Section 9

Let us next turn to another ancient book, fragments of which are given by H. P. Blavatsky, where we shall find the same idea of a web and its spinning. One of the Stanzas of Dzyan runs as follows :
" Father-Alother spin a Web, whose upper end is fastened to Spirit, the Light of the One Darkness, and the lower one to its shadowy end, Matter ; and this Web is the Universe, spun out of the Two Substances made in One."
Father-Mother is the graphic name for the Eternal when viewed as emanating the universe out of its own essence. Spirit and Matter are names for the modes of its existence as viewed by little men. Spirit is that Light of which the author of the Book of Genesis speaks as created by the divine fiat that willed " let there be light." It is the Light of the One Darkness, because Spirit is the brightest light that the inner eye of man can bear ; and yet beyond this the intuition declares there is that which
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transcends even this most glorious light, but upon which no mortal can look and live, for to see it he must become immortal. And this is, therefore, darkness to mortal gaze, and so is not inappropriately termed the One Darkness. So, then. Father- Mother spin the web of the universe out of the two substances, Spirit and Matter, which really are not two in essence but one, for they are Father-Mother essentially.
In this connection it is hardly necessary to remind the reader of the words put into the mouth of the Erdgeist by the genius of Goethe :
" Thus at the roaring loom of Time I pi}', And weave for God the garment thou see'st Him by."
This garment of God is the universe. The loom of the Erdgeist roars as the shuttles fly on their cyclic journey back and forth ; but their roaring is no chaotic cacophony, but the " har- monious song" of the " spheres."
It may be useful to remark here that with regard to the idea of a cocoon (for the garment or web is ever spheroidal), the symbol of an egg, or embryonic germ, is an index of the same idea, and its frequent occurrence in the
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old religions is because of the marvellous manner in which so universal a phenomenon in nature shadows forth the manner of the inner workings of the creative energy.
Yet one more instance of the same idea, this time from the hieroglyphics of ancient Khem. Several of the inscriptions on the tombs of the kings in the ancient sacred city of Thebes have been translated by Edouard Naville, the French Egyptologist, and embodied in his book. La Litanie du Soleil. A few sentences dealing w'ith the present subject, together with M. Naville's excellent commentary, were translated in the May number of Lucifer (1894), under the head- ing, " The Gods and their Dwellings." Speak- ing of Teb Temt, the term for the Supreme Being in these old records, M. Naville writes:
" He is a being enclosed in an envelope, which is neither a sphere nor an egg, but more closely resembling the latter. The symbol which represents the envelope Teb has exactly the shape of the cocoon of the silkworm. This is, no doubt, the origin of the tradition handed on to us by Eusebius, which attributes the form of 0 to the universe."
It would be easy to multipl}' quotations and
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produce much evidence of the frequency of this idea in ancient scriptures, but sufficient has been said to warrant a fuller exposition than if the conception were of very rare occurrence.
Now, the study of the allegorical descriptions of creation and the origin of the universe that are found in every scripture, would be of only minor importance if they had but a remote bearing on human affairs. If primordial pro- cesses and the development of long series of hierarchies are simply to serve as a pretext for airy metaphysical speculation, they can only be of interest for a very limited class of minds. If, on the other hand, the processes of the great world are directly applicable to the processes of the little world, if the history of the universe is also the history of man, then the study of such processes is of very vital interest to us, for they teach us the history of the spirit and soul in man, and so wean him from the illusion that he is a mere body, and the powers of man only such as the physical body will permit him to wield. We have all heard the trite old aphorism, commonly called Hermetic, " as above so below," and some have met with it elsewhere and have learned to realise its truth, for it
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helps the solution of the great problem of life in a manner that no other method will. Analogy of processes and the great fact that man is potentially deity, that "This is That," as the grand logion of the Vedas has it, is the only means whereby a solution of the problem can be attempted ; and a religion or a philosophy, or a science, that neglects this central fact ends nowhere but in confusion. As the Kathopanishad (II. iv. lo) has it : " What verily is here below that is there ; what is there is likewise here.'' That is to say, what is true of the universe is true of man, what is true of man is true of the universe ; what is true of little man, the little world, is true of the heavenly man, the great world.
Let us, then, bear this in mind and apply it to the subject in hand, our " web of destiny." The web of destiny is not one but three, not single but threefold, for are there not three worlds? The threads of the web are gross, subtle, and subtler than subtle, for is not man spirit, soul and body ? And is not man God, did he but know it ? There is but one Self "hidden in the heart of all creatures." It is the bodies that make the Self seem different, for
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it is one for all. These bodies are webs (A destiny, self-evolved, self-woven. There are those who think th;i.t man is but his physical body ; not so say the scriptures. The seers of truth speak of man as spirit, soul and bfjdy, and the wisest say that the Self is beyond. In iii.in, the Self is enwrapped, and yet nf;t rcrdly enwrapped — for all words are incapable of truly stating the mystery — in a spiritual body or spirit, in a psychic body or Sf;iil, ?i.rid in ;i, physical body ; three webs of destiny, or, if you prefer it, one web of triple texture. The spiri- tual, psychic and material vestures clothe the Self in a triple disguise that produces this seem- ing separateness which is called the "great heresy" by those who know the Self. The Vedantic psychologists call them the gross, subtle and causal vestures or disguises, and the early Christian mystics, the so-called Gnostics, classified mankind into the Hylics, Psychics and Pneumatics. These Greek names signified that men were to be distinguished according to the bonds in which they were bound, according to the error in which they were plunged, for Hyle means matter, and Psyche soul, and Pneuma spirit.
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But these vestures are living vestures, for there is the material life, and the psychic life, and the spiritual life ; three oceans of life and consciousness, and yet not three but one, for they are the Self. For what is more precious to man than life ; what does he cling to with such desperation ? He clings to the Self, for life is the Self. Through life alone can we have some conception of God here in this world. Life is God.
And so we have three bodies and three lives, the habitual or material life, the emotional or psychic life, and the intuitional or spiritual life, and yet all is one — the Self. Here we have the seven-fold nature of the Esoteric Philo- sophy, so much talked of and so little under- stood ; and yet it is a natural classification, an unavoidable classification. It is by what the Vedantins call the " false attribution " of the Self to the gross vesture or physical body that the "waking" consciousness, or habitual life, is experienced ; by the false attribution of the Self to the subtle vesture, or psychic body, that the " dreaming " consciousness, or emotional life, is sensed ; and by the false attribution of the Self to the causal vesture, or spiritual body,
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that the " deep sleeping " consciousness, or noetic Hfe, is enjoyed. Now these terms " deep sleeping," " dreaming " and "waking" are very inadequate, and are only the reflections or memories of the three great lives, or states of consciousness, in our small brains. For what we call dream is only a memory, and what we call deep sleep is only a reminiscence, a vague feeling, that we have slept ill or well. These three states appear to us in our normal consciousness as waking and dreaming and deep sleep ; but there is a waking conscious- ness appropriate to each of the three bodies of man, and a dreaming state, and one of so-called deep sleep; and beyond all is the "fourth," the " peace that passeth all understanding."
Here below in this world we are wrapped round in a triple vesture, for all things centre together here in the battlefield of good and evil. The triple " carapace of selfhood " im- prisons and confines us.
In the " interspace," or "middle distance," there are but two vestures, if complete sever- ance from physical bonds can be achieved ; but if not, the shadows cast by the blackness of the sins committed in the body are reflected
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into the world of the soul and accompany it on its passage through the " hall of learning."
In the highest world there is but one, the vesture of causation; and in this "heaven- world " the disciple learns the past and future. They say the wise ones can separate these three vestures at will, can assume and lay them aside, for the Self strides through the three worlds in the twinkling of an eye.
The mystics of the early days of the Chris- tian era, now condemned as heretics, knew of these sacred things and understood the mean- ing of the outward rites and symbols. Thus they called those who had no thought for any- thing but the body and its pleasures the "dead." These were the Hyhcs, the " sepulchres," for they were indeed dead to higher things ; such men and women were naturally without the community of real " Christians ; " not placed without by any man-made ordinances, but naturally outside the " church" or assembly of saints. For to enter therein they had to " rise from the dead " and be baptized. This baptism was no outer form ; the outer form was but a symbol. It was a real natural process open to all men, not to be given by favouritism, not to
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be withheld by mortal hands. And there were two great baptisms, the lesser and the greater. The baptism of water and the baptism of fire or of the holy spirit. These were the lesser and the greater mysteries that we hear of among the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Persians and elsewhere. For what is the baptism of water ? We know what water is here on earth ; but just as the " dreaming " state is but a memory and reflection of the true state of the soul in our waking consciousness, so is the water of the earth a reflection of the true water of nature. " On my soul, gentlemen, ye have never seen the true earth," says Eugenius Philalethes, and he might have added, " On my soul, good friends, ye have never seen the true water of life." For this water is the ocean of soul-life, the " astral " ocean, that causes the soul-sight to live. It was only when the pilgrim had learned to put on his subtle vesture at will and was " doused " into the waters of the ocean of pure astral light and life, that he was indeed baptized with water. And yet these were but the lesser mysteries. Those who were illumined by this natural initiation were called Psychics. But the greater mysteries pertained to the
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perfect, the just. The baptism of fire was the reception of the spiritual influx of divine hght and hfe. The breath of the Holy Spirit (air) vivified and energised their spiritual bodies, and thus they were called Pneumatics.
Beyond these greater mysteries, transcendent and unspeakable as they are said to be, there was something grander and greater and more wondrous. Beyond the three states is the " fourth " ; the Self, the Father, is ever waiting on the threshold for his children. It is the mystery of the At-one-ment, the baptism of blood, when the very life and essence of deity is given that man may be one with the Highest. Pity it is that these high things are so degraded in our age. But we arc in the mire and must make the best of it.
Let us now return to our three vestures, the karmic webs that we have woven for our weal and woe. The third depends on the second, and the second on the first. The physical body is the product of the psychic, and the psychic of the spiritual. Or in other words, the gross vesture is "precipitated" through the force- mould of the psychic vesture, by means of the character and experience stored up in the spiri-
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tual vesture. Each vesture has its appropriate Hfe-span. The " shadow-man " Hves longer than the physical, it may be but a few years, it may be centuries, for its life-span is as variable as that of the physical vesture, though its normal life is of greater length. But both these life-cycles are governed by the great life-cycle of the spiritual body. The gross and subtle bodies have their root in the causal. This is the perennial root living throughout the "eternity." On this "all the worlds depend," as the scripture saith, or in other words, from it grow all the bodies, gross and subtle, that serve as vestures for the reincarnating Lord. And seeing that these psychic and physical bodies sprout forth from it and die down into it, as the summer and winter of its great year cause the warm life now to be breathed forth and then to be withdrawn, it needs must be that all causation rests with it ; that it is the karmic storehouse of all that each man was, is, and will be; that (to use another simile), it is the very "book of the recording angel." It is because of this that the whole past of a man surrounds him on every side ; it is impressed on his psychic vesture (the sidereal or astral
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man), for it is the " influence of the stars " ; it is stamped upon his physical frame and features. But these " stars " are not the stars of heaven, and the predictions of astrologists and cheiro- mantists and the rest are based on a correspon- dence and not on a reahty. True astrology deals with something higher.
Nor need we go further than the mythology of the Book of Genesis to gain a conviction of the truth of this triple nature of man. For there is first the man made in the " image" of God, and then the Adam of " red-earth," who dwelt in paradise, no physical region as we now understand the word. The paradisiacal body is the soul, and not until man is cast out of Paradise does God lastly fashion for him his " coat of skin." Only when man is born into physical life is he clad in the gross vesture of the material body. Can anyone be so foolish as to think that God actually made for Adam and Eve garments from the skins of animals wherewith to clothe them ? Let us leave such crudities to the uninstructed congregations of our " little Bethels," and proceed to see whether it is possible for man to escape from the triple web of his destiny ; and how the passivity of the
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three great oceans of life may be changed into the activity of the three great Hghts ; and how that the triple-tongued flame may burst forth and destroy the webs and join the ineffable Grand Master, the Fire Self.
Perhaps some may think that, as I am writing about destiny, I should therefore, enter into a long disquisition on freewill and necessity ; but I have no desire to enter into that endless squirrel-wheel of controversy. Freewill and necessity are mutually dependent ; each exists because of the other ; remove one and the other ceases to be. They are a pair of opposites, and the best religion and philo- sophy teach that there is that which transcends all pairs of opposites, and that man in his inmost nature can reach that all-desirable goal which is a solution of the great problem of manifested existence.