Section 6

This is the key-note of the Aryan religion, and every Upanishad persistently reiterates it. As H. P. Blavatsky, but for whose teaching these essays would not have been written, says in that inexhaustable store-house of instruction, and information. The Secret Doctrine (i. 330) :
" Not till the Unit is merged in the All, whether on this or any other plane, and Subject
THE WORLD-SOUL. ^l
and Object alike vanish in the absolute negation of the Nirvanic State (negation, only from our plane), not until then is scaled that peak of Omniscience — the knowledge of things-in-them- selves ; and the solution of the yet more awful riddle approached, before which even the highest Dhyan Chohan must bow in silence and ignorance — the unspeakable mystery of That which is called by the Vedantins, Parabrahman."
Of course this may be denied by the theist, but remember that definition, even of the most metaphysical character, will land the definer in the most preposterous contradictions. The reader may also object: what does Madame Blavatsky know of the highest Dhyan Chohan (Spiritual Existence) ? To which, if I may venture to say so, her reply would be, as it has been to many another question : " Thus have I heard." In other words, the teaching is that of those whom H. P. Blavatsky knew had knowledge. But that is not all ; for the explan- ations contained in The Secret Doctrine were never meant to rest on mere assertion, and the statement above quoted finds its support in all the great world-religions, as may be amply seen
74 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
even from the few quotations adduced in this article.
I have also, it will be remarked, avoided any selections from the heterogeneous Scriptures which are now called the Old Testament, pre- ferring to give citations from the Kabalah. Perhaps also some readers may be surprised that I have also refrained from giving the prayer of Christendom from the New Testament, commonly known as the " Lord's Prayer." But my reason for this is that it was not a Christian prayer originally, but a Jewish one, and that even James, the "brother of the Lord," gives a teaching directly opposed to one of its principal clauses. This prayer is found almost verbatim in the Jewish Kadish, and runs as follows :
"Our Father, which art in heaven, be gracious to us, O Lord our God ; hallowed be Thy name ; and let the remembrance of Thee be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth here below. Let Thy kingdom reign over us, now and for ever. Thy holy men of old said : * Remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever they have done against me.' And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil
THE WORLD-SOUL. 75
thin^. For Thine is the Kingdom, and Thou shalt reign in glory, for ever and for ever more.^
Moreover if James is any authority, we find ourselves placed on the horns of a theological dilemma, for he says :
" Let no one, when he is tempted, say 'I am tempted of the Deity': for the Deity cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man."^
A teaching more in harmony with the direc- tion to " enter into tliy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door pray to thy Father in secret.''
(Matthew vi. 6, tw irarpi aov tw ev rw KpvTrrM.)
This does not mean that being in a physical closet, the prayer is thus "in secret." But that this prayer, or contemplation, is to be made to, or on, the " Father in Secret," within the " chamber of the heart," as the Greek text proves beyond any question.
And now, in closing, let me again say that I
1 Gerald Massey, The Natural Genesis, ii. 469. Version from A Critical Examination of the Gospel History, p. log. Of. Basnage, Hist, desjnifs, p. 374.
-James, i. 13. The words used for tempted, etc., are all from the verb irei.pa.^op.aL, and are identical with the word used in the prayer as found in the texts of Matthew [vi. 13) and Luke (xi. 4), viz., w€ipaa/J.6i.
76 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
think that both the behevers in a Personal God and those who refuse to give any attribute to Deity may find some common ground of agreement in the concept of the World-Soul. Of course, it is only to the broad-minded that any appeal is made.
In our days unorthodoxy is no longer a term of reproach ; it has now securely saddled re- proach on the back of orthodoxy. And for this desirable state of affairs we owe many thanks to fearless free thought, to the unwinking scrutiny of scientific observation, and the logic of scien- tific methods. But the pendulum begins to swing to the extreme, and it is time to protest against freedom developing into licence, and the newly-fashioned idols of orthodox science being substituted for the crumbling idols of orthodox religion. Religious thinkers are be- ginning to broaden in every direction, and though Churchmen still hold persistently to the term " Personal " God, which owes its genesis to an ignorant blunder, they will, under pressure, so sublimate the concept that it is easy to perceive that the words have no longer for them their just meaning, and that for some reason best known to themselves, or for some
THE WORLD-SOUL,
17
undefined fear, or conservative policy, they prefer to call white black. The thcist con- tends that men must have something to lean on, and that to take away the personality of Deity would be to destroy the hope of the Christian world. But why so ? Is there not a Christ in every man to lean upon ? Nay, is not the Christ the very Man himself, if he would but know Himself? What more is requisite ?
But the orthodox world has so long been reciting invocations to Jehovah that they have forgotten the teachings of their Founder who spoke of the " Father in Secret " — no new teaching, as the above quotations amply prove, but a repetition of the old, old mystery. And yet the more advanced Christians are almost invariably ashamed of Jehovah and do not care to have his exploits referred to. They try to explain it by airily referring to a partial revela- tion to the Jews, preluding a full revelation to themselves. If you refer to the injustice of leaving other world-religions out in the cold, they generally maintain a freezing silence and regard you henceforward as a dangerous dis- turber of the public morals. Or they will talk of monotheism and polytheism, and beg the
78 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
question by assuming that Judaism, in its present dead-letter orthodox garb, is mono- theism, whereas in reahty it should rather be called monolatry.
No doubt some who read this and call them- selves Christians, will see here an additional reason for condemning theosophical writers as anti-Christian, and in disgust will inform their friends that theosophy is an enemy of Christ and a child of that interesting creation of the human brain which is called the Devil. And perhaps they are partially right from their own point of view, for it certainly is destructive of their dogmas and superstitions ; but whether such dogmas and superstitions were taught by the Christ is another question.
But equally so is theosophy destructive of dogmas and superstitions in Brahmanism, or Buddhism, or Taoism, or Mohammedanism, and so to the bigoted externahst of each of these religions it must be anti-Brahmanical, anti- Buddhistic, and so on. Whereas the theoso- phist claims that he is not really an enemy of any religion, but, on the contrary, as true a believer as any of such religionists.
In such a pitiable state of affairs, our task
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should be to bring once more to the sight of men the old ideals of humanity, trusting that the memory of the past may come back once more, and that all men, without distinction of race, caste, creed or sex, ma}^ recognize a common possession in them. And may they weld us together in those bonds of harmony and brotherhood which have only been loosed by licence, but which freedom will once more place on our willing hands !
Vasdiisi jh-iiaiii yathd vilidya Navani ffrihnati naro 'pardiii Tatha shartrdni vihdya jiriuiny- Aiiydni sanydti navdiii dehi.
As a man casting off worn-out garments takes other new ones, so the lord of the body casting off worn-out bodies enters other new ones. —
Bhagavad GtxA, ii. 22.
8i
THE VESTURES OF THE SOUL.
Handbooks and pamphlets on theosophy — as sketched in the system of the Esoteric Philosophy that has been so prominently brought forward by H. P. Blavatsky — are to- day so numerous, that almost all my readers must be aware of what have been called the seven "principles" of man. That is to say, that man is regarded from seven points of view, although in reality he is ever one entity. This has been done, in order that we may get a clearer idea of the complex nature of the vehicles, sheaths, garments, or vestures, in which the divine consciousness manifests itself in the case of the human being. For as in all sciences, so in the greatest science of all — that of the human soul — we must resort to analysis, if we would have a clear conception of the problem before us.
There are many systems, all of which divide
F
82 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
the nature of man, each in its own way. In the present essay, however, I shall not insist on any precise division, but shall endeavour to give you some idea of what some of these soul- vestures may be. And by Soul I mean the divine consciousness in man — which is spoken of sometimes as the Self — and not the restricted idea that is more generally connoted with the term in the w^estern world. Of this Self, the Bhagavad Gltd speaks as follows (ii. 20) :
"This is not born, nor dies it ever, nor having once been will it not be again. Un- born, eternal, everlasting, ancient, this is not slain though the body be slain."
Aye, no matter how^ sublime and god-like the body or vesture may be — for even that gar- ment of God by which men behold Him, as Goethe says, the whole conceivable universe, woven in the loom of time, even this will perish in the eternities. But the Self is {ibid., ii. 24.) :
" Eternal, all-pervading, stable, immovable, ancient — this is said to be the unmanifestable, this the unthinkable, this the unchangeable."
Therefore, as Krishna says :
" Knowing it to be such, pray do not grieve."
Yes, the Soul has many a garment besides
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 83
the "coats of skin" that covered the spiritual nakedness of our primeval Selves, in the childhood of our present humanity. It was left to the dulled intellect of our present age and its immediate predecessors to clothe the naked physical bodies of a pictorial Adam and Eve with the skins of wild beasts, stitched to- gether, forsooth, by the " Lord God " himself. It is high time to end such a theological farce and publish a revised edition of this grand soul- myth, which, if Carlyle had not anticipated us, we might very appropriately call the " sartor resartus," or stitcher re-stitched. Let us first trace the descent of the Soul, or Self, as it in- volves downwards, clothing itself in several main vestures and other minor ones, according to the teaching of the Vedantic philosophers and seers of ancient India. You will find the passage in that mystical treatise. The Dream of Rdvan, (London : The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895). The " Four States and Tabernacles of Man " are described as follows :
"There are four spheres of existence, one enfolding the other^ — (i) the inmost sphere of
1 That is to say, interpenetrating each other, and not like the skins of the onion.
84 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
Turiya [lit., the fourth] , in which the indivi- duahzed spirit Hves the ecstatic Hfe ;^ (2) the sphere of transition, or Lethe, in which the spirit, phinged in the ocean of Agnana >on- wisdom] or total unconsciousness f and utterly forgetting its real Self,^ undergoes a change of gnostic tendency [polarity?] ;* and from not knowing at all, or absolute unconsciousness, emerges on the hither side of that Lethean boundary to a false or reversed knowledge of things (Viparita Gnana), under the influence of an illusive Pragfia, or belief in, and tendency to, knowledge outward from itself, in which delusion it thoroughly believes, and now endeavours to realize : whereas the true knowledge which it had in the state of Turiya, or the ecstatic life, was all li'ithin itself, in which it intuitively knew and experienced all things. And from the sphere of Pragna, or out-knowdng — this struggle to reach and recover outside itself all that it once possessed within itself, and lost —
1 On its own plane of true spiritual consciousness.
2 As we know consciousness.
8 Because of this vesture of Agnina.
4 That is to say of recovering its primal wisdom or Gnana, which is the same word as Gnosis.
VESTURES OF THE SOUL 85
to regain for the lost intuition an objective perception through the senses and understand- ing— in which the spirit became an intelHgence — it merges into (3) the third sphere of dreams, where it beheves in a universe of Hght and shade, and where all existence is in the way of A-bhasa, or phantasm. There it imagines itself into the Lingadeha (Psyche)^ or subtle, semi- material, ethereal, soul, composed of a vibrating or knowing pentad, and a breathing or undula- ting pentad. The vibrating or knowing pen- tad consists of simple consciousness radiating into four different forms of knowledge — (a) the egoity or consciousness of self; (b) the ever- changing, devising, wishing mind, imagination or fancy ; (c) the thinking, reflecting, remem- bering faculty ; and (d) the apprehending and determining understanding or judgment.^
" The breathing or undulating pentad con- tains the five vital aurae — namely, the breath of life, and the four nervous aethers that produce
1 This is the Astral Soul, not the Astral Body of the Esoteric Philosophy.
- This is the Lower Mind or Manas of the Esoteric Philo- sophy, and the Antahkarana or Inner Organ of the Vedan- tins, consisting of [a) Ahankara, ib) Chittam, k) Manas, {d) Buddhi.
86 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
sensation, motion, and the other vital phenomena.
** From this subtle personification and phantasmal sphere, in due time it progresses into (4) the fourth or outmost sphere, where matter and sense are triumphant ; where the universe is believed a solid reality ; where all things exist in the mode of A-kara,^ substantial form ; and where that — which successively for- got itself from spirit into absolute unconscious- ness and awoke on this side of that boundary of oblivion into an intelligence struggling out- ward, and from this outward struggling intelligence imagined itself into a conscious, feeling, breathing, nervous soul, prepared for further clothing — [where that which does all thisj now out-realises itself from soul into a body, with five senses or organs of perception, and five organs of action, to suit it for knowing and acting in the external world, which it once held within, but has now wrought out of itself.'^
1 From d-Ii)i, to bring towards or down, to make or form wholly.
- The five organs of sensation are the skin, eyes, nose, ears, tongue, corresponding to the simple consciousness and the four different forms of knowledge of the vibrating or know- ing pentad, viz., the Lower Mind. The five organs of action
VESTURES OF THE SOUL. 87
(i) The first or spiritual state was ecstasy ; (2) from ecstasy it forgot itself into deep sleep ; (3) from profound sleep it awoke out of un- consciousness, but still within itself, into the internal world of dreams ; (4) from dreaming it passed finally into the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense. Each state has an embodiment of ideas or language of its own. (i) The universal, eternal, ever-present intuitions that be eternally with the spirit in the first, are in the second utterly forgotten for a time, and (2) then emerge reversed, limited, and translated into divided successive intellec- tions, or gropings, rather, of a struggling and as yet unorganized intelligence, having reference to place and time, and an external historical world, which it seeks but cannot all at once realize outside itself. In the third (3) they be- come pictured by a creative fantasy into phan- tasms of persons, things and events, in a world of light and shade within us, which is visible even when the eyes are sealed in dreaming
are the mouth, hands, feet, and the two lower organs, cor- responding to the breath of life and the four nervous aethers, which are the five vital aurae of the breathing or undulating pentad.
88 THE WORLD-MYSTERY.
slumber, and is a prophecy and forecast shadow of the sohd world that is coming. In the fourth (4) the out-forming or objectivity is complete. They are embodied by the senses into hard external realities in a world without us. That ancient seer (Kavi Purana) which the Gitd and Mahdhhdraia mention as abiding in the breast of each, is (i) first a prophet and poet ; then (2) he falls asleep and awakes as a blindfold logician and historian, without materials for reasoning, or a world for events, but groping towards them ; next (3) a painter with an ear for inward phantasmal music, too ; at last (4) a sculptor carving out hard palpable solidities." I have ventured on this lengthy quotation because it is one of the plainest statements I have yet found of the famous but difficult system of \'edantic psychology. It has to be carefully thought out to be fully appreciated, but will well repay the trouble by bringing to light many fresh beauties which a cursory first reading will necessarily slur over. It is a most beautiful idea, that of the self-same Self being successively clothed in Vestures which transform it first into a poet and prophet, in a state out of time and space ; then a blindfold logician