Section 3

* Kuvera. the keeper of the treasures of the Earth, lord of the Earth, called the Egg of Jewels, Ratnagarbha.
* Antaka the " Ender." a title of Yama, the ' Restrainer," tt- ' - -- I ■ • . -:- .. - ,j tells us that Yama " .e first that departed
tt.;... _. - ^iys :" He it was who
found out the way to the home whicb cannot be taken away
' Those who are now born (followi by their own paths 10 the place whither our ancient fathers have departed ' " This, in the more direct tradition of the \'edas, is a glyph of the Third Race that brought
" . . . . death into the world And all oar woe. with loss of Eden "
THE WORLD-SOUL. 29
presidest over the world, with various energies addressed to various purposes. Thou, identical with the solar ray, Greatest the universe; all elementary substance is composed of Thy qualities ; and Thy supreme form is denoted by the imperishable term Sat. ... To Him who is one with True Knowledge ; who is, and is not, perceptible (sat and asat, ' real ' and 'unreal'), I bow. Glory be to Him, the Lord Vasudeva !"
The same strain of adoration is still further emphasized in the hymn of the Yogins when Vishnu, in the Boar Incarnation, or Varaha Avatara, raised the Earth out of the Waters (Ibid., i. 63) :
" Thou art, O God, there is no supreme condition but Thou."
Or again, as the God Brahma prays to the Supreme Hari (Vishnu) {Ibid., i. 139) :
" We glorify Him, Who is all things ; the
But Yama, in the later traditions Pitripati and PretarAja, the " Lord of the Manes" and " King of the Ghosts," was also Dharmaraja, "King of Justice," our Sch^es who judge ourselves, in the clear Alcashic Light, while Chitragupta (the " Hidden Painting or Writing "). the Scribe of Yama, reads the imprint of our virtues and our vices from the Agra-, sandhani or "Great Record," the Tablets of the Imperishable Memory of the Astral Light. Yama is represented as of a green colour, clothed with red.
30 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Lord supreme over all ; unborn, imperishable ; the protector of the mighty ones of creation, the unperceived/ indivisible Naraj-ana ; the smallest of the small, the largest of the largest Elements ; in Whom are all things ; from Whom are all things ; ^^^ho was before exis- tence ; the God Who is all beings ; Who is the end of ultimate objects ; Who is beyond final Spirit, and is one with Supreme Soul ; Who is contemplated, as the cause of final liberation, by sages anxious to be free."
As the Avatara Krishna, He is hymned of by Indra after his defeat by Him. (Ibid., v. 103.)
" Who is able to overcome the unborn, un- constituted Lord, Who has willed to become a mortal, for the good of the world ?"
And when Krishna is nailed by the arrow to the tree, and the Kali Yuga begins, this is how Arjuna, his beloved companion, laments the departure'^of the ^Christ-Spirit, of That which " unites Entity to Non-entity." {Ibid., v. 161, 162.)
" Hari, Who was our strength, our might.
1 Aprakasha : Fitzedward Hall tells us that the commen- tator explains this to mean " self-illuminated."
THE WORLD-SOUL. 31
our heroism, our prowess, our prosperity, our brightness, has left us, and departed. Deprived of him, our friend, ilkistrious, and ever kindly speaking, we have become as feeble as if made of straw. Purushottama, who was the living vigour of my weapons, my arrows, and my bow, is gone. As long as we looked upon Him, fortune, fame, wealth, dignity never abandoned us. But Govinda is gone from among us. . . . Not I alone, but Earth, has grown old, miser- able and lustreless, in His absence. Krishna . . . . is gone !"
Let us next pass to China and the Far East. Lao-tze, perhaps the greatest of the Chinese masters, teaches as follows, in his sublime work the Tao-teh-king, or "The Book of the Perfection of Nature " {A Study on the Popular Religion of the Chinese, by J. J. M. de Groot : translated from the Dutch in Les Annales du Musee Guimct, ii. 692 etseq.):
"There was a time when Heaven and Earth did not exist, but only an unlimited Space in which reigned absolute immobility. All the visible things and all that which possess existence, were born in that Space from a powerful principle, which existed by Itself, and
32 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
from Itself developed Itself, and which made the heavens revolve and preserved the universal life ; a principle as to which philosophy declares we know not the name, and which for that reason it designates by the simple appellation Tao, which we may nearly describe as the Universal Soul of Nature, the Universal Energy of Nature, or simply as Nature."
And in speaking of the mysterious Tao, the That which cannot be translated, the nameless principle, we may with advantage quote from an essay by a sympathetic scholar, who writes as follows {Taoism, an essay by Frederic H. Balfour, in Religious Systems of the World, p. yy):
" We are told that it has existed from all eternity. Chuang-tze, the ablest writer of the Taoist school, says that there never was a time when it was not. Lao-tze, the reputed founder of Taoism, affirms that the image of it existed before God Himself. It is all pervasive ; there is no place where it is not found. It fills the Uni\-erse with its grandeur and sublimity ; }-et it is so subtle that it exists in all its plenitude in the tip of a thread of gossamer. It causes the sun and moon to revolve in their appointed orbits, and gives life to the most microscopic
THE WORLD-SOUL. 3^
insect. Formless, it is the source of every form we see ; inaudible, it is the source of every sound we hear ; invisible, it is that which lies behind every external object in the world; in- active, it yet produces, sustains and vivifies every phenomenon which exists in all the spheres of being. It is impartial, impersonal, and passionless ; working out its ends with the remorselessness of Fate, yet abounding in beneficence to all."
And later on he quotes as follows from Chuang-tze :
" There was a time when all things had a beginning. The time when there was yet no beginning had a beginning itself. There was a beginning to the time when the time that had no beginning had not begun. There is existence and there is also non-existence. In the time which had no beginning there existed Nothing. . . . When the time which had no beginning had not yet begun, then there also existed Nothing. Suddenly, there was Nothing ; but it cannot be known, respecting existence and non-existence, what was certainly existing and what was not."
I have given the above as a specimen of
c
34 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
subtle metaphysical speculation, and also as an example to show the utter inadequacy of words to express ideas. The mind loses itself in en- deavouring to transcend itself, even to the extent of appearing entirely incomprehensible to those who have not seriously approached the contemplation of that supreme intuition of humanity, the essential Unity of all things.
But no one should think that this No-thing is an empty abstraction and mere negation; it transcends our iinite concepts, but is no less the One Reality because of that. It is the right perception of these great problems that inspires such noble concepts of existence and calm contemplation of " death " as those expressed in the words of Lieh-tze :
" Death is to life as going away is to coming. How can we know that to die here is not to be born elsewhere ? How can we tell whether, in their eager rush for life, men are not under a delusion ? How can I tell whether, if I die to- day, my lot may not prove far preferable to what I was when I was originally born ? . . . . Ah ! men know the dreadfulness of death ; but they do not know its rest. . . . How ex- cellent is it, that from all antiquity Death has
THE WORLD-SOUL. 35
been the common lot of men ! It is repose for the good man, and a hiding-away of the bad. Death is just a going home again. The dead are those who have gone home, while we, who are living, are still wanderers." {Op. cit., p. 8i.)
Aye; death is indeed a "going home," but a " going home " that need not be delayed until the body dies. Some theosophists have heard of those who "go home" when they have " died " to their lower natures; and then they know the real nature of this illusory existence, although, as the Rishi Narada reported, it was very pleasant for those "who had forgotten their birth-place." The Soul of Humanity, the World-Soul, weeps for her children, who forget their Mother and, "prodigal sons" that they are, fill their bellies with husks of the swine.
Continuing our depredations from the shelves of the world-library, we pass to ancient Persia or whatever country gave to the world the wisdom of the old Avesta. Written in a language hardl}' yet plainly decipherable, it may well be approached to the Vedas in antiquity, and its language be referred to one of the first branch- lets of the mother of Sanskrit.
In the Avesta of the Parsis, Zarvana Akarna,
36 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
" Time without Bounds," is the ineffable All ; in this arises Ahura Mazda, the World-Soul, whose names are many. He is The Being and the One Existence; the One, Who was, Who is and Who shall always be. He is Pure Spirit and the Spirit of Spirits ; Omniscient and Omnipotent, the Supreme Sovereign. He is beneficent, benevolent, and merciful to all. In the Dinkard (ii. 8i), He is described as :
" Supreme sovereign, wise creator, supporter, protector, giver of good things, virtuous in actions and merciful."
Let us now see what the Kabalah has to teach us, and mark the difference of its great large spirit from the glorification of the "jealous God," the "God of armies," to whom so-called Christian nations pray to bless their respective arms in fratricidal wars. To-day sees Christian Europe armed to the teeth in honour of Jehovah, while the "Father" of Jesus, the "God of Love " is set on one side and forgotten.
Solomon ben Yehudah Ibn Gebirol, of Cordova, the greatest of the mediaeval kabalistic adepts, thus sings of the World-Soul, or the Supreme Principle, in one of his philosophical
THE WORLD-SOUL. 37
Hymns, called "The Kether Malkuth," or " Crown of the Kingdom."
"Thou art God, Who supports, by Thy Divinity, all the things formed, and sustains all the existences by Thy Unity. Thou art God, and there is not any distinction established between Thy Divinity, Thy Unity, Thy Eternity, and Thy Existence ; because all is only one mystery, and, although the names may be distinct, all have only one meaning. Thou art Wise, Wisdom which is the fountain of life, floweth from Thee, and compared with Thy Wisdom, all the knowledge of mankind is foolishness. Thou art Wise, being from all eternity, and Wisdom was always nourished by Thee. Thou art Wise, and Thou hast not ac- quired Thy Wisdom from another than Thy- self. Thou art Wise, and from Thy Wisdom Thou hast made a determining Will, as the workman or artist does, to draw the Existence from the No-Thing, as the light which goes out of the eye extends itself. Thou didst draw from the Source of Light without the impression of any seal, that is, form, and Thou madest all withoutanyinstrument." {My er'sQabbalah, p. 3.)
See how differently the mind of this learned
38 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Jew regarded the "creation" of the Universe from the absurdity of the dead-letter dogma of "creation out of nothing." Just as the artist fashions the pot out of the clay, so does the Deity, out of its Wisdom which is Itself, emanate or evolve a determining Will to draw the " Existence" from the "No-Thing," the poten- tiality of that same Wisdom, for it is No-Thing in that it transcends all and ever}' thing we can think of, that is to say, the highest conceptions of human thought. But It is no more " Nothing" than is Deity the " Unconscious." The No-Thing is not " nothing," the Non- conscious is not "unconscious," but both are attributes expressive of our ignorance, while asserting that That transcends all things and all consciousness.
So that we should do well to bear in mind the wise words of the Zohar and appl}- the in- junction contained therein to the words of the Hymn of the master of the Kabalah we have just cited, being well assured that he would have permitted none of his pupils to take the words of his instruction for the real mystery itself. Says the Zohar (III. fol. 1526; in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 102) :
THE WORLD-SOUL. 39
" Woe to the man who sees in the Thorah (Law) only simple recitals and ordinary words. . . . Each word of the Thorah contains an elevated meaning and a sublime mystery. The recitals of the Thorah are the vestments of the Thorah. Woe to him who takes this garment for the Thorah itself."
Or, again, as Origen, perhaps the most philosophical of all the Church Fathers, writes :
" Where can we find a mind so foolish as to suppose that God acted like a common hus- bandman, and planted a paradise in (the Garden of) Eden, towards the East ; and placed in it a Tree of Life visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life ? And, again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree ? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally." (Origen's Works, Clark's Ed., cited, 315 et seq., Bk. iv. c. 2.)
But then Origen was once the disciple of
40 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Pantsenus, after the latter's return from India, who was also the teacher of Clement.
Yet one more citation from the Zohar, before we leave the Kabalah, in order to vindicate the writers of that famous collection of books called the Bible, which is almost universally mis- understood.
"The Ancient of the Ancients, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, }-et also has not any form. It has a form through which the Universe is maintained. It also has not any form as It cannot be comprehended." {Zohar, " Idra Zuta," iii. 288a ; Myer, ibid., p. 274.)
Passing from Chaldsea and Judaea to Egypt and its hoary wisdom, this is what M. Gaston Maspero, the learned French Egyp- tologist, in his Hisioire d'Orioit, writes con- cerning the ideas of the Egyptians on the Soul of the World :
" In the beginning was the Noon, the Primordial Ocean, in the infinite depths of which floated the germs of all things. From all eternity God generated Himself and gave birth to Himself in the bosom of this liquid mass, as yet without form and without use. This God of the Egyptians, One Being only,
THE WORLD-SOUL. 41
perfect, endowed with knowledge and un- fallacious intelligence, incomprehensible in so far as no one can say in what He is in- comprehensible. He is the One Only One, He Who exists essentially. Who alone lives in substance, the sole generator in the Heaven and on the Earth Who is not generated, the Father of Fathers, the Mother of Mothers." (Quoted by M. E. Amehneau in his Essai siir le Gnosticisme Egyptien, in the series of Les Annales du Mnsee Giiimet, Tom. xiv. 282.)
The Supreme God of the Mysteries whom the Greeks named Ammon, the Egyptians called Amen. As M. E. de Rouge says {Melanges d' Archeologie, p. 72): "The name Amen means ' hidden,' ' enveloped,' and by extension ' mystery.' .... This God then was called Amen because He represented all that was most secret in Divinity." In a Hymn to Ammon Ra, speaking of the name Amen, it is said (Grebaut, Hymne a Amnion Ra) : " Mysterious is his name even more than his births." And, in the invocations, which M. Na^•ille has collected under the title of Litanie du Soleil, the same God is called "Lord of the hidden spheres," the " Mysterious One,"
42 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
the " Hidden." (Amelineau, op. cit., p. 285.)
Here also must be appended a magnificent Hymn to the Sun, the symbol of the World- Soul, in which we can see peeping through the mysticism of both the initiatory Psalms of the Old Testament and certain concepts in the New. Thus it runs :
" The Princes of Heaven all daily behold the glory of the King's Crown, upon the head of Thee, the Mighty Prince, which is the Crown of Power, which is the Crown of the Endurance of Thy Government, an Image of Th}' might.
'• Songs of praise to the Creator of Egypt, and of the Shining Bark of the Lord (the Sun). Make those to fear, who hate Thee, make Thine enemies to blush, Lord and Prince of the very shining Star-house ; Thou Who hast joined together Thy plantation, Thou Who seest the Murderer of Thy Child of Man, the Righteous. Let me go to Thee ; unite me with Thee ; let me look upon Thy Sunlight, King of the Universe !