Questions We All Ask

Lectures delivered by

G. de Purucker
in the Temple of Peace, Point Loma, California

Originally published from 1929 to 1931 by Theosophical University Press. Second and revised electronic edition copyright 2000 by Theosophical University Press. Electronic version ISBN 155700-149-9. This edition may be downloaded for off-line viewing without charge. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial or other use in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Theosophical University Press. Because of current limitations in ASCII character fonts, and for ease of searching, no diacritical marks appear in the electronic version of the text.

Volume 2: Second Series No. 1. September 1, 1930 (lecture delivered June 29, 1930) "Who Are You?" No. 2. September 8, 1930 (lecture delivered July 6, 1930) "Have You Found Yourself?" No. 3. September 15, 1930 (lecture delivered July 13, 1930) "What Are You?" No. 4. September 22, 1930 (lecture delivered July 20, 1930) "The Destiny of a Soul" No. 5. October 12, 1930 (lecture delivered July 27, 1930) "Souls That Drift" No. 6. October 20, 1930 (lecture delivered August 3, 1930) "Occultism and Psychism" No. 7. October 27, 1930 (lecture delivered August 10, 1930) "Occultism and Psychology" No. 8. November 2, 1930 (lecture delivered August 17, 1930) "Gods, Men, and Atoms" No. 9. November 10, 1930 (lecture delivered August 24, 1930) "Visions" No. 10. November 17, 1930 (lecture delivered August 31, 1930) "Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace" No. 11. October 5, 1930 (lecture delivered September 14, 1930) "Was Jesus Man-God, Great Sage, or Myth?" No. 12. November 24, 1930 (lecture delivered September 28, 1930) "Ghosts" No. 13. December 1, 1930 (lecture delivered October 5, 1930) "The Mystical Story of Jesus" No. 14 December 8, 1930 (lecture delivered October 12, 1930) "The Secret Anatomy of the World" No. 15. December 15, 1930 (lecture delivered October 19, 1930) "The Secret Physiology of the World"

No. 16. December 22, 1930 (lecture delivered October 26, 1930) "The Azure Seats of the Gods" No. 17. December 29, 1930 (lecture delivered November 2, 1930) "Occultism, Mysticism, and Secret Societies" No. 18. January 5, 1931 (lecture delivered November 9, 1930) "Elementals and Nature Spirits" No. 19. January 12, 1931 (lecture delivered November 23, 1930)"Mysteries of Sleep and Death" No. 20. January 19, 1931 (lecture delivered November 30, 1930) "More About Sleep and Death" No. 21. January 26, 1931 (lecture delivered December 7, 1930) "Sprites, Fairies, Goblins" No. 22. February 2, 1931 (lecture delivered December 14, 1930) "Something About Myself" No. 23. February 9, 1931 (lecture delivered December 21, 1930) "Something More About Myself" No. 24. February 16, 1931 (lecture delivered January 4, 1931) "The Theosophical Mahatmas" No. 25. February 23, 1931 (lecture delivered January 11, 1931) "Some Secret Causes of Rebirth" No. 26. March 2, 1931 (lecture delivered January 18, 1931) "Is Our Universe Mad?" No. 27. March 9, 1931 (lecture delivered January 25, 1931 "Glimpses into the Unseen Universe" No. 28. March 16, 1931 (lecture delivered February 1, 1931 "Glimpses into the Unseen Universe -- II" No. 29. March 23, 1931 (lecture delivered February 8, 1931) "Occultism: Genuine and Imaginary" No. 30. March 30, 1931 (lecture delivered February 15, 1931) "Invisible Worlds and Their Inhabitants" No. 31. April 6, 1931 (lecture delivered March 22, 1931) "The Secret Doctrine of the Ages" No. 32. April 23, 1931 (lecture delivered April 5, 1931 "The Esoteric Easter"

Second Series: No. 1 (September 1, 1930)

WHO ARE YOU?

(Lecture delivered June 29, 1930) CONTENTS: Who are you? -- The body a mere physical event. -- The foundations of ethics laid in nature's heart itself. -- The key thought of the ancient Mystery schools. The "Lost Word." -- Peace, light, consolation: all are within you. -- Pain and suffering the fruit of ignorance. -- "Behold, the feast is laid!" -- The soulless materialism of our grandfathers merely a superstition. -- Scientific fads exist today. -Materialism is soul-devastating. -- H. P. Blavatsky and the mental ghosts of her day. -- The origin of cosmic law and order. -- Why do we sometimes apparently suffer unjustly? -- Why is every phase of life characterized by fierce conflict? -- Claim your birthright of the spirit! -- The noblest path in life. Who are you? As you must know, this is an old question that men for ages have asked each other, Who are you? "What a stupid question!" some people may say. And they will probably answer: "I am so-andso; I have such a name; I occupy such a position in society; I was born in such a place; in brief, I am soand-so." But the wise man, the true thinker, repeats his question: "Who are you? Who indeed are you? Explain your answer to me. Any other person might have had your name, been born where you were born, worn the clothes that you have worn, followed more or less the same intricate pathways of destiny that you followed, and yet have been different." Are you a mere body and nothing more? Do you reckon, in other words, your spiritual paternity by the flesh-house in which you live? What is it that distinguishes you from others; and outside of this distinction, what is it, not that which makes you what you are, but which causes you to be what you are? Here is the answer: You are essentially a character, each one of you. You express it in all you do: in your thoughts, in your actions, in your consequent character, built up as that character is by thoughts and emotions and consequent actions. Therefore also do you express that character in the destiny which you make for yourself. A mere body cannot do that. A body is a mere physical "event," to use the language of modern scientific philosophers, for it appears and disappears; and yet you retain your individuality even in the short span between the first conscious strivings of the individuality of your soul in any lifetime until you pass into what men call the great mystery of death. Therefore do I repeat my question: Who are you? You have not answered the question; and just this is the question that I want you to think about this afternoon, friends, and to take in thought away with you, because it is the most important question with which human beings can concern themselves. It involves everything that you are and do. If you know truly who you are, you will know your origin; you will also know why you are here, and why you are doing such-and-such things, and not doing other things. You will also know whither the course of your thoughts is leading you -- in other words you will have some vision of what the destiny is which your present character is already shaping for you. Do you see the ethical, the moral, implications in all this? Now let me tell you as a theosophical teacher just what you are, albeit my explanation be brief. You are, each one of you, a visible expression of an inner divine and flaming intelligence, poorly expressing itself through the human vehicle; but the root of you is divine, a child of the spiritual universe, even as your physical body is an offspring of the physical universe. You are a child of the spiritual-divine universe in the inmost of the inmost of your being. You are, therefore, inseparable from that spiritual-divine universe, for you cannot leave that universe, a fact that I have so often told you before. You are an essential, intrinsic part of it. Think what that fact means. It means among other things that within you, somewhere, either active or latent, there is everything that is in the Boundless; somewhere locked up within you there is this fiery spirit, a god-spark, of which you, in your intelligence and in the feelings of your heart, are a still feeble expression; but you are destined in the far-distant aeons of the future much more completely to manifest forth the divine flame within you.

What hope there is in this doctrine! You may see now from what has been said where the foundations of ethics are laid -- in nature's heart itself. You see now from this brief sketch that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and that nature is built on fundamental lines of equity, on eternal and infinite justice, and that what causes the so-called disharmony and disorder in various parts of the universe, even as in the hierarchy of men, is the varying and conflicting wills and emotions and thoughts of hosts of individuals striving one against all, or a few against all, and vice versa; and this conflict produces friction, which is disharmony, which is lack of peace, and which in individuals is a violation of the fundamental love and harmony which are the very roots, which are the very heart, of the universe. The inmost of the inmost of the inmost of the core of each one of you is a god, a divine being. "Man, know thyself," said the old Greek Oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi -- Gnothi seauton. Do you think that this knowledge of yourself means the little knowledge that is comprised within your brains and in your human heart and derived from your personal and petty affairs of life? O friends, friends, friends! It means that if you know what is within you, all the powers and faculties and energies locked up in you, which you derive from the very heart of being, you have all wisdom and truth, for these are in the core of the core of your being, where they are waiting for your recognition; it also means that the very essential light of you is almighty love, the heart of things. Do you begin to see now the reason of the question: "Who are you?" Do you see the implications of this question? Do you see the hope that lies in this very brief and altogether incomplete explanation that I have tried merely to sketch in outline for you? There is a road, a pathway, leading to the heart of the universe, and each one of you is that pathway --

each one of you is that pathway; and by following this still small pathway, as the Hindu Upanishads so
nobly put it, which is the pathway of consciousness leading to the divinity within you, to your own inner spiritual self, you can ascend out of the spheres of matter, through the expansion of your growing consciousness, until that human consciousness becomes universal in its sweep. This is the key thought of all the ancient schools of initiation, of all the ancient Mystery schools. They taught this one fact openly; and what was hid from the ordinary mankind was how to tread this pathway. For there are dangers along this road -- steep and thorny, but sublime -- which slowly ascends out of the valleys of material existence in constant rise over the mountain peaks of the spirit, until finally, when you reach the highest pinnacle of what any one sphere of life can give to you, the wings, to use a figure of speech, of your soul have grown so that you can launch yourself into the blue ether and ascend along the solar rays of the spirit to a union, a self-conscious union, with divinity. Sons of the sun you are -each one of you is a son of the sun, the spiritual sun. This teaching of the inner god, of the inner divinity, of the limitless powers and possibilities in the evolutionary growth of every human being, is the "Lost Word" of which faint whisperings are still heard in your spiritually deaf Occidental world. For this Lost Word is no mere word, because strictly speaking it is an interior illumination. It is a system of thought and a manner of living. It is the ancient wisdomreligion of mankind, the wisdom of the gods. Any sincere son of man who will not be balked by obstacles, whose spirit rises high above the attractions of the material world, and who wills to know and who dares to follow that pathway can become in its divine fullness the god within, first, and then afterwards there will open before him other pathways leading to the heart of the cosmic divine. You will doubtless remember what the great Christian teacher said: "I am the Way, I am the Life"; and his first disciples knew well the meaning of his teaching; but alas! alas! how quickly did it die out from the memory of men, when ecclesiasticism and the lust for temporal power blinded men's eyes. Do you not know intuitively that each one of you is in the inmost of his inmost just such a Christos-spirit -- just such an immanent Christ, of which the modern mystical Christians are beginning to talk, just such an inner Buddha, as the Orientals say? And alas! because men know this sublime truth no longer, because they have forgotten it, they turn to things of the exterior world, and attempt to find consolation and peace where there is neither consolation nor peace, seeking help where help will never be found; searching for light where light is not. All -- peace, light, consolation, help -- are within you. Your

understanding is within. Your heart-force is within. All your percipient faculties are within. Where then, logically, should you seek for light? Outside of you? No, within. Do I then mean by this appeal to the spiritual individual that there is no need for teachers, that there is no need for organization? Do I then imply by voicing these unquestionably true and sublime facts that every man is a sufficient law unto himself? I do not. Just examine yourselves and you yourselves will then understand. Are you consciously expressing the divine powers within you? Do you even know of their existence otherwise than intuitively perhaps? Do you know how so to live that the divine within you may show forth its transcendent powers? Herein therefore is seen the need of a true teacher. Every great sage and seer of the past has taught among many other things one fundamental, identic, truth, which is what I have briefly set forth to you this afternoon. Every one of them can say, and many of them have said, just as Jesus did: "I am the Truth; I am the Way; I am the Life." So also is each one of you, if only you live unto the god within you. No, I believe in teachers; I believe in true teaching; I believe in helping others. Teachers, true teachings, mutual help, are things that are needed. But when the teaching has been given, when the light has been received, then is the chance for your own inner faculties to show what power and resiliency of will you are able to manifest in your own life, and thereafter to tread the sublime path as a free spiritual entity. Furthermore, you will meet teachers always along the path, no matter how high you may go. The universe is a composite entity, builded of worlds within worlds, worlds invisible within the physical and astral encasements; and each one of these inner and invisible worlds of hierarchies, has its own heads, its own teachers, leaders, guides -- spiritual beings who have attained that high state through self-directed evolution as my great predecessor Katherine Tingley loved to phrase it. Do you see the logic of it all? Organization is needed because organization is the same thing as law and order. Imagine what would happen if every human being on earth were to be a law unto himself in every detail, thoughtless of the rights of others, following his own whims and wishes at whatever cost to others. A blessed peace, a sublime harmony, should we have on earth, should we not! Men who teach such an anarchy of organization are not great. They lack wisdom. They lack first of all the inner vision, the vision sublime of the spirit; and do you know what is written all over this Vision in characters so beautiful that they are indescriptible in language ordinarily human? It is this: Give up thy lower personal life if thou would'st find the life everlasting. Do you see? Exchange the limited, the personal, the small, the petty, the incomplete, the unevolved, for all the contraries of these. For within you are all things and all possibilities of growth. But in order to find the way, to put your feet on this path, which you must tread inwards, leading to divinity, you must have guides; you must be taught. Where are these guides? Where will you be taught? I can show you the way; I can show you how to put your feet on this still, small path leading ever more and more and more inwards. But the initiating motion must come from you. I have no right to sway your will; I have no right to force the slightest situation in your mind, nor do I desire to do this. It would not only be futile but downright foolish, because no one can see until he opens his eyes. All I can say to you is a repeating of the teaching of the great seers and sages: Behold, the feast is laid, the wine of the spirit and the bread of life are on the table. Come and partake freely. Unhappiness, sorrow, pain, suffering, and disease are the fruits of ignorance. Has that thought sunken into your hearts? The way to freedom and to peace which passeth all understanding, and to light and to harmony and to love, can be found. Knock; knock with a clean heart and an eager mind and an unveiled spiritual perception, and then your knock will be the right one, and the portals will open before you. Ask, and ask with the same qualities of heart and mind, and you will receive. I tell you in all sincerity that these are not empty words. There is truth to be had, there is wisdom in the world; there is light. I will show you. That is my duty; that is in part what I was sent to do. Love, almighty love, will crack the stoniest of human hearts, for it works from within, and nothing can withstand its all-penetrating power. The first question that I will briefly answer this afternoon along the line of thought upon which I have already tried to speak to you, is this:

Are life and its phenomena the resultants of a soulless mechanism called nature, or are they the results of law and order moving in mysterious ways? Isn't that a typical example of a brain-mind question! I don't believe that the man has ever lived who has used his brain so slightly that he really looks upon nature as a soulless mechanism. Does a machine run itself as Nature does? Does a machine reproduce itself as nature does? Is a machine inspired, as nature is, producing its marvelous phenomena? Furthermore, a machine proves a mechanician -- not one who has made the machine out of nothing at all, which is absurd, but one who is the controller and guide of mechanical appliances so to speak which already exist. The gods guiding and in a sense controlling nature do not "make" nature, but they produce it out of already preexisting material and seeds of individuality resident in the heart of each atom: in other words they are the guides, the teachers, the watchers, the leaders, after whose pattern of thought and following whose urgent will nature moves into manifested being. Do you know that the cause of questions like this is the old materialism of our fathers and grandfathers, a materialism which was a fad, a scientific doctrine in which no one believed but which everyone talked about because it was the fashion? I remember in my boyhood that I used to have the fun of my life in asking questions of those people who talked to me so persistently about "fortuity," and the "machine of nature," and "natural mechanisms," and all that kind of thing; and I never received a satisfactory or strictly logical answer. When pushed to the limit, they always said the same things that the parsons did, but of course in other words and from another viewpoint: "I really don't know. I cannot answer that question. It is just so." And I always asked: "Is that an answer?" And the response reluctantly came: "No, I realize that it is not an answer, but it is the best response that I can give." "All right," I said, "if your answer is an acknowledged lack of a logical, formal, definite proof of what you have staked your life and reputation upon, then what kind of a belief is it?" To me it is just a blind belief, taking somebody else's opinions as nature's truth. And do you know, furthermore, that that soulless materialism of our fathers and grandfathers was just a superstition, a plain unvarnished superstition, without an atom of truth in it, a mere scientific fad, a mere scientific theory -- and there are scientific fads and superstitions even today, and we might as well know it and talk about it because it will help the great men of science to have the ceaseless chattering of the camp followers of science stopped. The most interesting thing about this whole matter is that the people who have pulled down these former scientific bigwigs from their thrones of infallibility are the other scientists. The attacks which destroyed the old soulless materialism of our fathers came from within the ranks of scientists themselves, and such attacks are always the most disintegrative of all, the most fatal. You may perhaps think that my words are a little severe upon science. I am not speaking of science per se; science is grand, is holy, for it is, as far as we have carried it, ordered knowledge of the Universe; and you would find all theosophists rallying like a massed army against any attack upon honest investigation of nature's secrets. Theosophists will tolerate no attacks of that kind; but scientists, individual men, no matter what their sincerity may be, are a different matter entirely from science itself. Get that idea! I tell you plainly that these old materialists, these materialists of the days of our fathers and grandfathers, taught a superstition which was not founded on nature, but founded upon the results of their own lucubrations, their own thoughts -- honest, devoted, sincere, doubtless, and comprising an attempt to find explanations of things, but nevertheless wholly mistaken. Even as a boy I would have none of it. The great scientists of today are beginning to recognize this fact that the old materialism of our fathers was an unvarnished, crude superstition. Some of the greatest minds in science today are openly proclaiming the same thing that I am saying. From this platform I have often called the old materialism soulless, uninspired, in fact worse, soul-devastating, because it is wholly untrue and is a mere scientific superstition; and it worked such evil on men's minds because it cut off men's cognition and intuition of an inner and spiritual universe and the knowledge that there is light to be had from this interior universe.

This morning a friend handed in to me an extract from a lecture or writing, I don't know which, by one of the most eminent English scientific men, and I will read this extract to you. It is from Professor J. S. Haldane, one of the most eminent men of Great Britain in his line. He says: Materialism, once a scientific theory, is now the fatalistic creed of thousands; but materialism is nothing better than a superstition on the same level as belief in witches and devils. I have never used language as strong as that, nor as uncomplimentary. And yet this language is true. So you have this corroboration of my words from one of the most eminent scientific men of today. The fruits of the old materialism of our fathers and grandfathers are working evil even today in the minds and hearts of men. The fatalistic materialism existing today in such multitudes, a fatalistic materialism which the scientists have already repudiated, and yet which vast multitudes of men and women today unconsciously believe in because they have read it in the books found in the libraries, and are still taught it in the schools, is naught but a crude superstition, as this eminent scientific thinker says, and is to be classed in the same category with the old beliefs in witches and devils. I tell you that our scientists today are beginning to be mystics. They are beginning to dream dreams and to see visions of truth. They are receiving a greater light, and I know of no cause which has worked more strongly to bring this about than the work of The Theosophical Society, and of that wonderful woman, H. P. Blavatsky, who founded The Theosophical Society. In her day, when she came, the world was in its mental attitude and outlook sunken in a materialistic mental swamp, a mental morass. She challenged the truth of these old materialistic theories. She ran full tilt, not like Don Quixote at windmills, but at mental ghosts -- the thoughts and beliefs, false, unnatural, untrue -- which were taught in all the universities of the Occidental world. H. P. Blavatsky deserves the heartfelt gratitude of every thinking man and woman, and The Theosophical Society which she was the founder of, has for the last fifty years and more brought forth and taught the teachings which in her time were at first considered to be most unaccountably weird and queer, and yet which later have become in many cases the accepted doctrines of our ultramodern scientific luminaries. I have made this statement before and I have proved it by quoting item and instance time and time again. So there in brief is your answer to the question that was asked of me. Life and its phenomena are not the resultants of a soulless machine called nature. They are the evidences of what men in their ignorance call law and order, moving in mysterious ways; and what is this law and what is this order? I will tell you briefly what they are. What men call law and order in the uiverse are the wills and conscious movements -- the movements of the consciousness -- of the gods with which the universe is filled full, and of all the smaller entities in the divine hierarchies through which or whom these sublime cosmic spirits work. I call them gods, because such in truth they are; but if you like the word not, then call them cosmic spirits -- call them what you like, but get the idea. These gods exist in all-various grades, degrees, steps, stages, of evolutionary advancement, so that we have the greatest that human imagination in its loftiest flights can think of, can picture, can figurate, down through all intermediate stages to our own material sphere, yea, and below -- what we humans call below. Now you see where so-called cosmic law and cosmic order come from, or rather originate. Take a man's body as an instance of my thought. In it dwell his intelligence and will. His body is permeated with his will and intelligence, and when he raises his arm he does so with will and with movement of his consciousness; and all the countless hosts, unnumbered decillions, of atoms composing the physical substance of that arm, obey his will. Those atoms are a part of the man's own being -- bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, life of his life -- and just so are all inferior things in nature herself, so to speak, bone of the bone, life of the life, blood of the blood, of the gods who infill the universe. Such is the explanation of what men, not knowing the truth, abstractly call law and order -- the movements of the consciousnesses, that is to say of the wills and of the intelligences, of the divine beings who infill the universe and who indeed are it in its nobler parts. For even gross physical matter

itself is not different from the universe of which it is a part. Obviously. At the core of the core of the core of every atom, above it, surrounding it, manifesting through it, so feebly but yet manifesting through it, there dwells, there sits, there is, the life of an inner god; and as evolution -- which means unfolding what is within, bringing out what is locked up -- pursues its work on all these hosts of less things, they grow steadily greater, because ever more and more do they bring out the divine powers within; and finally man appears, imperfect, very imperfect, but still a man; beginning very feebly, but nevertheless beginning, to show the divine powers within. And beyond man there are hosts of other entities along the rising ladder of life, expressing in still nobler degree and in fuller measure, the powers of the inner god, the immanent Christ if you like the term, the inner Buddha, if you like the term, the inner god as I call it. So matter itself is rooted in divinity. See the beauty, see the hope, see the peace, in this thought. Imagine what men shall become in the future; imagine the time to come when men will walk the earth like gods. And why? Because then they will be men-gods, god-men, from having evolved forth more and more of the bright and flaming fire in the core of the core of their being. "Ye are gods," said the Christian New Testament, and the statement is true. Why do we suffer? Here comes in orderly logical sequence my next question: What can you say to those who suffer and seem to suffer unjustly? Friends, the world is indeed full of pain. Hard must be the human heart which cannot see it; stony must it be which cannot feel it. Is any human being exempt from suffering and pain? From sorrow and grief? Have you never looked into the eyes of those whose souls are wrung with torture? I have. And the first time in this life when that revelation came to me, when I saw the cause, I said: Forevermore I am a servant of Those who bring peace and light and love into the world. As the great Buddha-Gautama said: "Ye suffer from yourselves, none outside brings it upon you." You choose wrongly what you think and therefore wrongly do you act. You choose the difficult path instead - marvelous paradox! -- that path steep and thorny, but only to the low, mean, ignoble, human passionate man: you choose the difficult path instead of that road (steep and thorny it may be) which leads upwards into light and peace indescribable. Men bring down suffering, sorrow, disharmony, disease upon themselves. Instead of uniting in fraternal action, instead of each man feeling the woes of the world and attempting to do what he can, however small, to help, men alas! choose the path of satisfaction of the personal desires of the lower self; and since all men do this, the world is filled with pain and sorrow. That is why ye suffer, ye sons of men. That is why your hearts are wrung. That is why ye are diseased both in mind and body. Nature will not tolerate such action contrary to her own heart of hearts. The very heart of nature is love and harmony and peace, which mean cooperation, mutual helpfulness, brotherliness, kindness. But men act contrariwise and then they say: "My God, what has brought this upon me?" Yourself! Why not live the god within you? Why not have peace? Why not have union? Why not think brotherly? Live brotherly? Don't you know -- have you not yet found out -- how painful selfishness is, how devastating both in heart and mind? Haven't you discovered that the man who thinks of naught but himself always loses in the end? Give up your personal life, if ye would find the life everlasting, because such is the law, the nature, of the god within you. There is the road to peace; there is the road to happiness; there is the road to joy; there is the road to health; for that road leads to harmony and almighty love. Do you get the idea? If so then you see why we suffer. We suffer from ourselves; and the sooner the lesson is learned, the sooner shall we taste of the life everlasting.

You say that love is the cement of the universe and that the heart of things is harmony and peace. How then do you account for human weakness, misery, wretchedness, sin, and pain? I think that I have already answered that question, but in further elaboration of the thought, I may remark that I received the other day, along the same line of thinking, two questions. I believe they were written by the same kind friend. I will read them to you. They contain almost the same thought as that which is imbodied in the question that I have just read to you, and have answered somewhat but have not yet answered fully. The first of them is this: Every phase of life is largely a matter of combat -- bloodthirsty, ruthless, merciless, devastating combat. The whetted sword, mammoth guns, deadly gases, sharp claws, and saber teeth, to say nothing of the more subtle whispering conflict among many humans. Beneath the placid surface of ethereal blue seas move two great schools, the hunters and the hunted, the latter the prey of sharp teeth, voracious jaws, and powerful tentacles. The keynote of our sports and games is combat. Flowers and trees seem to be exempt therefrom. Perhaps if we could pierce the veil and see all the invisible processes of growth and blossoming one might find combat there also. A collection of flowers is often described as "a riot of color." Why all this conflict? Is it the law of life? The second question is this, preceded by a quotation from the great English biologist, Thomas Huxley: "Not only does every animal live at the expense of some other animal or plant, but the very plants are at war." Was Huxley right in saying this? As a bald statement Huxley's observation is true. It is true. And is not that just what I also have said? The causes of all this war is the conflict of wills and emotions and intensified low personal desires in these imperfect and ungrown creatures and things. Yet the heart of the Boundless is harmony and peace. It is only in manifested material worlds where every entity is for itself, because it is imperfect, ignorant, unwise, unknowing of the law of nature's heart, that you will find this horrible situation. Our earth is not a high sphere in the mansions of space. It is a low one, it is very material indeed. We humans are passing through it now, we, the host of men, simply as one phase of our long evolutionary journey backwards to the divine; and does not your heart move when you see this picture, realizing the all-powerful god within you on the one hand, and the misery and wretchedness around you on the other hand? Does not your heart whisper its sublime admonitions to help? O men of death, why not claim your birthright of the spirit? Unlock the transcendent powers of the divinity within you. Ye know not what is locked up within you. Every son of man, every daughter of woman, is in the heart of the core of himself or herself, not only an inner god, a divinity, but a poet, a sage, a seer, an artist, a fountain of every quality and faculty that the noblest of men have ever expressed in their professions. Every one of you is such. Having this vision sublime, we theosophists do not shut our eyes to the misery of others, but devote our lives like the buddhas of Compassion to help all things, first by raising ourselves -- impersonally, not personally -- so that we may help others to see the light divine. You cannot merely carry others always. That is not the right and profitable way. They must learn to walk each one for himself or itself. They themselves, each one of them, must learn to walk, to think, to feel, to grow. But you can always bring light, help, show the path, be a teacher unto your fellow men. Ye will be doing Masters' work in this way. It is nobler than any other path in life, and such a work needs men. No weakling can do it. It needs men of iron will first, for self-conquest; it needs men -- and women of course -- of high intellectual capacity; and ye can attain it. It needs men and women of spiritual vision, having the conscious reception of the light divine. That is the vision sublime. That is what ye may see on the mystic mountains of the spirit. And oh! the blessing, the peace, the consolation, and the spiritual balm for broken hearts that ye can give to others when once ye have seen that vision sublime! O friends, think, feel, be -- at least in part -- the god within you!

Second Series: No. 2 (September 8, 1930)

HAVE YOU FOUND YOURSELF?

(Lecture delivered July 6, 1930) CONTENTS: Have you found yourself: the real you? -- The modern schools of the Mysteries. -Without self-knowledge the outer world is a phantasm. -- To him who would become one with the "changeless." What do we mean by the word changeless? -- Camp-followers in the cosmic evolutionary journey. -- The physical world a mere cross section of time-space. -- Man's journey through the universe. Our destiny is to become collaborators with the gods. -- People don't like to think. -- The doctrine of hierarchies as taught in theosophy. -- Are teachers necessary? -- Is the god within a sleeping giant? -- Truth is discerned with the inner vision. -- Ever-changing standards are no criterion. -- Judge causes rather than results. -- Why do deep afflictions come into blameless lives? -- Suffering is the gateway of purification. -- Give forth the treasures of the spirit! A speaker can say more sometimes in the silence and through the voice of the silence than he can say by using the most rapid and ready speech of human tongue. I sometimes think that an audience, through the impressions that it receives from watching a speaker, from getting his atmosphere, in other words receiving the mental impress rather than the verbal stamp of his thought, takes in more of what that speaker is trying to say than such an audience does by merely listening to the words. And having this thought in my mind, I was looking at you, friends, in order to see if I could find any ones who had found

themselves.
Have you found yourself? On last Sunday I asked you the question: Who are you? And today I ask you a question of equivalent profundity and meaning: Have you found yourselves? Yes, yourself, the real you: that which brought you into the world as you really are -- not the foolish things that you do or the idle and frivolous thoughts that you may think, or again the profound and worthy thoughts that you may think. These are all effects of you; but you yourself -- are you found? Do you know yourself? If so, do you know who you are? If so, do you know why you are here? That one interrogation, in these two forms -- Who are you? and Have you found yourself?-- is the very heart of the ancient wisdom's teachings. These two questions briefly set forth the meaning of the great schools of the Mysteries of the ancient world -- and of the modern world also, if you know whither to go to find these modern schools of the Mysteries. How can you know anything if you do not know yourself? All that you are is in you. What men call understanding, intellect, heart, mind, all your capacities, the originating impulses of all that you do, are parts of you. Now, how can you understand anything outside of you if you don't know yourself? The whole of the essential teaching of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind is to show men the path to knowledge of the real self; for when he attains this sublime vision, then he knows all that is without the Self, for he shall have entered into causal things, into causal worlds, where originating impulses arise; and his attention is no longer distracted by the phenomena of the exterior world, which is all, for the individual perceiver, a phantasm unless he knows himself. Each one of you, as I tell you on every Sunday afternoon when I speak to you, is an imbodied god -- a spark of the heart of the universe -- of the Central Fire -- and therefore when you know yourself, you know the heart of the universe, for essentially you are it, each one of you, in the core of the core of your being. All things become understandable to you when you know who you are. There is not a religion, there is not a philosophy, there is not a science, which has ever endured, which has not taught this fundamental truth: i. e., the way to knowledge and unity with the universe lies primarily in knowledge of yourself. A man's mind must be plunged into Cimmerian darkness, he must be incapable of logical thinking, if he does not appreciate this fact instantly; and to many minds it comes like a flash of light, and is the beginning of a new life. You cannot know yourself by following the lives outside of you, for before you

know your self, that outside or exterior world is just one perplexing and bewildering whirl of phantasmagoric phenomena. The way to wisdom, to the knowledge within, and to unity with the spiritual universe is within each one of you. This is the simplest proposition that the human mind can understand, and yet it is the most difficult for those who simply won't open their eyes to the obvious. What is yourself? I have told you: a divine being, a spark of the inner fire. Immovable? Unchanging? No. Moving steadily forwards, always evolving, growing, changing. How can a thing improve which is immovable, changeless? Some people with an intuitive recognition of certain abstract philosophical ideas, but without the wisdom that the majestic philosophy of mankind today called theosophy brings, use such expressions as: "Oh! I want to become one with the eternal; I want to become changeless; I want to become immovable in perfection." Heaven help them! This means that they don't want to grow. They don't want to become better; they don't want to know more than now they know! The magnificent philosophies of India, for instance the Upanishads of the sacred writings of that ancient motherland of religions and philosophies, in speaking of the changeless and of the 'undecaying,' use these words in a purely relative sense, meaning that those sublime spiritual realities, by contrast with our present passing river of phenomena, stand majestic and sublime, and follow a sweep of evolving life on a scale so grand that to us humans it seems, but only seems, to be motionless. Thus seems it also to the unreflective human when he considers the earth on which he lives: he does not realize that it is in incessant, continuous movement around the sun and that its position in space is changing daily, hourly, instantly. His senses apprise him not of this, and if he judge by his sense observations he must believe that the earth is standing still and is the center of the universe. Change is growth, growth is change; and evolution is but another word for growth. That is what theosophists mean by evolution; we use the word in the strictly etymological Latin sense, as meaning the unfolding -- as I have so often already explained to you -- the pouring forth, the unwrapping, of what is within. How can a seed bring forth what is not within it? How can any growing, evolving, changing, entity become something the seeds of which were not previously latent within it? Evolution is growth, and growth is evolution; and these are but two words for change. Kindly get understanding of this thought. It is enormously important. Therefore be not afraid of change, but be sure that ye change for the better -- that ye change for the better. Grow, expand! You have will; you have intelligence; you can therefore choose your path. Be careful, then, that your path be upwards; for as you grow, that is to say as you evolve, you will be bringing out more and more what is within you. I have been asked many, many times by friends who have heard me speak: "Do I understand, then, that theosophy teaches that we shall be going on forever and forever and forever, just growing and growing and growing? Isn't there any rest? Isn't there any peace? Don't we ever stop growing?" Regarding these questions my thought reverts to a little poem by an American author which I read once and which I believe I have quoted before from this platform: I wish I were a little rock A-settin' on a hill, A-doin' nothing all the day But jest a-settin' still. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep, I wouldn't even wash -I'd jest set still a thousand years And rest myself, by gosh! Isn't that a sublime ambition! But nature's laws are all against it. You must grow, whether you will or whether you nill, and how noble, how much better is it not, to grow with your will, to be a man with your will, to ascend the stairways of life towards something ever better and more sublime with your will, and with your intelligence manifesting the divine powers within you, than to be like the little rock "a-

settin' on the hill." Is not self-directed growth far better than trailing along behind in the rear, a camp follower of humanity on the cosmic evolutionary journey? Because go ye must, whether ye will or whether ye nill. Go ye must! What a sublime picture this brings to the eye of our mind, a vision of endless growth, endless improvement! We began our evolutionary journey as an unself-conscious god-spark in this our homeuniverse, in this our home hierarchy, passing through all the phases and realms and stages of universal nature, especially of invisible nature, and we find ourselves at the present time on this our physical plane or sphere, in this physical world -- a mere cross section of time-space; and we shall some day leave it, journeying out of it upwards, ever more upwards, and thus passing from humanity into quasi-divinity, and when we shall have attained quasi-divinity, we shall leave it for destinies still more sublime. Yes, it is our destiny to become collaborators with the gods with which the universe is filled, is full, is filled full. It is our destiny to become gods ourselves; for each one of you, in the core of his being, is such a god. Each one of you is a god-spark, a spark, to use ordinary language, of the Central Fire of the Cosmos. Therefore, becoming a god is simply evolving, bringing forth, what is within you. It means simply expanding in consciousness and power, so that your consciousness from human becomes universal, which means comprising within its sweep all the realms and spheres visible and invisible of our home-universe. When this universal stage shall have been reached, is that the end of our growth? No, there are no ends. You will then go still higher. Try to imagine what these two words mean: infinity -- no beginning, no end; eternity -- no beginning, no end. Nothing stands still, not even for a fraction of a human second; all is in motion -- gods, universes, solar systems, worlds, and all the atoms which compose them; and we humans, human atoms so to speak, we human life-atoms, having reached this present stage of evolution, shall march steadily forwards as units of the same cosmic procession of which I have just spoken. Some people don't like to think: I really am inclined to think that all people don't like to think. That includes you -- and me! They much prefer to believe what they are told. But we in theosophy don't like to believe merely what we are told. We are taught differently: we are taught to believe what our conscience tells us is true, and we are taught to believe naught else. Is your conscience, therefore, an infallible guide? No. For conscience itself is an evolving portion of your constitution, an evolving faculty, growing ever stronger, more clairvoyant of truth, of right. But it is your light; it is the light from your spiritual soul, and ye have none other; and that light will grow ever and steadily greater and grander, purer and more divine, as ye faithfully follow it. Every part of you is evolving. The very divine being, which is the core of the core of the heart of the heart of you, is an evolving entity. You, as a human mentality, as a human soul, are an evolving entity, a feeble shadow and manifestation of the god within you, a vehicle of that god's powers and energies, framed by evolution to manifest those powers and energies on this plane, in this human world. And all the atoms of your various bodies -- spiritual, psychical, astral, and physical -- are likewise, each one of them, an evolving entity. Do you see the picture? Do you understand what this picture implies? Nothing lives unto itself alone. We all live unto each other. As the atoms of my body are held in the dominating grip of my individuality, so are we human beings, considered as a body, as a hierarchy, held in the life and guided by the intelligence of some entity still more sublime. Why give to this sublime entity a name? Why not do as the Christian Apostle Paul did, and simply say: "In it we live, and move, and have our being"? God? What is God? Why limit the fact by giving it a name in our thought? Boundless infinitude, which is but the other aspect of boundless eternity, is filled full with gods in all stages of evolutionary development: low, higher, and for us the highest; but beyond there are other hierarchies of them endlessly. Everything is evolving. Everything is moving, progressing. In the case of each entity no matter how high or how low it may be this progressive evolution is accomplished by self-originated impulses, from within. Nature is merely the field in which you live and work out your destiny; and that

field is the life-essence of this grander entity of which I have just spoken, just as the molecules and the atoms composing my body live in me, move in me, have their being in me, their greater container. So is it likewise with us: we live and move and have our being in this greater entity. In these few words lies the gist of the sublime doctrine of hierarchies as taught in theosophy. Take this thought into your consciousness. It is a wonderful key to nobler and still loftier thoughts. There are some people who are like the little boy of whom I was reading in a funny story the other day. This is a story about a little boy who wanted to know something about heaven and also about what happened to naughty little boys who tell lies: "Mother, do liars ever go to Heaven?" "Why no, dear! Certainly not." After a long pause -- "Well, it must be awful lonesome up there with only God and George Washington." -- The Hardware Age Now, this humorous little story well illustrates the type of mind that some people -- you would be surprised to know how numerous they are -- love to cultivate. They like to dwell in familiar thoughts; they like to be told things which they love to follow. But tell them that they are following someone else's thoughts, and notice the offended dignity with which they will greet your remark. You will be the recipient of that Gorgon's stony stare which will freeze you stiffer than an icicle. Have you found yourself? Are you beginning to get the idea of what I mean by asking you this question? I want you to wake up to what is within you. I mean every word of this. I want you to awaken spiritually and intellectually. Don't accept offhand merely what I say to you. Don't be like the little boy who asked his mother where liars went after death and then accepted what she said; but think for yourselves, and that will be the first sign of your awakening, of your finding yourself. Gnothi seauton said the ancient Greeks, voicing the declaration of the Greek Oracle: -- Man, know thyself! You will know all things in the universe if you know yourself fully, for then you will have become a god with consciousness of universal field. A question came to me the other day for answering this afternoon, and I will read it to you now. Why are teachers necessary when every human being is a potential god? Is the god within inadequate, or is it another case of a sleeping giant? This question is beautifully phrased; and I would like to answer offhand: It is a case of a sleeping giant. The god is adequate. But I cannot give such an offhand and easy answer, for this divine being within you is not "asleep." It is a titan, a divine titan, but it sleepeth not at all. Fell it to sleep for one fleeting instant of time, and all that you are would evanish away like a mist before the morning sun -- and incomparably more quickly. All that you are, all that you express, all that you manifest, consists in streams of energy -- spiritual, intellectual, psychical, astral, and physical -- which ultimately originate in the god within you, your own inner divinity, which is the heart, the core of you. Withdraw it if possible from your constitution, and all the rest of you would vanish like a fleeting shadow on a white wall. In such a supposititious case a watcher could say: You were and now you are not. No, it sleepeth not at all, nor ever. Its very essence is vibrant spiritual energy. Get that thought please. It is the outflowing of this energy within you which expresses itself in and through the imperfect vehicles which you are: your imperfect human soul, your imperfect mind, your imperfect intelligence, your vagrant and imperfect emotional nature. These energies expressing themselves through these different parts of your constitution, produce you. You see, here again I come back to the same thing which I said before: Evolution is the fuller and fuller and progressively more perfect manifestation of these powers of the inner god. As a seed brings forth what is locked up within it as potency, finally manifesting some of these powers as a full-grown plant, as the human microscopic seed brings forth that which grows into the full-sized human adult, manifesting, bringing forth, unwrapping, unrolling, what it contains as latent capacity, faculty, potency, within itself,

similarly through the ages does the ever-evolving, growing, changing entity bring forth ever more fully what is locked up within -- and this is evolution. No, I cannot say that the god within is merely a sleeping giant. It is a giant in power indeed, a titan, a cosmic titan, but it is fully awake. And we poor humans, each one of us, a reflection of the latent powers and faculties flowing forth from this divine being within each of us, as the ages pass march ever upwards towards a union with our divine self. We shall lose finally our present human self because it will expand, grow, into becoming our divine self. Do you understand that thought? Let me ask you: Does the child lose itself when it becomes a man? Does the young oak, springing from the acorn, lose itself when it in its turn becomes a full-grown oak? Evolution is change, but change in the sense of growth of what is within. Now, here I must enter a caveat lest you misunderstand this idea. Theosophists are not Darwinists, we are not Transformists; we do not teach that one thing merely changes into something else without a connecting thread of vitality and consciousness between one change and the succeeding change. Our theosophical teaching is that evolution is an unfolding in ever greater degree of what remains the same individuality. Theosophists are therefore not Darwinists; we are not Lamarckians; we are not Transformists. We are evolutionists. As I have said before: will a pile of strings and pieces of wood and a pot of varnish and bits of metal and ivory and other things, through evolution transform themselves into a piano? Is a heap of stones a house? No, theosophists don't teach Transformism; we don't teach that the stone becomes a plant by the stone "transforming" itself into a plant. That would be magic of a kind that the ancient wisdom knows nothing of and such magic does not exist. Theosophists certainly don't teach that. In the core of the core of every life-atom there is the overshadowing -- or over-lightening to use a better word -- influence of the god within that life-atom, within it but also above it because superior to it, the life-atom being merely its vehicle. As ages pass the energies streaming from the god within and working through this life-atom pass from new body to new body, rising along the scale of life from body of stone to body of beast, through the plants, to body of man, and from man entering bodies of gods. I might add also that the various vehicles or bodies through which this stream of life-consciousness passes are of course improved by the working of this stream within them, so that the bodies themselves, as the ages bring forth generation after generation, slowly improve both in texture and capacity, to manifest more perfectly this stream of vitality and consciousness. Hence it is that the bodies themselves evolve through growth to perfection. I have heard it asked: "Where are these gods of which you speak?" We think that we do not see them, and therefore we say they are non-existent. We blind our eyes to the vast and bewildering complex diversities of growing things around us, offsprings of the life-atoms of these gods. Nature herself proves that the gods are within her and working through her. Is it logical to say that a thing is non-existent because we do not see it? You don't see energy and by the same line of argument energy does not exist. You have never seen an atom, and by the same line of argument atoms do not exist, because you don't see them. The entities inhabiting some of the electrons forming the atoms of your body do not see you, and therefore, from the same line of argument, you do not exist. Do you understand me now? No thinking man, therefore, would argue merely that because his senses do not apprise him of the existence of something, therefore it is non-existent. The argument is childish. I need but to allude to it to show you how futile such offhand arguments are. What is proof? The preponderance of evidence presented to the mind. Is proof, therefore, absolute truth? It is not. You may prove a thing to the hilt, and yet be wrong. But there is that within you, your intuitive cognising faculty, which will tell you what truth is. And were all the universities of our own globe to combine against a man who knew a fact from the powers within him, they would not change his cognition of the truth that he sees; and when a man can stand like that and face the world because his instinct, his conscience, his intuition, his intellect, tell him that such and such a thing is true, he indeed is a man, and he is infinitely farther along the path than are the dogmatists, whether in religion or science or philosophy, who have not his faculty of developed inner vision.

Yes, every one of you has within him an infallible guide, which is the full conscious power of the god within you and of which your consciousness and conscience are as yet an undeveloped expression. Your duty, therefore, is to look within to find this guide. Do you need teachers? Yes, you do need teachers. What does a teacher do? He shows you the path; his teaching is a help. He evokes from within you your own latent and dormant faculties. That is what a true teacher does -- he educates -- instructs also, perhaps, but EDUCATES -- brings out what is within you, leads forth your native powers. Instruction is merely filling your mind full of facts -- good enough in its way and in its place, but it is not the true work of a teacher. A teacher shows you how to think, how to become; shows you how to use what is within yourself. He shows you the way. He does more. A true spiritual teacher will take your hand and bring you, if you trust him, to the portals of the Temple of Divine Wisdom; and there, not he but you will give the knock. For this knock is not a knock of the hand; it is a manifestation issuing from soul, from mind and heart, that you have arrived at the point where you want more light, and your teacher recognizes that knock, as Jesus said. Certainly teachers are needed; and the man who thinks that he knows so much that he can learn no more -- you know where to place him on the ladder of life. Pity him, for he has not found himself; he does not know who he is; the god within him is not manifest. The more you really know, the more you are aware that you don't know much. Strange paradox! It is the ignorant, it is the foolish, the self-satisfied, who say: "We have truth; we are the ones." But the one who has even a little of the divine illumination of truth will tell you: "I am a learner. I am a student. I have seen the vision sublime and I know that beyond that vision (I now know it for I have seen it) there are visions still more grand." You know what the ancient Greek, Socrates, said of teachers. He was accused, by those who brought him before the judges, of corrupting the youth of his land by instilling into their minds teachings contrary to the established law; and he said: "Men of Athens, I am the midwife of the souls of men. I bring to birth what otherwise would cause heavy labor to those who are learning." He spoke truth. A teacher occupies a position of enormous responsibility indeed. But he gives -- gives all that is in him, all that he is and has. He is entitled to the perfect trust and loyal friendship and devotion of those whom he teaches. I tell you, you men of the Occident, that you have lost one of the noblest instinctual feelings of the human heart, and that is, devotion, self-dedication, one of the manliest and noblest not only of human emotions but instincts; and with this loss ye have likewise lost much of the sense of gratitude. These are the things which make men great. Mere accomplishments count for but little. You hear the statement constantly made: "I do not care what a man says; show me results." Yes, this is perfectly logical, perfectly true. I would not attempt to deny it. But after all, what does it mean? Such a speaker is looking for results, he is not looking for causes; and if the standard is wrong, if what men happen to prize in any age is on a level low and ignoble, the man who produces results of that low and ignoble stage will be considered a great one. No, it is the treasures that are in the heart of man, in his spirit, in his intellect, which make him man. Not what he produces alone, not what his results are alone. Pray learn that well. The statement made as a statement is true enough. Nobody would attempt to deny that if you are something of worth, you will produce fruits in accordance with what you are. But do not judge, that is my point; do not judge a man merely by what he produces, by what the results are. Judge him by what he is. Judge not that ye be not judged, because in judging ye judge yourselves: your judgment places you where you belong, as showing what your intuition, your faculty of visioning truth, is. Consequently, when we see people suffer, when we see people misfortunate and unfortunate, when we see people in sorrow and pain, judge them not, for none of you knows the hid causes of what has produced this. Judge not the ragged beggar on the street. In his last life he may have been a prince clad in purple, and for some former fault he is now passing through this stage, a new stage, on this earth -- a stage of moral and intellectual cleansing and purgation.

Be charitable in your thoughts. Be pitiful. It is great so to be. Judging our fellows quickly and without adequate thinking is unkind to say the least. It is also foolish, because your judgments are inevitably based on the standards of the day, and the veriest tyro, the child in an intermediate school, knows that standards change. Shall ye have the standards of Rome, or the standards of Greece, or the standards of our day, or the standards of the European Middle Ages, or the standards of India? Why not take the standard that your own spirit-soul whispers constantly to you: forgive, love. Be at peace. Cultivate harmonious relations with your fellow men. Do not judge; be helpful. Be kind. These show true manhood. The weakling does not understand. I here turn to a question which was sent in to me within the last day or two, asking that it might be answered this afternoon. It is this: Why is it that a fine and blameless soul with an exceptional capacity for deep feeling is, not infrequently, subjected to the most intense suffering that the human heart can know? Can you explain why such deep afflictions come into blameless lives? Yes indeed, I can explain it, and know that my explanation will be easily understood of you, for not one of you is freed from sorrow and pain. It is something that all sons of men know of, have experienced, and those who have passed through the cleansing fire, through the pure fine flame of suffering, are the ones who are pitiful towards those who themselves are passing through the stages of purification. It is through knowledge that we grow. It is through experience that we evolve. And those experiences which make the greatest call upon our energies and ethical stamina are the ones which help us the most, and they awaken our dormant spiritual and intellectual powers the most quickly. We can live like drones, droning away a valuable incarnation on earth; or we can live like true men, vibrating with life in every atom of our being, spiritual, mental, psychical, astral -- even the body then vibrating with kindly feeling. Nothing makes us feel with others so deeply as passing through the gateways of purification which sorrow and suffering and pain are, for sorrow and suffering and pain are ennobling and refining influences. When the human heart is wrung, has been wrung, then it becomes tender to the woes of others. Do not pity yourselves when passing through these gateways of purification, O friends! look upon it all as a sublime opportunity, painful as it is, for all quick growth is painful, and sorrow quickens the evolution of the soul, for it stirs up everything within you. "What causes pain and suffering to come into blameless lives?" The laws of infinitely merciful nature, whose whole effort is to awaken the man to the realization of the existence of the god within, in other words and to speak more accurately, to awaken you as humans to recognize your own inner god. Also the immediate causes of suffering and pain coming into blameless lives are the things wrongly done, in former incarnations, the things left undone, the lessons in life deliberately ignored and turned from. We are always quick to see and to wonder at the suffering and pain that we undergo, but do we ask ourselves with equal readiness: whence come upon us the things of good fortune and the things of success and the talents and the good lucks so called that we meet with? It is all our karma, as theosophists say, in other words the results or consequences whether good or bad of noble acts or ignoble acts which we had done or left undone or wrongly done in this or in previous lives on earth. Nature is a close and absolutely accurate marker of everything that you think or do. Nature being infinitely just, everything that you think or do is written on the page of your character -- on the credit or the debit side; and sooner or later ye must meet the bill and pay it if the account is running against you. But here also lies the mercy of the divine Law, that our payment results in a quickened evolution of our own inner spiritual self. Sorrow, suffering, pain, bring forth more quickly than joys and happiness the powers and faculties that we have within us. Do you understand me now? The heart of nature is love unbounded and peace which passeth all comprehension, even of the very gods. When a man acts aright, he acts according to nature's laws, to use popular language; and therefore that is the way to peace and harmony, because he acts with nature and runs not contrary to her own irresistible currents of evolution.

When a man acts for himself alone, placing his puny, his feeble, his imperfect will against the strong current of nature's flooding river of evolutionary progress, he is swept aside on to some sandbank of destiny, and must recover by his own efforts his former place in nature's majestically advancing river of evolution. That is why we suffer. We suffer from ourselves, and, alas! we make others suffer with us, because we are all knitted together in inseparable bonds of origin and destiny. Therefore be merciful, be pitiful, when power is in your hands; for as ye mete, said Jesus the avatara, it shall be meted unto you. Ye shall receive back what ye give. Give, therefore, the treasures of your spirit; and act like a god even now, because even now ye have godlike thoughts. Be men, expressing the divine powers of the divinity within you!

Second Second Series: No. 3 (September 15, 1930)

WHAT ARE YOU?

(Lecture delivered July 13, 1930) CONTENTS: Light for the materialism-ridden Occident. -- Why be satisfied with spiritual and mental husks? -- No oracle is needed to answer your questions. -- Occidentals have lost the key to selfknowledge. -- Evolve by self-directed evolution. -- The Psychical Powers: they die with the body. They are not the source of spiritual powers. How they are used by the great ones. Their danger when used by the ignorant. -- The average man of the Occident intellectually lazy. -- Beware of him who says: "Lo, here is the Christ!" -- Wisdom the treasury of experience. -- It is the blows of destiny that awaken. -Membership in The Theosophical Society. -- The Inner Body of the T.S. -- What is empty space? -- Was the Pyramid of Cheops merely a tomb? -- The higher initiation of the Mystery schools. I am looking for gods among you. I mean it! I am looking to see how many of you manifest -- however feebly -- the divinity within you, for this divinity you cannot hide. It will shine forth from you as an emanation that any thoughtful and percipient mind can sense. It will stream forth from your eyes, shine from your face, and your very manner of holding yourself will show to a looker-on who knows how to read the signs just how far you have climbed the evolutionary ladder of life. I am looking for gods among you. Do I find them? Yes! Yes! I see in you the fire of intelligence; I see the flame of understanding; I see the rein of self-control, however inadequately and imperfectly it may be held, governing the lower man in you; and in so much I sense that I stand here before an audience of gods, and am speaking to an audience of gods. Do you know how I can interpret this? Because I myself am an imbodied god. Having understanding within me, I can interpret it when I see it in you. Having intelligence in me, I recognize it in you. Feeling the urge of brotherly love in my heart, I see how my words evoke it forth from your own heart. I see it in your faces; for the very core of the core of each one of you is a divinity. I tell you this on every Sunday when I talk to you, because it is so important, especially in the materialism-ridden Occident of the last hundred years or so, during which time men lost their grip on all things that are worthwhile, on all things that stand forever -- the great realities of existence. I want to recall to your minds what you really are, so that you yourselves may choose your own path, marching steadily ever upwards towards that divinity which is not only within you, within the core of the core of you, but which also shines over you and deluges you with its divine radiance and which permeates you with its celestial fire. Why not ally yourselves more fully with this inner divinity within you? Why be satisfied with spiritual and mental husks that the swine do eat, to use the language of the Christian New Testament, impolite as that language is? Why choose bran, the husks, the rejecta, when you can have the full kernel furnishing the divine bread of wisdom? You can have it. You can indeed have it. You have it, but you won't take it, because you have forgotten that you have it within you. You know that what I tell you is true. Two Sundays ago I asked you, when standing here before you -- before an audience like you at any rate -- I asked you: Who are you? and I wonder how many of you offhand could have given me a quick, a ready, an accurate answer. And on last Sunday I asked you: Have you found yourself? If you have, nothing that I could say to you will be strange to you. The teachings of the ancient wisdom would then simply come to you as familiar thoughts, as dear and precious meditations springing from the deeps of your own heart. And today I ask you again if you know who you are, and if you have found yourself, what are you? and whither are you going? Can any one of you answer these questions? It is true that you are filled with intuitions, and therefore also intuitively do you know that what I tell you is true. But if I were to ask you for an intellectual exposition in answering these questions that I put before you, what could you answer me? Is it any wonder that the god Apollo, at his Oracle in Delphi, Greece, in ancient times had written over the portico of the Temple raised in his honor, two words: Gnothi seauton, "Know Thyself!"? And you

need not come to an oracle in order to have your questions answered. You have it all within. You can answer all your own questions, every one of you, once that you come into a self-conscious realization of who you are, and what you are when you have found yourself. You will then know what your place in the universe is, what your origin was, and what your future will be. I can tell you, further, if you have the answers to these questions, which you can have if you know yourself, then this world would be a heaven, because disputes would stop, quarrels would cease, understanding and brotherly love would take the places of strife and discord. These are the truths that The Theosophical Society, above everything else, was founded to bring back to the cognition of the men of the West. To the men of the East also does this apply, but particularly so to Occidentals, because the Occidentals have lost the key to self-knowledge. You have verily lost that key. The words that our announcer read to you this afternoon are no vain words. They are not mere poetry, they were not uttered merely in an attempt to produce an impression. I repeat the words of all the great seers and sages of the ages: Knock, and if you give the right knock, it will be opened unto you. Ask, and if you ask aright, in self-forgetfulness and in sheer hunger for light, for truth, ye shall receive. There is truth in the universe, truth which has been tested throughout innumerable ages by the greatest men, by the great sages and seers of all time, by the greatest men, I say, that the human race has ever given birth to -- the greatest thinkers, the greatest psychologists, the greatest philosophers, the founders of the greatest world religions. I have uttered a few of their names time and time and time again: Jesus the Syrian sage, and the great Gautama the Buddha, are two whom it will suffice to mention now. The roots of their teachings are the same in each and all of the great religions and philosophical systems for they tell you what you are, whence you came, whither you go, and what the universe is of which you are, each one of you, an inseparable part, therefore containing within you all that the universe contains. One drop of the water of the sea will tell you the mysteries of the ocean. You are such drops of the infinite ocean of life; and if you know yourself, ye shall know all the secrets of that infinite ocean of life. You have everything within you -- spiritual powers, intellectual powers, psychical powers so called, astral powers, vital powers, and even physical powers; and you don't use one thousandth part of what you have within you, because you don't know that you have these powers. You prefer, you have preferred, your fathers have preferred, to take either the dead-letter teachings of a moribund church or the equally dogmatic and unsatisfactory teachings of an unknowing science -- a science whose weakness (and equivalently whose strength) is that it changes from year to year because it learns more. But do you think I am going to base the beliefs of all my being on a changing theory which passes from phase to phase? No! I am going to follow that still small pathway within me, which will lead me, if faithfully followed, to the heart of the universe -- my parent, my divine source, and yours. That is where I shall find wisdom and peace and vision, because I shall drink of the waters of life eternal. These waters are within me, within you. Men have learned something of the powers of the physical universe, something of the feeble because undeveloped powers of their own inner constitution; and these powers have blinded them, imperfectly developed as they are, and oh! so imperfectly understood -- have blinded them I say, to the sublimer powers of the spirit still more within. When a theosophical lecturer speaks after this fashion, he does not mean that ye should abandon what we have that is worthy, that is of value, that is useful. He means only that ye should seek for something higher and nobler; that ye should grow; that ye should evolve by self-directed evolution, as Katherine Tingley so often told you from this platform -- by self-directed evolution, meaning by rapid growth instead of merely flowing along on this steadily advancing but oh! so slow river of time. Use your will; use your intelligence; use your intellect; use the faculties for self-development that you have; and thus be, because ye shall become, and thus be ever more fully the god within you. Every one of you, in the core of his being, is a Christ, is a Buddha, is a great sage and seer, is a spiritual

clairvoyant, is a mystic, is a sublime poet, is a lofty-minded scientist, is a genius, is a supremely great artist. Think! The human race has produced all these manifestations of the human spirit. Shall we say that certain ones of the sons of men have been particularly favored, and that the other children of men have not the same chance? How can that be? These great ones came from the same human stock that we are; the same blood flowed in their veins as flows in ours; all the faculties that they had and developed, are human. You also have them all. Show me out of these great men, first, a single one that ever harmed his fellow; second, who ever limited the use of the faculties that he had to the so-called psychical powers. I know not one. All of them were teachers of men. All of them were guided by the divine flame within, by the spiritual light which is bounded by neither space nor time, and which appealed as strongly to the human heart in the ages of the past as it will appeal in a billion years from now, if men then still exist on earth. But the psychical powers so called, such as thought-transference and clairaudience and clairvoyance -useful if guided by high moral power -- die when the body dies; pass when the body is dissolved, and that is the end of them. But what remain not only in the individual who has lived and taught, but also in the hearts of his fellows, are the things of great and outstanding value: the teaching of men to love each other; the teaching to men that they are sons of the gods, children of the spiritual universe, having everything within them that the universe has -- every energy, every faculty, every power -- that they can become divine if they will. The teaching of love, of almighty love, which is all-permeant, which penetrates everywhere, and which the stoniest of human hearts never has been able to resist; the teaching of compassion, of pity, of mercy, of kindliness, of universal brotherhood -- one of the sublimest of our theosophical doctrines, that fundamentally we are all one, keepers of each other, wholly responsible for what we do to each other, responsible for the sufferings that we cause, for the aching hearts that we shall be called to account by nature's spiritual law in making ache -- all these qualities and powers flow forth from the spirit, because they all originate in spiritual faculties; and when you have come to use and enjoy these spiritual faculties self-consciously, then you live in the eternal life, because your consciousness becomes cosmic in its sweep. It is no longer limited to the fleshly body, or to the mere interests of one incarnation on earth. Think it over. These manifestations of spiritual power are the marks of a spiritual genius; but I can tell you also that these great ones of the ages didn't neglect the psychical powers that were theirs. Nevertheless remember that the spiritual powers do not spring from the psychical powers. The psychical powers come into birth within men naturally, and in these great ones were used properly and usefully, because such psychic powers were guided by high moral instinct, and because in addition to being guided they were enlightened by the divine flame of spiritual intelligence. People usually do not know these things in the West. They can know them, but as a rule they won't know them. You can find these teachings and doctrines in the ancient religious and philosophical literatures of the world; but if you ask a man to make this search, as a rule he says: "Hm, too highbrow!" He evidently wants to be a low-brow. Do you want to be low-brows? The beast is a low-brow. The truth of the matter is that the men of the Occident as a rule -- not all of course, because there are splendid men everywhere, but the average man in the Occident -- is intellectually lazy, and wants someone else to think for him. He wants to be led; he wants to be guided. And the proof of this statement is here: that upon the first discovery of the truth of his spiritual independence and of his inner spiritual power, the discovery runs away with him, and thereafter for a while he won't be guided by anybody, not even by his higher self. "I am supreme," is his thought. "I am the supreme individual" -- thus running to the other extreme -"nothing that I do not think of and cannot think of can possibly exist in the Universe, because I have not thought of it." Previous to that time he took everything that he thought and felt from books that he had read, or from someone who had acquired a certain position in the intellectual world.

Now, theosophists have something to lay before you, to set before you. It is at once an inspirer towards a nobler life and a corrective of our faults. The ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, belonging to no age, because it belongs to every age, was evolved forth by no one individual because every spiritually great man has taught it -- and when I say spiritually great man, I mean the greatest of the great, the loftiest intellects, the titanic spiritual giants of the human race. This ancient wisdom-religion was their teaching, is their teaching, and will be their teaching. No one has invented theosophy. Theosophy will tell you what your spiritual nature is, what these psychical powers, so called, are, how you are builded, whence you came, what your present nature and usefulness in the universe is, what your destiny will be. No theosophist ever presents his sublime philosophy to you and says: You must believe this or you cannot join us. We say: These are the teachings of the wisdom-religion of mankind; they are what I have told you they are. Undertake the study of these doctrines yourself. Prove them yourself. Follow them, if you are man enough to follow them, if you find them good. If you don't like them, don't take them. We have no dogmas at all in The Theosophical Society. We are searchers for truth, learners of truth; and I tell you: be suspicious if anyone should ever stand before you and say: "Behold, I am the Christ." The great ones are always modest. The more that a man knows, the more indeed he may speak with decision and power, and he has the right to do so, but the less does he lay down what he knows as a law for others to follow. You know what is said in the Christian New Testament about those who were spoken of as coming in after times: Lo, someone will say, here is the Christ. Believe him not. And others will say: Lo, there is the Christ. Also believe him not. But every man who knows something, who has truth even in minor degree, is entitled to say and has a right to say: I am the way, I am the life, because I can show you the way and give you the light. What does any university professor say? He says the same thing, but in your Occidental phrases. "Yes, sir, I am a teacher of psychology; I am a teacher of Greek; I am a teacher of astronomy; I stand before you teaching this subject or that." All this is simply saying: "I am the way to learn psychology; I am the way to learn Greek; I will show you the way to learn astronomy. Come to me, and I will give you light on these subjects." Human hearts are stony. People talk about "tender" human hearts. My friends, human hearts are the most adamantine, stony things that I have ever known. Nothing will break this stoniness except that which lacks all violence, all force, which is modest, utterly kind, peaceful, brotherly. Do you know what it is? It is almighty love, the very cement of the universe, permeating everything, holding even the atoms together. None can resist it. Do you catch the thought? What powers shall ye cultivate in order to grow, to be, to succeed? Those which nothing can withstand, which nothing and none can resist, which work day and night, in the silence and in the storm, always zealously, the very heart-energy of the universe, of which you are children -- these are the powers which ye should cultivate: love, intelligence, compassion, pity, forgiveness, and such fruits of these as are gentleness, kindheartedness, mildness of spirit, and similar things. These are spiritual powers. Next let me tell you a few of the fruits, of the rewards, that ye shall have, first from knowing that ye have these, then from cultivating them. Ye shall have spiritual clairvoyance, vision of universal sweep, limited only so far as you as an individual can interpret, can receive, can contain. The spiritual faculties are within you and can be cultivated to an infinite extent. Understanding, for instance, for understanding is also of the very nature of the heart of the universe. You have it within you. Ye can understand all things if ye cultivate it. Ye can understand why the grass grows, why the bloom is on the peach, why your fellow human beings live, why you are here, what the stars in their courses are constantly singing to you, why hate and love, night and day, summer and winter, heat and cold, and all the other pairs of opposites, exist in the universe. Ye shall have clairaudience and clairvoyance of a spiritual kind -- not the psychic counterparts of these, but the spiritual powers derived from the spiritual faculties within you. I tell you in all seriousness, that when ye possess these powers which ye can, by cultivating the inner divine faculties, the spiritual faculties, within you, ye shall hear the music of the spheres and know what it is that ye hear; ye shall

hear and see the grass grow and understand why it grows; ye shall hear the atoms sing and see their movements, and the melodies that any physical body produces -- the unison of the songs of all individual atoms. Psychic powers, so called, will give you none of these things; but the spirit within you will do so -- son of the sun in very truth, your own inner god. It is your interpreter! And material success? Shall I drop to the physical plane for a moment and tell you how to succeed in the material world? Perhaps for a moment only, because it will enable me to illustrate a point. The man who possesses spiritual faculties and powers and knows how to use them for good, never for evil -- because he will then be destroyed, if he does, by the reaction, by the snap-back -- the man who so uses them will have all that the physical world, the world of men, possesses for him -- fortune, power, influence, human affection, human love; in fact all good things will be his. And just here is the test: Do I take these unto me only, for me only, or wholly for the service of my fellow men? If the latter is the case, he is like a god who walks among men. If the former is the motive, he will never fully receive. Did you ever hear of a man who could get a corner on love? Is it possible for a human being to get a corner on understanding and intellect? Do you now get the idea? Awake, I tell you! Be the best that you are. For, verily, ye are gods and the sons of gods -- immortal divinities in your innermost essence! Ye don't know what ye have within you. And these psychic powers, the pursuit of which is now popular all over the Occident, leading people astray -- are the psychic powers in themselves evil? No. But first, men don't know what they are; and, in the second place, when they do have a little of this, or of that, or of some other psychic power, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it is misused for selfish and ignoble purposes. Therefore, the psychic powers themselves are not wrong, but they should be guided by the moral instinct and by the sublime vision springing from the god within you. Then their use is proper; and no matter what use be made of them, it is a safe and holy use. What are these psychical powers so called? Here is a question on this topic that was sent in to me for answer: Does the possession of psychic powers indicate a superior state of evolution? My observation has been that people possessing such so-called psychic powers generally feel that they have something to be proud of. It would be something to be proud of in a certain way if only people knew how to use them and control them, instead of being used by them and controlled by them. Do you admire a man who cannot control himself, cannot control his faculties, but is a mere slave, a tool, an instrument, jumping-jacking around as it were, and not even able to control the spasmodic movements of his physical body? Is it an admirable sight? No. Lack of self-control is always an ugly thing to see, because it is an imperfect thing. But a man who controls himself, because he knows who he is, who retains command of his own faculties and powers, who is not afraid to let the heart of him out and to let the soul of him speak is a true man, and such a man ye need never have fear of. It is the most difficult thing to do to keep yourself in perfect self-control. Self-control is always kindly; it is always beautiful; it is always respected. Think of the opposite picture. Did you ever know what is popularly called a psychic? I have met, I believe, but one in my life who had relatively perfect selfcontrol. Now what is the reason that this is usually the case? The human race has attained, at the present stage of its evolution, a period in its evolutionary journey, friends, when psychical powers are beginning naturally to manifest themselves, and their further growth and further evolution should proceed along perfectly normal, proper, and legitimate lines. They should not be abused, any more than the faculties and powers of the physical body should be abused. And when anything is abused, is it good? Does it mean self-control? Is it beautiful? Is it lovely? Is it of good report? The silence contains the answer. But if these people in whom the psychical powers are beginning to show themselves, very feebly as yet, had undertaken an equivalent training in morals -- for morals indeed are not conventions, but based upon

the very fabric of the universe, therefore founded in universal law -- and if this moral instinct and training were guided by the divine flame of the god within each one, then development of these psychical powers and faculties would proceed perfectly naturally, normally, and the result would be a spectacle both beautiful and useful, and also highly instructive. There is danger in the situation in the world today as it stands with regard to this matter of psychical faculties and powers. Theosophists have not been understood on this question of psychic faculties and powers. Many so-called psychics seem to think that theosophists oppose a natural, normal growth of human faculty and power; and that is untrue, and I have no hesitation in calling it plain poppycock. Theosophists do oppose any abuse of things. We oppose misuse of things. We say, for instance, that any man who will deliberately harm some other by misusing, let us say, some branch of science that he has mastered, should be restrained, should be taught, should be educated. Theosophists do not say that knowledge is wrong. On the contrary, we say exactly the opposite: that knowledge per se is noble, and we cannot have too much of it. But knowledge misused is devilish. There must be the moral sense, the moral instinct, guiding the knowledge, and that moral instinct is a child of the divine flame within you. It is your conscience. Your conscience is not infinitely perfect. It is not, therefore, utterly sure and infallible. Your conscience therefore is a growing, expanding, evolving, thing, growing more sensitive as the ages pass, more sensitive to truth. Therefore I cannot tell you: trust to your conscience utterly. I can only say that it is the only light you have, and you should cultivate your conscience more. Exercise it. Give to it its own sweep of power, and above everything else, find the road of the spirit within you; seek for that supernal light which is within your soul and guiding it. Go inwards. I will show you the way. Any true theosophical teacher can show you the way. If you want a voiceless teacher, then study the great books of the ancients. Teachers are needed in the world, as I have often told you.

Who are you? Have you found yourself? If so, give me the answers. What are you? Whither are you going? Give me the answering passwords.
Yes, these psychics do indeed seem to think that they are a superior people. It is a natural thing to think, because these psychical faculties and powers are still greatly undeveloped in them; they are but the first faint flutterings, as it were, of what in future will be wings, but the strength moving those wings in their flight to the stars will be that of the god within you. No; no theosophists will ever tell you that psychical powers per se are wrong and evil. On the contrary, we have taught that they exist, that they are misunderstood, that people with psychical powers are in danger not only for themselves, but often are a danger to their fellows. Just pause a moment. Had any modern psychic lived four hundred, three hundred, years ago, what would have become of the poor wretch? The stake, the torture chamber, imprisonment, would likely have been his fate. Oh! "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn," as Burns so truly said. Knowledge is freedom; knowledge is the pathway to wisdom; and wisdom is the treasury of experience gained in past infinitudes of evolutionary growth. You have will; you have intelligence; you have a heart. Make it an understanding heart. You have the power of discrimination; you can have decision of purpose; you have unsuspected faculties and powers locked up within you, and it is precisely these faculties that theosophists hope to awaken in the human race as future centuries fall by into the ocean of the past. Psychics can greatly help if they have the moral instinct guiding them, and provided also that this moral instinct or conscience in its turn is guided by the god overshadowing you and whose ray is within you. Then all things will move harmoniously and smoothly, progressively, towards a spiritual and intellectual culmination which in future ages shall be more sublime than ye wit of today. For the time is coming when this earth shall be the home, the homeland, the home-sphere, of human gods walking over its surface, because the inner god in each human individual shall have been evolved forth, shall have

unrolled, unwrapped, expressed itself; and then indeed men shall walk the earth like gods, because they will think like gods, and feel like gods. Psychics and psychical powers: I know what they are. I know what they all mean. I too am one of them. But thanks be to the immortal gods, there was a spark burning in my heart, a light, which as a boy I discovered, and followed. I came to know my conscience, to recognize the inner light, this spark within. And by tending it faithfully, by watching it night and day, it grew, no longer remaining a spark-light, but becoming a warm and tender flame, suffusing my whole being with its soft radiance; and I know, friends, I know that if I tend that divine flame within my soul to the end of my days, without fail and faithfully, if my karma, my destiny, be favorable, perhaps, and kind to me, in my next incarnation on earth I shall manifest still more fully than the feeble flame I have so far evolved, the divine sun within my heart. This is not poetry. I am telling you sublime facts. Think! Think! How many of you really think? You don't want even to be told, many of you -- you men in the West -what you really are. You prefer to go along in a rut, following always what you have done before and what your fathers have done and your grandfathers, and their great-grandfathers. Children -- forgive me! -- children in intellect, of undeveloped mind, of undeveloped heart, whose intuition burns indeed, but oh, so feebly! The men of the West won't learn until the hard knocks and blows of destiny awaken them. Then they will turn to better things. Then they will learn something; and oh! how blessed this thought is: that none is rejected of the sons of men, that all, no matter how imperfectly developed, have a chance, another chance, a chance anew, in this or in some future incarnation on earth. Most human beings today are like the little girl in the story that a friend sent in to me. Let me read it to you. I will read it in the exact words which were sent to me. I cannot resist telling you of a little incident which occurred in a neighbor's family. The little girl of eight had formed the undesirable habit of using swear-words. Naturally the mother was shocked, but her method of punishment was unfortunate, as events proved. Whenever the bad words came, the mother would vigorously wash out the child's mouth with soap. But in spite of this the bad words continued. One day the aunt, happening to pass the bathroom, was surprised to see the child vigorously applying this process of soapwashing to herself. "Poor child," thought the aunt, "she is trying." So, with her gentlest and most forgiving manner she said to the child, "More bad words?" "No!" was the prompt and astonishing reply, "I'm just getting used to it!!" Now, isn't this little girl's action just like the action of most grownups? We grownups can learn a great deal from the little ones, if we have the clairvoyant eye, I mean the seeing eye, and the understanding heart. We can learn a great deal from the clever sayings of little children. I love to hear them talk; I have learned more, really, from hearing little children talk, than I have from -- from other people! Now, friends, the time is very near to our closing hour. But I want to answer very briefly two or three other questions that were sent in to me with the request that I answer them today. Does one, in joining your Society, have to give up membership in some other Theosophical Society with which he may be affiliated? He does not. No indeed. We are not so narrow-minded as that. Any human being who sincerely accepts the principle of universal brotherhood can be a member of The Theosophical Society. It does not matter to what other society he may belong, or to what other religion he may belong, or whether he belongs to any other religion at all. The Theosophical Society is not a body of saints -- whether ancients or latterday. We are just human beings, trying to do good in the world as best we can. But perhaps in sheer honesty I ought here to enter a caveat: that we have an inner body for esoteric training, for a study of the deeper teachings of theosophy, and to this inner body, simply on account of the necessities of the case -- that is to say the necessity of having people in it who have been more or less prepared by training and study -- to this inner body only students of theosophy who are members of The Theosophical Society can come. It would be fatal in such an Inner School to have a student

following two diverse or antagonistic trainings, if you understand what I mean. This rule is not one which is due to any selfishness at all, but it exists simply because experience has shown that we cannot do otherwise. The next question contains a clipping from The San Diego Union of June 15th, being a part of Arthur Brisbane's column. I will read a few words from Mr. Brisbane's remarks, and then read the querent's questions, and then answer it briefly. Mr. Brisbane is talking of the Venus of Milo, the famous statue at present in the Louvre in Paris, and he says: According to Einstein, the empty space around the statue would seem to be the important thing. A common place man says the statue, the creation of human genius, is forty-seven trillion times more important than the space around it. And the querent asks: Which is the more vital: the dull cold exquisite marble statue perfect in every detail but lacking the breath of life -- or space vibrant with pulsating eternal energy? I say that the latter is the more important because the latter is full of spirit -- even as the statue itself is -but, I ask you, which is the nobler: the creation of human genius, no matter how noble that creation is, or the surrounding space filled with potentialities for growth of all kinds and vibrant with life and cosmic thought? Decidedly the latter, and Einstein is right. I would say that the empty space -- so-called empty because you don't see the life, the lives with which it is full -- is forty-seven trillions of times fuller of mystery and beauty and the power and the genius of the gods than the carven statue made by human hand. My last question: For what purpose was the great Pyramid of Cheops built? Was it merely a tomb? If so, merely a tomb, why is it that no dead bodies have ever been found in it -- no mummified remnants of human mortality? No, it was a majestic fane, a majestic temple, wherein those who had been duly prepared to receive a vast and sublime light, received it, under wise guidance; and yet indeed it was a tomb: it was a tomb, but not of a dead body. It was a tomb of human personality, where the lower, passionate, weak, vacillating, unsteady-minded, man became, for the time being at least, an imbodied god. By the ancient magic of the Mystery schools of the archaic ages, at the times of the higher initiation the god came forth from within the spiritual nature and shone directly through the physical vehicle, so that the body of the neophyte, as it lay in trance, was resplendent with light. And on the third day, when the neophyte was "raised," remaining conscious of his sublimer experiences in the inner worlds for a short or a longer period, depending indeed upon his own spiritual power, he taught even his teachers what he had learned behind the veil. And while he was in this state, his very face shone with glory, the glory of Father Sun!

Second Series: No. 4 (September 22, 1930)

THE DESTINY OF A SOUL

(Lecture delivered July 20, 1930) CONTENTS: Intelligence or blind chance in the universe? -- The central fire of cosmic being. -- No consciousness-tight compartments in the universe. -- The portals to the mysteries of the universe. -- Two ways to achieve your destiny. -- Self-directed evolution. -- Do nature's evolutionary courses bring satiety? -- Better try another planet! -- Does nature do things just for fun? -- Lessons in the schoolhouse of earth-life. -- Cosmic spirits or gods: the name matters not. -- Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. -- Universal brotherhood: but what about the outcasts of India? -- Repulsive individualism vs. the radiant beauty of impersonality. -- Selfishness is unwise. -- Is there danger in automatic writing? -The two kinds of automatic writing. -- The wonderful untapped resources of the spiritual nature. Bring them forth! I usually conclude my public lectures with telling my audiences that, collectively and individually, they are gods, imbodied divinities, divine sparks arising out of the heart of the universe which is its Central Fire -- that bright and flaming fire of life and intelligence which holds all things harmonious, and keeps them running in courses symmetrical and orderly. It is the source, the fountainhead, of everything that is -- of you, of me, of gods, of monads, of atoms, of worlds, of suns, of nebulae, of universes -- all of them existing in the vast spaces of limitless space; and all rooted in the vastly large spacial universe which we may call the invisible. Or, in your viewing of the universe, do you prefer the old-fashioned hypothesis now dead, which was nothing but a scientific superstition, to wit, the old hypothesis of materialism, which a great British scientist has recently said is as much a superstition as was the medieval belief in devils and witches, to the effect that the entire body of the cosmos is nothing but a fortuitous dance of atoms, blindly driven hither and yon, unguided, undirected, unimpulsed, dead. What a nightmare, actually inconceivable and not to be formulated in any strictly logical categories! No human mind can successfully put such ideas together into a coherent system of thought: that out of non-intelligence springs the bright and flaming fire of intellect, and that out of cosmic disorderliness comes the fine flower of the universe -- order, cause and effect. Therefore the roots of all things are divine; the origin of all things is sublime intelligence which flows through all that is, and which theosophists sometimes call by the phrase, the Central Fire of cosmic being. Each one of you is a spark of it. Each one of you essentially therefore is a divinity. Each one of you is an evolving and learning entity. You are not perfect. You are not wholly imperfect. You have powers; you have faculties; you have capacity for growth; and evolution is nought but the welling forth of what is within, the self-expression of the faculties and powers and energies lying latent in every evolving entity and thing anywhere. Therefore this means that the future destiny of mankind, considered as a host, is to be a host of gods. You cannot bring forth what is not within you. What is not within you, therefore obviously will not express itself, because it is non-existent; and the very root of you is this divine flame of intelligence, of willpower, of consciousness, of love -- of the cosmic love which is all-permeant, penetrates everywhere, and which nothing can resist because it is nature's fundamental essence, nature's fundamental energy, nature's fundamental law. Ally yourself with this, and in proportion as you succeed in so doing, you become irresistible, and irresistible for good alone. "A soul's destiny!" You already have the picture. A soul's destiny must include, likewise, its origin. Anything that will explain what any soul -- not necessarily a human soul -- any conscious entity came from and will ultimately attain through evolution, must explain likewise what it is at the present time. The three go together; indeed, when we add the future destiny of a soul to the preceding three we realize that the past, the present, and the future must also hang together inseparably. The Occidental world for too long, for altogether too long, has been under the psychological cloud of an idea that things in nature

exist in consciousness-tight compartments: that matter is one thing, and that spirit is something else; or matter is one thing and that energy is something else; and that by some mysterious magic which no one has ever been able to explain, these two run along concurrently in nature's evolutionary courses, and yet have no radical, root-relation with each other. That idea was just a full-fledged superstition. Our majestic theosophical philosophy teaches strictly to the contrary of this, to wit, that everything is interconnected, interblended, interbound, interlinked, with everything else. Nothing, no entity, exists unto itself alone. It cannot. Each is an offspring of the universe, the child of that universe. Everything that is in the universe, therefore, is in each child of the Universe. Do you get the meaning and reach of this obviously necessary conclusion? It means that you have the possibility of infinite growth before you. You spring forth from the universe, of which you are, each one of you, an inseparable part. You cannot leave it. There is nowhither whither you may go. Everything that the whole contains is contained latently or actively in every infinitesimal portion of that whole. Ex uno disce omnia, as the Latins said, which I may paraphrase by saying: out of every single drop of the ocean of the sea, ye may learn the whole ocean. Your consciousness is the great portal to all the mysteries of the universe, because your innermost consciousness is that universe. You are its child, and therefore the pathway to all things is within you. This pathway is not without. Everything that the universe contains is your spiritual and natural heritage. All things are already within you, in seed. Therefore see and understand what you have locked up within you. Dream of it, figurate it to yourselves, make the picture, imagine it -- as the first step to becoming greater. Out of manhood ye shall grow into godhood -- I mean to say, into individual gods. I do not use the word godhood in the meaningless sense of a mere abstraction as it is so often used. Out of you, by developing what is within you, in time, as the ages pass, ye shall develop what is locked up within you, which is Divinity. The whole universe is your field of action. Out of it you came. You are in it passing through one phase of your long, long, indeed endless and beginingless, evolutionary journey. And you will grow greater as the ages pass, as your consciousness expands to become universal from being limitedly human. What is man? He is an aggregate, he is a composite entity. He is himself a little universe. Everything is in him in seed, or more or less active. Your very bodies are formed of the cosmic elements; and through these cosmic elements, as builded into the human frame, you express yourself feebly, an effort at selfexpression which makes you what you are at present, human beings. Just like a little child which, as it grows, succeeds in expressing ever more perfectly up to maturity the locked-up powers, but not yet succeeding in doing so in childhood, so we, as men -- shame upon us, incarnate gods as we are! -express ourselves, our inner faculties and powers, alas! only too often with naught but an inarticulate cry. How much better could we do if we only would! Every one of us, every normal human being, is a Christ in his inner parts, is a Buddha. Yes, and more -- the universal heart is within us. Do you know what the ancient philosophers of Hindustan said in their magnificent philosophical teachings? I will tell you a little of it. They asked a question: Kas twam asi? Who art thou? And the answer came: Tat twam asi. That (the Boundless) thou art. A child of the universe you are, sprung from its own substance, therefore filled with the very fire which governs and lightens every articulation of the universal worlds -- all is in you. It is to bring back some of the ancient knowledge of the archaic wisdom-religion of antiquity, that the Theosophical Movement was founded, to give men hope, to give them vision -- the vision sublime -- to give them peace, to give them consolation. And last, but not least, to make them feel for others, to instill the sublime precepts of universal brotherhood into human hearts which had grown stony and unfeeling, and to bring light and illumination to minds which had become darkened through miseducation; because with light and compassion working within them, men become truly men, because then indeed they are already passing out of manhood, trembling, as it were, on the verge of touching divinity.

"The destiny of a soul:" Out of boundless time in the past ye came, ye children of men; out of the womb of infinity and eternity ye have been journeying hither. Hither and forwards into boundless duration shall ye follow the path of growth. What a picture for your quiet hours of meditative thought! There are two ways for a man to achieve his destiny, for a human soul to reach its own inner powers, the full expansion of its own godlike genius. Two ways: and the first is that followed by the majority, the great and voiceless majority, drifting along like flotsam on the ever-running, ceaselessly moving river of time; and this is the path of natural evolution, of natural growth. But oh! how slow, how slow, how slow it is! Ages will pass before the inner expansion of your faculties and powers reaches even a modicum of a larger greatness. The other pathway, that all the great sages and seers of the ages have shown to their fellow men, that which means a quicker growth, a more rapid evolution, a more speedy emergence from the chrysalis of humanhood into possessing the wings of the spirit -- the bird of eternity, to change the metaphor somewhat -- is initiation, which is a reality on earth even today. There is a path -- as H. P. Blavatsky, the main founder of The Theosophical Society, so nobly wrote -- there is a pathway, steep and thorny though it be for the average man, yet it leads to the very heart of the universe. The one traveling this path passes through the portals of growth quickly, relatively speaking; and I can show you how to put your feet upon this pathway, so that instead of spending ages and ages and ages and ages in slowly evolving, in slowly expanding, in slowly bringing forth the powers and faculties within you, you can grip yourself, guide your own evolution, and thus much more quickly grow. This is self-directed evolution, as my great predecessor Katherine Tingley called it. This is initiation. It exists today. But there are preparations even for initiation. None can follow a pathway, is it not obvious, which he has not the strength to walk upon. Therefore he must gather strength unto himself. He must prepare himself. To use the language of the Christian New Testament, he must "gird up his loins and take his staff in his hand, have no thought for the morrow, and carry nothing with him." Lightfooted must he speed along, without encumbering and hampering weights. How do you do it? How do you make these preparations? All the great seers and sages of the ages have told you. I will tell you it again. It is also the message of the wisdom-religion of antiquity today called theosophy. It is as follows: Become self-forgetful, for then you throw off your burdens: you hate not, and you love all things, both small and great. Forget yourself, and you are then no longer enchained with the bonds of desire and acquisition tying you to things of evanescent and impermanent value. Your soul, your spirit, your mind, your heart, become infilled with impersonally great and noble thoughts, desires, and aspirations, which even one thought of merely personal profit and personal acquisition and gain will kill at least for the time being. Love, forgive, be merciful, be compassionate, be pitiful; in other words, expand your consciousness, and if you can do these things successfully, ye need never fear temptation. It will never really touch you, nor bind you, because it will have no hold upon you. This is so because you will then have become selfless. Think it over. It is really so easy to do all this. And yet men will not follow this pathway. Out of eternity have we come, journeying through realm after realm of Nature's mystic and invisible constitution-- through the worlds both invisible and visible -- gathering experience in each, perfecting our faculties in each. And when grown great in any such world, or on any such plane, or in any such sphere, having learned all the lessons that these worlds and planes and spheres can give us, we then pass to still nobler things. Why are we here? Some people seem to think that nature's evolutionary courses bring satiety, bring surfeit. How vain and thoughtless an idea is this! Their idea of the universe seems to be a limited and restricted field in which one set of faculties only is exercised; and these people remind me of the individual who must have been in the mind of the poet who wrote some verses which a friend kindly sent in to me, and which I brought with me in order to read to you if I had a chance to do so this afternoon. My chance has come, and I will now read them. They were originally printed in the Washington Evening Star. They were headed: "Better Try Another Planet."

Same old topics -- same old news. Same old pictures -- same old clues. Same contentions bring surprise; Same old wets and same old drys. Motors spin and make a dash, For a triumph or a smash. Pictures gay delight the eye; Same old things you'd like to buy. Science shows the same old terms; Same old atoms; same old germs. Same discoveries we view, Each with names both long and new. Same old struggles for release, Threats of war and plans for peace. Same old market on the jump -Same old profit; same old slump. Though confusion we may find In a changeful state of mind, With new themes of grief or mirth, It is still the Same Old Earth. I would have headed this poem just exactly as the editor of the Washington Evening Star did, I suppose, unless indeed it was so entitled by the author of it. "Better Try Another Planet" -- which is exactly what you will all do some day. Nature is not so builded as to bring satiety and surfeit to her children. She never repeats herself. Each new experience is in a new field; each new experience is a new life with new opportunities and new environments. There is endless change because change is growth, and growth is evolution; therefore change is evolution, philosophically speaking, of course. Do you think that one life on earth brings out all your powers, brings into full flower all your faculties and energies? Alas! most men and women die with a feeling of having lived almost in vain. Not a billionth part of what is within them have they discovered or brought into action. And it is their own fault. Human beings are lazy, intellectually and otherwise. Talk to a man about self-directed evolution, self-directed growth, and look at him carefully. In some you will see a quick lighting of the eyes; the bright flame of intelligence has been touched, evoked. You have given such as these a new and a holy thought, and they will guard it and profit by it. But in the eyes of others you see no more response than if you looked into the eyes of a dead fish! Do you think that nature does things just for fun? I don't see any sign of that. On the contrary, the very sufferings and pains that human beings have, and that wring their hearts, show that they are growing. Don't be afraid of pain. Don't be afraid of sorrow. They both are friendly. Don't think that you are unfortunate because you have done something which brings nature's reaction upon you in the shape of suffering or pain. You are learning a much-needed lesson. You are growing; and the pains and sorrows are growing pains. That is why human beings return to earth again and again. They haven't learned their lessons in the schoolhouse of earth-life. When a human being has learned all that earth can teach him, he is then godlike and returns to earth no more -- except (hear the glad tidings!) except those whose hearts are so filled with the holy flame of compassion that they remain in the schoolroom of earth that they have long since advanced beyond and where they themselves can learn nothing more, in order to help their younger, less evolved brothers. These exceptions theosophists call the buddhas of compassion, the Christs; and such a spirit is the Christ-spirit. Each one of you some day will be given the choice. Which path, my brothers, will ye then take? Either is noble; both lead to heighths of spiritual sublimity. But one, the road of compassion, is divine. Some day ye must make that choice. But the results of making that choice, of choosing the road of self-forgetfulness and pity and impersonal love for all others, for all things, while temporarily holding you in the realms of illusion, of matter, will ultimately lead you by a road, straighter than any other, to

the very core of the core of the universal heart; for ye shall have obeyed the impersonal commands of cosmic love, and that means allying yourselves consciously with divinity. Think of the philosophy of it and you will see how consistent and logical it all is. Therefore have all the great sages and seers of the past taught their fellow men: If ye wish happiness and peace and faculty and power and knowledge and wisdom and growth, give yourselves utterly. It is the little personal things which cramp your powers. It is the personal "I" which limits your receiving of the impersonal divine flame, of the impersonal divine light, trying to enter your human consciousness from your spiritual being -- the clouds of your selfish, aggressive, and acquisitive personality hindering the entrance of this flaming light. Abandon these faults of the personality and stand forth in your own inner godhood -- this is the destiny of a soul. It remains within your own choice which ye shall do, and it lies on the lap of the gods. Therefore choose! And abide by your choice. Such is nature's law. Choose divinity and become a god and with its concomitant powers become a master of life. Or choose the opposite, and remain indefinitely in the realms of illusion. I have said that ye are gods. Ye are so; and if there be any Christians here in the audience this afternoon, I say to them to look at the identic words as found in your own Christian New Testament. The heart of the heart of the core of the core of you is a divine being, and you, as men, are merely expressing feebly these divine powers within you. There is a pathway steep and thorny which leads to the heart of the universe -- to your own heart of hearts. Knock -- and this is not a knock of physical hand -- and it shall be opened unto you. Ask, and ye shall receive in full measure, overflowing. And the invitation is to become -- that is what it means -- what you are yourselves within. H. P. Blavatsky in her The Secret Doctrine, volume I, page 224, wrote very briefly but admirably upon this point. She says: "Collectively, men are the handiwork of hosts of various [cosmic] spirits; [which are gods, and you may call them gods if you like, as I do] distributively, the tabernacles of those hosts, and occasionally and singly, the vehicles of some of them." Do you understand? Men are the handiwork of these cosmic gods and spiritual beings; and each such god or spiritual entity expresses itself through the human tabernacle which it has built up. Each one of you therefore is a conglomerate constitution builded by the faculties and powers flowing forth from the heart of the heart of you which is this inner god, your cosmic spirit. It is thus that men are builded up into humanity, into possessing the human constitution including of course human physical bodies; each such constitution more or less -- and usually less -- expressing at least a little of these sublime, these divine, powers and faculties. But occasionally -- and here listen well, friends -- occasionally and singly a human being becomes the vehicle, the self-conscious temple, of the divine entity within, and then such a man walks the earth an incarnate god. Such was the Christ, such was the Buddha. Such were many if not most of the great sages and seers of the past. Initiation will bring to you this guerdon of self-forgetfulness, this recompense of a heart which has become a temple of wisdom and love. Try to understand my thought. It is in its element so simple. It promises so much; and I say again unto you: Knock, and it shall be opened. Ask -- and the asking must come from you -- and then ye shall be taught, ye shall receive the light. There is truth in the universe. That truth can be had, and the way to have it is by willpower and by perseverance in following the path, and by self-forgetfulness, so that ye will not have your feet clogged by the mire of selfish desire, holding you fast on the pathway. Come and partake of the Master's feast. Here is one of two or three questions that I have been asked to answer this afternoon. It is the following: Are the sixty million "untouchables" of India within the fraternal circle of universal brotherhood, notwithstanding that their "elder brothers" have pronounced them outcasts -- lower than the beasts? Is there a possibility that Occidentals may descend into the "I am holier than thou" abyss and develop a legion of untouchables in the Western world?

The answer is, Yes, in either case. Even the untouchables are sons of God as the Christian said, and sons of the gods as theosophists say, because the heart of the heart of each one of them is a divinity. Religious bigotry, unwise attempts to keep those who are unfit for it out of the magic circle of wisdom and the ancient teaching of knowledge, brought about the existence of the caste system and the legion of untouchables, because they were supposed to be unfit and therefore technically unclean. Nevertheless I say: Certainly do they come within the circle of universal brotherhood, which has no frontiers and no barriers against any. Even the beasts, even the plants, we reckon as elements in nature's law of universal brotherhood and to this brotherhood belong the souls also of all other things. All, in the theosophic conception of universal brotherhood: all, all are entities having one common source, following the same identical evolutionary pathway of growth, and all marching steadily forward into the future towards better things. And your proud Occident, priding itself on its brotherhood, how about your untouchables? Walk the streets of your great cities before ye cast stones, even at those who live in glass houses. Examine your own household, O friends! One of our noblest and greatest doctrines is the teaching of universal brotherhood, as I have attempted briefly to set it forth to you in other words this afternoon, the feeling of comradely kinship with all that lives, because in very truth ye are more than mere kin: the same consciousness flows through all things, all are derived from the same source. Your very bodies are builded of the same chemical atoms that are in the bodies of all other things; and ye are all marching forwards to the same destiny. In one life a man may be born a prince in his palace, and in another life, for deeds wrongly done and deeds left undone, he may be born a peasant in his hut, or as some poor untouchable; but the lessons of life even here can be learned and learned well. Let us who know these things teach our fellow men their high responsibility, and the duty that devolves upon them to act aright, to think aright, to feel aright. Let us teach them that all men are brothers, not as an emotional precept, not as a thought passing forth from an emotion, but as a fact under the sanctions of nature's never-ending and irrevocable laws. Each one of us is our brother's keeper. A man fails in his duty if he does not help his fellows; and I tell you, lest I be misunderstood, that sometimes the noblest help is correction, but correction given kindly, with true impersonal love, and with no thought of personal advantage; and the best correction is teaching him to see aright the laws of life. Win the hearts of your fellows, and ye shall have peace among you. Yes, the untouchables of your Occident, they are many and of many kinds. Walk the streets of your great cities any night. Go into the market-places. Enter palaces or enter huts, and ye shall find the same that ye shall find in India, and with as little excuse here as there. Men must protect themselves against evil -- that is true. No man should permit a wrong, whether done to himself or to others. The true man should never become particeps criminis, a participator in a crime, by weakly allowing some criminal act to happen, if he can prevent it. But be tactful, be kindly, and forgive. Try to understand and to help by means of education the weak and the stumbling, for ye, my brothers, have yourselves stumbled time and time again. Why do persons who have developed the impersonal outlook possess a beautiful radiant personality, with voices as soft and melodious as the rustle of the corn, or the soothing murmur of brooks -- while he who concentrates upon the personal, rejoices in a more or less repulsive individualism? How easily explainable! When a man becomes self-forgetful, he becomes a very sun of light, radiating spiritual energy, radiating energy of a spiritual and intellectual kind, which permeates the love flowing forth from him into the very hearts of others, and takes these others by storm. Whereas a man who thinks of naught but self -- my, my wishes, my thoughts, my plans, my property -- makes a perfect cocoon of imperfect and ugly selfhood around himself, through which nothing can shine, and which is like an adamantine wall around him more hard and durable than steel; and when he stands before you, or you see him walking the street, he produces no other effect upon you than, just as this questioner has said, your instinctive sense of a more or less repulsive individualism.

Let the love within you shine forth. Love will break even stony human hearts. Nothing, not even hate, can withstand its passage. Therefore how wise were the philosophic ancients: "Hate not. Conquer hatred by love, for this is the ancient law." It is nature's law. The strong man is he who loves, not he who hates. The weak man hates because he is limited and small. He can neither see nor feel the other's pain and sorrow, nor even sense so easy a thing as the other's viewpoint. But the man who loves recognizes his kinship with all things. His whole nature shines with the beauty within him, expands with the inner fire which flames itself forth in beautiful and symmetrical thoughts, and therefore in beautiful and kindly acts. The self-forgetful man or woman likewise in time will gain a sympathetic voice which will make its own appeal, even if his words be not fully understood. His very features will soften and become kindly, therefore attractive. He will not be feared. He will not be hated. Selfishness is ignoble. It is also very unwise, because there is nothing like selfishness that cripples you and that mires your feet in the slough of the lower selfhood. Here is an unusual question: Is there any danger in automatic writing? It depends upon what you mean by automatic writing. There is more than one kind of it. If you refer to certain things of a psychical character, then I can only state that automatic writing of this kind is accompanied with more than one danger, but perhaps the main is that the will becomes somnolent, and the grip of the spiritual nature over the lower man is by so much the more decreased. As a matter of fact, there is a great deal talked today in the Occident about psychical powers, and under this word psychical are classed a great many things that do not belong in that category at all. The human being has spiritual powers, grand and sublime faculties and energies, which the average man will not know of because he won't look within. He is too lazy intellectually and otherwise. But the psychical powers per se are on a much lower plane and belong merely to the astral part of the human being, a part of his inner constitution which is but very little more ethereal than the gross physical world. It is possible for a human being to write automatically due to an energy emanating from this lower part of his constitution, and he can do this by throwing himself into a negative state of mind. This can indeed be done by practice, but it is a very baleful practice which will in time bring untold suffering in its train. It is, furthermore, unwise because it places one's energies, one's attention, the concentration of one's intellectual faculties, on the lowest -- almost the lowest at any rate -- part of the human constitution. Those who do not understand these things frequently ascribe the origin of this automatic writing to the influence of "spirits" from the other world. In certain parts of the globe, not in the Occident, but in India for instance, automatic writing which is beyond the control of the writer is ascribed to the bhutas, which we may briefly call spooks, ghosts, simulacra, the reliquiae, of dead men, in other words the astral dregs and remnants of human beings. That influence, according to what the Orientals say, produces this kind of automatic writing; and almost all the automatic writing of the Occident is of that type. The brain is an exceedingly delicate instrument, sensitive to etheric waves, to astral waves, to waves of consciousness. Thought-transference proves it -- of which the average human being is scarcely conscious at all, although these waves, I say, are passing through the brain tissue all the time. But having said this much and now leaving it aside, let me call your attention to the fact that there is another automatic writing of a wholly different type. This kind is wholesome, good, and proper to cultivate if you have a wise and reliable teacher. Otherwise you will almost invariably slip on the path. This other kind of automatic writing can occur when the higher part of the human constitution becomes the controlling factor for an hour or two or three mayhap. The human being then is no longer conscious of his physical personality at all; he has transcended that. He has raised himself, has become for the time being almost at one with the god within, and in these circumstances his hand writes what may actually be a very message from his own spiritual nature.

But alas, in the present state of human evolution none can do this without initiation, without training, without a teacher. H. P. Blavatsky did much automatic writing of this latter kind; and what she wrote was sublime, not merely in the thoughts, but in the very diction; it was grammatical, perfect, fascinating. This latter kind of automatic writing is on a par with the melodies which the musician hears inwardly, such as was the case with the deaf Beethoven. It is such harmonies as the poet hears, feels, senses, so that he is utterly oblivious of the physical world, utterly oblivious of his surroundings; for the poet then lives in this higher world, this world of abstract thought and harmony; and then, if his brain is alert enough, is sensitized enough, he writes down the thoughts of beauty which he receives inwardly. It is thus that the great poets, the great musicians, the great artists, receive their inspirations. It is the inner voice, the inner vision, the inner wisdom. Raise yourself into union, even if it be only temporary, into communion, with the god within you, and ye shall be all things -- statesman and poet, philosopher, scientist, inventor, everything; for it is all in the spiritual part of you, and this spiritual part contains wonderful untapped resources. Know yourselves and follow the path to wisdom, to knowledge illimitable, and to unspeakable peace. Even material success will be yours; for none would even wish to prevent your feet, to hinder your passage; for love would flow forth from you. All men would be with you, none against; and this is the reward, the guerdon, of becoming a true man, a man-god. And in the future, ye children of earth as now ye are, ye shall be gods walking this our mother planet, because ye shall have unrolled, unwrapped, unpacked, brought forth from within yourselves your latent faculties and powers and energies. Children of the heart of the universe, ye shall be men-gods on earth; ye shall walk this earth in the distant aeons of the future -- because evolution will bring it about -- as gods, because ye shall think like gods and therefore ye will feel like gods and act like gods. Such is the destiny of a soul.

Second Series: No. 5 (October 12, 1930)

SOULS THAT DRIFT

(Lecture delivered July 27, 1930) CONTENTS: Drifting spiritually, psychologically and mentally. A spiritual polar star really exists. -Physicians of human souls needed. -- Are you like Thomas the Doubter? -- The countless false selfproclaimed teachers. -- The fine flowers of the human race. -- The wellspring of wisdom within. -- No reliable public information in regard to the psychical faculties. -- Recognize the teacher by the light of intuition. -- Victor Hugo on the subject of teachers. -- Follow the steep and thorny road: the noblest adventure in life. -- A few of the real inner powers. -- Mental moonlight or the sunlight of the spirit? -Materialism is but a superstition, says a famous scientist. -- Why must I rest for so long a time between lives on earth? The devachan a time of assimilation. What about the assimilation of food? A perfect analogy. -- Break your chains and embark upon the sublime spiritual adventure! The general subject of my talk to you this afternoon is, "Souls That Drift." As I look at my audiences on each Sunday, among other thoughts that occur to me, I often wonder how many of you are drifting souls. I am sure that you will not be offended at my speaking of the possibility of some of you being drifting souls, because as a matter of fact most human beings are drifting through the lifetime of the present incarnation, and this is so for the following reasons: men do not know who they are. Men have not yet found themselves. Men have no spiritual polar star, so to speak, towards which they can self-consciously turn -- and nevertheless that spiritual polar star actually exists. But men as a rule in the Occident do not know that it exists. The consequence is that the majority of human beings in the Occident are souls that are drifting, spiritually, psychologically, and mentally. Leaders, true leaders of men, are lacking, for in our days most Occidentals will have naught to do with the Occidental religion in which they no longer believe. And on the other hand they are doubtful of the ordinary standards of political and social morality. What is more needed than anything else in the Occident, I think, is physicians of human souls. Where will you find physicians for your souls? I am inclined to think that if you found one, you would at least at first be somewhat afraid of him. You would like to test him, and in a sense that would be a proper and prudent precaution. You would doubtless look for signs, perhaps for wonders, at any rate for marks of ability. You would as individuals be like Thomas the Doubter. You would want to probe with your mind into the spiritual and psychological apparatus of such a physician just as Thomas wanted to probe with his finger into the places where the nails had been in the body of his teacher, according to the legend. And you would doubtless flatter yourselves because of your caution and prudence, saying to yourselves: "How wise I am in my generation!" On the other hand, what are you to do? You don't know how to judge a true spiritual leader from one who is a mere faker, and this is so because you have not been educated to understand and to apply the means of judging the true from the false. If a true physician of your souls were to appear amongst you, I doubt if you would accept him. You might, perhaps, if he had a charming smile or an agreeable personality, or if he had soulful eyes that appealed to your artistic instincts, or dark or perhaps golden yellow hair! But are your souls going to be cured of the pain and sorrow which wrack you, because some human individual with a glib tongue has golden yellow hair, or dark hair, or a pair of soulful eyes? Of course not. You see, therefore, that it is just as I have said: you cannot readily discern because you do not know yourselves, because you have not found yourselves. I asked you these same questions recently from this platform. If you knew yourself, you, each one of you as an individual, then you would have found yourself, and knowing yourself, nothing could thereafter mislead you nor bias your judgment nor sway your will, because the spiritual faculties in you would be wakened and you would recognize truth when it knocked at your minds and hearts. But men in our modern times, in the Occident more particularly, have lost all knowledge of the ancient wisdomreligion of mankind, except perhaps some faint echoes of it which are to you little more than a faint, farflung rumor out of the distant past of human history.

As it is, you are afraid of following spiritual teachers lest you be misled; and I am obliged to tell you that perhaps your fear is your spiritual safety, because the world is replete with incompetent and often false self-proclaimed teachers. Do you then understand this situation? It is perfectly true that you must have guides to show you the way. You must have healers for your souls, which is infinitely more important than healers for your body; and yet you don't know where to look for them; and if a true healer, a true physician of the soul, were to appear among you, the chances are nine out of ten you would reject him because his physical body, perhaps, or his manner of speech, or some mannerism or idiosyncrasy or peculiarity of his personality, would be unpleasant to you. You have not the wisdom and penetrating intellectual power to look beneath the flesh of the appearance, and thus to see the fire of the flaming intelligence within, derivative from the spirit, from the god within. But once you have learned to recognize this flaming spiritual fire in yourself, it becomes unmistakable ever afterwards, and it is easy to recognize it in others. It was precisely to show men, as far as possible, how to know themselves, how to find themselves -- to show them the pathway to wisdom and light -- that the ancient religion of mankind, today called theosophy, was brought anew to the western world by the founder of The Theosophical Society, H. P. Blavatsky. The world, I tell you truly, is today in a precarious situation. Men are afraid to accept leaders, and oh, how my heart sympathizes, from one point of view, with that fear! How has man been deceived in the past by false leaders, and led astray by false gods! Nevertheless, despite this fear of accepting leaders, men's hunger for truth leads them oft to rise above this fear, and alas! to accept as leaders, men who are as blind as themselves and who know as little often of nature's holy secrets as the average man himself does. And yet, on the other hand, men must have guides -- teachers of truth, they who know; and indeed there are such great men alive in the world today. There are such great souls living even today in the world, forming a brotherhood, which men theosophists call the Elder Brothers of mankind, or by equivalent terms, such as the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. They are the fine flowers of the human race, the products of a spiritual, intellectual, and psychical evolution. They are linked consciously -- not unconsciously as the vast bulk of mankind is -- but self-consciously, with the inner god, with that spark of the divine within them which is the core of the core of the heart of the heart of every son of man; and being in this self-conscious communion with their own inner divinity, they truly know, because they have experienced, they have seen, the vision sublime; and therefore they can communicate this vision, this knowledge, that they have interiorly, which they have seen, to their fellow men. When a man thus knows himself, and has found himself, no longer is he a drifting soul. Do you know who you are? Have you found yourself? Now answer my question in the silences of your own heart. Have you solved the enigmas of life and death? If you have not, then you don't know who you are, nor have you found yourself. Yet these enigmas can be solved. They are by no means unsolvable. Man is a composite entity, rooted in the very divine fire which is the heart of the universe, and man's constitution manifests on earth in a body of gross flesh. His inner constitution is in touch, is in relation, with every plane and with every world and with every sphere of the boundless universe, and with all the vast and illimitable spaces of space, and especially of invisible space, and because he is thus linked with all the articulations and members of the universe, he has the faculties within him which will enable him to know all things. The key to all is becoming at one with the spiritual nature within. This done, all doors fly open at the mystic knock given, and truth, unveiled, pure, can be seen and understood. Has it ever struck you that you are a child of the universe? What else can you be? You cannot be apart from the universe in which you "live and move and have your being," as Paul of the Christians truly said. The universe surrounds you. Its spiritual energies and powers permeate you because they are ubiquitous, infinite, everywhere existent. Each one of you is an inseparable part of the boundless universe. Therefore the core of the core of you, the heart of the heart of you, is the core of the universe, the heart of the universe. If you do not see and accept this obvious fact, then you will have this problem

to solve: "I am a child of the universe, I am of it, I am in it. And yet I do not partake of what that universe contains and is." Do you therefore see that this problem is unsolvable because it is not a true problem at all, and is merely a figment of human imagination based on ignorance? Consequently, all that is in the universe is in you. Everything that is in the universe is in you, mostly latent of course, because man is still a very imperfectly evolved being in all the parts of his constitution, very imperfect indeed, because not yet far evolved along the pathway of evolutionary progress; but nevertheless he is a man. He is endowed by union with the universe with the same divine flame of intelligence within that universe. He has spiritual faculties and powers within him, derivatives of and from the universe, which form a reservoir which only the great sages and seers of whom I have spoken have opened, and from which they can draw at will, because this Spiritual Divine reservoir is the self -- the spiritual self, not the gross physical self, or mental self, or psychical self, but the spiritual-divine self of each one of them. Think of the beauty of this grand picture of truth! See the hope in it! Your pathway of evolution is literally beginningless and endless. You never began. You always were. You never will end. You will be going on growing forever and forever. For since you are in your essence the universe itself, since the very heart of the universe is your heart, how can you disappear out of it? Hence I have said: not knowing who ye are, not having found yourselves, ye are truly drifting souls; and now ask yourselves if this my statement is not true. Listen: there is a pathway to wisdom sublime and to knowledge illimitable. This pathway follows the line of your own selfhood, spiritually speaking, and if you follow it faithfully, this pathway will lead you to the very heart of you, your spiritual center which is the universe divine, the fountain of your spiritual being. Not having found this pathway in the Occident, look what men in the West today do. Turning away from the light shining in its radiant splendor, the spiritual light within, they look outwards and run after every psychical and mental will-o'-the-wisp that their attention is called to, searching here, searching there, looking thither, turning yon -- and always deceived. Yet ye need not be deceived. Men today think that they may find in the psychical faculties and powers so called, what the instinct of a man tells him is light, true life, in ever greater measure and fulness; but they are looking in the wrong direction. They look outwards instead of inwards, or rather do not penetrate into the wellspring of life and wisdom within their spiritual self. How can you find truth, my brothers, in that which dies when you die, in other words in the material and component parts of you? Turn rather to the god within, to your inner self, deathless, relatively changeless, the spiritual sun of your being, and the fountainhead of all that you are. All your faculties, all your powers, all your energies, come from this divine sun manifesting within you; and the so-called psychic faculties and powers are but as it were the reflected inner moonlight, and like all reflected light, such faculties and powers -- which undoubtedly exist -- distort, deceive, mislead, as the moonlight so often does. It has been said to me: From what you say, theosophists do not believe in these psychical faculties and powers. My answer was: You are entirely wrong. We do know of their existence, and knowing of their existence we know their danger. There is real danger, great danger, because the reflected glimmer of light from these psychical faculties is very misleading. Do we as theosophists then say that we should not employ these psychical faculties and powers which undoubtedly exist within us, although undiscovered by most men? We do not. We say: cultivate them, use them -- but only after training in knowledge and wisdom showing you how to use them. When a man has allied himself consciously with the god within him, with the real source of everything that he is, then these psychical powers and faculties so called develop and unfold as naturally as the unfolding of the petals of a flower; and the use of these psychical faculties and powers then becomes not only legitimate and proper, but necessary. But to cultivate these psychical things before you have mastered the merest elements of self-knowledge, of selfhood, before you know who you are or before you have found yourself, makes you to be as much without guides as is a bit of drifting flotsam on the

ocean of life; or, to change the metaphor a bit, you are only a bit of drifting flotsam on the swiftly moving river of time, and then you are really in danger, because you do not know what these psychical faculties and powers are and what their proper use is and how to control them. There is absolutely no information about them given out publicly, no information that can be trusted. Absolutely none! I tell you now with all the earnestness of my soul: Beware! Let me use the words of Jesus the avatara, who said in substance: "Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven, and all these other things will then be added unto you." Hence I tell you: Go first to the heart of things; take the greatest thing, the allencompassing thing, which is yourself, and understand yourself and know yourself; and then all the smaller things within you like these psychical powers and faculties will be forthwith mastered and taken captive by you, and you can use them safely. Your questioning minds ask: How? Uninstructed, ignorant as I am, how am I to do this? This shows that what I have told you is true: you don't know yourselves. Which shows that you have not found yourselves. I can tell you how to know yourself and how to find yourself, for this is a part of my duty as a theosophical teacher. Every true student of the wisdom-religion of mankind today called theosophy can tell you how. Then your doubtful and suspicious minds, so oft deceived, so often wrung with the agony and pain of frequent disappointment, say: "Can I trust you? Are you also a false prophet?" So deeply ingrained, O my brothers, is mistrust of other men in the Occident today, due to past centuries of religious and philosophical miseducation, that men have lost the sense of trust in their fellows, and also have almost lost the ability to recognize truth when they hear it. As I have said, usually they will not accept a true teacher when they see him, because they understand him not and know him not. They have no standard of judgment, no rule of proof -- excepting of course the chosen few, choice spirits whose intuition is like a burning flame in their hearts, giving them light to see and enabling them to choose aright, and showing them how to recognize. Verily this burning flame of intuition, the sister of almighty love, burns in the hearts of these chosen few. But the average man is suspicious, rendered so from disappointment after disappointment. He thinks that it is a wise thing to refuse to look anywhere except in those directions where leather-lungs on the one hand, and big advertisements in the newspapers on the other hand, promise quick rewards. Then he says: Ah! here is something practical! Vain thought, arising out of the hunger of a broken and disappointed heart! Men today are so suspicious, not only of themselves but of their fellows, that they have no standard to go by and therefore they follow anything and everything that seems to promise reality. Is not this a strange paradox? Having no standard to judge by, hunting for truth, avid for truth, they will accept anything if at the moment it seems to appeal to them. Whereas, on the other hand, if this appeal is not made in a manner which captivates them, they seem to think that they show intellectual power in refusing to receive light, in refusing to accept real leaders and guides. How can it be otherwise when their minds are filled with mental pictures that they have seen in the books of history about the deceptions practiced through the ages on mankind by designing men and crafty priesthoods? Yet your intuition and your instinct whisper to you that not all men are unworthy of trust. There are men who are courageous enough to proclaim that searching for light and receiving it when found are signs of greatness of heart and of an expanded intellect. Let me read to you what a great Frenchman, Victor Hugo, once wrote: The very law which requires that mankind should have NO OWNERS requires that it should have GUIDES. To be ENLIGHTENED is the reverse of being SUBJECTED. The march forwards requires a directing hand; to rebel against the pilot scarcely advances the ship; one does not see what would be gained by throwing Columbus overboard. The words "This way" never humiliated the man who was seeking the road. At night I accept the authority of the torches. Admirable! And so do ye who drift. Ye are hungry for guides; your hearts are aching to find someone whom you can trust and who will lead you; and you know it well. The proof is seen in our theaters and

lecture halls. Hundreds and thousands attend the lectures of every itinerant speaker, psychic, would-be teacher. And what do these audiences hear? Esoteric truths regarding the nature of the universe, its origin, and its destiny? Truths regarding the composition of the human being, which can be tested by your own examination and proved by the words of the greatest intellects and spiritual seers that the human race has produced? No! Would you like to find the pathway to your own inner god -- your spiritual self? There is a preliminary preparation, however, required of all -- a preparation for this sublimest of adventures in the journey of the human soul. Do you know what it is? It will sound so familiar to you: Learn to forgive your fellows, for this means developing strength, the exercise of the spiritual part of you, and it is bringing into manifestation your higher manhood. Learn to love, for this is the voice of divinity within you; and when you can learn to love, the sun within is already beginning to break through the clouds of your lower surrounding selfhood. To love is divine, because it is a universal energy in your heart. The very sun which shines in the heavens is compact of that divinest of energies. Be self-forgetful, because when you are self-forgetful the veils of personality and selfishness fall from your eyes. You are then no longer blinded by selfishness. You then see. Become impersonal; for then you are no longer gripped by personal desires, held in bondage as serfs and slaves by your own lower being. There is the truth -- the beginning of truth; and if ye follow faithfully this pathway, ancient, familiar to your hearts, ye will have put your feet on that Road which leads to the heart of the u niverse. Pause a moment in thought. Which will ye be: drifting souls, or men and women who have taken command of their own faculties and powers and have begun to grow? It is all a matter of self-directed evolution, as our beloved Katherine Tingley so often told you from this platform! In following this pathway you become a true man; and from a true man you become a god-man, because all the interior powers and faculties within you will become more and more manifest. You will develop more and more all the powers within you, and you will be enabled to show these powers to others and thus you can prove their existence. But no one can pass the frontiers of the lower selfhood who clings to the lower self. Therefore, strive to become selfless, become impersonal, become kindly, become brotherly, learn to forgive, learn to love, learn to be self-forgetful. All this means unselfishness; and selfishness is the root of all evil, and therefore is the fertile cause of all misfortune and pain. On last Sunday you spoke of two pathways that man can follow in his evolution: first, drifting along slowly through the ages, on the slowly moving river of time and racial growth, as the majority of mankind does; and second, pursuing the steep and thorny road which brings a quicker return to the gods. Later, in the same lecture, you said: "and in another life, for deeds wrongly done and deeds left undone, ye may be born a peasant in his hut or some poor untouchable," etc. Question: When a man's lot in life seems to be particularly hard, may it not be that he has, perhaps unconsciously, chosen the "steep and thorny road" in order to hasten his growth, and not necessarily that he is reaping the fruits of a former evil existence? Yes, it is true. Many a man who has now reached masterhood of life, one of the great sages and seers, began to follow the steep and thorny road which leads to the very heart of the sun -- began to follow it unconsciously; and do you know what it means to follow this steep and thorny road? It means gaining powers, it means opening faculties within you, it means becoming a Master directing his own course on the ocean of life, instead of being merely a drifting piece of human flotsam, a drifting soul? Many a one has done this in the past and began it unconsciously; yet it means hard work. Do you know anything more stonily hard than human hearts? Do you know anything more fragile and yet more crystallized than human minds? Human hearts are so crystallized that they won't bend even to

proof sometimes, and yet are so fragile that the whole mental framework may crack and break under some accident. The steep and thorny road, my brothers, is a difficult one. But the rewards! Is there a man here to whom this adventure does not appeal? It is the noblest adventure in life: becoming a man, taking command of yourself, living like a man, evolving forth the godlike powers and faculties within, consciously, so that at your will you can direct them; becoming a brother to all, loved of all because there is no hatefulness in you, trusted of all, hated only by the hateful. What are these powers? I will enumerate a few only: transferring your thoughts without a word, voiceless speech. This is no psychical power. Its psychical aspect, commonly called thoughttransference, is but a bagatelle and is illusory because it is but a reflected light of the real spiritual power within. I am talking about the spiritual faculty, the root of the vastly feebler power called thoughttransference. If you have this truly spiritual power, then you can transfer your thought and your consciousness and your will to any part of the earth and actually be there, see what goes on, know what is happening there. No merely psychical power will ever enable you to do that. In Tibet this is called the hpho-wa. Having this power ye can pass through stone walls as easily as the electric current runs along or through the copper wire. Another spiritual faculty is genuine clairvoyance and the spiritual ability to see and to see aright; and in seeing to know that your seeing is truth. This is no psychical faculty. The clairvoyance commonly called the psychical clairvoyance is very deceptive because nothing is really known about it, in spite of the much talk that you may hear about it. The so-called psychical clairvoyance is very deceptive because it is a mere moonlight reflection, and this moonlight reflection is uncertain, deceiving, and illusory. Genuine spiritual clairvoyance, of which the psychical clairvoyance so called is but a feeble ray, will enable you to see what passes at immense distances! You can sit in your armchair and see, with eyes closed, all that you care to see at great distances. This can be done not only in this exterior world but ye can penetrate into the interior and invisible worlds with this spiritual vision, and thus know what is going on in the worlds spiritual and ethereal; and remember also that these inner and invisible worlds are the basis or root of this mere cross section which we humans call the physical universe. This physical universe is just one phase or plane of the great universe of boundless life. Another spiritual power is true and genuine clairaudience, real clairaudience, the ability to hear with the spiritual auditory power or faculty, even to hear what the gods are saying and doing. These words are not mere poetry. I here mean the actual inner spiritual ear. Having this power ye can hear the music of the spheres; for I tell you in solemn truth, my brothers, that every sphere that runs its course in the abysmal depths of space sings a song as it passes along. Having this spiritual power ye can hear the grass grow. Every little atom is attuned to a musical note. It is in constant movement, in constant vibration at speeds which are incomprehensible to the ordinary brain-mind of man, and each such speed has its own numerical quantity, in other words its own numerical note, and therefore sings that note; so that had ye this spiritual clairaudience the life surrounding you would be one grand sweet song and you yourself would sing a song, your very body would be as it were a symphonic orchestra, singing some magnificent, incomprehensible, musical symphonic composition. The growth of a flower for instance would be like a changing melody running along from day to day. I mean every word of this, literally. These are instances of some of the powers and the faculties of the spirit, but not of the immensely less powerful and tertiary psychical faculties. These last are but reflected mental moonlight so to speak. Therefore I say to you: go to the sun within you, take the kingdom of heaven by violence, for it is yours, it is your spiritual heritage. Why bother with paste and false gems when ye may have all the jewels of the Golconda of the spirit? But the greatest faculty, the greatest power, of all is that, when ye have found yourself, when ye have begun to know yourself, ye will discover within you incomprehensible mysteries, beautiful, sublime, indescriptible, grand; and I think that the most wonderful of them all is the power of almighty love, for this is the very cement of the universe, which holds all things in steady, orderly, sequential courses.

Becoming one with it, in other words, becoming one with what you are within your own inner being, ye become a god, a very god, for such a god ye are in your inmost. Now then, which will ye have? The powers of the spirit that all the great sages and seers have been telling you about for untold ages -- ethics, right, justice, growth, true manhood, forgiveness, love, pity, compassion, spiritual clairvoyance, spiritual clairaudience, spiritual faculties and powers -- or will ye be running after the will-o'-the-wisps, the reflected moonlight and verbal moonshine, of itinerant teachers who know but little or nothing more about it all than you yourself do? I have used the words sunlight and moonlight. I use them advisedly, and I will tell you why. The ancient wisdom-religion today called theosophy teaches that the god within you is a child of the spiritual sun; the spirit within you, therefore, is a luminous radiance, and is your inner god; while the psychical part of you, the intermediate part between the spiritual solar ray and your physical body, reflects the powers, such as they are elementally, derivable from the moon. Hence the instinct of mankind speaks of lunatics -- the moon-stricken. Yes, I say the moon advisedly and I mean it. I know what I am talking about, and I care naught for the superstitions of our fathers -- scientific superstitions or religious superstitions, it matters naught to me. Men of the Occident, you have been so trained in materialistic thought that the average belief today, or rather lack of belief, is that there is naught in a human being except his physical body, and that when he dies the dissolution of the physical corpse is the end of him. None of the human race of any outstanding spiritual and intellectual distinction has ever believed that, except the superstitious scientists and their camp followers of the days of our immediate fathers. Even the superstitious religionists were a little wiser than the former because, however mistaken their views were, and they certainly were grossly wrong on so many points, they had the brains to realize that consciousness cannot arise out of unconsciousness nor life out of lifelessness, death. If there is naught in the universe but blindly driven matter, how could such things be or ever exist as consciousness and beauty, compassion and mercy and pity and clairaudience and clairvoyance and all the other faculties active or latent that the human being possesses, and which, in the case of the great ones of the earth, can be used at will? How could matter even move, if it has not life, and matter is full of incomprehensibly rapid vibrations; and now today when our really great scientific men are becoming mystics, becoming mystical thinkers, they talk to us about the fundamental of the cosmos being mind-stuff and consciousness-stuff; while the materialism of our immediate scientific fathers of forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years ago, is dead. Dead indeed, but the evil effects of that old materialistic teaching are still visible everywhere in the Occident. One of the greatest of ultramodern British scientists, J. S. Haldane, only a short time ago made the remark that materialism is a superstition -- and he referred to the scientific materialism of our immediate fathers -- as much a superstition as was the belief in devils and witches. There is a grand declaration for a scientist of today! And he is absolutely right. Remember that you have been brought up in the popular materialism of the West, which still is taught in your textbooks, still exists as authoritative articles in your encyclopedias, and in many cases is still taught from the lecture platforms of your universities. Remember therefore that in these cases you are taught something which is untrue, which is a scientific superstition, which does not exist, and that those who tell you to look within yourselves for truth because you have consciousness, intelligence, love, within you, are truly safe guides. Question: I am not satisfied with some aspects of the doctrine of reincarnation as taught in theosophy. I think that the time which it is said may elapse between lives on earth, digesting our experiences, is unreasonably long. For instance: if I was a person of more or less importance in Egypt some two thousand years ago, and only now am living another earth-life here in America, and if I lived a life of about sixty years in Egypt, then it has taken me thirty times as long to get the meat out of my experiences as it did to go through them. Now, from what I know of an average human life, a fellow could sum up any one of them completely with a box of cigars and night's hard thinking. So why all that period of two thousand years? I know you're not to blame for this, but it's up to you to do some explaining.

I wish I had that chap on this platform before me. I would ask him a few questions in order more fully to draw out his mind. In the first place, the statement has often been made in the textbooks of the theosophical philosophy that the average length of time in the devachan or so-called heaven-world passed between one reincarnation on earth and the next reincarnation on earth is about 1500 or 2000 years, and the statement, considered as an average, is correct -- but it is only an average. The average span of human life, taking the world as a whole today is -- do you know how long? Some fifteen years or thereabouts. That is the probably correct average. This average is secured by counting all deaths that occur in childhood, in wars, in accidents, what not; and yet many individual men live to be seventy, eighty, ninety, and some perhaps a hundred or even more years. There is a rule in occultism -- which please do not confuse with psychism -- which states that the excarnate soul or human being passes one hundred times as much time in the devachan or heaven-world as he did in the last preceding life on earth as an imbodied man. Therefore, since the average span of human life today is 1500 years, the average devachanic or between-lives time is one hundred times that, or fifteen hundred years. But some men live to be forty years old, fifty years old, sixty years old, seventy years old, and even more, and each one such will pass a period of time in devachan or the heaven-world one hundred times the number of human years that he previously had lived on earth. There are certain esoteric exceptions to this law upon which I cannot touch this afternoon. Now comes the question of this querent why the length of devachanic time should be so long. The sense of this question therefore is that life on earth, at least in the mind of this questioner, is a fairly happy event. Men seem to think that life on earth is more or less of a heaven. They evidently don't like to leave it and want to come back to it quickly. Yes, they will come back to earth all right. There is no doubt about that. But don't you know that nature has its own way of working, and its own way of moving, and its own laws, and remembering these things we cannot be like that old dear lady I heard of once who said: "Well, I know that reincarnation isn't true." Why? "Because I don't like it! I have had one life on earth, and I don't want to have another life like that again. I have had all I want of it." But this questioner, whose question I am trying now to answer, seems to think that life on earth is so supernally beautiful, so heavenly, that to pass his three or four or five or six or seven thousand years in devachan is going to be awfully tedious. He won't find any tedium there nor will he recognize any passage of time. The devachan is a state of unspeakable bliss, peace, and expansion of consciousness, just exactly like the most lovely rosy dream; and it is like a dream in a way because it is just like the man who wakes in the morning and who does not realize that he has been asleep, nor the length of time that he has slept. This length of time is indeed required in the devachan for the same reason that the physical body requires the rest and recuperation of quiet sleep in order to build up the body again. The body more easily assimilates during sleep the food that it has taken. In sleep nature's building and repairing processes work quietly and rapidly. They are not interfered with by active movement either of mind or body. This assimilation requires a long time. How long do you sleep? I have heard some people say they cannot do with less than eight hours. Eight hours are already a third of a day. And here this poor man is complaining that it takes him thirty times as long to digest the spiritual and intellectual experiences in the devachan as it takes him to live the preceding life on earth. When you take food into your body, do you think that you digest that food and have it assimilated immediately? No indeed. It takes you a long time to digest that food. It takes you hours to digest your physical food. When the food is passed out of the stomach it is not then assimilated at all. It will take you almost a day, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty-four hours, perhaps, for the body to take into itself, as building bricks, the molecules and atoms of the food that you have put into your stomach, and you may

have occupied a quarter of an hour at your meal; and as I have just said, it takes you all the rest of the day, and probably all the time when you are sleeping that night, and some part of the morning after your sleep, before the entire cycle of digestion and assimilation is completed. Exactly the same rule prevails in the devachan which, as I have just told you, is the digestion and assimilation of the experiences -- experiences spiritual, intellectual, psychical, even physical in a sense - that you had in the last preceding life on earth. Your consciousness has to work over and build into itself recollections and memories of the nobler and spiritual part of the preceding life before that consciousness can understand them and digest them all; and understanding of what you have been through depends on the digestive and assimilative processes of the consciousness. Consider how long a time it takes in order to train a little child from birth until the end of childhood, and some people are more or less children even when they are grown up. Furthermore -- and please remember this point carefully -- the nobler a man is, the more spiritual his being is, the longer is his devachan, the heaven-world period that he goes through after death. This is nature's law. This devachan is a period of rest, of intellectual recuperation of digestion and assimilation of the spiritual experiences of all kinds that were passed through in the preceding life. On the other hand, the more material a man is in character, in other words the fewer the noble and beautiful thoughts that he had in his last life on earth, the shorter is his heaven-world period. The reason for this is that there is very little of a spiritual character to digest and assimilate in the post-mortem period. Before I leave you this afternoon, I desire to remind you of a few facts that I have spoken of before. There is truth in the universe. What men call truth is a formulation in human language of nature's structure, operations, and processes. This truth in the universe can be had by men. Any sincere and earnest human soul can learn something at least, and often a great deal, of this truth. This truth as a formulated philosophy is in the guardianship of the titanic spiritual intellects of the human race, many such great beings existing even today and living together as a Brotherhood -- and these great ones are they whom theosophists call the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. You can become allied with them if you live the life, if you like a sublime spiritual adventure, if you are ready to undertake the responsibility of using the faculties and powers that are latent within you, and which will be opened in you, if you are trained to use them. Nature is immutably just and will hold you exactly accountable for everything that you think and do. And her rewards are equally sure and just. Are you ready to come to the door and knock? If you give the right knock it shall be opened. This is a promise. Every great seer and sage has told his fellow men the same. And consequently every true theosophical teacher, who is an agent of this great brotherhood, has the same promise to make. They tell you that this coming to the door of the Temple of Wisdom must be done with an absolutely clean heart. You cannot enter if you do not so come -- and this is not because anybody prevents you, but because your own imperfect being prevents you from taking this step. How can a chained dog, unless he breaks the chain, go farther than the length of the chain? Therefore I say to you: Break your chains! Be no longer drifting souls! Be true men! Break the bonds of personality that cripple you! Become the god within you! This you can do. And if you need a teacher, then come where you heard the first words that fired your heart and stimulated your imagination!

Second Series: No. 6 (October 20, 1930)

OCCULTISM AND PSYCHISM

(Lecture delivered August 3, 1930) CONTENTS: The fairyland of truth. -- A sublime philosophy taught in past ages: the brahma-vidya and the gupta-vidya. -- Why is the secret science hidden from the majority of men? -- The travelers in search of light and what they have to tell us. -- The difference between occultism and psychism. -- Psychic powers a mere reflection, distorted and illusory. -- An enumeration of some of our latent spiritual faculties. -- Every occultist is a scientist. -- Professor J. E. Boodin of Los Angeles voicing old theosophical truths. -- What is beauty? "We are upheld by Beauty" says the poet. -- Nature's law is to give as one has received. -- Christian Science and psychical practices. Watch the aftereffects! -- Esoteric hints on the cause and cure of disease. -- The physicians of the future. -- The Theosophical WorldCongress at Point Loma in August, 1931: an explanation of its objects. -- Why not be yourself, your spiritual self? I am going to try to lead you into a fairyland this afternoon -- a fairyland of truth not of imagination -taking you deep, deep, deep into the very real things of the cosmic life, that cosmic life which is enshrouded with veils hemming in the imprisoned splendor. Deep, deep, deep into the very heart of this splendor, for it is the heart of the universe; and these encircling veils, these imprisoning garments, these enshrouding encasements, are they which blind, which deceive, which produce illusion, not only in human hearts but in human minds, so that those deluded mistake the illusion for the real, so that they follow bypaths and side issues of life, both human and cosmic. I have called this realm of the inner worlds a fairyland, but do so only to use a term that will be easily understood of you. Actually it is reality -- the heart of the universe. It is the fountain of truth, and the source whence flow forth into the cosmic spaces what we human beings in our ignorance call the "laws" of universal nature. In times far, far past -- so long bygone that men have lost, at least in the Occident, all recollection of it -- there was taught on earth a sublime philosophy, a formulation in human tongue of the very structure, operations, and nature of the universal mother herself. Faint memories of this archaic wisdom-religion of mankind have come down to men of modern times; and these faint echoes you will find in what is called the heart-doctrine -- to use the technical term -- of all the great world religions and world philosophies. Hence, when men read these archaic thoughts imbodied in these ancient world religions and world philosophies, if the readers be of intuitive mind, suddenly light comes to the beclouded intellects, the heart is moved, and the man says: Immortal gods, I have known that before! This is recognition by the god within of something akin to itself, the imprisoned splendor, reality and truth, that I have just spoken of. This ancient philosophy, this ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, bore various names in different ages and among different peoples. In our time we call it theosophy, "the wisdom of the gods," which in very truth it is. Among the ancient inhabitants of Hindustan they called it brahma-vidya, the "knowledge of the universe;" and the esoteric part of it, the secret part of it, that part of this wondrous philosophy especially followed by the most illuminated minds, the titanic intellects, in other words by the great seers and sages of mankind, and their disciples, was called the gupta-vidya, "the secret science," "the hid wisdom" -- not kept secret from motives of selfishness, not hid away for the sole pursuit and delectation of selfish philosophers, but secret and hid only because the majority of mankind could not follow it, because that majority of mankind has never believed that it exists. Men in all ages have not easily given up the personal self and its delusions and illusions, so that the god within which is in all men might shine forth through the encircling veils down into the brain-mind and give that mind light. Isn't it even so today? What did Jesus the avatara, the Master of the Christians, mean, according to his reported words "Give up thy life if thou wouldst find the life universal," if not what I have just said? That was the substance of his teaching. And in fact it is absolutely true. You cannot become universal until you surmount the personal, the limited, the restricted, the self with frontiers.

It is exactly like the man living within the confines of some great town, who says: "I will not abroad, I will not travel. What my fathers had is good enough for me." But another man, with a hunger for knowledge in his heart, passes out of the city gates, pursues the highways of the kingdom, and travels, and learns, and returns unto his fellow citizens and tells them what he has found, and tries to open their eyes; and they say: "Man, whence camest thou? Prove to us that thou hast seen what thou relatest." And what can the messenger of knowledge say except: "I have seen, I know. Come with me: I will show you the way. Follow the pathway that I will designate, and thus I will bring you to the places of light that I have seen." Some follow him because their minds are more enlightened and their hearts are stirred, and these men of illuminated understanding say to themselves: "Verily, I will look into this. This man is a changed man from the time when he went forth from amongst us. He has seen something; he has learned something; he has become grander and greater." But others will have naught of it. Such ones as I have spoken of, who left the restricted city of the human personality and wandered forth in search of light, are they whom theosophists call the great seers and sages of mankind, the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace; and the knowledge that they have brought back from the most wondrous and soul-stirring adventure that it is possible for a human being to have, they formulated into human language and gave it to their fellow men. And this wisdom was the brahma-vidya, the theosophy that is even now taught; and each one of such great Seers and Sages founded a school for those who trusted him more fully than others did; and he taught in this school the deeper things, the hid wisdom, the secret wisdom; and this was the gupta-vidya. It is taught even today. Do you long for it? Are you ready for it? Do you desire it? Then come. Knock, and if your knock is the right one, the doors will fly open, as if by magic. Ask, and if your asking is not based on selfish desire for personal preferment, but based on a passionate love of holy truth and in a desire to help your fellow men when once you have gained that truth, then in asking you will ask aright, and ye shall receive because it is your right to receive. Such men as those who went forth in the quest for wisdom were the true occultists of the past; they were the great seers and sages, and such great seers and sages were true occultists, students of the guptavidya, the secret wisdom of the universe, the wisdom of the gods; for the universe is filled full with gods, with divine beings; and ye children of men are such gods essentially, in your innermost nature, even in your present phase of evolutionary growth, although enshrouded with veils of the lower selfhood -- so that in very truth ye know not who ye are. Ye know not what ye have within you; and many of you, alas! will not even see nor will ye listen. Is there anyone blinder than he who will not open his eyes, nor deafer than he who will not unstop the channels of his ears? Occultism, my brothers, is that aspect of natural philosophy which deals with the hid, secret wisdom of nature's own heart as that wisdom is formulated in the archaic Wisdom-Religion of mankind; and theosophy, even as it is taught today, includes this gupta-vidya or occultism in what the ancient inhabitants of Hindustan called the brahma-vidya. On the other hand, what is psychism? If occultism be, as I have just told you it is, the treading of the path which will lead you to the very heart of the universe and the gaining of the knowledge which that heart contains -- which path you have a right to tread because you are essentially a god, and in treading this path you go simply to your own divine home -- if one then who follows this path is an occultist, what is a psychist? He is one who follows the deceptive lights, the illusory gleams, of his intermediate human nature, the intermediate part of his constitution, of the psyche, which James of the Christians -- I am not going to be as impolite as he was -- called, material, sensuous, illusory. This description of the psychical faculties and powers is accurate and true. This human part of you is one of those enshrouding veils, of which I have spoken, which blind you to the greater light of the cosmic truths; and those who concentrate their attention on the faculties and the powers pertaining to this intermediate nature of man, are psychists. They mistake the ghostly, illusory, moonlight of the intermediate nature of man for the splendor of the spiritual sun within. Just as this human part of us is a reflection of the spiritual sun within, of the god within, so is the moonlight a reflection of the sunlight, of the splendor of our day-star. Psychism is a study of the

energies and powers and forces belonging to the various realms of the astral world, a realm of nature only one degree or step higher than the physical; and there is today in the Occident no reliable information about it at all, because those who really know the truth about it don't advertise that truth ever, because this would be misleading their less evolved brothers. There are many people who talk about psychism, who will stand on platforms and tell you all about it; but I can tell you this -- and this is the message of all the great seers and sages of the ages -- that those who follow the things of the intermediate personal nature, the personal things, those who follow moonlight rather than the splendor of the spiritual sun, cast around themselves veils of personality still more thick than before, still more impervious to the inner divine splendor striving to come forth. These enshrouding veils are the ordinary mental and emotional veils of the lower selfhood. What we must do is to rise above the personality, above all things that pertain to the merely personal human nature, and strive to become more universal, selfless, gradually more impersonal. Then we rise above this intermediate or psychical nature towards the spiritual day-star of our own inner being, which inner day-star is a spark of the central heart of the universe. Do theosophists then deny that there are psychic forces and powers in man? We most certainly do not! It is because we know of their existence, it is because we know of the danger of cultivating these psychical powers, that we call your attention, thus faithfully re-echoing the warnings of the archaic wisdomreligion of mankind, to the things of the spirit, to the things of real value. Theosophists want our fellow men to have wisdom, to have light, indeed to have spiritual powers, and to use the spiritual faculties usually lying latent within them. But so utterly are these matters misunderstood in the Occidental world today that the average man seems to confuse the psychical powers and faculties with the spiritual ones, and no greater mistake could possibly be made. The psychical faculties and powers and energies are a mere reflection, a secondary, indeed a tertiary, reflection of the divine sun within; and, like all reflected light, the effect that it produces on the consciousness is a distortion of reality, is deceitful, producing mental and emotional illusion. As I told you on last Sunday from this platform, the real faculties and powers that remain with a man when he passes on from this life, are the spiritual ones, and all personal faculties and powers die when the end of any one reincarnation is reached. Why then, again to speak according to the language of the Christians, why not lay up for yourselves treasures in the realm divine, where thieves do not break through and steal, nor doth rust corrupt? This is a figure of speech, but our language is full of striking figures of speech. The truth behind it is what I call your attention to. What are some of these spiritual powers, some of these spiritual faculties? First, what is the love in your heart? Is that a psychical power? No, it is the very root of your being, the very life of your essence; and impersonal, unselfish love is the very cement of the universe, nature's supremest, grandest power, and nothing in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the regions under the earth, can stay its passage or forbid its penetrating power. It is all-permeant, it penetrates everywhere, and when you radiate love you produce love in others, because you yourself become lovely, because of its irradiating influences arising in your own heart. Again, what is understanding? Is this a psychical power? No, it is a spiritual faculty. Do not confuse understanding with the mere psychical-physical brain-mind. Understanding is the faculty which enables you to discriminate between thoughts and thoughts, things and things, to know one from the other. It is a sister of almighty love. Again, what is vision? Not physical vision, nor that which on the astral plane manifests itself as psychical clairvoyance; but true vision is spiritual clairvoyance, the root of the astral power which, because it is so imperfect -- not only imperfect in its development in the psychic practitioner but imperfect in itself -- is deceitful. But the spiritual power, when you have allied yourself with the god within you, will show you how to see things at whatever distance. You immediately see things at

enormous distances through the inner spiritual eye. Your consciousness is there, whither you have cast it. In Tibet, they call this power the hpho-wa, which means the power to project your consciousness (which means also your will) to any distance that ye may please: on earth, to the moon, to any other planet, to the sun. This is the true power, the true faculty, of spiritual clairvoyance, and this it is which every true theosophical teacher, that is to say every true occultist, will call your attention to, and plead with you to use it, "to take the kingdom of heaven by violence," which means to enter into the realm of the divine, for it is your heritage. It is your heritage as a man, as a human being. Have ye the ability inwardly to hear? Not merely with the physical ear, so imperfect and undeveloped a sensory organ as it is, but to hear things at a great distance? Can ye hear the atoms sing? Can ye hear the growth of a flower and the growing of the grass? For I tell you that each atom sings its own song. This spiritual ability is true clairaudience, spiritual clairaudience, the faculty of the inner spiritual ear, of which the psychical clairaudience is but a distorted and therefore deceptive reflection. There is this faculty in man, my brothers, which, if cultivated under wise training, will enable you to hear the songs of the spheres as they pass along; and this is no merely poetical statement. Everything that moves is in motion, obviously. It vibrates, and in vibrating it produces a musical note which sings, and in this manner does every atom sing. The stars, the planets, as they move in their orbits, sing likewise, as Shakespeare said, choiring "to the young-eyed cherubims." Now think over what I have told you. "Are ye spiritually dead," as the great Pythagoras said, so dead that ye cannot understand: or is there something within you that answers with quick and ready response, It is so! Some people you simply cannot teach. This is because they are not spiritually awake. They simply don't understand what you are talking about. But for that reason, because there are those who cannot understand, should we remain silent? It is a duty to tell your fellow men the truth that you have found, as far as it is wise and proper so to do. Every occultist is a scientist, but not every scientist is an occultist, even today, although the advances that our ultramodern scientists are making are marvelous, simply amazing. Our scientists today are becoming mystics, thinking along mystical lines, and thinking things, teaching things, discovering things, which if even announced fifty or sixty or seventy or eighty years ago would have banned them, ostracized them, from the company of their respectable fellow scientific researchers. Let me read to you something along this line that a friend sent in to me, taken from an article published in the Hibbert Journal of July, 1930, by Professor J. E. Boodin of Los Angeles, entitled "The Universe a Living Whole." How often have you heard me use this very phrase! How ancient, how familiar it is! It means that everything is alive, that nothing is dead. Death -- were such a thing possible -- would mean utter immobility, changelessness, inability to move. Show me where any such thing is. Everything is in motion. Everything is alive, and one of the physical manifestations of life is vibration, a very popular word today, because a very expressive one. Here then is what Professor Boodin has to say in the extracts that I have made. Listen: When one considers the almost infinitely complex conditions which are necessary for intelligence, it is madness to suppose that it could be the work of chance. The spark of creative intelligence itself must be lit by the creative intelligence of the cosmos which furnishes the perennial inspiration for creative activity. How many times have you not heard these same thoughts enunciated from this platform during the course of the last twenty years or more! The spirit of the whole dominates the course of the cosmos. It dominates not by despotic power, but by constructive love. It gives tone to the whole. It persuades the finite so far as the finite permits -- to use the language of Plato. It selects and encourages all finite initiative which is in the direction of health and beauty. But it suppresses and excludes from the divine life whatever there is of falsehood and perversion in the finite. Nothing can persist in the divine economy which is contrary to the health of the whole. The

good, as Plato would say, legislates to the whole and determines survival within the whole. The individual soul which is induced to take on the divine pattern, which falls into step with the choral dance of the whole (to use a figure by Plotinus), becomes integrated into the eternal movement of value. The soul which refuses to do so puts itself outside the divine order. It shuts itself up by its own choice in the outer darkness of its own selfishness and eliminates itself from the whole. This is hell now or hereafter . . . the sordid influences cannot be admitted into the enveloping cosmic spirit. The wicked impulses and thoughts are immured in their local habitation. They are bound by the gravitation of their own lust to their earthly abode. How true all this is! Here we have a prominent thinker speaking of the cosmic love, the love which is the cement of the universe as I have so often called it, which not only "gives tone to the whole" but actually is the cohesive energy in boundless space. Professor Boodin speaks like a true mystic and like a philosopher of the archaic wisdom-religion of mankind, in other words like a theosophical philosopher today, when he uses the figure of Plotinus that every entity which is in the universe, when it "falls into step with the choral dance of the whole, becomes integrated into the eternal movement." This is a typical idea of the ancient Platonists and Neoplatonists as well as of other philosophers of the ancient world, and it is truth itself; and Professor Boodin is to be warmly congratulated on his most admirable exposition of the root-idea of the archaic philosophy, which he has seized in these respects with the intuition of the true mystic. On the other hand, what this Los Angeles writer says to the effect that the only hell now or hereafter is that which each entity living in the boundless spaces makes for itself by shutting itself up "by its own choice in the outer darkness of its own selfishness and thus eliminates itself" from the greater streams of life of the whole, is merely voicing another secret teaching of the esoteric wisdom of the archaic ages, and is good theosophy. And again how true it is according to our theosophical wisdom that "the wicked impulses and thoughts are immured in their local habitation! They are bound by the gravitation of their own lust to their earthly abode"! These citations that I have made are truly admirable; and I have been wondering, since reading them, whether this courageous and mystical gentleman of Los Angeles could have been reading a recent book of mine entitled Theosophy and Modern Science, or perhaps whether he has read and studied H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine published in 1888. You see, therefore, why the enshrouding veils of personality shut out the inner splendor which strives always to express itself in and upon the wider fields of the spiritual consciousness innate in every human being. It is these imprisoning and enshrouding and constricting veils of personality which produce the only hells there are anywhere in the universe, and any hell like this is the fertile mother of unhappiness and human misery. It is verily the enfolding and constricting veils of personality -- these veils, these garments, enshrouding the inner spiritual splendor -- which prevent that inner splendor from manifesting in the mind and in the heart of the average human being. If ye want to immure yourself in still thicker veils of personality and suffer from the restricted vision produced by selfishness and growing desire, then follow the illusory but often flowery pathway of the lower selfhood, the path of psychism; for these psychic powers and faculties, imperfect, illusory, merely reflected light, will lead you astray into the bypaths and side issues of life, will appeal to your lower selfish personality, from motives of personal gain, and these will condense and harden the enshrouding veils more than ever they were before. Herein lies the great danger of the psychic path. Will ye go to the moon, my brothers, or is your pathway set towards the sun? Children of the sun, sons of the sun as ye all are, I call upon you to come to your spiritual parent! Be great! Ascend, take, be! Be the god within each one of you -- which god is your own impersonal, immanent Christos, your own inner god, the inner Buddha within you, the root and fountainhead of your own spiritual individuality. Becoming allied with this, then all powers will be yours; all inner faculties will open and blossom. All spiritual and intellectual energy will become your servant; and when this is achieved then the psychic faculties and powers will develop naturally and safely within you, will open naturally and safely, like the enclosing petals of the unblown bud. This is the spiritual road, the road of safety, because your heart will

have previously recognized its kinship with the sun god within you: your inner light itself will be strengthened by the streams of the irradiating splendor within, and ye shall then stand a Master of Life because consciously linked with the very heart of the universe. Being such as this, you will obtain and control successfully all psychical powers and faculties whatsoever. My brothers, do ye feel the beauty of these thoughts -- the beauty in your own spirit? Does not your soul leap and quiver within you at hearing the call? Do you know what beauty is? It is harmony and symmetry, the sense of spiritual harmony within the observer recognizing the harmony without. Beauty per se is a divine thing, for spiritual beauty is the twin sister of almighty love. That is why beauty is at once holy and dangerous to imperfectly balanced hearts and minds. The other day a friend sent to me a little poem that was written by a friend of the one who sent this poem to me. It is verse which shows great promise because there is easily visible in it the poetic heart, the understanding heart, intuitively recognizing its oneness with the universe. Do you understand what that means? What inspiration there is in this sense of oneness with all that lives and is! Let me read these verses to you. The poem is entitled "We Are Upheld by Beauty." We are upheld by beauty; Beneath our feet, above us; in our hearts. At night the heavens become a vast dim meadow Strewn with innumerable glowing flowers; Beneath our feet the gardens and the fields Unfold their myriad blossoms, Flaming poppy, delicate violet, Fair lilies breathing fragrance like a psalm: And, when in meditation, with closed eyes, We look within our hearts, Well is it for us if we find that garden, Fairest of all, filled with immortal flowers, Where, first to warm our hearts, in flaming beauty Is that flower men call Courage; Then radiant Faith, clad in heaven's own hues, And the white lily of unselfish Love. Beneath our feet, above us, in our hearts, Beauty enfolds us like a mother's arms. The mother here spoken of is the mother divine, that is universal nature, spiritual nature -- not the mere cross section of nature that we men call the physical universe, but all that is, especially the vast invisible worlds and spheres, and the innumerable worlds and spheres of life vibrating in ceaseless and incomprehensible activity. These are the invisible worlds and spheres of the boundless universe. Would ye enter into these invisible spheres and know truth at first hand through individual contact? Will ye become a cosmic traveler, an inhabitant of the universe, leaving, as Oliver Wendell Holmes so beautifully puts it in "The Chambered Nautilus," the mansion of a day in order to enter into others still more grand? Ye can do so. Ye have the power to do so within you. There is not a power in the boundless universe which is not in you. You have it within you. There is not an energy, there is not a substance, there is not anything, in boundless infinitude which is not within you, latent or active as the case may be. Ye have it all. Each one of you is a child of the universe, a part of it, inseparable from it; as a part of the whole, therefore, that part contains in essence, manifest or unmanifest, active or latent, as the case may be, all that the boundless whole contains. Here then is the pathway that I call upon you, my brothers, to follow. Find yourself. Finding, ye shall know yourselves. Knowing yourselves, ye shall enter upon your cosmic rights, your spiritual heritage, and ye shall thereafter take command of yourselves and be true men. A true man is a god manifesting

through a man's body. The universe is filled full with gods existing in innumerable hierarchies, and in all-various grades of evolutionary growth. And ye, the human host, are but one minor hierarchy of this countless multitude of hierarchies. Every one of you is individually a god in the core of the core of his being. Each one of you has within you the potentiality of becoming a Master of Life, of developing forth from within your essence powers and faculties which at the present time are completely unknown to you. And why should you not begin at once to do this? The way to do it is to receive instructions, to train yourselves under competent spiritual guidance, given by those who know how to do it; and I can show you the way to enter upon this path of accelerated evolution if you will trust me. But ye must remember the law of compassion flowing from nature's own heart: ye can take this knowledge, this wisdom, only when ye take it in order to give to others. Just as a muscle grows through exercise, just as the mind develops its faculties and powers by exercise, so likewise does the inner growth proceed by study, by meditation under competent training; and ye cannot grow unless ye give to others what ye yourselves have received. This is nature's way of working and therefore it is nature's law. All exercise is in a sense giving to others, because it means producing, and any entity or thing producing for itself alone is trying to do something which he cannot achieve. He defeats his own end ultimately. How beautiful this spiritual verity is! The sense of beauty in the human heart recognizes this great law of spiritual nature with instinctive gladness. On the other hand, think of what selfishness means. Ye cannot truly enjoy anything without sharing it with someone else. The miser dies even while he lives, and the giver lives even when he dies, for he becomes one with the All. My brothers, I call upon you all to follow the pathway unto the gods. You don't have to seek outside of yourselves for that pathway, for if you do you will never find it. That pathway is within you. Each one of you is that pathway. As I have just told you, each one of you is an inseparable part or portion of the cosmic whole. Therefore know yourselves, and in knowing your spiritual self ye will be following that pathway. That pathway will lead you to the sun, to the spirit of light and life, to the chief of our own home-universe. Sons of the sun ye verily are! Why not then recognize your spiritual parentage; why eat of the husks -- to follow again the figure of the Christian New Testament -- which the swine do eat? Why not go to the Master's table, to your Father's table? The average man does not see the beauty of this tremendous truth because he does not believe that he is a son of the sun. Not believing it he does not think about it. Not thinking about it, he does not care about it. Therefore you cannot interest him. He has no interest whatsoever in it. And it is these darkened human minds and stony human hearts enshrouded in the dark veils of selfishness and personality whom we must help. But the brighter minds, those who can see even a little of the sublime light, they desire to return Home; they want truth; they are avid for it. They are hungry for it, and they will have it; and to such as these I say: Come! There is indeed truth to be had; I can show you how to find that truth. I can show you how to put your feet upon the pathway which will lead you to that truth, and it is you who will travel along that pathway and prove to yourself that what I tell you is truth. Every true theosophical teacher has as his first duty to show his fellow men that pathway sublime, splendid, leading to the very heart of the universe, and that pathway is within yourself. Each one of you a god as you verily are, kin to the gods which fill the universe full, O sons of men, why will ye not see when the vision sublime lies plain before your eyes! A man said to me once: "When a Christian Scientist has had visible, tangible evidence of the results produced on a man's body by thought-power, it is impossible to convince him that he is wrong, and that theosophists are right in saying that such things are not possible." Question: Does theosophy say that these so-called marvels are impossible of accomplishment, or merely that following such practices is extremely dangerous to the human constitution? The questioner is right in the deduction. Now in answering this question, I don't want to step on any sensitive toes. I have very good friends, or have had very good friends, among the Christian Scientists. But I must nevertheless answer this question. I cannot answer it with an answer that I myself do not

believe is a truthful one. So please remember that in answering this question I do so from the standpoint of a theosophist. Let me add, however, that the theosophist never, at any time, attacks the religious beliefs of some fellow human being. We look upon that procedure as disgraceful, and also as being short-sighted and as showing a lack of an understanding heart. But while we try always to render unto others the same kindly courtesy that we ask of others when they study our sublime theosophical doctrines, this does not prevent us from telling what we believe to be the truth as proved to us by our studies. Christian Science, no matter what its proponents may claim for it, falls within the frontiers of what I have called psychical practices. Of course, by faith, or by thought-power, or willpower -- call it what you will, let us not quibble about words -- a man can work sometimes what seem to be marvels. He can not only change his thought-currents and thus change his character, which is indeed a wonderful and splendid thing to do, it may be, but he can even, by the power of his faith and by his thought, change his physical body. Hence, in our practical, pragmatical world, that is quite enough to enable anybody to say: "How practical! The fact is proved. I will proceed." But is the fact proved? By taking drugs I can stimulate certain organs in my body so that for the time being I become almost superhuman. The unwonted alertness, the quickening of the life-flow, the stimulation of the mental and psychical faculties within, are in certain cases phenomena which follow. But the aftereffect -- there is the proof of the pudding! The taking of drugs is always ill-advised, for drugs destroy: not only do they destroy nerve tissue and other tissue, thus making the man worse than he was before, but they strengthen mental and emotional selfishness, because no human being will take drugs unless it is to gain some personal advantage of some kind. And furthermore the very fact that a man takes drugs is a sure sign that the enshrouding veils of personality and individual appetite and passion are very dark around him. I am not now speaking of proper medical practice. Do you realize that when a man has a disease, that that disease has had a cause? Do you also realize that the man is simply working out what has come to him because he has brought it upon him by his own acts? Also that his nature is changing, is in process of cleansing, and that the inner poison, the poison in his mind and in his heart, which has been manifesting in his body as a disease, is now in the process of working out of his system. It is quite possible to dam back that disease and thus to throw it back into the constitution again. You can indeed dam it back; and the result is that someday it will come out again, but bringing in its train a thousand devils worse than itself, because it will have accumulated energy by being dammed back. Christian Science, while I have deep respect for the sincere and beautiful characters who follow it and earnestly believe it, is something that I -- and this I have a right to say undoubtedly -- personally cannot accept. To me it is very dangerous. It is a meddling, by using psychical powers, with the delicate constitution of the human being. It is damming back what nature is trying to throw out. Disease is a purgation, a cleansing, and therefore the poison within ought to come out. Disease is nature's way of making the flow of life clean and sweet again. Men of the West, as a rule, are cowards where disease is concerned, because they are short-sighted, due to the fact that they have no real philosophy of life and of the human constitution. A man has a disease, or a woman has, and he or she hunts up and down the earth for some remedy to cure the ill. And that in itself is all right. There is no harm in attempting to find a proper medical cure, no harm in trying to get relief. This is perfectly proper. But when you dam that disease back by willpower or thought-power, or psychical energy, this is another thing entirely, for the time will come when it will have accumulated strength by the increase of the latent fault of character which originated that disease; and heaven help the unfortunate wretch when the time comes for this increased disease again to manifest its action, for this it will certainly do at some future time. Much better is it to let nature purge the constitution, as it is trying to do; and I tell you that the physician of the future will have learned how to lead disease out of the body, carefully, gently, easily, so that the body will be neither wrecked nor even hurt, and yet the lesson will be learned. When I say the physician of the future, I do not mean men of a year from now, but the practitioners of a much more distant period.

There is much good in Christian Science, from one aspect at least. The Christian Scientists are so earnest, they are so devoted, they really believe what they teach; and those moral qualities are admirable, because worthy of high respect. In many ways they teach beautiful thoughts, such as kindliness to others, love towards others, mutual helpfulness, kindly charity. All that is fine. I am glad to pay tribute to these splendid qualities -- but the philosophy of Christian Science, if indeed it can be said to have a philosophy, which I seriously doubt, it is impossible to accept; and last but not least the methods of Christian Science do not cure the disease at all. They merely throw it back into the system and there it lies dormant until the time comes for it to reappear. The last question that I shall be able to answer this afternoon, due to the shortness of time at my disposal, is the following: Your announcement of a World-Congress of Theosophists at Point Loma in August 1931, has aroused so much interest in the theosophical world that there are indications that literally thousands of people will be planning to come here to attend this Congress. Are you going to be able to receive such a crowd at your public sessions? Will you have living accommodations for them all here at Point Loma? Or will you have to shut your doors on the greater number of these, even if they be earnest and sincere theosophists? We certainly shall not shut our doors in the face of anyone, but if they come by the thousands, where on earth could we put them? We have only two guest rooms at the present time; so I am afraid that the only thing to do will be to ask the kindly brothers of other societies and of our own society, outside of one or two prominent officials who have already been promised accommodations here, to live in San Diego or in Ocean Beach or in some outlying but close-by place. I want to tell you something about this congress or gathering of theosophists in next August -- 1931. I am very happy about the responses that I have received from all over the world to my suggestion to hold such a congress at which representatives from all the Theosophical Societies will be present; but I think that so large a gathering -- I mean so huge a gathering as thousands attending it -- would nullify any possibility of fruitful and efficient work. What I really desire is to have a heart-to-heart talk with the chief officials of the other Theosophical Societies with my own officials here present, so that we can come to some mutually honest and sincere understanding of each others' problems. I want brotherly feeling among theosophists. I want kindliness, mutual charity, and forgiveness of each others' faults. That is what I want; and my hope is that next year, if I can gather the heads of these other Theosophical Societies at Point Loma, where they will meet me and my officials here in our Temple of Peace or in our Greek Theater, we can then iron out things that bar a complete understanding at the present time. They will then know me; I will know them; and distrust I hope will give way to trust; suspicion will give way to brotherly love and kindliness. Some of these other theosophists seem to think that I am going to swallow them all. Well, I will frankly say that I wish I could. I am not a bit ashamed to say it. I am proud of The Theosophical Society which I have the high honor and responsibility of leading. I know, my brothers, what we have and especially what I myself have to give. I know what I have been taught to give to my fellow men; and it is my duty to give it to them. But does this mean that I ignore the rights of others? No indeed. How could that be? I were not worthy to be a theosophical teacher if I could infringe the smallest right of any fellow human being. My heart tells me also that this my duty lies even more plainly in the case of other men and women who are theosophists and who, through the mutual misunderstanding and distrust that have existed in the past among theosophists, are members of different societies, and follow other leaders. Now, I have no objection at all to the existence of other Theosophical Societies. What I want is brotherly love among them, and if possible a reunion. I want a common understanding among us. As I have said before, my idea is to found a super-society -- not a political federation, for then there would be the same conflicts and trouble that we have had in the past; but my idea is to form a spiritual brotherhood, to which every theosophical organization would give honest allegiance and also be able to withdraw from

it at any time; every such component Theosophical Society (and our own would be the first) to give up no rights; each one would retain all its rights, its own officers, its own constitution, its own field of work, its own particular teachings -- in fact anything it likes; but in the name of the Masters and of the immortal gods, let us meet on a platform where universal brotherhood shall reign over our hearts and live in our souls! This supreme society, according to my idea, would have one supreme officer, holding his position by innate spiritual right due to his esoteric and occult training. This supreme officer would have no political powers whatsoever, but would be merely one who is accepted as the teacher and leader of this superTheosophical Society; and he would hold office by and through the love and trust and confidence -- the children of experience -- that he would evoke in the hearts of all the composing theosophical bodies and individuals. Here, therefore, is just an outline of the idea and hope that I have in mind to bring about if I can. Some day it will certainly come to pass, and I hope that we shall see it a living reality soon. Our time to close has now come. I have tried to carry you into the spiritual fairyland that I spoke to you about in beginning my lecture this afternoon. I have given to you ideas of supernal beauty. I have drawn your attention to the beauty which is at the very heart of things. I have called your attention to the fact that cosmic love, almighty love, is itself that heart of things; and that each one of you is a channel for expressing it, if ye will; that the cosmic pathway to magnificent experience and growth begins within each of you, and in following this pathway it will lead you to the heart of the universe; that the method of freeing your feet from the clinging mire of the personality is to become impersonal, self-forgetfully to love -- to learn to love, and to learn to forgive. Then ye become already quasi-divine. Nothing except forgiveness and love and honesty will purge your heart of weaknesses, children of selfishness. Remember then, my brothers, that each one of you in the core of your being, is an imbodied god. Why will ye not be yourself -- your greater self, your spiritual self!

Second Series: No. 7 (October 27, 1930)

OCCULTISM AND PSYCHOLOGY

(Lecture delivered August 10, 1930) CONTENTS: Truth not exterior to yourself. -- The brain but a mass of physical atoms. -- The builder is the inner fire, identic with the universe. -- The great men of science are becoming occultists. The mystic keys not yet in their possession. -- Science rediscovering old things. -- What is occultism? -- What is psychology? As taught in the West merely physiological psychology. Modern psychology looks to effects not causes. -- True psychology defined. -- The three main divisions of man's nature. -- The nous and psyche of Platonic philosophy. -- The inner eye. What is it? -- What is a hunch? -- The only safe development of the psychical faculties. -- Purveyors of so-called psychical faculties. -- H. P. Blavatsky's words on psychism. -- Spiritual teachings are never sold. They are man's heritage. -- How much can the photographic plate record? -- A rational explanation of fairies. -- A promise of the way to light and truth. Truth, my brothers, is something which is not radically exterior to you. You cannot know anything of that which is exterior to you in its principles unless, and because of the fact that, ye yourselves have truth within. It is the percipient mind and the comprehensive understanding which are in you -- not which give to you, but which are in you -- communicating to you the ability to know; and all that you can know is that which is within the compass of the reaches of your own understanding. Do you get the idea? How then is it that when the human mind reaches out, for instance into the deep abysses of stellar space -- into those realms of cosmic existence which on the face of it, according to the appearance of things, are outside of you -- that there is understanding, that there is appreciation, of law and order and system and harmony and beauty, and that the comprehension of it all draws the understanding portion of you on into still deeper reaches? Because it is within you! You cannot understand something which is without the bounds of your understanding; and, radically, naught in the universe is impossible for you to understand. Each one of you is an incarnate divinity, clothed with enshrouding and encrippling veils, vehicles, bodies, ethereal bodies -- call them what you like -- through which the divine fire, the divine flame, of intelligence must penetrate before its brilliance can reach the human mind, enlighten the physical brain, and to these communicate the understanding of the spiritual man. Your brain is but a mass of physical atoms. It is something builded up for a purpose, precisely after the same way in which an automobile is builded by man's inventive genius for a purpose, or as is a steamplow so builded, or any other thing. The builder is the inner fire, the inner life, which builds its own vehicle; for your very brain substance is a deposit from the more etheric part of you. It is the lees, the dregs, the deposit, of the inner ethereal man, itself the vehicle of the spiritual man, because each one of you in the inmost of his inmost is a spiritual-divine being. This is the reason that man's consciousness is at home in the divine spaces; this is the reason that he has this understanding within him, this divine faculty, so that he can reach out indefinitely, not only into the stellar spaces, but -- listen, brothers -- far more marvelous, into those inner spaces of consciousness, which the ancient Hindus called the pathway of the self, which self in its essence is a divine thing, in its essence is a spark of the cosmic fire; and therefore is identic with the universe: so to speak blood of its blood, life of its life, bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh. Hence the universe, both visible and invisible, is your home; therefore ye are children of the universe, and there are no frontiers that can be set to your advancing and evolving understanding and growing intelligence. What a sublime picture! This is the message of all the great seers and sages of all the ages. Do you know that the greatest minds in scientific research today are beginning to understand this fact, so ancient, so familiar to the human heart, taught by every great world religion, voiced in every great world philosophy? Our modern scientists are beginning to understand it, I say, and in beginning to understand it are beginning to teach it. Men like Professor Eddington, the great English scientific thinker, talk about mind-stuff as being the fundamental of the universe.

But none of them, none of them, I say, understand the divine mystery fully. Why? They are pursuing a divine profession, led on by the divine hunger for greater truths; their minds are expanding and opening, receiving the illuminating rays from the cosmic life and from the divine flame of the cosmic intelligence; but they have not yet seized the mystic keys; and yet those keys can be had. Do you know that every such ultramodern scientific researcher is becoming a mystic, and that in becoming a mystic he has set his feet on the pathway of occultism? Do you know what occultism is? It is the science of the things which are hid, whether entities or things or so-called laws matters not at all; yet whatever is hid but which can be discovered and found out, and the science which shows you how to do this, these two combined are occultism. It is an ancient science; it is not new; it is as old as thinking man. You aggressive Occidentals are not the first who have ever thought, who have ever tried to penetrate behind the veils of the outward seeming into the inward life. You think you are, but you are not; and the more the great philosophies and religions of the far Orient are examined and studied and investigated, people of the West come to realize that there are in these ancient literatures things very familiar to the human spirit, and that the subjects of thought that modern researchers in science and philosophy and religion are now beginning to find out and think about are as old as the enduring hills. This science of exploration into the things which are hid, not immediately observable, is occultism, the secret science, explaining the mysteries of the universe, which means explaining the mysteries of human consciousness also. Are you in the universe? Yes. You are not outside of it. Being in it, you are parts of it. Do you get that idea? You can never leave the universe; for in the sense in which I at present employ the word that universe is boundless infinitude. All the universes, not one universe merely, but all the universes scattered like cosmic seeds throughout frontierless space, are simply innumerable. Nevertheless you, in the inmost of the inmost of you, are inseparable portions of it all. Everything that is in boundless infinitude: every energy, every power, every faculty, everything: is therefore in you, because you are, each one of you, an inseparable part of the cosmic whole. Do you see what this means? It means that you have within you, if you can find it out, a doorway opening into infinity; which means, to change the figure of speech a bit, that each one of you is a pathway leading into infinite fields, both visible and invisible, inner and outer, which fields are collectively your own self, your higher self, your spiritual essence, for this your spiritual essence is the same as the spiritual essence of the cosmos. Do you get an adumbration at least of the idea thus placed before you? What a dignity does it confer upon you as men! Now, what is psychology? Can any one of you tell me what psychology is? It is a new study in the West, yet it is as old as the enduring hills, and we should know this if we could trace its history back through past ages. In itself it is nothing new. But in the Occident, due to the lack of the esoteric keys given by the great sages and seers of mankind in past ages, men in the West, instead of having at their command as an instrument of thought a true and genuine psychology -- the science of the human being considered in his emotional and intellectual parts -- has only, due to the painful work of a few scattered researchers, a quasi-science which is properly called physiological psychology. To speak more accurately, this is not psychology at all. You might perhaps call it psychological physiology, and thus you will see easily that it is a very different thing from true psychology. The results and effects on the human mind, and therefore on human conduct, of certain misunderstood and in certain cases unknown mental and emotional energies and forces in the human being, which express themselves in thoughts and acts, are the bases for this modern psychological physiology. It is only a quasi-science, and it does not carry one far. I would not spend, I would not waste, one half hour of my precious time in studying the mere record of the experimental researches of these otherwise devoted and self-denying researchers into the human constitution who are trying to know something of the inner constitution of man by studying its effects as they manifest themselves in man's physical cadaver. I want truth. I can get truth by going within, by

studying myself, and I can do this for the reasons that I have set forth before. I can do this because I am essentially a god, a divine being, feebly manifesting its transcendent powers through the crippling and enshrouding veils of the person -- through the mind, through the emotions, through the appetites, through the mere brain. Can I understand the god within by studying the psycho-physiological reactions to thought of the human body? Do I want to study the sun? Shall I study merely its reflection in a pool of water? That reflection will help in giving me some ideas; it will indeed give some vague idea of the surface of the sun; but if I want to know something of the sun per se, something of the solar heart, I raise my eyes to our day-star itself, and then I try to look within myself, for within me lie the explanations, and therefore lies the understanding, lies the consciousness, which interpret what I see. In doing this I have every chance to see aright. Let me now tell you what true psychology is. True psychology is a study of the structure, functions, and operations of the intermediate part of man's inner and invisible constitution. There are three parts to man's constitution -- there are more parts, indeed, but there are three main parts -- the spiritual, the intermediate or psychical, and the astral-physical. Those are the three main bases of man considered as a septenary entity. The spiritual part we may call the pneumatic part, from the Greek word pneuma, the spirit. The study of the intermediate part of man's constitution we call psychism or psychology, because either name is perfectly good. When we study the structure and operations of the physical cadaver, we properly call it physiology. Our modern psycho-physiological researchers are studying the body, and the reactions of the mind and emotions upon that body, and vice versa. They do not know what this intermediate part of man's constitution is. Every man of course knows that he thinks and feels. But psychologists do not study as much as they ought to these thinkings and feelings. They are much more inclined to study the effects on the body of thoughts and feelings, or rather the reactions of the brain and nervous system to thoughts and feelings. For instance, how does a man react to certain tests? There is a faculty within you which, if cultivated under training, will lead you to understand all that is in you, will lead you along the path of the most wonderful adventure that it is possible for a human being to undertake -- the path of exploration of consciousness. Do you follow me? This is the path which teaches you to find your self, to know its powers, to comprehend its faculties, to direct its energies rightfully. This is the true science of psychology as studied by the ancients, and the record, at least in part, of this ancient study still remains in the archaic literatures. In our days in the Occident, men and women are fascinated by what they call the psychical powers and faculties. They do not really know what these are. There is absolutely no reliable public information about these things, for you will never get such reliable information in public print nor in public lectures. You will get only more or less vague ideas and statements at the very best in public writing or speeches. Nevertheless, accurate, profound, and indeed perfect knowledge of these psychical powers and faculties can be had. Anyone who wants the truth and wants it for spiritual and intellectual progress can get such information. As I have told you again and again: Come to the door and knock, and if you knock with a pure heart, driven by the divine hunger to get wisdom and impersonal knowledge, these will be given to you. Ask, said in substance Jesus the Syrian sage, and if ye ask aright, ye shall receive. There is in very truth an explanation full, complete, all-comprising, of the riddle of the universe. This complete explanation can be had. This explanation is held in the guardianship of the most evolved human beings of our planet, whom theosophists call the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. These great seers and sages live today as a brotherhood pursuing their sublime work in the quiet, undisturbed, and they live wholly to benefit their fellow men. You cannot have happiness if the frontiers of your consciousness are no wider than your own merely personal sphere. You cannot thus reach beyond your personal limitations into the grand spaces; you must become impersonal, cosmic in other words, if you wish to understand cosmic truths. You must leave the restricted person, the small powers, the limited faculties, of the ordinary man, and reach out

with your greater inner faculties with your spiritual powers which are cosmic in their scope, and these spiritual powers are really you, for they remain with you when you cast the body aside; and all your merely personal gains inner and outer are then left behind and profit you not at all. You see here the meaning of the words of Jesus the Syrian sage which I repeat in substance: Lay up for yourselves treasures in the realms of the spirit where thieves do not break through and steal from you what you have laid up, and where rust doth not eat away what you have stored aside. The meaning is: cultivate the spiritual powers and faculties within you; become selfless, become self-forgetful; learn to forgive; exercise your intellectual and moral powers; learn to love. These are spiritual qualities and powers, therefore cosmic. They are eternal; they spring from the fountainhead of the ever-enduring part of you. I tell you these things as often as I can, because they are the very foundation of the truth that human beings can understand and therefore should follow. I cannot drive them home too often into your minds. They are the foundation for the receiving of a greater truth than that which now you know. The ancient Platonists called the spiritual-intellectual part of man the nous, and said that man attains freedom in the spirit, cosmic freedom of consciousness, when his inner constitution becomes noetic, which is the adjective from nous, the higher consciousness. These ancient Platonists said, likewise, that man has a lower faculty or power or field of consciousness within him, which they called the psyche, and which James of the Christians spoke of rather discourteously, I think, as earthly, devilish, and impure. I would not use such words. You see, I am not a Christian! Therefore, the psychical part of you is not high, because it is the field of your ordinary mind, of your ordinary emotions, of your ordinary likes and dislikes. It is the field of action of all the energies and forces within you that can act on such coarse stuff as the physical body is made of. I want you to get this idea clearly. On the other hand, you have spiritual willpower; there is a god within each one of you, your own higher self -- not God in the ordinary Occidental sense, but a god, a divine being, the very core of you. Why not link yourself with that inner divinity? Some of you who are of a philosophic bent of mind may question me, and say: "Well, are you teaching a kind of fatalism? We are just ordinary human beings, and if this god is within us, are not we humans mere slaves, psychical machines, under the control of its transcendent powers?" My answer is No, for this god is your self, your divine self, that part of you which links you into the very structure of the universe in its highest aspect -- if there be indeed a highest aspect, for the universe is infinite. We do most emphatically teach the existence in man of a free will streaming forth from this god within, enabling man therefore to choose his own path of thought and feeling and action. Or do you like the idea of the young person spoken of in a few verses that were sent in to me the other day, suggesting that men are only slaves, fatally driven beings, mere automatic creatures of some superpower? I don't know where these lines came from, but will read them to you: There was a young man who said, "Damn, I suddenly see that I am A creature who moves In predestinate grooves, In fact, not a 'bus, but a tram!" As you know, a tram is an English name for a streetcar running along tracks already laid. As a matter of fact you are not trams. You are more like buses. You can go wherever you like, think what you like, exercise your inner faculties and powers as you will; and why, in the name of holy truth, do ye not do it! Ye are free, my brothers. There is naught that hinders you on your path except your own faults and imperfections of willpower and judgment. Do you get the idea that I am trying to convey to you? Do you not immediately see the scientific basis for ethics that is involved in this conception? Morals are not merely man-made conventions: they are based on the very structural harmony of the universe. When a

man acts harmoniously, he acts in accordance with the universal scheme and law; and harmony in consciousness and thought and therefore in action is what men understand by the term ethics. Just think how grand a man seems to us when we see him choose his pathway in life with a will, acting with a will, like a man, realizing that other men have rights also, and that he, with his will, will not infringe those rights! That picture is a grand one. It is the very essence of all religious thought. This instinct of ethics springs out from within your inner constitution. It comes forth from your spiritual being recognizing harmony, order, the stateliness and majesty of beauty -- beauty in thought, beauty in aspiration and feeling, beauty in action. Do you think that it is a weakling who can follow this sublime pathway in life? Then try it yourself! When you go out of our temple door this afternoon, at the first opportunity that comes try to act like a true man, self-forgetful, kindly, brotherly. And if you succeed, you will feel your shoulders rise with the expansion of thought within you; there will be happiness in your heart; you will feel a sudden expansion of your consciousness; you will feel that you have begun to act manly, because you have become self-forgetful. That is good psychology. That is most excellent occultism; and every man who so acts is an embryooccultist, beginning to explore the mysteries of his own consciousness and finding it unspeakably fascinating, entering into the secrets, into the hid things, of his being, and thus developing himself, expanding, growing. No true occultist ever does a wrong to a fellow or indeed to anything else. You cannot be an occultist unless you forget yourself. Further, you cannot be an occultist unless in addition to forgetting yourself, you try to help your fellows. This is a fine spiritual exercise. Try it! You will gain an experience such as you have never had before. You will gain something that you will never, never lose, for you will have thus builded into the fabric of your character both strength and vision. The god within you will have begun to enclose you with its divine radiance. Love will be yours, because if you follow this pathway you will become lovely. Love will be yours also because, in following this pathway, you will evoke love from others' hearts. A greater understanding will be yours, because you will have given your understanding exercise, brought out its latent power, because, merely in order to see these things, therefore to do them, you must use will and your understanding. Clairvoyance will be yours, spiritual clairvoyance -- not the psychical reflection thereof which is so dangerous, but true spiritual clairvoyance -- enabling you, as I told you on last Sunday from this platform, to see with the inner eye what passes at any distance from you, at whatever distance in space or on earth, for there is this faculty within you and you can develop it. It is the inner eye. Don't you believe it? Then examine merely the ordinary records of literature and ponder over what you will find in those records. Spiritual clairaudience will be yours: the power to hear with the inner ear, not with the physical organ so deceptive because so imperfect, but the power to hear anything you will at whatever distance, whether on Mars or on the sun or on the moon, or on Jupiter or on some distant star, or anywhere on earth. Men exercise these faculties even today, and do not know it; but when it happens, then they say: Oh, I had a strange hunch, I had an unusual feeling! And I followed that feeling and everything came out right. I am referring of course, my brothers, to those cases which are real hunches, not merely to imaginary hunches which also occur frequently. Cultivate the powers and faculties of the spirit. For instance, having this clairaudience, you can hear the grass grow, and that hearing will be to you like a symphonic musical poem. You can hear the celestial orbs singing their songs as they advance along their orbits through space; and do you know why? Because everything that is, is in movement, producing sound, simple or composite as the case may be; so that in very truth every tiny atom sings its own note, its own musical note, and every composite entity, therefore, is an imbodied musical poem, a musical symphony. Your bodies are, each one of them, singing its own composite song. When a flower unfolds its petals, there is motion, therefore it is musical, and if you have the spiritual clairaudience you can hear it. I mean every word of this literally; and spiritual clairvoyance and spiritual clairaudience are but two of the powers of the spirit. There are many others.

Psychism is a word to conjure with today in the Occident. What our bigwigs of the various European and American universities call psychology, the man in the street -- who understands very little about the Greco-Latin names and the abstruse phrases and whatnot, and who knows that there are powers latent within him and in his fellows, and who wants to know something understandable about these hid faculties and powers, -- calls psychical powers, psychical faculties; and in so-called psychical circles he hears a great deal about 'clairvoyance,' and clairaudience, and thought-transference, etc., etc. But he receives no accurate or reliable information about any of these, because such reliable information being too dangerous to give out publicly, the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace do what they can to prevent such public communication. These so-called psychical faculties and powers are very dangerous indeed unless developed under a wise spiritual teacher who knows what he is about, and furthermore under the severest kind of restrictions and conditions. How many unfortunate men have lost much money, for instance, by following the advice of those who had no spiritual right and who lacked the proper training to give such advice. Of course I don't want to be unkind, you understand. I detest throwing mud, but it is my duty to warn. Therefore I say to you: Be careful! How many hearts have been broken -- and this is a much more serious thing -- of men and women in trouble seeking help and going to what they call -- well, to the purveyors of so-called psychical teachings. Broken homes, orphaned children, divorces, and almost endless misery of both heart and mind have resulted from such unwise action. Do you wonder that theosophists, who know the existence of these dangerous powers and faculties in man which the ordinary man calls the psychical, do you wonder why we feel it our duty to call the dangers especially to your attention? We do not do so unkindly. Many of these so-called psychics are honest people. In some cases they mean well. But they are not illuminated. They have not been trained by real occult teachers, and consequently are themselves also wanderers in the illusory shadows of the astral world. The spiritual part of them, the spiritual part of their constitution, which is the divine sun within them, the inner star, the source of all the great spiritual faculties and powers within, is not deluging the hearts and minds of these psychics with the brilliance of its rays; and consequently even with the best of intentions they have neither the esoteric right to teach nor the vision to know what to say and what not to say. Let me read to you in this connection what the founder of The Theosophical Society in modern times, H. P. Blavatsky, wrote -- one of her last messages to her students. She sent it to the American Convention of Theosophists which took place in l891. She wrote as follows: Your position as forerunners of the sixth sub-race of the fifth root-race has its own special perils as well as its special advantages. Psychism, with all its allurements and all its dangers, is necessarily developing among you, and you must beware lest the psychic outruns the Manasic and Spiritual development. Psychic capacities held perfectly under control, checked and directed by the Manasic principle, are valuable aids in development. But these capacities, running riot, controlling instead of controlled, using instead of being used, lead the Student into the most dangerous delusions and the certainty of moral destruction. Watch carefully, therefore, this development, inevitable in your race and evolution-period, so that it may finally work for good and not for evil; and receive, in advance, the sincere and potent blessings of Those whose good-will will never fail you, if you do not fail yourselves. . . . Theosophy first, and Theosophy last; for its practical realization alone can save the Western world from that selfish and unbrotherly feeling that now divides race from race, one nation from another, and from that hatred of class and social considerations that are the curse and disgrace of so-called Christian peoples. . . . In your hands, brothers, is placed the welfare of the coming century, and great as is the trust, so great also is the responsibility. These are truths magnificently set forth in words! It is precisely because theosophists have been taught to know the existence of these dangerous powers and faculties in man, the so-called psychic powers, that we call your attention to them and beg of you, as you love your own beloved friends and the peace and tranquillity of your own consciousness, to turn to the spiritual light, to the source of all wisdom and knowledge, which is the divine sun, within you -- the source of all the things which make life great and

high and noble. Equally important is it for you to beware of the deceptive moonlight of the psychical part of man's constitution. I tell you again that there is no reliable public information about these psychical faculties and powers existent in the West today. There are many lecturers going about the country talking much about these things; but I tell you one most important fact in this connection: that the Masters of Wisdom, who are the titanic spiritual and intellectual flowers of the human race, the fine flowers of mankind, never teach dangerous truths to untrained minds. Would a mother's loving heart put dynamite into the hands of her little child? Dynamite exists, of course. Would she hand her little boy or her little girl a flask of violent poison, merely with the idea that everybody should have everything indiscriminately without training and without warning? Even your public schools of all grades know better than to act in this way. Many things are not taught in public; and I can tell you why: because the teachers know that it is not safe to do so. It is a thousand times more dangerous to teach things such as these psychical subjects to men and women who don't know what these psychical powers really are and who are absolutely unprotected by any adequate spiritual and intellectual training or development. It is easy to teach about these psychical powers -- very easy indeed. You don't have to be spiritually and intellectually great to understand them. And here lies the temptation that men have in this connection: it seems to them to be a quick and easy way to get some power over their fellows. But you will never be able to use a spiritual power to the detriment and hurt of your brother. Do you here see the enormous difference between spiritual and intellectual training, on the one hand, and the very uncertain and illusory and unreliable teachings about the psychical powers and faculties that can be picked up only for a price? You pay; and you receive nothing that is of any worth at all. The spiritual powers and faculties which form the higher part of your own constitution will evolve forth within you only when you become impersonal, when you live to benefit mankind, when your heart is so stirred that no longer can you live for yourself but must live to help others. Such a life is sublime. That is what the seers and sages of the ages have done in the past; that is what Jesus, that is what the great Gautama the Buddha, did, that is what all the great ones of the past have done; and the world even today reveres their names, reveres their lives; whereas the murderers, whether of names or of bodies or of human souls, have been forgotten. O my brothers, the pathway to divinity is within you; that pathway to divinity arises not outside of you. It does not lead to an outside, to an extracosmic deity, for there is no outside of the universe. The path to divinity is within you and begins within you. It takes its beginning, for each one of you, in heart and mind conjoined in your consciousness. It leads ever more and more within, so that as you follow it, you grow in power and faculty of understanding, and you become more and more what you innately are. You bring out more and more into manifestation what you have of glory and grandeur and strength within you. And where does this pathway leading to divinity end? There is no ending of it. It never had a beginning for it was always you and it never will have an ending because it will always be you -- your spiritual essence in each case. It leads onwards and onwards and onwards forever. Sons of the sun you are, and one of these days you shall evolve spiritually and intellectually to the point where you shall pass through the portals of the spiritual sun, merely to pass onwards and still farther onwards towards that ever receding goal. Brothers, I bring to you light. My duty is to try to bring to you help, to give myself to you. I have been approached, since I succeeded our great-hearted Katherine Tingley as Leader of The Theosophical Society, to give private spiritual teachings for a price; and my answer has invariably been: the day when any theosophical teacher accepts one penny for teaching the ancient wisdom-religion or the esoteric secrets of man and of the universe, on that day the Theosophical Movement will die. No spiritual teachings are ever given for a price. They are yours by right, your heritage, your own. I have no right to hide them from you, but I am not going to give them to anyone until I know that the receivers are capable of receiving and of guarding them sacredly. Do you think that I would give to any man on earth

the key to open a power within himself which he would use to the hurt and injury of his brothers? Never! But come, come with open heart, with eager intellect, with at least the beginning of an unveiled spiritual vision, even if that beginning be small. Knock at the door of my heart; ask, and ye shall receive. It is my duty to give all that I have, but only when I know that those to whom I give can be trusted absolutely. There are curious ideas abroad in the world today about some of these things. Some people believe in sprites and fairies, goblins and gnomes, angels and -- the other kind of angels; and all this simply shows how hungry men and women are to have something in the nature of immaterial and spiritual truths given to them. These truths verily exist and can be given, but only under due guarantees of secrecy and silence. They are never in any circumstances or under any conditions given out publicly either by lecture or by print. But men today are ignorant of these things and, because they do not know the laws of the universe, desire to become spiritually rich quickly. They desire to get everything all at once; and men don't grow in that way. It is against nature's law of evolution and slow but sure development and growth. Isn't it obvious that it would be utterly impossible for me to communicate powers to you unless you had grown or evolved to the point where you could receive them and understand them and thus properly use them? How can a little child of six or seven years carry the burden that his stalwart father carries? There is the idea. How can a child of seven or eight years solve a recondite problem in Euclid, for instance, that to his father may be a simple problem? It is all a matter of inner spiritual and intellectual growth. And so, when I hear some of these itinerant lecturers going over the country and talking about fairies, and saying: "Here is an interesting thing: here is a photograph that I took of a band of fairies, or of gnomes," what can I say that is at once truthful and yet brotherly and not unkind? Can you photograph electricity? Can you photograph energy? Can you photograph force? Can you photograph the astral? You cannot. All that the photographic plate, that the camera, will record is the traces of energy and passing fluidic substances left on our physical sphere and in our physical sphere by forces or energies working in the invisible realms; and such things as these traces are the commonest experiences of life. The lightning's flash, the falling rain, the opening flower, the growing tree, a walking man, a running automobile, the stars in their orbits, the brilliant luminosity of the nebulae in the midnight sky, the flash of the electric spark in the laboratory, the tiny sand-pillar whirled by the winds of the desert, the oncoming cyclone -- all these things, in fact everything that is visible, can be photographed because these are all traces of the hid powers working behind the veil, but these powers themselves in their essence cannot be photographed because they do not belong to the physical sphere, and it is only things of the physical sphere that the photographic plate of the camera can catch and record. Here is a question that was sent in to me for answer today: I am interested in fairies and nature spirits. [So am I!] I always did love nature [so do I], and nothing pleases me better than to wander in the woods and enjoy the delightful feel of things. But how much better it would be if I could learn how to see the beautiful sprites and things which must live there. I am thinking of joining your organization so as to study the occult side of things. What would it cost for lessons, or have you got books about it? I understand that it is only necessary to subscribe to the principle of universal brotherhood in order to join. Well, that would be easy, because I never was one to quarrel with others. My wife says she thinks I've got my ideas tangled up about these things, but she can't tell me how. What do you think about it? Now isn't that an interesting question! Well, I am going to astonish you perhaps in what I shall say. I also believe in fairies. I also believe in sprites. I also believe in gnomes. I also believe in cosmic spirits. I believe that the universe is filled full with gods, with semi-divine beings, and with beings of much lower grade in nature's innumerable hierarchies. And I know all these invisible entities exist in all-various kinds and at all-various stages of growth, of evolution, high, intermediate, and low. But do I believe in fairies and sprites with little green caps and little green jackets and long shoes with pointed toes sticking

out, as mere copies of the clothing of the inhabitants of Europe of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? No. Why should I? Why should these supposititious fairies and gnomes be clad according to the clothing of Europeans of medieval times? Why should these fairies be shaped like men, only very small? The whole suggestion is unnatural and therefore untrue. There are planets in our solar system which have inhabitants, just as the earth has. And yet their inhabitants are as different in form from us as it is possible to imagine different forms to be. Why, then, must we say that because we have a human form, every other entity in the universe or on earth must have human forms also, perhaps a little taller or a little smaller than we are? I don't believe in that kind of fairies. When I say that I believe in sprites and gnomes and goblins and kobolds and elves and what not, I believe what the theosophy of the ages has taught the existence of: in other words, I believe in conscious entities living in the invisible worlds. What this kind questioner refers to in his question are what theosophists call elementals, elementals existing in many stages of evolution and possessing many kinds of forms, some a little like the human and most of them very unlike the human form. Elementals are growing, learning entities; they are entities beginning their growth towards becoming human. They are very young in evolution and are not yet far evolved along the pathway of growth; but they will be men in some far, far distant time of the future when evolution shall have worked its magic upon them. Why are we human beings here? We are self-conscious, and we have hearts; we feel, we understand, we have wonderful faculties locked up within us. What does it all come from? Did it just happen so? Do you really believe that anything just happens so? Now, I do not so believe. I simply do not understand what this phrase means, "just happened so." We humans are here because of preceding causes stretching backwards illimitably; and we human beings are the present effects of those preceding causes; and we ourselves are at present causes expressing the intelligence and feeling and understanding of the powers locked up within us and which will make us very different in faculties and powers and shape in future ages. In just the same way there are hosts of entities far below us humans. We are not the only selfconscious beings in boundless infinitude. Of course I believe in these growing entities, in these evolving entities all growing progressively greater just as men are. You can call these inferior entities fairies if you like, or sprites, gnomes, kobolds, elves, because the name does not matter much. But I certainly would like to see anyone capable of photographing them. When I see that, then I will believe that you can photograph energy, as energy. You cannot do it. All you can do is to photograph the traces of its action left behind in this physical universe, because you photograph by light, which is a physical thing, a substance-energy, and the material photographic plate can receive and record only material impressions. I think that this kind questioner has his ideas badly tangled. I think that his wife was right! No spiritual truth is ever sold. We have our theosophical books in which as much as it is safe to print publicly is given out, and that which you will find in our books is really wonderful. It will be a revaluation to those who have not studied theosophy; and the price that we charge for our books is simply to cover the cost of printing and publication and mailing. But do you think that any price on earth could buy me? My heavens! I would not be worthy of looking an honest man in the face if I could be bought. You try it, and see. I mean it too! But nevertheless you can have the holy truth. Come to me, any one of you who chooses may come to me with an earnest heart, willing absolutely to accept the conditions of learning, the conditions which are not mine but those which I am obliged to lay before you, and if your heart is honest and your will is strong, and I find that I can trust you, then I will give you as much truth as I can. This is a promise. Every theosophical teacher says the same; and furthermore, my brothers, I can show you how to put your feet on the pathway of light which will lead you to personal acquaintance with the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, if you follow that pathway unfailingly to the end. Cultivate the divine within you. Try to be at one with your inner god.

You, my brothers, I am speaking to as an audience of gods, as divine beings, as cosmic spirits, which you truly are in your higher parts. You have totally unknown faculties and powers within you. You have not touched the fringe of acquaintanceship with what you have within you. Sons of the sun ye are. Sons of the spiritual sun which is the heart of the bright luminary our day-star. A god is the core of the core of the heart of the heart of each one of you. Divinity irradiates your consciousness. Oh, why not become your divine self, and then take the kingdom of the spiritual realms by strong will and intense purpose. Ye are gods, my brothers, in your inmost!

Second Series: No. 8 (November 2, 1930)

GODS, MEN, AND ATOMS

(Lecture delivered August 17, 1930) CONTENTS: Within you is the light of eternity. -- The limitations of the argumentative brain-mind. -The secret of the physical atoms of chemistry. -- The ten hierarchies of our own home-universe. -- What do you mean by self-study? Can it lead to self-worship? -- The ever-receding holy of holies. -- What is a star? -- Smashing the prejudices of scientific fanatics. -- Why the repetition of a truth is good. -- What has brought about the diversity in the universe? -- The Gayatri, an ancient Vedic prayer: an interpretation. -- What draws us back to earth? -- What attracts us after death? -- Will there be a preliminary meeting of all theosophists in May 1931? Dr. de Purucker firmly maintains his original position. -- Fundamentally men are trustworthy. -- Spiritual ideals cannot be voted upon. -- It is ideas that rule the world. -- Words from the Journal of the Swiss philosopher, Amiel. -- Awake to a cognizance of the life sublime! A speaker who has something to tell his audience which is real and beautiful and true because based on the very structure and operations of almighty nature herself, and who stands before an audience as a theosophical lecturer does, wonders, when beginning to speak, just how much of what he is going to say will sink into the minds of his hearers, so that through their minds these wonderful theosophical thoughts may reach the understanding heart of you, the center of consciousness. This center of consciousness is a brilliant flame, an inner light, which passes through the tissue of living veils of personality cast around it by evolution and will. It streams forth from the very heart of being, and may, rightly be called the very light of eternity. It is to this light within you that I always address myself: this light which is not a physical brilliance at all, but nevertheless of which even the physical brilliance of the stars of the material universe is, as it were, a shadow. This light is composite of consciousness, love, understanding which is the root of intelligence; and these are not three things, but one thing, like a three-faceted jewel showing now this, now that, now the third aspect of itself. The faculties which a human being shows, which he manifests, obviously spring forth from within him. They do not come from without. They arise in his own inner forum of consciousness; and just in proportion as the percipient ego, the self-conscious human being, can penetrate more and more inwards towards this flow of light, this light of eternity within, does the man who is this percipient ego enter into the deeps of himself, which is the same as saying into the deeps of the universe of which he is an inseparable part. This light it is that I appeal to. I care nothing at all for argumentative brain-minds. It is these brain-minds of ours, although useful in ordinary affairs of life, which nevertheless cause divisions among men, which separate man from man and race from race, and bring about the misery and sorrow of the world. My appeal is to that within you which is eternal, for it is the very light of eternity streaming through you. These observations are drawn from a part, a beautiful part, of the teaching of all the sages and seers of all the ages, a teaching existent among all men and in all times. Ye are gods, says the writer of one of the Christian scriptures, and he spoke truth. As men of course we are not gods; we human beings as human beings are but feeble and imperfect manifestations of the supernal splendor struggling to escape through the living tissue of the encircling veils and garments of the personal selfhood; but the inmost of the inmost of us, the core of the core of the heart of the heart of us, is a god, a divine being, not merely rooted in the universe but a very part of it -- life of its life, bone of its bone, being of its being; and when once you understand this sublime thought, you will realize that you yourselves are -- each one of you is - that universe, for each one of you is but an inseparable part of the incomprehensible whole. Everything that is in the whole, as I tell you again and again from this platform, is therefore in each one of you, gods as you are in your inner parts; and each one of you is striving to manifest your transcendent spiritual powers through these crippling and encircling veils of the lower selfhood. This teaching really

is the heart of the heart of all the great world religions and world philosophies. I allude to it on every Sunday when I speak to you, because it is all important. How can a man understand the universe, apparently outside of him but of which he is really a part, unless he knows himself? It is not enough merely to feel, merely to think. You must know; and how do you know yourself? By studying things apparently outside of you? No, by going inwards, into your own consciousness -- not the brain-mind consciousness, not the physical consciousness. These last are merely two of the veils, two of the garments, two of the living tissues, of the inmost of you. But the process that I now here refer to is going deeper within, into the deeps, and thereby following that still, small path of which the Hindu Upanishads tell us, leading ever more within. It will lead you to the very heart of the universe, if you follow it faithfully and without fail. Consider how this sublime thought clothes you as men with high dignity; see the responsibility inherent in your lives as men. You recognize yourselves as collaborators with the gods in the great cosmic work - and the universe is filled full with gods. Like you not the name? If so, you make me think of what a clever Irish writer recently said. He said: "Our fathers were afraid of ghosts, but we moderns are afraid of names." Call these gods then cosmic spirits, or archangels, or angels, or whatnot: Dominions, Principalities, Powers -- what does the name signify? It is the thought involved which is all important. These gods which fill the universe full are our parents, our kin. They have produced us, not "created" us, but somewhat after the manner in which an earthly father will produce from his own being his physical child. As the child in a sense is a part of his father, so have these divine beings in the universe produced or evolved forth the demigods who in their evolutionary course on earth we call men. We are gods in our inmost, demigods because children of the gods, and on earth we are men. And we demigods, we men, who are gods in our inmost, are living in bodies of flesh at the present time, bodies composed of atoms, of chemical atoms; and what are these atoms? Are they different in essence from us? No. Has not an atom, each one being an inseparable portion of the universe just as every man is, everything essentially within it that a man or a god has? Verily so, for these atoms, even the physical atoms of chemistry, are but the outer living tissue of the divinity at the heart of every atom -- of each one of the atoms. Therefore it at once becomes obvious that every man is a little universe, a microcosm; every god is a greater universe; while at the other extreme every atom even is an infinitesimal universe. Gods, demigods, and atoms -- gods, men, and atoms -- are the subjects of our study together today. Do I choose these three, gods, men, and atoms, because I mean thereby to signify that these three hierarchies or classes of beings are the only self-conscious entities in boundless infinitude? Not at all. But simply for purposes of easy understanding I have taken three interlocking and interblending hierarchies. In our own home-hierarchy, which comprises all within the encircling bounds of the galaxy, the Milky Way -that is, our home-universe -- ten, so teaches the sublime wisdom-religion of the archaic ages, are the subordinate hierarchies or stages or steps, from the highest to the lowest, within this our home-universe; and these ten include within their compass all the classes of living beings existent within this homeuniverse. What are these ten classes, according to the ancient enumeration? They are the following: gods, demigods, daimones, men; then, coming to our earth, beasts, the plant kingdom, the mineral kingdom, and the three kingdoms of the elementals below the mineral kingdom -- ten in all. Note well that every cosmic hierarchy in boundless space is divided in the same way; but some of these cosmic hierarchies are high and some are low, if we use our own Milky Way as a convenient standard of reference. There are no frontiers to infinitude. Did not every great seer and sage teach that within a human being lie all the mysteries of the universe? Man, know thyself, was the profound injunction of the Delphic Oracle. Why was so much emphasis laid on this injunction? Because the way to wisdom, the way to knowledge, the way to understanding, lies within man himself. The understander is within.

Some people like to be on what they consider the safe side in religious and philosophical questions. I met a man once who had joined a certain church. I said: "Why? From what you tell me, you really don't believe in those teachings." "No, I don't." "Well, why did you join?" "Well, it is good to be on the safe side. I may be wrong, you know." This prudent individual reminds me of a joke that was sent in to me yesterday, or a day or two ago: An old lady in church was seen to bow whenever the name of Satan was mentioned. One day the minister spoke to her and asked her why she did so. "Well," she replied, "politeness doesn't cost anything, and then -- you never know." I have known people to come into The Theosophical Society on much the same grounds. They like our teachings; they think that these teachings are fine, are scientific, philosophical, and religious; but I have always felt that there was a little something about these people that did not ring quite true; and I remember in one case that I spoke to a comrade in this connection, and I said (I will call him Jack): "Well, Jack, why did you join?" "Well, I liked the idea of joining." And I said: "Why? You are not -well, I don't mean to be unkind, Jack -- but you are not doing exactly as you ought to do." "Well," he said, "I will tell you why, G.deP. I thought that perhaps, after all, your teachings might be true; and that after I joined The Theosophical Society, and accepted these ideas with my intelligence such as I have evolved it, these teachings might be a sort of protection against my doing things that I might do if I were outside." I could tell you quite a lot of funny stories about people who have joined us in the past, and in certain instances about some people who have dropped out of membership. I will tell you that I am not eager for that kind of Fellows in The Theosophical Society. I direct my appeal always to the real inner man, to the essential spiritual manhood of you. I would not give a snap of the fingers for all the wealth of the world and all the power of the world if I could bring them into the Theosophical Movement but by doing so lose my own soul. I know that having found myself, my real inner spiritual self, I have found all, for at will I can enter that portal opening inwardly to the Mystic East, and thereafter follow a pathway which, if I pursue it faithfully, will lead me to the very heart of the Universe, past the portals of the sun, our own glorious day-star. I mean every word of this and mean it literally. It is to this element in you, my Brothers, that I always make my appeal. In connection with what I have just said, a question was sent in to me that I will now read. It seems to fall into place here. If a man looks within too intensively, is there a possibility of his becoming a self-made man who worships his creator? This is a rather clever question because it points out that there is always a chance of a man losing his spiritual way, and worshiping himself. My answer to this question is a positive negative, because any such lower self-examination is morbid. It is not the study of and aspiration towards the spiritual being within that I have heretofore spoken of. You cannot study this inner spiritual life of you too intensively. It is compact of truth, of almighty love, of compassion, of pity, of all the elements in the universe which produce, through the intelligence and hearts of men, kindliness, brotherhood, gentleness, and things of good and high report. This study of our spiritual being shows us that we must break through the enshrouding veils of the lower selfhood and penetrate within to the divinity, to the inner god, which is the heart of the heart of each one of us. Then, when we have reached that sublime goal, we shall have the impulse to turn around, as do the glorious buddhas of compassion who turn backwards on the path, and help our fellows trailing along behind. This compassionate act is what all true spiritual saviors of men do. The self-study which I was told to teach is not the study of the lower personal elements of our being, but it is the study of the god within, your inmost being; and the way consciously to reach it is to break through the encircling veils of the lower personality, to pass these, to break down these barriers if need be, and to cast them aside, but in any case to enter into the holy of holies within us. How wonderful this adventure is! This inmost of us, which I have called a holy of holies, as soon as you reach it fades away

into something still more sublime on the distant mountain peaks of hope, and then ye pass onwards, and reaching that more distant goal ye find that the same experience happens again. But at each such recurrence of this sublime experience the stage of understanding and consciousness attained is higher than the previous one; and so it continues, each stage being higher still, ever more high, until ye reach the portals of the spiritual sun, not only the spiritual sun within you but also of that very day-star which is the source of all life and light on our earth. Our fathers thought that our physical sun was but a huge furnace burning itself out. What an amazingly puerile conception! The ancient Mystics taught that every star in the cosmic spaces was but the luminous veil or garment of a god, just as they also said that every body of every human being is but the outermost veil of a divine entity working through that outermost veil. There are times when I take pleasure in smashing, if I can, the old prejudices of so-called religious and scientific fanatics, if by doing so I can let light in to darkened minds. As a matter of fact men's minds today are in deep obscurity and lack spiritual illumination because the men of our present day have been brought up in the old scientific and religious materialistic teachings of our fathers. Even today the universities teach this materialism from their lecture platforms, despite the astonishing progress that scientific discovery and research have made; the books that you read in the libraries are written with this moribund materialism as their main theme; and yet I tell you that this materialism, at least in the minds of the great men of the world, is now dead. The scientific and religious teachers of the world no longer accept it. No truly eminent man believes today in that old materialism; and some of the greatest scientific minds of the day are thinking of new and lofty intellectual departures; these men are seeing visions and dreaming dreams of spiritual truth. A few of them are even talking of mind-stuff as being the foundation of the universe; and as a great English scientist wrote a short time ago, the materialism of our fathers was a scientific superstition -- the scientific materialistic thought of our forefathers was a superstition -- as much so as was the belief in devils and witches; and yet that same materialism is still taught today to your children and youth. The whole thought-world of the Occident is still filled with it, although everybody who is well-informed now knows that it is untrue. And yet it is taught, and therefore it shapes the minds of our youth, and their minds are still more or less governed by it. Do you now understand why I love to smash these scientific and religious fantasies of a bygone day? On the contrary, I assert that the world is filled with gods and that every living thing and the so-called inanimate things also, are trees of life, with their roots above in the spiritual realms, with their trunks passing through the intermediate spheres, and their branches manifesting in the physical realms. Such a spiritual tree also is man. So also is a beast. So also is a plant. So also is a demigod. So also is a god. So also is a super-god. I was asked the other day why I repeated so often what I had said on previous occasions. I answered: Because it is a wonderful, beautiful series of thoughts that I have been told to deliver from this platform; and also please remember that you cannot repeat a good thing too often. It is repetition which is the very soul of advertising, and when you have a truth to advertise and to give, tell it and tell it and tell it again, and with all the energy and earnestness which you have. I am a believer in the divine source of the universe. Spirit is the root of things; and the gods and demigods and daimones and all the other vast armies and hosts of cosmic entities, invisible and those which we apparently see, are all collaborating together in the cosmic work; and they are the causes of the natural so-called diversity that you see everywhere -- atom differing from atom, man differing from man, one demigod differing from others; and so forth throughout infinity. In these divine and spiritual entities lies the cause of the diversity of the universe. This point may not interest some of you, perhaps, but uninitiated thinkers of all ages have pondered over the problem: What has brought about the diversity in the universe? It is the divine beings existent therein as the lives and intelligences of the universe; and of these divine beings men are one host. O my brothers, ye are gods -- at present feeble and undeveloped human beings, but yet each one of you in his inmost is a god -- each one of you in his heart of hearts is a divine being, a spark of the universal cosmic intelligence.

Strictly in connection with what I have said to you, about reaching the portals of the sun and passing beyond it into realms still more sublime, there came to me a question the other day which I will now read to you: I do not understand what you mean when you speak of men as sons of the sun, implying that thereby some greater dignity attaches to them than is usually the case. I know what is meant by being sons of God [I do not], in the sense that when we turn from our crude, elemental, human ways, and sincerely try to follow the high ethics of Jesus Christ, we are redeemed from our earthly nature. But sons of the sun sounds like a Pagan idea to me. I do not wish to appear critical; I just do not understand. Can you explain further? I most assuredly can explain further. "O spiritual sun, Father in heaven, giver of life and light, enfold us in thy radiance; awaken in us thereby thy own light in our hearts, so that it may flood our pathway and guide our feet on our journey to thy sacred seat." This is a paraphrase of an ancient Vedic prayer called the Gayatri, and is even today one of the most sacred verses of Brahmanism. I quote it for its esoteric significance and don't quote it as signifying sun worship, for that is not the idea at all. The spiritual sun, of which the physical sun is but the outermost veil, is the channel through which all beings pass on one phase of their aeons-long evolutionary pilgrimage. It is for a time a home in which we must stay. Sons of the sun, said the ancients, are the sons of men. The sun is, men also are, and both are parts of the cosmic whole, both are productions of the cosmic life. You may say that instead of being sons of the sun we are brothers of the sun, and you would say aright; but as that brilliant day-star of ours in its spiritual essence, in its spiritual parts, is the fountainhead of the life with which our solar system is filled, the open portal through which streams the light of eternity -- and I am not using poetical words -it is therefore perfectly correct to use the phrase sons of the sun, for in us, in each one of us, there abides a divine spark, a spiritual electric scintilla so to speak, a spiritual spark, drawn from the spiritual sun. You Occidentals have been thinking for too long a time that the only power of thought resides in your own Occidental brains. Too long a time have you disregarded nature's outstanding fact that consciousness and the energy of the spiritual life inhere in all human beings. Why does this kind questioner call this idea a pagan idea, if not from this Occidental egoism which qualifies its own small portion of learning as the standard by which all the rest of mankind shall be judged? Yes, it is a pagan idea, because it is a true idea. It is also a pagan idea to say, as the writer of one of the Christian scriptures said, Ye are gods. It is typically pagan! Shall you reject a truth because some people whose minds are three or four hundred years behind the advancing times say that the truth is a pagan truth? You won't find this narrowness of spirit in other parts of the world. Yes, it is a pagan idea, thank the immortal gods. Am I therefore a pagan? I am, in the above sense of the word, because I am a searcher for truth. Do you ask me: Are you a polytheist? I answer: I am, because although you must not imagine that I believe literally in the ancient, worn-out mythological teachings of Greece or of Rome, or of Hindustan or of China, yet I do believe, and in fact I know, that the universe is filled full with sentient, conscious entities, whom I call gods because I know that they are far greater than men are, but yet have intelligence and life and understanding, and in a sense have understanding hearts, and furthermore are the causes of the vast and seemingly bewildering diversity of the natural universe, because they are the roots of that diversity. Now, when a theosophist speaks of the universe, does he mean merely the physical universe that he sees? No, no, no! I have already told you often that that physical universe is but the outer garment, the outer veil, hiding the wonderful secrets of the inner worlds and realms, worlds spiritual, worlds ethereal, existing in all-various grades and degrees of evolutionary advancement. So fully are theosophists evolutionists that we do not stop short at any frontier, but say that evolution applies to all things and everywhere, and during boundless eternity. It never began; endings it knows not. Evolution is growth, is progress, and all things grow and progress, and how can they do so unless there be the fields of life on which they may live and learn; and these fields of life are the worlds invisible and visible.

Therefore I beg you to think. Pause before you hastily judge. How beautiful is life when properly understood! With what dignity does the understanding of it clothe men's minds! Consider the one cosmic life, common to all things. Remember the one destiny, endless, always growing larger, growing greater continually, and common to all entities and things. Forget not the endless growth or evolution common to all entities and things. In repeating the beautiful thoughts that it is my duty to lay before you, I do so with a purpose, hereinbefore stated: to drive home by repetition the sublime ideas; but yet I am not like the Negro preacher of whom I was reading this morning. Do you want to hear about that Negro preacher? I will read a paragraph to you just as a little mental diversion from these deeper thoughts. This humorous skit was sent in to me by a kind friend. I don't know from what paper it originally came. This is it: FULL MEASURE Judge Brown: "Well Ephraim, what are you preaching to your flock these days? I hear you are making a mighty stir." Ephraim: "Well, sur, yassur, I is, I gives it to 'um dis way: Fustly, I tells 'um what I'm gwine tell 'um, den I tells 'um what I said I wuz gwine tell 'um, and den I tells 'um what I done tole 'um." I am not quite such a repeater as this Negro preacher, because at each separate time when I repeat a beautiful thought I try to vary it a little, to give you a little more than before of the wonderful light of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind. Always remember that the things that are great are not the things which are seen. The things that are seen are results, effects, of the inner lives. The great things in life are those which are invisible, those which mystically draw us on to themselves, those which are greater than we and include us within the compass of their being. It is these greater things that interest real men. It is these greater things that you will discover in endless succession as you follow the mystical path leading ever more within towards the inner god. O my Brothers, realize what you have locked up within you. Everything that the boundless infinitude contains is locked up within each one of you, active a little, latent greatly. But they are all there. See what this means for your future, as you grow and develop and bring out through evolution what is within you: unfolding, unwrapping, throwing forth from within outwards, just as a flower grows. So indeed does a flower evolve, or men or gods or worlds or suns. The time is coming when a race of men your descendants of a far distant age in the future, will walk the earth, as I have told you on other occasions, and act like gods and talk like gods, because they will think like gods, and they will think like gods because the gods within them shall then have begun to manifest their transcendent energies, faculties, powers. There is the fundamental reason of their growth. You could not become a god unless you were one even now in your inmost; you could not have become a man unless you had had manhood latent within you from the beginning. Can an acorn, can an apple seed, bring forth respectively the oak or the apple tree unless these were lying latent there? No. Here is also a question quite along the line of our thought. It is preceded with a quotation from Bulwer Lytton's The Coming Race, chapter 15, and the question itself follows: "Minds accustomed to place happiness in things the reverse of godlike, would find the happiness of Gods exceedingly dull, and would long to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with each other." Such being the case, should not a belief in reincarnation be very popular? Yes, and a belief in reincarnation is and always has been exceedingly popular in the world. More than half of the human race today believes in it. But the citation from Bulwer Lytton's noteworthy book contains the key to the explanation why men come back into human bodies again and again. Their psychical constitutions are appetitive of what earth-life provides for them. In other words, men hunger for human life on earth! Being imperfect entities, their desires are imperfect; and it is nature's fundamental law that what we long for we ultimately always go to. What ye wish for, ye shall ultimately obtain. Now, please get the full sense of this profound truth. If ye crave and hunger after the things

which hurt and blind both yourself and others, then ye shall have them in time, and the consequence is that ye will follow the downward way. If ye long for the things which expand the consciousness, which open the heart and develop the intellect; if ye love love and hate hate, and aspire for all that is great and noble and true; if ye wish to make of your human consciousness a cosmic consciousness, ye shall obtain it all in due course of time. The reasons are obvious, and lie in the fact that the currents of your vital energies are directed along the path which your mind and imagination open before you; and if your mind and imagination are centered on this or on that or on something else, thither will ye travel the pathway. There is an ancient Sanskrit saying, exceedingly profound, mystical, esoterical, based on one of nature's fundamental laws, which no Occidental Orientalist has ever understood, and here it is, first the original Sanskrit and then its English translation: Yadyad devata kamayati, tattad devata bhavati: that is to say, in English: "Whatsoever an entity (a god, devata, is here taken as an example) longs for, that very thing the entity will become." But men being as now they are, half god, half animal, their desires partake of both these classes of entities, and consequently they live partly in the spirit and partly in the material worlds. When a man dies, the better part of him is raised by its own attraction -- irresistibly drawn upwards so to speak, or inwards, at any rate drawn to the spiritual realms; and when the long, sweet, and happy sleep of devachan is ended, the seeds sown in the last life and in previous lives in the very character, in the fabric, of the entity then in his spiritual rest -- when the repose is ended, I say, these seeds will begin to grow, to manifest themselves, to open, and then the human being descends through the spiritual realms again to the fields wherein those seeds were originally sown, to earth-life. It is a man's psychical hunger, his psychical thirst, in other words the appetites of his nature, which direct him hither or yon. Isn't it so? The same rule prevails when the physical garment of flesh is dropped, and consequently the soul is then drawn to what it feels to be familiar scenes, because it has had these scenes in its mental picture gallery during the life just passed, and has dwelt upon them in imagination, and has thus built up a fabric of energy. This is the devachan. When the reverse process takes place and the seeds of material appetites begin to awaken after the devachanic rest, they attract the entity back to the familiar fields of material existence. Thus is reincarnation on earth brought about, for a great part of the lower constitution of the human being is of earthly fabric and construction, compact of earthly thoughts and earthly passions and earthly desires which, although sinking at death into latency, ultimately awaken when the devachanic sleep is ended; and thus the entity is drawn back to earth-life. Yes, men want to come back to "quarrel," as Bulwer Lytton so neatly puts it, in other words to be men again: to love with their little loves, to hate with their little hates, to play a few more antics on the stage of earth-life, to lay up for themselves more treasures on earth where thieves break through and steal, and where the rust doth corrupt. They want these things, and hence they come to earth again. At the present time men don't want to live like gods and to think like gods, and therefore to act like gods. Their appetites, their wishes, their thirst for existence, are not set with godlike ends as the goal. Nevertheless you can change all this, and you can strive to be, even now, at least somewhat of the divinity within you. You can indeed do this. You can set for yourself a divine ideal and work towards it, strive to become it, and thus grow to be at least godlike men. All the powers of the divine are already in you. They are locked up in you. They are native to your spiritual self, to the god within you. That inner god is your essential being. Why not strive to become it? Here is a little question that I desire to answer today. I promised to do so, although it stands apart from the thread of our thought. It is a question sent in to me by a boy in our school, fourteen years old. When a cell divides by fission, do two new lives enter the cells thus formed, or is one of them still the same cell as the original? This is a pretty good question for a boy of fourteen! The theosophical answer to it is briefly this: What happens when a father casts into the appropriate environment the human life-germ? Is the father the

same as his son or his daughter? No. The one cell, when it divides into two, follows the same law. One remains what it was before, and the other or daughter-cell is the beginning of a new life which the parent-cell has produced. There is your answer in brief. Another question before me is the following: In the August issue of The Theosophist, edited by Dr. Besant, in a report of the Geneva Convention of Adyar Theosophists, your proposed congress for all Theosophical Societies to be held next year at Point Loma on August 11th is spoken of. But I also read that an effort will be made to call a preliminary meeting of the chief officials of these various societies to meet in May and to discuss ways and means, etc. It has been suggested that you convoke this preliminary gathering. Will it be done? It seems to me to cast an entirely different color on the whole thing and to give it more of a political aspect and less of a spiritual one. The facts as stated are correct. It has been suggested that I convoke this preliminary gathering, and I shall refuse. The situation is not an easy one to face. The effort which originated at Point Loma for fraternization and brotherhood among all theosophists and Theosophical societies whatsoever was a spiritual effort; and I greatly fear that if any such introductory meeting were held, the spiritual atmosphere or the spiritual appeal of the original idea would be lost; and, by the immortal gods, my brothers, I dare not take the chance! Too much is at stake! So, for my part, I shall be obliged to refuse. My original invitation, however, stands just as it originally stood, and I am ready. The congress spoken of is not to be a universal congress to which anybody who is a theosophist belonging to whatsoever Theosophical Society may come and vote. That was not at all my idea. The idea was in no wise that this convention at Point Loma next year should be a political gathering with all the soul-killing atmosphere of such a political meeting; but my effort took the form of an appeal to the spiritual feeling in men's hearts and minds to be brotherly, to be kindly. The idea was to have the chiefs and perhaps a very few of the other principal officers of the different societies meet together and talk over their common problems together: to give each the other his hand and to converse as brothers. That is what I want; that is what I hope for; and that itself, I believe, should be the only and sole preliminary step to something greater to come in the future. Never shall I consent, as long as I remain the Leader of The Theosophical Society, to bring down a spiritual ideal to be judged and to be discussed and sat upon by men, however splendid as men they may be, sitting in conclave and adopting the results of their deliberations by the expedient of counting upraised hands or noses, or the ayes and the nays. Has it never struck you men of the Occident that it is great men who prevail in the world? No truth is so common; but when the application of this truth is called for, men are doubtful and timorous in following it. It is ideas which move the world; it is ideas which make and unmake civilizations; and ideas do not originate in the multitudes, they originate always in the mind of some individual. Are ye going to cripple that individual's power by subjecting his thought to the votes of those who, even with the best of good will, perhaps do not, because they cannot for the time, understand? Are ye going to kill a spiritual idea by subjecting it to the forms followed by political gatherings? I will have nought to do with such a thing. Here is my hand extended to any brother, to any human being, genuinely and sincerely. Come, my brother. Take my hand. Let us live in peace and harmony. Is not that enough? There is my pledge and there stands my honor. When will men learn that the hope of the world lies within and not without? The way to stifle a great and sublime idea is to discuss it too much, and thereafter to vote upon it. Immediately questions of expediency arise: "Shall I, or shall I not? Is it best?" Doubt, suspicion, immediately enter in at the door thus thrown wide open. But in the heart of man there is the light of eternity. Personally I will trust my fellow men. I have always trusted, and I have never yet appealed to this heart-trust in vain. There are some men who have tried to deceive me; but these men misunderstood me. Once, my fellow men understand me, there will be no

more trouble. Fundamentally men are trustworthy. I trust them. Make an appeal to the god within your fellow and let the god within you be the one who appeals, and even though the one who hears the appeal may turn his back and pretend to be deaf, yet you have cast a seed into his mind and heart which will grow in the silences; and someday it will open, and your man is your captive -- a captive of your heart, a lover of the love which you have given. There is the difference between a spiritual plan, a spiritual ideal, and one which is tested and determined by the mere brain-mind adjudications of political conclaves. In each of you is divinity -- you are a god within a man -- and the man is enshrouded, veiled, by a body of atoms; hence you are three, god, man, atomic vehicle. You in your physical being not only represent the universe, but I tell you that every one of you in his inmost is a living god. Take that thought home with you and ponder over it; and once it enters into your minds, once you catch the light, all things that are worthwhile will be yours. As the Swiss philosopher and writer Amiel wrote in his Journal, of which I will read an extract: Never to tire; never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender, to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; to love always -- this is duty. . . . Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent propaganda. . . . Every man is a center of perpetual radiation like a luminous body: he is, as it were, a beacon which entices a ship upon the rocks if it does not guide it into port. . . . Such is the high importance of example. Begin to be then the god within you. Dignify your lives by lofty thought; for I tell you that when you begin to feel like a god, it shows that you have begun to think godlike thoughts, and when you so think and when you so feel, your fellows will instinctively recognize the god within you, and love you for the love that you pour out into their hearts, thus awakening them to a cognizance of the life sublime.

Second Series: No. 9 (November 10, 1930)

VISIONS
(Lecture delivered August 24, 1930) CONTENTS: Vision is the fundamental of every great world religion. -- The clear calm visioning of the spirit. -- Distorted visions of the psychics. The adamantine wall around their beliefs. -- The misleading visions of the would-be teachers. -- The Saptadarsana or "Seven Visions": -- the seven schools of archaic Hindu philosophy. -- Dean Inge and the problem of suicides. Does he understand karmic consequences? -- The after-state of the suicide hinted at. -- Are the arts of the Christians superior to others? -- The glory of ancient art. -- Music lives apart from religious belief. -- The effects of selfish gratification. -- Did the science of the stars originate on the plains of Babylonia? -- Archaic records of the Hindus, Chinese, and ancient Americans. -- Does theosophy foster a sense of separateness? -- The "broad-minded" follower of no beliefs. Where does he stand? -- A definite, clear-cut policy is necessary. -- "Come to heaven" with the theosophists! Seeing visions! We all see visions. In fact whenever we think, which is continuously, we are seeing visions, because thinking is visioning; and thus it is that even in the current speech of everyday existence, you will find men saying: "What is his outlook on life?" This is vision. "What are his views?" This is vision also. "What do you see in it?" This also refers to vision. All thought is vision: all the mental processes, all the wondrous fabric of imagery that imagination builds up, is vision. The poet, the religious seer, the philosopher, the scientist -- all who think, which means all men -- see visions. Some visions are long in duration. They may last even for a lifetime; and all the man's consciousness is circumscribed by that one long vision. But other visions are short, brief, transitory, and such are the visions that come sometimes like flashes of illumination; and then the man, or the woman, says: I see! Great men see great visions, men of smaller capacity see visions which are not so great, but all of us continuously see visions. Try to get this idea clear in your minds, and then you will understand much of what lies at the bottom of the great religions and philosophies of the past. For they are actually visions, seen by the titanic spiritual seers of the race; and therefore at the bottom of every such world religion and world philosophy there lies truth, wondrous truth, because these greater visions are simply the interpretations of the forces and energies and substances of universal being which flow through man, the child of the universe, and imprint their characteristics on his consciousness; and then he says: I have seen! I have light! I have the vision of truth! Therefore at the bottom, as the fundamental, of all the great world religions and world philosophies, there lies this fundamental truth which today we call theosophy. Yes, and how many visions there are of other kinds! Good men see good visions, as I have already said; but bad men see evil visions, and that is hell -- misunderstood, misconstrued -- because really hell means unhappiness, and it arises out of the workings of the lower, circumscribed personal individual who cannot expand his consciousness to universal reaches. Hell is limitation, hell is concentration around the insignificant personality, instead of being the cosmic love which takes within the compass of its sweep all that is, and therefore, being universal, there are no contradictions in details in it, there is no contrariety in it, there is nothing of opposition in it; all therein is harmony and peace. Therefore good men see good visions because they are in tune with the universe -- "in tune with the infinite" to use a rather ludicrous but popular expression of the day; and therefore also for the same reason evil men see evil visions because such visions are small and circumscribed, limited and imperfect. All the doing of crime is a distorted vision. All acts of heroism and greatness are high and lofty visions of some spiritual reality leading to self-forgetfulness. Indeed, all thought is vision, and our consciousness is the fountain of our visions. Every invention is a vision; every act of noble statecraft is a vision; every deed done well is born in a vision; every deed left undone or evilly done arises out of a distorted vision. Every scientist who discovers some new law of universal being, "law" to use ordinary human terms, does so because he sees a vision. The truth comes to him like a flash of light from within,

from within his own understanding, not from without; and he sees this vision because he has raised himself up so that his ordinary brain-mind is at one with his own spiritual being where truth abides in fullness, and thus he becomes at one at least temporarily with his inner god. He sees a vision and thenceforwards his life is changed for the better. So it is with us all: and when men make mistakes, it is simply because they have seen awry. The fundamental of every human being is good, for every man inwardly longs for beauty, longs for high thought, for clean thought, for inner harmony; but then comes in the working of imagination, the imagemaking power within us, moving according to our own suggesting faculty within, and if the imagination be inharmonious, it stirs up and roils the sweet and clear picture that the spirit within presents to the conscious mind; and evildoing is often the result. Abandon your own small personal wishes, and ye shall have peace. Live for the eternal, and ye shall become like unto the eternal -- calm, tranquil, clear visioning, at utter peace, and immensely strong -and then your visions will be those of great genius. You will then become a true spiritual leader and a true guide of your fellow men, because you will see truth, and seeing, you yourself will follow, and your fellow men will recognize that, and oh how gladly will they follow you. Every spiritual seer is a seer because he sees. He visions. The noblest of them see the vision sublime, which is truth. There are deceptive visions also, as I have just pointed out. Some of these deceptive visions belong to what is today so popular in the Occident, to psychism as it is popularly called, and these are deceptive visions because most people who follow these so-called psychic practices do so because they desire gain for themselves, for the mere "me," all of which is selfish, limiting, circumscribing, condensing, shutting out the light, and a narrowing of the consciousness instead of its expansion. The psychics see visions. Of course they do, but these are distorted ones, and therefore false visions; yet it is a vision of its kind, because it is a seeing. The practice of psychism is easy; so is wrongdoing. But the fruits of it are bitter, because they mislead. Yet the spiritual part of you, linked with divinity, your own inner god, is immortal, and there lies all that makes a man great -- there real, inner, spiritual vision and real strength lie. That is where light comes from, from the inner spiritual sun. It never leads astray; it illuminates the pathway not only for yourself but for all with whom you live and work as fellow human beings; and the marvel and beauty of it all, my Brothers, is that you can see the visions that you will. You have willpower, you have choice, and precisely because you have free will and choice and can choose your pathway does responsibility lie upon you. You must also abide by the pathway that you have chosen, and what comes to you comes to you because you have followed a certain pathway in life. You can change your pathway. You can change your visions. Each one of you in the core of the core of your being is a divine entity, a god, that is the spiritual sun within you. This is what the mystical Christians of today call the immanent Christ, the Christ living within each man; and it is what the Buddhists for instance call the inner Buddha, or the Brahmanists speak of as the inner Brahma. The name by which we call it matters not at all. Oh, what powers lie within the constitution of man, in most cases utterly ignored! Most men do not believe that they have these powers lying latent within them, and not believing, they have not the vision, they do not see; but you can see. You can have the vision. Speak about these matters to the average psychic today, and try to transpierce the mental barriers that his mind has set up around itself, and you will find this to be very difficult because this wall which the average psychic builds around his beliefs is adamantine, diamond-hard, and yet so fragile. But there is one method which always wins, and that method is the way of love. It penetrates all things; naught can shut it out; and the magic of it all is that once the tender ray of love reaches into the stoniest human heart, it there begins to glow and to set on fire with its holy flame all responsive material, and when this is done, then the man without answers to the call, so that the man is captured from within his own heart, in the core of his being, and thenceforwards he is your man, saved by you for noble ends. Love will always win, and this is not mawkish sentimentality at all, but real, impersonal, self-forgetful love. There is a still small voice within which will tell you always when you are on the right path, and

you can cultivate this voice, make it a living reality in your life. It is a voice which is not a voice, but only called a voice in order to employ some human word that gives an idea of what it is. It is a vision. It is the life within. It is the voice of the silence, the voiceless urge which, when you cultivate it and become one with it -- for it is your own inner spiritual being -- is like the tones of thunder in your heart and mind. Yet people are like little children in these matters, at least most of them. I have said this before, and I have been asked afterwards questions somewhat like the following one: "Well, is it really a voice? How do you hear it?" I said: "Listen!" "Well, I have hearkened, but I have not heard anything." "Well," I said, "feel." "Well, I have tried to feel but I have not got any feeling." "Well," I answered, "wait, and in time, if you aspire faithfully, you will both hear and feel, and very clearly too." All this reminds me very much of a humorous little story that was sent in to me today. I am going to read it to you. I like to read innocently comic things. I have a strong sense of humor, and I also like sometimes to poke fun, innocent fun, at some of the human Sobersides that I occasionally meet; but innocently humorous things are always pleasing to me. Do you want to hear about a little child who listened to the voice of God? I don't know where this bit of humor came from, but it is really clever and good: Mama was trying to teach her four-year-old daughter the difference between right and wrong. She said, "Listen, baby, and you will hear a little voice in your heart, which will tell you what God wants you to do." A few days later, having some disturbance in digestion, and hearing a rumbling noise within herself, she called to her mother, "Mama, mama, come quick; God is talking to me in my stomach." There are people who are just like this little girl, grownups who, because they do indeed see a vision, but a distorted one -- who, because they have not cultivated the spiritual part of their being which is truth and vision of reality -- when getting an idea or a whim or a notion, which are all visions but distorted ones, set themselves up for teachers, and teach. Some of these are the erratic psychics that I have before spoken of, who stand on platforms and lecture upon their favorite topic. Don't you realize, my Brothers, that there is a heavy moral responsibility in implanting seeds of thought and of feeling in others' minds, and that you become thereafter responsible insofar as you have changed the character, through the thought and the feelings, of those who have heard you? According to our teaching of karma, what you sow you shall reap, now or at a later date, and the sowing of seeds of thought or of feeling is something which carries with it a heavy load of moral responsibility. By nature's fundamental laws of harmony and inseparable union, you become connected, linked, with those whom you have misled, and this moral connection remains until you have undone the wrong which your words brought about when they were cast as seeds into the minds of your fellows, or into their hearts. I feel very strongly about this matter. Before I come over to this our Temple of Peace in order to speak to you, I tell you that I cast out of both my heart and my mind, to the utmost of my power, everything that I can find within me that is personal, so that I may deliver unto you the message of which I am the bearer, which message is not my own but is a repetition of the message of truth as given to mankind by the titanic spiritual and intellectual seers of the ages. That message is theosophy. Even then the responsibility lying on me is a heavy one. Yet what happiness there is also for me in the thought that if I can awaken the dormant soul, break stony human hearts, give light to darkened minds, through sowing seeds of thought and hope and love and peace and harmony and compassion and pity, I then can feel that I have done some good, at least, and have accomplished part of the mission which I was sent to fulfill, however imperfectly and inadequately my work may be done. Yes, I call upon you to see the vision sublime. So well is the fact known by all thinking men that thought is visioning, that references to this fact recur constantly in the language of everyday life, and to this I have alluded in opening my lecture today. In archaic India the ancient philosophers, in recognition of this psychological truth, gave in accordance

therewith the graphic title to the seven schools of philosophy that the Hindu genius had brought forth, and which these Schools collectively bore, and this title was Saptadarsana meaning the "Seven Visions." It is obvious that every religion is a vision, good, bad, or indifferent. It is obvious that every philosophical system is a vision, good, bad, or indifferent. It is obvious that every idea in your mind is a vision. It may be to you good; it may be to you bad; it may be indifferent to you. Why then, having free will and choice and understanding now somewhat of what you have within you, why will ye not follow the pathway leading within you and ultimately conducting you unto the gods? Ye are gods in your inmost, and when the writer of the Christian scriptures said thus much, he said truth. Most men pollute the temple of the divinity, the living god within, as well as the mind and the heart and the body, with visions from below, and with the acts flowing forth from those visions of the nether realms; and nature will require them to pay for this to the uttermost farthing. The reason of this is that ye have changed nature's harmonious courses in one way or in some other by doing so. Ye have used energy, ye have chosen a path, and thereafter have begun to carve your way; and you have inbuilt, consequently, into your character, a certain fabric, a certain shapeliness or a certain distorted form, which will remain with you and govern your life, now and in the future, until you change the ugliness to beauty and the distortion to harmonious symmetry. Therefore, try always to see the vision sublime. This is permanently within you; and if you want to know how to see the vision sublime, in other words how to put your feet upon the pathway leading you to see that vision sublime on the mountain peaks of the Mystic East within you, then come, and I will show you where that path begins. Study the sublime wisdom-religion of mankind, today called theosophy, and you will find therein the keys which you yourself will insert one after the other into the portals of the temple enshrining the god within you. You yourself will unlock the doors of your own inner being and, passing the thresholds, enter into a light growing greater in each new chamber of consciousness into which you penetrate. Love will guide your way, will lighten this path, but only if you permit it to do so. Love is clairvoyant, it is strengthening, it is harmony, it is peace, it is invigorating, it is all-penetrating. Nothing can bar its passage; and having impersonal love shining in your heart -- a love which is impersonal utterly, kindly, pure, and clean -- you become it, and then even your physical manhood will manifest the transcendent powers of the holy thing within you. LOVE by CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN It takes great love to stir a human heart, To live beyond the others and apart, A love that is not shallow, is not small, Is not for one, or two, but for them all. Love that can wound love, for its higher need; Love that can leave love, tho' the heart may bleed; Love that can lose love, family and friend, Yet steadfastly live, loving to the end. A love that knows no answer, that can live Moved by one burning, deathless force -- to give Love, strength, and courage -- courage, strength, and love; The heroes of all time are built thereof. This is the love of which I speak -- cosmic, universal, divine. Here is a question that I was asked to answer: On August 21st, last week, one of the daily papers published a comment of yours on Dean Inge's statement of approval of suicide under certain conditions. As your paragraph was short, would you mind enlarging upon your views in your next lecture? I was surprised to see that several other San Diegans were quoted approving, to a degree, Dean Inge's views. (By the way, does Dean Inge know anything about karmic consequences brought over from previous lives, etc., etc.?) I do not know whether Dean Inge knows anything of the theosophical doctrine of karmic consequences. I presume that he does have some literary knowledge of it, but I fear that if so, he does not understand it

from lack of sufficient study of it. Dean Inge is a courageous man, a forward-seeing man, a man with a vision -- such as it is; a man who has shown the fine stuff that he is made of in the various stands that he has taken time and time again on different subjects. But when asked if I approve of Dean Inge's views regarding suicide, of physical self-destruction, then I say No. What do you think of a man or a woman who, in any circumstances whatsoever, weakly bows the head before the adverse storms of destiny and circumstances? Your faces show me what you think, and that's what I think, too. My answer therefore is No! Stand up! Face the fight! You brought it upon yourself: therefore face it like a man, no matter what it is. There is nothing in the universe that can conquer the spiritual you, conquer your indomitable spiritual will. Your mental and psychical self may go down time and time again; but stand up again each time and go to the battlefront anew, and each time ye will be stronger than before, braver, more clearly visioning the end, which is the conquest of adversity -- and self-conquest first. Suicide is cowardly and foolish. We see before us, for instance, a miserable wretch broken in body and mind and without a friend in the world -- what can be done? Have we the picture, the vision, making us say, "Kill him. Put poison within his reach so he can kill himself"? To what good, I ask? What is that animate body there for? By accident? If you believe in accident, then I have nought else to say to you except I don't. There is no chance in the universe; everything runs according to what men call law and order, harmony; and this unfortunate and miserable wretch, however much the picture of his misery and suffering may tear our hearts, brought himself to this pass and none but he can bring himself out of it. What matters if he die by nature's own processes? Nought. He will come back again and begin life anew; he will have his other chances again and again and again. But it matters a great deal if, in a spirit of cowardice, bowing the head in weak submission to what he himself has brought upon him himself, he drinks the potion or takes the revolver or casts himself into the sea. Such an act is merely one more crime added to the long list which have brought him to this terrible pass. And furthermore, I don't know a single case which cannot be helped. Do you mean to say that you, as human beings, if you had a chance to help some miserable wretch like this, would weakly and cowardly pass the sufferer by, unheeding the wail of pain or the cry for help? No, you would certainly do something; it would be your duty. Furthermore, there are our splendid public and private institutions established for helping cases just like this. Why does the wretch take his own life? It is cowardice, fear, weak will and a weaker moral sense, lack of moral stamina -- lack of real manhood or real womanhood. Mine is what you might call the view of the spiritual surgeon who, on the battlefield, will amputate a limb in order to save the life, and he does aright. But this does not mean that, because we recognize this fact, we should pass the sufferer by in stony-hearted indifference. It is our duty to help. But you cannot permanently help a man like that unless you arouse in him the spirit of self-help. Therefore restore the man's self-respect. Try to do that. Do you say that it is difficult? Yes, verily it is a problem; but there it is and it has to be faced. It is one of the problems of life, it is indeed not at all an easy thing to solve; but there the problem is and must be solved. To urge this mental and physical weakling to commit another crime, suicide, which is the worst of all, and so to say, call to him: "Act like a coward, you beast: kill yourself!" is simply urging a fellow human being to become more cowardly still and to be a participant in the ugliest of spiritual and natural offenses. Thus analyzed, we see clearly what it really is that these misguided and unfortunate injunctions to self-destruction in such circumstances mean. Forgive me if my language seems strong, but I feel strongly about it. In a great many people there is the feeling: "It is a good way to be rid of these creatures." Ah, my Brothers, think of your own loved ones, and pause! We owe a debt to each other, a debt which has no end; and how beautiful life would be if this fact were realized: each to all and all to everyone owes a debt of help, a duty of comradely feeling. There in this realization is the solution of the problem. Give new ideas to the world; change men's hearts; instill active self-respect into them instead of injunctions to cowardice, and you will be a worker of magical good among your fellow men. I could talk to you for half a day on what happens to the poor wretches who suicide. Their condition is ultimately a thousand times worse than what it was before the frenzied act. Someday I will talk to you about what

happens in the after-state to those who destroy themselves willfully from cowardice, from fear, from false pride; and the cause of suicide is found in these and similar intellectual and moral weaknesses. But don't confuse such cases with the man who may even seem to throw away his life in order to rescue the life of some one else. This is not suicide, it is heroism; it is grand, it is sublime. Or, take again the case of one who gives even his life to some great and surpassingly lofty cause: this too is beautiful, grand, manly, heroic, godlike. Thus you see the difference between the coward and the great man. "Greater love hath no man than this: that he give up his life for his brother." Why is it that the personality of Jesus has been the source of the greatest music (vocal) ever written, and similarly in poetry, and painting? Christianity is the only religion I know that inspires songs of praise and thanksgiving in the hearts of its followers. I think that the kind questioner is wrong all along the line. There is of course no doubt that people who are, or who have called themselves Christians, have written some beautiful musical compositions, vocal or instrumental as the case may be; and also that European poets of high standing and European artists of equivalent inspiration have respectively produced great works. There is no doubt of it. But the European musicians, poets, and painters are not the only ones who have ever lived in the world. With the single exception of Buddhism perhaps -- and that only because it is so loftily spiritual that the whole inner constitution of man seeks expression on a plane far higher than that of merely physical expression of harmony and symmetry of form -- I do not know a single great religion which omits or has omitted music, poetry, and painting from its ceremony or ritualistic observances, and this applies both to ancient times and to the present; and to say that Christianity has been the producer of the greatest music, the loftiest poetry, and the most suggestive art is in my judgment exaggerating the case preposterously. From time immemorial, and with every new decade that passes, research is proving the truth of this more clearly. Poetry and art have occupied a place in the religious and emotional life of the human race which perhaps was greater and more inclusive than that which these two phases of the activity of the human spirit have occupied in the last two thousand years of European history -- two short millennia in the long annals of the history of the world. How about the marvelous development of art of the Greeks from whom even today modern artists draw their finest inspirations, merely because the Greek art is best known to us; and even today some of our noblest buildings, national, municipal, and private, are more or less copied after the ruined temples and other structures of the great Mediterranean peoples. How about the poetry of Homer, of Ennius, of Vergil, not to speak of the religious and epic poetry of the sages of Hindustan, expressed for instance in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana? Every scholar knows that the ancient peoples of the world all chose poetry as the fittest medium in which to enshrine their loftiest conceptions, not merely of religion but also of philosophy, and likewise to record the great deeds of past generations. Again, the stories that have been related about the marvelous painting of some of the Greek artists, we have no reason to doubt. Anyone who has examined the pictures copied from the temple walls and other great buildings of Persia, Assyria, Egypt, the temples of Hindustan, the Angkor Wat of Cambodia, and again the monumental pile of Boro-budur in Java, where practically every square foot of space is filled with delicate carven tracery and harmonious form, will realize how great a part pictorial art played in the lives of these ancient peoples. The Egyptian temples and pylons are carven with poems in stone which if we had the artistic eye to appreciate them would seem to us at least as noteworthy as the best of medieval European paintings with the latter's utter disregard in so many cases of the rules of background and foreshortening and whatnot. All over the world, man from time immemorial has let his heart out in song and praise either of nature or of the gods, and merely because we have, as regards the ancient peoples, in many instances merely literary records of their greatest work, why should we jump to the conclusion that their work was inferior to our own? All such deductions seem to be not only preposterously biased, but betray a lamentable ignorance. The temple music, as well as the civic or other choral music, of the ancient peoples seems to have occupied as large a place in their life as it does in ours, and perhaps a larger part,

because the ancients were far more religious than the Europeans have ever been, if indeed less bigoted and narrow-minded; and the presumption therefore is that their music was on a higher plane than ours, and occupied at least as large a part in the heart-life of those bygone races as medieval music did in the ritual services of European Christianity. Of course one can only point to the music of the Hebrews, or to the music of the Greeks as instances, existing in literary records, because their literatures are full of references to musical instruments and to songs of praise and thanksgiving. We don't know much about it all today, but the literatures do tell us a good deal. Also Persia, Babylonia, Egypt, Hindustan, where do we not find a people whose whole soul has not been more or less enwrapped in musical expression in matters of religious service? The view of the questioner, of course, is an Occidental view, the view of one brought up in the Christian Church, I suppose; and therefore it is the usual Occidental view, in this present case kindly, but nevertheless greatly limited. It is not a great view, not a great vision to have, and amply demonstrates the usual Western racial egoism. It is a circumscribed view, limited by habit, by the customary way of viewing things. Furthermore, I might call your attention to the fact that some of the noblest music ever written is not by any means church music -- not by any means; and if you have heard, as I have often heard, choruses of European peasants, for instance, singing some of their folksongs, with chest dilated with enthusiasm, so that the sound rolls forth like thunder, you would soon realize that music springs from the human heart itself, quite irrespective of any race's religious belief. But there is something beyond and nobler than audible music, lovely and inspiring as good audible music is, and that is the music of the heart -- the music of the silences, surging through the corridors of our consciousness and of our memory; and when one has heard this inner melody of which the outer is merely a feeble reproduction and interpretation, all other music loses much of the hold that it has had upon us. This is the music of the soul, the music of the spirit. Call it by what name you will, it remains the music of the heart which springs from the light within. Everything -- this is literally so -- everything that moves emits sound. Every atom therefore sings, and every electron in every atom has its own characteristic musical note. As I have told you before, the music of the spheres of the Pythagoreans is an actual truth, and we cannot hear it simply because our gross senses cannot take it in, as Shakespeare also so grandly saw. Every celestial orb, as it swings along its pathway, sings its own majestic paean, and everything on earth or elsewhere, animate or so-called inanimate, being a collection of atoms, is therefore a symphonic melody, a symphony, the aggregated volume of sound being composed of the notes of each and every singing entity, and every atom thereof is a singing entity, so that our physical bodies themselves are imbodied song. If you had awakened the power of the inner spiritual ear, my Brothers, as I have told you on other occasions, you would hear as a song the opening of the rosebud, and you could hear the green grass blade grow. You could hear every hair on your head as it lengthens in growth, for growth is movement. The growth of a little child you would hear as a prolonged chorus of singing atomic entities. Here, then, is the real natural music, nature's own orchestras, the orchestrations of nature's own ever-beating heart. A soul born of wealthy parents lives its life after the conventional way of rich people -- self-indulgence, no thought or sympathy for the poor or unfortunate, or any conscientious sense of morality. Is not such a one sowing seed-thoughts of a return to the same conditions in other incarnations? As a parallel suggestion, take a life diametrically the opposite. No, such a one as the former is more likely sowing seeds for mental and physical degradation, for he has deliberately been imbibing the opiate, the psychic drug, of selfish gratification through a long lifetime perhaps; and nature will take him at his own act -- and in the next life, or the one following it, nature will render to him a mind and body corresponding to his former weaknesses, a body which he himself will have made for himself because he has built into the very fabric of his being the distortions of character and weaknesses of will arising out of self-gratification and self-indulgence. It is thus that a

man strengthens his character or weakens his character; and nature in the next or in some future life or perhaps in this same life will make the body follow the lead of the improved or enfeebled character. But do not make the common mistake that this kindly querent does, to wit: that all the rich are selfish, and all the rich are self-indulgent. It is not so. There are among the wealthy those who are blessed, so called, with this world's goods, who have as noble impulses and as fine feelings as anyone. It is not wealth that places the real man. Man places himself, and the true man can be a true man when born in the lap of luxury just as well as when born in the peasant's hut. It is the man who should be taken into account; and it is therefore wrong to say that because a man is rich, he is self-indulgent, he is evil, he is weak. That is plain bunkum; just as much as it would be to say that because a man is born poor, he is therefore a paragon of all the virtues. Men are just as you find them, and there are good men who are rich men, and evil men who are poor men, and evil men who are rich men, and good men who are poor men. Modern astronomers say that astronomy "originated" on the plains of Babylonia. Is this true? Were the Babylonians so highly evolved that they could originate such an intricate science, or did they themselves get it from some other peoples? This is not so easy a question to answer as it seems, although it is the usual or popular view. It is the view that you will find in the encyclopedias, and because people see it there they think that of course it must be true. "I have read it in print!" But is it true? This view simply signifies that the modern scientific researchers have not been able to trace the origin of modern astronomy farther back than the remarkable achievements in astronomical lore of the Chaldeans. That is all it means; and when men read this statement in the encyclopedias, then they couple it with the old, worn-out but still prevalent idea that thinking man, in his evolution from the ape -- which is another worn-out but more or less prevalent falsehood -- is some ten thousand or fifteen thousand or possibly twenty thousand years old. Now, I will tell you a little about the origin of the sublime science of the stars as theosophy explains it. In ancient times this sublime science was called astrology, which does not mean the unreliable tattered remnant of that ancient starry science which goes by that name today; but in those archaic days it was a starry science in very truth, the science which looked upon universal being as animate, as alive, and upon the celestial orbs as being merely the physical bodies or garments each one of an indwelling divinity, just as man, physical man, is merely the outward garment, the outermost garment, of an indwelling divine entity. Consequently, the great seers and sages of the ages, who know how to do it -- who were taught how to do it through initiation -- sent the spirit of themselves behind the veil of the outward seeming into the deep abysses of invisible nature, into the inner realms and worlds, and found therein the causes of things, and having found the causes of things brought the knowledge of it back and told this knowledge to their fellow men in formulated systems of thought. As much as could be told to the average man was told, and this part that was told publicly formed the astrological part of the ancient religions and philosophies; and the part that could not be told to all, because all men were not trained to understand it, was kept sacred and secret, and was taught in the Mystery schools to those who came for light and instruction and who in coming gave the "right knock" at the portals of the temple. Astronomy therefore, as astrology, as the starry science of the living orbs of the heavens, originated according to the theosophical teachings some eighteen million years ago, according to our records, among a human stock who at the time were emerging from intellectual unconsciousness into intellectual activity; and it was taught as the inner explanation of the living universe, including therefore man's constitution also as an inseparable part of that living universe; and thereafter this starry science descended through the long, long ages to race after race of men, until finally it reached our own times. In the Occident, because the Occident has lost the keys to this ancient starry truth, we have what is modernly called astronomy, divided into two parts: astrometry, dealing with the dimensions, the forms

and the movements, of the celestial bodies; and physical astronomy, dealing with the physical composition of the celestial bodies. There were greater astronomers in ancient Hindustan, for instance, than any whom Europe has given birth to yet. There was in existence in Hindustan, and also on the plains of Babylonia, and likewise in Egypt and in Persia and in the ancient Americas also, a great and beautiful science which today would be called astronomy. The Surya-Siddhanta, for instance, of ancient Hindustan, claims for itself an origin more than two million years ago; and some of our Occidental astronomers are studying this Hindu work even today, and are finding the study interesting. They can understand the Surya-Siddhanta better than some of the other ancient astronomical and astrological works because it is more like what is today called astronomy, and because it is not so astrological as some of the other works are. No, Astronomy most emphatically did not 'originate' on the Babylonian plains, although the Greeks derived virtually all they knew about Astronomy, at least in the earlier part of Greek civilization, from Babylonia and Egypt. Ancient China knew Astronomy before even the ancient Babylonians did, and recorded eclipses, recorded various conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, and recorded what not else; and our modern European and American astronomers are just beginning to understand better the ancient records. There are in European and American museums clay tablets taken from old Chaldean ruins, which are today commonly called astrological works, and many of these have not yet been read or properly understood, and perhaps when they are properly understood, our recognition of the great antiquity of Astronomy will be more common than it is today. I will answer one more question before I leave you this afternoon: Dear Sir: I attended your lecture for the first time last Sunday afternoon, August 17, and I was entirely in sympathy with all that you said; but there is one question I should like to ask you, as I understand you receive questions from any and all who care to send them in. My question is this: Why do you label what you teach "theosophy"? Why limit your philosophy by any name at all? I have met many broad-minded and progressive people who in almost all points think as you do, but who are unwilling to group their ideas of philosophy and life under any one name, as they feel that doing this would immediately draw a circle around them thus excluding thousands of others whose beliefs differ but slightly from their own. It seems to me that your calling your philosophy "theosophy" fosters a sense of separateness between you and the rest of the world. Are we not all working towards one great truth, which no one has as yet arrived at, but which, through the efforts of us all, will be the possession of the human race at some time in the future? [Yes, I will answer affirmatively this point at once.] I cannot help but think that if theosophists (among whom I doubt not are many fine and progressive people), would join hands with the rest of us in their and our efforts to find out the truth about man and nature, we should all be nearer to the realization of that Universal Brotherhood of which you spoke so forcibly on Sunday last. Very sincerely yours. Isn't this questioner kind! In the first place, theosophy is not an invention. Nobody invented it and gave to it a name, as a man might invent a new kind of buzz saw and give to it a trade name, or a new kind of pigs-in-clover puzzle and give to it a new name. Suppose that the suggestion of this kind friend were adopted by us, what then could we do? Suppose I were to ask the question: "How do you call your teaching?" It has no name. "What name do your beliefs go by?" Oh, they have no name. "Well, don't you call yourselves by some kind of name?" No, we haven't any name. We don't want any name. We are so broad and universal that we take in the whole universe. We are, let me say, Roman Catholics and Protestants and Jews and Brahmanists and Buddhists and the inhabitants of Venus, and we don't require a name. We are IT. We are so perfectly universal and well known by everybody that we don't need a name. We are just like the sunlight shining in our brilliance upon everyone.

Now, such a mental attitude looks very pretty at first sight, and people who adopt it may perhaps flatter themselves that they are wonderfully broad-minded. But such an attitude of mind has its great disadvantages. Personally, I think it is uncommonly fierce egoism. That is my private opinion about any such attitude. Now, I have heard of people -- and the woods are full of them today -- who think they are so broad and generous-minded and perfectly universal and so assured of their own superiority, that they don't want to ally themselves with anybody or anything. They just want to be superior to any attachments, spiritual, intellectual, ethical, or social -- being such superior people you see -- and the consequence is that they are just as colorless and diffuse as the air is. They have not much individuality; they have not much force of character; they have no definite beliefs; they are just most wonderfully diffuse and characterless. You cannot accomplish anything in life that is of worth by following such a fallacy. You must have onepointedness, a directed will, a definite policy, a system, order, coordinated thought, if you are to accomplish any kind of work that is worthwhile in the world; nevertheless, we theosophists don't follow theosophy merely because we look upon it as a circumscribed and restricted thing, which it most emphatically is not. We Theosophists don't say to anybody: "If you don't believe as we do, then get out. This is our circle here and in it we live and move and have our being, and it is for us alone." Never do theosophists talk in that way. Our platform is so broad and yet so profound that the only prerequisite to fellowship in The Theosophical Society is an honest belief in universal brotherhood. Now, if that isn't broad enough for anybody, I would like the objector to show me something better. Nevertheless, the theosophical teachings are a formulated system of thought originated by great spiritual seers and sages depicting and explaining the structure, operations, nature, origin, and destiny of the universe and therefore of man who is an inseparable part of that universe. Our teachings are definite, clear-cut, well-defined, and satisfy both the heart and mind of man. We are obliged to call ourselves by some name. Everything that exists must be verbally defined if we are to allude to it definitely either in thought or in speech. We must give to the Universe a name, but everybody recognizes that this is a name. Infinitude must be defined by some human word if men are to allude to it in human speech. The ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, my Brothers, however, was not called by the name theosophy in all other ages. That is the name given to it today, simply in order to give people some idea of what it is and to have some name to call it by. Being merely a name, of course it does not adequately characterize and explain this ancient wisdom-religion of the human race which has existed in all times, among all peoples, and has been given different names in different ages. If theosophy were merely a new way of explaining science or one of the already known great religions or great philosophies, the question of the querent might have good sense in it; but theosophy contains doctrines and teachings which are utterly unknown in the Occident today or nearly so, as well as the teachings which of course are found in all the great world religions and world philosophies. It gives a grand, a magnificent, an imposing, outlook or vision on the universe and on human life and explains this vision both in general and in particular; and thus you see it is something which stands by itself, although theosophists claim, and claim with positiveness, that it is universal, that it is all-inclusive, that it covers all the fields of every activity of the human consciousness. It is obvious, therefore, that we must give it a name, and if it is, as I have just shown you it is, something so different from anything else that men are ordinarily accustomed to, we are obliged to give it a name in order to allude to it when speaking of it. It seems to me -- and I say this without any wish to give offense to the thoughtful questioner -- that not enough thought has been devoted to this question, because it is juvenile in its restricted and narrow views. Furthermore, I tell you that theosophists have a work to do in the world. That work is what we are doing, or trying to do. You come here, I suppose, to learn something about what theosophy teaches. Suppose that we were to advertise: "Come to Point Loma every Sunday afternoon at three o'clock to hear Dr. de Purucker talk on nothing at all -- or what is the same thing -- talk on everything." Such an advertisement, to me, would be a madman's advertisement.

I don't think that this question shows very deep thought. There are so many people in the world today -oh, the woods are just full of them, and I have met many of them -- who don't want to belong to anything or to believe anything definite. They merely want to be spiritual and intellectual dreamers. I have sometimes said to people like these: "You have just said that you don't want to belong to anything. Haven't you any idea of order, of system, of one-pointedness of thought and work? Do you know how things are accomplished in the world? Theosophists have a work to do. We must have a mental and psychological plowpoint. You cannot plow a field by waving your arm over it. That may be a beautiful gesture, and it is easy, but it does not accomplish anything. It does not mean honest-to-goodness work, the exercise of willpower, the use of your intelligence. If you want to do anything, you must set for yourselves a program, you must outline your policy; you must define your field of thought or work, and then go to it." Study theosophy, my friends, and if you find that it is circumscribed or limited or shuts anybody out, anything out, then come and tell me, and I will take your hand in thankfulness for what you have shown to me. But some unfortunate people are narrow-minded, and they don't know it, and consider themselves exceedingly broad-minded. They are actually so narrow-minded that they want even heaven for themselves alone -- although I have never heard them say that they wanted the other place for themselves alone! All this really originates in the fact that these people have lacked training in concentrated thought, and therefore are actually impatient at people who don't accept their own vague diffuseness of ideas. I am going to read to you a funny little poem that was sent in to me as quoted in The O. E. [Oriental] Library Critic, an interesting periodical edited and published by the theosophical modern Juvenal or satirist, Dr. H. N. Stokes of Washington, D.C., a man of trenchant wit, whose favorite occupation in life seems to be pricking bubbles of fantasy and bursting bladders of pretension and perforating shams. The four lines of this selection are as follows: We are the sweet elected few; May all the rest be damned; There's room enough in hell for you; We won't have heaven crammed! Now, theosophists don't think in that way. We want you to "come to heaven" with us. And that is why I always appeal to you to awaken the inner god within you; and when that inner divinity is awakened and you then begin to see the vision sublime in your own heart and mind, my Brothers, then you are hooked. A fisher of men I am, and my bait is truth; and I catch my fish by awakening their own inner beings and thus giving them light and the grand consciousness of a living, immortal love. Love is the captor, and those who love are the captives.

Second Series: No. 10 (November 17, 1930)

MASTERS OF WISDOM AND COMPASSION AND PEACE

(Lecture delivered August 31, 1930) CONTENTS: Are the Masters of Wisdom great men or gods? -- The names of some are household words. -- The fine flowers of humanity. -- An explanation of the word god. -- What is meant by evolution? -- Our real home is the universe. -- What is the work of the Masters of Wisdom? -- What is the truth which they teach? -- The call from the teacher -- from darkness into light. -- The paradox of self and Self. -- Success: what is it? -- How does growth come about? -- What is personal magnetism? Should a speaker cultivate it? -- The appeal to the inner god. -- Orient and Occident contrasted. -Nobility is not confined to one particular race. -- Walk in the light of the spiritual sun! -- Seize the scepter of power! -- Come up higher! The world, my friends, has always known of the existence of great men, men of outstanding spiritual power and of intellectual fire, who, on account of the great record which they left behind them, have come down through the annals and chronicles of history as the so-called Saviors of men. Myths, stories, legends of various kinds, have been written about their birth, about the lives that they led, about the socalled marvels that they did; and scholars in all the ages since they passed away from the scene of ordinary human life have studied these records, these stories, and have given the fruits of their studies to the world usually in more or less baroque or distorted form. They have been called Sons of God, and they have been called Kin of the Gods, as in fact they are. But in very few cases has the other half of the truth been told: that they were men, great men, men of outstanding capacity and power, so that the impression that their figure, spiritual and intellectual and otherwise, made upon the minds of succeeding generations has produced these stories, these legends, these mythoi. Who are these men? You know the names of some of them just as well as I do. You have heard these names time and time again; the names of some of them, at least, are household words at every civilized fireside, and in every civilized home: Jesus the Syrian sage, the Buddha-Gautama, Lao-tse, and Confucius of China, Krishna again of India, and in the lands farther west such men as Pythagoras, Empedocles, Apollonius of Tyana, and many, many more. In what did these great men differ from the average man? What was it that made them great? Was it a gift from God or from the gods? Or were they the fine flowers of the evolutionary process -- men who had unwrapped and drawn out from the treasury of their own inner being the powers and faculties and energies which made them what they were? The latter is what theosophists say. They are, and were, and others like them will be in future ages, the fine flowers of humanity. Every one of them in the past was and every one of them in the future will be what he was or what he will be merely by bringing out what is within: by unwrapping, unrolling, manifesting, the latent powers, energies, faculties, of each one's inner god. Every great world religion, every great world philosophy, has spoken, has taught, of the existence of an inner god in every human being; and in modern times in the Occident the Christians of a mystical turn of mind, coming back to an original truth of primitive Christianity, speak about the inner Christ, the immanent Christ, the Christ within, of which the outer man is but a feeble manifestation, a feeble expression. The Buddhists in similar vein speak of the Buddha within, the inner Buddha; and the Brahmanists, the Hindus, will likewise speak of the Brahma in the seven-portaled city, man. But in all cases, whatever the terms be by which the explanation is made, the truth is the same in them all: that there is in every human being an essential divinity, his own inner god, his own highest self. Alas! that this sublime truth should have been lost to the Occident, for in it lies all spiritual hope; in it lies all real spiritual and intellectual power and the explanations of these powers and faculties when you see them manifested in your fellow men. Every one of you, my Brothers, is a divinity encased in vehicles, in sheaths, of an enshrouding lower selfhood; and all the work of growth, all the work of evolution, is the thinning out of these sheaths, is the dissolving of the gross physical aspects of them and the raising of them to become ethereal, translucent to the rays of the inner god-sun, the god within. As

these encrippling, enshrining, enshrouding sheaths of the lower selfhood -- intellectual, psychical, astral, and of the physical body also -- become transparent, in exactly the same degree, in the same ratio, pari passu, can the supreme splendor within flow forth and manifest itself through the mind of the man who is expressing it, and then his fellows say: "Behold! A God walks the earth!" There is the key to the whole matter. In proportion as the individual human being can manifest this splendor within, just in the same degree do men call him great -- the great poet, the great scientist, the great religious founder, the great philosopher, the leader of men, the great scientific researcher who has his flashes of intuition, who has hunches, as the world says; and then, standing even higher or above these, the god-men who form the subject of my discourse today. That in substance is all there is to the matter. The teaching is simple, so simple that a child may understand; and yet so deep and so far-reaching in the implications that it has -- and in the inferences that you should draw from those implications -- that if you pursue this path of thought faithfully, you will find that it explains fully and satisfactorily all the intricate problems of human genius and of human destiny. Such, then, are the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. As I have said, they are great just in proportion, just in degree, as they evolve forth from within the powers of the inner god. "Know ye not that ye are gods?" says the Christian Scripture, and the writer who wrote this wrote truth. See what sublime hope this teaching gives! Consider how it explains the intricate problems above alluded to. The psychology so called of the Occident is mere child's play, mostly guesswork, a guessing after the manner of functioning of the physical body and of the physical consciousness -- of the mere brain, but leaving unexplained all the really great things of the human constitution, as these great things express themselves in human life. In what I have said I have given you the key to it all. See how it clothes human beings with dignity. Have ye not consciousness, my Brothers? Have ye not love in your hearts? Have ye not intelligence? Having them, why not then develop them? Exercise brings facility in usage. All evolution means unfolding what is latent within. Evolution means an expansion of consciousness from the limited, the personal, the restricted, the circumscribed, the little man, outwards, so that the individualized consciousness of man finally becomes cosmic, universal in its reaches. You can so evolve yourself by allying yourself with the inner god that I have spoken of; for that inner god is cosmic in its consciousness. The world is filled full with gods; and when I say the world, I really mean the universe -- the boundless spaces of infinite space. Of this space your inner god is a native. In the cosmic spaces your highest self is at home even as your human self is at home on earth; and hence your true home is the universe. That is why you have the feeling of familiarity when you study nature and gain a comprehension of her wonderful laws. O my Brothers, enter into this consciousness. Become at one with universal being; for it is your home. There is where you belong. Nothing in boundless space is alien to you, to some part of your being; to the divinity within you, to the intellectual part within you, to the divine flame of intelligence which enlightens your being, even to your emotional character, all nature is akin, because ultimately they all derive from the very essence of the universe. Note how familiar this sounds to your heart. See where it places man: at home in the universe! Only the mind and heart of the limited human being prevent the inner flame from returning to its cosmic home consciously, and from that returning home, from entering into what is your heritage -- nay, more, from becoming what you really are in your inmost being -- only the lower, crippling, selfish personality shuts you out. You see now what the great seers and sages of all the ages had in mind when they spoke to their fellows and taught them as Jesus did: "Give up thy life if thou wouldst live." Give up this circumscribed,

restricted, personal life, and enter into the consciousness of the spaces. Man is a wonderful being, marvelously constructed, strangely builded, possessing within him everything; and the average man of the West knows it not. You are children of the universe; you are here within it, living in it, born from it, deriving all that you have and all that you are from it; therefore you are a part of it. Since you cannot ever leave it, you are an inseparable part of it; therefore whatever that universe is, is you; and whatever you are, is the boundless infinitude -- frontierless, beginningless, endless. It all flows through you. Deduction: "Kas twam asi?" -- "Who art thou?" -- said the ancient Hindu teacher. And the answer came: "Aham asmi parabrahma," "I am the boundless infinitude." Profound conception! You see now, perhaps, who, what, why, and how the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace are. They have become at one with and at home with the buddhic part of their inner constitution -- the spiritual part, if you will. Their consciousness thereby has become quasi-universal, quasi-cosmic; and in later stages of evolutionary growth their consciousness will become entirely universal, fully cosmic; for the destiny of mankind is to become a race of gods, not created, not just happening so, but by bringing forth what even now is lying within, even as the acorn brings forth the oak by unrolling, by unwrapping, by breathing forth, evolving forth, what is in the seed. Evolution is merely becoming, growing; and those wonder-men, great men, who have outrun the average of men, who have exercised their will in self-discipline and their intelligence in visioning the vision sublime, are the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. They could not not be; their existence is a necessary result of the structure and operations of universal being. Indeed, your own instinct tells you somewhat at least of what you have within you. Just pause in your consciousness a moment -- the most precious privilege, the most fruitful thing, that you can possibly do -- and feel your own inner grandeur, feel the inner god work within you, become temporarily at least transparent to the rays divine. No argument of your merely argumentative brain-mind -- critical, circumscribed, inept because imperfectly evolved -- will ever thereafter take away from you the memory of the vision sublime. The entire lifework, the entire labor, of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace is living to benefit mankind. In that they find their supreme joy, just as you do, though ye know it not. From feeling that they do perennial good, they draw one part of their sublime reward. Seeing others grow great under their teachings, blossoming forth into use of faculty and power, beginning to see -- my God! beginning to see and to feel -- oh, what a blessing this reward is! They live to benefit mankind; they teach; they stimulate all spiritual growth in whatever men they may see manifesting just enough of the buddhic splendor, of the spiritual splendor, to be able to begin to grow. Furthermore, from time to time they send out into the world chosen disciples, chosen pupils, to strike anew in the hearts of men the age-old keynote: to pluck with musical hand the hearts of men, so that those hearts shall ring a joyful response. These pupils come; they teach; they act as their own Masters have acted: they instill these thoughts of beauty; they give hope to men; they point the way to the wonderful path of evolutionary growth; and on the distant horizon they show you the goal that you can reach. Such is every true theosophical teacher; and if he teaches not the truth, he is no true teacher. What is the truth? What is the path? The truth is self-forgetfulness, which means growth into the cosmic reaches which continual remembrance of self, limited, circumscribed, prevents. What is the pathway? The pathway is you, and is not alone your teacher. The pathway is yourself, your spiritual being; and therefore the call from the teacher comes to you: Awake, my Brother, awake to the god within yourself, not outside, not in me, but in you -- the Master supreme! Where is the fountainhead of your understanding? Where arises the flame of your intelligence? What is the wellspring of love within you? Where is the sun of compassion and pity and self-forgetfulness and peace? All within you. That therefore is the path. Who am I? I am That. Do you understand the meaning of this? The word That refers to that to which we cannot, to which we dare not because we cannot, give a human name. By calling it the Boundless That perhaps we give to it the best, because the most impersonal, word. Each human being is in his essence the universe. This, therefore, is the pathway. Do you see, my Brothers?

Were I to call your attention to things of minor moment, to talk to you about the psychical powers and principles, and so forth, I should mislead you, because I should distract your attention from the things of great and outstanding value. I should cripple your growth by thus misleading your minds, and before the gods immortal, I should be responsible as a spiritual criminal! On the contrary, I point to the path of the spirit, to the cosmic way, to that still small path within the core of the core of the heart of every human being, of which the Hindu Upanishads speak, which is within each one of you, which is a call to each one of you to follow it, so that ye may grow and pass from darkness into light -- into light ineffable, beyond human words to describe or explain. There is where all things of value are. The psychical powers are deceptive, because they are quasi-material. The spiritual powers are truth-giving and illuminating, because they flow forth from the very heart, the divine heart, of the invisible universe. And powers? Shall we talk of powers? Look at the powers that these great men had. See the works that they wrought, the deeds that they did, the teachings that they taught. And every one of them said unto his followers: "Come up. Come up higher. Come up. All, all that I do, shall ye do likewise." Selfconquest, self-discipline, self-study -- the study of the higher self -- self-understanding, self-evolution, self-growth: there is the teaching. Forget the self in order that ye may find the Self. A paradox, but how wondrous true! Forget the lower, circumscribed man of limited self, so that the consciousness of that self may expand into the fields of the universe -- its native home. Expand your human consciousness so that it may become the consciousness of the god within you. What a sublime and encouraging teaching! Success? Do you know what success is? Powers? Powers! Powers to walk, to think, to talk? Can the beasts do these? Walk, think after a fashion, talk -- a bit, perhaps. But not yet is the brain of the beast enlightened with the divine flame of cogitative intelligence, so that it may actually construct works of beauty and grandeur on the face of the earth. The beasts are coming towards humanity as humanity is evolving unto becoming gods. Powers? I will show you the way to gain powers -- powers that will make you like gods on earth, but powers ye never can obtain until every vestige of the selfish selfhood is washed out of you; for nature will not allow it. The very way by which to gain wondrous powers is by giving up the selfhood which prevents those powers from acting. Clairaudience -- the spiritual kind -- will enable you, as I have already told you, to hear such things as the moving of the orbs in heaven; and the opening of the rosebud will come to your inner consciousness like a symphony -- because every atom is singing its own musical note. Clairvoyance -- of the spiritual kind -- will enable you to see, not merely at a vast distance, but much more marvelous still, into the invisible worlds, so that, as Paul of the Christians put it in language that he knew could at least be understood: "I was raised up into the third heaven and saw things which I dare not, because I cannot, repeat and make understandable." Many more powers: the ability to transfer your consciousness to any part of the earth, and to be there, self-consciously; and not only to any other part of the earth, but to the very orbs in the spaces surrounding the earth. My Brothers, this is possible, because the cosmic spaces are your home. You are they and they are you. The very powers which work in them are also in you. The very substances out of which they are born and builded, you also are builded out of. You are native there; and therefore manifesting such powers as these is a natural thing to do. There is nothing weird about all this, nothing uncanny or strange. It is the most natural thing in the universe, even as it is today when men manifest intelligence. Think what thought means! How glorious is thought! How marvelous! The ability to think constructively, to think beautiful things, and to produce works of wonder and beauty modeled after the thought! And success? The average idea of success today in the Occidental world is to prevail over your opponents -- a most short-sighted view! That was the view even in commercial matters only a relatively few short years ago, when the idea of success then was to drive the other fellows to the wall. But now in the Occident men are becoming wiser; they realize that it is better business to help the other chap, to keep him going; for every man who is successful is not only a buyer but an advertisement. Here is a question on success that was sent in to me to be answered.

We read: "Success is of rough texture and coarse material. The most delicate fabric in all creation is suffering." [How true!] Is success, material success particularly, the alpha and omega of all that is? -- [the beginning and the end of all that is.] Professor Joseph Jastrow of the University of Wisconsin once declared: "A man's success is mostly good luck coupled with just enough brains not to stand in the way of it." I think that there is a great deal of truth in Professor Jastrow's observation. The worst foe of a man is the man himself. This is a fact, and furnishes us with the substance for a somewhat melancholy commentary on human weakness. Success is coarse -- material success of course I refer to. The most delicate fabric of character, the most delicate power of the soul, is the ability to suffer manfully; for that delicacy is significant of power. Think and reflect. What are the most powerful agents that men know of? They are the silent, delicate things. Electricity, gravitation -- tremendous in power but so intangible and delicate. The battleship straining through the seas, and creaking in every plate, with all the thunder of her engines, is a play-toy compared with nature's handiwork, with nature's silent and mysterious powers working as they do. Look at the mystery locked up in the atom. You never hear it. You cannot see it; but those unspeakably enormous energies, powers, forces -- call them what you like -- have builded everything that the visible universe consists of, and have builded you too. How does growth come about? In the silence, mostly through suffering, which opens our hearts; and through pain, which opens our minds, because it gives us thought. Pain and suffering, sorrow and its ilk, are the great things, are the grand things, because they are the friendly ones to man. Welcome them then, when they come to you. Only the coward weakly bows the head. The brave man, the courageous man, recognizes his kinship with what is coming to him, takes manfully what comes to him, and is greater and better for it. He has grown! Give me the man whose heart has been rent with pain and whose mind has been racked with sorrow, for I know that he is a better and a stronger man for it. Yes! I care very little about material success. In some ways it is good and most excellent if the results can be applied to good deeds in helping others, and in carrying on a noble work such as ours. But if you ask me what personally I prefer, I answer: Give me the hand of a man who has suffered hell, for I feel that I can trust him -- at least the chances are ten thousand times greater that he knows the truth after having been through the fire than the one who has never tasted of sorrow or pain. On the other hand, if we speak of spiritual success, of spiritual attainment, then that is indeed something else, something very different from the former. What men call good luck is simply what theosophists call karma -- the consequences, the results, of what you yourself in past lives have thought and felt and done, because your thoughts and your feelings and your doings have changed your mind, changed your consciousness, changed the very fabric of your character; and as your character is you, in the next life or even in the same life it may be, your character which has thus been wrought upon and changed will work after the new pattern given to it and bring to you joy or bring to you pain. So you see that out of pain comes good -- growth. So fear not pain, it is friendly; fear not suffering, it is a friend. Here is a funny question: Dear Dr. de Purucker: Please pardon the personal nature of this letter. I have been attending your lectures for some months, and have received so much help from them that I persuaded a friend of mine from the East to come and hear you last Sunday. Imagine my disappointment, after the lecture, when I asked my friend how she liked it, and she said: "It was very interesting, but you know, Dr. de Purucker sadly lacks magnetism!" [Well, I hope I do -- that kind!] I don't know what this magnetism is that she speaks of, but personally I have never felt a lack of anything that is beneficial in your talks. Please tell me something about this 'magnetism' that so many

speakers claim to have. If you found you could appeal to a larger number of people by employing it, would you do so? Do you know how? Again apologizing for the personal character of this letter, but I really want to know. I think that it was one of the stronger and more beautiful sex who asked this question. I will let you into a little secret, if you will forgive me for being a trifle personal. I have heard certain speakers lecture, and sometimes I have liked the general tone and trend of their efforts, but I have also been offended at the very obvious appeal made, deliberately made, by what the average person calls animal magnetism. I think that such an appeal is highly reprehensible; and if anyone at any time should see a trace of it in me, I shall thank him or her from the bottom of my heart if I may be notified of that fact. I have trained myself completely to avoid that. What I desire to do, my Brothers, is the direct contrary of any appeal by animal magnetism, because my effort is to appeal to the god within you, to bring out the beauty latent in your character, to bring out the divinity within you; not to impress you with the fact that I have animal magnetism or even mental magnetism, thus making you feel that you like to come and hear me speak because I put you into a state of physical feeling which is -- just the opposite of the state that I hope you will leave this Temple in. My message is a spiritual and an intellectual one, and it is to the spiritual and intellectual faculties in you that I appeal. I could not reach the divinity within your hearts, at the core of your being, if your attention were concentrated -- mental attention or other attention -- on what flows forth from my mere physical or even mental being. Your minds then would be looking downwards towards what the theosophist often calls the pit. My appeal is to you as imbodied gods, as I have told you before. Every afternoon when I speak in our Temple of Peace I feel that I am addressing an audience of imbodied gods; and being an imbodied god myself, although feebly manifesting through this mind and body of mine, my appeal is to the imbodied gods who are before me, in their turn feebly manifesting, each one, his or her inner godhood it is true; but nevertheless and despite the difficulties my appeal is solely to the divinity within each one of you. I had liefer die a thousand times than make my appeal on so coarse and low a plane as that of mere personal magnetism. Were I to do so, I should fail utterly in bringing about what it is my effort to achieve, and instead of giving to you what I was sent to give to you as best I can, as a spiritual teacher, I should direct your attention and concentrate your mind on the lower if not lowest elements of material existence. In your lectures you frequently speak disparagingly of Occidentals and with favor of Orientals. Now, I don't want to say anything unkind in this era of theosophical fraternization, but I don't think all the specimens of Orientals that we have here in the West are superior to us Westerners. Some of them I think are decidedly inferior. And then, you yourself have warned us against some swamis and such like who come from the Orient purporting to teach truth. Wherein lies their superiority?

Non peccavi -- I have not sinned. Non culpa mea -- It's not my fault! I don't think that I have ever said
that Orientals were superior to Occidentals. I have said this -- and I will say it again, because I believe it to be true -- that the Occident has been spiritually asleep for more than two thousand years under the influence of a spiritual opiate; whereas the Orientals during that time, and for thousands of years before that time, have been cultivating the interior faculties of mankind rather than looking without into the material surroundings as aggressively and exhaustively as the Occident has. And, as I have tried to point out to you in the earlier part of our study together this afternoon, my Brothers, all that is of value to you as men, collectively and as individuals, is within you; it is your first duty to know yourself. And if anyone of you is so crippled in intellect as to misunderstand me to mean that I suggest that you follow your mean and selfish lower selfhood, then I say that my speech is fruitless -- that it is useless to speak to you. I do not mean that. When I speak of the inner self, I mean the god within, the divine flame of intelligence and love which is the very root of the root of your being, and of which the outer, exterior selfhood is but an imperfectly evolved shadow -- a shadow of the reality.

In the Orient -- and there are awfully bad Orientals just as there are awfully bad Occidentals, and there are fine Orientals just as there are fine Occidentals; but nevertheless, in the Orient -- for thousands and thousands of years the inner constitution of man -- spiritual, intellectual, psychical, and astral -- has been investigated carefully, studied diligently, and strenuous efforts made to gain an understanding of man's invisible constitution. Only recently has the Occident begun to awaken to the need of knowing something about man's constitution, and the result is that you have that curious apology for real psychology which is indeed called psychology but is not it, yet it is a stepping-stone, poor as it is. It should more truthfully and honestly be called psychological physiology; it is not worthy of the name of psychology, and the sooner the truth is said the better. I stand here to tell what I have found to be the truth and to lay it before you for you to accept or reject as you please. No! I don't favor Orientals over Occidentals; I don't favor Occidentals over Orientals: it is the man whom I am looking for, the individual, the one in whom I see the divine flame; he is the one I am after, the one who shows me in his eyes and in his face some glow or mark of the buddhic splendor within -Occidental, Oriental, civilized man, barbarian, or savage, it is all the same to me; it is the man I am looking for. It matters not to me what be the color of his skin, nor the tongue that he uses in speech, nor what his social standing is. I have seen this buddhic splendor shining in the peasant in his hut and in the prince in his palace, and recognizing a brother I gave him my hand. It is the noble man, the evolved individual, whom every true theosophist is looking for, hunting for; and, metaphorically speaking, every true theosophical teacher goes into the highways and byways of the world seeking for those who, to adopt the words of your Christian scripture, may be invited into the feast at the Master's table; and those highways and byways are just as much the prince's palace as the peasant's hut and just as much the peasant's hut as the prince's palace. Wherever I see the flame of the inner god showing on the face and manifesting in the life, thither I go and say, "My Brother, come, come with me." And there is immediate and mutual understanding between us. Don't you think that we Occidentals make entirely too much of funerals? Birth is entering into one phase of existence and death is entering into some other phase. Why don't we have the same elaborate ceremonies and display of emotions when a birth occurs as when a death occurs? Why not -- when you come to think of it? No matter what your religious view may be, or lack of a religious view, don't you pity every little child when you reflect on what that child has to go through? Just let your hearts speak. And yet, as I told you, that is the way by which we grow -- through suffering, through pain, which softens us and gives us compassion and pity for others, because we ourselves have been through it. Pain and suffering have raised us to a plane of understanding and impersonal feeling. Therefore life, even with all the pains -- and however much our hearts may ache at seeing the little child beginning its new pathway, nevertheless it is life -- is a treading of that other pathway, mystical, still, unseen, which is the growth of the inner man. There were some ancient peoples who had funeral ceremonies at the birth of children and who put on the white garments of festivity when merciful death had released the inner man from the tortured and suffering body. "Depart, splendor of the sun," was their hymn; "depart unto thine own. Son of the sun, rise along the etheric pathways to join the ineffable glory, thy parent." My Brothers, I want to make a plea to you, an appeal, which I make on every Sunday when I speak here -- a plea which is for you. "Father Sun, enlighten the hearts and minds of my Brothers, that they may see their whole duty on their way to thy sacred seat, and by the light, thy light, cast on their pathway, I pray that they may not stumble on the road, while returning to the portals of thy self, the Spiritual Sun!" That is my plea -- a paraphrase of an ancient Vedic verse, called the Gayatri or the Savitri, considered even today as the holiest verse in all the Brahmanical scriptures, because it condenses in its few words the entire mystical and esoteric meaning of occultism: your essential unity with the spiritual universe, your origin therein, the fact that you are now living therein, the fact that this inner guiding light is even at the present moment shining through you, showing you your way, threading as best it may down through the

encircling veils of the lower selfhood into your heart and mind, and thus giving you light and peace and understanding and consequently help. Ally yourselves, therefore, my Brothers, with the god within each one of you, your own inner divinity; for this ye are destined to do in the future, when ye shall have become a race of men-gods; and those who have preceded you on the path, who have outrun the average of mankind, are the Masters of Wisdom and Love and Peace of whom I have spoken to you. There is no reason why you also should not now seize the scepter of power -- spiritual, intellectual, impersonal, divine -- sooner than the laggards on the ways of life who through suffering will be brought to do it also in later ages. Why not now begin to become the divinity within you? Come! Come up higher!

Second Series: No. 11 (October 5, 1930)

WAS JESUS MANMAN-GOD, GREAT SAGE, OR MYTH?

(Lecture delivered September 14, 1930) CONTENTS: Jesus in various aspects: the sage, the central figure in a "mythos," the avatara. -- The terms buddha and avatara explained. Is the accepted birth-date of Jesus correct? -- The Gospels not historical truth but symbolic truth. -- The story of initiation. -- The teaching of Jesus: the immanent Christ. -- The testimony of the disciple John according to Irenaeus of Lyons. -- Baptism a mystical word. -- The two kinds of avataras. -- The appearance of avataras at cyclic times. -- Did Jesus meet death by violence? What about the spear-thrust? What about the cry from the cross? -- Initiations take place even today. -- What is the significance of the cross? -- Parallel symbology in the Scandinavian Eddas. -- The intuitive vision of the poets. -- At what age did Jesus receive initiation? -- In regard to mental healing. -There is always a vision beyond. Follow the pathway and pass through the portals of the sun! It is commonly supposed that Theosophists claim that Jesus was a myth, which supposition is not true; or again that Jesus was a great Sage, which supposition is partly true; and thirdly the supposition that Jesus was a god-man Theosophists accept only in part. The Christian idea of the Great Man, the illuminated Individual, who is supposed to have lived some 1900 or 2000 years agone, is that Jesus was a god-man -- just that: the incarnation in a human vehicle or body of the second Person of the inseparable Trinity that orthodox Christians believe in. Theosophists do not accept that belief; but we do teach, nevertheless, that Jesus was a man-god and an avatara -- a Sanskrit term which I shall explain soon. We also say, voicing the doctrines of the ancient wisdom of mankind, that in his human aspect, Jesus later called the Christos, the Christ or the "Anointed," was a great sage and seer; and we also claim that this great man was in no sense a myth, but that he was the central figure in a mythos -- a series of mystical teachings -- which is a very different thing indeed from the ordinary English word myth as commonly used. Jesus was not the only avatara who has ever lived on earth -- the only manifestation in a man of a divine being. Other avataras lived before him. It is the teaching of the wisdom-religion of antiquity, today called theosophy, that these great beings or avataras appear on earth at cyclical intervals, when, as Krishna says in the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita -- and I paraphrase slightly the passage: "When righteousness is running low in the hearts of men and unrighteousness and evildoing sway their souls, then come I, as a portion of my divine self, and appear in the world in a human vehicle; and then do I teach and show again to men the way to peace and love and happiness and the heighths of spiritual glory." An avatara, then, is a partial manifestation of a divinity in a human being, and is not the manifestation of a man's own inner god; for when this latter happens, then we have among us what theosophists call a buddha: this is our technical term, meaning an "awakened one," one who manifests the divinity which is the very core of the core of his own being. But an avatara is one who is not the reincarnation of a reincarnating ego, and therefore not a unitary being as ordinary humans are, but is one who appears after a certain fashion which I will try briefly to explain to you -- who appears as a great glory among men, and who does an especial work on earth. An avatara never has a prior birth, nor a succeeding reincarnation. The avatara Jesus, for instance, will never have a birth on earth again, in other words will never reincarnate; for such is an avatara: a divinity manifesting through the psychological apparatus of what theosophists call one of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace who gives himself for that purpose, in order that the sublime powers of the divinity thus manifesting may show themselves among men and teach men. Obviously, then, such a particular composite entity, such a spiritual-psychological-physical composition, is not the reincarnation of a preceding unitary entity coming over from other lives as a reincarnating ego

and having future reincarnations when the present earth-life is ended, as is the case with all other human beings. Thus then, as Jesus was the manifestation, or rather the channel for the manifestation, of a portion of the powers of a divinity, he was a man-god or a god-man; he was of course also a great sage and seer at the same time, for sage he certainly was and seer he most emphatically was, for he had wisdom and he "saw." There did indeed exist in Palestine at some time before the supposed birth-date of Jesus -- say a hundred years more or less -- this being, this man-god, about whom clustered within less than a hundred years after his passing, all the legends, all the stories, that were gathered together and edited and later set forth in the books that compose the Christian New Testament. Those stories are not historical: they are mystical, symbolic, and therefore are as true as truth itself, because conveying the actual facts, not so much of the life and work of Jesus the Christos considered as an individual, but setting forth what theosophists call the story of initiation. Do you get the idea? Every country had its schools of initiation, its schools of the great Mysteries; and these mysteries were closely guarded and kept very secret indeed. It was the habit in those days to choose some great human being who had taught men, and around that individual to weave a web of symbolic teaching, setting forth -- so that ordinary men in reading could not understand but yet would be attracted to spiritual things -- what actually took place in the initiation chamber. That is what happened in the case of Jesus called the Christos. Consequently, the sayings of the four books called the Gospels are not historical truth but symbolic truth. Jesus the Syrian avatara did not teach anything new. What he did was to point once again to the old, old pathway to the spiritual life: the pathway to wisdom and spiritual power; and he told his followers how and what they might achieve by following this pathway, so that ultimately they could become such as he was -- such as he was so far as wisdom and power went; for in the heart of the heart of every human being there is a divinity, his own inner god, which the Christians of a mystical turn of mind today call the immanent Christ. Therefore each one of you has it within the power of his will and of his choice to follow this pathway that the great seers and sages of the past ages have trodden, and to become like unto them. This inspiring teaching lay at the basis of the reason for choosing such a great individual and weaving around the legends of his personality as he appeared on earth a mystical tale describing in symbolic form what took place in the chamber of initiation. It is implied in the Christian Gospels, for instance, that the entire lifework of Jesus lasted about a year or two and that then he was crucified; and yet we have one of the earliest and most prominent of the Church Fathers of the West, Irenaeus of Lyons in Gaul, saying that, according to those who knew best, among them being Jesus' own disciple John, the Master Jesus lived to be nearly fifty years old. As the accepted teachings state that he was "baptized" in his thirtieth year by John the Baptist, then if Irenaeus' statement has any basis of truth, Jesus must have lived twenty years after the baptism and nearly twenty years after the alleged crucifixion. Baptism among the ancients is a mystical word, and therefore when so used it is a technical word signifying one of the phases of initiation. Consequently, if Irenaeus' statements are true, Jesus died, threw off the body, abandoned the body -- put the matter as you will -- some twenty years after he was baptized and "crucified," and therefore when he was in his fiftieth year. Let me read to you the words of this Church Father, Irenaeus who was as I have just told you Bishop of Lyons in Gaul about the middle of the second century. Irenaeus states the following in his famous work, Against Heresies, Book II, chapter 22, paragraphs 4, 5, and 6: Exactly as the Gospel and all the Elders testify, because those who had known John, the disciple of the Lord, intimately in Asia Minor, affirm that John had given them that information --

about Jesus having lived until his fiftieth year, which means twenty years after the supposed date of his crucifixion. You may now begin to see how the entire matter of the story of Jesus is all tangled up -- partly by those who so arranged the situation and partly by reason of the lack of modern understanding of ancient ways and of ancient institutions. We see, therefore, that the Christian story of Jesus is a series of symbolic scriptures written in symbolic form and style, not pretending to be an accurate personal history but trying to convey a truth to men, a spiritual bait; trying to convey to men a mystic hope and call under the guise of allegory, symbolology, so that men in taking this bait would discover that their minds were fascinated and their hearts turned to the light, and thus, in all probability, they would come and seek for initiation -- as the old expression had it, they would come to the door of the temple and "knock" and "ask." Such was the old way of making a public appeal or call to come up higher and to develop the spiritual part of the human constitution. Let me also add in passing that the four canonical Christian Gospels are not by any means the only Gospels that were ever written. We know from the ecclesiastical history of Christianity that there were dozens of old Gospels, which with the exception of the four now accepted as canonical, were after the third or fourth century of the Christian era set aside and for many centuries have been called apocryphal. If you will study the lives, as they are set forth in the more or less imperfect literature in which these written lives are imbodied, of the great seers and sages of past times, you will find more or less exactly the same entanglements of thought and circumstances that are so easily discernible in the Christian story of Jesus. The very names of most if not all of these great seers and sages have been covered around with allegory and symbol -- myths have been told about them -- in a few cases they are alleged to have been born of a virgin or born in some other mysterious way, and to have lived and taught, moving the hearts of men by their works of marvel, and, after finishing their teaching, finally passing away in some mysterious manner. The story of Jesus is not new as a type; in essentials it is in large part a repetition in the case of that particular avatara called Jesus of what other great seers and sages or avataras or buddhas did and taught; and most of these great figures of history after they died or had vanished, left behind them an entangled system of symbolology, of symbol, of allegory, usually supposed in much later years to be accurate historical records, but such they were not at all. This does not mean that these entangled records whether in the case of Jesus or in the cases of others were wholly devoid of some actual historical facts or recorded instances, but it does mean that the historical record or actual events have been so garmented with symbol or so disguised in allegory that they are difficultly discernible in these enshrouding veils. Jesus was an avatara, a direct manifestation of a portion of the powers of a divinity working through the psychological apparatus of one of the Masters of Compassion and Wisdom and Peace, who gave himself for that purpose, in order that at that cyclical time, which then had arrived on the whirling wheel of destiny, the particular divinity involved in the case could show at least somewhat of its sublime powers among men and teach them, and once more point out the way of truth and of light and of compassion. I would like to add in passing that the doctrine of the avataras shows us that there are two kinds of these unusual beings: one, human avataras, of which Jesus and Sankaracharya of India were types, and nonhuman avataras, technically called "Anupapadaka" avataras. This latter kind of avataras or the anupapadaka type refers only to what I may call a cosmic mystery. Anupapadaka is a Sanskrit compound word which literally means "parentless" or "without a parent," or more accurately "one who does not follow," as a son follows his father in direct serial succession. This latter class of avataras would take too long to explain further in a Temple lecture such as I am delivering this afternoon, and any further elucidation of this, should anyone be interested, will have to wait until the inquirer joins The T.S., and, indeed, takes a further step into our Esoteric Section, where the deeper teachings of theosophy are explained and elucidated.

The human type of avatara, or the first type just spoken of, occurs when some sublime human being, such as one of the theosophical mahatmas or Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, offers the psychological part of his own being as a vehicle in order to transmit or to step down to the human plane a portion of the divine energies and faculties of a divinity, and this psychological portion so loaned to be such a vehicle seeks incarnation by overshadowing and enlivening some human life-germ of clean and appropriate heredity. Strange and mysterious as this doctrine is, and rare as is the event of an avatara's coming, nevertheless it is a fact; and should anyone be interested, I refer him to other lectures of mine where he will find further elucidation. There was no reincarnation at all in the case of Jesus the avatara, because he was not at all the reincarnation of a reincarnating ego. An avatara is what may truly be termed an act of supreme white magic. O Brothers, do you get at least an adumbration of the idea? The Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace knew that the time had arrived for the manifestation of a divinity among men, an actual manifestation of one of the gods with which the universe and in this case more particularly the solar system is filled full; and one of this noble company, of this Brotherhood of Masters of Wisdom, gave himself for the purpose of enabling this divinity to manifest through him, and overshadowed the human seed which was to be born -- in perfectly normal human fashion -- in Palestine as a little child: enlivened and inspired that boy, and then, when the time came -- when growth, when adulthood, had been reached, in one of the sanctuaries of the Mysteries which existed in those days, Jesus, then or later called by that name, was baptized -- a technical word -- this meaning that he was "raised" from manhood into divinity by the "descent" or avatara of the divinity upon him which thereafter worked through him. This is so simple to understand and yet so true; and I do think that those men have the minds of little children -- undeveloped, immature -- who cannot immediately see the beauty of this mysterious truth at which I have briefly hinted in the remarks that I have just made. My Brothers, you yourselves: what have you within you? You have understanding, you have intellect, you have spiritual and intellectual faculties of a high order, and yet you manifest them poorly. Nevertheless you have them, and you could manifest them in superlative degree if you wished to do so, and if your heart were wholly set upon doing it. Has not your heart ever been stirred? Are you passing your existence on earth like the dumb beasts, or are you living like men? Have you never felt stirring within your heart that mysterious spiritual energy which can with difficulty be named, but which every sane man senses? Have you never had a glimpse of the vision sublime? Have you never felt what majesty and power are lying latent within you? If you have, then you have the proof of the divine power in your own being, and all mere words of argument after that are useless, for you know. Pity therefore those who cannot understand, whose natures, whose inner faculties, have not been awakened, have not been aroused, who have never seen even a glimpse of the vision sublime, who have never felt the stirring of the god within. I venture to say that those among you who have never had even an adumbration of this inner splendor, are very, very few. Has your heart never expanded with love, with compassion, with pity, with selfforgetfulness, with those strange and wonderful intimations of truth and of glory, which come like a light which breaks through darkness, so that the man then exclaims: "My God, I see!" Of course you have! And such an experience is an initiation for the one who undergoes it. O my Brothers, if you knew what you have within you! Glory unspeakable, power to move the very stones of earth, if ye would only take that power! Each one of you is an embodied god, and you recognize it not. As John the disciple of Jesus begins his Gospel: "The light shineth in darkness and the darkness knoweth it not" -- so does the spiritual light shine in the hearts and minds of men, in and through the darkness of prejudice, of misconception, of ignorance, and of egoism above everything else. Who is the great man on earth? Who is the man who makes the mark? Who is the man who succeeds in doing great and noble things? Who is the man who has real inner power? Who is the man who moves the hearts and minds of his fellows? Is it the little, restricted, blinded, darkness-minded, man? Or is it the man with bright and flaming ideas? Is it not the man whose own conviction, as expressed in his speech

and in his life, plucks at your heartstrings so that they quiver and return an answering music? The latter, assuredly! Therefore I say to you: See the truth! Examine yourselves, and thus know! Every one of these great sages and seers, whether he was the Buddha-Gautama of India, or Lao-tse of China, or Sankaracharya of India again, or Jesus, or Empedocles, or Pythagoras, or Apollonius of Tyana -- any one of a numerous host of them -- all taught the same fundamental doctrines which therefore were identic. What were some of these teachings? "Man, know thyself!" For self-knowledge -- the knowledge of the higher spiritual self -- is the pathway of wisdom, of understanding, of light, of peace, of power, and it comes to man through self-forgetfulness, and self-forgetfulness is the knocking, the mystic knocking, at the door of the initiation chamber of the temple. You cannot express universal powers, you cannot manifest the divinity within you, because that divinity is entirely impersonal, if your mind and heart are restricted and imprisoned by your personal desires. You must expand your nature and open it, in order to let the sunlight of the spirit stream in to you. Therefore, as you easily see, self-forgetfulness and impersonality mean the gaining of wisdom and great and holy power. Another one of their teachings was that every human being, every entity anywhere, is a child of the universe. The universe is his or its home. A man is de facto as much at home in the starry spaces as he is here on this planet earth; and thus the great seers and sages also taught that it is possible for a man to pass from sphere to sphere, from plane to plane, from solar system to solar system, as the cycles of evolution roll by; and that his sojourn on earth is like the putting up at a tavern or at an inn for a daynight. Do you not begin to feel what this noble teaching evokes in your hearts? It evokes first of all a realization or sense of our essential oneness with all that is; for I am -- just as you all are -- of the substance of the universe, its child, an inseparable part of it, and therefore am I at home everywhere and remain so throughout endless duration. You see how this one teaching cuts the very root of selfishness and therefore of evildoing; you see in this teaching also the strong and unanswerable proof of the natural reality of ethics -- how ethics are founded on the universe: ethics are founded on its very structure and operations, for what the All is, that you are; and what every man is, that is also the Boundless. Bone of its bone is man, heart of its heart, blood of its blood, substance of its substance; and he is eternally at home in the boundless All, and spiritually united with all things, because all things come forth from the same fountain of being and all things return after any individual cycle is ended to that same fountain, only to issue forth again on a pilgrimage or course of evolution still more sublime than the preceding one. Was Jesus man-god, great sage, or a myth? He was each in part, not one of the three wholly. He was man-god because manifesting a part of the very power and flame -- the bright and starry flame -- of a divinity. He was great seer and sage because he manifested the highest kind of intellect and vision: he was a seer because he saw; he was a sage because he knew. He was, finally, the central figure of a mythos, as the Greeks said; but his existence was not at all fabulous. In this connection I will read to you a question or rather a series of questions that have been sent in to me for answer: I am puzzled with my reading of the back numbers of "Questions We All Ask," when I come across the statement that Jesus the Christ, or any other avatara, did not meet death by violence. Question: If the description of his death as given in the Bible is incorrect, only a symbol or a mere mystical saying, how did he meet his death? The body was cast aside when the avatara no longer needed it -- cast aside or laid aside and then was dissipated as all physical bodies ultimately are into its component atoms. No avatara has ever met a violent death, at least as far as is known to me. You speak in another part of his not being "humble" before Pilate; so what happened after that?

May I ask you what your own intuition tells you about the alleged humility of Jesus? Is the neophyte in the presence of his initiator humble in the sense in which the word is usually employed? Is there then an ignoble sense of abasement? Or, on the contrary, is not the heart raised with glory, with sublime hope, with ineffable aspiration? The whole story of Jesus, as I have already told you, as it is given in the New Testament, is only a symbolological allegory, detailing briefly and in figures of speech what happened in the initiation chamber. What about the spear thrust? Yes, what about it? What spiritual or moral good does the literal reading of the story of the alleged physical crucifixion of Jesus do to anybody? As a story it is little short of being puerile. But the spear thrust was one of the parts of the initiatory rite or ceremony, having its own particular signification, which of course I cannot speak of in a public audience, but it was not a physical act causing a physical wound. In some of the initiatory ceremonials, instead of a spear being used, some other instrument such as a dagger was employed in the symbolic rite; but the fundamental meaning in either case was the same, to wit, that the man gave up his lower personal being as a sacrifice, so that the power and influence of the god within might have free flow through the entirety of the constitution of the man when he left the chamber of light after the initiation was completed. Do you understand? The spear thrust signified the dying of the personal, so that the inner spiritual man could be freed, untrammeled, unhindered. Do you understand, my Brothers? What prevents men today from taking from the spirit what truly belongs to them? From taking spiritual glory, power, wisdom, all the things that are grand and sublime? Selfishness prevents it. The personal egoisms, the personal desires, all of them circumscribing, limiting, folding in, making small the cognising part of our constitution. The exercise of the opposite qualities of all these place our feet upon the pathway, the road, to follow. Therefore I tell you: expand your character, don't contract it! Give; don't covet in getting! Be continuously; don't die! Such then was the mystic signification of the spear thrust -- the death of the small, limited, personal man, so that the spiritual man within might free itself from the prison of the lower man. In a moment or two I shall explain this phase of our thought a little more clearly. The last words, as given from the cross, how about them? These last words are given in the two first Gospels, in Matthew, Chapter 27, Verse 46, and in Mark, Chapter 15, Verse 34, thusly: Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani. These words, called "the cry of the cross," have been translated into Greek in your Christian New Testament as follows, and this is the English rendering of the Greek translation: "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" This is a false translation into Greek, although correct in English from the Greek, because these words in the original mean: "My God! My God! How thou hast glorified me!" For these words are good Hebrew, ancient Hebrew, and the verb Shavahh means 'to glorify' certainly not "to forsake." But in the Twenty-second Psalm of the Old Testament in the first verse, there are the following words in the original: Eli, Eli, lama a'zavtani, which do mean "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" Now, why in the name of holy truth -- and this is a proof of what I have told you before that the Christian scriptures are written in symbolic form and with mystical allusions -- why in the name of holy truth should the writers of these two Gospels use words which are good Hebrew and yet give a perfectly wrong translation of them? Because the intent was to hide the truth and yet to tell a truth -- typically in line with the mystical atmosphere and manner of the ancient when dealing with the Mysteries. Both the original Hebrew meaning and the wrong Greek translation are right when properly understood. The personal man, when it dies, always cries "My God! Why hast thou forsaken me to become dust?" But the higher, the nobler, part of the man, the spiritual man within, exclaims with a shout of joy: "My God! My God! How thou dost glorify me!" This last was an exact rendering of the natural reaction of the neophyte when reaching glorification during initiation. It is also a proof, to one who knows how to read it, of the symbolic character of the writings of the Christian Gospels, although the meanings were all tangled up, deliberately so tangled, so that the real

inner teaching could not be received by every curious eye which ran along and tried to read, but nevertheless containing just enough of mystical thought-suggestion to be a bait to men whose inner character, whose inner being, had begun to awaken; so that reading these things, seeing these strange discrepancies and contradictions, their interest would be aroused -- and they would come to the Temple door and "knock," give the right knock, and enter in. Such was the symbolic cry of every neophyte initiated by the great teacher into the grander life. For I tell you, my Friends and my Brothers, that these initiations take place even today, and they take place at a certain time of the year; and when these initiations occur, the neophyte who has passed through the rite successfully, and who has gained his godhood in his manhood, is in so elevated and ecstatic a condition that for a short time this inner divinity streams through his being like the flaming splendor of a sun, so that in very truth, as the ancients put it, he is clothed with the sun. When this sublime event takes place during initiation the whole spiritual being of the man answers as it were with a cry of joy: "Oh! My God within, my Divinity at the core of my being, how thou dost glorify me!" -- the very words that are alleged to have been used by Jesus on the cross. The crucifixion itself was one of the phases of the ancient ceremonial rite. The neophyte in trance was laid upon a cruciform couch, a couch in the form of a cross, with arms outstretched; and for three long days and nights -- and sometimes for a longer period, such as six or even nine days and nights -- the spirit of the neophyte passed through the spheres of cosmic being, thus learning at first hand the mysteries of the universe. For I tell you truly, there is a way of unloosing the spirit of man from the trappings and chains of the lower part of him, so that, free, it may pass as a pilgrim from planet to planet and from planet to sun before it returns to the earth-body that it had temporarily left. I desire to call your attention in this connection to an exceedingly interesting, very profoundly mystical, and suggestive passage from one of the Scandinavian Eddas, taken from what I believe is called Odin's Rune Song. It is as follows: I know that I hung on a wind-rocked tree, nine whole nights, With a spear wounded and to Odin offered -- myself to myself -On that tree of which no one knows from what root it springs. In these few lines this passage from the Edda gives another version, and a most interesting one, of the "crucifixion"-mystery. The reference also to "hanging on a tree" is most suggestive because this very phrase was frequently used in the early Christian writings as meaning "hanging on the cross." In this Scandinavian mystical story, the tree is here evidently the cosmic tree, which is a mystical way of saying the imbodied universe, for the universe among the ancients of many nations was portrayed or figurated under the symbol of a tree of which the roots sprang from the divine heart of things, and the trunk and the branches and the branchlets and the leaves were the various planes and worlds and spheres of the cosmos, the fruit of this cosmic tree containing the seeds of future trees, being the entities which had attained through evolution the end of their evolutionary journey, such as men and the gods -- themselves universes in the small, and destined in the future to become cosmic entities when the cycling wheel of time shall have turned through long aeons on its majestic round. As I have said in many other places, all initiation, so far as pictorial rite or figurative symbolism went, portrayed the mystic structure and operations and secrets of the hid universe as expressed in the acts and words of the master initiator and of the neophyte. Here again we have a subject fascinatingly interesting but too deep to develop in the short time at my disposal in a public lecture. I merely point, by the hints that I have just given, to its deep esoteric meaning, and must now pass on to other phases of my subject, concluding with the observation that this Scandinavian version of the cosmic crucifixion, also mentioned by Plato, refers to the cosmic Logos "crucified" in and upon the cosmic world-tree of which that same Logos is the enlivening and intellectual spirit.

A friend sent in to me a day or two ago a beautiful little poem once printed in Scribner's, and I will read it to you. It is a most intuitive series of lines, so intuitive indeed that it is a proof that some human beings receive light, go through a certain kind of initiation, and during this temporary moment the inner light, the inner glory, streams through the consciousness. O ye living dead, who do not and cannot understand -- living in the body but dead in all other parts of your being -- why will ye not understand what is within you? Here is the poem: it is written, of course, after the Christian style, but that style is without importance: MANY MANSIONS by ARTHUR GUITERMAN Vast is my Father's house and glorious are Its many mansions, citadels of light, Enchanted moon and redly flaming star. Whether beheld or still beyond our sight They gem infinitude. Well named were they By dreaming bards of some wild desert clan, Nihal, Giansar, Betelgeuse, Er Rai, Gomesia, Fomalhaut, Aldebaran And Talitha the Maiden. Isles of rest, Inns of Eternity, they house the soul Upon its pilgrimage, that splendid quest Wherein from world to world and goal to goal We, too, shall tread, as myriads have trod, These stepping-stones on the long road to God. The Christian term God almost spoils the beauty of the thought, but the thought is there nevertheless. I would that you were all students of the esoteric part of our philosophy, so that I could explain more in detail and at greater length what I have here but briefly pointed to. Yet experience has shown us that with many, many human beings it suffices but to point with a wordless gesture to a truth. Then they catch the thought; their minds are brightened; they awaken; and they come to us. I can show you the way; I can open for you the path. Each one of you is himself -- or herself -- that path; and therefore I can show you how to find yourself -- your real self, the god within you. Every theosophical teacher can do the same if he is a true teacher; and that is precisely what Jesus the avatara had in mind when in substance he said: "Come unto me, ye who are heavy-laden and weary, and I will give you rest, and light, and peace, and joy, and hope" -- for all these are one in essence. The foundation of all the teaching is to realize with both heart and soul that each one of you is an inseparable child of the universe: that you are It and that It is you. You cannot leave the universe; you are born of it and in it. Isn't that fact obvious? Therefore the universe is your home; essentially it is you yourself; for the divine part of you is cosmic in the reaches of its consciousness, just as the ordinary small part of you has a consciousness which reaches but little beyond the brain of flesh, and in that little brain of flesh most of you live. O sons of men, know yourselves and awaken to what is within you! Realize that you are one with the universe, for it is you and you are It! This is the key of all the teaching; and you cannot even begin to follow this Path by following the willo'-the-wisps of emotion and thought. You cannot begin the Path by following your little ambitions and the psychical attractions that small men live in and for. The reach of these, their extension, is too circumscribed, too deceitful. But the things of the spirit, the things of divinity, when you become one with your own inner god, give you power unbounded, and vision which takes the Universe within its scope; for you are, essentially speaking, a god in human flesh. This applies to all of you. What a blessed thought: that the Universe is I and that I am the Universe; that I am at home in it now and will be at home in it in a billion eternities from now; that I am what I make myself to be; that I am now what I have made myself to be; and that I can better my condition infinitely and grow and expand, become what is the Universe, because it is I in my highest parts. What a hope! What a vision!

I have here a little poem that was sent in to me, and it is so pleasing that I will read it to you. It shows the instinct in one human heart -- I don't know who wrote it, but it shows the instinct in one human heart -- of the sense of inseparable unity with all that is. This realization brings such peace, such vision: CONFESSION OF FAITH I shall be one with my mother Earth, One with her rains, with her snows; One with the green of the path we trod, And I shall be one with God. With all things living I shall be, With man, with toad, and tall birch-tree; I shall be one with the worm you prod, With weed, with seed -- One with God! Now, these lines are beautiful. It matters but little that the phraseology is of the Christian type. The essential idea of unity is there; there is a glimmer of the vision sublime, the recognition of one's essential unity with all that is. Here is another question: Did Jesus get initiation before he gave the Sermon on the Mount? If he were not initiated until the time of his death, how then did he have time to give any teaching? This is a very clever question. It is precisely the question that the Gaulish Bishop, Irenaeus, wrote about, of whom I spoke in the beginning of our study together this afternoon. He said in substance: "If Jesus was crucified within a year or two or three after he was baptized, how did he have time to teach all men?" The idea here is as I have told you before that baptism was a technical word of the initiation chamber, and means the receiving of light, which is initiation. Do you understand me? And therefore this old Christian Church Father argued quite cleverly, basing his argument on what he said was "the Gospel and the testimony of all the Elders," that Jesus must have lived for some twenty years after his baptism, and therefore had attained some fifty years of age, in order to give him time to teach. Here is a question addressed to myself: My second question is concerning disease. You say that if you get sick you get a doctor and do not use mental healing. Now, how can a person of your and Katherine Tingley's attainments ever get "dis-ease" if constantly filled with love and working in harmony with the divine? There must be some disharmony in the body to create disease. I also note that you use spectacles to read the questions. It has occurred to me and I am still questioning in my mind: Do the theosophical Leaders not have sufficient wisdom of physical laws to correct the defect, or do they think it so unimportant that they neglect it or feel that it is some karma [some law of cause and effect, some consequence] that they are working out? The thought "Be ye perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect": does it apply only to the spiritual or is the physical included? Are all physical ailments therefore to be ignored except as far as medicines or doctors or food will restore the body? I understand that mental healing only postpones and is therefore harmful. Well, it is so, simply because the latter kind of healing dams back the poison in the system instead of allowing it to come out naturally through the body. A man can make himself believe that he has almost any kind of trouble and it will affect the body correspondingly. A man also can indeed apparently cure certain diseases of the body, if he can use certain psychological faculties that he has, which these lovely people whom I don't care to speak of by name have found out how to use with a certain degree of skill. But the results, my Brothers, are not good. All disease is a purging, a purgation, a cleansing. Nature's law is that the poison should come out. If it remains within, it poisons the body, the constitution, still worse than before; and the physicians of the future will know perfectly well how to lead disease out of the body so that the body shall not be injured at all. But be very careful about damming it back, throwing

it back into the stream of consciousness, for one of these days the trouble will come out despite your best efforts and it will have gained strength and power and be like ten devils worse than the first. Therefore, be careful. I have deep sympathy and respect for these perfectly lovely people who believe otherwise; but I have been asked the question, and I am answering it as my heart and my teaching tell me to answer you, truthfully. Now, as regards myself. Why do I wear spectacles? Because I can see better! That is a good answer, I think: a perfectly good answer. However, I wish I could do without them. I have worn them now, I think, about two years. It was a friend who induced me to wear them, because he said that I was beginning to squint at print when I read it. I began to wear glasses, and now I have to keep using them. If (let me use the words of this questioner) "a person of my attainments, is constantly filled with impersonal love and working in harmony with the divine, how is it that I get sick sometimes, and also have to wear glasses?" My dear Friends, it is not I who put myself on so high a pedestal as this kindly friend places me upon; it is this kind questioner who places me there, and I wish that he would not so place me. I am not a Jesus; I am a man, trying to lead a good and useful life. I am a theosophical teacher. I have been taught, and I know that the testimony that I give is a true witness. But nevertheless I am human. Such sickness as I may at any time have, or the wearing of glasses, are all due to my karma as we theosophists say. Even now I have to bear the consequences of evil deeds that I may have done ten lives agone, which have not yet worked themselves out. Perhaps in those ten lives agone I tried to do what these perfectly lovely people I have been speaking of themselves do: perhaps I tried to dam sickness back into my constitution, so that I would not suffer very much then, and thus only now, when I don't want it, it comes out now and bothers me occasionally, such as a cold or a headache or a susceptibility to indigestion. Yes, my heart is filled with impersonal love, and I try -- I try all the time -- to go higher along the pathway of spiritual development. Nevertheless I am a man. I still have old karma to work out, and at present I know enough not to dam back any disease that may come upon me. I now want it to come out, I desire to be rid of it; and also I am now trying so to think, to feel, to live, and to act, that in future lives I may be a nobler vehicle of the god within me than I am now. But having been taught, I myself can teach; having had experience, I know that the pathway of growth is endless; there is never a time throughout boundless infinitude when the pilgrim-soul reaches an impassable wall. There is always a vision beyond. Therefore I say unto you: Follow that pathway. It is within you, because it is you your self. Search outside for it and you lose it. Look within -- not into the small, personal, restricted man, but within to the spirit within you, and sense the glory which even now fills both your heart and mind, but which you do not yet recognize. Follow your intimations of love and self-forgetfulness; sense them first, then follow them. Heed not at all the jeers of those who understand you not. Pity them, for they are blind. Follow that pathway and pass through the portals of the sun into a splendor still more sublime. And if you need help, then from my heart I tell you, Come! Give the right knock and it shall be opened unto you. Ask, and ask from the god within you, and ye shall receive!

Second Series: No. 12 (November 24, 1930) GHOSTS (Lecture delivered September 28, 1930) CONTENTS: Shadows of the astral realms. What power have they? -- Ours is a ghost-ridden world. -We are the willing victims of ghosts. -- The outworn half-truths of our fathers, philosophic, scientific and religious. -- Look for new aspects of old truths. -- The world is on the edge of a moral abyss. -- An ethical, social, and physical catastrophe. -- Quotations from Arthur Stanley Eddington. He glimpses the reality of inner realms. -- "My rights!" the cry of the Occident. The fertile mother of selfishness. -Ghosts of egoism, intolerance, and hate. -- What a man believes is vital. -- Vampirizing mental ghosts. -The leaders of scientific thought and their intuitions. -- Sir Oliver Lodge touches theosophical truths. -Are all paths to wisdom equally good? -- Our world but one inn on the journey of life. -- Become acquainted with yourself! Look towards the shining god at the core of your being! I am going to talk to you this afternoon about ghosts; and to do so I require no dark seance room, and no subterranean dwelling where we may see in our fertile imagination the flitting, fleeting, wandering sights of the underworld. But I would that I could talk to you in the face of heaven, under the splendor of the golden sun, and in that beautiful environment call to your minds the fact that the ghosts I am going especially to talk to you about this afternoon are not the ghosts of Hades or the underworld -- those dim and shadowy simulacra of human beings that have been; not those wan and bloodless spooks, not they -but the ghosts of which you, my Brothers, are the victims, willing, conscious, and therefore enslaved: the ghosts of past things, of past ideas, of past ideals, which still exercise their sway over your minds, and therefore govern your conduct; ghosts whose influence is still powerful in your spiritual and intellectual life, because you still have more or less belief in them and follow them. Thus instead of raising your eyes to the golden sunlight, and breathing the spiritual effluence flowing from our day-star, your eyes are directed into the subconscious regions of your own minds, where the ghosts of the past still abide and enslave you: ghosts of many kinds -- religious ghosts, philosophical ghosts, scientific ghosts, social ghosts -- the astral-mental remnants of things that have been and which you still permit to enslave you, and to govern your conduct not only as between man and man, but in nearly all things that compose our average human life. Now, as regards spooks, why should I waste time in telling you what the theosophical wisdom of the ages has long, long, long since probed, turned inside out, and thus exposed to the understanding of any intelligent student? It is the testimony of universal history that men when they die leave behind themselves in the astral world these pale simulacra -- copies, images, of the physical vital men who were -- and these images remain in those dim and shadowy astral realms until these images themselves fade out, exactly as the physical body contemporaneously dissolves into its elemental dust. This takes place after the starry spirit has fled from the astral image or eidolon, that starry spirit which gave the living men all the spiritual and intellectual energy and force that they had, all the sublime and inspiriting ideas that those men had when alive on earth, ideas of great spiritual and intellectual value and power; for it was those ideas which shook the world of the time and made and unmade civilizations. All this nobler spiritual part finally abandons these astral images of the men that were, leaving behind therefore but the pale and bloodless shadows -- shadows, as the ancients truly called them, which have no power except that of astral-physical and moral infection. They can infect but automatically, much in the same way as a rotten apple in a barrel of apples can infect and spoil the other apples in the barrel. Their mere presence when sought and entertained is productive of repulsive effects on living men. But nature takes good care of all these things when not interfered with by man's over-inquisitive and curious appetite for sensation; and if these astral eidola are left strictly alone, and man turns while alive on earth to the spiritual energies within his being and cultivates these energies -- I mean to these spiritual faculties which I have just told you make men great, and inspire them, and which form the spiritual essence of their being -- then these repulsive astral corpses or images have no effect upon the living, and indeed are repelled.

But it is not of these astral ghosts of dead men that I wish to speak. As the novelist says: That is a story which can be told on some other occasion. Our world today is a ghost-ridden world. Men and women today believe in theories and things, philosophical, religious, and scientific, that the leaders of human thought have abandoned as outworn, as at the very best only half-truths or a series of half-truths. But the average man today is hardly cognizant of this fact, and consequently he still uses the books that were printed in the time of our fathers, or indeed copies the ideas and theories more or less fully that were contained in the books that were printed in the time of our fathers, and uses these new editions as textbooks in schools and universities. These theories and outworn ideas are therefore truly ghosts that nobody now believes in -- no one, I mean, of the great leaders, the real thinkers, of the human race. These mental and emotional ghosts are of many kinds, philosophical and religious and scientific and social and whatnot. Conservatism in some cases is an excellent thing; it functions as a rein on too hasty an acceptance of newer fads and theories; and contrariwise new thinking also in most cases is an excellent thing, because it is usually the result of a vision; but I have known cases where men have driven an automobile over a precipice because they thought they saw a vision of a clear road before them; and I have known of other cases when men have refused to accept a truth, a vision of actuality, because they had their faces turned to the past -- actually worshiping ghosts of dead and outworn ideas. I mean by a ghost a once living belief which has been rejected by the greatest thinkers of the human race, which is discarded by them, and nevertheless which is still taught as a living truth by the rank and file of other men. There is a whole series of religious and philosophical and scientific beliefs today which are taught, taught in your universities and colleges and high schools, and indeed in the lower grades also, and which are beliefs which have been discovered to be untrue or at best only adumbrations of truths, and which the leaders of thought have rejected either in whole or in part. These are the ghosts that I want to talk to you about this afternoon. Part of my duty as a theosophical teacher is to awaken men to the real things of life, to those things which pass not but endure, and which, marvelously enough, are things that have a life which is everlasting. Such real factors in human existence which are perpetually true and perpetually inspiring are brotherhood, compassion, love, kindliness, forgiveness, peace, altruism. These remain always the same. They pass not nor do they ever die. But all other theories and fancies and fads and so-called facts die that are not in that starry class; and these starry inspirations in our minds are the reflected energies of the deathless spirit within us, the sublime teachings of our own inner god which we receive in the quiet when the mind is still, and in the silence of our fevered emotional nature. It is a change in men's hearts that is required today, and this change is the easiest thing to accomplish, and yet the most difficult! This is a paradox. It is the easiest thing to accomplish because recognition of these starry spiritual energies of our being is native to us and comes stealing into our consciousness when we pause and reflect; and yet one of the most difficult things to do because so few men seek the silent places of the soul and thus learn to think clearly and consecutively. I do not know anything else except theosophy that has a shadow of a chance to achieve this change of human hearts and minds, and I say this for the following reasons: theosophy has, first, no dogmatic beliefs which must be accepted whether one is convinced or not of their truth. Our eyes are always turned to the Mystic East for a new light on old truths and facts; and it is marvelous how often theosophists find that we have already discovered this new light in our sublime theosophical teachings. Theosophists are always on the lookout for a new aspect of an old truth that we already have. Next, our appeal is to brotherhood: our appeal is to men sincerely to love each other, truly to help each other, and this is not vapid sentimentality at all, but a recognition of a fundamental characteristic of our being; and hence our appeal is for men to treat other men as brothers; and, mark you, this does not mean falling on each others' necks and slobbering there. A brother can be stern with a brother if the need be, but sternness in right and truth and for a high principle does not mean cruelty. It means working for justice, it means labor in the paths of right.

There are many kinds of ghosts that you are psychologized with today -- I repeat, many kinds of ghosts - theories and doctrines and fads and fancies and ideas that are no longer living, but are dead, most of them being the beliefs and teachings and doctrines of our fathers, the scientific doctrines of our fathers, for instance, of fifty years ago and of one hundred years ago, which comprised the scientific materialism of our fathers which is still taught in your schools, changed somewhat it may be in some respects, but nevertheless still taught in its elements. It is in this atmosphere of a scientific past that your children are still brought up, and consequently their minds are distorted and perverted and set and crystallized in outworn beliefs; although today our greatest thinkers are telling you that that scientific materialism of the past is dead, because it was untrue. The situation is serious, for the world today is shaking, is trembling, on the edge of a moral abyss, due to the false religious and scientific and philosophical teaching of the last three or four hundred years, and the only thing that will save the situation is a change in men's hearts, and this change can come about only with the coming of a new vision of reality. Without a vision of truth the people perish. The Occidental world today has placed its scientific beliefs in the forefront of its civilization, and in most cases these scientific beliefs mean the outlived beliefs of fifty years ago, except for the enlightened few who have followed with intelligent mind and opening heart the latest discoveries, and deductions from those discoveries, made by the greatest of our scientific researchers. Many of the scientific beliefs still taught in our schools and still permeating our thought-atmosphere are based wholly or in part on materialistic beliefs that have been abandoned by the greatest scientists themselves. I intend to read to you this afternoon two or three quotations from eminent scientific men which will prove to you what I have just said. I have made this statement frequently before about the world still generally believing in an outworn scientific materialism, and after making such remarks I have sometimes received notes asking: "Why did you say that? Do you mean to say that our great educators do not know any more than to feed our children an intellectual pabulum of dead beliefs which have been openly abandoned by those in the forefront of scientific research?" And my answer is, YES! That is just what is done, and it is high time that earnest voices be raised to expose the facts, and to state the truth, before it is too late. Men's minds have been distorted. They have been taught that they are but overgrown beasts. They have been taught that the universe is uncaused by any spiritual energy, that it has been fortuitously built, and is proceeding in a crazy galloping race towards -- what? Nobody ever really answered that question. The average man of today does not know what the greatest scientific leaders of today are teaching: that the universe is ensouled, that it is a living organism, a living entity, and that mind -- or, as theosophists say, minds, in the plural -- is the instigating and inspiriting energy which has built the Universe as it is, and thus makes of it an understandably evolving entity. That is in substance what the greatest scientific thinkers today are teaching; but the average of mankind still believes in the mental ghosts of what is now a dead past. A truer knowledge, as followed by the scientific leaders, has not yet seeped into the common consciousness of mankind; and it is high time that this newer knowledge were broadcast over the earth, for it will unquestionably be a saving power in the emotional and psychological turmoil in which the world is struggling today. I tell you that our civilization is drifting, and drifting fast, towards a moral abyss, and only a real knowledge of the essential spiritual nature of mankind and of the universe will save it from not only an ethical but a social and physical catastrophe of worldwide proportions. It is ghosts, the psychological infections derived from believing in ghosts of dead or worn out beliefs, which are the main causes of the troubles in the world today. Arthur Stanley Eddington, F. R. S., Plumian Professor of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, in his Swarthmore Lecture of 1929, printed in that year in a small book entitled Science and the Unseen World, has the following interesting comments to make, among a number of other thoughtful observations:

I have already said that science is no longer disposed to identify reality with concreteness. Materialism in its literal sense is long since dead. But its place has been taken by other philosophies which represent a virtually equivalent outlook. The tendency today is not to reduce everything to manifestations of matter -- since matter now has only a minor place in the physical world -- but to reduce it to manifestations of the operation of natural law. By 'natural law' is here meant laws of the type prevailing in geometry, mechanics, and physics, which are found to have this common characteristic -- that they are ultimately reducible to mathematical equations. . . . It is probably true that the recent changes of scientific thought remove some of the obstacles to a reconciliation of religion with science; but this must be carefully distinguished from any proposal to base religion on scientific discovery. For my own part I am wholly opposed to any such attempt. Briefly the position is this. We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness -- the one center where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations (true or false) than those conditioned by the world of symbols. Are not these too of significance? -- pp. 50 and 73 Indeed, these other stirrings, these other revelations, are verily highly significant. Reduced to its elements, what does this ultramodern scientific teaching mean? It means that the world that the physical senses apprise us a little of is but a small part of the universe, and the least part; that the greater is within; that the real world is the spiritual side of life -- that which is behind the physical veil of existence, which works through that physical veil, and which we see around us as manifesting its invisible powers in producing all the phenomena of being. Theosophists have taught this for many, many years, and have spoken of the invisible worlds, the invisible worlds and spheres, which are the real living inner causes of things; and furthermore we have always taught that the universe is filled full with gods, cosmic spirits, call them by what name you will - divine beings, thinking, conscious, sentient entities -- which furnish the motivating and driving power of the universe of which our physical sense apparatus gives us only a relatively insignificant and quite imperfect report. These teachings are ancient, archaic, but nevertheless everlasting because they are true. They are not mental ghosts, not some man's or a number of men's beliefs, outworn and now dead but still exercising their infecting sway over the hearts and minds of later generations. So far as our modern world is concerned, a new vision has come to our scientific researchers: they are beginning to dream dreams of reality, and to see visions of truth. In these days a theosophical speaker can publicly express almost any part of the theosophical philosophy, because men's minds are more open than they used to be. The time was when we pointed out the dangers of what is now popularly called hypnotism, and then the wise public smiled or laughed, as the case was, at the stupidity of the lecturing theosophist in believing in such superstitions; but we nevertheless taught and taught and taught, and kept on teaching and pointed out that just because there was this power -- and I am using this merely as an example of many, many instances -- just because there is this power latent in all men, which those who have become conscious of it can exercise upon their fellow men, therefore is it a real danger; and in the wrong use of any human faculty or power there lies a heavy ethical responsibility. One of the ghosts of the past is the idea of "rights: I stand for my rights!" A constant and unfailing repetition of this otherwise proper phrase has become nauseating. Where do you hear men today speak of "My duties, my obligations"? You hear it only in the cases of a few illuminated and kindly-hearted men who have freed themselves from that ghost of the past -- the ghost of "my rights!" and who have come to realize a far greater and nobler ideal of being true to one's obligations, to one's duties. The entire civilization of the Occident is builded on the basis of the idea of "my rights!" and we have almost lost any thought that so one-sided an ideal can be naught else than the fertile mother of selfishness and ultimate social disintegration, because every man thinks of his rights, and looks upon his duties as something to escape from if possible. All this means a lack of social coherence, and unless

checked will in time bring about the downfall of the one-sided but proud fabric of Occidental civilization. Think of your duties, ponder over your obligations. There is a noble manhood in this conception and a clothing of the human being with a spiritual and intellectual dignity. Remember that other men are like you, my brothers; and if you get this idea and follow it out faithfully, in time they will think like you too. Don't you see that in getting this other and nobler vision you won't need to talk of your individual rights? In such case nobody will ever infringe them or will desire to. Let brotherhood and the sense of individual obligation towards others become understood and faithfully followed of men, accompanied with kindliness of feeling and kindliness of spirit, and then nobody will ever desire to attack your rights. Think what a heaven human life would be if we could shake off that one ghost of the past, and honorable and thinking men today realized more keenly their duties to each other, their obligations to each other and to the human race! Then all your disturbing and fevered political questions would die a natural death. These are the most ghastly ghosts of all, the most unreal things, the most stupid, because the most artificial. You cannot legislate men into being good. Do you think that by changing your government you are going to change men's hearts? What will make our civilization endure, my Brothers, is a change in the heart of each one of you and a telling to others of the change in your heart. Then all your problems will solve themselves, and indeed there will no longer be any such problems to solve. Everybody will be safe and everybody will be truly happy, and men's faces will be set forwards, seeing a vision of the future, instead of doing as men now do, looking backwards into the past, and thus being infected by the mental ghosts of the past with its outworn and shaky ideals. I am wondering how many of you have really got my idea? I believe however that most of you have seized it and I am glad; and I believe this because I see the light of understanding and sympathy in your eyes and showing in your faces. Some people don't like to move mentally; it hurts them to change their ideas. They prefer to suck in ghosts with every mental breath that they breathe, rather than to breathe the golden sunshine, the golden light, of enduring truth which is so native to the human soul and appeals with an appeal which receives so quick and ready an answer in our hearts. These people make me think of a story that I read today of a Negro preacher, a story written by Mr. Irvin S. Cobb. I brought it over to the Temple to read to you this afternoon. I have never been able properly to tell a story, so instead of trying to tell you it, I am going to read it to you. If I told this story, you would laugh at me -- you would not laugh at the story. So I prefer to read it. This story cleverly shows how disinclined a certain type of people are to change their ideas. Here is the story: It would seem that down on a Georgia plantation an aged Negro preacher took for his text, on a certain Sunday morning, a passage out of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. Warming to his theme, he gave his own version of the Creation. He then told how the earth and the heavens above the earth and the waters beneath had been fashioned from nothingness by the Divine Will within the span of a single week. By such stages he arrived at the beginning of the recorded history of our original Grandparent. "Den come Adam!" he shouted, "Adam, he wuz de fust man. God made Adam out of mud. Yas, suh; jes grab a han'ful of mud an' squooze hit togither an' dar wuz Mister Adam, all complete. But de mud wuz soft lak an' he wuz still damp. So God taken an' sot him up ag'inst de fence to dry, an' --" From the rear of the meeting-house arose an interrupting voice: "Who made de fence?" For not the fraction of a second did the pastor hesitate. "Put dat fella out of dis church!" he ordered. "Put him out an' mek him stay out. Sich questions ez dat is would destroy all de theology in de world!" Now, doesn't this neat little story cleverly illustrate one kind of the mental ghosts that I have been talking to you about? This story illustrates the kind of mental ghost, my Brothers, that infected men's minds so badly that they deluged the soil of some European battlefields during the Middle Ages with human blood: the kind of ghosts which built the torture chamber of the Middle Ages, and only the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace know how many human hearts were broken in those

times, due to the mental infection caused by these ghosts of egoism, intolerance, and hate. Such ghosts as these are very dangerous, for they infect men's hearts and poison their minds, and thus lead to inhuman and despicable actions. It won't do to say: "I don't care what a man believes, provided that he acts decently." I tell you that I do care a great deal what men believe, for what men believe is the cause of what they do and what they build or of what they destroy. I want men to be generous, kindly, uplooking, brotherly, open-hearted, open-minded, utterly incapable of raising a hand against a fellow human being. It matters a great deal to me what my brother humans believe; and I am going to try to change their beliefs as much as I can, not by instilling more mental ghosts into their minds, but by an appeal to their hearts, by an appeal to their intellect, not to believe merely as I do and to think merely as I do, but to think for themselves, to cast away the mental ghosts that they still harbor in their minds, and which are vampirizing the best life out of them -- religious ghosts, scientific ghosts, ghosts of philosophy, social ghosts, all kinds of ghosts. The amazing revolution that is taking place in scientific thought today I look upon as one of the saving graces of our time. The scientists today -- that is to say the greatest men of them, the leaders of them -are more truly religious than many professional religionists are who are all too often psychologized by ghosts of the type that the Negro preacher in the little story was psychologized by. These great-minded ultramodern scientific discoverers are beginning to sense the oneness of their own spirit with universal being. They sense the one cosmic life pulsing through all things both great and small. These great men of science are beginning to realize with both heart and mind that they are the children of the universe, entities inseparable from it because they are blood of its blood and bone of its bone and life of its life, so to speak; and in time they will reach the keen realization of the fundamental doctrine of theosophy, of the ancient wisdom, that in every human being, in fact in every entity, all that is in the boundless universe is and lives and works in every such component inseparable part of that Universe. The part cannot be different in essence from the whole. This is an archaic theosophical teaching. I have spoken of it here from this platform on almost every Sunday afternoon when I have had the pleasure of speaking to you; and these modern, ultramodern, scientific thinkers and researchers are now themselves beginning to understand this sublime conception. It is truly a vision sublime. They are getting entirely new ideas of the structure of the universe and of the substance of the universe. The universe to them is becoming an entirely different thing to study from what it was conceived to be in the days of our fathers; and our scientists are enabled to do this because they are freeing themselves from the dominance of mental ghosts -- the outworn beliefs and thoughts and ideas of the past. I call your attention to the latest scientific discoveries and researches not so much as regards the deductions drawn from these discoveries but more particularly as to what these discoveries and deductions point to. They are full of promise for the future. In most cases the fundamental ideas of them are very familiar to theosophists, teaching as we do the wisdom-religion of mankind, knowing as we do that every human being is an incarnate god, an imbodied divinity, albeit feebly manifesting its transcendent powers through the mind, through the mere human brain. Yet from this divinity within each one of us comes all that is worthwhile in the human being, all that is enduring, all that lasts throughout time. Why not ally yourselves with this divine entity within you? It means immortality for you! Do you get the idea? When you have so allied yourself self-consciously with your inner god then you are one of those sublime beings whom theosophists speak of as the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, consciously and at will living from age to age; and I may point out to you that the traditions of all humanity tell us of the existence of these great men. But until that full alliance with your inner god comes, you can at least obtain some gleams, some glimmers, of the vision sublime, and gain the peace of heart and the quiet of the spirit which are a treasure greater than the contents of all earth's material treasure-houses. No one can take this treasure from you, no one can steal it away or destroy it. It will live in you and with you forever.

Such great men are the men who truly rule the world, whose ideas change civilizations. They can do this because they have seen the vision sublime and realize their oneness in faculty and in power with the cosmic life. Professor Jorgensen of Copenhagen, in a recent address at the International Congress of Philosophy held in Oxford, England, this September stated that recent advances in the physical sciences had brought about "radical changes in -- or rather destruction of -- current opinions about the world in two or three fundamental respects: in respect of the structure of the world, in respect of the stuff of the world, and -according to some thinkers -- in respect of the reality of the world." This "destruction of current opinions" is an outstanding example in point of what I have been talking to you about concerning the overthrowing of mental ghosts with which our minds have been filled and which have misguided us, for all old opinions are ghosts -- unless indeed such opinions belong to the class of thinking which is harmonious with nature's own inner processes. How close does Professor Jorgensen in these remarks approach to our theosophical thought! Think over what his words mean: a complete rejection not merely of the scientific teachings of our fathers -- mental ghosts that your children are too often being taught today, changed a bit it may be, but yet the same ghosts -- but they mean an entirely new outlook on, and an entirely new insight into, the universe, and signify that the so-called material universe is but a sporadic phenomenon in the cosmic spaces, and that the great reality resides in the so-called emptiness of cosmic space. Do you get the idea? To us, to our physical sense apparatus, space is seemingly empty; but yet it is our theosophical teaching that space is packed full with living things, living entities, invisible to us, intangible by sense, but containing all the worthwhile part of the universe, in other words the invisible and spiritual realms of cosmic being. The scientists now are not only questioning, but in large degree have changed their views regarding the stuff of the universe, and also their views as to how that universe is builded, in other words its structure; and they are even asking, as the ancient philosophers of Hindustan did many, many thousands of years ago: Is the physical world a reality, or an illusion? And their answer is: illusion. It is mostly spaces, holes: a thing called matter built up of molecules, formed of atoms; and these atoms are most apparently empty spaces, little worlds with relatively as much distance between electron and electron in an atom as there is between planet and planet in our solar system. So where is your seemingly dense, compact, and everlasting material world? It is an illusion. Yet man, with his penetrating mind, with his intuitive spirit, with his inquisitive intellect, is slowly more and more penetrating behind the veil, drawing the veil away; and in doing so he is beginning to see the vision of reality -- a vision so new to your Occident, yet so ancient to universal human thought. Thank the immortal gods, therefore, that the ghosts of the past are dying. Let the dead past bury its dead, and let us turn to the golden sunlight of truth. And now Sir Oliver Lodge, a great scientist indeed, has this to say: We have concentrated too much upon matter, and attended too little to the possibilities of space. Already science is discovering that all activity, all energy, all spontaneity, is to be traced to the properties possessed by what we call empty space, and that the matter that appeals to our senses is a comparatively trivial interruption of its continuity, with a function purely demonstrative. The atoms of matter show what is going on in space. They have no initiative of their own, are pushed hither and thither, and take the path of least resistance. All the genuine activity has hitherto eluded us. We have been studying pointer-readings, and are only now beginning to realize the immensity of the powers which move those pointers and bring about all the phenomena, some of which we are familiar with and others that so far only a few believe in. The real fact is that we are in the midst of a spiritual world; that it dominates the material. It constitutes the great and omnipresent reality, whose powers we are only beginning to realize, whose properties and functions exhaust all our admiration. They might indeed be terrifying had we not been assured for our consolation that these tremendous energies are all controlled by a beneficent . . . power whose name is Love. In that faith, we can face any destiny that may befall us in the infinite future.

Now, on the whole, these are really splendid words. They show a vision -- a bit of that vision sublime of which I have spoken to you so often. But what does the deduction mean that we are compelled to draw from his words? It means that men have been ghost-believers, worshipers of ghosts, followers of dead things, of unreal things, and worst of all that men have been sacrificing on the altar of their hearts to what they thought was truth and which is turning out to be mental ghosts coming out of the past. Therefore change your viewpoint. Get the new vision. That vision is already in you. All that prevents your seeing this vision of reality and getting the conviction of this natural truth is simply the false deductions, the scientific and religious and philosophical ghosts, mental ghosts, derived from the teachings and books of the last two or three generations. Reach out and seize the idea that you are fundamentally a spiritual entity, each one of you, for that idea is the truth; and once you have this idea, then live accordingly. Live accordingly, I say! In fact, once that idea comes home to your hearts and minds, you will long to live accordingly, and you will quickly find out what living accordingly will bring to you. It will bring the vision of truth to you. This vision of truth will come quickly to you then, because your nature will have become harmoniously adjusted with the universe. There will be synchronous vibration, to use a popular expression, between you and the universe in which you live, and of which you are an integral and inseparable part. This synchronous vibration will produce the vision within you. Furthermore you will get powers. Yes, I repeat it: powers. The same tempting bait with which you, my Brothers, have been tempted by every itinerant mystical or quasi-mystical lecturer on a public platform. But these powers that I speak of ye never can misuse, for they are cosmic powers: they are powers which will enable you to rise along the ladder of evolution more rapidly than otherwise ye could have gone. Ye will gain vision, clairvoyance of the spirit, ability to see behind the material veil into the very operations of natural being around you. A single abuse of these powers means loss of them, for abuse of these wondrous powers arises out of a selfish hunger for personal gain, and such self-seeking is constrictive and condenses the garments of the soul around the soul, thus making the veils of selfhood thicker than they were before; and these spiritual powers come only -- can come only -- when the nature of the aspirant expands and opens to the rays of the god within, and these rays are in fact the fundamental energies which produce faculty and power. I hope that you understand this. You will also gain the faculty of spiritual clairaudience. I have spoken of these matters to you before, and I desire briefly to repeat them again today. It is properly called spiritual clairaudience, because having this faculty ye will be able to hear with the inner ear things at a far distance -- or close at hand -as the case may be. This power also ye never can abuse, because a single attempt to abuse it, a single attempt to misuse it, will mean loss of it, for such abuse is a gratification of a hunger for personal selfish gain, and that again means constriction and brings about the conditions that I have just spoken of; and ye can get this power only by expanding and opening your being as in the preceding case. I choose my words carefully because I am trying to present a clear-cut picture to your minds. Other powers: powers for instance enabling you to leave your physical encasement, the body, and to go with your self-consciousness and your will to other parts of the earth. Yes, and even to other planets of our solar system, and it may be also to Father Sun; and much more than this, you may win also the ability to enter into the invisible realms and be in them and cognise in them as a self-conscious entity. But if you abuse this power, it means loss of it in its turn. As a matter of fact, you cannot really abuse it, for in the attempt to abuse it ye shall lose it; for such an attempt to abuse means a gathering of selfish veils around yourself, which is constriction, binding, closing in, shutting up; and this power can come only from expansion of consciousness, from self-forgetfulness, from an opening and broadening of the inner being -- becoming cosmic or quasi-cosmic, in other words. Do you get the idea? A question: If I asked a man to tell me how I could reach Chicago, and he said to me: "Oh, take any road you wish, whichever appeals to you most," I would think either that he did not have the information I wished, or that there was no such city. But we hear would-be teachers nowadays frequently give the same advice

when asked to be shown the road to wisdom, to truth. "Follow any teacher, study any philosophy," they say, "whatever pleases you most; it is not necessary to follow any particular one." Question: Is not this a tacit acknowledgment on their part that they do not believe there is one fundamental truth in the universe, and that all we can do is to make the best of a bad job? A great many people think along the line of the preliminary observations to this question, and I am convinced that they are utterly wrong. I also would say that I have found this idea to be a very common one, and there actually are men and women today who pride themselves on having this notion, and think that it is a duty to propagandize it, saying to others: "Oh, do anything you like. Follow any path. All roads lead to Rome. All roads lead to Chicago." I think the reason why this idea is so popular is because it is so plausible and easy to understand. But plausibility and ease in understanding an idea are no proof of its worth. I do not believe in this idea. I do not see anything in it that is helpful, that is really worthwhile, or that shows even ordinary reflection or common good sense. For my part, I know perfectly well that there is always a better road than the one that any man may be following, and that in a general way we may say that there is also always a best. Yes, I think that the questioner is quite right in supposing that such an idea is a tacit acknowledgment that the people who utter this idea disbelieve in any fundamental truth in the universe and also disbelieve that there is a pathway by which that truth may be reached. If you are asked by some passing tourist: "I beg your pardon. Will you kindly tell me the shortest road to San Diego?" would you say in answer: "Oh, take any road, any road will lead there"? You would be misleading him. If a person comes to me and says, and I feel the pathetic plea of his heart: "Can you help me? My heart wearies of the world, of its sadness, of its pain. I have suffered. I want peace." And if I were to answer that man: "Surely, study anything you like in order to gain peace; any study will lead you to its acquirement," I would not merely be lying to him, but betraying my trust as a teacher. There is a path to wisdom, my Brothers, which is also a path to peace and a path to truth. Does anyone doubt it? When you hear the babel of voices around you, and your ears are afflicted at every street corner with leather-lunged proclamations and declamations and acclamations, and all promising an easy path to achievement, what are you going to do? Are you going to listen to every voice and follow each one after the other and thus achieve naught but a running of circles around yourself? You would be very foolish if you did this. On the contrary I tell you: look within, look into your own heart and your heart will tell you that there is a secret way to peace and to wisdom and to truth. Now, my Brothers, I can show you that path. As a theosophical teacher I can give you the same answer that theosophical teachers have always given: "Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest and wisdom and peace." I will show you the pathway leading to wisdom, to inner happiness, and to achievement; but I cannot tread that pathway for you, I can merely point out where that path lies, and show you how to begin to tread it. You yourself must reach that path and thereafter must tread it alone. So much I can do. Remember also that this is not my truth, it is the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, formulated by the titanic seers of the human race, and of this wisdom I have given to you this afternoon but a tiny fragment. I can do so much because I have studied, because I myself have been taught, and therefore I stand in duty bound to give to others what I myself have learned. Don't trust me merely because I tell you this, but trust your own intuition as to the truth of what I tell you. This is my first word to you: Don't trust me because I am I, but take everything that I lay before you and examine it carefully and minutely. If you find it good, then hold to it until you discover a greater good. I can show you that wondrous path. I will most emphatically not tell you that any philosophy is good enough, that any mental discipline is good enough! I am not a fool and I will not betray your confidence in acting in that wise. There is always a better road, better than the last road followed, and beyond the better there is always a still better and a best. I have found that road or pathway, and I can show you how you may find it. I can do

no more. I cannot grow for the growing child; I cannot eat for my friend; I cannot understand for him. He himself must grow; he himself must eat; he himself must understand. But I can show him where he can find understanding, where he can learn how to grow, and I can point out to him the Master's table where the feast lies spread. Now, in closing: Every human creature -- every man, every woman -- is, in the core of the core of his being, or her being, a divinity. In the Christian New Testament this is spoken of under the saying: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of the divine, and that the spirit of the divine dwelleth in you?" But theosophists give much more point and definiteness to this teaching. We learn that every one of us is in the inmost of his being a god. We live in a spiritual universe, composed of many inner realms, planes, spheres; and the physical sphere on which we are dwelling at present is but one inn on the journey of life, one resting-house; for, as the Christian New Testament again so truly and mystically says: "In my Father's house are many mansions." This inner god of you is all there is of you that is worth anything of enduring value. All the rest of you is composite and will ultimately decay. You can become acquainted with yourself, with your spiritual self. "Man, know thyself," said the Greek god Apollo from his Oracle at Delphi. There is a world of wisdom in this injunction. You can become acquainted with yourself, and thereafter enter into bliss unspeakable, you can learn how to gain and to use spiritual powers which will make you master of life and of death, and you can become a savior and a benefactor of your fellow men if you will. To me my audiences always seem to be audiences of imbodied divinities. I feel as if I were standing on Olympus, and talking to the gods, for I see not merely these human faces before me, but I sense also the inner spiritual glory shining through them. Oh, my Brothers, when you come to have the insight, to realize the feeling that when you look upon your fellow humans you see them as imbodied gods, then you will have a peace of heart and mind which are beyond expression in words, and you will also feel your heavy responsibility as a teacher. Each one of you being an imbodied god, my Brothers, why not ally yourselves with this deathless part of you? Why not enter into this beauty, into this sublimity, into this lofty life? You can do so if you will. Ally yourself with the immanent Christ within your being, as the modern mystical Christian puts it; become the inner Buddha, as theosophists phrase it. But in any case, become one with the god within you -- and then live grandly, live to benefit mankind. There is no such peace on earth, there is no such happiness, as the feeling of doing good to others. The very urge of the god within you impels you to do this; and for you who so act it will ultimately win you deathlessness, for you will then have allied yourselves self-consciously with the shining god at the core of your being.

Second Series: No. 13 (December 1, 1930)

THE MYSTICAL STORY OF JESUS

(Lecture delivered October 5, 1930) CONTENTS: The Christian New Testament and its imagined source of inspiration. -- The Christian attitude towards people of past ages. -- The prevailing uncertainty of the authorship of the Gospels. -Was Christianity only a religious hoax? -- The so-called Apocryphal Gospels. -- Was Jesus only a solar myth? -- The meaning of the word Christos. -- Were the peoples of ancient times forsaken by the great ones? -- Insane warrings over the meanings of words. -- There is an esoteric story about Jesus. -- Many Jesuses in Jewish history. -- Interpretation of the story of Jesus and Barabbas. -- The Hebrew words Bnei Yisael or "Sons of Israel." -- Are you spiritually dying? -- The fallacy of a modern school of materialistic philosophy. -- Are theosophists unchristian? -- Can the less become the greater? -- An amazing misunderstanding of ancient esoteric teachings. -- The heart of the sun is a cosmic divinity. -For those who await a "Coming Christ." -- Behold the light on the mountains of the Mystic East. I have the intention of briefly talking to you about Jesus! You may ask me: What do you know about him? And to that I could give a ready and perhaps satisfactory answer. But do you realize that it is only within recent years that such a question as this one has ever been asked with any degree of moderation of feeling? European people used to take the documents which form the Christian New Testament, these documentary books which we now know to be of varied value and of different type, and study them with the idea that they were dictated by the Spirit of Almighty God, written with full inspiration of the Holy Ghost; and that the authorized English version or translation of them -- and doubtless the other translations in other European tongues -- were due to the plenary inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Hence it so happened that what each European reader found in these books composing the Christian New Testament was supposed by him to be indeed the word of God Almighty, infinitely accurate and truthful, and divinely given to the men of earth some two thousand years agone more or less; and that till the time of this divine gift the entire human race had been virtually uncared for spiritually, except for those more or less intuitive feelings and thoughts which were implanted by the almighty creative power in the human soul, in the human consciousness, and in the human mind. Within a short time after the alleged crucifixion of the Master Jesus -- at any rate from the time when the Christian scriptures began to have circulation in the Mediterranean world -- and all through the Middle Ages and till nearly our own days -- men quarreled and fought about the documents composing the Christian New Testament, not only with regard to just what these documents had to say, but about mere words and phrases, and also as regards their age, and as regards who wrote these various Christian scriptures; and even today nobody knows anything positive, real, and certain about them, although many clever and learned theories had been emitted and had been accepted as true because of utter lack of positive proof. Now, consider what all this means. Men do not know the exact date when the four Gospels were written, nor the exact date when the Book of Acts was composed, nor the exact date when the various Epistles were written and sent forth, nor when the last Book called the Apocalypse was composed, supposedly by St. John on the Isle of Patmos. Some humorous skeptics have said that John must have partaken rather freely of underdone lobster the evening before writing this Book, or of some other indigestible food, and that the result of this physiological state was the Apocalypse called the Book of Revelations. We may smile at this humorous and rather unkind criticism, but perhaps it has had its effect in destroying the hard dogmatic spirit, so unkind, so unbrotherly, which afflicted men so sorely till very recently. Even today I say, nobody knows anything about the writers of these various scripts or scriptures as they are called. Nobody knows who wrote them; nobody knows when they were written; and furthermore nobody knows if the things recorded in these New Testament Books were true, or about the mystical aspirational feeling of those who wrote them down. Consider also what Christianity has been for nigh upon eighteen hundred years, a religion of vigorous dogmatic propaganda, a religion teaching certain very definite and strict doctrines of faith which one must believe at the peril of his supposedly immortal soul.

Now, in view of the almost complete darkness of ignorance enshrouding the origins and writers of these mystical scriptures, what are we to conclude therefrom? Was Christianity only a religious hoax, a cruel and diabolic hoax, perpetrated upon the entire Western world? Some people have said so. Theosophists do not teach anything like that; but nevertheless what our teaching is concerning these matters is very different indeed from what the orthodox theologians teach and have taught. For hundreds and hundreds of years it was almost forgotten except perhaps by the theological learned few that in the early days of Christianity, in the times of primitive Christianity, there were many more than the four Gospels which now are accepted as the canonical -- several more than the one Book of Acts which now finds place in the accepted Christian New Testament -- many more than the Epistles which presently are found in the collection of writings called the New Testament. We know that at the very least there were something like 24 or 25 different Gospels which are now called apocryphal, also Epistles galore, and many Books of Acts -- Gospels and Epistles and Acts of all kinds emitted and circulated by the various primitive or early Christian sects. They are called apocryphal or doubtful merely because they do not now belong to the present Canon of accepted scriptures, and yet scholars know full well that these so-called apocryphal writings were in their times considered canonical by those who accepted them and used them. When did Jesus live? When was he born? Did he ever live in fact? Was he a myth? If so, was he a solar myth so called, a mere mythical figure which certain students and scholars of skeptical mind have supposed to be the true explanation of the figure of that sublime entity whose lineaments scholars dimly perceive on the horizons of primitive Christianity? The answers to those questions are still unfound and still occupy the attention of not a small army of scholars and students; but behind all the cloud of uncertainty and the dust of conflicting opinions, through all the ages since Jesus later called the Christ came and taught his fellow men, through all and behind all this we nevertheless discern the sublime figure of a great teacher -- not the only great teacher in the annals of history, say theosophists, but nevertheless a grand and sublime teacher of men, his heart full of love and pity for erring mankind, and who passed his life upon earth in instilling elevating teachings into men's hearts and minds, and who finally passed away, according to the Gospel theory, by suffering the death penalty of crucifixion. Was he indeed crucified or was he not? Here again, while most scholars believe he was crucified, we are obliged to say "nobody really knows." Who indeed was Jesus? Nobody really knows. There is not one single, definite, conclusive, and proving answer to the questions that I have just placed before you -- not a single answer which is known to be a certainty. Nevertheless, theosophists teach that there did indeed live, shortly before the beginning of what is now called the Christian era, a great seer and sage later called Jesus the Christos.

Christos is a Greek word which means one who has been anointed. This is a direct reference, a direct
allusion, to what happened during the celebration of the ancient Mysteries. Unction or anointing was one of the acts performed during the working of the rites of those ancient Mysteries in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The Hebrew word for an anointed one is Mashiahh, meaning exactly the same thing as the Greek word Christos -- the Anointed. It is of course well known that the Jews were even then expecting and still expect the coming of their Messiah, which is a common way of misspelling the Hebrew word Mashiahh; and the mystical allusion here in this ancient Jewish belief is identical with the mystical and esoteric meaning that the word Christos contained when employed with an allusion to the rites of initiation. Nevertheless the Jews: what have they to say about Jesus? As all the Occidental world knows they have not accepted him as their Messiah or Anointed; although, according to the story as it has come down to us in the Christian scriptures, Jesus was born a Jew, lived among the Jews, and in the Gospel according to Matthew we there find the legend coming from his own mouth, so it is stated, which proclaims: "I come but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." According to the general Christian idea, the Jewish Messiah Jesus came to his people and was rejected by them, and non-Jewish people, the gentiles, heard his message and accepted him and believed in him. This significant fact should arrest our attention, and give us pause for thought. Don't you get the hint already from what I have said that there must be a profound mystical meaning and story behind all this welter of legend and tale and record? Was Jesus the only great seer and sage who

has ever existed, who has ever taught and worked to save his fellow human beings from becoming bond slaves to selfishness and the destructive calls of the world of material existence? No! The annals of human history are full of the records of others, great ones, great sages and seers who came each one in his time and to his own people and taught a doctrine which however much it might have differed in form or in language, contained fundamentally the same identic message. Some of the names of these great ones are very familiar to you: I have often called your attention to them in connections similar to my present theme: Lao-tse and Confucius in China, Krishna and the Buddha in India, Zoroaster in Persia, and in the Greek lands Pythagoras and Empedocles and Plato and Apollonius of Tyana; and heaven knows how many more in other parts of the world. Is it at all conceivable that the spiritual powers that be, which rule and inspirit the universe and infill it with light and life, with guidance and intelligence, of which we human beings are inferior reflections, could exist as they most certainly do, and yet have left the entire human race from its first appearance on earth without spiritual guidance and without spiritual teaching until a certain Jewish boy was born some two thousand years ago? What a limited, insane, and therefore repulsive idea! The ancient doctrine of a god living in the core of the core of every human being tells us in vibrant notes a very different story, for our hearts and minds both, when we consult them apart from prejudices and misconception and miseducation, vibrate with instant sympathy to the theosophical doctrine of the divinity indwelling in the core of every being. How familiar this doctrine of the indwelling god is to our hearts! I tell you in all the earnestness of my soul that in the heart of the heart of every one of you abides a living and inspiriting god, of which you as human beings are the feeble expressions -- feebly manifesting the divine powers of the individual divinity within. What does even the Christian scripture say as to this point: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of the living divinity and that the spirit divine dwelleth within you?" Jesus the Avatara is also said to have taught that every man could become like unto him, and as he did so could they also manifest forth the divine powers within. And instead of accepting this sublime teaching among others of the beautiful doctrines and teachings of spiritual Christianity, men have battled for dogmas, opinions, words, phrases, and theories, so that certain medieval battlefields of European countries flowed with human gore, shed because men quarreled insanely about the meanings of words. How could it be otherwise, my Brothers? Lose the spirit, and ye lose the vision, and in losing the vision ye lose hold of truth and compassion and peace and love and brotherhood. It is to restore to men this vision sublime that The Theosophical Society in our present day was founded, being one of several objectives that we hold so dear to our hearts to achieve. Theosophists say, and say truly, that we bring back to Christians the teaching of the Christ living within -- or to put it otherwise, of the Buddha living within -- each one of you, of the god within each one of you: truly a god living in the inmost of each one of you, for in each case it is a spark of the Divine, of the Most High, dwelling in you and above you, and it also is the very fountain of all your being. Therefore do theosophists say that there is a mystical, an inner and esoteric and true, story about Jesus, which is the true story of him and of his life, and this became esoteric only because it has been forgotten, lost sight of; and this is the story which theosophists study, not only on account of its being a part of our training, but also because we look upon Jesus called the Christ as having been one of the theosophical teachers of his time. Our doctrines tell us of a long line of such teachers stretching far back into the dim mists of antiquity and reaching in inverse direction even to the present day -- a long line of great seers and sages, each of whom had become one with his own inner divinity, with the god within, the immanent Christos, the inner Buddha; and having become so at one with the inner divinity, they knew all necessary knowledge because they saw it, and therefore could they teach, and teach the truth. Yes, some two thousand years or more ago a great sage and seer did live, who in later times was called Jesus the Christ or "the Anointed." Jesus was a common name in the history of the Hebrews. There were many Jesuses among them. The name itself means "Savior" -- one who saves or rescues whether by physical act or by spiritual and moral and intellectual teaching. There were many Jesuses in Jewish history, as I have already told you. Joshua and Jehoshua are two variants of the same name. Let me now turn to an important aspect of the mystical story of Jesus which I think you will find interesting. You will doubtless remember one scene, as it is given in the Christian scriptures, told in all

the four Gospels in various fashion, setting forth how, according to the Christian Gospel story, Jesus, after he was betrayed and when brought before Pilate, received the unconscious homage of that Roman official -- "I see no fault in this man." But as it was the custom of that day, says the Christian narrative, to release a political prisoner to the Jews on the Feast of the Passover, Pilate is stated to have said to the accusers of Jesus: "Whom will ye that I release unto you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called the Christ?" And they said: "Barabbas." Now, here is a very interesting and significant point of the narrative. In some of the old manuscripts of the Christian New Testament the full name of the so-called robber Barabbas is given as Jesus Barabbas. As Jesus means Savior and Barabbas is a compound word which means "son of the father," when we remember that the name of the Christian Savior is given as Jesus and that he also is frequently alluded to in a vague way as the son of a divine father, we find not a little of interest in these mystically significant facts. Do you begin to get my meaning? Do you begin to see the esoteric or mystical light breaking into your minds? "Whom will ye that I release unto you: Jesus, son of the Father, or Jesus whom ye call the Anointed?" -- We have here therefore two Jesuses -- two saviors, because please remember that the word Jesus means "savior." Therefore: whom will ye (according to the esoteric rendering) that I shall release unto you for freedom, although having offended your man-made laws? Jesus, the son of the father -- the inferior part of a human being -- or Jesus the anointed of the divine spirit? And the legend states that the answer was: Barabbas. Give us the man Barabbas. Let me now carry you on a little farther in our mystical story: the entire story of Jesus as given in the Christian New Testament is an esoteric or mystical tale setting forth in mystical form what took place in the initiation-chambers -- initiation as you may know signifying the dying of the lower man, so that the higher nature of the neophyte could thereafter be released, and further that the postulant, when he had finished his three-days' initiation trial, might go forth 'anointed' or as one who had received the unction or anointing in the Mysteries. They took Barabbas, the Jesus Barabbas, the lowest part of the man considered as a human being, and they "crucified" the divinity within -- not a crucifixion according to the Roman way of punishing by hanging on a physical cross until death mercifully came; but the neophyte was taken and laid upon a cruciform couch, a bed in the shape of a cross, and there he lay in a trance for three days and three nights, and thereafter arose as a Messiah, a Christos -- both these words signifying the same thing -- an anointed one. These terms are all esoteric terms, every one of them. Jesus is stated to have said, according to the story in the Gospel, which story is current under the name the Gospel according to Matthew: "I come but unto the lost sheep of Israel." Do you know what this Hebrew word Israel means? It is more accurately written in the Hebrew Yisrael, a word derived from a Hebrew verbal root Sarah, which means "to rule," "to govern," "to command," and also by a connection of sense "to struggle to attain." Consequently, the phrase, the Bnei Yisrael, meaning "the sons of Israel," was a phrase used exactly in the same sense in which the Hindus spoke of the Aryas, meaning the noble, the elevated, the superior, the rulers, as contrasted with the Mlechchhas or inferiors or outcasts; and exactly in the same sense again in which the Greeks spoke of the Aristoi, the aristocrats -- not meaning aristocrats in the modern social sense, but signifying men who were aristocrats in heart and mind, builded by natural evolution to be the better ones, the evolved ones, the superior, the grand men, no matter what their physical birth was; and just as the Hindus spoke of the Mlechchhas, so did the Greeks speak of the Barbaroi, barbarians. In a similar way did the Jews speak of all those who were not Bnei Yisrael as outsiders, or Gentiles, etc. Note also that the alleged statement of Jesus says that he came to teach the "lost sheep" of Israel, mystically signifying those by nature ready for and capable of esoteric training, but who had not yet received it, and therefore were wandering in the outer darkness of material life. I don't want to burden your minds this afternoon with thoughts too recondite and difficult. Yet I am trying to make clear to you at least something of the esoteric or mystical story of Jesus so that you will get at least some ideas of value and worth which you can take away with you, and think over, thus enabling you, if you should be interested in studying the Christian Testament in this newer light, to see something other in the story of Jesus than the mere exoteric words.

I tell you that the story of Jesus is a story of initiation, of what took place in the initiation chambers; and this fact accounts for the inconsistencies and the difficulties and the contradictions and the variations in the various scriptures and in the different manuscript-readings of those scriptures which still exist. This mystical and esoteric tale is a very interesting and a fascinating one, for it was in fact a tale told around the ideal figure of a great Seer and Sage who did indeed live as a man, but who, as a man, was quite different indeed from the esoteric or mystical or mystery-figure discerned as the Jesus of the scriptures. The Jesus of the scriptures is an ideal figure of one represented as having attained quasi-divinity by having passed through the initiatory rites then used in Palestine, and who because of this had become "a son of the spiritual Sun," a son of Father Sun. We can say today in exactly the same way as hinted at a moment ago that men are divided into two classes: first, into those who are spiritually "dead" although alive in the body, the 'living dead' as Pythagoras neatly put it; and, second, into the sons of Israel -- in other words, those who are the naturalborn spiritual rulers of men, or who become such through initiation. Let us also remember that just as the Hindus and the Greeks spoke of themselves as being the "superior" men, the Aryas and the Aristocrats, doubtless partly from motives of racial pride, so the Hebrews in exactly the same way and doubtless from the same motives spoke of themselves generally as being the typical Bnei Yisrael -- the sons of Israel, or the natural rulers or superiors of other men. Such racial or national pride and prejudice is a psychological phenomenon that may be observed in the history of every distinct people or racial strain, and exists even today in the foolish and blind racial or national pride and prejudices with which we are all, alas, so well acquainted. I have given you in the preceding observations, my Brothers, the foundations or key of the esoteric or mystical story of Jesus; and now let me ask the question: Who was Jesus as a matter of fact? A fortnight ago I spoke to you on this last theme, and I tried to answer briefly the question which I propounded: Was Jesus man-god, great seer, or myth? and in answer to my own question I told you that he was what theosophists call an avatara. An avatara is an unusual event in human history. It is a case where a human being in certain unusual circumstances is spiritually linked straitly with one of the gods with whom the universe is filled full, and this human being thus steps down, to use a figure of speech borrowed from electrical practice, the divine flame of this divinity so that he -- the divinity's human vehicle -- may communicate it to his fellow human beings as spiritual and intellectual energy, and who therefore teaches, and teaches with the authority of a divine being. Such an entity was Jesus; but he was not by any means the only avatara who has ever lived. There have been many other avataras in the past history of the world, and there will be many more in the world's future history. Is an avatara the same as the case of a human being who allies himself with his own inner god, with the native spiritual-divine essence within him? It is not, because the latter case produces what theosophists call a buddha -- one who has attained through human birth, after human birth, after human birth, in the age-long battle of self-conquest and achievement, a status of quasi-divinity, and who has verily thus become like a man-god walking the earth: one who has conquered through willpower and spiritual aspiration the Barabbas part of his being, and who therefore has become a much fuller expression of the divinity in the heart of each of us than the average man is. Such is a buddha, but Jesus was not one. Jesus was an avatara; and for a fuller exposition of my meaning I refer you to the printed report of my lecture two Sundays agone. Nevertheless, Jesus also could truly be called a man-god or a god-man because he expressed through his human nature the cosmic divinity with which he was linked in the highest part of his constitution. So far as his physical body was concerned, he was born just as I was born, just as you were born, in the regular and usual way. The part of the mystical story of Jesus which alludes to the virgin birth refers to one of the profound mystical teachings belonging to the same initiatory cycle that I have already spoken to you about this afternoon. This teaching regarding the virgin birth would be too deep a matter to go into at all adequately this afternoon, but I can say that it is strictly connected with the same esoteric or mystical scheme that I have spoken of; and, indeed, one or more of the oldest Christian manuscripts -- the Greek

writings from which the translated Christian scriptures of today come -- plainly state that Joseph was the father of Jesus, thus doing away at a stroke with the wrong idea of the alleged physical virgin birth of the great Jewish avatara. How much grander is the figure of Jesus as an avatara than is the orthodox idea about him! How gloriously human does that strange and sublime being become to us! How humanly divine becomes the sublime figure of Jesus the avatara -- a man, but a man through whom coursed the electric fire and flame of a cosmic divinity, so that through the mind and consciousness and even the body of the avatara Jesus his disciples and those around him who had the eyes to see it could feel and understand that they were in the very presence of a living spiritual fire, one of the living and self-conscious Fires which infill the universe. How suggestive and beautiful this mystical story is! It clothes the figure of Jesus with both spiritual grandeur and human sublimity, and furthermore sets Jesus forth as a grand exemplar or type which all other men can become themselves if they will but follow the pathway leading to the heart of the universe. You men do not know what you have within you! Most men today are spiritually dead -- alive in the body which after a while they will lay down, but during life they are spiritually dead: unmanifesting all the higher part of themselves, afraid even to become compassionate, afraid to give the heart generously in impersonal love, afraid to forgive, afraid to feel grandly. One of the noblest of the objectives of The Theosophical Society, based on one of the most important teachings of theosophy, is to awaken men to the spiritual reality in their souls, to tell them what they have within them, unmanifest, but nevertheless there -- the living and self-conscious god dwelling within the core of the being of each one of you. Where does your intelligence come from? Wherein is your mind rooted? How about the grand feelings which, according to the usual saying of men, flow from the heart? Look at the example of a man who is self-sacrificing. Pause in contemplation of the picture. Is it not a grand and inspiring thing to see? Such a man is self-forgetful to the point of gladly laying down his life for others if the call should come. Is that grand impulse ordinarily and materially human? Consider on the other hand the mad and frenzied rush in our great Occidental cities today, wherein every man is brushing aside his fellows in the frantic scramble for selfish material achievement. They are nearly all doing it, and this accounts for the unholy and unbrotherly battle that we see waged everywhere. These last are not the men who move the world. The men who move the world are the men who think grandly, the men who feel sublimely, who set the example of self-forgetful service for others, and who are ready to live and die for a principle. This last is superhuman, indeed divine. Where does the impulse come from? It comes from the divinity within, within the human soul, and often manifests as an instinct that in that way only lie peace and happiness and the realization of true manhood. Plato was right: it is ideas that rule the world, and ideas come from men, and they come from the great men; and the man who is spending all his energy and time and strength in the frantic scramble for material gains is the man who is losing all the best of his life. Part at least of every man's time should be given to high thought and to noble feeling. You are spiritually dying unless you do that. I mean thought and feeling along high and sublime lines. Otherwise, you are living merely the lives of human beasts engaged in a mad struggle for something that you cannot permanently clutch or keep with you when you die. When the time comes for you to draw up your legs in bed and say good-bye, you will realize that you have wasted a lifetime, that you have, to use the words of the Christians, "laid up no treasures in heaven" and that you leave earth-life poorer than when you came into it. You have deprived yourself of what you should have won; and I think that a man is hugely to be pitied whose heart has never been stirred by an impersonal thought, by a self-forgetful idea. I say with Pythagoras that such a man is one of the living dead. Be the Christ within you -- the Christ-spirit, the immanent Christ, that the mystical Christians of today sometimes speak of. Be the inner Buddha, the god within you, and you will have peace and happiness and you will gain moral strength and attain spiritual power, and your fellow men will sense it all instinctively and know that they stand in the presence of a godlike man. These are the real things in life. All the rest is transitory. I don't say that a man should shun the world and flee into the wilderness -- not at all. His duty is to remain in the world and to do a man's work, but to do it like a man. Therefore rise!

Be superior! Lead, instead of being one of the dumb following sheep! Such was the teaching of Jesus the Christ; such was the teaching of Gautama the Buddha. It is also the teaching of all the great seers and sages of the ages: Be yourself, your inner self, your higher self, your divine self! And, as the Delphic Apollo put it, "Man, know thyself!" Know the god within you! Do you think that this injunction merely means knowing your physical senses and body -- that you have two eyes and a nose and a mouth and two ears and two hands and two legs more or less well attached to a trunk? Do you want to be mentally children? On the contrary, I want you to realize what you have locked up within you. You are the ones who won't let it come out. Each one of you is imprisoning his own higher self. All of us are doing it; only some of us, my Brothers, see the vision sublime, at least a few rays of it in the Mystic East, and have said: "I can rest no more in the grave wherein I have been lying supine; I will arise and go to the god within me, my Father, and there take myself, my heritage. I will be a Man." It is so easy to do this. Do you know that it is easier by far than living the life which the majority of men are living today, every man fighting every other man and struggling against every other man? There is actually a school of materialistic philosophy existent today which says that it is this struggle which brings out strength. What it does bring out is hell! And the other road is so easy: mutual kindliness, helpfulness, forgiveness, compassion towards each other, pitifulness, deliberately refusing to gain for yourself if your fellow loses. This path is grand. And there are men by the millions who feel this and who in many cases act accordingly. It is the grand rule, the manly road, the road of peace and happiness, of growth and strength, and it takes manhood to follow it. Don't attempt it if you are weaklings. The weakling cannot do it -- in the first place because he does not want to do it. If he did, he could begin doing it. Do theosophists teach a doctrine which is unchristian? Yes, if by the word Christian you mean the oldfashioned theology, the old-fashioned teaching, of the medieval churches. But the teaching of Jesus is our teaching; the doctrine that he taught we also teach and we try to follow it. In that we may not always succeed. Theosophists are human, just like everybody else; but nevertheless we see the ideal and aspire towards it. We know that that ideal conceived as a path of thought and action can be followed; we therefore set our eyes on the mountains in the Mystic East over which we see the light shining, and thither we march. We rescue Christ from the grave of human hearts; and one of these days we will restore Christ to the Christian churches, and when we shall have done that, then we shall take a new step forwards. "You are a most unchristian man," was said to me some time ago. I said: "Yes, thank you!" Because I knew just what the speaker had in mind when he spoke, and I added: "Yes, I am most decidedly not a Christian," because I knew what he meant by the word. But Jesus called the Christ was one of our own theosophical teachers, was one of the theosophists of his time, was one of the great seers and sages who come at cyclic intervals in human history, in order to teach and to guide their fellow men. I desire the Christians to see and feel their living Christ. I desire to restore Christ to the churches from which he has been banned, from which he has been driven. That is only a part of our work and a small part; but as far as it goes we are very sincere and earnest about it. Listen to this kindly question that has been sent in to me: I have read some of your lectures, Questions We All Ask, and although I am liberal in my views as an honest Christian, I cannot help hearing a note of great -- even more than great, immeasurable -- egoism in your philosophy. You make the statement, in substance, that men may become as our Lord Jesus Christ was on earth. [No, I have not said exactly that.] Do you really mean that, or is it said by way of encouragement? Let me tell you what is really in my heart. Since my boyhood, our Lord Jesus Christ has inspired me with all that is high and holy in my life; the idea of God himself, in the person of his Son, coming down to earth and sharing our sorrows, has been a constant help to me. But am I to supplant this holy awe for so great a being by an ambitious desire to climb to such an impossible heighth? Why, that

would wreck my life. And how can a man, created by God, become God? Can the less become the greater? Well now, how can you satisfactorily answer a man like the writer of this question? Usually the less does in time evolve into the greater. That is the meaning of growth. That is the meaning of evolution. But did not Jesus, my dear Brother Christian, tell you that you are a son of God, which means that you have a divine spark within you, and do you not understand that this divine spark is a god? Just as he was the manifestation of a divinity, and had this divinity working within and through him, so likewise can any good and sincere man manifest in ever larger measure the divinity within himself. Who then is the better Christian, I or my critic? "Greater things than these shall ye do," said in substance Jesus. That is also what theosophists say. We say that greater things than he ever is reported to have done can be done, because there are no frontiers in rising spiritually along the ladder of life and becoming grander forever on the upward path. There have been imbodiments of beings on other planets who were so much superior to the Jesus of our planet that we can make no comparison between them. Such is one of our teachings. He was so very great and so very grand, so sublime an entity, only because we human beings are generally so imperfect. I do not like to think of infinitude and boundless eternity as being in any wise, abstract or other, a Person or as taking upon itself a shape, human or other. All that seems to me to be infinitely wrong, an amazing misunderstanding of ancient esoteric, secret teachings, taught in the Mystery chambers; for we know that those ancient Mysteries existed: we know indeed that the mystery teachings were taught, and that they received the unqualified and unquestioning spiritual and intellectual homage of the greatest men of ancient days. We know that all the great thinkers and sages and seers of antiquity were taught in these wonderful mystery schools; and therefore do theosophists say that even so was it the case with him who later was called Jesus the Christ; and as I have already told you his crucifixion was but one phase of the initiatory ceremonies of the initiation chambers. I would that I might describe this fully to you, so that you could see it all clearly. Let me however say this: the neophyte lay entranced for three days and nights, and during that period of time his inner being -- his spirit-soul, or soul-spirit, call it what you will -- was released from the chains of the body and went on its peregrinations through the entire solar system from planet to planet and from planet to sun, finally passing the very portals of Father Sun. Remember that according to the Ancient Wisdom the heart of the heart of the sun is a cosmic divinity, the source of the glorious splendor and vitality which it is constantly pouring forth. On the eve of the third day the spirit-soul or soul-spirit began to wing its way back to its personal encasement, and on the morning of the fourth day, more or less as regards the time, the neophyte arose from the cruciform couch or bed on which he had lain attached, roped to it but for safety's sake only, and arose a Master of Light, a Master of Life, a Christ, a Buddha, one who had received the holy and mystical unction, the anointing on the forehead. Thereafter he was a qualified and authorized spiritual teacher of men. He taught by the authority that belonged to him by natural right and by initiation, and he could say, as every such sage and seer has always said: I am the Way, I am the Life, I am the Light. Everyone who had gone through these same wonderful experiences has said the same, and has truly spoken, my Brothers; and you, if you attain in the same way, will find that it will be not merely your right but your duty to teach, and that you will teach with authority because you will know -- all the inner and higher part of your being will be awakened; intuition, wisdom, and knowledge instant, quick, certain, sure, and full, will infill your mind with the mysteries of the universe. You will see grandly; and hence this is called the vision sublime. No, theosophist as I am, and unchristian as I am according to the orthodox view, I nevertheless believe myself to be a better Christian than many are, because I know who Jesus was, and a better Christian I do believe than this otherwise kindly Christian friend who holds to the old, orthodox beliefs which he neither really understands nor can interpret.

Look into the eyes of someone whom you dearly love with an impersonal love. Be very watchful as you look. Be also impersonal; and you will see a great and holy mystery there. For, as the poet has truly said, the eyes are the windows of the soul -- darkened windows it is true, dark and obscure because windows of flesh, but oh! anyone who has had this experience can see the flame of divinity there. You cannot see it, however, unless you look for it. It will be there; but you will not look for it unless your consciousness tells you that it is there. Then turn from the one whom you love so dearly, and look into the eyes of someone else, and see the same sublime -- what may I call it? -- thing, entity, being, force, power, consciousness. Give to it any name you like -- that wondrous, indescriptible thing which every human being shows forth. Try it, and you will succeed just in proportion as you are impersonal, just in proportion as your mind is quiet and still -- still as space; you will see it when the mind is at rest and the senses are at peace. You will there feel the living Buddha, the living Christ. The Christos in you will recognize the other Christos in the one whom you love, for they are of the same race and realm, breathe the same spiritual ether, and have the same consciousness; and hence recognition is instant. What a vision! I am sorry for those who have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no understanding heart to comprehend. What kind of men and women are they? They are, as Pythagoras said, the living dead, alive in the body but unmanifesting in all the other parts of them. Pity them, pity and forgive! Are you open to suggestions? [Well, as I receive so many questions each week I think I am!] I would like to suggest that you get in touch with these people who talk about a "Coming Christ," and different incarnations of Jesus, and whose wife he was in other lives, and just explain to them that Jesus, being an avatara, never had a previous incarnation and never can have another one. You explained this very clearly in one of your earlier lectures. I think you would be doing them a great kindness. I am afraid that they would not think that I was "doing them a great kindness." But I have already done all this. I have already more than once tried to set forth what our theosophical teachings are with regard to the avatara doctrine, and every time when I speak to an audience like this, I feel that I am treading a very difficult way indeed. I look into your faces and I see the flame of understanding in some, and the pitiful look of mental fatigue in others' faces; and yet how can I make the matter clearer than in what I have already said? These good people who say that Jesus called the Christ in former lives was a woman, and once was the wife of him who in Roman times was called Julius Caesar, seem to me to wander wide from the avatara teaching. An avatara has never had a previous birth on earth, cannot ever have a future life on earth, for the reasons which I have set forth two weeks ago, and which you will find published in one of the pamphlets called Questions We All Ask. Read our books, come to our Temple of Peace, listen to me at least with kindness in trying to understand what I am endeavoring to say; and then, after that, after we have thought together a little while in that wise, then, if you like, come to me, or write to me, and I will do my best to show you the beginning of the path. This is a promise -- if, mark you -- if you understand me. I cannot show a blind man the road which may actually lie at his feet. But a man who has begun to see, in other words who has begun to feel and to understand, to him indeed I can show the beginning of the path, the path which will take him directly and rapidly to the mountains of the Mystic East of which I have spoken before, that Mystic East whence all light comes. Ex oriente lux! Light from the quarter of the rising sun, I will and can show you! Now, friends, before we part today, I desire once more to recall your thought to the fact that I am speaking here to an audience of gods, gods imbodied in human souls, in their turn imbodied in encasements of human flesh; but each one of you in the inmost of the inmost of his being is a divine entity; and it is to this entity that I try always to make my appeal, by hint, by allusion, by a suggestion rather even than by direct word. It is this inner god within each one of you and of which you are the feeble expression that I desire to call to your attention again this afternoon: to tell you that you can become at one with this inner god of you -- not one god in all of you, but meaning that each one of you in the highest part of his being is a divinity, a god; for the universe is filled full with gods, with cosmic

spirits, with self-conscious, intelligent, and spiritually sentient entities, and this sublime fact accounts for the wondrous and bewildering variety that even the physical universe shows. The roots of that variety are in the inner worlds of nature, in the inner realms, and especially in these gods who verily are the roots of all beings and of all things. You are an audience of gods, and each one of you can show forth in more or less perfect fashion the divine powers within you if only you will to do it and grow to have the understanding of this ineffable verity.

Second Series: No. No. 14 (December 8, 1930)

THE SECRET ANATOMY OF THE WORLD

(Lecture delivered October 12, 1930) CONTENTS: The ancient wisdom taught in the schools of the Mysteries. -- The universe a living entity; its physical aspect but an outer shell. -- Mythological account of the structure of the universe. -- The interlocking of hierarchies. -- Ancient astrology based on this hierarchical scheme. -- The classes of angelic entities referred to by Dionysius the Areopagite. -- A system of negative thinking leads nowhere. -- Be not slaves of mere human authority. -- Test before you accept. -- Modern scientists and their other "dimensions of space." -- If space is a container, what holds the container? -- Dr. James Jeans and his theory of 'singular points' or hearts of nebulae. Theosophy enlarges upon this idea. -- Do you know what your destiny is? -- What do you mean by the spaces of space? -- Does the human soul reincarnate only on earth? -- Is it advantageous to reincarnate quickly? -- Enter the chamber-temple within you! Listen to the whisperings of your divinity! I am not a spiritual or psychical anatomist. I am not going to introduce you to a psychical dissecting table; nevertheless I am going to try to paint for you a wondrous picture, to try to draw aside a curtain, so that you may see and in seeing understand some of the ancient teachings of the esoteric Mystery schools of antiquity, those esoteric schools which in their time and in their places among the different races of men taught the old wisdom of antiquity, the wisdom-religion of mankind. This ancient wisdom is not based, as I have so often told you, on anyone's say-so: not based on the deceptive vision of socalled psychical clairvoyants, but is actually rooted in the very structure and operations of the universe surrounding us, which is the same thing as saying cosmic being, and which has been put into human thought and language by the great Sages and Seers of past ages, by those men who through initiation learned, who were taught, how to send their percipient consciousness behind the veils of the outward seeming, behind the veils of the universe that seems so apparently real, and that surround us on all sides -- the penetrating consciousness going deep, deeper, deeper still, into the very womb of being, and there seeing truth; and seizing it with the grip of spiritual and intellectual understanding, these great Sages and Seers brought back from this most marvelous of human adventures what they had discovered; put it into human formulated terms, and taught it as a sublime natural philosophy of truth in those ancient esoteric schools called the schools of the Mysteries. They were very real, those old schools, and the greatest men of antiquity passed through them, were initiates in them, were taught in them; and you can read in the records of those old times which have come down to us of the present day, what those great men of the past publicly said and taught after they had left the initiation chambers. They put in human language for public dissemination as much as they dared -- for the rules regarding secrecy were very strict -- and their testimony is one, their witness is one; and it all runs to this end: that there is truth in the universe; that this truth can be known and taught; that it can be understood by anyone who will lead the life, undertake the training, and go through the period of trials to test his power of understanding, of vision, of assimilation, and his sense of responsibility. These great men of the past united in saying that the Mysteries taught men how to live nobly, how to die with a glad and fervent hope, how to lead and inspire their fellow men in all the avocations of life; and they said further that initiation deprived death of all its seeming terrors, for it showed the neophyte that he was essentially an integral part, an inseparable portion, of the great cosmos, the great universe; that the universe is man's natural home; that in that universe he belongs; that never can he leave it; that he is its offspring: bone of its bone, blood of its blood, life of its life, being of its being, and therefore that man is an inseparable part of it, and consequently that everything that the infinite cosmos contains is in every man and can be had for the taking -- if he knows how to take it! There is the difficulty -- "if he knows how to take it." Men don't know themselves. Most men don't even want to know themselves. They themselves are spiritually rooted in the universe; in fact essentially they are it; therefore the key to all this wondrous wisdom -- lies where? In yourself. You are, each one of you, that sublime mystical pathway leading direct to the heart of the universe. There is no other path to tread in order to reach utter truth. No one else can tread that path for you. You cannot really learn and really know merely by what other men tell

you. Other men may give you hints; they may inspire you; they may help; they may raise; they may encourage all that is true and real; but so far as the individual is concerned, he must tread that sublime pathway himself. Isn't it obvious? Can someone else understand for you? Can someone else learn for you? Can someone else grow for you? You must become before you can be; you must be before you can understand -- and I mean self-consciously become, self-consciously be, before you can self-consciously understand. Now, what is the structure or anatomy of the universe according to these ancient teachings? The old seers and sages taught that the universe is a living entity, that it is a vital organism -- much in the same way as man's body is a vital organism: in other words that the universe is a living thing, a living entity; and man with his life and his intelligence and his consciousness and all his power, all his thought and feeling and emotion, is but a reflection of the whole, working in him as an inseparable part of that allencompassing whole. The part obviously partakes of what the whole is. They taught, furthermore, that the gross physical universe, which our senses apprise us of -- but oh! so slightly, because our physical senses are as yet so imperfect -- they taught, I say, that this encompassing physical universe is but the outer shell, the body, the garment, the veil, of the greater universe -- in other words they taught that there is a spiritual universe, of which the outer physical universe is the extremest exterior garment; and that between this spiritual root-universe and the exterior universe there were stages, planes, realms, parts, steps, degrees, from the highest of our own home-hierarchy downwards to the lowest stages or degrees of that home-hierarchy. According to the usual mythological account of the structure of the universe as this account existed among the ancients, and especially among the peoples of Asia Minor, the universe was stated to consist of nine or ten heavens so called -- usually of ten heavens so called, or spheres -- named as follows, and counting from the most material or grossest upwards: first, the quadruplicate range of the four elements, comprising "Earth"; then the sphere of "Water"; then the sphere of "Air"; then the sphere of "Fire"; then the "heaven" or sphere of the Moon, then that of Mercury, then that of Venus, then that of the Sun, then that of Mars, then that of Jupiter, then that of Saturn; and then last, the Waters of Space, which cosmic ocean includes the sphere of the so-called fixed stars, and the limitless outer range of the cosmic hierarchy. It will be noted that we have here a series of twelve, instead of the usual nine or ten, but this is to be understood as meaning that the first in the series is not only the lowest of any such hierarchical system, but also the highest or beginning of an inferior hierarchy descending in graded stages below, while the twelfth or last is not only the highest of any such hierarchy, but also is the link connecting the lowest of the succeeding or superior hierarchy ascending in a similar range of nine or ten included spheres or realms. The same general system was known the world over, though its component elements were variously reckoned and often disguised under different names. There is a great deal in this hierarchical system as just outlined which the archaic wisdom of the ages called theosophy explains as being perfectly true and as an exact rendering of nature's hierarchical structure, although obviously, as the student can easily see, expressed in purely mythological form. Furthermore, I might add that the powers and principles and influences of the respective planets, including the Sun and Moon, as they were outlined in such ancient mythological systems, are set forth in the hierarchic scheme that I have just outlined for you. Ancient astrology, which was so different from the modern tattered remnant that Europeans give the name of astrology to, was based on this hierarchical scheme or pattern as its fundamental conception. It is thus seen that the Sun and Moon and the five planets named, occupied an exceedingly important position in the building of the solar system. To each one was assigned an especial influence, and an especial power, and an especial constructive energy; and as all cooperated together, each one producing in action its own particular or characteristic energy, the resultant, according to the theme, was the solar system as it at present exists.

Lastly -- and this is very important -- each one of these nine or ten realms or spheres, whether solar or lunar or planetary or elemental, is the direct field of action of what it is customary to call a planetary spirit. There is still another way of dividing the tenfold or ninefold or even twelvefold hierarchical system of the universe according to the mystical teaching prevalent among the nations of Asia Minor, and it is as follows, and we should remember while studying it that this system exercised the profoundest influence on all the nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, and was at the bottom of the highly mystical astrological systems of not only the Greeks and the Romans but of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians likewise. This second manner of division runs as follows: The world was conceived of as consisting in its lowest parts of seven elemental substances, united with seven equivalent elemental energies, of which four only in each case were commonly spoken of, to wit: earth, water, air and fire, which together formed the realm or sphere stretching from the earth to the moon. Beginning with the sphere or realm of the moon began the ten heavens so called, which were serially denominated as follows: the first or lowest was the sphere of the Moon, the next on the ascending scale was the sphere of Mercury, then the sphere of Venus, then the sphere or realm of the Sun, then the realm or sphere of Mars, then that of Jupiter, and then that of Saturn. Then followed the eighth or so-called fixed sphere, succeeded in its turn by the realm of the unseen stars, after which and still more distant came the tenth and last, called that of the surrounding waters of space. Beyond this again was what was sometimes spoken of as the crown, or the crown of light, which was the illimitable expanse of infinitude outside of our own home-universe or galaxy. A later school of mystical thinkers used this same serial hierarchy of the heavens and connected with each one of the ten its own class of spiritual beings, to which the following names were given, counting from the lowest to the highest -- and in passing it may interest you to know that it is to this series of spiritual beings that St. Paul of the Christians referred when he spoke of the classes of angelic entities; and it was likewise to this same conception that the much later pseudo-Dionysius, commonly called Dionysius the Areopagite, referred in his work. These ten classes of spiritual entities, according to this later school, were connected with the various socalled heavens as follows: the Angels with the sphere of the Moon; the Archangels with the sphere of Mercury; the Principalities with that of Venus; the Powers with that of the Sun; the Virtues with that of Mars; the Dominations with that of Jupiter; the Thrones with that of Saturn; the Cherubim with the Eighth Sphere; the Seraphim with the Ninth; and an indefinite class of still more sublime spiritual entities were supposed to reside in and to inspirit the Tenth Realm or Sphere. It should be remembered, of course, that this system of interlocking and interblending worlds and energies is described in the mythological sense, and should so be understood, although of course the fundamental ideas are the same as the series of worlds and their respective inhabitants which theosophy teaches, but which theosophy teaches of in a much more scientific and consistent manner. All the mystical ancients conjoined in saying that pure spirit, and a fortiori pure divinity, cannot act directly upon gross physical being; that there must be intermediate stages -- steps, degrees, realms -stepping down, so to speak, the indwelling superior cosmic powers; and that when these indwelling cosmic spiritual powers reach in their descent this outermost physical garment or veil of the series, which outermost garment we call our physical universe, these powers express themselves in this physical universe as the powers and elements and substances producing the enormous and entrancing variety of beings and entities and things which we sense all around us. A little thought will show you how consistent this structural scheme is with all that we know and with all that our intuitions intimate as being true. Or, on the other hand, do you prefer to take a theoretic system which is now moribund, dying if not already dead, I mean the materialism of our forefathers, whose answer to every pertinent and inquiring question as given by its exponents was "We don't know!"? "What is energy?" "We don't know." "What is force?" "We don't know." "What is life?" "We don't know." "How large is the universe?" "We don't

know." "Whence came man?" "We don't know." "How is it that our solar system is as it is and not otherwise?" "We don't know." "What produces the entrancing variety everywhere around us?" "We don't know." And so on endlessly. No, such a system of negative thinking will never satisfy man's aspiring heart and inquiring mind. Give me the vision of the seer, the wisdom of the sage; for I will take that vision and that wisdom and test them by my own vision, and by the intelligence with which as a man I am endowed -- test and prove, holding fast to that which is good and rejecting what my conscience tells me is untrue -- a most excellent rule. Ask you, perhaps: "In following this rule is it not possible that I may reject a truth?" Of course it is; you may reject truth after truth after truth and be the poorer for it; but at least, my Brothers, ye will have acted like men, been conscientious with your own souls, trusted to your own spiritual vision, imperfect as it is; and in trusting to your own conscience and your intelligence and the emotions of the higher part of your being, ye will give them exercise and they will grow greater with that exercise continuously, so that as time goes on, the cornerstone (to use the metaphor of the Christian New Testament) that the builders rejected will ye take again and understand it and fit it into its proper place. As the great Buddha says: "Believe not anything that is told to you merely because it is told to you." Exercise the wondrous powers of your own inner being; give them exercise; and in so giving them exercise they will grow strong, stronger, continuously more strong, and greater vision in time thus will be yours, and also a greater power; and ye will grow greater in dignified manhood. Ye may reject a truth time and again, time and again, time and again; but the rule is a good one to follow. It is far better to follow this rule than to be dumb following slaves of some mere human authority. It is I who tell you this with all the earnestness of my being precisely because I also know the enormous value of true authority. I know what a true teacher is and what he can give, paradoxical as this statement may sound with what I have just said; but it is fully consistent with what I have just said, as ye will realize if ye will pause a moment in thought. Be always willing to learn, but believe naught that your own conscience rejects. Your conscience is not infallible at all, it is fallible; but the greater man has a more visioning consciousness than the inferior man, and the still greater man more than the greater man, and the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace have immense power of consciousness and vision, and the gods still more than they. But can ye tread the path of truth merely by believing what ye are told without investigation and earnest thought and without exercising the faculties which are inherent in your being? No, of course not. Therefore I say: believe not at all anything ye are told unless it appeals to your conscience; and then, if it so appeals and you find it good, if you believe it to be true, hold to it against the world if need be. Be a man and recognize that there are teachers in the world, men who are greater than you. This fact will be one of the first things that you will learn by trusting the voice of your own conscience. Isn't this fact wonderful? It is a seeming paradox -- a paradox indeed, and yet it is true. It is obvious that some men know more than other men; therefore they who know more are the naturalborn teachers of them who know less. But the man who is the pupil should himself grow through himself exercising the inherent powers of his being. This is one of the first injunctions of theosophy: examine, investigate, prove, test, and believe not at all anything that your conscience tells you is wrong. You are thus on the safe path, and very soon you will come to realize that there are indeed great teachers in the world, because you will feel growing within you, in your own heart, recognition of the fact that you yourself are learning. You will find by your intercourse with your fellow human beings that you in some strange and mysterious way are beginning to see things and to feel things that they apparently are incognizant of, and this will give you a hint, and following it you will voluntarily seek your teacher and find him. The teacher is always there, when the pupil is ready. There is an ancient wisdom, my Brothers, the ancient wisdom that I have told you about. It is a marvelous system of doctrine. It tells us that the universe is not only a living organism, but that we physical human beings live in intimate connection, in intimate contact, with invisible spheres, with invisible and intangible realms, unknown to us only because our physical senses are so imperfectly evolved that we neither see them nor feel them nor hear them nor smell them nor taste them, nor cognize

them except by that much more highly evolved sensorium which men call the mind. These inner realms interpenetrate our physical sphere, permeate it, so that in our daily affairs, as we go about our duties, we actually pass through the dwellings, through the mountains, through the lakes, through the very beings mayhap, of the entities of and dwelling in these invisible realms. These invisible realms are built of matter just as this our physical world is, but of a more ethereal matter than ours is; but we cognize them not at all with our physical senses. The explanation is that it is all a matter of differing rates of vibration of substances. Pause a moment in thought over this. Think it over. The ancients said that there are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, degrees, planes, realms, stages, steps, ranging from high to low, or from low to high, according to the way you may count them; and that each more interior stage or degree or plane or realm is somewhat more ethereal than the realm immediately below it in the hierarchical scale, and all of them more ethereal than the physical realm in which we happen to live at the present time; and that these realms or stages ascend from the physical to the spiritual. And is the highest or spiritual realm the end? It is not. It is merely the beginning of a second ascending hierarchical ladder of life, so that the tenth or highest stage of any such hierarchy if you count upwards, or the first if you count downwards, is merely the most inferior stage or degree of another superior hierarchy itself ascending in ten stages or degrees; and so endlessly through the spaces of space. Furthermore, the same rule applies in the opposite direction, that the lowest degree or stage of any hierarchy is the highest of an inferior hierarchy on the descending scale, and so on forever. The world is filled full with gods, with gods and demigods, and beings who are even higher than what men call gods -- all of them spiritual beings, cosmic entities, call them by what name you may like; and we human beings are but one class of them, at the present time passing through this section or phase of a long evolutionary journey from inferior to better, from better to still better, and so on forever on the ascending arc of growth and development; and our temporary sojourn in this our physical world occurs only because we have reached here as we pass along that ascending arc. Further, this evolutionary path, said the teachers of this ancient wisdom, proceeds in cycles, spirals, each turn of the spiral bringing out new manifestations of the inherent life of the evolving entity. Furthermore, these wise men taught -- taught from what they themselves had experienced in the initiation chambers: taught not because someone else had instructed them, but because they had been on the mystical adventure to these interior realms; and because they had been there, and had seen, and felt, and contacted these realms, they knew and therefore could teach truth. How can a man really know anything at all which he himself has not been through? They taught that these inner worlds are the worlds to which all the better part of man goes when he lays aside the physical body -- into the interior realms and planes and spheres of the cosmic life. They taught that the journey after death was made upwards through these nine other planes or spheres, until the acme or top of the hierarchical ladder was reached; and then came the return journey downwards through the same planes, until the earth sphere was again entered upon, and thus a man was reborn, each time a little higher than before, let us hope -- because there are certain cases of retrogression -- with each new birth learning a little more and becoming somewhat more than he was before. Now, hearken! Is this physical world of ours all there is of the boundless universe? What sane man believes that? If you think so, then answer my questions! I won't be satisfied with a mere "I don't know." You will have to give me some consistent, logical, understandable reason for your belief. Why should the boundless spaces consist merely of one physical universe? Why should things be forever just as they are at present? Isn't it obvious that things are changing, are growing, and that the standard for infinity is not this physical universe that we so imperfectly understand? Remember that this physical universe itself is merely the outermost expression of the evolving lives with which the universe is filled, and which lives have reached their present type as we know them merely because they are passing through this one stage in the long, long journey of evolution.

You yourselves are imbodied gods. Yes, the root of each one of you is a divine being; and your humanhood today is but a visible and imperfect manifestation in this world of gross substance of the powers and faculties that you have locked up within you. The real roots of things are in the invisible worlds; the real causes of all things lie there. Therefrom spring forth the entities that compose the variety of our physical world; and today you have your ultramodern scientific thinkers, and the greatest of them, talking more or less vaguely but intuitively about other dimensions of space, instead of which phrase "dimensions of space" theosophists, having the same idea although much more developed, talk about the superior worlds or realms or planes of space. Your modern scientists have completely thrown over the materialism of your fathers. It is dead, gone, but not yet forgotten; and the minds of men today are still filled with the old materialistic ideas and teachings and theories of forty and fifty and a hundred years ago, and those ideas and theories are still taught in our schools, although it may be in a more or less disguised form. Yet the great leaders of scientific thought, the great scientific discoverers and investigators, know that the materialism of our fathers is now dead. These great ultramodern scientists are teaching of invisible worlds; they are now talking about space very much as a theosophist talks about space, as being the habitat of consciousness, the habitat of mind. But to speak of it as mind is merely putting in a generalized form exactly what theosophists say when we talk about minds -- in the plural -- meaning gods, cosmic spirits, and invisible realms and worlds and spheres, the habitats and dwellings of these gods and cosmic spirits. What is space? Can any one of you tell me what space is? Is it a mere container? Is it a mere emptiness which holds things? Will you tell me how emptiness can hold things? Think! How can emptiness hold things? If it is a container, what is that container? I repeat the question: what is the container? Furthermore, what contains the container? The conception, if we can dignify it by that name, reminds me of the story of the little boy who was asked one day by his teacher: "Johnny, can you give me an example of the use of the word cowhide?" "Umph . . . yes, sir. Cowhide is the thing which keeps the cow together!" Space, therefore, is "the thing which keeps things together!" Isn't that wonderfully clear! But I don't think so. To the theosophist, space is the cosmic All. Theosophists don't dare further to define it, because we cannot; it is infinitude -- infinitude lasting through eternity; it is boundless, frontierless; it is the ALL -- it is what we, using one of our technical terms, call parabrahman -- the Boundless, beginningless, endless. Furthermore, infinity, which is the same as eternity -- for they both are one conceptually -- is not mere emptiness, but is a plenum: it is an infinite Fullness, and merely seems empty to us because our physical eyes cannot interpret the vibrations emanating and flowing forth from the worlds and spheres and realms with which space, so called, is packed full, and which actually forms space itself. The ancients frequently spoke of cosmic space as "the waters" of space. "The spirit of God," says the Hebrew Bible, "the spirit of the elohim, of the gods, moved on the waters of space" -- an esoteric expression simply meaning the vast Plenum or Fullness packed full with cosmic divinities and the worlds or spheres or realms in which they dwell; and our scientists, the biggest ones among them at least, today are teaching essentially the same thing in very different words, as witness Sir Oliver Lodge, and Professor Eddington and Dr. Jeans, and the great American physicist, Millikan, who has so marvelously developed the theory of the cosmic rays. They speak of space now as being the real fountain from which everything else comes, say that worlds and suns and stars are but interruptions, as it were, of the fullness of space. Now we theosophists would consider this last term "interruptions" as wrong; we would say that any physical sphere or world is but a thickening or condensation of the substance with which space is filled -- thickened and concreted around a heart, a central point. An ultramodern scientist, Dr. Sir James Jeans, is teaching essentially the same conception when he speaks of the nebulae which bestrew the violet dome of night as having at their hearts what he calls singular points, through which stream from another dimension (world, say theosophists) into this world, primal matter in its first physical stage or state; thus teaching in ultramodern scientific phraseology a tenet of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind. The singular points of Dr. Jeans theosophists call laya-centers -- and it is an old teaching among us, ancient, archaic. Let me tell you something more: every globe that you see in space has as its center, its

heart, just such a singular point, to adopt the language of Jeans, the English astronomical physicist; and through this center of each such globe come into that globe the streams of entities, the river of living things, by which that globe is inhabited, all of them on their evolutionary pathway. They then enter into the atmosphere of any such globe, such as our earth, and find, if they be human entities, their habitats in the bodies of little children; and similarly so is it the case with the beasts and the vegetables, as well as the atomic entities of the mineral kingdom. There are no solutions of continuity in space, either in inner and invisible space or in outward and visible space, my Brothers. The various ranges or planes or steps of the hierarchical ladder that I have spoken of melt, fade, into each other. There are no sharp breaks between any two of them. Theosophists talk of planes, but this is a mere word used in an attempt to communicate our thought easily to those who have not studied theosophy. The physical world grades off into the astral world, which grades off again into a world higher than it, the world which is superior to the astral world; and so it continues throughout the series of hierarchical steps which compose a universe such as our universe. Remember also that the boundless All is filled full with universes, some so much greater than ours that the utmost reach of our imagination cannot conceive of them. The anatomy of space, of the world, is really the structure of the universe -- a vast and self-contained organic entity filled with life, or more accurately lives, from the highest called the gods down to the least evolved which we humans call atoms, all combining to form an endless chain or hierarchy of living entities. You cannot leave the universe. Think what that means! You are at home in it vast -- spaces are your home, indeed endless space is your spiritual habitat. The powers that are locked up in you, of which you are incognizant, express themselves in you as inherent powers and faculties, such as intuition, understanding, intellect, love, compassion, forgiveness: all these and many others are in you and can be developed amazingly. The powers that you have as yet unevolved in you are very great and wonderful, and they are powers that usually you don't know anything about because the ordinary man has not evolved to the point where these powers are more than beginning very feebly to manifest themselves. I hesitate to use certain convenient words freely, because these words have been so misused; but nevertheless I will now refer to a few: spiritual clairvoyance, spiritual clairaudience, power to make rain, power to see into the past and into the future, power to penetrate with your consciousness selfconsciously into the very abysses of the atom on the one hand, and into the abysses of the spaces of our solar system on the other hand, and be at home and familiar there. Ah! you men don't know what you have locked up within you! You are bartering all the best in you for a mess of pottage! Self-satisfaction in the small and paltry things of physical existence blinds you and prevents your seeing with the vision of the spiritual eye. And so many men are wasting time in chasing the shadows and phantasms of material existence, mistaking these phantasms for the realities of life. Immortal gods! I wonder how many of you have felt the stirring of some unwonted and strange consciousness within you -- intuitions, intimations, of a new and grand developing faculty! "Know ye not that ye are the temple of the divine and that the very spirit of the divine dwelleth in you?" Don't you see that this word of truth from the Christian scripture means that each one of you is rooted in the divine part of the universe, in the higher part of the invisible spheres, in that part which is pure consciousness and which men in their awful ignorance speak of as God and give to it a personal pronoun He, thus making it an exaggerated copy of their own physical apparatus of being? You can ascend, if you will and if you are taught how to do it (and you can be taught how), along the stairway of your inner being, going constantly higher and more and more inwards, till you reach the very summit, the acme, the top, the flower, of the hierarchy of the cosmos of which you are children and thus partake of the very fountain of life and light and understanding -- which is but another way of saying becoming at one with the spiritual universe. What a picture! These, therefore, are some of the teachings of theosophy. You see how this picture of the structure of the world, consisting as it does of endless series of steps, of grades, gives you the key to wondrous

mysteries. It also means that the following of this pathway inwards brings you ever more fully into the inner worlds, into the inner spheres, ever more and more closely to the spiritual roots of things. It is this wonderful pathway which is the evolutionary pathway that all entities follow, leading them into the causal elements and worlds, until finally the pilgrim returns as a fully evolved and self-conscious god -which you are even now in the heart of the heart of your inner being -- to that divine spiritual sun of which you are immortal rays. What a sublime destiny for men and for all things! Remember that men are merely one family of the vast host of evolving entities with which the universe is filled: gods above us, and we shall become gods; beasts below us who shall in time become men or at least humans; vegetation, the plants below the beasts, who will in time blossom forth as beasts; and the atoms, the chemical elements below the plants, which atomic elementals likewise are learning and evolving things on their upward evolutionary journey. They too will in the distant aeons of the future become men and then become gods, a host of gods. And throughout endless eternity in the past, on all the worlds that have been and now are gone because they have lived and gone higher, this endless stream of advancing entities has been evolving; so that, as I have told you, the universe is filled full with gods, the evolved product of past eternities of growth. Consider also the other direction of the evolutionary stream of lives: always new elemental beings coming into any one sphere and beginning their journey upwards with divinity as their destination, slowly preparing through the ages to attain self-conscious godhood for each, and destined, they too, to pass through the human stage. What a picture! Give me the seer! Give me the thinker! Give me the man who can sense truth! I care not a snap of the fingers for the canons of the schools! Give me truth; and remember that essential truth is even now latent in the heart of each one of you. There you will find it, the most precious treasure that man can attain. The universe is a vast and most wonderfully complex structure, yet so simply and shapely builded; its patterns are as clear, once you see the picture and understand it, as are the wonderful and delicate traceries of the snowflake on the pane of glass, so symmetrically and harmoniously builded. When modern scientists talk of space, do they mean the same thing that you theosophists do when you use the phrase the spaces of space? I don't think so, friends. But I will say, as I have said before this afternoon, that our greatest scientific researchers are coming with every ten-year period closer and closer to our archaic wisdom-religion; more and more are they drawing aside the veil covering nature's recondite secrets; by their wonderful discoveries are they seeing ever more deeply into the heart of being. When the theosophist speaks of the spaces of space, he means what I have said to you this afternoon about the structure of the universe, referring especially to its invisible, interior realms and worlds. I now turn to a somewhat different phase of my theme. You will get in life just what you want. Remember this, for it inshrines a profound teaching. If you want something, then long for it, work for it. You will get it in time. I pray that inspiration may be in your souls, so that you will place your goal of getting high; for if you long for the sty of the swine, if you desecrate your manhood, if you abandon your divine prerogative of free thinking and live on the mental husks that the "swine" do eat, ye shall go to the sty of the swine. This is a Christian figure of speech, but it conveys a profound truth. You will get in this and in the after-lives just what you have worked for, longed for, felt after -- just what you thus builded yourselves to be. This is what theosophists call karma, consequences: "As ye sow, so will ye also reap." Build yourselves shapely and you shall reap shapeliness and beauty; build oppositely, build otherwise, and then may the immortal gods help you if they can! You yourselves are masters of your destiny: you have free will, power of choice, intelligence; you have divine faculties and powers just beginning to bloom within you. Use them properly and according to law, which means the symmetrical use according to the forces flowing from nature's heart, and then you will grow like the flowers and blossom into divinity. But misuse them and degrade them, and then down you will go, and here also you

will get what you have made for yourselves -- you will become what you have made yourselves to be. You will lie in the bed that you yourselves have made for yourselves. Such is the law of nature. You are gods and can carve your own pathway; carve it then upwards. As you build so must you live in the house that you have builded. It behooves a man to think, and to take wise thought of what he thinks and feels and does, because by using his inherent powers and locked-up energies he will sow seeds of thought and emotion and he will reap, even as he has already reaped, what he sows -- what he has in the past sowed into his being -- as character. A glorious destiny awaits you if you follow the upward path; and I tell you that you have no time to lose in chasing the phantasms of the material world. Take them not for realities, for they are illusory and deceptive. Is space substantial, or is it just mere emptiness? What is space, anyway? I think that I have more or less fully answered this question today. Space is substantial; it is the cosmic fullness; it is everything; it is the ALL; space is infinitude; and the spaces of space are especially important to remember in this connection, for they are the inner worlds, the invisible worlds, the causal worlds, the roots of this outward world -- which outward world is a mere garment, the mere skin, as it were, of the fruit; and the life of the fruit is in its seed. Are human beings children of earth, or have they also links with the universe as a whole? Yes, they have links with the universe as a whole; but why speak merely of links? You yourself are the universe. You cannot leave it; you are in it; you are its child; all that is in the universe is in you; and your present physical, exterior garment of flesh is merely one low phase of the infinite and eternal evolutionary journey that you are making. In future you will be gods; in past aeons you were atoms -life-atoms; and you are now merely bringing forth, unwrapping, unrolling, evolving in other words, the faculties of space that were locked up in your interior and invisible parts. Does the human soul reincarnate only on earth, or does it go to other planets? So far as the human soul is concerned, it has rebirth only on this earth; but so far as another part of the inner constitution of man is concerned, this other part which we call the monad follows indeed a most wonderful adventure -- mystical, wondrous, marvelous, almost indescriptible; for it follows a pathway from planet to planet and from planet to the portals of Father Sun, before it retraces its journey earthwards. But the human soul as such, that feeble and unevolved entity, is a production of the higher part of man's constitution working together with his earth-surroundings, and therefore in one sense of the word the mere human soul is a child of earth. Is it advantageous to reincarnate quickly, or is it more advantageous to the evolving soul to have a longer rest period between our births on earth? This is such a simple question that I marvel a bit that any student of theosophy could ask it, and the questioner seems to be a theosophical student. Is it advantageous to a man to have very little sleep, or is it more advantageous to a man to sleep overmuch? Isn't the answer to the question obvious? The period of rest between earth-life and earth-life is a period of bliss, of sweet and inexpressibly beautiful dreaming, of rest and repose, of peace, of quiet. The human soul needs it badly; for what man or woman, my Brothers, can say "My life is a life of utter happiness"? Life on our material sphere, for almost all human beings, is a hard one, containing much pain, containing much sorrow and heartache, with much of disappointment and of thwarted hope. Alas! men help each other so slightly; but unfortunately such is life on earth at the present time, in the present material phase of our existence; and the poor human soul needs its rest period, its period of consolation and solace and bliss and rest and peace. Therefore the answer to the question is that since Mother Nature cares for these things so very beautifully, it is much the best to leave it in her hands and not to try psychical experiments. Don't you think so? The soul must have sweet rest just as the body must have repose when it lays itself down to sleep in bed.

I may say in further answer to this last question that it is perhaps better for the human soul to have as long a rest period in the Devachan, as theosophists call it, in this state of bliss, as is possible. This Devachan is a time not merely of rest, as I have described it, but also of assimilation and of digestion of the experiences of the last life; and some of our experiences are very difficult to digest! I think that if men were more kindly to each other, a little gentler, a little more thoughtful, how much easier and how much better our common life would be. It really is easier to act in that way. It does seem to me that when I see a man do an unkindly act, or a woman so act, they are doing something which is repulsive in its ugliness. It is not beautiful to look at. A mean act is an abominable thing to observe; and a really fine, self-forgetful, high-minded, and noble action -- a man rising above circumstances in self-forgetful action -- is a beautiful thing to see. Where is the normal human heart that does not warm towards such a man? We instinctively feel the hero in him; and precisely where the difficulties are great, there does our admiration grow the more. I shall now close our study together for this afternoon; but I desire to have a few words in private with you before I leave you. And when I say in private, I have in mind the figure of speech of the Christian writing which I give the sense of in the following words: "Go thou into thine inner chamber and there commune in the silence with your inner god." I want to appeal to this living inner chamber in each one of you -- to the heart of the heart of you, to the soul of the soul of you, to your inmost, to that strange chamber temple within you, wherein, if you listen carefully, you can hear the whisperings of divinity, of the divinity which fills that chamber full, for it is your own inner god. O my Brothers, enter into this chamber in your heart of hearts. Become one with your self, your divine self, the god within you!

Second Series: No. 15 (December 15, 1930)

THE SECRET PHYSIOLOGY OF THE WORLD

(Lecture delivered October 19, 1930) CONTENTS: The term physiology as used by the Greeks. -- The universe an organic entity. -- "So many men on earth, so many gods in heaven." -- The injunctions of the Delphic Oracle. -- An understanding of the phrase "the spaces of space. -- Energy or energies? -- Passing the Gates of Death with a vision. -Truth is the heritage of all men. -- The golden chain of the teachers of mankind. -- Ultimately you are your own highest teacher. Thus speaks the true teacher. -- Are the operations of the universe haphazard? -- Henry Drummond and his Natural Law in the Spiritual World. -- What are natural "laws"? -- The illusions of the lower mind. -- The spiritual ties of union in the universe. What are they really? -- The Sparks of Eternity. -- The island-universes of the ultramodern astronomers. -- The encourager within your own heart. Trust it! Follow it! Be it! The theme, friends, which I am going to talk about this afternoon, is entitled "The Secret Physiology of the World," using this word physiology in the sense of the ancient Greeks, as meaning the indwelling multitudes of lives which infill and inspirit, which invigorate and endow, the universe with all that it contains and is -- not merely the physical universe which our imperfect senses give us some impression of, but more particularly the inner universe -- the spiritual universe of which our physical universe is but the outermost garment or veil. Physiology as thus understood means the science and the study of the vital powers and functions of the universe, just as physiology properly understood in its human application means the study of the vital powers and functions of the human vehicle, the human body. The universe is an organic entity, filled full with living beings, cosmic spirits, dhyan-chohans as theosophists say -- call them by what name you will -- and it is the manifestations and workings of these entities dwelling behind the veil of the outward seeming which produce the marvelous variety that we see around us everywhere and which astound our intellect and bewilder our understanding. So many men on earth, so many gods in heaven! Each human being is but the outermost expression of a divine entity, of an inner god, of a spiritual-divine being of which the human expression is an imperfect and feeble reflection -- a faint and imperfect reproduction in human form of the spiritual powers within. So many men on earth, so many gods in the inner worlds. This is the root-thought which was in the minds of all the great seers and sages of the ancient times when they taught their disciples, their pupils, their followers: Look within, O Man! For in thee lie all the mysteries of the universe! Seek to fathom thine own unfathomable essence, for that unfathomable essence is boundless space! Follow the pathway of thy spiritual self leading ever more within; and then all truth and wisdom, all that there is to know, and compassion and infinite impersonal love, will be thine! "Man, know thyself!" was the profound injunction of the Delphic Oracle. Why? Because man is a microcosm, a little world, embracing within the compass of his whole constitution (not in the compass of his physical body or in that of his mere mind, but in the compass of his entire constitution) all the energies, powers, faculties, forces -- everything in fact that boundless space contains. He is a child of the Universe, and therefore is inseparable therefrom. Consequently, everything that is in boundless infinitude is in man, either in potency or in activity. You know doubtless what the old Hindu philosophers taught. They asked the question: "Kas twam asi?" "Who art thou?" And the right answer came: "Parabrahma," "the Boundless." In these words you have a hint of what is meant by the secret physiology of the world, using the word world in the sense of the boundless universe. That universe is filled full with spiritual beings, with ethereal beings, with astral beings, each class of such entities dwelling within its own appropriate sphere, each on its own appropriate plane; and each class of such entities having bodies -- vehicles, garments, veils -- fitted to, appropriate for, each such sphere or plane or world, just as we human beings on earth have bodies fitted to, and appropriate for, life here.

On last Sunday afternoon I tried to call your attention, friends, to what I call the Structure of the universe -- the secret structure of the universe -- showing how it consisted of hierarchies upon hierarchies of varying grades and of varying stages of ethereality, and all included and encompassed by, and filled full with, the life of a super-hierarchy, at the head of which super-hierarchy was a cosmic hierarch; and I tried to show furthermore that these aggregates of hierarchies are innumerable in boundless space; that they are incomputable, that they cannot be counted; that they bestrew the spaces of space like cosmic gems, like sparks of the indwelling spiritual fire; for space per se has no beginning and it has no ending. When I speak of space I mean not only the extension of the physical universe, which is really but one plane, one world, one sphere; I mean by the spaces of space more particularly the inner worlds -- astral, ethereal, others more ethereal, and then still more ethereal worlds, then spiritual worlds, then worlds divine. Do we here reach an end? No. There are no endings of the cosmic structure anywhere except relative endings. The super-hierarchy that I have spoken of contains all the hierarchical aggregates that I have just briefly described, but it in its turn is attached, linked to, and interblended and interwoven with another still higher and grander cosmic hierarchy, thus beginning a new series of grades or steps or planes or spheres or worlds, stretching both "upwards" and "downwards" -- and ever farther inwards. These boundless spaces of space, my Brothers, are your home. You are all children of eternity, sons of infinitude; for the inmost of the inmost of you is beginningless; and the inmost of the inmost of you is therefore deathless. Show me where a thing begins, and I will show you a form of illusion, temporary, unenduring. Everything that has a beginning and an ending is a thing with form and shape, and therefore has neither permanency nor does it last. But do you imagine for an instant, my Brothers, that I am at present talking to you merely about physical things having shape? Show me where intelligence begins, where love begins and ends; where electricity begins, where even physical matter begins or ends; and still more so where spirit has its beginning and its finish and beyond which there is naught. These observations exemplify what I mean by the phrase "spaces of space." Please get this thought clearly in your minds: the spaces of space. Now, what is the physiology of the spaces of space? What produces the vital functions, the vital powers, which indwell in these spaces of space, and which in the physical world produce the astounding variety that we see all around us: which produce the stellar host and all the circling orbs; produce here on earth every tiniest atom as it sings its way along its evolutionary path through life after life after life? It is energy -- energies say theosophists; it is force -- forces say theosophists; it is soul -- souls say theosophists; it is cosmic spirit -- cosmic spirits say theosophists; and I call these cosmic spirits by the good old name gods -- existing in hierarchies of gods, supergods, gods still higher; and in the other direction, demigods, heroes (to follow the Greek names for this ladder of life), then men on earth, then the beasts, then the plants, then the mineral kingdom, and those three kingdoms of the elementals -- as theosophists call these elemental entities -- which live beyond, and on, and within the last-named kingdom. The world is filled full with energies, with forces, each one of them endowed with or, more accurately speaking, possessing by intrinsic right, its portion of intelligence, of will, and of consciousness. Can you limit the ranges of these three within the encompassing material substance of man's brain cells and say that they exist only there? What a lunatic idea! Were it so, how account for their existence there alone? How explain it? Men are conscious: men have wills: men have intelligence: simply because they are particles of a universe from which they are inseparable, and from which they draw all that they have and are. They are essentially that universe; they are merely one host of the multitudes of other beings expressing these inner faculties, these inner powers -- the powers and energies of these inner and invisible worlds. So many men on earth, so many gods in heaven -- in the inner worlds. Indeed, men with every breath they draw, with every movement they make as they walk, as they work, pass through, literally, the dwellings, the entities, it may be the rivers, the woods, the oceans, the lakes, of the world just above ourselves in ethereality. We humans have no conscious cognizance of it. But do you think that our physical world is the only inhabited world in boundless infinitude? Do you think that it is the standard by which to judge the possibilities of boundless infinitude? What a lunatic idea! It is a

remnant of the old idea that the earth, our earth, our little earth, is the center of the universe created especially by God for man's habitat and that all the rest of boundless space, even physical space, is merely an embroidered decoration in the starry dome for the delectation and thoughtful meditation of man! Keep your medieval ideas, if you will; but to me, give me the instincts of my spirit! Give me those things which the inner eye, visioning, tells me I should follow, for it is these that I believe in and trust in; for I follow the promptings of the spirit within me and this enables me to see, and what I see, you can see it too. Truth is for all men. All men have a power within them which can be self-consciously attained only by each man for himself. This is a power of consciousness; and as ye open yourself to this consciousness and pass the threshold of it into a more secret chamber of your inner being, you will see there a beauty, a vision of truth; and then after a time you will see another portal and you will realize that that other portal that now you begin to see is also within you, within your consciousness; and you will move towards it and open the new door, giving entrance into a world still more beautiful, still more sublime; and thus you can follow the path of the spiritual self, of the essential selfhood, of the divine selfhood within, ever more and more inwards. And that path of beauty and peace and achievement is endless; for it is you and you are the universe -- each one of you. Men and women are here on earth as a human host merely as pilgrims putting up for a while at this inn of earth, for the space of this short human life; and when ye leave it on the great adventure which begins with the coming of what men call death and so foolishly fear, ye will pass onwards, following the pathways of the universe to other destinies, all regulated entirely by what you have made yourself to be, by what use you have made of your faculties and powers here on earth; for ye will reap what ye have sown. Ye are the makers of yourself; ye are the carvers of your own destiny. Make it a noble one! Make it sublime! Yes, we as a human host are passing through earth-life now merely as one phase of our long, long journey through eternity. We shall come back here when the cycle upon which we are at present moving turns in its spiral course, and then we shall reincarnate on earth again in human bodies. But after death -O Death, mother of peace and bliss; O Death, the opener, the one giving the vision -- after death ye shall enter into the Circulations of the universe; and if ye have wrought your lives aright on earth, ye shall be cognizant of what ye see as ye pass along. The physiology of the universe is the physiology of an organism, of a living entity; and it is the gods, and the demigods, the semigods, the heroes, the excarnate human beings, the supergods, and other entities too innumerable even to speak of because I doubt if you could understand me -- it is these which provide the motivating impulses moving the universe from within and giving it its countless functions and vital powers. Ye are children of boundless space, children of eternity. We men as children of the universe are a part of its vital forces; we take a collaborating part in the divine cosmic labor; and the gods are not only our brothers and our parents, but we men are gods in our inmost, and are even at the present time taking an active although an unself-conscious part in the grand physiological work of the universe. Clear out of your minds the old superstitions of your religious books, the old teachings of the religions that have misled the spirit of men! Within lies truth, nowhere else! As the Lord Buddha taught: "Believe not at all what you are told merely because you are told it"; but if your conscience tells you that it is true, then hold to it, and hold to it with all the strength of your soul. Truth lies within, not without; nevertheless, that without is not yet you self-consciously, but will be. Man is at present a god manifesting on earth in human flesh as he follows his age-long evolutionary pathway. In future periods of time he will evolve forth from himself, unwrap from himself -- which is what evolution means -- bring out from himself, what he is within -- latent powers, latent faculties, what are now seeds of energy and intelligence and understanding -- and thus he will then walk the earth as a man-god. That is your destiny. This divinity is even now within you. It is the very core of the core of your being, the very heart of the heart of you. It is within you and also above you.

Know yourself! I can tell you that one of the first instructions given to the student is: learn to know yourself so that you may know the universe of which you are an inseparable part. You can know what is outside only by the touchstone of yourself. Where is your understanding? Within. Where is your intuition? Within. Where is the power which makes you, you? Within. Where is the individuality which produces you as a man and which produces other men as men? Within. Where is your intellect? Within. Can't you see that you have everything within? So many men on earth, so many gods in heaven! This is a theme for you to think over. Oh, if men only knew what they are within! One very important rule of nature or natural law regulating not only the structure -- interior and exterior -- of the universe, but also its physiology, is this: where there is one man, or one god, or one world, or one plane, or one sphere -- it matters not at all what the unit may be -- there is a higher, there is one superior to it, one still loftier; consequently beyond or above, within if you like, this unit, there exists a still nobler range of consciousness: a sphere, a plane, a realm, a world, still more sublime; and so on through an endless chain of succeeding degrees or stages, each one of these realms and worlds and spheres being populated, as our earth is, with beings -- intelligent, sentient, conscious, feeling. Therefore men can learn and do learn from those more evolved than they are. This is nature's first law, because learning is growing. Do you see the need therefore of the existence of teachers? Even in ordinary humanity some men are more advanced than others, and consequently know more, feel more, see more: they are the natural teachers of those who know and feel less than they. Even in ordinary humanity it is so. There are always steps, degrees, grades, on the ladder of life, and this rule prevails also in the existence of men. And much greater than ordinary men, much farther evolved, much more cognizant of the existence of the inner worlds, are the great sages and seers of the human race -the Buddhas, the Christs, the great thinkers and leaders of men. So also it is in the inner worlds themselves. The gods inspire, guide, and are constantly engaged in work, in labor, connected with the vitalizing and inspiriting of their respective spheres. The demigods are their children; and the demigods teach the heroes, to use the Greek hierarchical names; and the heroes are the leaders and teachers of average men; and men in their turn more or less consciously guide and teach the beasts. Do you understand me, my Brothers? Within you is the fountain of all wisdom, and ultimately you are your own highest teacher and the carver of your own destiny. That is one truth. Nevertheless there exist in the world great teachers, whose sublime labor it is to help their fellow men. There is no contradiction between these two statements. To me it is childish when I hear a man declare: "I am an incarnate god and need no teacher." Ah! true, if that human being so speaking were indeed manifesting the divine powers within him; but such a speech proves the paucity of his spirit and the limited range of his visioning power. It takes greatness to understand greatness; it takes the vision of the spirit to be able to teach others of that vision. Can a man whose heart has no conception of greatness and whose soul does not swell with impersonal love for his fellow beings -- can such a man teach others? No. But there are men who are very great indeed because highly evolved and they are the natural-born teachers of their fellows. Teaching is a necessary thing, because teaching means growing and this is nature's law. The first lesson that the real teacher will give to his disciples is not "Follow me," but "Man, as you are rooted in the spiritual universe and are inseparable from it, in yourself is the fountain of all wisdom and light, of all peace and love, of all beauty and harmony. Follow this path to the Buddha within and above you. I," says the teacher, "will show you the way, for I have trodden it. I know the way." And the teacher gathers his pupils together as the bird will gather her young under her wings. He protects them, he guides them, he stimulates them, he fills them with intimations of spiritual and intellectual beauty, he points out to them the path, as he leads them on the forwards-going path, on the path of evolution. Thus does a true teacher act. Men don't know what they have within them -- indescriptible beauty, power to become self-consciously at one with all nature's being; for you yourself as individuals traverse, pass through, because your constitution is in tune with and at one with, all the inner spheres: the realms and the worlds which we

see not and feel not; and yet in some mystic and unexplainable way we sense that these surround us and permeate us. In every man's heart -- or shall I say his soul, or shall I say his mind? -- there is a feeling of his oneness with all that is, and that all things are his, for he is they; that there are no insurmountable barriers beyond which he cannot pass; that boundless infinitude is his home, and that with every step that he takes forwards and inwards, he enters into more intimate associations with other classes of spiritual beings. My first question, friends, is the following: Are the operations that take place in the world and in the universe generally, haphazard, or are they consistent and purposive -- having a purpose? They are the latter, of course. Will you tell me, please, how the universe can be a lunatic universe? Do you see any signs of lunacy in it? How can it be haphazard? How can it be a merely fortuitous occurrence and running by chance? Where do you see in it any signs whatsoever of haphazard or fortuitous occurrences? On the contrary, everywhere prevails rigid law, so called: inflexible consecutiveness of movement from cause to effect, everything bound together in unbreakable bonds, and all betraying, especially to the inner seeing eye, a majestic plan, a sublime purpose. Is this therefore a lunatic universe? It seems to me that any thoughtful and really observant man who would free his mind from prejudices of merely human theory will have his answer written large around him and especially so within himself. The theosophical philosophy teaches something diametrically contrary to this supposed idea of haphazard or fortuitous action. It teaches a universe which is an ensouled organism as man's body is ensouled; the ensouling energy, however, being rather a vast aggregate of consciousnesses comprising will and intelligence working all together as a harmonious organic unity, and the results of their operations which seem so inscrutable to the unenlightened and uninstructed brain-mind of man, are the marvelous symmetry and harmony in the so-called laws which are the first thing that strike the thoughtful mind in studying the universe around us. Man himself is but one host of this incomprehensibly vast aggregate of other consciousnesses. If you are interested in a more detailed answer to this question, I refer you to other lectures which I have given here in this Temple of Peace, and these lectures you will find printed in the present series of pamphlets called Questions We All Ask. Question Two: Are the different parts of the solar system connected with each other by other than physical laws, or is gravitational attraction the only bond among them? Some years ago there was written an interesting book by a Scottish author called Henry Drummond. This book was entitled Natural Law in the Spiritual World. I was a youth at the time when I read this book, and I said to myself even then: "It is a clever work; but why in the name of all that is holy didn't the author entitle it Spiritual Law in the Natural World?" -- meaning by the term natural world what theosophists call the physical world. These so-called laws of nature which are talked so much about and which no one of the users of the term really understands, are merely the reflections in this physical world of spiritual energies and powers belonging to the entities of the inner and invisible spheres and realms, expressing themselves here. This physical universe, it should be remembered, is not the standard by which to gage infinity. Our physical universe is only one expression, one plane, one world, one sphere, of the spaces of space; and what men call the laws of the physical universe which surrounds us are merely the reflections, the expressions here, of the ethereal and spiritual vitalities and functions of the invisible and indwelling divinities which thus make up what we may truly call the physiology of the universe. The title of the book by the Scottish author that I have named is what the ancient Greeks would have called a hysteron proteron, which I may anglicize by translating this phrase as 'the cart before the horse.' But, do you see, at the time when this Scottish author wrote, men had come to a state of mind in which they had lost all faith in anything that they could not see or could not touch or could not hear or smell or

taste -- thus pinning their faith to the most deceptive things that men know, the reports of our physical senses. These physical senses are indeed the most deceiving organs that men have, valuable in their way as they certainly are; while, on the other hand, the most reliable and convincingly working elements of the human constitution were virtually lost sight of: intuition, understanding, freedom from brain-mind prejudices and fads; and worst of all there was a turning away from those finer spiritual senses, whether dwelling in brain or heart or both, which are whispering, whispering, whispering, intimations of truth all the time to him who has the hearing ear. I pity, I pity indeed, the man or woman belonging to the class that the ancient Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, called the living dead -- people living in the body indeed but practically dead to the voice of their indwelling spirit; who cannot feel instinctively and see intuitively that the great things are the things which belong to the inner life of man, and not at all to the physical senses. Let me try briefly to illustrate this. A man returns home at night. He approaches his gate. He starts aside. "A serpent," he exclaims, "coiled in my path." But then he looks again, and he finds that the supposed serpent is but a coil of rope. Perhaps the same man approaching his house at eventide saw running over the grass of the hill in front of him "a rabbit with horns" as it seemed to him; and he turns home and tells his family of "a rabbit with horns that I have seen this eventide." What he really saw were the long ears of the rabbit; but to him at the time they seemed to be horns. The supposed serpent in the path and the supposed horns of the hare were as unreal and non-existent as is the hair on an egg, but for the time being he was persuaded that he saw things which existed. It is thus that our minds are deceived, and we often hold to these delusions produced by our senses as being true, and we allow our judgment thereafter to be swayed by these illusions. These examples of illusion are drawn from the ancient Hindu writings concerning the nature of maya, illusion. It is our senses and the lower mind cooperating which produce illusion in our consciousness. Listen, my friends: there is in each one of you an infallible guide, a touchstone of truth. It is yourself, your spiritual self, of which your animal or merely human self is a feeble and often deluding reflection. I appeal to my audience every time when I stand on this platform and speak, on every Sunday afternoon, to try to become at one with this spiritual self within you, for it is your inner god. There lie truth and wisdom and understanding and ineffable peace. It is of course true that gravitational attraction is one bond uniting the various bodies of our solar system. There are also electrical and magnetic bonds, of course. But I can tell you that among the different members of the solar system, and similarly so as regards the other solar systems comprising our own home-universe -- which is encompassed within the encircling zone of the galaxy, the Milky Way -- there are other inner bonds or ties of union of many, many, many kinds: divine bonds, spiritual bonds, ethereal bonds -- in fact, all the bonds of the inner and invisible worlds and realms and spheres. And it is these inner worlds and realms and spheres which compose the real universe of which our physical universe exists merely as one plane or realm or sphere. The very bonds of union that hold the solar systems of the various suns in systematic place, in order; the very bonds of union which hold our planets in their orbits as they cycle around their primary, our own day-star; the very bonds of union which keep the different solar systems of the galaxy combined together as our own home-universe: are just these invisible and spiritual-ethereal energies or forces of titanic power working in the invisible realms of universal invisible nature. Do you ask what they really are, these inner and invisible and governing energies and forces? I will tell you: they are the vitalities and wills and consciousnesses of cosmic entities all working harmoniously and consistently and continually together, in just the same way as man's physical body is kept to its shape and holds its individual form by his own vital and volitional and conscious essences. All the innumerable hosts of life-atoms which compose even man's physical frame are held together as a unity in the grip of the vitality and will and consciousness of the man, for he, the man, is the hierarch of his hierarchy, which last is the structure and fabric of his inner constitution. In just the same way are the invisible and interior worlds held together by, bound together by, encompassed by, and swimming in the ocean of the vitality and will and consciousness of the supreme hierarch of our own cosmic hierarchy.

When I say supreme hierarch, my Brothers, please remember very clearly that I have already told you in other lectures that these cosmic hierarchies are countless in number; they are innumerable; they fill infinitude full; and in our own theosophical phraseology, we call this countless host of stars with all their inner constitutional elements and energies by the beautiful name "the Sparks of Eternity." It is the vitality and will and consciousness, therefore, of the encompassing divine being which includes within its constitution all that our universe is -- both the inner and the outer parts of our universe; and it is this cosmic vitality, this cosmic will, this cosmic consciousness composing this encompassing divinity, which hold all things in order in the universe, which gives them place and retains them in harmonious adjustment, and which give us the beauty and the peace and the law so called which are so evident in the cosmic spaces. The other universes that our ultramodern astronomers are beginning to tell us about, and which they call island-universes outside the bounds of our own galactic system, we may look upon as being a cellular aggregate -- each such island-universe representing what we may call the Cosmic Cell in the bodyaggregate of a cosmic super-hierarchy. A wondrous conception is this, enchanting the thought, elevating the understanding, and quickening our imagination as we ponder over the matter. Each such islanduniverse is a cosmic cell included in the encompassing vital individuality of this cosmic super-divinity. Paul of the Christians, who was an initiate, spoke truth when he remarked: "In it -- such a divinity -- we live, and move, and have our being." But just because boundless infinitude has no frontiers, has no beginning and no ending, therefore are these cosmic super-entities as numerous as, indeed vastly more numerous than, men are in their own human host. ****** I regret that I have had to hold over for a number of Sundays some most interesting questions regarding man's reincarnations on earth. The short space of time still at my disposal will not permit me to answer them this afternoon. I will try to do so on another occasion; and next week on Sunday afternoon I hope to talk to you briefly and as best I may about the marvels of the spiritual world which are the causes of the secret physiology of the universe, and likewise of the secret structure or anatomy of the universe. What a theme these three subjects of thought give to us, for our hours of quiet meditation: the pneumatics of space, the secret physiology of space, and the secret anatomy or structure of space! Man in essence is a child of boundless infinitude, a god in human flesh feebly expressing the divine powers of his inner constitution, destined in the future to take his proper place on the azure seats of the gods in the council chambers of infinity! Man is a child of space, filled with powers which he understandeth not; no plaything, as he wrongly imagines, of the winds of chance, but truly the master of his destiny when once he understands and assumes his spiritual and essential rights and obligations. And do you know, my Brothers, that he cannot assume those rights until he knows his duties: for the quickest way by which to get one's rights is to be faithful to one's obligations, to one's duties. Do you know why? Because the performing of duties and obligations are spiritual and intellectual and moral exercises which make one strong. A true man is a noble being. A true man is an inspiration: a child of eternity, destined to traverse eternity, so to speak, in the future, as a god, on his evolutionary way to passing into a super-god, then into a sublime hierarch, and thereafter going still higher. My Brothers, each one of you in the core of the core of your being is a divinity, which divinity is the source of all that makes you what you really are, the source of all that is worth while in your life. This inner divinity is the encourager in your heart, the stimulator of your soul; it is the one who gives you courage and peace, and who fills your heart with love, and your soul with understanding. Trust it! Follow it! Be it!

Second Series: Series: No. 16 (December 22, 1930)

THE AZURE SEATS OF THE GODS

(Lecture delivered October 26, 1930) CONTENTS: Not the gods of the ancient mythologies. -- Who are the gods? -- From uselfconscious god-sparks to self-conscious gods. -- A mistake in early Christian thought. -- From star to atom. -- What are the azure seats of the gods? -- The relation between men and gods. -- The universe an endless ladder of life. -- Our other selves, the gods. -- Glimpses into the life of an atomic system. -- The cosmic age of an atom. -- Where do the gods dwell? -- Mark Twain and his religion. -- Extract from the biography of Mark Twain. -- How account for the obvious imperfections in the universe? -- Is true esoteric teaching ever given for a price? -- The teacher's vow of personal poverty. -- The basis of esoteric truth in The Theosophical Society. -- You are an imbodied flaming divinity! On Sunday afternoon two weeks ago I spoke to you on a theme which I called 'The Secret Anatomy or Structure of the World, using the word world in the sense of universe, and on last Sunday afternoon I spoke to you on a somewhat similar theme which I called "The Secret Physiology of the World." In the first of these two lectures I tried to describe the structure and nature of the invisible and visible realms which the theosophist properly groups under the term universe, and in the second of these two lectures I attempted to portray for you a picture of the vital functions and powers inherent in the universe, and endeavored to show that these vital functions and powers were caused by and actually were the essences -- comprising the intelligences and will of a vast interblending and interlocking series of gods -- existent in hierarchical systems; and this afternoon I am going to try to make another picture for you, mounting still higher along the ladder of life which forms the constitution of the universe; and my theme I have called "The Azure Seats of the Gods," comprising in this title what may otherwise be described as the pneumatology of the world -- signifying by this term pneumatology a brief outline or sketch of the gods themselves, that is to say of the spiritual essences with which the universe is filled full: their origin, nature, and destiny. I wonder, friends, what you think I may have in mind in beginning to talk to you upon my subject, "The Azure Seats of the Gods." Do you think I mean the gods of Greece and Rome, sitting in lofty Olympus on seats of azure marble? Or the gods of Hindustan, or the gods of the ancient Americas? No, I do not refer to the old pantheons of deities. But, nevertheless, I will say in passing that even those old pantheons were builded upon an ancient and esoteric wisdom which taught, under the guise of a public mythology, profound secrets of the structure and operations of the universe which surrounds us. The entire human race has believed in gods, has believed in beings superior to men; the ancients all said that men are the children of these gods, and that from these superior beings, existent in the azure spaces, men draw all that in them is; and, furthermore, that men themselves, as children of the gods, are in their inmost essence divine beings linked forever with the boundless universe of which each human being, just as is the case with every other entity everywhere, is an inseparable part. That is a sublime conception! It shows man's oneness with boundless infinitude. It shows us that out of the womb of the past comes the evolutionary life-stream, advancing slowly through the ages with its innumerable hosts of growing, evolving, learning entities. It teaches us also that from unself-conscious god-sparks we become in time self-conscious gods, thereafter taking a self-conscious part in the cosmic labor. What a picture for our hours of quiet thought! How these ancient ideas dignify our humanity, ennoble our standing as men! How they inspirit our souls and inflame our minds with hope! For they show us clearly that, notwithstanding all our mistakes, notwithstanding the many, many times when we fall by the wayside, nevertheless always are we advancing steadily forwards -- growing, learning, evolving! As I have so often told you before, evolution means the bringing out from within of what is latent within us. We are essentially gods; we are divine beings in our inmost essence, children of the cosmic spirit which encompasseth us; inseparable therefrom, and growing from unself-conscious god-sparks -- not yet selfconsciously recognizing our unity, our oneness, our identity, with the cosmic life -- into self-conscious

realization of it. Even we as the human host -- gods imbodied in human flesh and but feebly expressing the divine forces within us -- even we as the human host have our seats in the azure spaces of this earthsphere. One great mistake that the European peoples made after the downfall of Greece and Rome, from whose wisdom we inherited so greatly, was accepting the idea that mankind is distinct and separate from the universe in which mankind lives and moves and has its being. We are not separate, we in the universe are at one always, from eternity to eternity, with the boundless, encompassing life, which is our life -with the boundless encompassing intelligence which holds the stars in their courses and governs the movements of each tiniest atom. We are at one with the cosmic consciousness of which we are the offsprings. Do you see what this implies and means? That all the boundless spaces of space are our home, our home! How vast a palace is therefore ours! How great a field for expansion! How sublime a destiny is ours! Therefore try to sense your oneness with the encompassing life, and live and be and grow and manifest through yourself what you have locked up within you. We are one with the universe -obviously, because we cannot leave it; its life is ours; its substances are ours; its energies are ours; its powers are ours; its forces are ours; its consciousness is ours; its destiny is ours. We are it. Every one of us is rooted therein -- indeed, not only rooted therein, but verily it. The azure seats of the gods, my Brothers, are the deathless selves within us. We are as deathless in our inmost as is the Boundless, for we are it; and it is only these composite bodies of atoms -- borrowed each from others and all from each and each from all -- these transitory and inadequate physical frames which can manifest but only in sorry measure the powers locked up within each one of us. Casting these away, we come to freedom, we come to a greater expansion of life, for then we enter into our own and exchange the mortal for the immortal: leave the personal for the impersonal, which is the deathless part of us; for we ourselves, each one in the inmost spiritual self abiding in the core of the core of us, are seated on the azure thrones -- the azure seats of the gods -- in each case, such azure throne being each god's own deathless essence, encompassed by the Boundless. Is this difficult to understand? Nay, it is simple, easily comprehensible! Just open your hearts; forget your mental prejudices; forget misleading religious and scientific teachings of the past, both of which are moribund, dying if not dead, and come into your own! Be alive! Live! Be what is within you! Let the inwardly-living come out, and be true men! Then fear and horror and misery will pass from you as clothes outworn and unequal to your grown stature. It is personality, which is limitation, which binds and cripples the spirit within. Free yourself from the imperfect and crippling personality and wander into the cosmic spaces! And verily, I say to you, take your seats -- the azure thrones which belong to you as gods, as children of the universe, deathless in your inmost, as it is deathless in its inmost. Remember that these azure seats are in each case the deathless spirit within you. You are seated in yourself; you are born from yourself; naught else brings you to birth. Your Self is your seat, your azure seat of power. For that self, as you follow it with the eye of the spirit ever more inwards into the inner worlds, is divine. You are all sons of the gods, who are beings greater than you now are: beings who have become gods from having been men, even as you, the present human host, will evolve forth the divinity within you, and hence in future cosmic aeons you will in your turns take your places as fully self-evolved cosmic deities. Assume then and even now the azure seats of power which are rightly yours and which exist in the boundless bosom of the spaces of space! Yes, these cosmic spirits, which I call gods (it is as good a name as any other), these dhyan-chohans, if you like to use our own theosophical term -- "Lords of Meditation" -- were once men in far bygone aeons of cosmic time, in other universes which now have vanished and which gave place at their passing to their successors, at once their own children and yet reimbodiments of themselves. As man reimbodies himself in human flesh in life after life, so do the universes reimbody themselves as universes in cosmic aeon after cosmic aeon. Each such universe has its beginning, has its growth and flowering of power, has its decay, its passing, its death, its blissful rest; and then it comes forth again out of the womb of space and a new universe is thus born to enter upon a new cycle of evolutionary activity. And the

beings, the entities -- hosts, incomputable multitudes of them -- which filled those former universes with lives and intelligences and wills, and which were all beings having the same status as we men now have during one phase of our evolution, now have become gods, have evolved to be such; and we who are now men will blossom forth in future cosmic aeons as gods also. When I speak of the spaces of space, and of the cosmic spaces, I mean more particularly the inner and invisible worlds, not merely the material extension of our physical universe; for our physical universe is but one section, as it were, one plane of the all-encompassing world-life; and above and beneath and around, in endless series, are the inner and invisible realms and spheres, each one filled as full with lives and energies and consciousness and wills as our own physical universe is. Here on this earth we sense movement everywhere, and variety everywhere; and variety means individuality, it means endless hosts of processions of beings advancing forwards in all the grades of evolutionary progress. All are on their upward way, all are learning; those below us destined to pass through the human stage where we are now, and by that time we shall have left the human stage and shall have evolved forwards into human godhood or into godhood -- not into a God, not into one God, but ourselves being gods and furnishing the motivating powers and vital functions which fill the universe full, so that it moves and expresses itself in ceaseless, all-various action, thus producing the universe that we see: the suns, the stars, the nebulae, the comets, the planets and the similar and minor hosts of entities that we know to exist even on our earth. The universe is an endless ladder of life! This, in brief, was the esoteric teaching behind the ancient mythologies, the popular, degraded, and degenerate mythologies of the ancient peoples; it was the mystery-teaching taught in the Mystery schools, where sages likewise taught the neophyte how to hasten his evolutionary pace, to quicken his progress, to evolve more rapidly. This teaching all centered around one fundamental rule of fact: forget yourself, if you will come into your self. Do you understand? The teaching of Jesus, the Syrian sage was exactly the same: "Give up thy life, if thou wouldst live." This means to give up the limited, personal, small, restricted self, and to live in the spiritual part of yourself, which is your real self, your spiritual self, your divine self, which is cosmic in its reaches and ranges of extension. In other words, it means to live as gods instead of as mere men -- to live according to the god within you, which is not a god outside of you, but the god within you! When even the Christian spoke of men as being Sons of God, he uttered the same sublime idea; but alas, alas, the explanation of the idea had been lost! O Brothers, to assume the azure seats of power is your future destiny. Some will do it more quickly than others, because their hearts are anhungered for truth and because already is stirring within them the resistless urge of almighty love: that love which breaks all bounds, which overleaps all barriers, because its very essence is cosmic; which causes us to forget ourselves and to live in the universal, to live in others and for others, for then when we have this conception and feel this urge, we realize that our brothers are we. What a sublime thought, and what a feeling of homecoming and of peace and of inexpressible rest does this teaching give to us! The Delphic Oracle taught: Gnothi seauton, 'Know thyself!' For you, the self, the spiritual self, are essentially all that is; and the more you know of the spiritual self the more you enter into the very womb of cosmic being, the more you become what you are in your highest, what you are in your inmost; the more you become self-consciously at one with divinity. Knowing your spiritual self, you know all things; you know all things with progressively increasing power and comprehension, because knowing your self means knowing the universe; for you are it and it is you; and this spiritual self, this wondrous marvel within, always incomprehensible because infinite -- this self is for each one of you your own azure seat of power. Each one of you is sitting in his own azure seat with the universe beneath, above, around! O my Brothers, do you understand this idea? It is so simple. Wash your minds clean of all the superstitions of the past! Try to understand this simple thought! It is a master key, a master-key opening all doors of wisdom and knowledge and power. Enter into the company of the gods, your other selves, so to speak, who have simply gone ahead of you in evolution, and that is why they are gods. We humans are trailing along the evolutionary pathway behind them; and behind us are trailing other hosts of beings,

who even at present are beginning to look up to us as gods. Having this idea clearly in our minds, we clearly vision an endless procession of lives, each one of them destined in time to become a god, a cosmic spirit. Do we not see the movements of the gods? Do we not hear them speak? Do we not see what they do? We do -- but we recognize it not. Their existence is so vast and ours so small, their time periods are so great and ours so small, their spaces in which they live, filled with their vitalities and consciousness and wills, are so cosmically huge, that we with our limited perceptions know them not. That is all there is to it. Now look in the opposite direction into the life of an atomic system, and consider a moment what happens there. One only of our human seconds of time means, let us say, four quadrillion revolutions of an electron around its protonic sun-center -- and this perhaps is the entire life cycle of an atomic solar system! So, similarly, but in the other direction, one second of the time of the gods is to us a cosmic life period -- the entire lifetime of our solar system. That is why we don't see them work; that is why we don't see them act; that is why we don't hear them speak: because they move in cosmic measures, and we cannot take it in. Our life is too small, too fretful, too fevered, too quick, too minute. Perhaps the infinitesimal entities living on an electron revolving within an atom -- let us say in one of the atoms composing my body -- run through lifetime after lifetime after lifetime before I can even snap my finger; and that snap of the finger alone would be in time to such an atomic infinitesimal entity, short as it is to me and to you, a cosmic age. And to such an infinitesimal entity, my human consciousness -fretful and limited and small and human as it is compared with that of the gods -- is a cosmic lifetime. Therefore am I to such an infinitesimal consciousness a dhyan-chohan as theosophists say, a "lord of meditation"; and such an infinitesimal atomic philosopher, perhaps calls me, with my small, human, fretful life, a lord of meditation, because it catches of my consciousness but an infinitesimal fraction during the time that it takes to snap my finger. Do you understand? The life period of such an infinitesimal consciousness is too small, too fretful, too fevered, too rapid, for it to take in even so quick an action as the snapping of a human's fingers. The gods are; they live; it is their powers and energies, their vital functions, which form the physiology of the wonderful, mysterious, sublime universe in which we live and move and have our being and it is the incomprehensible love which fills their hearts, so to say, which we humans in our fevered existence sense dimly as the impersonal love in our own hearts. Figurate to yourself, if you like, a series of everlasting concentric spheres of consciousness. You know of course what concentric spheres are -- spheres within spheres, the greater including the less, but all having one common central point. Let us say that this central point is the deathless self. This deathless self begins its evolution, so far as any universe is concerned, as an unself-conscious god-spark, which in our symbolic figure is the center of the inmost of these concentric spheres. As this consciousness-center evolves and grows and learns and expands its consciousness little by little as the aeons pass, this center of self-consciousness expands to become at one with the next outermost of the concentric spheres; and in this next outermost sphere it therein lives for still other aeons as a still evolving or expanding consciousness. When it has finished its life course and learned all possible lessons there, through and by means of an expanding and growing understanding, it next reaches the third of the concentric spheres. Thus does this process of expanding consciousness continue until finally the consciousness-center reaches the sphere of consciousness which we humans call the human stage, and its then state of evolution as manifesting in a psycho-astral-physical vehicle we call man. We are now as men through evolution expanding our understanding in what we may call the human ranges of consciousness; and this expansion of understanding will steadily continue until we shall have learned all the lessons that the human stage can teach to us, and then we shall work and function and have our being in the next wider concentric sphere of cosmic consciousness. And so do we continue ascending the ladder of life, or, in other words, passing over at long distant intervals of time to a larger concentric sphere until we finally reach divinity, implying the attainment of a consciousness including and enclosing a solar system. Does our evolution stop there? Not at all; for we shall continue our advance as self-conscious entities continually to spheres still grander, so that our encompassing liferange will include numbers of solar systems.

Do you see, therefore, what this scheme of evolution means? It means that there are gods endlessly ahead of us, ever greater and more wonderful with each attainment of a wider range or sphere; and also that there are hosts, multitudes, of other consciousnesses trailing behind us in spheres of consciousness smaller than ours and through which we have passed. But each greater concentric sphere that is attained is the vitality, the consciousness, the will -- the vital energy, the vital powers -- of some cosmic entity who has preceded us, in whom all other smaller entities move and live and have their being. Just so do we now as humans live and move and have our being in the sphere of the vitality and consciousness and will of that one god or divinity who is just beyond or ahead of us; and that god in its turn lives in the vitality and consciousness and will of a super-god greater than it; and so on without break. Examine the boundless spaces: there are no frontiers. Our vision halts; but where our vision halts, then thought leaps beyond our vision. Imagination in its turn overleaps thought; and at the outermost limits where imagination fails, the marvelous spiritual consciousness within us wings its flight beyond, and we instinctively recognize our intrinsic oneness with the Boundless. Here let me introduce an appropriate question that has been sent in to me for answer. In your lectures you talk a great deal about gods. Are there really such entities? I have already told you about them and have tried briefly to explain who and what they are. If you don't like to accept what I have said, then what are you going to do? Are you going to be satisfied with the facile and meaningless answer "I don't know"? Are you indeed? Not by a great deal! There is not living a man who is satisfied with the unsatisfactory answer "I don't know." There is an instinct in the human heart which whispers to every sane and normal man "You can know; for it is within yourself." Yes, the gods verily exist, and every intuitive and thoughtful man knows it perfectly well. He knows perfectly well that human intelligence and human consciousness and human will are not the only consciousness and intelligence and will in boundless space, in boundless time. A similar question that I have been asked to answer by the same questioner is the following: If so, what are they and where do they dwell? They are what I have told you, and they dwell in the azure spaces of space -- not merely in the physical universe, for that is not at all the idea, but in what are to us the invisible realms. Is your intelligence, is your love, is your spiritual power, is your will -- are all these in your flesh and merely the products thereof? If so, how can men transfer their thoughts as constantly they do? How can so transitory and passing an aggregation of physical atoms as the physical body is produce the works of majesty and beauty and power which dignify and glorify human life? In your turn tell me how! The ancient wisdom today called theosophy teaches us that it is understanding that does all this; it is intellect, it is visioning, it is the creative power within us and working through the physical vehicle. The body is a mere changing form that dies, and that is not the same during two consecutive seconds of human time. Think! Or, if you don't want to think, then be satisfied to repeat the rattletrap catch phrases of our fathers! Yes, the rattletrap scientific and religious catch phrases of our fathers that now are dead. The greatest ultramodern scientists today are beginning to teach what theosophists teach and have always taught: that mind or consciousness is the fundamental essence of the universe, which theosophists say is not mind but minds, not consciousness but consciousnesses -- in other words, gods! As between these ultramodern scientists and theosophists it seems to be largely a mere matter of phrasing: the idea apparently is the same. And here is a third question from the same querent: Do they live in the world as strangers, or are they integral parts of the universe? They are integral parts of the universe. Without the gods the universe could not be. It is their life and will and consciousness which hold the universe together -- together, and in order, and in place, and in

harmony; and inversely it is also true to say that without the universe the gods could not be. They are fundamentally one. They are fundamentally the same, just as a man is. A man needs a body to work through, and that body in a sense is himself -- his physical self: transitory, mortal, an atomic aggregate which passes, a mere changing shape. But is not that exactly what the universe is, physically speaking -transitory, mere shapes and forms of things, which come and go, when you take the cosmic view? Worlds come and go; but the universe as an entity lasteth forever, because the gods ensoul it. I sometimes wonder what the religious feelings and beliefs may be of the kind friends who come here on Sunday afternoons. As I suppose you know, some men are afraid of their religion; others are ashamed of it; others think that they haven't any at all -- and that asseveration I don't believe. Some people are like Mark Twain, who on his own testimony was scared stiff at his own religion. Perhaps you don't believe that statement? Well, I will read to you an extract from a letter that he once wrote to a member of this Society. This member asked him if he was a theosophist or interested in theosophy, and here, in part, is his answer which I will read to you, written from a small place near Vienna, dated August 5, 1898. Here, then, is the extract from his reply to this theosophist: No, I'm not leaning toward theosophy. I'm not leaning in any direction, I believe, but standing pretty straight in a petrified attitude. I have a religion, and a stubborn belief in it, but I have not found resemblances to it anywhere, and I shouldn't know how to label it if I should try. I have written it all out, but (between you and me) I dasn't stay in the same room with it during a thunderstorm. I shan't publish it -- I've got better judgment. Yes, and more charity. Sincerely yours, S. L. CLEMENS. Perhaps he was wise in not publishing it. A man who, to use his own terms, "dasn't stay in the same room with" his religious beliefs during a thunderstorm, must be spiritually and mentally speaking in a rather precarious state of mind. Was he afraid of himself or afraid of his religious beliefs? The theosophist has no such fear. When the thunder rattles the windowpanes and the lightning flashes o'er land and sea, remember, my Brothers, that lightning and thunder are manifestations of the same life that is in you yourself. Understand it and love it and fear it not, for that love is you and you are it. Cast fear from your hearts, for fear is a delusion and a deceit and will unman you. Be great in the simplicity of your soul. Expand with the expanding love within you, and then fear will vanish. He who truly loves never fears. I have here something else from Mark Twain, from his biography as published by Albert Bigelow Paine; and I desire to read this biographical extract to you, because it will neatly illustrate how people's religion sometimes makes them feel that they "dasn't stay in the same room with it during a thunderstorm." I think that Mark Twain himself wrote all of this. The extract as I have it is entitled Little Bessie Would Assist Providence: (It is dull, and I need wholesome excitements and distractions; so I will go lightly excursioning along the primrose path of theology.) Little Bessie was nearly three years old. She was a good child, and not shallow, not frivolous, but meditative and thoughtful, and much given to thinking out the reasons of things and trying to make them harmonize with results. One day she said: "Mama, why is there so much pain and sorrow and suffering? What is it all for?" It was an easy question, and mama had no difficulty in answering it: "It is for our good, my child. In His wisdom and mercy the Lord sends us these afflictions to discipline us and make us better." "Is it He that sends them?" "Yes." "Does He send all of them, mama?" "Yes, dear, all of them. None of them comes by accident; He alone sends them, and always out of love for us, and to make us better." "Isn't it strange?" "Strange? Why no, I have never thought of it in that way. I have never heard any one call it strange before. It has always seemed natural and right to me, and wise and most kindly and merciful."

"Who first thought of it like that, Mama? Was it you?" "Oh no, child, I was taught it." "Who taught you so, mama?" "Why, really, I don't know -- I can't remember. My mother, I suppose; or the preacher. But it's a thing that everybody knows." "Well, anyway, it does seem strange. Did He give Billy Norris the typhus?" "Yes." "What for?" "Why, to discipline him and make him good." "But he died, mama, and so it couldn't make him good." "Well, then, I suppose it was for some other reason. We know it was a good reason, whatever it was." "What do you think it was, mama?" "Oh, you ask too many questions! I think it was to discipline his parents." "Well, then, it wasn't fair, mama. Why should his life be taken away for their sake, when he wasn't doing anything?" "Oh, I don't know! I only know it was for a good and wise and merciful reason." "What reason, mama?" "I think -- I think -- well, it was a judgment; it was to punish them for some sin they had committed." "But he was the one that was punished, mama. Was that right?" "Certainly, certainly. He does nothing that isn't right and wise and merciful. You can't understand these things now, dear, but when you are grown up you will understand them, and then you will see that they are just and wise." After a pause: "Did He make the roof fall in on the stranger that was trying to save the crippled old woman from the fire, mama?" "Yes, my child, Wait! Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I only know it was to discipline some one, or be a judgment upon somebody, or to show His power." "That drunken man that stuck a pitchfork into Mrs. Welch's baby when -- " "Never mind about it, you needn't go into particulars; it was to discipline the child -- that much is certain, anyway." "Mama, Mr. Burgess said in his sermon that billions of little creatures are sent into us to give us cholera, and typhoid, and lockjaw, and more than a thousand other sicknesses and -- mama, does He send them?" "Oh, certainly, child, certainly. Of course." "What for?" "Oh, to discipline us! Haven't I told you so, over and over again?" "It's awful cruel, mama! And silly! and if I -- " "Hush, oh, hush! Do you want to bring the lightning?" "You know the lightning did come last week, mama, and struck the new church, and burnt it down. Was it to discipline the church?" (Wearily) "Oh, I suppose so." "But it killed a hog that wasn't doing anything. Was it to discipline the hog, mama?" "Dear child, don't you want to run out and play a while? If you would like to -- " "Mama, only think! Mr. Hollister says there isn't a bird, or fish, or reptile, or any other animal that hasn't got an enemy that Providence has sent to bite it and chase it and pester it and kill it and suck its blood and discipline it and make it good and religious. Is that true, mother -- because if it is true why did Mr. Hollister laugh at it?" "That Hollister is a scandalous person, and I don't want you to listen to anything he says." "Why, mama, he is very interesting, and I think he tries to be good. He says the wasps catch spiders and cram them down into their nests in the ground -- alive, mama! -- and there they live and suffer days and days and days, and the hungry little wasps chewing their legs and gnawing into their bellies all the time, to make them good and religious and praise God for His infinite mercies. I think Mr. Hollister is just lovely, and ever so kind; for when I asked him if he would treat a spider like that he said he hoped to be damned if he would; and then he -- Dear mama, have you fainted! I will run and bring help! Now this comes of staying in town this hot weather." Now, that is the kind of religion that I do not believe in. Can you blame me? The bewildering variety that we see in the universe everywhere around us -- the imperfections that we see everywhere, such as

exist in us humans, or in the beasts, or in the plants, yea, even in the demigods and gods -- for although they are divine they are imperfect as compared with boundless infinitude -- these very imperfections, this infinite variety, that we see, prove the existence in the universe of hosts, multitudes, endless legions of growing, therefore imperfect, and evolving entities, which in their incomprehensible aggregate fill the universe full, and indeed are that universe. Don't you see what I mean? Nature's imperfections, so called, are a proof of the existence, activities, and operations in nature of multitudes of imperfect creatures, however high or however low they may be, just as man's imperfect handiworks are proofs of the imperfect thoughts that he thinks, and all the imperfect emotions he allows to sway his heart, as expressed in the acts for ill and for weal which he does. The "good" and the "evil" in the world are a proof of imperfection, and therefore are a proof of the actual existence of imperfect but nevertheless evolving and growing hosts of beings like us humans. There, too, to the logical mind, when you think it over, is a perfect proof that the universe is filled full with thinking, sentient, conscious, living, willing, entities, in all grades, at all stages, and in all degrees of growth. Nature is the standing proof of this. On the other hand, the beauty that surrounds us, the marvelous harmony and symmetry of which we are conscious, the love which fills our breasts, the compassion and the pity which sway our souls, are proofs also of the striving of the divine flame within universal nature and therefore within us humans who are some of nature's children; and by these noble faculties of our being we recognize again our fundamental oneness with all that is. Yes, my Brothers, we too are gods, imbodied gods; and in time to come we shall take our seats selfconsciously -- those azure seats in the council chambers of infinitude -- and there we shall sit and confabulate with the gods, our peers; and our vitality, our psycho-electric vitality and magnetism, will fill a certain portion of the spaces of space, and in that vital essence of ours will live and move and have their being other hosts and armies of entities, inferior to us, even as and just exactly as we humans live and move and have our being in the vital magnetism of divine beings who have preceded us on the evolutionary path. Here are two more questions that I promised I would answer this afternoon: I am greatly interested to learn that you have an esoteric school where you give private advanced instruction. I am an earnest student of truth, but I cannot afford high fees. I once took a course in psychism which cost me fifty dollars, and learned nothing that I could not have gotten out of books. Do you give real secret instruction, and is the price per lesson or a lump sum for a complete course? Merciful heavens! If the time should ever come when I as a theosophical teacher could fall so low as to take one penny for teaching a spiritual truth, I pray the gods immortal that I may then at once breathe my last and be annihilated utterly. But such a fate is impossible for any true theosophical teacher. Never a penny is taken in payment by any true teacher of theosophical truths. Truth is your right as human beings. You are as entitled to it as I or as any other. Therefore my answer is: Not one cent is ever taken for teaching the realities of the universe. I had liefer starve in the gutter, as H. P. Blavatsky said, than receive a penny in payment for teaching holy facts of esoteric occultism. I don't mean these remarks unkindly as regards those other people who do teach for a price; I am not desirous of casting mud upon them, indeed, I am not alluding to them. This question has been asked me and I am answering it, and I repeat: No true spiritual teacher ever charges one cent for his teachings. I have been sent to teach, and to this duty of teaching I have devoted my life. Theosophists have indeed an Esoteric School where the more advanced instruction is given; but it is not given by favor nor is it ever boughten. Only when, due to my own training, my Brothers, I feel that I can entrust this holy treasure to another human heart, dare I pass it on; and then it is passed on freely. Yet I have no right to judge any other's ability or capacity in an offhand manner. Anyone has a right to apply to me. Ask, knock, and by the ancient law I am bound to open the doors. But by those same ancient laws, I am equally bound carefully to study, carefully to watch, the minds and hearts of applicants, and if the heart be not pure and the motive not good, with great kindness and gentleness the unprepared ones are allowed simply to leave us with such help as they may have received, and there our official relationship ends.

But to those who have been tested, who have been tried and found worthy, whose hearts have opened, whose minds have been lighted with the divine flame, they receive -- and freely. I cannot speak at length of these matters in a public audience, as you will readily understand; but I have given you in hints the whole truth. There is a deep wisdom to be had, deeper even than the marvelous teachings which we give from our platforms and which you will find printed in our books. But in order to receive this esoteric teaching, this deeper teaching, you must at least have studied somewhat, or at any rate be very intuitive: your hearts must have opened. This teaching is a passing on of light from mind to mind, from heart to heart. It is an opening of the doors within you, and when this happens then you yourself see. It is not for me to judge those who apply. I have no right to keep anyone out whose application is primarily honest. All I can do is to follow with great strictness and with rigid exactitude the straight and narrow line of action that the ages have laid down as the path of the teacher. That is all I can do. But to those who come to me with open heart and eager mind, and whose spiritual perception is already somewhat unveiled, to them I say: "Come, my Brothers, come! The feast is spread on the Master's table. I can show you the way to travel in order to find that self, of which I have spoken, which leadeth you forever more and more inwards into the very heart of the universe; I can show you the way and how to put your feet upon that way, which is your self. I can show you how to find yourself, your divine self; but you yourself must tread that path, in other words develop your own spiritual selfhood." Isn't this rule obvious and proper and necessary? But I repeat the truth: that no genuine spiritual teacher ever takes one cent for teaching the mysteries of the inner life whether of the universe or of man. What objection is there to a teacher of occultism charging a fee? Are not our schoolteachers paid? How would the occult teacher make a living if he did not charge something? How have they always lived? They work. H. P. Blavatsky, the foundress of the Theosophical Society in our age, in her spare time wrote articles for various magazines and newspapers, and from the meager income which she thus derived she lived and worked her entire life long and gave most of the little that she earned to the Society she so dearly loved. She founded the Theosophical Society -- that great leonine heart; she gave her lifeblood to found it. It was her child; and her successors who followed her passed their lives in doing the work and building up that which was confided to their hands. The gifts that were given to them paid for their clothing, for their food; and even these gifts were in large part turned over to the Theosophical Society. But whether a pupil and follower gave one cent or gave thousands, it mattered not. The poor is as welcome at the Master's table as is the billionaire -- more so, perhaps -- perhaps; it all depends upon the man or the woman. The clergyman receives his stipend, the schoolteacher receives his or her salary; and so forth; but no theosophical teacher has a salary or stipend or allowance: never has had, and I hope never will have. What is given to him in order to keep him alive, to clothe him, to pay his traveling expenses on his lecture tours, that is what he lives on. If he has any time that he can take from his strenuous official activities, then he will write, or he may use his hands to work, in order to provide food for his mouth. It is so. Every theosophical teacher has taken an unbreakable vow of poverty, of personal poverty. He can of course hold millions and even billions for the Society -- if we had them, which unfortunately we have not! -- but he has no right to keep even one cent for himself alone. Now, my brothers, before closing: The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 in the United States by H. P. Blavatsky, who was sent by the masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, in order to found the Theosophical Society in our age. From that original society, and after the passing of H. P. Blavatsky, there came into existence children-societies. Each one is now doing its own work; each one has its own officers and field of activity; but there is one distinctive feature -- and this is said simply as a statement of fact, of truth, without wishing to cast the shadow of a slur on brother-theosophists -- there is this distinctive feature between our Theosophical Society and others: ours is essentially based on

esoteric truths and esoteric discipline. From the very beginning, throughout, it has been and is pervaded by a spirit of brotherly kindliness, of love and compassion and of self-forgetful service for the world. Furthermore, it is permeated with the spirit of the teaching of our secret or esoteric school, so that even in our exoteric work this esoteric spirit is the life-blood, the coursing vitality, which has made The Theosophical Society, which I now have the high honor to direct, what it is. I fancy, therefore, that those who join The Theosophical Society do so because they feel that strange and mystical appeal, living in all human souls, and whispering to hearts anhungered for truth and to minds eager for more light, that there is Truth to be found -- the basic truth of the Universe -- of a spiritual and intellectual character; and that this Truth can be had. Verily, it can. I call upon you, my Brothers, to remember the main motif of our study together this afternoon. It is, to remember and to realize that each one of you is an imbodied, flaming divinity -- an imbodied flame of the cosmic soul, of the cosmic-spiritual fire; that each one of you has locked up within you, potencies, powers, faculties, energies, which you wit not of as a rule; and that these energies and faculties and powers and potencies can be cultivated wondrously; so that once you have taken the key and opened the door of yourself, your divine self within, you can pass over the threshold and see in the far distance -- a distance not so much of time nor of space, but of growth -- the gods on their azure seats in the council chambers of space. This is not poetry. I speak to you from my very heart of hearts. What I have said to you is truth.

Second Series: No. 17 (December 29, 1930)

OCCULTISM, MYSTICISM, AND SECRET SOCIETIES

(Lecture delivered November 2, 1930) CONTENTS: Is The Theosophical Society a secret society? -- What is the purpose of a secret society? -The possession of wisdom brings heavy responsibility. -- One great Esoteric School and one wisdomteaching. -- Occult societies and mystical societies are not exactly the same. -- Who is the true occultist? -- Mithraism a mystery-teaching. -- The close run between Mithraism and Christianity. -- The Mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace. -- Have the various religio-philosophical societies of today a historical ancestry? -- Claims made by the modern Rosicrucians as an organization. -- The final test of a teaching: universality. -- How can I find the society inspired by the most advanced Masters? -- Have not all theosophical societies the same teachings? -- One great Brotherhood of the Masters of Wisdom. -- Why have not the scientists "discovered" the Masters? -- A misapprehension as regards the Theosophical World-Congress to be held at Point Loma, 1931. Will any theosophists be excluded? Is The Theosophical Society a secret society with bars raised against those who apply in sincerity and honesty of heart? It is not. Anyone may join The Theosophical Society who will accept the fundamental prerequisite, in fact the only prerequisite -- an earnest and honest belief in universal brotherhood. Membership is open to every race of men, to every age after adulthood; and anyone who applies honestly can become an F.T.S. -- Fellow of The Theosophical Society. You may ask: Then why is it that some of your teachings are spoken of as secret, as esoteric, as being such that you, a theosophical lecturer, cannot refer to them in public? Yes, that is true also. We have in fact a secret society -- it is not a branch of The Theosophical Society at all, but an esoteric body of students who are engaged in the study of the deeper teachings of theosophy and who undertake to lead a noble life. Into this Esoteric Section can enter, will enter, may enter, my friends, only those who give the right knock. Now, this restriction -- the right asking, the right knocking at the Temple door, so to speak -- is not a bar raised arbitrarily against anyone; it is not something placed in order to trip unwary feet, but it fills a need which has existed throughout all the ages of past time. In every land, among all races of men, and, as I have said, in every age, there have been secret associations of men who gathered together for a deeper, closer study of the wondrous mysteries of the universe which surrounds us; and only those could enter these secret societies or associations who had proved themselves worthy, well qualified to bear the responsibilities, and also who were earnest and honest; for in the higher grades of this Esoteric Section of ours, those who have proved that they are true to truth, loyal to loyalty, feal to fealty, honest in honesty, these who have thus proved themselves to have these qualifications, are taught the most wondrous secrets of the universe -- not solely how that universe is builded and constructed and what its inner carpentry is, but also taught regarding the powers which infill this universe, which inspirit it, which invigorate it, which make it in fact what it is; they are taught about these powers, and also taught how to evoke from within the recesses of their own being the same spiritual and intellectual faculties and powers -- in other words, wisdom and knowledge are put into their hands, because they have proved themselves spiritually and intellectually and morally worthy of the charge, and of the heavy moral responsibility which this charge implies. You see thus that the restrictions spoken of are called for because of the present feeble character of human nature itself -- feeble, failing, imperfect, only partly evolved, and therefore subject to temptation, and subject to failing. No spiritual teacher will ever give to another human being a truth implicating power unless he knows that that other human being has proved himself worthy and well qualified, capable of carrying the burden of wisdom and knowledge and responsibility; but once that the neophyte has proved himself worthy and well qualified, then by natural right all the wisdom and knowledge about the universe that can be given to him belong to him as a human being. It is his; therefore it is potentially yours also. It is the same principle arising in prudence and experience which causes the chemist to lock the doors of the laboratory, so that cranks and criminals, thieves and children, may not enter in and perhaps with unwitting mind and careless hand scatter the seeds of disease, or wreak havoc on their fellow men.

Men of the Occident don't know what they have lying within them, as I tell you on every Sunday when I speak to you from this platform. You have powers latent within you as men which, if you knew how to control and direct them, could wreck the monuments of the greatest city of the world and by a single effort of the spiritual will cause them to vanish into impalpable dust, and thus could bring devastation and death to your fellow human beings. Is power like that to be placed in unskilled and above all in immoral minds and hands? This is the reason for the bar, for the restriction, that I have spoken of, and this bar is simply the door of the Temple itself: that is, your Temple. This Temple belongs to humanity, to every son and daughter of man. But you must prove yourself worthy to enter into it, and having proved yourself worthy, then all that can be taught therein is yours by right. There have existed secret societies in all ages, among all races of men everywhere, from the pole to the equator, from the equator to the other pole. There have been great men in the past, there are great men in the present, there will be great men in the future, who have known and who will know how to unlock the powers locked up within themselves. They have been initiated; they have been taught in the esoteric schools of the past. In every case, these great men are the saviors of mankind -- those bright and flaming intelligences, children of the human race, whose records we may even now see written large in the annals of history. All ages have known them; all races have produced them. They all belong to the one great Esoteric School, the greatest spiritual school that the earth has ever produced; and we call these great ones of the human race, the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. How many times have I recited a few of their names to you from this platform: the great Buddha, Krishna, Sankaracharya, in India; Lao-tse, Chuang-tse, Confucius, in China; Jesus the Syrian sage; Pythagoras, Empedocles, Apollonius of Tyana, as instances of Greeks; and in other lands similar individuals of whom only a name remains to us at present, such as Quetzalcoatl, and Manco Capac -and many, many more. All these great men taught one fundamental doctrine. The language conveying this sublime doctrine may have been in many cases different; the mere system of teaching the doctrine may have varied; but that fundamental doctrine was the same everywhere, and its fundamental principles were identic. Do you know why? Because each one of these great men had been initiated; had been taught in that greatest of esoteric spiritual schools, how to take leave of the physical vehicle and to pass with all his percipient faculties behind the veil of the outward seeming, and thus to glean knowledge and wisdom of nature's inner workings at first hand. Doing this they saw; seeing this they knew, because they had been there and had become. Thus it was that they all taught the same wisdomteaching. This great adventure will also be yours, my Brothers, in good time. It is your own for the taking. But in order to take, you must be, you must prove yourself; and in order to pass the examinations you must study and train yourself; and there is no examination and no conquest so difficult as that of self. Selfcontrol, self-conquest, self-victory -- a victory over the personal self, so that the immortal god within you may shine forth in resplendent wonder, in its native glory. Then you are fit to carry the heavy burden of responsibility; then you are fit to wield the scepter of power and to dart the thunderbolt, to use the old figure of speech. Then you can truly lead; then you can truly guide -- because you see; because you have been there, and therefore know. Mystical societies, occult societies, have existed -- and the average of men in the Occident think that these two kinds of societies are exactly the same. They are not. The occultist is one who studies at first hand those parts of nature which are hid, not seen -- the unseen, the invisible -- those parts of nature which so many men in their foolish blindness deny the existence of, so that they turn away from the straight and narrow path, which always is more or less a lonely path, but which leads to glory unspeakable, to mastery first over self, your self, nature's child, and then later over nature's inner forces and powers; because when you have passed the examinations, when you have passed the portals of initiation, then you become at one with spiritual nature, and nature's inner forces and powers you find to be in yourself. Oh! do you get that thought? It means becoming at one with the spiritual essence of your being, with your own inner god! And this is no mere figure of speech. Each one of you is the feeble reflection, the feeble expression, of a bright and flaming divinity within you and above you.

Initiation is naught but a becoming at one with your own inner god, your own spiritual being, and this means expanding your consciousness, your inner powers, so that they take cosmic extent, gain cosmic reaches. Being at one with the spiritual essence of things, you live there and breathe its atmosphere and become a very god in flesh. Just as Jesus the Syrian sage said: "I and my Father are one" -- referring here to his own inner god. When you become at one with your own inner god -- in other words, become at one with the divine essence working through you and giving you intelligence and love and power and vision -- you have allied yourself with the divinity within you, and thus you become a god among men, literally. The great ones of the past of whom I have spoken, have done just that; and smaller men do it in less degree; and these smaller ones, these smaller sons of men, are they whom we call geniuses. My Brothers, in past ages, when the currents of material life ran less strong than they do today, when men's minds in those former ages were turned more to the things which endure, to the things of the spirit, to the things which last -- I mean to the energies and feelings and thoughts within you, which bring you hope and make you live grandly and die grandly -- in those past ages it was thought to be man's loftiest objective to become more than man, more than an ordinary human. In order to become more than an ordinary human, a man whose heart was anhungered for truth and whose soul was quickened with an intuition of great spiritual values, entered upon the path of the ancient mysteryteaching. He gave up his life in order to find Life; he broke the bonds of personal existence -- limited, restricted, constricted -- so that his soul might expand into its native cosmic essence. That is what the Mysteries of the ancient days in their higher degrees did for the men who were capable and strong enough to undertake the tests and pass them successfully. Now, this study and investigation of the secret laws of our great parent, Mother Nature, of which we are all children, is called Occultism. It also involves the highest form of spiritual self-dedication. You cannot ever reach an end of this study and investigation, because Mother Nature herself, in her wondrous and illimitable fields of existence, is endless. So this means, as you at once may see, that behind every veil which now confronts you and blinds you, you can pass into a greater light -- only to find another veil beyond, behind which, by greater growth still, you may go; and so on forever. What a sublime hope! Endless growth, endless expansion, undying vision! It is a blessed thought that we gain it all by our own efforts alone! How that fact appeals to a true man -- the sense of victory over self first, and then over the complex and wandering forces of nature around us, in order to help others. Because, don't you see, when you try to help yourself alone and to gain for yourself alone, and to live for yourself alone, you cannot go farther than a certain boundary which is the sphere of your limited personality? But when you live to help others, your consciousness is constantly expanding to take these others in, in other words moving always steadily outwards with the expansion of one's life and sympathies; and besides that you are in the current of the advancing river of progress, evolving, and all nature is with you, carrying you along with itself. Brotherhood is based on nature's fundamental law that no entity lives unto itself absolutely. It cannot; in trying to violate this fundamental law it perishes in time. But when we live unto others than our own self, we expand constantly. Our consciousness reaches forever and forever more outwards to greater spaces and finds its play in ever wider and grander fields. Living unto others is the way to grow great. This is not vapid sentimentality -- it enunciates the first law of being. Of mystical societies there have been many indeed; and they are graded exactly according to the men who composed them. The idea of mysticism as contrasted with occultism is this: within every human being there is an interior light, man's infallible guide; and consequently, in order to know truth, every human being must consult this light within himself where truth abides in fullness. As the great Buddha said in substance: "Trust not the words of any other man, however fine they may be, merely because that other man has received the plaudits of mankind." Trust the spirit within you, trust your own conscience, although it is fallible because as yet imperfectly developed; it is, nevertheless, your final guide, the unwavering arbiter within yourself, because your conscience is a more or less complete shining of the interior light that I have just spoken of.

You see, therefore, from what I have just said, the difference that lies between occultism and mysticism. Every true occultist is a true mystic, and similarly every true mystic is an occultist; but the genuine occultist in addition to being a mystic is one who has been initiated by those whom he knows to be teachers or by his own especial teacher; so that his knowledge and course of life depend not only from the interior light that I have spoken of, but also flow from the grand science that he has been taught by those still greater than himself -- his teachers or his teacher. Do you think that because I have spoken so earnestly of the great help and of the great beauty of the inner light, do you think that because I speak of this to my audience on every occasion when I address them, that I forget the need of genuine teachers? O my Brothers, not at all. Men need both. On the one hand, men need guides and helpers, instructors; but, on the other hand, they also need to look within themselves and to become at one with the interior light. There is no contradiction at all between these two statements. If a man shows me the way at the time when the night is dark and my feet stumble in the path, should I accept, as Victor Hugo nobly says, "the authority of the torches"? Of course! Gladly do I accept the guiding hand. But for all that, when my feet are placed upon the way, shall I abandon my first prerogative as a spiritual entity manifesting as a human being -- shall I abandon my independent judgment? Never! For following my interior light is the beginning of the growth within me, which light may be called the voice of my inner god, and this light increaseth in power and brilliance with every new lifetime, every new reincarnation, on earth. Both the interior light and genuine teachers are needed by men. Men need teachers, genuine spiritual teachers; but also must they learn to look within themselves, learn to stand on their own feet and in time to be their own guides, just as little children learn to walk; and we are all little children, when you think of it, by comparison -- in comparison with the surrounding great mystery of the universe which even the greatest god cannot fully plumb; for were he able to plumb it to the deepest deep, to the uttermost end, then he would find a frontier at that uttermost end and no further advancement would be possible. But there is no such uttermost end, there is no such frontier. There is always a grander and a greater world to explore, always something nobler beyond, something higher and more beautiful still, deeper, and more lofty. Therefore both are required -- teachers and the noble self-confidence arising out of this inner light -- and this self-confidence is not the vain self-confidence of the foolish, but the noble self-confidence arising from one's increasing sense of union with the inner spiritual light. When you have the latter, then you see the vision sublime, and you are approaching a stage in your growth in which you will be near to confabulating with the gods who fill the universe full and of whom we humans are the children. O my Brothers, think of your divine ancestry! Think of the spiritual powers within you, of which you have intimations at times, and alas! from which all too frequently you turn away, because your minds are filled full with the patter of the schools and with the passing fads and fancies of the day. Listen to the voice of humanity enduring through the ages, recurrent in every age, insistent at all times in our consciousness, ringing out when civilization brings forth the greatest men -- rather than listening only to the teachings of the schools, which teachings change with every twenty-five years or so. Exchange not your spiritual birthright for the passing fads and fancies of a day. Listen to the mystic voice of humanity. It says: "Man, know thyself. Within thee there is a divine being, the source of all that makes you great, deathless; which gives you hope and peace and which fills your heart with almighty love; which is also the source of your intellect, of your intelligence -- which is the source of all that you are." This is an ancient teaching; it is the teaching of all illuminated mankind. It varies never and not at all. One of the greatest of the esoteric schools among the Greeks and later among the Romans was that of the Mithraists. They had a wonderful teaching! It has been called a religious belief or religion. Yes, so it was; but it was also a mystery-teaching, a teaching of one of the Mystery schools. Do you know that Mithraism drove Christianity so hard at one time that the scales were so evenly balanced that a feather's weight in the Mithraic scale would have changed the course of history? Christianity prevailed only because it was easier to accept on belief. Do you get the thought? The nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea at that time were, spiritually speaking, running on a downgrade: an era of spiritual and intellectual obscuration had come upon men; and the grand old teachings of the Mystery schools had been largely forgotten, and the races that then lived around the

Mediterranean could hardly understand those teachings; and the time finally came when they preferred to believe on faith rather than to think. That is why Christianity prevailed. Mithraism at one time was predominant in court, in the army, in the navy, among the people, indeed, everywhere; but it required thinking, it required study, it required something more than easy belief; and speaking in a strange paradox, it was its greatness which was its weakness -- it was too great for a degenerate people to understand it. Consider the Eleusinia, as another type of esoteric society, commonly called the Mysteries of Eleusis; consider also the Mysteries of Samothrace. Concerning these Mystery schools, the greatest men of Greece and Rome have told us -- concerning these two great schools -- that in them a man was taught how grandly to live, and when his time comes how grandly to die, filled with the fervent hope that he was on his way to join the gods -- not in body, but in essence -- preceding a return here on earth among men. Yes, in all countries there were esoteric schools, and in the greatest of these esoteric or secret schools they taught occultism, the secret teaching of the things that are hid, not apparent, secret, such as the structure of the universe around us; such as the kind and nature and quality and circumstances of the spiritual beings who fill the universe full; such, again, as man's origin and destiny -- spiritual, psychical, physical. Therefore, every theosophist who is something more than a mere Fellow of The Theosophical Society is either a mystic or an occultist, or both, usually both; but they who belong to our Esoteric School, of which I have spoken to you briefly, they are both indeed. No matter how often they may temporarily fall from their best, no matter how often their feet may stumble on the pathway, they at least are sincerely trying; and when they stumble or should they stumble, up they rise again and take a new step forwards on the path towards those distant hills of the Mystic East, over which they see the sunrise every morning, inwardly. There is truth in the universe, my Brothers; it can be had. This truth is not my truth, nor is it your truth; it is ours. You have a right to it and I have a right to it. But as a theosophical teacher I cannot give it unless I know that I transfer this most precious of treasures into worthy hands. Some people don't like to believe certain things. Tell a man that he is a god and probably he will look at you and blink. Tell him that he is -- well, a mere human, and he will think you are quite some chap! It is a strange twist of human psychology that men sometimes -- and women too -- like to think that they are admired for their faults! It is quite understandable, however. We excuse ourselves if others admire us for our failings, you see. But tell a man that he is an incarnate divinity, and he is not quite sure whether you are in earnest or not. He wants to find out for himself first and that is right, it is just as it ought to be. But this inclination to disbelieve also has its unfortunate side. Some people are a little too prudent sometimes; and yet I hate to say that, because I am continually urging prudence upon you: Be careful; don't accept every one who comes along and says "I am a teacher. Follow me." My message to you is to look within yourself. That is what it is my duty to tell you; and only if your own conscience leaps in instant recognition that what you hear is truth, then trust me. Our theosophical truths are very wonderful, and so appealing that a great many of the various religiophilosophical societies that exist today, and which claim to have a secret teaching (I have not spoken of these societies by name because it would sound as if I were casting slurs on people, and heaven knows I don't want to do that!) have taken over a great many of our theosophical teachings which they have adopted as their own, and in consequence in certain cases make claims for a wondrous historical ancestry of their own. Well, the claim is true, so far as the teachings that they have borrowed from us are concerned; but I have grave doubts of such societies having an archaic ancestry in any other respect. Now please understand that I don't want to point my finger here or my finger there and say that the Wites have taken some of our teachings and claim to be a true secret society coming down from past ages. I don't like unfriendly suggestions of that kind, and yet what can I do? As a theosophical teacher I am sworn to tell the truth as far as I know that truth, and I am equally bound to hide nothing if it is true. Or again, I refrain from pointing in another direction, saying that the X-ites have done the same thing. I will

however make one exception, because there is a certain foundation in this case for claims of historical ancestry extending beyond a generation or two. The exception that I refer to is the Rosicrucians. About Rosicrucianism in recent years we have been hearing a good deal. I have no doubt that there are splendid and unusual people among them -- earnest and devoted and sincere; and yet, do you know, friends, that I am of the opinion that a large number of the doctrines that they promulgate have been taken from the theosophical teachings. That taking of our teachings is all right. It is fine. No true theosophist would object to it. The theosophical teachings belong to mankind. But this is what I personally am doubtful about: the claim made by any organization which adopts teachings that the organization so adopting is a brotherhood or society that has come down through the ages. The theosophical teachings so adopted have indeed come down through the ages, but their subordination to certain Christian teachings belonging to the Rosicrucian body, or the rather curious twisting of our Theosophical teachings in order to make them accord with certain mystical, medieval, quasi-Christian teachings, which are in their presentation relatively modern although quite mystical, in some instances, does not seem to me to prove that the proponents thereof possess a glorious spiritual ancestry as an organization. About the middle of the fifteenth century there lived a German of strong mystical bent who was called Christian Rosenkreuz. This name may be rendered as Christian Rosy Cross. Whether this name Rosenkreuz was a name which was adopted, as I believe it was, is a matter which I leave to you. He claimed to have been on a pilgrimage in the East and to have brought back from the Orient the teachings which he is alleged to have given out with great care. To a certain degree the teachings that I have read and which are stated as having come from Christian Rosenkreuz are quite theosophical, both in tone and in content, but enunciated or expressed in a peculiar and hardly genuinely theosophical form. I may merely add in conclusion that there are a number of associations calling themselves Rosicrucians which, as far as I can gather, don't seem to agree among themselves. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as every student of European history knows, there came into existence quite a number of so-called Hermetic societies which, however, probably did not use that name: these were societies having a mystical and so-called occultistic trend; and they all made rather large claims as concerns a mystical and historic ancestry; and as far as I have been able to study these claims, they were based on small foundations of fact. I will give you what seems to me to be the only proper test by which to prove any such claim. It is an infallible test: Are the teachings of any individual or of any organization -- are they, or are they not -universal? If they are, you may safely trust them. This is an infallible test. Does the Theosophical Movement, for instance, propagate teachings which ring as true today as they rang true when the first human protoplasts walked the earth and as they will ring true twenty billions of years hence, or as they will ring true even today to the inhabitants of other planets revolving around other suns? In other words, if the teaching is universal and applies to all times and to all entities everywhere -- if it is based on natural fact -- then it is true. You can trust it. I would not accept any theosophical teaching which was based otherwise. I have tested them all. I have found that every one is based on nature herself. They explain all religious philosophies and all philosophical religions. They are as true to the Hindu as to the Occidental; they are as true to the Chinaman as to the Aztec; they are universal, appealing to all men; and they have existed in all ages. There is the test: universality. Any society which works under the influence of restrictive teachings and which limits even slightly the flow of spiritual life by concentrating it around and from any human spiritual figure of history as chiefest, may be doing excellent service in certain lines, and never would I throw a speck of mud, but as a theosophical teacher I am bound to tell you that the theosophical philosophy is based on nature's own operations, in other words on truth -- not limited to Christianity, not limited to Buddhism, not limited to Hinduism, not limited to Greece or to Rome, or limited to anything. Prove this statement by your own study. Investigate, study, test. The work of proof lies with you. The following is the first question that I have to answer this afternoon:

A friend is a fellow of an esoteric society which he says dates back to ancient Egypt. Apparently this society teaches about the same things as do the theosophists. Do other occult societies have Masters like the theosophists? If so, how can interested students know which society has the most advanced Masters, for I understand there are various degrees of Masters? Well, there are various degrees of initiated men, and these Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace are just that -- men who have evolved forth the Buddha within, the Christ within, the god within them, evolved it out, so that they stand as expressions thereof. I don't know whether I should tell you without circumlocution what my candid opinion is regarding any society which claims to date back to ancient Egypt. I might hurt somebody's feelings, and I don't want to do that. I will apply here the test that I have already spoken of: Are the teachings of the society mentioned universal? Have they the mahatma touch, have they the mahatmic atmosphere, behind and within them? (Do you understand me? Theosophists call these great Masters mahatmas.) Are the teachings universal? Do they appeal to all? Are they the same in all ages? Do they touch your heart and quicken your understanding? Any society which puts forth, which teaches, a body of doctrine which does these things, probably has our Theosophical Masters behind it in some degree at least. And when the further question is asked: "How is one to find a society having the most advanced Masters?" I would answer: The society which is the most universal, which is the kindliest, which teaches doctrines that appeal to all -- doctrines that appeal not merely to the brain-mind, but which touch the heart, which quicken the understanding, which awaken the intuition, which make men feel their essential human dignity. This idea of Masters behind societies was generally unheard of until H. P. Blavatsky, the foundress of the Theosophical Society in our modern times, taught it. You have thus your answer, my Brothers. I do not care to go into this question more deeply. If any society wishes to claim that it has great seers and sages behind it, all I can say is, the heavens bless you, my Brothers. If you really believe it, then prove it by your lives. I don't care to dispute your claim. My duty is to aid, to help, to stimulate decency in men, to evoke kindliness and brotherhood in human hearts; yes, and to teach. Now, I will tell you just what I think: there is on earth today a band or association of great sages and seers, wise men, highly evolved human beings, whom we call Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. They founded the Theosophical Society in our modern times, and it is but a rebirth in our day of other theosophical societies that they had founded in other ages. They founded the Theosophical Society through the messenger whom they sent forth to found it -- H. P. Blavatsky, -- and entrusted to her care as teacher the grand old doctrines of the wisdom-religion of mankind -- doctrines which are universal, appealing both to heart and mind, elevating, encouraging, giving hope and light and peace. I am speaking as a theosophical teacher. I am not aware of any other body of Masters whatsoever. Our Masters may work through societies other than The Theosophical Society. Why not? If the opportunity to work for human betterment is a good one in any other society -- if there are in any other society, no matter what its name may be, or in any church, great and lofty-minded men, who are fit vehicles to receive the blessing of the spiritual life flowing from this grand Brotherhood of our Masters -- then most assuredly do I believe that our Masters work through such lofty men. They may be Christians, they may be Buddhists, they may be Hindus, they may be Freethinkers, they may be atheists, heaven knows what! The Masters live to benefit the human race; and although the Theosophical Society is their own child and they watch over it, although they do not guide it, nevertheless, being the exemplars of human compassion, love, and pity, being the exemplars of the divine flame of intelligence which infills the universe, if they see men and women leading a beautiful life in human organizations other than the Theosophical Society, most assuredly is our Masters' influence felt among such men and women too. Our Masters live to benefit mankind. So you see the question lacks a certain amount of reflection (and I don't mean this unkindly), for it is in fact rather foolish to ask where the most advanced Masters may be found.

Do you realize, my Brothers, that every one of you in your inner being is a mahatma, is yourself an unevolved Master? Think over it. Remember that evolution is simply the unfolding of this inner greatness, the expansion of your inner, latent, native powers and faculties; and mastery or mastership is but one grand step higher than ordinary humanity. Beyond the stage that our theosophical Masters have attained stretches the endless stair of life, ever upwards; and that is the stair that in future ages you also will climb. I am a fellow of a few years' standing in another Theosophical Society, and in fairness I wish to say that you seem in every lecture to throw some new light on the teachings. I cannot understand how it is that you teach things that appeal to me as true but not to be found in our books. Is the reason because your teachings are esoteric? Are not all theosophical societies supposed to have the same teachings, and do not all these teachings come from the same Masters? It is true that all the teachings given forth by my predecessors have been in essence esoteric; and in that fact lies their wonderful appeal. Furthermore, when the Theosophical Society -- which must not be confused with the Theosophical Movement, which has existed in every age -- was founded in our own age, in 1875, in New York, then indeed there was but one body of teaching; and it could truthfully be said that all theosophists believed in and accepted that one body of teaching. But, my Brothers, the Theosophical Society is simply an association of human beings; and after the death of the great founder, H. P. Blavatsky, the Theosophical Society separated into different children-societies -- a misfortune which I am in part now laboring to undo in my work for theosophical fraternization and reunification. In some of these theosophical societies certain teachings have been promulgated, propaganded, and printed which the Fellows of these later theosophical societies apparently believe in. I will say this much, my friends, that The Theosophical Society which I have the high honor to lead and the heavy responsibility of guiding holds fast and without change to those original teachings brought from the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace by H. P. Blavatsky. These teachings we retain in their pristine purity, although this does not mean in any wise that we are mere dogmatic formalists or bibliolaters. We are the exact contrary of this. These sublime teachings can be and have been developed by us. They can be and have been elaborated by us. They can be and have been explained by us. But as a body of teachings they are those same original teachings from which we have not varied. If you will remember that theosophy is a promulgation in human formulation of the structure and operations of the universe both spiritual and material, you will see that they comprise the sum total of all possible human knowledge far beyond the complete grasp of any human being, and that consequently development of them, elaboration of them, and explanation of them, is not only a logical necessity, but is a course of action that follows as naturally as one step follows another step forwards. I think, therefore, that in stating these facts, the question is properly answered. There are, therefore, these later theosophical societies teaching other doctrines which their proponents consider to be theosophical, but which I do not accept because I cannot accept them; but nevertheless I have no word of scorn for any other theosophist, and no unkindly thought towards any other theosophist. If these other theosophists are satisfied and happy with what they have and promulgate, then it is my duty to see if I cannot bring even a greater peace to their hearts and a larger light to their minds than those which now they have. That is my duty as a theosophical teacher. Here is an odd question: If there are such superhumans as you theosophists call Masters, how comes it that our great scientists who have discovered even the electron cannot find these Masters? [Laughing] Excuse me, please. I think the reason for this question is because the questioner supposes that the great scientists are looking for the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace in their test tubes, and in their apparatuses of experiment, and it is hardly reasonable to expect to find human beings there. Do you want to know where our Masters are? They are in fact everywhere. Their home is the world. Wherever human need is greatest, there are they. Wherever human suffering is most poignant, there they are. Their main seat at the present time is in more than one of the inaccessible places of the

lofty tableland of Bodyul (Tibet); but they have their branch associations elsewhere on earth also. Nevertheless, because they gather and hold their special meetings in these particular localities does not mean that they continually stay there and leave them not at all. I tell you that wherever human need is greatest, there they are. If our scientists used their intuition as grandly as some of them use their brain-minds, they would then indeed know where the great ones are; more, they would feel their actual presence. What an interesting thing am I going to tell you now! In the laboratories of work of three of our greatest ultramodern scientists, in three places that I have in mind, some of the great brothers have been present although invisible to the physical eye, watching the experiments in progress, stimulating the intuition of the researchers and inspiring illuminating thoughts, placing an inspiring hand, as it were, on the brain of the researchers -- giving light, stimulating thought, and suggesting new ways and methods of work. The questioner asks: "Why haven't the experimenters found your mahatmas?" My answer is: Let them look for the Masters where the Masters are, if they will; they will then see them perhaps, they will then feel them perhaps; then they will know. Yes, the greatest of ultramodern scientific discoveries, and even more important than the discoveries, the greatest of the scientific deductions of recent times, are derivable directly from the influence flowing from the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, enlightening the brain of the researchers, so that they had hunches, so that they had grand and illuminating thoughts, so that they had a vision. Then the discovery was made, and the deductions were drawn from that discovery. Wherever human need is great, there the Masters are. And I should perhaps add that help is given in this invisible and silent way in all cases where the discoveries to be made and the deductions to be drawn from such discoveries will inure to produce a more spiritual view of the universe and to the amelioration of human relations; for, as I have told you, the Masters live but to benefit all mankind. One more question: I notice that from the Theosophical World-Congress to be held at Point Loma in 1931 you seem to propose to exclude as delegates the followers of a teacher who has a large following of theosophists and who is also the head Bishop of a Theosophical Church. Since it is proclaimed that The Theosophical Society is broad enough to include persons of all shades of religious belief, why should any theosophists be excluded from this theosophical universal Congress? A very good question, but it is one which is based on a misapprehension of the facts. In the first place, it is by no means to be a universal Congress. We are going to send out invitations to the heads only of all the different Theosophical Societies whose addresses we can procure, extending an invitation in the name of brotherhood and peace, and on the ground of those of our theosophical teachings which are common to all of us, to come to Point Loma in August 1931, and thus to meet here together as brothers, and to show to the world that at least in fundamental feeling and in fundamental theosophical teaching we are essentially one body of workers for humanity. If I can assemble these theosophical heads, once get them together with me, so that we can talk together amicably and in peace, I think that more will be done to reunite the different branches of the Theosophical Society than anything else that has been achieved since the melancholy event of the disruption of the Theosophical Society which I have mentioned this afternoon. I have no intention, and our officers likewise have no intention, of excluding any theosophist who comes as a duly accredited delegate from some Theosophical Society. As this is to be a Theosophical Congress alone, one who calls himself a Bishop merely will not be invited to come. But if he comes as a theosophical delegate it will matter not at all whether he be pope, bishop, priest, parson, or what else: if he comes as a Theosophist he will be welcome, but welcome because he comes as a Theosophist and not as a prince, priest, or peasant. Our gathering is to be a small congress of theosophists with a specific theosophic purpose in view. In some future year I hope to call a universal pan-theosophical congress; but to this especial congress or gathering of August 12th, next year, we shall invite only the heads of the different Theosophical Societies and a few duly accredited delegates from more or less independent theosophical societies who are not sufficiently closely organized to have a responsible or official head.

I don't exactly know how the unfortunate misunderstanding arose to which the questioner refers. We have no intention of excluding any duly accredited theosophical head. I have said very plainly, and have constantly repeated it, that this meeting of August 12, 1931, is to be a Congress of theosophists, and only the theosophical heads will be invited to attend at this particular gathering. Would it be wrong to suggest that perhaps some people who do not favor this plan of ours or who have misunderstood this plan of ours have circulated this unfortunate rumor of exclusion? Our officers and I have tried to be quite specific as regards these matters, and it is difficult for me to understand how our words could have been twisted into meaning that we have the intention of excluding any duly accredited theosophical delegate. Yes, and continuing my answer to the question, The Theosophical Society is broad enough to include as members, persons of all shades of religious belief or of none, but this inclusion in our membership rests on a specific ground, which is this: that the applicant for Fellowship, or the Fellow, look deep into his own belief, that he plumb the deepest depth of his own religious or philosophical conviction, solely for the purpose that he may find our universal theosophy there. He will find it there if he examine carefully enough and look deeply enough. The only prerequisite to joining us is a belief in universal brotherhood. It may be argued that the churches also teach universal brotherhood -- at least that they do teach it in our day; probably they do as a theory and I presume that they try to practice it. We Theosophists try to practice it; we don't say that we are perfect in our practice, for we are human; but I do say that theosophists really try to practice what we preach. The Theosophical Society admits to Fellowship anyone who accepts the principle of universal brotherhood, no matter what the applicant's belief may be, no matter what the color of his skin, no matter what his caste -- in fact, anyone, any human being, who accepts in principle the teaching of universal brotherhood is welcome as a Fellow of The Theosophical Society. But it is obvious to anyone who has studied our doctrines that the theosophical meaning of brotherhood is a deeper one than the ordinary dictionary sense of this word. Our teaching of brotherhood means this: that every entity everywhere -- not only human beings, but every entity anywhere -- whether in far-off Sirius or in Betelgeuze, or within and without the galaxy: every entity dwelling on every electron in every atom as well as every divinity -- is an inseparable part of the cosmic spirit, and therefore is a spiritual ray of the boundless ocean of conscious life which infills and inspirits the universe. Consequently, we and they are all essentially united, and brotherly feeling is not only a duty, but becomes a joy. Brotherhood -- meaning the essential spiritual oneness of everything that is -- is nature's fundamental principle, fundamental law; and the man whose heart is filled with this conception is already beginning to feel stirring within him that marvelous and inspiring sense of complete oneness with the universal cosmic life.

Second Series: No. 18 (January 5, 1931)

ELEMENTALS AND NATURENATURE-SPIRITS SPIRITS

(Lecture delivered November 9, 1930) CONTENTS: The laughter of the gods. -- To understand all is to forgive all. -- Lives between the human being and the atom. -- Whence come the multitudinous impulses in nature? -- What are elementals really? -- Journeying through universes. Is there an end to this journey? -- We were once elementals. -Immortality means crystallized imperfection. -- The inspiring vision that theosophy gives. -- Teachings of the medieval Philosophers of Fire. -- Can fairies be photographed? -- How can one gain actual knowledge of the elemental worlds? -- Bulwer Lytton's description of elementals. -- There can be only one occultism. -- Can Eastern occultism and modern science ever unite? -- What is the first step on the path of occultism? -- A question about J. Krishnamurti. -- There is a divinity sleeping in the heart of your heart! QUESTION: "Do you think the gods ever tire of laughing at us humans?" Do you think so? I think that they are laughing all the time in a quiet, silent way, very much as we humans smile at the antics of the beasts -- the antics of the dog, of the sheep, at the queer movements of the worm, at the buzzing mosquito, and the fugitive fly. We laugh and ponder and wonder at this mysterious universe of ours, in which such multitudes of animate beings exist -- and all so apparently different as among themselves. We think that we understand a little about them, because they evoke in us a sense of humor and we laugh at them. Now, how about the antics that we humans play on the stage of life -- you, I, all human beings; thinking our little thoughts, solving our problems, seeming to us so difficult, so profound, that at times it appears to us as if the fate of the entire universe depended upon the solution of these problems that we strive to arrive at? I think that the gods are laughing at us all the time; and their quiet laughter takes the form of the gentle rain and of the sunshine and of the rays from the stars and of the painted heavens at chill morn and at dewy eve; so that we sense that the gods are filled with their own silent and universal understanding of nature's laws, which understanding is so wonderful and so majestic, because it is not disturbed by passion, because it is not fevered, because it is not hurried; it is like the silent and gentle laughter of a kindly heart, shedding its balm on us -- on us. We human beings are full of pranks. And why shouldn't we be? I don't offer this query by way of explanation; but merely ask the question: Why shouldn't we be? Why shouldn't the dog, or the horse, or the cow, or the mosquito, or the eel, or the rat, or the rabbit, do each one its own particular work in the station of life which it has attained at the present time in its advance along the evolutionary pathway? The gods laugh at us indeed -- not unkindly; but nevertheless they laugh at us in the majestic silences, much as we laugh at the antics of the beasts beneath us. The gods understand. They have been where we now are. They were men, or beings equivalent to human beings, in some far past cosmic age -- in some solar system, which is now evanished, mayhap, out of even the recollection of the gods themselves. Comprehension is understanding, and genuine understanding is always kindly. It is the heart which does not understand which judges, and judges unfairly. The French have a proverb derived from Montaigne; they say: Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner -- "to understand all is to forgive all." This by no means implies an approval of things which are wrong; but it does mean that with the understanding heart we can see behind the veil, behind the crust of circumstance, behind the shell of conditions, which covers the causes and reasons of things; and thus seeing with an understanding heart, we can forgive. Forgiveness, however, is something entirely different from condoning. We can forgive a fellow human creature for his faults, for his so-called sins, for the injury that he does to us or to others. We do not condone, for condoning wrong means that one becomes particeps criminis -- a partner in the crime, a participator in the wrongdoing; but forgiveness is divine. The gods laugh at us because they understand us; for they have been where we now are, much as we have been little children. We forgive the little children, we forgive the little child its faults and its

pranks, but we ourselves do not do as the little children do. And therefore I say in answer to this question: yes, the gods laugh quietly at us all the time and in the immense silence. But how about those other vast hordes, classes, families, hosts, armies of entities not so progressed as the gods, which fill universal being full, and which undertake the smaller tasks in the cosmic work, even as mankind undertakes its own tasks: I mean those beings between us humans on the one hand and the so-called insensate atom on the other -- elementals, nature-spirits, nature-sprites, gnomes, elves, kobolds, goblins, fairies, call them what you like. These names are indeed but names -- names that our ancestors gave to these hosts of imperfectly developed entities. Don't be frightened at a mere name: try to get the thought, to understand the idea. Nature is full of impulses of all kinds, high and low, good and bad, peaceful and otherwise, gentle and violent, kindly and malignant. Whence do these impulses come? Where do they arise? They proceed from animate entities. Obviously an incomputable number of these impulses are imperfect; and the proof is that we see the work of imperfection all around us. It is abundantly true that we see grandeur; that we see sublimity; that we see glory; that we see relatively perfect work; we also see such accuracy in nature's operations and structure that it astounds us; but we likewise see imperfection -- what men call evil, inharmony. Whence does all this welter of conflicting impulses come? Whence do these things that we see, arise? Yes, I ask it again: whence? They are indeed there, and our minds are fully cognizant of their existence. Now, the only source of disharmony, of imperfection, of evildoing, of inability to produce perfect results, that human beings know of, is in human beings; yet we see these same imperfections outside of us; and too many of us say -- for we cheat ourselves with words and say -- that they "just are." Have they no cause? Of course they have; and we are cheating ourselves with words if we conclude otherwise. They have causes; and it is obvious that imperfection arises only from an imperfect source, i. e., in imperfect beings. These imperfectly evolved beings have their places in the boundless scheme of things just as we humans have, just as the gods have, just as the super-gods have, and at the other end of the scale, just as the atoms have. Because these entities are imperfect, therefore their works are imperfect. A generalizing term we may call these imperfectly evolved entities by, is sprites or nature spirits; but I like the good old theosophical term, elementals, which means beings who are beginning a course of evolutionary growth, and who therefore are in the elemental states of their growth. How did they come into our universe? How did we come here? We are here; they are here. Is it not obvious that there is a cause for these things that we have spoken of? Human beings on earth -- are they the only infinite, quasi-intelligent, quasi-intellectual, thinking, conscious entities in boundless infinitude? Consider that the beasts, the plants, yes, and as the theosophist says, even the minerals, are all possessed each in its own degree of life, of animation, of a certain portion of an intellectual essence: for the cosmic soul permeates all things as an ocean of life; the cosmic life permeates all things as the cosmic soul; and all things and all entities everywhere are but the children of this cosmic life-consciousness; and as our earth is not the only seat or dwelling place of sentient and animate beings -- which supposition is transparently absurd -- therefore consciousnesses and lives and animate beings exist in families, races, in hordes, in armies, in incomputable multitudes, everywhere. An elemental, my Brothers, is a being who has entered our universe on the lowest plane or in the lowest world, or degree, or step, of that universe, on the rising stairway of life, and this stairway of life begins in any universe at the lowest stage of that universe, and ends for that universe in that universe's highest stage -- its own cosmic spirit. Our universe is not the only one in infinitude. Boundless space is filled with innumerable universes. You cannot count them, so numerous are they. Our universe is only one of them. Infinitude is filled with them. And these universes interpenetrate each other, the rivers of living beings flowing from one universe into some other universe and backwards in the waves of life as they sweep through boundless space. Mark you, friends, when I speak of boundless infinitude I do not mean only this physical universe, which is but one cross section, so to speak, of infinite space. I mean particularly those inner, those invisible, worlds of which our outward physical universe is the mere exterior garment or body.

All these universes are packed full with lives, some of these lives being very high, and some very low, but all are evolving, all are growing and learning entities. When any entity passes from one universe into the next universe on its forward evolutionary march, it enters that next universe in the next universe's lowest degree or world or plane or stage; and that entity thus entering theosophists call an elemental in and for that universe, because it is then in the elements of things; and it is destined to grow in that universe which it has just entered, gaining experience, unfolding its inner powers, throwing forth what is within it as the growing tree does, and as the bud brings forth the flower -- bringing out from within, as the ages pass, ever more and more of the powers locked up within itself. Thus the elemental passes from the elemental stage through all the realms of being as it rises along the stairway of life, passing through the human stage, becoming superhuman, quasi-divine -- a quasi-god, -- then becoming a god. And does the stairway end there? Is the evolutionary journey then complete? Is there an impassable barrier beyond which it cannot go? Do all things there stop in crystallized and utter perfection? Nay! The evolving entity that we have in our mind's eye simply passes out of that universe -- the universe into which it had previously entered and into which it has attained divinity, and passes out only to enter into a superior universe. That other superior universe may be entirely unseen, but it is there. So did we humans first enter this present universe. We, in the beginning of our evolutionary journey in our present universe, entered this present universe as elementals therein, and we have grown through all the stages upwards until at present we are human beings; and we are still growing, still evolving, still pressing forwards. Do you know what evolution really is? I have often told you: evolution is bringing out what is within, unfolding the latent powers locked up within the deathless center which every human is at the core of the core of himself. Infinitude lies there, deathlessness lies there, and therefore the pathway of growth is endless and beginningless. The way by which to grow is to shed the personal in order to become impersonal. Do you understand? To shed, to cast aside, the limited in order to expand. How can the chick leave the egg without breaking its shell? How can the inner man expand without breaking the shell of the lower selfhood? How can the god within manifest itself -- that god in each one of you, your own divine consciousness -- until the imperfect, the small, the constricted, the personal in other words, has been surpassed, overpassed, left behind, abandoned, cast aside? It is in impersonality that lies immortality; in personality lies death. Therefore expand, grow, evolve, become what you are within! The gods call to us constantly -- not in human words, but in those soundless symbols transmitted to us along the inner ethers which man's heart and soul interpret as spiritual instinct, aspiration, love, self-forgetfulness; and the whole import of what these voiceless messages are, is: "Come up higher!" We humans too were elementals once; and of course when I say we, I don't mean the present evolved human being, because that would be absurd; but I mean that we in far bygone periods of cosmic time were elementals beginning our evolutionary growth in this our present home-universe. Now, mark, my friends, what I shall now say to you: there is a deduction, a very important one, that I am going to ask you now to draw; and be not affrighted at it. All evolution is change; all change in evolution is growth, expansion. You cannot become something better than what you are now without leaving this present behind. Consequently, as this law applies as much to the spiritual and psychical realms as it does to the physical and astral, we draw the following deduction: There is no immortal soul in man. Do you understand? I thank the gods that it is so! Because, if there were a genuinely immortal soul in me, that soul could never grow, because it could not change; I should be forever in crystallized imperfection because, if I changed in one atom, and by one iota, immortality would instantly vanish, because I should have become something else by the degree of that change for betterment; and evolution which is change is uninterrupted and continuous and has proceeded throughout eternity. Do you now understand the idea? This is the heart of the explanation of the teaching of the Lord Gautama the Buddha -- who was the very incarnation of love and wisdom on earth because manifesting the powers of a divinity, his own inner god, his own inner dhyani, as theosophists say, the celestial entity of which he was the human

expression or vehicle. And Jesus the Syrian sage and avatara said exactly the same in substance when he taught: "I and my Father are one." There are worlds in boundless space, there are universes in the boundless reaches of infinitude, in which the lowest grade of beings, the elementals of such world or universe, are higher in their own courses of life than those entities whom we humans call gods -- and take this conception alone as an instance of the inspiring vision that theosophy gives: so grand, so great, so wide-reaching is the theosophical teaching. All beings are interwoven together, all beings are interlinked together. There are only relative high and low; for the forces which course through us all and inspire us all and guide us all and make us all what we are, are fundamentally the same. Is it not obvious? We change from age to age, growing always greater. Do we remain forever the same? No. We change from age to age, and this is evolutionary growth! I know not a more spirit-killing teaching in the philosophical or religious history of the globe than the teaching that man has one immortal soul which was at one time created and which thereafter is destined to endure thus for aye. This is crystallized immortality in imperfection, with no genuine growth towards a change in spiritual and cosmic values, and therefore possessing no prospect of cosmic hope! What wonder is it that men therefore ask themselves: "What is the use of trying? What is the use of trying to become something nobler than what I am?" I do not say this unkindly, my Brothers, but I stand here as a theosophical teacher; and it is my duty to teach what I myself have been taught as best I can. "Thus have I received; thus must I pass it on." Growth is eternal; evolution is without beginning, and it is endless. We pass through all the mansions of life, as the ages of eternity slowly stream by into the limitless ocean of the past. But we go steadily along, marching into an ever greater grandeur -- into ever greater light. It is because of this fact that so many of the occultist and mystical societies of the world have proclaimed: "Our aim is to gain a greater light. Light, more light!" The teaching that I have given to you is simple; anyone can understand it who thinks over it honestly. It has been taught in all ages, in all races of men, and taught by the giants in intellect possessing the deepest spiritual vision of the human race. Consult the literatures of mankind and you will see that I tell you truth. The great visionaries have seen it, the great teachers taught it, and all inferior men have been comforted by it. These beings which fill universal nature full in all their incomputable hosts have been called by different races of men by different and varying names. But you can always tell to which class or race of these beings a particular title appertains, because the attributes of such beings are usually described by the title-name. In the medieval times in European countries the Philosophers of Fire, as they were called, taught about four classes of elemental beings, as respectively belonging to the element of fire, and to the element of air, to the element of water, and to the element of earth -- these four elements not being the fire and the air and the water and the earth of our physical world alone, but these four names were words used technically; and the names of the inhabitants of these four so-called elements respectively were the salamanders, the sylphs, the undines, and the gnomes. Often these four classes of inhabitants were called by the generic term fairies. And the instinct of humanity throughout countless ages has produced its manifold stories and legends about the fairies so called. I was reading the other day about a theosophical writer, who is a Fellow, I believe, of some other Theosophical Society than ours and who, I believe, has claimed to have photographed fairies; and these photographs were described as showing fairies clad, more or less, in medieval European costume. And I said to myself, how accommodating those fairies are! Why should they be dressed in costumes of the humans of European medieval days, unless perhaps they are described as so clad because medieval writers depict them as wearing the clothing and costumes of their own medieval periods? Why should fairies retain medieval costume? Why should they not be dressed in top hats and swallow-tail coats, or in sweaters and puttees, or again in hoop skirts, crinolines, and bustles? Possibly five hundred years from now some other speculative writer will photograph with some etheric instrument of that future age -- or think he does -- pictures of entities clad as we at present are, and say: "Here! See my pictures of fairies!"

It should seem obvious that one can photograph only that which can be photographed, and which the photographic plate chemically prepared can entrap as an image borne to it on the wings of material light. Whether we call these entities nature sprites or nature spirits, or call them elementals as we theosophists do, or call them devas or devatas as the Hindus do, or call them by some other name, or call them daimonia as the Greeks and Romans did, or speak of them as elves and kobolds, or sylphs and undines, or fairies, or whatnot, as medieval Europeans have done -- the mere name matters not at all. Let us get the truth about them, as to what they are, where they dwell, how they came into their dwelling places, how long they are going to stay there, when they will leave, and what their purpose in dwelling there is. All this is knowing something about them indeed. You can get all this by proper study. An easier way is by cultivating certain faculties which every human being has latent within him. These faculties can be cultivated. The first rule leading to success in such cultivation of faculty is given in the answer to the inevitable question: "For what art thou doing this? Is it in order to benefit mankind, in order to help the world of which you are an inseparable part, or is it for some selfish or quasi-selfish purpose of your own?" Selfishness is an infallible bar in gaining knowledge in occultism. You cannot join the angels, to speak in Christian terms, unless your own being has become angelic. You cannot confabulate with the gods, unless you yourself have become godlike and can breathe that sublime ether where they sit on their azure seats of power -- their own spiritual selfhood. The nature spirits, the elementals, cannot confabulate with men until they have become like men. In order to come into touch with the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace -- our elder brothers -- you must become at least somewhat like unto them. Then all that they have is yours for the asking. Such is the law, and it is just, and it is comforting. Be self-forgetful, be kindly, keep your heart filled with impersonal love, forgive, and then you will get the vision, because you will have become unselfishly selfless -- which means impersonal. There will then be no veils blinding you. Your mind will not be filled with the fevered thoughts of your own daily wishes for personal gain; but your mind will have expanded pari passu with your heart, so that heart and mind will take in and embrace others than your limited, personal, restricted self. Do you understand this? The secret lies in expansion! You must grow and expand in order to gain knowledge of what lies over the horizon! There is the secret of impersonal growth and it is the secret of gaining both knowledge and power. Yes, these nature spirits, or by whatever name you choose to call them, have been written about by romancers of all times; they have been written about by philosophers and religionists; their existence and their nature have been taught in the esoteric Mystery schools of ancient times. Some of these beings are inexpressibly beautiful; others are horrible. Some are friendly, and some are malignant to men. But all have their places in the universal scheme of things. What is poison, for instance, to human flesh, may be like the elixir of life to other entities. Poisons can cure as well as kill. Therefore judge not because some classes of these invisible entities are unfriendly to us men. They also have their place in the scheme of things, even as we humans have. They too are growing and learning entities on their upward way. There is nothing at all so dangerous to the explorer in these invisible realms as fear. Fear is fatal. You must be beyond fear; you must replace fear with love. He whose heart is filled with impersonal love fears never. Then you are safe. And you cannot love if your whole being is personalized, if it is constricted, if it is selfish. Love and it are opposite poles. Therefore love impersonally; and an excellent practice, in order to cultivate this sublime power, this grand occult power which can move even the hills, is to learn to forgive your fellows. If you bear even a grudge, then you poison your own life-stream. Therefore, for your own protection, hate not; for you yourself, the hater will be the first to suffer. I tell you, my Brothers, that ethics are based on nature's fundamental laws. Ethics are not mere conventions. And when I speak of ethics, I don't mean any one human being's particular idea of what

ethics are, but the grand moral principles of human conduct which the ages have proved and found to be grand. Bulwer Lytton, the author of Zanoni, makes the wise Mejnour say to Glyndon: "Now in space there are millions of beings, not literally spiritual, for they have all, like the animalculae unseen by the naked eye, certain forms of matter, though matter so delicate. . . . Yet, in truth, these races differ most widely . . . some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others, settle as messengers between earth and heaven." And why should these entities not have these different and varying types of character? How about us human beings? Are all human beings perfect? Don't we humans show these same virtues and these same vices? Is it not true that some men hate and are as malignant as fiends to their brothers? Is it not true that other human beings are like gods on earth, and that to be in their presence is a blessing? Kindliness and love and wisdom radiate from them like rays from the sun. H. P. Blavatsky, the great founder of the Theosophical Society in our own age, comments upon this extract from Zanoni: Such is the insufficient sketch of Elemental Beings void of Divine Spirit, given by one whom many with reason believed to know more than he was prepared to admit in the face of an incredulous public. We have underlined the few lines than which nothing can be more graphically descriptive. An Initiate, having a personal knowledge of these creatures, could do no better. But these elemental beings are far inferior to man. Man stands midway along the stairway of life, or the pathway of evolving entities, between the gods on the one hand, and these beings beneath him on the other hand. And yet, could we (which is impossible -- but could we) eliminate them from the universe, take them out from the Universe, then the universe would fall to pieces and crumble into impalpable cosmic dust, because these minor beings, these growing entities below man, are the elemental spirits of nature, what theosophists call the elementals, and in very truth they form the material fabric and structure of the universe. They surround us always: we pass without knowing it through the various grades of ether and substance in which they live and dwell and have their being; we breathe them in and exhale them again; they are in our flesh, in the air we breathe, they are in the water, in the earth, in the plants, in the spaces. They are everywhere; and they are with human beings and with the gods, the grand cosmic workers; they have their places in the cosmic work just as men have and just as the gods have. They all help to the same cosmic ends; and that is why they are here. They have their inevitable places, and they are growing and evolving entities just as we humans are growing and evolving entities; they will grow and evolve and finally become men, but then we humans shall have grown to become gods. Forget it not: we once in far bygone aeons were just such nature sprites or elementals. But even then -just as it is at present -- locked up within each one of us then existing as an elemental being, there was the inner god, unable to express itself as yet because the vehicle was so imperfect, even as the vehicle now in us human beings is too imperfect for a full manifestation of the splendor of the inner divinity; but nevertheless the inner god was always there as the spiritual point, the vital and central point of consciousness; and let us not forget also that these gods themselves are growing, changing, advancing, evolving. There is no death, there is no death anywhere; there is but composition and dissolution. And it is between these two continuously interchanging states of endless life that we learn; it is by means of these two processes that we grow. It is thus that the child becomes the man, changing, passing, from childhood to manhood: the child was, and then is not, but the man succeeds him. No entity anywhere at any time remains changeless, for this would be an immortality in crystallized imperfection, and the idea is both horrible and repulsive because it is flagrantly untrue. Yes, the elementals are everywhere about us. The blood which flows in my body is driven by their power, guided, however, by my automatic mental action -- the vegetative part of my mental constitution.

I am born of the elementals; they have born me this body, and I have been the grand architect of this body of mine through my overshadowing soul; and these elemental workers have followed the impress which my vitality has given to them and have builded for me the temple, the physical temple of flesh, in which I live. To them I am a god, just as to us human beings the gods seem so grand. And yet in the realms of the divine, the gods who inhabit these realms are but imperfect entities compared with other superior spheres inhabited by entities still more sublime. The elementals are growing beings, learning entities, evolving elemental souls, passing through phase after phase of existence in innumerable embodiments succeeding each other throughout countless time. I pray you understand this idea. It is as simple as it is grand, and it is a wonderful key; it is a key to many great mysteries. I have some questions here, which I have been requested to answer. I will do so briefly. There is a school of theosophists developing a western occultism. I have noticed that you never mention western occultism but seem to confine yourself exclusively to Tibetan or Hindu occultism. Why should not the West develop a system of occultism of its own, a union of Eastern esotericism with the proved discoveries of modern science? This, I believe, is the object of the school I refer to. Why should it not be supported as a progressive step in theosophy? Why not? But nevertheless the statement as regards myself is not true. Often have I spoken of the great occultists of the West. But it is an absurdity to suppose that there can be an Eastern occultism, and a Western occultism, and a Northern occultism, and a Southern occultism. Occultism is simply the science of the things which are hid. You cannot have an Eastern chemistry, and a Western chemistry, and a Northern chemistry, and a Southern chemistry. Chemistry is chemistry, however much schools which teach chemistry may differ from each other. It is an absurdity to talk about the occultism of the West except in so far as the literatures treat the fundamental subject differently from the manner in which Orientals have treated the occultism of the East. Occultism is the science of the things that are hid, that are unseen; and no true occultist exists except he who has been initiated. Mystics exist -- many of them - without having passed through the initiatory rites; and there have been many grand mystics; mysticisms of many kinds exist, according to the temperament of the writer or the thinker or the feeler. But there is but one occultism -- the science of things unseen. Therefore teaching the occultism of any people, whether of the East or of the West, whether of the North or of the South, is teaching universal occultism; and merely to consult the literatures of Oriental writers on occultism or Western writers on occultism is merely an exercise in literary instruction, and that exercise is a good thing to follow; but nevertheless there are not two or three or more kinds of occultism. There cannot be. If so, then genuine occultism would be untrue. It is the science and elucidation of the things which are hid, unseen, and which comprise, as I have told you on other occasions from this platform, the structure and operations of the universe in which we and all the hosts of entities visible and invisible live and move and have our being; and this explanation means especially of the invisible universe -- the illimitable ranges along the endless stairway of life which obviously our imperfect physical eyes cannot see, and which our imperfectly developed brain-mind finds it so difficult to understand. So far as a union of Eastern esotericism with the proved discoveries of modern science is concerned, I lectured from this platform some few years ago, for some six months or more, on that very subject; and these lectures have been printed in a book (Theosophy and Modern Science; republished as Man in Evolution) which anyone of you can read. The next question that I have been asked to answer this afternoon is the following: I consider myself practically a theosophist -He has a good opinion of himself. I try to be a theosophist.

-- although as yet I have joined no Theosophical Society. I admire the loftiness of the thought in your lectures, but notice that you stress mostly selflessness and do not give much attention to branches of occultism that interest many theosophists. In another Theosophical Society, they also claim to teach selflessness but in addition give interesting information regarding occult powers. Do you not think that more people would join your Society if you would do the same? It is quite possible that we should gain members more quickly, but I am inclined to think that I don't want that kind of inquirers to predominate in our membership. The Theosophical Society is constantly teaching the wisdom of the gods; and I call upon every genuine heart and thinking mind to join with us in our sublime work. Come then, and help us! I can show you the way leading to your own inner god; but if any one of you comes thinking that you are going to gain powers for yourself merely in order to put it over on your fellows, then I pray to you to keep out. Cleanse your hearts, my Brothers; then when this is done, come, and both my hands will be ready to take yours. "A clean mind, a pure heart, an unveiled spiritual perception" -- even the beginning of these three sublime virtues will entitle you to all the wisdom of the gods, given to you progressively as you grow. So far as occultism goes, I have talked about that sublime subject on many, many different occasions. I teach it. Teaching is part of my theosophical duty; but the more secret things of occultism that I teach are kept well secret. I will tell you this: self-advertisement for the mere end of gaining adherents puts those who thus advertise their wares -- where? The man, the organization, the society, which has something valuable to give is soon discovered by those who are hungry for the truth that can be found there. Inquirers soon discover it. They discover where it is; and thither they go. Any human being believing in the only prerequisite to fellowship in The Theosophical Society, which sole prerequisite is an honest belief in universal brotherhood, is cordially invited to join us. Theosophists have no dogmas. You don't have to believe any thing on blind faith. I tell you that fact on every Sunday when I speak to you, and if anything I say to you at any time seems to you to be wrong, reject it -- and thus be an honest man. In doing so you are at least exercising your powers of spiritual judgment; and even though you make a mistake, as it is probable that you will, nevertheless in continuing that spiritual exercise you will grow spiritually. We in The Theosophical Society are not teachers of blind faith. Some theosophists say that we should develop our powers and become adepts, while others say we should simply be unselfish and work for humanity and that the powers will come of themselves. If we develop our powers and thereby come closer to the great Masters, will not unselfishness follow as a logical sequence? No! The mere developing of powers is easy, very easy; and it is precisely the thing that the chela, the disciple, the pupil, is taught not to do -- taught not to try to develop powers when he takes his first steps on the path of occultism. The magicians of the African deserts, the voodoo doctors, the barbarians of the earth, can easily teach you, for instance, how to hypnotize. This is not at all difficult to do. But why do you want to learn hypnotism? To gain for yourself some selfish advantage or to satisfy the selfish craving for power. Do you think that any true spiritual teacher would teach such things as that? The teacher's duty is to bring light, peace, help, consolation, to broken hearts and to souls afire with the hunger for truth. As regards powers, these will come in good time, and they will be the spiritual powers; and the spiritual powers are the grandest and most potent of all, and they will come only when you shall have learned to use them wisely and unselfishly. They cannot be used otherwise. No, you cannot approach the asrama, the seat of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, merely by developing your powers. The only way to reach them is, as I have told you before, by becoming like unto them. Will ye reach the gods? Then become godlike. If ye wish to be disciples of the great Masters of Wisdom and Peace, then become like unto them; and if the wish to do this is in your heart, you will be shown the way. The Masters are waiting and ready; but they accept as disciples only those who can understand what they teach (is it not obvious?), and who can bear the burden of the responsibilities which accompany conferred knowledge and developed powers. Powers then will come to you -- spiritual powers, intellectual powers, psychical powers, even physical powers; but no spiritual

teacher will ever teach you how to develop your powers, except on spiritual and moral and intellectual grounds and after long and arduous tests safely passed through, because unless you are ready, spiritually and intellectually prepared, he would be putting an engine of destruction into your hands, and you, the receiver, would be the first victim of the fatal gift. Men in general do not arm lunatics -- who, alas! are among us -- and send them out to wreak havoc in the world. We do not put poisons and explosives in the hands of little children and then send them forth to play. Such likewise is the principle of prudence and wisdom which lies in the laws of occult training. But be like unto the Masters, my Brothers, and you will find them, because in very fact they will come to you. And then in time your powers will develop as easily and naturally as the flower grows. This is a promise; it is a statement of exact and literal truth. Too often has it been supposed that putting power into unprepared hands is the way by which to reach the gods. The idea is all wrong. No human being can gain spiritual powers until he has proved that he is prepared to use them aright; and if any human being has a contrary idea it is because he is either thoughtless or evil-minded. The following is a question, friends, which I was very doubtful about answering. I will read it: I was formerly a member of the Theosophical Society of which Annie Besant is the head, but now am a follower of our revered teacher, J. Krishnamurti, who has shown us the true path to enlightenment. Many of my former comrades are criticizing our teacher, J. Krishnamurti, as having departed from theosophy. As I suppose you have no prejudices in this matter, I wish to ask your opinion as to whether it is reasonable to do this, seeing that the two leaders of Mrs. Besant's society -- Mrs. Besant herself and Bishop Leadbeater -- endorsed our teacher, J. Krishnamurti, as the incarnation of a world-soul, and they themselves accepted him as their teacher? If they have changed their minds, do we have to do the same? Should we not follow the world-teacher in preference? So far as I know, although both are of course very advanced theosophists, they do not claim to be world-teachers. I answer this question with extreme reluctance. It is not really my business to deal with the internal affairs of some other Theosophical Society; and furthermore, Mrs. Besant, Mr. Leadbeater, and Mr. Krishnamurti are not members of ours and have naught to do with us. They are leading spirits in another Theosophical Society, and I have no doubt that all three are trying to do their best, and I suppose that they do what they think is right; and had I known from whom this question came, I should have returned the question and have suggested that the matter be placed before Mrs. Besant or Mr. Leadbeater or Mr. Krishnamurti. Of course it seems that the querent, the questioner, thinks that Mr. Krishnamurti is a world-teacher. I do not think that he is. I think that Mr. Krishnamurti is a well-meaning, kindly-hearted young man. I see no signs at all of his being a world-teacher or any other sign that would induce me to think that he is approaching that sublime state. I see in him and in his teachings neither the profound wisdom, nor the intellectual penetration, nor -- and this perhaps is the real test -- the esoteric knowledge. But this of course is my opinion. I have no doubt that Mr. Krishnamurti is a most excellent young man trying to do what he thinks is right; and if any have found help in following his teachings -- simple and, in a way, only a moderately successful rehash of some of the teachings of the Hindu Upanishads -- then I am glad of it for their sakes; and I wish Mr. Krishnamurti well as long as he continues in his efforts to help others. As regards Mrs. Besant's and Mr. Leadbeater's former and present opinion of their protege, I have naught to say. That is their affair alone and it is for them to give any answer that they may please to this question. It is not my business. I could, of course, tell you what I think; but what good would that be to you? However, perhaps as the question has been asked of me, as a theosophical teacher it is my duty to make a few further comments, and therefore I will go a little farther and say: my heart has ached because of the troubled situation of brother-theosophists in that Society. I would give anything if I could bring help to them. I have already extended my right hand in genuine fellowship, and it is still outstretched. I have received heartfelt responses from many individuals, although not from all; and I am encouraged.

But the troubles of these other theosophists in their own Society are their own affair, and they must find a way out for themselves. If I can give any help at any time, and in any way, I shall be heart-happy to do so. I cannot do more than that. They have brought forth teachings other than the original teachings of the founders of the Theosophical Society, and if those who accept these new teachings find them good and are satisfied, then I have naught to say to them on that score. But how can I bring help to a man who won't accept it? I feel that I cannot answer at greater length this question as to whether members of Mrs. Besant's Society should follow her or should follow Mr. Krishnamurti, her one-time protege. That is a question which I feel it would be improper for me even to try to answer. My Brothers, before closing I want to tell you something that I bring to your attention on every Sunday afternoon when we meet here together: it is a recalling to your mind and to your heart of your divine ancestry. You as human beings sit before me as human beings; but looking beyond and behind the veil of flesh, I can see the sublime lineaments of a god in each one of you. I can sense the divinity sleeping in the heart of your heart; and I feel, as I stand here and speak to you, that I am addressing an audience of the gods as it were in highest Olympus, seated on their azure seats of power, these azure seats being for each one of them his own divine selfhood. Men, you are gods feebly expressing through your imperfect human vehicle, through your imperfectly evolved humanity, the divine powers and faculties in you. Oh! if I could implant this seed of thought and feeling in your hearts and minds, so that it would take root and grow there and thus change your lives, I should feel that I, a man, had done a god's work -- the work of a god! But the god within me appeals to the god within you, and urges me to tell you: Man, know thyself, thy inner divine self, for it is one with boundless infinitude, of which you are, each one of you, an inseparable part.

Second Series: No. 19 (January 12, 1931)

MYSTERIES OF SLEEP AND DEATH

(Lecture delivered November 23, 1930) CONTENTS: Sleep and death are brothers. -- Every awakening is a new incarnation. -- The essential difference between sleep and death. Death is a fulfillment of spiritual yearnings. -- What causes dreams? -- Dreams of the post- mortem period. -- The marvel of the growing child. -- Does an extra-cosmic God create your destiny? -- Where do our inner powers come from? -- Death is a time of assimilation. -What speakers on psychism say. -- An explanation of the varying quality of dreams. -- The length of the devachanic period. -- What about the utter materialist? -- A word about suicide. -- Leonhard Euler, the Swiss mathematician, on "Sleep and Death." -- Do you need proof of the strength of your inner god? -Katherine Tingley's Invocation: "O My Divinity!" -- Did a world-soul use the body of H. P. Blavatsky as an instrument? -- The divine labor of the Masters of Wisdom. -- Have the fiery courage of the god in your heart of hearts! Sleep and death! For how many ages have men thought over these two, these two interruptions of human consciousness: one so obvious, sleep, that we all are cognizant of it and yet pause in wonder when we think of it; and the other, death, an apparent utter cessation of consciousness, presenting a problem, so some say, that no human spirit has ever solved. And they say this untruly and unwisely; for I tell you, my Brothers, that each one of you, given the right key, can solve all the mysteries of sleep and therefore of death, because sleep and death are psycho-physical brothers. Hypnos kai thanatos adelphoi, said the ancient Greeks: "Sleep and death are brothers." It is true. Exactly the same succession of events takes place in death that ensues when we lay ourselves in bed at night and drop off into that wonderland of consciousness we call sleep; and when we awaken rested, composed, refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready for the fray and problems of the daily life again, we find that we are the identic persons that we were before the sleep began. In Sleep we have a break of consciousness; in death also there is a break of consciousness. In sleep we have dreams, or a greater or less unconsciousness; and in death we have dreams -- blissful, wondrous, spiritual -- or blank unconsciousness. As we awaken from sleep, so do we return to earth again in the next reincarnation in order to take up the tasks of our karmic life in a new human body. Here then is one difference between sleep and death, but a difference of circumstance and by no means of kind: after sleep we return to the same body; after death we take upon ourselves a new body. We incarnate, we reincarnate, every day when we wake from sleep; because what has passed, what has happened to us, what has ensued, while the physical body is asleep, is identic, but of very short term, with what takes place, with what ensues, with what happens, when and after we die. Death is an absolute sleep, a perfect sleep, a perfect rest; sleep is an incomplete death, an imperfect death, and often troubled with fevered and uneasy dreams on account of the imperfection of the conscious entity -- call it soul, if you like -- which the human ego is. Death and sleep are brothers. What happens in sleep takes place in death -- but perfectly so. What happens in death and after death, takes place when we sleep -- but imperfectly so. We incarnate anew every time when we awake, because awaking means that the entity which temporarily has left the body during sleep -- the brain-mind, the astral-physical consciousness -- returns into that body, incarnates itself anew, and thus the body awakens with the psychical fire again invigorating the blood and the tissues and the nerves. Sleep and death are brothers. Death has no real terrors. There is no death, if by that term we mean a perfect and complete, an utter and absolute, cessation of all that is. Examine yourselves, examine your consciousness, examine your feelings, examine your thoughts, look into your own self, test it, and you will find that what I tell you is true. Have you ever feared in going to your bed and in lying down and in losing consciousness? No. It is so natural; it is so happy an occurrence; it is so restful. Nature rests and the tired brain reposes; and the inner constitution, the soul if you like so to call it, is temporarily withdrawn during the sleeping period into the higher consciousness of the human being -- the ray, so to speak, is absorbed back into the inner spiritual sun.

Just exactly the same thing takes place at death; but in death the worn-out garment is cast aside; the repose also is long, utterly beautiful, utterly blissful, filled with glorious and magnificent dreams, and with hopes unrealized which now are realized in the consciousness of the spiritual being. This dreaming condition is a panorama of the fulfillment of all our noblest hopes and of all our dreams of unrealized spiritual yearnings. It is a fulfillment of them all in glory and bliss and perfect completion and plenitude. Why do we dream when we sleep? Is it the reflex action of the molecules of the cortex of the brain, or an automatic reaction of the nervous system of the body? Explanations such as these that have been given at various times contain each one its own small modicum of truth. But all such explanations describe merely the bare physical mechanisms of the thing. Behind the mechanism there is a mechanic, so to speak. Dreaming is a withdrawal of the self-consciousness, and it is this which produces sleep; and, on the other hand, it is the greater, the perfect, the absolute, withdrawal of the same self-consciousness, of the thinking and self-conscious entity leaving the body -- casting it aside as a worn-out garment -- that brings about death: yes, and this is the case even in the death which comes as the sequel of disease, or which comes as the sequel of accident or of violence. The mechanisms in all cases are the same. We dream when we sleep because of the thoughts that we have had, and the emotions that we have experienced, and the deeds that we have done during the waking day tiring the brain. Similarly we dream when we die; but our dreams in this case are not at all distorted by the influences of the psychophysical part of us, as always takes place in the dreams of mere sleep; but the body being cast off at death and the astral part being left behind to decompose in the astral realms, the spiritual nature is finally freed and thereafter feels no terrestrial influences more. The soul has now returned to its own spiritual source; it has withdrawn into the bosom of the spiritual part of the human being, into the part much higher than the human soul is; and there the soul, purified of all material yearnings, rests in its own sphere, in perfect peace, in perfect bliss, dreaming dreams of all the deeds that it longed to do and could not do; seeing the accomplishment in its consciousness of all the nobler acts that it wanted to achieve in the life last past and that it could not or did not achieve -- dreams of spiritual beauty, dreams of spiritual happiness, dreams of spiritual peace, dreams of unspeakable reality; because these dreams of the postmortem period, being spiritual dreams, are more intensely vivid, more intensely real, to the experiencing consciousness than is our original consciousness in the physical body when awake. This physical body of ours interferes with our perception of reality, and dims and tarnishes our vision and nobler feelings. It beclouds the consciousness; it weighs it down; it distorts both thought and feeling. In physical life the passions of all kinds have their play in all their fevered heat; but after death all that is left behind; there is then nothing at all to interfere with the utter bliss of the disembodied entity, which is now freed. Death and sleep are brothers. Nay, more, they are one, and only called brothers because they are two aspects, so to say, of the same thing -- the spiritual and the physical -- two phases, two manifestations, of the same thing, which is consciousness. Pause a moment in thought: A little child is born. Its faculties at birth are undeveloped. It shows but little more actual intelligence when born than does the young of the beast. But as the days fly by, as the weeks become the months and the months the years, we see a great wonder taking place before our eyes. We see the growth of self-consciousness; we see a marvelous and yet familiar fire of understanding in the eye of the little one; we begin to see the self-consciousness of the supernal light of spirit. The inner faculties, including the mind, are beginning to show themselves; and this process continues until adulthood is reached, and the man is then in the plenitude of his powers for that life so far as evolution has brought them forth. But where do these inner powers come from? Don't let your minds be psychologized by the ideas of the materialism of the past, which have been abandoned by the leading thinkers today, scientific and other. Where do these powers come from that the child shows? I repeat. We see intellect inscribing works of genius which shake the hearts of men, giving birth to all the beautiful things which ornament human life -- we know and love the poet, the seer, the philosopher, the religious teacher, producing all the wonders that the genius of man brings forth -- and I ask you again, where do they come from? Furthermore, in

following the same line of thought, why is it that some men are so great, and others less great and others less great still? And above those who are so great are the nobler scattered few -- the noblest flowers of the human race, the titanic intellects and spiritual seers of humanity. Again I ask you: where do these powers come from? Did a God create a man so, according to the old outworn theory, predestinating one child to the hovel of misery, and predestinating some other child to be born in the palace of the prince; predestinating one child to be a genius, and some other man to live his life long hungering for self-expression and unable to bring forth what is within him from lack of power to self-express the faculties of the inner god? Will you believe that -- that some God, some extracosmic God, created men so? Then you belong to the past ages, you are a Medievalist in mind, and before you stand the unsolvable problems of cosmic and human responsibility and justice. Theosophists say that these inner powers in a man were developed in other former lives on earth, lives lived in the past; so that when the reincarnating ego comes back to earth on its cyclical pilgrimage around the spheres, spheres inner and spheres outer, it comes back as a treasure-house of talents, talents and genius laid up in the treasure-house of itself: faculty, power, both being the fruits of human experience, such experience as you are gaining even now every day. The reincarnating ego comes back rested, reposed, from its Devachan, as theosophists call it, from the "heaven world," if you like the phrase better; and it comes back rested, having assimilated the spiritual experience which it had garnered to itself, to its consciousness, in these wondrous and vivid "dreams" of the devachan. The post-mortem period is a period of spiritual and intellectual digestion, of assimilation of the experiences acquired during the life just closed or previously closed. So also is sleep a period of assimilation, and the rebuilding of the tired entity which sleeps. This is a brief outline of the close similarity, indeed identity, of death and sleep. Death and sleep are essentially one. Sleep is an incomplete and imperfect death. Death is a complete and perfect sleep. Consider: consciousness, relative immobility on the bed, then lack of consciousness, followed by dreams, or perhaps unconsciousness. Death is an absolute sleep, a perfect sleep, in which the enshrouding body and the inferior part of the inner constitution of man have been cast aside as so much deadweight enclosing the fiery consciousness of the spiritual part of man's constitution. Otherwise, the two processes respectively of death and of sleep are identic. Sleep and death are one process expressing itself in two phases of manifestation. You hear a great deal sometimes from so-called speakers on psychism (and I desire to use no words that may hurt or wound anyone) about what happens after death or during sleep. What they tell you is, practically all of it, fragments of misunderstood teachings of the old religions of the Orient -- grand old religions as they even yet are, wonderful when you have the key to them, but easily misunderstood and therefore misinterpreted by those who possess not the keys to open their real meaning. As a matter of fact, when a man sleeps -- lays himself down on his bed and drops off, as people say, into unconsciousness -- the astral body of him, the link between the physical body and the next superior part of his inner constitution, slowly oozes from the physical body and remains outside of it, but always very close to the physical body and attached to that physical body by astral-vital bonds of union; and when this vacating of the physical body is imperfect and not complete, then dreams, and usually evil dreams, trouble the sleeping brain. Dreams themselves may be dreams of beauty, they may be dreams of horror, they may be intermediate between the two, or they may be trifling dreams, and it is common to speak of evil dreams and good dreams; but whatever the type of dream may be, all varieties of dream depend upon, first, the life that the man leads generally, and second, upon what the man has last thought and last felt and last done before he fell asleep. Just so is the case of the devachan, the heaven world, after death, except that in the case of the devachan only dreams of spiritual beauty take place. If the man during his life has had lofty aspirations, has aspired towards, has yearned and hoped and labored for, lofty and beautiful things, and has been unable to translate these yearnings and aspirations into action, then all his devachanic dreams are sublime; for his spiritual consciousness is at work in a most vivid and real way, running over the gamut of all the things that it longed to do and hoped to do and could not do but now is doing -- in thought-consciousness, which men call dreams.

He who was a musician on earth, in the devachan weaves in thought music of indescribable beauty; the poet in the devachan makes poems which are spiritually unearthly in their splendor; the philosopher, due to his spiritual faculty of going behind the veil of the outward seeming, when in the devachanic state goes into the very womb of being in thought. In all cases, the entity in the devachan, in the heaven world, dreams his beautiful dreams exactly according to the way he lived in the last life, and according to the thoughts of grandeur and beauty and unrealized splendor that he had when last living in the body. Contrariwise, those who have led an ignoble existence, whose physical lifetime had been brightened by no thought of beauty or of impersonality or of self-forgetfulness, and who had no yearnings at all of a lofty kind -- what is there for such death-sleeping entities to dream of? Little indeed. And therefore their post-mortem state is one of almost complete unconsciousness, because during the life last passed they built up no treasury of aspiration, of love, of hope, of yearning for sublime things; and consequently the mind rests in unconsciousness, for it has no seeds in itself producing dreams of beauty and splendor. Thirdly, the man who is intermediate between one of noble soul and one of ignoble soul has a devachanic or heaven-world state which is indeed one of dreams, but of dreams much less vivid, much less clear, slight, vague; and his rest period in the devachan is short. Do you understand the idea? It is easily understood. The man who is noble in heart and in intellect, who cannot find an outlet on earth for the expression of his inner faculties, lives long in the devachan or heaven world after his decease, because in that devachan he finds an expansive expression of all the best parts of his inner constitution, of his psychospiritual being; and his stay in the devachan or heaven world may be for several thousands of years. On the other hand, the utter materialist, the man of base, ignoble existence, has after death a period of almost complete unconsciousness, and, furthermore, at its completion returns to take up a body in a worse condition of physical existence than the one he previously was in. Such a man had his chances of improvement, spiritually and mentally and morally, in the last life, and either ignored those chances or neglected them. He failed to pass the examinations of life in his last incarnation on earth, and thus by nature's laws is demoted to a lower state of human existence. You see, therefore, that man cannot trifle with nature's laws. Man makes himself to be exactly what he becomes: what he wills, what he desires, what he instinctively turns to, he will obtain. If his desires and yearnings are sublime and lofty, he proceeds steadily forward in evolution from good to better; but if he neglects his chances and lives a gross life involved in physical appetites and yearnings, he returns to the same thing in his next incarnation, but on a lower grade than he had before, and his pathway is downwards -- unless, indeed, he reforms his character and begins to climb anew. Yes, keep the thought in your mind, my Brothers, that sleep and death are one -- not two, but one. Remember that when you lie down to sleep on your bed you die a little death. This will cast out fear from your hearts when you realize its truth. Death will thus become familiar to you. The thought of death will become friendly; and when your time comes to die you will die gladly and you will die with a will. I repeat that death and sleep are one. Sleep is an imperfect, incomplete death; and death is an absolute, perfect, complete sleep; but sleep and death are essentially one process of change. Remember that you are a child of infinitude, each one of you, inseparable from the boundless universe in which we all live and move and have our being; remember that you are well taken care of by almighty nature's laws, which brought you here, which will take you out from this life, and which will infallibly guide you on your way. Trust yourself then to death in happy confidence; die with a strong and happy will; die with gladness when your time comes; be not afraid. Mock at the phantom of death -- mock at the old hideous specter which the fearful imagination of ignorance wove in the hearts and minds of men. Mock at that specter, that evil thing of the imagination! Cast it out! Remember that you are well taken care of. What ye will receive either in life or in death, and how ye will receive it, lies wholly in your own control. Have you dealt well and wisely with the talents -- to use the metaphor of the Christian New Testament -- that have been entrusted to your hands? Have ye fought a good fight? Have you been

faithful to your charge? Have you been clean in life and decent in thought? Angels, indeed, the teachers do not expect men to be; but men can at least realize that they are men -- expressions in physical body of an inner, divine being, the inner god of each one of us. As ye live, as ye think, as ye feel, and further as ye act correspondingly, so will be your sleep -- either the sleep at night or the sleep of that longer period which men call death. When ye rest -- in the body or out of the body -- ye will dream in either case, digesting, assimilating, and building into yourself as character what you have made yourself to be. Every man is the maker of himself -- for man is his own parent. Naught else rules your destiny, naught else guides your evolution. Ye are gods feebly manifesting your transcendent divine powers through bodies of flesh. Live accordingly, and receive the guerdon of the gods when ye die. Be not afraid. I tell you, my Brothers, that when one who has studied our wondrous theosophical teachings receives the light, it becomes his duty to pass that light on to others, to awaken others, to give them what he himself has received. No true theosophist will ever tell you to believe anything merely because some lecturer says so, or because the theosophical leader says so, or because it is written in our books. Never! Every true theosophical lecturer will tell his audience: This is the teaching of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind today called theosophy. The great seers of the ages have tested it, have proved it, have sent their percipient consciousness behind the veil of the outward seeming and seeing, have known, and knowing have brought back what they themselves learned, and thereafter have taught. Therefore test the teaching yourselves. Prove it yourselves. Don't take anything on mere faith. If anything that is ever said to you in a theosophical lecture hall appeals to you as wrong, then reject it with all the strength of your being; and if anything is ever said in a theosophical lecture hall that appeals to you as truth, then be true men and hold to that truth with a will and with courage. Have the courage of your convictions and proclaim them, and thus help us Theosophists to pass on the glad tidings that we have received in common. You may make mistakes in following this splendid rule of spiritual and intellectual independence; but even if you should make a mistake or indeed many mistakes, nevertheless you will be exercising your own faculties and inner powers; and this exercise will give them strength, and in time you will gain a clearer vision as you live. In order to round out the thought regarding death, do not for a moment imagine that the theosophist ever teaches or approves of self-murder, commonly called suicide. This is always wrong, because it is immoral and cowardly. The fate of the suicide is a sad one, indeed a terrible one, and it is good and right that the truth concerning suicide be told. The suicide willfully cuts short the life that nature, or as theosophists say, that karma, intended to be longer, and he has thus placed himself in a post-mortem condition in which he must live and suffer greatly until the term of his lifetime, had he lived on earth, is closed. The fate of the suicide is an awful one. I have elaborated this matter on other occasions, in other lectures, to which I now refer you. Leonhard Euler, who died in 1783, a very famous Swiss mathematician and a very remarkable man, who was unusually intuitive in some ways, wrote the following, which I have extracted and which I will now read to you: Sleep furnishes something like an example (prefiguration) of the state of the soul after death, as the union of soul and body is then in a great measure interrupted; yet the soul ceases not from activity, being employed in the production of dreams. These are usually disturbed by the remaining influence which the senses exercise; and we know by experience that the more this influence is suspended, which is the case in profound sleep, the more regular and connected are our dreams. Thus, after death we shall find ourselves in a more perfect state of dreaming which nothing shall be able to decompose. It will consist of representations and reasonings perfectly sustained. This is one of the most remarkable passages concerning sleep and death that I have ever found in a European writer. An initiate into the Mysteries could not have written more to the point and with greater effect. Euler is perfectly right. Our dreams are the more vivid, the more real, to the consciousness just in proportion as the inferior part of us, the body and the astral-vital parts, are utterly quiescent. When this

lower part of the human constitution is cast off in death, then the spiritual consciousness expands over its own fields of activity, which are the cosmos, the universe; and the psychomental part, commonly called the soul, is withdrawn into the bosom of this spiritual part and rests there in its devachan of blissful, peaceful dream. And now a few words: When a man while alive on earth can ally himself with his own inner god, with the divine entity at the very root of his being, then he dreams no more but becomes divinely selfconscious -- becomes godlike in his consciousness; for then his consciousness takes cosmic sweep, expands to embrace the solar system and even beyond; and though living on earth he walks among his fellows as a god-man. This not only can be done but has often been done, and done again and again; and the great titanic seers and intellects, the great spiritual visionaries of the human race, were just such godmen: the Buddha, Sankaracharya, Jesus the Syrian, Lao-tse, Krishna, Pythagoras -- oh! a host of them -were such god-men; some were greater than others, but all, each one of them, in greater or less degree, had become at one with his own inner god, with what the modern mystical Christian calls his immanent Christ, the Christ dwelling within him: theosophists say the inner god. There is one inner god for each human being. This inner god is your own divine essence, for a human being is composite; he is not just soul and body. Examine yourselves; examine your own instincts; examine your intuitions. Have you no intimations of things which are beyond your ordinary human understanding -- sudden and wonderful flashes of light? Have you not at least in some degree the vision? Cannot you see, even though it be only at times? It is the light from above, from within -- from within and above you, from your own inner god, which produces these wonderful moments of light and of inspiration. O my Brothers, why not become at one with this divinity within you? Why be like the swine in the sty, groveling in the mud, when within you is a god? What I have told you this afternoon is the teaching of all the great sages and seers of the ages, who have lived and taught in all countries and in all ages. They teach one fundamental doctrine, although that doctrine is expressed in different languages because given at different times to different races of men, and given in different formulations; but it is always the same essential, fundamental doctrine -- truth. I have many questions to answer this afternoon. Here is one: It is said that "form implies limitation." Is the god within the physical form of man limited by or to the capacity of the physical form, or is it free to mingle with the universe, regardless of physical limitations? It does mingle with the universe; the universe is essentially itself. Furthermore, the god is not within the physical body. This is obvious. You human beings, we human beings, I, you, are simply feeble manifestations as individuals of a ray from the divinity at the core of each of us. This divinity, which is our own highest essence, our own highest being, manages to send a ray of its sublime, of its divine, essence through all the portions of man's constitution till finally it reaches the physical brain and gives it the light of thought and consciousness. The physical is but the vehicle, the last outward shell, of man's constitution; and this inner god dwells in its own realms and enlightens us with a ray; and this ray is our human soul. My inner god, or your inner god, in each case mingles with the universe, because it is a divine child of the divine part of the universe, of the invisible, spiritual, divine part of the universe, and therefore it is inseparable from the universe. Indeed, even our physical bodies are inseparable parts of the universe: the atoms, the chemical atoms, of which our physical bodies are composed, are the same chemical atoms that compose the stone, or the wood, or the metal, or the planet, or the star which begems the violet dome of night. The atoms which compose my physical encasement leave me and return to me; so do yours; they pass through me or through you and return again. The physical body is but a more or less transient, more or less permanent, form, held together by the cohering life-will of the entity I call I. Hence I ask you again: Why not follow this spiritual ray -- this ray issuing to and in each one from your own inner god -- why not follow it to its divine source? You can do it in consciousness. And, as you try, as you work to that end, you can so purify the lower part of your constitution that this ray will no longer

be a feeble gleam of light touching and enlivening the physical brain, but will irradiate all your consciousness as a man, so that even in the physical body you can have a cosmic consciousness, because you then will have become at one with your own inner god. O my Brothers, I hope you understand. The teaching is so simple, and yet to Occidental ears so strange. Remember that it is the teaching of all the great sages and seers. It was the teaching of Jesus called the Christ; it was the teaching of Gautama Buddha; it was the teaching of all the other great ones. You hold it in your own willpower and imagination to achieve this grand consummation of all evolution. You can each one of you be a god. Be your own inner god, which is a spark of the central, divine fire of the universe. Pray think over my words with care. Here is a question very much the same as the last: Despite the conviction that there is a god within each and every one of us, may not an immortal mortal be pardoned for not seeing the way clear to take that inner god seriously? Looking backward or scrutinizing the present, and observing the fearful things that men do -- the periodical wars of slaughter for patriotic or political reasons, and of birds and animals for sport, man's inhumanity, greed, selfishness, covetousness, thirst for wealth and fame, the misuse of power, and adoration of the great god Mammon -- all this does much to shake one's faith in the inner god. True, there have been great souls who have accomplished beautiful things. True, that every man occasionally radiates flashes of divinity, even as a diamond now dull and unresponsive, when a vagrant beam of light from without enfolds it, brings to instantaneous birth exquisite bursts of flaming color that rival in purity and rarity the rainbow or the sunset. Yet this constitutes a deplorably insignificant modicum of goodness wherewith the whole world might be leavened. It is obvious that the shortcomings emanate from the lower man. But the god within must be pitifully impotent to be so easily deposed from its throne, permitting the lower nature to usurp the kingdom. If it can be so easily dethroned, is it not an unstable thing to depend upon for guidance? How may confidence in the inner god be restored -- and maintained? This is a confession, and a plea for help! It emanates from a mind colored and overweighted with the old teaching of the materialism of our fathers which is now dead, which is abandoned by the greatest thinkers of the human race today and which yet exercises its lethal influence, its deadening influence, over the minds of men. The situation is pitiful. A man writes to me a question: "I believe in the inner god and I know that he exists within me as my own inmost; and yet he must be a pitifully impotent entity within me to allow me to do the things that I do." Isn't the answer to his question obvious? It is this: Become at one with your own higher self! Be a man! Refuse to follow the inferior, and cast in your fortune with the superior! Turn to the sun, which you admit exists! Why will you regard the shadows? Turn to the light! There is your answer. Begin if you must in a small way, as all men do with whatever duty they begin to do; but be a man! Have the courage of your own conviction! Follow it! Improve yourself! Study! Reflect! Aspire! Hope! Live so that the god may manifest itself in both your brain and heart; and you will soon, very soon, know that the divine Master within you lives -- and is your self! A short time ago a friend, hearing the Invocation given at the end of our meetings, asked me what I understood the meaning to be of the phrase "that from the corruptible I may become incorruptible." I do not doubt that there are others as well as this friend who would appreciate hearing from you what you have to say about this, as your answer would be far more adequate than anything I could say. Now, I do wonder if my answer could be or would be more adequate. The questioner has omitted to cite the other portion of this Invocation, beautiful as it is, which runs: "that from imperfection I may become perfection; that from darkness I may go forth in light." The invocation signifies the changing over of the inferior part of you to the higher; it means abandoning the mud for the aether; it means going out of the night, out of the shadows, into the glorious sunlight -- and it also means giving up fevered unhappiness for ineffable peace. It means giving up ignorance for wisdom. It means throwing over hate, so that your heart may become irradiated with love. It means abandoning dislike so that your heart may be filled with forgiveness. These are all manly qualities. It takes a man to exercise them. And just in proportion as your character is virile, strong, manly, just in that same degree or ratio will your heart be filled with love and compassion and pity for those who injure you and abuse you. That is godlike! You have the power

within you to be it and to do it. Why not use this power? Why not grow into being it? Why not become it? Immortal gods, my Brothers: What is the matter with you all? I am not speaking only to you here; for as I stand before you and look into your faces I see recognition, I see that you understand me; but I am talking to the vast mass of humanity who are sleeping the sleep of the materialistic dead -- materialists -filled with and following evil dreams, sunken in unhappiness, lacking peace, lacking spiritual and intellectual consolation, weaving webs of illusory phantasy all the time in their minds, entangling themselves in fevered emotions, refusing to go out into the rays of the life-giving sun. Ah! You exchange the "corruptible for the incorruptible" when you ally your consciousness with the divine ray within you. Then you pass from imperfection to perfection; then you abandon the corruptible, in order to become the incorruptible -- in order to become one with the fundamental laws of the Universe which endure for aye. Doing this you go forth from darkness into light. This is one third of our Invocation: "O my Divinity, blend thou with me, that from the corruptible I may become incorruptible, that from imperfection I may become perfection, that from darkness I may go forth in light." This is our beloved Katherine Tingley's Invocation: it is masterly! You stated in one of your lectures that a sublime spirit -- I think you called it a world-soul [No, I didn't!] -- used the body of Mme. Blavatsky as an instrument. Also you have stated that there is a line of succession of theosophical teachers, one following another without a break and all representing the same high spiritual beings; at least that is as I understand it. I wish to ask: Did a world-soul also use Katherine Tingley as an instrument, and is one using you? This is not intended to be personal, but you yourself have stated that you are Mme. Tingley's successor. I have never at any time written or said that a world-soul used the body of H. P. Blavatsky or of William Q. Judge or of Katherine Tingley or of myself "as an instrument." I have said, and I now repeat it, that one of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, one or other of them, did at certain times employ the personality of one of these four as a vehicle through which to do certain things. That is a fact, and I have stated it, and I now repeat it. But these Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace are simply great men: they are men, men who have evolved unto becoming like god-men on earth, but nevertheless men like you and like me. They are simply more highly evolved men than we are. It was they who founded the Theosophical Society in our age and who sent H.P.B. as their first messenger in order to found our Society and to give it certain age-old teachings that she brought with her, and these great Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, who are the elder brothers of the race, are indeed back of The Theosophical Society and are protecting it, if they do naught else; protecting it, however, only in so far as we members of The Theosophical Society keep it a fit instrument to do the work that they intended it should do. Should we fail, then the inspiration will cease -- and rightly so. If the artisan's tool is broken, shall he use the broken tool or forge one anew? Theosophists know this and know it well; and we try, whatever our faults may be, my Friends and Brothers, to keep our Society what its great founders meant it to be; and, thank the immortal gods, I can tell you in the honesty of my soul that up to this date it has remained and now is a fit instrument to do the work they intended it to do and is a fit channel for their teaching to and influence upon the world. We are very watchful; and keeping The Theosophical Society fit to do their work means at least two things: first, impersonal love for humanity expressed in doctrine and in act; next, fidelity to the noblest powers and faculties within each one of us, so that as a band of brothers we can say, when the Master comes, "Lord, I am ready." You can say this if your heart is filled with impersonal love for all that is, for all things both great and small; if you have no selfish motives behind your acts; if you do your duty by the Society and also by your family and by your nation; in other words, if you live as an honest man should live, filled with ideals, striving for the best, but never content with what you have already achieved, and always longing for more of the vision sublime. If we can do all this -- and we have succeeded thus far -- The Theosophical Society will live on into future ages as a fit vehicle for the Masters' work; and then it will do the work that it was intended to do: unite men into a brotherhood, a brotherhood of love, of peace, of self-respecting and energetic adherents and propagandists of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, teachers of mutual kindliness, who are haters of hate, who are lovers of love. All this will keep our feet following the path.

Thus, you see, it is not at all a question of a world-soul. I think that this expression is a very trifling one, because in the minds of most men it is an ambiguous one. What theosophists call the avataras only are individual expressions of a world-soul, and the avataras are few; and there is a very interesting and singular history about them, which I have no time to speak of this afternoon. It is the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, who are great men, highly evolved men, great seers and sages, initiates, holding great power, possessing titanic intellect, and of titanic spiritual development, grand men, who are behind the Theosophical Movement, behind The Theosophical Society; and at times they do use certain rare ones in the Society as the vehicles or channels for a more intimate dissemination of their teachings and influence. Such was H.P. Blavatsky; such was William Q. Judge; such was our beloved Katherine Tingley. Remember, my Brothers, that the world is guided by spiritual powers; that mankind is not lost in a physical wilderness. These great men watch over and protect the destiny of the human race, of which they themselves are individual parts. That is their sublime duty; that is their grand work. And at different times, as the ages fly by, when spiritual truths have been largely forgotten and materialistic impulses and movements are rampant in the world, then they send forth from their ranks a messenger, one carrying the age-old truths anew to mankind, teaching men how to become at one with each man's own inner god, teaching men the explanation of the riddles of life, giving to men a philosophy, a sublime philosophyreligion-science, which synthetic system is based on the structure and operations of the universe. In other words the duty of the messenger is to teach men truth and impersonal love. Now, before closing, as is usual in our meetings in this our Temple of Peace, I feel impelled to call upon you once more to realize who you essentially are: to realize that each one of you is in his essence, and therefore most truly, a divine being, a god, a cosmic spirit, with which gods the universe is filled full, and each such god is a native of the invisible spiritual realms of the universe; and that consequently each one of you is but a feeble, poor, incomplete manifestation in your human nature of this divinity. Look at the hope in this teaching! Remember what you are -- that you have this divine ray enlightening your minds, warming your hearts, all the time; that you have but to turn to it for it to grow always greater in its influence upon you; remember that practice makes perfect, that exercise brings strength, that striving for truth brings a larger visioning. Be therefore the god within you, the inner Buddha, the immanent Christ; for in that way peace and power, happiness and glory, strength and courage indescriptible, will be yours. Have no fear of anything in the universe. Fear is weak and destructive; fear deadens; fear blinds; fear kills. Have the fiery courage of the god in your heart of hearts, and be it!

Second Series: No. 20 (January 19, 1931)

MORE ABOUT SLEEP AND DEATH

(Lecture delivered November 30, 1930) CONTENTS: The immortal instinct within you. -- You and the universe are one. -- You cannot flee from yourself. -- Sir James Jeans on the question of mind and matter. Where he differs from theosophy. -- Nothing to fear in sleep or death. -- Borrowing the thoughts of other men. -- What is a spiritual monad? -- Evils in the train of ignorance. -- Why do we return to earth? -- Our origin and our destiny. -Theosophy explains the term "space." -- Old age as it should be. -- The mystery of sleep. -- About dreams. -- Journey of the inner consciousness during sleep. -- Analogy between sleep and death. -Countless hierarchies in the universe. -- Dr. Bigelow and his understanding of the doctrine of karma. -The scientific basis of ethics. -- Children of cosmic space. Children of mortality, sons of death, victims of a blind irresistible fate, hopeless, eternally without a future destiny, driven as sear and dead leaves before a crazy wind of fate -- are you all that? What a picture! What a gloomy fantasm! What a nightmare! Your feelings, your instincts, your intuition, your intellectual faculties -- what is the answer that they give to such fantasms as these? How do you feel about it? Your own consciousness is the standard by which you may test the problems of life. Don't follow other men's views merely because those views are popular. Think for yourselves! Be true men! Answer the immortal instinct within you! Follow it! For that instinct is not only a spiritual one, but an intellectual one also. It arises within you and is the influence that the inner god, the sleeping divinity which is the core of every human being, attempts to pass down through the clay of the human brainmind with that human brain-mind's native ignorance, with its native atmosphere of darkness and chill. How many men, alas, prefer to take the views, the fads, the theories, the hypotheses, which happen to be popular in the day in which they are enunciated, to the spiritual instinct, the intellectual instinct, the psychic instinct, even the physical instinct, which automatically rebels against the gloomy nihilism that I have just spoken of. For we know that man has willpower and intelligence; we know that man can think and feel and act with a will; and we know that in the core of his being he senses that he is not different from the universe in which he lives and moves and has his essence, and that he is at one with it, an inseparable part of the universe of which he is the child. So, therefore, all is well, because what that universe is, that is you; what that universe is, you are that. You don't live outside of the universe, you are part of it, as a part is an integral portion of the whole. You are blood of its blood, life of its life, fabric of its fabric, being of its being. If not, then you are something different from boundless infinitude; if not, you are apart from it: and this means that there are two infinitudes then, boundless infinitude and you! This supposition is absurd. What the universe is, that you are; what you are, the universe is. See how men differ among themselves! See how men differ from other lives, from the other multitudes and hosts and armies of beings which cover even the earth with pullulating vitality, and yet all are one in essence. Beyond the earth in the vast spaces of cosmic being, what must there be there, think you? What must there be? We are not different from the Universe; we are not exceptional; we are simply as a human host, parts of the All, parts inseparable from the whole, parts derivative from the whole. Hence the resultant, the deduction, that we must draw from these thoughts, is: All is well; for the universe is well, if is well run, it is well conducted, it is well organized, it is our very model and pattern of harmony and law. Therefore so are you. Think! Don't take other men's thoughts and abdicate one of your own noblest faculties -- that of independent intellectual and spiritual research. Think truly! Awaken the god within you, awaken your own individual spiritual faculties and powers! Think for yourselves, but think loftily and sublimely. You won't regret it. In doing so, you will find yourself, and happiness. There is no happiness like unto that. And when I say find yourself, obviously I don't mean the physical self; I mean the essential entity around which the physical and the astral, and the psychical and the mental, are builded as garments, through which garments the divine splendor of the essential self, which is at the core, which is indeed

the core, of each one of you, works or tries to work, manifests or tries to manifest, its transcendent powers. In proportion as it succeeds in doing this, the cold mud of the brain is set aflame, and man cognizes, reasons, thinks, feels, is a man! You have consciousness, intellect, instinct, inspiration, aspiration, life, willpower, reason, because the Universe has all these. You are not different from the whole of which you are an inseparable part. You simply exemplify and manifest as a part what the whole contains; and this thought is so obviously simple that no child will refuse to accept it. It is only sophisticated men -- men thinking other men's thoughts instead of thinking for themselves, believing in fads and fancies of a time -- who reject or turn aside from even the powerful noble instincts of their own essential nature. Those fads and fancies and theories and hypotheses, whether religious or philosophical or scientific, are now matters of a bygone generation. The crass materialism of our fathers is dead; our greatest scientific philosophers today are preaching the doctrine that consciousness is the fundamental essence in the universe. Get this thought and hold to it! Consequently, the fundamental essence in each one of you is consciousness, because, as said, you are an intrinsic, integral, and essential part of the cosmic whole. You cannot really lose yourself even if you try to do so. You cannot flee from yourself, try as you will; for yourself will chase yourself into the remotest chambers even of your unconsciousness, which men call deep sleep or death. What does Sir James Jeans, one of the greatest of ultramodern English scientific philosophers, have to say about this question of mind and matter? Please understand that I don't quote Sir James Jeans because I, as a theosophical thinker and teacher, approve of or endorse everything that he utters, because most emphatically I don't; but he has said some excellent things, some exceedingly good things, and these things are the same in essential particulars as is the teaching of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind today called theosophy; and it is the good things which he has said that I quote, quoting him for the things which struck me, as a thinking man, as being true. He says in his recent book, The Mysterious Universe: Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter -- not, of course, our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown exist as thoughts. The new knowledge compels us to revise our hasty first impressions that we had stumbled into a universe which either did not concern itself with life or was actively hostile to life. The old dualism of mind and matter, which was mainly responsible for the supposed hostility, seems likely to disappear, not through matter becoming in any way more shadowy or insubstantial than heretofore, or through mind becoming resolved into a function of the working of matter, but through substantial matter resolving itself into a creation and manifestation of mind [theosophists say of which mind is a function -- G.de P] . . . 'consciousness.' . . . And while much in it may be hostile to the material appendages of life, much also is akin to the fundamental activities of life; we are not so much strangers or intruders in the universe as we at first thought. Now, here is where, according to our theosophical way of thinking, Sir James Jeans falls down. He speaks of mind, or as we say of consciousness, as being "hostile to the material appendages of life," but as consciousness and life are but two phases of the same thing, and as matter is but another phase of the essential underlying consciousness, the illogic of his idea becomes immediately apparent, for he has constructed a hypothesis of which the cardinal principles are in irreconcilable conflict. It is astonishing that he does not see this. Nevertheless the mere fact that he speaks of mind, of which our individual minds are as it were atoms, is most excellent good logic, sense, and philosophy, for the fundamental idea is typically a doctrine of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind today called theosophy. Sir James gets the fundamental thought, and yet seems to be afraid to go the full length of his own Ariadne's thread of

intuition. He is still psychologized with the old idea that men are accidents, albeit thinking and selfconscious accidents, in an automatically acting and a fortuitously born universe. On the contrary theosophists say that men are essential, intrinsic, inseparable, parts of the universe itself; and not only man, but every other entity and every thing that is; because all together they make the universe. Far from being "intruders" or "strangers" or accidental voyagers, we are pilgrims into the realm of the material universe, and the vast spaces of boundless space -- visible and invisible -- are our native home, our native habitat. There is our native land -- here, there, everywhere. Isn't it obvious? Go outside the universe, if you can. Leave it, if you can. Vain and futile thought! You are here. Go ye ten thousand billion light-years beyond Sirius, and you will still be in the boundless All, for that boundless All is boundless infinitude; and ten thousand billion years of light-time beyond Sirius is as naught in the frontierless, beginningless, endless spaces of illimitable infinitude. There is your native home, my Brothers. Native of boundless space am I; natives of boundless space are you. Children of infinitude you are, having in you in potentia or in actu everything that boundless space contains. boundless space is your home; and the core of the core of your being is the heart of the universe -- a heart which, quoting Pascal who in turn quoted ancient pagan writers, is like a boundless sphere having its center everywhere and its circumference nowhere, because neither center nor circumference are anywhere in especial. Therefore, when man sleeps or when he dies, all is well. He is here on earth as a man because he is passing through one phase of his aeon-long evolutionary journey. He has become man from lower stages of his own line of evolutionary unfoldment. From man he will become a god; and man already shows godlike qualities -- consciousness which can plumb or which tries to plumb the universe, intuition, intellect, which grip the problems of life and solve them. Are these attributes not godlike? Man has the instinct of eternity in his breast; he senses that all of him is of the universe. So, whether a man sleep or whether he die, all is well, and because he has come here now, it means that he came here before and will come again, for he goes and returns on the cyclic round. How did man come here? How did you come here? By accident? By chance? By fortuity? What are these? These are words. What do they mean? Nothing -- except that, when you cannot explain a thing, you say, "It happened so." They are confessions of ignorance. No man today believes in chance. Everything exists because it must exist. Each thing or entity is but one link in a chain of events enduring from age to age; and every link on the forward movement or on the upward climb is a nobler link of evolutionary experience than the one next preceding it. I told you on last Sunday, my Brothers, that sleep and death are not essentially different, that they are the same, two manifestations of the same process: death being a perfect or absolute sleep, and sleep being an imperfect and incomplete death. In either case, there is the loss of personal consciousness; in either case there is the loss of the active willing to do, to achieve; in either case there is rest, there is peace; in either case there is digestion and consequent assimilation of what the consciousness has just previously experienced, be it in the day preceding the night-sleep, or be it in the lifetime preceding the devachan, as theosophists say -- or the heaven world following a lifetime on earth. In either case it is sleep-death, death-sleep; for they are essentially one. It is rest; it is repose; it is peace; it is supreme bliss; especially so in death, for in death the rest is so absolute, the consciousness is so perfectly withdrawn from the fevered forces of material life that its native faculties and powers work more naturally and more freely, because liberated from the crippling bonds of the body and of the lower mind. The entity in death has cast off physical mortality and has put on the garments pro tem of the spirit which is deathless, because that spirit is the fundamental energy of the universe, expressing itself as incomputable hosts of atoms of spirit which are individual monads, each one being the source or fountainhead or root of a manifesting entity such as a man. Strange creatures, we human beings: nature proclaims so loud all around us just what life is and what death is, and what sleep is, and we are blind, blind, blind, blind! And why blind? Because we won't see what is the essential self. We prefer to take other men's brain-mind thoughts and accept them as our own. These other men are just like you: speculators, dreamers, thinkers, some of them intuitive, some of them not intuitive at all. Therefore, our theosophical teaching is: look within yourself for truth and peace and happiness. You will there find fountains of wisdom illimitable, and fields of consciousness which

you yourself may explore; for it is you yourself: the universe. Become acquainted with yourself; be your own inner spiritual essence. You manifest feebly intellect, feeling, consciousness, intuition, and many other similar attributes and faculties which are all caused in your constitution by the working of a spiritual ray streaming into your constitution from the apex of that constitution which is the spiritual monad just spoken of. Hence our theosophical teaching is: follow this ray, which you manifest so feebly, to its source and become greater, and thus become progressively greater in the very things which make you what you are in your best and noblest. Following the self ever more inwards to the self, becoming more and more yourself, your higher self, your consciousness will in time, in future aeons, at last become cosmic, because the god within you, your own inner spiritual sun, so to speak, has a consciousness of universal reach. A man is born as a little child. He has but little more thought and feeling and imagination and intellect than the young of the beast has, and is even more helpless -- a pitiful little bit of humankind. But watch as the child grows. Note the wonder that takes place. Watch the growth in understanding. Sense the increase in magnitude and in depth of feeling, as the little child grows. See the child bring out from itself -- ever more and more evolve in other words, evolve forth from within itself, which is what evolution really means -- all the inner faculties. See him expand more and more as time goes on and as he grows to adulthood. Then it would seem as if the man, having reached maturity, had reached the boundary of all that he could do in that one life, and he remains steady there for a while, and uses or abuses (alas!) his powers; and then little by little you see another wonder beginning to take place: you see strange things happening in that man as he ages, until finally, if the life has been nobly lived, there is a richness, a mellowness, of understanding and of thought and of feeling in the old man, sinking into decrepitude physically, but expanding inwardly, which is godlike. Or, if he has lived evilly, wasted his powers, you see the second childhood preceding what men call death, and the spectacle is pitiful. Now, isn't all this wonderful? From a microscopic human seed so small that no unaided eye can see it, there grows through many stages an entity who becomes a six-foot man, we will say. He makes a number of gestures, good, bad, and indifferent, on the stage of life, and then after a little more time we see him fade, until one day, like a wind-blown tree, he crashes and his place knows him no more. It is ignorance which is the parent of fear; fear is the parent of hate; fear and hate are the parents of dishonesty. Fear not at all. There is no need to fear. Fear yourself, if you long to fear something, as most men do. Men usually don't feel satisfied unless they can be afraid of something! Fear yourself then. Yes, I mean reverence the god within; for that is one entity with whom you cannot play the traitor! That god within is your savior, you yourself, your own inmost being, the source and fountainhead of all that is good within you; and when I say good, I mean everything that is worth while within you -- thought, consciousness, intellect, intuition, reason, feeling, love, forgiveness, pity, kindliness, the sense of brotherhood -- everything that is decent and grand springs from it. The thought is significant. It is a significant thing that we see a microscopic human seed become a sixfoot man and express wonderful faculties and do marvelous things -- perhaps shake the very foundations of civilization with the force of his ideas; produce marvels, it may be, of beauty -- mechanical, intellectual, or what not; and then fade away, and decay, and die. Nature repeats herself everywhere. What she does in the grand she reproduces in the small; and the reason for this is that there is one fundamental law or system of action, of operation, in the universe, which expresses itself therefore in every part of the universe, being its fundamental current of consciousness-vitality. Man is born, reaches the culmination of his powers, and dies because the physical universe does the same thing in the great as man's physical body does in the small. But the essential man was there as the consciousness-center around which the personal man, the astral-physical man, was builded. The reincarnating ego came back to earth and overshadowed -- did not enter, but overshadowed -- this human seed, which thereafter began to grow into the six-foot man. You cannot not come back; you came here because you builded yourself in past lives, builded your character, to come here again; and just as there are these different stages of growth in the life period on

earth of a reincarnated ego, by the same law of analogical action which is an aspect of the fundamental law of boundless space, we began as entities in the beginning of this cosmic life period as unselfconscious god-sparks, sparks of the cosmic central fire, and we have been evolving ever since, living and living and living and living, and dying and dying and dying, swinging backward and forward like a pendulum of consciousness throughout the ages, until we are now here as men. And if we follow the forwards-moving evolutionary current, as we must and as we will, in time to come we shall blossom forth as gods, fully self-conscious god-sparks: having been in the beginning unselfconscious god-sparks, we shall in future aeons of time become self-conscious gods. Is that the end of our growth? No. There are no ends. The term is foolish. We shall ineluctably go on forever; for space is frontierless; and when the theosophist speaks of space, he does not mean only our own physical universe. That physical universe is but a cross-section, one plane, as it were of the illimitable universe which to us as physical men is invisible and impalpable. The theosophist means by the word space particularly the inner and invisible worlds, the roots of the entities and things which show themselves in our physical universe; for our physical universe is merely the outer garment, the physical body, of what is within; and these within-things, this ineffable within, express themselves or expresses itself, through the outer veil or garment or body, just as the essential man expresses himself through the outer garment or veil of the astral-physical garment or body. Even a dramatist like Shakespeare speaks of the seven ages of man. You probably all have read the famous passage that I have in mind. Let me, however, read it again to you. It is interesting. It is found in Shakespeare's As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7. It is the melancholy Jaques who speaks: All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. What a picture! A theosophist in reading this -- at least, I do -- asks himself, I ask myself, what kind of men must Shakespeare have known? Follow nature's laws of self-control and high thinking and noble living, and your old age will be a wonder to see: full of lofty thought rendered glorious and splendid with the increasing brilliance from the inner god flooding your physical brain; an old age broken it may

be in body, bent and feeble it may be in body, and lame, but wise, full of wisdom and having a heart expanded with pity for all that lives, filled with love and understanding for all that lives. Death comes suddenly, and sleep comes suddenly. Watch yourself as you fall asleep. I wonder how many of you will succeed? Most people lie down, and after a shorter or a longer period they are asleep. What has become of them? What makes that body lie there resting itself and either breathing easily and peacefully or snoring like a pig? What has happened? What has become of that energetic entity which enlivened, which filled with flame and fire, that body, and made the man a man? We are so accustomed to sleep that we do not think about these things. Nature is shouting the truth to us on every hand, and we are as deaf as adders to nature's voices, and as blind as bats in the sunlight. What has happened to that sleeping man? What has become of his thought? What has become of his feeling? Where is even his usual physical energy? In sleep he moves but little; he may turn in bed; he may mumble a bit in his sleep; but so does an infant. I will tell you what has happened: sleep is caused by the withdrawal from the physical body of the entity which filled it with its flame and gave it active life. That is sleep. And when that withdrawal of the inner entity is complete, the sleep as sleep is relatively perfect and there is relatively perfect unconsciousness - the sweetest sleep of all. For then the body is undisturbed, rests peacefully and quietly, rebuilds in its system what was torn down during the hours of active work or play. If the withdrawal of the inner entity -- call it the mind, call it the consciousness, call it the soul, we won't quibble about words is -- incomplete or partial, then dreams occur: fevered dreams, sweet dreams, but dreams; for the entity, the consciousness, the mind, the soul -- call it what you like -- still in this last case feels the attraction of the physical part of itself, the physical man, still feels that physical man working on it psychomagnetically, as it were; and its unconsciousness is disturbed by the vibrations of the physical man, of the animate body. This produces evil dreams, bad dreams, fevered dreams, strange dreams, unhappy dreams. If the withdrawal is somewhat more complete than in this last case, but not yet wholly complete, then there are happy dreams, dreams of peace. Finally, as I have already said, if the withdrawal is complete, so that the influence of the physical body cannot affect the entity which has withdrawn itself, then there is relatively complete unconsciousness, for the tired mind is resting also; and for another reason, a reason upon which I will touch with reluctance, but I feel it incumbent upon me somewhat to complete the picture of what happens when you sleep; the brain registers naught; for it is utterly quiet in these cases of utter unconsciousness in sleep. The brain registers naught of what the consciousness itself is experiencing. That consciousness is resting, but resting as it were half-awake, as a man may rest in quiet thought, eyes closed in a doze, not in a sleep, still conscious of what is going on around, but not fully awake; and in this state, this inner consciousness, call it the soul if you like, or the mind, or the inner man, is in another world, drawn to that other inner and invisible realm or plane or world or sphere, to which cause and effect -- the law of karma as theosophists say, the cause and effect of thoughts just previously thought, of actions previously done, of feelings previously felt -- have given it the direction it follows. Do you understand me? I will repeat: when the sleep is what men call utterly unconscious sleep, it is so because the inner entity, mind, soul, consciousness -- call it what you like -- is the least affected by the psychomagnetic vibrations of the body and of the brain in particular. It itself, this consciousness or mind, is in a doze, resting, but with a certain amount of its consciousness remaining, which the brain, however, cannot register as a dream, because the separation between the body and the consciousness which has left it is too complete. But while this consciousness is thus half-awake, so to speak, half-resting, it is in that particular world, invisible to human eyes, to which its feelings and thoughts in the previous moments and hours have directed it. It is there as a visitant, perfectly well protected, perfectly guarded, and nothing will or can in all probability harm it -- unless, indeed, the man's essential nature is so corrupted that the shield of spirituality ordinarily flowing around this inner entity is worn so thin that antagonistic influences may penetrate to it.

The world is full of mysteries; and I think that the man who says that this is so, and it cannot be that, and that the universe stops here, and nothing but that is possible, is a foolish man. But now, mark you, my Brothers. I have briefly described what sleep is. Death is exactly the same, but absolute instead of imperfect. Death is an absolute sleep, a perfect sleep. Sleep is an imperfect, an incomplete, death. Hence, what happens when you sleep in that short period of time, is repeated perfectly and completely and on a grand scale when you die. As you awaken in the morning in the same physical body, because sleep is not complete enough to break the silver chain of vitality uniting the inner, absent entity with the sleeping body, just so do you return to earth after your devachanic experience, or experience in the heaven world, the world of rest, of absolute peace, of absolute, blissful repose. During sleep, the silver chain of vitality still links the peregrin entity to the body that it has left, so that it returns to that body along this psychomagnetic chain of communication; but when death comes, that silver cord of vitality is snapped, quick as a flash of lightning (nature is very merciful in this case), and the peregrin entity returns to its cast-off body no more. This complete departure (I use ordinary human words) of the inner consciousness means the snapping of that silver cord of vitality; and the body then is cast aside as a garment that is worn out and useless. Otherwise, the experience of the peregrin consciousness, the peregrinating entity or soul, is exactly the same as what happened to it during sleep, but it is now on a cosmic scale. The consciousness passes, and before it returns to earth again as a reincarnating ego, it goes from sphere to sphere, from realm to realm, from mansion to mansion, following the wording of the Christian scriptures, which are in the "Father's house." Nevertheless, in a sense it is also resting, in utter bliss, in utter peace; and during this resting time it digests and assimilates the experiences of the last life and builds these experiences into its being as character, just as during sleep the resting body digests and assimilates the food it has taken in during the daytime, and throws off the wastes, and builds up the tissues anew; and when the reawakening comes it is refreshed. So is the reincarnating ego refreshed when it returns to earth. Therefore, fear not at all. All is well; for the heart of you is the universe, and the core of the core of you is the heart of the universe. As our glorious day-star sends forth in all directions its streams of rays, so does this heart of the universe, which is everywhere because nowhere in particular, constantly radiate forth streams of rays; and these rays are the entities which fill the universe full. There are those which are beginning in one universe their evolution; there are those which have become through evolution men or beings like unto men; there are those which from manhood have already evolved into godhood; there are those who from godhood have evolved into becoming super-gods; and so on. The universe is filled full with gods and other creatures, other entities: demigods, men, all kinds of entities existing in allvarious stages of evolutionary growth. I wonder if any human being here thinks that men are the only self-conscious, thinking, intelligent beings in boundless space. Of course not. The fact that we men think and feel, have intuition, have understanding and will, proves that these things, these qualities, these faculties, these powers, exist everywhere; for how otherwise could they be in us? Can the part be greater than the whole? And if the part, a man, shows certain faculties and powers, de facto from that very fact, the whole, the universe, must contain them also. Consciousness is the fundamental thing in the universe, and along this line I desire to read to you a little extract from the work of a recent writer that I thought rather fine. It was written by a Dr. Bigelow: Consciousness is continuous. That means you cannot, so to speak, pick up a single idea alone any more than you can pick up a single knot in the middle of a fish-net. You pick up any knot you like, but you will get at the same time what is tied to it. And if, at any point of the summed-up consciousness of a man's life, there is tied the record of an injury done to another man, that record will infallibly remain tied; and when, in a later life, in disentangling the threads of his own existence . . . he comes again to that particular point, that injury will return against him with the accuracy of a spring which expends

when released the exact energy required to compress it, and the blow he receives will be just as hard as the blow he gave: action and reaction are equal and opposite. This is a faithful exposition of what theosophists call our doctrine of karma, of consequences, that ye sow what ye reap, that ye reap what ye sow. Enjoy ye happiness and peace and riches in this life? Ye have sown them by corresponding action in some past life or lives. Suffer ye now? Are ye brokenhearted, weary, heavy-laden? You have done it to yourself, my Brother. Nature is not mocked. Her fundamental essence is consciousness and her fundamental law is reaction -- consequences. What you put into the ground of your character, you will reap; what you sow into yourself by thought and will and feeling, makes your character. Thus you build yourself through the ages; and if you do evil to some other, that evil will come back to you. You know the old saying: "Curses come home to roost." They do, indeed. Here is the scientific basis for ethics. Ethics are not mere conventions. There are indeed conventional ethics; but the essence of ethics, the fundamental principle that right is right and wrong is wrong, that dishonor is wrong and that honor is right, that just dealing is right and that unjust dealing is wrong -these fundamental things which I call ethics, are based on nature's fundamental law. Sow beauty into your character by your thoughts and acts, and you will become beautiful. Sow love in your character by your aspirations and thoughts and acts, and love will build your character to be lovely, and you will meet the guerdon of love, which is love. Be lovely and you will be loved; be hateful, and the very fact of your thinking and feeling hate distorts your character, twists it. The torsion is tremendous, because your will and feeling are with it, and you will return with a twisted and distorted character, which may even manifest in a twisted and distorted body, the natural reaction on the physical body of the indwelling energy of your character. Sow love, and reap it; sow hate, and reap it. Sow goodwill, deeds of kindness and brotherhood -- and you will receive goodwill, and deeds of kindness and brotherhood. Be peaceful, and you shall receive peace; be kindly, and kindliness will be your guerdon. Forgive, and forgiveness will be yours. Strive, and you will gain; aspire, and what you aspire to you shall reap, for within you dwells an indomitable will springing from the very heart of the universe, and to a man who uses his will aright and who uses his will with a will, naught can oppose his progress. If he fails, it is because his will lacks practice; and if he uses that will for evil purposes, if he abuses it, nature will react upon him exactly according to what he did and gave. Use your divine part, the divine part of yourself, that spiritual will -- use it with a will on the side of right, of love, of peace, of brotherhood, of happiness to others. Nature's reaction upon you will bring back to you all that you have sown. Ethics are man's way of expressing his consciousness of the harmony and symmetry and beauty inherent in the universe. I have many questions before me that I intended to try to answer this afternoon; but as the time for our closing has now come, I beg your indulgence in the postponement of my answers to them to a later date. But before closing, if you please, may I call your attention once more to a thought which to me is the best part of the thoughts that I can ever give to you. It is as follows: You are gods, my Brothers; every one of you in the core of the core of your being is a god, a divine entity. Call it a spirit, if you will; we will not quibble over names. I use the good old term god, because gods you are; but if the term offends you, then employ your own. When I stand here and address this audience (and I wish you were thousands instead of the few hundreds here) I feel that I, a god in my inmost, am addressing an audience of gods, speaking to beings possessing godlike understanding, feeling that despite my imperfect words, your hearts are touched with what I have tried to tell you, because you have the understanding hearts of gods. Each one of you, to use the term of the modern mystical Christian, is the expression of an immanent Christ or Christos, endeavoring to express its transcendent powers through the medium of your imperfectly evolved mental and physical being. Each one of you is an inner Buddha, trying to express its wonderful faculties and powers through your imperfectly evolved mind and human consciousness.

But, nevertheless, you are essentially gods, children of cosmic space. You have never not been; you never will be not; for the essence of you, the core of the core of you, is boundless infinitude -- the All; for each one of you is an inseparable and integral part of that All.

Second Series: No. 21 (January 26, 1931)

SPRITES, FAIRIES, GOBLINS

(Lecture delivered December 7, 1930) CONTENTS: Do you believe in ghosts? -- Turning back to our ancestors. -- Subordination to cosmic law. -- The human race in past and future. -- Worlds exterior and interior. -- Endless chain of hierarchies. -- Man an expression of "mind." -- Endless variety in the universe. -- An elemental defined. -- The life within the atom. -- Names fairies go by. -- Teachings of medieval mystics. -- Forms of elementals; their destructive powers; their relation to disease; their link with human beings. -- Fairies photographed. -- The habiliments of fairies. -- Universal belief in invisible entities. -- Where do elementals live? Are they friendly or hostile to us? Can and do they communicate with men? -- Folklore based on truth. -- Transformism not accepted. -- Power to carve our own destiny. "Pat, do you believe in ghosts?" "No, Sor; but I hate like Hell to be where they are!" Pray excuse the apparent profanity in this quaint answer, friends, but Pat's state of mind is exactly like that of so many other people who, when you ask them: "Do you believe that there are other living beings in the universe besides men, beings who have a certain amount of consciousness and intelligence, and who in short are wholly animate entities?" -- say: "No, of course I don't believe in those old superstitions." But on a dark night, when the storm gods are riding on the wings of the wind or, again, when everything is so still that even the creaking of the woodwork -- then perhaps their answer might be changed in their own mind to mean: "No, I don't believe in elementals or sprites or fairies, but I hate to be where they are!" So, when I ask: "Do you believe that there are other entities in the universe who have animation, some degree of intelligence, some degree of willpower?" -- the average man of today probably will say: "No! Really, I don't know. Science has not proved such a fact." Eh? But when the same man thinks in the quiet of the nighttime, when he has a chance to reflect, then he begins to wonder a little whether after all he and other men and the beasts are the only animate and intelligent or quasiintelligent entities living in boundless infinitude. Now, if human beings were the only animate and self-conscious entities in the universe, how could we account for that fact? Why should this dust speck in the illimitable fields of the spaces of space be the only spot where animate creatures exist? Whence comes the intelligence which manifests itself in man? Whence comes the willpower of which he is an exponent? Whence come the passions, good and bad, which he so often shows -- passions of which he, alas, rarely is the master, but of which he should always be the master, yet of which he too often is the slave? Why should this one spot of boundless infinitude, this one physical plane of ours, possess such entities as exist nowhere else? Explain that wonder to me, you who deny. It seems to me that this magnification of our earth as the only habitat of intelligent entities is but the same state of mind of our ancestors of some hundred years ago, who thought that the earth was the center of the universe, and all the rest of the universe was created by god for man's sole delectation and instruction. Isn't it obvious that what is in one spot must exist either active or negative, everywhere; otherwise how comes it that that one spot is the inexplicable exception? Don't fall into the error of thinking that you as men are essentially different entities from the universe, your parent. You are inseparable parts of the universe; out of it you cannot go; you belong to it; you are of its blood -- blood of its blood, bone of its bone, life of its life -- and everything that is in you is, de facto, in the whole of which you as men are inseparable parts. Pause in thought over this and then you will see why the critical brain-mind, with its egoistic assumptions and narrow and imperfect vision is so apt to answer like Pat, and say: "No, Sor!" But then the intuition comes: "But I hate like everything to be where they are!", thus constituting a tacit acknowledgment of the existence of invisible entities.

It is the teaching of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, today called theosophy, that mankind manifests merely as one race, as one host, of animate entities, what the universe contains in the grand. Even the atoms of the human body are cosmic atoms; and you will find the same atoms in the most distant star. The atoms of man's mind are likewise cosmic atoms -- and these atoms are his thoughts, if you like; and you will also see intelligence in the majestic order, in the discipline, and in the subordination to cosmic law, of the celestial bodies. Man is not an exception in the universe in any respect whatsoever. He merely exemplifies as one race what is everywhere. There are races far higher than we humans are -- angelic races, godlike races on other celestial globes, and there are also other beings far inferior to men. Man is merely man because he is passing through this particular stage of his own long evolutionary pilgrimage. That is why he is man. He is man because he has reached the man stage; but he has not always been man. In past times the human race was an elemental race, and existed in the evolutionary stage represented by the beings whom theosophists call elementals. In the aeons of the far distant future we shall be gods; for a god is even now within each one of us -- in the core of the core of each one of us, in the heart of the heart of each one of us. This divine entity shows divine powers, which express themselves feebly as yet through our imperfect human vehicle. What are these divine powers? Will, choice, intelligence, constructive and creative ability, self-control, love, forgiveness, compassion, pity, the yearning for brotherhood, for peace, for happiness for all. These are divine instincts and qualities; and they spring forth from this core of the core within each one of us, in the heart of the heart of us. I tell you that the man or woman is dead -- dead within, though living in the body it may be -- who does not sense these truths instinctively, intuitively -- instinctively and intuitively -- and thus recognize the verity of them. Show me why you as men have these wondrous faculties and powers, and show me why no other race of animate beings in boundless space may have them. You cannot do this. The mere fact that men have these faculties and powers, proves their existence elsewhere. Men are no exceptions in nature. Deny it, and you are faced with a problem that you cannot solve. Admit it, and all your being answers in glad response -- your logical faculty, your intellectual power: "It is so!" It is our theosophical teaching that the spaces of boundless space, not only our exterior, physical universe, but all the interior worlds -- and these latter are by far the greater part of space: the interior, the invisible, but only invisible because our imperfectly evolved human sense apparatus does not report the existence of these interior worlds to us -- all these interior worlds are filled full with animate beings, just as our earth is. Not only men on earth, but the beasts and even the vegetation, show marvelous instinctive intelligence, each class after its kind, each class after its race, each after its family. If every animate entity was exactly like every other animate entity in boundless space, then there would be a drab uniformity everywhere. But you see such uniformity nowhere. Even among men you see differences in facility, differences in development -- great men, inferior men (not essentially inferior, but in development), men intermediate who are the average men. And above us, high above us, there are the gods. These gods were men in some far past manvantara, or cosmic life period, just as we men of the present day in future cosmic life periods shall have evolved into becoming gods, even as now we are men from having evolved forth out of the elemental stages. All nature, all the universe, boundless infinitude, looked at in this way we recognize to be one beginningless and endless and frontierless stream of evolving entities coming out from the invisible on the one hand as elemental entities, descending into the material spheres as life-atoms, passing a stage of existence in every one of the inns of life as they move along with this advancing evolutionary current: minerals, plants, beasts, men, super-men or what the Greeks called heroes, lower gods, higher gods, super-gods, and so on, forever.

Now, pause: either all things are at an absolute standstill throughout infinity, or movement, which means change, which means growth, which means progress, exists. And the latter is the fact; for we move, we change, we grow, we evolve; and if we do this, as we most certainly do, you must admit the same process everywhere, otherwise the same old problem confronts you: What is man? Why should he be the sole exception in boundless infinitude? Reason! Think! Free your soul! Give to it the wings with which it was born! Even our great scientists today, the most advanced among them, are now talking about 'mind' and consciousness as being the fundamental of the universe. Now, what does that mean? Just what I have told you: it means that men are expressions of this mind, of this consciousness; and we men are not the only such expressions. This cosmic mind governs the movements of every molecule of physical substance. Just as we human beings spring forth from this cosmic mind as our fountainhead, as our source, so do the gods. But all everywhere is evolving. And every entity -- although swimming, immersed as it were, in this cosmic life, in this cosmic mind -- every entity is itself an individual and is moving, is growing, is changing, is evolving. If man does not monopolize all the intelligence in the universe, if he is not the sole exponent of willpower and of love and of all the other noble faculties in the human constitution, then these same faculties and powers are elsewhere and everywhere; because if elsewhere, they are logically everywhere; for the universe brought them all forth, and what the part contains the whole is the source of. Think it out. Therefore, the gods exist because men exist; men exist because the gods exist; the elemental beings exist because men and gods exist; we and the gods exist because the elemental beings exist. It all comes back to the same thought: the one instance proves all the others and all the others prove the one. Life is everywhere, because life is motion, movement, change, which is evolution, growth. And where life is, is intelligence; where life is, is willpower. But, and here mark you well, my Brothers, not always existing in equal degrees. This is obvious! There are highly evolved men, men poorly evolved, and then the vast range of men occupying the intermediate stages. So is it also in the incomputable hosts of beings living in boundless space. Therefore, the universe is filled full with gods; it is filled full with vast hierarchies, hosts, multitudes, armies -- call their aggregates what you like -- of other sentient, animate, thinking, conscious, quasiconscious, entities, beings, creatures -- we won't quibble about names. They exist in all grades, from the loftiest that the mightiest human imagination can conceive of and beyond, down to the lowest that human thought can fathom, and lower still. This means that the power to use one's will exists in degree, in all-various degrees; it means that intelligence in the universe manifests itself in evolutionary degrees or stages, some low, some higher, some higher still. Therefore the universe is filled, not only with gods, but with beings between the gods on the one hand and the elemental beings on the other hand. Now, what shall we call this incomputably vast range of consciousnesses? What name or names shall we give to them? Call them what you like. Briefly, theosophists speak of them as gods, demi-gods, heroes, men, creatures lower than men, and the elementals. Elementals is simply a name given, as a generalizing term for purposes of convenient expression, to all beings below the minerals. Nevertheless, the minerals themselves are expressions of one family or host or hierarchy of elemental beings. The vegetable kingdom likewise manifests merely one family or host of elemental beings happening to be in the vegetable phase of their evolution on this earth. Just so likewise as regards the beasts. The beasts are highly evolved elemental beings, relatively speaking. And, as I have already told you, men in far distant aeons of the cosmic past were elemental beings also. We have evolved from that stage into becoming men, expressing with more or less ease, mostly very feebly, alas! but still expressing somewhat, the innate divine powers and faculties locked up in the core of the core of each one of us. And this core of the core of each one of us is our own inner god. Christians of a mystical turn of mind today speak of this inner god as the immanent Christ; the Buddhists speak of it as the inner Buddha. What matters the name? Every race of men on earth has believed in these hosts of entities -- some visible, like men, like the beasts, like the animate plants; and anyone who denies that a plant has a certain degree of animation

needs to study the subject. Even the minerals are alive and filled with life, for they are in constant movement. Consider, if you like, what modern science tells about the chemical composition of every atomic entity: that an atom is composed of two kinds of electrical bodies, one existing at the heart of it, which is called the atomic sun, and which is the protonic nucleus of a positive electrical character; and around this atomic sun whirl with vertiginous speed the electronic particles of a negative electrical character; and it is this speeding, this manifestation of electrical life, which holds the atoms together so strongly that no power that man has been able to put to the work has succeeded as yet in wrenching an atom asunder. All that our modern physical chemists can do is to apply, as it were, a gentle pressure at appropriate moments and to appropriate substances, and thus take advantage of what nature herself is doing. Where movement is, there is always life. See how symmetrical and beautiful these movements in the atom are! Consider how wonderful and strangely symmetrical they are! Then raise your eyes to the violet dome of night; watch the celestial bodies in their movements around the sun; gaze through a telescope or study the photographs that that telescope produces, and see the wonderful panorama existing in cosmic space! It all inspires reverence and awe and wonder. The mere fact that man can feel these things and cognize them shows that he instinctively recognizes his identity with the universe of which he is an inseparable part. He recognizes that his own life is there in cosmic space as well as here; he senses his fundamental oneness with all that is. Do you believe in fairies? Do you believe in sprites? Do you believe in goblins and hobgoblins? And there are many other kinds of these entities, too. Now, I don't say that I do believe in them. I am going to tell you what I myself think about them after a bit. I am going to make a few general observations first. In various countries and at various times, names have been given to certain classes of these invisible entities -- entities who are low in the evolutionary scale of life. They are not at all high in evolutionary development. But they indeed exist. I have jotted down the names of some of them, and I will read these names to you: Fairies, Sprites, Hobgoblins, Elves, Brownies, Pixies, Nixies, Leprechauns, Trolls, Kobolds, Boggarts, Barguests -- and the 'Little People,' generally speaking. The ancient Greeks had their Naiads, the elemental beings who haunted the fountains and springs and the rivers; the Oreads, who haunted the hills and the mountains; the Limniads, who haunted the ponds and lakes; the Hamadryads, who lived and died with their native trees, which trees expressed their life; the Dryads, a general name for the invisible lives of the trees of the forests; and the Meliads of the fruit trees and the gardens; and there were others. In the European Middle Ages the Philosophers of Fire, so called, and the so-called Rosicrucians, taught that these elemental beings were of four general kinds. These men had to be very careful in the language that they used, because the authorities had a heavy hand in those days. They 'knew it all,' you know. However, these medieval mystics taught that these elemental beings were of four general kinds: those frequenting the element of fire (a technical term which did not mean exactly the fire that we know), those frequenting the element air (also a technical term), and these were the salamanders and sylphs respectively of fire and air; those unquiet, unsteady, elemental beings who, they said, frequented the waters, and whom they called the undines; and then the gnomes of the earth. The idea here was that the universe, inner and outer, visible and invisible, was composed of a number of planes, so to say, or worlds or spheres, from the spiritual to the physical -- seven in all; and they gave these names, these four names, fire, air, water, and earth, to the elemental spheres which were the least evolved, the grossest: the gnomes of earth, the undines of water, the sylphs of air, and the salamanders of fire. They said that these beings were "without a soul." They meant by that expression that they had not evolved to the point that men have reached: in other words, that they were sprites unevolved; they had not yet brought out from within, which is what evolution means, the powers of the indwelling god at the core of every individual. It is to the beings inhabiting the four lowest grades of the invisible worlds, of the invisible spheres, that the general term fairies applies. Under that term, as a general term, you may class all these other entities whose names I have just recited to you.

The question now therefore is, do these beings exist? They do. Do they dress like men, more particularly like European men of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with long pointed shoes and little pointed caps and tight hose, with little green or red or parti-colored cloaks? -- and you will remember how men dressed in the Tudor Age in England, for instance. No, they do not. These elemental beings can and do take almost any form; they change form according to any passing current of energy, and copy the thought-forms existing in the atmosphere, existing in the places or in the individuals to which they are attracted; in themselves they are as formless as cloudlets, or as globules of air; they are like cloudlets of air gathered around a permanent central point, which in each case is the center, the durable center, of such an elemental being. The elementals are exceedingly subject to currents of human thought and human will; and it is upon this fact that the mystical Medievalists taught that the Magician, in order to control the elemental beings, must himself have a strong will and a steady and permeant intelligence. If he has not these and if he therefore cannot control these beings, they taught that the spirits of nature could even kill him -- destroy his body. Such indeed is the fact. Do you doubt it? Then go to your insane asylums; go to your criminal prisons; look at the human wrecks which, alas, are among us everywhere. Look also at the suicides, and consider the hysteric statements of those who commit crimes in sudden and frenzied impulses of passion. All these are abnormal cases; they are the cases of weak-willed men who have lost control of themselves and have become the victims of some dominant passion; and such a dominant passion furnishes a very appropriate field or atmosphere in which these "soulless" elemental beings can flourish and live and act. The elementals are not responsible for what they do. You cannot say that fire which destroys a beautiful work of art is responsible. You cannot say that the hailstones which destroy a crop are responsible. From the standpoint of the medieval mystics, the destructive fire or the hail, etc., are merely physical manifestations of the working in the invisible realms of these elemental beings who work automatically, instinctually, and without the guiding light of spiritual conscience. These elemental beings have not as yet evolved forth from their own inner god a self-conscious soul such as men have. I will tell you a little esoteric secret in this connection: every time when a man flies into a passion, whether of desire or of anger, whether of fear or of hate, he has lost control of himself and at the time exemplifies the characteristic and power of some elemental being under whose influence he has fallen. This natural fact, so simple, so easily understood, is the basis of the old superstition about the action upon human beings of devils. These elementals are not devils; they are simply elemental beings, and they have a natural and strong affinity for man. They look upon man much as we humans look to the gods; but when the man becomes degenerate and drops to their lower sphere, then is their chance. Automatically and instinctively they act, and they act as impersonally and as much without conscience as does the electric current. And I may say just here that the electric current is but a stream or flow of these elemental beings. Turn the switch, release the current and, if the circumstances are right, the man whose hand touched the switch is a dead man. I will go a little farther: Diseases are the results of loss of self-control at some time, either in this or in some past life. You can say that an elemental has entered into the man's vital aura and that the man cannot repel the invasion or dislodge the invader, the reason being that the man has lost control of himself. Thus, such an elemental is like a disease seed dropped into fertile soil; and if the man does not oust it with his will and by aspiration to better things, in other words by resuming his normal spiritual manhood, that seed will grow, and disease or horrible consequences will be the result for him. These elementals are akin in their very origin to human beings; because, as I have told you, human beings in a far past cosmic manvantara -- or past life period of cosmic existence -- were elemental beings also; and these elemental beings in future ages will become men -- will evolve forth a soul from within, just as the acorn evolves forth the lofty oak from within itself. The acorn is not the oak, but the

acorn contains the oak in potentia because it has in the heart of it, in the core of it, the oak characteristics -- the swabhava of the oak, as theosophists say. Therefore, when I am asked: Do I believe in fairies? I answer: Yes-No, No-Yes. I believe in fairies in the manner that I have set my belief forth; but if you ask if I believe in fairies as the men of four, five, six, hundred years ago believed in them, then I answer, No, certainly not; not at all. The universe is filled full with gods; the universe is also filled full with intelligent, with half-intelligent, with quasi-intelligent, with almost unintelligent entities, existing in all-various grades and degrees of evolution, but nevertheless all are evolving entities, and all begin their evolutionary pilgrimage at its beginning -- that fact is obvious. The beginning of any entity is its elemental root or seed; and as this elemental entity evolves, changes, grows, expands, in other words brings out what is locked up within it, as the acorn brings forth the oak, as the apple seed brings forth the apple tree: in brief, as this expansion and unfolding, this evolution, proceeds, you have a constantly greater and nobler expression of the spiritual essence at the core of the core of such an elemental being. And here I repeat briefly what I have so often told you before: that theosophists are strict and rigid evolutionists, but we are not transformists. With us, evolution is a natural process exactly explained by this Latin word evolutio and signifying the unfolding, the unwrapping, the bringing out, of what is latent or unexpressed in the very fabric and essence of the being itself. As a rose unfolds from its bud, bringing out what is the swabhava or characteristic of the rose-plant, as the acorn brings forth the oak, unfolding the characteristics from within itself of the oak-tree, just so does man or any other entity anywhere in the universe evolve or unwrap or bring forth what is locked up within itself as the very law or essential characteristics of its being. Elemental in the beginning of a cosmic life period, evolving through all the countless forms of existence during that cosmic life period, and ending as a fully self-conscious god at the end of that life period -- there in brief you have the picture. Elemental at one end, beginning, and god at the other end, the ending of such a cosmic period of existence. Each such cosmic life period is both preceded and followed by other cosmic life periods. We have thus an endless chain of causation extending from eternity to eternity, so to speak. It is therefore obvious that in order to span the impassable gap, so to say, between the elemental being at one end and man at the other, the evolving elemental being must pass through all these intermediate cosmic stages. The elemental cannot attain godhood at a bound. It must evolve or grow into becoming a god. See now the ethical side to this: Do not blame for their faults and shortcomings and natural incapacities those who are less evolved than you. Don't be harsh in your judgments. Be pitiful; be kindly. Remember that they would do better if they knew better; and that, in order to know better, they must evolve, they must grow. Do you blame the little child for screaming? Do you blame it for causing a conflagration or an accident to others? You try to correct any fault in the child, and this is your duty; you try to forestall any accident that the child may bring about; but you don't crucify or hang or electrocute the infant, for the simple reason that it does not know self-consciously what it is doing, it has not as yet in its infant years brought forth as it does in the years of later life a spiritual conscience living within it. Just so is it with all other entities, and so also, but on a higher scale, with your fellow human beings. Society must protect itself, of course; but don't protect yourself harshly, don't do it unkindly. Remember the refining and magnetic power of love! Have the understanding heart; learn to forgive; and be yourself an example of what you want others to be. You yourself set the example. Be true men. Manifest what you as a fully evolved self-conscious being are. The basis for ethics lies in nature's own fabric and structure, that is to say in nature's own laws. Ethics are not at all mere human conventions. They are based on natural law -- the essential laws of the universe. I have before me this afternoon five questions that have been sent in to me, and these questions ask about sprites, fairies, and goblins. Remember that all these names are just names for various classes of the same beings -- different names for different elemental beings existing in various kinds and classes.

A kind friend sent to me the other day two newspaper illustrations, being reproductions of two photographs, in each case showing a child with dancing "fairies" before her. These photographs were printed some years ago, and produced a small sensation in a restricted circle of quasi-mystical and perhaps rather credulous people. Many people believe that these photographs were true pictures of actualities simply because they were photographs. Conan Doyle, the clever creator of Sherlock Holmes, a brilliant man, is said to have investigated the matter of these photographs, and it is stated that he was sure that no double exposure of the photographic plates had been made. But as I looked at these pictures and studied them, knowing what I do about elemental beings, these pictures seemed very unreal and artificial to me. Now please understand me: I accuse nobody of willful deception. Conan Doyle was a brainy man, but he made mistakes. Show me a man who is infallible, incapable of making a mistake. I don't believe that such a being exists. Anybody can make mistakes, and I can make mistakes as readily as anybody else in matters concerning which my experience is small; and so it is with every other man. Of course the man whose experience is wide along a certain line of study or practice will make fewer mistakes than one who is ignorant in that line or inexpert in that line. The man who thinks that he is infallible I fear is selfdeceived and foolish. Infallibility rightly means having infinite cognizance of infinite matters, and this for human beings is impossible. We are all evolving entities and this means that every one of us is imperfect. But nevertheless we are all growing in knowledge and in spiritual wisdom simply because we are all evolving. There are great men, men less great, men less great still, and what we may for purposes of illustration call inferior men, and so forth. I don't think that these photographs that I have just spoken of are aught else than -- but no, I won't say anything that might seem unkind. Perhaps it is best in this connection to leave my thought unsaid. I will say this, however: that these elemental beings, when they are in the presence of a human being, as indeed they are constantly (because they surround us everywhere, being in our flesh, in our blood, in our brains, in our lungs, everywhere; we are permeated by them) take on the lineaments, the shapes, even the clothing it may be, of the thoughts that they automatically sense in the mind of the being or beings with whom they are at the time in direct contact. The photographs that I speak of showed little fairylike creatures dressed more or less in the styles of the Tudor Age in England, and also having wings somewhat like the pictures of angels. As we know, the picture books and children of our present age figurate the fairies of the medieval times as being dressed just like these photographs show these dancing images to be; and the addition of the wings to these dancing images that the photograph showed were doubtless a later imaginary addition to them derived from the medieval pictures of angels large and small, flitting around by means of wings. Why should not our picture books and our children think of fairies in short skirts and bare arms and silken stockings and bobbed hair with wristwatch on arm, etc., etc., or perhaps with tophats and swallow-tail coats? I trust that my thought is clear. How is it that other nations and other ages have picturated these elemental beings as possessing the shapes and as being clad according to the costumes and habits of these other ages and other peoples? For instance, we still have records that the ancient Greeks had notions that these elemental creatures acted like Greeks and dressed like Greeks. Why? In England, the fairies are supposed to be dressed in the costumes and to have the habits of an earlier or of a later age such as the Tudor Age. Why? In Germany they were supposed to be dressed and to act like German peasants. Why? And in Sweden to be dressed and to act like Swedish peasants. Why? Go to India, go to China, go to other countries of the East, and in each instance you will find that elemental beings, called fairies in medieval Europe, are described as being dressed in the costumes of those Oriental countries and to act like natives of those Oriental and other countries. Why? Isn't it obvious that each land and each people has given to these elemental beings habiliments and costumes with which these different peoples themselves were most familiar? Here are the five questions that were sent to me. I will read the first to you, and then after a few words of comment I will read the others.

I understand that you believe in fairies and similar creatures existing in the imagination of the superstitious men of a bygone age. Is this true? I am sure it must be false. The questioner thinks for me, you see. In the first place, are there no superstitious men today? "Pat, do you believe in ghosts?" "No, Sor; but I hate like Helll to be where they are!" We are just as superstitious in our own way as our fathers were in their way, every whit as much; and we still have superstitions often of a most irrational kind -- scientific superstitions, philosophical superstitions, religious superstitions also. We know well that they are superstitions, we know it just as well as we know anything else; and yet we hold to those superstitions or fads and fancies of a past era like grim death, merely because they are popular, and the average man has not yet been able to shake them off. But the great man frees himself from these superstitions; that is, he thinks for himself. Such is the mark of a great man, to be able to think for himself, but nevertheless to think kindly, brotherly. I will say in answer to the question that I believe in the elemental spirits as I have described them to be; but, in the fairies as they have been commonly supposed to be, no, I do not believe in them at all, except in the sense that I have already outlined and hinted at. Question 2: How is it that every race of men throughout universal history and in every part of the globe has always believed in invisible entities existing in other worlds than ours? Because man's own instinct has told him that these entities exist; it is the consensus of judgment of the human race that these entities exist, and this is a matter quite apart from what uneducated and unguided mysticism in any age may have supposed regarding these elemental entities. The popular mythologies, it must be remembered, were never at all the belief of the wise and illuminated seers. Now, pause in thought over this: When universal mankind in every age has felt and believed and taught the same things, we must believe that innate human intelligence and instincts are working, and therefore that there is truth in these same things, leaving aside all embroidery and decoration of fancy and imagination; the essential must be true, because man's instinct repeats it in age after age, man's instinct sets it forth in belief and teaching in age after age; and the instinct and the thinking and the intuition and therefore the teaching have always been that these elemental beings exist in all steps and grades of evolutionary development: some are spiritual, and are very kindly to men, and are lofty, ethereal entities; others are deep-sunk in material existence, and are therefore unfriendly to man, and often malignant; and there are all the intermediate stages of these entities between these two extremes. Such has been the universal belief of the human race. Do we not find the same varieties of entities and things even in the physical world? Are not some beasts friendly to man? Are not some unfriendly? You will find these varieties and grades of evolutionary development even in men. Some men are dangerous; some men are kindly; some men are good; some men are bad; some men have a heart; some men seem to be heartless. Think over these ideas. Are you going to be like the dumb, driven sheep, following every wind of opinion, and from year to year merely believing what the passing age believes? Or are you going to liberate the wings of your mind, of your intellect, and think for yourselves? Study! Read! Think! Give your consciousness a chance to express itself with its native energy. If these invisible and airy beings exist, where do they live and what is their character? They are everywhere -- in the fire, in the water, in the air, in the earth, in the sky -- everywhere, each class existing in its appropriate sphere, just as men are on earth; each class lives and acts and is fit for its appropriate sphere, just as men are on earth. Every tree, for instance, is an outward expression of such an elemental being passing through its tree stage of evolutionary progress. Every insect is such an elemental being passing through the insect stage of its evolutionary journey. Of every beast exactly the same observation can be made; and obviously I here refer only to the beings that surround us on earth. The invisible realms are filled full with these elementals. They are everywhere, existing in all-various grades of development and are of all-various kinds, some very friendly to men, some unfriendly and hostile -- not by will, but by natural character; men and they don't tune in together. There are poisons

that can be extracted from plants and from beasts which can be used to heal; but they likewise can be used to kill. Steel can kill, and yet steel in the hand of the clever surgeon, and rightly used, can heal. Are they friendly or hostile to human beings? The one or the other, as the case may be. Can they and do they communicate with men? It depends upon what you mean by communication: if you ask whether they speak to us as human beings speak to human beings, then the answer is no, because they are not men. You might as well ask: Can the trees communicate with a man? I say, yes! Ah! Have you never been in some great primeval forest? Has your soul never at any time felt the influence of these wondrous creatures, the great trees, with their unutterable peace, and their quiet whispering to us, even with the tremulous movement of their leaves, strange thoughts of beauty and wonder? Have you felt it? Yes; these beings can communicate, but in their own way. Look into the eyes of the dog you love, or of the horse that you love. It cannot "talk" to you, but nevertheless it talks to you in its own way. There are no fairies at all such as the medieval pictures misrepresent them to be. The fundamental idea that sprites, elemental beings, exist is very true. Some even look like men, and that is also true; but they look like men simply because they haunt the habitats of men and automatically take on the appearance of men. Consider that even the dog, a highly domesticated beast, is beginning to have certain minor human traits. He loves his home; he loves the fireside; he loves the one or two or three whom he is accustomed to, just like men. Compare the domesticated dog with the wild dog, or with the wolf, who loves the free open spaces, and you will see the differences at once. The vast majority of these creatures have no permanent form, because they take on any form according to the currents of energy or of thought to which they are so highly subject. They are, as I said, like globules of air, like cloudlets, changing form constantly with every passing thought that they catch and automatically conform to and follow; with every passing impulse of a psychomagnetic kind that they catch they change accordingly. But, as a matter of fact, even so do men to a certain extent. The same principle prevails. Don't men change from hour to hour and from day to day -- not change in the general sense of growth, but change in their opinions, their feelings; and this they do even hourly. A man may act like a fiend in the morningtime. He does not mean to be a fiend, but may be so grouchy that his whole appearance is like a fiend; and by noon or in the afternoon he may be an angel, a pitiful, compassionate angel, doing a work of human kindliness somewhere. Do I believe in fairies? Using this word as a general term for these elemental beings, Yes. I now repeat: Do I believe in the fairies of the European peoples, as these fairies are portrayed by medieval writers in different ages and by those modern writers who copy the Medievalists? No. Do I believe in the fairies as they are described by the populace of Hindustan or China or of Japan or of the countries to the north or to the south of our own double continent? No, I do not. But nevertheless I know that the folklore regarding fairies is based on truth; I know that these elemental beings do indeed exist, that they are of all-various kinds, that the world is filled with them; that they exist not only on our physical plane, but on all the invisible planes, and on all the other planes of ethereality as these planes increase in spirituality. The gods themselves were elemental beings once, because that stage was the beginning of their evolution in our present cosmic sphere. We men were elemental beings once, because once we also were in our beginnings. The elemental beings are evolving into becoming men, as we humans have already evolved into becoming men. We men are evolving into becoming gods, as the gods have already evolved from manhood into becoming divine. Evolution, in our theosophical teaching, is an operation of a universal nature and therefore prevails everywhere. Not only the entities of earth evolve, but it is our theosophical teaching that evolution is a universal law, more accurately one of nature's fundamental operations; for evolution is growth, and growth is change, and change is movement, and movement is life, and movement springs from

consciousness. Without consciousness life and movement cannot be, they cannot exist, because movement to be movement according to law which means order and harmony thus signifying intelligence must proceed from a point of departure in a purposive line to a destined point, and all the movements that we know in the universe are this kind, proceeding from point to point according to law and order which is harmony; and chance and fortuity are utterly irreconcilable with law and order. Now, Brothers, please do not misunderstand me to mean, when I say that human beings were elementals once and that in future cosmic aeons they will be gods, that I imply by this remark that the god within us has become a god without purposive operation, and by mere fortuitous transformism from a previous human being; nor, similarly, that the human being is the human being because it has changed without purposiveness by chance action from an elemental being. That is not my idea. I mean that the heart of every entity is a divine essence from any beginning of evolution to any end of evolution; and it is the currents of consciousness and energy flowing from this divine essence, through the various bodies in which that divine essence or inner god exists, which provide the motivating urges to betterment, to improvement, to growth. The inner god has been there from the beginning, but unexpressed. Evolution is bringing forth what is within, not chance accretions of faculty or organ by merely exterior environmental action. Evolution is not something added to you from without. What is in the acorn? The seed-life of the oak. That seed-characteristic is in the acorn from the beginning. Therefore the god in potentia is in the elemental being from the beginning; and all evolution is simply an unfolding, an unwrapping, an expanding process, bringing out ever more and more perfectly what is within; and the different stages of this bringing out are the different stages which the evolving and advancing entity goes through -elemental being, mineral, plant, beast, human, hero, lower god, god, super-god -- the series is endless. What a picture this teaching gives to us! But we now existing as human beings, having evolved forth from within us the essential noble human instincts -- having evolved forth the divine feeling of love, of compassion, of pity, of understanding for others, and therefore the instinct of forgiving -- have a heavy responsibility upon us, for we have become cognizant of right and wrong; and hereafter what we choose to do we individually shall be responsible for; for our minds have been enlightened, our understandings have been fired with the divine fire within us; we have come into touch with our inner god, however feebly; and thus now being men, self-conscious entities with a consciousness as we are now, we shall pay for what we do that is wrong, and we shall receive the guerdon for what we do that is right. Therefore the teaching of all the sages and seers of all the ages has been one: come up higher, my Brothers. Be yourself, your divine self. Manifest the god within you, for it is there. Take command of yourself. Be true men; and do this by expressing the power of your inner god.

Second Series: No. 22 (February 2, 1931)

SOMETHING ABOUT MYSELF

(Lecture delivered December 14, 1930) CONTENTS: The self-perpetuating brotherhood of teachers. Their cyclic appearance among men. Their messengers. -- Theosophy in all ancient scriptures. -- The way to receive truth. -- Leader and follower alike. -- The beauty of clairvoyant trust. -- Not claims but facts. -- Charges of charlatanry refuted. -"One man and Truth a majority." -- Explanation of "In the name of the Masters"; "the authority that has devolved upon me"; the term mediator. -- The constitution of The TS (Point Loma). Does it invest the Leader with absolute authority? -- Autonomy of National Sections. -- Esoteric spirit of The TS. -Dangers of unlimited power in the hands of one person. -- Protest against charge of claiming infallibility. -- Against laying down dogmas. -- A vow of poverty. For many weeks, for months indeed, I have been receiving at numerous intervals questions referring to myself; and I have regularly laid these questions aside. I don't like to talk about myself, although indeed I am always enthusiastic when it comes to the matter of the theosophical work which I am doing and which I am trying to do; but for a number of reasons I have brought these different questions with me to the platform this afternoon. I shall read them to you and then try to answer them, because it seemed to me that, while the subject of my own person is very uninteresting to me, it has possible value in the minds of those who don't know me and my work; and I think that the answers which I will try to give to these questions will enable you to understand our theosophical work better than many do at present. I refer here of course to questions which have been asked about me and my individual connection with The Theosophical Society and its activities. Had they been asked about The Theosophical Society only, I would have answered them immediately. A theosophical lecturer speaks under difficulties always. A great many people don't know what theosophy really is. They think that it is some strange, outlandish, possibly even weird, form of belief; instead of being, as it truly is, a philosophy-religion-science giving in reasoned formulation truths about the structure, the operations, the physiology, and the psychology, of the universe. In other words, it answers the great questions which all thinking men put, not only to their own souls, but in the silences ask of that encompassing spirit of truth which some men call god and others nature, and to which others give no name at all. All sane men hunger for truth; all aspiring men want light -- and in the vast majority of cases they have neither. A little of each, mayhap, they indeed have: a little only of guidance, a bare glimmering of light; and these rays of light and truth that they do have come from within, from the operations of the divine entity which is resident in the core of the core of every human being -- because, verily, my Brothers, this divine entity essentially speaking is that human being in his divine inmost. It is due to the enshrouding veils of personal selfhood, and also due to miseducation along all lines of human thinking and feeling, that men in the Occident with very few exceptions have lost touch with the inner individual god dwelling at the heart of every individual human being, and which inner god is the divine-spiritual essence of each such individual. Hence it is that Occidentals usually seek for guidance and light outside of the inner fields of consciousness, forgetting that guidance and light are within, because the understander is within, the feeler is within, vision is within; and this within is an inseparable part of the universe -- this divine flame within you, which is your very utmost, truest self, is an inseparable portion so to speak of boundless infinitude. You obviously cannot leave the universe of which you are children. You are in it, you will be in it for aye, for aye you have been in it, because you are, each one of you, inseparably a part of it; and being thus each one of you an inseparable part of boundless infinitude, whatever is in the encompassing whole is in each part of that whole; and each one of you is such a part. Therefore the cosmic light is within you; the cosmic guidance or life is within you; and it is to this within that the truth seeker, the man hungry for light, for more light, must finally turn if he will find truth and light and peace and happiness.

Granted all this as being necessary deductions from the premise, nevertheless there remains the other fact that men, not knowing how to find this wondrous path, need help; they need guidance. The little child growing to adulthood has within it all the undeveloped faculties and powers of the adult; but during its period of infancy and childhood it needs the mother's guiding hand, the tender care of her protecting arms; and just so is it with us humans as contrasted with the sublime gods who infill the universe and of whom we are the offspring. Think! We humans have not by any means reached the summit of evolution. We have merely attained one stage, one grade, one state, on our upward evolutionary climb. Therefore it is that all the great sages and seers of all the ages have told men always: "Look within; Man, know thyself; seek out the inner god; but I will help, for I have found." Therefore are teachers necessary; therefore are teachers required; and these spiritual teachers are the truest helpers of the race, their noblest guides, sometimes called Saviors. As every well-read man knows, there have been such great men on earth, men whose outstanding spiritual and intellectual genius has shaken the very fabric of civilizations, or, indeed, they have builded anew for a succeeding age and race of men. Each such great sage and seer brought in a new age, for in each such case, the times in which they came were times in which men had become spiritually asleep and intellectually and psychically degenerate. All evolution, all growth, all progress, is like a rising along an arc for a time, reaching a culmination of power and faculty, and then slowly sinking as the faculties wane, until the historic trough of the curve is reached. Then a new great one appears, and directs men on another upward round subsequent to the one down which they had come. Each such upward round is a little higher in its culmination than the one last passed. This Theosophical teaching of guides, of leaders, coming to men in regular serial order or in serial succession, is one of our most beautiful and most consoling theosophical doctrines. The burden of the message of every such great sage or seer always contains the appeal to the individual man to awaken from his spiritual and intellectual slumber and to become more at one with the god within him. No true theosophical lecturer ever tells you: "Believe me!" Never! He says: look within; examine yourself, and if aught that you hear from me is repulsive or offensive to your ethical instinct, then abhor it. You may make a mistake in doing so, you may turn aside from something which might help you greatly; but nevertheless in being sincere with yourself you have exercised your divine prerogative of judgment, your divine prerogative of free choice and free will; and this is for you an invaluable spiritual exercise, which strengthens these inner powers, which opens new faculties within you, so that you grow or evolve more rapidly. It is also by our mistakes that we can learn lessons of great value. Keep your heart pure: there is a key; keep your mind open: there is another key. Hearken for truth always. Seek for a greater light always. With your mind open, your heart clean, then no matter what may be the mistakes that you may make, you are rising along the upward path. The Theosophical Society was founded by this association, this brotherhood, of great sages and seers; for they exist in all ages, and their association is self-perpetuating on account of the new recruits who join this brotherhood as age follows age. They sent forth one of their disciples to found the Theosophical Society in our age, in 1875; and that messenger was H.P. Blavatsky -- instructed to bring to men, not something new, but the age-old truth based on universal facts: to sound that truth anew, to awaken men's hearts, to stimulate men's minds. Theosophy teaches naught that is new in the sense of being unnatural -- not based on nature. Theosophy teaches the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind. Search the old scriptures of the races of the world: you will find theosophy in all of them if you know how to look for it -- how to find it under the guise of metaphor, symbol, emblem, and allegory -- but it is there. Prove this statement of mine by your own investigation. Hence, when a theosophical teacher speaks, he does indeed speak with a certain authority, because he himself has been taught. Himself having been taught, he in his turn can teach others. He knows whereof

he speaks, and the witness that he brings is a true witness, no matter how feebly he may be able to show it. I tell you that the witness that he brings is a true witness. Indeed every good man is a true witness of goodness; every man of genius brings a true witness of that genius; and who will say nay to this obvious truth? Therefore, when some people who don't understand these wondrous theosophical thoughts, which nevertheless are so simple, so true, criticize our doctrine of a succession of theosophical teachers and say that we "claim" this, or that we "claim" that, my reply is simply that they understand not that which they criticize. They haven't understood the meaning of the doctrine; and yet the truth is there for anyone who will honestly search for it in earnest study and unbiased mind. Where and how will you learn chemistry? By going to a professor of chemistry. Where will you learn astronomy? By going to an astronomer. Where will you learn anything? By going for it to him who knows it. You can thus prove whether he knows or not what he teaches: you can prove whether he knows it by his life, by his teaching, and by your own reactions to these. Abhor what your conscience admits not as good; on the other hand, accept what is good, what you feel to be right, and hold to it though all the world be against you. Be true men! Death itself is naught when compared with moral cowardice and the stigma of infidelity to principle. Be true, and all the world will be yours in time. Be sincere and in time you will know the truth, for then your heart is pure and your mind is clear; and nature's currents of life and of intelligence flow steadily and surely through hearts and minds that are pure. Truth lies within you. It is but visions of the truth that is within you that you see in the phantasmagoria outside of you. This is the basis of the teaching that every true theosophical leader will tell you of. It has been said by some who don't know me and who don't understand me that I "make claims." I think that I have never made a claim in my life. I tell you facts, and I ask you to prove them. If you like them not, accept them not. But it is my duty to lay the facts before you; and if people say that in doing thus I make claims, what is my answer? I can only say: No, my Brother, I am telling you the truth as I have received it. That truth I cannot, I dare not, alter or distort. Prove it yourself. Accept it if it is good and hold to it like grim death. Abhor it if your conscience says nay. As Victor Hugo used to say: "When the night is dark, shall I refuse the authority of the torches?" Shall we throw the pilot overboard because of our mind-proud feelings that "we don't relish the thought that we are under his control"? Ah! Immortal gods! I love to follow what is grand! I love what is beautiful, and I gladly follow it. Show me what is right, and I will follow to the world's end. I have learned something: When the night is dark, I accept the authority of the torches. But I never follow until something within me leaps in glad and instant recognition of a truth, and then I am a slave of truth. I am a leader of men who trust me, but I am a follower of my teachers too; and I cannot follow those teachers faithfully and truly if I vary one faint line from the path of duty. I cannot fail and follow simultaneously. Learn, my Brothers, the beauty of clairvoyant trust -- of trust based on your instincts of what is right. A grander man is he who can trust when he feels that his trust is rightly placed than is the man who in his mind-proud way will believe in naught and trust in naught because, forsooth, he knows it all. Poor, purblind follower of his own darkened vision -- a human mole! It is fashionable today to be moles of that kind. It is supposed to show strength of intellect to refuse to follow even when both intellect and instinct conjoin in an appeal to pursue the path that the great ones have trodden. Whereas, I tell you, that when the great man sees truth, he follows it, he moves steadily towards that truth; he cannot do otherwise. As I suppose you know, we humans are so apt to follow what we like, what we want to do. In this respect we are much like little children. If daddy tells a child something that he doesn't like, the child usually obeys because he knows what is going to happen to him if he doesn't; but although he may follow daddy's instructions, the child badly brought up thinks that daddy has made a mistake -- or that

daddy is a mistake. We grownups in many respects are just like such a child. This is illustrated by a little story which I have before me and which I will read to you: His father had found it necessary rather severely to punish Robert, aged five. The little chap came running to me with resentment in his heart. "Auntie," he sobbed, "did God make you?" "Yes, Robert," I answered. "And did he make ma?" "Yes." "And did he make me?" "Certainly, my boy." "And did he make pa, too?" "Of course he did." "Well," sobbed Robert sadly, "that's when he made a mistake!" I am afraid that we are much like little Robert. We always think that the other fellow makes a mistake if he does not do as we think he ought to do. But is that state of mind fair? Give the other man the benefit of the doubt. Examine what he sets forth. Prove it yourself. Can anything be more fair than this procedure? It is wise, too. You have claimed in some of your General Letters addressed to members of The Theosophical Society and of the Esoteric Section that spiritual and intellectual forces are flowing through you and that you stand in personal contact with the Masters. As so many unworthy people have made similar claims does this not open you to the charge of charlatanry and thus injure the reputation of the Society which you represent? I have not at any time made any claims; but I have indeed stated certain facts, and have stated them positively. I have not at anytime set these facts forth as mere claims. Any man, my Brothers, who will tell others a new fact is always exposed by that act to the charge of charlatanry. What is he going to do? Is he to be a coward and keep his mouth closed, or is he to do his duty and tell the truth as he was told to do it, charge of charlatanry or not? There is the case. I always say: examine what I say for yourselves. If you like what you are told, then hold to it and come and help me; and if is offensive to you, then reject it. You are the judges, each one is the judge for himself. But as to my making claims, I make none! The annals of history are written large with the cases of men who have taught truths, who have stated facts, and who have been called charlatans, thieves, rogues, robbers of souls, devils, imps, cheats, frauds, and whatnot. But you will never find a true man bending under these charges. He will pursue his path and will go to the end. I tell you that the old saying is true which you must have often heard, that "one man and God are a majority"; and theosophists say: one man and truth are a majority. What happens finally? Very soon other men come, and the man who was alone is the head of a multitude, and that multitude swells until one day it suddenly finds itself to be the majority. This is the guerdon of courage, a courage based on the conviction that what you say is right, is true, is just. A theosophical teacher who could be afraid of aught in this sense of the word -- afraid of anything save his own feeble, human, erring nature -- a theosophical teacher, I repeat, who could be afraid at any time of telling what he knows to be true is indeed a weakling and at worst a fraud; and the sooner he is pulled down from the pedestal upon which he stands, the better. He is no true theosophical teacher. The mere fact that evil men have made false claims to be teachers of truth in the world -- does this disprove the obvious truth that good men have taught truth? Shall we deny the sunlight because the night is there? Shall we deny the existence of truth and peace because falsehood and war exist in the world? Shall a man be afraid of being called a charlatan because there have been charlatans? You have your answer. The world moves ahead on account of the great men who have led it and who lead it -- true leaders: those men who have courage, moral courage, and who are not afraid to speak the truth, but who

speak it with kindness. Courage, truth, brotherly love -- these are three magical weapons always ready for the hand of one who brings real light and help to his fellow men. As regards the statement in the question that I have claimed that "spiritual and intellectual forces flow through me, and that I stand in personal contact with the Masters," I can only say that whatever statements I have made in these respects are not claims, but are statements of fact, and I don't think it would be easy to point to any statements made by me which would show me as a poser claiming myself to be a focus of spiritual and intellectual forces. As much as any other true theosophist I shrink with disgust from advertising myself, as a charlatan might do, as being a public envoy of the Masters. What I have written and said, I hold to, because it is truth, but it is grossly unfair and unkind to claim that statements of fact which I have indeed uttered have been made with the remotest desire of posing. Such would be abhorrent to me. In some of your official announcements you speak of yourself as the messenger of the Great White Lodge. What do you mean by this? In what sense is more weight to be attached to your claim than to similar claims made by others since H. P. Blavatsky's time? I have never at anytime made claims, as is here alleged. I have stated certain facts; and upon those facts the construction imbodied in this question could indeed be made; but the facts that I have stated have been indeed statements of facts and in no case the making of claims. Furthermore, no more weight is to be attached to anything that I may say, in case I should ever make a claim, which is most unlikely, than is to be attached to a claim made by anyone else. Claims amount to little, if anything: it is what the man gives from himself that you must go by; it is your reaction to him and to his life and to his teachings which for you is the important thing; it is not his claims, nor is it indeed his bare statements. Otherwise you are like dumb driven sheep, merely following some more or less vociferous bellwether. I urge upon you to listen to what you hear; to listen carefully and honestly, to give it careful thought; and if you find that it appeals to you as true, then, in the name of holy truth, hold to it and give your help where you feel that help is needed. This is the act of a true man. If, on the other hand, what you hear appeals to you as false or as offensive, then abhor it, refuse it, reject it. Never mind if you make a mistake, if your judgment is insecure and lacks clarity and strength. By exercising your judgment and discrimination, such as you have them, you exercise spiritual faculties and these faculties will grow stronger in time and with practice; consequently in time your judgment and your discrimination will be stronger than now they are through the exercise that you give to them. This principle of conduct is an excellent one to follow. But as I have already told you, if you believe that what you hear is true, then hold to it and ally yourself with its proclaimer. Is not this right? I do not know that I have ever definitely called myself "a Messenger of the Great White Lodge." On the other hand, I have made certain statements of fact which point in that direction, but I have left the inferences to be drawn from my statements to the good judgment and sense of honesty and truth of those who have listened to me. What I am, I am, but I urge this upon no man. It is, however, true that I have been given a mission to fulfil from the same great teachers who sent H.P. Blavatsky into the world; but it must not be thought that these great men are not working through others also. By their lives you will know these others, and by their teachings you will recognize them. Your General Letters to the Fellows of your Theosophical Society and of the Esoteric Section are signed, "In the name of the Masters and under the authority that has devolved upon me." This expression has caused adverse comment from members of other theosophical organizations. Please explain just what you mean by it. It would seem to me that the words are clear enough, and possess a meaning which can hardly be misunderstood. They mean that what I write officially, in such official communications, is written in the name of my teachers, whom I follow, whom I am pledged to follow; and I am pledged by my spiritual self, and by my manhood, faithfully to follow and to deviate not from the path. Would you have me do aught else than tell you the truth as I know that truth? Would you have me cheat and hide the facts and

perhaps from fear say something that is untrue? Am I to be blamed because I tell the truth, because I state a fact? Shall this be thrown in my teeth as being a mere claim? I tell you, as I have told you before: reject what I tell you, if it offends your ethical sense; but if you know me, know me to be a true man, know what I do, know what I aspire to do and what I long to accomplish, and if you feel that I am right and that I need help in my work, then why not help me in that work? "The authority that has devolved upon me" is the authority which I possess as Leader of The Theosophical Society, an authority which fell upon my shoulders after our beloved Katherine Tingley, my great-hearted predecessor, passed on. That is all this latter part of the quoted sentence means. I cannot see that there is any particularly unjustifiable claim here. Why is it that people are so prone unkindly to judge? Usually without asking a man openly what he really means or intends to say, some people will sit down and write articles for the newspapers, or write letters to each other, and allege that So-and-So "makes claims." There is one pleasing thing about all this: it arouses an interest in our theosophical work; it advertises both our theosophical work and myself. We thus get a lot of free advertising, and this fact does not at all displease me; but nevertheless such action is hardly fair. As a matter of fact, despite its unfairness I nevertheless wish that they would do more of it, simply because of the advertising value it has for us. Shall I change my policy and say something different from what I have already said merely because what I have said has aroused adverse comment from people who don't understand me? Shall I not rather follow the example of the great teacher of Palestine: "Master, forgive them, for they know not what they do." I know full well, my Brothers, that many of these people who have criticized me and my various written and spoken communications and also certain of my acts since I became Leader of The Theosophical Society, would be now with me and supporting me if they only knew me and understood me. I recognize this fact fully; and therefore have I long since extended my hand in friendship. I have said: "Come, Brother; here is my hand. Come to know me. Learn to trust me. Test me. Differ from me, if you will; but let us live brotherly." It is publicly stated by the official representative of another Theosophical Society who declined to accept your outstretched hand of fraternal cooperation: "A Theosophical Society is a union of men on the basis of the recognition of the divine self for the realization of universal brotherhood without mediation or mediator." He also says that Dr. de Purucker claims to be such a mediator. Do you? And if so, why? Here is a man criticizing me because he thinks I have not said the very thing that I have been talking about from this platform for eighteen months, ever since I became the Leader of The Theosophical Society. I have said to you on each Sunday when you have attended here: "Look within. Man, know thyself. Find your own inner god and abide by its guidance, for there lie truth, and peace and happiness and light." And now this criticizing brother comes along and says that I make claims to be a mediator between a human being and his own inner god! This is a preposterous assertion! What I do claim -- and this is a claim, and I have so announced it openly -- what I do claim is to be one who can show you how to find your self, how to find your own inner god. In that sense, I am a mediator between you as men or women and the god within each one of you, because I point to the path, to the Middle Way. I have myself been taught this; therefore having been taught it, I can teach it, exactly as a professor of chemistry or astronomy can teach chemistry or astronomy because in each case the teacher has been taught his science -- he has himself learnt it. He is a mediator -- such a professor -- between the untaught consciousness or mind of the learner and the graduate expert. That should be clear. It is on the other hand, absolutely false should anyone say that I have said that a theosophical leader, teacher, lecturer, writer, or whatnot is a mediator in the sense of being an intermeddler between a man and the divine spark within that man which is the core of that man's spiritual essence.

I think that the statement that the question contains with regard to what a Theosophical Society should be, is very good as far as it goes; but it is also incomplete. I, too -- and I know that all my fellow theosophists will agree with me -- also say that a Theosophical Society is a union of men on the basis of the recognition of the divine self for the realization of universal brotherhood, but also that a genuine Theosophical Society exists for teaching men the forgotten doctrines of the wisdom-religion of mankind. Furthermore, in such a Theosophical Society, the grand, the sublime, teaching should be constantly to the fore: that it is man's primal duty to find himself, to find his divine self -- the god within him. I tell you this truth on every Sunday afternoon when I speak here. But because I can show you the way by which to find your own inner god, to find that inner peace which passeth all ordinary understanding, and because I can show you the way by which to unlock marvelous faculties and powers now lying latent within you, does this contradict what I have so often stated that the supreme tribunal for every man lies within his spiritual being? The two statements are not contradictory, but complementary. When the night is dark, may I not accept the authority of the torches? If a man shows me the way and says: "Here lies the Path," shall I treat this friend with scorn, and say to him, "I myself know the way; I need you not"? If you do indeed know the way, then you need not help from outside; but how many know this way? Yes, the two go together: teachers are needed; the true man longs for light; he yearns to be shown the path; a teacher does this; but nevertheless that path is to the inner god, to the man's own divine essence, and he himself must find it and must tread it when found. This inner divine essence of the man is of cosmic reach, for it is divine. Consequently, is a theosophical teacher a mediator? Is a theosophical teacher a mediator in the sense that I have just set forth as being one showing you the path that you yourself will follow? Yes. But if it means that I claim or that any theosophical teacher claims to insinuate himself into your conscience and to guide your conscience, thus coming between you and your own inner god, then the allegation as I understand it is a falsehood. It is unfortunate that my hope for a fraternal union of all genuine theosophical hearts has been in some cases so greatly misunderstood, and that the essential or rather the true meaning of my words has been so frequently distorted. If my outstretched hand of fraternal cooperation is refused, I myself will nevertheless decline to withdraw it. Some day I hope a brighter light will come to those who now don't understand. The next question: I belong to a Society in Germany which, like yours, claims to have been founded by H. P. Blavatsky in New York in 1875. I was much interested in your appeal for fraternal cooperation among all Theosophical Societies, but was discouraged by the following objection raised by the administration of our organization: "By virtue of its constitution the Theosophical Society (Point Loma) is guided by a Leader invested with paramount authority in all that concerns the society, holding his office for life (Art. V of the Constitution). In accordance therewith, the Leader exercises all power, all rights, and authority (Art. VI). By virtue of his power, the Leader appoints all the leading officials of the society, and has the right at any time to remove them from office (Art. VII)." Are you really an autocratic despot with absolute power over your members? I'm not frightened by words; I like what I know of your character; and so long as you are the Leader, then I say the more power in your hands, the better. I believe in the Masters, and if a servant of the Masters rules in the spirit of wisdom and compassion and peace, nothing could be finer. But I have heard of schemers getting control of theosophical groups. Is there not danger in placing so much power in the hands of the Leader? Very soon after I came into office, following the passing of my great-hearted predecessor, Katherine Tingley, I found our Society, as of course I knew was the fact, working successfully under a Constitution which had been adopted almost unanimously in 1898 in and by the Theosophical Congress in Chicago, thus giving great and wide-reaching powers to the "Leader and Official Head" of the

Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, as the Society was then called. I immediately began to talk about the matter to our officials, and to take counsel with them. I told them that I desired to strip myself of all the authority that I possibly could renounce; that I wanted to govern, if they insisted upon using that word -- in other words I wanted to do my work as Leader -- only by appealing to the hearts and to the minds of the Fellows of The Theosophical Society. I stated that I desired to bind our members to me, individually and collectively, by bonds of brotherhood, by strong bonds, bonds stronger than steel, the bonds of mutual love and mutual understanding; and, I added, I don't want anyone to follow me as Leader who does not trust me and love me -- to love me not as a mere man but to love me for what I stand for, to love me for the spirit of truth that is within me, to love me for what I am trying to do in my theosophical work, i. e., to bring brotherhood as a reality into the world, to bring peace to men's hearts and confidence and quiet to men's souls. Our officials listened to me for a long time in silence, but at last they saw my viewpoint, and I succeeded in having my way. Thereupon, at a Congress held on December 5th, in 1929, in this our Temple of Peace, our old Constitution was changed in certain respects in conformity with my urgently expressed views, and it was thus that, at my own desire, I stripped myself of much, of most indeed, of the authority that my great predecessor had -- a wide-reaching authority given to her by almost unanimous vote in Chicago in 1898 at the Theosophical Congress, and given to her in order to enable her to save the Society at that time, so that there should be one head, one directing will, one guiding intelligence for the years that then were to follow. The Chicago Congress at the time acted wisely, for the Society was then in very difficult waters. When a ship is close to the rocks of disaster, as was then the case, what will best and most quickly ensure safety? Is it by calling a council of everybody on board from the chief navigator down to the cabin boy, and having long discussions about every detail, whether the wheel is to be swung to starboard, whether the wheel is to be thrown to port, or whether so much coal is to be consumed? Nay! When the ship is in danger you put its affairs and its control into the hands of a wise and responsible head, and thereafter hold him responsible for what ensues. In times of danger one guiding mind means safety. What would happen if two men tried to steer the same automobile in a crowded city street? Then when the work is done, he lays down the authority formerly given to him. And that is what happened in The Theosophical Society. It is true that the Constitution of The Theosophical Society, as it at present exists, gives "paramount authority" to the Leader in all that concerns the policy of the Society; and my power as Leader of The Theosophical Society begins and ends there. By constitutional direction I am bound to direct the policy of The Theosophical Society; but, as a matter of fact, so does the head of any big business organization; so does a captain on a ship; so does the President of the United States; so does the man anywhere who holds the guiding wheel. To say, as does this kind critic, that I exercise "all power, all rights, and authority," is false; it is not true. I have no power outside the duties laid upon me by the Constitution to direct or guide the policy of The TS, and this I am instructed and solemnly pledged to do. Let me add here that our Constitution contains an Article in accordance with which it can be amended at any time, and I could be voted out of office in a day, if the Fellows of The Theosophical Society so desired it. As it happens, they don't so desire it. I have learned to love my fellow men more and to recognize with even profounder vision the duty I owe to them since they put their trust into my hands. Let me tell you something, my Brothers: There is nothing in the world that will call out the best in a man so quickly and so strongly as trusting him. All his being rises in eager desire to prove that your trust is well placed. There are rascals in the world, I admit; there are evil men. But look at our Society as it is today. Suppose (I will suppose this) that I am or my Successor will be an evil man: do you know how long I or he would be the Leader of The Theosophical Society? Probably within a year, perhaps within six months, either of us would be a leader without a following. Theosophists believe in the realities of life; we believe in trusting each other; we have learned that it is the best way. It is so even in the ordinary walks of life. If you go into a gentleman's business office and commence your talk with him by saying: "Sir, I distrust you; I think that you are a blankety-blank

scoundrel," you are surely not going to do much business with him! Use your instinct of troth and of right in such matters. If you go into his office and he impresses you as being an honest man having a clean steady eye and a manner expressive of intelligence and power, then it is only natural and right to trust him within reason. It is an incomparably better thing to do than to be ruled by corroding suspicions. It is incumbent upon you to exercise your judgment, of course; there is need to use discrimination; remember always the experience that you have gained of men; don't be a fool; but learn to trust the best in others, and they will welcome your trust and return your trust a hundredfold. That is what all good men learn. Furthermore, I do not appoint "all the leading officials of the Society"; I appoint my own Cabinet, as I believe the President of the United States does, and as I believe that some of the great men of affairs of the world appoint their own councils or executive committees; and I appoint also the General Secretary and the General Treasurer of The Theosophical Society. Every National Section of The Theosophical Society is autonomous within the provisions of our Constitution, and appoints its own President and Officers. But under our Constitution such National President requires my approval before he assumes office. As The Theosophical Society, considered as an international body, is composed of these National Sections, and as the Constitution explicitly recognizes the autonomy of these Sections within the provisions of our Constitution, you see at once that so far as the National Sections go the constitutional power of the Leader is rather negative and passive than positive and direct in this respect. It amazes me that people will criticize and judge before they know the exact facts and the spirit governing The Theosophical Society and permeating all the provisions of our Constitution. This spirit of which I have just spoken is a tradition among us and dates from the time of H. P. Blavatsky. In other words I mean that the spirit of The Theosophical Society is distinctly an esoteric one, and it is this esoteric spirit as between teacher and pupil -- which theosophists call the chela spirit -- which distinguishes our Society from any other Society called theosophical that exists today. This spirit is not something new, but has existed in all esoteric movements of the past. It is based on the fact that there is truth in the world, that the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace exemplify this truth in their lives and in their teachings, and that such authority as they have flows forth from their spiritual status and is gladly accepted by their chelas or pupils on account of the love and the devoted trust which these chelas and pupils have in these teachers or masters. It is this esoteric spirit of devotion to which I refer, and its influence is both powerful and beneficent in its operations. The objection raised in the question which I am now answering was doubtless intended to be honest and kindly; but nevertheless this objection is a criticism which is erroneous because greatly divergent from the facts. Furthermore -- and this is to my mind the strongest observation that I can make to any sensible body of people in commenting upon this matter -- what would it avail me so to conduct myself, so to treat the people who trust me, that they would lose trust in me, begin to dislike me, begin to hate me, and finally to turn from me? I would be cutting the ground from under my own feet. Remember that our National Sections are autonomous within the provisions of our Constitution; furthermore, every lodge of The Theosophical Society is autonomous within the provisions of the Constitution; and it stands to reason, therefore, that in order to insure success for the Movement which I head, I will do all I can so to conduct myself and so to guide the policy of The TS that the Fellows of The Theosophical Society will continue to respect me and continue to love me. This is obvious. Hence I say that criticisms like the one embodied in this question are childish because they show lack of mature reflection and ignore the essential esoteric spirit permeating not only our Constitution but far more important still our entire theosophical work. The next question: The Constitution of The Theosophical Society of which you are the Leader places enormous powers in the hands of its chief executive, which is yourself. Is it not dangerous and unwise to bestow unlimited powers upon any person? Does not experience teach that such powers are misused if the person endowed with them is neither holy nor wise?

Yes, certainly; but our Constitution does not place enormous powers in my hands, as I have already tried to explain to you. The power, such as it is, that I wield, my Brothers, is the power of an understanding heart working on the understanding hearts of those who have learned to understand me and to love me. That fact is the basis of such power that I have. I have no right under the Constitution to say to anyone: "You must do thus or so; you will have to do it." All I can say is: "I appoint you to such or such other position or to do this or that work. Will you do it?" The Constitution gives me the power to appoint and even obligates me to appoint certain people to do certain things, if the need be great enough; but is that an unusual and an awful power? I say No, because it is a power commonly exercised by individuals holding responsible positions of authority. A captain of a ship on the high seas has more power on shipboard than I have -- several times more power. His word is absolute law. He can put a man in chains and do other things that I would have no power to do even did the fantastic idea occur to me to do it, and this supposition is absurd to the last degree. And yet people cross the seas by the millions, put themselves under the despotic control of the ship's captain -- and don't know anything about it! Yes, answering the question more specifically, I think that it is very dangerous to bestow unlimited powers upon any person; but when it is not a question of unlimited powers being bestowed, where is the point of the question? I have not unlimited powers. My powers are very restricted. The next question: H. P. Blavatsky is quoted as having said: "Dogma and authority are the extinguishers of light and truth." Are you not laying down dogmas in the name of theosophy and demanding that people shall accept you as an infallible authority? Now, can you beat this question as a sample of a preposterously false statement? How on earth could anybody get the idea that I pose as being infallible? I have never at any time made any such claim or demand; I simply could not do it because it is utterly contrary to all my character, to my instincts, and to my views of what is right. I have never given any slightest grounds for the supposition that I demand "that people shall accept me as an infallible authority," nor have I ever laid down any dogmas of any kind. What I have said is this, and to me it is a simple statement of truth: "Shall I, in the nighttime, deny the authority of the torches?" When I go to school I go to learn. Shall I, when I go into the schoolroom, refuse to allow my professor to lecture, because I don't like the idea of being taught by him? Why then go to the schoolroom? But the professor does not claim to be infallible. The presumption is that he would not hold his post long if he did. No, my Brothers, I have never at any time made any such preposterous demand or claim. Every human being can err, and any human being who errs is fallible. I can err; it is as possible for me to make a mistake as for anyone else to make a mistake; but granting all this, I am also bound to say that in my own line of work and duty I have been taught; therefore in those lines I know what I am doing; consequently, in those lines I am much less apt to err, to make mistakes, than one who has not been taught in these respects as I have been taught. Isn't that fact an obvious fact? Why then utter the utterly false statement that I demand "that people shall accept me as an infallible authority"? Furthermore, as concerns the matter of "laying down dogmas in the name of theosophy," all my policy and all my teaching run directly counter to this idea, for I can envisage no more disastrous fate for The Theosophical Society than to have it become a vehicle for the teaching of dogmas of any kind, even dogmas of truth. The next question: Some of your supporters speak of your superior fitness as a theosophical leader and say that your authority rests thereupon. If that is so it's very fine indeed; but when they go on to say that the possibility that you might err is not even to be considered, it gives me pause. [And it gives me pause, too!] Do you really consider yourself infallible?

I do not. I do not know where this kind questioner got his (or perhaps her) idea that our people of The TS look upon me as infallible or claim that I am. I have never at any time heard any one of our people make such a stupid remark. The allegation is manufactured out of whole cloth, out of a complete misunderstanding of the facts. My people know me; they know that I am a man, that I have my own troubles; they know that they can trust me; and that is why I am here in the position that I hold. But they also know that I came as a teacher of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, however much my human capacities are inadequate to reach the lofty standard that an ideal teacher holds. All I say is that I do the best that I can do, and try to do it all the time. I was taught and trained to teach, and I pass my life and give all that I have and all that I am in a sincere endeavor to do my utmost best. Some other, doubtless, could do much better than I, but at least I feel that what I do do is the best that I can do, and our blessed Masters ask no more than this from any one of their disciples. Consequently, when the Above and the Below conjoin in harmony, we have peace and understanding and such efficiency as may be in the circumstances. I wish that I might be notified immediately of any Fellow of The Theosophical Society who may at any time (and I am merely stating this as an absurd possibility) be overheard to say that I cannot err and that I am infallible; and I can assure you that should such an impossible thing occur, such Fellow and I would very soon have a most interesting and beneficial half hour together. I certainly would talk to him like a Dutch uncle! (I have before me a number of other questions similar to those that I have already briefly answered, and as I have determined once for all to have this matter out and to be done with it, on Sunday next I think that I will continue this lecture and talk to you on the same theme under the title 'Something More About Myself.' Before closing, I desire to add a few remarks to those I already have made to you, if you please.) I do my best -- at least I try to do my best -- with the heavy duties laid upon me, and under the heavy responsibilities which I carry. I know that it is quite possible that I may make mistakes, but I can easily rectify them, because such mistakes as I may make at any time will not be mistakes of the heart but mistakes of a tired brain. For instance, I may be sleepy some day and then may make a mistake in writing. Anybody can make mistakes. But I will tell you that I have been taught to fill the post that I now occupy; and having been taught, I am more or less expert in that post; and therefore the chances of making mistakes are fewer than otherwise they would be. Furthermore, I have taken certain irrevocable obligations upon myself, one of them being what you might call a vow of poverty. I have no right individually, personally, to own one dollar -- no, not one. I can of course hold millions, billions, at any rate as much as I can gather, for the beautiful, for the grand, work of The Theosophical Society. But personally I cannot own a dollar. So you see that one common fear of so many people in modern times that a leader will be a money-grabber or an amasser of funds for his personal benefit, is in this case without any foundation. Furthermore, I don't want to own any personal fortune. I give my life and all that is in me, the best that is in me, to the work which I love more than anything on earth, more than any human tie, and as I shall labor until I die in the work to which I have made my life consecrate, do you think that paltry temptations such as those of money-getting would have any weight with me or make any appeal to me? None at all! Personally I am poor. I don't personally own a dollar in the world. I am provided with the means to get the little food which I eat. Kind and understanding friends help me. I labor at my theosophical work unceasingly from morn till eve. I have no vacations -- I work night and day. I love my work. But shall I say in this respect that "the laborer is worthy of his hire"? No, I am not hired, I give myself and give myself gladly. But I have no right and I have no slightest desire to lay aside one dollar for myself. But how I long -- and I will tell you this frankly, my Brothers -- how I yearn to be able to control the monetary means for expanding our theosophical work, thus enabling me to bring peace to human hearts, to bring light to human souls, to bring help and consolation to broken human minds, by a far larger dissemination among men than is the case at present of the teachings of the ancient wisdom-religion of

mankind today called theosophy. That is what I yearn to do; and had I the funds wherewith to do it today, you would see marvels of theosophical propaganda and growth within even a twelvemonth's time. What cripples me is lack of monetary funds. All that I ever had I have given to The Theosophical Society, exactly as Katherine Tingley did, exactly as did her predecessor Mr. Judge, exactly as did H. P. Blavatsky who preceded him. I would that I could describe to you the peace, the rest, the happiness, and the joy, that flow from the feeling that all you have and all you are has been laid on the altar of the Masters of Truth! I cannot tell you what a keen and poignant feeling of happiness and peace this brings. I think now, my Brothers, that you have learned something about me; and I am happy to be able to talk to you as frankly and as openly as I have spoken this afternoon -- more frankly than I have ever talked to a public audience at any time since I assumed office. In closing, let me remind you, as I remind you always on every Sunday afternoon when we meet here together to study and to commune heart to heart and mind to mind, let me again remind you, my Brothers, that each one of you is the vehicle or carrier or garment of a divine flame, your own inner divine essence, which is a flaming spark of the central fire which permeates the universe. Let me again remind you that each one of you, although a human being, is in his inmost, a god; and this god attempts to express its divine faculties and powers through you as a man; and it succeeds but feebly as yet, because evolution has not as yet sufficiently opened the inner nature so that the glory there within and above may stream down into the human consciousness. We wrap ourselves around with encircling veils and garments of selfishness, obscuring veils of the lower selfhood; so that even this divine splendor can pierce through these thickened veils but poorly. Nevertheless, there it is; there is the divine within you, your own inner god, the source of all that is good in you, of all that is strong in you, of all that is noble in you: the source of all your aspirations, the source of all your deepest yearnings, the fountain of all your noble hopes. Oh! ally yourself with your self, your divine self!

Second Series: No. 23 (February 9, 1931)

SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MYSELF

(Lecture delivered December 21, 1930) CONTENTS: The awakening of cosmic consciousness. -- Hope for all in the future. -- The Christ story universal. -- A glimpse of the vision sublime. -- In speaking about oneself. -- Remorse in the wake of wrongdoing. -- The sunrise of the New Era. -- Enemies turned friends. -- Principles upheld by The TS (Point Loma): autonomy, freedom from dogma, belief in Universal Brotherhood. -- What about toleration? -- Test of a genuine Theosophical Society. -- A pledge to Katherine Tingley. -- No theosophical popery! -- The amended Constitution of The TS. -- Spiritual and ethical lazybones. -- Is divine self-knowledge the whole of theosophy? -- From a letter from G. de Purucker to Fellows of The T. S. -- The birth of the Christ-light within. -- A Christmas greeting. The Christ-spirit which dwells in every human heart, and which at this season of the year should be given opportunity to show itself, is, I wonder, now living consciously to you in the hearts of how many of you? Go into the streets of our great cities; look at the faces of the men and women whom you see passing by, seamed with sorrow, stricken with pain, filled with a heart-hunger for something that dimly they sense but know not where they may find it in order to satisfy this hunger of the heart. Is it not written large all over them? It is at a time like this, it seems to me, when we should give more thought to these things. The fundamental fact in the universe, my Brothers, is that the cosmic spirit lives and works through all things, and with especial power in those beings who offer it any special opportunity to manifest itself through them; yet even in those beings who will not voluntarily give themselves up to the divine fire within, in them also the spirit shows itself somewhat, so that at times and oft indeed in the most unexpected places you will find men and women doing deeds of wondrous courage and of spiritual grandeur, these being the times when the personality sinks into forgetfulness and the inner spiritual man lives -- manifesting the very god that he is in his inmost essence. For every human, as I tell you on every Sunday when I speak to you here, is the manifestation of a divine being, of his own inner god -- a feeble manifestation indeed, expressing but poorly, oh! so inadequately, the wondrous faculties and powers of the divine flame within. And why? Because men involve themselves in thick and almost impermeable veils of personal selfhood. They do not know what it is to forget self, to live, as the saying goes, in the eternal, to feel the wondrous sense of oneness with the All. When a man can do this latter, my Brothers, his consciousness has taken upon itself cosmic reaches; it has then become universal; he has then raised himself above and out of the enshrouding veils of the lower person and has become divine, and therefore cosmic, because he has become at one with his inmost. See now what you have within you; sense the spiritual powers within you. Live in them, and be truly men. This is the message of the Christ, all forgotten during many ages. It is a call to man to come up higher; to be one with the divinity within, man's own inner god, the divine being at the heart of the heart of him, which divine being one portion of the world calls the Christ immanent, or the Christ-light, and which another portion of mankind calls the Buddha within, or again the Brahma sleeping within the temple of man's own selfhood. Think what recognition of this truth means and, following the recognition of it, the putting it into practice in the daily life. It means all-around victory; it means enormous power for good; it means complete self-forgetfulness -- and by this last fact I mean becoming cosmic in consciousness, giving up the personal for the impersonal self, transcending the personal in order to become divine -- universal. This is the message of all the sages of all the ages; it is the essence of all esoteric teaching; it is the basis of all true religion, the key to all philosophy, and the knock at the portal of all true science. For, pause: when a man has become cosmic in his consciousness, expanded, universal, all that his consciousness can

touch and reach he becomes cognizant of; and therefore can he enter into the very heart of the minutest atom and know its secrets; he can pass to the stars and, entering into their life, know their secrets also. Let the Christ-light shine forth, my Brothers. Be yourselves, and receive all that the universe can give unto you, for each one of you is an inseparable part of that universe. You are in it; you cannot leave it; you are a part of the indescribably vast whole, and therefore whatever that vast whole has within it, is in you. As an inseparable part of it, you have all that the whole, the cosmic whole, has. You are essentially divine: "Know ye not that ye are gods and that ye are the temple of the spirit of the universe?" Realize it and live accordingly, and then you will walk like a god among your fellow men. You do it by transcending the personal veils which shut out this inner light, which prevent it from entering into your personal consciousness. The Christ-spirit, the light of the Christ, is in you; for it essentially is you. Jesus Christ, the Jewish sage, the Palestinian sage, was not the only one who could say with truth: "I am the way; I am the life; I am the light"; for every human being who allies himself with the god within him says the same and says it aright. Now think this over. What name shall we give to this inner glory? Shall we say the Christ-light? Yes, if you like. Shall we say the buddhic splendor, as I love to say? Yes, if you like. The thought is identic; only the words vary. But however you may call this divine thing within you, this splendorous flame of the cosmic fire, realize it, and you cannot then do other than live it, for you will be it. Whence come all your intuitions? Whence come all your intimations of spiritual grandeur? Whence comes the urge in your heart for peace and for love and for compassion and for pity and for kindliness? From within. These things are deathless; their nature is universal and they come with your expanding consciousness. Whence comes the living flame of genius in man? From the same inner god. There is no favoritism in the universe; for essentially man, being an inner god, an inseparable part of the cosmic fire, has free will, has choice, has all the faculties of the universe, developed or undeveloped, as the case may be, within him -- a treasury upon which he may draw, a fountain at which he may drink -- himself, his divine self! I tell to you a message of hope; I give to you a doctrine of peace; I lay before you teachings of spiritual grandeur. Isn't it pitiful to see the faces in our streets? Can you blame some of us for despairing almost at seeing what men are and do? I myself sometimes almost despair; and then I turn to the light within me and it gives me hope again and peace, because I know that the time is coming in the far distant future when even these poor, battered specimens of humanity will realize the divine powers and faculties within them and will then seize their spiritual heritage and will become men and live as men; and then, making their peace with themselves, with the inner god, they will begin divinely to grow, and finally will walk the earth as gods. This is the Christmas greeting that I give unto you -- the greeting of Jesus the Palestinian sage, one of our elder brothers when he lived; but he was not the only one. "Greater things than these shall ye do," he said; and do you think that the story of Jesus as told in the Christian scriptures refers only to that Jewish lad, that Jewish sage? No; it is a tale as old as mankind; for as the message of Jesus, later called the Christ, was given to the hearts and minds of his fellow men, calling them up out of themselves and out of the veils of personality in which they lived, so is the same message the teaching of all the great sages and seers of all the ages. Jesus the Christ merely repeated the spiritual message of the gods and of all his great spiritual predecessors. As the Greek god Apollo pointed out, as the writing on the pediment of his temple at Delphi said:

Gnothi seauton, "Know thyself." Do you now understand why? Because that self is an inseparable part
of the cosmic self, a divine flame living within you, and an inseparable part of the cosmic flame; and therefore in knowing yourself you begin to tread that still small pathway of which the Hindu Upanishads so nobly speak, which is your self, and which, as you follow it, will lead you to the heart of the universe.

Within yourself lies your salvation; within you lies truth; within your self is your only hope; and that hope is a cosmic one. Let the Christ-light live in your hearts and minds and illumine all your being; for it is wondrous holy, wondrous in all that it works and does upon you. My call, my Brothers, to the audiences who assemble here in our Temple of Peace, is always this: Know yourself, your essential spiritual self; you are gods in your inmost; each one of you is a god in his inmost -- a spark of the cosmic flame; and the universe is filled full with gods in all-various degrees and grades of evolutionary growth and development; and we men are but one hierarchy, one great family, of these divinities, which family is passing through our present human stage of evolutionary development. We began our evolution as unself-conscious god-sparks; we are now men, but we are advancing with our faces set to the Mystic East; we are growing; we are evolving; and the time is coming in the far distant aeons of the future when we shall have brought into a burning flame this radiant spark of divinity within us. Then we shall be as gods on this earth, dhyan-chohans is our own theosophical term. Even now men show, however feebly, divine faculties -- intelligence, a capacious and scrutinizing intellect, a feeling of love for all that lives, a sense of oneness with boundless space. Our hearts are on occasions set aflame with the holy fire; and then we turn in love and pity and compassion and we forgive our fellows for their mistakes, realizing that in forgiveness lies grandeur, high moral grandeur; and that the man who cannot forgive is not highly evolved. The French have a proverb, Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner: "To understand all is to forgive all." To understand all! Forgiving, however, is not condoning. No man should condone a wrong; but for the helpless, in some cases, for the poor wretches who sin -- my heart melts with pity for the man or woman who cannot forgive them. Do I like their company? I do not; I confess it. I had liefer converse and be with men and women whom I can more easily feel to be akin to me, akin in thought, akin in feeling; but I am working out of this my own particular veil of limitation that still binds me; for I have myself been taught, my Brothers. I have been taught the teaching that I now give to you; and I tell you that forgiveness is sublime; forgiveness is also a spiritual exercise. Exercising the faculties within you by forgiving, they will then grow strong; and forgiveness will become easy; and this spiritual exercise develops you spiritually; it will enlarge the sphere of your consciousness, so that, as it were, you will expand, expand, expand, as the years pass, until your consciousness in very truth becomes cosmic in its reaches. Then indeed you will live in the divine part of yourself; then indeed you will have become at one with the god within you, with the inner buddha. You will then be suffused with the buddhic splendor; you will then be fully living in the Christ-light. The man Jesus was truly a "Christos," simply because that Palestinian avatara manifested the divinity within himself; it was the case with the Buddha-Gautama likewise; and also with many others. Every human being has that sublime end before him as his destiny. This then is the message of Christmas that I bring to you again. Forget, if you will, the old story of the babe in the manger and all the other legendary decorations which pious but unwise men gave to the grandest story in human history -- the story of a spiritual initiation, not alone applicable to Jesus but to hundreds of great sages who have preceded him and who followed him -- in order to carry this wonder-story over easily into the minds of the uninstructed; and remember that the essential meaning of the Christ story is the living Christ within you, born anew at every time when a man surrenders to his spiritual Self, to the god within him. Then the Christ is "born anew." And it is so easy! Evildoing makes trouble for you; wickedness has bitter pains which follow in its wake; but peace and happiness indescribable are the guerdon of him who lives the life of the Christ in his own heart, and also power -- spiritual power to sway the hearts of his fellow men for good, power to fire their minds so that they may see. Isn't this a grand thing to do? Oh! that I could awaken human hearts, so that they might see the vision sublime as I have seen it, however imperfectly! Any one of you may also see it if you live the life which will bring it to pass; and I look forwards, my Brothers, to the time to come in the future, when that vision sublime, as it first

appeared to me, will become something ineffably grand. I live for it; and I want others to come with me into the light. Test what I say. Test it by your own instincts; test it by your own intellect; test it by the intuitions within you. If it is wrong, then abhor it, reject it, cast it from you. But if it is right, as you see it to be right, then hold to it and come and help us! On last Sunday afternoon I talked to you a little about myself. I did so in answering questions that had been sent in to me, as many such questions frequently are sent in to me: What kind of a man I am, what my work is, what I aspire to, etc., etc.; and when the afternoon meeting closed I had not yet answered all the questions that I had accumulated. So I thought that I would take up the remainder of the questions this afternoon and in answering them tell you a little something more about me. I thought that that would be a bit of a challenge. If I showed the slightest intention to apologize for speaking of myself, you would recognize at once in me a preacher who follows not his own doctrine. A man must reach a point where he may speak about himself with the same impersonal feeling that he would about some beauteous flower or about the humble ant, let us say, crawling on the ground under his feet. It has been said that I am a despotic leader of The Theosophical Society. Merciful heavens! May the immortal gods in their pity forgive such statements as that! I forgive them, and surely what I can do the gods will do! But I would like to know if any man making an unkind and untrue statement about some other man imagines for an instant that he is exempt from the gnawing and corroding remorse which will some day come to him because he has done an injustice? Do you know, I think that the most poignant pain that a man can endure is the realization that it is too late to repair a wrong done. That is an awful feeling. I would not harm a fellow human being consciously for anything that this world contains. I will tell you why I make this statement: it is because I have wronged my fellow men, not only in other lives, and the pain that then I had tore the scales from my blinded eyes, gave me the vision to realize the wrongs that I had done; and I consecrated my life and my future lives to repair the wrongs that I did, and to do it in the best way that I could find; and this is the case with every one of you, my Brothers. I would that in this beautiful Christmastide -- not beautiful on account of the old and greatly misunderstood legends, but beautiful on account of the inner meaning that they contain -- I would that I could persuade at least a few human hearts to see with me into the Mystic East -- into your own inner spiritual splendor -- the sunrise of the New Era flooding with its rays the faces turned towards it; for that sun is the living mystic Christ within you, and the Mystic East is in your own heart; and each one of you is a child of the cosmic christos, the universal Christ-spirit; for you are sons of the sun; each one of you is an imbodied divinity. I will crack some stony human hearts yet! Some of them are so enshrouded, so enfolded and hard with personality, that they are worse than adamantine; but I will break them. I have won enemies to become friends and oh! how happy that has made me, for I knew that in some past life, when my soul was younger, I had then injured them; and in making amends, in giving all that is in me to repair the wrong done, I have found a peace, a happiness, and a strength, which cannot be described in words. I so found myself, my inner self. Let me now answer some of these questions that have been sent to me. The President of one of the European Sections of The Theosophical Society (Point Loma), recently sought the cooperation of another theosophical organization in his country. His proffered hand of friendship was rejected by the General Council of the other theosophical organization on the ground that the Point Loma Society "does not uphold the theosophical principles of autonomy, of freedom from dogma, and of toleration." The charge was also made that the literature published by the Point Loma Society proved this statement. As an interested and unbiased outsider, I would like to know just how much basis in fact there is for the position taken by this other theosophical organization.

My Brothers, there is no basis whatsoever for it, except in one point: our Society does not stand for toleration. Do you understand me? If not, I will tell you why. A man says to you: "Why, come along with me; I am tolerant; I will tolerate you." Eh? Do you want to be tolerated? No! Consequently, theosophists don't stand for toleration; we stand for equality, for freedom, and for brotherhood. We are not tolerant because we are not intolerant. Now think over this fact. This word toleration, comes to the tongue so glibly; yet the man who boasts of his tolerance and preaches it, I tell you, is intolerant at heart, for tolerance means to "tolerate" another; and do you think that merely tolerating other human beings would be right or grand or even decent? I do not. What would a man think of you if you were to say to him: "I will tolerate you"? It is absolutely true that not only do theosophists believe in and teach autonomy, but it is one of the provisos of the Constitution of The Theosophical Society; it is guaranteed by our Constitution. Every Section of The Theosophical Society is autonomous within the provisions of the Constitution; and so indeed is every lodge of The TS. We have absolute freedom of belief and speech. Look for instance at The Theosophical Forum which we publish monthly. In it we have printed attacks on our TS, on our people, on myself; and this is done deliberately. Why should we not print attacks against us, if any good purpose can be served by so doing? Are we afraid to do so? We are not. I trust in the hearts of my fellow human beings and in their sense of justice and right. I believe in the great human heart. It is to the human heart, to the nobler human mind, that I appeal. I believe in being absolutely frank and truthful. If men misjudge us or me, so much the worse for them, but at least our record is clear. I have peace in my heart and quiet in my mind, because I know that truth will prevail. Freedom from dogma? Of course we have no dogmas, obligatory or otherwise. On almost every Sunday afternoon, my Brothers, when I have spoken here, I have told you that our TS has no dogmas whatever. Any man, any honest man or woman, can be an FTS -- a Fellow of The Theosophical Society -- if he accept the only prerequisite to membership, a belief in universal brotherhood, not as a merely sentimental feeling, not meaning at all that we must all drink out of the same dirty cup or all sleep in a common bed, but an honest-to-goodness movement of the human heart, recognizing our spiritual oneness and that we are all flames or sparks from the same central cosmic fire, but nevertheless recognizing the fact that we are men and women in different stages of evolutionary growth. The following is quoted from a European publication: "The Universal Brotherhood founded in 1898 by Katherine Tingley, after amending its former constitution and its name, since 1929 calls itself The Theosophical Society, although there are about half a dozen societies claiming that name in the world already. The name of the society as well as the spirit of the publications by its Leader and other representative members indicate that it is intended to signify by that name that The Theosophical Society is the only genuine Theosophical Society which was founded by H. P. Blavatsky as the Messenger of the Great White Lodge." Question: Does The Theosophical Society with International Headquarters at Point Loma really claim to be what the writer of the above paragraph states: i. e., the only genuine Theosophical Society founded by H. P. Blavatsky as the messenger of the Great White Lodge? It does not; no such preposterous claim has ever been made. We claim to be one of the important theosophical life-streams, albeit a chief one, descending from the envoy of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace; but any other Theosophical Society whatsoever that teaches the original theosophical doctrines and can claim its founding as an offshoot from the Society founded in 1875 by H. P. Blavatsky, we recognize as a genuine Theosophical Society. The degree of genuineness, my Brothers, we recognize to depend upon the greater or less fidelity to the original teachings of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace as set forth by H. P. Blavatsky, their envoy in our age. This doubtless otherwise kindly querent is laboring under a totally wrong impression. Is it so indeed -or may it be, mayhap, one of those sad cases of mud-throwing? Some of you at least do not know what

we have been through in past years. We have suffered under wrong and false imputations circulated against us, printed and given by word of mouth, involving things that are wholly false. That great woman, Katherine Tingley, with whom I worked for more than 26 years, always and invariably urged upon me the duty, impulsive and strong in feeling as I am, of being patient and forgiving. She told me more than once: "The time will come in your administration of The Theosophical Society when you will be able to tell the truth before the world"; and I said, "As I live, I will do it." I am going to do it by winning the hearts, through my own genuine sincerity and brotherly love, of those who have differed from us. Isn't that ambition far grander than always to be squabbling? I have offered my hand in brotherly sincerity, and I say to all others: Come, let us be brothers; here is my hand; let us work together; let us knit up again the torn fabric of the Theosophical Movement, and become at one and at peace. And I challenge, in the name of holy truth, those who will not as yet hear the Masters' call, for such it is; and brotherly love is always suffused with the divine. The Fellows of your Society accept your leadership as practically infallible, and, indeed, the Constitution of The Theosophical Society (Point Loma) gives you wide powers. Does not the history of the nations, especially of popery, teach what great crimes have been perpetrated through absolutism? Is it not true that to foster faith in authority draws the consciousness away from the higher self and darkens the soul, and is therefore wrong? Yes, a thousandfold is it evil; and you will find naught of it here. I say from this platform on every occasion when I see a chance to voice the sublime truth: in yourself lies the working of your own destiny. It is to the god within you that you must turn for guidance. Do I not call upon your own inner god, as individuals, whenever I speak to you? Do I ever say to you that you "must" follow me? You know that I have not ever said so. The very heart of the theosophical teaching is a call to the inner god. Furthermore, not one single Fellow of The Theosophical Society, man or woman, young or old, looks upon me as infallible, or has ever looked upon my great-hearted predecessor, Katherine Tingley, as infallible. She was great, and stood for what she knew to be the crying need of The Theosophical Society, and for her own convictions, before the world at a critical time in the history of The Theosophical Society which then needed a strong and guiding hand. She once told me, "G.deP." she said, "when I pass on and the cycle turns, will you continue as I have had to do in order to save the Society?" And I said, "No." And she said, "Thank the immortal gods!" I knew what she meant, and I knew that my answer was what she expected. She had a work to do in a certain line and lived to do that work, grandly and nobly lived to do it, but she knew that when she passed on it would be at the end of one cycle and at the beginning of another, when new methods were to be employed by her successor. When her death came at the turning of the cycle, the time came for me to lay down the great authority given to her at the Theosophical Congress in Chicago in 1898; and when I came into office at her passing, I consulted with our officials, and with some of the wisest and most experienced Fellows we have, and I told them that I was going to strip myself of all the constitutional power that I could rightfully abandon, and that in future I was going to work to win the hearts of my fellow men by love and by their conviction of my truth and troth and honesty; that the time had passed when the Leader of The Theosophical Society needed to use the strong guiding hand in order to keep the Theosophical ship straight to the north -- to the Mystic North in this case, to the pole star of the spirit. So I did, indeed; and our Constitution which was amended on December 5, 1929, by delegates duly assembled in congress here, gave me just sufficient power to guide the policy -- to define and outline and guide and guard the policy -- of The Theosophical Society. No member at any time has ever looked upon me as infallible, or as 'practically infallible.' I would like indeed to find such a strangely believing member. I challenge anyone to bring him to me and let me talk to him! When people talk about infallibility, I think that they rarely realize what the word signifies. The highest god in highest heaven, to use a common phrase, is fallible as compared with Boundless infinitude. How then about a mere man, no matter how great that man might be? Even the Masters of Wisdom and

Compassion and Peace, demigods as they are in very fact, at least the greatest of them, are still fallible. Naught but boundless infinitude can be said to be infallible; and really even this is but a figure of speech, and the whole idea behind this foolish question is but a to-do about nothing at all -- vox, et praeterea nihil. It is no compliment to the intelligence of any person who will say, who will make, erratic and indeed foolish statements like this about any other human being. You may remind me that one of the great Christian Churches teaches the infallibility of its Head under certain conditions. Are we to be guided by what a certain portion of mankind think? Is such a statement an argument? No, of course not. No member of The Theosophical Society at any time has ever looked upon me as infallible; and I want to drive that fact home. I disclaim the allegation. I should be ashamed to wear such tinsel habiliments of human vanity. My Brothers, don't you know that one of the most enduring ties, as among men, is the feeling that we all can err? It is the recognition of the feeling that we all can err that makes us charitable, that makes us kindly, that leads us to the divine actions of forgiveness. Yes, I myself have said on occasion after occasion that it is perfectly true that any attempt to draw the human consciousness away from the indwelling inner god towards belief in an outside authority darkens the judgment, beclouds the understanding, and weakens the will; and all these three are just the opposite of what our teaching is. I call upon you to look within, to understand yourself, to follow the divinity within you, to use your own judgment; and even if you make a mistake in so doing, or make mistake after mistake after mistake by so doing, nevertheless by exercising your inner spiritual faculties, you are giving them strength, just as the exercise even of a physical muscle will give strength to the muscle which is used; and the time will come, if you obey, if you follow, this inner spiritual exercise, when your own judgment will become clearer, when your mind will become less obscure, and you will then begin to see the vision sublime. And then -- then we shall have caught you; then you will be a captive of our love; you will no longer refuse it; and remember that I am merely voicing the words of all the great sages and seers. Don't misunderstand me: our love -- yes; but only because it is identic with the love given by the great ones, the great spiritual guides of mankind. There is abroad in the world today a tendency to criticize others, to say: "I don't care about joining any society; I want to stand outside and look on. I have had plenty of it all. I don't care to affiliate with any organization. I think you are doing a good work, even a splendid work; but I just prefer to stay outside." Now I ask you a plain question: Do you admire that spirit? I do not. Give me the man who will help when his heart, when his conscience, and when his mind, tell him that before him is a work into which he should throw himself as a helper. Do you want to be mere lookers-on? -- spiritual and ethical lazybones? I tell you frankly that I can understand that attitude, but I neither admire it nor have sympathy with it, and therefore I have no patience with it. I think that the man or the woman who can stand idly by and be a mere looker-on when something is going wrong or, contrariwise, when a great and noble work needs help, is doing a positively unethical act, and manifests a species of subtle selfishness which should be shaken off as soon as possible. Give me the man who follows the urgent promptings of his soul to lend a hand where help is needed! He indeed is a man! Nature calls strongly for aggregations; nature calls upon men to band together and to work together, and all her movements and operations are contrary to and against them who attempt to stand aside while the processions of life move on. A member of another Theosophical Society writes: "Theosophy is divine self-knowledge, the selfrecognition of God in man; it needs no outer leader and is not obtained by faith in authorities." Do you agree with this writer? No, I do not. The statement is badly phrased and therefore untruly phrased. I am sorry to say frankly that I am tired of a certain class of theosophical egoists who stand before the public and pose as being men of spiritual discernment, and whose attitude carries the tacit declaration: "We are the pure, we are the high

ones. We know what theosophy is; theosophy is as we say it is." Give me, on the contrary, the man whose attitude is charitable, because his heart is kindly. Give me the man who has the understanding heart, who can understand the difficulties of his fellows, who does not assume the self-righteous and self-sufficient attitude! It is perfectly true that one of the basic, essential teachings of theosophy is that voicing the inner divinity or the inner god in man, which is the final tribunal to which the man should turn; that as a bare statement is wholly true. But I for one do not speak of this inner divinity as "God." I have often told you just what this inner divinity is, and in doing so I merely repeat the message of all the great sages and seers: It is your own inner god, the divine entity at the core of the core of you, a spark of the flaming fire of the universe; for the universe verily is filled full with gods, and men are merely feeble exemplifications of this natural fact, for men as spiritual entities are at present passing through one phase of their aeon-long evolutionary journey, the phase of humanity. Again, is divine self-knowledge the whole of theosophy? It is indeed a teaching that we should aspire to make a living reality in our lives; it is a noble aspiration, and one that all right-thinking men should strive to follow. But the definition itself is incomplete as given. It seems to me actually to be a subtle appeal, mark you, to personal selfishness. Theosophy is more than an urging of the individual to try to find the god within himself for his own purposes. Theosophy is, besides, a reasoned formulation in human thought and language of the nature, structure, and operations of the universe and of all that it contains, and therefore it includes man and all his relations with the universe in the scope of its teachings. Theosophy is wisdom; and once that a man has this wisdom even in minor degree, all that pertains to him as an individual will automatically find its proper place in his thought and life. Having this wisdom, you will have the key of the great problem of finding yourself, of how to gain this self-recognition of the inner divinity. But to limit the scope of theosophy to that one teaching alone is to amputate from it vast ranges of religious and philosophical and scientific thought. If this Fellow of another Theosophical Society who wrote as quoted above sincerely believes that definition is all-inclusive, then I ask his forgiveness if my words may seem to carry a touch of reproof. I am bound to speak the truth as it is given to me to see it. I also speak that truth as I have been taught it. But I speak kindly if, indeed, at times with directness and emphasis. There are times when one needs to use language forcefully. Now, let me read to you something in this connection that I wrote to the Fellows of our Society on February 17th of this year: There are theosophists belonging to different societies in the world today who are heart-hungry for theosophic truth, and for theosophic guidance. They crave, they long for, a theosophical leader and teacher whom they can trust; and while I believe that there are certain kinds of theosophists who dislike the idea of a leader and teacher, and who think that H.P.B. was the only teacher, or perhaps that H.P.B. and W.Q. Judge were the only teachers; nevertheless, in the quiet of the nighttime, when reflection follows the tranquil course of the stream of consciousness undisturbed, they must realize that the flow of inspiration from the great mahatmas of the Himalayas has never been broken, and cannot be broken if the theosophical teachings are true. It is futile, it is useless, it is even childish, to point to an occasional statement here and there, made by H.P.B. or by Judge, to the effect that no Master of Wisdom will be sent to the western world until the last quarter of the twentieth century -- if even then. Of course this is true; and I may add just here, that it is highly improbable that even then a Master of Wisdom will be sent, although a messenger most undoubtedly will come. All such conclusions arise from a misunderstanding of the meaning of what H.P.B. did write and from a too strong emphasis laid upon words. I repeat my declaration: the Masters of Compassion and Wisdom are as active in the world today as ever they were; and the stream of inspiration and holy light flows even now with undiminished intensity from the great asrama. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

It were childish to suppose that a sudden interruption of the stream of inspiration and of teaching, once started through H.P.B. for the saving of the souls of men from spiritual degradation -- which saving is done through enlightenment and teaching -- could have taken place when H.P.B. went Home. The spiritual forces of the globe do not work thus; they are flowing continuously; and even they, the great Masters of Wisdom and Compassion, are but the instruments of the Law, and the servants of the guides and governors of the spiritual universe. Hence the great ones work continuously and incessantly. O my beloved theosophists! Take heed and listen well! You can drink at these Pierian Springs still, if such is your wish -- at these springs of illumination and wisdom and knowledge, of which the great teachers are the constant transmitters to their fellow men of minor grade in evolutionary development. And what I then wrote I now again say; I repeat it. I have been asked: "Are you an occultist?" I haven't time to answer this question today. I will merely at the present moment say: Yes, and answer the question more fully on next week. On last Sunday you stated, during your lecture, that you were under a vow of personal poverty. You said that you could not own one dollar for yourself, although you could and would be glad to hold millions for the theosophical work. Is this vow of yours of recent date, and can you break it when you will? If I could break a vow like this when I willed to do so, what kind of a vow would it be? No, my Brothers: I took this pledge when I was a young man still in my teens; and it is a pledge that I cannot ever break. I cannot own one dollar personally, but I can hold millions, billions, any sum, for the work which I was sent to do. I can hold it and consecrate it to that work; but I cannot personally own one dollar, and I am happy. Dear Dr. de Purucker: At this Christmas season I am reminded of an expression which I have heard theosophists use, to wit: "the birth of the Christ in the human heart." As I shall be attending your lecture in the Temple of Peace on Sunday, December 21st, I should very much like to hear from you some explanation of what is meant in theosophy by this beautiful expression. I always say, my Brothers, "the birth of the Christ-light in human hearts"; and in beginning our study this afternoon, I tried to explain to you just what that phrase signifies. It means that every one of you in his highest, noblest, most impersonal part, is a god, a divine being, a Spark of the central flame of the universe -- not central because it is in a locality, but because it is everywhere central: it is the inmost of the inmost of every mathematical point everywhere; and this wonder, some parts of the world of men have called the Christ-light, the Christ immanent, the Christ indwelling, and another part of the world of men speak of it as being the inner Buddha, the buddhic splendor. To me this latter is a more beautiful phrase, because it means more to me at least. To you the words the Christ light perhaps may mean more. Now, this Christ-light is the source of all the noblest that you are; it is the source of everything that is high and good within you; it is the source of your manhood, the source of the strength of character that you have, the source of all your spiritual faculties, the source of the powers that are in you; it is the source of the love which inflames your heart when you do deeds of beauty and of goodness. This is the Christ-light! Oh, may that Christ-light be born in every human heart, at least once a year! And may that birth of the Christ-light be your Christmas, although at first it may burn only as a tender flame, as a little babe of light, so to say. Open your nature to it and let it fill you; for it is your spiritual self, the god within you. It is all that is holiest and most beautiful in human existence, and the source of all that is good and divine within us. And now, in closing, my Brothers, I want to read to you again something that I wrote to the Fellows of our Society as a Christmas greeting last year. I think that it will follow on well with what I have just stated; and I may add, perhaps, before reading it, that from times immemorial the human sages and seers have always chosen the season of the winter solstice for one of their great initiation ceremonies. That is why the birth of the mystical Christ, now called the Christmas-anniversary, was placed at the date of the winter solstice, December 25th, but which rightly should have been, astronomically speaking, December

21st. The calendar in Julius Caesar's time was inaccurate, even after he amended it with the aid of the astronomer Sosigenes. Let me now read to you what I wrote in my General Letter to the Fellows of The Theosophical Society and to members of the Esoteric Section on December 7, 1929: There is much more pertaining to this season of the year than even our own theosophical students generally realize. Resolutions made at this time in a proper spirit -- in the spirit of impersonal devotion to high ideals -- and with a heart overflowing with love for all that is, have a relationship with the divine; and because of this divine relationship they exercise throughout the subsequent months a silent but powerful domination over both mind and heart. It was a knowledge -- deep, wide-reaching, mystic -- of these and other collateral truths of nature that brought about the working of one of the highest degrees of initiation at the time of the winter solstice, and for some two weeks thereafter. Memories of those far bygone days still linger in the hearts of men at this time -- memories of a time when divine beings were on earth, and taught their younger brothers, mankind. This fact was commemorated in later ages in the initiation ceremonies of the winter solstice, wherein the aspirant passing successfully through the trials, met his own inner god face to face, and being "raised" to union therewith, became suddenly suffused with splendor, so that, as the phrase passed outwards from the crypts, he was said to be "clothed with the sun"; and it was true -- in a far more real and mystical sense than sincere but unknowing men of later times have ever realized. Therefore do I send out my deepest and most heartfelt good wishes to all that lives, to Fellows and nonFellows, to men and women of whatever race or creed, wherever they are. And more, to the very gods do I raise my own soul in reverential recognition! Brothers, in parting with you this afternoon, I wish you a very merry Christmas in the usual sense, and I hope that my poor words may at least have evoked the latent fire in your hearts, and that I can go to bed tonight when my work is done feeling that I have brought a little hope, a little help, a little light, to others.

Second Series: No. 24 24 (February 16, 1931)

THE THEOSOPHICAL MAHATMAS

(Lecture delivered January 4, 1931) CONTENTS: Recognition of greatness in others. -- No limits to human genius. -- A spiritual brotherhood of sages and seers. -- Theosophical mahatmas men, not spirits, evolved not created. -- The sanest men on earth. -- Their existence a logical necessity. -- Do they belong to the theosophists? -Varying degrees among them. -- Why do they hide from men? -- Do they ever work in the world? -Where do they live? -- Why are they deprived of physical comforts? -- Hindu yogis not to be confused with Masters of Wisdom. -- The word "Mahatma" explained. -- What about Mahatma Gandhi? -- How can one meet a Master of Wisdom? -- The Theosophical Society and the mahatmas. There is a hunger in the human heart for beauty; there is a longing in the human soul for harmony and for peace; there is an unceasing aspiration in the human mind for an understanding of the problems of the universe; and all these qualities of heart and soul and mind are fundamentally one, arising out of that amazing spiritual fire, call it light if you like, which dwells in the inmost of the inmost of every human being, and which is a reflection in his human character of the divine flame which is fundamentally the spiritual man; and this flame is the core of his being. Men yearn for truth; they yearn for light, they yearn for peace and happiness; and alas, in how slight a degree is this divine hunger satisfied! It is unsatisfied because men will not self-consciously realize who they are -- the man will not realize who he is, what he is, in the core of himself, for his human consciousness refuses to recognize the living existence in him of this divine flame of the spirit. Nevertheless, there is through the ages a pressure towards this realization, and when recognition comes, then indeed breaks the splendor of the spirit on the mind and illuminates it divinely. The man's soul is then moved, the very depths of his being are stirred, for he recognizes not only his kinship with -- in an abstract sense -- but his fundamental oneness with, the universe of which he is a child, an inseparable part. When this recognition of our inner spiritual grandeur comes to us, then we recognize also that there is spiritual grandeur outside of us existing in other human beings. Then we recognize the kinship of other human spirits with our own. This is the meaning of what I have told you on many other occasions: it takes greatness to recognize greatness, just as it takes a loving heart to recognize love in other hearts. Thus the man who is spiritually awakened, or who is becoming spiritually awakened, recognizes that other men also can be grand and great, and that their hearts are filled, as is his, with an innate and instinctive spiritual nobility. In other words, he recognizes that the divine is working in other human beings also, and that possibly in some of these other fellows of his, there throbs a heart which is more or less fully cognizant of its spiritual powers. The man then realizes that he may find one or more higher even than himself: one or more who have become more or less at one with the inner flame of divinity, with the inner god, with the divine spirit stirring within. Such intimations or intuitions of the living divinity within us all persuade us beyond cavil or argument that our noblest aspirations are true, are based on fact; for in very truth there are such greatly awakened hearts in the world; there are indeed such wondrous men in the world, men who have evolved to the point where the divine flame within, the inner god of them -- the inner god of each one of them -- is expressing itself more or less fully and according to the evolutionary stage of advancement of the individual. Such great men it is customary, and it has been customary from immemorial time, to speak of as Saviors of their fellows. They are indeed the spiritual saviors of men, the great and outstanding human spiritual genii -- spiritual geniuses -- of the human race; they have shaken men's hearts by the magic of their teaching and by the example of their lives, and by their power to explain life's mysteries to inquiring minds hungering for truth and light. Such great men are the men who stand high on the pillars of the civilizations of the past, just as they will stand high on the pillars of the civilizations of the future, as

other men, newer men, take the places of those who already form this grand spiritual brotherhood of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. How stony must be the human hearts that do not leap in instant recognition of this truth! How natural it is to all our intuitive feelings to believe that there is spiritual grandeur in the world, that there is beauty in other men, that there are beauty of soul and wondrous strength of will, and power of intellect, and flaming, clairvoyant imagination which overleaps the boundaries of the frontiers of the common or herdmind! Look at history. See the great men that the human race has produced. Look at the outstanding spiritual and intellectual human genii. Look at Gautama the Buddha, the very embodiment of wisdom and love. Look at Jesus the Avatara, another embodiment of love and wisdom. Look at others of these great ones, whose names perhaps are less well known; and we realize as we survey these human embodiments of spiritual light that our intuitions and intimations are true. Then, as all men know, beneath these genii of the spirit and of the intellect there are, and there have been, and there will be in the future, other men whom we call geniuses, men of wondrous ability, men of high and vaulting talent, whose souls commune with the very stars, and pluck from heaven heaven's own flame of truth, and tell it in phrase and in teaching to their fellows. You know that these men exist: you know that the records of these genii of the race are written in living flame across the pages of history. Where then will you pause and say that human genius cannot go higher than this level, or than that level, or than the mediocre plane which average mankind already has attained in its evolution? It is our theosophical teaching that greater men even than those geniuses to whom I have alluded exist in the world at the present time and existed in past times; and they have lived and taught and guided their fellow men; and these great ones, we say, compose a spiritual brotherhood of the great sages and seers of the human race. These are what are called the theosophical mahatmas. They are the elder brothers of mankind -- and they are men, not spirits; they are men who have evolved through self-devised efforts in individual evolution, always advancing forwards and upwards until they attained the lofty supremacy that now they hold. They were not so created by any extracosmic Deity, but they are men who have become what they are by means of inward spiritual striving, by spiritual and intellectual yearning, by aspiration to be greater and better, nobler and higher, just as you, my Brothers, in your own way so aspire. They are not what they are by any favoritism either of a god or of Fate, but have merely run ahead of the great multitude of men. There they stand: they are helpers, they are seers, they are sages. They have naught that they have by way of gift. All that they have, which means all that they are -- all that they have evolved to, all that they have become -- they have gained by self-devised efforts in individual evolutionary growth. How does a child learn in school? How does a man learn a profession or a calling? By study, by application, by aspiring to be something better and higher than he was before. Apply these same principles of growth and conduct to the living spirit within you, to the human soul within you, remembering that this human soul is evolving just as much as the body itself is evolving; and in fact the body is evolving only because the soul evolves; and I use this word soul only that you may understand me easily. Applying these principles of growth that I have just spoken of you will readily see that these mahatmas are highly evolved egos, highly evolved human souls, and that their existence in the world is a logical necessity and an inevitable result of evolution. It is all a matter of inner growth and development: listen - it is all a matter of bringing out what is within you, latent, as yet unmanifest, not yet brought forth into an adequate expression in human life. Whence comes the majestic oak? Out of the little acorn, out of the magic vital particle in the acorn, which particle contains within itself all the potency and life-to-be of the future oak, the majestic tree in its turn giving birth to thousands of other acorns. Just so does a man grow, from small to great, from great to still greater. Is not then the idea simple when once you understand it? Indeed, is it not easy to understand?

You now see just what these mahatmas are: evolved men, men who have in evolution run ahead of the multitude of the races of mankind who have preceded us. That is all there is to it. They are men who have brought forth the powers and capacities of the inner god of which each human being is but a feeble expression at present; and, granting that feeble expression as we must, my Brothers, look at the wondrous powers that even now the human being shows forth. Pause a moment in thought! Think of man's intellect gauging the ways of the stars, probing into the very womb of space, counting the atoms in a particle of physical substance, drawing up philosophies and sciences and religions which have shaken the very souls of other men! This is indeed godlike; this is indeed more than mere genius; this verily is the working of the divine flame within. Look again at the love which fills man's spiritual being, if he only will give it room therein: love which embraces within its compass the entirety of all things, the spaces of boundless space. What a divine faculty love is; what a divine energy it is! Think again of compassion and pity and our instinctive sense of friendliness and brotherhood. Think of men's yearning for peace, for harmony. All these are godlike qualities. They are divine qualities. They come forth from the divinity living in the core of the core of each one of us, for each human being is an incarnation, an embodiment, of his own inner god. The modern Christians of a mystical bent of mind call it the Christ Immanent, the immanent Christos; and the Orientals, in Buddhism for instance, call it the living Buddha within; and others of the Orientals, in Brahmanism for instance, speak of it as the Brahma in the City of the Human Soul. Call it by what name you like; we instinctively sense that the divine flame is there, the source of all that we are that is good, that is grand, that is great. It is an alliance with one or more of these inner faculties which makes man great, which makes him a genius, which makes him able to shake the hearts and move the minds of his fellow men. For when he is allied with this divine flame, it sweeps through him and sways him, and then you can see it expressing itself in all the being of the man who shows it. He then forgets himself utterly as a personality. He then lives in the boundless. He loses all thought of his personal being, and lives in eternity. For during such times of illumination his consciousness has taken unto itself cosmic reaches, and he feels with the vibrations of the atoms in farthest Sirius, and vibrates sympathetically by reaction to the movements of the polar star. This is no mere poetical phraseology -- it is actual truth. You cannot ever leave this universe. You are a part of it, a living part of its essence, and on every plane of your constitution you are here and there, and boundless space is your native home. Therefore, every part of the universe, everything that it contains, or ever has contained, or ever will contain, is in you, manifest or not yet manifest, but there. Think! Each entity -- man, god, atom, ant, flower, beast, sun, nebula, solar system, any entity anywhere -- is an inseparable part of the boundless All, and therefore contains in himself, or in itself, everything that the boundless All contains; for the boundless All is the WHOLE, and the entity is an encompassed part of it; and what the whole contains, of necessity every part contains. Does not every drop of the ocean contain all that the ocean contains? When the dewdrop slips into the shining sea, is the dewdrop different from the shining sea? So is man, living in the ocean of the spirit all-encompassing, everywhere around him and in him and permeating every atom of his being on all the seven planes of his constitution visible and invisible. The great ones of the human race are great precisely in accordance with the degree in which, and by which, they manifest the divine powers lying within them. When they manifest these divine powers grandly, then such men are called mahatmas, our theosophical mahatmas. It is not we theosophists who speak of them as our theosophical mahatmas. It is non-theosophists who so refer to them and wrongly refer to them. The mahatmas are not our property. They are called theosophical mahatmas simply because people associate their existence with The Theosophical Society; but nevertheless they are your elder brothers just as much as they are ours. They are the elder brothers of the human race, and are no more ours than yours. They are highly evolved men, controlling powers over nature's forces which they have gained through self-directed evolution during many, many, many, many lives in the distant past. Now they are become

masters of life; in former ages they were men like you and me. In future ages they will become gods, just indeed as we shall all of us so become, when the destiny of the human race on this planet shall have reached its furthermost end for the present cosmic period of evolution; because within each one of us there is the individual's own indwelling inner god, the source of all that is great in us; and evolution is simply bringing out or unfolding what the man already and now has "within" him -- or "above" him. There is naught that is weird about these great men; they are the sanest men on earth, the gentlest, the kindliest, the most pitiful, the most compassionate, the most brotherly and the most peaceful and the wisest, the strongest and the purest, the noblest and the greatest. They do not stand, all of them, on the same step of the ladder of evolutionary progress. Some of them are very great, very high, others less so, others less so still. Then next in turn there are their chelas or pupils, men who are striving to become like unto their Masters, and who are a step or two or three ahead of the average man; and then we the average men find our place in the scale. Thus, our Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, the elder brothers of the human race, have simply preceded us or run ahead of us in evolutionary development. All of us shall be Masters of Wisdom and Compassion someday. Those who exist at present are simply those who are ahead of the multitude of humanity. Many foolish questions have been asked about these great men. It is, for instance, said of them: "If they are so great, and know so much, then why in the name of conscience don't they come out before the world, and show their credentials, and act like open-minded men, instead of hiding behind a veil of secrecy and anonymity?" Why the devil should they? Excuse me: why should they come out and expose themselves on a public platform, and be examined as if they were for purchase? If they can do their work better -- and they are far wiser than you or I, and certainly know how to do their work better than we know it -- if they can do their work better in the silence, and unknown of the multitude, how foolish it were to cripple their work by choosing the difficult and foolish path! Nevertheless they are active in the world all the time. Their agents are active always and everywhere. Their influence is always for good, always for brotherhood, always for kindliness among men, always for peace, always for progress and the gaining of a greater light, always for the things which give to men's hearts high hope and courage, and to their minds inspiration and love and rest. But this is not the rest which is mere negative repose or sleep; but it is, on the contrary, the rest which comes from the harmonious working of all one's functions and faculties -- spiritual, intellectual, ethical, vital, and physical. Sometimes they awaken men when men have fallen to sleeping, to spiritual and intellectual inertia, and resting in the smug satisfaction of physical comforts. Then they begin to call forth the soul of men, that fiery flame which stirs and moves within us and leads us to deeds of greatness and to imagination of sublime things. Yea, then they stir up conditions so that men shall awaken and begin again to recognize the call from within, the call of the human soul. They are our elder brothers because they watch over us as an elder brother watches over his younger brother. They are our teachers because they teach us through the ages; they instruct us and guide us. They are our Masters, because we are their pupils. It matters not that the pupil does not always recognize his teacher. In things of the spirit, and in things of the mind, these great ones always follow the best path, the most efficient path. They stimulate men's minds with high and noble thoughts. They work through other men as their agents whom they have chosen from out the multitude, and who themselves are, relatively speaking, great men, but in less degree, and who become the pupils of these greater ones. Where do these great ones live? The answer is that they live wherever they please. But their main home, so to speak their main headquarters, is in one of the little-known parts of the earth, a region which they have deliberately chosen on account of its quiet and aloofness from the fevered throbs of existence, so that they may pursue their avocations in quiet and in peace and undisturbed by the hurly-burly of the busy marts of men. When the philosopher, when the scientist, is working at a problem, does he go out and stand on the street corner? No, he seeks quiet and peace where he can think and work on his problems undisturbed. The principle is the same.

I have brought with me this afternoon to our Temple of Peace some questions that during the past few weeks have been sent to me on this matter of the theosophical mahatmas, and I will now read these questions to you and try to answer them. I trust that you will understand the language, occasionally a little technical, which I am sometimes obliged to use. I make this observation because on one or two occasions it has been reported to me that certain phrases used by me are not easily understood. I often speak to you about the inner god; and this, extraordinarily enough, seems to be one of the phrases that not everyone has rightly understood. I was amused to hear the other day that some kind friend who had attended one or more of our meetings remarked to an acquaintance: "What did the gentleman mean when he spoke about the inner god? What is the great idea?" It seems simple enough to me that any human being can realize or can understand that there is a divine center within his own very essence, a spark of the central fire of the universe, and that all that the man is, is simply an outflowing of the energies of this central spark within him, this divine flame which is the very core of his own being and is his truest self. It is wrong, perhaps, to think of this inner god as having a body. What on earth has a body to do with it! Has a beautiful thought, for instance, two arms and two legs and two ears and a nose and a mouth, etc., etc.? Obviously not. A thought is a beautiful energy -- if indeed the thought be beautiful. It is only bodies that have shape. Has your consciousness per se a shape? It were a poor consciousness if it had a shape that a carpenter or a smith might make or might copy! Consciousness is a divine energy, a living flame, a living fire, and it simply makes unto itself bodies as it will, through which bodies it manifests its native powers. I hope that you understand the language that I am now using. I do not mean to imply that the inner divinity has no form whatsoever; but whatever form it has is a purely spiritual form of which our physical body is a most imperfect reflection. Before I come to these questions before me, I am going to read to you something. This is a little story that is taken from a magazine called Oral Hygiene, a dental magazine, I suppose, and it illustrates the utmost need of using language that those you are speaking to can easily understand. I try to follow this rule always, but sometimes it is a little difficult when one is treating of subjects of abstract character. This is the little story: Chinese patient over telephone: "Doc, what time you fixee teeth for me?" Doctor: "Two-thirty; all right?" Chinese patient: "Yes, tooth hurty me all light, but what time you want me to come?" Now this quaint little story just illustrates how easy it is for a man to be wrongly understood. I might say a word or use a phrase which to me is perfectly clear, but if you don't happen to know just the sense, the idea, that I put into this word or into this phrase, you might misunderstand my meaning totally; and this is one of the reasons why I am so glad to answer the questions that come to me, because these questions show me whether I succeed in conveying to you the sublime theosophical teachings which it is my duty to give to you. This is the first question: Apparently these elder brothers called mahatmas deprive themselves of the comforts of modern civilization by living in remote places away from their fellow men. Is this a matter of preference or is it one of necessity? I think that I have already explained this question in what I have said this afternoon, but briefly the answer is that they prefer to live as they do live. To them it is by no means a deprivation. But, also, they can work much better in the quiet and away from the noise and hurly-burly of our modern Occidental life, and they would be idiots if they took the hardest and most difficult way for doing their work. By

choice they live in the simplest way, in the quietest, in the most peaceful way, because they have found that this way is the best. For the so-called modern comforts I don't think they care two pins! It is -- now please don't be hurt! -- it is the man whose whole thought is centered in his body who thinks so much of the value of physical comforts. Haven't you ever heard of the absent-minded folk who are so wrapped in thought that they sometimes don't know what they do, or eat, or what clothes they put on, and of the faithful wife who has to follow in order to prevent her husband from going out in the street in his slippers or in something still more undress! These great men care not for the so-called physical comforts of modern civilization. They have a sublime work to do in which their whole life is involved; it is their self-chosen work, and they do it in the most efficient way and in the manner which pleases them best. People today think a great deal about the comforts of our physical civilization, such as the street railways and automobiles and electric lights and houses heated with steam or electricity, etc., etc., etc. Yes, yes; all this is comfortable, and is all right in a way; but it is likewise very uncomfortable and unpleasant if, when you are trying to put a number of thoughts together in consecutive fashion, you have to do so in a room facing a street where a river of streetcars is passing by with clanging bells, and a stream of honking automobiles fills the spaces on either side, and steam-whistles are blowing and wheels are rattling and all the rest of it! This may be one of the comforts of civilization, but it is nerveracking to a man who is trying to find the necessary quiet and peace for him to achieve some really great and enduring work. Continue for a moment to examine this other side of the question. I want to ask you honestly if a man is happier merely because he has an automobile? I mean really and truly happier. I am not referring to the man who is trying to pose before his fellows and to put on side and swagger, as small-minded people sometimes do. Now there is no harm in automobiles or street-cars or electric lights or anything like that. I am not saying a word against them. But do you mean to tell me -- does any sensible man or woman in this auditorium mean to tell me -- that a man's happiness depends upon whether he has an automobile or lives in a house with electric light or gives up his burning log in the fireside for a hissing and cracking steam-radiator? If so, I pity him. I know just where his thoughts are, consequently where his actions are, and what his aspirations and yearnings are. The so-called comforts are by no means unmixed blessings -- steam heat, for instance. Ask the average Englishman who comes to this country and goes into one of the steam-heated apartments of New York or elsewhere, what he really thinks of the American steam-heated rooms. Very probably he will tell you 'a mouthful', and so did I when I first experienced the effects of such a super-heated room. Please understand me: there is no harm in comforts, even physical comforts; there is no harm in them at all if they do not absorb too much of the man's attention and vital energy -- as they usually do. All these things are good if good use is made of them; and they are all bad if you become their slaves. Be men! Be true men! Be at least in part the spiritual and intellectual fire which is within you! Then you can have all the physical comforts in the world, and they won't touch you or harm you -- that is, have them if you want them! But if you want to be one of the human sheep, a semi-slave to merely physical things, then I tell you in all earnestness that you are in a parlous state. You see, therefore, just about what I mean and how much attraction the much-lauded physical comforts have for really great men, men whose souls commune with the stars, and who, when they look into the eyes of their fellows, see a divine light there, see the flame of the other man's inner god, and who can commune with the divinity within that fellow man. Estimate life's values justly. That is our theosophical rule. I can easily accept most of the theosophical teachings, but it is difficult to associate the yogis and socalled mahatmas that one meets in India with the teachings of the Masters of Compassion and Wisdom and Peace concerning which you so often tell your Temple audiences. Will you please explain.

It is as wrong as it is foolish to confuse the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, these great ones that I have tried this afternoon so briefly to explain to you, with the yogis or so-called mahatmas of India. Perhaps the confusion arose out of the fact that this word mahatma is used, or has been used recently, in the newspapers in connection with a very sincere Hindu political agitator called Gandhi, and the explanation of the use of this word in such a connection is the following: mahatman, commonly spelled mahatma, is a title like Mr. or Sir or Lord or Baron or Count, or whatnot; it is a mere title, and it has been customary for ages in India to give this title of Mahatma to anybody who, in the eyes of those who speak, holds a position of public veneration or respect; but it is most often given to beings who possess or who are supposed to possess spiritual and intellectual grandeur. The theosophical mahatmas, therefore, are quite different from these Hindu yogis. Some of these Hindu yogis and sadhus doubtless are good and sincere and earnest men. Some I have every reason to think do not at all merit this title. I don't mean this remark unkindly. I am not speaking in order to cast aspersions on anybody; but nevertheless I am asked an honest question and I will answer honestly, for it is my duty to tell the truth as I see it or know it. Our Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace really are like demigods on earth, if we compare them with the average run of men, simply because they have evoked each one his own inner god and have become at one with it. These yogis, in some cases, are men who are striving to conquer the body and physical temptations in various ways, for instance by torture of the body. They also study more or less some of the magnificent philosophical teachings of India coming down from far-distant ages of the past; but mere study will not make a man a mahatma, nor will any torture of the body bring about the spiritual vision -- the vision sublime. Our mahatmas are such because they are the fine flowers of evolution and have made themselves to be what they are through many lives on earth of high aspiration, of lofty thinking, and of spiritual yearnings. No, our theosophical mahatmas are quite other than the Hindu yogis or sadhus. Are the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi the same as those taught by your Masters of Compassion and Peace? Just as far as Gandhi teaches the age-old wisdom-thought are the teachings identic. I do not know how far he teaches the archaic wisdom because I am not acquainted with Gandhi, although I have much respect for his earnestness and sincerity. Just so far as I teach the same old wisdom-thought are the teachings identic. Anyone, of any race, and at any time, who teaches truth teaches what the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace teach. In these words then you have your answer. I tell you, furthermore, that it is not so much what a man teaches as what a man is that is the real test of the man; and you can feel what the man really is simply by being in his presence, my Brothers. It is what a man lives, how a man lives, what his convictions are, that make him high or low in the eyes of the gods. If Gandhi lives what he believes in, and if he believes in high and noble things, in just that degree he is a great and good man. If he does otherwise -- and I do not affirm this -- then he is a hypocrite. No matter what career a man follows -- and this is our theosophical teaching -- no matter what the career or avocation in life is that he may choose, if he lives up to the heart-belief within him, and that heartbelief is one of spiritual and intellectual nobility, then he is an honest man and therefore a good man, and never will he hurt his fellows either by word or by act. Is not this a just rule? When I look into a man's face I am searching for a light; and if I see this touch of the buddhic splendor in his eyes, then I know that before me is a man, it may be a great man. It is utterly indifferent to me what his opinions may be or what line of work he follows -- science, religion, philosophy, politics, or whatnot. All are indifferent to me. I look for men, and when I see a man I will trust him; for my own heart recognizes manhood in my fellows. When you speak of mahatmas or Masters of Wisdom, do you speak from personal knowledge? Have you ever met one? What is to be done in order to meet one of them?

This question is somewhat of a poser. There is one thing, my Brothers, that no genuine, no true, theosophical teacher ever is allowed to do, and this is publicly to claim acquaintance with the great ones. No genuine theosophical teacher ever desires to do this, but earnestly desires to avoid it. There may be times when the positive assertion in the affirmative is called for, and if these very rare times fall within our esoteric rule of open speech in this respect, then the affirmative statement is permissible; but to answer affirmatively a question like this, merely in order to satisfy what may be a perfectly proper inquiry, is not one of the permitted cases; and besides, suppose that I were to answer this question by saying that I speak from personal experience of the existence of the mahatmas, what real good would that do to you? Those of you who know me and who therefore know me to be an honest man, will take my word for what I affirm; but those of you, my Brothers, my Friends, who know but little or nothing of me, would merely say, and would be quite justified in saying, "It may be. The man at least seems honest." Therefore, if I were merely to tell you again and again, and fifty times a day, that I have met the teachers, that would be no real proof to you. Those who know me -- to them indeed it might be proof; but to those who know me not at all, it would be a bare assertion; and I speak in this way, my Brothers, because in recent times there have been many such claims made by individuals who announce having had a personal contact with the teachers -- indeed, many strange and indeed weird claims along this line have been made, and I have listened to these claims with disgust. Let me remind you that it is one of our theosophical teachings that any statement made by a theosophical lecturer must be taken or rejected according to what the hearer finds of truth or of falsehood within it. This is a rule that theosophists insist upon and apply to ourselves first. And I tell you today, my Brothers and Friends, what I have often told you before: take nothing from me that you hear me tell you unless your consciousness leaps in recognition of it, and you feel that the statement made is true. Then take it, and hold to it like men. But, in any case, test it; probe it; prove it, by all the faculties that you have. Put to this work of test all that you have within you -- spiritual vision, intellectual power, and thus analyze it. Reject it if your consciousness disapproves of it, for that is only honest. I now turn to the next part of this question: "Have you ever met one?" I have, and more than one. But this assertion is no proof to you. It is my bare statement. But after what I have just said, I explain that I make the assertion because it seems an honest thing to do for those who, in this auditorium, may feel that I have spoken too vaguely. There may be hungry hearts in this room who will be glad to know that a brother has had the glorious opportunity. To these I speak in order to give them hope, to assure them that I have had that great and wonderful privilege. What is to be done in order to meet one of them? Live the life which they teach you to live, and then you will meet them; live a life of kindliness, of brotherhood, of love, of pity, of compassion, and of earnest and unremitting exercise of the intellectual and spiritual faculties. Analyze, discriminate, study, aspire, yearn to become greater than now you are; and the Masters will instantly and instinctively feel the call of your heart -- and you will soon know of their actual existence. They, in order to be known, must be reached, must be gone to. The reason is obvious. In order to learn anything, in order to gain anything, you must take the preliminary steps towards it. You must arrange the appropriate circumstances and live in accordance therewith, in order to gain the real things of life, in order to cultivate your inner faculties; and, in cultivating them, to insure yourself becoming something greater and grander than now you are. How are you to do it? The answer is: by living the life which will bring it about. Is the reason not obvious? In order to be on that distant horizon of splendor, you must yearn towards it and go unto it. Are the Masters spoken of by H. P. Blavatsky and others as having been active during the early times of The Theosophical Society still alive and working with you? They are still alive, and very much alive! But look at the curious way in which this question is phrased! "Are they working with you?" My answer, Brothers and Friends, is that I yearn to work with them. They are the goal towards which I aspire, the pattern which I try to follow. They will work with me, if you

like to phrase it so, but only when I have begun to work with them. Is it not so in all affairs of life? Does the chief in any department confide in his subordinate who refuses to obey orders? Now, the mahatmas give no orders. They show you a path, wondrous, beauteous, with glory and victory at the end, and tell you how to tread that path. That path will lead you unto them, and will in aeons and aeons in the future lead you to the very heart of the universe. Therefore they will work with me provided that I work with them, provided that I follow the suggestions that my Chiefs have given to me. The companionship exists when the companionship already exists, to utter a rather paradoxical aphorism. But if I fail, if I fall, if I stumble on the path, I can always pick myself up again and strive anew to forge a stronger link with them than that which previously existed. There is one thing only that I fear in this connection, one only thing that every student, every disciple, must be always on the watch for. It is this: turn not like Orpheus -- backwards. If you stumble on the path you can always arise and press forwards more rapidly than before; but never become discouraged. Remember that the light is ahead, that victory lies in front. Forwards is the key word of progress. No matter what the mistakes and failings and stumblings on the path may be, forwards lie light and victory beyond human thought adequately to express. The Masters will work with anyone who "lives the life", and it is so easy and so beautiful to do this -and living the life means gain: gain in power, gain in faculty, gain in sensitivity to the wondrous mysteries that surround us, gain in the sense of becoming conscious of being at one with the boundless universe. The final guerdon, the final recompense, it is beyond present human imagination to conceive of. I have one more question, Friends, and this question I promised to answer this afternoon. It is a personal question: Are you an occultist? Were I to say Yes, then you would rightly say, "The man's an egoist." Were I to say No, then you would rightly say, "The man's a liar." I don't like either horn of this dilemma. However, strictly according to the definition of this word occultist, as meaning one who studies the hid structure, relations, and operations of the universe, then I am an occultist, and so is every other man who does the same. If the questioner, by using this word, means one -- and the woods are full of them today -- who makes big claims about being in touch with cosmic spirits, or masters, or elementals, and will tell you how to get powers for a monetary fee, then I repudiate with all the earnestness of my soul, any intention ever of trying to be such an occultist. I am an occultist because I study the hid things in the universe, which means also the secret powers and faculties in the human being. I know what I have proved to be true; but by telling you this as a mere assertion, what good am I doing to you? You need not believe what I tell you. My friends who know me will believe me when I tell them, because they know me. But you kind strangers and friends -- to you it is a mere assertion. So you see how difficult it is to answer questions such as this. And let me add a few words before I pass from this to my close: I do not mean, and I did not mean, to imply that certain individuals who have called themselves occultists and who make a living by it are bad people. On the contrary, I have known astrologers and palmists and others who follow strange and unusual professions who are as fine and sincere people as any I have met anywhere, and who are governed in their dealings with their fellows by a high sense of honor; and I doubt not that if they had the private means they would give what they believe to be their services to the world free, and without price. I say this in justice to those of this type whom I have known. I hate even indirectly to do a wrong to a fellow man. I have been wronged myself and I know how it feels. But coming back to the question: merely to tell you that I am an occultist by the dictionary-definition of the word does not tell you much! Yet I answer the question in the affirmative for the same reason that led me to answer some other questions this afternoon in the affirmative. There may be in the audience

one or two, at any rate a few, whose hearts would be glad to know that the speaker whom they hear this afternoon had gone at least a little way behind the veil, however short the way may be; but nevertheless I repeat that a mere assertion does not prove anything. Beware of makers of claims! I tell you sincerely that I have never made a claim along these lines in all my life; and I add to this that had I ever made any such claims I would not be fit to stand on this platform and speak to you. I would be totally unfit. Any man who has been taught the truth, or some of the truths, regarding the structure and operations of the Universe in its invisible realms especially -- what it is and what it contains, and man's relations thereto -- is an occultist. An occultist means one who studies the hid things of cosmic being. Every one of you can be an occultist if you will: if you will live the life, if you will undertake the training, if you will follow the necessary studies. Every one of you has the powers within him which will make acquisition of these hid and wondrous mysteries of being your own. My Brothers, in leaving you this afternoon and in wishing you all a Happy New Year, let me remind you once more that the core of your being is a living god; this inner god is your essential self, the fountain of all the highest that you express as a human being, the source of all that is great, grand, and sublime! Why not ally yourself with this flame which is your self, your spiritual self? Your guerdon will be victory over the forces of life; and the end will be union with the spiritual sun of which you are, each one of you, a ray. Sons of the sun you are!

Second Series: No. 25 (February 23, 1931)

SOME SECRET CAUSES OF REBIRTH

(Lecture delivered January 11, 1931) CONTENTS: Each of us an artist of character. -- Searchers for light in the material world. -- The law of reimbodiment universal. -- Is the universe a gigantic machine? -- Thirst for material life. -- Power to reduce number of rebirths. -- State of the atom-soul. -- Diversity of individualities. -- It pays to live aright. -- Is rebirth the result of fate? -- Length of period between lives. -- Exceptions to this rule. -- Is a man always born in the same race? -- Hints on the afterdeath state. -- Opportunity for receiving more light. -- The stream of inspiration from the Masters of Wisdom. -- Penalty for betraying the ancient mysteries. -- The ancient rule in passing on truth. -- Knock at the Temple door! Children of destiny! Don't you see this fact written all over your faces? Don't you see the lines engraven by experience when you look into the faces of your fellows? Deep lines, lines of sorrow, lines of pain, lines of joy, and those clear expanses of consciousness, left by the experiences of love and peace, which the face likewise shows? Your destiny is written all over you -- all over your face, in your body, in your gestures, in the expression of your eyes, so that he who has the key to this, even as he runs, may read in the faces of his fellows what their past has been, what their present in all likelihood now is, and, judging by the past, what the future will be. Children of destiny! A destiny that each one of you for himself has woven around himself as a spider weaves its web; for you are your own makers, your own formers and shapers, because you all are living entities endowed with willpower and consciousness; and these are divine things, divine faculties, for with them a man may carve his way not only in the world but through the spaces of space, as the ages roll by. For he himself traverses time as a pilgrim, just as he traverses the short expanse of one life as a pilgrim, making himself as he goes: an artist -- an artist of character; and that character is himself. Time and space weave their magic web; and this magic web is destiny. It is on this web that the reincarnating entity taking birth after birth in lives on earth pursues his path through the ages. Mark you, my Brothers, this web is the web that he himself makes, for it is the web of his character; and time and space cooperate with him -- with his will, with his consciousness -- which thus make this web of destiny. Build yourselves nobly, therefore; and if ye have builded awry, straighten it out and build better for the future, for there is that within you which is undying. This is consciousness: not a consciousness separate from the universe, but a consciousness allied with the very heart of the Universe; for each one of you is an inseparable part of the universe in which you live and move and have your being. This consciousness is undying, for the very heart of it is boundless infinity -- the universe; and your willpower, that magic sword with which you carve your way, is one with the very essence of the universal life. Do you know, my Brothers, that this thought of man's essential oneness with boundless space is the lost key to the grand mysteries of existence? -- not only of human existence, but of cosmic existence. Feeling this oneness, then a man knows that the universe is his home: that the universe is his eternal dwelling place, and that in it he lives, for he is always one with it. He is but one expression, one part, of the vast boundless whole. There is the lost key to modern Occidental thought, the lost key of Occidental science, philosophy, and religion; and if the theosophical philosophy brings back to Occidental mankind just this one thought of man's oneness with the universe, then what peace, what consolation, what spiritual and intellectual help will it bring to bruised and broken hearts! Men hunger for light and know not where to look for it; men's instincts tell them truth, but they know not how to interpret those instincts, because their minds, their intellects, have been distorted by the teachings of men searching in the material world only for light -- a noble occupation, indeed, but nevertheless signifying that the searchers have lost the key to the grander within, of which the material universe is but the outer carapace, the shell, the clothing, the garment, the body.

This is one of the secret causes of rebirth, of the rebirth of the human soul; because man, being an essential part of the universe, one with its very heart, in his heart of hearts and indeed in all his being must obey the cosmic law of reimbodiment: his birth, then growth, then youth, then maturity, then expansion of faculty and power, then decay, then the coming of the great peace -- sleep, rest -- and then the coming forth anew into manifested existence. Even so do universes reimbody themselves. Even so does a celestial body reimbody itself -- star, sun, planet, whatnot. Each one is a body such as you are in the lowest part of yourself; each one is an inseparable portion of the boundless universe, as much as you are; each one springs forth from the womb of boundless space as its child, just as you do; and one universal cosmic law runs through and permeates all, so that what happens to one, great or small, advanced or unadvanced, evolved or unevolved, happens to everyone, to all. This indeed is one of the secret causes of rebirth. It is one of universal nature's fundamental operations. Therefore we human beings, as parts of the enormous, of the vast, of the incomprehensible whole of the universe follow the law of that universe. We cannot do otherwise. Reimbodiment of everything, of every individual entity, is one of cosmic nature's fundamental operations -- laws if you like; and because the whole so acts, does it not obviously carry along with it every part of itself? Is this, the universe, but a gigantic machine? Are human beings and other entities merely the flotsam and jetsam of a tide of fate, swept along from eternity to eternity without self-devised direction, without the exercise of the will of the individual? I have told you just the contrary. Precisely because every part of the whole is an inseparable part, therefore does it partake of all that the whole has and is; and as the whole has consciousness and will, therefore every part is composite, is composed of, consciousness and will; which means that you as parts of, inseparable parts of, the cosmic whole, of necessity have consciousness and choice, willpower, free will. You carve your own destiny, you make yourselves what you are; what you are now is precisely what in past lives you have made yourselves now to be, and what you will in the future be, you are now making yourselves to become. You have will, and you exercise this will for your weal or for your woe, as you live your lives on earth and later in the invisible realms of the spaces of space. This is one more, and the second, of the secret causes of rebirth. We human beings love this earth of ours -- and rightly so, in a sense, for here we are; here lies our present destiny; here is the inn, so to say the inn of life, in which we are at present staying for a lifetime. We shall return to it. But in this inn of life we use our willpower; we are shaping our destiny here every instant; we are making ourselves to be what we in the future shall become. So therefore, quite outside of the universal impulse, the cosmic impulse, that I have previously spoken of, which impulse is based in the fundamental law of the universe carrying us as parts along with it in the stream of evolutionary progress: quite apart from that, each one of us has individual willpower. Our destiny lies not only on the lap of the gods but in each one's own right hand, so to say. Be therefore the gods within yourselves, for the core of the core of every one of you is a divine being, a child of the spiritual universe of which I have just told you. You are inseparable from the universe. Indeed you are it; it is you. As the ancient Hindu philosophers put it: tat twam asi: "That boundless space thou art, O disciple!" It is this use of our own willpower, by which we carve our way, that determines what kind of life we shall have when next we come back to earth and take up a human body anew. Now, this is a third secret cause, and perhaps it is the most materially effectual; and this third cause resides in the bosom of each one of us. It is this thirst for material life, thirst for life on earth, hunger for the pastures and fields wherein once we wandered and which grew familiar to us, which brings us back to earth again and again and again and again. It is this trishna, to use the Sanskrit word, this tanha, as the Pali books of the Orient say; it is this thirst to return to familiar scenes that brings us back to earth -more effectual as an individual cause, perhaps, than all else. We hunger for the scenes that we have known; we long for the waters of life that we have drunken of; we yearn for the loves of olden days. Thirst, hunger, there, perhaps, is the most materially effectual secret cause of rebirth, at least so far as the individual human is concerned.

So is it even in the ordinary affairs of human life. Do not men usually go to the things that they like best, driven by the hunger for such, or such, or such, a pursuit or doing or act? Are not men usually found in the surroundings which they themselves move towards? This is brought about by hunger, by thirst, for what we want -- in other words by desire. It is desire, it is thirst, for material life that brings us back to earth, to material existence. These hungers, these thirsts, these yearnings, these desires, call them by what name you like, have been built by ourselves into our own fabric of character as tendencies and biases while we live on earth in human bodies, and they have distorted our fabric of soul, so to speak, so that even after a life on earth and during our devachanic rest period, sooner or later the time comes when these seeds of thought and of emotion, these hungers in other words, begin to make themselves felt in the excarnate ego; and then comes the attraction, the yearning back, to the familiar scenes of earth-life -and the ego slowly descends to the visible realms earthwards, and finally a little child is born, drawn to the scenes (I will use ordinary, easily comprehensible words) and to the parents and to the environment whose vibrations are most akin to its own. It is as simple as A B C. There are six questions, friends, that I have been asked to answer today: 1. Is it possible to reduce the number of our reincarnations in the physical world? 2. Is there any way by which a man can increase the number of reincarnations in the physical world which he loves? 3. Is reincarnation a result of fate, or can the human individual control the numbers and times of his rebirths on earth? 4. How long a time as an average exists between reincarnation and reincarnation? 5. Is a man always born in the same race? 6. What happens to the excarnate entity after death and before he returns to rebirth on earth? That last one is indeed some question, and this kind friend expects me to cover all the wondrous mysteries of death in five or ten minutes at most during the course of a communing with you in one afternoon! Answering therefore Question 1, it is quite possible to reduce the number of our rebirths in the physical world; and, answering Question 2, it is quite possible to increase them. I have already told you how. If you desire, my Brothers, to live in the fullest expansion of your inner faculties, in the spiritual, in the divine, part of your being, then free yourselves from the cramping shackles of earth existence and live in the sun of the spirit, in the solar splendor of divinity; and your rebirths on earth will be fewer precisely in accordance with the greatness of your yearning for the freedom of the spirit. If, on the other hand, you desire to return very frequently to earth and undergo all its temptations, to weave the web of physical existence so strong that it is difficult, very difficult indeed, to break the slightest one of its strands, then cultivate -- unfortunate wretch! -- the hungers and desires and yearnings of material life. This would be indeed an awful choice! All our unhappiness, all our misery, all human misfortune, all human worry, heartache, blindness, come from our lower desires while undergoing life in these material spheres. Freedom lies in liberating ourselves from the shackles of these material hungers, thirsts, desires -- freedom, strength, and power. The gods are in the worlds of spirit; men are here in bodies of flesh on a material sphere. The atom-souls invigorating and enlivening the grossest part of this material sphere are still more sunken in matter than are we. Who is the freer of the twain -- the atom of a stone, of gold or of silver, or of calcium, or of whatnot, or the man with his divine power of intellectual thought, using his free will, and aspiring to lift his soul to the stars? Where lies the greater freedom -- below with the atom, or with the man? And then above the man, consider if you can the life of the gods -- a vastly greater and nobler freedom which to us is divine, a full and wondrous power, and peace and understanding, power guiding the very stars in their courses, in other words laying down the laws of the universe which the gods inspire with their life and consciousness, and of which all the subordinate entities of the universe are parts. Do you understand this thought?

Just as the atoms of a man's body are in their small way conscious in an atomic consciousness and live in man's greater and grander and more expanded consciousness, which is their Oversoul, just so do we humans and just so do the gods beyond us live in the Oversoul, in the life, in the consciousness, of the supreme hierarch of our own cosmical hierarchy. Is this God? No, it is not the Occidental conception of God, not at all. For the universes in boundless space are innumerable. These sublime hierarchs of the hierarchies which infill and actually compose boundless space are uncountable, so numerous are they. They fill space full with their consciousnesses and their wills. It is this diversity of individualities which accounts for the diversity so marvelous and so beautiful that we see all around us. It accounts for the fact that one man's character is one, and another man's character is another, and my character is one, and yours is one, etc., etc., etc., for we are all, collectively speaking, sparks of the cosmic spiritual fire. Do you understand this thought? This marvelous diversity is caused by the innumerable units of the great sparks of the cosmic fire in which those sparks live and move and have their being. We thus come back to the original thought -- the unity of all things, of all entities, with all that is -- with the universe! What a blessed thought! Boundless space is our home! Furthermore, great ethical principles repose upon this wondrous thought, universal brotherhood, the feeling of oneness with the All: the feeling that the life, the being, the career, the destiny, of every entity is ours also; the sense that when we harm a fellow, ultimately we harm ourselves in exactly the same way, because we have used our will to make an impression on the surrounding being of the universe, and infallibly there will be an equivalent reaction against us. Such is nature's law: action and reaction are equal, and inevitable is the reaction. Watch your step! Watch your step! Even from the pragmatical standpoint it pays to be decent and strong and to do right and to live aright! Not only does it develop your own inner faculties and powers, so that as you exercise them they become constantly stronger, but also you have peace; you inspire love in the hearts of your fellows; you inspire trust in their minds. Believe me, my Brothers, trust a man, trust the best that is in him, no matter how often he may fail you, trust him (using your common sense, of course, and your judgment) and make an appeal to the god within him and you will arouse something grand in him by that appeal. He will yearn to be worthy of your trust. No great matter if he fail! His failure simply shows that the poor fellow is too weak. But one day he will be strong and he will pay you back in the golden coin of grateful recognition. As ye sow, ye shall reap. Make your own character harmonious; make it symmetrical, make it beautiful, make it strong by exercising those qualities and faculties within you which tend to do this. Abhor those hungers and desires and passions and yearnings and whatnot, which weaken, which corrode, the fabric of your character. Don't you see immediately what happens when you follow the path which weakens and corrodes your character -- the indulgence of your desires and your passions? You are unbuilding, you are slowly destroying yourself; you are undoing nature's wonderful age-long evolutionary labor. "Work with Nature and she will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance." So says one of our theosophical books, and it is holy truth. It pays to do right. Quite outside of this matter-of-fact viewpoint, turn an instant to a nobler vision. Happiness, peace, strength, grandeur, lie in being a true man -- such happiness as naught else in all the world can bring to you. Does not a man's heart beat faster when he hears of a deed which is heroic? Does not he aspire to emulate it? Isn't there a glad and instinctive leaping of the soul when we hear of a thought or of an emotion or of a deed which is sublimely self-forgetful? This is the instinctive homage of the human heart given to strength -- to spiritual strength; and we know that all sin so called is weakness; and this is the reason why every normal human being contemns evil doing, has contempt for it. Nobody likes weakness, and all normal human beings love strength, real strength I mean, strength of character, strength of intellect, strength of vision, strength of the spirit. I have told you, therefore, how to reduce or how to increase your rebirths on earth. To ordinary humans it seems quite right to love this dear old earth of ours. It is right, it is proper; but only when you love it

impersonally. The danger is not, my Brothers, in the earth on which we live: the danger lies in each one of us who live. Don't you see what I mean? When a man meets a temptation, or a woman meets a temptation, is the danger outside? No. It is in your own heart. Therefore love your earth, for it is beautiful to love, it is beautiful to look upon. But try to make it better than it is, better than it was when you found it. There is a spiritual law behind this effort so to do; there is strong reason in so acting. In it there is a great and wise philosophy. Contrariwise, hunger for material existence because it is material, and then you will reincarnate frequently, and each time weave a web of character which becomes worse and worse as time goes on, because the character will be more and more filled with earthly desires, with the desires of this weak, feeble body where sorrow is and where pain abides; because on earth our desires never can be satisfied. The more we indulge an ignoble appetite the fiercer it burns. Freedom lies in saying no, and in controlling ourselves and using our faculties properly. There lie freedom and peace and strength; and a man who can succeed in doing this and doing it all the time is like a god among men. The doing of it is easy. It is a great deal easier than suffering and suffering and paining and paining and worrying and worrying and being at odds with all your fellows all the time, and finally ending in misery, physically, mentally, and otherwise -- a degenerate, broken being. Think it over! And yet remember this, that the real seat of these material desires and hungers and appetites is not in the body, which is but man's outermost garment, but in his undeveloped and weakly controlled human mind. There it is where our passions and our desires and our hungers and our yearnings ride and build imaginary castles of fantasy which we mistake for life's realities. It is our mind which thus misleads us; and the poor, wretched body, feeble instrument of flesh, can do naught other than obey slavishly what the mind impels it to do. The same bodily passions are easily controlled, for they are after all but reflections of the troubled dreams of our brain-mind. Rebirth: is it "a result of fate?" It is not, and the human individual most decidedly can "control the numbers and times of his rebirths on earth," just as I have explained. There are other lives far more beautiful than the lives on earth -- in the inner realms, in the inner spheres. The wonder is not at all that these inner realms, to which we shall go after death, exist and that we shall live there, but the wonder would be if life on this physical globe were the only one that the boundless universe could give to us. The mere fact that we exist here is a promise and an intimation of the fact that we shall exist hereafter on other spheres, in other worlds, on other planes. This life exists. It is like a signpost. Do you get the idea? As the Hermetic saying has it, "As above, so below; as below, so above." So far as this goes, it proves the existence of other spheres, of other planes, of other worlds. Otherwise explain how it happens that we are here. Is it by chance? Show me the man who believes in chance; then I will ask him a few questions, and he won't pry himself loose from my questionings by any fiddle-faddling argumentations about what Tom says, or Dick says, or Harry says. He is going to tell me why, give a reason for his alleged belief, or confess that the great sages and seers of the ages are right. Rebirth is the result of destiny, the destiny that you have made for yourselves in past lives. You have builded yourselves to come back here to earth; and that is why you are here now, because in other lives you builded yourselves to reincarnate. You are your own parents; you are your own children; because you are yourself. Do you get the idea? You are simply the result, as a character, as a human being, of what you builded yourself to be in the past; and your future destiny -- effect of necessity following cause -- will be just the result, the karma as theosophists say, in other words the consequence, of what you are now building yourselves to be. If your present life is beautiful, you will have your guerdon in the future; you will have yourselves to thank for your happiness; and if your present life is full of pain and sorrow and heartache and inexplicable riddles which you cannot solve, likewise you have only yourselves to blame for the condition in which you find yourselves. No God outside, despotically or otherwise, creates or directs our destiny. "Ye are gods"; each one of you is a child of the spiritual universe. Take this to your hearts and meditate upon it; remember that you are at home in boundless space. Each one of you is an imbodied god.

"How long a time as an average exists between birth and rebirth?" Usually about a hundred times the length of the life last lived on earth. Why this should be so is one of the wonderful studies; but it is the rule. For instance, if a human being has lived twenty years on earth, he will have two thousand years more or less in the devachan before he returns; if a man has lived forty years before he dies, then four thousand years in devachan; if he has lived sixty years, then six thousand years in the invisible spheres, and then he returns; and so forth. That is the rule; there are exceptions, of course. There are, for instance, the great sages and seers who, on account of their developed spiritual being, can control the length of the period in the invisible realms after death, or indeed can pass from body to body retaining full consciousness, or they can return when they will; they are masters of our phases of life, even as an average man on this earth is a master of circumstances in which he finds himself -- if he be indeed a master of them, and there are such. "Is a man always born in the same race?" Bless your souls, no; certainly not! The same "race" probably will have passed away before he returns to earth again, unless indeed he be a very materially minded individual hungering for the fleshpots of earth-life; then he returns quite soon. But in his case I say, Pity him. Don't think for a moment that this earth-life is the only place where love meets love. It is more difficult for loving hearts to meet and to recognize each other on earth than it is in the more ethereal spheres; for we are farther from the heart of love of the universe, than when we are in the more spiritual spheres. In those inner realms we go from planet to planet; we enter invisible and more ethereal realms, and at each such stage we are closer to those we love, to those we love with an impersonal love, with a self-forgetful yearning to serve, to help; and such a love is very beautiful; it is a spiritual thing; and it lives. Such a love will outlast even you as you now are; for you as now you are after a time will have vanished and you will become something greater than now you are. Don't you see? For evolution is growth, and we exchange our weakness for strength, we transmute our weaknesses into their opposites; therefore we become something quite other than what now we are. Do you know why we are able to do this? Because the core of the core of every human being is a divine entity, is a god, is a cosmic spirit, is a spark of the central flame; and evolution, development, growth, is simply bringing out the faculties and powers of this spark within, of this inner god, this immanent Christos, this inner Buddha. That is growth: bringing out what is within. Is it not thus that a little child grows? Is it not thus that the oak springs from the acorn, bringing out what is within itself? "What happens to the excarnate entity after death and before the return to rebirth on earth?" I will answer this question briefly, my Brothers. A man goes whither his sum total of yearnings, emotions, aspirations, direct him to go. How easily understood this is! It is the same even in human life on earth. A man will do his best to follow that career towards which he yearns or aspires; and when we cast this physical body off as a garment that has outworn its usefulness, we are attracted to those inner spheres and planes which during the life on earth last lived we had yearnings towards, aspirations towards. That is also precisely why we come back to this earth to bodies of flesh. It is the same rule but working in the opposite direction. We had material yearnings, material hungers and thirsts, latent as seeds in our character after death; and they finally bring us back to earth. But after death, the nobler, brighter, purer, sweeter, seeds of character, the fruitage, the consequence, of our yearnings for beauty and for harmony and for peace carry us into the realms where harmony and beauty and peace abide. And these realms are spheres just as earth is, but far more ethereal and far more beautiful. I touch upon this matter with great reluctance, for the reason that there is so much of an esoteric character about it that I cannot tell in a public lecture the whole truth and I will explain this in a moment. I can give hints, but I cannot explain it, and this is not at all because our Society has any idea that our teaching should selfishly be kept for ourselves, not at all; but because you cannot, my Brothers and Friends, understand the deeper theosophical teachings without having studied. Otherwise you will surely misconstrue them; and just as all the past ages have had esoteric schools where the deeper teachings

were given to those who were worthy and well qualified to receive, so have we theosophists. Any human being may join our Esoteric School, may receive the sublime teachings given therein; but first he must pass the tests. Is not this right? These tests are impersonal honesty of purpose, an impersonal hunger for light, an impersonal desire to help along the good work, an impersonal pledging of the word of honor that all that is taught in the esoteric schools shall remain sacred and guarded in the silence. The excarnate entity is in its devachan, as theosophists say; that is to say in a heaven world of peace indescriptible in human tongue, a world of bliss and utter repose. And yet the spiritual entity nevertheless goes to other realms and spheres, as I have already told you. This is a contradiction, perhaps you say. I answer, No. It is a paradox if you will, that is, an apparent contradiction. Do you want to know the truth, the whole truth and naught but the truth? Then, my Brothers, come to the Temple door and knock; ask, ask with a loyal heart and ye shall receive. This teaching is yours. All that the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace have in their keeping is their most sacred charge. The wisdom-religion of the archaic ages is yours as your natural birthright as human beings; but in order to receive it you must receive it aright. As I have received it, thus may I give it; not otherwise. Yet all this teaching is yours. And this leads me directly to a communication that I received today: Dear Dr. Purucker: Here are some questions which I have received from a friend -- a very good friend both of you and of our Society. It is really a series of questions, so I quote my correspondent's words in extenso, as they do not lend themselves to being divided into separate and distinct questions, being all intimately interrelated: "There is a point which has been on my mind since reading the Ninth Circular Letter by Dr. de Purucker in the December Forum. We are told in several places that 'the stream of inspiration and of illumination and of wisdom and of help flows as strongly from them [the Masters] as it ever did' (page 5), and other words to the same effect. "Now what some of us want to know is, are this illumination and this wisdom simply a repetition of what is to be found in the theosophical literature which we already have? If so, why should one's 'heart go out in great pity, in genuine compassion' towards those who prefer to get this illumination and wisdom out of the books in which it is recorded, rather than from a teacher who is just telling us the same things over again in his own words? On the other hand, if there is really something new in this stream of illumination why not tell us what it is, instead of repeating that it is there? Of this, there has not been the least sign so far, as far as I can perceive. Are this illumination and this wisdom, presumably given for the good of the world, of such a nature that the world is not allowed to have them? If not, why not out with it? "As you know, I have the greatest admiration for G.deP.'s stand for fraternization. This has been so long forgotten that it needs a man with a tongue of fire to proclaim it. All credit be to him for so doing. But even this is not new; it is the old forgotten wisdom which many read every day and forget the next minute. It is that, not the adherence to texts, or 'bibliolatry,' which calls for pity and compassion. "If, perchance, I am told that this new knowledge is given to ES members, then, I ask: Why place a fence around it? If it is for the world, the world should have it. If it is not for the world, but only for a select few who have either taken a pledge or proved themselves worthy, why talk about it at all? Why tantalize others by talking about something fine which you decline to give them? "In short, these questions have put me in a grouchy mood. . . . This in no wise affects my attitude towards the fraternization movement, but I am not going into raptures of ecstasy over something which so far appears to have no existence, apart from the knowledge we already have. If this wonderful stream of wisdom and inspiration can be shown to exist, then I shall be the first to admit it. But mere reiteration that it does exist, simply makes me laugh." Don't you see the position I am in? Now, I will try briefly to explain this matter, Friends. I have a deep sympathy with minds like that of this writer, minds which are hungry for light, genuinely sincere and manly, yearning, as this writer does, for some proof that Dr. de Purucker's statement is, after all, holy truth. Let such sincere inquirers knock, and the door will open for them; let them ask and ask aright, and it is theirs. They have as much right to it as the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace

themselves have. But can I, who am pledged to the strictest secrecy and silence, throw open the doors of the holy of holies to any who may desire to rush in without due preparation and without understanding what it all means, even granting perfect sincerity and a genuine yearning for truth on their part? You may remember what the Christian text says: "Give not that which is holy" to all and sundry; you may also remember the other Christian saying: "Cast not pearls before" those who as yet have not been prepared to know their value and hence to receive them in the spirit in which they are given. This stream of illumination and wisdom and help indeed continues to flow, and it flows now as always it has flowed into the world. It flows from the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, or rather through them from still higher spiritual beings. To use the beautiful metaphor of one of the great Hindu epics, I may remind you of the spiritual waters of the Ganga, the great Ganges as they modernly call it in India, which, mystically speaking, is said to flow with rippling and pearly splendor from the gods into the dwelling places and habitats of men, the physical Ganges symbolizing the flow of the spiritual Ganges which cleanses men of the stain of faults, and which fills their souls with light and the waters of life. This story of the spiritual Ganga is a very deep and profound one and a very beautiful one. Truth exists in the world, my Brothers, and can be had. Examine human history; examine the civilizations of Greece, of Rome, of Babylonia, of Persia, of Egypt, of India even today: you will find in all these countries that the schools of the Mysteries were sacredly guarded, the teachings most secretly kept. So sacredly were they guarded in Greece and Rome, for instance, that betrayal of what took place in the initiation chamber, or any unauthorized allusion to the teachings given, was punished by the State itself with the supreme physical penalty of death. I may remind you of the great-hearted Socrates who unintentionally betrayed some of the teachings of the Mysteries, and of the philosopher Diagoras who had to flee for his life. Now, such an extreme penalty theosophists, of course, look upon with horror and aversion as a horrible degeneration of the original penalty for betraying the Mysteries, which was simply that of exile into a far land, and a man thereafter was called 'dead' because he was dead at law in the land of his birth. He was dead to his fellow-citizens and to the State, and this fact and this phrasing were construed literally by later generations of men; and thus the death penalty for the betrayal of the Mysteries was inaugurated in a later age. This one fact shows that there had come about a terrible degeneration in the original strictly humanitarian spirit of the Mysteries; but it also shows with equal clearness how sacredly the ancient Mysteries were universally venerated and guarded from unauthorized exposure or from invasion of any kind. Yes, the holy wisdom has been kept secret, sacred, and apart, from immemorial time; but there always have been teachers of it in the world; "the Lost Word originally given by the supreme Hierarch," as the writers of the Hebrew Qabbalah put it, "to a select company of angels in Paradise" even today can be found and can be told to those worthy and well-qualified to receive it, and actually is so told. The lost wisdom is here; accept the conditions of admission into its portals, apply for entrance in the right spirit, show your willingness to cooperate with those who give all they can to help along the work of human brotherhood and who live for the receiving of light solely in order that they may be the means of passing on the light to others. Do this, and then the holy wisdom is yours for the asking. It is your birthright. But even a child may not claim its birthright until it come of age: a wise provision even in human concerns. No, this illumination and this wisdom are much more than the mere repetition of what is found already printed in our theosophical books. Such printed matter is of course a part of the ancient wisdom. The great author of the first of these books, H.P. Blavatsky herself, wrote in substance: "What I now give out to the world is only a few fragments of the ancient wisdom of the archaic ages. Other teachers will come and give other fragments; and these fragments will fit in perfectly with what I now and here give." Of course this is the truth, because every educated man knows that no great teacher has ever given all the wisdom of the gods out publicly and at one time, and in no case except under a more or less thin veil of allegory, symbol, and metaphor. This is naturally, inevitably, perfectly right. But in addition to this stream of illumination and wisdom and help existing, mainly and in its largest part in our Esoteric Section at the present time, I must also point out to you that, particularly during the last

three years or so, there has been a steady emission from us of hitherto esoteric teachings into public channels, such teachings having become proper and fit for publication at the present time; although I admit that these teachings have been very carefully worded, and they have been made so absolutely accordant, even in language, with what H. P. B. wrote and taught, that few perhaps have as yet discovered their existence as new fragments of the archaic Rock of Ages. Yet they may be found by those who are interested enough to read my public lectures, also any articles written by myself and Katherine Tingley jointly and published in The Theosophical Path, and in other publications of mine. Actually these new published teachings are most valuable keys in themselves. Were the world ready for it, there would not be any need for an Esoteric Section at all, but every man being ready and fit would be a fit and proper channel to receive the living fire of the ancient wisdom. The new teachings that have been given since H. P. Blavatsky left this sphere of work are "new" only because for thousands and thousands of years they have been kept secret by the Masters. These new teachings are from the same archaic wisdom whence H.P.B., the envoy of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, took the teachings which she published. Consequently, my heart does indeed go out in great pity, in genuine compassion, for those who cannot see that truth is a living fire and that you cannot lock it up in books. To change the metaphor: the fountain of truth flows even now with undiminished stream; and any son of man who at the same time is a son of heaven, may drink at this fountain, at this flowing stream, if he will come to the mystic door in the proper spirit. Ask! Knock! This is a promise. I pity those who think that H.P.B. brought the truth, or at least certain fragments of it, but that when she passed on it was thereafter impossible for a human being to gain other fragments of that same truth until the end of the present century. I pity them indeed; for I tell you in all the earnestness of my soul that the same stream of illumination and wisdom and help is flowing even today; and this stream is your spiritual birthright. It cannot be given openly to the world; the world would not understand it. It must be given only to those who have been trained by study to understand it, so that they can properly interpret it, so that their lives can be beautified, glorified, made grand and sublime; and thus that they themselves in turn becoming teachers may help others to enter the fields of happiness and peace, of wisdom and compassion. Yes, this wisdom, this illumination, exists for the good of all the world; but precisely because it is given for the good of the world it is given according to the immemorial manner: As I have received it, thus only can I give it. I have labored, labored through many lives, to be able to receive even the little that I now possess and can understand; and I know that it would be very, very unwise to hand to others the treasure that I have received, little as it may be, otherwise than as I myself have received it. Now, do we "place a fence around it" -- to use the language of this highly intelligent writer? "If it is for the world, the world should have it." O immortal gods, yes, the world should indeed have it; but it is not ready for it, it cannot understand it, it won't understand it. So we have to frame a scheme that men may, despite themselves, get at least a little of the living fire of truth; otherwise they won't take it; and that scheme is, as fishers of the souls of men to bait our hooks with bits of the wondrous truth itself. My Brothers, you can have this truth. I can show you how to have it; but first you must pass the tests. What are these tests? An honest heart, a hunger for truth, a yearning for light and for ever more light; and you must show this in your life. It is manly to ask such a test of your fellows; it is an appeal to the god within them; it is an appeal to the instinctive sense of human grandeur, to the longing in human hearts for inner growth, for spiritual betterment. It is yours, this wisdom; it belongs to you; it is your human birthright; but you must "come of age" before you may receive it. You will come of age in time; but oh! why not come of age now? This simply means yearning for ever more light, living an honest life, a manly life, and with your heart always filled with the unuttered prayer: "Give me truth and let all the rest go." When that prayer fills your heart full, you will already have passed the test. You will already have knocked at the temple door, and thereafter you cannot be kept out. You will, in fact, find that indeed there is no door.

It is true that I have often spoken of this living stream of illumination and light. I recognize that this writer is perhaps justified by ordinary literary customs in saying that my statement is reiterated, is repeated, perhaps tiringly. Yes; and I do it deliberately. I want my fellow men to know that truth is in the world, that this truth may be had, and I tell them the truth when I speak of it. You may have it, but I say again that you must come in the right spirit. You must show me that your heart hungers for light, for peace, and for the opportunities to labor in self-forgetful service for mankind. I am a fisher for men. Every genuine theosophical teacher is. Every man who longs to help his fellows and who has at the same time at least a part of a great light to give -- not his light, not my light, but the wisdom-religion of the archaic ages -- every such human being who longs to give to his fellows what is theirs by right of birth and who searches for ways by which to move their hearts, to open their eyes, he indeed is a fisher for the hearts of men. I bait my hook with the appeal to the intuition of my fellows, with the statement that there is truth in the world, that the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace live, and that they form a brotherhood of great seers and sages; that this brotherhood has existed from immemorial time; that they possess in its fullness the archaic wisdom-religion of mankind; and that this wisdom can be given today to fit and worthy men. This is the bait which I place on my hook. I yearn to help my fellows, to give them what I have earned. O my Brothers, believe me, there is no selfishness in keeping this wondrous wisdom secret. It has been so kept from immemorial time by the greatest seers and sages of all the ages; but always has the call gone forth from them: "O man, knock, and knock aright; ask, and ask aright; come, come to the feast laid on the table of the Master: eat, drink." That is my bait, the bait of truth, the bait of the heart of a man who, whatever his failings may be, honestly loves his fellow men. I yearn to help. I live for it. I have given up my life to this wondrously beautiful work; my life is consecrate to it; and what little I have to give, that little is yours, and I long to give it to you. Answering more definitely, therefore, the question of this querent, I will say that this illumination and this wisdom of which I speak are vastly more than merely "a repetition of what is to be found in the theosophical literature which we already have." It is much more than merely repeating in my own words what H. P. Blavatsky has already so nobly and so adequately set forth in her great works; and furthermore, these other teachings are new to the modern world. Again, all these teachings belong to mankind and are not selfishly kept from any man, but as I have said, I cannot give what I myself have received under the pledge of secrecy otherwise than as I myself have received it. If there is any quarrel on this point, why quarrel with me who try to be a faithful servant of those who have taught me? If there is any quarrel, quarrel if you will with the age-old rule and custom, and with the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion themselves who, as for instance in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, repeat so often in varying phrases the fact that they cannot give the ancient wisdom to the world indiscriminately and to all and sundry, but only to those who have received adequate preparation.

Second Series; No. 26 (March 2, 1931)

IS OUR UNIVERSE MAD?

(Lecture delivered January 18, 1931) CONTENTS: Harmony in both infinitesimal and cosmic spheres. -- Universal harmony mistaken for ineluctable fate. -- From determinism to indeterminism. -- Theosophy shows the middle way. -- Our relation to the gods. -- Instability of scientific theories. -- Extracts from lecture by Sir James Jeans. -- He postulates an illogical theory. -- Do we exist by accident? -- Is universal death the ultimate goal of humanity? -- The lost key to Occidental science. -- The universe friendly to human life. -- Einstein touches theosophical truth. -- Theories as to the nature of God. -- Tendency to anthropomorphize. -Confusion of meanings of the term 'space.' -- Island-universes of modern astronomy. -- Impersonal love the heart of the universe. Friends -- old friends and new friends, friends of the ages past and those of you who, mayhap, for the first time hear something of our wonderful theosophical teachings -- Greetings and Peace! The title of my lecture this afternoon is: 'Is Our Universe Mad?' Do you live in a universe which is mad? Are you therefore yourselves crazy? Or is there an instinct within you which tells you that the mighty orbs of space pursuing their revolutions so majestically, so harmoniously, so peacefully with each other, are all symbolic of the fact, indeed are standing proof, that the universe is harmonious with itself, every part with every part, and that a cosmic insanity is the very last thing that human beings or any intelligent, sentient, self-conscious, thinking entity may find in boundless space? If the universe is mad, if it is a helter-skelter universe, a crazy universe, then we are all crazy. If so, there is then neither cause nor reason for existence; and in the universe there is naught but fortuity sitting supreme as the Goddess of Chance, and ruling, not by irrevocable fate indeed, but by her own essential being -- fortuity, chance, helter-skelterism, haphazardism. Where do we see a proof of this anywhere? Search the infinitesimal worlds and you find the same majestic law and order that prevails in the cosmic spheres. In both you find harmony, in both you find cooperation; in both you find everything living for everything else and all working unto some grandiose and predestined end, which we human beings, although we have self-consciousness and intellect, can indeed sense the existence of, but of which we cannot understand all the details as expressed in the cosmic process. How fine it is that we have this intuition of the cosmic order! How splendid a promise it is of a greater light to come to us, of new realms of being to explore in the future, as our faculties evolve and expand! Think what it means to see before us as our present and also our future destiny the vision of ourselves as inhabitants of a boundless sphere, of an incomprehensibly vast universe, in which of course at present we live and move and have our being, but of which our poorly developed understanding as yet gives us so feeble an image. However, we sense a future before us every step towards which enables us to envisage something grander than that which now we know. How fine it is that, great as we are as human beings, we are growing to an ever expanding realization of how much greater and grander the cosmos is than we are, and how filled it is with wonder and beauty, with harmony and symmetry, with everlasting peace flowing forth from its heart of love, which is the heart of harmony. A mad universe would mean that it could not hold together for a fraction of an instant of time. No part would cohere with any other part, but everything would be helter-skelter, indeed a crazy universe both in general and in particular. Where do we sense all this? Nowhere. Indeed, we see so much to the contrary that some philosophical minds have actually spoken of the universe as being in the grip of an ineluctable Fate, thereby misreading and misconstruing indeed, but nevertheless recognizing the energy, the power, the consistency, and therefore the majesty, of the laws of the cosmos. All the deductions of the scientific researches and teachings, all the estimated truths that our modern philosophical scientists are bringing to us, are based on the one unquestionable fact that nature in her operations pursues invariable processes, which because they are invariable and work continuously without interruption, men call universal law, or universal laws.

Suppose that our scientists were faced with a picture, with a panorama, of being which had no invariable processes of action at all, indeed no processes of any kind, but only blindly driven atoms flying hither and yon throughout the spaces of boundless space. Could there be any such thing as human science whatsoever? Obviously not, for there would be no basis of regularity, of order, of system; and furthermore, the human mind as a part of the cosmic process would be entirely irregular, unsystematic, incapable of logical and coherent thought. Neither the one nor the other exists. Yet mark you, there is afloat in the scientific world today a teaching which is called indeterminism, signifying that there is at least relatively disjointed and uncontrolled action of individuals apart from the cosmic process, from which notion the idea seems to flow that there is chance, fortuity, in the universe. How can this be? How can one atom be driven by chance, be governed or ruled by chance, and that same chance not prevail everywhere? That one atom then would be outside the laws and regularity of boundless infinitude, and it is obviously not so. The meaning of this last idea is that some of our great scientific thinkers have revolted against the ideas of the scientists of another generation now dead, who taught a rigid physical determinism, implying that the universe is held in the grip of an ineluctable and inescapable fate; and (mark you here the poor logic) a fate -- meaning an invariable course of action -- working fortuitously, haphazardly, helter-skelter! What is the matter with these particular Occidental thinkers? Let them use the logic of their minds, let them rigidly follow out their own philosophical principles based as these latter are claimed to be on natural laws and processes. Either chance rules the universe or law does; and we see chance nowhere and law everywhere. Revolting from the bygone materialistic doctrines of a generation of scientific thinkers now dead, and rightly so revolting, some of our greatest modern scientific thinkers have run to the other extreme of fantasy, and now are attempting to preach a doctrine which they call indeterminism, implying that there is chance of a new kind in the universe, a chance existing at the heart of things, thus again implying that the universe is not governed by orderly and systematic processes, ruled by law, which last is but the recognition of harmony, beauty, love, peace, evolution, everywhere. Some of our modern scientific thinkers are great men indeed. Theosophists call them our best friends; they are doing our work albeit in their own way; they have approached in recent years some of our theosophical teachings wondrously close, but not yet have they found and adopted what is the master key to nature's holy of holies. This master key of thought is the following: all Nature is ensouled; it is a vast organic entity, every part interworking, interlocked, interrelated, with every other part, and thus all working together towards that same distant consummation, which human beings vaguely sense but obviously cannot fully understand, because the consummation is too great for our presently undeveloped minds; nevertheless our understanding is growing to apprehend it ever more as our faculties expand through evolutionary growth. How wonderful it is, I repeat, that there are always to be discovered these greater scenes beyond as our imperfect faculties evolve more and expand; that nature with every geological era takes on a new face, portrays a new aspect of herself, and that because of this we continuously are able to see new beauties and new marvels everywhere as we grow. Life is wonderful; growth is full of happiness, for every step in growth is a step nearer to nature's heart. You have therefore your choice: are you all crazy, my Brothers, the haphazard offspring of a mad, of a crazy, universe, or are you, as theosophists have taught from immemorial times, sons of the gods, selfconscious beings passing through an experience on earth on our long evolutionary pilgrimage to greater and ever greater things -- an evolution which is endless, which had no beginning, which will have no end? Choose! I know what your choice is. Yes, life is intrinsically beautiful and full of mystery and wonder, and the more you see of life the more you realize that beauty, and the less you see of life the less you realize the wonder of it.

Think what it means to be a collaborator with the gods in the cosmic work; and that is just what we obviously are. We are here in this universe; we are self-conscious entities; we have willpower and choice, and we work or fail to work as we choose; but nevertheless we choose -- and this is exercising a godlike faculty; and we abide, we must abide, by the results of our choice. But all the same we collaborate with the powers that rule the universe, that govern it, call these powers by what name you will. I call them by the good old name, gods for that indeed is what they are. Some of you may prefer to call them Angels and Archangels, what not -- Powers, Principalities, Virtues, Dominions, and all the other etcetera of names. What do names mean after all? Let us not quibble over names. The idea is the important thing. We are the children of the gods -- not children born as human children are born, but their spiritual offspring, living in their vital spheres, which in their aggregate are our universe. Just as the atoms composing a man's body live in his vital sphere, which is the universe of those atoms, similarly in the vital spheres of the gods do we live and move and have our being. Thus are we children of the gods -essentially gods ourselves therefore, in our innermost beings; for the heart of the heart of the heart of a man is a divine spark, a divine entity; and all the work of evolution is merely the bringing out into ever grander expression of the energies and faculties and powers of this god -- shall I say within or above? -but at any rate of this divine entity which I call the inner god. In future aeons when evolution shall have done its wondrous work upon us, then we, my Brothers, shall ourselves have evolved forth the god within us -- each one of you will have evolved forth the god within each one of you -- and then we shall be not only as gods, we verily shall be gods. In the far distant aeons of the future this shall come to pass. Look even now at the almost impassable gulf of feeling and of thought, of consciousness and of faculty, between the beasts and man: man, the proud possessor and exemplification of his fiery intellect which can probe the abysses of space or the equally wondrous abysses of the atom, and also the possessor of feeling which can encompass the universe in its reach, so that even human love is akin to divine love; for the man who loves greatly is a great man. Even now these faculties are within us, and evolution will simply bring them forth into ever greater and greater perfection, and more and more of them in all their amazing variety. Thus and therefore in times to come we shall be gods, not only on earth but elsewhere. Is our universe mad? Or is there law in the universe? Is there harmony in the universe? Is there order in the universe? Are things regular in process and in action? Your own mind tells you the proper answer. Admit any one of these last four questions as conveying a fact, and your inevitable answer is: Yes, the universe is sane, the universe is not crazy. Let me now tell you something, my Brothers. The theosophist more than any other man recognizes with profound gratitude the wonderful and often self-denying work that our most eminent scientists are doing. As I have told you, science is our best friend. But at the same time we are scientific students and we know that all scientific theories vary from age to age, because the theories and hypotheses of science are merely the teachings, the ideas, of great scientific men who emit them, who formulate them and emit them, at different periods as the years flow by into the ocean of the past; and as scientific knowledge steadily increases, so do these scientific teachings, ideas, theories, hypotheses, grow profounder, greater, wiser, and more impressive as time passes; so that in very truth what is the orthodox (I use the word advisedly) scientific teaching of one century is a forgotten scientific teaching of a thousand years after, or of five hundred years, or of a hundred years after, it may be. Theosophists are profoundly grateful to these self-denying, thoughtful, earnest, devoted, and in most cases kindhearted scientific researchers; but we don't accept what they say as the whole truth of the universe. We know better. I am going to read to you some extracts from a newspaper containing a cabled report dated from London, November 29, 1930, giving the views of one of the most prominent and justly renowned British physicists, Sir James Jeans, a man who has come -- in one or two ideas of his that I have frequently spoken of from this platform -- marvelously close to our theosophical teachings. But now I am going to quote to you some statements of his that seem to me to be strangely inept; and I marvel how a man of his intellectual capacity and evident scientific insight can emit theories that seem to me to fight like the very

devil with other theories that he himself has put forth. Is illogic a scientific virtue? I doubt it. Before I make any further extended comment, let me first read to you the following: The universe is actively hostile to life like our own. Human life -- indeed all life -- arose through a mere accident. An ice age of universal death must eventually destroy life on the earth, and man will leave the universe as though he had never been. This is, then, all that life amounts to: to stumble almost by mistake, into a universe which was clearly not designed for life [Why are we here?], and which, to all appearances, is either totally indifferent or definitely hostile to it, to stay clinging on to a fragment of a grain of sand until we are frozen off, to strut our tiny hour on our tiny stage with the knowledge that our aspirations are all doomed to final frustration, and that our achievements must perish with our race, leaving the Universe as though we had never been. Above all else we find the universe terrifying [Don't you pity him?] because it appears to be indifferent to life like our own [Why are we here? I repeat]; emotion, ambition and achievement, art and religion all seem equally foreign to its plan. [Why do they exist?] Perhaps, indeed, we ought to say it appears to be actively hostile to life like our own. Into such a universe we have stumbled, if not exactly by mistake [Whose mistake?], at least as the result of what may properly be called an accident. For him it would seem that the universe is mad, ruled by fortuity or accident. Life is hostile, he says, cosmic life is hostile to human life, and nevertheless here we are, by accident! How can these contradictions be pictures of natural truth? Use your brains! I tell you that this series of pessimistic observations is a mere theory. Where do we see it corroborated anywhere? Show me an accident anywhere and prove it to be an accident. You cannot; because that which you may call an accident had a cause; and that cause in turn had itself a cause; and behind that cause was still another cause -- a chain of causation from eternity to eternity; and where is your accident in such a chain of cause and effect? It seems incredible that the universe can have been designed primarily to produce life like our own. Quite so in one sense: primarily to produce men! This is the old Occidental theological theory that the whole of boundless space exists merely in order to produce you and me and our earth, so that I, as one of the race of human beings, can stand and wave my arms at you! Immortal gods! What an amazing return to a worn-out theological nightmare! At first glance, at least, life seems to be an utterly unimportant by-product: we living things are somehow off the main line. What does that mean? What is this main line? A crazy universe producing us because it could not produce us! And yet we are here -- here by accident! Cosmic insanity producing accidents which give birth to human life on earth! Chaos producing cosmos, order, system, arrangement, law, method, evolution, progress, harmony, peace! Think! That is what theosophists say to our friends: we try to show them that it is man's first duty to think for himself, to reject that which his conscience rejects and to hold to that which he believes to be true. And now comes the end of this remarkable series of assertions: It matters little by what particular road this final state is reached; . . . the end of the journey cannot be other than universal death. Do you think that Sir James Jeans really believes this himself? If he does, then I would like to ask him a question: Why is it that we were not dead long ago? It has ex hypothesi taken infinity to produce us and to bring us to this present time all by accident; and I suppose that the human race will disappear through the working of another cosmic accident! The glamour of a great name, such as that of Sir James Jeans, has enormous psychologic power, but no theosophist worthy of the name will ever allow his intellect to be swayed merely by the glamour of great names. It is our bounden duty as men to think for ourselves.

Question: Is universal death the ultimate goal of humanity? Is the universe actively hostile to man, or is man hostile to universal law? My answer to both these questions is an emphatic No. Now think a moment: how could either the one or the other be? If the universe were hostile to man, how is it that man is here? He could not have been produced by accident or otherwise if the universe were hostile to him, for the entire weight of the cosmic organism and life would have been against his production by accident or otherwise. Think what this asseveration means: the universe, boundless space, essentially hostile to something which nevertheless is brought forth itself by an inexplicable accident, although as just said the universe is hostile to the production of human life, to his very being! Do you understand me? On the contrary, our theosophical teaching is and has been from immemorial time (and this theosophical teaching is the same as that of all the great sages and seers of all the ages), that man is essentially at home in the universe; the universe is his eternal dwelling-place and his everlasting home. He is an inseparable part of the universe; and every part of him -- spirit, soul, mind, consciousness, all the powers and faculties of him, inner and outer, visible and invisible, are at one with cosmic law, with cosmic harmony, with cosmic love, with cosmic substance, with the cosmic processes, which have produced him strictly and rigidly in accordance with themselves, with their own characteristics, and with their own movements and processes. Such ideas as these of Sir James Jeans are mere theorizing; they are a theory only. The following is what the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, today called theosophy, teaches: that man is essentially at one with the universe, which is his eternal dwelling place; that the universe and he are essentially one; that the very core of the core of the human being, his root, is the universe itself. He is inseparable from it; he cannot ever leave it; he is a part of it, he is its offspring. Therefore what man shows or manifests he shows because the universe itself shows it, because it comes from the universe of which he is a child and an inseparable part; and if man shows intelligence and consciousness and love and pity and compassion, harmony and peace and the sense of beauty, as he undoubtedly does, these therefore are likewise in the Universe of which man himself is an inseparable part. The part cannot contain nor show what the cosmic Whole has not. Do you understand? The part can contain only what is within the whole, the All. This simple fact should be obvious enough to everybody. This oneness of all beings with the universe is the lost key of religion, of philosophy, and of science, in your Occident, my Brothers, the lost key to natural truth; and this lost key, this lost key of feeling and thought, nevertheless is slowly coming back to thinking men of the West. More and more numerous are the thinkers today in the Occident who are beginning to understand because they have begun to realize this wondrous truth: I am a child of the Universe; I am a child of the universe in all the universe's parts; I am blood of its blood, bone of its bone, thought of its thought, life of its life, flesh of its flesh; It is I and I am it. Out of the womb of being I came, and with expanding consciousness through the ages I evolve. How simple and how grand is this thought! Truly beautiful, because true. With deep respect to so great a scientific theorizer I must nevertheless recall to his thought, that stern and inflexible logic is one of the outstanding characteristics of the truly scientific mind. Yea, my Brothers, we are here because the universe has brought us forth from within itself. Here we are. Pause and reflect over what this means. Therefore because we are inalienable parts of the universe, the universe is very friendly to us. Why should so great a scientific thinker set up man, in his present imperfect evolutionary stage or condition, as the standard by which to gage boundless infinitude and all the hierarchies of animate and sentient beings existing elsewhere, and say that the universe is hostile to human life? The two ideas run not together; the two conceptions hang not together at all. The niverse is friendly to human life, otherwise we should not, we could not, be here -- I mean that we could not even exist. I am the universe; the universe is I. My spirit is a spark of the central fire; my mind is a reflection of the cosmic soul; the very atoms of my physical body are the same as the atoms which vibrate in symphonic harmonies in the celestial bodies which begem the violet dome of night. I am what I am because I am a

child of space, a child of the gods, passing through this earth stage on my long evolutionary pilgrimage. I keenly feel my oneness with the All; I sense that the remotest god in remotest space, call such a god a cosmic spirit if you like, is my close kin. I am friendly with him and he is friendly with me. In consequence, I am at home everywhere; I am at home in remotest Sirius, I am at home at the pole star, I am at home in the most distant nebula, because I recognize my kin in them. One of the greatest scientific theorists that the Occident has known since the downfall of Greek and Roman civilization has recently entered our country and is at present among us -- a man who has uttered some scientific theories which have shaken the very foundations of science itself as it existed fifteen or twenty years ago. He is teaching doctrines in a mathematical way, in a mathematical form, that theosophists as modern teachers of the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind have been teaching in the West for more than fifty years. I refer, of course, to the great Einstein. Einstein is also a man of heart. Perhaps that is why his mind has been led to penetrate so deep into the mysterious recesses of being. In making this statement I do not mean that the theosophical philosophy unqualifiedly endorses all the details of Dr. Einstein's mathematical hypotheses, but I do mean that his essential thought of the relativity of all entities is a fundamental theosophical conception, for this means that all entities are interrelated and essentially interconnected and all interworking with every entity everywhere. Whether Dr. Einstein in his mathematical demonstrations may or may not succeed in proving his theme, the essential idea, the fundamental conception, I believe to be true. He is quoted in a London paper, The Sunday Despatch, as follows, as reprinted in Public Opinion, November 21, 1930: There is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men -- above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own inner and outer life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. My peace of mind is often troubled by the depressing sense that I have borrowed too heavily from the work of other men. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built upon this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle. Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury -to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that an unassuming and simple manner of life is best for everyone, best both for body and mind. Now, isn't that fine? No wonder this man's genius has been led by the heart of him, by the clairvoyant vision of his soul, to look into nature's mystic veil and beyond it! Result: one of the few greatest scientists living today! Man ignores at his peril any part of his character. Man ignores at his peril any portion of himself; for the fully rounded out and developed man will exercise every faculty and energy of his being, and thus he becomes truly great. A man who has a heart and uses it not is a half-man; a man who has a mind and uses it not also is a half-man. Man is composite of both heart and mind; and woe be to any son of man who neglects either of the twain. Man's strength lies in the symmetrical and perfect functioning of all his faculties. It is thus that we know a great man when we see him. It is thus that love is born in our hearts for the love that we sense in others; and love is the parent of our love of beauty; love is the parent of the compassion which moves us to deeds of pity -- a divine thing; and love and harmony are one. When a man has harmony in his soul, when a man has music in his heart (and music and harmony are one), then indeed, day by day in ever larger measure, do we see the inner god showing its wondrous beauty. O my Brothers, realize your dignity as men, as human beings! In the core of the core of you is a god, a divine being, a cosmic spirit -- call it what you will -- an immanent Christ, the inner Buddha. This is your real self; it is the fountain of all that is great and noble in you; it is the fountain of the understanding heart that the great man has; it is the source of the love which makes you do great deeds. Greatness lies this way.

The world is awakening spiritually, and I have often wondered just how much to the devoted work of The Theosophical Society and of the Fellows of The Theosophical Society is due the new spiritual awakening now so manifest in the world. We see everywhere signs that our theosophical teachings are coming to the front in unexpected quarters; and this makes us happy indeed, because it means that other men are getting the peace, are receiving the inner spiritual awakening, that theosophists have received. It also means that other men are finding their spiritual freedom, finding the inner freedom of life, which when complete makes a man a god even though living in flesh, and indeed even though his body may be in slavery. Some of the great essayists and writers of our time now are talking about love being existent in the world as an inherent factor of the cosmic process, love and also poetry; and these lovers and poets who see poetry and love at the heart of things are challenging the mathematicians; and the mathematicians are taking up the challenge. It is a step forward in either case. But after all, what folly such disputes are! Is not mathematics when rightly understood the very exemplification and proof of harmony and regularity, of order and of system and of quantitative relations and of peace? And what is poetry without harmony and without the mathematical rhythm of its advancing march? Poetry is music, music also is mathematics; they are all one. Why therefore seek for a God whose heart is alleged to be that of a poet or that of a lover and at the same time say that the mathematical view of the modern scientific physicist is all wrong: that the physicist's view in other words is erroneous, because the heart of things is poetry and love? Why deny to the mathematical idea its due place in human thought as exemplifying one of nature's processes? It should be obvious that poetry, and love which is harmony, and mathematics, are all fundamentally one -- simply three different phases, or three different ways, by which the cosmic soul expresses itself in the minds of men; for the three indeed are one. For instance, Sir Francis Younghusband, a capable English writer, who, after the English fashion, writes a letter to a newspaper giving his opinions of things, speaks of his belief that the originator of the fountain of cosmic love must, besides being a great mathematician and a great poet, also be a great lover. The criticism that I venture to voice here is that so sharp a distinction is drawn between mathematics and love on the one hand and mathematics and poetry on the other hand, as if they were three radically distinct and diverse things. Why clothe the abstract divinity of cosmic being with the habiliments and attributes and customs of humanity? It is as if the Deity were merely "a great big man up there" who loves like a man, who poetizes like a man, and who reasons mathematically like a man; and I say deliver me from such horrors of imagination! Love is the very essential heart of the universe, but it is a wholly impersonal love. It is the very fountain of all that is, for love is harmony. Consequently this harmony is likewise mathematical in essence and therefore also what men would call of a poetic character; but none of these -- love, mathematics, or poetry -- should be understood literally to be the restricted human operations of consciousness of a distinctly personal character which go by the same names. The man manifests these principles because the human is a part of the universe, but he manifests them personally instead of in the purely impersonal way in which they exist in the cosmic structure. To speak of this heart of nature as being human in character however great, and thus to anthropomorphize it, and thus to limit it, is all wrong; and hence it is philosophically erroneous to speak of this heart of nature as a lover, or as a poet, or as a mathematician. Ah, no, my Brothers, the heart of things is infinite love, but is not a lover. It is infinite love because it is infinite harmony and infinite peace and infinite beauty; and hence again we cannot call it either a mathematician or a poet. The following question has been kindly sent to me by a friend for answer this afternoon. It is a short imaginary dialog between Einstein and Mr. Arthur Brisbane: Einstein: There is a limit to space, it has its boundaries. Brisbane: Admitting this, what is on the other side of those boundaries? Einstein: Nothing.

Brisbane: What is nothing? How much of nothing would it require to create a universe? Brisbane pauses for a reply. Question: How shall one solve the problem? Can nothing be done about it? Ah, but there is no problem. It is all a confusion of language, a confusion of terms. When Occidentals talk about space, they confuse two ideas: first, what they call emptiness on the one hand, supposed to be the cosmic container, which is not a container because then it would be a thing; and, second, extension of a material sphere -- in other words a universe composed of a vast number of nebulae, of suns, and all the rest of it. Now, theosophists also teach that our universe has boundaries, that therefore it is finite because it is an entity; it is indeed an entity, an organic, cosmic entity, just as a human being on our much smaller scale is on earth an entity, or as a tree is, or as a beast is, or as our sun is, or as our earth is, or as any other planet is. But in such case theosophists speak only of our own universe, our own home-universe, of which we are the offspring, or of any other organic entity in the boundless spaces of space. What I mean by our own home universe is all that is comprised within the encircling zone of the galaxy, of the Milky Way: this we call our home-universe, and obviously it has boundaries. Now then, what is outside those boundaries? Our answer is, space, intercosmic ether if you like, or call it by any other name you please; we shall avoid haggling over words, and therefore speak of it as the intercosmic ether. Our home-universe is surrounded by what our modern astronomical scientists call island-universes, which are other universes more or less like ours, and these island-universes our astronomers dimly see through their telescopes and discern on their photographic plates as star-clusters or nebulae, or whatnot. These "Sparks of Eternity," as theosophists call them, are sown throughout the boundless, limitless fields of the spaces of space; and space in this our theosophical sense is frontierless, beginningless, endless, the All. In this question we discern the usual and unvarying quibbling over terms -- that is all this question really refers to; and such quibbling is the usual occurrence when men disagree, for they usually disagree not so much about essentials but about differences of opinion arising from misunderstandings of the meaning of words. In an argument both men are usually sincere, usually both mean to do right, usually both mean to be just to each other, but their arguments most commonly arise out of a mutual misunderstanding of words, and therefore their arguments degenerate into mere fightings over words which they mistake for disagreements about essentials. How many quarrels might be avoided if men, when discussing together, would first define the terms that they intend to use. I now turn to a number of questions on the theme of our study together this afternoon, and these questions I have promised to answer today. I will answer them very briefly, and then our time to part will have come: Is universal death the ultimate goal of humanity and of the world, as the English physicist Jeans suggests? I have already answered this question, and I again say that the answer is No. If universal death, according to this theory, were the end of the universe, then how explain that we are here and very much alive now? We had all the infinity of the past, all boundless duration of the past, in which to experience such universal death coming upon the universe. Yet here we are. Let these theorists explain this one fact, if you please, before enunciating more theories of this kind, for that is really what they are: theories, theories, theories! Don't call them truths until nature herself has been proved to be their author and foundation. Nature is the final tribunal of truth, and when I say nature, I mean not physical nature alone but spiritual nature, divine nature, as well -- nature invisible as well as visible. Here is something to take note of, and it is one of our fundamental theosophical teachings: every entity, no matter how great, no matter how small, in our theosophical doctrines -- the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind -- has a beginning, has its culmination of power, each has its flowering of faculty and energy, and then undergoes its decay, and finally its death; then ensues for it a rest period; after which it

comes forth anew, blossoming anew from out the invisible worlds into this sphere again. Just so a man dies and disappears from earth, but later returns to a new body on earth; exactly so a universe is gathered together, reaches its culmination of power and of expression of what is within it; then its energies begin to wane, and decay sets in; then it dies, and its body is dissipated. But, after long cosmic ages of rest, it comes forth anew -- a reimbodiment of a world, just as a man reimbodies when he reincarnates. Every thoughtful man will instantly see how this system appeals to his sense of consistency, for he feels the logic of it, the logical simplicity of it; and the fact that this universal method of embodiment, then rest, then embodiment, then rest, then embodiment, then rest, exists in all things that we humans can trace the history of is a standing proof that our intuition -- nature's own voice of truth within us -- is true. We men of earth know, if we think at all clearly, that the faculties more or less developed that we possess as humans we could have developed only in this same environment in which now we are, because these faculties are appropriate to this environment. This fact itself is a proof of our having had other lives on earth. We could not have developed the faculties that we have now -- being faculties appropriate to this sphere -- on some other sphere. We have developed them on this earth in other lives on earth, and that is precisely why we are now here on earth, possessing the faculties that we developed in other lives on earth in this same environment, because such faculties would be inappropriate and unfit for any other field except this in which they were seeded and rooted and grew to manifestation. Yes, our universe will die, but only because this universe is an entity, therefore a limited organism; but boundless, frontierless infinitude is immortal, nor can it ever pass away. Such an idea is grotesque. On a smaller scale will our sun also die in future time; so will our earth; so will every entity anywhere, because every entity is obviously a limited organism. But is there aught in this for pessimism or despair? Nay, greatly to the contrary. It is thus we grow ever greater; it is thus that we change continually, by these deaths and rebirths, the fields of experience and the scenes of life. Death and life are the two sides of growth, and no growth can take place except as a resultant of these twain. Death is friendly; death is very friendly! It is through death as well as through life that we grow. When we are tired we lay the tired body down, we cast it off as a garment that is outworn and because its usefulness is gone; and then after a greater or smaller length of time we come anew to earth, a better, nobler, more evolved character, because in the post-mortem period we shall have digested and assimilated the experiences last passed through. Is space limited and has it boundaries? This question also I have already answered. Infinitude is frontierless, has no limits and no boundaries. But what do people mean when they speak of space? Do they mean infinitude: frontierless, beginningless, and endless? No; usually they do not; they commonly mean the physical sphere around us, no matter how large, how vast, the physical sphere may be; and of course this physical sphere has boundaries, because it is an organic entity -- obviously so. So therefore, construing this question as logically it should be construed, the answer is Yes: space, if by that term you mean any one universe, has boundaries, because it is an entity, because it is an organism, and therefore it is limited and has boundaries; but frontierless infinitude obviously has no boundaries and therefore is deathless. If so, what exists beyond those boundaries? Countless multitudes of other universes, called island-universes by the modern astronomers, are sprinkled over the fields of the spaces of space. As the old-fashioned sower of grain wandered forth into his fields casting his grain broadcast, so indeed may we figurate to ourselves the mighty forces and powers of the universe bringing forth these "Lights of Eternity," these "Seeds of Eternity," each Seed being a universe or a world -- called a seed because destined to grow into something more wondrous and grander than what it previously was. Is our universe a chance evolutionary production and therefore is the universe mad, or is there universal law?

Universal law exists because universal law is order, harmony, symmetry, regularity -- all that we see, in fact. There is no such thing as chance. When a man cannot explain something, then he calls it chance. Chance is but a verbal counter, a mere word with which we hide our ignorance. All that we do really know is order, regularity, harmony, all of which proclaims law. That is all we really know; all the rest is theory. Consequently the universe is sane, and so are you. You are not insane nor am I insane, the fortuitous offspring of a crazy universe. We are children, we are offspring, of ourselves -- of ourselves, for each one of us in his inmost is a divine being, and as such a divine being is a spark of the cosmic fire. Therefore are we our own productions; we are our own forefathers. Likewise we shall be our own children, for we are ourselves; we make ourselves to be what in future we shall be; we are now what in the past we have made ourselves to become. We are the creators of ourselves, and we are the creatures of ourselves. What a grand view for a man to have this is! I tell you truly: let a man really understand our theosophical doctrines, and then no matter what temptations he may have to face and how often he may fall, he will grow to greatness in time, because our doctrines arouse a hunger for truth, a passion for truth, in our hearts, and this hunger, this passion, can never be gainsaid, for they are spiritual movements of our consciousness, and will lead us onwards as a pillar of fire before us on the path. Is the universe run according to mathematical principles? If so, is there no possibility for essential poetry and inherent love in the universe? O my Brothers, essential poetry and inherent love dwell in your own hearts. Do you not know this? Consult your own heart: it knows love; it beats in sympathetic response to love in the hearts of others. Look within; ask yourselves if love is there. You will have an immediate answer in the affirmative. And essential poetry? Love is the very parent of poetry, for love and harmony are one, and poetry is harmony, and poetry and love are mathematical because they are regular and harmonious. Love is the very heart of things; spiritual consciousness is this also, and they are both one. Love then with the love that abides in your heart for all. So doing, you will ally yourselves with boundless space, which is your own home, because it is your spiritual self, your essential fundamental being. Cultivate also your intellectual faculties, for thereby you enter into harmonious vibrations with the mind of the Oversoul, of which your mind is a spark. But above all things, cultivate love, impersonal love, love which takes within the reach of its all-embracing compass everything, both great and small. This love is divine. In proportion as a man or a woman can do this, just in the same ratio is he or she great. Commune continuously with the god within you. Then peace will come to you past all understanding. Harmony will beautify your life, and beauty therefore will shine forth from your very being -- the beauty and harmony and love which are one. Find yourself, your real, your spiritual, Self. Find the wondrous thing that inwardly you are. Learn to know yourself.

Second Series: No. 27 (March 9, 1931)

GLIMPSES INTO THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE -- I

(Lecture delivered January 25, 1931) CONTENTS: Are human beings exceptions to cosmic law? -- Boundless space our home. -- Man an invisible entity. -- Scientific generalizations unsatisfactory. -- One fundamental doctrine in world literatures. -- Unconscious use of inner faculties. -- The man-plant of eternity. -- Laya-centers of theosophy. -- Questions answered by Sir James Jeans. -- Fortuity and fate. -- Proofs of consciousness in the universe. -- Conflict between religion and science impossible. -- The path to immortality. -- Plato and the ancient Hindu teaching. Friends: come now with me; come with me into realms which are far removed from this fevered sphere of human ambition, of human joy and disappointment; and let us wander together a little while into those other realms of human thought and into those actually existing parts and places of the universe which have been adventured into and described by the great seers and sages of the past. In thus wandering for a while together, we may find at least for a short period a temporary surcease from our pains, our sorrows, our disappointments, and our heartaches. What a grand thing it is to realize that this mere physical sphere is not all that there is of the boundless universe: that it is, so to speak, but one plane, one world, one veil, beyond which man's enterprising spirit may go out on the greatest adventure that it is possible for a human entity to undertake: the search for light, for truth, for wisdom, for knowledge of the supreme self. From time immemorial the great ones of the human race have taught -- and have taught with one voice and after one way of speaking although indeed in different tongues -- that behind the outward veil of physical existence there lie vast ranges of cosmic consciousness, and vast ranges of cosmic being which that cosmic consciousness invigorates; and that in these ranges, on these planes, on these spheres, in these worlds -- call them what you like -- there live vast and incomputable multitudes, armies, hosts, of living beings, who are there because they are passing through their respective phases of their long evolutionary journey, precisely as we human beings here on this earth are passing through the earth phase of our own long, aeons-long, evolutionary pilgrimage. We human beings are but one host of these countless hosts of hosts of hosts of hosts. We human beings are by no means solitary and inexplicable exceptions in the boundless universe. We entities here on earth merely exemplify one phase -- our earth phase -- of what the universe does and of what the universe brings forth from within its bosom. Do you get the thought? Admitting our own existence and our own powers and faculties as we must do, we thereby prove the rule, for we could not be here except by reason of cosmic law and cosmic energy and cosmic life. Our own existence automatically proves the existence of other hosts of entities living as well in the invisible as in the visible spheres. Say you that we human beings are exceptions, and that our earth is an exception, in boundless space and in all the infinitudes of cosmic being and throughout endless and beginningless eternity? Say you that we are exceptions, that we are merely chance products of a crazy universe, producing order fortuitously out of an irrational cosmic disorder? If you say this foolish thing, then prove it to me, if you can. Such a thought I can never accept, for it would be accepting something against which my very spirit rebels. My mind is a logical one, and must follow logical processes; and logic invigorated by the inner spirit is illuminated. Where lies wisdom? Where lies knowledge? Where lies understanding? All lie within. Why should this dust-speck which we human beings call earth be the only dust-speck in boundless eternity and in boundless infinitude to bring forth sentient, self-conscious, and aspiring entities? Obviously the supposition is an absurdity. But the fact that we are here, proves that we by that fact exemplify and prove a general rule. One single rose proves the existence of the entire rose family. We human beings essentially are kin to the gods, kin to the cosmic spirits. The universe is our home. Isn't it obvious? Here we are in it. We cannot ever leave it. We are its children, its offspring, and

therefore all that there is of boundless space is we ourselves in our inmost. We are native there, and boundless space is our home, and our instinct tells us therefore that "all is well." Man has will, and he exercises this will in choice. He can do, or he can refrain from doing. He has the vision of mind: he can discern, judge, discriminate, set apart and put together -- and analyse, and synthesize -- and these are godlike faculties. Where do these faculties exist? They exist in him, because they are intrinsic parts of himself: they are his faculties expressed through the physical body. Man per se is an invisible entity. What we see of him in and through the body is merely the manifestation of the inner man, because man essentially is a spiritual energy -- a spiritual, intellectual, psycho-material energy, the adjective depending upon the plane on which you choose to discern his actions, for indeed he may be said to exist on all planes, inner and outer. The heart of the heart of a human being is a god, a cosmic spirit, a spark of the central cosmic fire; and all evolution -- which means unfolding what is within, unwrapping what is within the evolving entity, bringing forth what is locked up within -- all evolution, I say, is merely bringing forth ever more and more into a more perfect manifestation, the infolded, inlocked, wrapped up, energies, faculties, powers, organs, of the evolving entity. And pari passu, with equal step, as these faculties and energies become more able to manifest themselves, more perfectly evolved forth, does the organism through which they work -- the body -- show the effects of this inner evolving fire, of this energy within, and thus also the body itself so evolves, because automatically reflecting in itself each inner step taken forwards. Man is an invisible entity, but he needs a physical body in which to live and with which to work upon this physical plane. He is a pilgrim of eternity. He came forth from the invisible part of cosmic being in aeons so far bygone in the past that mankind, except the great sages and seers, has lost all count thereof. He came out of the womb of cosmic being as an unself-conscious god-spark, and after wandering aeon after aeon after aeon after aeon through all the various inner worlds, passing at different stages through our own material sphere, and out again into the inner worlds, he finally became man, a self-conscious entity; and here we are. Future aeons of time will bring forth even on this our earth, into a far more perfect manifestation than at present, the locked-up faculties and powers existent in every human being; and in those days of the far distant future man will walk the earth a god, and he will walk this earth communing with his fellow gods, for he will then have brought forth the godlike powers now unevolved but nevertheless within his essence. What is the difference between the beast and the man today? Even the beast has all the potentialities of the human being, but they are not yet evolved forth as they are, although imperfectly, in man today. The human being has to a certain degree evolved them forth, but nevertheless the human being has passed only a part of his way through this present earth stage of evolutionary experience. He will finish this earth stage of experience in the distant future, by growing, ever growing, improving, evolving, progressing ever more forwards -- for such is Nature's way -- until the god within him shall shine forth in native splendor, and then all men shall not only be like gods but verily shall in fact be gods, and shall walk the earth as gods, and they will think godlike thoughts and feel like gods. Yes, such is our future destiny. These faculties and powers in the future to be evolved forth are existent in the invisible spheres even now, and they are parts of us because we are essentially invisible beings. We are inhabitants of these inner realms and spheres even more truly than we are, physically speaking, inhabitants of our physical earth sphere. Do you realize that the greatest men of science today are teaching that the real world is an invisible world, and that this our physical sphere is a sphere of illusion? That the real physical sphere is not at all what we see with our physical sense apparatus, because that apparatus is so imperfectly evolved that our vision of what surrounds us is not a true vision; but that the real world is an inner and invisible world, in other words an invisible universe, wholly composite of interlocking and interpenetrating energies. It used to be a common scientific teaching that energy was a mere offspring of the material world, no one knew how born; but now the ideas of our greatest scientific minds have run to the other extreme and have reversed themselves, and now these minds say that the material world is but the fruitage, the effect, the result, of invisible energies ever operating and cooperating.

Eddington and Jeans -- to quote only two of such great scientific intellects -- and even the great Einstein, talk about the fundamental thing in the universe as being mind, as they call it, or mind-stuff -consciousnesses I say -- and that our material sphere is merely one of the effects of the incessant activities of this invisible agent. Now, mark you, my Friends and Brothers, theosophists don't care to satisfy our minds by generalizations in that easy way. We gladly admit the general truth of the statement that mind is the fundamental essence of the universe, but we follow the old wisdom-religion of mankind which has existed in all ages, among all men, and which has been proved by every great Sage and seer whom the world has ever known, and we say that instead of mind or consciousness, which are merely generalizing terms, the background of the universe -- in other words, the invisible spheres -- is essentially composite of hosts of consciousnesses and wills, i. e., of living entities, just as we humans are. We human beings on this earth merely exemplify the rule that the universe is filled with consciousnesses and wills, and the fact of the great variety of entities that exists in our sphere simply exemplifies once more the same rule of natural being: that consciousnesses are innumerable in the universe and are of allvarious kinds. Just so are the varying consciousnesses of men exceedingly numerous in their great variety, and we know they are of various kinds: as for instance, the consciousness of the poet, the consciousness of the seer, the consciousness of the philosopher, the consciousness of the artist, the consciousness of the musician, the consciousness of the scientist, etc., etc. Endless variety in universality is nature's law. Therefore we as a human host are essentially invisible beings, because our consciousness is essentially an invisible energy. We inhabit the spheres, the vast spaces, of space; and I now and here allude more particularly to those invisible spheres where in very truth we are incomparably more at home than we are even in this physical universe, which we understand so ill, and where we have to work through a gross physical body which actually dims the inner fire and which cripples the expression of the inner faculties, the inner energies. It is like the glory of the sun shut out from human eyes by veil after veil surrounding the divine splendor; but as we go behind veil after veil after veil we approach ever closer to the sunlight of the spirit within, which is the inner god. We are more at home in the invisible spheres than we are here, because these spheres are closer to the essence of our being. All the great sages and seers of all the ages have taught one common doctrine. Prove this for yourselves: search the sacred writings of the peoples, of the nations, of the earth, and search with an unprejudiced and a seeing eye. Cleanse your mind, wash it free from prejudice and preconception, so that your vision may be clear and strong; and I tell you that throughout all these different literatures of mankind you will find in them one common, fundamental, basic doctrine. Prove this statement. Don't believe what I say merely because I say it. Prove it for yourselves. I have proved it. This fundamental doctrine is the doctrine of the great sages and seers, of those men who are farther evolved than the average man is, and who were initiated in the ancient Mystery schools; who, consequently, being more evolved than the average man is, had become more ready in the exercise, more exact in the exercise, keener and stronger in the exercise, of the interior or spiritual and intellectual faculties and powers; so that they could send the percipient mind, the percipient consciousness, deep into the womb of being, pass behind the physical veils, penetrating thereinto in full self-consciousness. What they brought back from this sublime adventure they formulated into human tongues as this fundamental doctrine I have spoken of, and taught it to their less evolved fellow men. Such were the great sages and seers of humanity. Doubtless you know the names of some of them. I have often recited them here. Let me now repeat the names of a few who are perhaps the best known to Europeans: the Buddha-Gautama, Jesus the Avatara, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Apollonius of Tyana, Krishna, Sankaracharya, Lao-tse, even Confucius, the original Zoroaster, and many more; and all were founders of the greatest philosophical and religious schools that the world has known.

It is pathetic that Occidental professors so often rend and tear the teachings of these great ancient sages and seers, merely because they do not understand those teachings. Brought up as they have been in Occidental religions and scientific theories they are blinded to misbelieve that man has a percipient spirit which can cognize truth instantly, immediately; that man has an inner faculty which, so to speak, can go to the gates of the sun, or drink of the Pierian springs of the primal wisdom. Yet indeed man so can do if he be trained to do it, and the great sages and seers do this and always have done it. All of you can do it, my Brothers, if you will undertake the training and will live the life that will fit you to do it. And in future ages, when you shall have evolved forth what are now locked-up faculties and powers within you, and shall have developed keener inner senses than now you have, then such wondrous and mystical adventures will be common and natural and instinctive operations of the consciousness of all men. But even now, even now I repeat, whence come the great works which mankind produces? Whence come the works of genius? Whence comes that intuitive vision which sees, and which in seeing transmits to others? All comes from within, from the exercise conscious or unconscious of the developing inner eye, of the evolving inner consciousness. Even now, more or less unconsciously to himself, man is using these inner faculties and powers, feebly evolved as they are, and he calls them by various names such as intuition, instinct, vision, genius, 'hunches,' and whatnot. Or intellect, or psychic sight -- a horrible phrase -- and by other terms. He uses these imperfectly evolved faculties even now, and by their use produces works of genius, and yet in most cases knows not self-consciously what he is doing or the source of his inspiration. Whence comes the mathematical and philosophical vision of an Einstein? How did Newton, the Englishman, come to have his almost universal sense of mathematical proportion and cosmic law? From what source came the world-shaking power of a Buddha or of a Jesus? Again, whence spring forth all the great works of human genius? All come from within and in every case. All come from the invisible worlds. Out of the invisible into the visible, like the growth of a plant, comes man, the man-plant of eternity. Beginning in one life on earth as a human seed, which grows to maturity, and produces or evolves forth what is locked up within; and then, with the natural decay of power, sinking to earth the body dies; and after a long period of rest and assimilation of experience in the invisible worlds, the inner spiritual flame comes again to earth for a new reincarnation here. Such in brief is the history of man, the man-plant of the ages. He is born and flowers a while and then dies down and rests, and with the returning life-season he springs anew into existence and again flowers and again dies down; but always the golden thread of self -- the sutratman of the ancient philosophers of Hindustan -- passes through both time and space. Yes, my Brothers: what I am trying to drive home into your consciousness is the fact that each one of you is not only a spiritual energy, in other words an invisible being, but that actually each one of you is a child of the universe, a spark of its central fire, and therefore life of its life, bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh; an inseparable part of boundless nature is each one of you, and of invisible nature especially. The greatest men both spiritually and intellectually that the world has ever seen, no matter what line of activity their genius may follow, the greatest men the world has ever seen in any line of human thought or effort, have taught these identic truths. Some have taught them in one way, some have taught them in another way, but they all have taught the same fundamental truths. They taught that this physical sphere is but the outer garment, the veil, the body, of invisible spheres; that these invisible spheres together compose the invisible universe, just as our physical spheres in their aggregate compose what we call our home-universe, which is all that is included within the encircling bounds of the galaxy, the Milky Way. They further taught that these invisible universes are as incomputable in number as are the sands on the seashore; and this is just about what our modern physical-astronomical scientists are likewise coming to teach us, to wit: that every galaxy in distant, all-surrounding space is akin to our own galaxy, and is a Universe, an island-universe they call it, akin to ours; and of course it is so, because universal nature is one vast organic entity.

Just as this physical universe has its inhabitants, and is divided into spheres and various elements, so indeed is the invisible universe builded on exactly the same plan and in exactly the same order. This is not because our physical universe originates this earth, not because our physical universe is a standard by which to judge all else and after which all else is copied; but, on the contrary, my Brothers, our physical universe is as it is because itself is a reflection of the powers, energies, within, which come pouring forth into our physical universe and make it just what it is. When Sir James Jeans, for instance, speaks of the existence in the nebulae of Space of what he calls singular points -- which theosophists for ages in the past have called laya-centers -- through which come pouring into our physical universe energies and matters from another dimension -- to use his term -from other worlds theosophists say, from other spheres, from the inner and invisible universe, he merely repeats unconsciously to himself what the wisdom-religion of mankind, today called theosophy, has taught from immemorial ages. What a declaration for an Occidental scientist to make! Our whole argument is thereby admitted: his singular points through which come pouring into our physical sphere the energies and matters of an invisible universe, are what theosophists call laya-centers, channels, canals, open doors, through which they pass upwards out of this universe into the invisible universe and inversely from the invisible universe downwards into this physical universe, the beings and energies and matters resident respectively in either. This is an old idea with us theosophists and also with the theosophists of other ages past, in Hindustan, for instance. Furthermore, these great sages and seers taught that these invisible worlds of the invisible universes are as varied and as multiform and are as fascinating in their all-various differentiations as are our own -and vastly more so. You know the old saying of the Egyptian Hermes, of the Hermetic School: "As above, so below; as below, so above." Why is this true? Because the universe is one organism with one fundamental law or system of laws, one fundamental mind-stuff or consciousness, so that whatever the whole has or is, in other words whatever the cosmic aggregate has or is, every minutest entity, every minutest part of the whole, also has. Do you understand? Inversely therefore, whatever the part has, the whole has: the vast, incomprehensible to human minds, boundless, frontierless space, invisible and visible, inner and outer. Therefore it is that our physical sphere is but a reflection of what is above; and if you know how to read the cosmic riddle, if you know how to construe the cosmic enigma, you will understand that what we see here -- if you know how to read it -- will show you what the gods are and have and pass their lives in. We are essentially kin with the gods; and therefore I say that the universe is very friendly to us. We are children of it; all that it is is in each one of you. All the emotions of your soul, all the movements of your intellect, on a cosmic scale and in spiritual qualities exist in the gods. Do you follow the argument? It is really very simple. Reflect how beautiful and inspiring is this picture. Discern how full of hope it is, how easy to understand. Children of the gods you are, therefore gods yourselves manifesting, oh so feebly as imperfect man, the divine faculties which nevertheless you do manifest in some degree at least, thereby proving your divine origin. Give me the man who can see and who can clearly think; whose mind is not crippled and enslaved by the scientific or philosophical or religious ideas of some passing age. Give me the man whose heart can beat in tune with the universal pulse, and who, when he examines the literatures of his fellows of whatever age of mankind, can sense the working of the great human heart in them, and in reading them can say "Ay, that have I seen; that do I also know." In the London Observer of Sunday, January 4, 1931, there appeared the report of an interview with perhaps the most prominent British astronomical physicist today, Sir James H. Jeans. From this report I have selected two questions which were asked of Sir James by the reporter and Sir James's answers; and I am going to read these two questions and their answers to you.

Question: Do you believe that life on this planet is the result of some sort of accident, or do you believe that it is part of some great scheme? Answer: I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe. If this is so, then it would appear to follow that there is a general scheme. My inclination towards idealism is the outcome largely of modern scientific theories -- for instance, the principle of indeterminacy may provide an escape from the old scientific doctrine that nature is governed by strictly deterministic laws. In general the universe seems to me to be nearer to a great thought than to a great machine. It may well be, it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind.
How familiar these ideas seem to us theosophists! They were as familiar to past ages as the face of your beloved is to each one of you today. Old, old, old, old thoughts are these; nothing new. And now our great scientists are beginning to think them again, for these thoughts are in the air; and modern scientific thinkers emit them anew as wondrous thoughts, new thoughts, inspiring deductions from scientific research and discovery. We are glad of it. No matter how they come, if only they come again into the consciousness of men, theosophists are thankful for these new-old doctrines. It is the thing per se that we want, not the method of its coming. This so-called principle of determinacy, this supposed principle of determinacy or of indeterminacy -you know what these ideas are, I suppose. The scientists of the last generation or two managed to persuade themselves that nature was a vast cosmic machine, unimpulsed, uninvigorated, unenlivened, by either mind or thought or consciousness or spirit or soul -- call it what you like -- and that the marvelously intricate and mathematically founded universe had run itself from all eternity, and would, mayhap, mayhap not, run itself through all the eternity of the future -- how they did not know. How can a machine run itself forever? They answered: "We do not know. It may, perchance, have periods of 'life' and periods of cosmic 'death'; but we do not know." They said that this cosmic machine was fatalistic in character: that every cog fitted into every other cog, and that thus it ran by itself and for itself, without guidance, without governance, without thought, without consciousness -- that it was but a physical machine, in fact; and this rigid concatenation of physical cause and effect is now called the principle of physical determinacy. Men said there was no escape from it; and that because it existed and because evidences of consciousness in it were lacking, de facto there was no inner or spiritual principle involved in it at all. Pathetic and futile conclusion. To a theosophist, this very existence of ineluctable order and regularity in cosmic structure and operations, based on rigidly mathematical principles, announces an inherent life and consciousness in the universe. Fortuity -- curiously enough another scientific dogma of those days, strangely contradictory of the physical determinism so popular then -- was the other pillar of the Temple of Scientific Theory. The ideas were worshiped in this Temple, rather than truth, and the ideas were the offspring of the high priests of the Temple, and on its altars incense was raised to the mind-born children of its high priests rather than to the indwelling spirit and life of our cosmical universe, which is the spirit of truth, of order, of regularity, the fountain of consciousness, the source of all that is great and noble and holy. The modern hunger to throw off the shackle of the so-called principle of determinism, the bastard child of the materialistic nightmare of our forefathers, arises in the hunger to find soul or spirit, in other words free acting will and individual consciousnesses, in nature. This hunger is a natural one and a right one but, let us ask, why not do as the theosophist does, find that soul and spirit are and must be concordant with and part of universal nature and the cosmic scheme of things rather than something contradictory to it and out of causal relation with it. This last supposition to the theosophist is the summit of absurdity. Souls, that is to say individual consciousnesses and wills, exist throughout universal nature physically separate as the atoms of being, for indeed universal nature is composite of them; but by this very fact these individual souls and wills are wholly concordant with natural processes of which they are inseparable parts and with the cosmic

structure, rather than existing in opposition thereto or by virtue of an accident -- a flash of rhetoric which is as idle as it is inept. No wonder that our modern scientists, with a wisdom which has been evolved by the obtaining of a greater knowledge, are breaking away from the nightmare of materialism of our immediate forefathers. There was not one solid substantial proof of these old materialistic theories regarding the universe, for they were only theories; and Occidental men, in scrutinizing the outside universe so carefully as they thought, forgot the key to that outside universe, which key is for each man himself -- his own spiritual selfhood. Man forgot his own spiritual soul, the movements of his own consciousness, the spiritual motions of his own inner being. If the universe has them not in any wise whatsoever, how is it that they exist in man, a part of that universe? And how can they be restricted to men alone? Obviously, what the part has, the whole must have. Theosophists teach the existence of a rigid concatenation of cause and effect which is as strict as that of the old physical determinism which our modern scientists have so wisely cast to the winds; but we say that this rigid natural concatenation of cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect -- every effect in turn immediately becoming a new cause -- is itself but a manifestation of consciousness, the fundamental element or energy in the universe, or rather that this concatenation is the resultant or manifestation of hosts of consciousnesses pervading and permeating the visible and invisible universes, and existing in all grades or degrees on the beginningless and endless ladder of life. Some of these cosmic movements are very great because the cosmic consciousness moves in universal sweeps, and within universal reaches, motions which are difficultly discernible by man's as yet imperfectly evolved mind. Do you understand? Just so might a man's pet dog or his beloved horse see what the master does in whistling and in calling, but does not understand. Just so we humans seeing the vast movements and motions in the universe think that because they are so majestic and take such long time periods to pass from their beginnings to their ends, they are but the working of a cosmic machine. So you see, my Brothers, that this passing from the principle of physical determinism to what they now call the principle of indeterminacy, is a willing effort to free themselves from the older materialistic nightmare; and may the immortal gods bless the effort! But here is a danger that I see: in jumping from the frying pan of physical determinism, modern scientific thinkers may cast themselves into the fire of mere fortuity, mere chance. What will save them is such a teaching as this now held up by many scientific minds, that the fundamental element of the universe is consciousness. How indeed can anyone doubt it? You yourselves, my Brothers, are consciousnesses, sparks of the universal fire, children of the universal parent; you are what you are because the universe is as and what it is. Here is the second question: Do you agree with Einstein's remark that modern scientific speculations spring from a profound religious impulse? Answer: I agree with that remark if the word, religious, be sufficiently widely interpreted. I think that the greatest achievements generally spring from what may be called a religious impulse. . . . And in science I think that the best work is that which is undertaken purely for the truth's sake, or undertaken wholly for the benefit of humanity. I suppose one could describe both these motives as religious impulses. And so indeed they are. When will you Occidentals come to understand what the wisdom of the children of men has known from immemorial time, that science and philosophy and religion are but three operations of the human mind or soul or spirit -- call it what you like -- in any case, of the human constitution? Therefore they spring from one entity, one consciousness, and you cannot understand any one of the three without understanding the other twain, for they are like the three sides of one thing. You cannot understand true religion without understanding true science and true philosophy; you cannot understand true philosophy without understanding true religion and true science; and you cannot understand true science, which is ordered knowledge of the universe, unless you understand true

philosophy and true religion. There can be no such thing in theosophy, I may add in passing, as a conflict between religion and science. It simply does not and cannot exist. It is true that theosophists, in common with all men, hunger for a greater light; it is true that we want ever more light. But is not this the divine hunger of the human heart and can there ever come a time when no more light may be had -- in other words, when evolution shall cease? Of course not. Immortal gods, give me more light! That is our theosophic prayer. No matter what it costs me as a person, I cast the cost aside if only the gods help in bringing to me light and thus satisfy the divine hunger of my soul. Remember this, that light for the mind, love for the heart, understanding for the intellect: all these three must be satisfied in every man before he has real peace. Our universe is run according to law: in other words, it is strictly orderly, systematic, rigidly in accordance with the movements of the consciousnesses which infill and actually compose the universe both visible and invisible. The innumerable hosts of the gods in their thoughts and in the motions of their constitutions produce what appear to us as the laws of the physical universe. Consequently justice rules, because harmony is nature's own heart. Everything is well ordered; everything is orderly and harmonious, for love, almighty, impersonal love, which is the noblest thing that human hearts have ever felt, is the very core of things, and impersonal love is harmony. Therefore, wipe the tears from your eyes; raise them aloft from the ground and look to the Mystic East within; for on those distant mountain peaks o'er which the spiritual light of the rising sun ever breaks, there is your home. There is a law of compensation in the universe, meaning that all evildoing has its own retribution by nature's own act. Leave it therefore to the gods to avenge you if you have suffered, and suffered wrongly. "Vengeance is mine," said the Scriptures claimed by the Christians, merely re-echoing an ancient truth, a teaching of the sages and seers. Harmony is at the heart of things, for all nature is orderly, and beautifully moves in system and stately measures. Give justice when you receive injustice. Ally yourselves with the gods, with your own inner god. Requite never hate with hate, for thus you but add fuel to an unholy flame. Requite hatred with compassion and justice. This is the ancient law. Thus also you make no evil karma for yourself; thus you ally yourself with nature's own spiritual procedures and you become a child of the cosmic life, which thereafter will beat in your own heart with its undying pulses. This is the path of immortality: allying yourself with the universe, with its spiritual essence. What prevents man from doing this, in other words from becoming at one with the god within him, with the inner Buddha, with the immanent Christ? It is selfishness -- self-seeking, the hunger to satisfy the petty, personal desires at the cost of others' pain. The path to immortality and glory is unselfishness; it is the path of forgiveness and of compassion; it is the path of impersonal love. Is not this the teaching of all the sages of all the ages? And why is it so? For this reason: that by so acting you act in accordance with nature's own most secret and recondite operations, laws, habits, procedures. And as I have told you, you are each one of you an inseparable part of the universe, and consequently -- listen carefully to this wonderful ancient deduction -- you are in the essence of yourself that very universe. Do you understand? That universe is you, for all your being is but the cosmic fire. You see now the pathway to follow, the pathway of the spiritual self, of this inner flame, of this god within? Follow it then, and your consciousness will ever expand more and more until it attains cosmic reaches. Do you see the logic of this? Remember the teaching of the sages of Hindustan: Tat twam asi: That (boundless infinitude) thou art! It is true. Those sages used this technical word 'That,' rather than give to it some human descriptive title limiting it; therefore they simply called it by the demonstrative pronoun That. Even so did the divine Plato speak of 'This and the Other' -- "This world" and "That world." Just so said the ancient Hindu: Idam and tad: "This" and "That." Thou art in very truth a child, O son of man, of the heart of things; and that heart of things is the core of the core of you. Follow that pathway. It is the pathway of immortality; it is the pathway of the spirit.

Second Series: No. 28 (March 16, 1931)

GLIMPSES INTO THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE -- II

(Lecture delivered February 1, 1931) CONTENTS: Spiritual not psychic faculties desired. -- Growth from within outwards. -- Comprehension of the path. -- Looking within not an unwholesome morbidity. -- Signposts to the interior worlds. -- Is man an exceptional event in the universe? -- Every man a potential seer. -- Cosmic hierarchies interlocked. -- When life becomes a grand adventure. -- A lesson in occultism. -- Woofle-birds among men! -- Contradictions of modern scientists. -- Are consciousness and matter fundamentally different? -Theosophy not a new-made theory. The unseen universe! I am wondering, friends, how many of you may think that I am going to talk to you this afternoon about something weird, strange, uncanny, unwholesome for the intellectual and spiritual life of a human being. But I am not. I could not do so as a theosophical teacher, because theosophy warns us strongly against the misuse of the interior psychic faculties and powers, and directs our attention to the spiritual faculties and powers by which we may realize our spiritual unity with the boundless. We learn from the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind to use our spiritual powers and the manner of becoming self-consciously at one with the cosmic life; and just because the knowledge so taught is definite, and applicable by every sensible human being to his own life: just because the knowledge is such do we learn how to avoid the pitfalls, the mayavi psychic will-o'-the-wisps which mislead men and which have produced in the world today so many differing branches of thought, and which have caused the average modern man to feel, and feeling to say, "Where, immortal gods, may I find truth?" What is the truth? Is it something outside of you? How so? No indeed: the truth is within. Who is the finder? It is you. Truth is within; the finder is within, because it is your self. Therefore the truth is in you, in the spiritual nature of every son of man. Within is the pathway to the gods. Seek not the keys of truth outside of yourself. Search for the light divine within your own essence. Then your whole inner being will open as the flower opens to the morning sun, and you will know truth, because you yourself will be it. Do you understand me? Do you understand that each one of you is a child of the universe, born out of its spiritual heart, and therefore that the universal pulse beats within you, that the universal substance is within you, and is in very truth you yourself, and that the energies of the universe are in you and actually are you yourself? Therefore I say again that the pathway to truth is within you -- your self is your pathway. There is no pathway to truth outside of you, because the only path that you can tread is the pathway of selfhood, and unless you follow that path you cannot walk upon it. That which is "outside of you" is merely yourself inverted. Therefore grow, expand, become greater, and the energies interior and invisible of your being will finally take in all the outside; for being an inseparable part of the universe, that universe in the core of its being is yourself; and we look outwards merely in order to check, as the scientist does, detail by detail, what we have learned from the inner experience. This is the lost key of all Occidental thought, my Brothers -- the lost key that opens all the riddles of existence; and the application of this key to the lock of each man's own inner character is so simple: "Man, know thyself!" That is all there is to it. It is the beginning of the path and its midway point and its end; and, strange paradox, these are but figures of speech: the pathway of the spiritual self never had a beginning; it will never have an end, for the self divine within you in its essence is the self of the universe. You have no selfhood without it, outside of it. An inseparable part of the boundless All is each one of you; therefore the boundless All is yourself and your eternal home. You are native there, and are kin of the gods. The universe is your eternal dwelling place. "Man, know thyself," proclaimed the famous old Delphic oracle of Apollo. All the great sages and seers of all the ages have taught the same truth. If you can find this key, all doors thereafter will fly open at your will. What is this key? The key is you, for yourself; and the doors that fly open are the enveloping

veils of the lower selfhood which shut in the light or shut it out, whichever expression pleases you the better. Do you understand the meaning of this wondrous teaching? Do you begin to grasp some of the reach of it? Veil upon veil you will pass as you progress and will leave it behind, but always will there be a more beautiful veil beyond to pass behind into a greater glory. What does all this imply? It implies that growth is endless, that evolution is endless; and that an end comes never at all. I would that I could drive this sublime truth home into human hearts and minds, for it gives such ineffable peace, and to those who mourn it brings unspeakable comfort; and as a rule of conduct it is so sure. Each one of you may test it for yourself, indeed must test it. Each one of you must follow the pathway for himself. Can I gain truth for you? No. You must for yourself gain the light. How simple all this is! Can I learn for you? No. You must learn for yourself. Can I grow or evolve for you? No. You must grow and evolve in and for yourself. How? Is it by looking without and seeing the marvelous phenomena of existence around us, only to check off the details of your own inner growth in expanding mind and in an ever-broadening consciousness? No. It is by first looking within. There is your pathway to the heart of the universe, because that heart of the universe essentially is your inmost self. Do you now see what this means? It means a continuously growing spiritual selfhood, which blends finally into the very essence and substance of the cosmic or universal self. This one thought, my Brothers, is the open sesame to the doors of all the treasuries, and the destroyer of the veils hiding the mysteries of the unseen universe. Become at one with your spiritual self and you are at peace. Become at one with the god within you and you have light. Become at one with the divinity within and its very strength and vigor flow through your veins. Then you vibrate synchronously with all that is outside, for that outside is simply the universe of which you are an inseparable part. The way, the manner, of achieving this is by going within. Please do not understand this phrase "going within" to mean some morbid and unwholesome brooding upon one's woes and sorrows and troubles. O immortal gods, no! Those woes and sorrows and troubles belong to the lower selfhood, belong to the man who has not found himself, who has not come into the possession of his spiritual being, who has not found the pathway. Find this inner light! Every one of you can and must do so; and when it is found then sorrows cease; pain becomes pain no more; peace, light, enter your heart and your mind; death vanishes. For the very fundamental thought of this teaching is man's oneness with the universe of which he is an inseparable part. So that even the death of the physical body is but a change, the casting off of a veil -- the outermost veil, the outermost garment -- and living freer than before: resting indeed, as regards the human part of us, but ever so much freer than when shrouded in these gross physical encasements we call physical men. Theosophists speak of the unseen universe, and I wonder if you wonder what I mean by this term. On last Sunday afternoon I tried to set forth just what was implied by this term, the unseen universe. I mean all those invisible, inner planes, worlds, spheres, -- call them what you like -- which fill boundless space, and of which our gross physical sphere or universe is but a mirroring or a reflection. Try to get this thought. It is easy to understand. What makes a rose a rose in all its beauty, grace, and warmth? What makes it so? Chance? Immortal gods, who believes in chance? Indeed, if chance ruled this Universe then the seed of the rose, the clipping of the rose, might bring forth a palm, or a cherry tree, or an oak, or whatnot. But invariably does the apple seed bring forth the apple; the life behind it produces itself on this physical plane, and of its own type, and of its own kind. It can but produce itself. It cannot produce what is not itself. Do you now begin to get the thought? It is this same principle at work to which we allude when theosophists say that this physical sphere is but the reflection, but the reproduction, of the inner, invisible, hid worlds, spheres, planes; and the aggregate of these inner worlds, spheres, and planes, we call the unseen universe. This unseen universe you can

easily understand something of. Check off your intuitions as I have said before, by examining the wondrous physical sphere around us in all its majesty, beauty, order, symmetry. The energies that make this physical sphere flow forth from within, out of the invisible worlds, and flow through this physical sphere that our senses tell us somewhat of; and these energies can work only according to their own types, produce only what those energies themselves are. Isn't that fact obvious? So that the physical sphere as thus produced by the aggregate workings of these invisible energies -- lives, theosophists say - but reflects, shows forth, manifests, what is within it. The physical sphere is but the body expressing the inner life and soul, or rather lives and souls, of the unseen universe. Hence, as we see order, symmetry, system, beauty, harmony in the physical sphere that surrounds us, so likewise, because this physical sphere is a copy of what is invisible, harmony, order, system, beauty, are in the inner worlds -- the causal worlds -- of which our physical world or universe is an effect or production. The invisible universe is composed of celestial bodies just as our physical universe is composed of worlds and spheres and planes; and furthermore the unseen universe is filled full with its appropriate inhabitants, just as our physical sphere is, as exemplified in our own Mother Earth. Otherwise, why should earth be an exception? I repeat the question: why should earth be the only exception? Pause a moment in thought. Think for yourselves. Enjoy the noblest privilege of manhood and think for yourselves. Explain to me how one exception in boundless space, an exceptional event different from everything else, should exist and exist where we are. How could it exist if it were so utterly contrary to the universal law? Is it not obvious that our notion that we are exceptions and that our earth is an exception arises out of our own ignorance and our own foolish egoism? We are here and things are as they are here merely because it is all in accordance with the universal plan, with the universal energy, with the universal consciousness. Yes, as even the greatest of our scientific thinkers now are beginning to teach, that universal consciousness is the fundamental of the cosmos, and we must remember that it is infinite. Theosophists applaud these latest scientific pronouncements, for it is exactly what we ourselves have taught, although phrased in language other than our own technical Theosophical terms. But nevertheless theosophists say, echoing the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, that this word consciousness is merely a generalizing term; theosophists much prefer to be more definite and instead of consciousness, to say consciousnesses. Just because mankind is composed of more than one man, therefore mankind or humanity is merely a generalizing term; and we know that humanity is composed of men, of human individuals; and let us not forget that the earth is populated with other entities, too. All space is filled full with sentient selfconscious, quasi-self-conscious, quasi-conscious entities in all-various grades of evolutionary progress; and we human beings, as only one hierarchy of entities presently existing on our earth, merely prove the rule that prevails everywhere. We could not be here if it were not the universal rule elsewhere, if it were not an exemplification of the law that prevails everywhere. We humans are no exceptions whatsoever in the cosmic plan, but merely exemplify a singular instance of this universal plan. Wash your minds free of the old ecclesiastical superstition that mankind on earth is an exception to the general rule of things, and that our little dust-speck, which we call earth, is different from other dustspecks. It is different in details, assuredly, just as men differ among themselves in details; yet just as all men manifest the same general principles of energy and substance beneath the wealth of confusing details, so likewise does the universe. We men are merely a special instance, so to say, of the cosmic rule prevailing everywhere. Yes, the invisible universe is filled full with hierarchies of intelligent, quasi-intelligent, self-conscious, and quasi-self-conscious entities, existing in infinitely varying grades of evolutionary progress; for evolution prevails everywhere. It is one of nature's fundamental laws, or rather operations; and let us remember that evolution is growth. Do you know what growth really is? It is the bringing out of what is within. Do you get this important thought? Link it up with what I told you a few moments agone, that within is everything, in germ or in activity, potentially or actually manifest.

Every human being, therefore, whether having evolved to the point of expressing it as yet or not, is the vehicle of a divine being, of an inner god; and furthermore every human being has within him the capability of being a sage, a seer, a genius, a spiritual leader. It is all a question of bringing out what is locked up within. The way by which to bring out successfully what is locked up within you is by working with nature's laws -- the way of harmony, the way of peace, the way of brotherhood, the way of kindliness. Those entities who set themselves against the swiftly flowing stream of growth, against the river of evolutionary progress, sometime will rue the day when they made the choice, for they will be swept away with the mighty current and, after ages of suffering, mayhap, will learn the lesson of unity, learn the lesson of growth, which means following nature's laws; and then they will begin to advance forwards again. Ethics, therefore, as you see, are founded on nature's own structure. Ethics are real; they are vastly more than mere conventions useful for men to follow. The man who does right, lives harmoniously with his surroundings, with the beating heart of nature; and the man who does wrong, who violates nature's laws, pays heavily for his error and to the last iota. Out of this invisible universe we came; thither into that invisible universe we shall again go -- but only to return here again. Every entity follows a cyclical line of lives, which are strictly enchained, and which exemplify a chain of causation, of cause and effect. Every cause immediately produces an effect, which instantly becomes a new cause, which immediately in turn produces a new effect, it becoming a new cause, and so on forever. This is growth. This is change. Therefore this is likewise variety. This means learning, progress. My Brothers, it is our theosophical teaching that this invisible universe -- which expression is a generalizing term, as I have just told you -- consisting of many worlds and spheres and planes, and what not, itself is divided into corporate entities. We may call them home-universes. These home-universes are builded on a hierarchical pattern or plan, just as our physical universe is. Have you ever thought about it? If not, pause a moment in thought over it. The electrons build the atom; the atoms build the molecules; the molecules build the cells; the cells build the bodies -- entities if you like; the bodies live on earth or elsewhere; earth is one of a family of planets of the solar system; our solar system is one of a vast family of other solar systems comprising our galaxy, the Milky Way, our home-universe; and our galaxy, our home-universe, is but one of other universes sown like seeds of life over the infinite fields of boundless space. This illustrates the hierarchical system: the less contained by the greater, a greater still containing this greater, a much greater one containing a still greater, and so forth. It is our teaching that this hierarchical system is not only unilateral, so to speak, i. e., embracing one side, one plane, one world, but also is inexpressibly interlinked, interlocked, with all other hierarchical systems composing the boundless universe; and furthermore that any universe or hierarchical system is invisible as well as visible. Every universe contains its inner constitution just as man does; and all these various universes -- which means of course all these various worlds and planes -- are all interlocked, interworking, interlinked, all joined together by irrefragable bonds, by the unbreakable bonds of the cosmic life and substance. So that, as I told you when I began this study with you this afternoon, my Brothers, the universe is one, and every entity everywhere is an inseparable part of this universe; and therefore we are akin with all that is -- akin with the gods in all their wide ranges of being and of growth and in all their vast hierarchies of existence; akin with the inhabitants of all other planets in all other solar systems; akin with the inhabitants of the planets in our own home solar system; because all are formed out of the same cosmic principles, all are enjoying the same cosmic life, the same cosmic energy, bathing in the same cosmic essence, and therefore all have the same origin and are all marching forwards towards the same ultimate grandiose destiny. We are all inexpressibly linked together forever. Deduction: What I do sooner or later reacts upon me. What I feel, what I think, what I bring forth into act, will react upon me. I get just what I have sown. As the sower casts forth his seed, so does he reap what forth he cast. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. Man is a child of the invisible universe. Man is a child of this physical universe just because he is a child of the invisible universe. All that is in the universe is in

you -- everything; because you are an inseparable part of it and cannot ever leave it. Inversely, what is in you is everywhere. Make your own deductions. Do you see the reaches of thought in this and the peace which they bring to the mind? Do you see the spiritual and ethical and intellectual surety in it? Do you sense what it means in your being conscious of your absolute unity with the cosmic life, with the cosmic consciousness, with the cosmic essence? Death henceforth has no terrors whatsoever for you; life henceforth becomes continuously joyful; it becomes a grand adventure; for we move on from stage to stage, from world to world, from sphere to sphere, from plane to plane, learning ever, and responsible each man to himself, but also each responsible to all others. See how this clothes our human species with dignity which we never can lose. At the heart of each one of you is a god -- a god, not God, a god, a divine being, your inmost essence, your inmost self, a spark of the central fire, to use a popular expression, a flame of that central cosmic life, the Divine Fire. Being an inseparable part of the universe, each one of you, this flaming spiritual fire is your inmost self. I tell you this on every Sunday afternoon when I speak to you here, because the thought is so important. Considered as a doctrine it contains such great hope, such unspeakable inspiration. It leads on the mind to ever greater visions of glory and understanding; it opens the case-hardened lower self so that the inmost self may shine forth even into the physical man. It fills his heart with peace and his mind with hope. It was the teaching of all the great seers and sages of all the ages. It was the teaching of Jesus; it was the teaching of the Buddha; it is the teaching of them all. "Man, know thyself." How? Do you realize that none but an Occidental audience would be puzzled as to the how? The answer is: by being your inmost self: the best, the loftiest, the noblest, that is in you. That is all; and that effort, continuously followed, will lead you -- now listen carefully -- behind all the veils shutting you out from the invisible universe; for it means becoming at one with your inmost spiritual self, which, as I have just told you, my Brothers, is the heart of the universe. I am now going to give you a little lesson in Occultism; and I am going to have the pleasure of wondering how you will like it. The little lesson is the following: do you want to penetrate behind these veils? Do you want to know something of the wondrous mysteries hid behind them? Then, be forgetful of yourself and as severe in correcting your own faults, as you must become kindly and forgiving as regards others. Check yourself from following wayward impulses. Be determined to follow the path of self-conquest. "Take it with strength" -- a better translation of the teaching of the Christian New Testament that "the Kingdom of Heaven must be taken by violence." Take it with strength; in other words, conquer yourself. And the next time you pause before a temptation -- eh? The first little test! A man who cannot turn successfully from a temptation is usually the man who wonders: "Why can't I go beyond and myself see these wondrous things that I hear about?" The obvious answer is that he can't even protect himself, can't even control himself. How would he fare in those invisible realms, peopled as they are with their own hosts among whom he, this human weakling, just because of his weakness, would be an unprotected outsider? Think of the situation. If he cannot even care for himself here on earth where his present home is, how could he possibly protect himself and care for himself in what are to him, as an earth-child, regions unknown and strange and filled with unusual temptations and pitfalls and terrors as well as beauties both marvelous and seductive. As you now must see, there is a very definite, very common sense, very strong, reason for the old teaching: the way to power is by self-conquest. The man who can control himself can control other men -- for their good. Any other kind of control is tyranny and wholly and radically wrong. If you want to control the elementals, if you want to control the living beings inhabiting other worlds and spheres, merely in order to protect yourself, then you must control them in the sense in which a good man will control his horse or his dog: control yourself first. Gain strength in other words. That is the key thought. You have the powers of a god within you. You have a key within you which can unlock for you every closed door that the universe contains. That key is your spiritual self, a spark of the cosmic fire that I

have told you about, flowing from the heart of the universe. Therefore, be that spiritual self of yourself, and then the universe is yours; for then you will be as a god. This is a long stage of evolution ahead of us considered as a race, but it is coming because we are moving steadily forwards towards it. Meanwhile, if you want to explore the invisible realms, if you want to know what they are, how they are, where they are, what they look like, what are the beings who inhabit them, then take the first step at the next temptation that comes to you: exercise your willpower, and say No! In other words, strengthen yourself. The rule as you see is as simple as can be. There is no other way. It is the way of safety; it is the way of glory; it is also the quick way. You see, as I told you, my Brothers, when I began our study with you this afternoon, the wonderful theosophical teachings do not contain anything that is weird or uncanny or unreasonable. They show a man how to attain his noblest best. They show him the path that he should follow, and it is so beautiful, this path. In following it a man grows, he expands. In this growth he gains feelings that to him at present are but very vague, inchoate dreams. His inner faculties begin to grow. He becomes inwardly greater; he feels much more keenly; he enters progressively more and more into the inner life, because in fact he is slowly becoming it. His inner senses awaken. On the other hand, look at the man who cannot even say No to the least temptation. Is he admirable? A man with a human physical body, with all the divine and spiritual faculties within him lying untouched, unevoked, magnificent treasuries of power and faculty within; and he is so weak, so flabby of will, so lacking in lofty aspiration, that he cannot even resist the first little temptation that occurs. He falls. Is this admirable? Is such a man a beautiful picture of virile manhood? Is such a man manly? Let every man in this auditorium look into his own heart. How we admire a man who can control himself -- quietly, unostentatiously, without bragging about it! It is grand to know a man like that, or a woman like that. I am not preaching, my Brothers. I am a man like you, but I have been taught. I know what I am talking about. I, too, have my troubles; I too have had my temptations; and I have had to conquer -- myself: yes, conquer, or go down. And at least, whatever my failings may have been or are, I have found the road to ineffable peace, the path to unspeakable bliss; I have found the way to the mountaintops, and I have begun to tread it. I know what peace and happiness are. I know how these may grow within me. And oh! that I could give to you the little that I have gained, so that you also might have the peace and the vision that have come to me! Think of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace, the elder brothers of mankind: they who are much farther evolved along the path than we are -- demigods (I will not withdraw the term) -demigods in human flesh, but yet men, and called by me demigods merely because they have become more manly and have evoked more of the inner divine powers within them than the average man is and has. They have found the path within themselves and have also evoked their own spiritual faculties and powers, and in consequence their whole being is suffused with love and compassion and pity and wisdom and knowledge, and power is in their strong hands and is wielded with justice and in compassion for erring mankind. The trouble is that most men and women so continuously look backwards. Is it not an amazing paradox, my Brothers? Everyone knows that progress is forwards and that forwards lies the Light. They know it well; you know it well. But we will persistently turn our backs on the light and look to what is behind us. It all reminds me of a humorous little story I read of the woofle-bird. Have you ever heard of the woofle-bird? It's a real thing, too. The woofle-bird is a real entity. I wonder if you will be able to find that bird after I read to you this little story. This is it: Well, we heard a new expression over the radio, or new to us: the discovery of a new species in bird life, named the woofle-bird. It always flies backwards, and the reason is that it doesn't give a darn where it is going but wants to see where it has been. Can you locate the woofle-bird now? Nearly all of us are woofle-birds. The average man doesn't give a darn where he is going, but he is continually looking backwards, so to speak, because he wants to see

where he has been. This is because it is exactly the same with his thoughts. It is the same with our teachings -- scientific, religious, philosophical, and whatnot. I desire to contribute my little mite to change this psychology. I was taught to give men hope and peace, to fire their hearts with a flame of holy, impersonal love; and that work I shall continue trying to accomplish until my time comes to pass out. I too may be a woofle-bird, alas, but at least I am trying to fly forwards instead of backwards; and I want your company. Just like woofle-birds, we are so apt to think of the universe according to the stories that we have heard about it in the textbooks of our schools: a universe which runs by itself, all alone, nobody knows how, which just came, which just growed -- like Topsy. Nobody knows where it is going, and they think the universe doesn't give a darn where it is going. But just the same we are all looking behind to see where it came from, and we cannot see any farther in that direction than if we looked forwards along the path whither we are going. I suppose that you all have sat on the back platform of an observation car where you are always looking at the scenery that has passed. As for me, I like to sit in the front, at least to look forwards, and to see whither I am going. The only way, my Brothers, for a man really to know where he is going and what he is, is by looking within himself -- within his spiritual self. Study yourself -- not the physical, picayunish, petty, little selfhood that makes our life a torment and often a hell, but the real inner man, the self within, which is a hero, which thinks sublime thoughts and has lofty aspirations towards the stars, and whose very being is love and wisdom. Study it. It is the god within you. It is you and the fountain of all that is great within you. O my Brothers, why not try to become at one with it? Therein lie strength, wisdom, peace, vision, happiness, ability to help, genius, growth. All that is great is there. I have spoken of our scientific views, as well as of our philosophical and religious ones, as being those mainly of the past. I do not mean this discourteously, for there are some very eminent scientists whose gaze is forwards. No one more than the theosophist has a higher respect for the best work of our modern scientific researchers. Theosophists have a habit of saying that they are doing pioneer work for The Theosophical Society; and an increasingly large number of our great scientific thinkers are continuously approaching more and more to our age-old Theosophical doctrines -- yes, approaching them more and more. I could recite instances to you of what theosophists have taught during the fifty years last past, since the present Theosophical Society was founded, teachings which are now commonplaces in the highest scientific quarters. We are very happy about this. But because science is growing, because our scientists are gaining new visions, are these facts reasons why we should stop at one point, when they themselves are moving forwards, and, staying at that point say: "This is the teaching of truth"? No! Let us move forwards with the great ones of science themselves, and keep our minds fluid, and thus advance. Or, if you want to be simple woofle-birds, where are you going to build your nest in peace, with the feeling that the place you select will remain forever undisturbed and yourself remain forever in undisturbed peace? These scientists are doing wonderful work in many instances. My favorite reading at the present time is scientific works, and I read in order to provide myself with material for my lectures to my audiences, so that what I tell them as having been discovered by the greatest of scientific minds is true reports. And I have found this: that science per se does not exist, but that there are scientists. Science is a body corporate of collected facts, which body corporate changes with every two or three years. There is a continuous overhauling of the stock on the shelves, so to speak. Old things are taken down and cast into the discard; new ideas are put into their places. In view of this fact, are you going to pin your faith to changeable theories, or are you going to think for yourselves, to find yourselves, to realize your oneness with the universe in which you live and of which you are an inseparable part, which is your closest and most intimate and most important concern? Think, I repeat. I have before me this afternoon a few citations of remarks by some of the most eminent modern scientific thinkers. Let me quote first from Sir James Jeans:

The new planet may compel us to abandon our views as to the origin of the sun's family. Fine! Here again our scientists are learning something new, and discarding the ideas of our fathers and grandfathers. This is excellent! Most excellent indeed! But how about those poor minds who accepted the scientific teachings of our fathers, of our grandfathers in other words of the last generation or two, to the effect that the present constitution of the solar system will in all probability prevail forever and that it cannot be changed? Is not this a typical example of a scientific dogma? Jeans again: The Universe is melting away. But what does Dr. R. A. Millikan say: Creation is always going on in the Universe. And yet these gentlemen are two of the greatest thinkers in scientific circles today! Then comes Bertrand Russell: There are various reasons for doubting whether Einstein's universe is quite right. Well, why not so? Did anyone suppose that the wonderful Einstein was infallible and could not make a mistake and had reduced every possible fact of nature to fit into its proper niche in his otherwise scientifically fine theory of relativity, etc.? Obviously, the greatest human thinking apparatus can attain only to approximate truth. Einstein says: Nothing is faster than light-waves. But Professor G. P. Thompson utters a quite contradictory statement when he says: The waves that accompany an electron do not travel with the speed of light, but much faster. Sir A. Eddington says: The electron is a dummy. Sir J. J. Thompson: The mathematician may play all kinds of tricks with space; with a few strokes of his pen he can create a space with almost any properties you may order. And a writer, Arthur Mee, commenting on these remarks, says: There never was a time when the men who lead in scientific thought were so doubtful of the ground on which they stand. . . . Let us entertain a philosophic doubt as to the inspiration of dicta on the heavens and their affairs, their constituents and boundaries, and their ultimate destiny, which pursue one another down the columns of our journals. . . . As Cromwell said, "Gentlemen, remember, in the name of God, you may possibly be mistaken." Nevertheless, and after stating these few words of warning, let us also remember what wonderful advances our greatest scientific thinkers are making! They are now teaching that the fundamental thing of the universe is mind-stuff, consciousness. Compare this with the scientific teachings of thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Pause a moment in thought. Don't be woofle-birds all the time, but look ahead. Give wings to your creative thought, and think! Consciousness, life, is the heart of the universe, the essential of it; and all the rest is but illusion, appearances, phenomena. Sir James Jeans finely says -- and I am quoting these men, so that you will have just what they themselves say:

There is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. . . . We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has . . . the tendency to think in a way, which for want of a better word, we describe as mathematical. . . . It may well be, as it seems to me, that each individual consciousness ought to be compared to a brain-cell in a universal mind. Compare thoughts like these with what our textbooks even today are teaching in our public schools and universities! Jeans continues: I incline to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derived from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe. And the great American scientist, who did such magnificent work on the cosmic rays, Dr. R. A. Millikan, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said recently: Evolution raised doubts about the theory that the universe will come to an end through 'heat-death' when all the heat and energy of the suns and planets has been radiated into space beyond all recovery. Instead, it tends to help support the belief that new energy and heat are being created somewhere out in space, to replace that which is lost. . . . . . . acceptable and demonstrable facts do not, in this twentieth century, seem to be disposed to wait on suitable mechanical "pictures." Indeed, has not modern physics thrown the purely mechanistic view of the universe root and branch out of its house? It most certainly has. We live in a new time indeed; we live in a new era; we are coming back to the old teachings of the archaic wisdom-religion of mankind, today called theosophy, that the universe is filled full, not only with consciousness, but with consciousnesses: cosmic spirits, super-gods, gods, demigods, etc. -- call them what you like, -- and then such beings as we men are, and then those beneath us; and where may you pause and say: "Here the ladder of lives begins and there it ends"? You cannot say so. There is neither beginning nor end in infinitude. But this means that all entities and things fundamentally are consciousnesses -- divine consciousnesses, spiritual consciousnesses, human consciousnesses, beast consciousnesses, plant consciousnesses, and even the consciousnesses of the stones if you like -- each class of its own kind, but all evolving, all progressing, all changing because all are growing. Are men the sole exception, in being consciousnesses in boundless space? No, of course not. We men are just one family-host passing through the earth phase of our long evolutionary pilgrimage. Out of the invisible worlds into this sphere we come; and when we have done our part here, played our part on this stage of life, we leave it and go back into the invisible spheres, there to play other parts on other stages of life, but only to return here again whither we are attracted by what we have lived here and done here and been here in other lives. Here we have sowed seeds which we shall have to come back to reap. We come together because we have loved each other and hated each other in other lives, because we have wronged each other and done each other right. We have built up links of karma, as theosophists say, links of destiny, together and among ourselves. And leaving all else aside, because my time for speaking is passing quickly, this is the explanation why those who love find each other again. I say literally that they cannot be kept apart. Yea, and those who hate inevitably also will come together again; they cannot avoid each other, because hate in a sense has as strong an attraction as love has. Therefore, build yourselves aright; build nobly; build well; build yourselves divinely. Adventurous lovers of life, dreamers of dreams, hearken! The universe is yours, for it is you. Its life is your life; its mighty pulse beats in your heart; its substance gives you your bodies and its consciousness is you. You are at one with the boundless All. It is you and you are It. Question 1: Our modern scientists are beginning to dream of invisible or unseen universes. Is this also the teaching of theosophy?

It most emphatically is, as I have tried this afternoon and also on last Sunday afternoon to set briefly before you. Most decidedly do theosophists teach it; and furthermore we say that the unseen and invisible Universes are the roots of things, are the causes of things, on this and in this our physical universe. The real man, for instance, is invisible, unseen; and the body merely shows forth, expresses, what comes from the real man. The real man is a spiritual and intellectual energy; and the body does what this energy says: "Up, arm! Forward, leg! Point, finger! Write, hand! Think! Speak! Act!" Our physical body could be made so helpful a friend, if only we treated it halfway decently. Remember that ye are the Temple of the Most High and that the spirit of the divine dwelleth within you. You remember the saying in the Christian Scripture. Question 2: If such an invisible universe exists, what kind of an affair is it? Is it like our own physical sphere, or greatly different from it? It is both like and unlike. Our physical sphere is like it because it is a copy of it on this gross physical plane. The worlds and spheres and planes of the invisible universe also differ greatly among themselves. But you know the maxim of the ancient Egyptian Hermes, one of the profound maxims of the Hermetic school. I repeat it to you today because it is true and it is so pertinent to my present remarks: "What is above is the same as what is below." Now, hearken to what follows: "What is here below is the same as what is above" in the spiritual worlds; the reason for this being that universal cosmos has one fundamental life, one fundamental law, one fundamental consciousness, which run through all and through every part of the All. Therefore every part reflects somewhat at least of the life and law and consciousness which permeate the whole. Must not every part shadow forth what the whole of which it is a part contains? Obviously. Question 3: What relation has our physical world to a possible universe which is invisible? It has every relation to it. Our physical world is simply the clothing, the garment, the outermost shell, the body, the reflection, the mirroring, of the inner universe, just as man's body is the outermost shell, garment, clothing, reflection, mirroring, of what he himself is within. Question 4: Is consciousness different from matter in the universe, or are they one at root? They are one; at root fundamentally one. Matter is, so to say, consciousness crystallized, passing through the material phase; or in other words monadic entities imbedding conscious entities passing through the material phase of their long evolutionary pilgrimage; and, conversely, spirit is, if you like, substance etherealized. Theosophists prefer to say that spirit or energy is the cause, and matter or substance is the effect. The last question that I have to answer today is the following: Is man a "lost child" in a chapter of cosmic accidents, or is his being here part of nature's scheme? Let me ask you a question: Man is here; if he is not here according to nature's scheme, then how came he here? How exists he here? The obvious answer is that he is here because such is nature's law. He is here therefore harmoniously; obviously he is a part of cosmic being. Man is no lost child! Wash your minds clean of those old scientific and theological superstitions, for that is just exactly what they are. Man is a god manifesting in a physical body but through an intermediate psychological apparatus. To put it briefly, he is a divine flame encased in gross substance or matter, manifesting feebly at the present time in his evolutionary journey the wondrous faculties and powers of the god within, but showing them nevertheless at least somewhat; for man can think, and thinking is a wondrous faculty; he can cast his thought beyond the stars; he can reason; he can draw deductions from premises; he can raise himself aloft on the wings of his imagination, and, guided by reason, soar beyond the confines of the polar star. Man can feel; he has compassion; he has pity for the helpless, pity for the hopeless, a yearning to aid those who need aid. All these are divine faculties. Even in so small a degree as these examples testify does man show forth the working of the god within him.

Now then, my Brothers, in closing I ask you to reflect that all that I have told you this afternoon has been laid before you not as a theory, not at all. That is not our claim; for we claim to possess the ancient wisdom-religion of mankind, which the most titanic intellects of the human race in other ages formulated into human tongues. What I have laid before you is for your earnest thought, for you kindly to think over and to judge of it, realizing the imperfections which your speaker this afternoon has in attempting to give you the wondrous truth which at least in part has come to him. Take therefore this sublime system of thought; think upon it; ponder it; brood over it; and my earnest prayer, my Brothers, is that you may have the peace, the light, the hope, that have come to me, to us theosophists, who have found as I have found. To those who mourn are these words in particular addressed; for your tears shall be wiped away, and love, almighty, impersonal love, with its healing balm, will come stealing into your being to soothe and to bless.

Second Series: No. 29 (March (March 23, 1931)

OCCULTISM: GENUINE AND IMAGINARY

(Lecture delivered February 8, 1931) CONTENTS: Dual aspect of nature. -- Wholesome teachings of the true theosophist. -- Genuine occultists of the ages. -- Occultism defined; its counterfeits pointed out. -- Theosophical Movements throughout the ages. -- Imaginary occultists. -- Modern science and occultism. -- On making claims. -Persecution of envoys from the Masters of Wisdom. -- H. P. Blavatsky and her message. -- The Tibetan term, hpho-wa. -- Wisdom not picked from trees. -- What is meant by occult powers? -- Relation between psychic and occult powers. -- Which first: the spiritual or the psychic? -- Self-consciously at home in the universe. A genuine Theosophical lecturer, Friends, is not a crank; and if he be a true theosophical lecturer he will not talk to you about things which are weird, uncanny, strange -- which give you the creeps; for why should any real understander and therefore expositor of nature's great and wondrous mysteries, in however small a degree, have to rely upon the so-called weird and uncanny in order to produce a sense among you that back of what he says he is in communication with planes of being beyond the ordinary ken? Such efforts are of course purely artificial and proclaim an attempt to arouse a belief in what are probably merely fictitious powers in the speaker. A theosophical lecturer, if he be truly such, will tell you of the wonders of the universe: what is hid therein, how the universe is builded, what its structure is, what man is and what relation he has with the boundless All -- that universe -- of which he is an inseparable part. A theosophical teacher will tell you of man's origin, of the present character and nature of man's being, and of human destiny. In other words, his talks -- his studies together with his audiences -- will be descriptive: expository only in the sense of giving forth what he himself has learned. I ask you to believe me when I tell you in all sincerity that the genuine theosophical teacher will lead you into realms which are not only very beautiful but will give to you teachings that are essentially wholesome, clean, and sane. This does not mean that such a lecturer, if he be indeed a genuine theosophical teacher, is ignorant of what may be called the dark side or night side of nature; but it does mean that he realizes that a study of nature's shadowy veils or shadowy side is one that should be deferred until a later date in the student's life, when the proper foundations, spiritual, intellectual, and ethical, shall have been strongly laid. It is quite true that there is a side of nature which to us human beings seems horrible, just as there is a side to nature which is inexpressibly beautiful, lovely and sublime. Is it not thus also in ordinary human affairs? We see the dual nature manifesting even in man himself: we see in one man the hero, selfsacrificing, self-forgetful, strong, clean, and in every way grand; and in another man we may see the opposites of all these fine qualities, such as meanness, hatred, evildoing, and all the horrors that break forth when the lower nature of man is unleashed. So is it likewise in the Great Mother, nature herself: there is what we may for brevity call the light side, the spiritual or heavenly part of the universe, the causal roots of all that is lovely and harmonious and inspiring in our studies of nature. But we are likewise cognizant of the other side of natural being. I tell you truly that the genuine occultist -- a term which I will describe and clearly define in a moment or two -- is a most wholesome being to know, for he is more or less filled with the inner spiritual light, the light of the god within him. If he is a genuine theosophical occultist, not only can he communicate this light to others and arouse in them the same fire that burns in his own breast, and thus give to his fellows peace and joy, and arouse in them the sleeping sense of beauty, and above everything else that strange, wondrous, intimate feeling of man's essential unity with the universe, of his essential oneness with the All, but he is in duty bound to do this. The position of theosophical teacher carries with it great and heavy responsibilities, and these he can never at any time ignore or pass by, nor would he indeed ever desire to do so, for his greatest joy is in

helping others, is in giving the same light to others that he himself has received and in passing on that light as he himself has obtained it. Show me one of the great sages and seers of the ages whose teachings have ever been uncanny, or have aroused hatred, or a moral rebellion of spiritual instincts in any human breast: you cannot point to one; and all the great sages and seers of the ages have been genuine occultists, genuine theosophical teachers of high degree, real thinkers -- knowers indeed; because they have gone behind the veils of the outward seeming, each one with his own percipient individual consciousness, and thus themselves seen at first hand -- seen nature's inmost structure, operations, laws, and all the wondrous inner beauty of things of which the inspired poets of the ages have sung. These great sages and seers have brought it all back with them on their return from this noblest of adventures, and have formulated their knowledge in human language and have taught it to their fellow men. Thus indeed have the great religions and philosophies and philosophical sciences of all past ages originally been delivered unto men. For the founder or originator of every one of these great ancient systems of thought was a genuine sage and seer -- called a sage because he knew, and called a seer because he could see.

Occultism is a much misunderstood and much abused term. If you look the word up in the dictionaries,
you will almost certainly not get the proper definition of it as occultists themselves understand it, for the simple reason that lexicographers themselves are almost certainly not Occultists; mayhap you may find something about it in the encyclopedias, if they are generous enough to include this hitherto tabooed subject of thought in their pages; but it is extremely probable that you will find the same total misunderstanding of the real meaning of occultism in the encyclopedias that you will meet with in the dictionaries. What then is occultism? occultism, I say, is the study of the things which are occult, hid -- realities in other words: not imaginary things. If we accept this definition of the word -- and I assure you that it is the right and proper definition that occultists themselves employ -- it becomes immediately obvious that occultism must be the most serious and important branch of human knowledge; and as genuine occultists always say that occultism is founded on nature herself, it therefore must be the very cream of natural philosophy -- using the words natural philosophy in the sense of including all realms and spheres of the universe and particularly those of the inner, invisible, and causal realms. Occultism is the descriptive science of the things that are causal, and therefore of the things which are in most instances invisible -- nature's fundamental structure, operations, and laws; and anyone who studies these realities and who has reached some understanding of them from individual experience and insight and who delivers what he knows to his fellow men, is a true and genuine occultist. But do not confuse this wide range of experience possible to human beings with merely one or two or three more or less disputed psychic faculties such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, thought-transference, etc. Do I believe in clairvoyance, for instance? Bless your dear souls, of course I do -- but in genuine clairvoyance, using the word in the largest sense as meaning clear-seeing, insight behind the veils, inner visioning. Every true coin, it is said, is or can be counterfeited; and if a thing were not true, in other words had no value, were not genuine and real, there would be no possibility of its being counterfeited, because no one would have a use for it. Therefore, wherever you see a counterfeit it is paradoxically enough a testimony to actual values existing somewhere which are the realities; hence, wherever you see spurious coin you may be assured that a hunting for the pure gold will not be unrewarded. Occultism is the science of the things which are invisible. This grand science actually exists. It is an operative science but also a descriptive one. There is a way of going behind the veils of nature; there is a secret, a sacred, science, and this science is occultism. Occultism bears the same relation to theosophy that wisdom bears to its works among men. Occultism is that part of theosophy which pertains to the secret and sacred science; and theosophy is that part of occultism which pertains to the operations and descriptive work of the secret and sacred science among men. When parts of this secret and sacred science are delivered to men in formulated fashion, more or less openly and clearly so that any who are worthy may receive and understand, that is theosophy -- the wisdom of the gods, as given to mankind.

All through the ages there have been searchers and seekers after this secret wisdom. The instinct of the human heart has told all thinking and intuitive men in all ages that there is an explanation of the riddles of life, and that this explanation can be had, that it may be found. Always the problem has been the How, the Where. Blind sons of men, the great sages and seers have always told you the how and the where! Every one of them has given to you the hint, has shown to you the beginning of the path. Their message has always been, although variously voiced and differently phrased: "Come unto me, all ye that are weary with the world and heavy-laden with its sorrow, and I will give you wisdom, which is also peace. Look within, O son of man, for there begins the mystic pathway of Wisdom for each one of you, a pathway which leads to the heart of the universe, for each one of you in his inmost, in the core of the core of his being, is a divinity, a deathless god; and the very heart of the heart of the heart of the core of the core of every living entity is a spark of the eternal central fire; so that if you become at one with this spark, you are at one with the central fire, its fountainhead; and then all wisdom is yours, and all knowledge is yours, and all love is yours, and all power is yours." This is so simple that a child may understand the rule; and every theosophical movement in every age has been founded with the main intent of bringing to men the realization of the truths of life -- of the nature, structure, and operations of the universe of which all men are inseparable, individual parts. Every theosophical movement throughout the ages has been founded in order to bring back to man the realization of that which is essentially man's, to awaken in his heart his spiritual instincts, to light the divine fire anew in his soul, so that, inflamed with its glory, he may press onwards, find this pathway, and in following it to its end -- which is indeed no end, for it is endless -- he may reach the realization by individual experience of his complete oneness with the universe of which he is a child. That universe is you; every part of it is yours; it is your eternal home and your everlasting dwelling place. There you are native; and not only are you, each one of you, the heart of the universe in the manner that I have just set forth when speaking of the inner god, but that universe itself verily is you yourself in your inmost. Do you get this wondrous thought so filled with inspiration and hope? There, then, is the pathway. Beginning to tread it, you begin the study of genuine occultism; and it is dependent upon your own selves, your own souls, individually speaking, how far you advance along this pathway, which "begins" in you and which reaches forever and forever and forever in constantly enlarging reaches throughout the beginningless and endless spaces of Space. "Man, know thyself!" Do you now begin to see the idea? Thy self, thy spiritual self, is the universe itself. The heart of being is your heart of being. You are in the universe, you live in the universe, always will you be in it, you cannot ever leave it, you have never been out of it, because you are its child, and here now you are. Is not this thought a very simple and easily understood conception? Do you not begin to catch a glimpse of the glory that lies back of it, and of the inspiration to a nobler and a grander life that it contains? Any man who pursues this study -- in other words, any man who follows this pathway -- is an occultist, a genuine occultist; and precisely in accordance with the advance that he has made along this inner, wondrous Path of mystery and peace and wisdom and beauty, is his inner spiritual standing -- whether he be a mere beginner on the path or a master of life. This inner god within each one of you the mystical modern Christians call the immanent Christos; and the Buddhists call it the inner Buddha; and the Brahmanists call it the Brahma within -- all different words for the same thing; and the European mystics always have spoken of it as the inner light. Now anyone, however much his mind and heart may feel inclined to the study of things which are hid, who does not follow this spiritual pathway is not a genuine occultist. He studies a pseudo-occultism, indeed, in the sense of studying mysterious and weird things, but his occultism is imaginary; he is studying more particularly the curiously complex and perplexing psychological operations of his own mind. I do not deny and in fact I affirm that even this pseudo-occultism is a particular, albeit unimportant, branch of the genuine occultism, because the student in occultism must first of all study himself; but unless he has the larger teachings and is under the instruction of a genuine progressed occultist he is following a dangerous because misleading pathway. He is attempting to run before he can crawl.

Such men as these are pseudo-occultists, imaginary occultists. Some of them are sincere even if ignorant; but some of them also are frauds, conscious or unconscious -- frauds, because claiming pretensions to a wisdom which they possess not. Are there not conscious and even unconscious frauds in other walks of life also? But because there are frauds shall we turn from the realities? Because there are bad men shall we eschew the company of the good? Shall we avoid the companionship of men whose hearts are noble, whose instincts are lofty, and whose word is truth itself, because we happen to know that there are men in the world whose hearts are ignoble, whose instincts are base, and whose claims are mere pretensions? Of course not! Even these unfortunate ministers of deception are unconscious and perhaps unwilling witnesses of the existence of the pure gold of the genuine occultism to which, despite themselves, they are drawn and which they attempt to copy. Occultism, therefore, is the science of the things which are invisible; and this means, as I have already said, the coordinated science of the structure, operations, and so-called laws, of universal being. Do you realize that our modern Occidental science is becoming occultist? Do you realize that some of our greatest scientific researchers are distinctly and properly to be called occultists? They most certainly have a right to the name. They are penetrating behind the outermost veil of the outward seeming, and moving forwards towards another invisible veil which is behind the veil of the outward seeming. They have as yet advanced but a short way, it is true, and they really don't know whither they are going; nevertheless, they are students of the things which are invisible in nature's structure and in her operations and energies and laws; and by the definition that I have already laid down they are entitled to be called genuine -- but unconscious -- occultists. Theosophists don't call them by that name because we prefer to restrict this term to men who have been trained by genuine occult teachers who have been taught how to unlock the inner percipient self, so that it may, if one like, leave the body and enter into the very womb of natural being. This indeed can be done; it is in fact done every day; and those men who can do this are the genuine occultists, those who have the best and largest right to this noble title. Our modern scientists, wonderfully as they are working, are nevertheless unconscious occultists. All the great seers and sages of whom I have already spoken, and their pupils who have been taught by them to do what I have told you -- to unlock the inner self and to send it out into nature's heart -- they indeed are the genuine occultists; and they never talk in public about it; they don't advertise themselves even. But there are rare exceptions to this rule. There are occasions, indeed, when the association of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace sends out one or more of their pupils with instructions to proclaim the glad tidings of spiritual truth once more to the hearts and minds of men, and to do so with the voice of authority, as Jesus did, as the Buddha did, as Pythagoras did, as Empedocles did, as Lao-tse did, as Krishna did, as Apollonius of Tyana did, and as did many others; and as I have often before told you, their teaching has always been fundamentally one teaching, however that teaching may have varied in form because given in different ages to different races of men; it has always been fundamentally the same. It matters not at all in what language they spoke, nor in what age and under what conditions and in what circumstances they delivered what they had to say: the essentials were always the same -- the same identic formulation of natural facts, and the same identic system of natural verities. There are false or rather imaginary occultists in the world today, and in recent times they are growing to be a small host. They advertise themselves more or less openly. Can you blame the theosophists for often feeling suspicious, for doubting, when they hear these claims? I cannot blame them. People say that I make claims. I have never made claims. They don't understand. I have never made a claim in this respect in all my life, nor could I be guilty of so gross a violation of the fundamental law of the occult training. I have, however, made certain statements which are true; I have made them because I was told to make them; but I didn't make them in order to be accepted as an occultist nor as a theosophical teacher, but in making them I realized that there was a profound purpose in my so speaking or writing, and that what I said I laid before the conscience of my hearers, which conscience would dictate the acceptance or the rejection of the statements made by me. I have asked no man or woman ever to believe a word that I say merely because I say it; I have said just the contrary and have said it very vigorously. What I may say at any time, I call upon you to examine for yourselves, to search it, to analyze it; and if you find that it is good and true, then I ask you to hold to it with all your strength. Be

honest; and if you find that what I say to you is wrong and false, then reject it, abhor it. It is the only honest thing for you to do. I have spoken of this on many other occasions, and what I have on these other occasions said I now refer you to if you are interested. When H. P. Blavatsky, the envoy of the Masters of Compassion and Wisdom and Peace in our age, came to the Occidental world, did she come as one who had no authority? Did she write books and send them forth to be accepted or rejected, as merely interesting or curious specimens of mystical theorizing and without any reference to a greater authority by far than her own? Like all envoys from the Great Lodge of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion she laid her literary works on the altar of truth and left it to the conscience of her readers and to their intuitions to judge of it. But running all through her teachings was the declaration in substance as follows: "There is an association of great seers and sages now living on the earth. This association or brotherhood has lived throughout all the ages of past time. It will live on into the future. They are the guardians of the mystical wisdom of mankind, the wisdom and knowledge of the initiation chambers. I have come as their envoy. I have been sent to do a certain work in the world, a work embodying a sublime purpose. I have something of great value to give to you. I can show to you the pathway to wisdom and peace and love. Examine what I bring, and if it appeal to your heart and to your mind, then come -- come to me. I stand ready to give to you what I myself have received; but only as I have received it may I in turn pass it on to others." She was exceedingly chary of proclaiming anything that might have caused her to be thought of as a false or imaginary occultist. Her whole instinct of decency and her character as shaped by her esoteric training revolted against such action, just as the instinct of every honest and decent person would so revolt. Let me ask you, my Brothers, and in asking this I ask you to examine your own hearts before you answer: If you have something wondrously beautiful and grand that is for all the world and that is the common spiritual and intellectual heritage of mankind, are you going to be afraid of what people will say about you because you try to give this ineffable treasure to others? Are you going to hesitate and pause and turn from your task and refuse to give what you were told to give, merely because people will say of you: "Ha! ha! He makes claims. The world is sick at heart with false claims. That is just what ails the Theosophical Movement today -- an abundance and a superabundance of mere claims and pretentious asseverations of possessing a mystical knowledge which others have not." No! You will give what you have to give to all who are willing to receive it in the proper spirit and you will give it honestly and courageously, and you will not turn from the task before you because you may fear unpleasant consequences to your own personal self. Every new bringer of truth has been persecuted -- every one has been especially persecuted (strange and melancholy paradox!) by those who were nearest to him, nearest in belief to his teachings. This also is a paradox full of pathos, that men from a sense of caution and prudence -- noble virtues in themselves -and from a love of holy truth itself, hesitate, draw back, are suspicious, when they hear a thing which seems to them new, albeit beautiful and full of spiritual inspiration. Isn't it pathetic? Then comes Time, the great solver of all problems, the healer of all wounds, and pours his soothing balm over men's hearts and minds, clears away the mists, and finally brings understanding; and after the death of the envoy, mayhap, they say: "Verily, verily, a son of the sun has come to us and we recognized him not." But even though such be the fate of most of the envoys of the great ones, in the end it matters not at all. The envoys come, knowing what they will meet with; but they come to give, and to give up their life if need be, to give of themselves, all that they have and all that they are, in the giving; for they come not for self but for others. Yes, as you must now see, there are genuine occultists and those whom we may perhaps call imaginary occultists. Let us be charitable in our judgment regarding these latter. Some of these imaginary occultists are not at all bad men. Some of the teachings that they give are good. But whence take they them? Where do they find them, when they give them out? They have found them here, in the theosophical philosophy! That is the fountainhead whence they draw all the good that they gave: they find it all in the genuine teachings of theosophy as brought to the Western world by the envoy of the great teachers, H. P. Blavatsky -- her whom I so love and revere for her life of martyrdom. She was a genuine occultist

indeed. She was the envoy of the great ones, as others have been before her. She brought the teachings of the age-old wisdom-religion anew to mankind; and it is from this fountain of wisdom that men of later date have drawn for their own purposes. If now they had given out these teachings and had said: "These truths have I drawn from H. P. Blavatsky; to her is due the credit, and also to them -- the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace -- who sent her forth," then I would not utter a word of blame. Indeed, I should even applaud. But when I find people taking credit unto themselves, and not giving credit where credit is rightly due, then I call such action a spiritual theft, and such people I qualify as imaginary occultists. The woods are full of them today. Our cities today contain a small army of them, and our newspapers contain column after column of their advertisements. I have not the slightest desire to throw mud at anyone nor to utter a word of unmerited reproof. But my instinct of justice and my sense of right revolts sometimes when I ponder over these matters, and I feel that it is my duty to tell you the truth. "Come unto me," said the Syrian initiate-teacher, "Come unto me, and I will show you the pathway to wisdom, to peace, to love, and to power." Such was also the declaration of the Oracle of the Delphic Apollo, who, in other words, said: "Man, know thyself: this is the pathway to wisdom, to peace, to love, to power." And H. P. Blavatsky said, in language which no thoughtful mind could misinterpret: "Come unto me, my Brothers. I have been taught. Only as I have been taught am I authorized to give; but what I have been taught I can give, and it is my duty to give it." She gave, and gave lavishly. What she gave was not her own; it is not mine own; it is not your own; because it is ours and belongs to all of us. It is the common spiritual and intellectual heritage of mankind; it belongs to you as human beings, to every son of man; and anyone who studies this common heritage of mankind and who follows the pathway that it opens, is a genuine occultist; and if he follow this pathway leading him to a greater chamber of wisdom and then later still to chambers more lovely by far, he is a greater occultist. The pathway, remember, is endless, for it leads over and through the spacious fields of the spaces of invisible space. I have a number of questions before me this afternoon that at different times have been sent to me for answer, and as they all bear on the topic of our study I will now take them up seriatim. Just what do you theosophists mean by occultism? Many people use this word, but there seems to be little agreement among those who use it. I have told you its meaning: occultism is the study of the things which are invisible, secret, sacred -- the study of the inner structure, operations, powers, and so-called laws, of the universe. This is a definition which is exact and which is therefore true; and, of course, since man is an inseparable part of the universe, therefore the secret powers, energies, and operations of the inner and invisible human being form a part of the study of the genuine Occultist also. For instance, there is a strange and mysterious energy in man, which few men consciously know anything about, and in connection with this there is a secret and wonderful key which enables him to unloose, to unlock so to say, the chains which bind him into the gross psycho-astral-physical encasement. There is this key by which to unlock the lock which locks this inner man in; and when the inner man is thus loosed or unlocked, he can go forth into the inner realms of being, into the secret and invisible places of space. In Tibet this power, this key power, is called the hpho-wa; it is called by other names in other places. All races of people have known of this wondrous fact; they have thought much about it; they have wondered greatly about it. Their instinct has told them that it is a fact. When this inner man is thus unloosed, he can send himself or project himself or, if you like the phrasing better, he himself can go whither he will, not only anywhere on the surface of the earth or to the center of the earth or to the higher regions of our atmosphere, but also to the moon, to the planets, to the sun. It depends upon what

part of the inner constitution of himself he unlocks. The spiritual part is at home in the solar spaces. Thither at will it goes like a flash of thought. The more material part of the constitution of man is earthly and clings to the earth, but nevertheless is more ethereal than is the physical body; and he can send this more ethereal but yet material part of his being to any portion of our own rocky sphere that he may please to dispatch it to; and there he can function in all his powers and faculties self-consciously and with full volition and do what he pleases. His ability in each case depends solely upon his grade of advancing in the sacred science, which also means living the life. Would you like to test this yourself? Would you like to do this yourself? Would you like to know by personal experience of these things? You can, if you will obey the law and follow the rules. Ah, yes, the same old stumbling blocks -- laws and rules! But such is nature's way. There's the rub, my Brothers: obeying rules and following studies. And yet is it not everywhere the same in life? You can't even run an automobile without learning how to do it. How can you work a problem without learning the rules for its solution? How can you practice chemistry without having studied the science? Here then is the secret: you must give yourself, if you desire to find yourself. Do you see the point? "Give up thy life if thou wouldst live." Do you grasp the idea? Give up the small life, the petty life, the mean life, the restricted life, the little personal life which shuts you in, which binds you close -- give it up and follow the light of the star within you. Expand from personality into impersonality and take your place as a master of life! "The kingdom of wisdom must be taken by strength" -- violence is the usual English translation. It must be taken by strong will. Wisdom cannot be picked from trees. It must be won by self-effort. Oh! the blessed thought that it is to be won, that it can be had, that there is in man this wondrous faculty of learning and of knowing, of being able to do all that is lofty and sublime! This thought itself, what an encouragement it is, and how strongly does it work upon man to live a nobler and better life! If people developed their occult powers would it not be a good thing for themselves and for mankind in general? What do you mean by occult powers? If you mean what I have already told you, then I enter a caveat: it depends. There are powers within the human being at the present time which are invisible and which are evil. They are occult powers, just as there are also other powers within him which are lofty in spirituality, which are divine. Shall we talk about cultivating occult powers before we define what we mean by the term? No. Cultivate the powers which give you freedom, which release you from the shackles and chains of the lower selfhood. Be free spiritually, and intellectually free; then you can be trusted with all the occult powers within you and within the universe surrounding you, of which you are a child, because then you will be a Master of Life, and all the powers that then you will have you will wield only for great and noble and unselfish and impersonal purposes. But were I to say that everybody should cultivate occult powers merely because they are occult, I should be failing grossly in my duty. Therefore I say, No. You should cultivate your spiritual powers, yes; your intellectual powers, yes; your intellectual faculties, yes; but when it comes to cultivating the astral and psychic powers, then I say, No. The average man is totally unfit to have complete command of other powers than those which he already has; and as a matter of fact, those which he already has he cannot even control. Is this not true? Indeed, the average man cannot even control himself, the ordinary psychoastral-physical powers that he commonly uses today; and then, forsooth, to have people talk about cultivating occult powers, simply shows that they don't know what they refer to. Their minds are clouded as regards the facts. Look at the average man: I repeat that he cannot even control his own feeble little appetites. Think the matter over; and you will agree with me that people who talk so glibly of cultivating occult powers are the people who are hardly to be trusted as guides, for before they can crawl themselves they seem to desire to teach other people how to run. And, mark you, my Brothers, what most people really mean when they speak of "cultivating my occult powers" is "I want to get power over other people." I

tell you that such people are totally unfit to wield occult powers of any kind, for the motive is in most cases selfish, and their minds are beclouded with ignorance. It is one of our theosophical duties to show men the way to wisdom, to peace, to happiness, to strength, and to spiritual power -- the real powers, the powers which are safe and clean and sweet, which make a man lovable, which make him compassionate, which guarantee that power put into his hands will be wielded never for self but always in order to benefit others. Do you see what I mean? Before occult powers of any kind are cultivated, man must learn the first lesson of the mystic knowledge, which is to control himself; and all powers that later he gains must be laid on the altar of impersonal service -- on the altar of service to mankind. There are great men, noble-minded men, men who can be trusted; and they are entitled to have powers, and they have them. They are chelas, as we theosophists say; it may be unknown to themselves sometimes in the beginning, but nevertheless they are pupils, disciples, of the great teachers -- of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace. O my Brothers, unlock the divine in your own being! It is very easy to begin this effort. Aspire, forgive, love impersonally, control yourself, exercise your spiritual faculties, cultivate your intellectual powers, do good to others; but always learn to love, to love more, to love still more greatly, to love more grandly still, and let your compassion reach even to the stars in thought and in feeling. Then you are indeed on the pathway to the gods. You are becoming a genuine Occultist, and some day great powers will be yours and the vision sublime -- that vision which will enable you even while yet in the physical body to look within and beyond and to see truth face to face. Distance then will matter not, for you will be seeing with the spiritual eye. What relation have the so-called psychic powers to what you theosophists call occult powers? They have the same relation that baby talk has to the discourse of a wise philosopher. The psychic powers are the lowest powers of the intermediate nature in the human being, and we are exercising and using them even now -- yes, now, and we cannot even control them. Men's thoughts are vagrant, wandering, uncertain, lacking precision, without positive direction, and feeble. The average man cannot even keep his thoughts in the grip of his self-conscious will. His weakest passions lead him astray. Such as these are psychic powers. It is man's work to transmute them and to turn them to uses which are good and useful and holy. But there is one thing that he can do even now, and it is a grand thing: he can cultivate his spiritual and intellectual faculties and powers. Why waste time on these lower things which are so restricted and weak? "Expand!" is our theosophical teaching; and in this connection always remember: your spiritual being is coextensive with the universe. There is where you should live in thought. There is where you should dwell, and there is where you do dwell every time when you do a heroic act, every time when your thought and feeling rise out of the sphere of the restricted and narrowed person: then you live in your spiritual being; and mark you the wisdom that comes with it, note the peace that you obtain: that strange and wondrous atmosphere which seems to surround all your inner being and which gives you such high self-confidence, such lofty self-trust in the best sense of the word. This is not vanity, this is not conceit, but it is a sense of your spiritual value as a man. In so striving in thought and will you gain other things too, but these I dare not speak of in public. But nevertheless these words point to the pathway. You seem to discourage the development of occult powers. Why should we not develop them when the more power we have, the more we can do for humanity? I have already told you my answer to this. It would be fine indeed if every man could infallibly control himself and in all circumstances. Then nature's own barriers would be let down, and the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace themselves would come before the public and teach -- teach men how to unlock the mysterious treasury of the spiritual selfhood which all human beings have within them including powers of many and various kinds. Men cannot trust each other today, simply because a

man does not trust even himself. Is not that fact true? What a pathos there is in it all! It is indeed pathetic. Nevertheless human beings are growing; they are advancing; they are learning ever more and more; and in future ages, as I have so often told you from this platform, men will walk the earth like gods, and act like gods, because they will think and feel like gods. This will be because the god within will then be manifesting itself, just as even now it does in small degree when a man's heart is filled with pity for others, when he rushes to help, to aid those who call for aid, when compassion and love and understanding fill the heart full. No, I do not discourage the development of occult powers, but I do discourage the development of powers which man as yet is totally unfit to control because he cannot even control himself. The occult powers are not at all wrong in themselves. Ah me! What a restricted life most men lead! They don't know what they have within them; they have never looked within themselves; they have never felt themselves really living; they have never really lived; they don't know what they have locked up within them: a god! a divine spark of eternity! Consequently the only way in which I can answer this question, is as it was answered before: We don't discourage the development of occult powers, but we say that the only occult powers that it is safe to develop at the present time and the only ones which will bring adequate rewards to men in their present evolutionary stage are the spiritual and intellectual powers; therefore that the rewards of cultivating these are enormous: increased intellect, increased understanding, increased intuition, increased power to love -- which means to enter into sympathetic vibration with surrounding nature. Do you grasp what that means? Warnings of danger, sense of coming help, sympathetic vibrations! Grasp the thought! "It pays!" -- a commercial phrase to a commercial age! Recently in the Middle-West I heard a lecture on psychic phenomena by a noted speaker who does not call himself a theosophist, although he lectures on similar subjects. There were perhaps two thousand people present. His lecture was much more interesting than ordinary theosophical addresses, and that is why he had such a great crowd. That's pretty good, I think! There are many deep students who are intensely interested in the mysteries of nature, but the theosophists seem to be more concerned with subjects like the divinity of man than practical occultism. Isn't this an extraordinary inversion of facts! What can be more practically occult than the realization in human life of man's essential divinity? You say we should seek the inner god. Can the god be reached in one bound? Don't we have to pass through the astral and all other intervening planes before we can mount so high? I am not opposed to your noble sentiments, but do you not begin at the wrong end? No, my Brother, we do not "begin at the wrong end." We begin at the right end, we assuredly do. We begin at the end where all the great sages and seers of past ages have begun -- at the beginning. You don't have to "pass through the astral and all the intermediate" stages. That idea is childish. Why, men and women of earth, don't you realize that every one of you is a composite entity: that there is a divine part of you, a spiritual part of you, an intellectual part of you, a psychic part of you, an astral part of you, and last your physical body? You are living now in your physical body, and your emotions and common thoughts are in the psychic or astral parts, and you cannot control either. Now, our theosophical call to you is to live in the higher part of your being, which is there, which is waiting to help you, where all real energy lives and where titan forces reside: to live where life has its fountain, to live where intellect, intuition, the spirit, live.

I tell you that the powers that the man who lives in that part of his being wields and can wield at will are incomparably stronger, mightier in every sense of the word, than are the feeble little powers that man wields today because he lives only in the lower parts of his constitution. These mightier powers are the powers of the spiritual nature. For instance, I know of one power which, if it were translated into physical action, could rend a rock by an effort of the human will, and in as brief a time as a snap of the fingers could pass all its atoms into the etheric blue. It is the spiritual powers which are the ones terrific in strength and energy, because they are the causal powers. Try to understand that thought. Yes, seek the inner god, the divinity at your heart of hearts. This is the logical beginning of all occult and esoteric training, because it is the efficient way to do things. It is the path of least resistance; and when you have awakened the inner god then everything else is added unto you automatically. You have then become at one with the divinity outside of you. You are then self-consciously at home in the universe. All powers of wisdom and love are then yours. I want to know if anything could be a greater and more practical occultism than teaching a man to become at one with the god within him -- the source of all he is, the source of all his energies, of all his powers, of all his faculties, and the entity which ages of evolution will bring forth into visible manifestation as his future self. I ask you this question plainly. Gaining this, it will never fail you. It will be with you always. Even such a small thing as death then will have no terrors for you. You will then have become wholly at one with the universe.

Second Series: No. 30 (March 30, 1931)

INVISIBLE WORLDS AND THEIR INHABITANTS

(Lecture delivered February 15, 1931) CONTENTS: Shifting brain-mind theories. -- Unvoiced intuitions. -- Theosophy no new-fangled thing. - Repetitions of key doctrines. -- What is energy? -- Means of cognizing inner worlds. -- The pathway of chelaship. -- Advances of modern science. -- Consciousness is spiritual energy. -- The cosmic ladder of life. -- An eternal pilgrimage. -- No ape blood in human veins. -- Relation between visible and invisible worlds. -- Spiritism not theosophy. -- Is humanity an exception to universal law? -- Destiny of the human dead. -- Interchange of life-atoms. -- Locations of invisible worlds. -- The consistency of nature. Friends: If I belonged to a certain class of people -- and I don't -- I would tell you that my habit of looking at my audiences for a moment or two before beginning to speak to them is because I desire to come en rapport with them -- I with them and they with me; but actually I follow this habit of looking at my audiences in order to discern, if I may, within your faces, expressing itself there, and also in your eyes, some touch of the inner splendor, that inner light of wisdom and peace, which theosophists call the buddhic splendor or the buddhic glory, which arises from the deep fount of divinity dwelling in the heart of each human being. It is to this divinity within that I endeavor always to appeal. I care not a snap of the fingers for the brain-mind asseverations, dogmas, ideas, and popular thoughts which govern the world today, because all these are but transitory and represent fugitive stages in mental development and they will pass. Not a snap of the fingers do I care for them, although naturally, my Brothers, they are to be taken into account, because they form the one thing that any theosophical lecturer must meet -- yea, and overcome -- when he speaks to his audience: he must overcome these mental prejudices or views by the power of his strong human sympathy and by virtue of having an understanding heart. As a matter of fact, we are en rapport. You and I already understand each other on inner planes. I have already told you in the few words which I have said to you this afternoon something that you won't forget, a verity that I repeat on every Sunday when I stand here on this platform: that my audiences are human beings and therefore are human in body, but that they are composed likewise of spiritual energies. It is these inner spiritual entities whom, with the inward eye, so to speak, I can see sitting in solemn conclave on the azure seats of the gods -- a poetic way of speaking, it is true, but nevertheless declaring a great principle; for every son of man, every human being, is allied in his inmost to the very heart of the universe of which he is an expression; and all that is noble and fine in a human being, all that makes him truly man, springs forth from this fount of divinity within each one of us. It is to that fount that I appeal always. Your brain-mind thoughts and theories change with every lustrum of five years. New brain-mind thoughts and theories then come into vogue, and the old ones pass out of fashion. Why should any theosophical lecturer waste his time in appealing to those brain-mind prejudices and fashions of thinking? A theosophical teacher, a theosophical lecturer, a theosophical writer, has truths to give to the world -- not his truths, not our truths, but the truths belonging to the common wisdom-religion of mankind, which is as old as thinking men, which is ancient of days, and which is living even yet in men's hearts as unvoiced intuitions; and it is these intuitions which I wish to evoke in your own hearts; it is these intuitions which I wish to bring out to your own recognition, so that you yourselves in thinking may see the truth, may see the light. In other words, I desire to appeal to the Master of Wisdom in the core of each one of you so that that Master of Wisdom may become your own preceptor, your own teacher, your own infallible Guide. Every one of you has an inward eye, an inner vision; and you have forgotten it: most of you, many of you at least, have forgotten that you have inner senses with which you can contact the inmost secrets of being; and I remind you that the physical senses are but the outermost expressions of these inmost ones.

This teaching is not new; it is as old as the ages. Don't accept it merely because I tell you it. Accept it however if it appeals to you as true. If it appeals to you as false, then reject it, abhor it, discard it. All through the ages there has been taught in varying ways, in different times and to different races of men, the same fundamental system of natural verities, which today, formulated as we now have it, is called theosophy. People really don't understand what theosophy is. So many of them think that it is some new-fangled thing, a new-fangled scheme of interpreting nature and man. It is not. Test it yourselves; examine the ancient literatures; read them; study them; compare them; test them; and then you yourselves be the judges of what you find. That seems to be a fair proposition. I say this because I have often told you that you will find as the heart of all these ancient literatures, embracing the religious, philosophical, and scientific thought of all past time this one fundamental original stream of natural verities or truths of which I have just spoken and which today is called theosophy. What then is theosophy? It is the formulated system of natural religion-philosophy-science, embracing the verities of infinite nature, and teaching therefore of the structure, operations, and laws of nature as they have been and are visioned, seen, experienced, witnessed, by all the great sages and seers of the ages past and present. All of them through an ascending series of initiations have sent the percipient part of themselves, the seeing part, the visioning part, the thinking part, the intuitive part, the self-conscious part, behind the veil of the outward seeming of nature which surrounds us. They have gone behind the veils into new and marvelous realms of being and there themselves at first hand have quaffed of the waters of truth. Drinking of those sublime Pierian springs, they bring back to their fellow men and formulate in human tongue what they themselves have seen and have found; and these various formulations were, in past ages, the original sources of the ancient philosophies and religions. All these great sages and seers having seen the same verities, having found the same truths, in the invisible spheres of being, and having formulated this same body of truths which they had discovered, it is clear then that behind all the literatures, within all the literatures, under the words, in the words, behind the words, you will find this one fundamental system of natural scientific religio-philosophy. I have often before from this platform told you these same facts, first because they are very important and their repetition is exceedingly good because it accustoms Occidental minds to ideas which to these minds are relatively new; second, because these few fundamental ideas are very decidedly important keys opening up other more difficult and more recondite aspects or parts of our theosophical philosophy; and third, because on every Sunday when I speak to you from this platform, in addition to the many who come either frequently or continuously, I realize that there are always many newcomers among my audiences, and it is only fair that in order to make what I say more comprehensible I give to those newcomers also the same key doctrines so frequently mentioned. All through the ages, and in all the ancient literatures, even as we have them today, you will find the declaration made by the noblest intellectual thinkers, the greatest and sublimest spiritual seers, of the human race, that this physical universe of ours is but the outer garment, the veil hiding others within it or behind it, which latter are invisible to physical eyes, unheard by physical ears, untouched by any physical senses, because belonging to spheres of energies and matter which are not those of our physical world. All our various sense apparatuses are builded to contact only the physical world as it is around us at present. It is for this reason that we cognize this physical world by means of our senses. This teaching of the existence of these inner and invisible worlds is a very, very old one. It is a teaching or doctrine that has stood the test of the most searching examination of the titanic intellects of all past ages. Pause therefore a moment in thought over this fact, for it proves that at the least, it is a teaching worthy of our most serious consideration. The greatest men who have ever lived have taught it; and they all taught their fellow men also how to find themselves the pathway so that for themselves they could prove what they were told by their teachers and preceptors, the great sages and seers. Yes, verily, the invisible worlds exist; and this outermost world of ours is but the veil hiding the inner worlds, just as man's body is the veil hiding the energies, substances, which pulse and pulsate and work and express themselves through him. It is obvious, therefore, that these inner worlds are the causal

worlds, that they are the causes of even what we see in this gross material physical world. This material world is the effect, the aggregate effects, of what takes place in and on the inner worlds and spheres and planes. These inner worlds and spheres and planes you can call worlds of forces or energies if you like. But what is energy as taught even today by the greatest of ultramodern scientific researchers? It is matter; or conversely we can say that matter is but crystallized or equilibrated energies. This is an old theosophical doctrine, actually as old as the ages of mankind, and it signifies that matter or substance on the one hand and spirit or energy on the other hand are fundamentally one thing. So, when one speaks of inner worlds composed of energies or forces, it is exactly the same as if one were to speak of inner worlds composed of substances of a more ethereal type than those which our sense apparatus can cognize on account of the latter's imperfect stage of evolutionary development having brought it to the point only of being able to perceive substances and energies on its own plane. Furthermore, a human being can, by means of his inner faculties and powers, cognize and recognize these inner worlds. There is a means of leaving this outermost garment or veil, of leaving it deeply entranced, if you like, sound "asleep" if you like -- call the condition by whatever name pleases you -but in any case there is a means of casting off for the time being this outer veil of physical selfhood, leaving it and going upon the most marvelous, the sublimest, adventure which it is possible for a human being to undertake -- the journey in and through some, at least, of the invisible worlds, spheres, planes, call them what you like. That is what the great seers and sages of the past have done; that is what was taught of and achieved in the initiation chambers of the past; and there are men on earth today who have gone through the tests, who have passed them successfully, who have been over the borderline and who have entered into the sublime things of the inner life -- yea, and also into those things which are not sublime, but which must also be known if man's knowledge of nature is to be complete. Theosophy shows you how to do this, among many other things. Every normal human being has energies, faculties, powers, within him or her, that he or she wot not of; they wit not what they have within them; and do you know what is the master key to finding out what you have within yourselves, ultimately leading you to become a Master of Life? Do you know what this master key is, I ask? I have told it to you so often already from this platform. I now repeat it in the words of Apollo of Delphi: Man, know thyself! Do you now begin to understand? You are a child of the Universe, inseparable from the universe, your cosmic parent. You are in it forever; you cannot ever leave it, being an inseparable part of it. You are throughout of its essence. You are born of its blood, born of its flesh so to speak, bone of its bone, life of its life, thought of its thought, substance of its substance, energy of its energy. Consequently, all that the universe contains you contain either in germ or more or less developed. Those parts of you, of your constitution, which yet lack development, you can develop; and as you develop these inner parts you come into synchronous vibration -- to use a term popular today and easily understood -- you become synchronously vibrating with those parts of the inner worlds which now you cannot cognize, because your present vibrations are different from them. Coming thus into synchronous vibration with these inner worlds, you immediately cognize them and recognize them and can begin to understand them. There is the master thought, the master key to achieving the beginning of this sublime adventure. Know thyself, O son of man! For in thee lie all the mysteries of the universe. Thou art its child; inseparable from it shalt thou ever be; for it is thou and thou art it. This is the pathway to all wisdom, to all knowledge, to all achievement. It is also therefore the pathway of evolution -- of evolving, of unfolding, what is folded up or latent within you. Do you know that you are in a certain sense inhabitants of these inner worlds even now? In this sense just as much so as you are inhabitants of this rocky sphere we call earth, a child, physically speaking, of the physical universe which surrounds us. Your spiritual roots pierce infinitude. You as a physical man hang like a pendant, as it were, like a jewel, from the root of your spiritual selfhood, the heart of the

heart of you. The origin of this spiritual selfhood is the cosmic soul, the divine spirit. You in your inmost are a spark of that central flame, each one of you. Have I made this wondrous thought clear? These few words point to the pathway sublime: knowing yourself, following the self of you ever more and more inwards, you become ever more and more in self-conscious connection, and you vibrate ever more and more synchronously with, these inner worlds and spheres. Is there anything weird about all this, anything uncanny, anything cheap, anything that even the average man cannot at least understand the fundamental thought of? There is not. And yet these few simple key thoughts, key doctrines, that I have already laid before you this afternoon and on so many other occasions, are the genuine master keys by which you can open the most secret chambers of the invisible universe. What I have told you also briefly outlines the pathway of discipleship, of chelaship as we theosophists say. Now, how are you to find this inner part of yourself? Is it by concentrating upon the part of yourself in which now you live -- upon this very part which shuts you out from the inner worlds, which hides the vision sublime: the personal selfhood which restricts and limits and condenses your thought around the petty brain-mind self? No! It is by casting all this aside, in order to go inwards, more and more inwards, to the spiritual center at the core of your being. A most excellent rule to find this spiritual self is the following: Whenever you have impulses to indulge in selfish action, refrain. Whenever you seek purely personal self-advancement, and particularly when others lose by it, then "abhor" the temptation, as Shakespeare says. Ah! This alone is a spiritual exercise which requires a true man's strength, the willpower and energy of a true man. Weaklings cannot do it although indeed they may dream of doing it, and this dream is a good thing because some day they will pass from dreaming to action. How merciful nature is! Imagine weaklings who cannot even control their own little petty personal passions and desires obtaining the mysterious keys to nature's wondrous secrets, and going into her inner chambers where they as weaklings belong not yet! You know the old, old saying of the ancient sages: Forget the self if thou wouldst find the self. Cast

aside the limited, small, personal self, if thou wouldst find the impersonal, cosmic self in your heart. If thou wouldst find thy life, abandon thy Life -- lose it. Such also was the teaching of the great Syrian
sage, Jesus, echoing the words of all the sages and seers of all the ages; and it is utter truth. By following this rule of action you exchange the small, the restricted, the petty, those things which make you limited and blind -- you exchange them, I say, for the grand, the sublime, the great, the universal, and come into self-conscious possession of your spiritual self, or rather your spiritual self comes into possession of you, the personal man, and uses it as a vehicle through which it can manifest its transcendent faculties and powers. You cast off the garment of the petty personal selfhood and by so doing come into active possession of energies and powers now lying latent within you, which energies and powers are springs of consciousness and action which are the noblest part of your constitution, and which at present you know not how to use. An ethical teaching, do some of you perhaps say? By the immortal gods, it is an ethical teaching! By the immortal gods, it is indeed ethics! I tell you that ethics are no mere human conventions however much man may clothe them in conventional thoughts, but are based on the harmony and love at the heart of the universe, which are the very essence of the universe, the very soul of the cosmic flame which keeps all things together, working together, hanging together, harmonious and cosmically peaceful. Ethics are very real because based on nature herself. Ethics means doing aright; right means harmony; right means law; and law is cosmic justice which is universal love. I know by my own experience that what I tell you is true; and I too have found out how devilish hard it is sometimes to control the personal self. I know it well. I have been through it; and I have no blame at any time for any brother who fails. All I say is: Rise again! Set your face forwards, and march! Every

time you fall, pick yourself up again and go at it with a newer and a stronger will. That is the way of success; and every one of you can succeed -- can succeed in bringing out these wondrous faculties and powers within your heart, within your mind, within the inner part of your constitution -- the spiritual and intellectual and psychic part; and you can then use rightfully and properly these various powers which thus you awaken, but only for impersonal ends; for the instant they are abused, then you lose them. You lose them because they are of cosmic character and reach and therefore require a consciousness having a cosmic reach to control them. The man whose convictions and thoughts are centered around his petty personal self cannot wield the scepter of the gods; but the god within you knows its own, and one of these days it will seize the scepter of power, it will claim its own -- what is within; and thereafter you will live like a god among your fellow men, act like a god among your fellow-men, because you will think like a god and feel like a god. The divine within you will have come forth into active being in your life. Look at the papers, the magazines, the remarkably interesting scientific books, that are printed today voicing the new dreams and visions and intuitions of our greatest scientific men. Consider how our greatest scientists are now teaching truths belonging to the ancient Occultism of the ages, today called theosophy. These great scientific men now tell us that the fundamental thing in the universe is not matter, but consciousness -- mind-stuff some of them call it; and they say that the material sphere, the material universe, is but the flowing forth, as it were, from within of this fundamental consciousness or mind-stuff -- in other words, that the physical universe is the resultant or consequence of the operations of the cosmic consciousness. Excellent! Most excellent is our thought; only theosophists, following the ancient tradition of the wisdom of the ages, say consciousnesses; for our teaching is that the cosmic consciousness is more truly explained by saying that it is plural, not singular, and that it is composite of all the innumerable hosts, multitudes, armies, hierarchies, of intelligent and conscious and self-conscious and quasi-self-conscious, beings living in these invisible worlds and spheres and planes and universes. They are of all-various degrees or stages in evolutionary development, these inhabitants of the invisible worlds. There are those which (or who) are very high, and there are others which (or who) are very low, lower even than mankind; and the intermediate stages of cosmic existence visible and invisible are filled with beings appropriate to those stages or planes of the universe. Are you human beings so dense of understanding, are you so blind to what nature proclaims on every hand, that you cannot understand the significance of variety, differences, differentiation, in the universe? Are you so blind that you think that men are the only self-conscious, thinking beings in boundless space and the only ones that have existed or can exist throughout endless and beginningless eternity? Mind-stuff is the fundamental essence of the universe -- consciousness, others say. Are we human beings on this little dust-speck of earth the only products of this infinite 'consciousness'? What a fantastic perversion of truth and fact! Why, my Brothers, the fact alone that we men exist proves the rule of what I have said; for there is no explaining why human beings should be the sole exceptions in infinite time and space. One rose, as I have said before, proves the existence of other roses. One thinking man proves the existence of a race of thinking men. What nature produces in the instance she produces because it is merely a law, a rule, and consequently what she follows in the instance or in the particular she follows because it is the rule in the universal. The consequence of this thought, then, is that just as our earth is populated not only with human beings but with all the hosts of entities beneath the human, just so also wherever nature builds mansions of life, she populates them; and the invisible spheres and worlds are filled with such mansions of life, each one carrying its hosts or inhabitants, each kind of inhabitant, each kind of hosts of inhabitants is appropriate to the world, inner or outer, visible or invisible, on which it is, appropriate to and fit for life on the inner plane on which it is, on the inner sphere on which it lives and exists and has its being. Life is universal. If life is not universal, then life is restricted. What proof have you of that fantastic idea? Some people say they don't know whether life exists on other planets. Of course they don't. You have not been asked to prove it. But merely because you make a statement declaring your ignorance, what kind of logical sense have you to suppose that such a declaration of ignorance is an argument

against the opposite proposition that because life is here and life is universal, therefore it must exist elsewhere? Not only on the physical planets which we can see with our eyes, but in other solar systems of our physical universe and also in the inner and invisible worlds do hierarchies, armies, hosts, multitudes, of living beings exist. Do you realize that our ultramodern scientists are today actually hinting at the existence of these inner and invisible worlds, perhaps without realizing what they are doing? Indeed, they are so hinting. They are beginning to talk about the possibility of an ether within the atom and therefore universal, because atoms are everywhere -- an old, old, old thought, ancient as thinking man; and this etheric world is an inner world, an invisible world, a world or plane permeating all physical existence; and nevertheless it is but the shell of worlds still more ethereal: it is the garment of the cosmic life next in grade of ethereality to our gross physical sphere. It is what theosophists call the lower astral world. But within this inter-atomic ether, there are other ethers, other and more ethereal grades of substance and being, leading directly inwards, or upwards if you like, to the realms of spirit, and spirit also is substance; for, as I have already said, energy and matter are fundamentally one; spirit and substance are fundamentally one; and as I have already told you the fundamental essence of the universe is consciousness, which is therefore likewise substance, because consciousness is spiritual energy. Often on other occasions when speaking here, friends, I have adverted, always briefly, to certain facts, to which I allude again today. I have tried to show you how the inner structure of the universe is: that the entire cosmic system of universes is of a hierarchical type, extending from what men call spirit, in other words from the most ethereal, the most spiritual substances and energies, "down" through constantly thickening veils of matter until we reach our own physical sphere; and then descending still lower than our physical sphere on the cosmic ladder of life. Because we human beings happen to be living on this one particular rung of that ladder of life -- on this plane, in this world, of this series of worlds and planes -- we are living as it were on only a cross section of the real universe, comprising, as the real universe does, the inner and invisible as well as this outer and visible range of existences; and this outer and visible universe is visible to us only because our sense apparatus has been builded through evolution to cognize the vibrations appertaining to this physical sphere. That is all. All these different worlds and planes and spheres are inhabited, whether they be visible or invisible, each with inhabitants of its own kind, who are entities that vibrate synchronously -- to use this expression so popular today -- with the energies and substances which make these inner and interior and invisible worlds. That is why they are conscious there as we are conscious here. We humans are merely pilgrims on this plane, in this world; we are merely staying here for a time, for one reincarnation on earth. We have been here often before in other reincarnations, and we shall come often again, but each such passage through this sphere is like stopping off at an inn of life. Yet the pilgrim passes on, goes to other worlds, to other spheres, to other planes, and does just as he does here, learning, learning, learning, in each; building up experiences, strengthening character, gaining wisdom, gaining understanding and, noblest and most beautiful of all, perhaps, evoking almighty love and sympathy out of the fountain of his inmost being, which fountain is his own inner godhood, the essential divinity which is his own heart of hearts. Just as the Christians today, who are of a mystical type of mind, speak of the immanent Christos, the immanent Christ, or as the Buddhists speak of the inner Buddha, so do theosophists speak of the inner god. It is the same thought exactly in all cases, but expressed in differing words. All evolution, all development, all growth in every line and in every way, is simply bringing out what the evolving, growing entity has within itself -- for the word evolution means just that: unfolding; and unfolding is growing, growth; and growth is evolving. As I have so often said to you from this platform, future ages of mankind here on this earth will have evolved, brought forth -- that is unfolded -- the divinity within; and this earth will be populated by a race of human gods in the far distant aeons of the future.

It is populated today by a race of beings -- who are you and I -- who are very far from being gods, and who are overgrown apes, some people think; but I don't so think; for there is not a drop of ape blood in human veins; although there is human blood in the veins of the ape, and that fact accounts for the ape's close physical likeness to man. I have a number of questions this afternoon which I have been holding for answer. The first of them is as follows: What relation have the invisible worlds, that theosophists speak so much of, to our world? Every possible relation. Our world is a part of the universe; these invisible worlds are other parts of the universe. They are as real on their own planes as this world is on this plane. These worlds are all interconnected, interlocked, interrelated, interworking, interchained; for all together they form one vast hierarchy on the cosmic ladder of life. Among them there are ranges of worlds which are far higher than ours, and there are other ranges which are inferior; but all are interconnected. Our world is the result, the effects, of the lives, operations, entities, energies, of other and invisible worlds, just as a human body, a man's body, is the result, the garment, the effect, of what that man himself is, considered as an energy, as a consciousness; and consciousness is a substance, albeit spiritual substance. The real man is invisible; he is in fact a bundle of energies, which means a bundle of spiritual and ethereal substances. His consciousness is centered in the ethereal, invisible part of his constitution; and the human body is but the deposit, the lees, the bark -- as I have already said, the effects -- of the inner causes. The man himself is his inner energies, his inner substances, his thoughts, his feelings, his emotions; and these are energies; matters therefore are they, but spiritual matters, for energy and matter are one fundamentally; spirit and substance are one fundamentally, each expressing itself in its own way. Do you get the thought? Therefore man's body is the outermost expression of the inner entity, of the ethereal-spiritual entity. Man's body is the deposit, the lees, of what the man inwardly is. Our physical sphere, considered as a physical body, analogically is exactly the same, making the necessary changes of facts and circumstances; for it is the inner worlds, corresponding to man's inner constitution in his case, which are the causes of the physical universe, and our physical world therefore is the effects, the effectual world. Therefore our world has every possible relation with the inner worlds. It is inseparably connected with them all. As the monads of human beings leave their bodies, they go into these inner worlds on the pilgrimage, the wondrous adventure, that I have already spoken to you about; and again they come from these inner worlds into reincarnation here and thus become men again. These inner worlds, therefore, are very closely connected with us; they are the sources of the movements of the physical sphere, just as the sources of the movements of a growing thing, of a plant, of a beast, of a man, lie in the invisible atoms which compose that growing entity. Growth is from within outwards. Yes, a lovely flower is born out of the invisible realms into its physical expression; it is an expression of energies, energies of a certain type, as this lovely pink flower before me is representative of one type of energy, and this other flower is representative of some other type of energy, and these other flowers at my side again represent other inner energies. Thus it is that men differ among themselves in character, for each one is the expression of the energies and substances of an individuality, of an ego, which produces the differing characters that men have; but all such productions are from within outwards. A lovely rose, the gentle violet, are expressions on this plane of the lovely rose and gentle violet on the inner planes working themselves outwards into this physical plane. So also as regards a human being. The real men are invisible, my Brothers; and please don't confuse what I am telling you this afternoon, and what I have already told you, with the doctrines of certain people who are today very numerous in the world and for whom as individuals I often have high respect: I mean the Spiritists. I say not one word in criticism of their beliefs; they have as much right to their beliefs as I have. I only ask you not to confuse our theosophical teachings, the teachings of the archaic wisdom-religion of mankind, with the

teachings of modern Spiritism. In many instances there are close likenesses between the two, but there are also very fundamental, very radical, differences. If these invisible worlds exist, are they inhabited, and what kind of inhabitants have they? "If these worlds exist." Do you doubt it? Why does the questioner say "if"? I have known philosophers to say, "If man exists." Do you doubt the fact of his existence? Now, such views as those implied in this question come from the state of thinking and the kind of thinking common and popular in the times of our fathers, of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, who thought that they knew pretty much all that the universe could tell them, and that modern Occidental science had said very nearly the last word possible of all human experience. And then come along Roentgen, and Becquerel, and Mme. Curie, and Einstein -- and among them all the props are completely knocked out from under the structure of the sacred science of the previous age. Ideas new and startling to the Occident came into men's minds, and they began to wonder. Now they are beginning to say, "Why, these ideas which seem so new are in reality very old; they have been taught for ages." Yes indeed, in modern times these old ideas have been given a new expression with new turns; but that is all. It is verily so. Modern scientists like Eddington and Jeans and Planck and Einstein, and the great American Millikan and the rest of them -- I mean the greatest men among them -- are beginning to talk about consciousness being the fundamental reality of the universe; but may I ask you: has no one ever heard that thought before the present day? Indeed yes; for it is the commonest philosophical postulate that the race has ever known. Our modern great scientists are beginning to rediscover what in ignorance our forefathers had discarded; and all this is very fine. May I however remind you, my Brothers, that theosophists say, not consciousness, but consciousnesses; for the world is filled full -- the universe, boundless space, with all the universes within it -- is filled full with hierarchies, multitudes, hosts, call them what you like, of conscious, sentient beings, more or less like us humans; some of them are higher, and some of them are lower, than we; but all are advancing, all are learning, all are growing, all are evolving, all are pilgrims on the evolutionary journey from eternity to eternity. Man has no unique position at all in the cosmic scheme. Humanity is but one hierarchy, one kind, one type, of beings, among the hosts of hierarchies with which the Universe is filled full. The Universe, my Brothers, is filled with gods -- gods of all kinds, of all classes and types, high, low, intermediate; and beneath them, less evolved than they, are other armies, other hierarchies, classes, hosts, of entities, which we may perhaps call demigods, or cosmic spirits; and then again beneath these in evolutionary progress, are still other hosts, until we reach men and beings like men on other planets in our own solar system and in other solar systems; and then beneath men there are beings like the beasts and the plants and the rocks; and beneath these again are other beings in the invisible worlds not so evolved even as they are. "If these invisible worlds exist, are they inhabited?" Indeed they are inhabited just as ours is. I would very much like to hear some time the explanation of some man, or woman mayhap, who would attempt to prove this thesis: "Man is the only self-conscious or conscious being in the Universe, and the planet Terra is the only inhabited globe in boundless infinitude." He would have no easy task, would he? In fact the thesis is something that he could not prove. Among other things it would mean saying that this globe and its mankind, its inhabitants, are the only instance in infinitude and in eternity of the existence of living, conscious, self-conscious creatures. The thesis in fact is folly. I tell you the very fact that men are here proves the existence of similar beings, entities, elsewhere. One man proves humanity; one rose proves a garden of roses -- aye, and many gardens of roses. One speck of gold proves the existence of gold elsewhere. "What kind of inhabitants have they?" All kinds of inhabitants. Don't think for an instant that the inhabitants of these other worlds must be just like men in shape, with two eyes and a nose and a mouth, two ears and two hands and two legs, and all the other appurtenances. Not at all. Our physical bodies are

shaped as they are shaped merely because our evolutionary growth has brought us to this particular present type. In other ages even our physical bodies were far different from what they are now; and in future ages our physical bodies as then they will be will be far different from what now they are. Our bodies are changing slowly, just as and because of the fact that the inner man is changing slowly -improving, evolving, growing, because continuously bringing out in fuller measure what is within. In fact, these inner and invisible worlds are populated with beings in each case appropriate to such world or sphere or plane, just as is the case with men on earth. In the spiritual worlds, the beings there are more spiritual than we are; in worlds less ethereal and less spiritual, the beings there are less ethereal, less spiritual, than the former class; and, furthermore, many of these worlds, inner, invisible worlds, are populated by entities far grander than man now is or than he will be a thousand million years from now; and, contrariwise, there are other worlds which are populated by entities less progressed than man is. It all is a matter of relativity. There are worlds of many kinds; but each is populated or inhabited by its own kind, appropriate to it, with bodies appropriate to it, just as is the case here on earth. Are these invisible worlds and planes populated by the human dead? No! Immortal gods! Just think for a moment: infinite space, infinite time, to be populated by the offspring of this little dust speck! -- existing for perhaps only a few thousand millions of years in the past which is as nothing in infinite duration! The idea is ludicrous. Nevertheless the human dead are well cared for. I would that I could draw aside the veil hiding our esoteric teachings and tell you somewhat of our esoteric doctrines which are so satisfying in these respects and so beautiful; but I cannot do this. I can only repeat the words that you have already heard this afternoon: "Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and knock aright, and it shall be opened unto you." The human dead are at rest; they live in a state of the utmost peace and bliss, in happiness beyond all human compare; they toil not; they labor not; there are no tears in their eyes; they are in perfect rest, resting in ineffable peace and bliss, until they return to this earth -- children as they are, physically and psychically speaking, of this earth -- until they return to this earth again to take up human bodies anew, to work off old debts, to pay off old obligations, to help those they have injured, and also to receive the help that is rightly due to them from their fellow men. These inner worlds and spheres and planes are not populated by the human dead. These last are at peace. There is, however, an intercourse -- continuous, steady, uninterrupted -- of other classes of entities between our world and the inner worlds. It is all very wonderful. It is a study which is unspeakably fascinating. For instance, the life-atoms of all entities on whatever world they may exist are interchanged; but also there are other entities besides life-atoms which furnish the intercourse, if you like the word, as among the various worlds and spheres invisible and visible. There is a part of man's constitution which is an inhabitant of every sphere in our own solar system, visible or invisible; and this part of our constitution we call the monad. But that part of us which is human, that is to say which we call man, the human being -- the child of the monad -- it rests after death and is at peace, until it comes to earth again. Where are these invisible worlds located? My Brothers, they are everywhere, literally everywhere. This very air which we breathe is permeated, is filled, with worlds, spheres, planes, which we cannot see nor hear nor taste nor touch, because our sense apparatus is not fitted for such cognition, not evolved to do it. Even as a man moves, as he walks the street, he passes through, it may be, the buildings, the countries, the lakes, the hills, the dwelling places, of entities inhabiting some of these inner worlds. Do you think that the way in which we live on this earth and the manner of our existence here is in either case an exception in the universe? Clear your minds of that moldy old superstition that our world and

that man are exceptions in the universe. We and our world are but instances of the universal rule, and merely exemplify it and prove it by the fact that we are here. Remember the old maxim of the Egyptian Hermes: "As it is above, so is it below. What is below, the same is above." The reason is that universal nature's, fundamental law prevails everywhere, therefore providing a uniform rule of life, consistent, coherent, equal, the same everywhere; because this fundamental law permeates everywhere. This is a simple thought, yet it is a wonderful key for your hours of quiet meditation. These inner worlds are everywhere, I say, and they are of many and various kinds. Some of them are so near, so to speak, to this, our own physical world, that the veil separating them from us is almost diaphanous, extremely thin. Mankind in the future will develop a new kind of seeing eye, the inner eye, and a new kind of inner feeling or sense, and then he will not only see and become conscious of these beings of the inner worlds, but he will be able, so to speak, to reach out a tactile finger and touch them. Is it possible for human beings to have personal contact with the invisible worlds? Nature's laws are very merciful and kindly. The average human being is utterly unprepared to have any conscious intercourse whatsoever with these inner worlds. He could only have such conscious intercourse at great risk to health -- mental, psychical, physical. These inner worlds are ruled by energies of their own, and are inhabited by beings of their own -- some friendly to man, very friendly, others hostile, deadly hostile. That fact need not surprise you. See how you men, men with consciences, illtreat and mistreat the beasts -- your own lower brothers. No, nature is merciful; she prevents the great multitude of men from having any cognition or intercourse with these invisible worlds, filled as they are with entities which in some cases are friendly but in other cases unfriendly, and with energies and powers that no human being, unless initiated, would know how to control, and which could easily tear him to pieces. But there are some human beings nevertheless who can have this intercourse at will: some human beings who have followed the pathway of the inner god, the pathway to wisdom unspeakable, that I have already spoken to you about -- and these are the great men of the human race and their disciples, their chelas, their pupils. These indeed, in the initiation chambers, have gone behind the veils. As a matter of fact they must do it, so that they may know, and knowing protect their weaker brothers. They indeed have followed this wonderful pathway leading ever more within. They have followed the pathway of initiation, which is the pathway to the gods; and they have been on the most wonderful adventure that any human being can undertake. They have left their humanity behind and, traveling through the spheres, have confabulated with the gods.

Second Series: No. 31 (April 6, 1931)

THE SECRET DOCTRINE OF THE AGES

(Lecture delivered March 22, 1931) CONTENTS: The pathway to the Mystic East. -- Extract from Browning's Paracelsus. -- Were the Mystery schools of antiquity institutions of priestcraft? -- True nature of uncivilized tribes of today. -The complexity of their languages. -- Modern evolutionary theories at fault. -- The Chinese and Egyptian languages. -- The case of the Negroes an exception. -- Similarity of traditional teachings. -Study of folklore profitable. -- Preparedness essential to initiation. -- Why are Teachers necessary? -H.P.B.'s words on the necessity of teachers. -- Guerdon of a true theosophist. -- To those who object to being joiners. -- Consecration of the life to service. Speaking to hungry hearts, human hearts which have suffered and through suffering have learned to hunger for more truth and to understand somewhat; speaking to human souls which have undergone the pain of learning and through undergoing that pain of learning have had the inner senses opened at least somewhat; such speaking is not an easy task, Friends. But there is a lofty delight in it -- a feeling that I also vibrate in synchronous harmony with the human hearts and minds to whom I speak; that I, too, have gone along the pathways of life down into the valleys of suffering and pain, and out of them have climbed up, up, still farther up, along that mystic pathway concerning which I have so often spoken to you, which leads to that Mystic East which is not a geographical locality, but which is found within you: the Mystic East towards which all human spiritual feeling is orientated, that inner directing power of the spirit, which leads us, if we follow faithfully its mandates, directly to the heart of the Universe. Any human being can follow this path, and indeed every human being must some day follow it; for there is no other path to truth than that which the individual himself treads, the path of self-learning. It is the mystic pathway leading to the Mystic East. It is because, Brothers, Comrades, and Friends, my feet have trodden this pathway a little that I can speak to you, knowing that what I say from an understanding heart will reach other understanding hearts also, and that you will vibrate sympathetically to what you hear. Every one of us human beings is a pilgrim on this pathway; every one of us is treading it always; and think of it, Friends, Comrades, and Brothers, as a pathway which has had no beginning, for it is the pathway of our spiritual essence -- I mean, in other words, that that spiritual essence of us is itself the pathway -- our innermost consciousness. This pathway, in other words, is a developing, an evolving, a bringing out, of what is locked up within; in fact, it is the pathway of learning, of growing, of becoming, and finally of being. "There is a center of truth within us all," as Robert Browning, the English poet, so beautifully puts it. Let me read to you a few lines from his Paracelsus: Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whatever you may believe. There is an inmost center in us all Where truth abides in fullness; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception -- which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and to KNOW Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without. Browning in these beautiful lines merely echoes the teachings of all the sages and seers of all the ages. "Man, know thyself," said the Delphic Oracle of ancient Greece -- voicing a truth that I repeat to you again and again and again and again from this platform; because in knowing yourself, ultimately you will know all others and all things. Your self is the spiritual child of the universe; you are therefore an

inseparable portion of that universe; you are rooted in it; you are of it: blood of its blood, bone of its bone, essence of its essence, life of its life; and therefore, in knowing yourself, you come through endless stages of greater learning to know the outside universe; and therefore we see how it is that truth is within us -- the entity cognizing truth is within ourselves. But do you think that the learner on life's pathways knows all or even can know all without help? The very fact that he learns, that he is growing, that he is a learner, implies the necessary existence of teachers, preceptors, guides, helpers, on the upward way. Isn't it so even in human existence and in all walks of our human life? Men must learn as well as grow, and the learning is within, because the consciousness is within, and because the pathway is within, and hence all that is great and noble, sublime and holy, in human existence takes its rise within because the roots of it all are within. But in his opening-out process, which is the real meaning of evolution, the human race needs guidance, it needs teachers, it needs preceptors, it needs human living signposts, so to speak, pointing the way; and this verity has been proclaimed in and by the history of every religious and philosophical organization which has ever existed on this earth. This is the heart-meaning of the great teachings given in the past by the great seers and sages, the teachers, the leaders, who were and are the preceptors, of their fellow men; and these great sages and seers were and are merely men who have advanced farther and more quickly than the average of men -a simple truth that I tell you again and again and again and again from this platform. Do you think that you could learn anything unless you had the capacity to learn it? This capacity itself implies the existence of growth, of improvement, of evolving, of bringing forth what is within the learner and grower; and it is the teacher's sublime duty to bring forth the imprisoned splendor. He cannot put it into you from without; just as Browning sets it forth so finely, it is in you already; and every man and woman here, in fact every human being, is an imprisoned splendor -- a god working poorly, oh! so poorly, through human flesh, through the human mind, but in its own realms a god nevertheless; and all evolution, all development, all growth, all progress, in human life is simply the bringing out more and more in ever greater measure the spiritual splendor imprisoned within every human being. You have heard of the great Mystery schools of antiquity. What were they? Institutions of priestcraft? No; pity the Occidental scholars whose mental habit it has been to suppose that. They judge from their own unfortunate experience, my Brothers. But theosophists say, judge by your self; judge by the hearthunger of your own heart for truth, for light, for peace, for a greater and a larger life. Judge by your own soul, and you will not be so ready to accuse other human beings of a desire willfully to deceive their fellow humans. No, I repeat: the ancient Mystery schools were founded by the great sages and seers of whom I have spoken -- in each case founded by one or more of these great sages and seers; and in those Mystery schools of the archaic wisdom of antiquity was taught the sublimest knowledge that men can have: first, learning to know yourself, the imprisoned splendor, the god within you. Quoth the Delphic Oracle: "Man, know thyself!" Spiritual self-knowledge is the royal road, the road leading to the Mystic East. In addition, in these archaic schools, there were taught the wonderful teachings concerning the nature, structure, and operations of the universe in which we live and move and have our being. These great sages and seers themselves had been initiated by their own greater teachers; and before these great sages and seers had become what later they became, when undergoing the initiatory ceremonies they had sent the percipient, the perceiving, the conscious, part of themselves behind the veils of the material universe, yea, into the very womb of cosmic being; they had sent the cognizing consciousness, each one of himself, deep, deep, deep into nature's heart; and bringing back what there they had discovered, what there they had found out, what there they had learned, they taught these sublime truths to their fellow human beings -- to each neophyte or disciple or pupil according to the latter's capacity to receive. My Brothers, as there is but one fundamental truth in the universe, simply because there is but one boundless All, all the great sages and seers therefore of necessity taught that one truth: felt it, experienced it; and hence the teaching of all of them was one in every essential characteristic. No matter

in what age these great seers and sages taught, no matter what the languages they used, no matter what the figures of speech that they employed, in each and in every case the essentials of their teaching were the same, because the truth was one. This truth regarding the nature, structure, operations, and laws of the boundless All, visible and invisible -- that not only was but today is the secret doctrine of the ages, the archaic wisdom-religion of mankind, of which faint echoes even today are heard in every human mind which is not wholly asleep and in every human heart which is not dead. Do you imagine, you men and women of the Occident, that you are the only human beings who have ever felt aright, who have ever thought deeply, who have ever cognized truth at first hand? Of course not. We of the present day are merely the children of past ages. I tell you that all the so-called barbarous and uncivilized and so-called savage tribes of men on earth today are not at all young tribes, young peoples, just beginning their evolutionary journey towards greater things: they are old with the ages, and are now decrepit if not dying out; they are races whose representatives experienced the lofty heights and culminations of their own respective racial glories in ages far past; and of those once proud and haughty races, in their respective times the kings of the earth, there remain today but their degenerate descendants, whom we men of the West in our proud Occidental fashion call savages and barbarians -and really that is what they now are. Do you know that some of these savage and barbarian races ages ago constructed languages which can stand on a par for flexibility and ability to express the most abstract operations of the human mind -- can stand on a par, I tell you, with the most highly developed languages of the white men -- Sanskrit and Greek, for instances; and yet these present-day barbarians and savages still speak, however inadequately, the tongues they have inherited from their great sires of ages agone; savages, barbarians, at present incapable of using adequately the linguistic instruments for expressing human thoughts that their ancestors used so grandly. There are the languages still existing as linguistic fossils. How did it happen that savage and barbarian peoples come to possess languages so intricate in grammatical structure and so evolved in certain instances as instruments for the expression of human ideas and conceptions? How does it happen that these races still speak, however inadequately, tongues which contain the power of expressing the most recondite operations of the human mind as successfully as do the majority of our European languages today? According to modern evolutionary theories these savages and barbarians are young races, and yet here in the instances which I have in mind some of these so-called barbarians and savage peoples possess languages, instruments for expressing thought, and seem to have always possessed them, which are perfectly fit and capable of voicing the profound and abstract conceptions of the human intelligence. The theory and the fact when thus brought together are seen flagrantly to contradict each other. There is something wrong in the modern evolutionary theory because such supposedly young peoples should be speaking languages of the most elementary character linguistically speaking, and the contrary is the case. Is it not obvious that these savage and barbarian peoples are descendants of once mighty and highly intelligent sires? That they are the mere remnants of races once possessing high spiritual and intellectual attainments and who thus gave birth to languages adequately and fitly expressing the inner spiritual and intellectual faculties? It is time, evolution, growth, the working and strivings of the human soul, of the human mind, which develop languages fit to express the higher powers of the human mind; and this takes time and could only have been accomplished as the ages flowed by into the ocean of the past. This is the real explanation of the fact that some of these dying languages are such marvelous instruments of human expression, and why some of them are highly complicated in grammatical syntax, far more so indeed than certain ones of our present European tongues. Again, mark you: look at the languages of some of the other peoples -- the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese, for instance, all peoples which have evolved high and intricate civilizations. The ancient Egyptians and the Chinese spoke languages formed mainly of linguistic roots alone, languages which are without the linguistic graces of the highly inflected tongues of the earth. Such languages as these two last show all the elements of linguistic fossils which have come down, as in the case of the Chinese, to our own day. And yet even they, the ancient Egyptians and the Chinese, speak or spoke languages which

enabled their users to express all the thoughts, however complicated or intricate, that we moderns can with our own highly inflected tongues. What does this all mean? There are barbarians using languages incomparably more evolved, linguistically speaking, than the Chinese, for instance -- a family of tongues composed of verbal roots only; and, on the other hand, the tongues of these barbarians in certain instances compare favorably from the standpoint of linguistic evolution with the highly inflected ancient Greek and Sanskrit. The reason is that they whom at present we call barbarians and savages are, as I have already told you, remnants of races who long ago passed their racial culmination. Their records lie in the far distant past, and only the ethnological remnants of once great peoples survive today. But the Chinese and the Egyptians spoke or speak tongues which ceased their evolutionary development and survive to our own day as linguistic fossils in an elementary stage of growth. There is one great racial exception to my statement that all the so-called savages and barbarian peoples are remnants, remainders, of former great races, and the racial exception to which I refer is the family of peoples originating in Africa -- I mean the so-called Negroes. Generally speaking, the Negroes are a race with a future; instead of being a mere racial remnant, they are a race which has been asleep and which only now is beginning to move rapidly along its own evolutionary pathway of development. The Tibetans also are in a similar category in the sense that their racial development lies largely before them instead of lying in the past. Races evolve, just as individuals do. Mark you here a noteworthy proof of this statement: wherever the white man goes and thither carries his civilization, his teaching, his so-called physical comforts and conveniences, he brings disease to the barbarian and savage peoples. They cannot long stand his presence. They wilt, they fade, and die out. This is because the white man is the dominant power; and these descendants of the ancient races yield before him and drop away. The white man's diseases seize upon the bodies of these descendants of once great sires, and pestilences and epidemics brought by the white man sweep them away by the thousands. But, contrariwise, what happens in the case of the Negro? Not only can he successfully withstand the white man's influences and the white man's presence and power, but he can even live together with the white man and hold his own -- he can live on and grow and prosper, develop and learn. The reason is that he belongs to a young racial stock; the physical and racial vitality runs strong in the Negro race; he can as a rule withstand the attacks of the white man's microbes, so to speak -- both psychological and physical. These old and now degenerate peoples all have mystical and religious records and sodalities which have come down through the ages, passed down from father to son, from priest to priest, through many ages; and the roots of their legends, the inner meanings of these transmitted or traditional teachings, are the same in general and often in specific terms, mark you, all over the earth. Isn't that an interesting and highly significant fact? No matter whence you draw the ancient records of these so-called barbarous and dying-out peoples, you will find that beneath the superficials of these records, they all teach pretty much the same fundamental doctrines. In one race these old doctrines were embroidered in one way, and in another old race the same doctrines were embroidered in some other fashion; but if you search carefully with the key that theosophy gives you to work by, you will discover the one fundamental, identic truth, in other words the same identic body of doctrines, under the coverings of habit and custom in every clime. I repeat that in the records of those ancient and barbarian peoples, you will find the same secret doctrine of the ages. In one race you will find one doctrine or set of doctrines more greatly emphasized than others are; in some other race you will find some other doctrine or set of doctrines of the archaic wisdom more greatly emphasized than in the former case, and so forth; but in all instances you will find the same fundamental teachings and at least hints of the existence of the greatly emphasized teachings existent in full flower elsewhere. Consider the ancient Greeks, for instance, who in our Occident have always been considered, and rightly so, as one of the most subtle-minded and intellectually developed people of the white race. Look at their

archaic schools of the Mysteries. The same essential things that you will find taught -- as far as they can now be found out -- in the Mystery-teachings of the Greeks, you will find in far-off Tasmania or Australia. Hunt for these proofs. Examine the folklore of these archaic peoples. Test it yourselves. Put the necessary time into the study, and you will discover that what I have told you is true. Now, my Brothers, do you think that this secret wisdom of the ages has vanished off from the face of the earth? Not at all. The human race has been protected and guided in the past by great sages and seers, lofty spiritual and intellectual Initiates, men who have become more or less at one with the inner divinity. They compose a brotherhood, and this brotherhood still exists today. Theosophists call these great ones mahatmas, masters, teachers, elder brothers, sages, seers, and by various other names. They exist even today as an association, as a brotherhood, and their sublime work is the aiding and teaching of their fellow men to become like unto themselves -- which means in brief a hastening of the evolutionary process. They have their schools of initiation into which men in the outside world can enter, provided that these great ones see in the hearts and minds of the men in the outside world the qualifications for initiation. This procedure is not a selfish one. It is not a policy directed by an ignoble wish to keep truth for oneself, but is directed by nature's own law. You cannot teach an infant studies which are beyond its capacities. You cannot teach it lessons in Sanskrit, nor how to deliver a lecture on astronomy or chemistry, as instances. You must wait until the child grows, grows up, until its faculties evolve, which is the same thing as inner growth. What a wondrous picture of hope and consolation we have here! Any man who will show the necessary qualifications is acceptable to these teachers -- not only acceptable, but he is helped, is taught; and every great seer and sage throughout the ages has had the same wonderful Message to give to mankind: "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest, and peace, and light." But the man's heart must hunger for these, his mind must be ready to receive them; otherwise how can he take them? His moral instincts must be sufficiently developed so that the development of the wonderful but latent power within him can be brought about with an assurance that these powers will not be debased to ignoble uses. I repeat, Brothers, that all the great sages and seers of the ages have taught: ask, and ask aright, and ye shall receive; knock, and give the right knock -- which is the life of a pure heart and the strivings of an eager intellect -- and then the door will be opened unto you. Any son of man has a right to these sublime teachings as his heritage as a human being. I will tell you frankly, Brothers, Comrades, and Friends, that the Theosophical Society was originally founded to bring these same ancient, very archaic, wonder-teachings back to the cognizance and living of mankind; and even today those who have proved themselves by kindliness of action, by a hearthunger for truth, by the courage to follow that truth to the world's end, ready to receive initiation, can get it. As I have told you on other occasions, this is a promise -- not my own, but the same promise that any genuine theosophical teacher and leader is authorized to make. Do you understand now what I refer to when I speak of the archaic doctrine, the wisdom-religion of mankind, the secret doctrine of the ages? It is that "Lost Word," which yet is not a word, but a system of teaching, a wisdom, the existence of which still remains as an echo in the hearts of all good and true and intuitive men. This Lost Word, this wisdom-teaching, you can have. It is, as a body of doctrines, the formulation in human language of the essential truths of the universe. It comprises the facts regarding the nature of the universe, visible and invisible, spiritual, intellectual, psychical, ethereal, astral, and physical. It comprises also the teachings regarding the structure and operations and laws of the universe, of which every human being is an inseparable portion. It also includes teaching a man to find himself -i. e., to discover, and uncover from its enshrouding veils, the god within him. In every human being there is his inner god. Some call it the immanent Christ, others the inner Buddha. But by whatever name we call it, it is the same. Having found this inner god, you will enjoy communion

with the divinities, and you will understand the universe in which you live, and move, and have your being, and of which you are an inseparable part. Receiving this Wisdom means the broadening of your consciousness, the deepening of your being, the evocation of your latent intellectual powers, and the self-acquaintance with your soul, so to speak -- call it by what name you like. It also means to become at one with the All, and self-consciously. Doing this is following the mystic pathway that I spoke of this afternoon. Essential truth is within you. Every man and woman of you here can find that truth, if you only have the key. It is the teacher who gives the key. He shows you how to become your self. He shows you how to unlock the faculties and powers latent within your self. He shows you how to bring out your self. He shows you how to be your spiritual self. There is a teaching current in the world today, not only in the ranks of some theosophists but it is very popular all over the world, to the effect that a man does not need teachers, that a man should be sufficient unto himself, that he has it within him to find his own path; and this is said to be a manly course of life. Verily, so it is: "Truth abides within in fullness"; but why haven't you found the path? Why aren't you what you claim you can be? For the simple reason that you don't know how to be it and because you have not been taught. You need a teacher. Pause in thought over this, if you please. Do you think that the human race has been abandoned through the ages, that the great seers and sages who have lived in the past and who have brightened human existence by their teachings, and who have given to men a deathless hope -- do you think that they were ordinary men, or are ordinary men today? They were and are men indeed, men who had become at one with the inner god, the god within: in other words, who had become at one with their spiritual self and thus they could teach other men to do the same. Men need teachers. O my Brothers, if I could tell you the debt of gratitude that I have to my own teachers, and to this gratitude I bear glad witness! I am not ashamed of it. I proclaim it as the loveliest and most beautiful thing in my life that I have learned to subordinate my human pride of mind to abstract truth, to love, to gratitude. Truth is within, in very fact; but a man must be taught how to unfold it within himself. Look at your little children. Their growth will exemplify the idea. A little child has everything within it that the grown man has, but as yet undeveloped and he needs his teachers; he needs the mother's loving care, first to guide the footsteps, then to teach the letters of the alphabet, to watch over its growing intelligence, to guide its mind into the proper paths; and I pity the mothers who fail in this -- one of the noblest duties that a human being can undertake. The spiritual teacher of grown men is just what Socrates claimed that he was himself, a "midwife" bringing out the man himself, bringing his disciples to birth -- to spiritual birth. This is a sublime thought. Yes, and furthermore, Brothers, Comrades, Friends, this great association of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace have their envoys and representatives in the world all the time. Now, pause in thought over this statement. As a great people will send its ambassador or envoy to some foreign land, so do these great ones, these great seers and sages of the ages, send their envoys, high disciples of theirs, into the world, in order to proclaim at different periods in the world's history the same old secret wisdom of the ages. H.P. Blavatsky was one such. There were many others before her. There were others after her. The future will show many more. It is trifling with truth, it is juvenile, it is childish, to say that the Great Ones send their representatives no more until a certain time-period has been reached. How do you know? Do you dictate the policy of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace? I repeat my question: How do you know? Why do you sit in judgment of your brothers? Here is a good proof by which you may judge such an envoy: What is his teaching? What is his life? What does he give to the world? Does he inspire his fellows with great and noble thoughts and does he show them the still small path of the ages? If he does, you need have no fear about superficial theories whether he is or is not a Teacher from the Great Ones. Such a man is a man to be trusted.

Reject anything that your conscience tells you is false; abhor it. Cast it aside even if a very god from heaven taught it to you; reject it, if your conscience tells you that it is wrong. You may make mistakes time after time; but at any rate you are exercising your divine prerogatives of free will and of vision, and you are also thereby exercising your intellect; and these will grow by the exercise and thus become stronger; and the time will surely come when your judgment and your discrimination will have grown to be far greater than now they are; and then you will recognize truth whenever you see it or hear it. If, on the other hand, what a man teaches you find to be true, that is if it appeal to you as a fact, then hold to it and help him to sow that truth abroad. Such action is a human duty. Every decent man feels it. Do you think that there is a man in this room who, seeing some other man working against heavy odds, would not instantly, with an outburst of generous feeling, rush to aid him? Of course he would; and so would every true woman, too. I tell you, not only that these Masters of Wisdom and Compassion and Peace send their envoys continuously into the world of men one after the other, but also that these envoys in consequence are working in the world among men all the time; and happy are they whose hearts recognize these envoys; happy they who recognize the footfalls of the messengers of peace and wisdom crossing the mountaintops of the Mystic East. I have been reminded sometimes that the chief founder of the Theosophical Society in our age, H.P. Blavatsky, taught that it was sufficient unto a man to look within himself in order to find truth, because all truth abides within. She did so teach, and so has every other great theosophical teacher and leader, and I am as cognizant of the fact as any one else is, and teach exactly the same thing myself. But H.P. Blavatsky also taught the need -- a real and imperative need -- for men to have spiritual teachers, teachers who could help to guide the faltering steps of average men, teachers who would be showers of the way: human signposts so to speak. Genuine theosophical teachers are not mere preachers of ideas or mental notions that may have currency as a fad in any age, but base their teachings and doctrines solely on the facts of being. They recognize full well that men are imperfect albeit learning entities, entities who are growing and, as in the case of all imperfectly developed entities, guidance is needed and help is to be given where help can be given and will be accepted in the spirit in which it is offered; and also they know and teach that while all truth abides within, nevertheless the average man can be helped to shorten his ages-long evolution by the means of receiving teachings through the inflaming of his own inner divinity, and this inflaming is the work of the greater men, of the Masters of Wisdom. Life is a school and men are the pupils in that school, and in that school there are teachers, and in these few words you have the key to the whole situation and to the policy of the Great Lodge. I will read to you a brief observation of H. P. Blavatsky's which is found in a letter written to a Dr. Franz Hartmann. You will find this letter published in full in the theosophical magazine, The Path, March, 1896: . . . I am enough of an occultist to know that before we find the Master within our own hearts . . . we need an outside Master. As the Chinese alchemist says, speaking of the necessity of an outside teacher: . . . 'One word from a wise Master and you possess a draught of the golden water.' [True!] . . . He is a Savior who leads you in finding your own Master within yourself. It is ten years already that I preach the inner Master. Do you think, Brothers, Comrades, Friends, that I as a theosophical lecturer and teacher would ask you to accept one word of what I tell you from this platform if you yourselves feel it to be untrue? No. I say to you again what I have always said: reject anything and everything that you hear if your conscience rebels against it. It is your human duty to do that. But, on the other hand, if what you hear appeals to you as true, then be true men and hold to it and proclaim to the world the truth that you have found and help us in so doing. Help in passing on the beautiful teachings of theosophy, its glad tidings of great joy.

Theosophists need the help of every honest man and woman who hears what we have to say and who feels that what we teach is truth. We have nothing to gain personally, theosophists, in our work. But let me pause a moment, and, after all, ask myself if this statement is exactly true. From another standpoint as I now think it over in speaking to you I am inclined to think that from this other standpoint the opposite statement is also true. We have everything to gain; for indeed in helping others we find ourselves, each one of us comes nearer to realizing the god within him. Don't you know that the sweetest, the loveliest, the happiest, moment in a man's life, is when he feels that he has helped a fellow human being? Have you not experienced that? It is a sublime experience. It satisfies something noble within you that naught else can reach. Yes, from this other standpoint, we Theosophists do gain, gain grandly, gain wonderfully, because not only do we come nearer to finding our spiritual selves, which itself is a sublime experience, but we see and feel that we help our fellows to find themselves, to find their true inner selves, as individuals. The secret doctrine of the ages you can find outlined in brief in our modern theosophical books, in our age especially in the works of H.P. Blavatsky, in her The Secret Doctrine, for instance. There you can read and study somewhat of what this ancient, this archaic, wisdom was, this Lost Word, which as said is no "word," which is indeed a wisdom, a wisdom-teaching. If the study of this ancient wisdom interests you and you desire to go farther along this path, which is the inner pathway of inner and spiritual selfrealization and which means a development of your inner, nobler selfhood, then come to our temple door and knock. In this connection quite frankly I am going to make a statement to you and it is as follows: during the last few years I have received a limited number of communications couched somewhat in the following fashion: "I have been to your Temple of Peace; I have heard you speak there. I would like very much to become better acquainted with the wonderful doctrines, the esoteric doctrines, at which I have so often heard you hint; but with all due respect to The Theosophical Society, I would much prefer not to join it. The reason is that I am not a 'joiner.' I like to be free. I don't care to associate myself with any Society. With all due respect to you splendid people and with deep sympathy for your work, nevertheless I prefer to remain apart, and to pursue my own personal path." I usually answer these communications with all due courtesy; but my own reaction is -- and here again I will talk quite frankly to you -- that a man or a woman who would like to take from a household what he is not entitled to take and then avoid helping the members of that household who have helped him or her, is not fully guided by the instincts of a true and generous heart. For my part, I am proud to join a body of men and women whom I believe to have found something great and beautiful -- the pathway of spiritual and intellectual self-realization under the guidance and teaching of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. It is possible that theosophists do not always follow this pathway with perfect fidelity. This is only natural because we are all human; but nevertheless our theosophists are trying to follow the path faithfully; and this already is a great deal. I am proud to join a movement headed by the immortal gods, for that is indeed a fact -- a movement composed of men and women who are honestly striving to do their best to bring light and help and peace and comfort to their fellows. My heart yearns to help in so great and so noble a work. I should be ashamed to want to obtain for myself without giving myself and what I can do in return for what I have received. I am, therefore, a "joiner" of all that is grand and sublime. Before you can enter our Esoteric Section -- but how shall I phrase this? Let me put the matter in this way: Before you can pass the threshold of the inner Temple you must enter the outer Temple. This is a rule which has come down to us from the ages of the past and simply exemplifies the results of ages of human experience. Furthermore -- and this I must say in honesty -- even if and when you have entered the outer Temple, it is not certain, absolutely certain, that you will be able to pass the threshold of the holy of holies -- the inner Temple. It all depends upon yourselves, and this statement should be perfectly clear to everybody.

If you have it in you to pass into the greater light, then not all the devils in hell can keep you out; but if you have it not in you, then with equivalent reason not all the gods in heaven can help you to pass inwards. Do you know why this is so? It is so because it is the individual who chooses for himself, in other words who walks his own path. Do you now get the idea? You must have it in yourself to succeed, you must have it in your own heart, before you can succeed. You must become it before you can be it, in other words pass the threshold of the inner Temple. I do not think that anyone, after this frank observation, my Friends, can ever say that I have told people enticing things and then, when it came to the scratch, I would not let them in. I will, therefore, now tell you the simple and exact truth: I cannot keep you out if you give the right knock, and if you ask aright; but, on the other hand, I could not, even if I would, pass you into realms of thought and consciousness which you yourself have not evolved within yourself, which you are not prepared to understand. In these remarks I refer to the esoteric part of our teachings, the secret part; but nevertheless any man or woman who accepts the one prerequisite for membership in The Theosophical Society, which prerequisite is a sincere belief in universal brotherhood, can join us and help us, and we are happy to have his brotherly aid. Now, Brothers and Comrades and Friends: before leaving you this afternoon, I want to talk to you briefly, as I usually do, upon something that to me is the loftiest part of our majestic theosophical philosophy. It is this: every human being is an imbodied incarnate divinity; some human beings manifest this divinity in splendor, and such men we call Buddhas, or we speak of them as Christs, or call them by other names. They are among the number of the great sages and seers of the human race. Again, other men show forth the faculties and powers of the inner god but averagely, but poorly; and they are the average men like me, like you -- unless, mayhap, in this audience, there may be a few who are greater than the average. It is quite possible. There are still other human beings who show forth the faculties and powers of the inner god very poorly, and these are the undeveloped men, the men whose hearts are asleep and whose minds are dulled. But they will grow to greater things. But to the average man and woman it is my duty to recall this wonderful truth of the essential god at the core of the core of the being of everyone. Each one is an incarnate god, each one of you is an imbodied divinity, kin with the immortals who guide and protect the universal spheres; and you can find how selfconsciously to became this inner god of you, which you yourself are in your inmost. Become it in your daily life little by little, every day a little more. Yearn to be it; yearn to become it; feel it; think of it; ponder upon it. Even the rewards that come from this discipline and this training are past ordinary comprehension. Pause a moment in thought and realize what it means to have your consciousness virtually of cosmic reach, attaining the outmost limits of our solar system, and this not only in the physical sphere but very much more so in the invisible worlds; try for an instant to realize what it is to send your consciousness behind the veils of the physical universe -- deep, deep, deeper still, into the very heart of being -- and there to learn, by becoming it, what is there, by experiencing all that is there in your own perceiving consciousness; and then, holiest thing of all, perhaps, feeling so strongly your oneness with the boundless universe that instinctively and with all the impulses of your life you consecrate yourself to its service -- a godlike activity. This consecration also means becoming ever greater in spiritual power, in growth of inner faculty, in inner vision, in inner hearing, in deeper feeling. Following upon this consecration the inner spiritual senses will open and develop grandly. You have all within you, and you lack but the proper teacher. Therefore, seek out your teacher. Aspire, become worthy of his care and guidance. You may find him sooner than you realize. Turn whither the noblest impulses of your soul direct you to turn. Doubtless he will be there.

Second Series: No. 32 (April 13, 1931)

THE ESOTERIC EASTER

(Lecture delivered April 5, 1931) CONTENTS: Easter a spiritual event. -- The Ostara of the early Germanic peoples. -- The Christian Easter a theological misinterpretation. -- The Mysteria of the ancient Greeks. -- Four seasons of initiation. Significance of each. -- Date of the Christian Easter. -- Hints concerning lunar influences. -Initiations still possible. -- Circulations of the universe. -- Meaning of the Easter egg. -- Japanese expression of an eternal verity. -- Crucifixion and resurrection explained. -- To give in order to get: a universal law. -- The boundless vision of the gods. Easter is a beautiful season of the year. It is not merely a day, it is rather a spiritual idea; indeed, it is an ideal -- as it were a breath of the soul of antiquity, which has come down to us, albeit distorted, from far past ages, this soul-breathing of antiquity arising in the inner spiritual life of man. By these words I mean that Easter represents an actual event which occurs annually in the spiritual life of man, because the events of man's spiritual life faithfully reflect the events that take place in the spiritual life of the world. It is a fact, Brothers, that every great mystical event of the ancient religions and philosophies of the world was commemorated in a feast, in the ancient sense of this word -- in a festival such as Easter in Occidental lands now is, and such as was the European original and forerunner of the present-day Easter festival: the Ostara or Eastre, as it was called by different families of the early Germanic inhabitants of the northern European countries. In those lands it took the form of a celebration of the vital forces working in the springtime, when new life is surging through the earth and affecting all earth's children, when the trees begin to burgeon and the flowers begin to blow, and when a new hope is singing in men's hearts, representing in men, because derived from the spiritual realms, exactly what appears in the beauteous flowers that in those northern lands Nature then begins to bring forth. The Easter Festival in Occidental countries is commonly supposed to be a purely Christian one, commemorating what the Christians call the supreme event of their religious faith -- the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Are we to accept as wholly complete a merely theological and one-sided interpretation of a really beauteous and significant event of general importance in the history of the spiritual life of mankind? Yet even this theological misinterpretation has a background of verity, a vein of truth running through it, because, as I told you before, every one of the great feast days of every one of the great religious faiths or philosophical faiths of mankind -- which means all over the earth -- has behind it as its background and origin an esoteric fact, arising in and out of what the ancient Greeks called their Mysteria, "the Mysteries." Easter is one such; Christmas, the supposed anniversary of the birthday of Jesus, is one such; but two others the Christians never commemorate in celebration, if indeed they ever understood these two latter; and these other two are the great spiritual -- psycho-spiritual -- events that occur in midsummer or the summer solstice, and at the time of the autumnal equinox. The ancients in their wondrous doctrines of the Mysteries taught that there were four main seasons of the year at which the highest, noblest, most heart-enticing initiations possible to man took place at certain periodically recurring times. These four seasons are respectively the two equinoxes, of spring and of autumn, and the two solstices, of winter and of summer. The Christians still commemorate two of these seasons -- one is solstitial and the other equinoctial -Christmas at the winter solstice more or less, and Easter around the time of the spring equinox: one of these two festivals commemorating the birth, as they say, of their Savior Jesus, and the other commemorating what they call his resurrection. Now even these two words, "birth" and "resurrection", distorted as they are by the orthodox Christian interpretations, and misunderstood as these two words have been from a very early period in Christian ecclesiastical history, nevertheless contain elements of real truth. This is because both of these festivals are distorted representations of two esoteric facts concerning what takes place in the initiation chambers at a winter solstice and at a spring equinox.

The initiatory cycle, my Brothers, contained the circling year as a symbol of the entire spiritual, intellectual, and psychical life cycle of a human being; and at the four cross periods, composing 'the cross of the universe,' as the divine philosopher Plato, the Greek, called it, there took place the four great initiation ceremonies of human existence, representing -- what? This first: the "birth" of the new man, of the initiate out of the personal man, the latter living, as Pythagoras put it, a living death, because living merely in the body and in the brain-mind, and usually entirely oblivious of the titanic spiritual forces that make a man really Man. When the man was thus born, mystically speaking, i. e., when the inner man or initiate arose out of the dead person, he was mystically said to be 'born' when this occurred at the time of the winter solstice, which the Christians celebrate as their Christmas Festival. He then entered upon the first stage of his career as an initiate, one who had begun really to know and really to follow the path, that mystic, small, old path which, when faithfully followed, will lead you to the very heart of the universe; for indeed that pathway is your own spiritual being, the inner man of you, the source of all that is great and sublime in mankind -- that inner holy spiritual Thing -- our spiritual self by which we are linked intimately with the very gods; and it is thus that following this pathway of the spiritual self we enter into cognizance of and become acquainted with the realms and forces of the spiritual universe, which is the cause and the mother of our exterior, physical universe, just precisely as the spiritual man is the cause and the parent of the psycho-physical man. How many times have I not told you from this platform that every human being is an inseparable part of the universe -- not merely of the physical universe, but more especially of the inner and invisible, the spiritual universe! He is bone of its bone, life of its life, blood of its blood, essence of its essence. There is his real home in the spiritual worlds; and from within him, from the inner and invisible man, spring forth all the qualities that make men great -- courage, steadfastness, truth, troth, insight, vision, intellect, spirituality, hope, peace, impersonal love -- all are from within. It is to rend the barriers of the physical being, the veils that enshroud the spiritual sun within and which lock these noble, these sublime, things in, that the neophytes followed the pathway of initiation, in order to bring out, in other words to evolve, what was locked up -- the inner essence of the man. The first of these initiations, as I have already told you, which was called the birth, took place and takes place at the time of the winter solstice, December 21-22, which Christians now call the Christmas Festival of December 25; and when this new 'Birth' occurred, then men said: "Lo! the Christ in man is born"; or, "the inner Buddha is born from within the shell of the neophyte." As the man lived on, if he had the strength of will and the courage to proceed and to follow the path to the second initiatory stage -no matter how many years this may have taken or now may take -- then came the "Easter" of his life, the second great initiation, when the Christ within him was -- not born, because that had already taken place -- but when the Christ "arose" and took his own stand as a fully developed master, teacher, guide, and leader, of men. Then came the third stage, that which was commemorated mythologically by so many of the ancient peoples in the festival of the midsummer, of the summer solstice. On June 21-22 began the "trials" of this third stage, and they lasted for fourteen days, beginning at a time when the moon was new and culminating and ending for that period when the moon was full. So was it also at the winter solstice or Christmas Initiation beginning on December 21-22, when the moon was new and ending fourteen days afterwards, when the moon was full. So was it also during the springtime, the spring equinox, the second stage; and so was it again during the autumn period, September 21-22: each of these initiation ceremonies began when, according to the ancient, wonderful, mystical, true astrology, the sun and moon and planets were rightly situated. Every one of these initiation periods began either at the time of the winter solstice, or of the spring equinox, or of the summer solstice, or of the autumnal equinox; respectively therefore on December 2122, and lasting for fourteen days until the full moon; or on March 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until full moon; and then on June 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until full moon; and then finally on September 21-22, and lasting for fourteen days until the moon was full.

This whole matter has been so completely lost sight of by Occidental peoples that it is most difficult adequately to describe the true circumstances; and the difficulty is rendered still greater by the fact that due to misunderstanding and ignorance and ecclesiastical bigotry and jealousy, what remained or was taken over by the early Christians has been greatly distorted and changed; so that while actually, as I have before said, the Christians celebrated two of these great initiation festivals, the ones they call Christmas and Easter, they know nothing of the other two; and even the two that they still commemorate they commemorate on approximately the accurate dates but actually inaccurately because not following the exact astronomical time periods. The circle of the year, as I have told you, represented symbolically the entire initiatory cycle that a man could follow from the beginning of his training until its end. There was the Birth, then the Resurrection, or rather the evocation of the inner Christ or Master, which was the mystic Youth just as the former had been the mystic 'Birth,' then the third which was the mystic Majority or Adulthood, at which the glorious initiate or Master of Life began an active, indeed a strenuous, career among men as Teacher and Guide and Savior; and then finally the last period, that of the passage into the great peace, where, if such was the choice made and followed, the Master left the world of men for ages and entered into other spheres. Many renounced this fourth and supreme initiation in order to remain Buddha-like, in their love and pity for erring mankind, with men in order to help them and to protect them and to guide them. Please understand that I am not describing these facts as the results of merely my own studies; I am simply repeating what you may prove for yourselves by your own studies actually to exist. How is the date of Easter reckoned today, according to the Christian fashion of doing so? It is figured in this way: Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon on the date of or first after the spring equinox. Bitter disputes arose in the early days of Christianity about the proper date on which to celebrate the Christian Easter Festival, commemorating the supposed resurrection, the rising, of their Savior; and the greatest and most bitterly debated of these disputes was called the Quartodeciman -- the word quartodeciman being taken from the Latin word for fourteenth -- "fourteenthers." It was so called because a large body of the early Christians contended that Easter should fall on the fourteenth day -which was full moon day -- of the Jewish month of Aviv or Nisan -- the same day on which the ancient Jews commemorated their Passover. The Jewish calendar was wholly a lunar one -- their months went by moons. As a matter of fact, even in English the word month, derived from the Anglo-Saxon Monath, means the period of one lunation or one moon, in Anglo-Saxon Mona. But the Christians, the majority of them, didn't like the idea of celebrating the Resurrection of their Savior, Jesus Christ, although he was a Jew, on the same date on which the Jews commemorated their Passover. They were very largely of opinion that their Easter Festival commemorating the alleged Rising of Jesus must be celebrated on a Sunday, the day of the sun. Thus it came about that after a great deal of verbal fighting and verbal squabbling -- very bitter and unkind some of it -- the arguments of the Quartodecimans were rejected and the Quartodecimans were declared to hold "heretical opinions." This event took place at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 of the Christian Era. This decree of the Nicaean Council of 325 showed that the Christians of that time had already lost the root-meaning of the Easter Festival; and I may add here that the Jews had the right idea in celebrating their Passover on the fourteenth of the month Nisan, in other words when the moon was full, no matter how much the Jews themselves at that late date may have misunderstood the real meaning and significance of this Spring Festival. The esoteric fact connected with this Spring Festival is one which is fully explained in our own Theosophical esoteric teachings. But I may remind you that the moon, among all the ancient peoples, and even today among non-Christian peoples practically all over the earth, has been called the Lord and Giver of life as well as of death; and there are certain phases of the moon, in other words certain positions that the moon occupies, taken in connection with the astronomical positions of the sun and the earth, when influences and forces both from the moon to earth and from earth to the moon run strong.

If you will examine the ancient literatures of the world, you will find that all that I have told you thus far is contained in those literatures, albeit in some cases rather carefully hid, as well as many other hints about the same secret facts of nature; and if you want to know how to understand and to construe these hints, then my advice to you is to study theosophy. This study will give you the key of the enigma. I will add also the following: that the old initiations have not died off from the face of the earth. They take place even today, and in the archaic way, under the supervision and guidance of men, great sages and seers, who know perfectly well what they are doing, and who know what the inner and to us -- to the average man -- mysterious secrets of the universe are; they know how nature's forces and currents run, and in what direction they run and along what pathways they return; they know, in other words, the circulations of the universe, circulations not only physical but psychical and spiritual; for verily there are such circulations in the universe. Everything in the universe is connected and bound together with every other thing that exists. Nature is one universal organism or organic entity. There is a harmony which prevails everywhere; and consequently there is a cosmic life, call it a cosmic spirit if you like, which is the ocean of being in which all differentiations take place: which is the great fountain of being in which all things exist, live, and move, and have their being. Consequently nature is one, and, as the old Hermetists said, what you see operative in any part of nature merely mirrors what takes place everywhere, because nature's laws form one unity, and consequently work together everywhere throughout the mighty mass. Out of the small, discover the great; in the great, seek the mystery of the small; as above, so is it below; as below, as the great Egyptian Hermes said, so is it above. Nature is organically one: one life, one essence, one consciousness, and one vast and incomprehensibly differentiated aggregate of bodies -- and therefore all things in the mighty whole are ruled and controlled alike and show it forth in the manifestations of their individual existences. Thus, therefore, following this analogical principle: just as a man's body has its circulations, has its feeble consciousness reflected from the inner spiritual man, so has the mighty organic sphere of our own home-universe. Man is a child of that universe and a reflection of it, manifesting in the small what exists in his great parent. The northern European peoples had a habit of celebrating the Easter Festival of spring by sending eggs, colored or otherwise, as gifts to each other. Why? We may well ask, what on earth have eggs, colored or otherwise, to do with the festival commemorating the supposed resurrection of the Christian Savior Jesus Christ? What have eggs to do with that event of such momentous importance to the orthodox Christian? It was a pagan custom among European peoples long before the Christians adopted it. The celebration of Easter in the European countries, i. e., in northern European countries, was a pagan custom long before the Christians took it over. Now harken to the following: out of the apparently inanimate and senseless egg comes a living being.

Omne vivum ex ovo, "Every living thing springs from an egg," be it small or be it great. The egg, therefore, was a symbol of the resurrection of life, this mystic, symbolic idea centering around the germ
of life enclosed within a relatively senseless encasement or body, which is the egg; but that germ within the egg is a living and working entity; growing -- wonderfully, mysteriously, marvelously -- in time assuming the form and the content of the individual to be born from the egg; and one day the egg bursts and the entity comes forth -- the fledgling, the chick, the human being, for the human life-germ is a cell, which is an egg also. Sending an egg was therefore a symbolic message, and was meant to say the following: "Brother, with this gift of the symbolic egg, symbol of the new life to be, I hope that you too will soon break the infolding "egg" of the lower self, the personal man; and that, having broken the shell of your personal being, you may step forth as the Master within." It therefore meant: seek initiation; break the shell of the lower personal man and step out as the living germ to be developed into an entity fit to live in the larger world of the spiritual. The egg, therefore, mystically and symbolically, represented the birth of the living Christ -- his resurrection from out the tomb of the material encasement. You see immediately that the egg is a beautiful symbol, very suggestive, and giving food for many hours of quiet thought.

You Occidental men don't know what you have within you. As I have told you so often, there is a divinity, there is a god, a divine essence, locked up within each one of you, and you won't let it out. It is particularly difficult for Occidentals -- Europeans and Americans -- to understand this noble truth and to follow it, because physical life in these countries is pursued so feverishly, with such a fevered enthusiasm, that Occidental men and women have lost the sense of and the feel of the great peace; they have lost self-conscious communion with the inner spirit of themselves. The personal man, my Brothers, must be "crucified," i. e., "slain" -- metaphorically speaking -- in order that the Christ within you may resurrect or arise. These are not merely pretty words, poetic tropes, quaint figures of speech: I tell you that within each one of you is a Buddha, or as some of the mystical Christians of today phrase it, within every human being there is the immanent Christos -- an actual fact. Why not ally yourself with your own inner divinity, with the divinity within you, the real spiritual and intellectual essence of yourself? There, verily, is the source of wisdom; there is the source of all knowledge. In becoming at one with this inner source you attain the great peace, you reach the great quiet, and mighty strength; you touch the vast reservoir where are stored up all the greatest forces of the universe; for the very heart of each one of you, is in actual fact the heart of the universe -- a heart which is not localized, which has no place, which is everywhere, but called the heart of the universe because it is the central focus of consciousness of every thing and every entity that exist anywhere. Pity the man or the woman who cannot understand even a little of this; for if he cannot understand it he is dead -- or sleeping. He is indeed living in the body as the beast lives, but nevertheless is a whitened sepulcher within, as Jesus the Christian sage put it, full of dead men's bones, and of rottenness and corruption. The pathway of beauty, the pathway of peace and strength, the pathway of the great quiet, is within you -- not within the material body, but within the inmost focus of your consciousness. This is the pathway that the great sages and seers of all the ages have taught. Follow that pathway; it will lead you to the heart of the sun, the master and guide of our solar system; and later if you follow it, it will conduct you to a destiny still more sublime. Yet that sublime destiny is only the beginning, only the beginning of something grander; for evolution, growth, expansion of consciousness, go on forever. In different countries there are different ways of phrasing these things of inner beauty. I listened two nights ago to a speech by a Japanese lecturer, a thoughtful man, a man of kindly heart, one who had already seen somewhat of the vision beautiful and who, during the course of his lecture, illustrated one point of his address by an example -- a Japanese poem. I will repeat this poem as I heard it; and in this connection please remember that the essence of poetry is visioning. Poetry is not merely the collocation of words; it is not rhyming. The noblest poetry oft is that which has no rhyme, but which instead appeals powerfully to the intellect and to the heart, because it gives vision; and this Japanese poem consisted of three lines only, nine words: An old pond -A frog plunging -A great splash. Do not these words give to you a beautiful and suggestive picture? The beauty of this little poem lies in the fact that there is in it no meretricious ornament, no wordy decoration; and because of this fact a thought, a picture, vivid, graphic, real, is presented to the minds of the hearers, and then the magic of thought is woven by the minds of the hearers themselves; and each man interprets the beauty of this thought strictly according to his own development of the understanding and of the poetic sense -- which means the sense of beauty and consciousness. "Now, what is this 'old pond'?" asked the lecturer. It is the spiritual life, he replied, the life beautiful, the inner life, the great peace, called old, because it has existed from eternity. It is the essence of the spiritual world; and it is called pond after the same fashion that made other mystical thinkers of other ancient peoples speak of the waters of space. And "a frog plunging": how graphic in its simplicity is this! It seems a desecration to color this thing by trying to explain it: the frog plunging into the water

where he feels at home is the man yearning to return into his own -- to re-enter the spiritual existence where his soul is native. Is not this the very heart of the idea imbodied in the Easter Festival? Is it not man rising out of the material and plunging into the spiritual life of his soul? There indeed are the Resurrection and the Life! The spiritually thoughtful man, the man yearning for truth, the man yearning to be truly himself, his greater self, his inner self, his real self, to be the god within him -- yearning to be and to grow and to enter into the light and the great peace, such a man may have his own individual Easter at any time. His Easter comes to him: his resurrection into the spiritual life comes to him: when he breaks the shell of the personal man with all its weaknesses and cloying desires and enshrouding veils, and casts that shell aside. Not by killing the body -- that is not the essential idea -- but by becoming at one with the god within, so that the body is no longer a hindrance but a faithful tool with which to carry out in this our sphere of existence, the mandates of the inner god. And the Crucifixion? I use this word because we Occidentals live in a country which has been Christian -- I am speaking to people who probably have been brought up as Christians; but if I were speaking in the Orient I would use the metaphors and the figures of speech of Oriental countries, as, for instance, those of Buddhism or of Brahmanism, or of the teachings of the Tao. The meaning of the crucifixion is the resignation, painful to most human beings, of the material personal man and exchanging it for a greater light; and it is called a crucifixion because to the personal man with his limited vision it seems like his own death. We must remember that the inner Christ -- or the inner Buddha if you please -- is fixed to the cross of material existence; but after the crucifixion there ensues the resurrection of the inner god. Yes, there are four great initiatory periods which take place during the course of the cycling year at the times of the two solstices and the two equinoxes; and these four initiations take place even today. I will tell you frankly, my Brothers, that the Theosophical Society has, among its other objects, to restore to men self-consciousness of the knowledge that they can grow, advance, evolve forth, and bring forth what is within them; and that this can be done and that they can do it most rapidly by passing through the initiatory rites, preceded and followed by the requisite and rigid training and teaching. I can show you where lies this path of initiation, but you yourselves must walk that path. I cannot walk it for you. I cannot grow for you. But as a theosophical teacher I can show you how to help yourselves, how to find yourselves this pathway of initiation -- this pathway leading, as I have so often said before, towards that Mystic East, which is not any geographical locality on earth, but is the place where the glorious sun of spirit is seen in the far distance by the soul of man. Crucifixion, to adopt the Christian phraseology, each one of you must undergo some time in the sense that I have just briefly outlined; you cannot enter heaven, again to follow the Christian phrasing, with the bags and impedimenta that you lug around with you in this material sphere, for there is no place for them in the spiritual world. You must go stripped like the athlete, leaping forward in glad anticipation of attaining what he sees on the distant horizon. In other words, you cannot follow the path successfully, nor successfully pass the portals of the temple of wisdom, until you have found your inner self at least in some degree and until you yearn for more of the beauteous vision. This beauteous vision is not outside of you. Your spiritual life is within you. This beauteous vision is the vision of the god within you, clad in the habiliments of the sun. This is not poetry, although it is true that I am now using the language of the outer court. You must become clothed, at least a little, with the solar splendor, you must have become at least a little at one with the buddhic glory before you can reach the sun and pass its portals -go into its heart. In other words, you must become like unto it. You cannot become one with your own inner god until the personal man, who is the becomer, has become at least to a certain extent godlike. You cannot enter into the great peace until you yourself have become peaceful. Oh! Resurrect the god within you, the inner Christ, the inner Buddha, the inner Brahma, call it by what name you will; that solar splendor which is the very core of your being. Be like the frog of the Japanese poet, plunging into the old pond -- the ancient pond of your spiritual consciousness. Then you will attain truth, light, peace, love, pity, compassion, strength, discrimination,

vision, glory unspeakable: and you can have all these at any time when you choose to have them. It is a matter of choosing -- simply a matter of choosing, and doing. My father was a Christian clergyman, and I remember that when I was a boy I used to go to church. In fact, I had to go to church. I used to sit in the pew, unless indeed I sat in a chorister's seat, because I had to sing, too. I used to sit in one of the pews and look around and study the faces of the people; and I wondered what was the matter with everybody. They indeed seemed to be kindly, courteous people, sitting there "on the job" -- a sort of duty which some of them seemed to like and some of them didn't seem to like; and I had an instinct that something was either wrong with me or wrong with the system. I have now found out where the wrong lies -- and I am not going to tell you what I have discovered. I don't think that I need to tell you. I am sure that you feel exactly as I do. Then, when I grew older and began to read a little of certain Oriental literature that fell to my hand, I realized that the instinct of my soul had been a true one; and after that, as I sat in the pew in church and looked around, I saw something which seemed to me new in the faces of my fellows. Oh, the spiritual hunger, the yearning, the unsatisfied yearning for light, that met my eyes! They were doing something more than merely being on the job. They wanted truth. They wanted consolation. They wanted vision -and found it not. Then, still a little later, Theosophical literature fell to my hand and I read it avidly and studied it eagerly, and then my heart awoke, as my brain had awaked before. But now, from a study of the theosophical literature, my heart awaking, I began to realize what there was, not only in me, but in my fellows; and I said to myself: hereafter my life is consecrate to what I know to be the truth. No man can live unto himself alone; no man can tread the pathway -- the still, small, old pathway -- of the spiritual self within him, alone. Marvelous thing that this is: you can gain only when you give, you can truly understand only when you interpret for others; you can truly be only when you have renounced. These sound like the paradoxes of Lao-tse, the great Chinese philosopher; and so they are. They are true. But in the Occident did not Jesus called the Christ, of whom Christians today are celebrating the anniversary of the supposed resurrection -- do they not also say that their Jesus taught: "Give up thy life if thou wouldst" -- what? -- "find it"? Lao-tse never uttered a more paradoxical saying than that; and it is a very true one. Why is it so? Because growth is expansion; growth is enlargement, whether of body, or of faculty, or of consciousness; and you cannot grow to the greater until you have given up the love of the smaller. You can bring the best in you out only when you give; and this therefore is the pathway of training that I am now laying before you -- a pathway leading to the resurrection of the Christos within you -- to the bringing out of the inner god. If you wish to get, give; and the greatest getting is the god within you; and you get it by giving yourself. Paradoxical? Yes. But I don't believe it is so paradoxical that you cannot understand it. The same principle prevails -- to come down to earthly things -- even in your ordinary business world. You cannot get business until you give of your substance to get it; you have to give something before you can get something; and this materialistic principle is merely a reflection of a universal law of nature; you cannot find your spiritual self until you give it; and you cannot find it until you give up the lower man, yourself. Who are you, anyway? Are you the god within you, or the lower man? You are indeed both: yet the lower man is merely a reflection of the higher man, much as the sun is reflected in a mirror, or in a basin of water, or as the moon's cold silvery beams are reflected at night in the waters of the pond. Thus the sunny god within you reflects its own divine brilliance through the brain-mind of you; and this brainmind of you is the personal man. So, therefore, as you see, merely giving up the personal man is actually becoming at one with the great man, the great one within, your inner god. You are, now, human Easter eggs! But I think that in your minds -- which I see by the expression on your kindly faces have been receptive and have understood -- I have placed the germ of a noble thought: I think that by our short study together this afternoon I have enabled the life-germ within your soul to stir in its ages-long sleep a little, to awaken a little more; and, to change the figure of speech, I feel that I

have put seeds of thought into your minds today which will grow and in the future produce fruit one hundredfold; and I pray the immortal gods that they may germinate nobly and grow great in your consciousness -- and bring forth your inner self. May the time soon come for you when the great peace, the boundless vision, will be yours. There is no reward like unto these two. With heart at peace, with mind at rest, with both these growing rapidly and expanding, cannot you sense already the destiny that lies before you in the distant aeons of the future? The great peace is the great life; and the vision sublime, which your spirits will see, is the vision that the gods have.