be under the delusion that we have lost them, they are not in the least under the delusion that they have lost us, because they can still see our astral bodies, and as soon as we leave the physical vehicle in sleep we
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are with them and can communicate with them exactly as when they were on the physical plane.
We need not worry ourselves about saving our souls ; rather on the other hand, as a Theosophical writer once said, we may not be entirely beyond the hope that some day our souls may save us. There is no soul to be saved in the ordinary sense in which the words are used, be- cause we ourselves are the souls; and furthermore there is nothing to be saved from except our own error and ignorance. The body is nothing but a vestment, and when it is worn out we cast it aside.
Co-Operation
It is part of the scheme of the Logos that at a certain stage in its evolution humanity must begin to guide itself. Therefore all the future Buddhas, Manus and Adepts will be members of our own humanity, the Lords from Venus having gone on to other worlds. Therefore also the Logos actually counts upon us all, upon you and upon me. We may have ninety-nine faults and only one virtue, but if that one virtue is needed in the Theosophical work (and what virtue is not needed?) we shall surely have the opportunity to use it.
We should then value our co-workers for what they can do, and not be constantly blaming them for what they cannot do. Many people have earned the right to do some particular kind of work, notwithstanding that their defects may be greater than their virtues. Peo- ple often make a sad mistake in comparing their work with that of others, and wishing that they had the same opportunities. The truth is that each one has
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his own gifts and his own powers, and it is not expected of any man that he should do as much as some other man, but only that he should do his best — just his own best.
The Master once said that in reality there are only two classes of men — those who know and those who do not know. Those who know are they that have seen the light and have turned towards it, through whatever religion they have come, at however great a distance from the light they may as yet find themselves. Many of them may be suffering much in their struggle to- wards that light, but at least they have hope before them, and while we sympathize deeply with them and strive to help them we yet realize that they are by no means in the worst case. The people really to be pitied are those who are quite indifferent to all higher thought — those who do not struggle because they do not care, or think, or know that there is anything for which to strive. These are they in truth who constitute "the great orphan humanity."
A Day of Life
It is not wise to specialize beyond a certain point, because one can never really get to the end of any sub- ject, and it tends more and more to narrow the mind and the outlook, to produce a one-sided and distorted development, and to cause one to view everything out of its due proportion. We are in the habit of thinking of a life-time as a long period, but really it is only a day in the greater life. You cannot finish a really great piece of work in one day ; it may need many days, and the work of one particular day may at the time show
A DAY OF LIFE 205
no appreciable result; but nevertheless every day's work is necessary to the completion of the great task, and if a man should idle day after day because the com- pletion of the work seems so far off he would certainly not succeed in getting it done.
There are many to whom Theosophy comes late in life, who feel themselves somewhat discouraged by the outlook, thinking they aro too old now to take them- selves in hand seriously or to do any valuable work, that the best that they can do now is to go quietly on to the end of this incarnation in the hope that they may have a better opportunity in the next.
This is a sad mistake, and that for various reasons. You do not know what kind of incarnation karma is preparing for you next time you return to earth. You do not know whether by any previous action you have deserved the opportuntity of being born into Theosoph- ical surroundings. In any case the most likely way to secure such a birth is to make use of the opportunity which has come to you now, for, of all that we have learned about the working of this great law of cause and effect, this one fact stands out most clearly — that the result of taking an opportunity is invariably that another and wider opportunity is given. If therefore you neglect the opportunity put before you by your en- counter with Theosophy now, it is possible that in the next incarnation the chance may not come to you again.
If a man sets to work earnestly and permeates his spirit as thoroughly as possible with Theosophical ideas, that will build them well into the ego, and will give him so great an attraction towards them that he is certain, even though he may not remember them in detail, to seek for them instinctively, and to recognize them, in his next birth. Every man therefore should begin Theosophical work just as soon as he hears of it, be-
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cause whatever of it he contrives to achieve, however little it may be, will be just so much to the good, and he will begin to-morrow where he has left off this time. Also by trying to do what he can with such vehicles as he has, obstinate and unresponsive though they may prove through lack of pliability, he will assuredly do much to earn for himself more pliable vehicles for next time. So no effort is lost, and it is never too late in any given life to enter upon the long, long upward path, and to make a commencement in the glorious work of helping others.
With an eternal life before us it would be a mistake to worry because the present day is drawing near its evening, or in despair to neglect the preparations for the coming day. Light on the Path says: "Kill out desire of life." This is often misunderstood, but its meaning should be plain. You cannot lose your life; \vhy then should you desire it? It cannot possibly be taken from you. At the same time the quotation means that you should kill out desire for particular bodily conditions.
Meditation
I think that our members sometimes mistake with regard to meditation, because they have not thoroughly understood the exact way in which it works. They sometimes think that because they do not feel happy and uplifted after a meditation it is therefore a failure and entirely useless, or they find themselves dull and heavy and incapable of meditation. There seems no reality in anything for them, no certainty about any- thing, and they feel that they are making no progress. They suppose that this must be somehow their own fault and they reproach themselves for it; but they
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often ask what they can do to improve matters and to restore the joy they used to feel.
Now the fact is that that experience in regard to meditation is that of all seekers after the spiritual life ; you will find that the Christian saints constantly speak of their sufferings at periods of what they call "spirit- ual dryness," when nothing seems any use and they feel as though they had lost sight of God altogether. Im- agine that I am sitting looking through a wide-open window upon a beautiful hill-side, but the sky is dull grey, heavy with a vast pall of cloud probably miles in thickness. I have not seen the sun for three days. I cannot feel his rays, but I know he is there, and I know that some day these clouds will roll away as others have done, and I shall see him again. What is neces- sary for the life of the world is that he should be there, not that I should see him; it is far pleasanter to see him and to feel the warmth of his rays, but it is not a necessity of life. I know just exactly how these people feel, and it is cold comfort to be told that our feelings do not matter, even though there is a very real sense in which it is true.
I think it is helpful to remember that our meditation has several objects — for example :
1. To ensure that, however deeply we may be im- mersed in the affairs of the world, we shall devote at least some time each day to the thought of a high ideal.
2. To draw us nearer to the Master and to the Logos, so that from Them strength may be poured upon us and through us to benefit the world.
3. To train our higher bodies, so that they may have constant practice in responding to the highest vibrations — to do the same thing for them that a care- fully arranged system of gymnastics or regular exer- cises does for the physical body.
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Now you will observe that all these objects are at- tained just the same whether we feel happy or not. A mistake that many people make is to suppose that a meditation which is unsatisfactory to them is therefore ineffectual. It is just like a little child performing daily her hour of practice upon the piano. Sometimes per- haps she partially enjoys it, but very often it is a weari- ness to her, and her only thought is to finish it as quick- ly as possible. She does not know, but we do, that every such hour is accustoming her fingers to the instrument, and is bringing nearer and nearer the time when she will derive from her music an enjoyment of which now she does not even dream. You will observe that this object is being attained just as much by the unpleasant and unsatisfactory hour of practice as by that which she enjoys. So in the work of our meditation some- times we feel happy and uplifted, and sometimes not; but in both cases alike it has been acting for our higher bodies as do the exercises of physical culture or train- ing for our physical body. It is pleasanter when you have what you call a "good" meditation ; but the only difference between what seems a good one and a bad one lies in its effect upon the feelings, and not in the real work which it does towards our evolution.
The reason of the temporary dullness is not always in ourselves — or rather, it is not always attributable to anything that can reasonably be called our fault. Often it is purely physical, resulting from over-fatigue or a nervous strain ; often it is due to surrounding astral or mental influences. Of course it is our karma to be subjected to these, and so in that more remote way we are responsible; but we must just do the best we can with them, and there is no need for us to be despondent, or to waste our time in reproaching ourselves.
Another reason also may be that at certain times the
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planetary influences are more favourable for medita- tion than at others. I know nothing of this myself, for I have never considered the planetary influences in these matters, but have always forced my way to what I desired ; but I have heard a friend say that an astrol- oger told him that on certain occasions when Jupiter had certain relations with the moon this had the effect of expanding the etheric atmosphere and making medi- tation easier, or at least making it appear more success- ful. The astrologer gave him a list, which he consulted after taking notes of the conditions of his meditations daily for three or four weeks, when he found that the results exactly agreed with the influences which were said to be acting. Certain aspects with Saturn, on the other hand, were said to congest the etheric atmos- phere, making the work of meditation difficult, and this also was verified in the same way.
The highest thought that we can have is that of the supreme Lord of all, but of course we must not suppose that our thought changes in the least the attitude of the Supreme towards us. We who are students ought to be far beyond the stage at which a man thinks that he can produce change in the Supreme — a thought which belongs only to the ignorant and unphilosophical among the Christians. We ourselves however are certainly affected by opening ourselves to Him. If you open the window of your room to the sun, the condition of your room is much changed by the power of the sun, but the sun is in no way changed by your opening the window. Open the windows of your soul to God.
During meditation one may try to think of the Su- preme Self in everything and everything in it. Try to understand how the Self is endeavouring to express itself through the form. One method of practice for this is to try to identify your consciousness with that
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of various creatures, such as a fly, an ant, or a tree. Try to see and feel things as they see and feel them, un- til as you pass inwards all consciousness of the tree or the insect falls away, and the life of the Logos appears. We are very much more than the tree or the ant ; there- fore there is no danger of our being unable to with- draw our consciousness when the experiment is fin- ished. We do not after all imprison it in the form of the tree or the ant ; we expand it to take in the life in every form. The man who does this for the first time is usually surprised when he realizes the limitations under which animals act. He had thought an animal acted in a certain way for what seemed quite obvious reasons, but when he really enters into the animal he finds that its motives and intentions are wholly differ- ent. The disciple has to go through this process also with lower classes of human beings, because without it he could not perfectly help them.
This enables us to get down to the bed-rock of the Self, and clears away the darkness and loneli- ness which often comes over us at one stage of our progress. When we know quite certainly that we are part of a whole we do not so much mind where this particular fragment of it may be, or through what experiences it may be passing. What- ever loneliness we may have, we feel, we know, that we are never alone ; the Master is always there waiting to help where help is possible. We must give up the clinging to the particular forms, and have no motive but to do the will of the Logos. We must never allow the feeling of loneliness to make us forget the Master or lose faith in Him, for no progress is possible unless we have the fullest confidence in the Master whom we choose to serve. If we have only a half-hearted ques- tioning faith in Him we cannot progress. We need
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not make the choice of a Master unless we will; but having made it we must have faith in the Teacher and His message.
In controlling the mind first turn away the senses from outward sounds and sights, and become insensi- tive to the waves of thought and emotion from others. That is comparatively easy, but the next stage is very difficult, for when this is done there come up from within disturbances which spring from the uncon- trolled activity of the mind. The meditation of many of our beginners consists mostly of a continuous strug- gle to come back to the point. Heie comes in the advice given in The Voice of Silence. "The mind is the slayer of the real ; let the disciple slay the slayer." You must not of course destroy your mind, for you cannot get along without it, but you must dominate it ; it is yours, not you. The best way to overcome its wandering is to use the will. It is often suggested that the pupil should help himself by making a shell round him ; but after all shells are but crutches. Develope will, and you will be able to dispense with them. The astral body tries to impose itself upon you in the same way, and to make you believe that its desires are yours ; but with that also we must deal in a precisely similar manner.
There is no limit to the degree to which will may be developed. There are decided limitations to the extent to which the strength of the physical body can be in- creased, but there seem to be no limitations in the case of the will. Fortunately we can train it in the ordinary small things of daily life every day and all day long, and we can have no better practice than this. It is much easier for a man to screw up his courage to face a dramatic martyrdom before a crowd of people than to go on doing the tiresome daily duty with tiresome people day after day and year after year. This latter
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needs much more will-power than the former. Be careful however that you do not make others suffer in your efforts to develope your own will. Sometimes people have shown will-power by leaving home and friends and going out to face all kinds of difficulties and privations in order to do Theosophical work. That is quite right if a man is absolutely free to do it ; but a man who left his wife and family for that purpose, or an only son who left parents that were dependent upon him, would evidently be neglecting his duty in a way which no one has a right to do, even for the sake of the noblest motives.
As a result of determined meditation we begin to build into our bodies the higher kinds of matter. At this stage we often feel grand emotions, coming from the buddhic level and reflected in the astral body, and under their influence we may do fine work and show great self-sacrifice. But then is needed the develop- ment of the mental and causal bodies in order to steady and balance us ; otherwise the grand emotions that have swayed us in the right direction may very readily be- come a little twisted and sway us along some other and less desirable lines. With feeling alone we never ob- tain perfect balance or steadiness. It is well that the high feelings should come, and the more powerfully they come the better, but that is not enough; wisdom and steadiness must also be acquired because we need directing power as well as motive force. The very meaning of buddhic is wisdom, and when that comes it swallows up all else.
Illumination may mean three quite different things. First, a man, by setting himself to think intensely and very carefully over a subject may arrive at some con- clusion with respect to it. Secondly, he may hope to obtain some illumination from his higher self — to dis-
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cover what the ego really thinks on its own plane about the matter in question. Thirdly, a highly developed man may come into touch with Masters or devas. It is only in the first case that his conclusions would be likely to be vitiated by his own thought-forms. The higher self would be able to transcend these, and so would a Master or a deva.
All these would have no difficulty in presenting things as they really are ; but we must remember that we have not only to absorb the information, but also to bring it down into the physical brain, and as soon as it reaches that brain it will begin to be coloured by prej- udices. What we can do in meditation depends upon what we are doing all day long. If we have built up prejudices in ordinary life we cannot escape from them during the time of meditation ; but if we patiently en- deavour to root out our prejudices and to learn that the ways of others are just as good as our own, we are at least on our way towards establishing a gentle and tol- erant attitude which will assuredly extend itself to the special time of our meditation. It is easy for us to see the disadvantages of. any new ideas or suggestions; these leap to the eyes. But look for the good also, which does not always so readily emerge.
During meditation the ego regards the personality much as at any other time — he is slightly contemptuous usually. Remember your physical meditation is not for the ego, but for the training of the various vehicles to be a channel for the ego. If the ego is at all developed he will meditate also upon his own level ; but it does not follow that his meditation will synchronize with that of the personality. The force coming down is always that of the ego, but only a small part, giving a one- sided conception of things. The yoga of a fairly well- developed ego is to try to raise his consciousness first
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into the buddhic plane and then through its various stages. He does this without reference to what the personality happens to be doing at the time. Such an ego would probably also send down a little of himself at the personal meditation, though his own meditations are very different.
For the development of the powers of the soul, thought-control is an essential pre-requisite. When the thought is controlled and the will is strong a good deal may be achieved in various directions. Much help may be given both to the living and to the dead, and those who are sick or sorrowful may be greatly helped and strengthened. It is well for each member to make it a daily practice to devote a certain time to the sending out of such thoughts to people v/ho are personally known to him — in addition, I mean, 10 the ordinary meditation which he undertakes for the sake of his own development. The same thing can be done to some ex- tent in group meditation; the thoughts of all may be concentrated for a few minutes upon some one who is known to be in trouble or suffering, and a determined effort made to send strength and consolation. The same power used in a different way will often cure physical diseases.
As to the development of astral sight and hearing, one hardly regards that as an end in itself, but rather as a means to an end. It seems best to utilize to the ut- most all the powers that we already possess, and wait for these others to unfold themselves as the result of study and unselfish work. Such powers are undoubt- edly a help, though they may be a danger if they come before the character is fully developed. For any one who wishes to hasten their unfoldment I should recom- mend the process which I describe in the last chapter of The Other Side of Death.
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Where a house is large enough to permit it, it is a good idea to set apart a room especially for meditation. I see no harm in holding group-meetings in such a room if the group be earnest and harmonious, but not if there is to be anything of the nature of discussion or wrang- ling. If you are trying experiments with mediums of any sort I should advise the use of some other room. You ask whether you should enter such a room when you feel worried; don't be worried, don't even admit the possibility of being worried. I advise you not to make a thought-form, "I am worried, therefore I must not enter," rather to take exactly the opposite line, "I am about to enter, therefore I am no longer worried." You will find that much more effective.
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FOURTH SECTION
Nirvana
IT has often been said that in the final consum- mation all individual souls merge into the Great Soul, and our students sometimes find it difficult to reconcile this with other statements which seem to imply that the individuality is maintained, in some form or other, even up to the very greatest heights. The fact is that no experience which we can have, and no ideas which we can formu- late down here in our physical brain, will at all express the glorious realities of nirvana and the planes beyond it. We know so little of that transcendent glory, and what little we do know can never be put into adequate words. Perhaps, however, it is in a certain sense some- what misleading to speak of individual souls as merg- ing into the Great Soul. Every monad is fundamen- tally a spark of the divine triad ; he cannot merge into that of which he is already a part. Surely a better explanation of what happens would be to say that as he evolves the spark develops into flame; he becomes more and more conscious of his unity with the divine, and so the Logos is able more and more to manifest Himself through him.
This much at least I can say, that up to the highest level of consciousness which any of our students have yet attained — up even to what is commonly called nirvana itself, there is no loss of individuality, of the power to think, to plan and to act. Long before that
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there is an entire loss of the sense of separateness, but that is a very different thing. Sir Edwin Arnold wrote of that beatific condition "the dewdrop slips into the shining sea." Those who have passed through that most marvelous of experiences know that, paradoxical as it may seem, the sensation is exactly the reverse, and that a far closer description would be that the ocean had somehow been poured into the drop !
That consciousness, wide as the sea, with "its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere," is a great and glorious fact; but when a man attains it, it seems to him that his consciousness has widened to take in all that, not that he is merged into something else. And he is right, for that which he had ignorantly supposed to be his consciousness was never his at all, but only the shining of the divine power and wisdom and love through him, and he is now at last beginning to realize that stupendous fact. The truth is that what is com- monly understood by individuality is a delusion and has never existed, but all that is best and noblest in that conception is maintained up to adeptship and far be- yond, even into the realm of the great Planetary Spirits, for They are assuredly individuals, though mighty be- yond our feeble powers of conception.
Even though the attempt be foredoomed to failure, let me endeavour to give some slight idea of an expe- rience which some of us once had in connection with this lofty plane. Before we ourselves by our own ef- forts were able to touch it, a Master, for certain pur- poses of His own, enfolded us in His higher aura, and enabled us through Him to know something of the glories of nirvana.
Try to imagine the whole universe filled with and consisting of an immense torrent of living light, and in it a vividness of life and an intensity of bliss alto-
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gether beyond all description, a hundred thousand times beyond the greatest bliss of heaven. At first we feel nothing but the bliss; we see nothing but the in- tensity of the light; but gradually we begin to realize that even in this dazzling brightness there are brighter spots — nuclei, as it were — which are built of the light because there is nothing but the light, and yet through them somehow the light gleams out more brightly, and obtains a new quality which enables it to be perceptible upon other and lower planes, which without this would be altogether beneath the possibility of sensing its effulgence. And by degrees we begin to realize that these subsidiary suns are the great Ones, that these are Planetary Spirits, Great Angels, Karmic Deities, Buddhas, Christs and Masters, and that through Them the light and the life are flowing down to the lower planes. Gradually, little by little, as we become more accustomed to the stupendous reality, we begin to see that, in a far lower sense, even we ourselves are a focus in that cosmic scheme, and that through us also, at our much lower level, the light and the life are flow- ing to those who are still further away — not from it, for we are all part of it and there is nothing else any- where— but further from the realization of it, the com- prehension of it, the experience of it.
If we can see and grasp even a little of the glory, we can to some extent reflect it to others who are less for- tunate. That light shines for every one, and it is the only reality; yet men by their ignorance and by their foolish actions may so shut themselves away that they cannot see it, just as the sun floods the whole world with light and life, and yet men may hide themselves in caves and cellars where that light cannot be seen. Just as a mirror properly placed at the mouth of such a cave or cellar may enable those within to participate,
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at least to some extent, in the benefits of the light, so may we, when we see the light, reflect it to others who have so placed themselves that they cannot perceive it directly.
No words that we can use can really give even the least idea of such an experience as that, for all with which our minds are acquainted has long ago disap- peared before that level is attained. There is of course at that level a sheath of some sort for the spirit, but it is impossible to describe it in any words. In one sense it seems as though it were an atom, and yet in another it seems to be the whole plane. Each man is a centre of consciousness and therefore must have some position; that focus in the stream of the life of the Logos must, one would say, be in one place or another. Yet he feels as if he were the whole plane and could focus anywhere, and wherever for the moment the outpouring of this force stops, that is for him a sheath. The man still feels absolutely himself, even though he is so much more ; and he is able to distinguish others. He is able to recognize with perfect certainty the Great Ones whom he knows, yet it is rather by instinctive feeling than by any resemblance to anything that he has seen before; but if he focusses his consciousness upon one of These he gets the effect of the form of the man as he knows it in the Augoeides, two planes below.
The Triple Spirit
The Monads are clearly all centres of force in the Logos, and yet each possesses a very distinct individ- uality of his own. In the average man the monad is but little in touch with the ego and the lower person-
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ality, which are yet somehow expressions of him. He knows from the first what is his object in evolution and he grasps the general trend of it, but until that portion of him which expresses itself in the ego has reached a fairly high stage, he is scarcely conscious of the details of life down here, or at any rate takes little interest in them. He seems at that stage not to know other monads, but rests in indescribable bliss without any active consciousness of surroundings. As evolution progresses, however, he grasps matters on the lower plane much more fully, and finally takes them entirely into his own hands, and at that stage he knows both himself and others, and his voice within us be- comes for us the Voice of the Silence. That voice dif- fers for us at different stages. For us now in this lower consciousness it is the voice of the ego; when we identify ourselves with the ego it is the voice of the spirit; when we reach the spirit it is the voice of the monad, and when in the far-away future we iden- tify ourselves wholly with the monad it will be the voice of the Logos; but in every case we have to sub- ject the lower and rise above it, before the voice of the higher can be heard.
This monad resides permanently upon the second of our planes, and when he descends upon the third, the plane of nirvana, he manifests himself as the triple spirit, and this triple spirit is a reflection or (even more truly) an expression of the Logos as He mani- fests Himself in our set of planes. His first manifes- tation on our highest plane is also triple. In the first of these three aspects He does not manifest Himself on any plane below the highest, but in the second He descends to the second plane and draws round Him- self a garment of its matter, thus making a quite sep- arate expression of Him. In the third aspect He
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descends to the upper portion of the third plane, and draws round Himself matter of that level, thus making a third manifestation. These three are the "three persons in one God," of which Christianity teaches, telling us in its Athanasian creed that we should worship "One God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance" — that is to say, never confusing in our minds the work and function of the three separate manifestations, each on its own plane, yet never for a moment forgetting the eternal unity of the "substance," that which lives behind all alike on the highest plane, at the level where these three are one.
Now an exact repetition of this process takes place in the case of man, who is in very truth made in the image of God. The spirit is triple upon the third plane, and the first of its three manifestations does not de- scend below that level. The second manifestation de- scends one stage, on to the fourth plane, and clothes itself with its matter, and then we call it buddhi. Just as before, the third aspect descends two planes, and shrines itself in matter of the highest level of the men- tal plane, and we call that manas, and this trinity of atma-buddhi-manas, manifesting in the causal body, is what we call the ego.
Never forget that the ego is not the manas only, but the spiritual triad ; at our present stage of evolution he rests in his causal body on the higher levels of the mental plane, but as he passes onwards his conscious- ness will be centred on the buddhic plane, and after- wards, when he attains adeptship, on the nirvanic. But it must not be supposed that when this further develop- ment takes place the manas is in any way lost. When the ego draws himself up into the buddhic plane, he draws up manas with him into that expression of manas
THE TRIPLE SPIRIT 225
which has all the time existed on the buddhic plane, but has not been fully vivified until now. In the same way when he draws himself up into the nirvanic plane, manas and buddhi exist within him just as fully as ever, so that now the triple spirit is in full manifesta- tion on its own plane in all its three aspects. There- fore the spirit is truly seven-fold, for he is triple on his own plane, dual on the buddhic, and single on the mental, and the unity which is his synthesis makes seven. Though he draws back into the higher he re- tains the definiteness of the lower.
This is probably what Madame Blavatsky meant when she spoke of the auric egg, but she surrounded this idea with great mystery, and it seems likely that she was under some pledge not to write freely about it. She never clearly explained the triple spirit, but evi- dently endeavored to suggest the idea without clearly expressing it, for she laid great stress upon the fact that, just as the astral plane may be said to be a reflec- tion of the buddhic, so may the physical be said to be a reflection of the nirvanic, and then she furthermore emphasized the fact that there are three bodies or ve- hicles of man on the physical plane — apparently going out of her way to make this agree, and for that purpose dividing the physical body of man into two parts, the dense and the etheric, and adding as a third principle the vitality which flows through them. Now as this vitality exists on all the planes, and might just as well be made into additional principles on the astral and mental planes as on the physical, it would seem that some reason is required for her rather peculiar ar- rangement, and perhaps this reason may be found in her desire to indicate the triple spirit without actually mentioning it. I think the President has said that when Madame Blavatsky spoke about the sacred auric
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egg she meant the four permanent atoms within an envelope of matter of the nirvanic plane.
Buddhic Consciousness
A selfish man could not function on the buddhic plane, for the very essence of that plane is sympathy and perfect comprehension, which excludes selfishness. A man cannot make a buddhic body until he has con- quered the lower planes. There is a close connection between the astral and the buddhic, the former being in some ways a reflection of the latter ; but it must not therefore be supposed that a man can leap from the astral consciousness to the buddhic without developing the intervening vehicles.
Certainly on the highest levels of the buddhic plane a man becomes one with all others, but we must not therefore assume that he feels alike towards all. There is no reason to suppose that we shall ever feel abso- lutely alike towards everybody; why should we? Even the Lord Buddha had His favorite disciple Ananda; even the Christ regarded Saint John the Beloved in a different way from the rest. What is true is that pres- ently we shall come to love every one as much as we now love our nearest and dearest, but by that time we shall have developed for those nearest and dearest a type of love of which we have no conception now. The buddhic consciousness includes that of many others, so that you may put yourself down into another man and feel exactly as he does, looking upon him from within instead of from without. In that relation you will feel no shrinking even from an evil man, because you will recognize him as a part of yourself — a weak part. You will desire to help him by pouring strength
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into that weak part of yourself. What is required is really to be in this attitude and to do it, not merely to talk about it or think vaguely of it ; and it is not easy to acquire this power.
Experience
It is not necessary for every ego to go through every experience, for when you rise to the buddhic level you can gain the experience of others, even of those who have opposed progress. We shall feel by sympathy. We could withdraw if we did not want to feel another's suffering; but we should choose to feel it because we want to help. On the buddhic plane we enfold the man in our own consciousness, and though he knows noth- ing of such enfoldment it will to a certain extent lessen his sufferings. In all probability we have all had most of the experiences of the savage and half-civilized stages. An adept would necessarily wish to remove or relieve suffering, but we may easily imagine a case in which he would see that the good which was being produced by the suffering so enormously outweighed the present pain that to interfere would not be kindness but cruelty to the sufferer. He would see the whole, not only the part. His sympathy would be deeper than ours, but he would not express it in action except when action was useful.
The Spheres
In any diagram which represents the various planes we usually draw them as lying one above the other like the shelves of a book-case. But then in explaining that diagram we are careful to say that this must not be
228 THE INNER LIFE
taken literally, since all the planes interpenetrate and all of them are about us here all the time. That is per- fectly true, and yet there is a sense in which the shelf- like arrangement is true also. We may perhaps draw an analogy from the condition of affairs which we find existing upon the surface of the physical earth. We may take the solid matter for all practical purposes as existing only under our feet, as the lowest stratum of physical matter, though of course it is true that countless millions of particles of solid matter are also floating in the air over our heads.
We may say that, roughly speaking, the liquid matter of the earth (chiefly water) lies upon the surface of the solid matter, though again it is true that a large amount of water interpenetrates the earth beneath us, and also that millions of tons of water are raised above the sur- face of the earth in the form of clouds. Still, the great bulk of the liquid matter of the earth lies on the top of its solid matter in the form of the ocean, lakes and rivers. Then the gaseous matter of our earth (chiefly the atmosphere) lies upon the surface of the water and of the solid earth, and extends much further away into space than either the liquid or the solid.
All three conditions of matter exist here at the sur- face of the earth where we live, but the water in the form of clouds extends further above that surface than does ordinary dust, and again the air, though inter- penetrating both the others, extends much further away still. This is by no means a bad analogy to explain the arrangement of the matter of the higher planes.
What we call our astral plane may also be considered as the astral body of the earth. It certainly exists all around us, and interpenetrates the solid earth beneath our feet, but it also extends far away above our heads,
THE SPHERES 229
so that we may think of it as a huge ball of astral matter with the physical earth in the middle of it, much as the physical body of a man exists within the ovid form which is filled with astral matter, except that in the case of the earth the proportionate size of its astral body outside the physical is enormously greater than in the case of man. But just as in the case of the man the densest aggregation of astral matter is that which is within the periphery of the physical body, so in the case of the earth by far the greater part of its astral matter is gathered together within the limit of the physical sphere.
Nevertheless, the portion of the astral sphere which is exterior to the physical, extends nearly to the mean distance of the moon's orbit, so that the astral planes of the two worlds touch one another when the moon is in perigee, but do not touch when the moon is in apogee. Incidentally, it follows that at certain times of the month astral communication with the moon is possible, and at certain other times it is not.
The mental plane of our earth bears about the same proportion to the astral as the latter does to the phys- ical. It also is a huge globe, concentric with the other two, interpenetrating them both, but extending much further from the centre than does the astral globe. It will be seen that the effect of this is that, while matter of all the planes exists together down here, there is a certain amount of truth in the illustration of the shelves, for beyond the limit of the physical atmosphere there is a considerable shell which consists only of astral and mental matter, and outside of that again another similar shell which consists of mental matter only.
When we reach the buddhic plane the extension becomes so great that what we might call the buddhic
230 THE INNER LIFE
bodies of the different planets of our chain meet one another, and so there is but one buddhic body for the whole chain, which means that in the buddhic vehicle it is possible to pass from one of these planets to another. I presume that when investigations in a similar way are extended to the nirvanic plane it will be found that that matter extends so much further that other chains are included hi it as well — perhaps the entire solar system.
All this is true as far as it goes, and yet it does not convey a really accurate idea of the true position of affairs, because of the fact that our minds can grasp only three dimensions, whereas in reality there are many more, and as we raise our consciousness from plane to plane, each step opens before us the possibility of comprehending one more of these dimensions. This makes it difficult to describe exactly the position of those who have passed away from the physical life to other planes. Some of such people tend to hover round their earthly homes, in order to keep in touch with their friends of the physical life and the places which they know ; others, on the other hand, have a tendency to float away and to find for themselves, as if by specific gravity, a level much further removed from the surface of the earth.
The average person passing into the heaven-life, for example, tends to float at a considerable distance above the surface of the earth, although on the other hand some of such men are drawn to our level. Still, broadly speaking, the inhabitants of the heaven-world may be thought of as living in a sphere or ring or zone round the earth. What Spiritualists call the summer-land extends many miles above our heads, and as people of the same race and the same religion tend to keep together after death just as they do during life, we
THE SPHERES 231
have what may be described as a kind of network of summer-lands over the countries to which belong the people who have created them.
People find their own level on the astral plane, much in the same way as objects floating in the ocean do. This does not mean that they cannot rise and fall at will, but that if no special effort is made they come to their level and remain there. Astral matter gravitates towards the centre of the earth just as physical matter does ; both obey the same general laws. We may take it that the sixth sub-plane of the astral is partially coincident with the surface of the earth, while the lowest, or seventh, penetrates some distance into the interior.
The conditions of the interior of our earth are not easy to describe. Vast cavities exist in it, and there are races inhabitating these cavities, but they are not of the same evolution as ourselves. One of these evolu- tions, which is at a level distinctly lower than any race now existing upon the surface of the earth, is to some extent described in the seventeenth life of Alcyone, published recently in The Theosophist; the other is more nearly at our level, yet utterly different from anything that we know.
As the centre of the earth is approached, matter is found to exist in a state not readily comprehensible to those who have not seen it; a state in which it is far denser than the densest metal known to us, and yet flows as readily as water. But yet there is something else within even that. Such matter is far too dense for any forms of life that we know, but nevertheless, it has connected with it an evolution of its own.
The tremendous pressures which exist here are utilized by the Third Logos for the manufacture of new elements ; in fact, the central portions of the earth
232 THE INNER LIFE
may with great truth be regarded as His laboratory, for temperatures and pressures are obtainable there of which we on the surface have no conception. It is there that, under His direction, troops of devas and nature-spirits of a particular type combine and sep- arate, arrange and rearrange the ultimate physical atoms, working along the wonderful double spiral which is symbolized in Sir William Crookes' lemnis- cates. From this point also, incredible as it seems to us, there is a direct connection with the heart of the sun, so that elements made there appear in the centre of the earth without passing through what we call the surface; but it is useless to speak of this until the higher dimensions of space are more generally under- stood. As in the case of the physical, the densest astral matter is far too dense for the ordinary forms of astral life ; but that also has other forms of its own which are quite unknown to students of the surface.
In investigating the interior of the earth we did not find a central shaft running from pole to pole, such as has been described by some mediums, nor did we find a number of concentric spheres resting upon cushions of steam. At the same time there are certain forces which do play through concentric layers, and it is not difficult to see what were the natural phenomena which deceived those who, in perfect good faith, made that statement.
There is unquestionably a force of etheric pressure just as there is of atmospheric pressure, and it can be utilized by man as soon as he can discover some mate- rial which is ether-proof. The same pressure exists in the astral world. The most ordinary example of this is what happens when a man leaves his body in sleep or in death.
When the astral body is withdrawn from the phys-
THE SPHERES 233
ical, we must not suppose that that physical body is left without an astral counterpart. The pressure of the surrounding astral matter — and that really means the action of the force of gravitation on the astral plane — immediately forces other astral matter into that astrally empty space, just as, if we create a vortex and draw out the air from a room, other air flows in instantly from the surrounding atmosphere. But that astral matter will correspond with curious accuracy to the physical matter which it interpenetrates. Every variety of physical matter attracts astral matter of corresponding density, so that solid physical matter is interpenetrated by what we may call solid astral matter — that is, matter of the lowest astral sub-plane ; whereas physical liquid is interpenetrated by matter of the next astral sub-plane — astral liquid ; while phys- ical gas in turn attracts its particular correspondence — matter of the third astral sub-plane from the bot- tom, which might be called astral gas.
Take the case of a glass of water ; the tumbler (be- ing solid matter) is interpenetrated by astral mat- ter of the lowest sub-plane; the water in the tum- bler (being liquid matter) is interpenetrated by astral matter of the second sub-plane, counting from the bottom upwards; while the air which surrounds both (being gaseous matter) is interpenetrated by as- tral matter of the third sub-plane, counting from the bottom upwards.
We must also realize that just as all these things, the tumbler, the water, and the air, are interpenetrated by physical ether, so are their astral correspondences further interpenetrated by the variety of astral matter which corresponds to the different types of ether. So when a man withdraws his astral body from the phys- ical there is an inrush of all three varieties of astral
234 THE INNER LIFE
matter, because man's physical body is composed of solid, liquid and gaseous constituents. Of course there is ether in the physical body as well, so there must also be astral matter of the higher sub-planes to correspond to that.
The temporary astral counterpart formed during the absence of the real astral body is thus an exact copy of it so far as arrangement is concerned, but it has no real connection with the physical body, and could never be used as a vehicle. It is constructed of any astral matter of the required kind that happens to be handy ; it is merely a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and when the true astral body returns it pushes out this other astral matter without the slightest opposition. This is one reason for the extreme care which ought to be exercised as to the surroundings in which we sleep, for if those surroundings are evil, astral matter of the most objectionable type may fill our physical bodies while we are away from them, leaving behind it an influence which cannot but react horribly upon the real man when he returns. But the instant inrush when the body is abandoned shows the existence of astral pressure.
In the same way, when the man has finally left his physical body at death, what he leaves is no longer a vehicle, but a corpse — not in any true sense a body at all, but simply a collection of disintegrating material in the shape of a body. Just as we can no longer call that truly a body, so we cannot call the astral matter which interpenetrates it truly a counterpart in the or- dinary sense of the word. Take an imperfect yet per- haps helpful analogy. When the cylinder of an engine is full of steam, we may regard the steam as the liv- ing force within the cylinder, which makes the engine move. But when the engine is cold and at rest, the
THE SPHERES 235
cylinder is not necessarily empty ; it may be filled with air; yet that air is not its appropriate living force, though it occupies the same position as did the steam.
Astral matter is never really solid at all — only rela- tively solid. You know that the mediaeval alchemists always symbolized astral matter by water, and one of the reasons for that was its fluidity and penetra- bility. It is true that the counterpart of any solid phys- ical object is always matter of the lowest astral sub- plane, which for convenience we often call astral solid matter; but we must not therefore endow it with the qualities with which we are familiar in solids on this plane. The particles in that densest kind of astral matter are further apart relatively to their size than even gaseous particles; so that it would be easier for two of the densest astral bodies to pass through each other than it would be for the lightest physical gas to diffuse itself in the air.
On the astral plane one has not the sense of jumping over a precipice, but simply of floating over it. If you are standing upon the ground, part of your astral body interpenetrates the ground under your feet; but through your astral body you would not be conscious of this fact by anything corresponding to a sense of hard- ness, or by any difference in your power of motion. Re- member that upon the astral plane there is no sense of touch that corresponds to ours upon the physical. One never touches the surface of anything, so as to feel it hard or soft, rough or smooth, hot or cold; but on coming into contact with the interpenetrating sub- stance one would be conscious of a different rate of vibration, which might of course be pleasant or un- pleasant, stimulating or depressing. When on awaken- ing in the morning we remember anything correspond- ing to our ordinary sense of touch, it is only that in
236 THE INNER LIFE
bringing the remembrance through, the physical brain adopted the means of expression to which we are ac- customed.
Though the light of all planes comes from the sun, yet the effect which it produces on the astral plane is entirely different from that on the physical. In astral life there is a diffused luminosity, not obviously com- ing from any special direction. All astral matter is in itself luminous, and an astral body is not like a painted sphere, but rather a sphere of living fire. It is also transparent, and there are no shadows. It is never dark in the astral world. The passing of a phys- ical cloud between us and the sun makes no difference whatever to the astral plane, nor of course does the shadow of the earth which we call night.
The invisible helper would not pass through a moun- tain, if he thought of it as an obstacle; to learn that it is not an obstacle is precisely the object of one part of what is called "the test of earth." There cannot be an accident on the astral plane in our sense of the word, because the astral body, being fluidic, cannot be destroyed or permanently injured, as the physical body can. An explosion on the astral plane might be temporarily as disastrous as an explosion of gunpow- der on the physical, but the astral fragments would quickly collect themselves again.
People on the astral plane can and do pass through one another constantly, and through fixed astral ob- jects. Remember that on the astral plane matter is so much more fluidic and so much less densely aggre- gated. There never can be anything like what we mean by a collision, and under ordinary circumstances two bodies which interpenetrate are not even apprecia- bly affected. If, however, the interpenetration lasts for some time, as it does, for example, when two persons
THE SPHERES 237
sit side by side through a service in a church or a per- formance in a theatre, a considerable effect may be produced.
There are many currents which tend to carry about persons who are lacking in will, and even those who have will but do not know how to use it. During phys- ical life the matter of our astral bodies is constantly in motion, while after death, unless the will is exer- cised for the purpose of preventing it, it is arranged in concentric shells with a crust of the coarsest mat- ter on the outside. If a man wishes to be of service on the astral, this shelling must be prevented, for those whose astral bodies have been thus re-arranged are confined to one level. If the re-arrangement has al- ready occurred, the first thing that is done when a person is taken in hand is to break up that condition and set him free on the whole of the astral plane. For those who are acting as invisible helpers on the astral plane there are no separate levels; it is all one.
In India the idea of service on the astral plane is not so widely known as in the West ; the idea of serv- ice to God for the attainment of liberation is more prominent than that of service to one's fellowmen. Atmospheric and climatic conditions make practically no difference to work on the astral and mental planes. But being in a big city does make a great difference, on account of the masses of thought-forms. Some psychics require a temperature of about eighty de- grees in order to do their best work, while others do not work well except at a lower temperature.
If necessary, occult work can be done anywhere, but some places afford greater facilities than others. For example, California has a very dry climate with much electricity in the air, which is favourable for the de- velopment of clairvoyance. Here in Adyar there is
238 THE INNER LIFE
no resistance to our thought-forms on account of the environment, because we are all thinking more or less along the same lines. But we must remember that there may always be resistance on the part of the per- son to whom we are sending thoughts, for some per- sons have for a whole life-time built round themselves such shells of selfishness that one cannot penetrate them even when one wishes to do them good.
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FIFTH SECTION
The Ego and the Personality
HERE are still many of our members who do not fully understand the problem of the higher and the lower self. Nor is this won- derful ; for we are repeatedly told that there is only one consciousness, and yet we often clearly feel two, so it is not remarkable that students should be uncertain as to the real relation between these two, and should wonder whether the ego is entirely dis- sociated from his physical body and has an existence of his own among his fellows on his own plane.
This problem of the lower and higher self is an old one, and it is undoubtedly difficult to realize that there is after all only one consciousness, and that the appar- ent difference is caused only by the limitations of the various vehicles. The whole consciousness works on its own higher mental plane, but in the case of the ordi- nary man only partially and vaguely as yet. So far as it is active it is always on the side of good, because it desires that which is favorable to its evolution as a soul. It puts a portion of itself down into lower mat- ter, and that portion becomes so much more keenly and vividly conscious in that matter that it thinks and acts as though it were a separate being, forgetting its connection with that less developed yet far wider self- consciousness above. So sometimes it seems as though the fragment worked against the whole; but the man who is instructed declines to be deluded, and reaches back through the keen alert consciousness of the frag-
241
242 THE INNER LIFE
ment to the true consciousness behind, which is as yet so little developed.
Undoubtedly the ego is only very partially expressed by his physical body, yet we should not be accurate in speaking of him as dissociated from that body. If we figure the ego as a solid body and the physical plane as a surface, the solid body if laid upon that surface could manifest itself through that surface only as a plane figure, which would obviously be an exceedingly partial expression. We can see also that if the various sides of the solid were laid upon the surface succes- sively we might obtain expressions which differed con- siderably, though all of them would be imperfect, be- cause in all cases the solid would have an extension in an entirely different direction, which could by no means be expressed in the two dimensions of the super- ficies. We shall obtain a nearly accurate symbolism of the facts as far as the ordinary man is concerned if we suppose the solid to be conscious only so far as it is in contact with the surface, although the results gained through the manifestation of such conscious- ness would inhere in the solid as a whole, and would be present in any later expression of it, even though that might differ considerably from previous expres- sions.
It is only in the case of those already somewhat ad- vanced that we can speak of the ego as having a con- scious existence among his fellows on his own plane. From the moment that he breaks off from his group- soul and commences his separate existence, he is a conscious entity ; but the consciousness is of an exceed- ingly vague nature. The only physical sensation which occasionally comes to some persons is at the moment of awakening in the morning. There is a state inter- mediate between sleeping and waking in which a man
THE EGO AND THE PERSONALITY 243
is blissfully conscious that he exists, and yet is not conscious of any surrounding objects, not capable of any movement. Indeed, he sometimes knows that any movement would break the spell of happiness and bring him down into the ordinary waking world, and so he endeavours to remain still as long as possible.
That condition — a consciousness of existence and of intense bliss — closely resembles that of the ego of the average man upon the higher mental plane. He is wholly centred there only for the short time which intervenes between the end of one life in the heaven- world and the commencement of his next descent into incarnation ; and during that short period there comes to him the flash of retrospect and prospect — a glimpse of what his last life has done for him, and of what his next life is intended to do. For many ages these glimpses are his only moments of full awakening, and it is his desire for a more perfect manifestation, his desire to feel himself more thoroughly alive and active, which drives him into the effort of incarnation. It is not desire for life in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather for that complete consciousness which in- volves the power to respond to all possible vibrations from the surroundings on every plane, so that he may attain the perfection of sympathy.
When the ego is still undeveloped the forces of the higher mental plane pass through him practically with- out affecting him, as he cannot respond to more than a very few of these extremely fine vibrations. It needs powerful and comparatively coarse vibrations to af- fect him at first, and these do not exist upon his own plane, and for that reason he has to put himself down to lower levels in order to find them. Therefore full consciousness comes to him at first only in the lowest and densest of his vehicles, his attention being f ocussed
244 THE INNER LIFE
for a long time down in the physical plane; so that, although that plane is so much lower than his own and offers so much less scope for activity, in those early stages he feels himself much more alive when he is working there. As the consciousness increases and widens its scope he gradually begins to work more and more in matter one stage higher — that is, in astral matter.
At a much later stage, when he has attained to clear working in astral matter, he begins to be able also to express himself through the matter of his mental body and the end of his present effort is achieved when he works as fully and clearly in the matter of the causal body on the higher mental plane as he does now on the physical plane.
These stages of full development of consciousness must not be confounded with the mere learning to use to some extent the respective vehicles. A man is using his astral body whenever he expresses an emotion; he is using his mental body whenever he thinks. But that is very far from his being able to utilize either of them as independent vehicles through which con- sciousness can be fully expressed. When a man is fully conscious in his astral body, he has already made a considerable amount of progress; when he has bridged over the chasm between the astral conscious- ness and the physical, day and night no longer exist for him, since he leads a life unbroken in its continu- ity. For him death also has ceased to exist, since he carries that unbroken consciousness not only through night and day, but also through the portals of death itself and up to the end of his life upon the astral plane.
One step of further development lies open to him — - the consciousness of the heaven-world; and then his life and memory are continuous during the whole of
THE EGO AND THE PERSONALITY 245
each descent into incarnation. Yet one step more raises the full consciousness to the level of the ego on the higher mental plane, and after that he has always with him the memory of all his lives, and he is ca- pable of consciously directing the various lower mani- festations of himself at all points of his progress.
It must not be supposed that the development of any of these stages of consciousness is ever sudden. The actual rending of the veil between two stages is usually a fairly rapid process, sometimes even instantaneous. A man who has normally no memory of what happens on the astral plane may unintentionally, by some acci- dent or illness, or intentionally by certain definite prac- tices, bridge over the interval and make the connec- tion, so that from that time onward his astral con- sciousness will be continuous, and his memory of what happens while the physical body is asleep will there- fore be perfect. But long before such an effort or acci- dent is possible for him the full consciousness must have been working in the astral body, even though in the physical life he knew nothing of it.
In exactly the same way a man must have been for a long time thoroughly practised in the use of his men- tal body as a vehicle before he can hope to break the barrier between that and the astral, so that he can have the pleasure of continuous recollection. By analogy this leads us to see that the ego must have been fully conscious and active on his own plane for a long time before any knowledge of that existence can come through to us in our physical life.
There are many in whom the ego has already to some extent awakened from the condition of mere bliss which was described above, and is at least partially conscious of his own surroundings, and therefore of other egos. From that time on he leads a life and has interests and
246 THE INNER LIFE
activities on his own plane ; but even then we must re- member that he puts down into the personality only a very small part of himeslf, and that that part con- stantly becomes entangled in interests which, because they are so partial, are often along different lines from the general activities of the ego himself, who conse- quently does not pay any particular attention to the lower life of the personality, unless something rather unusual happens to it.
When this stage is reached he usually comes under the influence of a Master; indeed often his first clear consciousness of anything outside himself is his touch with that Master. The tremendous power of the Mas- ter's influence magnetises him, draws his vibrations into harmony with its own, and multiplies manyfold the rate of his development. It rays upon him like sunshine upon a flower, and he evolves rapidly under its influence. This is why, while the earlier stages of progress are so slow as to be almost imperceptible, when the Master turns His attention upon the man, developes him and arouses his own will to take part in the work, the speed of his advancement increases in geometrical progression.
Of that stream of divine influence poured upon the ego by the Master, the amount which can be passed on to the personality depends upon the connection be- tween it and the ego, which is very different in dif- ferent cases. There is almost infinite variety in human life. The spiritual force rays upon the ego, and some little of it certainly comes through into the person- ality, because though the ego has put forth a part of himself he does not cut himself off entirely from it, notwithstanding the fact that in the case of all ordi- nary people the ego and the personality are very dif- ferent things.
THE EGO AND THE PERSONALITY 247
The ego in ordinary men has not much grasp of the personality, nor a clear conception of his purpose in sending it forth; and, again, the small piece which meets us in the personality grows to have ways and opinions of its own. It is developing by the experience which it gains, and this is passed on to the ego; but along with this real development it usually gathers a good deal which is hardly worthy of that name. It acquires knowledge, but also prejudices, which are not really knowledge at all. It does not become quite free from these prejudices — not only of knowledge (or rather its absence) but of feeling and action as well — until the man reaches adeptship. It gradually discovers these things to be prejudices, and progresses through them ; but it has always a great deal of limita- tion from which the ego is entirely free.
As to the amount of the spiritual force which is passed to the personality, one can only decide in a particular case by using clairvoyance. But something of it must flow through always, because the lower is attached to the higher, just as the hand is attached to the body by the arm. It is certain that the person- ality must get something, but it can have only what it has made itself able to receive. It is also a ques- tion of qualities. The Master often plays upon quali- ties in the ego which are much obscured in the per- sonality, and in that case of course very little comes down. As only those experiences of the personality can be handed on to the spiritual or permanent ego which are compatible with his nature and interests, so only those impulses to which it is able to respond can express themselves in the personality. Remember, though, that the former tends to exclude the bad and the latter the good — or rather we should call them the material and the spiritual, for nothing is bad.
248 THE INNER LIFE
One may sometimes see by clairvoyance many of these influences at work. On a certain day, for ex- ample, we may see a characteristic of the personality much intensified, with no outward reason. The cause is often to be found in what is taking place at some higher level — the stimulation of that quality in the ego. Sometimes a man finds himself overflowing v. ith affection or devotion, and quite unable on the physical plane to understand why. The cause is usually, again. the stimulation of the ego, or it may be that the ego is taking some special interest in the personality for the time being.
In meditation we sometimes draw such attention on the part of the ego, though it is well to keep in mind that we must try to reach up to join that higher ac- tivity, rather than to interrupt it to draw down its attention to the lower. The higher influence is cer- tainly invited by right meditation, which is always effective, even though on the physical plane things may seem to be very dull and quite without zest. The reach- ing upwards of the ego himself often means his neg- lect to send energy down to the personality, and this, of course, leaves the latter feeling rather dull and in the shade. The extent, then, to which the personality is influenced by the effort of the Master depends upon two things principally — the strength of the connec- tion at the time between the ego and the personality; and the particular work which the Master is doing upon the ego, that is, the particular qualities upon which He is playing.
Meditation and the study of spiritual subjects in this earthly life make a very great difference in the life of the ego. The ordinary person who has not taken up spiritual matters seriously has only a thread of connection between the higher and the lower self. The
THE EGO AND THE PERSONALITY 249
personality in his case seems to be all, and the ego, though he undoubtedly exists on his own plane, is not at all likely to be doing anything actively there. He is very much like a chicken which is growing inside an egg. But in the case of some of us who have been making efforts in the right direction, we may hope that the ego is becoming quite vividly conscious. He has broken through his shell, and is living a life of great activity and power. As we go on, we shall be- come able to unify our personal consciousness with the life of the ego, as far as that is possible, and then we shall have only the one consciousness ; even down here we shall have the consciousness of the ego, who will know all that is going on. But with many people at the present day there is often considerable opposition between the personality and the ego.
There are other things to be taken into account. It is by no means always accurate to judge the ego by his manifestation in the personality. An ego of in- tensely practical type may make much more show on the physical plane than another of far higher develop- ment, if the energy of the latter happens to be concen- trated almost exclusively upon the causal or buddhic levels. Therefore people who see only on the physical plane are frequently entirely wrong in their estimation of the relative position of others.
If you have to deal with a fairly advanced ego, you will sometimes find him rather inconsiderate of his body. You see whatever is put down into the person- ality is so much taken from him! I have again and again seen cases in which the ego was to some extent impatient and withdrew into himself somewhat; but on the other hand in cases such as these there is al- ways a flow between the ego and the personality, which is not possible with the ordinary man. In the ordinary
250 THE INNER LIFE
man the part is, as it were, put down and left, though not of course quite cut off; but at this more advanced stage there is a constant communication between the two along the channel. Therefore, the ego can with- draw a great deal of himself whenever he chooses, and leave a very poor representation of the real man be- hind. So the relation between the lower and the higher self varies much in different people and at different stages of development.
As to the work of the ego, he may be learning things on his own plane ; or he may be helping other egos — there are many kinds of work for which he may need an accession of strength. And then he may forget for a time to pay his personality proper attention, just as even a good man may occasionally, under some special pressure of business, forget his horse or his dog. Some- times when that happens the personality reminds him of its existence by blundering into some foolishness which causes serious suffering. You may have noticed that sometimes, after you have completed a special piece of work that has needed the co-operation of the ego to a large extent — as, for example, lectur- ing to a large audience — he takes away the energy and leaves the personality with only enough to feel rather dispirited. For a time he admitted that there was some importance in the work, and there- fore poured down a little more of himself, but after- wards he leaves the poor personality feeling rather depressed.
Of course, depression comes much more often from other reasons, such as the presence of an astral entity in a low-spirited condition, or of some non-human beings. And joy also is not always due to the influence of the ego, for the fact is that the man does not think much about his own feelings when he is in a fit condi-
THE EGO AND THE PERSONALITY 251
tion to receive an influx of power. Joy may be produced by the proximity of harmonious nature-spirits, or in a variety of other ways. The channel between the ego and personality is by no means always open. Sometimes it appears to be almost choked up — a condition of af- fairs which is quite a possibility in view of its narrow- ness in most cases. Then the force may break through again on some occasion, such as that of a conversion. But for many of us there is a constant flow in some measure. Meditation, conscientiously done, opens the channel and keeps it open. Always remember, though, that it is better to try to go up to the ego than to bring it down to the personality.
Every ego has a certain knowledge of his own. He obtains a glimpse, between lives, of his past and fu- ture ; in the undeveloped man this awakens the ego for a moment, after which he falls asleep again. During physical life the ordinary ego is to some extent capable of brooding watchfulness and a little effort, but is still in a sleepy condition. With a developed man the ego is fully awake. The ego in course of time discovers that there are a good many things which he can do, and when this happens he may rise into a condition in which he has a definite life on his own plane, though in many cases it is even then but dreamy. It is the ego's purpose to learn to be fully active on all planes, even the physical.
Suppose you have an ego whose principal method of manifesting himself is by affection. That quality is what he wants exhibited by his personality, and if you down here try to feel strong affection and make a specialty of that, the ego will promptly throw more of himself down into the personality, because he finds in it exactly what he desires. Be careful to provide what he needs, and he will quickly take advantage of
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it. Egos on their own plane can help other egos, when they are sufficienty developed to do so. The ego of the ordinary person has rather a vegetable conscious- ness or life, and seems to be only just aware of other egos. The personality will not know what the ego does, unless they have been unified. The ego may know the Master while the personality does not. The study of inner things, and living the life, wakes up the ego. Purely unselfish devotion belongs to the higher planes and concerns him.
I do not think the experiences of the personality can be transmitted to the ego, but the essence of them may. He cares little for the details, but he wants the essence of it. Any of those thoughts that we consider evil are impossible for the ego. For precise defini- tion he must come down into the physical body. He devotes himself more especially during the heaven-life to the assimilation of the experiences of the person- ality, but he is doing it all the time. When you take up the study of Theosophy, and live the life, you begin to call the attention of the ego by sending up vibra- tions to which he can respond. The ordinary man has in his life little that appeals to the ego.
High unselfish affection and devotion belong to the highest astral sub-plane, and these reflect themselves in the corresponding matter of the mental plane, so that they touch the causal, not the lower mental. Thus only unselfish thoughts affect the ego. All the lower thoughts affect the permanent atoms, but not the ego ; and corresponding to them you would find gaps in the causal body, not bad colors. Selfishness below shows in it as absence of affection or sympathy, and when the good quality developes the gap will be filled up. In the causal body you can see whether a man can possibly fail in this or that quality. Try to develope
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the qualities the ego wants, and he will come down to help.
As is said in Light on the Path, watch for the ego, and let him fight through you, and yet at the same time never forget that you are the ego. Therefore identify yourself with him and make the lower give way to you the higher. Yet do not be too greatly dis- heartened if you should fall even many times, for even failure is to a certain extent a success, since we learn by it and so are wiser to meet the next problem. We cannot always succeed now at every point, though we surely shall do so ultimately. But never forget that it is not expected of us that we shall always succeed, but only that we shall do our best.
Counterparts
When the ego descends into incarnation, he draws round himself a mass of astral matter, not yet formed into a definite astral body ; this takes, in the first place, the shape of that ovoid which is the nearest expres- sion that we can realize of the true shape of the causal body. But when the further step downward and out- ward into physical incarnation is taken, and a little physical body is formed in the midst of that astral mat- ter, it immediately begins to exert a violent attrac- tion over it, so that the great majority of the astral matter (which previously may be thought of as fairly evenly distributed over the large oval) now becomes concentrated into the periphery of that physical body.
As the physical body grows, the astral matter fol- lows its every change, and thus we find man present- ing the spectacle of an astral body, ninety-nine per
254 THE INNER LIFE
cent of which is compressed within the periphery of his physical body, only about the remaining one per cent filling the rest of the ovoid form. In the plates in Man, Visible and Invisible we have sketched in the outline of the physical body merely in pencil, so that it shows but slightly, because my especial desire in that book was to emphasize the colors of the ovoid, and the way in which they illustrate the development of man by the transfer of vibrations from the lower bodies to the higher ; but in reality that astral counter- part of the physical body is very solid and definite, and quite clearly distinguishable from the surrounding ovoid.
Note, therefore, that the astral matter takes the ex- act form of the physical matter merely because of the attraction which the latter has for the former. But we must further realize tbat although we may speak of the lowest sub-plane of the astral as corresponding to solid physical matter, it is yet very different in tex- ture, for all astral matter bears to its corresponding physical matter something the same sort of relation that the liquid bears to the solid. Therefore the par- ticles of the astral body, whether in the finest or coars- est parts of it, are constantly in motion among them- selves, just as are particles of flowing water; and it will consequently be seen that it is quite impossible for the astral body to possess specialized organs in the same sense as does the physical body.
No doubt there is an exact counterpart in astral mat- ter of the rods and cones which make up the retina of the physical eye ; but the particles which at one mo- ment are occupying that particular position in an astral body may, a second or two later, be moving through the hand or the foot. One does not, therefore, see upon the astral plane by means of the astral counterpart of
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the physical eyes, nor does one hear with the astral counterpart of the physical ears ; indeed, it is perhaps not exactly correct to apply the terms "seeing" and "hearing" to astral methods of cognizance, since these terms are commonly held to imply specialized sense- organs, whereas the fact is that every particle in the astral body is capable of receiving and transmitting vibrations from one of its own type, but its own type only. Thus when one obtains a glimpse of astral con- sciousness, one is surprised to find oneself able to see on all sides simultaneously, instead of only in front as one does on the physical plane. The exact corre- spondence of the astral body to the physical therefore is merely a matter of external form, and does not at all involve any similarity of function in the various organs.
But the attraction continued all through life sets up a kind of habit or momentum in the astral matter, which causes it to retain the same form even while it is withdrawn temporarily from the attraction of the physical body at night and permanently after death; so that even through the long astral life the lineaments of the physical body which was put aside at death will still be preserved almost unchanged. Almost — because we must not forget that thought has a powerful influ- ence upon astral matter and can readily mould it, so that a man who habitually thinks of himself after death as younger than he actually was at the time of that death will gradually come to present a somewhat younger appearance.
A questioner asks, "If the arm of a man, the branch of a tree, or the leg of a chair were cut off, would in each case the astral counterpart also be removed, and can we, by breaking an astral counterpart, produce a fracture in a physical object? That is to say, if with
256 THE INNER LIFE
the hand of my astral body I break the astral counter- part of a chair, will the physical chair also be broken ?"
The three cases given are not quite analogous. Both the tree and the man have the life within them which makes the astral body in each case a coherent whole. It is strongly attracted by the particles of the physical body, and therefore adapts itself to its shape, but if part of that physical body be removed, the coherence of the living astral matter is stronger than the attrac- tion towards that severed portion of the physical. Con- sequently the astral counterpart of the arm or branch will not be carried away with the severed physical fragment. Since it has acquired the habit of keep- ing that particular form, it will continue for a short time to retain the original shape, but will soon with- draw within the limits of the maimed form.
In the case of an inanimate body, such as a chair or a basin, there would not be the same kind of indi- vidual life to maintain cohesion. Consequently when the physical object was broken the astral counterpart would also be divided ; but it would not be possible to break an astral counterpart, and in that way to affect the physical object. In other words the act of frac- tion must begin on the physical plane.
One could of course move a purely astral object by means of an astral hand if one wished, but not the astral counterpart of a physical object. In order to perform this latter feat it would be necessary to mate- rialize a hand and move the physical object, when the astral counterpart would of course accompany it. The astral counterpart is there because the physical object is there, just as the scent of a rose fills the room be- cause the rose is there. To suggest that by moving the astral counterpart one could also move the physi- cal object is like suggesting that by moving the smell
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one could move the physical rose which causes the smell.
The astral body changes its particles as does the physical, but fortunately the clumsy and tiresome proc- ess of cooking, eating and digesting food is not a ne- cessity on the astral plane. The particles which fall away are replaced by others from the surrounding at- mosphere. The purely physical cravings of hunger and thirst no longer exist there ; but the desire of the glut- ton to gratify the sensation of taste, and the desire of the drunkard for the exhilaration which follows, for him, the absorption of alcohol — these are both astral, and therefore they still persist, and cause great suffer- ing because of the absence of the physical body through which alone they could be satisfied.
So far as we are at present aware the astral body does not appear to be susceptible to fatigue.
The ordinary man while possessing a physical body naturally never has the opportunity of working for any length of time consecutively upon the astral plane, for his nights of astral work alternate with days of phys- ical work. I knew, however, of one case of a man who, having the right to take a rapid reincarnation, had to wait upon the astral plane twenty-five years for the special conditions which he required. He spent the whole of this time in working for the help of others, without any intermission except the occasional attend- ance at classes held by pupils of our Masters ; and he assured me that he had never felt the slightest sense of fatigue — that in fact he had forgotten what it meant to be tired.
We all know that excessive or long-continued emo- tion tires us very quickly in ordinary life, and since emotion is an expression of the astral, that may per- haps lead some to suppose that fatigue of the astral
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body is possible. I think, however, that it will be found that what is subject to fatigue is merely the physical organism through which everything in us which mani- fests on this plane must pass. What we call mental fatigue is a parallel case. There is no such thing as fatigue in the mind; what we call by that name is only fatigue of the physical brain through which that mind has to express itself.
A spectator who has not been able to raise his sight above the astral level will of course see only astral mat- ter when he looks at the aura of his fellow-men. He will see that this astral matter not only surrounds the physical body but also interpenetrates it, and that with- in the periphery of that body it is much more densely aggregated than in that part of the aura which lies outside. This is due to the attraction of the large amount of dense astral matter which is gathered to- gether there as the counterpart of the cells of the phys- ical body.
When during sleep the astral body is drawn from the physical this arrangement still persists, and then any one looking at the astral body with clairvoyant vision would still see, just as before, a form resembling the physical body surrounded by an aura. That form would now be composed only of astral matter, but still the great difference in density between it and its sur- rounding mist would be quite sufficient to make it clearly distinguishable, even though it is itself only a form of denser mist.
There is a considerable difference in appearance be- tween the evolved and the unevolved man. Even in the case of the latter the features and shape of the inner form are recognizable always, though blurred and indistinct; but the surrounding egg scarcely de- serves the name, for it is in fact a mere shapeless
COLORS IN THE ASTRAL BODY 259
wreath of mist, having neither regularity nor perma- nence of outline.
In the more developed man the change is very marked, both in the aura and the form within it. This latter is much more distinct and definite — a closer re- production of the man's physical appearance ; while in- stead of the floating mist-wreath we see a sharply de- fined ovoid form preserving its shape unaffected amidst all the varied currents which are always swirling round it on the astral plane. Though the arrangement of the astral body is largely changed after death by the action of the desire elemental, such alteration does not in any way affect the recognizability of the form within the egg, though the natural changes which take place tend on the whole to make the form grow some- what fainter and more spiritual in appearance as time passes on.
Colors in the Astral Body
Any comparatively permanent color in the astral body means a persistent vibration, which in the course of time produces its effect upon the mental body, and also upon the causal body, so that the higher qualities developed by the life on the lower planes are grad- ually built into the permanent causal body, and so be- come qualities of the soul itself. The colors may be mingled to any extent; for example, affection (rose) mingled with religious devotion (blue) will give a lovely violet. It is only the good thought or feeling which can produce an effect in the causal body, and so be permanently stored up as part of the man. Other kinds of thought and feeling remain in the lower ve- hicles and are comparatively impermanent. The size of a thought-form shows the strength of the emotion.
260 the inner life
The Causal Body
No number of physical bodies could fully contain the causal body, any more than any number of lines can make a square, or any number of squares can make a cube. The ego puts himself down into his various bodies with the hope of gaining two things — to make the causal body learn to respond to more vibrations, and also to increase its size. Most people are not more than just conscious in the causal body. The strings of such egos cannot be played upon directly, but are affected from below by way of overtones. Most men can at present only work on the matter of the third sub-plane of the mental (the lowest part of their causal bodies), and indeed only the lower matter even of that is usually in operation. When they are on the Path, the second sub-plane opens up. The adept uses the whole causal body while his consciousness is on the physical plane. A rough and ready way of deciding at what stage a man stands is to look at the causal body. It shows also how he arrived there. Men de- velop unequally — we are all undeveloped in some way. An animal has a minimum-sized causal body as soon as he is individualized ; then it has to be developed both as to size and color.
The Desire-Elemental
Much of the matter of the astral body is vivified by elemental essence, which is cut off for the time being from the general mass which belongs to the plane, and becomes the man's expression on that plane. This is a living, though not an intelligent essence. But it has a kind of instinct which Mr. Sinnett calls "dawning
THE DESIRE ELEMENTAL 261
intelligence," which guides it into getting what it wants. Blindly and without reason, but instinctively, it seeks its ends, and shows great ingenuity in obtain- ing its desires and in furthering its evolution.
Evolution for it is a descent into matter; its aim is to become a mineral- monad. Therefore, its object in life is to get as near to the physical plane as it can, to come into contact with as many of the vibrations of the coarser kind as possible. It knows nothing of you; it could not know or imagine anything of you; but it does realize that it is apart from the general stock, and that it is good to be apart. It is not a devil, and you must not get the idea that it is to be hated.
It is part of the Divine Life, just as you are; but its interests are diametrically opposed to yours. It wants to evolve downwards; you want to evolve up- wards. It desires to preserve its separate life, and it feels that it can do so only by means of its connec- tion with you. It is conscious of a something which is your lower mind, and realizes that if it can englobe, as it were, this mind, and persuade you that its and your interests are one, you will increasingly supply it with the sensations it desires. When it gets the mat- ter sufficiently entangled to suit its purpose, you cannot then withdraw it, the result being that some of this matter of the lower mind is then lost to you altogether in the life after death.
So, you see, here is the desire-elemental seeking its own ends; not knowing that it is injuring you by try- ing to entangle your lower mind. The more it can do this the better for it, for the more mental matter it can entangle the longer will be its astral life — that life still enduring even after you have passed into the heaven-world. In Theosophical phraseology it has been
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known as the shade. Your business is not to allow yourself to be deceived; it understands nothing of your evolution, and is not responsible for it; it simply tries to turn you to its own purpose. You ought to understand the situation, and refuse to be drawn. Do let us realize this : that this elemental is not ourselves. It is never you who desire these lower things, but this creature.
It is not so much that we have to make a great fight against it, but we should shake ourselves free, saying : "This is not I ; I do not want this lower thing." Some- body wants it. Yes, it is this elemental ; and you are responsible for its likes and wants, for in your last life you made it what it is. Not that this particular collection of astral matter and elemental essence ex- isted then ; it did not, for it was newly gathered to- gether at your birth this time. But it is an exact re- production of the matter in your astral body at the end of your last astral life. Nevertheless it is not you ; and you must ever bear this in mind all through life, and even more during the life after death, for then it has still greater power to deceive you.
But you may think that by thus refusing to allow it to influence you, you are checking its evolution. Not at all. You are doing better for the elemental if you control the lower passions, and take a firm stand of your own. It is true you do not develope a very low part of it ; but you may drop the lower and evolve the higher. An animal can supply the lower kinds of vi- brations even better than you can yourself, whereas none but man can evolve the higher type of essence.
After the death of the physical body the ordinary man, who has never heard all this, finds himself when he wakes up on the other side in a totally unexpected condition of affairs, and is generally more or less dis-
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turbed thereby. Finally, he accepts these conditions which he does not understand, thinking them necessary and inevitable. Some no doubt are, but some are not, and with knowledge the latter could be transcended.
The elemental is afraid, because it knows that the death of the physical body means that the term of its separated life is limited ; it knows that the man's astral death will more or less quickly follow, and with it the loss to it of vivid and intense sensations. Consequently it adopts the best plan it can think of for the preserva- tion of the man's astral body. It evidently knows enough of astral physics to realize that the coarsest matter can hold together longest, and best stand fric- tion. So it arranges the matter in rings, the coarsest on the outside. And in so doing it is right, from its point of view. During physical life the astral body is like swirling, boiling water, but after death it ar- ranges the matter in a series of graduated sheaths, so that full circulation is impossible.
Now there are no sense organs in the astral body. There are in it organs corresponding to the physical sense-organs, but you do not see, hear and smell with them. You hear and see all over the surface of the body. Each sub-plane has its own matter; and it is by means of the matter of that sub-plane in your body that you can respond to its vibrations. Whatever mat- ter is on the outside (or surface) of your body re- sponds to these vibrations, and you see or hear by it alone. Consequently, what has happened is this : the elemental has, by this arrangement of the matter of your body, shut you up, as it were, in a box of astral matter, which enables you to see and hear things of the lowest and coarsest plane only. If you object to being shut up in this way, it endeavours to make you be- lieve that unless you do thus firmly root yourself into
264 THE INNER LIEE
the lower matter you will float off, and lose yourself in a nebulous vagueness.
But if, on the other hand, you were to set your will to oppose it, then at once there would be a difference. The particles of the astral body would be kept all inter- mingled, as in life; and you would, in consequence, be free of all the sub-planes.
The final struggle with it takes place at the conclu- sion of the astral life, for then the ego endeavours to draw back into himself all that he put down into in- carnation at the beginning of the life which has just closed — to recover as it were the principal which he has invested, plus the interest of the experience which has been gained and the qualities which have been de- veloped during that life. But when he attempts to do this he is met with determined opposition from this desire-elemental, which he himself has created and fed.
Though it can hardly be described as intelligent, it has a strong instinct of self-preservation, which leads it to resist with all the force at its command the ex- tinction which threatens it. In the case of all ordinary mortals it attains a certain measure of success in its efforts, for much of the mental faculty has during life been governed by the lower desires and prostituted to their service, or in other words the lower mind has been so seriously entangled by desire that it is impos- sible for it to be entirely freed. The result of the strug- gle is therefore that some portion of the mental matter and even of causal matter is retained in the astral body after the ego has completely broken away from it. When a man has during life completely conquered his lower desires and succeeded in absolutely freeing the lower mind from desire, there is practically no strug- gle, and the ego reclaims in full both principal and
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interest; but there is unfortunately an opposite ex- treme when he is able to reclaim neither.
So our business, both during life and after death, is to control this desire-elemental, and not let it con- trol us. Realize that you are a god in the making. All the power and force of the universe are on your side. The result is certain. Range yourself on the side of the Law, and all will be simplified.
Absolute control of passions is eminently desirable, but is obtained by few. You have to keep your temper on the astral plane. You see many dreadful things, and if you have not all feelings thoroughly under con- trol you may easily do something for which you will be sorry. Down here people often commit casual bru- tality and think nothing of it; a callous schoolmaster, for example, beats a child without realizing his wick- edness; but on the astral plane the heinousness of such a crime is at once obvious, and even the awful horrors of the karma which it entails may often be seen. On the astral you see the full effects of even an unkind word. Tremendous and violent passions may often attract low kinds of beings, who enter into the thought-forms and enjoy the vibrations. Such ani- mated thought-forms may last for years, and even pro- duce poltergeist phenomena.
Lost Souls
It is an unspeakable relief to be set free by the com- monsense of Theosophical teaching from the awful nightmare of the doctrine of eternal damnation which is still held by the more ignorant among the Christians, who do not understand the real meaning of certain phrases attributed in their gospels to their Founder.
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But some of our students, filled with glad enthusiasm by the glorious discovery that every unit must finally attain perfection, find their joy somewhat damped by gruesome hints that, after all, there are conditions un- der which a soul may be lost, and they begin to wonder whether the reign of divine law is really universal, or whether there is not some method by which man can contrive to escape from the dominion of the Logos and destroy himself. Let such doubters take comfort ; the Will of the Logos is infinitely stronger than any hu- man will, and not even the utmost exertion of perverse ingenuity can possibly prevail against Him.
It is true that He allows man to use his free-will, but only within certain well-defined limits ; if the man uses that will well, those limits are quickly widened, and more and more power over his own destiny is given to him; but if he uses that will for evil, he thereby increases his limitations, so that while his power for good is practically unbounded, because it has in it the potentiality of infinite growth, his power for evil is rigidly restricted. And this not because of any in- equality in the incidence of the law, but because in the one case he exerts his will in the same direction as that of the Logos, and so is swimming with the evolutionary tide, while in the other he is struggling against it.
The term "lost souls" is not well chosen, for it is al- most certain to be misunderstood, and taken to imply much more than it really means. In every-day par- lance, the word "soul" is used with exasperating vague- ness, but on the whole it is generally supposed to de- note the subtler and more permanent part of man, so that to the man in the street to lose one's soul means to lose oneself, to be lost altogether. That is precisely what can never happen; therefore the expression is misleading, and a clear statement of the facts which
LOST SOULS 26?
it somewhat inaccurately labels may be of use to stu- dents. Of such facts there seem to be three classes; let us consider them one by one.
1. Those who will drop out of this evolution in the middle of the fifth round. This dropping out is pre- cisely the aeonian (not eternal) condemnation of which the Christ spoke as a very real danger for some of His unawakened hearers — the condemnation meaning merely the decision that they are incapable as yet of the higher progress, but not implying blame except in cases where opportunities have been neglected. Theos- ophy teaches us that men are all brothers, but not that they are all equal. There are immense differences between them ; they have entered the human evolution at various periods, so that some are much older souls than others, and they stand at very different levels on the ladder of development. The older souls naturally learn much more rapidly than the younger, and so the distance between them steadily increases, and event- ually a point is reached where the conditions necessary for the one type are entirely unsuitable for the other.
We may obtain a useful working analogy by thinking of the children in a class at school. The teacher of the class has a year's work before him, to prepare his boys for a certain examination. He parcels out the work — « so much for the first month, so much for the second, and so on, beginning of course with what is easiest and leading gradually up to what is more difficult. But the boys are of various ages and capacities; some learn rapidly and are in advance of the average, while some lag behind. New boys, too, are constantly coming into his class, some of them barely up to its level. When half the year has run its course, he resolutely closes the the list for admissions, and declines to receive any more new boys.
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That took place for us at the middle point of this fourth round, after which the door was shut for pas- sage from the animal kingdom into the human, save for a few exceptional cases, which belong, as it were, to the future ; just as you have a few men attaining adept- ship, who are not belated remnants of the moon's adepts, but people in advance of the rest of humanity. In the same way there are a few animals at the stage of individualization, which the generality are expected to reach at the end of the seventh round. On the next planet an arrangement will be made by which these exceptions will have the opportunity of taking primitive human bodies.
A little later the teacher can already clearly foresee that some of his boys will certainly pass the examina- tion, that the chance of others is doubtful, and that there are yet others who are sure to fail. It would be quite reasonable if he should say to these last :
"We have now reached a stage when the further work of this class is useless for you. You cannot pos- sibly by any effort attain the necessary standard in time for the examination ; the more advanced teaching which must now be given to the others would be entirely un- suited for you, and as you could not understand it you would be not only wasting your own time but would be a hindrance to the rest of the class. It will there- fore be better for you at once to transfer yourselves to the next class below this, perfect yourselves there in the preliminary lessons which you have not yet thoroughly learned, and come back to this level with next year's class, when you will be sure to pass with credit."
That is exactly what will be done in the middle of the fifth round. Those who cannot by any effort reach the prescribed goal in the time which remains will be
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put back into a lower class, and if the class-room doors are not yet open they will wait in peace and happiness until the appointed time. They may be described as lost to us, lost to this particular little wave of evolution to which we belong ; they are no longer "men of our year" as we say at College. But they will very certainly be "men of the next year" — even leading men in it, be- cause of the work that they have already done and the experience that they have already had.
Most of these people fail because they are too young for the class, although they were too old to be put in the first place into the class below. They have had the advantage of going through the first half of the year's work, and they will therefore take it up again next time readily and easily, and will be able to help their more backward fellow-pupils who have not had their ad- vantages. For those who are too young for the work there is no blame in failure.
But there is another large class who might succeed by determined effort, but fail for want of that effort. These exactly correspond to the boy who drops behind his class not because he is too young, but because he is too lazy to do his work. His fate is the same as that of the others, but it is obvious that while they were blameless because they did their best, he is blame- worthy precisely because he did not do his ; so he will carry with him a legacy of evil karma from which they are free. It is to men of that class that the Christ's exhortations were addressed — men who had the oppor- tunity and ability to succeed, but were not making the necessary effort.
It is of these that Madame Blavatsky speaks in such vigorous terms as "useless drones who refuse to be- come co-workers with Nature, and who perish by mil- lions during the manvantaric life-cycle." {Secret Doc-
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trine, iii, 526.) But note that this "perishing" is mere- ly from this "manvantaric life-cycle," and that it means for them delay only, and not total extinction. Delay is the worst that can happen to people in the ordinary course of evolution. Such a delay is undoubtedly most serious, but, bad though it be, it is the best that can be done under the circumstances. If either through youth, or through laziness and perversity, these people have failed, it is clear that they need more training, and this training they must have. Obviously that is best for them, even though it means many lives — lives, many of which may be dreary, and may even contain much suf- fering. Still, they must go through to the end, because that is the only way by which they can attain the level which the more advanced races have already reached through similar long-continued evolution.
It was with the object of saving as many people as possible from that additional suffering that the Christ said to His disciples : "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned." For baptism and its corresponding rites in other religions are the sign of the dedication of the life to the service of the Brotherhood, and the man who is able to grasp the truth, and consequently sets his face in the right direction, will certainly be among the "saved" or "safe," who escape the condemnation in the fifth round ; while those who do not take the trouble to see the truth and follow it will assuredly fall under that condemnation. But remember always that the "damnation" means only rejection from this "aeon" or chain of worlds, a throwing back into the next of the successive life-waves. "Lost souls," if you will; lost to us, perhaps, but not to the Logos ; so they would be better described as temporarily laid aside. Of course it
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must not be supposed that the "belief" which saves them is the knowledge of Theosophy ; it does not matter in the least what their religion is, so long as they are aiming at the spiritual life, so long as they have def- initely ranged themselves on the side of good as against evil, and are working unselfishly onward and upward.
2. Cases in which the personality has been so much emphasized that the ego is almost shut out from it. Of these there are two varieties — those who live only in their passions, and those who live only in their minds ; and as both types are by no means uncommon it is worth while to try to understand exactly what happens to them.
We often speak of the ego as putting himself down into the matter of the lower planes, yet many students fail to realize that this is not a mere figure of speech, but has a very definite and very material side to it. The ego dwells in a causal body, and when he takes upon himself in addition a mental and an astral body, the operation involves the actual entangling of a portion of the matter of his causal body with matter of those lower astral and mental types. We may regard this "putting down" as a kind of investment made by the ego. As in all investments, so in this ; he hopes to get back more than he puts out, but there is a risk of disappointment — a possibility that he may lose something of what he invests, or under very exceptional circumstances there may even be a total loss which leaves him, not indeed absolutely bankrupt, but without available capital.
Let us consider the elaboration of this analogy. The ego possesses in his causal body matter of three levels — the first, second and third sub-planes of the mental ; but for the enormous majority of mankind there is as yet no activity beyond the lowest of these three types, and even that is usually very partial. It is therefore
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only some of this lowest type of causal matter that can be put down to lower levels, and only a small fraction even of that part can be entangled with mental and astral matter.
The ego's control over what is put down is very weak and imperfect, because he is still half asleep. But as his physical body grows up his astral and mental bodies are also developed, and the causal matter entangled with them is awakened by the vigorous vibrations which reach it through them. This fraction of a frac- tion which is fully entangled gives life and vigor and a sense of individuality to these vehicles, and they in turn react strongly upon it and arouse it to a keen realiza- tion of life. This keen realization of life is exactly what it needs, the very object for which it is put down ; and it is the longing for this keen realization when it has it not which is spoken of as trishna (the thirst for manifested life, the desire to feel oneself really vividly alive), the force which draws the ego down again into reincarnation.
But just because this small fraction has had these experiences, and is therefore so much more awake than the rest of the ego, it may often be so far intensified as to think itself the whole, and forget for the time its re- lation to "its Father which is in heaven." It may tem- porarily identify itself with the matter through which it should be working, and may resist the influence of that other portion which has been put down, but is not entangled — that which forms the link with the great mass of the ego on his own plane.
In order to understand this matter fully we must think of that portion of the ego which is awakened on the third sub-plane of the mental (remembering always how small a fraction even that is of the whole) as itself divided into three parts : (a) that which remains on
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its own plane ; (b) that which is put down, but remains unentangled in lower matter; and (c) that which is thoroughly entangled with lower matter and receives vibrations from it. These are arranged in a descending scale, for just as (a) is a very small part of the real ego, so (b) is but a small part of (a), and (c) in turn a small part of (b). The second acts as a link between the first and third ; we may symbolize (a) as the body,
(b) as the arm stretched out, and (c) as the hand which grasps, or perhaps rather the tips of the fingers which are dipped into matter.
We have here a very delicately balanced arrange- ment, which may be affected in various ways. The in- tention is that the hand (c) should grasp firmly and guide the matter with which it is entangled, being fully directed all the time by the body (a) through the arm (b). Under favourable circumstances additional strength, and even additional matter, may be poured from (a) through (6) into (c), so that the control may become more and more perfect, (c) may grow in size as well as strength, and the more it does so the better, so long as the communication through (b) is kept open freely and (a) retains control. For the very entangle- ment of the causal matter which constitutes (c) awak- ens it to a keen activity and an accuracy of response to fine shades of vibration which it could gain in no other way, and this, when transmitted through (b) to (a), means the development of the ego.
Unfortunately the course of events does not always follow the ideal plan of working above indicated. When the control of (a) is feeble, it sometimes happens that
(c) becomes so thoroughly immeshed in lower matter that (as I have said) it actually identifies itself with it, forgets for the time its high estate, and thinks of itself as the whole ego. If the matter be of the lower mental
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plane, we shall then have down here on the physical plane a man who is wholly materialistic. He may be keenly intellectual perhaps, but not spiritual; he may very likely be intolerant of spirituality and quite un- able to comprehend or appreciate it. He may probably call himself practical, matter-of-fact, unsentimental, while in reality he is hard as the nether millstone, and because of that hardness his life is a failure, and he is making no progress.
If the matter in which he is so fatally entangled be astral, he will be (on the physical plane) one who thinks only of his own gratification, who is absolutely ruthless when in pursuit of some object which he strongly desires, a man utterly unprincipled and of brutal selfishness. Such a man lives in his passions, just as the man immeshed in mental matter lives in his mind. Cases such as these have been spoken of in our literature as "lost souls," though not irretrievably lost. Madame Blavatsky says of them :
"There is, however, still hope for a person who has lost his Higher Soul through his vices, while he is yet in the body. He may still be redeemed and made to turn on his material nature. For either an intense feeling of repentance, or one single earnest appeal to the Ego that has fled, or best of all, an active effort to amend one's ways, may bring the Higher Ego back again. The thread of connection is not altogether broken." (Secret Doctrine, iii. 527.)
These are cases in which (c) has asserted itself against (b), and pressed it back towards (a) ; the arm has become attenuated and almost paralyzed, its strength and substance being withdrawn into the body, while the hand has set up for itself, and makes on its own account jerky and spasmodic movements which are not controlled by the brain. If the separation could be-
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come perfect it would correspond to an amputation at the wrist, but this very rarely takes place during phys- ical existence, though only so much of communication remains as is necessary to keep the personality alive.
As Madame Blavatsky says, such a case is not entire- ly hopeless, for even at the last moment fresh life may be poured through that paralyzed arm if a sufficiently strong effort be made, and thus the ego may be enabled to recover some proportion of (c), as he has already recovered most of (b). Nevertheless, such a life has been wasted, for even if the man just contrives to es- cape serious loss, at any rate nothing has been gained, and much time has been frittered away.
It may well be thought incredible that such men as I have described could in any case escape serious loss ; but, fortunately for our possibilities of progress, the laws under which we live are such that to achieve a really serious loss is no easy matter. The reason for that may perhaps be made clear by the following con- siderations.
All the activities that we call evil, whether they are working as selfish thoughts on the mental plane or as selfish emotions on the astral plane, invariably show themselves as vibrations of the coarser matter of those planes, belonging to their lower levels. On the other hand, every good and unselfish thought or emotion sets in vibration some of the higher types of matter on its plane ; and because that finer matter is far more easily moved, any given amount of force spent in good thought or feeling produces perhaps a hundred times as much result as precisely the same amount of force sent out into the coarser matter. If this were not so, it is ob- vious that the ordinary man could never make any progress at all.
We shall probably do the quite undeveloped man of
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the world no injustice if we assume that ninety per cent of his thought and feeling is self-centred, even if not actually selfish; if ten per cent of it is spiritual and unselfish, he must already be rising somewhat above the average. Clearly if these proportions pro- duced corresponding results, the vast majority of hu- manity would take nine steps backwards for every one forwards, and we should have a retrogression so rapid that a few incarnations would deposit us in the animal kingdom out of which we evolved. Happily for us the effect of ten per cent of force directed to good ends enormously outweighs that of ninety per cent devoted to selfish purposes, and so on the whole such a man makes an appreciable advance from life to life. A man who has even one per cent of good to show makes a slight advance, so it will be readily understood that a man whose account balances exactly, so that there is neither advance nor retrogression, must have been liv- ing a distinctly evil life ; while to obtain an actual de- scent in evolution a person must be an unusually con- sistent villain.
Thanks to this beneficent law the world is steadily but slowly evolving, even though we see round us all the while so much that is undesirable ; and even such men as I have described may not after all fall very far. What they have lost is rather time and opportunity than actual position in evolution ; but to lose time and opportunity means always additional suffering.
To see what they have lost and what they have failed to do, let us revert for a moment to the analogy of in- vestment. The ego expects to recover that which he puts out to interest in lower matter — the block that we have called (c) — and he expects it to be improved both in quality and quantity. Its quality is better because it has become much more awake, and capable of instant
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and accurate response to a far more varied gamut of vibrations than before — a capacity which (c) when reabsorbed necessarily communicates to (a), though of course the store of energy which made such a pow- erful wave in (c) creates only a ripple when distributed throughout the substance of (a). (It should be noted here that although the vehicles, containing as they do the grosser as well as the finer types of the matter of their respective planes, can respond to and express evil thoughts and emotions, and although their excitement under such vibrations can produce perturbation in the entangled causal matter (c), it is quite impossible for that matter (c) to reproduce those vibrations or to communicate them to (a) or (b) , simply because mat- ter of the three higher mental levels can no more vibrate at the rate of the lowest plane than the string of a vio- lin tuned to a certain pitch can be made to produce a note lower than that pitch.)
(c) should also be increased in quantity, because the causal body, like all other vehicles, is constantly chang- ing its matter, and when special exercise is given to a certain part of it, that part grows in size and becomes stronger, precisely as a physical muscle does when it is used. Every earth-life is an opportunity carefully cal- culated for such development in quality and quantity as is most needed by the ego ; a failure to use that op- portunity means the trouble and delay of another simi- lar incarnation, its sufferings probably aggravated by the additional bad karma incurred.
Against the increment which the ego has a right to expect from each incarnation we must offset a certain amount of loss which in the earlier stages is scarcely avoidable. In order to be effective the entanglement with lower matter must be very intimate, and it is found that when that is so, it is scarcely ever possible
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to recover every particle, especially from the connection with the astral vehicle. When the time comes for sepa- ration from that it is almost always a shade and not a mere shell that is left behind on the astral plane ; and that very distinction means that something of the cau- sal material is lost. Except in the case of an unusu- ally bad life, however, this amount should be much smaller than that gained by growth, and so there should be on the whole a profit on the transaction. With such men as I have described — men living entirely in their passions or their minds — there would be no gain either in quality or quantity, since the vibrations would not be such as could be stored in the causal body; and on the other hand, as the entanglement had been so strong, there would certainly be considerable loss when the separation took place.
We must not allow the analogy of the arm and hand to mislead us in thinking of (b) and (c) as permanent appanages of the ego. During a life-period they may be considered as separate, but at the end of each life- period they withdraw into (a), and the result of their experience is distributed, as it were, through the whole of its substance ; so that when the time comes for the ego to put part of himself out into incarnation once more, he does not stretch out again the old (b) and (c), for they have been absorbed in him and become part of him, just as a cupful of water emptied into a bucket becomes part of the water in the bucket and cannot be separated from it.
Any coloring matter which was present in the cup is distributed (though in paler tint) through the whole bucketful of water; and that coloring matter may be taken as symbolizing the qualities developed by expe- rience. Just as it would be impossible to take out again from the bucket exactly the same cupful of water, so
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the ego cannot again put out the same (b) and (c). The plan is one to which he was accustomed before he became a separate ego at all, for it is identical with that pursued by the group-soul, except that the latter puts down many tentacles simultaneously, while the ego puts forth only one at a time. Therefore the per- sonality in each new incarnation is a different one, though the ego behind it remains the same.
3. Cases in which the personality captures the part of the ego which is put down, and actually breaks away are happily excessively rare, but they have happened, and they represent the most appalling catastrophe that can occur to the ego concerned. This time (c), instead of repelling (b) and driving it gradually back into (a), by degrees absorbs (b) and detaches it from (a). This can only be accomplished by determined persistence in deliberate evil — black magic, in short. Reverting to our former analogies, this is equivalent to amputation at the shoulder, or to the loss by the ego of nearly all his available capital. Fortunately for him he cannot lose everything, because (b) and (c) . together are only a small proportion of (a) , and behind (a) is the great undeveloped portion of the ego on the first and second mental sub-planes. Mercifully a man, however incredibly foolish or wicked, cannot completely wreck himself, for he cannot bring that higher part of the causal body into activity until he has reached a level at which such evil is unthinkable.
Now that the central point of our immersion in mat- ter is passed, the whole force of the universe is press- ing upwards towards unity, and the man who is willing to make all his life an intelligent co-operation with na- ture gains as part of his reward an ever-increasing perception of the reality of this unity. But on the other hand it is obvious that men may set themselves in op-
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position to nature and, instead of working unselfishly for the good of all, may debase every faculty they pos- sess for purely selfish ends ; and of them also, as of the others, the old saying is true, "Verily I say unto you, they have their reward." They spend their lives in striving for separateness, and for a long time they at- tain it, and it is said that that sensation of being utter- ly alone in space is the most awful fate that can ever befall the sons of men.
This extraordinary development of selfishness is the characteristic of the black magician, and it is among their ranks only that men can be found who are in dan- ger of this terrible fate. Many and loathsome are their varieties, but they may all be classed in one or other of two great divisions. They both use such occult arts as they possess for purely selfish purposes, but these purposes differ.
In the commoner and less formidable type the object pursued is the gratification of sensual desire of some sort, and naturally the result of a life devoted to noth- ing but that is to centre the man's energy in the desire- body ; so that if the man who works on these lines has succeeded in killing out from himself every unselfish or affectionate feeling, every spark of higher impulse, naturally nothing is left but a remorseless, ruthless monster of lust, who finds himself after death neither able nor desirous to rise above the lowest sub-division of the astral plane. The whole of such mind as he has is absolutely in the grip of desire, and when the strug- gle takes place the ego can recover none of it, and finds himself seriously weakened in consequence.
By his carelessness in permitting this he has for the time cut himself off from the current of evolution, from the mighty wave of the life of the Logos, and so, until he can return to incarnation, he stands (what appears
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to him to be) outside that life in the condition of avichi, the waveless. Even when he does return to incarna- tion it cannot be among those whom he has known be- fore, for he has not enough available capital left to provide ensoulment for a mind and body at his previous level. He must now be content to occupy vehicles of a far less evolved type, belonging to some earlier race; so that he has thrown himself far back in evolution and must climb over again many rungs of the ladder.
He will probably be born as a savage, but will most likely be a chief among them, as he will still have some intellect. It has been said that he may even throw him- self so far back that he may be unable to find upon the world in its present condition any type of human body low enough for the manifestation which he now re- quires, so that he may even be incapacitated from tak- ing any further part in this scheme of evolution, and may therefore have to wait in a kind of condition of suspended animation for the commencement of an- other.
Meanwhile what of the amputated personality? It is no longer a permanent evolving entity, but it remains full of vigorous and wholly evil life, entirely without remorse or responsibility. As the fate before it is dis- integration amidst the unpleasant surroundings of what is called the "eighth sphere," it naturally tries to maintain some sort of existence on the physical plane as long as possible. Vampirism of some kind is its sole means of prolonging its baneful existence, and when that fails it has been known to seize upon any available body, driving out the lawful owner. The body chosen might very probably be that of a child, both because it might be expected to last longer and because an ego which had not yet really taken hold could be more easily dispossessed. In spite of its frenzied efforts its power
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seems soon to fail, and I believe there is no instance on record of its successfully stealing a second body after its first theft is worn out. The creature is a demon of the most terrible type — a monster for which there is no permanent place in the scheme of evolution to which we belong.
Its natural tendency therefore is to drift out of this evolution, and to be drawn by the irresistible force of law into that astral cesspool which in earlier Theosoph- ical writings was called the eighth sphere, because what passes into it stands outside the ring of seven worlds, and cannot return into their evolution. There, sur- rounded by loathsome relics of all of the concentrated vileness of the ages that are past, burning ever with de- sire, yet without possibility of satisfaction, this mon- strosity slowly decays, its mental and causal matter be- ing thus at last set free — never indeed to rejoin the ego from which it has torn itself, but to be distributed among the other matter of the plane to enter gradually into fresh combinations, and so put to better uses. It is consoling to know that such entities are so rare as to be practically unknown, and that they have the power to seize only those who have in their nature pronounced defects of kindred type.
But there is another type of the black magician, in outward appearance more respectable, yet really even more dangerous, because more powerful. This is the man who instead of giving himself up altogether to sensuality of one kind or another, sets before himself the goal of a more refined but not less unscrupulous selfishness. His object is the acquisition of an occult power higher and wider indeed, but to be used always for his own gratification and advancement, to further his own ambition or satisfy his own revenge.
In order to gain this he adopts the most rigid asceti-
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cism as regards mere fleshly desires, and starves out the grosser particles of his astral body as perseveringly as does the pupil of the Great White Brotherhood. But though it is only a less material kind of desire with which he will allow his mind to become entangled, the centre of his energy is none the less entirely in his per- sonality, and when at the end of the astral life the time of the separation comes, the ego is able to recover no whit of his investment. For the man therefore the re- sult is much the same as in the former case, except that he will remain in touch with the personality much long- er, and will to some extent share its experiences so far as it is possible for an ego to share them.
The fate of that personality, however, is very differ- ent. The comparatively tenuous astral integument is not strong enough to hold it for any length of time on the astral plane, and yet it has entirely lost touch with the heaven-world which should have been its habitat. For the whole effort of the man's life has been to kill out such thoughts as naturally find their result at that level. His one endeavour has been to oppose natural evolution, to separate himself from the great whole and to war against it; and as far as the personality goes he has succeeded. It is cut off from the light and life of the solar system ; all that is left to it is the sense of ab- solute isolation, of being alone in the universe.
We see therefore that in this rarer case the lost per- sonality practically shares the fate of the ego from which it is in process of detaching itself. But in the case of the ego such an experience is only temporary, although it may last for what we should call a very long time, and the end of it for him will be reincarnation and a fresh opportunity. For the personality however the end of it is disintegration — the invariable end of that which has cut itself off from its source; but through
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what stages of horror the lost personality passes before that is reached, who shall say? Yet be it remembered that neither of these states is eternal — that neither of them can in any case be reached except by deliberate life-long persistence in evil.
I have heard from our President of yet another even more remote possibility, of which I have never myself seen an instance. It is stated that, just as (c) may ab- sorb (b) and revolt against (a), set up on its own ac- count and break away, it is (or at any rate has been in the past) just within the limits of practicability that the deadly disease of separateness and selfishness may infest (a) also, that it too may be absorbed into the monstrous growth of evil, and may be torn away from the undeveloped portion of the ego, so that the causal body itself may be hardened and carried away, instead of only the personality.
If this be so, it constitutes yet a fourth group, and would correspond not to an amputation, but to an en- tire destruction of the body. Such an ego could not reincarnate in the human race ; ego though it be, it will fall into the depths of animal life, and would need at least a whole chain-period to regain the status which it had lost. But this, though theoretically possible, is practically scarcely conceivable. Yet it will be noted that even then the undeveloped part of the ego remains as the vehicle of the monad.
We learn then that millions of backward egos, un- able as yet to bear the strain of the higher evolution, will fall out in the middle of the fifth round and come along on the crest of the following wave ; that those who live selfishly, whether in the intellect or the passions, do so at their own proper peril, and at the serious risk of much sorrow and loss ; that those who are so fool- ish as to dabble in black magic may bring upon them-
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selves horrors before which imagination shrinks ap- palled ; but that the term "lost soul" is, after all, a mis- nomer, since every man is a spark of the divine fire, and therefore can never under any circumstances be lost or extinguished. The will of the Logos is man's evolution. In our blindness we may for a time resist Him, but to Him time is naught, and if we cannot see to-day He waits patiently till to-morrow, but always in the end His will is done.
The Focus of Consciousness
The consciousness in man can only be focussed in one vehicle at a time, though he may be simultaneously con- scious through the others in a vaguer way. If you will hold up a finger in front of your face you will find that you can so focus your eyes as to see the finger perfectly. At the same time you will see the wall and furniture be- hind the finger, but not perfectly, because they are out of focus. In a moment you can change the focus of your eyes, so that you will see the wall and the furniture perfectly ; in that case you will still see the finger, but will see it only dimly, because it in turn is now out of focus.
Precisely in the same way if a man who has developed astral and mental consciousness focusses himself in the physical brain as in ordinary life, he will see perfectly the physical bodies of his friends, and will at the same time see their astral and mental bodies, but only some- what dimly. In far less than a moment he can change that focus so that he will see the astral quite fully and perfectly. In that case he will still see the mental and physical bodies, but not in full detail. The same thing
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is true of the mental sight and of the sight of higher planes.
You ask how it is possible for an entity functioning on the astral plane to be aware of a physical accident or to hear a physical cry. It would not be the physical cry that he would hear ; physical sounds assuredly pro- duce an effect upon the astral plane, though I do not think that we should be quite correct in calling that re- sult sound. Any cry which had in it strong feeling or emotion would produce a strong effect upon the astral plane, and would convey exactly the same idea there as here. In the case of an accident the rush of emotion caused by the pain or the fright would flame out like a great light, and could not fail to attract the attention of a seer if he were anywhere near. A case in which this very thing occurred is related in Invisible Helpers — a case in which a boy fell over a cliff ; and was supported and comforted by Cyril until physical help could be brought.
Force-Centres
In each of our vehicles there are certain force-centres which in Sanskrit are called chakrams — a word which signifies a wheel or revolving disc. These are points of connection at which force flows from one vehicle to an- other. They may easily be seen in the etheric double, where they show themselves as saucer-like depressions or vortices in its surface. They are often spoken of as corresponding to certain physical organs ; but it must be remembered that the etheric force-centre is not in the interior of the body, but on the surface of the etheric double, which projects a quarter of an inch be- yond the outline of the denser matter.
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The centres which are usually employed in occult de- velopment are seven, and they are situated in the fol- lowing parts of the body: (1) the base of the spine; (2) the navel; (3) the spleen; (4) the heart; (5) the throat; (6) the space between the eyebrows; and (7) the top of the head. There are other force-centres in the body besides these, but they are not employed by students of the white magic. It may be remembered that Madame Blavatsky speaks of three others which she calls the lower centres : there are schools which use these, but the dangers connected with them are so se- rious that we should consider their awakening as the greatest of misfortunes.
These seven are often described as corresponding to the seven colors and to the notes of the musical scale ; and in the Indian books certain letters of the alphabet and certain forms of vitality are mentioned as attached to each of them. They are also poetically described as resembling flowers, and to each of them a certain num- ber of petals is assigned.
It must be remembered that they are vortices of etheric matter, and that they are all in rapid rotation. Into each of these open mouths, at right angles to the plane of the whirling disc or saucer, rushes a force from the astral world (which we will call the primary force) — one of the forces of the Logos. That force is seven-fold in its nature, and all its forme operate in all the centres, though in each of them one of the forms is always greatly predominant.
This inrush of force brings the divine life into the physical body, and without it that body could not exist. These centres through which the force can enter are therefore actually necessary to the existence of the ve- hicle, and so are in operation in every one, but they may be whirling with very different degrees of activity.
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Their particles may be in comparatively sluggish mo- tion, just forming the necessary vortex for the force and no more, or they may be glowing and pulsating with living light so that an enormously greater amount of force passes through them, with the result that va- rious additional faculties and possibilities are opened to the ego as he functions on that plane.
Now those forces which rush into the centre from without set up at right angles to themselves (that is to say, in the surface of the etheric double) secondary forces in undulatory circular motion, just as a bar- magnet thrust into an induction coil produces a current of electricity which flows round the coil at right angles to the axis or direction of the magnet. The primary force itself having entered the vortex, radiates from it again at right angles, but in straight lines, as though the centre of the vortex were the hub of a wheel, and the radiations of the primary force its spokes. The number of these "spokes" differs in the different force- centres, and determines the number of "petals" which each of them exhibits.
Each of these secondary forces, which sweep round the saucer-like depression, has its own characteristic wave-length, just as has light of a certain colour; but instead of moving in a straight line as light does, it moves along in certain relatively large undulations of various sizes, each of which is some multiple of the smaller wave-lengths within it, though the exact pro- portions have not as yet been calculated. The number of undulations is determined by the number of spokes in the wheel, and the secondary force weaves itself under and over the radiating currents of the primary just as basket-work might be woven round the spokes of a carriage-wheel. The wave-lengths are infini- tesimal, and probably some thousands of them are in-
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eluded within one of the undulations. As the forces rush round in the vortex, these undulations of different sizes, crossing one another in this basket-work pattern, produce an appearance which is not inaptly described in the Hindu books as resembling the petals of a flower ; or it is still more like certain saucers or shallow vases of wavy iridescent glass which I have seen in Venice. All of these undulations or petals have that shimmering iridescent effect, like mother-of-pearl, yet each of them has usually its own predominant color.
In the ordinary men, in whom these centres are just active enough to be channels for sufficient force to keep his body alive, these colors glow with a comparatively dull light ; but in those in whom the centres have been aroused and are in full activity they are of blinding brilliancy, and the centres themselves, which have gradually grown from a diameter of about two inches to the size of an ordinary saucer, are blazing and co- ruscating like miniature suns.
The first centre, at the base of the spine, has a pri- mary force which radiates out in four spokes, and there- fore arranges its undulations so as to give the effect of its being divided into quadrants, with hollows between them. This makes it seem as though marked with the sign of the cross, and for that reason the cross is often used to symbolize this centre, and sometimes a flaming cross is taken to indicate the serpent-fire which resides in it. When aroused into full activity this centre is fiery orange-red in color, corresponding closely with the type of vitality which is sent down to it from the splenic centre. Indeed, it will be noticed that in the case of every one of these centres a similar correspond- ence with the color of its vitality may be seen.
The second centre, at the navel or solar plexus, re- ceives a primary force with ten radiations, so it vi-
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brates in such a manner as to divide itself into ten undulations or petals. It is very closely associated with feelings and emotions of various kinds. Its predominant color is a curious blending of various shades of red, though there is also a great deal of green in it.
The third centre, at the spleen, is devoted to the spe- cialization, subdivision and dispersion of the vitality which comes to us from the sun. That vitality is poured out again from it in six horizontal streams, the seventh variety being drawn into the hub of the wheel. This centre therefore has six petals or undulations, and is specially radiant, glowing and sun-like.
The fourth centre, at the heart, is also of a glowing golden color, and each of its quadrants is divided into three parts, which gives it twelve undulations, because its primary force makes for it twelve spokes.
The fifth centre, at the throat, has sixteen spokes, and therefore sixteen apparent divisions. There is a good deal of blue in it, but its general effect is silvery and gleaming, with a kind of suggestion as of moon- light upon rippling water.
The sixth centre, between the eyebrows, has the ap- pearance of being divided into halves, the one pre- dominantly rose-colored, though with a great deal of yellow about it, and the other predominantly a kind of purplish-blue, again closely agreeing with the colors of the special types of vitality that vivify it. Perhaps it is for this reason that this centre is mentioned in Indian books as having only two petals, though if we are to count undulations of the same character as those of the previous centres we shall find that each half is subdivided into forty-eight of these, making ninety- six in all, because its primary force has that number of radiations.
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The seventh, the centre at the top of the head, is when stirred into full activity perhaps the most re- splendent of all, full of indescribable chromatic effects and vibrating with almost inconceivable rapidity. It is described in Indian books as thousand-petalled, and really this is not very far from the truth, the number of the radiations of its primary force in the outer cir- cle being nine hundred and sixty. In addition to this it has a feature which is possessed by none of the other centres — a sort of subsidiary whirlpool of gleaming white flushed with gold in its heart — a minor activity which has twelve undulations of its own.
I have heard it suggested that each of the different petals of these force-centres represents a moral qual- ity, and that the development of that quality brings the centre into activity, I have not yet met with any facts which confirm this, nor am I able to see exactly how it can be, because the appearance is produced by certain quite definite and easily recognizable forces, and the petals in any particular centre are either active or not active according as these forces have or have not been aroused, and their development seems to me to have no more connection with morality than has the development of the biceps. I have certainly met with persons in whom some of the centres were in full activ- ity, though the moral development was by no means ex- ceptionally high, whereas in other persons of high spirituality and the noblest possible morality the cen- tres were not yet vitalized at all, so that there does not seem to me to be any connection between the two de- velopments.
Besides the keeping alive of the physical vehicle, these force-centres have another function, which comes into play only when they are awakened into full activ- ity. Each of these etheric centres corresponds to an
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astral centre though as the astral centre is a vortex in four dimensions it has an extension in a direction quite different from the etheric, and consequently is by no means always co-terminous with it, though some