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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14378 ***
+
+FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY
+
+Mystical, Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical and Scientific Essays
+Selected from "The Theosophist"
+
+Edited by George Robert Snow Mead
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Mystical
+
+The "Elixir of Life"
+Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish?
+Contemplation
+Chelas and Lay Chelas
+Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies
+The Nilgiri Sannyasis
+Witchcraft on the Nilgiris
+Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes
+Mahatmas and Chelas
+The Brahmanical Thread
+Reading in a Sealed Envelope
+The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac
+The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis
+
+Philosophical
+
+True and False Personality
+Chastity
+Zorastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man
+Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man
+The Septenary Principle in Esotericism
+Personal and Impersonal God
+Prakriti and Parusha
+Morality and Pantheism
+Occult Study
+Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism"
+Sakya Muni's Place in History
+Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham
+Discrimination of Spirit and Not-Spirit
+Was Writing Known Before Panini?
+
+Theosophical
+
+What is Theosophy?
+How a "Chela" Found His "Guru"
+The Sages of the Himavat
+The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist?
+Interview With a Mahatma
+The Secret Doctrine
+
+Historical
+
+The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi
+The Theory of Cycles
+
+Scientific
+
+Odorigen and Jiva
+Introversion of Mental Vision
+"Precipitation"
+"How Shall We Sleep?"
+Transmigration of the Life Atoms
+"OM" and its Practical Significance
+
+
+
+
+
+FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY
+
+
+Mystical
+
+
+
+The "Elixir of Life"
+       From a Chela's* Diary.  By G---M---, F.T.S.
+
+"And Enoch walked with the Elohim, and the Elohim took him."
+--Genesis
+
+Introduction
+
+[The curious information-for whatsoever else the world may think of it,
+it will doubtless be acknowledged to be that--contained in the article
+that follows, merits a few words of introduction. The details given in
+it on the subject of what has always been considered as one of the
+darkest and most strictly guarded of the mysteries of the initiation
+into occultism--from the days of the Rishis until those of the
+Theosophical Society--came to the knowledge of the author in a way that
+would seem to the ordinary run of Europeans strange and supernatural.
+He himself, however, we may assure the reader, is a most thorough
+disbeliever in the Supernatural, though he has learned too much to limit
+the capabilities of the natural as some do.  Further, he has to make the
+following confession of his own belief.  It will be apparent, from a
+careful perusal of the facts, that if the matter be really as stated
+therein, the author cannot himself be an adept of high grade, as the
+article in such a case would never have been written.  Nor does he
+pretend to be one.  He is, or rather was, for a few years an humble
+Chela. Hence, the converse must consequently be also true, that as
+regards the higher stages of the mystery he can have no personal
+experience, but speaks of it only as a close observer left to his own
+surmises--and no more.  He may, therefore, boldly state that during, and
+notwithstanding, his unfortunately rather too short stay with some
+adepts, he has by actual experiment and observation verified some of the
+less transcendental or incipient parts of the "Course."  And, though it
+will be impossible for him to give positive testimony as to what lies
+beyond, he may yet mention that all his own course of study, training
+and experience, long, severe and dangerous as it has often been, leads
+him to the conviction that everything is really as stated, save some
+details purposely veiled.  For causes which cannot be explained to the
+public, he himself may he unable or unwilling to use the secret he has
+gained access to.  Still he is permitted by one to whom all his
+reverential affection and gratitude are due--his last guru--to divulge
+for the benefit of Science and Man, and specially for the good of those
+who are courageous enough to personally make the experiment, the
+following astounding particulars of the occult methods for prolonging
+life to a period far beyond the common.--G.M.]
+
+---------
+* A. Chela is the pupil and disciple of an initiated Guru or
+Master.--Ed.
+---------
+
+
+Probably one of the first considerations which move the worldly-minded
+at present to solicit initiation into Theosophy is the belief, or hope,
+that, immediately on joining, some extraordinary advantage over the rest
+of mankind will be conferred upon the candidate.  Some even think that
+the ultimate result of their initiation will perhaps be exemption from
+that dissolution which is called the common lot of mankind.  The
+traditions of the "Elixir of Life," said to be in the possession of
+Kabalists and Alchemists, are still cherished by students of Medieval
+Occultism--in Europe.  The allegory of the Ab-e Hyat or Water of Life,
+is still credited as a fact by the degraded remnants of the Asiatic
+esoteric sects ignorant of the real GREAT SECRET. The "pungent and fiery
+Essence," by which Zanoni renewed his existence, still fires the
+imagination of modern visionaries as a possible scientific discovery of
+the future.
+
+Theosophically, though the fact is distinctly declared to be true, the
+above-named conceptions of the mode of procedure leading to the
+realization of the fact, are known to be false. The reader may or may
+not believe it;  but as a matter of fact, Theosophical Occultists claim
+to have communication with (living) Intelligences possessing an
+infinitely wider range of observation than is contemplated even by the
+loftiest aspirations of modern science, all the present "Adepts" of
+Europe and America--dabblers in the Kabala--notwithstanding.  But far
+even as those superior Intelligences have investigated (or, if
+preferred, are alleged to have investigated), and remotely as they may
+have searched by the help of inference and analogy, even They have
+failed to discover in the Infinity anything permanent but--SPACE.  ALL
+IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE.  Reflection, therefore, will easily suggest to the
+reader the further logical inference that in a Universe which is
+essentially impermanent in its conditions, nothing can confer
+permanency.  Therefore, no possible substance, even if drawn from the
+depths of Infinity;  no imaginable combination of drugs, whether of our
+earth or any other, though compounded by even the Highest Intelligence;
+no system of life or discipline though directed by the sternest
+determination and skill, could possibly produce Immutability.  For in
+the universe of solar systems, wherever and however investigated,
+Immutability necessitates "Non-Being" in the physical sense given it by
+the Theists-Non-Being which is nothing in the narrow conceptions of
+Western Religionists--a reductio ad absurdum.  This is a gratuitous
+insult even when applied to the pseudo-Christian or ecclesiastical
+Jehovite idea of God.
+
+Consequently, it will be seen that the common ideal conception of
+"Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and
+metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists
+or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or
+Idealists, is a chimerical illusion.  But the actual prolongation of
+human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and
+incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily
+limited to at most a couple of hundred years.  We may break, as it were,
+the shock of Death, and instead of dying, change a sudden plunge into
+darkness to a transition into a brighter light.  And this may be made so
+gradual that the passage from one state of existence to another shall
+have its friction minimized, so as to be practically imperceptible.
+This is a very different matter, and quite within the reach of Occult
+Science.  In this, as in all other cases, means properly directed will
+gain their ends, and causes produce effects. Of course, the only
+question is, what are these causes, and how, in their turn, are they to
+be produced.  To lift, as far as may be allowed, the veil from this
+aspect of Occultism, is the object of the present paper.
+
+We must premise by reminding the reader of two Theosophic doctrines,
+constantly inculcated in "Isis" and in other mystic works--namely, (a)
+that ultimately the Kosmos is One--one under infinite variations and
+manifestations, and (b) that the so-called man is a "compound being"--
+composite not only in the exoteric scientific sense of being a congeries
+of living so-called material Units, but also in the esoteric sense of
+being a succession of seven forms or parts of itself, interblended with
+each other.  To put it more clearly we might say that the more ethereal
+forms are but duplicates of the same aspect,--each finer one lying
+within the inter-atomic spaces of the next grosser.  We would have the
+reader understand that these are no subtleties, no "spiritualities" at
+all in the Christo-Spiritualistic sense.  In the actual man reflected in
+your mirror are really several men, or several parts of one composite
+man;  each the exact counterpart of the other, but the "atomic
+conditions" (for want of a better word) of each of which are so arranged
+that its atoms interpenetrate those of the next "grosser" form.  It does
+not, for our present purpose, matter how the Theosophists,
+Spiritualists, Buddhists, Kabalists, or Vedantists, count, separate,
+classify, arrange or name these, as that war of terms may be postponed
+to another occasion.  Neither does it matter what relation each of these
+men has to the various "elements" of the Kosmos of which he forms a
+part. This knowledge, though of vital importance in other respects, need
+not be explained or discussed now.  Nor does it much more concern us
+that the Scientists deny the existence of such an arrangement, because
+their instruments are inadequate to make their senses perceive it.  We
+will simply reply--"get better instruments and keener senses, and
+eventually you will."
+
+All we have to say is that if you are anxious to drink of the "Elixir of
+Life," and live a thousand years or so, you must take our word for the
+matter at present, and proceed on the assumption.  For esoteric science
+does not give the faintest possible hope that the desired end will ever
+be attained by any other way;  while modern, or so-called exact
+science--laughs at it.
+
+So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined--
+literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the
+mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next.  This
+"next" is not spiritual, but only a more ethereal form.  Having by a
+long training and preparation adapted it for a life in this atmosphere,
+during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off
+through a certain process (hints of which will be found further on) we
+have to prepare for this physiological transformation.
+
+How are we to do it?  In the first place we have the actual, visible,
+material body--Man, so called;  though, in fact, but his outer shell--to
+deal with. Let us bear in mind that science teaches us that in about
+every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent;  and
+this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of
+unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have
+had the slightest suspicion of the fact.
+
+We see, moreover, that in process of time any cut or lesion upon the
+body, however deep, has a tendency to repair the loss and reunite;  a
+piece of lost skin is very soon replaced by another. Hence, if a man,
+partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new
+skin, so our astral, vital body--the fourth of the seven (having
+attracted and assimilated to itself the second) and which is so much
+more ethereal than the physical one--may be made to harden its particles
+to the atmospheric changes.  The whole secret is to succeed in evolving
+it out, and separating it from the visible;  and while its generally
+invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to
+gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to
+make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve
+and replace them.  We can say no more.  The Magdalene is not the only
+one who could be accused of having "seven spirits" in her, though men
+who have a lesser number of spirits (what a misnomer that word!) in
+them, are not few or exceptional;  they are the frequent failures of
+nature--the incomplete men and women.*
+
+-----------
+* This is not to be taken as meaning that such persons are thoroughly
+destitute of some one or several of the seven principles--a man born
+without an arm has still its ethereal counterpart;  but that they are so
+latent that they cannot be developed, and consequently are to be
+considered as non-existing.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+Each of these has in turn to survive the preceding and more dense one,
+and then die.  The exception is the sixth when absorbed into and blended
+with the seventh.  The "Phatu" * of the old Hindu physiologist had a
+dual meaning, the esoteric side of which corresponds with the Tibetan
+"Zung" (seven principles of the body).
+
+We Asiatics, have a proverb, probably handed down to us, and by the
+Hindus repeated ignorantly as to its esoteric meaning.  It has been
+known ever since the old Rishis mingled familiarly with the simple and
+noble people they taught and led on.  The Devas had whispered into every
+man's ear--Thou only--if thou wilt--art "immortal."  Combine with this
+the saying of a Western author that if any man could just realize for an
+instant, that he had to die some day, he would die that instant.  The
+Illuminated will perceive that between these two sayings, rightly
+understood, stands revealed the whole secret of Longevity.  We only die
+when our will ceases to be strong enough to make us live.  In the
+majority of cases, death comes when the torture and vital exhaustion
+accompanying a rapid change in our physical conditions becomes so
+intense as to weaken, for one single instant, our "clutch on life," or
+the tenacity of the will to exist.  Till then, however severe may be the
+disease, however sharp the pang, we are only sick or wounded, as the
+case may be.
+
+-----------
+* Dhatu--the seven principal substances of the human body--chyle, flesh,
+blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen.
+-----------
+
+This explains the cases of sudden deaths from joy, fright, pain, grief
+or such other causes.  The sense of a life-task consummated, of the
+worthlessness of one's existence, if strongly realized, produced death
+as surely as poison or a rifle-bullet. On the other hand, a stern
+determination to continue to live, has, in fact, carried many through
+the crises of the most severe diseases, in perfect safety.
+
+First, then, must be the determination--the Will--the conviction of
+certainty, to survive and continue.*  Without that, all else is useless.
+And to be efficient for the purpose, it must be, not only a passing
+resolution of the moment, a single fierce desire of short duration, but
+a settled and continued strain, as nearly as can be continued and
+concentrated without one single moment's relaxation.  In a word, the
+would-be "Immortal" must be on his watch night and day, guarding self
+against-himself.  To live--to live--to live--must be his unswerving
+resolve.  He must as little as possible allow himself to be turned aside
+from it.  It may be said that this is the most concentrated form of
+selfishness,--that it is utterly opposed to our Theosophic professions
+of benevolence, and disinterestedness, and regard for the good of
+humanity.  Well, viewed in a short-sighted way, it is so.  But to do
+good, as in everything else, a man must have time and materials to work
+with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by
+which infinitely more good can be done than without them.
+
+----------
+* Col. Olcott has epigrammatically explained the creative or rather the
+re-creative power of the Will, in his "Buddhist Catechism."  He there
+shows--of course, speaking on behalf of the Southern Buddhists--that
+this Will to live, if not extinguished in the present life, leaps over
+the chasm of bodily death, and recombines the Skandhas, or groups of
+qualities that made up the individual into a new personality.  Man is,
+therefore, reborn as the result of his own unsatisfied yearning for
+objective existence.  Col. Olcott puts it in this way:
+
+Q.  123.  What is that, in man, which gives him the impression of
+having a permanent individuality?
+
+A.  Tanha, or the unsatisfied desire for existence.  The being having
+done that for which he must be rewarded or punished in future, and
+having Tanha, will have a rebirth through the influence of Karma.
+
+Q.  124.  ....What is it that is reborn?
+
+A.  A new aggregation of Skandhas, or individuality, caused by the last
+yearning of the dying person.
+
+Q.  128. To what cause must we attribute the differences in the
+combination of the Five Skandhas has which makes every individual
+different from every other individual?
+
+A.  To the Karma of the individual in the next preceding birth.
+
+Q.  129.  What is the force or energy that is at work, under the
+guidance of Karma, to produce the new being?
+
+A.  Tanha--the "Will to Live."
+----------
+
+When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive,
+for there comes a moment when further watch and exertion are no longer
+needed:--the moment when the turning-point is safely passed.  For the
+present as we deal with aspirants and not with advanced chelas, in the
+first stage a determined, dogged resolution, and an enlightened
+concentration of self on self, are all that is absolutely necessary.  It
+must not, however, be considered that the candidate is required to be
+unhuman or brutal in his negligence of others.  Such a recklessly
+selfish course would be as injurious to him as the contrary one of
+expending his vital energy on the gratification of his physical desires.
+All that is required from him is a purely negative attitude.  Until the
+turning-point is reached, he must not "lay out" his energy in lavish or
+fiery devotion to any cause, however noble, however "good," however
+elevated.*  Such, we can solemnly assure the reader, would bring its
+reward in many ways--perhaps in another life, perhaps in this world, but
+it would tend to shorten the existence it is desired to preserve, as
+surely as self-indulgence and profligacy.  That is why very few of the
+truly great men of the world (of course, the unprincipled adventurers
+who have applied great powers to bad uses are out of the question)--the
+martyrs, the heroes, the founders of religions, the liberators of
+nations, the leaders of reforms--ever became members of the long-lived
+"Brotherhood of Adepts" who were by some and for long years accused of
+selfishness.  (And that is also why the Yogis, and the Fakirs of modern
+India--most of whom are acting now but on the dead-letter tradition, are
+required if they would be considered living up to the principles of
+their profession--to appear entirely dead to every inward feeling or
+emotion.) Notwithstanding the purity of their hearts, the greatness of
+their aspirations, the disinterestedness of their self-sacrifice, they
+could not live for they had missed the hour.
+
+--------
+* On page 151 of Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," the author's much abused,
+and still more doubted correspondent assures him that none yet of his
+"degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer's" Zanoni.... "the heartless
+morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be" and adds that few of
+them "would care to play the part in life of a desiccated pansy between
+the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry."  But our adept omits saying
+that one or two degrees higher, and he will have to submit for a period
+of years to such a mummifying process unless, indeed, he would
+voluntarily give up a life-long labour and--Die.--Ed.
+----------
+
+They may at times have exercised powers which the world called
+miraculous;  they may have electrified man and subdued Nature by fiery
+and self-devoted Will;  they may have been possessed of a so-called
+superhuman intelligence;  they may have even had knowledge of, and
+communion with, members of our own occult Brotherhood;  but, having
+deliberately resolved to devote their vital energy to the welfare of
+others, rather than to themselves, they have surrendered life;  and,
+when perishing on the cross or the scaffold, or falling, sword in hand,
+upon the battle-field, or sinking exhausted after a successful
+consummation of the life-object, on death-beds in their chambers, they
+have all alike had to cry out at last:  "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!"
+
+So far so good.  But, given the will to live, however powerful, we have
+seen that, in the ordinary course of mundane life, the throes of
+dissolution cannot be checked.  The desperate, and again and again
+renewed struggle of the Kosmic elements to proceed with a career of
+change despite the will that is checking them, like a pair of runaway
+horses struggling against the determined driver holding them in, are so
+cumulatively powerful, that the utmost efforts of the untrained human
+will acting within an unprepared body become ultimately useless.  The
+highest intrepidity of the bravest soldier;  the interest desire of the
+yearning lover;  the hungry greed of the unsatisfied miser;  the most
+undoubting faith of the sternest fanatic;  the practiced insensibility
+to pain of the hardiest red Indian brave or half-trained Hindu Yogi;
+the most deliberate philosophy of the calmest thinker--all alike fail at
+last.  Indeed, sceptics will allege in opposition to the verities of
+this article that, as a matter of experience, it is often observed that
+the mildest and most irresolute of minds and the weakest of physical
+frames are often seen to resist "Death" longer than the powerful will of
+the high-spirited and obstinately-egotistic man, and the iron frame of
+the labourer, the warrior and the athlete.  In reality, however, the key
+to the secret of these apparently contradictory phenomena is the true
+conception of the very thing we have already said.  If the physical
+development of the gross "outer shell" proceeds on parallel lines and at
+an equal rate with that of the will, it stands to reason that no
+advantage for the purpose of overcoming it, is attained by the latter.
+The acquisition of improved breechloaders by one modern army confers no
+absolute superiority if the enemy also becomes possessed of them.
+Consequently it will be at once apparent, to those who think on the
+subject, that much of the training by which what is known as "a powerful
+and determined nature," perfects itself for its own purpose on the stage
+of the visible world, necessitating and being useless without a parallel
+development of the "gross" and so-called animal frame, is, in short,
+neutralized, for the purpose at present treated of, by the fact that its
+own action has armed the enemy with weapons equal to its own.  The force
+of the impulse to dissolution is rendered equal to the will to oppose
+it;  and being cumulative, subdues the will-power and triumphs at last.
+On the other hand, it may happen that an apparently weak and vacillating
+will-power residing in a weak and undeveloped physical frame, may be so
+reinforced by some unsatisfied desire--the Ichcha (wish)--as it is
+called by the Indian Occultists (for instance, a mother's heart-yearning
+to remain and support her fatherless children)--as to keep down and
+vanquish, for a short time, the physical throes of a body to which it
+has become temporarily superior.
+
+The whole rationale then, of the first condition of continued existence
+in this world, is (a) the development of a Will so powerful as to
+overcome the hereditary (in a Darwinian sense) tendencies of the atoms
+composing the "gross" and palpable animal frame, to hurry on at a
+particular period in a certain course of Kosmic change;  and (b) to so
+weaken the concrete action of that animal frame as to make it more
+amenable to the power of the Will.  To defeat an army, you must
+demoralize and throw it into disorder.
+
+To do this then, is the real object of all the rites, ceremonies, fasts,
+"prayers," meditations, initiations and procedures of self-discipline
+enjoined by various esoteric Eastern sects, from that course of pure and
+elevated aspiration which leads to the higher phases of Adeptism Real,
+down to the fearful and disgusting ordeals which the adherent of the
+"Left-hand-Road" has to pass through, all the time maintaining his
+equilibrium.  The procedures have their merits and their demerits, their
+separate uses and abuses, their essential and non-essential parts, their
+various veils, mummeries, and labyrinths.  But in all, the result aimed
+at is reached, if by different processes.  The Will is strengthened,
+encouraged and directed, and the elements opposing its action are
+demoralized.  Now, to any one who has thought out and connected the
+various evolution theories, as taken, not from any occult source, but
+from the ordinary scientific manual accessible to all--from the
+hypothesis of the latest variation in the habits of species--say, the
+acquisition of carnivorous habits by the New Zealand parrot, for
+instance--to the farthest glimpses backwards into Space and Eternity
+afforded by the "Fire Mist" doctrine, it will be apparent that they all
+rest on one basis. That basis is, that the impulse once given to a
+hypothetical Unit has a tendency to continue;  and consequently, that
+anything "done" by something at a certain time and certain place tends
+to repeat itself at other times and places.
+
+Such is the admitted rationale of heredity and atavism.  That the same
+things apply to our ordinary conduct is apparent from the notorious ease
+with which "habits,"--bad or good, as the case may be--are acquired, and
+it will not be questioned that this applies, as a rule, as much to the
+moral and intellectual, as to the physical world.
+
+Furthermore, History and Science teach us plainly that certain physical
+habits conduce to certain moral and intellectual results.  There never
+yet was a conquering nation of vegetarians. Even in the old Aryan times,
+we do not learn that the very Rishis, from whose lore and practice we
+gain the knowledge of Occultism, ever interdicted the Kshetriya
+(military) caste from hunting or a carnivorous diet.  Filling, as they
+did, a certain place in the body politic in the actual condition of the
+world, the Rishis as little thought of interfering with them, as of
+restraining the tigers of the jungle from their habits.  That did not
+affect what the Rishis did themselves.
+
+The aspirant to longevity then must be on his guard against two dangers.
+He must beware especially of impure and animal* thoughts. For Science
+shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous
+action expanding outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the
+physical man.  The inner men,** however sublimated their organism may
+be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are
+still subject to the law that an "action" has a tendency to repeat
+itself;  a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser "shell"
+they are in contact with, and concealed within.
+
+----------
+* In other words, the thought tends to provoke the deed.--G.M.
+
+** We use the word in the plural, reminding the reader that, according
+to our doctrine, man is septenary.--G.M.
+----------
+
+And, on the other hand, certain actions have a tendency to produce
+actual physical conditions unfavourable to pure thoughts, hence to the
+state required for developing the supremacy of the inner man.
+
+To return to the practical process.  A normally healthy mind, in a
+normally healthy body, is a good starting-point.  Though exceptionally
+powerful and self-devoted natures may sometimes recover the ground lost
+by mental degradation or physical misuse, by employing proper means,
+under the direction of unswerving resolution, yet often things may have
+gone so far that there is no longer stamina enough to sustain the
+conflict sufficiently long to perpetuate this life;  though what in
+Eastern parlance is called the "merit" of the effort will help to
+ameliorate conditions and improve matters in another.
+
+However this may be, the prescribed course of self-discipline commences
+here.  It may be stated briefly that its essence is a course of moral,
+mental, and physical development, carried on in parallel lines--one
+being useless without the other.  The physical man must be rendered more
+ethereal and sensitive;  the mental man more penetrating and profound;
+the moral man more self-denying and philosophical.  And it may be
+mentioned that all sense of restraint--even if self-imposed--is useless.
+Not only is all "goodness" that results from the compulsion of physical
+force, threats, or bribes (whether of a physical or so-called
+"spiritual" nature) absolutely useless to the person who exhibits it,
+its hypocrisy tending to poison the moral atmosphere of the world, but
+the desire to be "good" or "pure," to be efficacious must be
+spontaneous.  It must be a self-impulse from within, a real preference
+for something higher, not an abstention from vice because of fear of the
+law:  not a chastity enforced by the dread of Public Opinion;  not a
+benevolence exercised through love of praise or dread of consequences in
+a hypothetical Future Life.*
+
+----------
+* Col. Olcott clearly and succinctly explains the Buddhist doctrine of
+Merit or Karma, in his "Buddhist Catechism."
+(Question 83).--G.M.
+----------
+
+It will be seen now in connection with the doctrine of the tendency
+to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of
+self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism
+is not a "visionary" theory dealing with vague "ideas," but actually a
+scientifically devised system of drill.  It is a system by which each
+particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives
+an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes
+of its own free-will and with "pleasure."  Every one must be practiced
+and perfect in a thing to do it with pleasure.  This rule especially
+applies to the case of the development of Man.  "Virtue" may be very
+good in its way--it may lead to the grandest results. But to become
+efficacious it has to be practiced cheerfully not with reluctance or
+pain.  As a consequence of the above consideration the candidate for
+Longevity at the commencement of his career must begin to eschew his
+physical desires, not from any sentimental theory of right or wrong, but
+for the following good reason.  As, according to a well-known and now
+established scientific theory, his visible material frame is always
+renewing its particles;  he will, while abstaining from the
+gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during
+which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were
+given a bad predisposition, will have departed.  At the same time, the
+disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of
+the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said
+acts.  And while this is the particular result as regards certain
+"vices," the general result of an abstention from "gross" acts will be
+(by a modification of the well-known Darwinian law of atrophy by
+non-usage) to diminish what we may call the "relative" density and
+coherence of the outer shell (as a result of its less-used molecules);
+while the diminution in the quantity of its actual constituents will he
+"made up" (if tried by scales and weights) by the increased admission of
+more ethereal particles.
+
+What physical desires are to be abandoned and in what order? First and
+foremost, he must give up alcohol in all forms;  for while it supplies
+no nourishment, nor any direct pleasure (beyond such sweetness or
+fragrance as may be gained in the taste of wine, &c., to which alcohol,
+in itself, is non-essential) to even the grossest elements of the
+"physical" frame, it induces a violence of action, a rush so to speak,
+of life, the stress of which can only be sustained by very dull, gross,
+and dense elements, and which, by the operation of the well-known law of
+Re-action (in commercial phrase, "supply and demand") tends to summon
+them from the surrounding universe, and therefore directly counteracts
+the object we have in view.
+
+Next comes meat-eating, and for the very same reason, in a minor degree.
+It increases the rapidity of life, the energy of action, the violence of
+passions.  It may be good for a hero who has to fight and die, but not
+for a would-be sage who has to exist and....
+
+Next in order come the sexual desires;  for these, in addition to the
+great diversion of energy (vital force) into other channels, in many
+different ways, beyond the primary one (as, for instance, the waste of
+energy in expectation, jealousy, &c.), are direct attractions to a
+certain gross quality of the original matter of the Universe, simply
+because the most pleasurable physical sensations are only possible at
+that stage of density.  Alongside with and extending beyond all these
+and other gratifications of the senses (which include not only those
+things usually known as "vicious," but all those which, though
+ordinarily regarded as "innocent," have yet the disqualification of
+ministering to the pleasures of the body--the most harmless to others
+and the least "gross" being the criterion for those to be last abandoned
+in each case)--must be carried on the moral purification.
+
+Nor must it be imagined that "austerities" as commonly understood can,
+in the majority of cases, avail much to hasten the "etherealizing"
+process.  That is the rock on which many of the Eastern esoteric sects
+have foundered, and the reason why they have degenerated into degrading
+superstitions.  The Western monks and the Eastern Yogees, who think they
+will reach the apex of powers by concentrating their thought on their
+navel, or by standing on one leg, are practicing exercises which serve
+no other purpose than to strengthen the willpower, which is sometimes
+applied to the basest purposes.  These are examples of this one-sided
+and dwarf development.  It is no use to fast as long as you require
+food.  The ceasing of desire for food without impairment of health is
+the sign which indicates that it should be taken in lesser and ever
+decreasing quantities until the extreme limit compatible with life is
+reached.  A stage will be finally attained where only water will be
+required.
+
+Nor is it of any use for this particular purpose of longevity to abstain
+from immorality so long as you are craving for it in your heart;  and so
+on with all other unsatisfied inward cravings.  To get rid of the inward
+desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is
+barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.
+
+So it must be with the moral purification of the heart.  The "basest"
+inclinations must go first--then the others.  First avarice, then fear,
+then envy, worldly pride, uncharitableness, hatred;  last of all
+ambition and curiosity must be abandoned successively.  The
+strengthening of the more ethereal and so-called "spiritual" parts of
+the man must go on at the same time. Reasoning from the known to the
+unknown, meditation must be practiced and encouraged.  Meditation is the
+inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to "go out towards the
+infinite," which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration,
+but which has now no synonym in the European languages, because the
+thing no longer exists in the West, and its name has been vulgarized to
+the make-believe shams known as prayer, glorification, and repentance.
+Through all stages of training the equilibrium of the consciousness--the
+assurance that all must be right in the Kosmos, and therefore with you a
+portion of it--must be retained. The process of life must not be hurried
+but retarded, if possible;  to do otherwise may do good to others--
+perhaps even to yourself in other spheres, but it will hasten your
+dissolution in this.
+
+Nor must the externals be neglected in this first stage. Remember that
+an adept, though "existing" so as to convey to ordinary minds the idea
+of his being immortal, is not also invulnerable to agencies from
+without.  The training to prolong life does not, in itself, secure one
+from accidents.  As far as any physical preparation goes, the sword may
+still cut, the disease enter, the poison disarrange.  This case is very
+clearly and beautifully put in "Zanoni," and it is correctly put and
+must be so, unless all "adeptism" is a baseless lie.  The adept may be
+more secure from ordinary dangers than the common mortal, but he is so
+by virtue of the superior knowledge, calmness, coolness and penetration
+which his lengthened existence and its necessary concomitants have
+enabled him to acquire;  not by virtue of any preservative power in the
+process itself.  He is secure as a man armed with a rifle is more secure
+than a naked baboon;  not secure in the sense in which the deva (god)
+was supposed to be securer than a man.
+
+If this is so in the case of the high adept, how much more necessary is
+it that the neophyte should be not only protected but that he himself
+should use all possible means to ensure for himself the necessary
+duration of life to complete the process of mastering the phenomena we
+call death!  It may be said, why do not the higher adepts protect him?
+Perhaps they do to some extent, but the child must learn to walk alone;
+to make him independent of his own efforts in respect to safety, would
+be destroying one element necessary to his development--the sense of
+responsibility.  What courage or conduct would be called for in a man
+sent to fight when armed with irresistible weapons and clothed in
+impenetrable armour?  Hence the neophyte should endeavour, as far as
+possible, to fulfill every true canon of sanitary law as laid down by
+modern scientists.  Pure air, pure water, pure food, gentle exercise,
+regular hours, pleasant occupations and surroundings, are all, if not
+indispensable, at least serviceable to his progress.  It is to secure
+these, at least as much as silence and solitude, that the Gods, Sages,
+Occultists of all ages have retired as much as possible to the quiet of
+the country, the cool cave, the depths of the forest, the expanse of the
+desert, or the heights of the mountains.  Is it not suggestive that the
+Gods have always loved the "high places";  and that in the present day
+the highest section of the Occult Brotherhood on earth inhabits the
+highest mountain plateaux of the earth?*
+
+---------
+* The stern prohibition to the Jews to serve "their gods upon the high
+mountains and upon the hills" is traced back to the unwillingness of
+their ancient elders to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship
+to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other words, to
+pursue adeptship.  This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it
+became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense:  for
+it is not India alone whose sons accorded divine honours to the Wise
+Ones, but all nations regarded their adepts and initiates as divine.--
+G.M.
+---------
+
+Nor must the beginner disdain the assistance of medicine and good
+medical regimen.  He is still an ordinary mortal, and he requires the
+aid of an ordinary mortal.
+
+"Suppose, however, all the conditions required, or which will be
+understood as required (for the details and varieties of treatment
+requisite, are too numerous to be detailed here), are fulfilled, what is
+the next step?" the reader will ask.  Well if there have been no
+backslidings or remissness in the procedure indicated, the following
+physical results will follow:--
+
+First the neophyte will take more pleasure in things spiritual and pure.
+Gradually gross and material occupations will become not only uncraved
+for or forbidden, but simply and literally repulsive to him.  He will
+take more pleasure in the simple sensations of Nature--the sort of
+feeling one can remember to have experienced as a child.  He will feel
+more light-hearted, confident, happy.  Let him take care the sensation
+of renewed youth does not mislead, or he will yet risk a fall into his
+old baser life and even lower depths.  "Action and Re-action are equal."
+
+Now the desire for food will begin to cease.  Let it be left off
+gradually--no fasting is required.  Take what you feel you require.  The
+food craved for will be the most innocent and simple.  Fruit and milk
+will usually be the best.  Then as till now, you have been simplifying
+the quality of your food, gradually--very gradually--as you feel capable
+of it diminish the quantity.  You will ask:  "Can a man exist without
+food?"  No, but before you mock, consider the character of the process
+alluded to.  It is a notorious fact that many of the lowest and simplest
+organisms have no excretions.  The common guinea-worm is a very good
+instance.  It has rather a complicated organism, but it has no
+ejaculatory duct.  All it consumes--the poorest essences of the human
+body--is applied to its growth and propagation.  Living as it does in
+human tissue, it passes no digested food away.  The human neophyte, at a
+certain stage of his development, is in a somewhat analogous condition,
+with this difference or differences, that he does excrete, but it is
+through the pores of his skin, and by those too enter other etherealized
+particles of matter to contribute towards his support.*  Otherwise, all
+the food and drink is sufficient only to keep in equilibrium those
+"gross" parts of his physical body which still remain to repair their
+cuticle-waste through the medium of the blood.  Later on, the process of
+cell-development in his frame will undergo a change;  a change for the
+better, the opposite of that in disease for the worse--he will become
+all living and sensitive, and will derive nourishment from the Ether
+(Akas).  But that epoch for our neophyte is yet far distant.
+
+---------
+* He is in a state similar to the physical state of a fetus
+before birth into the world.--G.M.
+---------
+
+Probably, long before that period has arrived, other results, no less
+surprising than incredible to the uninitiated will have ensued to give
+our neophyte courage and consolation in his difficult task.  It would be
+but a truism to repeat what has been again alleged (in ignorance of its
+real rationale) by hundreds and hundreds of writers as to the happiness
+and content conferred by a life of innocence and purity.  But often at
+the very commencement of the process some real physical result,
+unexpected and unthought of by the neophyte, occurs.  Some lingering
+disease, hitherto deemed hopeless, may take a favourable turn; or he may
+develop healing mesmeric powers himself;  or some hitherto unknown
+sharpening of his senses may delight him.  The rationale of these things
+is, as we have said, neither miraculous nor difficult of comprehension.
+In the first place, the sudden change in the direction of the vital
+energy (which, whatever view we take of it and its origin, is
+acknowledged by all schools of philosophy as most recondite, and as the
+motive power) must produce results of some kind.  In the second,
+Theosophy shows, as we said before, that a man consists of several men
+pervading each other, and on this view (although it is very difficult to
+express the idea in language) it is but natural that the progressive
+etherealization of the densest and most gross of all should leave the
+others literally more at liberty.  A troop of horses may be blocked by a
+mob and have much difficulty in fighting its way through;  but if every
+one of the mob could be changed suddenly into a ghost, there would be
+little to retard it.  And as each interior entity is more rare, active,
+and volatile than the outer and as each has relation with different
+elements, spaces, and properties of the Kosmos which are treated of in
+other articles on Occultism, the mind of the reader may conceive--though
+the pen of the writer could not express it in a dozen volumes--the
+magnificent possibilities gradually unfolded to the neophyte.
+
+Many of the opportunities thus suggested may be taken advantage of by
+the neophyte for his own safety, amusement, and the good of those around
+him;  but the way in which he does this is one adapted to his fitness--a
+part of the ordeal he has to pass through, and misuse of these powers
+will certainly entail the loss of them as a natural result.  The Itchcha
+(or desire) evoked anew by the vistas they open up will retard or throw
+back his progress.
+
+But there is another portion of the Great Secret to which we must
+allude, and which is now, for the first, in a long series of ages,
+allowed to be given out to the world, as the hour for it is come.
+
+The educated reader need not be reminded again that one of the great
+discoveries which has immortalized the name of Darwin is the law that an
+organism has always a tendency to repeat, at an analogous period in its
+life, the action of its progenitors, the more surely and completely in
+proportion to their proximity in the scale of life.  One result of this
+is, that, in general, organized beings usually die at a period (on an
+average) the same as that of their progenitors.  It is true that there
+is a great difference between the actual ages at which individuals of
+any species die.  Disease, accidents and famine are the main agents in
+causing this.  But there is, in each species, a well-known limit within
+which the Race-life lies, and none are known to survive beyond it.  This
+applies to the human species as well as any other.  Now, supposing that
+every possible sanitary condition had been complied with, and every
+accident and disease avoided by a man of ordinary frame, in some
+particular case there would still, as is known to medical men, come a
+time when the particles of the body would feel the hereditary tendency
+to do that which leads inevitably to dissolution, and would obey it.  It
+must be obvious to any reflecting man that, if by any procedure this
+critical climacteric could be once thoroughly passed over, the
+subsequent danger of "Death" would be proportionally less as the years
+progressed.  Now this, which no ordinary and unprepared mind and body
+can do, is possible sometimes for the will and the frame of one who has
+been specially prepared.  There are fewer of the grosser particles
+present to feel the hereditary bias--there is the assistance of the
+reinforced "interior men" (whose normal duration is always greater even
+in natural death) to the visible outer shell, and there is the drilled
+and indomitable Will to direct and wield the whole.*
+
+-----------
+* In this connection we may as well show what modern science, and
+especially physiology has to say as to the power of the human will.
+"The force of will is a potent element in determining longevity.  This
+single point must be granted without argument, that of two men every way
+alike and similarly circumstanced, the one who has the greater courage
+and grit will be longer-lived. One does not need to practice medicine
+long to learn that men die who might just as well live if they resolved
+to live, and that myriads who are invalids could become strong if they
+had the native or acquired will to vow they would do so.  Those who have
+no other quality favourable to life, whose bodily organs are nearly
+all diseased, to whom each day is a day of pain, who are beset by
+life-shortening influences, yet do live by will alone."
+--Dr. George M. Beard.
+-------------
+
+From that time forward the course of the aspirant is clearer.  He has
+conquered "the Dweller of the Threshold"--the hereditary enemy of his
+race, and, though still exposed to ever-new dangers in his progress
+towards Nirvana, he is flushed with victory, and with new confidence and
+new powers to second it, can press onwards to perfection.
+
+For, it must be remembered, that nature everywhere acts by Law, and that
+the process of purification we have been describing in the visible
+material body, also takes place in those which are interior, and not
+visible to the scientist by modifications of the same process.  All is
+on the change, and the metamorphoses of the more ethereal bodies
+imitate, though in successively multiplied duration, the career of the
+grosser, gaining an increasing wider range of relations with the
+surrounding kosmos, till in Nirvana the most rarefied Individuality is
+merged at last into the INFINITE TOTALITY.
+
+From the above description of the process, it will be inferred why it is
+that "Adepts" are so seldom seen in ordinary life; for, pari passu, with
+the etherealization of their bodies and the development of their power,
+grows an increasing distaste, and a so-to-speak, "contempt" for the
+things of our ordinary mundane existence.  Like the fugitive who
+successively casts away in his flight those articles which incommode his
+progress, beginning with the heaviest, so the aspirant eluding "Death"
+abandons all on which the latter can take hold.  In the progress of
+Negation everything got rid of is a help.  As we said before, the adept
+does not become "immortal" as the word is ordinarily understood. By or
+about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually
+dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of
+all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in
+disruption the agony of dying.  He has been dying gradually during the
+whole period of his Initiation.  The catastrophe cannot happen twice
+over.  He has only spread over a number of years the mild process of
+dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours.  The
+highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the
+world;  he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in
+so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves
+him blind to its very existence.  For the new ethereal senses opening to
+wider spheres are to ours much in the relation of ours to the Infinitely
+Little.  New desires and enjoyments, new dangers and new hindrances
+arise, with new sensations and new perceptions;  and far away down in
+the mist--both literally and metaphorically--is our dirty little earth
+left below by those who have virtually "gone to join the gods."
+
+And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
+people to ask the Theosophist to "procure for them communication with
+the highest Adepts."  It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
+can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
+progress by meddling with mundane affairs.  The ordinary reader will
+say:  "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." .... But
+let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
+would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation.  And is the
+result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
+encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?
+
+A deep consideration of all that we have written, will also give the
+Theosophists an idea of what they demand when they ask to be put in the
+way of gaining practically "higher powers."  Well, there, as plainly as
+words can put it, is the PATH .... can they tread it?
+
+Nor must it be disguised that what to the ordinary mortal are unexpected
+dangers, temptations and enemies also beset the way of the neophyte.
+And that for no fanciful cause, but the simple reason that he is, in
+fact, acquiring new senses, has yet no practice in their use, and has
+never before seen the things he sees.  A man born blind suddenly endowed
+with vision would not at once master the meaning of perspective, but
+would, like a baby, imagine in one case, the moon to be within his
+reach, and, in the other, grasp a live coal with the most reckless
+confidence.
+
+And what, it may be asked, is to recompense this abnegation of all the
+pleasures of life, this cold surrender of all mundane interests, this
+stretching forward to an unknown goal which seems ever more
+unattainable?  For, unlike some of the anthropomorphic creeds, Occultism
+offers to its votaries no eternally permanent heaven of material
+pleasure, to be gained at once by one quick dash through the grave.  As
+has, in fact, often been the case many would be prepared willingly to
+die now for the sake of the paradise hereafter.  But Occultism gives no
+such prospect of cheaply and immediately gained infinitude of pleasure,
+wisdom and existence.  It only promises extensions of these, stretching
+in successive arches obscured by successive veils, in an unbroken series
+up the long vista which leads to NIRVANA.  And this too, qualified by
+the necessity that new powers entail new responsibilities, and that the
+capacity of increased pleasure entails the capacity of increased
+sensibility to pain.  To this, the only answer that can be given is
+two-fold:  (1st) the consciousness of Power is itself the most exquisite
+of pleasures, and is unceasingly gratified in the progress onwards with
+new means for its exercise and (2ndly) as has been already said--THIS is
+the only road by which there is the faintest scientific likelihood that
+"Death" can be avoided, perpetual memory secured, infinite wisdom
+attained, and hence an immense helping of mankind made possible, once
+that the adept has safely crossed the turning-point.  Physical as well
+as metaphysical logic requires and endorses the fact that only by
+gradual absorption into infinity can the Part become acquainted with the
+Whole, and that that which is now something can only feel, know, and
+enjoy EVERYTHING when lost in Absolute Totality in the vortex of that
+Unalterable Circle wherein our Knowledge becomes Ignorance, and the
+Everything itself is identified with the NOTHING.
+
+
+
+
+Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish?
+
+
+The passage "to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve,"
+occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by
+superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings
+of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness.  In order to
+determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the
+word "selfishness" must first be ascertained.
+
+According to an established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive
+regard to one's own interest or happiness;  that supreme self-love or
+self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the
+advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding
+those of others."
+
+In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself
+and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a
+sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the
+crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies
+the perfect blank.  Now, can an occultist be then said to be "selfish"
+when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the
+writer of the article on the Elixir of Life?  It has been said over and
+over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after occult
+knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all
+Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies
+himself with the Father in Christian phraseology.  For that purpose,
+every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a
+feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other
+words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with
+which we are all more or less affected.  A study of the Law of Kosmic
+Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution, the more does it
+tend towards Unity.  In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility of
+Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her
+purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of annihilation.  The
+occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal
+philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to
+attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya.
+The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and
+Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all
+the nations and races, symbolizes the battle between unselfish and
+selfish impulses, which takes place in a man, who tries to follow the
+higher purposes of Nature, until the lower animal tendencies, created by
+selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy thoroughly routed
+and annihilated.  It has also been often put forth in various
+Theosophical and other occult writings that the only difference between
+an ordinary man who works along with Nature during the course of Kosmic
+evolution and an occultist, is that the latter, by his superior
+knowledge, adopts such methods of training and discipline as will hurry
+on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches in a comparatively
+short time the apex which the ordinary individual will take perhaps
+billions of years to reach.  In short, in a few thousand years he
+approaches that type of evolution which ordinary humanity attains in the
+sixth or seventh Round of the Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression.  It
+is evident that an average man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or
+rather in one incarnation.  Now those, who have studied the occult
+teachings concerning Devachan and our after-states, will remember that
+between two incarnations there is a considerable period of subjective
+existence.  The greater the number of such Devachanic periods, the
+greater is the number of years over which this evolution is extended.
+The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to
+be able to regulate his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the
+duration of his Devachanic existence between two incarnations.  In the
+course of his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical
+death and his next rebirth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual
+sleep, the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state
+of unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself
+reborn, to continue his purpose.  The period of this sleep may vary from
+twenty-five to two hundred years, depending upon the degree of his
+advancement.  But even this period may be said to be a waste of time,
+and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its duration so as
+to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of
+existence into another is almost imperceptible.  This is his last
+incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him.  This
+is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
+convey when he says:
+
+By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is
+actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved
+himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have
+necessitated in disruption the agony of dying.  He has been dying
+gradually during the whole period of his Initiation.  The catastrophe
+cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the
+mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a
+few hours.  The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely
+unconscious of, the World;  he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless
+of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense
+of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence....
+
+The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist
+controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other
+writings.  It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the
+old gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more
+ethereal ones, till at last the former sthula sarira is completely dead
+and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation,
+suited to his work.  That body is essential to his purposes;  as the
+Elixir of Life says:--
+
+To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials
+to Work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers
+by which infinitely more good can be done than without them.  When these
+are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive....
+
+Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper
+continues:--
+
+The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the
+mental man more penetrating and profound;  the moral man more
+self-denying and philosophical.
+
+Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following
+passage is entirely misunderstood:--
+
+And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
+people to ask the Theosophist "to procure for them communication with
+the highest Adepts."  It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
+can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
+progress by meddling with mundane affairs.  The ordinary reader will
+say:  "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." ....But
+let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
+would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation.  And is the
+result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
+encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?
+
+Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness,
+superficial critics neglect many profound truths.  In the first place,
+they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial
+as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress,
+new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good
+can be done than without them.  The more spiritual the Adept becomes the
+less can he meddle with mundane gross affairs and the more he has to
+confine himself to spiritual work.  It has been repeated, times out of
+number, that the work on the spiritual plane is as superior to the work
+on the intellectual plane as the latter is superior to that on the
+physical plane.  The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but
+only spiritually:  they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with
+worldly affairs.  But this applies only to very high Adepts.  There are
+various degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for
+humanity on the planes to which they may have risen.  It is only the
+chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree.
+And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their
+chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject
+are aware.  Each cycle produces its own occultists capable of working
+for the humanity of the time on all the different planes;  but when the
+Adepts foresee that at a particular period humanity will he incapable of
+producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions
+they do provide by either voluntarily giving up their further progress
+and waiting until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to enter
+into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation so as to be ready for work
+when the time comes.  And although the world may not be aware of the
+fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to remain
+in statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit of
+the future generations of humanity.  In short, as the Adepts work
+harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental law of their being, they
+have, as it were, made a division of labour, according to which each
+works on the plane appropriate to himself for the spiritual elevation of
+us all--and the process of longevity mentioned in the Elixir of Life is
+only the means to the end which, far from being selfish, is the most
+unselfish purpose for which a human being can labour.
+
+(--H.P. Blavatsky)
+
+
+
+
+Contemplation
+
+
+A general misconception on this subject seems to prevail.  One confines
+oneself for some time in a room, and passively gazes at one's nose, a
+spot on the wall, or, perhaps, a crystal, under the impression that such
+is the true form of contemplation enjoined by Raj Yoga.  Many fail to
+realize that true occultism requires a physical, mental, moral and
+spiritual development to run on parallel lines, and injure themselves,
+physically and spiritually, by practice of what they falsely believe to
+be Dhyan.  A few instances may be mentioned here with advantage, as a
+warning to over-zealous students.
+
+At Bareilly the writer met a member of the Theosophical Society from
+Farrukhabad, who narrated his experiences and shed bitter tears of
+repentance for his past follies--as he termed them.  It appears from his
+account that fifteen or twenty years ago having read about contemplation
+in the Bhagavad Gita, he undertook the practice of it, without a proper
+comprehension of its esoteric meaning and carried it on for several
+years.  At first he experienced a sense of pleasure, but simultaneously
+he found he was gradually losing self-control;  until after a few years
+he discovered, to his great bewilderment and sorrow, that he was no
+longer his own master.  He felt his heart actually growing heavy, as
+though a load had been placed on it.  He had no control over his
+sensations the communication between the brain and the heart had become
+as though interrupted.  As matters grew worse, in disgust he
+discontinued his "contemplation."  This happened as long as seven years
+ago;  and, although since then he has not felt worse, yet he could never
+regain his original healthy state of mind and body.
+
+Another case came under the writer's observation at Jubbulpore. The
+gentleman concerned, after reading Patanjali and such other works, began
+to sit for "contemplation."  After a short time he commenced seeing
+abnormal sights and hearing musical bells, but neither over these
+phenomena nor over his own sensations could he exercise any control.  He
+could not produce these results at will, nor could he stop them when
+they were occurring.  Numerous such examples may be cited.  While
+penning these lines, the writer has on his table two letters upon this
+subject, one from Moradabad and the other from Trichinopoly.  In short,
+all this mischief is due to a misunderstanding of the significance of
+contemplation as enjoined upon students by all the schools of Occult
+Philosophy.  With a view to afford a glimpse of the Reality through the
+dense veil that enshrouds the mysteries of this Science of Sciences, an
+article, the Elixir of Life, was written.  Unfortunately, in too many
+instances, the seed seems to have fallen upon barren ground.  Some of
+its readers pin their faith to the following clause in that paper:--
+Reasoning from the known to the unknown meditation must be practiced and
+encouraged.
+
+But, alas! their preconceptions have prevented them from comprehending
+what is meant by meditation.  They forget that the meditation spoken of
+"is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to 'go out towards the
+infinite,' which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration"--
+as the next sentence shows.  A good deal of light would be thrown upon
+this subject if the reader were to turn to an earlier part of the same
+paper, and peruse attentively the following paragraphs:--
+
+So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined--
+literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the
+mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next.  This
+'next' is not a spiritual, but only a more ethereal form.  Having by a
+long training and preparation adapted it for a life in the atmosphere,
+during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off
+through a certain process .... we have to prepare for this physiological
+transformation.
+
+How are we to do it?  In the first place we have the actual, visible,
+material body--Man, so called, though, in fact, but his outer shell--to
+deal with.  Let us bear in mind that Science teaches us that in about
+every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent;  and
+this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of
+unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have
+had the slightest suspicion of the fact.... Hence, if a man, partially
+flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so
+our astral, vital body .... may be made to harden its particles to the
+atmospheric changes.  The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out,
+and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible
+atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to gradually
+get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die
+and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace
+them.... We can say no more.
+
+A correct comprehension of the above scientific process will give a clue
+to the esoteric meaning of meditation or contemplation.  Science teaches
+us that man changes his physical body continually, and this change is so
+gradual that it is almost imperceptible.  Why then should the case be
+otherwise with the inner man?  The latter too is developing and changing
+atoms at every moment.  And the attraction of these new sets of atoms
+depends upon the Law of Affinity--the desires of the man drawing to his
+bodily tenement only such particles as are necessary to give them
+expression.
+
+For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved
+by nervous action expanding itself outwardly, must affect the molecular
+relations of the physical man.  The inner men, however sublimated their
+organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical,
+particles, and are still subject to the law that an "action" has a
+tendency to repeat itself;  a tendency to set up analogous action in the
+grosser "shell" they are in contact with, and concealed within.--"The
+Elixir of Life"
+
+What is it the aspirant of Yog Vidya strives after if not to gain Mukti
+by transferring himself gradually from the grosser to the next less
+gross body, until all the veils of Maya being successively removed his
+Atma becomes one with Paramatma?  Does he suppose that this grand result
+can be achieved by a two or four hours' contemplation?  For the
+remaining twenty or twenty-two hours that the devotee does not shut
+himself up in his room for meditation is the process of the emission of
+atoms and their replacement by others stopped?  If not, then how does he
+mean to attract all this time only those suited to his end? From the
+above remarks it is evident that just as the physical body requires
+incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the
+inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or
+unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress.  This is
+the real meaning of contemplation.  The prime factor in the guidance of
+the thought is Will.
+
+Without that, all else is useless.  And, to be efficient for the
+purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a
+single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued
+strain, as nearly as can be continued and concentrated without one
+single moment's remission.
+
+The student would do well to take note of the italicized clause in the
+above quotation.  He should also have it indelibly impressed upon his
+mind that:
+
+It is no use to fast as long as one requires food.... To get rid of the
+inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing
+without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.
+
+Without realizing the significance of this most important fact, any one
+who for a moment finds cause of disagreement with any one of his family,
+or has his vanity wounded, or for a sentimental flash of the moment, or
+for a selfish desire to utilize  the Divine power for gross purposes--at
+once rushes into contemplation and dashes himself to pieces on the rock
+dividing the known from the unknown.  Wallowing in the mire of
+exotericism, he knows not what it is to live in the world and yet be not
+of the world;  in other words, to guard self against self is an almost
+incomprehensible axiom for the profane.  The Hindu ought to know better
+from the life of Janaka, who, although a reigning monarch, was yet
+styled Rajarshi and is said to have attained Nirvana. Hearing of his
+widespread fame, a few sectarian bigots went to his court to test his
+Yoga-power.  As soon as they entered the court-room, the king having
+read their thoughts--a power which every chela attains at a certain
+stage--gave secret instructions to his officials to have a particular
+street in the city lined on both sides by dancing girls singing the must
+voluptuous songs.  He then had some gharas (pots) filled with water up
+to the brim so that the least shake would be likely to spill their
+contents.  The wiseacres, each with a full ghara (pot) on his head, were
+ordered to pass along the street, surrounded by soldiers with drawn
+swords to be used against them if even so much as a drop of water were
+allowed to run over.  The poor fellows having returned to the palace
+after successfully passing the test, were asked by the King-Adept what
+they had met with in the street they were made to go through.  With
+great indignation they replied that the threat of being cut to pieces
+had so much worked upon their minds that they thought of nothing but the
+water on their heads, and the intensity of their attention did not
+permit them to take cognizance of what was going on around them.  Then
+Janaka told them that on the same principle they could easily understand
+that, although being outwardly engaged in managing the affairs of his
+State, he could, at the same time, be an Occultist.  He too, while in
+the world, was not of the world.  In other words, his inward aspirations
+had been leading him on continually to the goal in which his whole inner
+self was concentrated.
+
+Raj Yoga encourages no sham, requires no physical postures.  It has to
+deal with the inner man whose sphere lies in the world of thought.  To
+have the highest ideal placed before oneself and strive incessantly to
+rise up to it, is the only true concentration recognized by Esoteric
+Philosophy which deals with the inner world of noumena, not the outer
+shell of phenomena.
+
+The first requisite for it is thorough purity of heart.  Well might the
+student of Occultism say with Zoroaster, that purity of thought, purity
+of word, and purity of deed,--these are the essentials of one who would
+rise above the ordinary level and join the "gods."  A cultivation of the
+feeling of unselfish philanthropy is the path which has to be traversed
+for that purpose.  For it is that alone which will lead to Universal
+Love, the realization of which constitutes the progress towards
+deliverance from the chains forged by Maya (illusion) around the Ego.
+No student will attain this at once, but as our Venerated Mahatma says
+in the "Occult World":--
+
+The greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the
+case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal
+feelings, blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection,
+will all give way to become blended into one universal feeling, the only
+true and holy, the only unselfish and eternal one, Love, an Immense Love
+for Humanity as a whole.
+
+In short, the individual is blended with the ALL.
+
+Of course, contemplation, as usually understood, is not without its
+minor advantages.  It develops one set of physical faculties as
+gymnastics does the muscles.  For the purposes of physical mesmerism it
+is good enough;  but it can in no way help the development of the
+psychological faculties, as the thoughtful reader will perceive.  At the
+same time, even for ordinary purposes, the practice can never be too
+well guarded.  If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and
+lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by
+thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of
+mediumistic faculties in themselves.  As was repeatedly stated--the
+Adept and the Medium are the two Poles: while the former is intensely
+active and thus able to control the elemental forces, the latter is
+intensely passive and thus incurs the risk of falling a prey to the
+caprice and malice of mischievous embryos of human beings, and the
+elementaries.
+
+It will be evident from the above that true meditation consists in the
+"reasoning from the known to the unknown."  The "known" is the
+phenomenal world, cognizable by our five senses.  And all that we see in
+this manifested world are the effects, the causes of which are to be
+sought after in the noumenal, the unmanifested, the "unknown world:"
+this is to be accomplished by meditation, i.e., continued attention to
+the subject.  Occultism does not depend upon one method, but employs
+both the deductive and the inductive.  The student must first learn the
+general axioms, which have sufficiently been laid down in the Elixir of
+Life and other occult writings.  What the student has first to do is to
+comprehend these axioms and, by employing the deductive method, to
+proceed from universals to particulars.  He has then to reason from the
+"known to the unknown," and see if the inductive method of proceeding
+from particulars to universals supports those axioms.  This process
+forms the primary stage of true contemplation.  The student must first
+grasp the subject intellectually before he can hope to realize his
+aspirations. When this is accomplished, then comes the next stage of
+meditation, which is "the inexpressible yearning of the inner man to 'go
+out towards the infinite.'"  Before any such yearning can be properly
+directed, the goal must first be determined.  The higher stage, in fact,
+consists in practically realizing what the first steps have placed
+within one's comprehension.  In short, contemplation, in its true sense,
+is to recognize the truth of Eliphas Levi's saying:--
+
+To believe without knowing is weakness;  to believe, because one knows,
+is power.
+
+The Elixir of Life not only gives the preliminary steps in the ladder of
+contemplation but also tells the reader how to realize the higher
+stages.  It traces, by the process of contemplation as it were, the
+relation of man, "the known," the manifested, the phenomenon, to "the
+unknown," the unmanifested, the noumenon. It shows the student what
+ideal to contemplate and how to rise up to it.  It places before him the
+nature of the inner capacities of man and how to develop them.  To a
+superficial reader, this may, perhaps, appear as the acme of
+selfishness.  Reflection will, however, show the contrary to be the
+case.  For it teaches the student that to comprehend the noumenal, he
+must identify himself with Nature.  Instead of looking upon himself as
+an isolated being, he must learn to look upon himself as a part of the
+Integral Whole.  For, in the unmanifested world, it can be clearly
+perceived that all is controlled by the "Law of Affinity," the
+attraction of the one for the other.  There, all is Infinite Love,
+understood in its true sense.
+
+It may now not be out of place to recapitulate what has already been
+said.  The first thing to be done is to study the axioms of Occultism
+and work upon them by the deductive and the inductive methods, which is
+real contemplation.  To turn this to a useful purpose, what is
+theoretically comprehended must be practically realized.
+
+--Damodar K. Mavalaukar
+
+
+
+
+
+Chelas and Lay Chelas
+
+
+A "chela" is a person who has offered himself to a master as a pupil to
+learn practically the "hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical
+powers latent in man."  The master who accepts him is called in India a
+Guru;  and the real Guru is always an adept in the Occult Science.  A
+man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter;
+and one who has brought his carnal nature under the subjection of the
+WILL;  who has developed in himself both the power (Siddhi) to control
+the forces of Nature, and the capacity to probe her secrets by the help
+of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being--this is the
+real Guru.  To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelaship is easy
+enough, to develop into an adept the most difficult task any man could
+possibly undertake.  There are scores of "natural-born" poets,
+mathematicians, mechanics, statesmen, &c.  But a natural-born adept is
+something practically impossible.  For, though we do hear at very rare
+intervals of one who has an extraordinary innate capacity for the
+acquisition of occult knowledge and power, yet even he has to pass the
+self-same tests and probations, and go through the self-same training as
+any less endowed fellow aspirant.  In this matter it is most true that
+there is no royal road by which favourites may travel.
+
+For centuries the selection of Chelas--outside the hereditary group
+within the gon-pa (temple)--has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas
+themselves from among the class--in Tibet, a considerable one as to
+number--of natural mystics.  The only exceptions have been in the cases
+of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di
+Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this
+celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into
+personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or
+large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social
+surroundings.  From Book IV. of Kui-te, Chapter on "The Laws of
+Upasanas," we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were:--
+
+1. Perfect physical health;
+
+2. Absolute mental and physical purity;
+
+3. Unselfishness of purpose;  universal charity;  pity for all
+animate beings;
+
+4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of
+the intervention of any power in Nature:  a law whose course is not to
+be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or
+propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;
+
+5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life;
+
+6. An intuitional perception of one's being the vehicle of the
+manifested Avalokiteswara or Divine Atma (Spirit);
+
+7. Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that
+constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with,
+and to, the invisible regions.
+
+Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring
+to perfect Chelaship.  With the sole exception of the first, which in
+rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these
+points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or
+less developed in the inner nature by the Chela's unhelped exertions,
+before he could be actually "put to the test."
+
+When the self-evolving ascetic--whether in, or outside the active
+world--has placed himself, according to his natural capacity, above,
+hence made himself master of his (1) Sarira--body;  (2) Indriya--senses;
+(3) Dosha--faults;  (4) Dukkha--pain;  and is ready to become one with
+his Manas--mind;  Buddhi--intellection, or spiritual intelligence;  and
+Atma--highest soul, i.e., spirit; when he is ready for this, and,
+further, to recognize in Atma the highest ruler in the world of
+perceptions, and in the will, the highest executive energy (power), then
+may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the
+Initiates.  He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose farther
+end is obtained the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of
+causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga--emancipation
+from the misery of repeated births, pretya-bhava, in whose determination
+the ignorant has no hand.
+
+But since the advent of the Theosophical Society, one of whose arduous
+tasks it is to re-awaken in the Aryan mind the dormant memory of the
+existence of this science and of those transcendent human capabilities,
+the rules of Chela selection have become slightly relaxed in one
+respect.  Many members of the Society who would not have been otherwise
+called to Chelaship became convinced by practical proof of the above
+points, and rightly enough thinking that if other men had hitherto
+reached the goal, they too, if inherently fitted, might reach it by
+following the same path, importunately pressed to be taken as
+candidates.  And as it would be an interference with Karma to deny them
+the chance of at least beginning, they were given it.  The results have
+been far from encouraging so far, and it is to show them the cause of
+their failure as much as to warn others against rushing heedlessly upon
+a similar fate, that the writing of the present article has been
+ordered.  The candidates in question, though plainly warned against it
+in advance, began wrong by selfishly looking to the future and losing
+sight of the past.  They forgot that they had done nothing to deserve
+the rare honour of selection, nothing which warranted their expecting
+such a privilege;  that they could boast of none of the above enumerated
+merits.  As men of the selfish, sensual world, whether married or
+single, merchants, civilian or military employees, or members of the
+learned professions, they had been to a school most calculated to
+assimilate them to the animal nature, least so to develop their
+spiritual potentialities.  Yet each and all had vanity enough to suppose
+that their case would be made an exception to the law of countless
+centuries, as though, indeed, in their person had been born to the world
+a new Avatar!  All expected to have hidden things taught, extraordinary
+powers given them, because--well, because they had joined the
+Theosophical Society.  Some had sincerely resolved to amend their lives,
+and give up their evil courses:  we must do them that justice, at all
+events.
+
+All were refused at first, Col. Olcott the President himself, to begin
+with:  and he was not formally accepted as a Chela until he had proved
+by more than a year's devoted labours and by a determination which
+brooked no denial, that he might safely be tested.  Then from all sides
+came complaints--from Hindus, who ought to have known better, as well as
+from Europeans who, of course, were not in a condition to know anything
+at all about the rules.  The cry was that unless at least a few
+Theosophists were given the chance to try, the Society could not endure.
+Every other noble and unselfish feature of our programme was ignored--a
+man's duty to his neighbour, to his country, his duty to help,
+enlighten, encourage and elevate those weaker and less favoured than he;
+all were trampled out of sight in the insane rush for adeptship.  The
+call for phenomena, phenomena, phenomena, resounded in every quarter,
+and the Founders were impeded in their real work and teased
+importunately to intercede with the Mahatmas, against whom the real
+grievance lay, though their poor agents had to take all the buffets.  At
+last, the word came from the higher authorities that a few of the most
+urgent candidates should be taken at their word.  The result of the
+experiment would perhaps show better than any amount of preaching what
+Chelaship meant, and what are the consequences of selfishness and
+temerity.  Each candidate was warned that be must wait for year in any
+event, before his fitness could be established, and that he must pass
+through a series of tests that would bring out all there was in him,
+whether bad or good.  They were nearly all married men, and hence were
+designated "Lay Chelas"--a term new in English, but having long had its
+equivalent in Asiatic tongues.  A Lay Chela is but a man of the world
+who affirms his desire to become wise in spiritual things.  Virtually,
+every member of the Theosophical Society who subscribes to the second of
+our three "Declared Objects" is such;  for though not of the number of
+true Chelas, he has yet the possibility of becoming one, for he has
+stepped across the boundary-line which separated him from the Mahatmas,
+and has brought himself, as it were, under their notice.  In joining the
+Society and binding himself to help along its work, he has pledged
+himself to act in some degree in concert with those Mahatmas, at whose
+behest the Society was organized, and under whose conditional protection
+it remains. The joining is then, the introduction;  all the rest depends
+entirely upon the member himself, and he need never expect the most
+distant approach to the "favour" of one of our Mahatmas or any other
+Mahatmas in the world--should the latter consent to become known--that
+has not been fully earned by personal merit. The Mahatmas are the
+servants, not the arbiters of the Law of Karma.
+
+Lay-Chelaship confers no privilege upon any one except that of working
+for merit under the observation of a Master.  And whether that Master be
+or be not seen by the Chela makes no difference whatever as to the
+result:  his good thought, words and deeds will bear their fruits, his
+evil ones, theirs.  To boast of Lay Chelaship or make a parade of it, is
+the surest way to reduce the relationship with the Guru to a mere empty
+name, for it would be prima facie evidence of vanity and unfitness for
+farther progress.  And for years we have been teaching everywhere the
+maxim "First deserve, then desire" intimacy with the Mahatmas.
+
+Now there is a terrible law operative in Nature, one which cannot be
+altered, and whose operation clears up the apparent mystery of the
+selection of certain "Chelas" who have turned out sorry specimens of
+morality, these few years past.  Does the reader recall the old proverb,
+"Let sleeping dogs lie?"  There is a world of occult meaning in it.  No
+man or woman knows his or her moral strength until it is tried.
+Thousands go through life very respectably, because they were never put
+to the test.  This is a truism doubtless, but it is most pertinent to
+the present case. One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very
+act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his
+animal nature.  For this is the commencement of a struggle for mastery
+in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken.  It is, once for all,
+"To be, or Not to be;"  to conquer, means Adept-ship: to fail, an
+ignoble Martyrdom;  for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity,
+selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is
+indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood.  The Chela
+is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his
+nature, but, in addition, the momentum of maleficent forces accumulated
+by the community and nation to which he belongs.  For he is an integral
+part of those aggregates, and what affects either the individual man or
+the group (town or nation), reacts the one upon the other.  And in this
+instance his struggle for goodness jars upon the whole body of badness
+in his environment, and draws its fury upon him. If he is content to go
+along with his neighbours and be almost as they are--perhaps a little
+better or somewhat worse than the average--no one may give him a
+thought.  But let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow
+mockery of social life, its hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity
+and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself up to a
+higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, bigotted, or malicious
+nature sends at him a current of opposing will-power.  If he is innately
+strong he shakes it off, as the powerful swimmer dashes through the
+current that would bear a weaker one away.  But in this moral battle, if
+the Chela has one single hidden blemish--do what he may, it shall and
+will be brought to light.  The varnish of conventionalities which
+"civilization" overlays us all with must come off to the last coat, and
+the inner self, naked and without the slightest veil to conceal its
+reality, is exposed. The habits of society which hold men to a certain
+degree under moral restraint, and compel them to pay tribute to virtue
+by seeming to be good whether they are so or not--these habits are apt
+to be all forgotten, these restraints to be all broken through under the
+strain of Chelaship.  He is now in an atmosphere of illusions--Maya.
+Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions attract
+the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement.  This is
+not a case like that depicted by a great artist, where Satan is seen
+playing a game of chess with a man upon the stake of his soul, while the
+latter's good angel stands beside him to counsel and assist.  For the
+strife is in this instance between the Chela's will and his carnal
+nature, and Karma forbids that any angel or Guru should interfere until
+the result is known.  With the vividness of poetic fancy Bulwer Lytton
+has idealized it for us in his "Zanoni," a work which will ever be
+prized by the occultist while in his "Strange Story" he has with equal
+power shown the black side of occult research and its deadly perils.
+Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a "psychic
+resolvent, which eats away all dross and leaves only the pure gold
+behind." If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political
+chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false
+speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind the germ is
+almost sure to sprout;  and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble
+qualities of human nature.  The real man comes out.  Is it not the
+height of folly, then, for any one to leave the smooth path of
+commonplace life to scale the crags of Chelaship without some reasonable
+feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him?  Well says the
+Bible:  "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall"--a text that
+would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the
+fray!  It would have been well for some of our Lay Chelas if they had
+thought twice before defying the tests.  We call to mind several sad
+failures within a twelve-month.  One went wrong in the head, recanted
+noble sentiments uttered but a few weeks previously, and became a member
+of a religion he had just scornfully and unanswerably proven false.  A
+second became a defaulter and absconded with his employer's money--the
+latter also a Theosophist.  A third gave himself up to gross debauchery,
+and confessed it, with ineffectual sobs and tears, to his chosen Guru.
+A fourth got entangled with a person of the other sex and fell out with
+his dearest and truest friends.  A fifth showed signs of mental
+aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable
+conduct.  A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of
+criminality, on the verge of detection!  And so we might go on and on.
+All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in
+the world for respectable persons.  Externally, they were fairly
+eligible as candidates for Chelaship, as appearances go;  but "within
+all was rottenness and dead men's bones."  The world's varnish was so
+thick as to hide the absence of the true gold underneath;  and the
+"resolvent" doing its work, the candidate proved in each instance but a
+gilded figure of moral dross, from circumference to core.
+
+In what precedes we have, of course, dealt but with the failures among
+Lay Chelas;  there have been partial successes too, and these are
+passing gradually through the first stages of their probation.  Some are
+making themselves useful to the Society and to the world in general by
+good example and precept.  If they persist, well for them, well for us
+all:  the odds are fearfully against them, but still "there is no
+impossibility to him who Wills."  The difficulties in Chelaship will
+never be less until human nature changes and a new order is evolved.
+St. Paul (Rom. vii. 18,19) might have had a Chela in mind when he said
+"to will is present with me;  but how to perform that which is good I
+find not.  For the good I would I do not;  but the evil which I would
+not, that I do."  And in the wise Kiratarjuniyam of Bharavi it is
+written:--
+
+     The enemies which rise within the body,
+     Hard to be overcome--the evil passions--
+     Should manfully be fought; who conquers these
+     Is equal to the conqueror of worlds. (XI. 32.)
+
+(--H.P. Blavatsky)
+
+
+
+
+Ancient Opinions Upon Psychic Bodies
+
+
+It must be confessed that modern Spiritualism falls very short of the
+ideas formerly suggested by the sublime designation which it has
+assumed.  Chiefly intent upon recognizing and putting forward the
+phenomenal proofs of a future existence, it concerns itself little with
+speculations on the distinction between matter and spirit, and rather
+prides itself on having demolished Materialism without the aid of
+metaphysics.  Perhaps a Platonist might say that the recognition of a
+future existence is consistent with a very practical and even dogmatic
+materialism, but it is rather to be feared that such a materialism as
+this would not greatly disturb the spiritual or intellectual repose of
+our modern phenomenalists.*  Given the consciousness with its
+sensibilities safely housed in the psychic body which demonstrably
+survives the physical carcase, and we are like men saved from shipwreck,
+who are for the moment thankful and content, not giving thought whether
+they are landed on a hospitable shore, or on a barren rock, or on an
+island of cannibals.  It is not of course intended that this "hand to
+mouth" immortality is sufficient for the many thoughtful minds whose
+activity gives life and progress to the movement, but that it affords
+the relief which most people feel when in an age of doubt they make the
+discovery that they are undoubtedly to live again.  To the question "how
+are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" modern
+Spiritualism, with its empirical methods, is not adequate to reply.  Yet
+long before Paul suggested it, it had the attention of the most
+celebrated schools of philosophy, whose speculations on the subject,
+however little they may seem to be verified, ought not to be without
+interest to us, who, after all, are still in the infancy of a
+spiritualist revival.
+
+---------
+* "I am afraid," says Thomas Taylor in his Introduction to the Phaedo,
+"there are scarcely any at the present day who know that it is one thing
+for the soul to be separated from the body, and another for the body to
+be separated from the soul, and that the former is by no means a
+necessary consequence of the latter."
+-----------
+
+It would not be necessary to premise, but for the frequency with which
+the phrase occurs, that the "spiritual body" is a contradiction in
+terms.  The office of body is to relate spirit to an objective world.
+By Platonic writers it is usually termed okhema--"vehicle."  It is the
+medium of action, and also of sensibility.  In this philosophy the
+conception of Soul was not simply, as with us, the immaterial subject of
+consciousness.  How warily the interpreter has to tread here, every one
+knows who has dipped, even superficially, into the controversies among
+Platonists themselves.  All admit the distinction between the rational
+and the irrational part or principle, the latter including, first, the
+sensibility, and secondly, the Plastic, or that lower which in obedience
+to its sympathies enables the soul to attach itself to, and to organize
+into a suitable body those substances of the universe to which it is
+most congruous.  It is more difficult to determine whether Plato or his
+principal followers, recognized in the rational soul or nous a distinct
+and separable entity, that which is sometimes discriminated as "the
+Spirit."  Dr. Henry More, no mean authority, repudiates this
+interpretation.  "There can be nothing more monstrous," he says, "than
+to make two souls in man, the one sensitive, the other rational, really
+distinct from one another, and to give the name of Astral spirit to the
+former, when there is in man no Astral spirit beside the Plastic of the
+soul itself, which is always inseparable from that which is rational.
+Nor upon any other account can it be called Astral, but as it is liable
+to that corporeal temperament which proceeds from the stars, or rather
+from any material causes in general, as not being yet sufficiently
+united with the divine body--that vehicle of divine virtue or power."
+So he maintains that the Kabalistic three souls--Nephesh, Ruach,
+Neschamah--originate in a misunderstanding of the true Platonic
+doctrine, which is that of a threefold "vital congruity."  These
+correspond to the three degrees of bodily existence, or to the three
+"vehicles," the terrestrial, the aerial, and the ethereal.  The latter
+is the augoeides--the luciform vehicle of the purified soul whose
+irrational part has been brought under complete subjection to the
+rational.  The aerial is that in which the great majority of mankind
+find themselves at the dissolution of the terrestrial body, and in which
+the incomplete process of purification has to be undergone during long
+ages of preparation for the soul's return to its primitive, ethereal
+state.  For it must be remembered that the preexistence of souls is a
+distinguishing tenet of this philosophy as of the Kabala.  The soul has
+"sunk into matter." From its highest original state the revolt of its
+irrational nature has awakened and developed successively its "vital
+congruities" with the regions below, passing, by means of its "Plastic,"
+first into the aerial and afterwards into the terrestrial condition.
+Each of these regions teems also with an appropriate population which
+never passes, like the human soul, from one to the other--"gods,"
+"demons," and animals.*  As to duration, "the shortest of all is that of
+the terrestrial vehicle.  In the aerial, the soul may inhabit, as they
+define, many ages, and in the ethereal, for ever."
+
+---------
+* The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the
+elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have
+called the "Elementals."  They never become men.
+--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+Speaking of the second body, Henry More says "the soul's astral vehicle
+is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of
+the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a
+sword without tearing or scorching of it."  And again, "I shall make
+bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in
+the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high
+happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their
+quitting the terrestrial one;  that heavenly chariot necessarily
+carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is
+capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if
+the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the
+heavenly.  When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not
+heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass
+of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the
+Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most
+thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of
+the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction.
+Phaedo):--"After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul
+will after death return to pure and eternal natures;  but that the
+impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections,
+will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross
+vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.*  For while a
+propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a
+certain vehicle to herself;  either of an aerial nature, or composed
+from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is
+recently collected from surrounding air;  for according to the arcana of
+the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and
+immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene
+body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is
+an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more
+extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a
+long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being
+dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body;  while on the
+contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial
+regions with its ethereal vehicle alone."
+
+----------
+* This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan
+philosophies.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of
+its body.  "However the soul be in itself affected," says Porphyry
+(translated by Cudworth), "so does it always find a body suitable and
+agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul
+does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is,
+an ethereal one."  And the same author, "The soul is never quite naked
+of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable
+and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer
+one).  But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the
+spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go
+away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till
+the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a
+dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow."
+Here it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the
+two future vehicles--the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the
+aerial.  This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato's
+commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated
+to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a
+distinct entity, separable from the lower soul.  Philoponus, a Christian
+writer, says, "that the Rational Soul, as to its energie, is separable
+from all body, but the irrational part or life thereof is separable only
+from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath after
+death a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth--this I say is a
+true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us.... The irrational
+life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but
+remaineth after the soul's departure out of it, having for its vehicle
+and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of
+the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant
+part, to wit, Air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what
+is most predominant therein."--Cudworth, "Intell. Syst."  From the same
+source we extract the following:  "Wherefore these ancients say that
+impure souls after their departure out of this body wander here up and
+down for a certain space in their spirituous vaporous and airy body,
+appearing about sepulchres and haunting their former habitation.  For
+which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living
+well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet;  these
+Ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours being
+fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this
+life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passions.  They further
+add that there is something of the Plantal or Plastic life, also
+exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death;
+they being nourished too, though not after the same manner, as those
+gross earthy bodies of ours are here, but by vapours, and that not by
+parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they
+imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause they who are wise
+will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that
+so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within
+our proper body) may not be clogged and incrassed, but attenuated.  Over
+and above which, those Ancients made use of catharms, or purgations to
+the same end and purpose also.  For as this earthy body is washed by
+water so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours--some of
+these vapours being nutritive, others purgative.  Moreover, these
+Ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body that it was
+not organized, but did the whole of it in every part throughout exercise
+all functions of sense, the soul hearing, seeing and perceiving all
+sensibles by it everywhere.  For which cause Aristotle himself affirmeth
+in his Metaphysics that there is properly but one sense and one Sensory.
+He by this one sensory meaneth the spirit, or subtle airy body, in which
+the sensitive power doth all of it through the whole immediately
+apprehend all variety of sensibles.  And if it be demanded to how it
+comes to pass that this spirit becomes organized in sepulchres, and most
+commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals, to
+this those Ancients replied that their appearing so frequently in human
+form proceeded from their being incrassated with evil diet, and then, as
+it were, stamped upon with the form of this exterior ambient body in
+which they are, as crystal is formed and coloured like to those things
+which it is fastened in, or reflects the image of them.  And that their
+having sometimes other different forms proceedeth from the phantastic
+power of the soul itself, which can at pleasure transform the spirituous
+body into any shape.  For being airy, when it is condensed and fixed, it
+becometh visible, and again invisible and vanishing out of sight when it
+is expanded and rarified."  Proem in Arist. de Anima.  And Cudworth
+says, "Though spirits or ghosts had certain supple bodies which they
+could so far condense as to make them sometimes visible to men, yet is
+it reasonable enough to think that they could not constipate or fix them
+into such a firmness, grossness and solidity, as that of flesh and bone
+is to continue therein, or at least not without such difficulty and pain
+as would hinder them from attempting the same.  Notwithstanding which it
+is not denied that they may possibly sometimes make use of other solid
+bodies, moving and acting them, as in that famous story of Phlegons when
+the body vanished not as other ghosts use to do, but was left a dead
+carcase behind."
+
+In all these speculations the Anima Mundi plays a conspicuous part.  It
+is the source and principle of all animal souls, including the
+irrational soul of man.  But in man, who would otherwise be merely
+analogous to other terrestrial animals--this soul participates in a
+higher principle, which tends to raise and convert it to itself.  To
+comprehend the nature of this union or hypostasis it would be necessary
+to have mastered the whole of Plato's philosophy as comprised in the
+Parmenides and the Timaeus;  and he would dogmatize rashly who without
+this arduous preparation should claim Plato as the champion of an
+unconditional immortality.  Certainly in the Phaedo the dialogue
+popularly supposed to contain all Plato's teaching on the subject--the
+immortality allotted to the impure soul is of a very questionable
+character, and we should rather infer from the account there given that
+the human personality, at all events, is lost by successive immersions
+into "matter."  The following passage from Plutarch (quoted by Madame
+Blavatsky, "Isis Unveiled," vol. ii. p. 284) will at least demonstrate
+the antiquity of notions which have recently been mistaken for fanciful
+novelties.  "Every soul hath some portion of nous, reason, a man cannot
+be a man without it;  but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh
+and appetite is changed, and through pain and pleasure becomes
+irrational.  Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort;  some
+plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame
+is corrupted by appetite and passion;  others are mixed as to some part,
+but the purer part still remains without the body.  It is not drawn down
+into the body, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the
+man's head;  it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part
+of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the
+appetites of the flesh.  The part that is plunged into the body is
+called soul.  But the incorruptible part is called the nous, and the
+vulgar think it is within them, as they likewise imagine the image
+reflected from a glass to be in that glass.  But the more intelligent,
+who know it to be without, call it a Daemon."  And in the same learned
+work ("Isis Unveiled ") we have two Christian authorities, Irenaeus and
+Origen, cited for like distinction between spirit and soul in such a
+manner as to show that the former must necessarily be regarded as
+separable from the latter.  In the distinction itself there is of course
+no novelty for the most moderately well-informed.  It is insisted upon
+in many modern works, among which may be mentioned Heard's "Trichotomy
+of Man" and Green's "Spiritual Philosophy";  the latter being an
+exposition of Coleridge's opinion on this and cognate subjects.  But the
+difficulty of regarding the two principles as separable in fact as well
+as in logic arises from the senses, if it is not the illusion of
+personal identity.  That we are particle, and that one part only is
+immortal, the non-metaphysical mind rejects with the indignation which
+is always encountered by a proposition that is at once distasteful and
+unintelligible.  Yet perhaps it is not a greater difficulty (if, indeed,
+it is not the very same) than that hard saying which troubled Nicodemus,
+and which has been the key-note of the mystical religious consciousness
+ever since.  This, however, is too extensive and deep a question to be
+treated in this paper, which has for its object chiefly to call
+attention to the distinctions introduced by ancient thought into the
+conception of body as the instrument or "vehicle" of soul.  That there
+is a correspondence between the spiritual condition of man and the
+medium of his objective activity every spiritualist will admit to be
+probable, and it may well be that some light is thrown on future states
+by the possibility or the manner of spirit communication with this one.
+
+--C. C. Massey
+
+
+
+
+The Nilgiri Sannyasis
+
+
+I was told that Sannyasis were sometimes met with on a mountain called
+Velly Mallai Hills, in the Coimbatore District, and trying to meet with
+one, I determined to ascend this mountain.  I traveled up its steep
+sides and arrived at an opening, narrow and low, into which I crept on
+all fours.  Going up some twenty yards I reached a cave, into the
+opening of which I thrust my head and shoulders.  I could see into it
+clearly, but felt a cold wind on my face, as if there was some opening
+or crevice--so I looked carefully, but could see nothing.  The room was
+about twelve feet square.  I did not go into it.  I saw arranged round
+its sides stones one cubit long, all placed upright.  I was much
+disappointed at there being no Sannyasi, and came back as I went,
+pushing myself backwards as there was no room to turn.  I was then told
+Sannyasis had been met with in the dense sholas (thickets), and as my
+work lay often in such places, I determined to prosecute my search, and
+did so diligently, without, however, any success.
+
+One day I contemplated a journey to Coimbatore on my own affairs, and
+was walking up the road trying to make a bargain with a handy man whom I
+desired to engage to carry me there;  but as we could not come to terms,
+I parted with him and turned into the Lovedale Road at 6 P.M.  I had not
+gone far when I met a man dressed like a Sannyasi, who stopped and spoke
+to me.  He observed a ring on my finger and asked me to give it to him.
+I said he was welcome to it, but inquired what he would give me in
+return, he said, "I don't care particularly about it;  I would rather
+have that flour and sugar in the bundle on your back."  "I will give you
+that with pleasure," I said, and took down my bundle and gave it to him.
+"Half is enough for me," he said;  but subsequently changing his mind
+added, "now let me see what is in your bundle," pointing to my other
+parcel.  "I can't give you that."  He said, "Why cannot you give me your
+swami (family idol)?"  I said, "It is my swami, I will not part with it;
+rather take my life."  On this he pressed me no more, but said, "Now you
+had better go home."  I said, "I will not leave you."  "Oh you must," he
+said, "you will die here of hunger."  "Never mind," I said, "I can but
+die once."  "You have no clothes to protect you from the wind and rain;
+you may meet with tigers," he said.  "I don't care," I replied.  "It is
+given to man once to die.  What does it signify how he dies?"  When I
+said this he took my hand and embraced me, and immediately I became
+unconscious.  When I returned to consciousness, I found myself with the
+Sannyasi in a place new to me on a hill, near a large rock and with a
+big shola near.  I saw in the shola right in front of us, that there was
+a pillar of fire, like a tree almost.  I asked the Sannyasi what was
+that like a high fire.  "Oh," he said, "most likely a tree ignited by
+some careless wood-cutters."
+
+"No," I said, "it is not like any common fire--there is no smoke, nor
+are there flames--and it's not lurid and red.  I want to go and see it."
+"No, you must not do so, you cannot go near that fire and escape alive."
+"Come with me then," I begged.  "No--I cannot," he said, "if you wish to
+approach it, you must go alone and at your own risk;  that tree is the
+tree of knowledge and from it flows the milk of life:  whoever drinks
+this never hungers again."  Thereupon I regarded the tree with awe.
+
+I next observed five Sannyasis approaching.  They came up and joined the
+one with me, entered into talk, and finally pulled out a hookah and
+began to smoke.  They asked me if I could smoke.  I said no.  One of
+them said to me, let us see the swami in your bundle (here gives a
+description of the same).  I said, "I cannot, I am not clean enough to
+do so."  "Why not perform your ablutions in yonder stream?" they said.
+"If you sprinkle water on your forehead that will suffice."  I went to
+wash my hands and feet, and laved my head, and showed it to them.  Next
+they disappeared.  "As it is very late, it is time you returned home,"
+said my first friend.  "No," I said, "now I have found you I will not
+leave you."  "No, no," he said, "you must go home.  You cannot leave the
+world yet;  you are a father and a husband, and you must not neglect
+your worldly duties.  Follow the footsteps of your late respected uncle;
+he did not neglect his worldly affairs, though he cared for the
+interests of his soul;  you must go, but I will meet you again when you
+get your fortnightly holiday."  On this he embraced me, and I again
+became unconscious. When I returned to myself, I found myself at the
+bottom of Col. Jones' Coffee Plantation above Coonor on a path.  Here
+the Sannyasi wished me farewell, and pointing to the high road below, he
+said, "Now you will know your way home;"  but I would not part from him.
+I said, "All this will appear a dream to me unless you will fix a day
+and promise to meet me here again."  "I promise," he said.  "No, promise
+me by an oath on the head of my idol."  Again he promised, and touched
+the head of my idol.  "Be here," he said, "this day fortnight."  When
+the day came I anxiously kept my engagement and went and sat on the
+stone on the path.  I waited a long time in vain.  At last I said to
+myself, "I am deceived, he is not coming, he has broken his oath"--and
+with grief I made a poojah.  Hardly had these thoughts passed my mind,
+than lo! he stood beside me.  "Ah, you doubt me," he said;  "why this
+grief."  I fell at his feet and confessed I had doubted him and begged
+his forgiveness.  He forgave and comforted me, and told me to keep in my
+good ways and he would always help me;  and he told me and advised me
+about all my private affairs without my telling him one word, and he
+also gave me some medicines for a sick friend which I had promised to
+ask for but had forgotten.  This medicine was given to my friend and he
+is perfectly well now.
+
+A verbatim translation of a Settlement Officer's statement to
+
+--E.H. Morgan
+
+
+
+
+Witchcraft on the Nilgiris
+
+
+Having lived many years (30) on the Nilgiris, employing the various
+tribes of the Hills on my estates, and speaking their languages, I have
+had many opportunities of observing their manners and customs and the
+frequent practice of Demonology and Witchcraft among them.  On the
+slopes of the Nilgiris live several semi-wild people:  1st, the
+"Curumbers," who frequently hire themselves out to neighbouring estates,
+and are first-rate fellers of forest;  2nd, the "Tain" ("Honey
+Curumbers"), who collect and live largely on honey and roots, and who do
+not come into civilized parts;  3rd, the "Mulu" Curumbers, who are rare
+on the slopes of the hills, but common in Wynaad lower down the plateau.
+These use bows and arrows, are fond of hunting, and have frequently been
+known to kill tigers, rushing in a body on their game and discharging
+their arrows at a short distance.  In their eagerness they frequently
+fall victims to this animal;  but they are supposed to possess a
+controlling power over all wild animals, especially elephants and
+tigers;  and the natives declare they have the power of assuming the
+forms of various beasts.  Their aid is constantly invoked both by the
+Curumbers first named, and by the natives generally, when wishing to be
+revenged on an enemy.
+
+Besides these varieties of Curumbers there are various other wild tribes
+I do not now mention, as they are not concerned in what I have to
+relate.
+
+I had on my estate near Ootacamund a gang of young Badagas, some 30
+young men, whom I had had in my service since they were children, and
+who had become most useful handy fellows.  From week to week I missed
+one or another of them, and on inquiry was told they had been sick and
+were dead!
+
+One market-day I met the Moneghar of the village to which my gang
+belonged and some of his men, returning home laden with their purchases.
+The moment he saw me he stopped, and coming up to me, said, "Mother, I
+am in great sorrow and trouble, tell me what I can do!"  "Why, what is
+wrong?" I asked.  "All my young men are dying, and I cannot help them,
+nor prevent it;  they are under a spell of the wicked Curumbers who are
+killing them, and I am powerless."  "Pray explain," I said;  "why do the
+Curumbers behave in this way, and what do they do to your people?"  "Oh,
+Madam, they are vile extortioners, always asking for money;  we have
+given and given till we have no more to give.  I told them we had no
+more money and then they said,--All right--as you please;  we shall see.
+Surely as they say this, we know what will follow--at night when we are
+all asleep, we wake up suddenly and see a Curumber standing in our
+midst, in the middle of the room occupied by the young men."  "Why do
+you not close and bolt your doors securely?" I interrupted.  "What is
+the use of bolts and bars to them? they come through stone walls.... Our
+doors were secure, but nothing can keep out a Curumber.  He points his
+finger at Mada, at Kurira, at Jogie--he utters no word, and as we look
+at him he vanishes!  In a few days these three young men sicken, a low
+fever consumes them, their stomachs swell, they die.  Eighteen young
+men, the flower of my village, have died thus this year.  These effects
+always follow the visit of a Curumber at night."  "Why not complain to
+the Government?" I said.  "Ah, no use, who will catch them?"  "Then give
+them the 200 rupees they ask this once on a solemn promise that they
+exact no more"  "I suppose we must find the money somewhere," he said,
+turning sorrowfully away.
+
+A Mr. K---is the owner of a coffee estate near this, and like many
+other planters employs Burghers.  On one occasion he went down the
+slopes of the hills after bison and other large game, taking some seven
+or eight Burghers with him as gun carriers (besides other things
+necessary in jungle-walking--axes to clear the way, knives and ropes,
+&c.).  He found and severely wounded a fine elephant with tusks.
+Wishing to secure these, he proposed following up his quarry, but could
+not induce his Burghers to go deeper and further into the forests;  they
+feared to meet the "Mula Curumbers" who lived thereabouts.  For long he
+argued in vain, at last by dint of threats and promises he induced them
+to proceed, and as they met no one, their fears were allayed and they
+grew bolder, when suddenly coming on the elephant lying dead (oh, horror
+to them!), the beast was surrounded by a party of Mulu Curumbers busily
+engaged in cutting out the tusks, one of which they had already
+disengaged!  The affrighted Burghers fell back, and nothing Mr. K---
+could do or say would induce them to approach the elephant, which the
+Curumbers stoutly declared was theirs.  They had killed him they said.
+They had very likely met him staggering under his wound and had finished
+him off.  Mr. K---was not likely to give up his game in this fashion.
+So walking threateningly to the Curumbers he compelled them to retire,
+and called to his Burghers at the same time.  The Curumbers only said,
+"Just you DARE to touch that elephant," and retired.  Mr. K---thereupon
+cut out the remaining tusk himself, and slinging both on a pole with no
+little trouble, made his men carry them. He took all the blame on
+himself, showed them that they did not touch them, and finally declared
+he would stay there all night rather than lose the tusks.  The idea of a
+night near the Mulu Curumbers was too much for the fears of the
+Burghers, and they finally took up the pole and tusks and walked home.
+From that day those men, all but one who probably carried the gun,
+sickened, walked about like spectres, doomed, pale and ghastly, and
+before the month was out all were dead men, with the one exception!
+
+A few months ago, at the village of Ebanaud, a few miles from this, a
+fearful tragedy was enacted.  The Moneghar or headman's child was sick
+unto death.  This, following on several recent deaths, was attributed to
+the evil influences of a village of Curumbers hard by.  The Burghers
+determined on the destruction of every soul of them.  They procured the
+assistance of a Toda, as they invariably do on such occasions, as
+without one the Curumbers are supposed to be invulnerable.  They
+proceeded to the Curumber village at night and set their huts on fire,
+and as the miserable inmates attempted to escape, flung them back into
+the flames or knocked them down with clubs.  In the confusion one old
+woman escaped unobserved into the adjacent bushes.  Next morning she
+gave notice to the authorities, and identified seven Burghers, among
+whom was the Moneghar or headman, and one Toda. As the murderers of her
+people they were all brought to trial in the Courts here,--except the
+headman, who died before he could be brought in--and were all sentenced
+and duly executed, that is, three Burghers and the Toda, who were proved
+principals in the murders.
+
+Two years ago an almost identical occurrence took place at Kotaghery,
+with exactly similar results, but without the punishment entailed having
+any deterrent effect.  They pleaded "justification," as witchcraft had
+been practiced on them.  But our Government ignores all occult dealings
+and will not believe in the dread power in the land.  They deal very
+differently with these matters in Russia, where, in a recent trial of a
+similar nature, the witchcraft was admitted as an extenuating
+circumstance and the culprits who had burnt a witch were all acquitted.
+All natives of whatever caste are well aware of these terrible powers
+and too often do they avail themselves of them--much oftener than any
+one has an idea of.  One day as I was riding along I came upon a strange
+and ghastly object--a basket containing the bloody head of a black
+sheep, a cocoanut, 10 rupees in money, some rice and flowers.  These
+smaller items I did not see, not caring to examine any closer;  but I
+was told by some natives that those articles were to be found in the
+basket. The basket was placed at the apex of a triangle formed by three
+fine threads tied to three small sticks, so placed that any one
+approaching from the roads on either side had to stumble over the
+threads and receive the full effects of the deadly "Soonium" as the
+natives call it.  On inquiry I learnt that it was usual to prepare such
+a "Soonium" when one lay sick unto death;  as throwing it on another was
+the only means of rescuing the sick one, and woe to the unfortunate who
+broke a thread by stumbling over it!
+
+--E.H. Morgan
+
+
+
+
+Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes
+
+
+Having resided for some years amongst the Mimdas and Hos of Singbhoom,
+and Chutia Nagpur, my attention was drawn at times to customs differing
+a good deal in some ways, but having an evident affinity to those
+related of the Nilghiri "Curumbers" in Mrs. Morgan's article.  I do not
+mean to say that the practices I am about to mention are confined simply
+to the Kolarian tribes, as I am aware both Oraons (a Dravidian tribe),
+and the different Hindu castes living side by side with the Kols, count
+many noted wizards among their number;  but what little I have come to
+know of these curious customs, I have learnt among the Mimdas and Hos,
+some of the most celebrated practitioners among them being Christian
+converts.  The people themselves say, that these practices are peculiar
+to their race, and not learnt from the Hindu invaders of their plateau;
+but I am inclined to think that some, at least, of the operations have a
+strong savour of the Tantric black magic about them, though practiced by
+people who are often entirely ignorant of any Hindu language.
+
+These remarks must he supplemented by a short sketch of Kol ideas of
+worship.  They have nothing that I have either seen or heard of in the
+shape of an image, but their periodical offerings are made to a number
+of elemental spirits, and they assign a genie to every rock or tree in
+the country, whom they do not consider altogether malignant, but who, if
+not duly "fed" or propitiated, may become so.
+
+The Singbonga (lit., sun or light spirit) is the chief;  Buru Bonga
+(spirit of the hills), and the Ikhir Bonga (spirit of the deep), come
+next.  After these come the Darha, of which each family has its own, and
+they may be considered in the same light as Lares and Penates.  But
+every threshing, flour and oil mill, has its spirit, who must be duly
+fed, else evil result may be expected.  Their great festival (the Karam)
+is in honour of Singbonga and his assistants;  the opening words of the
+priests' speech on that occasion, sufficiently indicate that they
+consider Singbonga, the creator of men and things.  Munure Singbonga
+manokoa luekidkoa (In the beginning Singbonga made men).
+
+Each village has its Sarna or sacred grove, where the hereditary priest
+from time to time performs sacrifices, to keep things prosperous;  but
+this only relates to spirits actually connected with the village, the
+three greater spirits mentioned, being considered general, are only fed
+at intervals of three or more years, and always on a public road or
+other public place, and once every ten years a human being was (and as
+some will tell you is sacrificed to keep the whole community of spirits
+in good train.)  The Pahans, or village priests, are regular servants of
+the spirits, and the najo, deona and bhagats are people who in some way
+are supposed to obtain an influence or command over them.  The first and
+lowest grade of these adepts, called najos (which may be translated as
+practitioners of witchcraft pure and simple), are frequently women.
+They are accused, like the "Mula Curumbers," of demanding quantities of
+grain or loans of money, &c., from people, and when these demands are
+refused, they go away with a remark to the effect, "that you have lots
+of cattle and grain just now, but we'll see what they are like after a
+month or two."  Then probably the cattle of the bewitched person will
+get some disease, and several of them die, or some person of his family
+will become ill or get hurt in some unaccountable way. Till at last,
+thoroughly frightened, the afflicted person takes a little uncooked rice
+and goes to a deona or mati (as he is called in the different
+vernaculars of the province)--the grade immediately above najo in
+knowledge--and promising him a reward if he will assist him, requests
+his aid;  if the deona accedes to the request, the proceedings are as
+follows.  The deona taking the oil brought, lights a small lamp and
+seats himself beside it with the rice in a surpa (winnower) in his
+hands.  After looking intently at the lamp flame for a few minutes, he
+begins to sing a sort of chant of invocation in which all the spirits
+are named, and at the name of each spirit a few grains of rice are
+thrown into the lamp.  When the flame at any particular name gives a
+jump and flares up high, the spirit concerned in the mischief is
+indicated.  Then the deona takes a small portion of the rice wrapped up
+in a sal (Shorea robusta) leaf and proceeds to the nearest new white-ant
+nest from which he cuts the top off and lays the little bundle, half in
+and half out of the cavity. Having retired, he returns in about an hour
+to see if the rice is consumed, and according to the rapidity with which
+it is eaten he predicts the sacrifice which will appease the spirit.
+This ranges from a fowl to a buffalo, but whatever it may include, the
+pouring out of blood is an essential.  It must be noted, however, that
+the mati never tells who the najo is who has excited the malignity of
+the spirit.
+
+But the most important and lucrative part of a deona's business is the
+casting out of evil spirits, which operation is known variously as ashab
+and langhan.  The sign of obsession is generally some mental alienation
+accompanied (in bad cases) by a combined trembling and restlessness of
+limbs, or an unaccountable swelling up of the body.  Whatever the
+symptoms may be the mode of cure appears to be much the same.  On such
+symptoms declaring themselves, the deona is brought to the house and is
+in the presence of the sick man and his friends provided with some rice
+in a surpa, some oil, a little vermilion, and the deona produces from
+his own person a little powdered sulphur and an iron tube about four
+inches long and two tikli.*  Before the proceedings begin all the things
+mentioned are touched with vermilion, a small quantity of which is also
+mixed with the rice.  Three or four grains of rice and one of the tikli
+being put into the tube, a lamp is then lighted beside the sick man and
+the deona begins his chant, throwing grains of rice at each name, and
+when the flame flares up, a little of the powdered sulphur is thrown
+into the lamp and a little on the sick man, who thereupon becomes
+convulsed, is shaken all over and talks deliriously, the deona's chant
+growing louder all the while.  Suddenly the convulsions and the chant
+cease, and the deona carefully takes up a little of the sulphur off the
+man's body and puts into the tube, which he then seals with the second
+tikli.  The deona and one of the man's friends then leave the hut,
+taking the iron tube and rice with them, the spirit being now supposed
+out of the man and bottled up in the iron tube.  They hurry across
+country until they leave the hut some miles behind.  Then they go to the
+edge of some tank or river, to some place they know to be frequented by
+people for the purposes of bathing, &c., where, after some further
+ceremony, the iron is stuck into the ground and left there.  This is
+done with the benevolent intention that the spirit may transfer its
+attentions to the unfortunate person who may happen to touch it while
+bathing.  I am told the spirit in this case usually chooses a young and
+healthy person.  Should the deona think the spirit has not been able to
+suit itself with a new receptacle, he repairs to where a bazaar is
+taking place and there (after some ceremony) he mixes with the crowd,
+and taking a grain of the reddened rice jerks it with his forefinger and
+thumb in such a way that without attracting attention it falls on the
+person or clothes of some.  This is done several times to make certain.
+Then the deona declares he has done his work, and is usually treated to
+the best dinner the sick man's friends can afford.  It is said that the
+person to whom the spirit by either of these methods is transferred may
+not be affected for weeks or even months.  But some fine day while he is
+at his work, he will suddenly stop, wheel round two or three times on
+his heels and fall down more or less convulsed, from that time forward
+he will begin to be troubled in the same way as his dis-obsessed
+predecessor was.
+
+--------
+* Tikli is a circular piece of gilt paper which is stuck on between the
+eyebrows of the women of the Province as ornament.
+--------
+
+Having thus given some account of the deona, we now come to the bhagat,
+called by the Hindus sokha and sivnath.  This is the highest grade of
+all, and, as I ought to have mentioned before, the 'ilm (knowledge) of
+both the deona and bhagat grades is only to be learned by becoming a
+regular chela of a practitioner;  but I am given to understand that the
+final initiation is much hastened by a seasonable liberality on the part
+of the chela. During the initiation of the sokha certain ceremonies are
+performed at night by aid of a human corpse, this is one of the things
+which has led me to think that this part at least of these practices is
+connected with Tantric black magic.
+
+The bhagat performs two distinct functions:  (1st), a kind of divination
+called bhao (the same in Hindi), and (2nd), a kind of Shamanism called
+darasta in Hindi, and bharotan in Horokaji, which, however, is resorted
+to only on very grave occasions--as, for instance, when several families
+think they are bewitched at one time and by the same najo.
+
+The bhao is performed as follows:--The person having some query to
+propound, makes a small dish out of a sal leaf and puts in it a little
+uncooked rice and a few pice;  he then proceeds to the bhagat and lays
+before him the leaf and its contents, propounding at the same time his
+query.  The bhagat then directs him to go out and gather two golaichi
+(varieties of Posinia) flowers (such practitioners usually having a
+golaichi tree close to their abodes);  after the flowers are brought the
+bhagat seats himself with the rice close to the inquirer, and after some
+consideration selects one of the flowers, and holding it by the stalk at
+about a foot from his eyes in his left hand twirls it between his thumb
+and fingers, occasionally with his right hand dropping on it a grain or
+two of rice.*  In a few minutes his eyes close and he begins to talk--
+usually about things having nothing to do with the question in hand, but
+after a few minutes of this, he suddenly yells out an answer to the
+question, and without another word retires.  The inquirer takes his
+meaning as he can from the answer, which, I believe, is always
+ambiguous.
+
+---------
+* This is the process by which the bhagat mesmerizes himself.
+---------
+
+The bharotan as I have above remarked is only resorted to when a matter
+of grave import has to be inquired about;  the bhagat makes a high
+charge for a seance of this description.  We will fancy that three or
+four families in a village consider themselves bewitched by a najo, and
+they resolve to have recourse to a bhagat to find out who the witch is;
+with this view a day is fixed on, and two delegates are procured from
+each of five neighbouring villages, who accompany the afflicted people
+to the house of the bhagat, taking with them a dali or offering,
+consisting of vegetables, which on arrival is formally presented to him.
+Two delegates are posted at each of the four points of the compass, and
+the other two sent themselves with the afflicted parties to the right of
+the bhagat, who occupies the centre of the apartment with four or five
+chelas, a clear space being reserved on the left.  One chela then brings
+a small earthenware-pot full of lighted charcoal, which is set before
+the bhagat with a pile of mango wood chips and a ball composed of dhunia
+(resin of Shorea robusta), gur (treacle), and ghee (clarified butter),
+and possibly other ingredients.  The bhagat's sole attire consists of a
+scanty lenguti (waist-cloth), a necklace of the large wooden beads such
+as are usually worn by fakeers, and several garlands of golaichi flowers
+round his neck, his hair being unusually long and matted.  Beside him
+stuck in the ground is his staff.  One chela stands over the firepot
+with a bamboo-mat fan in his hand, another takes charge of the pile of
+chips, and a third of the ball of composition, and one or two others
+seat themselves behind the bhagat, with drums and other musical
+instruments in their hands.  All being in readiness, the afflicted ones
+are requested to state their grievance.  This they do, and pray the
+bhagat to call before him the najo, who has stirred up the spirits to
+afflict them, in order that he may be punished.  The bhagat then gives a
+sign to his chelas, those behind him raise a furious din with their
+instruments, the fire is fed with chips, and a bit of the composition is
+put on it from time to time, producing a volume of thick greyish-blue
+smoke; this is carefully fanned over, and towards the bhagat, who, when
+well wrapped in smoke, closes his eyes and quietly swaying his body
+begins a low chant.  The chant gradually becomes louder and the sway of
+his body more pronounced, until he works himself into a state of
+complete frenzy.  Then with his body actually quivering, and his head
+rapidly working about from side to side, he sings in a loud voice how a
+certain najo (whom he names) had asked money of those people and was
+refused, and how he stirred up certain spirits (whom he also names) to
+hurt them, how they killed so and so's bullocks, some one else's sheep,
+and caused another's child to fall ill.  Then he begins to call on the
+najo to come and answer for his doings, and in doing so rises to his
+feet--still commanding the najo to appear;  meanwhile he reels about;
+then falls on the ground and is quite still except for an occasional
+whine, and a muttered, "I see him!"  "He is coming!" This state may last
+for an hour or more till at last the bhagat sits up and announces the
+najo has come;  as he says so, a man, apparently mad with drink, rushes
+in and falls with his head towards the bhagat moaning and making a sort
+of snorting as if half stifled.  In this person the bewitched parties
+often recognize a neighbour and sometimes even a relation, but whoever
+he may be they have bound themselves to punish him.  The bhagat then
+speaks to him and tells him to confess, at the same time threatening
+him, in case of refusal, with his staff.  He then confesses in a
+half-stupefied manner, and his confession tallies with what the bhagat
+has told in his frenzy.  The najo is then dismissed and runs out of the
+house in the same hurry as he came in.  The delegates then hold a
+council at which the najo usually is sentenced to a fine--often heavy
+enough to ruin him--and expelled from his village.  Before the British
+rule the convicted najo seldom escaped with his life, and during the
+mutiny time, when no Englishmen were about, the Singbhoom Hos paid off a
+large number of old scores of this sort.  For record of which, see
+"Statistical Account of Bengal," vol. xvii. p. 52.
+
+In conclusion I have merely to add that I have derived this information
+from people who have been actually concerned in these occurrences, and
+among others a man belonging to a village of my own, who was convicted
+and expelled from the village with the loss of all his movable property,
+and one of his victims, a relation of his, sat by me when the above was
+being written.
+
+--E.D. Ewen
+
+
+
+
+Mahatmas and Chelas
+
+
+A Mahatma is an individual who, by special training and education, has
+evolved those higher faculties, and has attained that spiritual
+knowledge, which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through
+numberless series of re-incarnations during the process of cosmic
+evolution, provided, of course, that they do not go, in the meanwhile,
+against the purposes of Nature and thus bring on their own annihilation.
+This process of the self-evolution of the MAHATMA extends over a number
+of "incarnations," although, comparatively speaking, they are very few.
+Now, what is it that incarnates?  The occult doctrine, so far as it is
+given out, shows that the first three principles die more or less with
+what is called the physical death.  The fourth principle, together with
+the lower portions of the fifth, in which reside the animal
+propensities, has Kama Loka for its abode, where it suffers the throes
+of disintegration in proportion to the intensity of those lower desires;
+while it is the higher Manas, the pure man, which is associated with the
+sixth and seventh principles, that goes into Devachan to enjoy there the
+effects of its good Karma, and then to be reincarnated as a higher
+personality.  Now an entity that is passing through the occult training
+in its successive births, gradually has less and less (in each
+incarnation) of that lower Manas until there arrives a time when its
+whole Manas, being of an entirely elevated character, is centred in the
+individuality, when such a person may be said to have become a MAHATMA.
+At the time of his physical death, all the lower four principles perish
+without any suffering, for these are, in fact, to him like a piece of
+wearing apparel which he puts on and off at will.  The real MAHATMA is
+then not his physical body but that higher Manas which is inseparably
+linked to the Atma and its vehicle (the sixth principle)--a union
+effected by him in a comparatively very short period by passing through
+the process of self-evolution laid down by Occult Philosophy.  When
+therefore, people express a desire to "see a MAHATMA," they really do
+not seem to understand what it is they ask for.  How can they, with
+their physical eyes, hope to see that which transcends that sight?  Is
+it the body--a mere shell or mask--they crave or hunt after?  And
+supposing they see the body of a MAHATMA, how can they know that behind
+that mask is concealed an exalted entity?  By what standard are they to
+judge whether the Maya before them reflects the image of a true MAHATMA
+or not?  And who will say that the physical is not a Maya? Higher things
+can be perceived only by a sense pertaining to those higher things;
+whoever therefore wants to see the real MAHATMA, must use his
+intellectual sight.  He must so elevate his Manas that its perception
+will be clear and all mists created by Maya be dispelled.  His vision
+will then be bright and he will see the MAHATMA wherever he may be, for,
+being merged into the sixth and the seventh principles, which know no
+distance, the MAHATMA may be said to be everywhere.  But, at the same
+time, just as we may be standing on a mountain top and have within our
+sight the whole plain, and yet not be cognizant of any particular tree
+or spot, because from that elevated position all below is nearly
+identical, and as our attention may be drawn to something which may be
+dissimilar to its surroundings--in the same manner, although the whole
+of humanity is within the mental vision of the MAHATMA, he cannot be
+expected to take special note of every human being, unless that being by
+his special acts draws particular attention to himself.  The highest
+interest of humanity, as a whole, is the MAHATMA's special concern, for
+he has identified himself with that Universal Soul which runs through
+Humanity;  and to draw his attention one must do so through that Soul.
+This perception of the Manas may be called "faith" which should not be
+confounded with blind belief.  "Blind faith" is an expression sometimes
+used to indicate belief without perception or understanding;  while the
+true perception of the Manas is that enlightened belief which is the
+real meaning of the word "faith."  This belief should at the same time
+be accompanied by knowledge, i.e., experience, for "true knowledge
+brings with it faith."  Faith is the perception of the Manas (the fifth
+principle), while knowledge, in the true sense of the term, is the
+capacity of the Intellect, i.e., it is spiritual perception. In short,
+the individuality of man, composed of his higher Manas, the sixth and
+the seventh principle, should work as a unity, and then only can it
+obtain "divine wisdom," for divine things can be sensed only by divine
+faculties.  Thus a chela should be actuated solely by a desire to
+understand the operations of the Law of Cosmic Evolution, so as to be
+able to work in conscious and harmonious accord with Nature.
+
+--Anon.
+
+
+
+
+The Brahmanical Thread
+
+
+I.  The general term for the investiture of this thread is Upanayana;
+and the invested is called Upanita, which signifies brought or drawn
+near (to one's Guru), i.e., the thread is the symbol of the wearer's
+condition.
+
+II.  One of the names of this thread is Yajna-Sutra.  Yajna means
+Brahma, or the Supreme Spirit, and Sutra the thread, or tie.
+Collectively, the compound word signifies that which ties a man to his
+spirit or god.  It consists of three yarns twisted into one thread, and
+three of such threads formed and knotted into a circle.  Every
+Theosophist knows what a circle signifies and it need not be repeated
+here.  He will easily understand the rest and the relation they have to
+mystic initiation.  The yarns signify the great principle of "three in
+one, and one in three," thus:--The first trinity consists of Atma which
+comprises the three attributes of Manas, Buddhi, and Ahankara (the mind,
+the intelligence, and the egotism).  The Manas again, has the three
+qualities of Satva, Raja, and Tama (goodness, foulness, and darkness).
+Buddhi has the three attributes of Pratyaksha, Upamiti and Anumiti
+(perception, analogy, and inference). Ahankara also has three
+attributes, viz., Jnata, Jneya, and Jnan (the knower, the known, and the
+knowledge).
+
+III.  Another name of the sacred thread is Tri-dandi.  Tri means three,
+and Danda, chastisement, correction, or conquest.  This reminds the
+holder of the three great "corrections" or conquests he has to
+accomplish.  These are:--(1) the Vakya Sanyama;*  (2) the Manas Sanyama;
+and (3) the Indriya (or Deha) Sanyama. Vakya is speech, Manas, mind, and
+Deha (literally, body) or Indriya, is the senses.  The three conquests
+therefore mean the control over one's speech, thought, and action.
+
+--------
+* Danda and Sanyama are synonymous terms.--A.S.
+---------
+
+This thread is also the reminder to the man of his secular duties,
+and its material varies, in consequence, according to the occupation
+of the wearer.  Thus, while the thread of the Brahmans is made of
+pure cotton, that of the Kshatriyas (the warriors) is composed of
+flax--the bow-string material;  and that of Vaishyas (the traders and
+cattle-breeders), of wool.  From this it is not to be inferred that caste
+was originally meant to be hereditary. In the ancient times, it depended
+on the qualities of the man. Irrespective of the caste of his parents, a
+man could, according to his merit or otherwise, raise or lower himself
+from one caste to another;  and instances are not wanting in which a man
+has elevated himself to the position of the highest Brahman (such as
+Vishvamitra Rishi, Parasara, Vyasa, Satyakam, and others) from the very
+lowest of the four castes.  The sayings of Yudhishthira on this subject,
+in reply to the questions of the great serpent, in the Arannya Parva of
+the Maha-Bharata, and of Manu, on the same point, are well known and
+need nothing more than bare reference.  Both Manu and Maha-Bharata--the
+fulcrums of Hinduism--distinctly affirm that a man can translate
+himself from one caste to another by his merit, irrespective of his
+parentage.
+
+The day is fast approaching when the so-called Brahmans will have to
+show cause, before the tribunal of the Aryan Rishis, why they should not
+be divested of the thread which they do not at all deserve, but are
+degrading by misuse.  Then alone will the people appreciate the
+privilege of wearing it.
+
+There are many examples of the highest distinctive insignia being worn
+by the unworthy.  The aristocracies of Europe and Asia teem with such.
+
+--A. Sarman
+
+
+
+
+Reading in a Sealed Envelope
+
+
+Some years ago, a Brahman astrologer named Vencata Narasimla Josi, a
+native of the village of Periasamudram in the Mysore Provinces, came to
+the little town in the Bellary District where I was then employed.  He
+was a good Sanskrit, Telugu and Canarese poet, and an excellent master
+of Vedic rituals;  knew the Hindu system of astronomy, and professed to
+be an astrologer.  Besides all this, he possessed the power of reading
+what was contained in any sealed envelope.  The process adopted for this
+purpose was simply this:--We wrote whatever we chose on a piece of
+paper; enclosed it in one, two or three envelopes, each properly gummed
+and sealed, and handed the cover to the astrologer.  He asked us to name
+a figure between 1 and 9, and on its being named, he retired with the
+envelope to some secluded place for some time; and then he returned with
+a paper full of figures, and another paper containing a copy of what was
+on the sealed paper--exactly, letter for letter and word for word.  I
+tried him often and many others did the same;  and we were all satisfied
+that he was invariably accurate, and that there was no deception
+whatsoever in the matter.
+
+About this time, one Mr. Theyagaraja Mudalyar, a supervisor in the
+Public Works Department, an English scholar and a good Sanskrit and
+Telugu poet, arrived at our place on his periodical tour of inspection.
+Having heard about the aforesaid astrologer, he wanted to test him in a
+manner, most satisfactory to himself. One morning handing to the
+astrologer a very indifferently gummed envelope, he said, "Here, Sir,
+take this letter home with you and come back to me with your copy in the
+afternoon."  This loose way of closing the envelope, and the permission
+given to the astrologer to take it home for several hours, surprised the
+Brahman, who said, "I don't want to go home.  Seal the cover better, and
+give me the use of some room here.  I shall be ready with my copy very
+soon."  "No," said the Mudalyar, "take it as it is, and come back
+whenever you like.  I have the means of finding out the deception, if
+any be practiced."
+
+So then the astrologer went with the envelope;  and returned to the
+Mudalyar's place in the afternoon.  Myself and about twenty others were
+present there by appointment.  The astrologer then carefully handed the
+cover to the Mudalyar, desiring him to see if it was all right.  "Don't
+mind that," the Mudalyar answered; "I can find out the trick, if there
+be any.  Produce your copy." The astrologer thereupon presented to the
+Mudalyar a paper on which four lines were written and stated that this
+was a copy of the paper enclosed in the Mudalyar's envelope.  Those four
+lines formed a portion of an antiquated poem.
+
+The Mudalyar read the paper once, then read it over again. Extreme
+satisfaction beamed over his countenance, and he sat mute for some
+seconds seemingly in utter astonishment.  But soon after, the expression
+of his face changing, he opened the envelope and threw the enclosure
+down, jocularly saying to the astrologer, "Here, Sir, is the original of
+which you have produced the copy."
+
+The paper lay upon the carpet, and was quite blank! not a word, nor a
+letter on its clean surface.
+
+This was a sad disappointment to all his admirers;  but to the
+astrologer himself, it was a real thunderbolt.  He picked up the paper
+pensively, examined it on both sides, then dashed it on the ground in a
+fury;  and suddenly arising, exclaimed, "My Vidya* is a delusion, and I
+am a liar!"
+
+---------
+* Secret knowledge, magic.
+---------
+
+The subsequent behaviour of the poor man made us fear lest this great
+disappointment should drive him to commit some desperate act.  In fact
+he seemed determined to drown himself in the well, saying that he was
+dishonoured.  While we were trying to console him, the Mudalyar came
+forward, caught hold of his hands, and besought him to sit down and
+calmly listen to his explanation, assuring him that he was not a liar,
+and that his copy was perfectly accurate.  But the astrologer would not
+be satisfied; he supposed that all this was said simply to console him;
+and cursed himself and his fate most horribly.  However, in a few
+minutes he became calmer and listened to the Mudalyar's explanation,
+which was in substance as follows The only way for the sceptic to
+account for this phenomenon, is to suppose that the astrologer opened
+the covers dexterously and read their contents.  "So," he said, "I wrote
+four lines of old poetry on the paper with nitrate of silver, which
+would be invisible until exposed to the light;  and this would have
+disclosed the astrologer's fraud, if he had tried to find out the
+contents of the enclosed paper, by opening the cover, however
+ingeniously. For, if he opened it and looked at the paper, he would have
+seen that it was blank, resealed the cover, and declared that the paper
+enveloped therein bore no writing whatever;  or if he had, by design or
+accident, exposed the paper to light, the writing would have become
+black;  and he would have produced a copy of it as if it were the result
+of his own Vidya;  but in either case and the writing remaining, his
+deception would have been clear, and it would have been patent to all
+that he did open the envelope.  But in the present case, the result
+proved conclusively that the cover was not opened at all."
+
+--P. Sreeneevas Row
+
+
+
+
+The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac
+
+
+The division of the Zodiac into different signs dates from immemorial
+antiquity.  It has acquired a world-wide celebrity and is to be found in
+the astrological systems of several nations. The invention of the Zodiac
+and its signs has been assigned to different nations by different
+antiquarians.  It is stated by some that, at first, there were only ten
+signs, that one of these signs was subsequently split up into two
+separate signs, and that a new sign was added to the number to render
+the esoteric significance of the division more profound, and at the same
+time to conceal it more perfectly from the uninitiated public.  It is
+very probable that the real philosophical conception of the division
+owes its origin to some particular nation, and the names given to the
+various signs might have been translated into the languages of other
+nations.  The principal object of this article, however, is not to
+decide which nation had the honour of inventing the signs in question,
+but to indicate to some extent the real philosophical meaning involved
+therein, and the way to discover the rest of the meaning which yet
+remains undisclosed. But from what is herein stated, an inference may
+fairly be drawn that, like so many other philosophical myths and
+allegories, the invention of the Zodiac and its signs owes its origin to
+ancient India.
+
+What then is its real origin, what is the philosophical conception which
+the Zodiac and its signs are intended to represent?  Do the various
+signs merely indicate the shape or configuration of the different
+constellations included in the divisions, or, are they simply masks
+designed to veil some hidden meaning?  The former supposition is
+altogether untenable for two reasons, viz.:--
+
+I.  The Hindus were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, as
+may he easily seen from their work on Astronomy, and from the almanacs
+published by Hindu astronomers.  Consequently they were fully aware of
+the fact that the constellations in the various Zodiacal divisions were
+not fixed.  They could not, therefore, have assigned particular shapes
+to these shifting groups of fixed stars with reference to the divisions
+of the Zodiac.  But the names indicating the Zodiacal signs have all
+along remained unaltered.  It is to be inferred, therefore, that the
+names given to the various signs have no connection whatever with the
+configurations of the constellations included in them.
+
+II. The names assigned to these signs by the ancient Sanskrit writers
+and their exoteric or literal meanings are as follows:--
+
+The Names of the Signs ....... Their Exoteric or Literal Meanings
+
+1. Mesha ........................... Ram, or Aries.
+2. Rishabha .......................Bull, or Taurus.
+3. Mithunam ................... Twins, or Gemini (male and female).
+4. Karkataka ...................... Crab, or Cancer.
+5. Simha .............................. Lion, or Leo.
+6. Kanya ............................. Virgin or Virgo.*
+7. Tula .......................... Balance, or Libra.
+8. Vrischika ..................... Scorpion, or Scorpio.
+9. Dhanus ....................... Archer, or Sagittarius.
+10. Makara ........... The Goat, or Capricornus (Crocodile, in Sanskrit).
+11. Kumbha .................. Water-bearer, or Aquarius.
+12. Meenam ................. Fishes, or Pisces.
+
+The figures of the constellations included in the signs at the time the
+division was first made do not at all resemble the shapes of the
+animals, reptiles and other objects denoted by the names given them.
+The truth of this assertion can be ascertained by examining the
+configurations of the various constellations. Unless the shape of the
+crocodile** or the crab is called up by the observer's imagination,
+there is very little chance of the stars themselves suggesting to his
+idea that figure, upon the blue canopy of the starry firmament.
+
+--------
+* Virgo-Scorpio, when none but the initiates knew there were twelve
+signs.  Virgo-Scorpio was then followed for the profane by Sagittarius.
+At the middle or junction-point where now stands Libra and at the sign
+now called Virgo, two mystical signs were inserted which remained
+unintelligible to the profane.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** This constellation was never called Crocodile by the ancient Western
+astronomers, who described it as a horned goat and called it so--
+Capricornus.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+If, then, the constellations have nothing to do with the origin of the
+names by which the Zodiacal divisions are indicated, we have to seek for
+some other source which might have given rise to these appellations.  It
+becomes my object to unravel a portion of the mystery connected with
+these Zodiacal signs, as also to disclose a portion of the sublime
+conception of the ancient Hindu philosophy which gave rise to them.  The
+signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning.  From one point of view
+they represent the different stages of evolution up to the time the
+present material universe with the five elements came into phenomenal
+existence. As the author of "Isis Unveiled" has stated in the second
+volume of her admirable work, "The key should be turned seven times" to
+understand the whole philosophy underlying these signs.  But I shall
+wind it only once and give the contents of the first chapter of the
+History of Evolution.  It is very fortunate that the Sanskrit names
+assigned to the various divisions by Aryan philosophers contain within
+themselves the key to the solution of the problem.  Those of my readers
+who have studied to some extent the ancient "Mantra" and the "Tantra
+Sastras" * of India, would have seen that very often Sanskrit words are
+made to convey a certain hidden meaning by means of well-known
+pre-arranged methods and a tacit convention, while their literal
+significance is something quite different from the implied meaning.
+
+---------
+* Works on Incantation and Magic.
+---------
+
+The following are some of the rules which may help an inquirer in
+ferreting out the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature to
+be found in the old Aryan myths and allegories:
+
+1. Find out the synonyms of the word used which have other meanings.
+
+2. Find out the numerical value of the letters composing the word
+according to the methods given in ancient Tantrika works.
+
+3. Examine the ancient myths or allegories, if there are any, which have
+any special connection with the word in question.
+
+4. Permute the different syllables composing the word and examine the
+new combinations that will thus be formed and their meanings, &c. &c.
+
+I shall now apply some of the above given rules to the names of the
+twelve signs of the Zodiac.
+
+I. Mesha.--One of the synonyms of this word is Aja.  Now, Aja literally
+means that which has no birth, and is applied to the Eternal Brahma in
+certain portions of the Upanishads. So,  the first sign is intended to
+represent Parabrahma, the self-existent, eternal, self-sufficient cause
+of all.
+
+II. Rishabham.--This word is used in several places in the Upanishads
+and the Veda to mean Pranava (Aum).  Sankaracharya has so interpreted it
+in several portions of his commentary.*
+
+--------
+* Example, "Rishabhasya--Chandasam Rishabhasya Pradhanasya
+Pranavasya."
+--------
+
+III. Mithuna.--As the word plainly indicates, this sign is intended to
+represent the first androgyne, the Ardhanareeswara, the bisexual
+Sephira--Adam Kadmon.
+
+IV. Karkataka.--When the syllables are converted into the corresponding
+numbers, according to the general mode of transmutation so often alluded
+to in Mantra Shastra, the word in question will be represented by ////.
+This sign then is evidently intended to represent the sacred Tetragram;
+the Parabrahmadharaka;  the Pranava resolved into four separate entities
+corresponding to its four Matras;  the four Avasthas indicated by
+Jagrata (waking) Avastha, Swapna (dreaming) Avastha, Sushupti (deep
+sleep) Avastha, and Turiya (the last stage, i.e., Nirvana) Avastha (as
+yet in potentiality);  the four states of Brahma called Vaiswanara,
+Taijasa (or Hiranyagarbha), Pragna, and Iswara, and represented by
+Brahma, Vishna, Maheswara, and Sadasiva;  the four aspects of
+Parabrahma, as Sthula (gross), Sukshma (subtle), Vija (seed), and Sakshi
+(witness);  the four stages or conditions of the Sacred Word, named
+Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari;  Nadam, Bindu, Sakti and Kala.
+This sign completes the first quaternary.
+
+V. Simha.--This word contains a world of occult meaning within itself;
+and it may not be prudent on my part to disclose the whole of its
+meaning now.  It will be sufficient for the present purpose to give a
+general indication of its significance.
+
+Two of its synonymous terms are Panchasyam and Hari, and its number in
+the order of the Zodiacal divisions (being the fifth sign) points
+clearly to the former synonym.  This synonym--Panchasyam--shows that
+the sign is intended to represent the five Brahmas--viz., Isanam,
+Aghoram, Tatpurusham, Vamadevam, and Sadyojatam:--the five Buddhas.  The
+second synonym shows it to be Narayana, the Jivatma or Pratyagatma.  The
+Sukarahasy Upanishad will show that the ancient Aryan philosophers
+looked upon Narayana as the Jivatma.* The Vaishnavites may not admit it.
+But as an Advaiti, I look upon Jivatma as identical with Paramatma in
+its real essence when stripped of its illusory attributes created by
+Agnanam or Avidya--ignorance.
+
+---------
+* In its lowest or most material state, as the life-principle which
+animates the material bodies of the animal and vegetable worlds, &c.
+--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+The Jivatma is correctly placed in the fifth sign counting from Mesham,
+as the fifth sign is the putrasthanam or the son's house according to
+the rules of Hindu Astrology.  The sign in question represents Jivatma--
+the son of Paramatma as it were.  (I may also add that it represents the
+real Christ, the anointed pure spirit, though many Christians may frown
+at this interpretation.)*  I will only add here that unless the nature
+of this sign is fully comprehended it will be impossible to understand
+the real order of the next three signs and their full significance.  The
+elements or entities that have merely a potential existence in this sign
+become distinct separate entities in the next three signs.  Their union
+into a single entity leads to the destruction of the phenomenal
+universe, and the recognition of the pure Spirit and their separation
+has the contrary effect.  It leads to material earth-bound existence and
+brings into view the picture gallery of Avidya (Ignorance) or Maya
+(Illusion).  If the real orthography of the name by which the sign in
+question is indicated is properly understood, it will readily be seen
+that the next three signs are not what they ought to be.
+
+--------
+* Nevertheless it is a true one.  The Jiv-atma in the Microcosm (man) is
+the same spiritual essence which animates the Macrocosm (universe), the
+differentiation, or specific difference between the two Jivatmas
+presenting itself but in the two states or conditions of the same and
+one Force.  Hence, "this son of Paramatma" is an eternal correlation of
+the Father-Cause. Purusha manifesting himself as Brahma of the "golden
+egg" and becoming Viradja--the universe.  We are "all born of Aditi from
+the water" (Hymns of the Maruts, X. 63, 2), and "Being was born from
+not-being" (Rig-Veda, Mandala I, Sukta 166).--Ed. Theos.
+-----------
+
+Kanya or Virgo and Vrischika or Scorpio should form one single sign, and
+Thula must follow the said sign if it is at all necessary to have a
+separate sign of that name.  But a separation between Kanya and
+Vrischika was effected by interposing the sign Tula between the two.
+The object of this separation will be understood on examining the
+meaning of the three signs.
+
+VI. Kanya.--Means a virgin and represents Sakti or Mahamaya.  The sign
+in question is the sixth Rasi or division, and indicates that there are
+six primary forces in Nature.  These forces have different sets of names
+in Sanskrit philosophy.  According to one system of nomenclature, they
+are called by the following names*:--(1) Parasakty;  (2) Gnanasakti;
+(3) Itchasakti (will-power); (4) Kriytisakti;  (5) Kundalinisakti;  and
+(6) Matrikasakti.  The six forces are in their unity represented by the
+Astral Light.**
+
+---------
+* Parasakti:--Literally the great or supreme force or power. It means
+and includes the powers of light and heat.
+
+Gnanasakti:--Literally the power of intellect or the power of real
+wisdom or knowledge.  It has two aspects.
+
+I. The following are some of its manifestations when placed under the
+influence or control of material conditions.
+
+(a) The power of the mind in interpreting our sensations;  (b) Its power
+in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation;  (c)
+Its power as exhibited in what are called by modern psychologists "the
+laws of association," which enables it to form persisting connections
+between various groups of sensations and possibilities of sensations,
+and thus generate the notion or idea of an external object;  (d) Its
+power in connecting our ideas together by the mysterious link of memory,
+and thus generating the notion of self or individuality.
+
+II. The following are some of its manifestations when liberated from the
+bonds of matter:--
+
+(a) Clairvoyance.  (b) Pyschometry.
+
+Itchasakti:--Literally the power of the will.  Its most ordinary
+manifestation is the generation of certain nerve currents which set in
+motion such muscles as are required for the accomplishment of the
+desired object.
+
+Kriyasakti:--The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce
+external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy.
+The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally if one's
+attention is deeply concentrated upon it.  Similarly an intense volition
+will be followed by the desired result.
+
+A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti and
+Kriyasakti.
+
+Kundalinisakti:--Literally the power or force which moves in a
+serpentine or curved path.  It is the universal life-principle which
+everywhere manifests itself in Nature.  This force includes in itself
+the two great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and
+magnetism are but manifestations of it.  This is the power or force
+which brings about that "continuous adjustment of internal relations to
+external relations" which is the essence of life according to Herbert
+Spencer, and that "continuous adjustment of external relations to
+internal relations" which is the basis of transmigration of souls or
+punarjanmam (re-birth) according to the doctrines of the ancient Hindu
+philosophers.
+
+A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power or force before he can
+attain moksham.  This force is, in fact, the great serpent of the Bible.
+
+Matrikasakti:--Literally the force or power of letters or speech or
+music.  The whole of the ancient Mantra Shastra has this force or power
+in all its manifestations for its subject-matter.  The power of The Word
+which Jesus Christ speaks of is a manifestation of this Sakti.  The
+influence of its music is one of its ordinary manifestations.  The power
+of the mirific ineffable name is the crown of this Sakti.
+
+Modern science has but partly investigated the first, second and fifth
+of the forces or powers above named, but it is altogether in the dark as
+regards the remaining powers.
+
+** Even the very name of Kanya (Virgin) shows how all the ancient
+esoteric systems agreed in all their fundamental doctrines.  The
+Kabalists and the Hermetic philosophers call the Astral Light the
+"heavenly or celestial Virgin."  The Astral Light in its unity is the
+7th.  Hence the seven principles diffused in every unity or the 6 and
+one--two triangles and a crown.--Ed. Theos.
+-----------
+
+VII. Tula.--When represented by numbers according to the method above
+alluded to, this word will be converted into 36.  This sign, therefore,
+is evidently intended to represent the 36 Tatwams.  (The number of
+Tatwams is different according to the views of different philosophers
+but by Sakteyas generally and by several of the ancient Rishis, such as
+Agastya, Dvrasa and Parasurama, &c., the number of Tatwams has been
+stated to be 36). Jivatma differs from Paramatma, or to state the same
+thing in other words, "Baddha" differs from "Mukta" * in being encased
+as it were within these 36 Tatwams, while the other is free.  This sign
+prepares the way to earthly Adam to Nara.  As the emblem of Nara it is
+properly placed as the seventh sign.
+
+---------
+* As the Infinite differs from the Finite and the Unconditioned
+from the Conditioned.--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+VIII. Vrischika.--It is stated by ancient philosophers that the sun when
+located in this Rasi or sign is called by the name of Vishnu (see the
+12th Skandha of Bhagavata).  This sign is intended to represent Vishnu.
+Vishnu literally means that which is expanded--expanded as Viswam or
+Universe.  Properly speaking, Viswam itself is Vishnu (see
+Sankaracharya's commentary on Vishnusahasranamam).  I have already
+intimated that Vishnu represents the Swapnavastha or the Dreaming State.
+The sign in question properly signifies the universe in thought or the
+universe in the divine conception.
+
+It is properly placed as the sign opposite to Rishabham or Pranava.
+Analysis from Pranava downwards leads to the Universe of Thought, and
+synthesis from the latter upwards leads to Pranava (Aum).  We have now
+arrived at the ideal state of the universe previous to its coming into
+material existence.  The expansion of the Vija or primitive germ into
+the universe is only possible when the 36 "Tatwams" * are interposed
+between the Maya and Jivatma.  The dreaming state is induced through the
+instrumentality of these "Tatwams."  It is the existence of these
+Tatwams that brings Hamsa into existence.  The elimination of these
+Tatwams marks the beginning of the synthesis towards Pranava and Brahmam
+and converts Hamsa into Soham.  As it is intended to represent the
+different stages of evolution from Brahmam downwards to the material
+universe, the three signs Kanya, Tula, and Vrischika are placed in the
+order in which they now stand as three separate signs.
+
+IX. Dhanus (Sagittarius).--When represented in numbers the name is
+equivalent to 9, and the division in question is the 9th division
+counting from Mesha.  The sign, therefore, clearly indicates the 9
+Brahmas--the 9 Parajapatis who assisted the Demiurgus in constructing
+the material universe.
+
+X. Makara.--There is some difficulty in interpreting this word;
+nevertheless it contains within itself the clue to its correct
+interpretation.  The letter Ma is equivalent to number 5, and Kara means
+hand.  Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam or karam
+(both are synonymous) being understood to mean a side.  So, Makaram or
+Panchakaram means a Pentagon.**
+
+----------
+* 36 is three times 12, or 9 Tetraktis, or 12 Triads, the most sacred
+number in the Kabalistic and Pythagorean numerals.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** The five-pointed star or pentagram represented the five limbs of
+man.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+Now, Makaram is the tenth sign, and the term "Dasadisa" is generally
+used by Sanskrit writers to denote the faces or sides of the universe.
+The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the universe,
+and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded by Pentagons.
+If we take the pentagons as regular pentagons (on the presumption or
+supposition that the universe is symmetrically constructed) the figure
+of the material universe will, of course, be a Dodecahedron, the
+geometrical model imitated by the Demiurgus in constructing the material
+universe.  If Tula was subsequently invented, and if instead of the
+three signs "Kanya," "Tula," and "Vrischikam," there had existed
+formerly only one sign combining in itself Kanya and Vrischika, the sign
+now under consideration was the eighth sign under the old system, and it
+is a significant fact that Sanskrit writers generally speak also of
+"Ashtadisa" or eight faces bounding space.  It is quite possible that
+the number of disa might have been altered from 8 to 10 when the
+formerly existing Virgo-Scorpio was split up into three separate signs.
+
+Again, Kara may be taken to represent the projecting triangles of the
+five-pointed star.  This figure may also be called a kind of regular
+pentagon (see Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 143).  If this
+interpretation is accepted, the Rasi or sign in question represents the
+"microcosm."  But the "microcosm" or the world of thought is really
+represented by Vrischika.  From an objective point of view the
+"microcosm" is represented by the human body. Makaram may be taken to
+represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as
+external objects of perception.
+
+In connection with this sign I shall state a few important facts which I
+beg to submit for the consideration of those who are interested in
+examining the ancient occult sciences of India.  It is generally held by
+the ancient philosophers that the macrocosm is similar to the microcosm
+in having a Sthula Sariram and a Suksma Sariram.   The visible universe
+is the Sthula Sariram of Viswam;  the ancient philosophers held that as
+a substratum for this visible universe, there is another universe--
+perhaps we may call it the universe of Astral Light--the real universe
+of Noumena, the soul as it were of this visible universe.  It is darkly
+hinted in certain passages of the Veda and the Upanishads that this
+hidden universe of Astral Light is to be represented by an Icosahedron.
+The connection between an Icosahedron and a Dodecahedron is something
+very peculiar and interesting, though the figures seem to be so very
+dissimilar to each other.  The connection may be understood by the
+under-mentioned geometrical construction.  Describe a Sphere about an
+Icosahedron;  let perpendiculars be drawn from the centre of the Sphere
+on its faces and produced to meet the surface of the Sphere.  Now, if
+the points of intersection be joined, a Dodecahedron is formed within
+the Sphere.  By a similar process an Icosahedron may be constructed from
+a Dodecahedron.  (See Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 141, art.
+193).  The figure constructed as above described will represent the
+universe of matter and the universe of Astral Light as they actually
+exist.  I shall not now, however, proceed to show how the universe of
+Astral Light may be considered under the symbol of an Icosahedron.  I
+shall only state that this conception of the Aryan philosophers is not
+to be looked upon as mere "theological twaddle" or as the outcome of
+wild fancy.  The real significance of the conception in question can, I
+believe, be explained by reference to the psychology and the physical
+science of the ancients.  But I must stop here and proceed to consider
+the meaning of the remaining two signs.
+
+XI. Kumbha (or Aquarius).--When represented by numbers, the word is
+equivalent to 14.  It can be easily perceived then that the division in
+question is intended to represent the "Chaturdasa Bhuvanam," or the 14
+lokas spoken of in Sanskrit writings.
+
+XII. Mina (or Pisces).--This word again is represented by 5 when written
+in numbers, and is evidently intended to convey the idea of
+Panchamahabhutams or the 5 elements.  The sign also suggests that water
+(not the ordinary water, but the universal solvent of the ancient
+alchemists) is the most important amongst the said elements.
+
+I have now finished the task which I have set to myself in this article.
+My purpose is not to explain the ancient theory of evolution itself, but
+to show the connection between that theory and the Zodiacal divisions.
+I have herein brought to light but a very small portion of the
+philosophy imbedded in these signs. The veil that was dexterously thrown
+over certain portions of the mystery connected with these signs by the
+ancient philosophers will never be lifted up for the amusement or
+edification of the uninitiated public.
+
+Now to summarize the facts stated in this article, the contents of the
+first chapter of the history of this universe are as follows:
+
+1.  The self-existent, eternal Brahmam.
+
+2.  Pranava (Aum).
+
+3.  The androgyne Brahma, or the bisexual Sephira-Adam Kadmon.
+
+4.  The Sacred Tetragram--the four matras of Pranava--the four
+    avasthas--the four states of Brahma--the Sacred Dharaka.
+
+5.  The five Brahmas--the five Buddhas representing in their totality
+    the Jivatma.
+
+6.  The Astral Light--the holy Virgin--the six forces in Nature.
+
+7.  The thirty-six Tatwams born of Avidya.
+
+8.  The universe in thought--the Swapna Avastha--the microcosm looked at
+    from a subjective point of view.
+
+9.  The nine Prajapatis--the assistants of the Demiurgus.*
+
+10.  The shape of the material universe in the mind of the Demiurgus--
+     the DODECAHEDRON.
+
+11.  The fourteen lokas.
+
+12.  The five elements.
+
+--------
+* The nine Kabalistic Sephiroths emanated from Sephira the 10th and the
+head Sephiroth are identical.  Three trinities or triads with their
+emanative principle form the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all
+which represents the whole Kosmos.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+The history of creation and of this world from its beginning up to the
+present time is composed of seven chapters.  The seventh chapter is not
+yet completed.
+
+--T. Subba Row
+Triplicane, Madras, September 14, 1881
+
+
+
+
+The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis
+
+We are indebted to the kindness of the learned President of the Adi
+Brahmo Samaji for the following accounts of two Yogis, of whom one
+performed the extraordinary feats of raising his body by will power, and
+keeping it suspended in the air without visible support.  The Yoga
+posture for meditation or concentration of the mind upon spiritual
+things is called Asana.  There are various of these modes of sitting,
+such as Padmasan, &c. &c.  Babu Rajnarain Bose translated this narrative
+from a very old number of the Tatwabodhini Patrika, the Calcutta organ
+of the Brahmo Samaj. The writer was Babu Akkhaya Kumar Dalta, then
+editor of the Patrika, of whom Babu Rajnarain speaks in the following
+high terms--"A very truth-loving and painstaking man;  very fond of
+observing strict accuracy in the details of a description."
+
+Sishal Yogi
+
+A few years ago, a Deccan Yogi, named Sishal, was seen at Madras, by
+many Hindus and Englishmen, to raise his Asana, or seat, up into the
+air.  The picture of the Yogi, showing his mode of seating, and other
+particulars connected with him, may be found in the Saturday Magazine on
+page 28.
+
+His whole body seated in air, only his right hand lightly touched a deer
+skin, rolled up in the form of a tube, and attached to a brazen rod
+which was firmly stuck into a wooden board resting on four legs.  In
+this position the Yogi used to perform his japa (mystical meditation),
+with his eyes half shut.  At the time of his ascending to his aerial
+seat, and also when he descended from it, his disciples used to cover
+him with a blanket.  The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda,
+corresponding to March 1847.
+
+
+The Bhukailas Yogi
+
+The extraordinary character of the holy man who was brought to
+Bhukailas, in Kidderpore, about 14 years ago, may still be remembered by
+many.  In the month of Asar, 1754 Sakabda (1834 A.C.), he was brought to
+Bhukailas from Shirpur, where he was under the charge of Hari Singh, the
+durwan (porter) of Mr. Jones. He kept his eyes closed, and went without
+food and drink, for three consecutive days, after which a small quantity
+of milk was forcibly poured down his throat.  He never took any food
+that was not forced upon him.  He seemed always without external
+consciousness.  To remove this condition Dr. Graham applied ammonia to
+his nostrils;  but it only produced tremblings in the body, and did not
+break his Yoga state.  Three days passed before he could be made to
+speak.  He said that his name was Dulla Nabab, and when annoyed, he
+uttered a single word, from which it was inferred that he was a Punjabi.
+When he was laid up with gout Dr. Graham attended him, but he refused to
+take medicine, either in the form of powder or mixture.  He was cured of
+the disease only by the application of ointments and liniments
+prescribed by the doctor.  He died in the month of Chaitra 1755 Sakabda,
+of a choleric affection.*--The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768
+Sakabda, corresponding to March, 1847 A.C.
+
+--------
+* The above particulars of this holy man have been obtained on
+unexceptionable testimony.--Ed. T.B.P.
+--------------------
+
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL
+
+
+
+True and False Personality
+
+
+The title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested
+a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on
+the present occasion.  The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of
+man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such
+weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be
+content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible
+to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of
+the highest philosophical capacity.  We will not now inquire whether the
+difference is one of states or of entities;  whether the phenomenal or
+mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible
+Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle;
+the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the
+senses and understanding, with the consciousness--Ahankara--thereto
+appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy
+is called Prakriti.  My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if
+it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even
+a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem.  It
+may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of
+the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life--if that can
+be made apparent--will incline you to regard the latter rather as the
+Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our
+immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of
+our phenomenal life.  It may be that by the light of such reflections
+the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the
+conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere
+consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no
+guarantee of an eternal individuality.
+
+It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all
+our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic
+worthlessness;  and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and
+felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding
+those "hard sayings" of sacred authority which bid us "die to
+ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth.
+This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious
+teaching;  and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from
+spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as
+merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.
+
+Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is
+thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to
+encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that
+which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne.  True
+it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged
+views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of
+individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings.
+These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological
+opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism
+to be regarded as a religion.  Nevertheless, that slight estimate of
+individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself
+to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is
+seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists
+on the discovery of our mere psychic survival.  The idealist may
+recognise this survival;  but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a
+post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance.
+For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of
+immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding
+consciousness--its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and
+affections--which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their
+importance is relative solely to the individual.  There is, indeed, no
+more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a
+teleological centre of the individual.  Ideas have become mere
+abstractions;  the only reality is the infinitely little.  Thus
+utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals
+whose "greatest happiness," mutually limited by nice adjustment to the
+requirements of "the greatest numbers," becomes the supreme end of
+government and law.  And it cannot, I think, be pretended that
+Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a
+relative for an absolute standard.  Their "glad tidings of great joy"
+are not truly religious.  They have regard to the perpetuation in time
+of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity
+are in time, and of time alone.  Their glorious message is not
+essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us
+by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring
+upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health.
+Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our
+opportunities.  As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief;
+but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let
+us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours,
+and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only
+value is opportunity.
+
+To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard
+man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these
+might become the central, actuating focus of his being--his "ruling
+love," as Swedenborg would call it--displacing his mere egoism, or
+self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying
+him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his
+energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to
+suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will.  Just as the
+entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really
+interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our
+supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no
+eye for any truth or any interest more abstract or more individual than
+that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation.  History shows
+approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive
+to have been Loyola;  such another, possibly, is Bismarck.  Now these
+men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns
+any value attaching to their own special individualities.  They are
+devotees.  A certain "conversion" has been effected, by which from mere
+individuals they have become "representative" men.  And we--the
+individuals--esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from
+individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of
+interests to which they are "devoted" enlarges--that is to say, as the
+dross of individualism is purged away--we accord them indulgence,
+respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family
+to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no
+denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and
+widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an
+individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his
+individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit.  The very modesty
+which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our
+addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some
+utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business
+even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a
+rest than living.  Well, but in the above instances, even those most
+remote from sordid individuality, we have fallen far short of that ideal
+in which the very conception of the partial, the atomic, is lost in the
+abstraction of universal being, transfigured in the glory of a Divine
+personality.  You are familiar with Swedenborg's distinction between
+discrete and continuous degrees. Hitherto we have seen how man--the
+individual--may rise continuously by throwing himself heart and soul
+into the living interests of the world, and lose his own limitations by
+adoption of a larger mundane spirit. But still he has but ascended
+nearer to his own mundane source, that soul of the world, or Prakriti,
+to which, if I must not too literally insist on it, I may still resort
+as a convenient figure.  To transcend it, he must advance by the
+discrete degree.  No simple "bettering" of the ordinary self, which
+leaves it alive, as the focus--the French word "foyer" is the more
+expressive--of his thoughts and actions;  not even that identification
+with higher interests in the world's plane just spoken of, is, or can
+progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his
+Divine ideal.  This "bettering" of our present nature, it alone being
+recognized as essential, albeit capable of "improvement," is a
+commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a "Philistine," conception.
+It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree.  It is
+a compromise with our dear old familiar selves.  "And Saul and the
+people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of
+the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not
+utterly destroy them;  but everything that was vile and refuse, that
+they destroyed utterly."  We know how little acceptable that compromise
+was to the God of Israel;  and no illustration can be more apt than this
+narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather
+typical than historical.  Typical of that indiscriminate and radical
+sacrifice, or "vastation," of our lower nature, which is insisted upon
+as the one thing needful by all, or nearly all,* the great religions of
+the world.  No language could seem more purposely chosen to indicate
+that it is the individual nature itself, and not merely its accidental
+evils, that has to be abandoned and annihilated.  It is not denied that
+what was spared was good;  there is no suggestion of a universal
+infection of physical or moral evil;  it is simply that what is good and
+useful relatively to a lower state of being must perish with it if the
+latter is to make way for something better.  And the illustration is the
+more suitable in that the purpose of this paper is not ethical, but
+points to a metaphysical conclusion, though without any attempt at
+metaphysical exposition.  There is no question here of moral
+distinctions; they are neither denied nor affirmed.  According to the
+highest moral standard, 'A' may be a most virtuous and estimable person.
+According to the lowest, 'B' may be exactly the reverse.  The moral
+interval between the two is within what I have called, following
+Swedenborg, the "continuous degree."  And perhaps the distinction can be
+still better expressed by another reference to that Book which we
+theosophical students do not less regard, because we are disposed to
+protest against all exclusive pretensions of religious systems.
+
+--------
+* Of the higher religious teachings of Mohammedanism I know next to
+nothing, and therefore cannot say if it should be excepted from the
+statement.
+--------
+
+The good man who has, however, not yet attained his "son-ship of God" is
+"under the law"--that moral law which is educational and preparatory,
+"the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," our own Divine spirit, or
+higher personality.  To conceive the difference between these two states
+is to apprehend exactly what is here meant by the false, temporal, and
+the true, eternal personality, and the sense in which the word
+personality is here intended to be understood.  We do not know whether,
+when that great change has come over us, when that great work* of our
+lives has been accomplished--here or hereafter--we shall or shall not
+retain a sense of identity with our past, and forever discarded selves.
+In philosophical parlance, the "matter" will have gone, and the very
+"form" will have been changed.  Our transcendental identity with the 'A'
+or 'B' that now is** must depend on that question, already disclaimed in
+this paper, whether the Divine spirit is our originally central
+essential being, or is an hypostasis. Now, being "under the law" implies
+that we do not act directly from our own will, but indirectly, that is,
+in willing obedience to another will.
+
+--------
+* The "great work," so often mentioned by the hermetic philosophers, and
+which is exactly typified by the operation of alchemy, the conversion of
+the base metals to gold, is now well understood to refer to the
+analogous spiritual conversion.  There is also good reason to believe
+that the material process was a real one.
+
+** "A person may have won his immortal life, and remained the same inner
+self he was on earth, through eternity;  but this does not imply
+necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on
+earth, or lose his individuality."--Isis Unveiled, vol. 1. p. 316.
+----------
+
+The will from which we should naturally act--our own will--is of course
+to be understood not as mere volition, but as our nature--our "ruling
+love," which makes such and such things agreeable to us, and others the
+reverse.  As "under the law," this nature is kept in suspension, and
+because it is suspended only as to its activity and manifestation, and
+by no means abrogated, is the law--the substitution of a foreign will--
+necessary for us.  Our own will or nature is still central;  that which
+we obey by effort and resistance to ourselves is more circumferential or
+hypostatic.  Constancy in this obedience and resistance tends to draw
+the circumferential will more and more to the centre, till there ensues
+that "explosion," as St. Martin called it, by which our natural will is
+for ever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine, and the
+latter henceforth becomes our very own. Thus has "the schoolmaster"
+brought us unto "Christ," and if by "Christ" we understand no
+historically divine individual, but the logos, word, or manifestation of
+God in us--then we have, I believe, the essential truth that was taught
+in the Vedanta, by Kapila, by Buddha, by Confucius, by Plato, and by
+Jesus.  There is another presentation of possibly the same truth, for a
+reference to which I am indebted to our brother J.W. Farquhar. It is
+from Swedenborg, in the "Apocalypse Explained," No. 57:--"Every man has
+an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior.  These
+two minds are altogether distinct.  By the inferior mind man is in the
+natural world together with men there;  but by the superior mind he is
+in the spiritual world with the angels there.  These two minds are so
+distinct that man so long as he lives in the world does not know what is
+performing within himself in his superior mind;  but when he becomes a
+spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is
+performing in his mind."  The consciousness of the "superior mind," as
+the result of mere separation from the earthly body, certainly does not
+suggest that sublime condition which implies separation from so much
+more than the outer garment of flesh, but otherwise the distinction
+between the two lives, or minds, seems to correspond with that now under
+consideration.
+
+What is it that strikes us especially about this substitution of the
+divine-human for the human-natural personality?  Is it not the loss of
+individualism?  (Individualism, pray observe, not individuality.)  There
+are certain sayings of Jesus which have probably offended many in their
+hearts, though they may not have dared to acknowledge such a feeling to
+themselves:  "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and those other
+disclaimers of special ties and relationships which mar the perfect
+sympathy of our reverence.  There is something awful and
+incomprehensible to us in this repudiation of individualism, even in its
+most amiable relations.  But it is in the Aryan philosophies that we see
+this negation of all that we associate with individual life most
+emphatically and explicitly insisted on.  It is, indeed, the
+impossibility of otherwise than thus negatively characterizing the soul
+that has attained Moksha (deliverance from bonds) which has caused the
+Hindu consummation to be regarded as the loss of individuality and
+conscious existence.  It is just because we cannot easily dissociate
+individuality from individualism that we turn from the sublime
+conception of primitive philosophy as from what concerns us as little as
+the ceaseless activity and germination in other brains of thought once
+thrown off and severed from the thinking source, which is the
+immortality promised by Mr. Frederick Harrison to the select specimens
+of humanity whose thoughts have any reproductive power.  It is not a
+mere preference of nothingness, or unconscious absorption, to limitation
+that inspires the intense yearning of the Hindu mind for Nirvana.  Even
+in the Upanishads there are many evidences of a contrary belief, while
+in the Sankhya the aphorisms of Kapila unmistakably vindicate the
+individuality of soul (spirit). Individual consciousness is maintained,
+perhaps infinitely intensified, but its "matter" is no longer personal.
+Only try to realize what "freedom from desire," the favourite phrase in
+which individualism is negated in these systems, implies.  Even in that
+form of devotion which consists in action, the soul is warned in the
+Bhagavad-Gita that it must be indifferent to results.
+
+Modern Spiritualism itself testifies to something of the same sort.
+Thus we are told by one of its most gifted and experienced champions,
+"Sometimes the evidence will come from an impersonal source, from some
+instructor who has passed through the plane on which individuality is
+demonstrable." (M.A. (Oxon.), "Spirit Identity," p. 7.)  Again, "And if
+he" (the investigator) "penetrates far enough, he will find himself in a
+region for which his present embodied state unfits him:  a region in
+which the very individuality is merged, and the highest and subtlest
+truths are not locked within one breast, but emanate from representative
+companies whose spheres of life are interblended." (Id., p. 15.)  By
+this "interblending" is of course meant only a perfect sympathy and
+community of thought;  and I should doubtless misrepresent the author
+quoted were I to claim an entire identity of the idea he wishes to
+convey, and that now under consideration.  Yet what, after all, is
+sympathy but the loosening of that hard "astringent" quality (to use
+Bohme's phrase) wherein individualism consists?  And just as in true
+sympathy, the partial suppression of individualism and of what is
+distinctive, we experience a superior delight and intensity of being, so
+it may be that in parting with all that shuts us up in the spiritual
+penthouse of an Ego--all, without exception or reserve--we may for the
+first time know what true life is, and what are its ineffable
+privileges.  Yet it is not on this ground that acceptance can be hoped
+for the conception of immortality here crudely and vaguely presented ill
+contrast to that bourgeois eternity of individualism and the family
+affections, which is probably the great charm of Spiritualism to the
+majority of its proselytes.  It is doubtful whether the things that "eye
+hath not seen, nor ear heard," have ever taken stronghold of the
+imagination, or reconciled it to the loss of all that is definitely
+associated with the Joy and movement of living.  Not as consummate bliss
+can the dweller on the lower plane presume to command that transcendent
+life.  At the utmost he can but echo the revelation that came to the
+troubled mind in "Sartor Resartus," "A man may do without happiness, and
+instead thereof find blessedness."  It is no sublimation of hope, but
+the necessities of thought that compel us to seek the condition of true
+being and immortality elsewhere than in the satisfactions of
+individualism.  True personality can only subsist in consciousness by
+participation of that of which we can only say that it is the very
+negation of individuality in any sense in which individuality can be
+conceived by us.  What is the content or "matter" of consciousness we
+cannot define, save by vaguely calling it ideal.  But we can say that in
+that region individual interests and concerns will find no place.  Nay,
+more, we can affirm that only then has the influx of the new life a free
+channel when the obstructions of individualism are already removed.
+Hence the necessity of the mystic death, which is as truly a death as
+that which restores our physical body to the elements.  "Neither I am,
+nor is aught mine, nor do I exist," a passage which has been well
+explained by a Hindu Theosophist (Peary Chand Mittra), as meaning "that
+when the spiritual state is arrived at, I and mine, which belong to the
+finite mind, cease, and the soul, living in the universum and
+participating in infinity with God, manifests its infinite state."  I
+cannot refrain from quoting the following passage from the same
+instructive writer:--
+
+Every human being has a soul which, while not separable from the brain
+or nerves, is mind or jivatma, or sentient soul, but when regenerated or
+spiritualized by yoga, it is free from bondage and manifests the divine
+essence.  It rises above all phenomenal states--joy, sorrow, grief,
+fear, hope, and in fact all states resulting in pain or pleasure, and
+becomes blissful, realizing immortality, infinitude and felicity of
+wisdom within itself. The sentient soul is nervous, sensational,
+emotional, phenomenal, and impressional.  It constitutes the natural
+life and is finite. The soul and the non-soul are thus the two
+landmarks.  What is non-soul is prakriti, or created.  It is not the lot
+of every one to know what soul is, and therefore millions live and die
+possessing minds cultivated in intellect and feeling, but not raised to
+the soul state.  In proportion as one's soul is emancipated from
+prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to
+the soul state is attained;  and it is this that constitutes disparities
+in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and
+their consequent approximation to God.--Spiritual Stray Leaves,
+Calcutta, 1879.
+
+He also cites some words of Fichte, which prove that the like conclusion
+is reached in the philosophy of Western idealism: "The real spirit which
+comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an
+impersonal pneuma--universal reason, nay, as the spirit of God Himself;
+and the good of man's whole development, therefore, can be no other than
+to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness."
+
+That there may be, and are affirmed to be, intermediate stages, states,
+or discrete degrees, will, of course, be understood.  The aim of this
+paper has been to call attention to the abstract condition of the
+immortalized consciousness;  negatively it is true, but it is on this
+very account more suggestive of practical applications.  The connection
+of the Theosophical Society with the Spiritualist movement is so
+intimately sympathetic, that I hope one of these may he pointed out
+without offence.  It is that immortality cannot be phenomenally
+demonstrated.  What I have called psychic survival can be, and probably
+is.  But immortality is the attainment of a state, and that state the
+very negation of phenomenal existence.  Another consequence refers to
+the direction our culture should take.  We have to compose ourselves to
+death.  Nothing less.  We are each of us a complex of desires, passions,
+interests, modes of thinking and feeling, opinions, prejudices, judgment
+of others, likings and dislikings, affections, aims public and private.
+These things, and whatever else constitutes, the recognizable content of
+our present temporal individuality, are all in derogation of our ideal
+of impersonal being--saving consciousness, the manifestation of being.
+In some minute, imperfect, relative, and almost worthless sense we may
+do right in many of our judgments, and be amiable in many of our
+sympathies and affections.  We cannot be sure even of this.  Only people
+unhabituated to introspection and self-analysis are quite sure of it.
+These are ever those who are loudest in their censures, and most
+dogmatic in their opinionative utterances.  In some coarse, rude fashion
+they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world's work, which is
+not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation.  We have to
+strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless
+tranquillity.  Then we may hope to die.  Meditation, if it be deep, and
+long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to
+understand the Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana.  One
+infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, who enjoys the
+temporal, sensual life, with its gratifications and excitements, as much
+as most, will testify with unaffected sincerity that he would rather be
+annihilated altogether than remain for ever what he knows himself to be,
+or even recognizably like it.  And he is a very average moral specimen.
+I have heard it said, "The world's life and business would come to an
+end, there would be an end to all its healthy activity, an end of
+commerce, arts, manufactures, social intercourse, government, law, and
+science, if we were all to devote ourselves to the practice of Yoga,
+which is pretty much what your ideal comes to."  And the criticism is
+perfectly just and true.  Only I believe it does not go quite far
+enough.  Not only the activities of the world, but the phenomenal world
+itself, which is upheld in consciousness, would disappear or take new,
+more interior, more living, and more significant forms, at least for
+humanity, if the consciousness of humanity was itself raised to a
+superior state.  Readers of St. Martin, and of that impressive book of
+the late James Hinton, "Man and his Dwelling-place," especially if they
+have also by chance been students of the idealistic philosophies, will
+not think this suggestion extravagant.  If all the world were Yogis, the
+world would have no need of those special activities, the ultimate end
+and purpose of which, by-the-by, our critic would find it not easy to
+define. And if only a few withdraw, the world can spare them.  Enough of
+that.
+
+Only let us not talk of this ideal of impersonal, universal being in
+individual consciousness as an unverified dream.  Our sense and
+impatience of limitations are the guarantees that they are not final and
+insuperable.  Whence is this power of standing outside myself, of
+recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo--judgments, of the
+prejudices with their lurid colouring of passion, of the temporal
+interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of
+egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself so that they indeed
+seem myself?  Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being,
+pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of
+things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present, with its
+phantasms, falsities, and half-truths;  who has nothing personal in the
+sense of being opposed to the whole of related personalities: who sees
+the truth rather than struggles logically towards it, and truth of which
+I can at present form no conception;  whose activities are unimpeded by
+intellectual doubt, un-perverted by moral depravity, and who is
+indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by
+calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value.  I look up to
+him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me to
+be without love. Yet I know that this is not so;  only that his love is
+diffused by its range, and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and
+comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only
+true, in a word, my immortal self.
+
+--C.C. Massey
+
+
+
+
+Chastity
+
+
+Ideal woman is the most beautiful work of the evolution of forms (in our
+days she is very often only a beautiful work of art).  A beautiful woman
+is the most attractive, charming, and lovely being that a man can
+imagine.  I never saw a male being who could lay any claims to manly
+vigour, strength or courage, who was not an admirer of woman.  Only a
+profligate, a coward or a sneak would hate women;  a hero and a man
+admires woman, and is admired by her.
+
+Women's love belongs to a complete man.  Then she smiles on him his
+human nature becomes aroused, his animal desires like little children
+begin to clamour for bread, they do not want to be starved, they want to
+satisfy their hunger.  His whole soul flies towards the lovely being,
+which attracts him with almost irresistible force, and if his higher
+principles, his divine spirit, is not powerful enough to restrain him,
+his soul follows the temptations of his physical body.  Once again the
+animal nature has subdued the divine.  Woman rejoices in her victory,
+and man is ashamed of his weakness;  and instead of being a
+representation of strength, he becomes an object of pity.
+
+To be truly powerful a man must retain his power and never for a moment
+lose it.  To lose it is to surrender his divine nature to his animal
+nature;  to restrain his desires and retain his power, is to assert his
+divine right, and to become more than a man--a god.
+
+Eliphas Levi says:  "To be an object of attraction for all women, you
+must desire none;"  and every one who has had a little experience of his
+own must know that he is right.  Woman wants what she cannot get, and
+what she can get she does not want. Perhaps it is to the man endowed
+with spiritual power, that the Bible refers, when it says:  "To him who
+has much, more shall be given, and from him who has little, that little
+shall be taken away."
+
+To become perfect it is not required that we should be born without any
+animal desires.  Such a person would not be much above an idiot;  he
+would be rightly despised and laughed at by every true man and woman;
+but we must obtain the power to control our desires, instead of being
+controlled by them;  and here lies the true philosophy of temptation.
+
+If a man has no higher aim in life than to eat and drink and propagate
+his species;  if all his aspirations and desires are centred in a wish
+of living a happy life in the bosom of his family;  there can be no
+wrong if he follows the dictates of his nature and is satisfied with his
+lot.  When he dies, his family will mourn, his friends will say he was a
+good fellow;  they will give him a first-class funeral, and they will
+perhaps write on his tombstone something like what I once saw in a
+certain churchyard:
+
+     Here is the grave of John McBride,
+     He lived, got married, and died.
+
+And that will be the end of Mr. John McBride, until in another
+incarnation he will wake up again perhaps as Mr. John Smith, or
+Ramchandra Row, or Patrick O'Flannegan, to find himself on much the same
+level as he was before.
+
+But if a man has higher aims and objects in life, if he wants to avoid
+an endless cycle of re-incarnations, if he wants to become a master of
+his destiny, then must he first become a master of himself.  How can he
+expect to be able to control the external forces of Nature, if he cannot
+control the few little natural forces that reside within his own
+insignificant body?
+
+To do this, it is not necessary that a man should run away from his wife
+and family, and leave them uncared for.  Such a man would commence his
+spiritual career with an act of injustice,--an act that like Banquo's
+ghost would always haunt him and hinder him in his further progress.  If
+a man has taken upon himself responsibilities, he is bound to fulfill
+them, and an act of cowardice would be a bad beginning for a work that
+requires courage.
+
+A celibate, who has no temptation and who has no one to care for but
+himself, has undoubtedly superior advantages for meditation and study.
+Being away from all irritating influences, he can lead what may be
+called a selfish life;  because he looks out only for his own spiritual
+interest;  but he has little opportunity to develop his will-power by
+resisting temptations of every kind.  But the man who is surrounded by
+the latter, and is every day and every hour under the necessity of
+exercising his will-power to resist their surging violence, will, if he
+rightly uses these powers, become strong;  he may not have as much
+opportunity for study as the celibate, being more engrossed in material
+cares;  but when he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation,
+his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession
+of the password, which is CONTINENCE.
+
+A slave cannot become a commander, until after he becomes free. A man
+who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal
+nature of others.  A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or
+habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental
+power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows
+strong by exercise;  and this is the use of temptations.  To have strong
+passions and to overcome them, makes man a hero.  The sexual instinct is
+the strongest of all, and he who vanquishes it, becomes a god.
+
+The human soul admires a beautiful form, and is therefore an idolater.
+
+The human spirit adores a principle, and is the true worshiper.
+
+Marriage is the union of the male spirit with the female soul for the
+purpose of propagating the species;  but if in its place there is only a
+union of a male and a female body, then marriage becomes merely a brutal
+act, which lowers man and woman, not to the level of animals but below
+them;  because animals are restricted to certain seasons for the
+exercise of their procreative powers;  while man, being a reasonable
+being, has it in his power to use or abuse them at all times.
+
+But how many marriages do we find that are really spiritual and not
+based on beauty of form or other considerations?  How soon after the
+wedding-day do they become disgusted with each other? What is the cause
+of this?  A man and a woman may marry and their characters may differ
+widely.  They may have different tastes, different opinions and
+different inclinations.  All those differences may disappear, and will
+probably disappear;  because by living together they become accustomed
+to each other, and become equalized in time.  Each influences the other,
+and as a man may grow fond of a pet snake, whose presence at first
+horrified him, so a man may put up with a disagreeable partner and
+become fond of her in course of time.
+
+But if the man allows full liberty to his animal passions, and exercises
+his "legal rights" without restraint, these animal cravings which first
+called so piteously for gratification, will soon be gorged, and flying
+away laugh at the poor fool who nursed them in his breast.  The wife
+will come to know that her husband is a coward, because she sees him
+squirm under the lash of his animal passions;  and as woman loves
+strength and power, so in proportion as he loses his love, will she lose
+her confidence. He will look upon her as a burden, and she will look
+upon him in disgust as a brute.  Conjugal happiness will have departed,
+and misery, divorce or death will be the end.
+
+The remedy for all these evils is continence, and it has been our object
+to show its necessity, for it was the object of this article.
+
+--F. Hartmann
+
+
+
+
+Zoroastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man
+
+
+Many of the esoteric doctrines given out through the Theosophical
+Society reveal a spirit akin to that of the older religions of the East,
+especially the Vedic and the Zendic.  Leaving aside the former, I
+propose to point out by a few instances the close resemblance which the
+doctrines of the old Zendic Scriptures, as far as they are now
+preserved, bear to these recent teachings.
+
+Any ordinary Parsi, while reciting his daily Niyashes, Gehs and Yashts,
+provided he yields to the curiosity of looking into the meanings of what
+he recites, will, with a little exertion, perceive how the same ideas,
+only clothed in a more intelligible and comprehensive garb, are
+reflected in these teachings.  The description of the septenary
+constitution of man found in the 54th chapter of the Yasna, one of the
+most authoritative books of the Mazdiasnian religion, shows the identity
+of the doctrines of Avesta and the esoteric philosophy.  Indeed, as a
+Mazdiasnian, I felt quite ashamed that, having such undeniable and
+unmistakable evidence before their eyes, the Zoroastrians of the present
+day should not avail themselves of the opportunity offered of throwing
+light upon their now entirely misunderstood and misinterpreted
+Scriptures by the assistance and under the guidance of the Theosophical
+Society.  If Zend scholars and students of Avesta would only care to
+study and search for themselves, they would, perhaps, find to assist
+them, men who are in possession of the right and only key to the true
+esoteric wisdom;  men, who would be willing to guide and help them to
+reach the true and hidden meaning, and to supply them with the missing
+links that have resulted in such painful gaps as to leave the meaning
+meaningless, and to create in the mind of the perplexed student doubts
+that finally culminate in a thorough unbelief in his own religion.  Who
+knows but they may find some of their own co-religionists, who, aloof
+from the world, have to this day preserved the glorious truths of their
+once mighty religion, and who, hidden in the recesses of solitary
+mountains and unknown silent caves, are still in possession of;  and
+exercising, mighty powers, the heirloom of the ancient Magi.  Our
+Scriptures say that ancient Mobeds were Yogis, who had the power of
+making themselves simultaneously visible at different places, even
+though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick
+and work that which would now appear to us miraculous.  All this was
+considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old
+books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori
+unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education.
+The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's
+conversion, is a well-known historical fact, requiring no proof.
+
+I will first of all quote side by side the two passages referring to the
+septenary nature of man as I find them in our Scriptures and the
+THEOSOPHIST--
+
+Sub-divisions of septenary        Sub-divisions of septenary
+man according to the              man according to Yasna
+Occultists.                       (chap.54, para. I).
+
+1. The Physical body, com-        1. Tanwas-i.e., body(the
+posed wholly of matter in its       self ) that consists of bones
+grossest and most tangible         -grossest form of matter.
+form.
+
+2. The Vital principle-(or Jiva)-  2. Ushtanas-Vital heat
+a form of force indestructible,        (or force).
+and when disconnected with
+one set of atoms, becoming
+attracted immediately by others.
+
+3. The Astral body (Linga-       3. Keherpas Aerial form,
+sharira) composed of highly          the airy mould, (Per. Kaleb).
+etherealized matter; in its
+habitual passive state, the
+perfect but very shadowy
+duplicate of the body; its
+activity, consolidation and
+form depending entirely on
+the Kama-rupa.
+
+4. The Astral shape (Kama-        4. Tevishis-Will, or where
+rupa or body of desire, a             sentient consciousness is
+principle defining the con-          formed, also fore-knowledge.
+figuration of--
+
+5. The animal or Physical          5. Baodhas (in Sanskrit,
+intelligence or Conscious-           Buddhi)-Body of physical
+ness or Ego, analogous to,            consciousness, perception by
+though proportionally higher          the senses or animal soul.
+in the senses or the animal
+degree than the reason,
+instinct, memory, imagination
+&c., existing in the higher
+animals.
+
+6. The Higher or Spiritual          6. Urawanem (Per. Rawan)
+intelligence or consciousness,        -Soul, that which gets its
+spiritual Ego, in which                or reward or punishment
+mainly resides the sense of            after death.
+consciousness in the perfect
+man, though the lower dimmer
+animal consciousness co-exists
+in No. 5.
+
+7. The Spirit-an emanation from       7. Frawashem or Farohar-
+the ABSOLUTE uncreated; eternal;      Spirit (the guiding energy
+a state rather than a being.          which is with every man,
+                                      is absolutely independent,
+                                      and, without mixing with
+                                      any worldly object, leads
+                                      man to good. The spark
+                                      of divinity in every being).
+
+
+The above is given in the Avesta as follows:--
+
+"We declare and positively make known this (that) we offer (our) entire
+property (which is) the body (the self consisting of) bones (tanwas),
+vital heat (ushtanas), aerial form (keherpas), knowledge (tevishis),
+consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem), to the
+prosperous, truth-coherent (and) pure Gathas (prayers)."
+
+The ordinary Gujarathi translation differs from Spiegel's, and this
+latter differs very slightly from what is here given.  Yet in the
+present translation there has been made no addition to, or omission
+from, the original wording of the Zend text.  The grammatical
+construction also has been preserved intact.  The only difference,
+therefore, between the current translations and the one here given is
+that ours is in accordance with the modern corrections of philological
+research which make it more intelligible, and the idea perfectly clear
+to the reader.
+
+The word translated "aerial form" has come down to us without undergoing
+any change in the meaning.  It is the modern Persian word kaleb, which
+means a mould, a shape into which a thing is cast, to take a certain
+form and features.  The next word is one about which there is a great
+difference of opinion.  It is by some called strength, durability, i.e.,
+that power which gives tenacity to and sustains the nerves.  Others
+explain it as that quality in a man of rank and position which makes him
+perceive the result of certain events (causes), and thus helps him in
+being prepared to meet them.  This meaning is suggestive, though we
+translate it as knowledge, or foreknowledge rather, with the greatest
+diffidence.  The eighth word is quite clear.  That inward feeling which
+tells a man that he knows this or that, that he has or can do certain
+things--is perception and consciousness. It is the inner conviction,
+knowledge and its possession.  The ninth word is again one which has
+retained its meaning and has been in use up to the present day.  The
+reader will at once recognize that it is the origin of the modern word
+Rawan.  It is (metaphorically) the king, the conscious motor or agent in
+man. It is that something which depends upon and is benefited or injured
+by the foregoing attributes.  We say depends upon, because its progress
+entirely consists in the development of those attributes.  If they are
+neglected, it becomes weak and degenerated, and disappears.  If they
+ascend on the moral and spiritual scale, it gains strength and vigour
+and becomes more blended than ever to the Divine essence--the seventh
+principle. But how does it become attracted toward its monad?  The tenth
+word answers the question.  This is the Divine essence in man. But this
+is only the irresponsible minister (this completes the metaphor).  The
+real master is the king, the spiritual soul.  It must have the
+willingness and power to see and follow the course pointed out by the
+pure spirit.  The vizir's business is only to represent a point of
+attraction, towards which the king should turn.  It is for the king to
+see and act accordingly for the glory of his own self.  The minister or
+spirit can neither compel nor constrain.  It inspires and electrifies
+into action;  but to benefit by the inspiration, to take advantage of
+it, is left to the option of the spiritual soul.
+
+If, then, the Avesta contains such a passage, it must fairly be admitted
+that its writers knew the whole doctrine concerning spiritual man.  We
+cannot suppose that the ancient Mazdiasnians, the Magi, wrote this short
+passage, without inferring from it, at the same time, that they were
+thoroughly conversant with the whole of the occult theory about man.
+And it looks very strange indeed, that modern Theosophists should now
+preach to us the very same doctrines that must have been known and
+taught thousands of years ago by the Mazdiasnians,--the passage is
+quoted from one of their oldest writings.  And since they propound the
+very same ideas, the meaning of which has well-nigh been lost even to
+our most learned Mobeds, they ought to be credited at least with some
+possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them,
+and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those
+hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about
+which we are still, and will go on, groping in the dark, unless we
+listen to what they have to tell us about them.
+
+To show that the above is not a solitary instance, but that the Avesta
+contains this idea in many other places, I will give another paragraph
+which contains the same doctrine, though in a more condensed form than
+the one just given.  Let the Parsi reader turn to Yasna, chapter 26, and
+read the sixth paragraph, which runs as follows:--
+
+We praise the life (ahum), knowledge (daenam), consciousness (baodhas),
+soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem) of the first in religion, the
+first teachers and hearers (learners), the holy men and holy women who
+were the protectors of purity here (in this world).
+
+Here the whole man is spoken of as composed of five parts, as under:--
+
+                                      1. The Physical Body.
+1. Ahum-Existence, Life.              2. The Vital Principle.
+It includes:                          3. The Astral Body.
+
+2. Daenam-Knowledge.                  4. The Astral shape or
+                                         body of desire.
+
+3. Baodhas-Consciousness.             5. The Animal or physical
+                                         intelligence or
+                                         consciousness or Ego.
+
+4. Urwanem-Soul.                      6. The Higher or Spiritual
+                                         intelligence or
+                                         consciousness, or
+                                         Spiritual Ego.
+
+5. Frawashem-Spirit.                  7. The Spirit.
+
+
+In this description the first triple group--viz., the bones (or the
+gross matter), the vital force which keeps them together, and the
+ethereal body, are included in one and called Existence, Life.  The
+second part stands for the fourth principle of the septenary man, as
+denoting the configuration of his knowledge or desires.*  Then the
+three, consciousness (or animal soul), (spiritual) soul, and the pure
+Spirit are the same as in the first quoted passage.  Why are these four
+mentioned as distinct from each other and not consolidated like the
+first part?  The sacred writings explain this by saying that on death
+the first of these five parts disappears and perishes sooner or later in
+the earth's atmosphere.  The gross elementary matter (the shell) has to
+run within the earth's attraction;  so the ahum separates from the
+higher portions and is lost.
+
+---------
+* Modern science also teaches that certain characteristics of features
+indicate the possession of certain qualities in a man. The whole science
+of physiognomy is founded on it.  One can predict the disposition of a
+man from his features,--i.e., the features develop in accordance with
+the idiosyncrasies, qualities and vices, knowledge or the ignorance of
+man.
+---------
+
+The second (i.e., the fourth of the septenary group) remains, but not
+with the spiritual soul.  It continues to hold its place in the vast
+storehouse of the universe.  And it is this second daenam which stands
+before the (spiritual) soul in the form of a beautiful maiden or an ugly
+hag.  That which brings this daenam within the sight of the (spiritual)
+soul is the third part (i.e., the fifth of the septenary group), the
+baodhas.  Or in other words, the (spiritual) soul has with it, or in it,
+the true consciousness by which it can view the experiences of its
+physical career.  So this consciousness, this power or faculty which
+brings the recollection, is always with, in other words, is a part and
+parcel of, the soul itself;  hence, its not mixing with any other part,
+and hence its existence after the physical death of man.*
+
+--A Parsi F.T.S.
+
+---------
+* Our Brother has but to look into the oldest sacred hooks of China--
+namely, the YI KING. or Book of Changes (translated by James Legge)
+written 1,200 B.C., to find that same Septenary division of man
+mentioned in that system of Divination.  Zhing, which is translated
+correctly enough "essence," is the more subtle and pure part of matter--
+the grosser form of the elementary ether;  Khi, or "spirit," is the
+breath, still material but purer than the zhing, and is made of the
+finer and more active form of ether.  In the hwun, or soul (animus) the
+Khi predominates and the zhing (or zing) in the pho or animal soul. At
+death the hwun (Or spiritual soul) wanders away, ascending, and the pho
+(the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat) descends and is changed into a
+ghostly shade (the shell).  Dr. Medhurst thinks that "the Kwei Shans"
+(see "Theology of the Chinese," pp. 10-12) are "the expanding and
+contracting principles of human life!" "The Kwei Shans" are brought
+about by the dissolution of the human frame--and consist of the
+expanding and ascending Shan which rambles about in space, and of the
+contracted and shrivelled Kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity.
+Therefore, the Kwei is the physical body;  the Shan is the vital
+principle the Kwei Shan  the linga-sariram, or the vital soul;  Zhing
+the fourth principle or Kama Rupa, the essence of will;  pho, the animal
+soul;  Khi, the spiritual soul;  and Hwun the pure spirit--the seven
+principles of our occult doctrine!--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+
+
+
+Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man
+
+
+It is now very difficult to say what was the real ancient Aryan
+doctrine.  If an inquirer were to attempt to answer it by an analysis
+and comparison of all the various systems of esotericism prevailing in
+India, he will soon be lost in a maze of obscurity and uncertainty.  No
+comparison between our real Brahmanical and the Tibetan esoteric
+doctrines will be possible unless one ascertains the teachings of that
+so-called "Aryan doctrine," and fully comprehends the whole range of the
+ancient Aryan philosophy.  Kapila's "Sankhya," Patanjali's "Yog
+philosophy," the different systems of "Saktaya" philosophy, the various
+Agamas and Tantras are but branches of it.  There is a doctrine, though,
+which is their real foundation, and which is sufficient to explain the
+secrets of these various systems of philosophy and harmonize their
+teachings.  It probably existed long before the Vedas were compiled, and
+it was studied by our ancient Rishis in connection with the Hindu
+scriptures.  It is attributed to one mysterious personage called
+Maha.*.....
+
+----------
+* The very title of the present chief of the esoteric Himalayan
+Brotherhood.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+The Upanishads and such portions of the Vedas as are not chiefly devoted
+to the public ceremonials of the ancient Aryans are hardly intelligible
+without some knowledge of that doctrine. Even the real significance of
+the grand ceremonials referred to in the Vedas will not be perfectly
+apprehended without its light being throw  upon them.  The Vedas were
+perhaps compiled mainly for the use of the priests assisting at public
+ceremonies, but the grandest conclusions of our real secret doctrine are
+therein mentioned.  I am informed by persons competent to judge of the
+matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning--one expressed by
+the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the
+swara (intonation), which are, as it were the life of the Vedas.
+Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything
+to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines;  but the mysterious
+connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets.
+
+Now, it is extremely difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived
+their doctrine from the ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient
+Brahrnans learned their occult science from the adepts of Tibet;  or,
+again, whether the adepts of both countries professed originally the
+same doctrine and derived it from a common source.*  If you were to go
+to the Sramana Balagula, and question some of the Jain Pundits there
+about the authorship of the Vedas and the origin of the Brahmanical
+esoteric doctrine, they would probably tell you that the Vedas were
+composed by Rakshasas** or Daityas, and that the Brahmans had derived
+their secret knowledge from them.***
+
+---------
+* See Appendix, Note I.
+
+** A kind of demons-devil.
+
+*** And so would the Christian padris.  But they would never admit that
+their "fallen angels" were borrowed from the Rakshasas;  that their
+"devil" is the illegitimate son of Dewel, the Sinhalese female demon;
+or that the "war in heaven" of the Apocalypse--the foundation of the
+Christian dogma of the "Fallen Angels" was copied from the Hindu story
+about Siva hurling the Tarakasura who rebelled against the gods into
+Andhahkara, the abode of Darkness, according to Brahmanical Shastras.
+---------
+
+Do these assertions mean that the Vedas and the Brahmanical esoteric
+teachings had their origin in the lost Atlantis--the continent that once
+occupied a considerable portion of the expanse of the Southern and the
+Pacific oceans?  The assertion in "Isis Unveiled," that Sanskrit was the
+language of the inhabitants of the said continent, may induce one to
+suppose that the Vedas had probably their origin there, wherever else
+might be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.*  But the real
+esoteric doctrine, as well as the mystic allegorical philosophy of the
+Vedas, were derived from another source again, whatever that may be--
+perchance from the divine inhabitants (gods) of the sacred island which
+once existed in the sea that covered in days of old the sandy tract now
+called Gobi Desert.  However that may be, the knowledge of the occult
+powers of Nature possessed by the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis was
+learnt by the ancient adepts of India, and was appended by them to the
+esoteric doctrine taught by the residents of the sacred island.**  The
+Tibetan adepts, however, have not accepted this addition to their
+esoteric doctrine;  and it is in this respect that one should expect to
+find a difference between the two doctrines.***
+
+----------
+* Not necessarily. (See Appendix, Note II.) It is generally held by
+Occultists that Sanskrit has been spoken in Java and adjacent islands
+from remote antiquity.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** A locality which is spoken of to this day by the Tibetans, and called
+by them "Scham-bha-la," the Happy Land. (See Appendix, Note III.)
+
+*** To comprehend this passage fully, the reader must turn to vol. I.
+pp. 589-594 of  "Isis Unveiled."
+--------
+
+The Brahmanical occult doctrine probably contains everything that was
+taught about the powers of Nature and their laws, either in the
+mysterious island of the North or in the equally mysterious continent of
+the South.  And if you mean to compare the Aryan and the Tibetan
+doctrines as regards their teachings about the occult powers of Nature,
+you must beforehand examine all the classifications of these powers,
+their laws and manifestations, and the real connotations of the various
+names assigned to them in the Aryan doctrine.  Here are some of the
+classifications contained in the Brahmanical system:
+
+   I. As appertaining to Parabrahmam and existing in the MACROCOSM.
+
+  II. As appertaining to man and existing in the MICROCOSM.
+
+ III. For the purposes of d Taraka Yog or Pranava Yog.
+
+  IV. For the purposes of Sankhya Yog (where they are, as it were,
+      the inherent attributes of Prakriti).
+
+   V. For the purposes of Hata Yog.
+
+  VI. For the purposes of Koula Agama.
+
+ VII. For the purposes of Sakta Agama.
+
+VIII. For the purposes of Siva Aqama.
+
+  IX. For the purposes of Sreechakram (the Sreechakram referred
+      to in "Isis Unveiled" is not the real esoteric Sreechakram
+      of the ancient adepts of Aryavarta).*
+
+--------
+* Very true. But who would be allowed to give out the "real" esoteric
+one?--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+   X. In Atharvena Veda, &c.
+
+In all these classifications subdivisions have been multiplied
+indefinitely by conceiving new combinations of the Primary Powers in
+different proportions.  But I must now drop this subject, and proceed to
+consider the "Fragments of Occult Truth" (since embodied in "Esoteric
+Buddhism").
+
+I have carefully examined it, and find that the results arrived at (in
+the Buddhist doctrine) do not differ much from the conclusions of our
+Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in
+form.  I shall now discuss the question from my own standpoint, though,
+following, for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion, the
+sequence of classification of the sevenfold entities or principles
+constituting man which is adopted in the "Fragments."  The questions
+raised for discussion are (1) whether the disembodied spirits of human
+beings (as they are called by Spiritualists) appear in the seance-rooms
+and elsewhere;  and (2) whether the manifestations taking place are
+produced wholly or partly through their agency.
+
+It is hardly possible to answer these two questions satisfactorily
+unless the meaning intended to be conveyed by the expression
+"disembodied spirits of human beings" be accurately defined. The words
+spiritualism and spirit are very misleading.  Unless English writers in
+general, and Spiritualists in particular, first ascertain clearly the
+connotation they mean to assign to the word spirit, there will be no end
+of confusion, and the real nature of these so-called spiritualistic
+phenomena and their modus occurrendi can never be clearly defined.
+Christian writers generally speak of only two entities in man--the body,
+and the soul or spirit (both seeming to mean the same thing to them).
+European philosophers generally speak of body and mind, and argue that
+soul or spirit cannot be anything else than mind. They are of opinion
+that any belief in lingasariram* is entirely unphilosophical.  These
+views are certainly incorrect, and are based on unwarranted assumptions
+as to the possibilities of Nature, and on an imperfect understanding of
+its laws.  I shall now examine (from the standpoint of the Brahmanical
+esoteric doctrine) the spiritual constitution of man, the various
+entities or principles existing in him, and ascertain whether either of
+those entities entering into his composition can appear on earth after
+his death, and if so, what it is that so appears.
+
+--------
+* The astral body, so called.
+--------
+
+Professor Tyndall in his excellent papers on what he calls the "Germ
+Theory," comes to the following conclusions as the result of a series of
+well-planned experiments:--Even in a very small volume of space there
+are myriads of protoplasmic germs floating in ether.  If, for instance,
+say water (clear water) is exposed to them, and if they fall into it,
+some form of life or other will be evolved out of them.  Now, what are
+the agencies for the bringing of this life into existence?  Evidently--
+
+I. The water, which is the field, so to say, for the growth
+of life.
+
+II. The protoplasmic germ, out of which life or a living organism
+is to be evolved or developed. And lastly--
+
+III. The power, energy, force, or tendency which springs into activity
+at the touch or combination of the protoplasmic germ and the water, and
+which evolves or develops life and its natural attributes.
+
+Similarly, there are three primary causes which bring the human being
+into existence.  I shall call them, for the purpose of discussion, by
+the following names
+
+(1) Parabrahmam, the Universal Spirit.
+
+(2) Sakti, the crown of the astral light, combining in itself all the
+powers of Nature.
+
+(3) Prakriti, which in its original or primary shape is represented by
+Akasa.  (Really every form of matter is finally reducible to Akasa.)*
+
+It is ordinarily stated that Prakriti or Akasa is the Kshetram, or the
+basis which corresponds to water in the example we have taken Brahmam
+the germ, and Sakti, the power or energy that comes into existence at
+their union or contact.**
+
+--------
+* The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic
+matter, out of which all visible forms are produced;  and Akasa, that
+same cosmic matter, but still more subjective--its spirit, as it were.
+Prakriti being the body or substance, and Akasa Sakti its soul or
+energy.
+
+** Or, in other words, "Prakriti, Swabhavat, or Akasa, is SPACE, as the
+Tibetans have it;  Space filled with whatsoever substance or no
+substance at all--i.e., with substance so imperceptible as to be only
+metaphysically conceivable.  Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown
+into the soil of that field, and Sakti, that mysterious energy or force
+which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahat of Tibet,
+FOHAT.  That which we call form (rupa) is not different from that which
+we call space (sunyata)....  Space is not different from form.  Form is
+the same as space;  space is the same as form.  And so with the other
+skandhas, whether vedana, or sanjna, or sanskara, or vijnana, they are
+each the same as their opposite." .... (Book of Sin-king, or the "Heart
+Sutra." Chinese translation of the "Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra,"
+chapter on the "Avalokiteshwara," or the manifested Buddha.)  So that
+the Aryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance,
+differing but in names given and the way of putting it.
+---------
+
+But this is not the view which the Upanishads take of the question.
+According to them, Brahamam* is the Kshetram or basis, Akasa or
+Prakriti, the germ or seed, and Sakti, the power evolved by their union
+or contact.  And this is the real scientific, philosophical mode of
+stating the case.
+
+--------
+* See Appendix, Note IV.
+--------
+
+Now, according to the adepts of ancient Aryavarta, seven principles are
+evolved out of these three primary entities. Algebra teaches us that the
+number of combinations of n things, taken one at a time, two at a time,
+three at a time, and so forth = 2(n)-1.
+
+Applying this formula to the present case, the number of entities
+evolved from different combinations of these three primary causes
+amounts to 2(3)-1 = 8-1 = 7.
+
+As a general rule, whenever seven entities are mentioned in the ancient
+occult science of India, in any connection whatsoever, you must suppose
+that those seven entities came into existence from three primary
+entities;  and that these three entities, again, are evolved out of a
+single entity or MONAD.  To take a familiar example, the seven coloured
+rays in the solar ray are evolved out of three primary coloured rays;
+and the three primary colours coexist with the four secondary colours in
+the solar rays.  Similarly, the three primary entities which brought man
+into existence co-exist in him with the four secondary entities which
+arose from different combinations of the three primary entities.
+
+Now these seven entities, which in their totality constitute man, are as
+follows.  I shall enumerate them in the order adopted in the
+"Fragments," as far as the two orders (the Brahmanical and the Tibetan)
+coincide:--
+
+                                 Corresponding names in
+                                  Esoteric Buddhism.
+
+I. Prakriti.                      Sthulasariram
+(Physical Body).
+
+II. The entity evolved
+out of the combination            Sukshmasariram or Lingasariram
+of Prakriti and Sakti.             (Astral Body).
+
+III. Sakti.                       Kamarupa (the Perispirit).
+
+IV. The entity evolved out
+of the combination of             Jiva (Life-Soul).
+Brahmam, Sakti and
+Prakriti.
+
+V. The entity evolved out
+of the combination of             Physical Intelligence (or
+Brahmam and Prakriti.              animal soul).
+
+
+
+VI. The entity evolved
+out of the combination of         Spiritual Intelligence (or Soul).
+Brahmam and Sakti.
+
+VII. Brahmam.                     The emanation from the ABSOLUTE,
+                                   &c. (or pure spirit.)
+
+Before proceeding to examine these nature of these seven entities, a few
+general explanations are indispensably necessary.
+
+I. The secondary principles arising out of the combination of primary
+principles are quite different in their nature from the entities out of
+whose combination they came into existence.  The combinations in
+question are not of the nature of mere mechanical juxtapositions, as it
+were.  They do not even correspond to chemical combinations.
+Consequently no valid inferences as regards the nature of the
+combinations in question can be drawn by analogy from the nature
+[variety?] of these combinations.
+
+II. The general proposition, that when once a cause is removed its
+effect vanishes, is not universally applicable.  Take, for instance, the
+following example:--If you once communicate a certain amount of momentum
+to a ball, velocity of a particular degree in a particular direction is
+the result.  Now, the cause of this motion ceases to exist when the
+instantaneous sudden impact or blow which conveyed the momentum is
+completed;  but according to Newton's first law of motion, the ball will
+continue to move on for ever and ever, with undiminished velocity in the
+same direction, unless the said motion is altered, diminished,
+neutralized, or counteracted by extraneous causes.  Thus, if the ball
+stop, it will not be on account of the absence of the cause of its
+motion, but in consequence of the existence of extraneous causes which
+produce the said result.
+
+Again, take the instance of subjective phenomena.
+
+Now the presence of this ink-bottle before me is producing in me, or in
+my mind, a mental representation of its form, volume, colour and so
+forth.
+
+The bottle in question may be removed, but still its mental picture may
+continue to exist.  Here, again, you see, the effect survives the cause.
+Moreover, the effect may at any subsequent time be called into conscious
+existence, whether the original cause be present or not.
+
+Now, in the ease of the filth principle above mentioned-the entity that
+came into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti--if the
+general proposition (in the "Fragments of Occult Truth") is correct,
+this principle, which corresponds to the physical intelligence, must
+cease to exist whenever the Brahmam or the seventh Principle should
+cease to exist for the particular individual;  but the fact is certainly
+otherwise.  The general proposition under consideration is adduced in
+the "Fragments" in support of the assertion that whenever the seventh
+principle ceases to exist for any particular individual, the sixth
+principle also ceases to exist for him.  The assertion is undoubtedly
+true, though the mode of stating it and the reasons assigned for it, are
+to my mind objectionable.
+
+It is said that in cases where tendencies of a man's mind are entirely
+material, and all spiritual aspirations and thoughts were altogether
+absent from his mind, the seventh principle leaves him either before or
+at the time of death, and the sixth principle disappears with it.  Here,
+the very proposition that the tendencies of the particular individual's
+mind are entirely material, involves the assertion that there is no
+spiritual intelligence or spiritual Ego in him, it should then have been
+said that, whenever spiritual intelligence ceases to exist in any
+particular individual, the seventh principle ceases to exist for that
+particular individual for all purposes.  Of course, it does not fly off
+anywhere.  There can never be any thing like a change of position in the
+case of Brahmam.*  The assertion merely means that when there is no
+recognition whatever of Brahmam, or spirit, or spiritual life, or
+spiritual consciousness, the seventh principle has ceased to exercise
+any influence or control over the individual's destinies.
+
+--------
+* True--from the standpoint of Aryan Exotericism and the Upanishads, not
+quite so in the case of the Arahat or Tibetan esoteric doctrine;  and it
+is only on this one solitary point that the two teachings disagree, as
+far as we know.  The difference is very trifling, though, resting as it
+does solely upon the two various methods of viewing the one and the same
+thing from two different aspects.  (See Appendix, Note IV.)
+--------
+
+I shall now state what is meant (in the Aryan doctrine) by the seven
+principles above enumerated.
+
+I. Prakriti.  This is the basis of Sthulasariram, and represents it in
+the above-mentioned classification.
+
+II. Prakriti and Sakti.  This is the Lingasariram, or astral body.
+
+III. Sukti.  This principle corresponds to your Kamarupa. This power or
+force is placed by ancient occultists in the Nabhichakram.  This power
+can gather akasa or prakriti, and mould it into any desired shape.  It
+has very great sympathy with the fifth principle, and can be made to act
+by its influence or control.
+
+IV. Brahmam and Sakti, and Prakriti.  This again corresponds to your
+second principle, Jiva.
+
+This power represents the universal life-principle which exists in
+Nature.  Its seat is the Anahatachakram (heart).  It is a force or power
+which constitutes what is called Jiva, or life. It is, as you say,
+indestructible, and its activity is merely transferred at the time of
+death to another set of atoms, to form another organism.
+
+V. Brahma and Prakriti.  This, in our Aryan philosophy, corresponds to
+your fifth principle, called the physical intelligence.  According to
+our philosophers, this is the entity in which what is called mind has
+its seat or basis.  This is the most difficult principle of all to
+explain, and the present discussion entirely turns upon the view we take
+of it.
+
+Now, what is mind?  It is a mysterious something, which is considered to
+be the seat of consciousness--of sensations, emotions, volitions, and
+thoughts.  Psychological analysis shows it to be apparently a congeries
+of mental states, and possibilities of mental states, connected by what
+is called memory, and considered to have a distinct existence apart from
+any of its particular states or ideas.  Now in what entity has this
+mysterious something its potential or actual existence? Memory and
+expectation, which form, as it were, the real foundation of what is
+called individuality, or Ahankaram, must have their seat of existence
+somewhere.  Modern psychologists of Europe generally say that the
+material substance of brain is the seat of mind;  and that past
+subjective experiences, which can he recalled by memory, and which in
+their totality constitute what is called individuality, exist therein in
+the shape of certain unintelligible mysterious impressions and changes
+in the nerves and nerve-centres of the cerebral hemispheres.
+Consequently, they say, the mind--the individual mind--is destroyed when
+the body is destroyed;  so there is no possible existence after death.
+
+But there are a few facts among those admitted by these philosophers
+which are sufficient for us to demolish their theory.  In every portion
+of the human body a constant change goes on without intermission.  Every
+tissue, every muscular fibre and nerve-tube, and every ganglionic centre
+in the brain, is undergoing an incessant change.  In the course of a
+man's lifetime there may be a series of complete tranformations of the
+substance of his brain.  Nevertheless, the memory of his past mental
+states remains unaltered.  There may be additions of new subjective
+experiences and some mental states may be altogether forgotten, but no
+individual mental state is altered.  The person's sense of personal
+identity remains the same throughout these constant alterations in the
+brain substance.*  It is able to survive all these changes, and it can
+survive also the complete destruction of the material substance of the
+brain.
+
+--------
+* This is also sound Buddhist philosophy, the transformation in
+question being known as the change of the skandhas.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+This individuality arising from mental consciousness has its seat of
+existence, according to our philosophers, in an occult power or force,
+which keeps a registry, as it were, of all our mental impressions.  The
+power itself is indestructible, though by the operation of certain
+antagonistic causes its impressions may in course of time be effaced, in
+part or wholly.
+
+I may mention in this connection that our philosophers have
+associated seven occult powers with the seven principles or entities
+above-mentioned.  These seven occult powers in the microcosm correspond
+with, or are the counterparts of, the occult powers in the macrocosm.
+The mental and spiritual consciousness of the individual becomes the
+general consciousness of Brahmam, when the barrier of individuality is
+wholly removed, and when the seven powers in the microcosm are placed
+en rapport with the seven powers in the macrocosm.
+
+There is nothing very strange in a power, or force, or sakti, carrying
+with it impressions of sensations, ideas, thoughts, or other subjective
+experiences.  It is now a well-known fact, that an electric or magnetic
+current can convey in some mysterious manner impressions of sound or
+speech, with all their individual peculiarities;  similarly, I can
+convey my thoughts to you by a transmission of energy or power.
+
+Now, this fifth principle represents in our philosophy the mind, or, to
+speak more correctly, the power or force above described, the
+impressions of the mental states therein, and the notion of
+self-identity or Ahankaram generated by their collective operation.
+This principle is called merely physical intelligence in the
+"Fragments."  I do not know what is really meant by this expression.  It
+may be taken to mean that intelligence which exists in a very low state
+of development in the lower animals. Mind may exist in different stages
+of development, from the very lowest forms of organic life, where the
+signs of its existence or operation can hardly be distinctly realized,
+up to man, in whom it reaches its highest state of development.
+
+In fact, from the first appearance of life* up to Tureeya Avastha, or
+the state of Nirvana, the progress is, as it were, continuous.
+
+--------
+* In the Aryan doctrine, which blends Brahmam, Sakti, and Prakriti in
+one, it is the fourth principle then, in the Buddhist esotericisms the
+second in combination with the first.
+--------
+
+We ascend from that principle up to the seventh by almost imperceptible
+gradations.  But four stages are recognized in the progress where the
+change is of a peculiar kind, and is such as to arrest an observer's
+attention.  These four stages are as follows:--
+
+(1) Where life (fourth principle) makes its appearance.
+
+(2) Where the existence of mind becomes perceptible in conjunction with
+life.
+
+(3) Where the highest state of mental abstraction ends, and spiritual
+consciousness commences.
+
+(4) Where spiritual consciousness disappears, leaving the seventh
+principle in a complete state of Nirvana, or nakedness.
+
+According to our philosophers, the fifth principle under consideration
+is intended to represent the mind in every possible state of
+development, from the second stage up to the third stage.
+
+IV. Brahmam and Sakti.  This principle corresponds to your "spiritual
+intelligence."  It is, in fact, Buddhi (I use the word Buddhi not in the
+ordinary sense, but in the sense in which it is used by our ancient
+philosophers);  in other words, it is the seat of Bodha or Atmabodha.
+One who has Atmabodha in its completeness is a Buddha.  Buddhists know
+very well what this term signifies.  This principle is described in the
+"Fragments" as  an entity coming into existence by the combination of
+Brahmam and Prakriti.   I do not again know in what particular sense the
+word Prakriti is used in this connection.  According to our philosophers
+it is an entity arising from the union of Brahmam and Sakti.  I have
+already explained the connotation attached by our philosophers to the
+words Prakriti and Sakti.
+
+I stated that Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa.*
+
+If Akasa be considered to be Sakti or power** then my statement as
+regards the ultimate state of Prakriti is likely to give rise to
+confusion and misapprehension unless I explain the distinction between
+Akasa and Sakti.  Akasa is not, properly speaking, the crown of the
+astral light, nor does it by itself constitute any of the six primary
+forces.  But, generally speaking, whenever any phenomenal result is
+produced, Sakti acts in conjunction with Akasa.  And, moreover, Akasa
+serves as a basis or Adhishthanum for the transmission of force currents
+and for the formation or generation of force or power correlations.***
+
+--------
+* According to the Buddhists, in Akasa lies that eternal, potential
+energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of
+itself.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** It was never so considered, as we have shown it.  But as the
+"Fragments" are written in English, a language lacking such an abundance
+of metaphysical terms to express ever minute change of form, substance
+and state as are found in the Sanskrit, it was deemed useless to confuse
+the Western reader, untrained in the methods of Eastern expression, more
+than is necessary, with a too nice distinctions of proper technical
+terms.  As "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," and Sakti "is an
+attribute AKASA," it becomes evident that for the uninitiated it is all
+one.  Indeed, to speak of the "union of Brahmam and Prakriti" instead of
+"Brahmam and Sakti" is no worse than for a theist to write that "That
+man has come into existence by the combination of spirit and matter,"
+whereas, his word, framed in an orthodox shape, ought to read "man is a
+living soul was created by the power (or breath) of God over matter."
+
+*** That is to say, the Aryan Akasa is another word for Buddhist SPACE
+(in its metaphysical meaning).--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+In Mantrasastra the letter Ha represents Akasa, and you will find that
+this syllable enters into most of the sacred formula intended to be used
+in producing phenomenal results.  But by itself it does not represent
+any Sakti.  You may, if you please, call Sakti an attribute of Akasa.
+
+I do not think that, as regards the nature of this principle, there can
+in reality exist any difference of opinion between the Buddhist and
+Brahmanical philosophers.
+
+Buddhist and Brahmanical initiates know very well that mysterious
+circular mirror composed of two hemispheres which reflects as it were
+the rays emanating from the "burning bush" and the blazing star--the
+spiritual sun Shining in CHIDAKASAM.
+
+The spiritual impressions constituting this principle have their
+existence in an occult power associated with the entity in question.
+The successive incarnations of Buddha, in fact, mean the successive
+transfers of this mysterious power, or the impressions thereof.  The
+transfer is only possible when the Mahatma* who transfers it has
+completely identified himself with his seventh principle, has
+annihilated his Ahankaram, and reduced it to ashes in CHIDAGNIKUNDUM,
+and has succeeded in making his thoughts correspond with the eternal
+laws of Nature and in becoming a co-worker with Nature.  Or, to put the
+same thing in other words, when he has attained the state of Nirvana,
+the condition of final negation, negation of individual, or separate
+existence.**
+
+---------
+* The highest adept.
+
+* In the words of Agatha in the "Maha-pari-Nirvana Sutra,"
+     "We reach a condition of rest
+     Beyond the limit of any human knowledge"
+--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+VII. Atma.--The emanation from the absolute, corresponding to the
+seventh principle.  As regards this entity there exists positively no
+real difference of opinion between the Tibetan Buddhist adepts and our
+ancient Rishis.
+
+We must now consider which of these entities can appear after the
+individual's death in seance-rooms and produce the so-called
+spiritualistic phenomena.
+
+Now, the assertion of the Spiritualists, that the "disembodied spirits"
+of particular human beings appear in seance-rooms, necessarily implies
+that the entity that so appears bears the stamp of some particular
+personality.
+
+So, we have to ascertain beforehand in what entity or entities
+personality has its seat of existence.  Apparently it exists in the
+person's particular formation of body, and in his subjective experiences
+(called his mind in their totality).  On the death of the individual his
+body is destroyed;  his lingasariram being decomposed, the power
+associated with it becomes mingled in the current of the corresponding
+power in the macrocosm. Similarly, the third and fourth principles are
+mingled with their corresponding powers.  These entities may again enter
+into the composition of other organisms.  As these entities bear no
+impression of personality, the Spiritualists have no right to say that
+the disembodied spirit of the human being has appeared in the
+seance-room whenever any of these entities may appear there. In fact,
+they have no means of ascertaining that they belonged to any particular
+individual.
+
+Therefore, we must only consider whether any of the last three entities
+appear in seance-rooms to amuse or to instruct Spiritualists.  Let us
+take three particular examples of individuals, and see what becomes of
+these three principles after death.
+
+I. One in whom spiritual attachments have greater force than terrestrial
+attachments.
+
+II. One in whom spiritual aspirations do exist, but are merely of
+secondary importance to him, his terrestrial interests occupying the
+greater share of his attention.
+
+III. One in whom there exists no spiritual aspirations whatsoever, one
+whose spiritual Ego is dead or non-existent to his apprehension.
+
+We need not consider the case of a complete adept in this connection.
+In the first two cases, according to our supposition, spiritual and
+mental experiences exist together;  when spiritual consciousness exists,
+the existence of the seventh principle being recognized, it maintains
+its connection with the fifth and sixth principles.  But the existence
+of terrestrial attachments creates the necessity of Punarjanmam
+(re-birth), the latter signifying the evolution of a new set of
+objective and subjective experiences, constituting a new combination of
+surrounding circumstances, or, in other words, a new world.  The period
+between death and the next subsequent birth is occupied with the
+preparation required for the evolution of these new experiences.  During
+the period of incubation, as you call it, the spirit will never of its
+own accord appear in this world, nor can it so appear.
+
+There is a great law in this universe which consists in the reduction of
+subjective experiences to objective phenomena, and the evolution of the
+former from the latter.  This is otherwise called "cyclic necessity."
+Man is subjected to this law if he do not check and counterbalance the
+usual destiny or fate, and he can only escape its control by subduing
+all his terrestrial attachments completely.  The new combination of
+circumstances under which he will then be placed may be better or worse
+than the terrestrial conditions under which he lived;  but in his
+progress to a new world, you may be sure he will never turn around to
+have a look at his spiritualistic friends.
+
+In the third of the above three cases there is, by our supposition, no
+recognition of spiritual consciousness or of spirits;  so they are
+non-existing so far as he is concerned.  The case is similar to that of
+an organ or faculty which remains unused for a long time.  It then
+practically ceases to exist.
+
+These entities, as it were, remain his, or in his possession, when they
+are stamped with the stamp of recognition.  When such is not the case,
+the whole of his individuality is centred in his fifth principle.  And
+after death this fifth principle is the only representative of the
+individual in question.
+
+By itself it cannot evolve for itself a new set of objective
+experiences, or, to say the same thing in other words, it has no
+punarjanmam.  It is such an entity that can appear in seance-rooms;  but
+it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit.* It is merely a power or
+force retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the
+individual into whose composition it originally entered.  It sometimes
+summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates for itself some
+particular ethereal form (not necessarily human).
+
+--------
+* It is especially on this point that the Aryan and Arahat doctrines
+quite agree.  The teaching and argument that follow are in every respect
+those of the Buddhist Himalayan Brotherhood.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+Its tendencies of action will be similar to those of the individual's
+mind when he was living.  This entity maintains its existence so long as
+the impressions on the power associated with the fifth principle remain
+intact.  In course of time they are effaced, and the power in question
+is then mixed up in the current of its corresponding power in the
+MACROCOSM, as the river loses itself in the sea.  Entities like these
+may afford signs of there having been considerable intellectual power in
+the individuals to which they belonged;  because very high intellectual
+power may co-exist with utter absence of spiritual consciousness.  But
+from this circumstance it cannot be argued that either the spirits or
+the spiritual Egos of deceased individuals appear in seance-rooms.
+
+There are some people in India who have thoroughly studied the nature of
+such entities (called Pisacham).  I do not know much about them
+experimentally, as I have never meddled with this disgusting,
+profitless, and dangerous branch of investigation.
+
+The Spiritualists do not know what they are really doing.  Their
+investigations are likely to result in course of time either in wicked
+sorcery or in the utter spiritual ruin of thousands of men and women.*
+
+--------
+* We share entirely in this idea.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+The views I have herein expressed have been often illustrated by our
+ancient writers by comparing the course of a man's life or existence to
+the orbital motion of a planet round the sun. Centripetal force is
+spiritual attraction, and centrifugal terrestrial attraction.  As the
+centripetal force increases in magnitude in comparison with the
+centrifugal force, the planet approaches the sun--the individual reaches
+a higher plane of existence.  If, on the other hand, the centrifugal
+force becomes greater than the centripetal force, the planet is removed
+to a greater distance from the sun, and moves in a new orbit at that
+distance--the individual comes to a lower level of existence. These are
+illustrated in the first two instances I have noticed above.
+
+We have only to consider the two extreme cases.
+
+When the planet in its approach to the sun passes over the line where
+the centripetal and centrifugal force completely neutralize each other,
+and is only acted on by the centripetal force, it rushes towards the sun
+with a gradually increasing velocity, and is finally mixed up with the
+mass of the sun's body. This is the case of a complete adept.
+
+Again, when the planet in its retreat from the sun reaches a point where
+the centrifugal force becomes all-powerful, it flies off in a tangential
+direction from its orbit, and goes into the depths of void space.  When
+it ceases to be under the control of the sun, it gradually gives up its
+generative heat, and the creative energy that it originally derived from
+the sun, and remains a cold mass of material particles wandering through
+space until the mass is completely decomposed into atoms.  This cold
+mass is compared to the fifth principle under the conditions above
+noticed, and the heat, light, and energy that left it are compared to
+the sixth and seventh principles.
+
+Either after assuming a new orbit or in its course of deviation from the
+old orbit to the new, the planet can never go back to any point in its
+old orbit, as the various orbits lying in different planes never
+intersect each other.
+
+This figurative representation correctly explains the ancient
+Brahmanical theory on the subject.  It is merely a branch of what is
+called the Great Law of the Universe by the ancient mystics.
+
+--T. Subba Row
+
+
+
+Appendix
+
+
+Note I.
+
+In this connection it will be well to draw the reader's attention to the
+fact that the country called "Si-dzang" by the Chinese, and Tibet by
+Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the
+province of Fo-kien (the headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the
+great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages.  According to these
+records, it was inhabited by the "Teachers of Light," the "Sons of
+Wisdom" and the "Brothers of the Sun."  The Emperor Yu the "Great" (2207
+B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult
+wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him--for he was the
+first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal
+authority--from Si-dzang.  That system was the same as with the old
+Egyptians and the Chaldees;  that which we know to have existed in the
+Brahmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet--namely, all the
+learning, power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were
+concentrated within the hierarchy of the priests and limited to their
+caste.  Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a question which no
+ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present.  They practice the
+Bhon religion, their sect is a pre-and anti-Buddhistic one, and they
+are to be found mostly in the province of Kam.  That is all that is
+known of them.  But even that would justify the supposition that they
+are the greatly degenerated descendants of mighty and wise forefathers.
+Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their
+rites--now those of sorcery, incantations, and Nature-worship--remind
+one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the
+records preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious
+practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse (a religion based upon pure
+reason and spirituality), as alleged by some.  Generally, little or no
+difference is made, even by the Kyelang missionaries, who mix greatly
+with these people on the borders of British Lahoul and ought to know
+better, between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow
+Caps and the Red Caps.  The latter of these have opposed the reform of
+Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so
+greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons.  Were our
+Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian
+Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an
+undeniable connection between the two.  To begin an argument here,
+proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of
+the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether
+we call them the Akkadians (a name invented by F. Lenormant), or the
+primitive Turanians, Chaldees, and Assyrians, is out of the question.
+Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric
+doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan.  And when we remember that the Vedas came,
+agreeably to all traditions, from the Mansarawara Lake in Tibet, and the
+Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on
+the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as
+having proceeded from one and the same source;  and to thus call it the
+"Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion. "Seek
+for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet,"
+was the advice of Swedenborg the seer.
+
+Note II.
+
+Not necessarily, we say.  The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these,
+Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India.  They were
+never indigenous to its soil.  There was a time when the ancient nations
+of the West included under the generic name of India many of the
+countries of Asia now classified under other names.  There was an Upper,
+a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period
+of Alexander;  and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient
+classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary
+were considered by them as forming part of India.  When we say,
+therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of
+the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia,
+and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, pre-historic India,
+India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost "Atlantis"
+formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and
+ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania.
+
+Note III.
+
+To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study
+well the Chinese sacred and historical records--a people whose era
+begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.).  A people so accurate, and
+by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its
+so much boasted modern science were anticipated--such as the compass,
+gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.--known and practiced
+thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans,
+ought to receive some trust for their records.  And from Lao-tze down to
+Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references
+to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts.  In the "Catena
+of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese," by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there
+is a chapter "On the TIAN-TA'I School of Buddhism" (pp. 244-258) which
+our opponents ought to read.  Translating the rules of that most
+celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-K'hae,
+called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming
+to the sentence which reads "That which relates to the one garment
+(seamless) worn by the GREAT TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS, the school
+of the Haimavatas" (p. 256), the European translator places after the
+last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may.  The statistics
+of the school of the "Haimavatas," or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are
+not to be found in the general census records of India.  Further, Mr.
+Beal translates a rule relating to "the great professors of the higher
+order who live in mountain depths remote from men," the Aranyakas, or
+hermits.
+
+So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart
+from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the Chinese
+and Tibetan sacred books, the legend is alive to this day among the
+people of Tibet.  The fair island is no more, but the country where it
+once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of
+the "great teachers of the Snowy Mountains," however much convulsed and
+changed its topography by the awful cataclysm.  Every seventh year these
+teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-BHA-LA, the "Happy Land."
+According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west of
+Tibet.  Some place it within the unexplored central regions,
+inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes;  others hem it in
+between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of
+the Gobi desert, south and north, and the more populated regions of
+Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British India), and China,
+west and east, which affords to the curious mind a pretty large latitude
+to locate it in.  Others still place it between Namur Nur and the
+Kuen-Lun Mountains, but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and
+speak of it as a fertile fairy-like land once an island, now an oasis of
+incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the
+esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary island.
+
+In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic
+Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern
+geologists-that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof that the
+substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?
+
+Note IV.
+
+We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference
+between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a
+kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as
+transcendental Buddhism.  If the Aryan esotericism applies the term
+jivatma to the seventh principle--the pure and per se unconscious
+spirit--it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of
+existence--(1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the
+vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or
+illusory life)--makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent
+one.  Brahma, or the ONE'S SELF, is its only representative in the
+universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are
+but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and
+complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses.  The Buddhists,
+on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to
+that one Self-Existence.  Buddha declares that there is neither Creator
+nor an Absolute Being.  Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the
+insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in
+the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation,
+and wherever there is relation there is dualism."  The ONE LIFE is
+either "MUKTA" (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to
+anything nor to any one;  or it is "BADDHA" (bound and conditioned), and
+then it cannot be called the absolute;  the limitation, moreover,
+necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all
+the evil in this world.  Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony
+admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated
+UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for
+want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the
+universe;  a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever
+was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether
+there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles
+of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara,
+and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and
+natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which
+take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti;  guided by
+the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a
+conscious deity, the theists would say;  the eternal energy of an
+eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists.  Space, then, or "Fan,
+Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness,"
+is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute.  (See Confucius' "Praise of the
+Abyss.")  The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to
+the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or
+contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can
+develop active conscious life;  and that to the question "how can
+unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the answer would be:  "Was the
+seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?"
+
+Note V.
+
+To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must
+not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this connection
+with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God.  The Upanishads--the Vedanta
+Scriptures--mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any
+allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute
+of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with
+the masculine Brahma of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti.  Some Orientalists
+rightly believe the name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or
+increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of
+Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout
+the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness,
+the one Life and the only Reality.
+
+--H.P. Blavatsky
+
+
+
+
+Septenary Division in Different Indian Systems
+
+
+We give below in a tabular form the classifications, adopted by
+Buddhist and by Vedantic teachers, of the principles in man:--
+
+Classification in      Vedantic         Classification in
+Esoteric Buddhism    Classification      Taraka Raja Yoga
+
+(1.) Sthula sarira      Annamaya kosa       Sthulopadhi
+
+(2.) Prana
+                        Pranamaya kosa
+(3.)The Vehicle
+       of Prana
+
+(4.) Kama rupa
+   (a) Volitions        Manomaya kosa
+(5.) Mind/& feelings &c.                    Sukshmopadhi
+   (b) Vignanam         Vignanamayakosa
+
+(6.) Spiritual Soul     Anandamayakosa      Karanopadhi
+
+(7.) Atma               Atma                Atma
+
+From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the
+Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic
+division as it is merely the vehicle of prana.  It will also be seen
+that the fourth principle is included in the third kosa (sheath), as the
+said principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy
+of the mind.  It must also be noticed that the Vignanamayakosa is
+considered to be distinct from the Manomayakosa, as a division is made
+after death between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a
+closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its
+higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact,
+the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.
+
+We may also here point out to our readers that the classification
+mentioned in the last column is for all practical purposes connected
+with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest.  Though there are seven
+principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in each
+of which his Atma may work independently of the rest.  These three
+Upadhis can be separated by an adept without killing himself.  He cannot
+separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his
+constitution.
+
+--T.S.
+
+
+
+
+The Septenary Principle in Esotericism
+
+
+Since the exposition of the Arhat esoteric doctrine was begun, many who
+had not acquainted themselves with the occult basis of Hindu philosophy
+have imagined that the two were in conflict. Some of the more bigoted
+have openly charged the Occultists of the Theosophical Society with
+propagating rank Buddhistic heresy; and have even gone to the length of
+affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic
+propaganda.  We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans
+that our septenary divisions of Nature and everything in it, including
+man, are arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of
+the East.  It is now proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas,
+the Upanishads, the Law-Books of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and
+show that they too support our position.  Even in their crude
+exotericism their affirmation of the sevenfold division is apparent.
+Passage after passage may be cited in proof.  And not only can the
+mysterious number be found traced on every page of the oldest Aryan
+Sacred Scriptures, but in the oldest books of Zoroastrianism as well;
+in the rescued cylindrical tile records of old Babylonia and Chaldea, in
+the "Book of the Dead" and the Ritualism of ancient Egypt, and even in
+the Mosaic books--without mentioning the secret Jewish works, such as
+the Kabala.
+
+The limited space at command forces us to allow a few brief quotations
+to stand as landmarks and not even attempt long explanations.  It is no
+exaggeration to say that upon each of the few hints now given in the
+cited Slokas a thick volume might be written.
+
+From the well-known hymn To Time, in the Atharva-Veda (xix. 53):
+
+     "Time, like a brilliant steed with seven rays,
+     Full of fecundity, bears all things onward.
+
+     "Time, like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on,
+     His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his axle
+     Is immortality...."
+
+--down to Manu, "the first and the seventh man," the Vedas, the
+Upanishads, and all the later systems of philosophy teem with allusions
+to this number.  Who was Manu, the son of Swayambhuva? The secret
+doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of
+the first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan-Chohans (Devas)
+at the beginning of the first Round. But we are told in his Laws (Book
+I. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa or "interval from
+creation to creation" (read interval from one minor "Pralaya" to
+another) and that "in the present divine age there have been as yet
+seven Manus." Those who know that there are seven Rounds, of which we
+have passed three, and are now in the fourth;  and who are taught that
+there are seven dawns and seven twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras;
+that at the beginning of every Round and at the end, and on and between
+the planets, there is "an awakening to illusive life," and "an awakening
+to real life," and that, moreover, there are "root-Manus," and what we
+have to clumsily translate as the "seed-Manus"--the seeds for the human
+races of the forthcoming Round (a mystery divulged but to those who have
+passed the 3rd degree in initiation);  those who have learned all that,
+will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following.  We
+are told in the Sacred Hindu Scriptures that "the first Manu produced
+six other Manus (seven primary Manus in all), and these produced in
+their turn each seven other Manus" (Bhrigu I. 61-63),* the production of
+the latter standing in the occult treatises as 7 x 7.  Thus it becomes
+clear that Manu--the last one, the progenitor of our Fourth Round
+Humanity--must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round, and
+that there is a root-Manu on globe A and a seed-Manu on globe G.  Just
+as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a "Root-Manu"
+(Dhyan-Chohan) and closes with a "Seed-Manu," so a root-and a seed-Manu
+appear respectively at the beginning and the termination of the human
+period on any particular planet.
+
+-------
+* The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by
+Viraj and then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven
+Menus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I.
+33-36), relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same
+time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain.
+---------
+
+It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric
+period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of
+two Manus or Dhyan-Chohans:  and hence a minor Manu-antara is the
+duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major
+Manu-antara is the period of one human round along the planetary chain.
+Moreover, that, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7
+Manus, and that there are 49 root-races on the seven planets during each
+Round, then every root-race has its Manu.  The present seventh Manu is
+called "Vaivasvata," and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who
+represents in India the Babylonian Xisusthrus and the Jewish Noah.  But
+in the esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor
+of our fifth race--who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated
+the fourth (Atlantean)--is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the
+nomenclature of the Root, or primitive Manus, but one of the 49
+"emanated from this 'root'--Manu."
+
+For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in
+their respective order and relation to each Round:--
+
+1st      1st (Root) Manu on Planet      A.-Swayambhuva
+Round.   1st (Seed) Manu on Planet      G.-Swarochi
+                                           (or)Swarotisha
+
+2nd      2nd (R.)     M.    on Planet   A.-Uttama
+Round    2nd (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Thamasa
+
+3rd      3rd (R.)     M.     "    "     A.-Raivata
+Round    3rd (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Chackchuska
+
+4th      4th (R.)     M.     "    "     A.-Vaivasvata (our progenitor)
+Round    4th (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Savarni
+
+5th      5th (R.)     M.     "    "     A.-Daksha Savarni
+Round    5th (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Brahma Savarni
+
+6th      6th (R.)     M.  on    Planet  A.-Dharma Savarni
+Round    6th  (S.)    M.  "      "      G.-Rudra Savarni
+
+7th      7th  (R.)    M.  "      "      A.-Rouchya
+Round    7th  (S.)    M.  "      "      G.-Bhoutya
+
+Vaivasvata thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive
+Root-Manu of our fourth Human Wave (the reader must always remember that
+Manu is not a man but collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but
+one of the seven Minor Manus who are made to preside over the seven
+races of this our planet.  Each of these has to become the witness of
+one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water
+in turn) that close the cycle of every root-race.  And it is this
+Vaivasvata--the Hindu ideal embodiment called respectively Xisusthrus,
+Deukalion, Noah, and by other names--who is the allegorical man who
+rescued our race when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere
+perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its
+temporary obscuration.
+
+The number seven stands prominently conspicuous in even a cursory
+comparison of the 11th Tablet of the Izdhubar Legends of the Chaldean
+account of the Deluge and the so-called Mosaic books. In both the number
+seven plays a most prominent part.  The clean beasts are taken by
+sevens, the fowls by sevens also;  in seven days, it is promised Noah,
+to rain upon the earth;  thus he stays "yet other seven days," and again
+seven days;  while in the Chaldean. account of the Deluge, on the
+seventh day the rain abated.  On the seventh day the dove is sent out;
+by sevens, Xisusthrus takes "jugs of wine" for the altar, &c.  Why such
+coincidence?  And yet we are told by, and bound to believe in, the
+European Orientalists, when passing judgment alike upon the Babylonian
+and Aryan chronology they call them "extravagant and fanciful!"
+Nevertheless, while they give us no explanation of, nor have they ever
+noticed, as far as we know, the strange identity in the totals of the
+Semitic, Chaldean, and Aryan Hindu chronology, the students of Occult
+Philosophy find the following fact extremely suggestive.  While the
+period of the reign of the 10 Babylonian antediluvian kings is given as
+432,000 years,* the duration of the postdiluvian Kali-yug is also given
+as 432,000, while the four ages or the divine Maha-yug, yield in their
+totality 4,320,000 years.  Why should they, if fanciful and
+"extravagant," give the identical figures, when neither the Aryans nor
+the Babylonians have surely borrowed anything from each other!  We
+invite the attention of our occultists to the three figures given--4
+standing for the perfect square, 3 for the triad (the seven universal
+and the seven individual principles), and 2 the symbol of our
+illusionary world, a figure ignored and rejected by Pythagoras.
+
+--------
+* See "Babylonia," by George Smith, p. 36.  Here again, as with the
+Manus and 10 Prajapatis and the 10 Sephiroths in the Book of Numbers--
+they dwindle down to seven!
+--------
+
+It is in the Upanishads and the Vedanta though, that we have to look for
+the best corroborations of the occult teachings.  In the mystical
+doctrine the Rahasya, or the Upanishads--"the only Veda of all
+thoughtful Hindus in the present day," as Monier Williams is made to
+confess, every word, as its very name implies,* has a secret meaning
+underlying it.  This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a
+full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, "the nave to which are attached
+the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel." (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda,
+XI. 4.)
+
+Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to
+the human body:  (a) an exterior or gross body (sthula-sarira);  (b) an
+inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-sarira (the vehicle), the two
+cemented with--(c), life (jiv or Karana sarira, "causal body").**  These
+the occult system or esotericism divides into seven, farther adding to
+these--kama, manas, buddhi and atman.  The Nyaya philosophy when
+treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Praman are to
+be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven "root
+principles" (see IXth Sutra), which are 1, soul (atman), and 2 its
+superior spirit Jivatman;  3, body (sarira);  4, senses (indriya);  5,
+activity or will (pravritti);  6, mind (manas);  7, Intellection
+(Buddhi).  The seven Padarthas (inquiries or predicates of existing
+things) of Kanada in the Vaiseshikas, refer in the occult doctrine to
+the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles.  Thus:  1,
+substance (dravya) refers to body or sthula-sarira;  2, quality or
+property (guna) to the life principle, jiv;  3, action or act (karman)
+to the Linga, sarira; 4, Community or commingling of properties
+(Samanya) to Kamarupa; 5, personality or conscious individuality
+(Visesha) to Manas;  6, co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation
+(Samuvuya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman;  7,
+non-existence or non-being in the sense of, and as separate from,
+objectivity or substance (abhava)--to the highest monad or Atman.
+
+-------
+* Upa-ni-shad means, according to Brahminical authority, "to conquer
+ignorance by revealing the secret spiritual knowledge." According to
+Monier Williams, the title is derived from the root sad with the
+prepositions upa and ni, and implies "something mystical that underlies
+or is beneath the surface."
+
+** This Karana-sarira is often mistaken by the uninitiated for
+Linga-sarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or
+latent embryo of the body, confounded with it.  But the Occultists
+regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death;  is
+withdrawn--leaving the 1st and 3rd principles to disintegrate and
+return to their elements.
+----------
+
+Thus, whether we view the ONE as the Vedic Purusha or Brahman (neuter)
+the "all-expanding essence;"  or as the universal spirit, the "light of
+lights" (jyotisham jyotih) the TOTAL independent of all relation, of the
+Upanishads;  or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta;  or again as Kanada's
+Adrishta, "the unseen Force," or divine atom;  or as Prakriti, the
+"eternally existing essence," of Kapila--we find in all these impersonal
+universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves
+"six rays" (the evolver being the seventh).  The third aphorism of the
+Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the "root and
+substance of all things," and no production, but itself a producer of
+"seven things, which produced by it, become also producers," has a
+purely occult meaning.
+
+What are the "producers" evoluted from this universal root-principle,
+Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated primeval cosmic matter, which evolves
+out of itself consciousness and mind, and is generally called "Prakriti"
+and amulam mulam, "the rootless root," and Aryakta, the "unevolved
+evolver," &c.?  This primordial tattwa or "eternally existing 'that,'"
+the unknown essence, is said to produce as a first producer, 1, Buddhi--
+"intellect"--whether we apply the latter to the 6th macrocosmic or
+microcosmic principle.  This first produced produces in its turn (or is
+the source of) Ahankara, "self-consciousness" and manas "mind."  The
+reader will please always remember that the Mahat or great source of
+these two internal faculties, "Buddhi" per se, can have neither
+self-consciousness nor mind;  viz., the 6th principle in man can preserve
+an essence of personal self-consciousness or "personal individuality" only
+by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that
+finite faculty;  for Ahankara, that is the perception of "I," or the
+sense of one's personal individuality, justly represented by the term
+"Ego-ism," belongs to the second, or rather the third, production out of
+the seven, viz., to the 5th principle, or Manas.  It is the latter which
+draws "as the web issues from the spider" along the thread of Prakriti,
+the "root principle," the four following subtle elementary principles or
+particles--Tanmatras, out of which "third class," the Mahabhutas or the
+gross elementary principles, or rather sarira and rupas, are evolved--
+the kama, linga, Jiva and sthula-sarira.  The three gunas of
+"Prakriti"--the Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity,
+and ignorance or darkness)--spun into a triple-stranded cord or "rope,"
+pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles.
+
+It depends on the 5th--Manas or Ahankara, the "I"--to thin the guna,
+"rope," into one thread--the sattwa;  and thus by becoming one with the
+"unevolved evolver," win immortality or eternal conscious existence.
+Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhautic essence;  so
+long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the
+divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles
+"like an animal" (purusha pasu).  The spirit, atman or jivatman (the 7th
+and 6th principles), whether of the macro-or microcosm, though bound by
+these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is
+yet nirguna--i.e., entirely free from them.  Out of the three producers
+or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that
+can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal.  The
+"divine monad" is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that
+from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver) is
+gunavat--endowed with qualities.  With the latter, Purusha or Atman can
+have nought to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its
+gunuvatic state);  with the former--or Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated
+cosmic essence--it has, since it is one with it and identical.
+
+The Atma Bodha, or "knowledge of soul," a tract written by the great
+Sankaracharya, speaks distinctly of the seven principles in man (see
+14th verse).  They are called therein the five sheaths (panchakosa) in
+which is enclosed the divine monad--the Atman, and Buddhi, the 7th and
+6th principles, or the individuated soul when made distinct (through
+avidya, maya and the gunas) from the supreme soul--Parabrahm.  The 1st
+sheath, called Ananda-maya--the "illusion of supreme bliss"--is the
+manas or fifth principle of the occultists, when united with Buddhi;
+the 2nd sheath is Vjnana-maya-kosa, the case or "envelope of
+self-delusion," the manas when self-deluded into the belief of the
+personal "I," or ego, with its vehicle.  The 3rd, the Mano-maya sheath,
+composed of "illusionary mind" associated with the organs of action and
+will, is the Kamarupa and Linga-sarira combined, producing an illusive
+"I" or Mayavi-rupa.  The 4th sheath is called Prana-maya, "illusionary
+life," our second life principle or jiv, wherein resides life, the
+"breathing" sheath.  The 5th kosa is called Anna-maya, or the sheath
+supported by food--our gross material body.  All these sheaths produce
+other smaller sheaths, or six attributes or qualities each, the seventh
+being always the root sheath;  and the Atman or spirit passing through
+all these subtle ethereal bodies like a thread, is called the
+"thread-soul" or sutratman.
+
+We may conclude with the above demonstration.  Verily the Esoteric
+doctrine may well be called in its turn the "thread-doctrine," since,
+like Sutratman or Pranatman, it passes through and strings together all
+the ancient philosophical religious systems, and, what is more,
+reconciles and explains them.  For though seeming so unlike externally,
+they have but one foundation, and of that the extent, depth, breadth and
+nature are known to those who have become, like the "Wise Men of the
+East," adepts in Occult Science.
+
+--H.P. Blavatsky
+
+
+
+
+Personal and Impersonal God
+
+
+At the outset I shall request my readers (such of them at least as are
+not acquainted with the Cosmological theories of the Idealistic thinkers
+of Europe) to examine John Stuart Mill's Cosmological speculations as
+contained in his examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy,
+before attempting to understand the Adwaita doctrine;  and I beg to
+inform them beforehand that in explaining the main principles of the
+said doctrine, I am going to use, as far as it is convenient to do so,
+the phraseology adopted by English psychologists of the Idealistic
+school of thought.  In dealing with the phenomena of our present plane
+of existence John Stuart Mill ultimately came to the conclusion that
+matter, or the so-called external phenomena, are but the creation of our
+mind;  they are the mere appearances of a particular phase of our
+subjective self, and of our thoughts, volitions, sensations and emotions
+which in their totality constitute the basis of that Ego.  Matter then
+is the permanent possibility of sensations, and the so-called Laws of
+matter are, properly speaking, the Laws which govern the succession and
+coexistence of our states of consciousness.  Mill further holds that
+properly speaking there is no noumenal Ego.  The very idea of a mind
+existing separately as an entity, distinct from the states of
+consciousness which are supposed to inhere in it, is in his opinion
+illusory, as the idea of an external object, which is supposed to be
+perceived by our senses.
+
+Thus the ideas of mind and matter, of subject and object, of the Ego and
+external world, are really evolved from the aggregation of our mental
+states which are the only realities so far as we are concerned.
+
+The chain of our mental states or states of consciousness is "a
+double-headed monster," according to Professor Bain, which has two
+distinct aspects, one objective and the other subjective. Mr. Mill has
+paused here, confessing that psychological analysis did not go any
+further; the mysterious link which connects together the train of our
+states of consciousness and gives rise to our Ahankaram in this
+condition of existence, still remains an incomprehensible mystery to
+Western psychologists, though its existence is but dimly perceived in
+the subjective phenomena of memory and expectation.
+
+On the other hand, the great physicists of Europe are gradually coming
+to the conclusion* that mind is the product of matter, or that it is one
+of the attributes of matter in some of its conditions.  It would appear,
+therefore, from the speculations of Western psychologists that matter is
+evolved from mind and that mind is evolved from matter.  These two
+propositions are apparently irreconcilable.
+
+--------
+* See Tyndall's Belfast Address.--S.R.
+--------
+
+Mill and Tyndall have admitted that Western science is yet unable to go
+deeper into the question.  Nor is it likely to solve the mystery
+hereafter, unless it calls Eastern occult science to its aid and takes a
+more comprehensive view of the capabilities of the real subjective self
+of man and the various aspects of the great objective universe.  The
+great Adwaitee philosophers of ancient Aryavarta have examined the
+relationship between subject and object in every condition of existence
+in this solar system in which this differentiation is presented.  Just
+as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter
+in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.  These
+different states of matter do not all come within the range of our
+present objective consciousness.  But they can be objectively perceived
+by the spiritual Ego in man.  To the liberated spiritual monad of man,
+or to the Dhyan Chohans, every thing that is material in every condition
+of matter is an object of perception.  Further, Pragna or the capacity
+of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the
+seven conditions of matter.  Strictly speaking, there are but six states
+of matter, the so-called seventh state being the aspect of cosmic matter
+in its original undifferentiated condition.  Similarly there are six
+states of differentiated Pragna, the seventh state being a condition of
+perfect unconsciousness.  By differentiated Pragna, I mean the condition
+in which Pragna is split up into various states of consciousness.  Thus
+we have six states of consciousness, either objective or subjective for
+the time being, as the case may be, and a perfect state of
+unconsciousness, which is the beginning and the end of all conceivable
+states of consciousness, corresponding to the states of differentiated
+matter and its original undifferentiated basis which is the beginning
+and the end of all cosmic evolutions.  It will be easily seen that the
+existence of consciousness is necessary for the differentiation between
+subject and object.  Hence these two phases are presented in six
+different conditions, and in the last state there being no consciousness
+as above stated, the differentiation in question ceases to exist.  The
+number of these various conditions is different in different systems of
+philosophy.  But whatever may be the number of divisions, they all lie
+between perfect unconsciousness at one end of the line and our present
+state of consciousness or Bahipragna at the other end.  To understand
+the real nature of these different states of consciousness, I shall
+request my readers to compare the consciousness of the ordinary man with
+the consciousness of the astral man, and again compare the latter with
+the consciousness of the spiritual Ego in man.  In these three
+conditions the objective universe is not the same.  But the difference
+between the Ego and the non-Ego is common to all these conditions.
+Consequently, admitting the correctness of Mill's reasoning as regards
+the subject and object of our present plane of consciousness, the great
+Adwaitee thinkers of India have extended the same reasoning to other
+states of consciousness, and came to the conclusion that the various
+conditions of the Ego and the non-Ego were but the appearances of one
+and the same entity--the ultimate state of unconsciousness.  This entity
+is neither matter nor spirit;  it is neither Ego nor non-Ego;  and it is
+neither object nor subject.  In the language of Hindu philosophers it is
+the original and eternal combination of Purusha and Prakriti.  As the
+Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the product of our
+mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purush is the
+only reality;  it is the one existence which remains eternal in this
+universe of Ideas.  This entity then is the Parabrahmam of the
+Adwaitees.  Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a
+material Upadhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint
+of an Adwaitee there will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal
+existence as there would be in the case of any other object.  In their
+opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his
+Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious
+conveys but its ordinary meaning.  They cannot admit that the grand
+total of all the states of consciousness in the universe is their deity,
+as these states are constantly changing and as cosmic idealism ceases
+during Pralaya.  There is only one permanent condition in the universe
+which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (field of
+consciousness) in fact.
+
+When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in
+reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they
+will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of unconsciousness
+is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees.
+
+The idea of a God, Deity, Iswar, or an impersonal God (if consciousness
+is one of his attributes) involves the idea of Ego or non-Ego in some
+shape or other, and as every conceivable Ego or non-Ego is evolved from
+this primitive element (I use this word for want of a better one) the
+existence of an extra-cosmic god possessing such attributes prior to
+this condition is absolutely inconceivable.  Though I have been speaking
+of this element as the condition of unconsciousness, it is, properly
+speaking, the Chidakasam or Chinmatra of the Hindu philosophers which
+contains within itself the potentiality of every condition of "Pragna,"
+and which results as consciousness on the one hand and the objective
+universe on the other, by the operation of its latent Chichakti (the
+power which generates thought).
+
+Before proceeding to discuss the nature of Parabrahmam.  It is to be
+stated that in the opinion of Adwaitees, the Upanishads and the
+Brahmasutras fully support their views on the subject. It is distinctly
+affirmed in the Upanishads that Parabrahmam, which is but the bare
+potentiality of Pragna,* is not an aspect of Pragna or Ego in any shape,
+and that it has neither life nor consciousness.  The reader will be able
+to ascertain that such is really the case on examining the Mundaka and
+Mandukya Upanishads.  The language used here and there in the Upanishads
+is apt to mislead one into the belief that such language points to the
+existence of a conscious Iswar.  But the necessity for such language
+will perhaps be rendered clear from the following considerations.
+
+--------
+* The power or the capacity that gives rise to perception.
+--------
+
+From a close examination of Mill's cosmological theory the difficulty
+will be clearly seen referred to above, of satisfactorily accounting for
+the generation of conscious states in any human being from the
+standpoint of the said theory.  It is generally stated that sensations
+arise in us from the action of the external objects around us:  they are
+the effects of impressions made on our senses by the objective world in
+which we exist.  This is simple enough to an ordinary mind, however
+difficult it may be to account for the transformation of a cerebral
+nerve-current into a state of consciousness.
+
+But from the standpoint of Mill's theory we have no proof of the
+existence of any external object;  even the objective existence of our
+own senses is not a matter of certainty to us.  How, then, are we to
+account for and explain the origin of our mental states, if they are the
+only entities existing in this world?  No explanation is really given by
+saying that one mental state gives rise to another mental state, to a
+certain extent at all events, under the operation of the so-called
+psychological "Laws of Association."  Western psychology honestly admits
+that its analysis has not gone any further.  It may be inferred,
+however, from the said theory that there would be no reason for saying
+that a material Upadhi (basis) is necessary for the existence of mind or
+states of consciousness.
+
+As is already indicated, the Aryan psychologists have traced this
+current of mental states to its source--the eternal Chinmatra existing
+everywhere.  When the time for evolution comes this germ of Pragna
+unfolds itself and results ultimately as Cosmic ideation.  Cosmic ideas
+are the conceptions of all the conditions of existence in the Cosmos
+existing in what may be called the universal mind (the demiurgic mind of
+the Western Kabalists).
+
+This Chinmatra exists as it were at every geometrical point of the
+infinite Chidakasam.  This principle then has two general aspects.
+Considered as something objective it is the eternal Asath--Mulaprakriti
+or Undifferentiated Cosmic matter.  From a subjective point of view it
+may be looked upon in two ways.  It is Chidakasam when considered as the
+field of Cosmic ideation; and it is Chinmatra when considered as the
+germ of Cosmic ideation.  These three aspects constitute the highest
+Trinity of the Aryan Adwaitee philosophers.  It will be readily seen
+that the last-mentioned aspect of the principle in question is far more
+important to us than the other two aspects;  for, when looked upon in
+this aspect the principle under consideration seems to embody within
+itself the great Law of Cosmic Evolution. And therefore the Adwaitee
+philosophers have chiefly considered it in this light, and explained
+their cosmogony from a subjective point of view.  In doing so, however,
+they cannot avoid the necessity of speaking of a universal mind (and
+this is Brahma, the Creator) and its ideation.  But it ought not to be
+inferred therefrom that this universal mind necessarily belongs to an
+Omnipresent living conscious Creator, simply because in ordinary
+parlance a mind is always spoken of in connection with a particular
+living being.  It cannot be contended that a material Uphadi is
+indispensable for the existence of mind or mental states when the
+objective universe itself is, so far as we are concerned, the result of
+our states of consciousness. Expressions implying the existence of a
+conscious Iswar which are to be found here and there in the Upanishads
+should not therefore be literally construed.
+
+It now remains to be seen how Adwaitees account for the origin of mental
+states in a particular individual.  Apparently the mind of a particular
+human being is not the universal mind.  Nevertheless Cosmic ideation is
+the real source of the states of consciousness in every individual.
+Cosmic ideation exists everywhere;  but when placed under restrictions
+by a material Upadhi it results as the consciousness of the individual
+inhering in such Upadhi. Strictly speaking, an Adwaitee will not admit
+the objective existence of this material Upadhi.  From his standpoint it
+is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But
+to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language;  and to enable my
+readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted.
+Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it.
+The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes
+visible to a person standing outside depends upon the nature of the
+curtain.  If several such curtains are thus successively placed around
+the light, it will have to penetrate through all of them;  and a person
+standing outside will only perceive as much light as is not intercepted
+by all the curtains.  The central light becomes dimmer and dimmer as
+curtain after curtain is placed before the observer;  and as curtain
+after curtain is removed the light becomes brighter and brighter until
+it reaches its natural brilliancy.  Similarly, universal mind or Cosmic
+ideation becomes more and more limited and modified by the various
+Upadhis of which a human being is composed;  and when the action or
+influence of these various Upadhis is successively controlled, the mind
+of the individual human being is placed en rapport with the universal
+mind and his ideation is lost in Cosmic ideation.
+
+As I have already said, these Upadhis are strictly speaking the
+conditions of the gradual development or evolution of Bahipragna--or
+consciousness in the present plane of our existence--from the original
+and eternal Chinmatra, which is the seventh principle in man, and the
+Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees.
+
+This then is the purport of the Adwaitee philosophy on the subject under
+consideration, and it is, in my humble opinion, in harmony with the
+Arhat doctrine relating to the same subject. The latter doctrine
+postulates the existence of Cosmic matter in an undifferentiated
+condition throughout the infinite expanse of space.  Space and time are
+but its aspects, and Purush, the seventh principle of the universe, has
+its latent life in this ocean of Cosmic matter.  The doctrine in
+question explains Cosmogony from an objective point of view.
+
+When the period of activity arrives, portions of the whole differentiate
+according to the latent law.  When this differentiation has commenced,
+the concealed wisdom or latent Chichakti acts in the universal mind, and
+Cosmic energy or Fohat forms the manifested universe in accordance with
+the conceptions generated in the universal mind out of the
+differentiated principles of Cosmic matter.  This manifested universe
+constitutes a solar system. When the period of Pralaya comes, the
+process of differentiation stops and Cosmic ideation ceases to exist;
+and at the time of Brahmapralaya or Mahapralaya the particles of matter
+lose all differentiation, and the matter that exists in the solar system
+returns to its original undifferentiated condition. The latent design
+exists in the one unborn eternal atom, the centre which exists
+everywhere and nowhere;  and this is the one life that exists
+everywhere.  Now, it will be easily seen that the undifferentiated
+Cosmic matter, Purush, and the ONE LIFE of the Arhat philosophers, are
+the Mulaprakriti, Chidakasam, and Chinmatra of the Adwaitee
+philosophers.  As regards Cosmogony, the Arhat standpoint is objective,
+and the Adwaitee standpoint is subjective.  The Arhat Cosmogony accounts
+for the evolution of the manifested solar system from undifferentiated
+Cosmic matter, and Adwaitee Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of
+Bahipragna from the original Chinmatra.  As the different conditions of
+differentiated C osmic matter are but the different aspects of the
+various conditions of Pragna, the Adwaitee Cosmogony is but the
+complement of the Arhat Cosmogony.  The eternal principle is precisely
+the same in both the systems, and they agree in denying the existence of
+an extra-Cosmic God.
+
+The Arhats call themselves Atheists, and they are justified in doing so
+if theism inculcates the existence of a conscious God governing the
+universe by his will-power.  Under such circumstance the Adwaitee will
+come under the same denomination. Atheism and theism are words of
+doubtful import, and until their meaning is definitely ascertained it
+would be better not to use them in connection with any system of
+philosophy.
+
+--T. Subba Row
+
+
+
+
+Prakriti and Parusha
+
+
+Prakriti may be looked upon either as Maya when considered as the Upadhi
+of Parabrahmam or as Avidya when considered as the Upadhi of Jivatma
+(7th principle in man).*  Avidya is ignorance or illusion arising from
+Maya. The term Maya, though sometimes used as a synonym for Avidya, is,
+properly speaking, applicable to Prakriti only.  There is no difference
+between Prakriti, Maya and Sakti;  and the ancient Hindu philosophers
+made no distinction whatsoever between Matter and Force.  In support of
+these assertions I may refer the learned hermit to "Swetaswatara
+Upanishad" and its commentary by Sankaracharya.  In case we adopt the
+fourfold division of the Adwaitee philosophers, it will be clearly seen
+that Jagrata,* Swapna* and Sushupti Avasthas* are the results of Avidya,
+and that Vyswanara,* Hiranyagarbha* and Sutratma* are the manifestations
+of Parabrahmam in Maya or Prakriti.  In drawing a distinction between
+Avidya and Prakriti, I am merely following the authority of all the
+great Adwaitee philosophers of Aryavarta.  It will be sufficient for me
+to refer to the first chapter of the celebrated Vidantic treatise, the
+Panchadasi.
+
+----------
+* Upadhi--vehicle.
+
+Jagrata--waking state, or a condition of external perception.
+
+Swapna--dreamy state, or a condition of clairvoyance in the astral
+plane.
+
+Sushupti--a state of extasis;  and Avastas--states or conditions of
+Pragna.
+
+Vyswanara--the magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system--
+the root objective aspect of the ONE LIFE.
+
+Hiranyagarbha--the one life as manifested in the plane of astral Light.
+
+Sutratma--the Eternal germ of the manifested universe existing in the
+field of Mulaprakriti.
+---------
+
+In truth, Prakriti and Purusha are but the two aspects of the same ONE
+REALITY.  As our great Sankaracharya truly observes at the close of his
+commentary on the 23rd Sutra of the first chapter of the Brahma sutras,
+"Parabrahmam is Karta (Purush), as there is no other Adhishtatha,* and
+Parabrahmam is Prakriti, there being no other Upadanam."  This sentence
+clearly indicates the relation between "the One Life" and "the One
+Element" of the Arha-philosophers.  This will elucidate the meaning of
+the statement so often quoted by Adwaitees--"Sarvam Khalvitham Brahma"
+** and also of what is meant by saying that Brahmam is the Upadanakarnam
+(material cause) of the Universe.
+
+--T Subba Row
+
+---------
+* Adishtatha--that which inheres in another principle--the active agent
+working in Prakriti.
+
+** Everything in the universe is Brahma.
+---------
+
+
+
+
+Morality and Pantheism
+
+
+Questions have been raised in several quarters as to the inefficiency of
+Pantheism (which term is intended to include Esoteric Buddhism, Adwaitee
+Vedantism, and other similar religious systems) to supply a sound basis
+of morality.
+
+The philosophical assimilation of meum and teum, it is urged, must of
+necessity be followed by their practical confusion, resulting in the
+sanction of cruelty, robbery, &c.  This line of argument points,
+however, most unmistakably to the co-existence of the objection with an
+all but utter ignorance of the systems objected to, in the critic's
+mind, as we shall show by-and-by. The ultimate sanction of morality, as
+is well known, is derived from a desire for the attainment of happiness
+and escape from misery.  But schools differ in their estimate of
+happiness. Exoteric religions base their morality on the hope of reward
+and fear of punishment at the hands of an Omnipotent Ruler of the
+Universe by following the rules he has at his pleasure laid down for the
+obedience of his helpless subjects;  in some cases, however, religions
+of later growth have made morality to depend on the sentiment of
+gratitude to that Ruler for benefits received.  The worthlessness, not
+to speak of the mischievousness, of such systems of morality is almost
+self-evident.  As a type of morality founded on hope and fear, we shall
+take an instance from the Christian Bible:  "He that giveth to the poor
+lendeth to the Lord."  The duty of supporting the poor is here made to
+depend upon prudential motives of laying by for a time when the "giver
+to the poor" will be incapable of taking care of himself.  But the
+Mahabharata says that "He that desireth a return for his good deeds
+loseth all merit;  he is like a merchant bartering his goods."  The true
+springs of morality lose their elasticity under the pressure of such
+criminal selfishness;  all pure and unselfish natures will fly away from
+it in disgust.
+
+To avoid such consequences attempts have been made by some recent
+reformers of religion to establish morality upon the sentiment of
+gratitude to the Lord.  But it requires no deep consideration to find
+that, in their endeavours to shift the basis of morality, these
+reformers have rendered morality entirely baseless.  A man has to do
+what is represented to be a thing "dear unto the Lord" out of gratitude
+for the many blessings He has heaped upon him. But as a matter of fact
+he finds that the Lord has heaped upon him curses as well as blessings.
+A helpless orphan is expected to be grateful to him for having removed
+the props of his life, his parents, because he is told in consolation
+that such a calamity is but apparently an evil, but in reality the
+All-Merciful has underneath it hidden the greatest possible good. With
+equal reason might a preacher of the Avenging Ahriman exhort men to
+believe that under the apparent blessings of the "Merciful" Father there
+lurks the serpent of evil.
+
+The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow,
+have sterner logic in their teachings.  That which tends to a man's
+happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as
+evil.  So far so good.  But the practical application of the doctrine is
+fraught with mischief.  Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank
+Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the
+Utilitarians' scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which
+cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion.
+
+The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the
+soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya. The
+starting-point of the "pantheistic" (we use the word for want of a better
+one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one
+energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is
+incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human
+spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to
+cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.
+
+Now knowledge or jnanam is divided into two classes by Adwaitee
+philosophers--Paroksha and Aparoksha.  The former kind of knowledge
+consists in intellectual assent to a stated proposition, the latter in
+the actual realization of it.  The object which a Buddhist or Adwaitee
+Yogi sets before himself is the realization of the oneness of existence,
+and the practice of morality is the most powerful means to that end, as
+we proceed to show.  The principal obstacle to the realization of this
+oneness is the inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the
+centre of the Universe.  Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the
+irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure.  This, as
+will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual from
+filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is exactly in
+place and no other individual is.  The realization of this harmony is
+the practical or objective aspect of the GRAND PROBLEM.  And the
+practice of morality is the effort to find out this sphere;  morality,
+indeed, is the Ariadne's clue in the Cretan labyrinth in which man is
+placed.  From the study of the sacred philosophy preached by Lord Buddha
+or Sri Sankara, paroksha knowledge (or shall we say belief?), in the
+unity of existence is derived, but without the practice of morality that
+knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or
+aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti.  It availeth
+naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and
+Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life.  To confuse
+meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of
+existence by a false assertion of "I," and is as foolish as the anxiety
+to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms.  You cannot be one with
+all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the
+onward march of Nature.  What is meant by the Brahmajnani being beyond
+the reach of Karma, can be fully realized only by a man who has found
+out his exact position in harmony with the One Life in Nature;  that man
+sees how a Brahmajnani can act only in unison with Nature, and never in
+discord with it:  to use the phraseology of ancient writers on
+Occultism, a Brahmajnani is a real "co-worker with Nature."  Not only
+European Sanskritists, but also exoteric Yogis, fall into the grievous
+mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human
+being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a
+condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that
+even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity
+on the higher astral and spiritual planes.  Sri Sankara has very
+conclusively proved, in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that such
+a supposition is nothing short of a delusion.  The great teacher shows
+there that forcibly repressing the physical body from working does not
+free one from vasana or vritti--the inherent inclination of the mind to
+work.  There is a tendency, in every department of Nature, for an act to
+repeat itself;  the Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is always
+trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to continued
+material existence;--and this tendency can only be counteracted by
+unselfishly performing all the duties appertaining to the sphere in
+which a person is born;  such a course alone can produce chitta suddhi,
+(purification of the mind), without which the capacity of perceiving
+spiritual truths can never be acquired.
+
+A few words must here be said about the physical inactivity of the Yogi
+or the Mahatma.  Inactivity of the physical body (sthula sarira) does
+not indicate a condition of inactivity either on the astral or the
+spiritual plane of action.  The human spirit is in its highest state of
+activity in samadhi, (highest trance) and not, as is generally supposed,
+in a dormant, quiescent condition. And, moreover, it will be easily
+seen, by any one who examines the nature of occult dynamics, that a
+given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is
+productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the
+physical objective plane of existence.  When an Adept has placed himself
+en rapport with the universal mind he becomes a real power in Nature.
+Even on the objective plane of existence the difference between brain
+and muscular energy, in their capacity of producing widespread and
+far-reaching results, can he very easily perceived.  The amount of
+physical energy expended by the discoverer of the steam-engine might not
+have been more than that expended by a hardworking day-labourer.  But
+the practical results of the labourer's work can never be compared with
+the results achieved by the discovery of the steam-engine. Similarly,
+the ultimate effects of spiritual energy are infinitely greater than
+those of intellectual energy.
+
+From the above considerations it is abundantly clear that the initiatory
+training of a true Vedantin Raj Yogi must be the nourishing of a
+sleepless and ardent desire of doing all in his power for the good of
+mankind on the ordinary physical plane, his activity being transferred,
+however, to the higher astral and spiritual planes as his development
+proceeds.  In course of time, as the Truth becomes realized, the
+situation is rendered quite clear to the Yogi, and he is placed beyond
+the criticism of any ordinary man.  The Mahanirvan Tantra says:--
+
+     Charanti trigunatite ko vidhir ko ishedhava.
+
+"For one, walking beyond the three gunas--Satva (feeling of
+gratification), Rajas (passional activity) and Tamas (inertness)--what
+injunction or what restriction is there?"--in the consideration of men,
+walled in on all sides by the objective plane of existence.  This does
+not mean that a Mahatma can or will ever neglect the laws of morality,
+but that he, having unified his individual nature with Great Nature
+herself, is constitutionally incapable of violating any one of the laws
+of nature, and no man can constitute himself a judge of the conduct of
+the Great one without knowing the laws of all the planes of Nature's
+activity.  (As honest men are  honest without the least consideration of
+the) criminal law, so a Mahatma is moral without reference to the laws
+of morality.
+
+These are, however, sublime topics:  we shall before conclusion notice
+some other considerations which lead the ordinary "pantheist" to the
+true foundation of morality.  Happiness has been defined by John Stuart
+Mill as the state of absence of opposition.  Manu gives the definition
+in more forcible terms:
+
+     Sarvam paravasam duhkham
+     Sarva matmavasam sukham
+     Idam jnayo samasena
+     Lakshanam sukhaduhkhayo.
+
+"Every kind of subjugation to another is pain, and subjugation to one's
+self is happiness:  in brief, this is to be known as the characteristic
+marks of the two."  Now, it is universally admitted that the whole
+system of Nature is moving in a particular direction, and this
+direction, we are taught, is determined by the composition of two
+forces--namely, the one acting from that pole of existence ordinarily
+called "matter" towards the other pole called "spirit," and the other in
+the opposite direction.  The very fact that Nature is moving shows that
+these two forces are not equal in magnitude.  The plane on which the
+activity of the first force predominates is called in occult treatises
+the "ascending arc," and the corresponding plane of the activity of the
+other force is styled the "descending arc."  A little reflection will
+show that the work of evolution begins on the descending arc and works
+its way upwards through the ascending arc.  From this it follows that
+the force directed towards spirit is the one which must, though not
+without hard struggle, ultimately prevail.  This is the great directing
+energy of Nature, and, although disturbed by the operation of the
+antagonistic force, it is this that gives the law to her;  the other is
+merely its negative aspect, for convenience regarded as a separate
+agent.  If an individual attempts to move in a direction other than that
+in which Nature is moving, that individual is sure to be crushed, sooner
+or later, by the enormous pressure of the opposing force.  We need not
+say that such a result would be the very reverse of pleasurable.  The
+only way, therefore, in which happiness might be attained is by merging
+one's nature in great Mother Nature, and following the direction in
+which she herself is moving:  this again can only be accomplished by
+assimilating men's individual conduct with the triumphant force of
+Nature, the other force being always overcome with terrific
+catastrophes.  The effort to assimilate the individual with the
+universal law is popularly known as the practice of morality.  Obedience
+to this universal law, after ascertaining it, is true religion, which
+has been defined by Lord Buddha "as the realization of the True."
+
+An example will serve to illustrate the position.  Can a practical
+pantheist, or, in other words, an occultist, utter a falsehood?  Now, it
+will be readily admitted that life manifests itself by the power of
+acquiring sensation, temporary dormancy of that power being suspended
+animation.  If a man receives a particular series of sensations and
+pretends they are other than they really are, the result is that he
+exercises his will-power in opposition to a law of Nature on which, as
+we have shown, life depends, and thereby becomes suicide on a minor
+scale.  Space prevents further discussion, but all the ten deadly sins
+mentioned by Manu and Buddha can be satisfactorily dealt with in the
+light sought to be focused here.
+
+--Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+
+
+Occult Study
+
+
+The practical bearing of occult teaching on ordinary life is very
+variously interpreted by different students of the subject.  For many
+Western readers of recent books on the esoteric doctrine, it even seems
+doubtful whether the teaching has any bearing on practical life at all.
+The proposal which it is supposed sometimes to convey, that all earnest
+inquirers should put themselves under the severe ascetic regimen
+followed by its regular Oriental disciples, is felt to embody a strain
+on the habits of modern civilization which only a few enthusiasts will
+be prepared to encounter.  The mere intellectual charm of an intricate
+philosophy may indeed be enough to recommend the study to some minds,
+but a scheme of teaching that offers itself as a substitute for
+religious faith of the usual kind will be expected to yield some
+tangible results in regard to the future spiritual well-being of those
+who adopt it.  Has occult philosophy nothing to give except to those who
+are in a position and willing to make a sacrifice in its behalf of all
+other objects in life?  In that case it would indeed be useless to bring
+it out into the world. In reality the esoteric doctrine affords an
+almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and
+no greater mistake could be made in connection with the present movement
+than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons
+capable of heroic self-devotion.  Assuredly it does not discourage
+efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress,
+if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them;  but it is
+important for us all to keep clearly in view the lower range of
+possibilities connected with humbler aspirations.
+
+I believe it to be absolutely true that even the slightest attention
+seriously paid to the instructions now emanating from the Indian Adepts
+will generate results within the spiritual principles of those who
+render it--causes capable of producing appreciable consequences in a
+future state of existence.  Any one who has sufficiently examined the
+doctrine of Devachan will readily follow the idea, for the nature of the
+spiritual existence which in the ordinary course of things must succeed
+each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any
+aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth.  I
+will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general
+drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale
+of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme
+development of Adeptship;  an achievement which means that the person
+reaching it has so violently stimulated his spiritual growth within a
+short period, as to have anticipated processes on which Nature, in her
+own deliberate way, would have spent a great procession of ages.  At the
+other end of the scale lies the small result to which I have just
+alluded--a result which may rather be said to establish a tendency in
+the direction of spiritual achievement than to embody such achievement.
+But between these two widely different results there is no hard and fast
+line that can be drawn at any place to make a distinct separation in the
+character of the consequences ensuing from devotion to occult pursuits.
+As the darkness of blackest night gives way by imperceptible degrees to
+the illumination of the brightest sunrise, so the spiritual consequences
+of emerging from the apathy either of pure materialism or of dull
+acquiescence in unreasonable dogmas, brighten by imperceptible degrees
+from the faintest traces of Devachanic improvement into the full blaze
+of the highest perfection human nature can attain.  Without assuming
+that the course of Nature which prescribes for each human Ego successive
+physical lives and successive periods of spiritual refreshment--without
+supposing that this course is altered by such moderate devotion to
+occult study as is compatible with the ordinary conditions of European
+life, it will nevertheless be seen how vast the consequences may
+ultimately be of impressing on that career of evolution a distinct
+tendency in the direction of supreme enlightenment, of that result which
+is described as the union of the individual soul with universal spirit.
+
+The explanations of the esoteric doctrine which have been publicly
+given, have shown that humanity in the mass has now attained a stage in
+the great evolutionary cycle from which it has the opportunity of
+growing upward towards final perfection. In the mass it is, of course,
+unlikely that it will travel that road:  final perfection is not a gift
+to be bestowed upon all, but to be worked for by those who desire it.
+It may be put within the theoretical reach of all;  there may be no
+human creature living at this moment, of whom it can be said that the
+highest possibilities of Nature are impossible of attainment, but it
+does not follow by any means that every individual will attain the
+highest possibilities.  Regarding each individual as one of the seeds of
+a great flower which throws out thousands of seeds, it is manifest that
+only a few, relatively to the great number, will become fully developed
+flowers in their turn.  No unjust neglect awaits the majority.  For each
+and every one the consequences of the remote future will be precisely
+proportioned to the aptitudes he develops, but only those can reach the
+goal who, with persistent effort carried out through a long series of
+lives, differentiate themselves in a marked degree from the general
+multitude.  Now, that persistent effort must have a beginning, and
+granted the beginning, the persistence is not improbable.  Within our
+own observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not
+be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in
+proportion to the difficulty of their commencement.  For a moment it may
+be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from
+each other by a total oblivion of their details;  but it really applies
+as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days
+within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights.
+The certain operation of those affinities in the individual Ego which
+are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma,
+must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life
+after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of
+memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of
+those that have gone before.  Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately
+engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself
+through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent
+aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely
+spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the
+same.  The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself
+and leads to good lives in the future;  the intelligent aspiration
+propagates itself in the same way plus the propagation of intelligence;
+and this distinction shows the gulf of difference which may exist
+between the growth of a human soul which merely drifts along the stream
+of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent
+purpose throughout.  The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking
+for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications
+which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success,
+achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up
+into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed
+flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of
+the thousand seeds.  Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given
+direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect
+as a stronger one;  so, exactly in this matter of engendering habits
+required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it
+is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration
+towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over
+the so called accidents of Nature.
+
+This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life
+which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter
+with the pursuit of occult science.  It will be quite plain that the
+generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in
+the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if
+anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life.  It
+cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of
+his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously
+ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of
+wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather
+than of true occultism--a candidate for satanic evolution instead of
+perfection.  But at the same time the physical habits of life may be
+quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes
+of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in
+the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences.  Some
+misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent
+reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become
+the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts.  It is supposed that what is
+practiced by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils.
+Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils
+who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to
+public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils
+the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism.  As we saw just now,
+there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the
+varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of
+intensity--so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of
+self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material
+gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism
+required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite
+without their consequences in the all-embracing records of Karma.  But,
+broadly speaking, asceticism belongs to that species of effort which
+aims at personal chelaship, and that which contemplates the patient
+development of spiritual growth along the slow track of natural
+evolution claims no more, broadly speaking, than intellectual
+application.  All that is asserted in regard to the opening now offered
+to those who have taken notice of the present opportunity, is, that they
+may now give their own evolution an impulse which they may not again
+have an opportunity of giving it with the same advantage to themselves
+if the present opportunity is thrown aside.  True, it is most unlikely
+that any one advancing through Nature, life after life, under the
+direction of a fairly creditable Karma, will go on always without
+meeting sooner or later with the ideas that occult study implants.  So
+that the occultist does not threaten those who turn aside from his
+teachings with any consequences that must necessarily be disastrous.
+
+He only says that those who listen to them must necessarily derive
+advantage from so doing in exact proportion to the zeal with which they
+undertake the study and the purity of motive with which they promote it
+in others.
+
+Nor must it be supposed that those which have here been described as the
+lower range of possibilities in connection with occult study, are a mere
+fringe upon the higher possibilities, to be regarded as a relatively
+poor compensation accorded to those who do not feel equal to offering
+themselves for probation as regular chelas.  It would be a grave
+misconception of the purpose with which the present stream of occult
+teaching has been poured into the world, if we were to think it a
+universal incitement to that course of action.  It may be hazardous for
+any of us who are not initiates to speak with entire confidence of the
+intention of the Adepts, but all the external facts concerned with the
+growth and development of the Theosophical Society, show its purpose to
+be more directly related to the cultivation of spiritual aspirations
+over a wide area, than to the excitement of these with supreme intensity
+in individuals.  There are considerations, indeed, which may almost be
+said to debar the Adepts from ever doing anything to encourage persons
+in whom this supreme intensity of excitement is possible, to take the
+very serious step of offering themselves as chelas.  Directly that by
+doing this a man renders himself a candidate for something more than the
+maximum advantages that can flow to him through the operation of natural
+laws--directly that in this way he claims to anticipate the most
+favourable course of Nature and to approach high perfection by violent
+and artificial processes, he at once puts himself in presence of many
+dangers which would never beset him if he contented himself with a
+favourable natural growth.  It appears to be always a matter of grave
+consideration with the Adepts whether they will take the responsibility
+of encouraging any person who may not have it in him to succeed, to
+expose himself to these dangers.  For any one who is determined to face
+them and is permitted to do so, the considerations put forward above in
+regard to the optional character of personal physical training fall to
+the ground.  Those ascetic practices which a candidate for nothing more
+than the best natural evolution may undertake if he chooses, with the
+view of emphasizing his spiritual Karma to the utmost, become a sine qua
+non in regard to the very first step of his progress.  But with such
+progress the present explanation is not specially concerned.  Its
+purpose has been to show the beneficial effects which may flow to
+ordinary people living ordinary lives, from even that moderate devotion
+to occult philosophy which is compatible with such ordinary lives, and
+to guard against the very erroneous belief that occult science is a
+pursuit in which it is not worth while to engage, unless Adeptship is
+held out to the student as its ultimate result.
+
+--Lay Chela
+
+
+
+
+Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism"
+
+
+The object of the following paper is to submit certain questions which
+have occurred to some English readers of "Esoteric Buddhism."  We have
+had the great advantage of hearing Mr. Sinnett himself explain many
+points which perplexed us;  and it is with his sanction that we now
+venture to ask that such light as is permissible may be thrown upon some
+difficulties which, so far as we can discover, remain as yet unsolved.
+We have refrained from asking questions on subjects on which we
+understand that the Adepts forbid inquiry, and we respectfully hope
+that, as we approach the subject with a genuine wish to arrive at all
+the truth possible to us, our perplexities may be thought worthy of an
+authorized solution.
+
+We begin, then, with some obvious scientific difficulties.
+
+1.  Is the Nebular Theory, as generally held, denied by the Adepts?  It
+seems hard to conceive of the alternate evolution from the sun's central
+mass of planets, some of them visible and heavy, others invisible,--and
+apparently without weight, as they have no influence on the movements of
+the visible planets.
+
+2.  And, further, the time necessary for the manvantara even of one
+planetary chain, much more of all seven, seems largely to exceed the
+probable time during which the sun can retain heat, if it is merely a
+cooling mass, which derives no important accession of heat from without.
+Is some other view as regards the maintenance of the sun's heat held by
+the Adepts?
+
+3.  The different races which succeed each other on the earth are said
+to be separated by catastrophes, among which continental subsidences
+occupy a prominent place.  Is it meant that these subsidences are so
+sudden and unforeseen as to sweep away great nations in an hour?  Or, if
+not, how is it that no appreciable trace is left of such high
+civilizations as are described in the past?  Is it supposed that our
+present European civilization, with its offshoots all over the globe,
+can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration which leaves life
+still existing on the earth?  Are our existing arts and languages doomed
+to perish? or was it only the earlier races who were thus profoundly
+disjoined from one another?
+
+4.  The moon is said to be the scene of a life even more immersed in
+matter than the life on earth.  Are there then material organizations
+living there?  If so, how do they dispense with air and water, and how
+is it that our telescopes discern no trace of their works?  We should
+much like a fuller account of the Adepts' view of the moon, as so much
+is already known of her material conditions that further knowledge could
+be more easily adjusted than in the case (for instance) of planets
+wholly invisible.
+
+5.  Is the expression "a mineral monad" authorized by the Adepts? If so,
+what relation does the monad bear to the atom, or the molecule, of
+ordinary scientific hypothesis?  And does each mineral monad eventually
+become a vegetable monad, and then at last a human being?  Turning now
+to some historical difficulties, we would ask as follows:--
+
+6. Is there not some confusion in the letter quoted on p. 62 of
+"Esoteric Buddhism," where "the old Greeks and Romans" are said to have
+been Atlanteans?  The Greeks and Romans were surely Aryans, like the
+Adepts and ourselves:  their language being, as one may say,
+intermediate between Sanscrit and modern European dialects.
+
+7.  Buddha's birth is placed (on p. 141) in the year 643 B.C.. Is this
+date given by the Adepts as undoubtedly correct?  Have they any view as
+to the new inscriptions of Asoka (as given by General A. Cunningham,
+"Corpus Inscriptionum Indicanum," vol. I. pp. 20-23), on the strength of
+which Buddha's Nirvana is placed by Barth ("Religions of India," p.
+106), &c., about 476 B.C., and his birth therefore at about 556 B.C.?
+It would be exceedingly interesting if the Adepts would give a sketch
+however brief of the history of India in those centuries with authentic
+dates.
+
+8. Sankaracharya's date is variously given by Orientalists, but always
+after Christ.  Barth, for instance, places him about 788 A.D.  In
+"Esoteric Buddhism" he is made to succeed Buddha almost immediately (p.
+149).  Can this discrepancy be explained?  Has not Sankaracharya been
+usually classed as Vishnuite in his teaching?  And similarly has not
+Gaudapada been accounted a Sivite?  and placed much later than "Esoteric
+Buddhism" (p.147) places him?  We would willingly pursue this line of
+inquiry, but think it best to wait and see to what extent the Adepts may
+be willing to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history
+on which, as it would seem, they must surely possess knowledge which
+might be communicated to lay students without indiscretion.
+
+We pass on to some points beyond the ordinary range of science or
+history on which we should be very glad to hear more, if possible.
+
+9. We should like to understand more clearly the nature of the
+subjective intercourse with beloved souls enjoyed in Devachan. Say, for
+instance, that I die and leave on earth some young children.  Are these
+children present to my consciousness in Devachan still as children?  Do
+I imagine that they have died when I died? or do I merely imagine them
+as adult without knowing their life-history? or do I miss them from
+Devachan until they do actually die, and then hear from them their
+life-history as it has proceeded between my death and theirs?
+
+10.  We do not quite understand the amount of reminiscence attained at
+various points in the soul's progress.  Do the Adepts, who, we presume,
+are equivalent to sixth rounders, recollect their previous incarnations?
+Do all souls which live on into the sixth round attain this power of
+remembrance? or does the Devachan, at the end of each round bring a
+recollection of all the Devachans, or of all the incarnations, which
+have formed a part of that particular round?  And does reminiscence
+carry with it the power of so arranging future incarnations as still to
+remain in company with some chosen soul or group of souls?
+
+We have many more questions to ask, but we scruple to intrude further.
+And I will conclude here by repeating the remark with which we are most
+often met when we speak of the Adepts to English friends.  We find that
+our friends do not often ask for so-called miracles or marvels to prove
+the genuineness of the Adepts' powers.  But they ask why the Adepts will
+not give some proof--not necessarily that they are far beyond us, but
+that their knowledge does at least equal our own in the familiar and
+definite tracks which Western science has worn for itself.  A few
+pregnant remarks on Chemistry,--the announcement of a new electrical
+law, capable of experimental verification--some such communication as
+this (our interlocutors say), would arrest attention, command respect,
+and give a weight and prestige to the higher teaching which, so long as
+it remains in a region wholly unverifiable, it can scarcely acquire.
+
+We gratefully recognize the very acceptable choice which the Adepts have
+made in selecting Mr. Sinnett as the intermediary between us and them.
+They could hardly have chosen any one more congenial to our Western
+minds:--whether we consider the clearness of his written style, the
+urbanity of his verbal expositions, or the earnest sincerity of his
+convictions.  Since they have thus far met our peculiar needs with such
+considerate judgment, we cannot but hope that they may find themselves
+able yet further to adapt their modes of teaching to the requirements of
+Occidental thought.
+
+--An English F.T.S.
+London, July 1883.
+
+
+
+Reply to an English F.T.S
+
+
+Answers
+
+It was not in contemplation, at the outset of the work begun in
+Fragments, to deal as fully with the scientific problems of cosmic
+evolution as now seems expected.  A distinct promise was made, as Mr.
+Sinnett is well aware, to acquaint the readers with the outlines of
+Esoteric doctrines and--no more.  A good deal would be given, much more
+kept back.
+
+This seeming unwillingness to share with the world some of Nature's
+secrets that may have come into the possession of the few, arises from
+causes quite different from the one generally assigned.  It is not
+SELFISHNESS erecting a Chinese wall between occult science and those who
+would know more of it, without making any distinction between the simply
+curious profane, and the earnest, ardent seeker after truth.  Wrong and
+unjust are those who think so;  who attribute to indifference for other
+people's welfare a policy necessitated, on the contrary, by a far-seeing
+universal philanthropy;  who accuse the custodians of lofty physical and
+spiritual though long rejected truths, of holding them high above the
+people's heads.  In truth, the inability to reach them lies entirely
+with the seekers.  Indeed, the chief reason among many others for such a
+reticence, at any rate, with regard to secrets pertaining to physical
+sciences--is to be sought elsewhere.*  It rests entirely on the
+impossibility of imparting that the nature of which is at the present
+stage of the world's development, beyond the comprehension of the
+would-be learners, however intellectual and however scientifically
+trained may be the latter.  This tremendous difficulty is now explained
+to the few, who, besides having read "Esoteric Buddhism," have studied
+and understood the several occult axioms approached in it.  It is safe
+to say that it will not be even vaguely realized by the general reader,
+but will offer the pretext for sheer abuse.  Nay, it has already.
+
+-------
+* Needless to remind AN ENGLISH F.T.S. that what is said here, applies
+only to secrets the nature of which when revealed will not be turned
+into a weapon against humanity in general, or its units--men.  Secrets
+of such class could not be given to any one but a regular chela of many
+years' standing and during his successive initiations;  mankind as a
+whole has first to come of age, to reach its majority, which will happen
+but toward the beginning of its sixth race--before such mysteries can be
+safely revealed to it.  The vril is not altogether a fiction, as some
+chelas and even "lay" chelas know.
+---------
+
+It is simply that the gradual development of man's seven principles and
+physical senses has to be coincident and on parallel lines with Rounds
+and Root-races.  Our fifth race has so far developed but its five
+senses.  Now, if the Kama or Will-principle of the "Fourth-rounders" has
+already reached that stage of its evolution when the automatic acts, the
+unmotivated instincts and impulses of its childhood and youth, instead
+of following external stimuli, will have become acts of will framed
+constantly in conjunction with the mind (Manas), thus making of every
+man on earth of that race a free agent, a fully responsible being--the
+Kama of our hardly adult fifth race is only slowly approaching it.  As
+to the sixth sense of this, our race, it has hardly sprouted above the
+soil of its materiality.  It is highly unreasonable, therefore, to
+expect for the men of the fifth to sense the nature and essence of that
+which will be fully sensed and perceived but by the sixth--let alone the
+seventh race--i.e., to enjoy the legitimate outgrowth of the evolution
+and endowments of the future races with only the help of our present
+limited senses.  The exceptions to this quasi-universal rule have been
+hitherto found only in some rare cases of constitutional, abnormally
+precocious individual evolutions;  or, in such, where by early training
+and special methods, reaching the stage of the fifth rounders, some men
+in addition to the natural gift of the latter have fully developed (by
+certain occult methods) their sixth, and in still rarer cases their
+seventh, sense.  As an instance of the former class may be cited the
+Seeress of Prevorst;  a creature born out of time, a rare precocious
+growth, ill adapted to the uncongenial atmosphere that surrounded her,
+hence a martyr ever ailing and sickly.  As an example of the other, the
+Count St. Germain may be mentioned.  Apace with the anthropological and
+physiological development of man runs his spiritual evolution.  To the
+latter, purely intellectual growth is often more an impediment than a
+help.  An instance:  radiant stuff--"the fourth state of matter"--has
+been hardly discovered, and no one--the eminent discoverer himself not
+excepted--has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities,
+its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the
+most puzzling scientific problems.  How then can any "Adept" attempt to
+prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar
+theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his
+position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense--
+consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate?  Is not this plain?
+
+Thus, the obstacle is not that the "Adepts" would "forbid inquiry," but
+rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average,
+and even of the scientific man.  To undertake the explanation of that
+which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the
+outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature.
+It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of
+physical phenomena--save in exceptional cases--is strictly forbidden.
+
+And now, "Adepts" are asked to meddle with astronomy--a science which,
+of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate
+information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the
+achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud!  It
+is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant
+than those of most other sciences.  But if it has done much in the
+direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his
+noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important
+particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the
+great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus.
+While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial
+and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously
+progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be
+identical with those observed on our own planet.  In this particular,
+Esoteric Psychology may be useful.  But who of the men of science would
+consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would
+recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's
+knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim
+the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the
+alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments;  while the Adepts
+can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials
+they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced.
+However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an
+incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact;  that
+their major propositions may not always be correct, although the
+predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn--spectrum analysis
+will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research.  Nor,
+before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the
+error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to
+some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and
+disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas.  At present the
+"Adepts" do not see any help for it.  Were these invisible and unknown
+profanes to interfere with--not to say openly contradict--the dicta of
+the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass
+ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be
+their only reward;  while those who would lend an ear to their
+"vagaries," would be characterized immediately as types of the "mild
+lunatics" of the age.  Unless, indeed, the whole of that August body
+should be initiated into the great Mysteries at once, and without any
+further ado or the preliminary and usual preparations or training, the
+F.R.S.'s could be miraculously endowed with the required sixth sense,
+the Adepts fear the task would be profitless.  The latter have given
+quite enough, little though it may seem, for the purposes of a first
+trial.  The sequence of martyrs to the great universal truths has never
+been once broken;  and the long list of known and unknown sufferers,
+headed with the name of Galileo, now closes with that of Zollner. Is the
+world of science aware of the real cause of Zollner's premature death?
+When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the
+fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful
+posterity.  But this will neither recall him to life, nor will it
+obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of
+this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death
+to receive the donkey's kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly
+charged with lunacy.
+
+Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the
+help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to
+fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the
+heavenly bodies, and--no more.  So far, it has been unable to discover
+with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun,
+stars, or even cometary matter.  Of the latter, it seems to know no more
+than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old
+Chaldea and Egypt--namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the
+rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction.  But let the
+modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way
+connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted
+with;  or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry.  The
+probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the
+world's perplexity;  since, all hypotheses to the contrary
+notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the
+common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity.  The reason for it is
+very simple.  And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the
+experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited
+by the hairy and bearded travelers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of
+their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has
+neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an
+excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen.
+The essence of cometary matter must be--and the "Adepts" say is--totally
+different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with
+which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar--
+all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding.  It is to be
+feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti
+is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or
+extra radiant state;  et seq.
+
+Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of
+the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of
+their inner constitution.  His science has led him no farther towards a
+reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can
+tell us only of the earth's superficial layers, and that of the
+physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man's outer
+shell, or Sthula Sarira.  Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting
+daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations,
+the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the
+blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical
+constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and
+the matter of our own planet.  Verily and indeed, no microscopes,
+spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses
+can ever be focused on either the macro-or micro-cosmical highest
+principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to
+physical inquiry.  The methods of spiritual research and psychological
+observation are the only efficient agencies to employ.  We have to
+proceed by analogy in everything to be sure.  Yet the candid men of
+science must very soon find out that it is not sufficient to examine a
+few stars--a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the
+shoreless, cosmic ocean--to conclude that these stars are the same as
+all other stars--our earth included;  that, because they have attained a
+certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the
+smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have,
+therefore, concurrently perfected the survey of all that exists within
+even that limited space.  For, in truth, they have done nothing of the
+kind.  They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made
+visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of
+their vision.  And even though it were helped by telescopes of a
+hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick
+Observatory, the case would not alter.  No physical instrument will ever
+help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of
+Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from
+the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella,
+with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away,
+can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea.
+For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral
+shape) the limits of the solar system,  yet he knows that, far
+stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems
+upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system
+of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the
+great Shamo desert.  The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows
+of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never
+caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the
+incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of
+other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And
+yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to
+the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of
+daisies may be to the eye of the botanist.
+
+--------
+* The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric
+Western astronomy.  Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day.
+--------
+
+Thus, the "Adepts" of the present generation, though unable to help the
+profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the
+material constitution, of star and planet, since European science,
+knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more
+properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms
+for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they
+may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not--and this is
+more than sufficient for all present purposes.  The next best thing to
+learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true.
+
+Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to
+expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery
+before "An English F.T.S.," his few questions may be partially answered.
+The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line
+of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of Western
+science to afford some useful hints at least.
+
+Question 1.--Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?
+
+Answer:--No;  they do not deny its general propositions, nor the
+approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses.  They only deny the
+completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many
+so-called "exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have
+followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance:  while
+denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of
+light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged
+to remote worlds in the process of formation;  and agreeing with modern
+science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but
+belong simply to clusters of "stars" already formed;  they yet add that
+many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists
+for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of
+the various materials made ready for future worlds.  Like bricks already
+baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer
+formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them
+having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some
+forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds.  The astronomer
+has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps
+by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital
+motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular
+star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances.  Thrown
+together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the
+law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M.
+Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others.  Before an emphatic
+contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered
+perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character
+of those other so-called "temporary" stars, whose periodicity, though
+never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned.  What are
+these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and
+splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a
+single trace behind?  Whence do they appear?  Whither are they engulfed?
+In the great cosmic deep--we say.  The bright "brick" is caught by the
+hand of the mason--directed by that Universal Architect which destroys
+but to rebuild.  It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will
+perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour.
+
+Another point most emphatically denied by the "Adepts" is, that there
+exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry
+worlds.  There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the
+systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all
+the physicist knows.  The "Adept" affirms in this connection that
+orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word
+"infinitude" without attaching to it any adequate importance;  rather as
+a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious
+Reality.  When an astronomer is found in his Reports "gauging
+infinitude," even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt
+to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and
+its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the
+cubic contents of some known quantity.  This is the direct result of the
+present conception of a three-dimensional space.  The turn of a
+four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever
+continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible
+and invisible space--in its septenary completeness.  "The Infinite and
+the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the
+human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as the transmuted
+"properties of the nature of things--of two subjective negatives
+converted into objective affirmatives," as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is
+to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or
+of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the
+region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space.  As an
+absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility
+above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are
+replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above."  When
+demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the
+invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that
+surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround--say, a fly, but which,
+in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it
+exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the
+transparent atmosphere.  This is no psychology, but simply occult
+physics, which can never confound "substance" with "centres of Force,"
+to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya.
+In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and
+telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an
+etheroscope.
+
+It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that
+"An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject
+gravity as at present explained.  They deny that the so-called "impact
+theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis.
+They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with
+ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have
+hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance
+of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the
+real nature of the solar stuff.  Believing but in the law of mutual
+magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who
+have come to the conclusion that "Universal gravitation is a weak
+force," utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of
+the phenomena of motion.  In the same connection they are forced to
+suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of
+centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law.
+To cite but one instance this force is powerless to account for the
+spheroidal oblateness of certain planets.  For if the bulge of planetary
+equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to
+centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful
+influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, "balanced by concentric
+rectification of each planet's own gravitation achieved by rotation on
+its axis," to use an astronomer's phraseology (neither very clear nor
+correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system),
+why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the
+differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets
+are directly in opposition to this theory?  How long shall we see even
+great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident
+hiatus!  The "Adepts" have never claimed superior or any knowledge of
+Western astronomy and other sciences.  Yet turning even to the most
+elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the
+centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground.
+That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, nor
+explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative
+density of some planets.  How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal
+force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we
+are told, only "about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only
+about one-fourth greater than the Earth," should have a polar
+compression more than ten times greater than the latter?  And again, why
+Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be "twenty-seven times
+greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth," should
+have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the
+Earth?  Or, why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times
+greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have
+its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's?  To crown
+the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces
+as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter
+of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the
+earth's equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the
+gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to
+bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the
+poles of the solar axis.  In other and clearer words, the sun, with only
+one-fourth of our earth's density for the centrifugal force to work
+upon, has no polar compression at all!  We find this objection made by
+more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far
+as the "Adepts" are aware.
+
+Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing
+nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and
+centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical
+constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak
+so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling
+out into space planets, comets, and whatnot.  Our humble opinion being
+wanted, we maintain:  that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the
+soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar
+system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives
+it in the Infinitude and Eternity;  that the Solar System is as much the
+Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with
+his own little solar cosmos.
+
+What are the proofs of science?  The solar spots (a misnomer, like much
+of the rest)?  But these do not prove the solidity of the "central
+mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the
+atmosphere behind them.  Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's
+body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing
+"a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery
+prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?"  We say that there is indeed a
+"prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical,
+mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic
+reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as
+Mr. Proctor honestly calls it.  Before saying anything further, we will
+consider the next interrogatory.
+
+
+
+Question II.--Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?
+
+Such is the accepted theory of modern science:  it is not what the
+"Adepts" teach.  The former says--the sun "derives no important
+accession of heat from without:"--the latter answer--"the sun needs it
+not."  He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous;  and for
+the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of
+vital energy;  for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not
+cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come.  Were the sun "a
+cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age
+by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for
+the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to
+achieve their rounds.  There would remain no hope for evoluting
+humanity;  except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical
+textbooks of Missionary Schools--namely, that "the sun has an orbital
+journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet
+but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General
+Readers.")
+
+The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can
+reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion,
+in any ordinary sense of the word;  or (b) that he is incandescent, or
+even burning, though he is glowing;  or (c) that his luminosity has
+already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted
+within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and
+physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial
+chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is
+acquainted with.  With reference to the latter, they add that, properly
+speaking, though the body of the sun--a body that was never yet
+reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented--cannot be said
+to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which
+the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the
+sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to
+science.  There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for
+the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark
+lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth
+could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun;  although, on the other
+hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or
+not as yet been discovered on our globe.  Some may be missing in certain
+stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation;  or,
+properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of
+their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific
+tests.  But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had?
+The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun--an invisible orb of
+which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing--has in him the
+spirit of every element that exists in the solar system;  and his
+"Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far
+more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth;  our
+planet having to await its further growth and development before any of
+its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that
+chromosphere.  Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the
+latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now
+supposed, for it is neither.  Thousands of years before Leverrier and
+Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya .... "hiding behind his
+Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;"  the ascetic's dress
+being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring
+matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital
+principle in man's blood--the symbol of the vital principle in the sun,
+or what is now called chromosphere.  The "rose-coloured region!"  How
+little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though
+hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its
+presence.  The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red
+matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of
+their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never
+see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of
+matter.
+
+---------
+* There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject.
+The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the
+sun into Satya Loka.  The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so.  The
+Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to
+leave his place.  The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth
+(Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so.  The
+visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem.
+---------
+
+If the "Adepts" are asked:  "What then, in your views, is the nature of
+our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"--they answer:
+beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is
+spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid,
+liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital
+electricity, condensed and made visible.*
+
+---------
+* If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of
+the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he
+would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible
+planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron
+claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh
+from heretic bones.  "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which
+is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen
+without art.  To make this element visible is the greatest secret in
+magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is
+a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the
+elements are visible but one, namely, the earth:  and when thou hast
+attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth
+in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God
+himself, and how he is visible, how invisible,"  The italics are the
+author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words
+which had a double meaning in their code.  Here "God himself" visible
+and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum--Nature's seventh
+principle.
+----------
+
+And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the
+luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame,
+no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account
+for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without
+combustion;  that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and
+flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of
+a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that
+undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the
+"protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been
+observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting
+every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.;  to
+this the only answer that can be given is the following:  the
+appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion.  Undoubtedly were
+the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the
+sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us
+to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow
+one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes.
+Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her
+instantly.  But it can never be.  The protecting shell is of a thickness
+and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever
+calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the
+sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is
+ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of
+the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities--Sir W.
+Herschel--says the following:  "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and
+if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a
+shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary
+cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of
+the sun through the transparent ones."  The underlined words, written
+nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of
+the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the
+far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived.  And what
+the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his
+assumption:  "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the
+solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent
+fluids of the atmosphere would permit him.  In others, the opaque
+vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view
+to penetrate to the surface of our globe."  Thus, if the atmosphere of
+our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is
+like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a
+cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon
+from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an
+astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from
+our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas,
+the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles!
+
+--------
+* Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of
+distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of
+the question."
+----------
+
+The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the
+more within the scope of our physical vision.  Truly remarks Sir W.
+Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps
+metaphorically!"  It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid
+bodies revolving near the sun's surface.  "They have been conjectured to
+be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid
+matter.... They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque
+masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun...."  When all his
+anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose
+intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all
+astronomers comes near the truth--far nearer than any of those modern
+astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his
+"imaginative and fanciful theories."  His only mistake, now shared by
+most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally
+observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun
+itself.  When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth
+willow-leaf theory--"the definite shape of these objects, their exact
+similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant
+to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid
+nature"--his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable
+knowledge of physical science.  When he adds:  "Nothing remains but to
+consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some
+sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the
+immediate sources of the solar light and heat"--he utters a grander
+physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer.  And
+when, furthermore, we find him postulating--"looked at in this point of
+view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and
+amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such
+organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that
+vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and
+electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an
+occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar
+physics.  These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer
+interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery
+constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole
+solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the
+vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and
+breathes, and has its being.  The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of
+our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a
+much as it gives out.  Were the astronomers to be asked--what definite
+and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory--what
+knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere--they might,
+perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present
+theories.  For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar
+physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever
+from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the
+heavenly bodies.  We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:--
+
+Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption
+possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some
+general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work
+upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and
+physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by
+spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner
+constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the
+axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction?  They have no
+means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of
+determining, the sun's physical condition;  for (a) they are ignorant of
+the atmospheric limits;  (b) even though it were proved that matter,
+such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being
+ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls
+upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly
+surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable
+velocity of many meteors;"  (c) confessedly--they "have no means of
+learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous
+spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the
+solar substance is concerned in sending out that light.  This light "may
+come from the surface layers only;"  and, "it may be but a shell" ....
+(truly!);  and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion,
+properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;"  and "whether
+these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only
+processes of combustion which can actually take place there."
+Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after
+all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of
+incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible
+characteristic of the light of the glowing gas."  Thus, the whole basis
+of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they,
+the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz.,
+that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them
+the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages,
+prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the
+authorities of the age in physical science--Professor Tyndall--saying
+that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no
+substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth--would
+be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;"  and
+again:--".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do
+not reach the sun's expenditure.  And still, notwithstanding this
+enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a
+diminution of his store ...."--after reading this, to see the men of
+science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may
+be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency.  Verily is that
+great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite
+extension--a mere drop in the Universal sea;"  and saying that, "to
+Nature nothing can be added;  from Nature nothing can be taken away; the
+sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit
+of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to
+shift the constituents of the never-varying total.  The law of
+conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the
+flux of power is eternally the same."  Mr. Tyndall speaks here as
+though he were an Occultist.  Yet, the memento mori--"the sun is
+cooling .... it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds
+as loud as it ever did.
+
+No, we say;  no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will
+not be extinguished.  Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on
+the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be
+gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite
+Space.  Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and
+the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden
+and--died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon
+awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them--to die themselves for
+their father's loss.  And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have
+to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only,
+surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of
+the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general
+conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun:  he will have
+unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"--the mysterious, the
+ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system.  Fables?  Mere
+poetical fiction?  Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the
+greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world
+among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the
+Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise
+of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths
+even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade.  This fable about the
+Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in
+subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has
+likewise the same occult meaning.  But then like the Ramayana "borrowed
+from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from
+the Gospel--in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the
+Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the
+same source!  When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian
+Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders,
+then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the
+historical truths of the West vindicated!
+
+
+
+Question III.--Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?
+
+
+No such absurdity was ever postulated.  The cataclysm that annihilated
+the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly
+preparing its work for ages;  as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism"
+(page 54).  "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though
+its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now.  What was said is
+still asserted:  every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a
+cataclysm--the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later
+on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or
+savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.
+
+That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to
+several reasons.  One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability,
+and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual
+blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish
+between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign
+to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric
+times.  For the latter the archeologist is not responsible--for what
+criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an
+excavated building bearing no inscription;  and what warrant has the
+public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some
+20,000 years?  A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and
+historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology
+bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected.  Oral literature,
+popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word--
+superstition;  and popular antiquities have become "fables" and
+"folk-lore."  The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius,
+mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end--the dawn of
+pre-Roman history;  the walls of Epirus and Mycenae--at the nearest.  The
+latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of
+about 1,000 years before the Western era.  As to the former, they were
+hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately--
+Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were
+created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced
+upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs.  Had it not been
+for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and
+heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on
+those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses.  And, as among the
+few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy--
+hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation--Western scholars got
+early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth
+clashed with the dicta of their churches.  Then, again, the modern
+Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans;  and they
+are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise.  However it may be,
+most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate
+the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records.  This is a ditch into
+which most have slipped.
+
+The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is
+humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up
+unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies;  and Christian
+bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian
+nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists--so long will
+Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient
+Judaism and modern Christianity.
+
+So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older
+civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has
+assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical
+chronology.  Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal
+History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe
+and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition
+furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian
+nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data
+coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time,
+that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not
+very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient
+relics--Babylonia and Assyria--there are other sites where it could
+profitably excavate.  The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by
+Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world;  while the
+Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile
+land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the
+Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces"
+under its beds of sand.
+
+Times have changed, are changing.  Proofs of the old civilizations and
+the archaic wisdom are accumulating.  Though soldier-bigots and priestly
+schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses;
+though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious
+records;  though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made
+bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if
+spared, would have solved many a riddle of history;  though Omar lit the
+fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of
+the Serapeum;  though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and
+Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon
+"heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas
+of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory--thus
+obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and
+treatises of great importance:  though this hateful and senseless
+Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations--still,
+despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of
+mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what
+science has often called "most curious coincidences."  Europe has no
+very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her
+successive races and their doings.  What with their savage wars, the
+barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior
+nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests
+who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an
+antiquity could not exist for Europe.  And, having no Past to record
+themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not
+scrupled to deny one to others--whenever the concession excited a
+sacrifice of biblical prestige.
+
+No "traces of old civilizations" we are told!  And what about the
+Pelasgi--the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus?
+What about the Etruscans--the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for
+the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems?  That
+which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a
+whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered.  A people
+described as are the Pelasgi--a highly intellectual, receptive, active
+people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary,
+though preferring peace;  a people who built canals as no one else,
+subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the
+most astounding strength;  who are even suspected of having been the
+inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from
+which all European alphabets are derived--who were they?  Could they be
+shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg
+(Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby
+demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to
+2247 "B.C.."  And who were the Etruscans?
+
+Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the
+high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say--prehistoric) Tursenoi
+of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history;  their
+Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when
+they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their
+northern latitudes"--only a few centuries elapsed?  Shall it be still
+urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology,
+accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and
+civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but
+"a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"?  Or, that the Trojan war could not
+have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed
+somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no
+means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle,
+Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records
+millenniums older?  If the Christian historian, hampered by his
+chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to
+stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously
+fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's
+consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get
+at the truth?  And if these incompetent builders of Universal History
+can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological
+and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has
+access to quite different--and we make bold to say, more trustworthy--
+materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend
+Western historical infallibility?  He believes--on the strength of the
+documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in
+India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of
+giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation
+of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement.
+That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when
+Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone.  And,
+having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took
+the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made
+civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of
+the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the
+Christian era;  and to crown all with the definite help later of the
+Normans and Saxons--two thousand years before they could build their
+medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans;
+and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as
+civilized;  then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently
+styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the
+Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously
+earlier time.  Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so
+many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the
+nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness--since
+they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence
+to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of
+this age--about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii,
+their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of
+the topmost one in the Troad;  and other and higher civilizations were
+exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the
+archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum
+were taken;  and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of
+sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the
+gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi;
+so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men
+are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the
+proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization.  Modern Florence
+lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in
+her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns.  And so also
+Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by
+modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic
+civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names
+Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."
+
+When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were
+the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious
+Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with
+writing--as proved by their inscriptions--than the Phoenicians, then
+only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data
+and dogmas.  Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no
+appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in
+the Past?"
+
+"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its
+offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?"
+More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the
+titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments,
+to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages."  Its
+civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively
+indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences.
+What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even
+approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the
+geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its
+ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile
+furniture:  or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and
+micrographs?  While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and
+cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed
+by a child breaking them to atoms.  When we know of the destruction of
+the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the
+Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly
+crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the
+hand of Time--lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm--the
+question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern
+reasoning.  Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few
+days;  your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand
+civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are
+made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable?  And
+why should European civilization escape the common lot?  It is from the
+lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in
+nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers;  and these know
+nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those
+very imperfectly.  The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old:
+they die but to revive.  And when the question found on page 58 of
+"Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress
+within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's
+correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying:  "This
+rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery
+follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you
+look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which,
+following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in
+enunciating, you are not the first to explain them."  We learn more
+easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood.  If, as
+averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great
+Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe
+were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic
+Rishis.  That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the
+secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which
+is now simply improving upon details.
+
+
+
+Question IV.--Is the Moon immersed in matter?
+
+
+No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela"
+his "views of the moon," for publication.  With Selenography, modern
+science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may
+ever hope to become.  It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and
+105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature.
+Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to--
+
+
+
+Question V.--About the mineral monad.
+
+
+Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is
+"authorized by the Adepts."  Why not?  The term "monad" applies to the
+latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the
+vegetable and the animal.  The monogenist may take exception to the term
+and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a
+corporealist, may not.  As to the other class of scientists, they would
+take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it
+"unscientific."  What relation does the monad bear to the atom?  None
+whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at
+present.  It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism
+classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable
+and ranked among algae;  nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics.
+Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course,
+from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its
+constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements.  In short,
+the mineral monad is one--the higher animal and human monads are
+countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain
+mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four
+kingdoms?  The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in
+man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad"
+applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual
+vivifying Principle.  But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual
+Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called.  The
+composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems
+necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is
+made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a
+centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state;  the
+animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm.  Now the
+Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable
+and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the
+lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of
+progression.
+
+It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity
+trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and
+after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human
+being;  in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad
+of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the
+correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every
+atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that
+form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom.  Each atom or molecule of
+ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated
+by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons.  But
+it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has
+not yet become individualized:  a sequential manifestation of the one
+Universal Monas.  The ocean does not divide into its potential and
+constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the
+evolutionary stage of man-birth.  The tendency towards segregation into
+individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to
+the point.  The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos,
+in the pantheistic sense;  and the Occultists while accepting this
+thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the
+evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the
+"Mineral Monad" is one.  The term merely means that the tidal wave of
+spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit.  The
+"Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable
+kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by
+Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their
+degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad--not the
+atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through
+which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.
+
+And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there
+are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious
+perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are
+endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable
+nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the
+vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening
+sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined
+the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered.  There
+are seven kingdoms.  The first group comprises three degrees of
+elementals, or nascent centres of forces--from the first stage of the
+differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree--i.e., from full
+unconsciousness to semi-perception;  the second or higher group embraces
+the kingdoms from vegetable to man;  the mineral kingdom thus forming
+the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"--
+considered as an Evoluting Energy.  Three stages in the elemental side;
+the mineral kingdom;  three stages in the objective physical side--these
+are the seven links of the evolutionary chain.  A descent of spirit into
+matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution;  a re-ascent from
+the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo
+ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to
+Nirvana--the vanishing point of differentiated matter.  Perhaps a simple
+diagram will aid us:--
+
+[[Diagram here]]
+
+The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes
+into concrete matter;  the point D indicates the evolutionary position
+of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion
+(a);  c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages
+of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the
+spiritual impulse (through the elementals--of which little is permitted
+to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of
+matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of
+organic life, vegetable, animal, human.  What is total obscuration of
+spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis--matter;  and this
+idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A.  The arrows show the line of
+travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding
+again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line,
+d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.
+
+The monogenists have had their day.  Even believers in a personal god,
+like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in
+the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress
+consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the
+vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man.  Man is
+the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first
+appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp.
+205-6).  The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an
+all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its
+lowest and most concrete terrestrial state;  in man the monad is fully
+developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according
+to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles.  In
+the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state--but one
+degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*
+
+----------
+* The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of
+evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness.
+----------
+
+
+
+Question VIII.--Sri Sankaracharya's Date
+
+
+It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any
+particular event in the ancient history of India;  and this difficulty
+is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists,
+whose labours in this direction have but tended to thicken the confusion
+already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often
+altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy.
+The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on
+examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based.  The
+writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an
+imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and
+of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of
+Hindu writers and pundits.  Very often, facts and dates are taken by
+these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries
+on the assumption that they are correct without any further
+investigation by themselves.  Even when a writer gives a date with an
+expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes
+the same date as if it were absolutely correct.  One wrong date is made
+to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often
+deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical.  And
+consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these
+writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology
+constructed by them will have to be carefully examined.  It will be
+convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before
+proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of
+Sankaracharya.
+
+I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices
+engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether
+rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old.  We
+do not mean to say that any one of these writers would now seriously
+think of defending the said doctrine.  Nevertheless, it had exercised a
+considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began
+to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology.  If an antiquity of
+five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected
+with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be
+rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding
+the truth of the statement.
+
+II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda
+can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even
+when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the
+Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial
+investigator untainted by Christian prejudices.  The maximum limit of
+Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament;
+and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of
+the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other,
+should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic
+and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history.
+
+III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas
+containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a
+subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a
+philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after
+the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era.
+Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin,
+in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries
+preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first
+time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five
+thousand years.
+
+IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by
+Gautama Buddha.  The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat
+philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the
+Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high
+antiquity to their own religion.  In consequence of this erroneous
+impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is
+declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha.
+For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the
+Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ.  This is
+indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus.
+
+V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to
+one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often
+assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of
+cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of
+different writers.  By this process of reasoning they have discovered
+two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis.  We do
+not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to
+identity of personality.  But we cannot but protest against such
+assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them,
+merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or
+establishing a favourite hypothesis.
+
+VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the
+chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of
+the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language
+and Indian literature.  The time required for this growth is often
+estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the
+time required for the gradual development of the various strata
+composing the earth's crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a
+proper method in making these calculations.  It will be wrong to assume
+that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of
+another within the same limits.  The peculiar characteristics of the
+nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into
+consideration in attempting to make any such calculation.  The history
+of the said nation is equally important.  Any one who examines Max
+Muller's estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda
+periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to
+these considerations.  The time allotted to the growth of these four
+"strata" of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary.
+
+We have enumerated these defects in the writings of European
+Orientalists for the purpose of showing to our readers that it is not
+always safe to rely upon the conclusions arrived at by these writers
+regarding the dates of ancient Indian history.
+
+In examining the various quotations and traditions selected by European
+Orientalists for the purpose of fixing Sankaracharya's date, special
+care must be taken to see whether the person referred to was the very
+first Sankaracharya who established the Adwaitee doctrine, or one of his
+followers who became the Adhipathis (heads) of the various Mathams
+(temples) established by him and his successors.  Many of the Adwaitee
+Mathadhipatis who succeeded him (especially of the Sringeri Matham) were
+men of considerable renown and were well known throughout India during
+their time.  They are often referred to under the general name of
+Sankaracharya.  Consequently, any reference made to any one of these
+Mathadhipatis is apt to be mistaken for a reference to the first
+Sankaracharya himself.
+
+Mr. Barth, whose opinion regarding Sankara's date is quoted by "An
+English F.T.S." against the date assigned to that teacher in Mr.
+Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism, does not appear to have carefully
+examined the subject himself.  He assigns no reasons for the date given,
+and does not even allude to the existence of other authorities and
+traditions which conflict with the date adopted by him.  The date which
+he assigns to Sankara appears in an unimportant foot-note on page 89 of
+his book on "The Religions of India," which reads thus:  "Sankaracharya
+is generally placed in the eighth century;  perhaps we must accept the
+ninth rather. The best accredited tradition represents him as born on
+the 10th of the month 'Madhava' in 788 A.D.  Other traditions, it is
+true, place him in the second and fifth centuries.  The author of the
+Dabistan, on the other hand, brings him as far down as the commencement
+of the fourteenth."  Mr. Barth is clearly wrong in saying that Sankara
+is generally placed in the eight century. There are as many traditions
+for placing him in some century before the Christian era as for placing
+him in some century after the said era, and it will also be seen from
+what follows that in fact evidence preponderates in favour of the former
+statement. It cannot be contended that the generality of Orientalists
+have any definite opinions of their own on the subject under
+consideration.  Max Muller does not appear to have ever directed his
+attention to this subject.  Monier Williams merely copies the date given
+by Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Weber seems to rely upon the same authority
+without troubling himself with any further inquiry about the matter.
+Mr. Wilson is probably the only Orientalist who investigated the subject
+with some care and attention;  and he frankly confesses that the exact
+period at which "he (Sankara) flourished can by no means be determined"
+(p. 201 of vol. I. of his "Essays on the Religion of the Hindoos").
+Under such circumstances the foot-note above quoted is certainly very
+misleading.  Mr. Barth does not inform his readers where he obtained the
+tradition referred to, and what reasons he has for supposing that it
+refers to the first Sankaracharya, and that it is "the best accredited
+tradition."  When the matter is still open to discussion, Mr. Barth
+should not have adopted any particular date if he is not prepared to
+support it and establish it by proper arguments.  The other traditions
+alluded to are not intended, of course, to strengthen the authority of
+the tradition relied upon.  But the wording of the foot-note in question
+seems to show that all the authorities and traditions relating to the
+subject are comprised therein, when in fact the most important of them
+are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments
+are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other
+portions of Mr. Barth's book, but there are a few isolated passages
+which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question
+or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in
+this connection.
+
+Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of
+Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the
+Buddhists, which he seems to place in the seventh and eighth centuries.
+In page 89 of his book he speaks of "the great reaction on the offensive
+against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the seventh and eighth
+centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara;"  and in page 135 he
+states that the "disciples of Kumarila and Sankara, organized into
+military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of
+orthodoxy." The force of these statements is, however, considerably
+weakened by the author's observations on pages 89 and 134, regarding the
+absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the
+authentic documents hitherto examined, and the absurdity of legends
+which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape
+Comorin.
+
+The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is
+highly ridiculous.  It is well known to almost every Hindu that the
+followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the
+greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and
+Mr. Barth seems to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila's
+views and Purva Mimamsa, and the scope and aim of Sankara's Vedantic
+philosophy.  It is impossible to say what evidence the author has for
+asserting that the great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the
+seventh and eighth centuries, and that Sankara was instrumental in
+originating it.  There are some passages in his book which tend to show
+that this date cannot be considered as quite correct.  In page 135 he
+says that Buddhist persecution began even in the time of Asoka.
+
+Such being the case, it is indeed very surprising that the orthodox
+Hindus should have kept quiet for nearly ten centuries without
+retaliating on their enemies.  The political ascendency gained by the
+Buddhists during the reign of Asoka did not last very long;  and the
+Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the
+commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132
+of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh
+century.  It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the
+Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of
+decay.  No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and
+energy in demolishing a religion already in ruins.  But what evidence is
+there to show that Sankara was ever engaged in this task?  If the main
+object of his preaching was to evoke a reaction against Buddhism, he
+would no doubt have left us some writings specially intended to
+criticize its doctrines and expose its defects.  On the other hand, he
+does not even allude to Buddhism in his independent works.
+
+Though he was a voluminous writer, with the exception of a few remarks
+on the theory advocated by some Buddhists regarding the nature of
+perception, contained in his Commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, there is
+not a single passage in the whole range of his writings regarding the
+Buddhists or their doctrines;  and the insertion of even these few
+remarks in his Commentary was rendered necessary by the allusions
+contained in the Sutras which he was interpreting.  As, in our humble
+opinion, these Brahma-Sutras were composed by Vyasa himself (and not by
+an imaginary Vyasa of the fifth century after Christ, evolved by Mr.
+Weber's fancy), the allusions therein contained relate to the Buddhism
+which existed to the date of Gautama Buddha.  From these few remarks it
+will be clear to our readers that Sankaracharya had nothing to do with
+Buddhist persecution.  We may here quote a few passages from Mr.
+Wilson's Preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary in
+support of our remarks.  He writes as follows regarding Sankara's
+connection with the persecution of the Buddhists:--"Although the popular
+belief attributes the origin of the Bauddha persecution to
+Sankaracharya, yet in this case we have some reason to distrust its
+accuracy.  Opposed to it we have the mild character of the reformer, who
+is described as uniformly gentle and tolerant;  and, speaking from my
+own limited reading in Vedanta works, and the more satisfactory
+testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, which he permits me to adduce, it does not
+appear that any traces of his being instrumental to any persecution are
+to be found in his own writings, all which are extant, and the object of
+which is by no means the correction of the Bauddha or any other schism,
+but the refutation of all other doctrines besides his own, and the
+reformation or re-establishment of the fourth religious order."  Further
+on he observes that "it is a popular error to ascribe to him the work of
+persecution;  he does not appear at all occupied in that odious task,
+nor is he engaged in particular controversy with any of the Bauddhas."
+
+From the foregoing observations it will be seen that Sankara's date
+cannot be determined by the time of the commencement of the Buddhist
+persecution, even if it were possible to ascertain the said period.
+
+Mr. Barth seems to have discovered some connection between the
+philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the
+Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the
+Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be
+given him for the originality of his discovery.  This mysterious and
+occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is
+pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the
+present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy.
+The only reason given by him in support of his theory is, however, in my
+humble opinion, worthless.  The Hindus had a Prominent example of a
+grand religious movement under the guidance of a single teacher in the
+life of Buddha, and it was not necessary for them to imitate the
+adventures of the Arabian prophet.  There is but one other passage in
+Mr. Barth's book which has some reference to Sankara's date.  In page
+207 he writes as follows:--"The Siva, for instance, who is invoked at
+the commencement of the drama of Sakuntala, who is at once God, priest
+and offering, and whose body is the universe, is a Vedantic idea.  This
+testimony appears to be forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes
+done, that the whole sectarian Vedantism commences with Sankara."  But
+this testimony appears to be equally forgotten when it is maintained, as
+is sometimes done by Orientalists like Mr. Barth, that Sankara lived in
+some century after the author of Sakuntala.
+
+From the foregoing remarks it will be apparent that Mr. Barth's opinion
+regarding Sankara's date is very unsatisfactory.  As Mr. Wilson seems to
+have examined the subject with some care and attention, we must now
+advert to his opinion and see how far it is based on proper evidence.
+In attempting to fix Amara Sinha's date (which attempt ultimately ended
+in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara
+lived.  Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in
+his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary.  We shall
+now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with
+the subject under consideration and comment upon them.  Mr. Wilson
+writes as follows:--
+
+"The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other
+remarkable incident amongst the Hindus.  The Kadali (it ought to be
+Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his
+system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since;  some accounts
+place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third
+or fourth century after;  a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in
+Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama
+Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at
+Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore
+Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that
+still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of
+the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and
+common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old.  The Bhoja Prabandha
+enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that
+prince;  his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries.
+The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to
+reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been
+born three times;  first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago,
+again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in
+Tuluva, no more than 600 years since;  the latter assertion being
+intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that
+was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious
+controversy.  The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared
+in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era.  Dr. Taylor
+thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from
+the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of
+about 1,000 years.  This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy,
+a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his
+doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a
+calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara
+Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the
+seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time
+agreeing with the statements made to Dr. Buchanan in his journey through
+Sankara's native country, Malabar, and in union with the assertion of
+the Kerala Utpatti, a work giving art historical and statistical account
+of the same province, and which, according to Mr. Duncan's citation of
+it, mentions the regulations of the castes of Malabar by this
+philosopher to have been effected about 1,000 years before 1798.  At the
+same time, it must be observed, that a manuscript translation of the
+same work in Colonel Mackenzie's possession, states Sankaracharya to
+have been born about the middle of the fifth century, or between
+thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, differing in this respect from
+Mr. Duncan's statement--a difference of the less importance, as the
+manuscript in question, either from defects in the original or
+translation, presents many palpable errors, and cannot consequently be
+depended upon.  The weight of authority therefore is altogether in
+favour of an antiquity of about ten centuries, and I am disposed to
+adopt this estimate of Sankara's date, and to place him in the end of
+the eighth and beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era."
+
+We will add a few more authorities to Mr. Wilson's list before
+proceeding to comment on the foregoing passage.
+
+In a work called "The Biographical Sketches of Eminent Hindu Authors,"
+published at Bombay in 1860 by Janardan Ramchenderjee, it is stated that
+Sankara lived 2,500 years ago, and that, in the opinion of some people,
+2,200 years ago.  The records of the Combaconum Matham give a list of
+nearly 66 Mathadhipatis from Sankara down to the present time, and show
+that he lived more than 2,000 years ago.
+
+The Kudali Matham referred to by Mr. Wilson, which is a branch of the
+Sringeri Matham, gives the same date as the latter Matham, their
+traditions being identical.  Their calculation can safely be relied upon
+as far as it is supported by the dates given on the places of Samadhi
+(something like a tomb) of the successive Gurus of the Sringeri Matham;
+and it leads us to the commencement of the Christian era.
+
+No definite information is given by Mr. Wilson regarding the nature,
+origin, or reliability of the accounts which place Sankara in the third
+or fourth century of the Christian era or at its commencement;  nor does
+it clearly appear that the history of the kings of Konga referred to
+unmistakably alludes to the very first Sancharacharya.  These traditions
+are evidently opposed to the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Wilson, and it
+does not appear on what grounds their testimony is discredited by him.
+Mr. Wilson is clearly wrong in stating that an antiquity of 1,600 years
+is attributed to Sankara by the Sringeri Matham.  We have already
+referred to the account of the Sringeri Matham, and it is precisely
+similar to the account given by the Kudali Brahmins. We have ascertained
+that it is so from the agent of the Sringeri Matham at Madras, who has
+recently published the list of teachers preserved at the said Matham
+with the dates assigned to them. And further, we are unable to see which
+"common tradition" makes Sankara "about 1,200 years old."  As far as our
+knowledge goes there is no such common tradition in India.  The majority
+of people in Southern India have, up to this time, been relying on the
+Sringeri account, and in Northern India there seems to be no common
+tradition.  We have but a mass of contradictory accounts.
+
+It is indeed surprising that an Orientalist of Mr. Wilson's pretensions
+should confound the poet named Sankara and mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha
+with the great Adwaitee teacher.  No Hindu would ever commit such a
+ridiculous mistake.  We are astonished to find some of these European
+Orientalists quoting now and then some of the statements contained in
+such books as Bhoja Prabandha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Raja-tarangini and
+Panchatantra, as if they were historical works.  In some other part of
+his preface Mr. Wilson himself says that this Bhoja Prabandha is
+altogether untrustworthy, as some of the statements contained therein
+did not harmonize with his theory about Amarasimha's date;  but now he
+misquotes its statements for the purpose of supporting his conclusion
+regarding Sankara's date.  Surely, consistency is not one of the
+prominent characteristics of the writings of the majority of European
+Orientalists.  The person mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha is always spoken
+of under the name of Sankara Kavi (poet), and he is nowhere called
+Sankaracharya (teacher), and the Adwaitee teacher is never mentioned in
+any Hindu work under the appellation of Sankara Kavi.
+
+It is unnecessary for us to say anything about the Madhwa traditions or
+the opinion of the Vaishnava Brahmins of Madurah regarding Sankara's
+date.  It is, in our humble opinion, hopeless to expect anything but
+falsehood regarding Sankara's history and his philosophy from the
+Madhwas and the Vaishnavas.  They are always very anxious to show to the
+world at large that their doctrines existed before the time of Sankara,
+and that the Adwaitee doctrine was a deviation from their preexisting
+orthodox Hinduism.  And consequently they have assigned to him an
+antiquity of less than 1,500 years.
+
+It does not appear why Dr. Taylor thinks that he can allow Sankara about
+900 years, or on what grounds Mr. Colebrooke is inclined to give him an
+antiquity of about 1,000 years.  No reliance can be placed on such
+statements before the reasons assigned therefore are thoroughly sifted.
+
+Fortunately, Mr. Wilson gives us the reason for Ram Mohun Roy's opinion.
+We are inclined to believe that Ram Mohun Roy's calculation was made
+with reference to the Sringeri list of Teachers or Gurus, as that was
+the only list published up to this time;  and as no other Matham, except
+perhaps the Cumbaconum Matham, has a list of Gurus coming up to the
+present time in uninterrupted succession.  There is no necessity for
+depending upon his calculation (which from its very nature cannot be
+anything more than mere guesswork) when the old list preserved at
+Sringeri contains the dates assigned to the various teachers.  As these
+dates have not been published up to the present time, and as Ram Mohun
+Roy had merely a string of names before him, he was obliged to ascertain
+Sankara's date by assigning a certain number of years on the average to
+every teacher.  Consequently, his opinion is of no importance whatever
+when we have the statement of the Sringeri Matham which, as we have
+already said, places Sankara some centuries before the Christian era.
+The same remarks will apply to the calculation in question even if it
+were made on the basis of the number of teachers contained in the list
+preserved in the Cumbaconum Matham.
+
+Very little importance can be attached to the oral evidence adduced by
+some unknown persons before Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar;
+and we have only to consider the inferences that may be drawn from the
+accounts contained in Kerala Utpatti.  The various manuscript copies of
+this work seem to differ in the date they assign to Sankaracharya;  even
+if the ease were otherwise, we cannot place any reliance upon this work,
+for the following among other reasons:--
+
+I. It is a well-known fact that the customs of Malabar are very
+peculiar.  Their defenders have been, consequently, pointing to some
+great Rishi or some great philosopher of ancient India as their
+legislator.  Some of them affirm (probably the majority) that Parasurama
+brought into existence some of these customs and left a special Smriti
+for the guidance of the people of Malabar; others say that it was
+Sankaracharya who sanctioned these peculiar customs.  It is not very
+difficult to perceive why these two persons were selected by them.
+According to the Hindu Puranas, Parasurama lived in Malabar for some
+time, and according to Hindu traditions Sankara was born in that
+country.  But it is extremely doubtful whether either of them had
+anything to do with the peculiar customs of the said country.  There is
+no allusion whatever to any of these customs in Sankara's works.  He
+seems to have devoted his whole attention to religious reform, and it is
+very improbable that he should have ever directed his attention to the
+local customs of Malabar.  While attempting to revive the philosophy of
+the ancient Rishis, it is not likely that he should have sanctioned the
+customs of Malabar, which are at variance with the rules laid down in
+the Smritis of those very Rishis; and as far as our knowledge goes, he
+left no written regulations regarding to the castes of Malabar.
+
+II. The statements contained in Kerala Utpatti are opposed to the
+account of Sankara's life given in almost all the Sankara Vijayams
+(Biographies of Sankara) examined up to this time--viz., Vidyaranya's
+Sankara Vijayam, Chitsukhachary's Sankara Vijayavilasam, Brihat Sankara
+Vijayam, &c.  According to the account contained in these works, Sankara
+left Malabar in his eighth year, and returned to his native village when
+his mother was on her death-bed, and on that occasion he remained there
+only for a few days.  It is difficult to see at what period of his
+lifetime he was engaged in making regulations for the castes of Malabar.
+
+III. The work under consideration represents Malabar as the seat of
+Bhattapada's triumphs over the Buddhists, and says that this teacher
+established himself in Malabar and expelled the Buddhists from that
+country.  This statement alone will be sufficient to show to our readers
+the fictitious character of the account contained in this book.
+According to every other Hindu work, this great teacher of Purva Mimamsa
+was born in Northern India; almost all his famous disciples and
+followers were living in that part of the country, and according to
+Vidyaranya's account he died at Allahabad.
+
+For the foregoing reasons we cannot place any reliance upon this account
+of Malabar.
+
+From an examination of the traditions and other accounts referred to
+above, Mr. Wilson comes to the conclusion that Sankaracharya lived in
+the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century of the
+Christian era.  The accounts of the Sringeri, Kudali and Cumbaconum
+Mathams, and the traditions current in the Bombay Presidency, as shown
+in the biographical sketches published at Bombay, place Sankara in some
+century before the Christian era.  On the other hand, Kerala Utpatti,
+the information obtained by Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar,
+and the opinions expressed by Dr. Taylor and Mr. Colebrooke, concur in
+assigning to him an antiquity of about 1,000 years.  The remaining
+traditions referred to by Mr. Wilson are as much opposed to his opinion
+as to the conclusion that Sankara lived before Christ.  We shall now
+leave it to our readers to say whether, under such circumstances, Mr.
+Wilson is justified in asserting that "the weight of authority is
+altogether in favour" of his theory.
+
+We have already referred to the writings of almost all the European
+Orientalists who expressed an opinion upon the subject under discussion;
+and we need hardly say that Sankara's date is yet to be ascertained.
+
+We are obliged to comment at length on the opinions of European
+Orientalists regarding Sankara's date, as there will be no probability
+of any attention being paid to the opinion of Indian and Tibetan
+initiates when it is generally believed that the question has been
+finally settled by European Sanskritists.  The Adepts referred to by "An
+English F.T.S." are certainly in a position to clear up some of the
+problems in Indian religious history.  But there is very little chance
+of their opinions being accepted by the general public under present
+circumstances, unless they are supported by such evidence as is within
+the reach of the outside world.  As it is not always possible to procure
+such evidence, there is very little use in publishing the information
+which is in their possession until the public are willing to recognize
+and admit the antiquity and trustworthiness of their traditions, the
+extent of their powers, and the vastness of their knowledge.  In the
+absence of such proof as is above indicated, there is every likelihood
+of their opinions being rejected as absurd and untenable;  their motives
+will no doubt be questioned, and some people may be tempted to deny even
+the fact of their existence.  It is often asked by Hindus as well as by
+English men why these Adepts are so very unwilling to publish some
+portion at least of the information they possess regarding the truths of
+physical science.  But, in doing so, they do not seem to perceive the
+difference between the method by which they obtain their knowledge and
+the process of modern scientific investigation by which the facts of
+Nature are ascertained and its laws are discovered.  Unless an Adept can
+prove his conclusions by the same kind of reasoning as is adopted by the
+modern scientist they remain undemonstrated to the outside world. It is
+of course impossible for him to develop in a considerable number of
+human beings such faculties as would enable them to perceive their
+truth;  and it is not always practicable to establish them by the
+ordinary scientific method unless all the facts and laws on which his
+demonstration is to be based have already been ascertained by modern
+science.  No Adept can be expected to anticipate the discoveries of the
+next four or five centuries, and prove some grand scientific truth to
+the entire satisfaction of the educated public after having discovered
+every fact and law of Nature required for the said purpose by such
+process of reasoning as would be accepted by them.  They have to
+encounter similar difficulties in giving any information regarding the
+events of the ancient history of India.
+
+However, before giving the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by the
+Indian and Tibetan initiates, we shall indicate a few circumstances by
+which his date may be approximately determined. It is our humble opinion
+that the Sankara Vijayams hitherto published can be relied upon as far
+as they are consistent with each other regarding the general outlines of
+Sankara's life.  We cannot, however, place any reliance whatever upon
+Anandagiri's Sankara Vijaya published at Calcutta.  The Calcutta edition
+not only differs in some very material points from the manuscript copies
+of the same work found in Southern India, but is opposed to every other
+Sankara Vijayam hitherto examined.  It is quite clear from its style and
+some of the statements contained therein, that it was not the production
+of Anandagiri, one of the four chief disciples of Sankara and the
+commentator on his Upanishad Bhashyam.  For instance, it represents
+Sankara as the author of a certain verse which is to be found in
+Vidyaranya's Adhikaranaratnamala, written in the fourteenth century.  It
+represents Sankara as giving orders to two of his disciples to preach
+the Visishtadwaitee and the Dwaitee doctrines, which are directly
+opposed to his own doctrine.  The book under consideration says that
+Sankara went to conquer Mandanamisra in debate, followed by
+Sureswaracharya, though Mandanamisra assumed the latter name at the time
+of initiation.  It is unnecessary for us here to point out all the
+blunders and absurdities of this book.  It will be sufficient to say
+that in our opinion it was not written by Anandagiri, and that it was
+the introduction of an unknown author who does not appear to have been
+even tolerably well acquainted with the history of the Adwaitee
+doctrine. Vidyaranya's (otherwise Sayanachary, the great commentator of
+the Vedas) Sankara Vijaya is decidedly the most reliable source of
+information as regards the main features of Sankara's biography. Its
+authorship has been universally accepted, and the information contained
+therein was derived by its author, as may be seen from his own
+statements, from certain old biographies of Sankara existing at the time
+of its composition.  Taking into consideration the author's vast
+knowledge and information, and the opportunities he had for collecting
+materials for his work when he was the head of the Sringeri Matham,
+there is every reason to believe that he had embodied in his work the
+most reliable information he could obtain.  Mr. Wilson, however, says
+that the book in question is "much too poetical and legendary" to be
+acknowledged as a great authority.  We admit that the style is highly
+poetical, but we deny that the work is legendary.  Mr. Wilson is not
+justified in characterizing it as such on account of its description of
+some of the wonderful phenomena shown by Sankara.  Probably the learned
+Orientalist would not be inclined to consider the Biblical account of
+Christ in the same light.  It is not the peculiar privilege of
+Christianity to have a miracle-worker for its first propagator.  In the
+following observations we shall take such facts as are required from
+this work.
+
+It is generally believed that a person named Govinda Yogi was Sankara's
+Guru, but it is not generally known that this Yogi was in fact
+Patanjali--the great author of the Mahabhashya and the Yoga Sutras--
+under a new name.  A tradition current in Southern India represents him
+as one of the Chelas of Patanjali;  but it is very doubtful if this
+tradition has anything like a proper foundation.  But it is quite clear
+from the 94th, 95th, 96th, and 97th verses of the 5th chapter of
+Vidyaranya's Sankara Vijayam that Govinda Yogi and Patanjali were
+identical.  According to the immemorial custom observed amongst
+initiates, Patanjali assumed the name of Govinda Yogi at the time of his
+initiation by Goudapada.  It cannot be contended that Vidyaranya
+represented Patanjali as Sankara's Guru merely for the purpose of
+assigning some importance to Sankara and his teaching.  Sankara is
+looked upon as a far greater man than Patanjali by the Adwaitees, and
+nothing can be added to Sankara's reputation by Vidyaranya's assertion.
+Moreover, Patanjali's views are not altogether identical with Sankara's
+views;  it may be seen from Sankara's writings that he attached no
+importance whatever to the practices of Hatha Yog regarding which
+Patanjali composed his Yoga Sutras. Under such circumstances, if
+Vidyaranya had the option of selecting a Guru for Sankara, he would no
+doubt have represented Vyasa himself (who is supposed to be still
+living) as his Guru. We see no reason therefore to doubt the correctness
+of the statement under examination.  Therefore, as Sankara was
+Patanjali's Chela, and as Goudapada was his Guru, his date will enable
+us to fix the dates of Sankara and Goudapada.  We may here point out to
+our readers a mistake that appears in p. 148 of Mr. Sinnett's book on
+Esoteric Buddhism as regards the latter personage.  He is there
+represented as Sankara's Guru;  Mr. Sinnett was informed, we believe,
+that he was Sankara's Paramaguru, and not having properly understood the
+meaning of this expression, Mr. Sinnett wrote that he was Sankara's
+Guru.
+
+It is generally admitted by Orientalists that Patanjali lived before the
+commencement of the Christian era.  Mr. Barth places him in the second
+century before the Christian era, accepting Goldstucker's opinion, and
+Monier Williams does the same thing. Weber, who seems to have carefully
+examined the opinions of all the other Orientalists who have written
+upon the subject, comes to the conclusion that "we must for the present
+rest satisfied with placing the date of the composition of the Bhashya
+between B.C. 140 and A.D. 60, a result which considering the wretched
+state of the chronology of Indian Liturgy generally is, despite its
+indefiniteness, of no mean importance."  And yet even this date rests
+upon inferences drawn from one or two unimportant expressions contained
+in Patanjali's Mahabhashya.  It is always dangerous to draw such
+inferences, and especially so when it is known that, according to the
+tradition current amongst Hindu grammarians, some portions of
+Mahabhashya were lost, the gaps being filled up by subsequent writers.
+Even supposing that we should consider the expression quoted as written
+by Patanjali himself, there is nothing in those expressions which would
+enable us to fix the writer's date.  For instance, the connection
+between the expression "Arunad Yavanah Saketam" and the expedition of
+Menander against Ayodhya between B.C. 144 and 120, relied upon by
+Goldstucker is merely imaginary.  There is nothing in the expression to
+show that the allusion contained therein points necessarily to
+Menander's expedition.  We believe that Patanjali is referring to the
+expedition of Yavanas against Ayodhya during the lifetime of Sagara's
+father described in Harivamsa.  This expedition occurred long before
+Rama's time, and there is nothing to connect it with Menander.
+Goldstucker's inference is based upon the assumption that there was no
+other Yavana expedition against Ayodhya known to Patanjali, and it will
+be easily seen from Harivamsa (written by Vyasa) that the said
+assumption is unwarranted.  Consequently the whole theory constructed by
+Goldstucker on this weak foundation falls to the ground.  No valid
+inferences can be drawn from the mere names of kings contained in
+Mahabhashya, even if they are traced to Patanjali himself, as there
+would be several kings in the same dynasty bearing the same name.  From
+the foregoing remarks it will be clear that we cannot fix, as Weber has
+done, B.C. 140 as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to
+Patanjali. It is now necessary to see whether any other such limit has
+been ascertained by Orientalists.  As Panini's date still remains
+undetermined, the limit cannot be fixed with reference to his date.  But
+it is assumed by some Orientalists that Panini must have lived at some
+time subsequent to Alexander's invasion, from the fact that Panini
+explains in his Grammar the formation of the word Yavanani.  We are very
+sorry that European Orientalists have taken the pains to construct
+theories upon this basis without ascertaining the meaning assigned to
+the word Yavana, and the time when the Hindus first became acquainted
+with the Greeks.  It is unreasonable to assume without proof that this
+acquaintance commenced at the time of Alexander's invasion.  On the
+other hand, there are very good reasons for believing that the Greeks
+were known to the Hindus long before this event.  Pythagoras visited
+India, according to the traditions current amongst Indian initiates, and
+he is alluded to in Indian astrological works under the name of
+Yavanacharya.  Moreover, it is not quite certain that the word Yavana
+was strictly confined to the Greeks by the ancient Hindu writers.
+Probably it was originally applied to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians;
+it was probably extended first to the Alexandrian Greeks, and
+subsequently to the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians.  Besides the Yavana
+invasion of Ayodhya described in Harivamsa, there was another subsequent
+expedition to India by Kala Yavana (Black Yavana) during Krishna's
+lifetime described in the same work.  This expedition was probably
+undertaken by the Ethiopians.  Anyhow, there are no reasons whatever, as
+far as we can see, for asserting that Hindu writers began to use the
+word Yavana after Alexander's invasion.  We can attach no importance
+whatever to any inferences that may be drawn regarding the dates of
+Panini and Katyayana (both of them lived before Patanjali) from the
+statements contained in Katha Sarit Sayara, which is nothing more than a
+mere collection of fables. It is now seen by Orientalists that no proper
+conclusions can be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana
+from the statements made by Hiuan Thsang, and we need not therefore say
+anything here regarding the said statements.  Consequently the dates of
+Panini and Katyayana still remain undetermined by European Orientalists.
+Goldstucker is probably correct in his conclusion that Panini lived
+before Buddha, and the Buddhists' accounts agree with the traditions of
+the initiates in asserting that Katyayana was a contemporary of Buddha.
+From the fact that Patanjali must have composed his Mahabhashyam after
+the composition of Panini's Sutras and Katyayana's Vartika, we can only
+infer that it was written after Buddha's birth.  But there are a few
+considerations which may help us in coming to the conclusion that
+Patanjali must have lived about the year 500 B.C.;  Max Muller fixed the
+Sutra period between 500 B.C. and 600 B.C.  We agree with him in
+supposing that the period probably ended with B.C. 500, though it is
+uncertain how far it extended into the depths of Indian antiquity.
+Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras, and this fact has not been
+doubted by any Hindu writer up to this time.  Mr. Weber thinks, however,
+that the author of the Yoga Sutras might be a different man from the
+author of the Mahabhashya, though he does not venture to assign any
+reason for his supposition.  We very much doubt if any European
+Orientalist can ever find out the connection between the first Anhika of
+the Mahabhashya and the real secrets of Hatha Yoga contained in the Yoga
+Sutras.  No one but an initiate can understand the full significance of
+the said Anhika;  and the "eternity of the Logos" or Sabda is one of the
+principal doctrines of the Gymnosophists of India, who were generally
+Hatha Yogis.  In the opinion of Hindu writers and pundits Patanjali was
+the author of three works, viz., Mahabhashya, Yoga Sutras, and a book on
+Medicine and Anatomy;  and there is not the slightest reason for
+questioning the correctness of this opinion.  We must, therefore, place
+Patanjali in the Sutra period, and this conclusion is confirmed by the
+traditions of the Indian initiates.  As Sankaracharya was a contemporary
+of Patanjali (being his Chela) he must have lived about the same time.
+We have thus shown that there are no reasons for placing Sankara in the
+eighth or ninth century after Christ, as some of the European
+Orientalists have done.  We have further shown that Sankara was
+Patanjali's Chela, and that his date should be ascertained with
+reference to Patanjali's date.  We have also shown that neither the year
+B.C. 140 nor the date of Alexander's invasion can be accepted as the
+maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to him, and we have
+lastly pointed out a few circumstances which will justify us in
+expressing an opinion that Patanjali and his Chela Sankara belonged to
+the Sutra period.  We may, perhaps, now venture to place before the
+public the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and Indian
+initiates.  According to the historical information in their possession
+he was born in the year B.C. 510 (fifty-one years and two months after
+the date of Buddha's Nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence
+in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at
+Conjeveram, Sringeri, Jaggurnath, Benares, Cashmere, and various other
+places visited by Sankara, are properly deciphered. Sankara built
+Conjeveram, which is considered as one of the most ancient towns in
+Southern India;  and it may be possible to ascertain the time of its
+construction if proper inquiries are made.  But even the evidence now
+brought before the public supports the opinion of the Initiates above
+indicated.  As Goudapada was Sankaracharya's Guru's guru, his date
+entirely depends on Sankara's date;  and there is every reason to
+suppose that he lived before Buddha.
+
+
+
+Question VI.--"Historical Difficulty"--Why?
+
+
+It is asked whether there may not be "some confusion" in the letter
+quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism" regarding "old Greeks and Romans
+said to have been Atlanteans."  The answer is--None whatever.  The word
+"Atlantean" was a generic name.  The objection to have it applied to the
+old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, "their
+language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European
+dialects," is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race
+scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion
+of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to
+as a remnant of the Europeans.  "The Turks are surely Semites," he might
+say 12,000 years hence, and "their language is intermediate between
+Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects." *
+
+--------
+* This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will
+be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged.  The
+figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the
+present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis.
+---------
+
+The "historical difficulty" arises from a certain authoritative
+statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max
+Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the "elder
+sister"--by no means the mother--of all the modern languages.  As to
+that "mother," it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a "now
+extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race."  When asked
+what was this language, the Western voice answers: "Who can tell?"
+When, "during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?"
+the same impressive voice replies:  "In prehistoric ages, the duration
+of which no one can now determine."  Yet it must have been Sanskrit,
+however barbarous and unpolished, since "the ancestors of the Greeks,
+the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts" were living within "the
+same precincts" with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by
+language has enabled the philologist to trace the "language of the gods"
+in the speech of every Aryan nation. Meanwhile it is affirmed by these
+same Orientalists that classical Sanskrit has its origin at the very
+threshold of the Christian era;  while Vedic Sanskrit is allowed an
+antiquity of hardly 3,000 years (if so much) before that time.
+
+Now, Atlantis, on the statement of the "Adepts," sank over 9,000 years
+before the Christian era.*  How then can one maintain that the "old
+Greeks and Romans" were Atlanteans?  How can that be, since both nations
+are Aryans, and the genesis of their languages is Sanskrit?  Moreover,
+the Western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed
+within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no
+existence as nations 11,000 B.C..  Surely they who advance such a
+proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement!
+
+----------
+* The position recently taken up by Mr. Gerald Massey in Light that the
+story of Atlantis is not a geological event but an ancient astronomical
+myth, is rather imprudent.  Mr. Massey, notwithstanding his rare
+intuitional faculties and great learning, is one of those writers in
+whom the intensity of research bent into one direction has biased his
+otherwise clear understanding.  Because Hercules is now a constellation
+it does not follow that there never was a hero of this name.  Because
+the Noachian Universal Deluge is now proved a fiction based upon
+geological and geographical ignorance, it does not, therefore, appear
+that there were not many local deluges in prehistoric ages.  The
+ancients connected every terrestrial event with the celestial bodies.
+They traced the history of their great deified heroes and memorialized
+it in stellar configurations as often as they personified pure myths,
+anthropomorphizing objects in Nature.  One has to learn the difference
+between the two modes before attempting to classify them under one
+nomenclature.  An earthquake has just engulfed over 80,000 people
+(87,903) in Sunda Straits.  These were mostly Malays, savages with whom
+but few had relations, and the dire event will be soon forgotten.  Had a
+portion of Great Britain been thus swept away instead, the whole world
+would have been in commotion, and yet, a few thousand years hence, even
+such an event would have passed out of man's memory; and a future Gerald
+Massey might be found speculating upon the astronomical character and
+signification of the Isles of Wight, Jersey, or Man, arguing, perhaps,
+that this latter island had not contained a real living race of men but
+"belonged to astronomical mythology," was a "Man submerged in celestial
+waters."  If the legend of the lost Atlantis is only "like those of
+Airyana-Vaejo and Jambu-dvipa," it is terrestrial enough, and therefore
+"the mythological origin of the Deluge legend" is so far an open
+question.  We claim that it is not "indubitably demonstrated," however
+clever the theoretical demonstration.
+---------
+
+Such are the criticisms passed, such the "historical difficulty." The
+culprits arraigned are fully alive to their perilous situation;
+nevertheless, they maintain the statement.  The only thing which may
+perhaps here be objected to is, that the names of the two nations are
+incorrectly used.  It may be argued that to refer to the remote
+ancestors and their descendants equally as "Greeks and Romans," is an
+anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic
+Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true.
+But, besides the very plausible excuse that the names used were embodied
+in a private letter, written as usual in great haste, and which was
+hardly worthy of the honour of being quoted verbatim with all its
+imperfections, there may perhaps exist still weightier objections to
+calling the said people by any other name.  One misnomer is as good as
+another;  and to refer to old Greeks and Romans in a private letter as
+the old Hellenes from Hellas or Magna Graecia, and the Latins as from
+Latium, would have been, besides looking pedantic, just as incorrect as
+the use of the appellation noted, though it may have sounded, perchance,
+more "historical."  The truth is that, like the ancestors of nearly all
+the Indo-Europeans (or shall we say Indo-Germanic Japhetidae?), the
+Greek and Roman sub-races mentioned have to be traced much farther back.
+Their origin must be carried far into the mists of that "prehistoric"
+period, that mythical age which inspires the modern historian with such
+a feeling of squeamishness that anything creeping out of its abysmal
+depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the
+mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice.
+The Atlantean "old Greeks" could not be designated even as the
+Autochthones--a convenient term used to dispose of the origin of any
+people whose ancestry cannot be traced, and which, at any rate with the
+Hellenes, meant certainly more than simply "soil-born," or primitive
+aborigines;  and yet the so-called fable of Deukalion and Pyrrha is
+surely no more incredible or marvelous than that of Adam and Eve--a
+fable that hardly a hundred years ago no one would have dared or even
+thought to question.  And in its esoteric significance the Greek
+tradition is possibly more truly historical than many a so-called
+historical event during the period of the Olympiades, though both Hesiod
+and Homer may have failed to record the former in their epics.  Nor
+could the Romans be referred to as the Umbro-Sabbellians, nor even as
+the Itali. Peradventure, had the historians learnt something more than
+they have of the Italian "Autochthones"--the Iapygians--one might have
+given the "old Romans" the latter name.  But then there would be again
+that other difficulty:  history knows that the Latin invaders drove
+before them, and finally cooped up, this mysterious and miserable race
+among the clefts of the Calabrian rocks, thus showing the absence of any
+race affinity between the two.  Moreover, Western archeologists keep to
+their own counsel, and will accept of no other but their own
+conjectures.  And since they have failed to make anything out of the
+undecipherable inscriptions in an unknown tongue and mysterious
+characters on the Iapygian monuments, and so for years have pronounced
+them unguessable, he who would presume to meddle where the doctors
+muddle would be likely to be reminded of the Arab proverb about
+proffered advice.  Thus, it seems hardly possible to designate "the old
+Greeks and Romans" by their legitimate, true name, so as to at once
+satisfy the "historians" and keep on the fair side of truth and fact.
+However, since in the Replies that precede Science had to be repeatedly
+shocked by most unscientific propositions, and that before this series
+is closed many a difficulty, philological and archeological as well as
+historical, will have to be unavoidably created--it may be just as wise
+to uncover the occult batteries at once and have it over with.
+
+Well, then, the "Adepts" deny most emphatically to Western science any
+knowledge whatever of the growth and development of the Indo-Aryan race
+which, "at the very dawn of history," they have espied in its
+"patriarchal simplicity" on the banks of the Oxus.  Before our
+proposition concerning "the old Greeks and Romans" can be repudiated or
+even controverted, Western Orientalists will have to know more than they
+do about the antiquity of that race and the Aryan language;  and they
+will have to account for those numberless gaps in history which no
+hypotheses of theirs seem able to fill up.  Notwithstanding their
+present profound ignorance with regard to the early ancestry of the
+Indo-European nations, and though no historian has yet ventured to
+assign even a remotely approximate date to the separation of the Aryan
+nations and the origins of the Sanskrit language, they hardly show the
+modesty that might, under these circumstances, be expected from them.
+Placing as they do that great separation of the races at the first "dawn
+of traditional history," with the Vedic age as "the background of the
+whole Indian world" (of which confessedly they know nothing), they will,
+nevertheless, calmly assign a modern date to any of the Rik-vedic oldest
+songs, on its "internal evidence;"  and in doing this, they show as
+little hesitation as Mr. Fergusson when ascribing a post-Christian age
+to the most ancient rockcut temple in India, merely on its "external
+form."  As for their unseemly quarrels, mutual recriminations, and
+personalities over questions of scholarship, the less said the better.
+
+"The evidence of language is irrefragable," as the great Oxford
+Sanskritist says.  To which he is answered--"provided it does not clash
+with historical facts and ethnology."  It may be--no doubt it is, as far
+as his knowledge goes--"the only evidence worth listening to with regard
+to ante-historical periods;"  but when something of these alleged
+"prehistorical periods" comes to be known, and when what we think we
+know of certain supposed prehistoric nations is found diametrically
+opposed to his "evidence of language," the "Adepts" may be, perhaps,
+permitted to keep to their own views and opinions, even though they
+differ with those of the greatest living philologist.  The study of
+language is but a part--though, we admit, a fundamental part--of true
+philology.  To be complete, the latter has, as correctly argued by
+Bockt, to be almost synonymous with history.  We gladly concede the
+right to the Western philologist, who has to work in the total absence
+of any historical data, to rely upon comparative grammar, and take the
+identification of roots lying at the foundation of words of those
+languages he is familiar with, or may know of, and put it forward as the
+result of his study, and the only available evidence.  But we would like
+to see the same right conceded by him to the student of other races;
+even though these be inferior to the European races, in the opinion of
+the paramount West:  for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other
+lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes
+hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a
+perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent
+regards as ante-historical.  The bare fact that, while Western men of
+science are referred to as "scholars" and scholiasts--native
+Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as "Calcutta" and
+"Indian sciolists"--affords no proof of their real inferiority, but
+rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that "self-conceit is rarely
+companion to politeness."
+
+The "Adept" therefore has little, if anything, to do with difficulties
+presented by Western history.  To his knowledge--based on documentary
+records from which, as said, hypothesis is excluded, and as regards
+which even psychology is called to play a very secondary part--the
+history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that hardly
+discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western
+world as a landmark of the commencement of its history.  Records made
+throughout a series of ages, based on astronomical chronology and
+zodiacal calculations, cannot err.  (This new "difficulty"--
+palaeographical, t his time--that may be possibly suggested by the
+mention of the Zodiac in India and Central Asia before the Christian
+era, is disposed of in a subsequent article.)
+
+Hence, the main question at issue is to decide which--the Orientalist or
+the "Oriental"--is most likely to err.  The "English F.T.S." has choice
+of two sources of information, two groups of teachers.  One group is
+composed of Western historians with their suite of learned Ethnologists,
+Philologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists and Orientalists in
+general.  The other consists of unknown Asiatics belonging to a race
+which, notwithstanding Mr. Max Muller's assertion that the same "blood
+is running in the veins (of the English soldier) and in the veins of the
+dark Bengalese," is generally regarded by many a cultured Western as
+"inferior."  A handful of men can hardly hope to be listened to,
+specially when their history, religion, language, origin and sciences,
+having been seized upon by the conqueror, are now disfigured and
+mutilated beyond recognition, and who have lived to see the Western
+scholar claim a monopoly beyond appeal or protest of deciding the
+correct meaning, chronological date, and historical value of the
+monumental and palaeographic relics of his motherland.  It has little,
+if ever, entered the mind of the Western public that their scholars
+have, until very lately, worked in a narrow pathway obstructed with the
+ruins of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic Past;  that they have been cramped
+on all sides by limitations of "revealed" events coming from God, "with
+whom a thousand years are but as one day," and who have thus felt bound
+to cram millenniums into centuries and hundreds into units, giving at
+the utmost an age of 1,000 to what is 10,000 years old.  All this to
+save the threatened authority of their religion and their own
+respectability and good name in cultured society.  And even that, when
+free themselves from preconceptions, they have had to protect the honour
+of the Jewish divine chronology assailed by stubborn facts;  and thus
+have become (often unconsciously) the slaves of an artificial history
+made to fit into the narrow frame of a dogmatic religion.  No proper
+thought has been given to this purely psychological but very significant
+trifle.  Yet we all know how, rather than admit any relation between
+Sanskrit and the Gothic, Keltic, Greek, Latin and old Persian, facts
+have been tampered with, old texts purloined from libraries, and
+philological discoveries vehemently denied.  And we have also heard from
+our retreats, how Dugald Stewart and his colleagues, upon seeing that
+the discovery would also involve ethnological affinities, and damage the
+prestige of those sires of the world races--Shem, Ham and Japhet--denied
+in the face of fact that "Sanskrit had ever been a living, spoken
+language," supporting the theory that "it was an invention of the
+Brahmins, who had constructed their Sanskrit on the model of the Greek
+and Latin."  And again we know, holding the proof of the same, how the
+majority of Orientalists are prone to go out of their way to prevent any
+Indian antiquity (whether MSS. or inscribed monument, whether art or
+science) from being declared pre-Christian.  As the origin and history
+of the Gentile world is made to move in the narrow circuit of a few
+centuries "B.C.," within that fecund epoch when mother earth,
+recuperated from her arduous labours of the Stone age, begat, it seems
+without transition, so many highly civilized nations and false
+pretenses, so the enchanted circle of Indian archeology lies between the
+(to them unknown) year of the Samvat era, and the tenth century of the
+Western chronology.
+
+Having to dispose of an "historical difficulty" of such a serious
+character, the defendants charged with it can but repeat what they have
+already stated;  all depends upon the past history and antiquity allowed
+to the Indo-Aryan nation.  The first step to take is to ascertain how
+much History herself knows of that almost prehistoric period when the
+soil of Europe had not been trodden yet by the primitive Aryan tribes.
+From the latest Encyclopedia down to Professor Max Muller and other
+Orientalists, we gather what follows;  they acknowledge that at some
+immensely remote period, before the Aryan nations got divided from the
+parent stock (with the germs of Indo-Germanic languages in them); and
+before they rushed asunder to scatter over Europe and Asia in search of
+new homes, there stood a "single barbaric (?) people as physical and
+political representative of the nascent Aryan race." This people spoke
+"a now extinct Aryan language," from which by a series of modifications
+(surely requiring more thousands of years than our difficulty-makers are
+willing to concede) there arose gradually all the subsequent languages
+now spoken by the Caucasian races.
+
+That is about all Western history knows of its genesis.  Like Ravana's
+brother, Kumbhakarna,--the Hindu Rip van Winkle--it slept for a long
+series of ages a dreamless, heavy sleep.  And when at last it awoke to
+consciousness, it was but to find the "nascent Aryan race" grown into
+scores of nations, peoples and races, most of them effete and crippled
+with age, many irretrievably extinct, while the true origin of the
+younger ones it was utterly unable to account for.  So much for the
+"youngest brother."  As for "the eldest brother, the Hindu," who,
+Professor Max Muller tells us, "was the last to leave the central home
+of the Aryan family," and whose history this eminent philologist has now
+kindly undertaken to impart to him,--he, the Hindu, claims that while
+his Indo-European relative was soundly sleeping under the protecting
+shadow of Noah's ark, he kept watch and did not miss seeing one event
+from his high Himalayan fastnesses;  and that he has recorded the
+history thereof, in a language which, though as incomprehensible as the
+Iapygian inscriptions to the Indo-European immigrant, is quite clear to
+the writers.  For this crime he now stands condemned as a falsifier of
+the records of his forefathers.  A place has been hitherto purposely
+left open for India "to be filled up when the pure metal of history
+should have been extracted from the ore of Brahmanic exaggeration and
+superstition."  Unable, however, to meet this programme, the Orientalist
+has since persuaded himself that there was nothing in that "ore" but
+dross.  He did more.  He applied himself to contrast Brahmanic
+"superstition" and "exaggeration" with Mosaic revelation and its
+chronology.  The Veda was confronted with Genesis.  Its absurd claims to
+antiquity were forthwith dwarfed to their proper dimensions by the 4,004
+years B.C. measure of the world's age;  and the Brahmanic "superstition
+and fables" about the longevity of the Aryan Rishis, were belittled and
+exposed by the sober historical evidence furnished in "The genealogy and
+age of the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah," whose respective days were 930
+and 950 years;  without mentioning Methuselah, who died at the premature
+age of nine hundred and sixty-nine.
+
+In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the
+offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology.  On
+the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before
+he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference
+to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have
+themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial
+history.  And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help
+his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees.  Our Rajputs,
+among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken
+lineal descent through 2,000 years "B.C." and more, as proved by Colonel
+Tod;  records which are accepted by the British Government in its
+official dealings with them.  It is not enough to have studied stray
+fragments of Sanskrit literature--even though their number should amount
+to 10,000 texts, as boasted of--allowed to fall into foreign hands, to
+speak so confidently of the "Aryan first settlers in India," and assert
+that, "left to themselves, in a world of their own, without a past and
+without a future (!) before them, they had nothing but themselves to
+ponder upon," and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other
+nations.  To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most
+of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric
+light, and after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret
+Code--branded generally as "theological twaddle."  Nor is it
+sufficient--if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did
+or did not know;  whether or not they cultivated the social and
+political virtues;  cared or not for history--to claim proficiency in
+both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya
+Bhasha.  To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical
+literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to
+the Brahmanical Code.  To master the conventional terms used in the
+Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one
+far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules
+of Panini, or his algebraical symbols.  Very true, most of the Brahmans
+themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their
+sacred texts.  Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their
+scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of
+the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national
+records and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu
+hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique.  Disrespectful
+though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more
+convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the
+average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the "language
+of the gods;"  that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly
+along the lines of countless generations the course of the "now extinct
+Aryan tongue" in its many and various transformations in the West, and
+its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical
+Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream
+began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, he has followed it up.
+Finally that, while he, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative
+interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of
+Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing
+about--i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has
+lost sight of from its "nascent state," and caught up again but at the
+period of its last degeneration--the native student never knew, nor can
+ever know, anything of that history.  Until the Orientalist has proved
+all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that
+air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every
+work upon India and its Past.  Having no knowledge himself whatever of
+those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central
+Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to
+maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them
+as the foreigner.  Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is
+little qualified to declare that the Aryan, having had no political
+history "of his own...." his only sphere was "religion and
+philosophy.... in solitude and contemplation."  A happy thought
+suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and
+defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rik-Veda.  Nor can he with
+the smallest show of logic affirm that "India had no place in the
+political history of the world," or that "there are no synchronisms
+between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the
+date of the origin of Buddhism in India;"  for he knows no more of the
+prehistoric history of those "other nations" than of that of the
+Brahman.  All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of
+hypotheses begin very little earlier than 200 "B.C.," if even so much,
+on anything like really historical grounds.  He has to prove all this
+before he can command our attention.  Otherwise, however "irrefragable
+the evidence of language," the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the
+European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before
+the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left
+their northern regions;  or (b) why the "eldest brother, the Hindu,"
+should have been "the last to leave the central home of the Aryan
+family."  To the philologist such a supposition may seem "quite
+natural."  Yet the Brahman is no less justified in his ever-growing
+suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a
+programme.  That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was
+forced to make "the eldest brother" tarry so suspiciously long on the
+Oxus, or wherever "the youngest" may have placed him in his "nascent
+state" after the latter "saw his brothers all depart towards the setting
+sun."  We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging
+such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the
+Christian era.  To show the "brother" inactive and unconcerned, "with
+nothing but himself to ponder on," lest his antiquity and "fables of
+empty idolatry," and perhaps his traditions of other people's doings,
+should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try
+him.  The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from
+which we have been so largely quoting--a work of a purely scientific and
+philological character--such frequent remarks and even prophecies as:
+"History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual
+education before, in the fulness of time, it could be admitted to the
+truths of Christianity."  Or, again "The ancient religions of the world
+were but the milk of Nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by
+the bread of life;"  and such broad sentiments expressed as that "there
+is some truth in Buddhism, as there is in every one of the false
+religions of the world, but...." *
+
+-----------
+* Max Muller's "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature."
+-----------
+
+The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to
+the recognition of either Indian antiquity, or the merit of the
+philosophies sprung from its soil!*
+
+---------
+* And how one-sided and biased most of the Western Orientalists are may
+be seen by reading carefully "The History of Indian Literature," by
+Albrecht Weber--a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest
+authorities.  The incessant harping upon the one special string of
+Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the
+keynote of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work.
+Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of
+Buddhism and Krishna worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its
+legends;  it is openly stated that "it is not at all a far-fetched
+hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian
+missionaries!"  The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that,
+notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist
+periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period--their
+universal tank of all ancient creeds, and of which some Orientalists
+would fain make a poor-house for all decayed archaic religions and
+philosophy. Even Tibet, in his opinion, has not escaped "Western
+influence." Let us hope to the contrary.  It can be proved that Buddhist
+missionaries were as numerous in Palestine, Alexandria, Persia, and even
+Greece, two centuries before the Christian era, as the Padris are now in
+Asia.  That the Gnostic doctrines (as he is obliged to confess) are
+permeated with Buddhism.  Basilides, Valentinian, Bardesanes, and
+especially Manes were simply heretical Buddhists, "the formula of
+abjuration of these doctrines in the case of the latter, specifying
+expressly Buddha (Bodda) by name."
+----------
+
+
+
+Leaflets from Esoteric History
+
+
+The foregoing--a long, yet necessary digression--will show that the
+Asiatic scholar is justified in generally withholding what he may know.
+That it is not merely on historical facts that hangs the "historical
+difficulty" at issue;  but rather on its degree of interference with
+time-honoured, long-established conjectures, often raised to the
+eminence of an unapproachable historical axiom.  That no statement
+coming from our quarters can ever hope to be given consideration so long
+as it has to be supported on the ruins of reigning hobbies, whether of
+an alleged historical or religious character.  Yet pleasant it is, after
+the brainless assaults to which occult sciences have hitherto been
+subjected--assaults in which abuse has been substituted for argument,
+and flat denial for calm inquiry--to find that there remain in the West
+some men who will come into the field like philosophers, and soberly and
+fairly discuss the claims of our hoary doctrines to the respect due to a
+truth and the dignity demanded for a science.  Those alone whose sole
+desire is to ascertain the truth, not to maintain foregone conclusions,
+have a right to expect undisguised facts.  Reverting to our subject, so
+far as allowable, we will now, for the sake of that minority, give them.
+
+The records of the Occultists make no difference between the "Atlantean"
+ancestors of the old Greeks and Romans.  Partially corroborated and in
+turn contradicted by licensed or recognized history, their records teach
+that of the ancient Latini of classic legend called Itali;  of that
+people, in short, which, crossing the Apennines (as their Judo-Aryan
+brothers--let this be known--had crossed before them the Hindoo-Koosh)
+entered from the north the peninsula--there survived at a period long
+before the days of Romulus but the name, and a nascent language.
+Profane history informs us that the Latins of the "mythical era" got so
+Hellenized amidst the rich colonies of Magna Grecia that there remained
+nothing in them of their primitive Latin nationality. It is the Latins
+proper, it says, those pre-Roman Italians who by settling in Latium had
+from the first kept themselves free from the Greek influence, who were
+the ancestors of the Romans. Contradicting exoteric history, the Occult
+records affirm that if, owing to circumstances too long and complicated
+to be related here, the settlers of Latium preserved their primitive
+nationality a little longer than their brothers who had first entered
+the peninsula with them after leaving the East (which was not their
+original home), they lost it very soon, for other reasons.  Free from
+the Samnites during the first period, they did not remain free from
+other invaders.  While the Western historian puts together the
+mutilated, incomplete records of various nations and people, and makes
+them into a clever mosaic according to the best and most probable plan
+and rejects entirely traditional fables, the Occultist pays not the
+slightest attention to the vain self-glorification of alleged conquerors
+or their lithic inscriptions.  Nor does he follow the stray bits of
+so-called historical information, often concocted by interested parties
+and found scattered hither and thither in the fragments of classical
+writers, whose original texts themselves have not seldom been tampered
+with.  The Occultist follows the ethnological affinities and their
+divergences in the various nationalities, races and sub-races, in a more
+easy way;  and he is guided in this as surely as the student who
+examines a geographical map.  As the latter can easily trace by their
+differently coloured outlines the boundaries of the many countries and
+their possessions;  their geographical superficies and their separations
+by seas, rivers and mountains;  so the Occultist can by following the
+(to him) well distinguishable and defined auric shades and gradations of
+colour in the inner-man unerringly pronounce to which of the several
+distinct human families, as also to what special group, and even small
+sub-group of the latter, belongs any particular people, tribe, or man.
+This will appear hazy and incomprehensible to the many who know nothing
+of ethnic varieties of nerve-aura, and disbelieve in any "inner-man"
+theory, scientific but to the few.  The whole question hangs upon the
+reality or unreality of the existence of this inner-man whom
+clairvoyance has discovered, and whose odyle or nerve-emanations Von
+Reichenbach proves.  If one admits such a presence and realizes
+intuitionally that being closer related to the one invisible Reality,
+the inner type must be still more pronounced than the outer physical
+type, then it will be a matter of little, if any, difficulty to conceive
+our meaning.  For, indeed, if even the respective physical
+idiosyncrasies and special characteristics of any given person make his
+nationality usually distinguishable by the physical eye of the ordinary
+observer--let alone the experienced ethnologist:  the Englishman being
+commonly recognizable at a glance from the Frenchman, the German from
+the Italian, not to speak of the typical differences between human
+root-families* in their anthropological division--there seems little
+difficulty in conceiving that the same, though far more pronounced,
+difference of type and characteristics should exist between the inner
+races that inhabit these "fleshly tabernacles."  Besides this easily
+discernible psychological and astral differences, there are the
+documentary records in their unbroken series of chronological tables and
+the history of the gradual branching off of races and sub-races from the
+three geological primeval Races, the work of the Initiates of all the
+archaic and ancient temples up to date, collected in our "Book of
+Numbers," and other volumes.
+
+---------
+* Properly speaking, these ought to be called "Geological Races," so as
+to be easily distinguished from their subsequent evolutions--the
+root-races.  The Occult doctrine has nothing to do with the Biblical
+division of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and admires, without accepting it, the
+latest Huxleyan physiological division of the human races into their
+quintuple groups of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthechroics,
+and the fifth variety of Melanochroics.  Yet it says that the triple
+division of the blundering Jews is closer to the truth, it knows but of
+three entirely distinct primeval races whose evolution, formation and
+development went pari passu and on parallel lines with the evolution,
+formation, and development of three geological strata; namely, the
+BLACK, the RED-YELLOW, and the BROWN-WHITE RACES.
+---------
+
+Hence, and on this double testimony (which the Westerns are quite
+welcome to reject if so pleased) it is affirmed that, owing to the great
+amalgamation of various sub-races, such as the Iapygian, Etruscan,
+Pelasgic, and later--the strong admixture of the Hellenic and
+Kelto-Gaulic element in the veins of the primitive Itali of
+Latium--there remained in the tribes gathered by Romulus on the banks of
+the Tiber about as much Latinism as there is now in the Romanic people
+of Wallachia.  Of course if the historical foundation of the fable of
+the twins of the Vestal Silvia is entirely rejected, together with that
+of the foundation of Alba Longa by the son of Aeneas, then it stands to
+reason that the whole of the statements made must be likewise a modern
+invention built upon the utterly worthless fables of the "legendary
+mythical age."  For those who now give these statements, however, there
+is more of actual truth in such fables than there is in the alleged
+historical Regal period of the earliest Romans.  It is to be deplored
+that the present statement should clash with the authoritative
+conclusion of Mommsen and others.  Yet, stating but that which to the
+"Adepts" is fact, it must be understood at once that all (but the
+fanciful chronological date for the foundation of Rome-April, 753
+"B.C.") that is given in old traditions in relation to the Paemerium,
+and the triple alliance of the Ramnians, Luceres and Tities, of the
+so-called Romuleian legend, is indeed far nearer truth than what
+external history accepts as facts during the Punic and Macedonian wars
+up to, through, and down the Roman Empire to its fall.  The founders of
+Rome were decidedly a mongrel people, made up of various scraps and
+remnants of the many primitive tribes;  only a few really Latin
+families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with
+the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining.  And, while the latter
+preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the
+Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of
+the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning.  The famous Latin
+league is no fable, but history.  The succession of kings descended from
+the Trojan Aeneas is a fact;  and the idea that Romulus is to be
+regarded as simply the symbolical representative of a people, as Aeolus,
+Dorius, and Ion were once, instead of a living man, is as unwarranted as
+it is arbitrary.  It could only have been entertained by a class of
+historiographers bent upon condoning their sin in supporting the dogma
+that Shem, Ham and Japhet were the historical once living ancestors of
+mankind, by making a burnt-offering of every really historical but
+non-Jewish tradition, legend, or record which might presume to a place
+on the same level with these three privileged archaic mariners, instead
+of humbly groveling at their feet as "absurd myths" and old wives' tales
+and superstitions.
+
+It will thus appear that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62
+of "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical
+difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a
+western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts.  Whether they can or
+cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems
+based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific
+hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little
+as any casual traveler's unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred
+visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol.
+The sentences, "the Greeks and Romans were small sub-races of our own
+Caucasian stock" (p. 6), and they were "the remnants of the Atlanteans
+(the modern belong to the fifth race)" (p. 62), show the real meaning on
+their face.  By the old Greeks, "remnants of the Atlanteans" the
+eponymous ancestors (as they are called by Europeans) of the Aeolians,
+Dorians and Ionians, are meant.  By the connection together of the old
+Greeks and Romans without distinction, was meant that the primitive
+Latins were swallowed by Magna Graecia.  And by "the modern" belonging
+"to the fifth race"--both these small branchlets from whose veins had
+been strained out the last drop of the Atlantean blood--it was implied
+that the Mongoloid 4th race blood had already been eliminated.
+Occultists make a distinction between the races intermediate between any
+two root-races:  the Westerns do not. The "old Romans" were Hellenes in
+a new ethnological disguise; and the still older Greeks the real blood
+ancestors of the future Romans.  In direct relation to this, attention
+is drawn to the following fact--one of the many in close historical
+bearing upon the "mythical" age to which Atlantis belongs.  It is a
+fable and may be charged to the account of historical difficulties.  It
+is well calculated, however, to throw all the old ethnological and
+genealogical divisions into confusion.
+
+Asking the reader to bear in mind that Atlantis, like modern Europe,
+comprised many nations and many dialects (issues from the three primeval
+root-languages of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Races), we may return to
+Poseidonis, its last surviving remnant of 12,000 years ago.  As the
+chief element in the languages of the 5th race is the Aryan-Sanskrit of
+the "Brown-white" geological stock or race, so the predominating element
+in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of
+some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the
+inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kivang-ze--a language which
+was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic, as it would be
+called by modern philologists.  It was, in short, the language of the
+"Red-yellow" second or middle geological stock (we maintain the term
+"geological").  A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race
+was, of course, to be found in the Aryans of the 5th.  But this did not
+prevent in the least the presence at the same time of unalloyed, pure
+Aryan races in it.  A number of small islands scattered around
+Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of earthquakes, long before
+the final catastrophe, which has alone remained in the memory of men--
+thanks to some written records.  Tradition says that one of the small
+tribes (the Aeolians) who had become islanders after emigrating from far
+northern countries, had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge.
+If, in spite of the Orientalists and the conjecture of M.F. Lenormant--
+who invented a name for a people whose shadowy outline he dimly
+perceived in the faraway Past as preceding the Babylonians--we say that
+this Aryan race that came from Central Asia, the cradle of the 5th race
+Humanity, belonged to the "Akkadian" tribes, there will be a new
+historico-ethnological difficulty created.  Yet it is maintained that
+these "Akkads" were no more a "Turanian" race than any of the modern
+British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously
+present in the Bible, and absent from history.  With such remarkable
+pacta conventa between modern exact (?) and ancient Occult sciences, we
+may proceed with the fable.  Belonging virtually, through their original
+connection with the Aryan, Central Asian stock, to the 5th race, the old
+Aeolians yet were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence
+in the now submerged continent, covering some thousands of years, but by
+the free intermingling of blood, by intermarriage with them.  Perhaps in
+this connection Mr. Huxley's disposition to account for his Melanochroi
+(the Greeks being included under this classification or type)--as
+themselves "the result of crossing between the Xanthochroi and the
+Australioids," among whom he places the Southern India lower classes and
+the Egyptians to some extent--is not far off from fact.  Anyhow the
+Aeolians of Atlantis were Aryans on the whole, as much as the Basques--
+Dr. Pritchard's Allophylians--are now southern Europeans, although
+originally belonging to the South Indian Dravidian stock (their
+progenitors having never been the aborigines of Europe prior to the
+first Aryan emigration, as supposed).  Frightened by the frequent
+earthquakes and the visible approach of the cataclysm, this tribe is
+said to have filled a flotilla of arks, to have sailed from beyond the
+Pillars of Hercules, and, sailing along the coasts, after several years
+of travel to have landed on the shores of the Aegean Sea in the land of
+Pyrrha (now Thessaly), to which they gave the name of Aeolia.  Thence
+they proceeded on business with the gods to Mount Olympus.  It may be
+stated here, at the risk of creating a "geographical difficulty," that
+in that mythical age Greece, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and many other
+islands of the Mediterranean, were simply the far-away possessions, or
+colonies, of Atlantis.  Hence, the "fable" proceeds to state that all
+along the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy the Aeolians often halted,
+and the memory of their "magical feats" still survives among the
+descendants of the old Massilians, of the tribes of the later
+Carthago-Nova, and the seaports of Etruria and Syracuse.  And here
+again it would not be a bad idea, perchance, even at this late hour, for
+the archeologists to trace, with the permission of the anthropological
+societies, the origin of the various autochthones through their
+folk-lore and fables, as they may prove both more suggestive and
+reliable than their "undecipherable" monuments.  History catches a misty
+glimpse of these particular autochthones thousands of years only after
+they had been settled in old Greece--namely, at the moment when the
+Epireans cross the Pindus bent on expelling the black magicians from
+their home to Boeotia.  But history never listened to the popular
+legends which speak of the "accursed sorcerers" who departed, leaving as
+an inheritance behind them more than one secret of their infernal arts,
+the fame of which crossing the ages has now passed into history--or,
+classical Greek and Roman fable, if so preferred.  To this day a popular
+tradition narrates how the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so
+renowned for their magicians, had come from behind the Pillars, asking
+for help and refuge from the great Zeus, and imploring the father of the
+gods to save them from the deluge.  But the "Father" expelled them from
+the Olympus, allowing their tribe to settle only at the foot of the
+mountain, in the valleys, and by the shores of the Aegean Sea.
+
+Such is the oldest fable of the ancient Thessalonians.  And now, what
+was the language spoken by the Atlantean Aeolians?  History cannot
+answer us.  Nevertheless, the reader has only to be reminded of some of
+the accepted and a few of the as yet unknown facts, to cause the light
+to enter any intuitional brain.  It is now proved that man was
+universally conceived in antiquity as born of the earth.  Such is now
+the profane explanation of the term autochthones.  In nearly every
+vulgarized popular fable, from the Sanskrit Arya "born of the earth," or
+Lord of the Soil in one sense;  the Erechtheus of the archaic Greeks,
+worshiped in the earliest days of the Akropolis and shown by Homer as
+"he whom the earth bore" ( Il. ii. 548);  down to Adam fashioned of "red
+earth," the genetical story has a deep occult meaning, and an indirect
+connection with the origin of man and of the subsequent races.  Thus,
+the fables of Helen, the son of Pyrrha the red--the oldest name of
+Thessaly;  and of Mannus, the reputed ancestor of the Germans, himself
+the son of Tuisco, "the red son of the earth," have not only a direct
+bearing upon our Atlantis fable, but they explain moreover the division
+of mankind into geological groups as made by the Occultists.  It is only
+this, their division, that is able to explain to Western teachers the
+apparently strange, if not absurd, coincidence of the Semitic Adam--a
+divinely revealed personage--being connected with red earth, in company
+with the Aryan Pyrrha, Tuisco, &c.--the mythical heroes of "foolish"
+fables.  Nor will that division made by the Eastern Occultists, who call
+the 5th race people "the Brown-white," and the 4th race the
+"Red-yellow," Root-races--connecting them with geological strata--appear
+at all fantastic to those who understood verse iii. 34-9 of the Veda and
+its occult meaning, and another verse in which the Dasyus are called
+"Yellow."  Hatvi Dasyun pra aryam varanam avat is said of Indra who, by
+killing the Dasyus, protected the colour of the Aryans; and again, Indra
+"unveiled the light for the Aryas and the Dasyus was left on the left
+hand" (ii. III 18).  Let the student of Occultism bear in mind that the
+Greek Noah, Deukalion, the husband of Pyrrha, was the reputed son of
+Prometheus who robbed Heaven of its fire (i.e., of secret Wisdom "of the
+right hand," or occult knowledge);  that Prometheus is the brother of
+Atlas; that he is also the son of Asia and of the Titan Iapetus--the
+antetype from which the Jews borrowed their Japhet for the exigencies of
+their own popular legend to mask its kabalistic, Chaldean meaning;  and
+that he is also the antetype of Deukalion. Prometheus is the creator of
+man out of earth and water,* who after stealing fire from Olympus--a
+mountain in Greece--is chained on a mount in the far-off Caucasus.  From
+Olympus to Mount Kazbek there is a considerable distance.  The
+Occultists say that while the 4th race was generated and developed on
+the Atlantean continent--our Antipodes in a certain sense--the 5th was
+generated and developed in Asia.  (The ancient Greek geographer Strabo,
+for one, calls by the name of Ariana, the land of the Aryas, the whole
+country between the Indian Ocean in the south, the Hindu Kush and
+Parapamisis in the north, the Indus on the east, and the Caspian Gates,
+Karamania and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the west.)  The fable of
+Prometheus relates to the extinction of the civilized portions of the
+4th race, whom Zeus, in order to create a new race, would destroy
+entirely, and Prometheus (who had the sacred fire of knowledge) saved
+partially "for future seed."  But the origin of the fable antecedes the
+destruction of Poseidonis by more than seventy thousand years, however
+incredible it may seem.  The seven great continents of the world, spoken
+of in the Vishnu Purana (B. II., cap. 2) include Atlantis, though, of
+course, under another name.  Ila and Ira are synonymous Sanskrit terms
+(see Amarakosha), and both mean earth or native soil;  and Ilavrita is a
+portion of Ila, the central point of India (Jambudvipa), the latter
+being itself the centre of the seven great continents before the
+submersion of the great continent of Atlantis, of which Poseidonis was
+but an insignificant remnant.  And now, while every Brahmin will
+understand the meaning, we may help the Europeans with a few more
+explanations.
+
+--------
+* Behold Moses saying that it requires earth and water to make a living
+man.
+--------
+
+If, in that generally tabooed work, "Isis Unveiled," the "English
+F.T.S." turns to page 589, vol. I., he may find therein narrated another
+old Eastern legend.  An island .... (where now the Gobi desert lies) was
+inhabited by the last remnants of the race that preceded ours:  a
+handful of  "Adepts"--the "Sons of God," now referred to as the Brahman
+Pitris;  called by another yet synonymous name in the Chaldean Kabala.
+"Isis Unveiled" may appear very puzzling and contradictory to those who
+know nothing of Occult Sciences.  To the Occultist it is correct, and
+while perhaps left purposely sinning (for it was the first cautious
+attempt to let into the West a faint streak of Eastern esoteric light),
+it reveals more facts than were ever given before its appearance.  Let
+any one read these pages and he may comprehend. The "six such races" in
+Manu refer to the sub-races of the fourth race (p. 590).  In addition to
+this the reader must turn to the paper on "The Septenary Principle in
+Esotericism" (p. 187 ante), study the list of the "Manus" of our fourth
+Round (p. 254), and between this and "Isis" light may, perchance, be
+focused.  On pages 590-6 of the work mentioned above, he will find that
+Atlantis is mentioned in the "Secret Books of the East" (as yet virgin
+of Western spoliating hand) under another name in the sacred hieratic or
+sacerdotal language.  And then it will be shown to him that Atlantis was
+not merely the name of one island but that of a whole continent, of
+whose isles and islets many have to this day survived.  The remotest
+ancestors of some of the inhabitants of the now miserable fisherman's
+hovel "Aclo" (once Atlan), near the gulf of Uraha, were allied at one
+time as closely with the old Greeks and Romans as they were with the
+"true inland China-man," mentioned on p. 57 Of "Esoteric Buddhism."
+Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the
+name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to
+be part of India;  and strange to him who does not follow the mysterious
+working of the human mind and its unconscious approximations to hidden
+truths--even the aborigines of the new continent, the Red-skinned
+tribes, the "Mongoloids" of Mr. Huxley, were named Indians.  Names now
+attributed to chance: elastic word that!  Strange coincidence, indeed,
+to him who does not know--science refusing yet to sanction the wild
+hypothesis--that there was a time when the Indian peninsula was at one
+end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of
+islands and continents.  The India of the prehistoric ages was not only
+within the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, but there was
+even in the days of history, and within its memory, an upper, a lower,
+and a western India:  and still earlier it was doubly connected with the
+two Americas.  The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus
+Marcellinus calls the "Brahmans of Upper India" stretched from Kashmir
+far into the (now) deserts of Schamo.  A pedestrian from the north might
+then have reached--hardly wetting his feet--the Alaskan Peninsula,
+through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and
+Aleutian Islands;  while another traveler, furnished with a canoe and
+starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the
+Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South
+America.  On pp. 592-3 of "Isis," vol. I., the Thevetatas--the evil,
+mischievous gods that have survived in the Etruscan Pantheon--are
+mentioned, along with the "sons of God" or Brahman Pitris.  The
+Involute, the hidden or shrouded gods, the Consentes, Complices, and
+Novensiles, are all disguised relics of the Atlanteans;  while the
+Etruscan arts of soothsaying their Disciplina revealed by Tages comes
+direct and in undisguised form from the Atlantean king Thevetat, the
+"invisible" Dragon, whose name survives to this day among the Siamese
+and Burmese, as also, in the Jataka allegorical stories of the Buddhists
+as the opposing power under the name of Devadat. And Tages was the son
+of Thevetat, before he became the grandson of the Etruscan
+Jupiter-Tinia.  Have the Western Orientalists tried to find out the
+connection between all these Dragons and Serpents;  between the "powers
+of Evil" in the cycles of epic legends, the Persian and the Indian, the
+Greek and the Jewish; between the contests of Indra and the giant;  the
+Aryan Nagas and the Iranian Aji Dahaka;  the Guatemalian Dragon and the
+Serpent of Genesis--&c. &c. &c.?  Professor Max Muller discredits the
+connection.  So be it.  But the fourth race of men, "men" whose sight
+was unlimited and who knew all things at once, the hidden as the
+unrevealed, is mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, the sacred books of the
+Guatemalians;  and the Babylonian Xisuthrus, the far later Jewish Noah,
+the Hindu Vaivaswata, and the Greek Deukalion, are all identical with
+the great Father of the Thlinkithians, of Popol-Vuh who, like the rest
+of these allegorical (not mythical) Patriarchs, escaped in his turn and
+in his days, in a large boat at the time of the last great Deluge--the
+submersion of Atlantis.
+
+To have been an Indo-Aryan, Vaivaswata had not, of necessity, to meet
+with his Saviour (Vishnu, under the form of a fish) within the precincts
+of the present India, or even anywhere on the Asian continent;  nor is
+it necessary to concede that he was the seventh great Manu himself (see
+catalogue of the Manus, in the paper on "The Septenary Principle in
+Esotericism" cited above), but simply that the Hindu Noah belonged to
+the clan of Vaivaswata and typifies the fifth race.  Now the last of the
+Atlantean islands perished some 11,000 years ago;  and the fifth race
+headed by the Aryans began its evolution, to the certain knowledge of
+the "Adepts" nearer one million than 900,000 years ago.  But the
+historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality
+are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years
+for all our human evolution.  Hence we put it to them as a fair
+question:  at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do
+they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and
+Romans?"  Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their
+territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations?  And where
+were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races?  It is not enough
+for purposes of refutation of other peoples' statements to say that the
+latter lived separate from the former, and then come to a full stop--a
+fresh hiatus in the ethnological history of mankind.  Since Asia is
+sometimes called the Cradle of Humanity, and it is an ascertained fact
+that Central Asia was likewise the cradle of the Semitic and Turanian
+races (for thus it is taught in Genesis), and we find the Turans
+agreeably to the theory evolved by the Assyriologists preceding the
+Babylonian Semitists, where, at what spot of the globe, did these
+Semito-Turanian nations break away from the parent stock, and what has
+become of the latter?  It cannot be the small Jewish tribe of
+Patriarchs; and unless it can be shown that the garden of Eden was also
+on the Oxus or the Euphrates, fenced off from the soil inhabited by the
+children of Cain, philologists who undertake to fill in the gaps in
+Universal History with their made-up conjectures, may be regarded as
+ignorant of this detail as those they would enlighten.
+
+Logically, if the ancestors of these various groups had been at that
+remote period massed together, then the self-same roots of a parent
+common stock would have been equally traceable in their perfected
+languages as they are in those of the Judo-Europeans.  And so, since
+whichever way one turns, one is met with the same troubled sea of
+speculation, margined by the treacherous quicksands of hypothesis, and
+every horizon bounded by inferential landmarks inscribed with imaginary
+dates.  Again, the "Adepts" ask why should any one be awed into
+accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high
+authority in Europe?  For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar--in
+every case save the purely mathematical and physical sciences--as little
+better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps,
+admiration.  He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of
+Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists.  He refuses
+to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural
+so-called "sciences" of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist,
+Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Oedipuses to whom it is
+not given to unriddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle
+her.
+
+With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the
+future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the
+"historical difficulty" with reference to the non-historical statement,
+necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact.  They knew
+that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the
+confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many,
+it would never do for them to say "we maintain" while Western professors
+maintained to the contrary.  For a body of, so to say, unlicensed
+preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to
+offer to fight an August body of universally recognized oracles, would
+be an unprecedented piece of impertinence.  Hence their respective
+claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in
+this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds.  The
+"Adepts" in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the
+"A.C.S.'s"--Adepts in Conjectural Sciences--unless they could show,
+partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what
+foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built.
+They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be
+right after all.  Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised,
+would have been fatal.  Besides risking to be construed into inability
+to answer, it might have given rise to new complaints among the faithful
+few, and lead to fresh charges of selfishness against the writers.
+Therefore have the "Adepts" agreed to smooth in part at least a few of
+the most glaring difficulties and showing a highway to avoid them in
+future by studying the non-historical but actual, instead of the
+historical but mythical, portions of Universal History.  And this they
+have achieved, they believe (at any rate with a few of their querists),
+by simply showing, or rather reminding them, that since no historical
+fact can stand as such against the "assumption" of the "Adepts"--
+historians being confessedly ignorant of pre-Roman and Greek origins
+beyond the ghostly shadows of the Etruscans and Pelasgians--no real
+historical difficulty can be possibly involved in their statement.  From
+objectors outside the Society, the writers neither demand nor do they
+expect mercy. The "Adept" has no favours to ask at the hands of
+conjectural science, nor does he exact from any member of the "London
+Lodge" blind faith:  it being his cardinal maxim that faith should only
+follow inquiry.  The "Adept" is more than content to be allowed to
+remain silent, keeping what he may know to himself, unless worthy
+seekers wish to share it.  He has so done for ages, and can do so for a
+little longer.  Moreover, he would rather not "arrest attention" or
+"command respect" at present.  Thus he leaves his audience to first
+verify his statements in every case by the brilliant though rather
+wavering light of modern science:  after which his facts may be either
+accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student.  In short,
+the "Adept"--if one indeed--has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and
+unmoved by, the issue.  He imparts that which it is lawful for him to
+give out, and deals but with facts.
+
+The philological and archeological "difficulties" next demand attention.
+
+
+
+
+Philological and Archeological "Difficulties"
+
+
+Two questions are blended into one.  Having shown the reasons why the
+Asiatic student is prompted to decline the guidance of Western History,
+it remains to explain his contumacious obstinacy in the same direction
+with regard to philology and archeology. While expressing the sincerest
+admiration for the clever modern methods of reading the past histories
+of nations now mostly extinct, and following the progress and evolution
+of their respective languages, now dead, the student of Eastern
+occultism, and even the profane Hindu scholar acquainted with his
+national literature, can hardly be made to share the confidence felt by
+Western philologists in these conglutinative methods, when practically
+applied to his own country and Sanskrit literature. Three facts, at
+least, out of many are well calculated to undermine his faith in these
+Western methods:--
+
+1. Of some dozens of eminent Orientalists, no two agree, even in their
+verbatim translation of Sanskrit texts.  Nor is there more harmony shown
+in their interpretation of the possible meaning of doubtful passages.
+
+2. Though Numismatics is a less conjectural branch of science, and when
+starting from well-established basic dates, so to say, an exact one
+(since it can hardly fail to yield correct chronological data, in our
+case, namely, Indian antiquities); archeologists have hitherto failed to
+obtain any such position. On their own confession, they are hardly
+justified in accepting the Samvat and Salivahana eras as their guiding
+lights, the real initial points of both being beyond the power of the
+European Orientalists to verify;  yet all the same, the respective dates
+"of 57 B.C. and 78 A.D." are accepted implicitly, and fanciful ages
+thereupon ascribed to archeological remains.
+
+3. The greatest authorities upon Indian archeology and architecture--
+General Cunningham and Mr. Fergusson--represent in their conclusions the
+two opposite poles.  The province of archeology is to provide
+trustworthy canons of criticism, and not, it should seem, to perplex or
+puzzle.  The Western critic is invited to point to one single relic of
+the past in India, whether written record or inscribed or uninscribed
+monument, the age of which is not disputed.  No sooner has one
+archeologist determined a date--say the first century--than another
+tries to pull it forward to the 10th or perhaps the 14th century of the
+Christian era.  While General Cunningham ascribes the construction of
+the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ--the
+opinion of Mr. Fergusson is that its external form belongs to the 14th
+century;  and so the unfortunate outsider is as wise as ever.  Noticing
+this discrepancy in a "Report on the Archeological Survey of India"
+(vol. viii. p. 60), the conscientious and capable Buddha-Gaya Chief
+Engineer, Mr. J.D. Beglar, observes that "notwithstanding his
+(Fergusson's) high authority, this opinion must be unhesitatingly set
+aside," and forthwith assigns the building under notice to the 6th
+century.  While the conjectures of one archeologist are termed by
+another "hopelessly wrong," the identifications of Buddhist relics by
+this other are in their turn denounced as "quite untenable."  And so in
+the case of every relic of whatever age.
+
+When the "recognized" authorities agree--among themselves at least--then
+will it be time to show them collectively in the wrong.  Until then,
+since their respective conjectures can lay no claim to the character of
+history, the "Adepts" have neither the leisure nor the disposition to
+leave weightier business to combat empty speculations, in number as many
+as there are pretended authorities.  Let the blind lead the blind, if
+they will not accept the light.*
+
+--------
+* However, it will be shown elsewhere that General Cunningham's latest
+conclusions about the date of Buddha's death are not all supported by
+the inscriptions newly discovered.--T. Subba Row.
+---------
+
+As in the "historical," so in this new "archeological difficulty,"
+namely, the apparent anachronism as to the date of our Lord's birth, the
+point at issue is again concerned with the "old Greeks and Romans."
+Less ancient than our Atlantean friends, they seem more dangerous
+inasmuch as they have become the direct allies of philologists in our
+dispute over Buddhist annals.  We are notified by Prof. Max Muller, by
+sympathy the most fair of Sanskritists as well as the most learned--and
+with whom, for a wonder, most of his rivals are found siding in this
+particular question--that "everything in Indian chronology depends on
+the date of Chandragupta,"--the Greek Sandracottus. "Either of these
+dates (in the Chinese and Ceylonese chronology) is impossible, because
+it does not agree with the chronology of Greece." ("Hist. of the Sans.
+Lit.," p. 275.)  It is then by the clear light of this new Alexandrian
+Pharos shed, upon a few synchronisms casually furnished by the Greek and
+Roman classical writers, that the "extraordinary" statements of the
+"Adepts" have now to be cautiously examined.  For Western Orientalists
+the historical existence of Buddhism begins with Asoka, though, even
+with the help of Greek spectacles, they are unable to see beyond
+Chandragupta.  Therefore, "before that time Buddhist chronology is
+traditional and full of absurdities."  Furthermore, nothing is said in
+the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas--ergo, there were none before
+"Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a
+history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind.  As
+though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding
+by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae
+between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo
+Kush, and the reign of Asoka.  Having nothing more solid, he uses
+contradictory inferences and speculations.  But the Asiatic occultists,
+whose forefathers had her tablets in their keeping, and even some
+learned native Pundits--believe they can.  The claim, however, is
+pronounced unworthy of attention.  Of the late Smriti (traditional
+history) which, for those who know how to interpret its allegories, is
+full of unimpeachable historical records, an Ariadne's thread through
+the tortuous labyrinth of the Past--has come to be unanimously regarded
+as a tissue of exaggerations, monstrous fables, "clumsy forgeries of the
+first centuries A.D." It is now openly declared as worthless not only
+for exact chronological but even for general historical purposes.  Thus
+by dint of arbitrary condemnations, based on absurd interpretations (too
+often the direct outcome of sectarian prejudice), the Orientalist has
+raised himself to the eminence of a philological mantic.  His learned
+vagaries are fast superseding, even in the minds of many a Europeanized
+Hindu, the important historical facts that lie concealed under the
+exoteric phraseology of the Puranas and other Smritic literature.  At
+the outset, therefore, the Eastern Initiate declares the evidence of
+those Orientalists who, abusing their unmerited authority, play ducks
+and drakes with his most sacred relics, ruled out of court;  and before
+giving his facts he would suggest to the learned European Sanskritist
+and archeologist that, in the matter of chronology, the difference in
+the sum of their series of conjectural historical events, proves them to
+be mistaken from A to Z.  They know that one single wrong figure in an
+arithmetical progression will always throw the whole calculation into
+inextricable confusion:  the multiplication yielding, generally, in such
+a case, instead of the correct sum something entirely unexpected. A fair
+proof of this may, perhaps, be found in something already alluded to--
+namely, the adoption of the dates of certain Hindu eras as the basis of
+their chronological assumptions.  In assigning a date to text or
+monument they have, of course, to be guided by one of the pre-Christian
+Indian eras, whether inferentially, or otherwise.  And yet--in one case,
+at least--they complain repeatedly that they are utterly ignorant as to
+the correct starting-point of the most important of these.  The positive
+date of Vikramaditya, for instance, whose reign forms the starting point
+of the Samvat era, is in reality unknown to them.  With some,
+Vikramaditya flourished "B.C." 56;  with others, 86;  with others again,
+in the 6th century of the Christian era;  while Mr. Fergusson will not
+allow the Samvat era any beginning before the "10th century A.D."  In
+short, and in the words of Dr. Weber,* they "have absolutely no
+authentic evidence to show whether the era of Vikramaditya dates from
+the year of his birth, from some achievement, or from the year of his
+death, or whether, in fine, it may not have been simply introduced by
+him for astronomical reasons."  There were several Vikramadityas and
+Vikramas in Indian history, for it is not a name, but an honorary title,
+as the Orientalists have now come to learn.  How then can any
+chronological deduction from such a shifting premise be anything but
+untrustworthy, especially when, as in the instance of the Samvat, the
+basic date is made to travel along, at the personal fancy of
+Orientalists, between the 1st and the 10th century?
+
+-----------
+* "The History of Indian Literature," Trubner's Series, 1882, p. 202.
+-----------
+
+Thus it appears to be pretty well proved that in ascribing chronological
+dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European
+archeologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms.
+That, in fine, they have been hitherto furnishing History with an
+arithmetical mean, while ignorant, in nearly every case, of its first
+term!  Nevertheless, the Asiatic student is invited to verify and
+correct his dates by the flickering light of this chronological
+will-o-the-wisp.  Nay, nay.  Surely "An English F.T.S." would never
+expect us in matters demanding the minutest exactness to trust to such
+Western beacons!  And he will, perhaps, permit us to hold to our own
+views, since we know that our dates are neither conjectural nor liable
+to modifications.  Where even such veteran archeologists as General
+Cunningham do not seem above suspicion, and are openly denounced by
+their colleagues, palaeography seems to hardly deserve the name of exact
+science.  This busy antiquarian has been repeatedly denounced by Prof.
+Weber and others for his indiscriminate acceptance of that Samvat era.
+Nor have the other Orientalists been more lenient;  especially those
+who, perchance under the inspiration of early sympathies for biblical
+chronology, prefer in matters connected with Indian dates to give head
+to their own emotional but unscientific intuitions.  Some would have us
+believe that the Samvat era "is not demonstrable for times anteceding
+the Christian era at all."  Kern makes efforts to prove that the Indian
+astronomers began to employ this era "only after the year of grace
+1000."  Prof. Weber, referring sarcastically to General Cunningham,
+observes that "others, on the contrary, have no hesitation in at once
+referring, wherever possible, every Samvat or Samvatsare-dated
+inscription to the Samvat era."  Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his "Arch.
+Survey of India," iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated
+Samvat 5 to the year "B.C. 52," &c., and winds up the statement with the
+following plaint:  "For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where
+there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must
+generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a
+particular inscription, and what date consequently the inscription
+bears." *
+
+--------
+* Op. cit., p. 203.
+--------
+
+The confession is significant.  It is pleasant to find such a ring of
+sincerity in a European Orientalist, though it does seem quite ominous
+for Indian archeology.  The initiated Brahmans know the positive dates
+of their eras and remain therefore unconcerned.  What the "Adepts" have
+once said, they maintain; and no new discoveries or modified conjectures
+of accepted authorities can exert any pressure upon their data.  Even if
+Western archeologists or numismatists took it into their heads to change
+the date of our Lord and Glorified Deliverer from the 7th century "B.C."
+to the 7th century "A.D.," we would but the more admire such a
+remarkable gift for knocking about dates and eras, as though they were
+so many lawn-tennis balls.
+
+Meanwhile, to all sincere and inquiring Theosophists, we will say
+plainly, it is useless for any one to speculate about the date of our
+Lord Sanggyas's birth, while rejecting a priori all the Brahmanical,
+Ceylonese, Chinese, and Tibetan dates.  The pretext that these do not
+agree with the chronology of a handful of Greeks who visited the country
+300 years after the event in question, is too fallacious and bold.
+Greece was never concerned with Buddhism, and besides the fact that the
+classics furnish their few synchronistic dates simply upon the hearsay
+of their respective authors--a few Greeks, who themselves lived
+centuries before the writers quoted--their chronology is itself too
+defective, and their historical records, when it was a question of
+national triumphs, too bombastic and often too diametrically opposed to
+fact, to inspire with confidence any one less prejudiced than the
+average European Orientalist.  To seek to establish the true dates in
+Indian history by connecting its events with the mythical "invasion,"
+while confessing that "one would look in vain in the literature of the
+Brahmans or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander's conquest, and
+although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events
+related by Alexander's companions with the historical tradition of
+India," amounts to something more than a mere exhibition of incompetence
+in this direction:  were not Prof. Max Muller the party concerned--we
+might say that it appears almost like predetermined dishonesty.
+
+These are harsh words to say, and calculated no doubt to shock many a
+European mind trained to look up to what is termed "scientific
+authority" with a feeling akin to that of the savage for his family
+fetich.  They are well deserved, nevertheless, as a few examples will
+show.  To such intellects as Prof. Weber's--whom we take as the leader
+of the German Orientalists of the type of Christophiles--certainly the
+word "obtuseness" cannot be applied.  Upon seeing how chronology is
+deliberately and maliciously perverted in favour of "Greek influence,"
+Christian interests and his own predetermined theories--another, and
+even a stronger term should be applied.  What expression is too severe
+to signify one's feelings upon reading such an unwitting confession of
+disingenuous scholarship as Weber repeatedly makes ("Hist. Ind. Lit.")
+when urging the necessity of admitting that a passage "has been touched
+up by later interpellation," or forcing fanciful chronological places
+for texts admittedly very ancient--"as otherwise the dates would be
+brought down too far or too near!"  And this is the keynote of his
+entire policy:  fiat hypothesis, ruat caelum!  On the other hand Prof.
+Max Muller, enthusiastic Indophile as he seems, crams centuries into his
+chronological thimble without the smallest apparent compunction....
+
+These two Orientalists are instances, because they are accepted beacons
+of philology and Indian paleography.  Our national monuments are dated
+and our ancestral history perverted to suit their opinions;  the
+pernicious evil has ensued, that as a result History is now recording
+for the misguidance of posterity the false annals and distorted facts
+which, upon their evidence, will be accepted without appeal as the
+outcome of the fairest and ablest critical analysis.  While Prof. Max
+Muller will hear of no other than a Greek criterion for Indian
+chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence--his universal
+solvent--in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature,
+astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c.  To support this fallacy the most
+tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted
+to.  If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative
+mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of
+their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the
+north-west of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock.  This is now
+entirely disregarded, because a disturbing element in the harmony of the
+critical spheres.  And though nothing is more reasonable than the
+inference that the Grecian astronomical terms were inherited equally
+from the parent stock, Prof. Weber would have us believe that "it was
+Greek influence that just infused a real life into Indian astronomy" (p.
+251).  In fine, the hoary ancestors of the Hindus borrowed their
+astronomical terminology and learnt the art of star gazing and even
+their zodiac from the Hellenic infant!  This proof engenders another:
+the relative antiquity of the astronomical texts shall be henceforth
+determined upon the presence or absence in them of asterisms and
+zodiacal signs, the former being undisguisedly Greek in their names, the
+latter are "designated by their Sanskrit names which are translated from
+the Greek" (p. 255).  Thus "Manu's law being unacquainted with the
+planets," is considered as more ancient than Yajnavalkya's Code, which
+"inculcates their worship," and so on.  But there is still another and a
+better test found out by the Sanskritists for determining with
+"infallible accuracy" the age of the texts, apart from asterisms and
+zodiacal signs any casual mention in them of the name "Yavana," taken in
+every instance to designate the "Greeks."  This, apart "from an internal
+chronology based on the character of the works themselves, and on the
+quotations, &c., therein contained, is the only one possible," we are
+told.  As a result the absurd statement that "the Indian astronomers
+regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers" (p. 252).  Ergo, their
+teachers were Greeks.  For with Weber and others "Yavana" and "Greek"
+are convertible terms.
+
+But it so happens that Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single
+Greek--Pythagoras;  as Sankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu
+philosopher;  and the ancient Aryan astronomical writers cited his
+opinions to criticize and compare them with the teachings of their own
+astronomical science, long before him perfected and derived from their
+ancestors.  The honorific title of Acharya (master) was applied to him
+as to every other learned astronomer or mystic;  and it certainly did
+not mean that Pythagoras or any other Greek "Master" was necessarily the
+master of the Brahmans.  The word "Yavana" was a generic term employed
+ages before the "Greeks of Alexander" projected "their influence" upon
+Jambudvipa, to designate people of a younger race, the word meaning
+Yuvan "young," or younger.  They knew of Yavanas of the north, west,
+south and east;  and the Greek strangers received this appellation as
+the Persians, Indo-Scythians and others had before them.  An exact
+parallel is afforded in our present day. To the Tibetans every foreigner
+whatsoever is known as a Peling; the Chinese designate Europeans as
+"red-haired devils;"  and the Mussalmans call every one outside of Islam
+a Kuffir.  The Webers of the future, following the example now set them,
+may perhaps, after 10,000 years, affirm, upon the authority of scraps of
+Moslem literature then extant, that the Bible was written, and the
+English, French, Russians and Germans who possessed and translated or
+"invented" it, lived in Kaffiristan shortly before their era under
+"Moslem influence."  Because the Yuga Purana of the Gargi Sanhita speaks
+of an expedition of the Yavanas "as far as Pataliputra," therefore,
+either the Macedonians or the Seleuciae had conquered all India!  But
+our Western critic is ignorant, of course, of the fact that Ayodhya or
+Saketa of Rama was for two millenniums repelling inroads of various
+Mongolian and other Turanian tribes, besides the Indo-Scythians, from
+beyond Nepaul and the Himalayas.  Prof. Weber seems finally himself
+frightened at the Yavana spectre he has raised, for he
+queries:--"Whether by the Yavanas it is really the Greeks who are meant
+or possibly merely their Indo-Scythian or other successors, to whom the
+name was afterwards transferred."  This wholesome doubt ought to have
+modified his dogmatic tone in many other such cases.
+
+But, drive out prejudice with a pitch fork it will ever return. The
+eminent scholar, though staggered by his own glimpse of the truth,
+returns to the charge with new vigour.  We are startled by the fresh
+discovery that Asuramaya:*  the earliest astronomer, mentioned
+repeatedly in the Indian epics, "is identical with 'Ptolemaios' of the
+Greeks."  The reason for it given is, that "this latter name, as we see
+from the inscriptions of Piyadasi, became in Indian 'Turamaya,' out of
+which the name 'Asuramaya' might very easily grow;  and since, by the
+later tradition, this 'Maya' is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in
+the West."  Had the "Piyadasi inscription" been found on the site of
+ancient Babylonia, one might suspect the word "Turamaya" as derived from
+"Turanomaya," or rather mania.  Since, however, the Piyadasi
+inscriptions belong distinctly to India, and the title was borne but by
+two kings--Chandragupta and Dharmasoka--what has "'Ptolemaios' of the
+Greeks" to do with "Turamaya" or the latter with "Asuramaya," except,
+indeed, to use it as a fresh pretext to drag the Indian astronomer under
+the stupefying "Greek influence" of the Upas Tree of Western Philology?
+Then we learn that, because "Panini once mentions the Yavanas, i.e.,
+.... Greeks, and explains the formation of the word 'Yavanani,' to
+which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must be
+supplied," therefore the word signifies "the writing of the Yavanas" of
+the Greeks and none other.  Would the German philologists (who have so
+long and so fruitlessly attempted to explain this word) be very much
+surprised if told that they are yet as far as possible from the truth?
+That--Yavanani does not mean "Greek writing" at all, but any foreign
+writing whatsoever? That the absence of the word "writing" in the old
+texts, except in connection with the names of foreigners, does not in
+the least imply that none but Greek writing was known to them, or that
+they had none of their own, being ignorant of the art of reading and
+writing until the days of Panini? (theory of Prof. Max Muller). For
+Devanagari is as old as the Vedas, and held so sacred that the Brahmans,
+first under penalty of death, and later on of eternal ostracism, were
+not even allowed to mention it to profane ears, much less to make known
+the existence of their secret temple libraries.  So that by the word
+Yavanani, "to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi,
+'writing,' must he supplied," the writing of foreigners in general,
+whether Phoenician, Roman, or Greek, is always meant.  As to the
+preposterous hypothesis of Prof. Max Muller that writing "was not used
+for literary purposes in India" before Panini's time (again upon Greek
+authority) that matter has been disposed of elsewhere.
+
+---------
+* Dr. Weber is not probably aware of the fact that this distinguished
+astronomer's name was simply Maya;  the prefix "Asura" was often added
+to it by ancient Hindu writers to show that he was a Rakshasa.  In the
+opinion of the Brahmans he was an "Atlantean" and one of the greatest
+astronomers and occultists of the lost Atlantis.
+---------
+
+Equally unknown are those certain other and most important facts, fable
+though they seem.  First, that the Aryan "Great War," the Mahabharata,
+and the Trojan War of Homer--both mythical as to personal biographies
+and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main--
+belong to the same cycle of events.  For the occurrences of many
+centuries, among them the separation of sundry peoples and races,
+erroneously traced to Central Asia alone, were in these immortal epics
+compressed within the scope of single dramas made to occupy but a few
+years.  Secondly, that in this immense antiquity the forefathers of the
+Aryan Greeks and the Aryan Brahmans were as closely united and
+intermixed as are now the Aryans and the so-called Dravidians.  Thirdly,
+that before the days of the historical Rama, from whom in unbroken
+genealogical descent the Oodeypore sovereigns trace their lineage,
+Rajpootana was as full of direct post-Atlantean "Greeks," as the
+post-Trojan, subjacent Cumaea and other settlements of pre-Magna Graecia
+were of the fast Hellenizing sires of the modern Rajpoot.  One
+acquainted with the real meaning of the ancient epics cannot refrain
+from asking himself whether these intuitional Orientalists prefer being
+called deceivers or deceived, and in charity give them the benefit of
+the doubt.*
+
+---------
+* Further on, Prof. Weber indulges in the following piece of
+chronological sleight of hand.  In his arduous endeavour "to determine
+accurately" the place in history of "the Romantic Legend of Sakya
+Buddha" (translation by Beale), he thinks "the special points of
+relation here found to Christian legends are very striking.  The
+question which party was the borrower Deals properly leaves
+undetermined.  Yet in all likelihood (!!) we have here simply a similar
+case to that of the appropriation of Christian legend by this worshipers
+of Krishna" (p. 300).  Now it is this that every Hindu and Buddhist has
+the right to brand as "dishonesty," whether conscious or unconscious.
+Legends originate earlier than history and die out upon being sifted.
+Neither of the fabulous events in connection with Buddha's birth, taken
+exoterically, necessitated a great genius to narrate them, nor was the
+intellectual capacity of the Hindus ever proved so inferior to that of
+the Jewish and Greek mob that they should borrow from them even fables
+inspired by religion.  How their fables, evolved between the second and
+third centuries after Buddha's death, when the fever of proselytism and
+the adoration of his memory were at their height, could be borrowed and
+then appropriated from the Christian legends written during the first
+century of the Western era, can only be explained by a German
+Orientalist.  Mr. T.W. Rhys Davids (Jataka Book) shows the contrary to
+have been true.  It may be remarked in this connection that, while the
+first "miracles" of both Krishna and Christ are said to have happened at
+a Mathura, the latter city exists to this day in India--the antiquity of
+its name being fully proved--while the Mathura, or Matures in Egypt, of
+the "Gospel of Infancy," where Jesus is alleged to have produced his
+first miracle, was sought to be identified, centuries ago, by the stump
+of an old tree in thee desert, and is represented by an empty spot!
+----------
+
+What can be thought of Prof. Weber's endeavour when, "to determine more
+accurately the position of Ramayana (called by him the 'artificial
+epic') in literary history," he ends with an assumption that "it rests
+upon an acquaintance with the Trojan cycle of legend .... the conclusion
+there arrived at is that the date of its composition is to be placed at
+the commencement of the Christian era in an epoch when the operation of
+the Greek influence upon India had already set in!" (p. 194.)  The case
+is hopeless.  If the "internal chronology" and external fitness of
+things, we may add presented in the triple Indian epic, did not open the
+eyes of the hypercritical professors to the many historical facts
+enshrined in their striking allegories;  if the significant mention of
+"black Yavanas," and "white Yavanas," indicating totally different
+peoples, could so completely escape their notice;*  and the enumeration
+of a host of tribes, nations, races, clans, under their separate
+Sanskrit designations in the Mahbharata, had not stimulated them to try
+to trace their ethnic evolution and identify them with their now living
+European descendants, there is little to hope from their scholarship
+except a mosaic of learned guesswork.  The latter scientific mode of
+critical analysis may yet end some day in a consensus of opinion that
+Buddhism is due wholesale to the "Life of Barlaam and Josaphat," written
+by St. John of Damascus;  or that our religion was plagiarized from that
+famous Roman Catholic legend of the eighth century in which our Lord
+Gautama is made to figure as a Christian Saint, better still, that the
+Vedas were written at Athens under the auspices of St. George, the
+tutelary successor of Theseus.
+
+---------
+* See Twelfth Book of Mahabharata, Krishnas fight with Kalayavana.
+---------
+
+For fear that anything might be lacking to prove the complete obsession
+of Jambudvipa by the demon of  "Greek influence," Dr. Weber vindictively
+casts a last insult into the face of India by remarking that if
+"European Western steeples owe their origin to an imitation of the
+Buddhist topes* .... on the other hand in the most ancient Hindu
+edifices the presence of Greek influence is unmistakable" (p. 274).
+Well may Dr. Rajendralala Mitra "hold out particularly against the idea
+of any Greek influence whatever on the development of Indian
+architecture."  If his ancestral literature must be attributed to "Greek
+influence," the temples, at least, might have been spared.  One can
+understand how the Egyptian Hall in London reflects the influence of the
+ruined temples on the Nile;  but it is a more difficult feat, even for a
+German professor, to prove the archaic structure of old Aryavarta a
+foreshadowing of the genius of the late lamented Sir Christopher Wren!
+The outcome of this paleographic spoliation is that there is not a
+tittle left for India to call her own. Even medicine is due to the same
+Hellenic influence.  We are told--this once by Roth--that "only a
+comparison of the principles of Indian with those of Greek medicine can
+enable us to judge of the origin, age and value of the former;" .... and
+"a propos of Charaka's injunctions as to the duties of the physician to
+his patient," adds Dr. Weber, "he cites some remarkably coincident
+expressions from the Oath of the Asklepiads."  It is then settled.
+India is Hellenized from head to foot, and even had no physic until the
+Greek doctors came.
+
+----------
+* Of Hindu Lingams, rather.
+----------
+
+
+
+
+Sakya Muni's Place in History
+
+
+No Orientalist, save perhaps, the same wise, not to say deep, Prof.
+Weber, opposes more vehemently than Prof. Max Muller Hindu and Buddhist
+chronology.  Evidently if an Indophile he is not a Buddhophile, and
+General Cunningham, however independent otherwise in his archeological
+researches, agrees with him more than would seem strictly prudent in
+view of possible future discoveries.*  We have then to refute in our
+turn this great Oxford professor's speculations.
+
+---------
+* Notwithstanding Prof. M. Muller's regrettable efforts to invalidate
+every Buddhist evidence, he seems to have ill-succeeded in proving his
+case, if we can judge from the openly expressed opinion of his own
+German confreres.  In the portion headed "Tradition as to Buddha's Age"
+(pp. 283-288) in his "Hist. of Ind. Lit.," Prof. Weber very aptly
+remarks, "Nothing like positive certainty, therefore, is for the present
+attainable. Nor have the subsequent discussions of this topic by Max
+Muller (1859) ('Hist. A.S.L.' p. 264 ff), by Westergaard (1860), 'Ueber
+Buddha's Todesjahr,' and by 'Kern Over de Jaartelling der Zuidel
+Buddhisten' so far yielded any definite results."  Nor are they likely
+to.
+---------
+
+To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also
+finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect
+accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir
+Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their
+chronology.  With him, it is always "Alexander's invasion" and
+"Conquest," and "the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes," while
+even the faintest record of such "conquest" is conspicuously absent from
+Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are
+mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of
+the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the
+Macedonian is yet called the "Conqueror of India."  In other words,
+while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great
+note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary
+or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration.  Until rubbed
+against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down,
+in the words of Professor Weber, as "of course mere empty boasting."
+Oh, rare Western sense of justice! *
+
+----------
+* No Philaryan would pretend for a moment on the strength of the
+Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the
+other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual "vassal" of
+Chandragupta.  They did not even pay tribute, but only a kind of
+quit-rent annually for lands ceded in the north:  as the grant-tablets
+could show.  But the inscription, however misinterpreted, shows most
+clearly that Alexander was never the conqueror of India.
+---------
+
+Occult records show differently.  They say--challenging proof to the
+contrary--that Alexander never penetrated into India farther than
+Taxila;  which is not even quite the modern Attock.  The murmuring of
+the Macedonian's troops began at the same place, and not as given out,
+on the banks of the Hyphasis.  For having never gone to the Hydaspes or
+Jhelum, he could not have been on the Sutlej.  Nor did Alexander ever
+found satrapies or plant any Greek colonies in the Punjab.  The only
+colonies he left behind him that the Brahmans ever knew of, amounted to
+a few dozens of disabled soldiers, scattered hither and thither on the
+frontiers; who with their native raped wives settled around the deserts
+of Karmania and Drangaria--the then natural boundaries of India. And
+unless history regards as colonists the many thousands of dead men and
+those who settled for ever under the hot sands of Gedrosia, there were
+no other, save in the fertile imagination of the Greek historians.  The
+boasted "invasion of India" was confined to the regions between Karmania
+and Attock, east and west;  and Beloochistan and the Hindu Kush, south
+and north: countries which were all India for the Greek of those days.
+His building a fleet on the Hydaspes is a fiction;  and his "victorious
+march through the fighting armies of India," another. However, it is not
+with the "world conqueror" that we have now to deal, but rather with the
+supposed accuracy and even casual veracity of his captains and
+countrymen, whose hazy reminiscences on the testimony of the classical
+writers have now been raised to unimpeachable evidence in everything
+that may affect the chronology of early Buddhism and India.
+
+Foremost among the evidence of classical writers, that of Flavius
+Arrianus is brought forward against the Buddhist and Chinese
+chronologies.  No one should impeach the personal testimony of this
+conscientious author had he been himself an eye-witness instead of
+Megasthenes.  But when a man comes to know that he wrote his accounts
+upon the now lost works of Aristobulus and Ptolemy;  and that the latter
+described their data from texts prepared by authors who had never set
+their eyes upon one line written by either Megasthenes or Nearchus
+himself;  and that knowing so much one is informed by Western historians
+that among the works of Arrian, Book VII. of the "Anabasis of
+Alexander," is "the chief authority on the subject of the Indian
+invasion--a book unfortunately with a gap in its twelfth chapter"--one
+may well conceive upon what a broken reed Western authority leans for
+its Indian chronology.  Arrian lived over 600 years after Buddha's
+death;  Strabo, 500 (55 "B.C.");  Diodorus Siculus--quite a trustworthy
+compiler!--about the first century; Plutarch over 700 anno Buddhae, and
+Quintus Curtius over 1,000 years!  And when, to crown this army of
+witnesses against the Buddhist annals, the reader is informed by our
+Olympian critics that the works of the last-named author--than whom no
+more blundering (geographically, chronologically, and historically)
+writer ever lived--form along with the Greek history of Arrian the most
+valuable source of information respecting the military career of
+Alexander the Great--then the only wonder is that the great conqueror
+was not made by his biographers to have--Leonidas-like--defended the
+Thermopylean passes in the Hindu Kush against the invasion of the first
+Vedic Brahmins "from the Oxus." Withal the Buddhist dates are either
+rejected or only accepted pro tempore.  Well may the Hindu resent the
+preference shown to the testimony of Greeks--of whom some, at least, are
+better remembered in Indian history as the importers into Jambudvipa of
+every Greek and Roman vice known and unknown to their day--against his
+own national records and history.  "Greek influence" was felt, indeed,
+in India, in this, and only in this, one particular.  Greek damsels
+mentioned as an article of great traffic for India--Persian and Greek
+Yavanis--were the fore-mothers of the modern nautch-girls, who had till
+then remained pure virgins of the inner temples.  Alliances with the
+Autiochuses and the Seleucus Nicators bore no better fruit than the
+rotten apple of Sodom.  Pataliputra, as prophesied by Gautama Buddha,
+found its fate in the waters of the Ganges, having been twice before
+nearly destroyed, again like Sodom, by the fire of heaven.
+
+Reverting to the main subject, the "contradictions" between the
+Ceylonese and Chino-Tibetan chronologies actually prove nothing. If the
+Chinese annalists of Saul in accepting the prophecy of our Lord that "a
+thousand years after He had reached Nirvana, His doctrines would reach
+the north" fell into the mistake of applying it to China, whereas Tibet
+was meant, the error was corrected after the eleventh century of the
+Tzina era in most of the temple chronologies.  Besides which, it may now
+refer to other events relating to Buddhism, of which Europe knows
+nothing, China or Tzina dates its present name only from the year 296 of
+the Buddhist era* (vulgar chronology having assumed it from the first
+Hoang of the Tzin dynasty):  therefore the Tathagata could not have
+indicated it by this name in his well-known prophecy. If misunderstood
+even by several of the Buddhist commentators, it is yet preserved in its
+true sense by his own immediate Arhats. The Glorified One meant the
+country that stretches far off from the Lake Mansorowara;  far beyond
+that region of the Himavat, where dwelt from time immemorial the great
+"teachers of the Snowy Range."  These were the great Sraman-acharyas who
+preceded Him, and were His teachers, their humble successors trying to
+this day to perpetuate their and His doctrines.  The prophecy came out
+true to the very day, and it is corroborated both by the mathematical
+and historical chronology of Tibet--quite as accurate as that of the
+Chinese.  Arhat Kasyapa, of the dynasty of Moryas, founded by one of the
+Chandraguptas near Ptaliputra, left the convent of Panch-Kukkutarama, in
+consequence of a vision of our Lord, for missionary purpose in the year
+683 of the Tzin era (436 Western era) and had reached the great Lake of
+Bod-Yul in the same year.  It is at that period that expired the
+millennium prophesied.
+
+--------
+* The reference to Chinahunah (Chinese and Huns) in the Vishma
+Parva of the Mahabharata is evidently a later interpolation, as
+it does not occur in the old MSS. existing in Southern India.
+--------
+
+The Arhat carrying with him the fifth statue of Sakya Muni out of the
+seven gold statues made after his bodily death by order of the first
+Council, planted it in the soil on that very spot where seven years
+later was built the first GUNPA (monastery), where the earliest Buddhist
+lamas dwelt.  And though the conversion of the whole country did not
+take place before the beginning of the seventh century (Western era),
+the good law had, nevertheless, reached the North at the time
+prophesied, and no earlier.  For, the first of the golden statues had
+been plundered from Bhikshu Sali Suka by the Hiong-un robbers and
+melted, during the days of Dharmasoka, who had sent missionaries beyond
+Nepaul.  The second had a like fate, at Ghar-zha, even before it had
+reached the boundaries of Bod-Yul.  The third was rescued from a
+barbarous tribe of Bhons by a Chinese military chief who had pursued
+them into the deserts of Schamo about 423 Buddhist era (120 "B.C.") The
+fourth was sunk in the third century of the Christian era, together
+with the ship that carried it from Magadha toward the hills of
+Ghangs-chhen-dzo-nga (Chitagong).  The fifth arriving in the nick of
+time reached its destination with Arhat Kasyapa.  So did the last two.*
+
+---------
+* No doubt, since the history of these seven statues is not in the hands
+of the Orientalists, it will be treated as a "groundless fable."
+Nevertheless such is their origin and history.  They date from the first
+Synod, that of Rajagriha, held in the season of war following the death
+of Buddha, i.e., one year after his death.  Were this Rajagriha Council
+held 100 years after, as maintained by some, it could not have been
+presided over by Mahakasyapa, the friend and brother Arhat of Sakyamuni,
+as he would have been 200 years old.  The second Council or Synod, that
+of Vaisali, was held 120, not 100 or 110 years as some would have it,
+after the Nirvana, for the latter took place at a time a little over 20
+years before the physical death of Tathagata.  It was held at the great
+Saptapana cave (Mahavansa's Sattapanni), near the Mount Baibhar (the
+Webhara of the Pali Manuscripts), that was in Rajagriha, the old capital
+of Magadha. Memoirs exist, containing the record of his daily life, made
+by the nephew of king Ajatasatru, a favourite Bikshu of the Mahacharya.
+These texts have ever been in the possession of the superiors of the
+first Lamasery built by Arhat Kasyapa in Bod-Yul, most of whose Chohans
+were the descendants of the dynasty of the Moryas, there being up to
+this day three of the members of this once royal family living in India.
+The old text in question is a document written in Anudruta Magadha
+characters.  (We deny that these or any other characters--whether
+Devanagari, Pali, or Dravidian--ever used in India, are variations of,
+or derivatives from, the Phoenician.)  To revert to the texts it is
+therein stated that the Sattapanni cave, then called "Sarasvati" and
+"Bamboo-cave," got its latter name in this wise.  When our Lord first
+sat in it for Dhyana, it was a large six-chambered natural cave, 50 to
+60 feet wide by 33 deep.   One day, while teaching the mendicants
+outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant,
+showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be
+easily detached, but the seventh leaf--directly connected with the stem.
+"Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and
+there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant.  What are
+the seven?  The seven branches of complete knowledge.  What are the six?
+The six organs of sense.  What are the five?  The five elements of
+illusive being.  And the ONE which is also ten?  He is a true Buddha who
+develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the
+one--'the silent voice' (meaning Avolokiteswara).  After that, causing
+the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself
+into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was
+septenary, and had seven stages of development.  From that time it was
+called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave.  After the first Synod was
+held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king,
+and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments."  These in
+after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial
+because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and
+then disposed of as explained.  Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the
+authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave
+received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct.
+In the "Archeological Survey of India," we find that Gen. Cunningham
+identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same
+Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave.  At
+the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing
+the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave,
+and he is right.  For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves
+mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations--both
+having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very
+time of their leaving India--to have their sites so easily forgotten.
+---------
+
+On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open
+their annals with the following event:--
+
+They claim according to their native chronology that Vijaya, the son of
+Sinhabahu, the sovereign of Lala, a small kingdom or Raj on the Gandaki
+river in Magadha, was exiled by his father for acts of turbulence and
+immorality.  Sent adrift on the ocean with his companions after having
+their heads shaved, Buddhist-Bhikshu fashion, as a sign of penitence, he
+was carried to the shores of Lanka.  Once landed, he and his companions
+conquered and easily took possession of an island inhabited by
+uncivilized tribes, generically called the Yakshas.  This--at whatever
+epoch and year it may have happened--is an historical fact, and the
+Ceylonese records, independent of Buddhist chronology, give it out as
+having taken place 382 years before Dushtagamani (i.e., in 543 before
+the Christian era).  Now, the Buddhist Sacred Annals record certain
+words of our Lord pronounced by Him shortly before His death.  In
+Mahavansa He is made to have addressed them to Sakra, in the midst of a
+great assembly of Devatas (Dhyan Chohans), and while already "in the
+exalted unchangeable Nirvana, seated on the throne on which Nirvana is
+achieved."  In our texts Tathagata addresses them to his assembled
+Arhats and Bhikkhuts a few days before his final liberation:--"One
+Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, king of the land of Lala, together with
+700 attendants, has just landed on Lanka.  Lord of Dhyan Buddhas
+(Devas)! my doctrine will be established on Lanka.  Protect him and
+Lanka!"  This is the sentence pronounced which, as proved later, was a
+prophecy.  The now familiar phenomenon of clairvoyant prevision, amply
+furnishing a natural explanation of the prophetic utterance without any
+unscientific theory of miracle, the laugh of certain Orientalists seems
+uncalled for. Such parallels of poetico-religious embellishments as
+found in Mahavansa exist in the written records of every religion--as
+much in Christianity as anywhere else.  An unbiased mind would first
+endeavour to reach the correct and very superficially hidden meaning
+before throwing ridicule and contemptuous discredit upon them.
+Moreover, the Tibetans possess a more sober record of this prophecy in
+the Notes, already alluded to, reverentially taken down by King
+Ajatasatru's nephew.  They are, as said above, in the possession of the
+Lamas of the convent built by Arhat Kasyapa--the Moryas and their
+descendants being of a more direct descent than the Rajput Gautamas, the
+Chiefs of Nagara--the village identified with Kapilavastu--are the best
+entitled of all to their possession.  And we know they are historical to
+a word. For the Esoteric Buddhist they yet vibrate in space;  and these
+prophetic words, together with the true picture of the Sugata who
+pronounced them, are present in the aura of every atom of His relics.
+This, we hasten to say, is no proof but for the psychologist.  But there
+is other and historical evidence: the cumulative testimony of our
+religious chronicles.  The philologist has not seen these;  but this is
+no proof of their non-existence.
+
+The mistake of the Southern Buddhists lies in dating the Nirvana of
+Sanggyas Pan-chhen from the actual day of his death, whereas, as above
+stated, He had reached it over twenty years previous to his
+disincarnation.  Chronologically, the Southerners are right, both in
+dating His death in 543 "B.C.," and one of the great Councils at 100
+years after the latter event.  But the Tibetan Chohans, who possess all
+the documents relating to the last twenty-four years of His external and
+internal life--of which no philologist knows anything--can show that
+there is no real discrepancy between the Tibetan and the Ceylonese
+chronologies as stated by the Western Orientalists.*  For the profane,
+the Exalted One was born in the sixty-eighth year of the Burmese
+Eeatzana era, established by Eeatzana (Anjana), King of Dewaha; for the
+initiated--in the forty-eighth year of that era, on a Friday of the
+waxing moon, of May.  And it was in 563 before the Christian chronology
+that Tathagata reached his full Nirvana, dying, as correctly stated by
+Mahavana--in 543, on the very day when Vijaya landed with his companions
+in Ceylon--as prophesied by Loka-ratha, our Buddha.
+
+---------
+* Bishop Bigandet, after examining all the Burmese authorities
+accessible to him, frankly confesses that "the history of Buddha offers
+an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings
+during a period of nearly twenty-three years." (Vol. I. p. 260.)
+---------
+
+Professor Max Muller seems to greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his
+chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the
+eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented
+claim.  "We are asked to believe"--he writes--"that the Ceylonese
+historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon in the
+year 543 in accordance with their sacred chronology!" (i.e., Buddha's
+prophecy), "while we (the philologists) are not told, however, through
+what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to
+the exact date of Buddha's death."  Two points may be noticed in these
+sarcastic phrases:  (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord;
+and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one
+of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused
+in history of "perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the
+sake of synchronisms."  With reference to charge one, he may be asked
+why our Sakyasinha's prophecies should not be as much entitled to his
+respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours--were we to ever write
+the true history of the "Galilean" Arhat.  With regard to charge two,
+the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all
+Christian chronologists are themselves living in.  Their inability to
+vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity,
+and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death--
+even before their own people--is far greater than is ours to demonstrate
+the year of Buddha to other nations.  Their utter failure to establish
+on any other but traditional evidence the, to them, historically
+unproved, if probable, fact of his existence at all--ought to engender a
+fairer spirit.  When Christian historians can, upon undeniable
+historical authority, justify biblical and ecclesiastical chronology,
+then, perchance, they may be better equipped than at present for the
+congenial work of rending heathen chronologies into shreds.
+
+The "channel" the Ceylonese received their information through, was two
+Bikshus who had left Magadha to follow their disgraced brethren into
+exile.  The capacity of Siddhartha Buddha's Arhats for transmitting
+intelligence by psychic currents may, perhaps, be conceded without any
+great stretch of imagination to have been equal to, if not greater than,
+that of the prophet Elijah, who is credited with the power of having
+known from any distance all that happened in the king's bed chamber.  No
+Orientalist has the right to reject the testimony of other people's
+Scriptures, while professing belief in the far more contradictory and
+entangled evidence of his own upon the self-same theory of proof.  If
+Professor Muller is a sceptic at heart, then let him fearlessly declare
+himself;  only a sceptic who impartially acts the iconoclast has the
+right to assume such a tone of contempt towards any non-Christian
+religion.  And for the instruction of the impartial inquirer only, shall
+it be thought worth while to collate the evidence afforded by
+historical--not psychological--data.  Meanwhile, by analyzing some
+objections and exposing the dangerous logic of our critic, we may give
+the theosophists a few more facts connected with the subject under
+discussion.
+
+Now that we have seen Professor Max Muller's opinions in general about
+this, so to say, the Prologue to the Buddhist Drama with Vijaya as the
+hero--what has he to say as to the details of its plot?  What weapon
+does he use to weaken this foundation-stone of a chronology upon which
+are built and on which depend all other Buddhist dates?  What is the
+fulcrum for the critical lever he uses against the Asiatic records?
+Three of his main points may be stated seriatim with answers appended.
+He begins by premising that--
+
+1st.--"If the starting-point of the Northern Buddhist chronology turns
+out to be merely hypothetical, based as it is on a prophecy of Buddha,
+it will be difficult to avoid the same conclusion with regard to the
+date assigned to Buddha's death by the Buddhists of Ceylon and of
+Burmah" (p. 266).  "The Mahavansa begins with relating three miraculous
+visits which Buddha paid to Ceylon." Vijaya, the name of the founder of
+the first dynasty (in Ceylon), means conquest, "and, therefore, such a
+person most likely never existed" (p. 268).  This he believes
+invalidates the whole Buddhist chronology.
+
+To which the following pendant may be offered:--
+
+William I., King of England, is commonly called the Conqueror; he was,
+moreover, the illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, surnamed le
+Diable.  An opera, we hear, was invented on this subject, and full of
+miraculous events, called "Robert the Devil," showing its traditional
+character.  Therefore shall we be also justified in saying that Edward
+the Confessor, Saxons and all, up to the time of the union of the houses
+of York and Lancaster under Henry VII.--the new historical period in
+English history--are all "fabulous tradition" and "such a person as
+William the Conqueror most likely never existed?"
+
+2nd.--In the Chinese chronology--continues the dissecting critic
+--"the list of the thirty-three Buddhist patriarchs .... is of a
+doubtful character.  For Western history the exact Ceylonese
+chronology begins with 161 B.C."  Extending beyond that date there
+exists but "a traditional native chronology.  Therefore .... what goes
+before .... is but fabulous tradition."
+
+The chronology of the Apostles and their existence has never been proved
+historically.  The history of the Papacy is confessedly "obscure."
+Ennodius of Pavia (fifth century) was the first one to address the Roman
+Bishop (Symmochus), who comes fifty-first in the Apostolic succession,
+as "Pope."  Thus, if we were to write the history of Christianity, and
+indulge in remarks upon its chronology, we might say that since there
+were no antecedent Popes, and since the Apostolic line began with
+Symmochus (498 A.D.), all Christian records beginning with the Nativity
+and up to the sixth century are therefore "fabulous traditions," and all
+Christian chronology is "purely hypothetical."
+
+3rd.--Two discrepant dates in Buddhist chronology are scornfully pointed
+out by the Oxford Professor.  If the landing of Vijaya, in Lanka--he
+says--on the same day that Buddha reached Nirvana (died) is in
+fulfilment of Buddha's prophecy, then "if Buddha was a true prophet, the
+Ceylonese argue quite rightly that he must have died in the year of the
+conquest, or 543 B.C." (p. 270).  On the other hand, the Chinese have a
+Buddhist chronology of their own;  and it does not agree with the
+Ceylonese.  "The lifetime of Buddha from 1029 to 950 rests on his own
+prophecy that a millennium would elapse from his death to the conversion
+of China.  If, therefore, Buddha was a true prophet, he must have lived
+about 1000 B.C." (p. 266).  But the date does not agree with the
+Ceylonese chronology--ergo, Buddha was a false prophet. As to that other
+"the first and most important link" in the Ceylonese as well as in the
+Chinese chronology, "it is extremely weak." .... In the Ceylonese "a
+miraculous genealogy had to be provided for Vijaya," and, "a prophecy
+was therefore invented" (p. 269).
+
+On these same lines of argument it may be argued that:
+
+Since no genealogy of Jesus, "exact or inexact," is found in any of the
+world's records save those entitled the Gospels of SS. Mathew (I--1-17),
+and Luke (iii. 23--38);  and, since these radically disagree--although
+this personage is the most conspicuous in Western history, and the
+nicest accuracy might have been expected in his case;  therefore,
+agreeably with Professor Max Muller's sarcastic logic, if Jesus "was a
+true prophet," he must have descended from David through Joseph
+(Matthew's Gospel);  and "if he was a true prophet," again, then the
+Christians "argue quite rightly that he must have" descended from David
+through Mary (Luke's Gospel).  Furthermore, since the two genealogies
+are obviously discrepant and prophecies were, in this instance, truly
+"invented" by the post-apostolic theologians [or, if preferred, old
+prophecies of Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets, irrelevant to
+Jesus, were adapted to suit his case--as recent English commentators (in
+Holy Orders), the Bible revisers, now concede];  and since, moreover--
+always following the Professor's argument, in the cases of Buddhist and
+Brahmanical chronologies--Biblical chronology and genealogy are found to
+be "traditional and full of absurdities .... every attempt to bring them
+into harmony having proved a failure." (p. 266):  have we or have we not
+a certain right to retort, that if Gautama Buddha is shown on these
+lines a false prophet, then Jesus must be likewise "a false prophet?"
+And if Jesus was a true prophet despite existing confusion of
+authorities, why on the same lines may not Buddha have been one?
+Discredit the Buddhist prophecies and the Christian ones must go along
+with them.
+
+The utterances of the ancient pythoness now but provoke the scientific
+smile:  but no tripod ever mounted by the prophetess of old was so shaky
+as the chronological trinity of points upon which this Orientalist
+stands to deliver his oracles.  Moreover, his arguments are
+double-edged, as shown.  If the citadel of Buddhism can be undermined
+by Professor Max Muller's critical engineering, then pari passu that of
+Christianity must crumble in the same ruins.  Or have the Christians
+alone the monopoly of absurd religious "inventions" and the right of
+being jealous of any infringement of their patent rights?
+
+To conclude, we say, that the year of Buddha's death is correctly stated
+by Mr. Sinnett, "Esoteric Buddhism" having to give its chronological
+dates according to esoteric reckoning.  And this reckoning would alone,
+if explained, make away with every objection urged, from Professor Max
+Muller's "Sanskrit Literature" down to the latest "evidence"--the proofs
+in the "Reports of the Archeological Survey of India."  The Ceylonese
+era, as given in Mahavansa, is correct in everything, withholding but
+the above given fact of Nirvana, the great mystery of Samma-Sambuddha
+and Abhidina remaining to this day unknown to the outsider;  and though
+certainly known to Bikshu Mahanama--King Dhatusena's uncle--it could not
+be explained in a work like the Mahavansa.  Moreover, the Singhalese
+chronology agrees in every particular with the Burmese chronology.
+Independent of the religious era dating from Buddha's death, called
+"Nirvanic Era," there existed, as now shown by Bishop Bigandet ("Life of
+Guadama"), two historical eras.  One lasted 1362 years, its last year
+corresponding with 1156 of the Christian era:  the other, broken in two
+small eras, the last, succeeding immediately the other, exists to the
+present day.  The beginning of the first, which lasted 562 years,
+coincides with the year 79 A.D. and the Indian Saka era.  Consequently,
+the learned Bishop, who surely can never be suspected of partiality to
+Buddhism, accepts the year 543 of Buddha's Nirvana.  So do Mr. Tumour,
+Professor Lassen, and others.
+
+The alleged discrepancies between the fourteen various dates of Nirvana
+collected by Csoma Corosi, do not relate to the Nyr-Nyang in the least.
+They are calculations concerning the Nirvana of the precursors, the
+Boddhisatwas and previous incarnations of Sanggyas that the Hungarian
+found in various works and wrongly applied to the last Buddha.
+Europeans must not forget that this enthusiast acted under protest of
+the Lamas during the time of his stay with them:  and that, moreover, he
+had learned more about the doctrines of the heretical Dugpas than of the
+orthodox Gelugpas.  The statement of this "great authority (!) on
+Tibetan Buddhism," as he is called, to the effect that Gautama had three
+wives whom he names--and then contradicts himself by showing ("Tibetan
+Grammar," p. 162, see note) that the first two wives "are one and the
+same," shows how little he can be regarded as an "authority."  He had
+not even learned that "Gopa, Yasodhara and Utpala Varna" are the three
+names for three mystical powers.  So with the "discrepancies" of the
+dates.  Out of the sixty-four mentioned by him but two relate to Sakya
+Muni--namely, the years 576 and 546--and these two err in their
+transcription;  for when corrected they must stand 564 and 543.  As for
+the rest they concern the seven ku-sum, or triple form of the Nirvanic
+state and their respective duration, and relate to doctrines of which
+Orientalists know absolutely nothing.
+
+Consequently from the Northern Buddhists, who, as confessed by Professor
+Weber, "alone possess these (Buddhist) Scriptures complete," and have
+"preserved more authentic information regarding the circumstances of
+their redaction"--the Orientalists have up to this time learned next to
+nothing.  The Tibetans say that Tathagata became a full Buddha--i.e.,
+reached absolute Nirvana--in 2544 of the Kali era (according to
+Souramana), and thus lived indeed but eighty years, as no Nirvanee of
+the seventh degree can be reckoned among the living (i.e., existing)
+men.  It is no better than loose conjecture to argue that it would have
+entered as little into the thoughts of the Brahmans to note the day of
+Buddha's birth "as the Romans or even the Jews (would have) thought of
+preserving the date of the birth of Jesus before he had become the
+founder of a religion." (Max Muller's "Hist. S. L.")  For, while the
+Jews had been from the first rejecting the claim of Messiah-ship set up
+by the Chelas of the Jewish prophet and were not expecting their Messiah
+at that time, the Brahmans (the initiates, at any rate) knew of the
+coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and
+therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth.  If, in
+after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible
+vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy
+to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and
+doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing
+superstitions, yet there had been a time when he was met by them as an
+Avatar. And, though they destroyed, others preserved.
+
+The thousand and one speculations and the torturing of exoteric texts by
+Archeologist or Paleographer will ill repay the time lost in their
+study.
+
+The Indian annals specify King Ajatasatru as a contemporary of Buddha,
+and another Ajatasatru helped to prepare the council 100 years after his
+death.  These princes were sovereigns of Magadha and have naught to do
+with Ajatasatru of the Brihad-Aranyaka and the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, who
+was a sovereign of the Kasis; though Bhadrasena, "the son of Ajatasatru"
+cursed by Aruni, may have more to do with his namesake the "heir of
+Chandragupta" than is generally known, Professor Max Miller objects to
+two Asokas. He rejects Kalasoka and accepts but Dharmasoka--in
+accordance with "Greek" and in utter conflict with Buddhist chronology.
+He knows not--or perhaps prefers to ignore--that besides the two Asokas
+there were several personages named Chandragupta and Chandramasa.
+Plutarch is set aside as conflicting with the more welcome theory, and
+the evidence of Justin alone is accepted. There was Kalasoka, called by
+some Chandramasa and by others Chandragupta, whose son Nanda was
+succeeded by his cousin the Chandragupta of Seleucus, and under whom the
+Council of Vaisali took place "supported by King Nanda" as correctly
+stated by Taranatha.  (None of them were Sudras, and this is a pure
+invention of the Brahmans.)  Then there was the last of the
+Chandraguptas who assumed the name of Vikrama;  he commenced the new era
+called the Vikramaditya or Samvat and began the new dynasty at
+Pataliputra, 318 (B.C.)--according to some European "authorities;" after
+him his son Bindusara or Bhadrasena--also Chandragupta, who was followed
+by Dharmasoka Chandragupta.  And there were two Piyadasis--the
+"Sandracottus" Chandragupta and Asoka.  And if controverted, the
+Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency.  If
+Asoka was the only "Piyadasi" and the builder of the monuments, and
+maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name;  and if his inauguration
+occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about 259 B.C., in other
+words, if he reigned sixty or seventy years later than any of the Greek
+kings named on the Piyadasian monuments, what had he to do with their
+vassalage or non-vassalage, or how was he concerned with them at all?
+Their dealings had been with his grandfather some seventy years
+earlier--if he became a Buddhist only after ten years occupancy of the
+throne.  And finally, three well-known Bhadrasenas can be proved, whose
+names spelt loosely and phonetically, according to each writer's dialect
+and nationality, now yield a variety of names, from Bindusara,
+Bimbisara, and Vindusara, down to Bhadrasena and Bhadrasara, as he is
+called in the Vayu Purana.  These are all synonymous.  However easy, at
+first sight, it may seem to be to brush out of history a real personage,
+it becomes more difficult to prove the non-existence of Kalasoka by
+calling him "false," while the second Asoka is termed "the real," in the
+face of the evidence of the Puranas, written by the bitterest enemies of
+the Buddhists, the Brahmans of the period.  The Vayu and Matsya Puranas
+mention both in their lists of their reigning sovereigns of the Nanda
+and the Morya dynasties.  And, though they connect Chandragupta with a
+Sudra Nanda, they do not deny existence to Kalasoka, for the sake of
+invalidating Buddhist chronology.  However falsified the now extant
+texts of both the Vaya and Matsya Puranas, even accepted as they at
+present stand "in their true meaning," which Professor Max Muller
+(notwithstanding his confidence) fails to seize, they are not "at
+variance with Buddhist chronology before Chandragupta."  Not, at any
+rate, when the real Chandragupta instead of the false Sandrocottus of
+the Greeks is recognized and introduced.  Quite independently of the
+Buddhist version, there exists the historical fact recorded in the
+Brahmanical as well as in the Burmese and Tibetan versions, that in the
+year 63 of Buddha, Susinago of Benares was chosen king by the people of
+Pataliputra, who made away with Ajatasatru's dynasty.  Susinago removed
+the capital of Magadha from Rajagriha to Vaisali, while his successor
+Kalasoka removed it in his turn to Pataliputra.  It was during the reign
+of the latter that the prophecy of Buddha concerning Patalibat or
+Pataliputra--a small village during His time--was realized.  (See
+Mahaparinibbana Sutta).
+
+It will be easy enough, when the time comes, to answer all denying
+Orientalists and face them with proof and document in hand.  They speak
+of the extravagant, wild exaggerations of the Buddhists and Brahmans.
+The latter answer:  "The wildest theorists of all are they who, to evade
+a self-evident fact, assume moral, anti-national impossibilities,
+entirely opposed to the most conspicuous traits of the Brahmanical
+Indian character--namely, borrowing from, or imitating in anything,
+other nations. From their comments on Rig Veda, down to the annals of
+Ceylon, from Panini to Matouan-lin, every page of their learned scholia
+appears, to one acquainted with the subject, like a monstrous jumble of
+unwarranted and insane speculations.  Therefore, notwithstanding Greek
+chronology and Chandragupta--whose date is represented as 'the
+sheet-anchor of Indian chronology' that 'nothing will ever shake'--it is
+to be feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the
+Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift with
+all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses.  She is drifting
+into danger.  We are at the end of a cycle--geological and other--and at
+the beginning of another.  Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up
+forces are bursting out in many quarters;  and not only will men be
+swallowed up or slain by thousands, 'new' land appear and 'old' subside,
+volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal;  but secrets of an unsuspected
+past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the
+humiliation of an imperious science.  This drifting ship, if watched,
+may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient
+civilizations, and fall to pieces.  We are not emulous of the prophet's
+honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy."
+
+
+
+
+Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham
+
+
+We have carefully examined the new inscription discovered by General A.
+Cunningham on the strength of which the date assigned to Buddha's death
+by Buddhist writers has been declared to be incorrect;  and we are of
+opinion that the said inscription confirms the truth of the Buddhist
+traditions instead of proving them to be erroneous.  The above-mentioned
+archeologist writes as follows regarding the inscription under
+consideration in the first volume of his reports:--"The most interesting
+inscription (at Gaya) is a long and perfect one dated in the era of the
+Nirvana or death of Buddha.  I read the date as follows:--Bhagavati
+Parinirvritte Samvat 1819 Karttike badi I Budhi--that is, 'in the year
+1819 of the Emancipation of Bhagavata on Wednesday, the first day of the
+waning moon of Kartik.'  If the era here used is the same as that of the
+Buddhists of Ceylon and Burmah, which began in 543 B.C., the date of
+this inscription will be 1819--543 = A.D. 1276.  The style of the
+letters is in keeping with this date, but is quite incompatible with
+that derivable from the Chinese date of the era.  The Chinese place the
+death of Buddha upwards of 1000 years before Christ, so that according
+to them the date of this inscription would be about A.D. 800, a period
+much too early for the style of character used in the inscription.  But
+as the day of the week is here fortunately added, the date can be
+verified by calculation. According to my calculation, the date of the
+inscription corresponds with Wednesday, the 17th of September, AD. 1342.
+This would place the Nirvana of Buddha in 477 B.C., which is the very
+year that was first proposed by myself as the most probable date of that
+event.  This corrected date has since been adopted by Professor Max
+Muller."
+
+The reasons assigned by some Orientalists for considering this so-called
+"corrected date" as the real date of Buddha's death have already been
+noticed and criticized in the preceding paper; and now we have only to
+consider whether the inscription in question disproves the old date.
+
+Major-General Cunningham evidently seems to take it for granted, as far
+as his present calculation is concerned, that the number of days in a
+year is counted in the Magadha country and by Buddhist writers in
+general on the same basis on which the number of days in a current
+English year is counted;  and this wrong assumption has vitiated his
+calculation and led him to a wrong conclusion.  Three different methods
+of calculation were in use in India at the time when Buddha lived, and
+they are still in use in different parts of the country.  These methods
+are known as Souramanam, Chandrarmanam and Barhaspatyamanam.  According
+to the Hindu works on astronomy a Souramanam year consists of 365 days
+15 ghadias and 31 vighadias;  a Chandramanam year has 360 days, and a
+year on the basis of Barhaspatyamanam has 361 days and 11 ghadias
+nearly.  Such being the case, General Cunningham ought to have taken the
+trouble of ascertaining before he made his calculation the particular
+manam (measure) employed by the writers of Magadha and Ceylon in giving
+the date of Buddha's death and the manam used in calculating the years
+of the Buddhist era mentioned in the inscription above quoted.  Instead
+of placing himself in the position of the writer of the said inscription
+and making the required calculation from that standpoint, he made the
+calculation on the same basis of which an English gentleman of the
+nineteenth century would calculate time according to his own calendar.
+
+If the calculation were correctly made, it would have shown him that the
+inscription in question is perfectly consistent with the statement that
+Buddha died in the year 543 B.C. according to Barhaspatyamanam (the only
+manam used in Magadha and by Pali writers in general).  The correctness
+of this assertion will be clearly seen on examining the following
+calculation.
+
+543 years according to Barhaspatyamanam are equivalent to 536 years and
+8 months (nearly) according to Souramanam.
+
+Similarly, 1819 years according to the former manam are equivalent to
+1798 years (nearly) according to the latter manarn.
+
+As the Christian era commenced on the 3102nd year of Kaliyuga (according
+to Souramanam), Buddha died in the year 2565 of Kaliyuga and the
+inscription was written in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga (according to
+Souramanam).  And now the question is whether according to the Hindu
+almanack, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik coincided with a
+Wednesday.
+
+According to Suryasiddhanta the number of days from the beginning of
+Kaliyuga up to midnight on the 15th day of increasing moon of Aswina is
+1,593,072, the number of Adhikamasansas (extra months) during the
+interval being 1608 and the number of Kshayathithis 25,323.
+
+If we divide this number by 7 the remainder would be 5.  As Kaliyuga
+commenced with Friday, the period of time above defined closed with
+Tuesday, as according to Suryasiddhanta a weekday is counted from
+midnight to midnight.
+
+It is to be noticed that in places where Barhaspatyamanam is in use
+Krishnapaksham (or the fortnight of waning moon) commences first and is
+followed by Suklapaksham (period of waxing moon).
+
+Consequently, the next day after the 15th day of the waxing moon of
+Aswina will be the 1st day of the waning moon of Kartika to those who
+are guided by the Barhaspatyamanam calendar.  And therefore the latter
+date, which is the date mentioned in the inscription, was Wednesday in
+the year 4362 of Kaliyuga.
+
+The geocentric longitude of the sun at the time of his meridian passage
+on the said date being 174 deg. 20' 16" and the moon's longitude being
+70 deg 51' 42" (according to Suryasiddhanta) it can be easily seen that
+at Gaya there was Padyamitithi (first day of waning moon) for nearly 7
+ghadias and 50 vighadias from the time of sunrise.
+
+It is clear from the foregoing calculation that "Kartik I Badi"
+coincided with Wednesday in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga or the year 1261
+of the Christian era, and that from the standpoint of the person who
+wrote the inscription the said year was the 1819th year of the Buddhist
+era.  And consequently this new inscription confirms the correctness of
+the date assigned to Buddha's death by Buddhist writers.  It would have
+been better if Major-General Cunningham had carefully examined the basis
+of his calculation before proclaiming to the world at large that the
+Buddhist accounts were untrustworthy.
+
+
+
+
+Discrimination of Spirit and Not Spirit
+
+(Translated from the original Sanskrit of Sankara Acharya.)
+
+by Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+[An apology is scarcely needed for undertaking a translation of Sankara
+Acharya's celebrated Synopsis of Vedantism entitled "Atmanatma Vivekah."
+This little treatise, within a small compass, fully sets forth the scope
+and purpose of the Vedanta philosophy.  It has been a matter of no
+little wonder, considering the authorship of this pamphlet and its own
+intrinsic merits, that a translation of it has not already been executed
+by some competent scholar.  The present translation, though pretending
+to no scholarship, is dutifully literal, excepting, however, the
+omission of a few lines relating to the etymology of the words Sarira
+and Deha, and one or two other things which, though interesting in
+themselves, have no direct bearing on the main subject of treatment.
+--T.R.]
+
+Nothing is Spirit which can be the object of consciousness.  To one
+possessed of right discrimination, the Spirit is the subject of
+knowledge.  This right discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is set
+forth in millions of treatises.
+
+This discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is given below:
+
+Q.  Whence comes pain to the Spirit?
+
+A.  By reason of its taking a body. It is said in the Sruti: * "Not in
+this (state of existence) is there cessation of pleasure and pain of a
+living thing possessed of a body."
+
+Q.  By what is produced this taking of a body?
+
+A.  By Karma.**
+
+Q.  Why does it become so by Karma?
+
+A.  By desire and the rest (i.e., the passions).
+
+Q.  By what are desire and the rest produced?
+
+A.  By egotism.
+
+Q.  By what again is egotism produced?
+
+A.  By want of right discrimination.
+
+Q.  By what is this want of right discrimination produced?
+
+A.  By ignorance.
+
+Q.  Is ignorance produced by anything?
+
+A.  No, by nothing.  Ignorance is without beginning and ineffable by
+reason of its being the intermingling of the real (sat) and the unreal
+(asat.)***  It is a something embodying the three qualities**** and is
+said to be opposed to Wisdom, inasmuch as it produces the concept "I am
+ignorant."  The Sruti says, "(Ignorance) is the power of the Deity and
+is enshrouded by its own qualities." *****
+
+----------
+* Chandogya Upanishad.
+
+** This word it is impossible to translate.  It means the doing of a
+thing for the attainment of an object of worldly desire.
+
+*** This word, as used in Vedantic works, is generally misunderstood. It
+does not mean the negation of everything;  it means "that which does not
+exhibit the truth," the "illusory."
+
+**** Satva (goodness), Rajas (foulness), and Tamas (darkness) are the
+three qualities;  pleasure, pain and indifference considered as
+objective principles.
+
+***** Chandogya Upanishad.
+--------
+
+The origin of pain can thus be traced to ignorance and it will not cease
+until ignorance is entirely dispelled, which will be only when the
+identity of the Self with Brahma (the Universal Spirit) is fully
+realized.*  Anticipating the contention that the eternal acts (i.e.,
+those enjoined by the Vedas) are proper, and would therefore lead to the
+destruction of ignorance, it is said that ignorance cannot be dispelled
+by Karma (religious exercises).
+
+--------
+* This portion has been condensed from the original.
+--------
+
+Q.  Why is it so?
+
+A.  By reason of the absence of logical opposition between ignorance and
+act.  Therefore it is clear that Ignorance can only be removed by
+Wisdom.
+
+Q.  How can this Wisdom be acquired?
+
+A.  By discussion--by discussing the nature of Spirit and Non-Spirit.
+
+Q.  Who are worthy of engaging in such discussion?
+
+A.  Those who have acquired the four qualifications.
+
+Q.  What are the four qualifications?
+
+A.  (1) True discrimination of permanent and impermanent things. (2)
+Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions both here
+and hereafter.  (3) Possession of Sama and the other five qualities.
+(4) An intense desire of becoming liberated (from conditional
+existence).
+
+(1.)  Q.  What is the right discrimination of permanent and impermanent
+things?
+
+A.  Certainty as to the Material Universe being false and illusive, and
+Brahman being the only reality.
+
+(2.)  Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions in
+this world is to have the same amount of disinclination for the
+enjoyment of worldly objects of desire (such as garland of flowers,
+sandal-wood paste, women and the like) beyond those absolutely necessary
+for the preservation of life, as one has for vomited food, &c.  The same
+amount of disinclination to enjoyment in the society of  Rambha, Urvasi,
+and other celestial nymphs in the higher spheres of life beginning with
+Svarga loka and ending with Brahma loka.*
+
+--------
+* These include the whole range of Rupa loka (the world of forms)
+in Buddhistic esoteric philosophy.
+--------
+
+(3)  Q.  What are the six qualities beginning with Sama?
+
+A.  Sama, dama, uparati, titiksha, samadhana and sraddha.
+
+Sama is the repression of the inward sense called Manas--i.e., not
+allowing it to engage in any other thing but Sravana (listening to what
+the sages say about the Spirit), Manana (reflecting on it), Nididhyasana
+(meditating on the same).  Dama is the repression of the external
+senses.
+
+Q.  What are the external senses?
+
+A.  The five organs of perception and the five bodily organs for the
+performance of external acts.  Restraining these from all other things
+but sravana and the rest, is dama.
+
+Uparati is the abstaining on principle from engaging in any of the acts
+and ceremonies enjoined by the shastras.  Otherwise, it is the state of
+the mind which is always engaged in Sravana and the rest, without ever
+diverging from them.
+
+Titiksha (literally the desire to leave) is the bearing with
+indifference all opposites (such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold,
+&c.)  Otherwise, it is the showing of forbearance to a person one is
+capable of punishing.
+
+Whenever a mind, engaged in Sravana and the rest, wanders to any worldly
+object of desire, and, finding it worthless, returns to the performance
+of the three exercises--such returning is called samadhana.
+
+Sraddha is an intensely strong faith in the utterances of one's guru and
+of the Vedanta philosophy.
+
+(4.)  An intense desire for liberation is called mumukshatva.
+
+Those who possess these four qualifications, are worthy of engaging in
+discussions as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit, and, like
+Brahmacharins, they have no other duty (but such discussion).  It is
+not, however, at all improper for householders to engage in such
+discussions;  but, on the contrary, such a course is highly meritorious.
+For it is said--Whoever, with due reverence, engages in the discussion
+of subjects treated of in Vedanta philosophy and does proper service to
+his guru, reaps happy fruits.  Discussion as to the nature of Spirit and
+Not-Spirit is therefore a duty.
+
+Q.  What is Spirit?
+
+A.  It is that principle which enters into the composition of man and is
+not included in the three bodies, and which is distinct from the five
+sheaths (Koshas), being sat (existence),* chit (consciousness),** and
+ananda (bliss),*** and witness of the three states.
+
+--------
+* This stands for Purusha.
+
+** This stands for Prakriti, cosmic matter, irrespective of the state we
+perceive it to be in.
+
+*** Bliss is Maya or Sakti, it is the creative energy producing changes
+of state in Prakriti. Says the Sruti (Taittiriya Upanishad):  "Verily
+from Bliss are all these bhutas (elements) born, and being born by it
+they live, and they return and enter into Bliss."
+--------
+
+Q.  What are the three bodies?
+
+A.  The gross (sthula), the subtile (sukshma), and the causal (karana).
+
+Q.  What is the gross body?
+
+A.  That which is the effect of the Mahabhutas (primordial subtile
+elements) differentiated into the five gross ones (Panchikrita),* is
+born of Karma and subject to the six changes beginning with birth.**  It
+is said:--
+
+What is produced by the (subtile) elements differentiated into the five
+gross ones, is acquired by Karma, and is the measure of pleasure and
+pain, is called the body (sarira) par excellence.
+
+Q.  What is the subtile body?
+
+A.  It is the effect of the elements not differentiated into five and
+having seventeen characteristic marks (lingas).
+
+Q.  What are the seventeen?
+
+A.  The five channels of knowledge (Jnanendriyas), the five organs of
+action, the five vital airs, beginning with prana, and manas and buddhi.
+
+-------
+* The five subtile elements thus produce the gross ones--each of
+the five is divided into eight parts, four of those parts and one
+part of each of the others enter into combination, and the result
+is the gross element corresponding with the subtile element,
+whose parts predominate in the composition.
+
+** These six changes are--birth, death, existence in time, growth,
+decay, and undergoing change of substance (parinam) as milk is changed
+into whey.
+--------
+
+Q.  What are the Jnandendriyas?
+
+A.  [Spiritual] Ear, skin, eye, tongue and nose.
+
+Q.  What is the ear?
+
+A.  That channel of knowledge which transcends the [physical] ear, is
+limited by the auricular orifice, on which the akas depends, and which
+is capable of taking cognisance of sound.
+
+Q.  The skin?
+
+A.  That which transcends the skin, on which the skin depends, and which
+extends from head to foot, and has the power of perceiving heat and
+cold.
+
+Q.  The eye?
+
+A.  That which transcends the ocular orb, on which the orb depends,
+which is situated to the front of the black iris and has the power of
+cognising forms.
+
+Q.  The tongue?
+
+A.  That which transcends the tongue, and can perceive taste.
+
+Q.  The nose?
+
+A.  That which transcends the nose, and has the power of smelling.
+
+Q.  What are the organs of action?
+
+A.  The organ of speech (vach), hands, feet, &c.
+
+Q.  What is vach?
+
+A.  That which transcends speech, in which speech resides, and which is
+located in eight different centres* and has the power of speech.
+
+--------
+* The secret commentaries say seven;  for it does not separate the lips
+into the "upper" and "nether" lips.  And, it adds to the seven centres
+the seven passages in the head connected with, and affected by, vach--
+namely, the mouth, the two eyes, the two nostrils and the two ears.
+"The left ear, eye and nostril being the messengers of the right side of
+the head;  the right ear, eye and nostril, those of the left side."  Now
+this is purely scientific.  The latest discoveries and conclusions of
+modern physiology have shown that the power or the faculty of human
+speech is located in the third frontal cavity of the left hemisphere of
+the brain.  On the other hand, it is a well known fact that the nerve
+tissues inter-cross each other (decussate) in the brain in such a way
+that the motions of our left extremities are governed by the right
+hemisphere, while the motions of our right limbs are subject to the left
+hemisphere of the brain.
+---------
+
+Q.  What are the eight centres?
+
+A.  Breast, throat, head, upper and nether lips, palate ligature
+(fraenum), binding the tongue to the lower jaw and tongue.
+
+Q.  What is the organ of the hands?
+
+A.  That which transcends the hands, on which the palms depend, and
+which has the power of giving and taking.... (The other organs are
+similarly described.)
+
+Q.  What is the antahkarana? *
+
+A.  Manas, buddhi, chitta and ahankara form it.  The seat of the manas
+is the root of the throat, of buddhi the face, of chitta the umbilicus,
+and of ahankara the breast.  The functions of these four components of
+antahkarana are respectively doubt, certainty, retention and egotism.
+
+Q.  How are the five vital airs,** beginning with prana, named?
+
+--------
+* A flood of light will be thrown on the text by the note of a learned
+occultist, who says:--"Antahkarana is the path of communication between
+soul and body, entirely disconnected with the former, existing with,
+belonging to, and dying with the body." This path is well traced in the
+text.
+
+** These vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the
+interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the
+body to external objects.  They are the five allotropic modifications of
+life.
+-------
+
+A.  Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. Their locations are said to
+be:--of prana the breast, of apana the fundamentum, of samana the
+umbilicus, of udana the throat, and vyana is spread all over the body.
+Functions of these are:--prana goes out, apana descends, udana ascends,
+samana reduces the food eaten into an undistinguishable state, and vyana
+circulates all over the body.  Of these five vital airs there are five
+sub-airs--namely, naga, kurma, krikara, devadatta and dhananjaya.
+Functions of these are:--eructations produced by naga, kurma opens the
+eye, dhananjaya assimilates food, devadatta causes yawning, and krikara
+produces appetite--this is said by those versed in Yoga.
+
+The presiding powers (or macrocosmic analogues) of the five channels of
+knowledge and the others are dik (akas) and the rest. Dik, vata (air),
+arka (sun), pracheta (water), Aswini, bahni (fire), Indra, Upendra,
+Mrityu (death), Chandra (moon), Brahma, Rudra, and Kshetrajnesvara,*
+which is the great Creator and cause of everything.  These are the
+presiding powers of ear, and the others in the order in which they
+occur.
+
+All these taken together form the linga sarira.**  It is also said in
+the Shastras:--
+
+The five vital airs, manas, buddhi, and the ten organs form the subtile
+body, which arises from the subtile elements, undifferentiated into the
+five gross ones, and which is the means of the perception of pleasure
+and pain.
+
+Q.  What is the Karana sarira?
+
+---------
+* The principle of intellect (Buddhi) in the macrocosm.  For further
+explanation of this term, see Sankara's commentaries on the Brahma
+Sutras.
+
+** Linga means that which conveys meaning, characteristic mark.
+--------
+
+A.  It is ignorance [of different monads] (avidya), which is the cause
+of the other two bodies, and which is without beginning [in the present
+manvantara],* ineffable, reflection [of Brahma] and productive of the
+concept of non-identity between self and Brahma.  It is also said:--
+
+"Without a beginning, ineffable avidya is called the upadhi (vehicle)--
+karana (cause).  Know the Spirit to be truly different from the three
+upadhis--i.e., bodies."
+
+Q.  What is Not-Spirit?
+
+A.  It is the three bodies [described above], which are impermanent,
+inanimate (jada), essentially painful and subject to congregation and
+segregation.
+
+--------
+* It must not be supposed that avidya is here confounded with prakriti.
+What is meant by avidya being without beginning, is that it forms no
+link in the Karmic chain leading to succession of births and deaths, it
+is evolved by a law embodied in prakriti itself.  Avidya is ignorance or
+matter as related to distinct monads, whereas the ignorance mentioned
+before is cosmic ignorance, or maya-Avidya begins and ends with this
+manvantara. Maya is eternal.  The Vedanta philosophy of the school of
+Sankara regards the universe as consisting of one substance, Brahman
+(the one ego, the highest abstraction of subjectivity from our
+standpoint), having an infinity of attributes, or modes of manifestation
+from which it is only logically separable.  These attributes or modes in
+their collectivity form Prakriti (the abstract objectivity).  It is
+evident that Brahman per se does not admit of any description other than
+"I am that I am."  Whereas Prakriti is composed of an infinite number of
+differentiations of itself.  In the universe, therefore, the only
+principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the
+manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it.  The
+eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one
+substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of
+designating the All.  Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood
+of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense
+binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite
+moods, and so is space.  The only progress in Nature is the realization
+of moods unrealized before.
+--------
+
+Q.  What is impermanent?
+
+A.  That which does not exist in one and the same state in the three
+divisions of time [namely, present, past and future.]
+
+Q.  What is inanimate (jada)?
+
+A.  That which cannot distinguish between the objects of its own
+cognition and the objects of the cognition of others....
+
+Q.  What are the three states (mentioned above as those of which the
+Spirit is witness)?
+
+A.  Wakefulness (jagrata), dreaming (svapna), and the state of dreamless
+slumber (sushupti).
+
+Q.  What is the state of wakefulness?
+
+A.  That in which objects are known through the avenue of [physical]
+senses.
+
+Q.  Of  dreaming?
+
+A.  That in which objects are perceived by reason of desires resulting
+from impressions produced during wakefulness.
+
+Q.  What is the state of dreamless slumber?
+
+A.  That in which there is an utter absence of the perception of
+objects.
+
+The indwelling of the notion of "I" in the gross body during wakefulness
+is visva (world of objects),* in subtile body during dreaming is taijas
+(magnetic fire), and in the causal body during dreamless slumber is
+prajna (One Life).
+
+Q.  What are the five sheaths?
+
+A.  Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vjjnanamaya, and Anandamaya.
+
+Annamaya is related to anna** (food), Pranamaya of prana (life),
+Manomaya of manas, Vijnanamaya of vijnana (finite perception),
+Anandamaya of ananda (illusive bliss).
+
+-------
+* That is to say, by mistaking the gross body for self, the
+consciousness of external objects is produced.
+
+** This word also means the earth in Sanskrit.
+-------
+
+Q.  What is the Annamaya sheath?
+
+A.  The gross body.
+
+Q.  Why?
+
+A.  The food eaten by father and mother is transformed into semen and
+blood, the combination of which is transformed into the shape of a body.
+It wraps up like a sheath and hence so called.  It is the transformation
+of food and wraps up the spirit like a sheath--it shows the spirit
+which is infinite as finite, which is without the six changes, beginning
+with birth as subject to those changes, which is without the three kinds
+of pain* as liable to them.  It conceals the spirit as the sheath
+conceals the sword, the husk the grain, or the womb the fetus.
+
+Q.  What is the next sheath?
+
+A.  The combination of the five organs of action, and the five vital
+airs form the Pranamaya sheath.
+
+By the manifestation of prana, the spirit which is speechless appears as
+the speaker, which is never the giver as the giver, which never moves as
+in motion, which is devoid of hunger and thirst as hungry and thirsty.
+
+Q.  What is the third sheath?
+
+A.  It is the five (subtile) organs of sense (jnanendriya) and manas.
+
+--------
+* The three kinds of pain are:--
+
+Adhibhautika, i.e., from external objects, e.g., from thieves,
+wild animals, &c.
+
+Adhidaivika, i.e., from elements, e.g., thunder, &c.
+
+Adhyatmika, i.e., from within one's self, e.g., head-ache, &c.
+See Sankhya Karika, Gaudapada's commentary on the opening Sloka.
+-------
+
+By the manifestation of this sheath (vikara) the spirit which is devoid
+of doubt appears as doubting, devoid of grief and delusion as grieved
+and deluded, devoid of sight as seeing.
+
+Q.  What is the Vijnanamaya sheath?
+
+A.  [The essence of] the five organs of sense form this sheath in
+combination with buddhi.
+
+Q.  Why is this sheath called the jiva (personal ego), which by reason
+of its thinking itself the actor, enjoyer, &c., goes to the other loka
+and comes back to this?*
+
+A.  It wraps up and shows the spirit which never acts as the actor,
+which never cognises as conscious, which has no concept of certainty as
+being certain, which is never evil or inanimate as being both.
+
+Q.  What is the Anandamaya sheath?
+
+A.  It is the antahkarana, wherein ignorance predominates, and which
+produces gratification, enjoyment, &c.  It wraps up and shows the
+spirit, which is void of desire, enjoyment and fruition, as having them,
+which has no conditioned happiness as being possessed thereof.
+
+Q.  Why is the spirit said to be different from the three bodies?
+
+A.  That which is truth cannot be untruth, knowledge ignorance, bliss
+misery, or vice versa.
+
+Q.  Why is it called the witness of the three states?
+
+A.  Being the master of the three states, it is the knowledge of the
+three states, as existing in the present, past and future.**
+
+-------
+* That is to say, flits from birth to birth.
+
+** It is the stable basis upon which the three states arise and
+disappear.
+-------
+
+
+Q.  How is the spirit different from the five sheaths?
+
+A.  This is being illustrated by an example:--"This is my cow," "this is
+my calf," "this is my son or daughter," "this is my wife," "this is my
+anandamaya sheath," and so on*--the spirit can never be connected with
+these concepts;  it is different from and witness of them all.  For it
+is said in the Upanishad--[The spirit is] "naught of sound, of touch, of
+form, or colour, of taste, or of smell;  it is everlasting, having no
+beginning or end, superior [in order of subjectivity] to Prakriti
+(differentiated matter);  whoever correctly understands it as such
+attains mukti (liberation)."  The spirit has also been called (above)
+sat, chit, and ananda.
+
+Q.  What is meant by its being sat (presence)?
+
+A.  Existing unchanged in the three divisions of time and uninfluenced
+by anything else.
+
+Q.  What by being chit (consciousness)?
+
+A.  Manifesting itself without depending upon anything else, and
+containing the germ of everything in itself.
+
+Q.  What by being ananda (bliss)?
+
+A.  The ne plus ultra of bliss.
+
+Whoever knows without doubt and apprehension of its being otherwise, the
+self as being one with Brahma or spirit, which is eternal, non-dual and
+unconditioned, attains moksha (liberation from conditioned existence.)
+
+--------
+* The "heresy of individuality," or attavada of the Buddhists.
+--------
+
+
+
+
+Was Writing Known Before Panini?
+
+
+I am entrusted with the task of putting together some facts which would
+support the view that the art of writing was known in India before the
+time of our grammarian--the Siva-taught Panini. Professor Max Muller has
+maintained the contrary opinion ever since 1856, and has the approbation
+of other illustrious Western scholars.  Stated briefly, their position
+is that the entire absence of any mention of "writing, reading, paper,
+or pen" in the Vedas, or during the whole of the Brahmana period, and
+the almost, if not quite, as complete silence as to them throughout the
+Sutra period, "lead us to suppose that even then [the Sutra period],
+though the art of writing began to be known, the whole literature of
+India was preserved by oral tradition only." ("Hist. Sans. Lit.," p.
+501.)  To support this theory, he expands the mnemonic faculty of our
+respected ancestors to such a phenomenal degree that, like the bull's
+hide of Queen Dido, it is made to embrace the whole ground needed for
+the proposed city of refuge, to which discomfited savants may flee when
+hard pressed. Considering that Professor Weber--a gentleman who, we
+observe, likes to distil the essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar
+of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period--admits
+that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering
+that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the
+parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries
+of Europe, what a memory must have been theirs!
+
+Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among
+the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there
+is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern;  further, that
+contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of
+languages.  Therefore, when Prof. Muller affirms that "there is not a
+single word in Panini's terminology which presupposes the existence of
+writing" (op. cit. 507), we become a little shaken in our loyal
+deference to Western opinion.  For it is very hard to conceive how one
+so pre-eminently great as Panini should have been incapable of inventing
+characters to preserve his grammatical system--supposing that none had
+previously existed--if his genius was equal to the invention of
+classical Sanskrit.  The mention of the word Grantha, the equivalent for
+a written or bound book in the later literature of India--though applied
+by Panini (in B. I. 3, 75) to the Veda;  (in B. iv. 3, 87) to any work;
+(in B. iv. 3, 116) to the work of any individual author;  and (in B. iv.
+3, 79) to any work that is studied, do not stagger Prof. Muller at all.
+Grantha he takes to mean simply a composition, and this may be handed
+down to posterity by oral communication.  Hence, we must believe that
+Panini was illiterate;  but yet composed the most elaborate and
+scientific system of grammar ever known;  recorded its 3,996 rules only
+upon the molecular quicksands of his "cerebral cineritious matter," and
+handed them over to his disciples by atmospheric vibration, i.e., oral
+teaching!  Of course, nothing could be clearer;  it commends itself to
+the simplest intellect as a thing most probable!  And in the presence of
+such a perfect hypothesis, it seems a pity that its author should (op.
+cit. 523) confess that "it is possible" that he "may have overlooked
+some words in the Brahmanas and Sutras, which would prove the existence
+of written books previous to Panini." That looks like the military
+strategy of our old warriors, who delivered their attack boldly, but
+nevertheless tried to keep their rear open for retreat if compelled.
+The precaution was necessary:  written books did exist many centuries
+before the age in which this radiant sun of Aryan thought rose to shine
+upon his age.  They existed, but the Orientalist may search in vain for
+the proof amid the exoteric words in our earlier literature.  As the
+Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and
+even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose
+mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had
+from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind
+ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual
+relations, which none but the initiate would observe.  That few living
+Brahmans possess this key but proves that, as in other archaic religious
+and philosophical systems, the soul of Hinduism has fled (to its primal
+imparters--the initiates), and only the decrepit body remains with a
+spiritually degenerate posterity.*
+
+-------
+* Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other
+works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly
+expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be
+imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman.
+--------
+
+I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a
+fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying.  We
+know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans.  But I hope
+to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will
+aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a
+base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing.
+Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim--though they
+will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.
+
+I.--It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of
+the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements;  and
+this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of
+the Tyrian settlement.
+
+II.--Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the
+Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.
+
+III.--It can be proved that before the final division and classification
+of languages, there existed two languages in every nation:  (a) the
+profane or popular language of the masses;  (b) the sacerdotal or secret
+language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries--the latter being
+one and universal.  Or, in other, words, every great people had, like
+the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which
+had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and
+later on in a phonetic alphabet.  Now it requires a stretch of
+prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman
+Aryans--mystics and metaphysicians above everything--were the only ones
+who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the
+characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous
+assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs.  It can be
+demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the
+Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the
+influence of the former for all their arts and sciences.  (Even if we
+accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from
+250-57 B.C., as he states it.)  The direct progenitor of the Vedic
+Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among
+the initiates).  The Vach--its alter ego or the "mystic self," the
+sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman--became in time the mystery
+language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and
+Chaldea;  of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans;  of the Pelasgi and
+Palanquans;  in short, of the whole globe.  The appellation DEVANAGARI
+is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic
+NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.
+
+As the discussion divides naturally into two parts as to treatment--
+though a general synthesis must be the final result--we will proceed to
+examine the first part--namely, the charge that the Sanskrit alphabet is
+derived from the Phoenicians.  When a Western philologer asserts that
+writing did not exist before a certain period, we assume that he has
+some approximate certitude as to its real invention.  But so far is this
+from the truth, that admittedly no one knows whence the Phoenicians
+learned the characters, now alleged (by Gesenius first) to be the source
+from which modern alphabets were directly derived.  De Rouge's
+investigations make it extremely probable that "they were borrowed, or
+rather adapted from certain archaic hieroglyphics of Egypt:"  a theory
+which the Prisse Papyrus, "the oldest in existence," strongly supports
+by its "striking similarities with the Phoenician characters."  But the
+same authority traces it back one step farther.  He says that the
+ascription (by the myth-makers) of the art of writing to Thoth, or to
+Kadmos, "only denotes their belief in its being brought from the East
+(Kedem), or being perhaps primeval."  There is not even a certainty
+whether, primevally or archaically, "there were several original
+alphabetical systems, or whether one is to be assumed as having given
+rise to the various modes of writing in use."  So, if conjecture has the
+field, it is no great disloyalty to declare one's rebellion against the
+eminent Western gentlemen who are learnedly guessing at the origin of
+things.  Some affirm that the Phoenicians derived their so-called
+Kadmean or Phoenician writing-characters from the Pelasgians, held also
+to have been the inventors, or at least the improvers, of the so-called
+Kadmean characters.  But, at the same time, this is not proven, they
+confess, and they only know that the latter were in possession of the
+art of writing "before the dawn of history." Let us see what is known of
+both Phoenicians and Pelasgians.
+
+If we inquire who were the Phoenicians, we learn as follows:--From
+having been regarded as Hamites on Bible testimony, they suddenly became
+Semites--on geographical and philological evidence(?).  Their origin
+begins, it is said, on the shores of the Erythrian Sea;  and that sea
+extended from the eastern shores of Egypt to the western shores of
+India.  The Phoenicians were the most maritime nation in the world.
+That they knew perfectly the art of writing no one would deny.  The
+historical period of Sidon begins 1500 B.C.  And it is well ascertained
+that in 1250 Sanchoniathon had already compiled from annals and State
+documents, which filled the archives of every Phoenician city, the full
+records of their religion.  Sanchoniathon wrote in the Phoenician
+language, and was mis-translated later on into Greek by Philo of Byblus,
+and annihilated bodily--as to his works--except one small fragment
+preserved by Eusebius, the literary Siva, the Destroyer of nearly all
+heathen documents that fell in his way.  To see the direct bearing of
+the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged
+ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to "European
+Universal History," meagre though its details and possible knowledge,
+yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given.  Some
+fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are
+preserved in Josephus;  and Tyre's activity begins 1100 B.C., in the
+earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called.  And
+in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of
+their power;  their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the
+whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near.  Even on
+Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red
+Sea, while trading on Solomon's account about a millennium before the
+Western era. These data no man of science can deny.  Leaving entirely
+aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the
+evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed
+tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western
+world are alone here given.  Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of
+which--on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner
+consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem
+proofs of its modern fabrication in the words "Yavana" and others--has
+been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!),
+we find:  (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated
+(before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the
+regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe;  and (2)
+that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the
+sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,).  With
+such proofs of international communication, and more than proved
+relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and
+other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our
+forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing.
+
+Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole
+custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they
+traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a
+people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of
+arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved
+against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission?  And even if the
+Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write--to every educated Hindu an
+absurdity--they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000
+years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics.  Negative
+proof, perhaps?  Granted:  yet no more so than their own, and most
+suggestive.
+
+And now we may turn to the Pelasgians.  Notwithstanding the rebuke of
+Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating
+"the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the
+subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is
+conjectured to have been from--(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from
+some (b) mariners--from the Greek Pelagos, the sea;  or again to be
+sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg!  The only divinity of their
+Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy,"
+the "dark-skinned;"  represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their
+"Divine Image."  Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have
+been Turanians, Semites or Aryans.  That they could not have been either
+of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on
+Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks--
+though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language."  Further,
+unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to
+Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common
+Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities.  But then
+how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages?
+The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues?  We who
+place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of
+historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous
+language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now
+extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit.  Who could they
+be, these Pelasgians?  They are described generally on the meagre data
+in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people,
+chiefly occupied with agriculture;  warlike when necessary, though
+preferring peace.  We are told that they built canals, subterranean
+water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent
+construction.  And their religion and worship originally consisted in a
+mystic service of those natural powers--the sun, wind, water, and air
+(our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the
+growth of the fruits of the earth;  moreover, some of their tribes were
+ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the
+head of the clan or family.  All this reminds one of the nomads, the
+Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were
+subject every distinct family or clan.  While the Pelasgians were
+acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus "a vast element of
+culture in their possession before the dawn of history," we are told (by
+the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the
+dawn of Christianity!
+
+Thus the Pelasgianic language, that "most barbarous language" spoken by
+this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan;  or rather, which of the
+Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a
+language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the
+Greek.  Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of
+Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer.  As the
+Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor
+even the Latin of Virgil.  Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad
+conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the
+blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic
+Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough
+and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the
+palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?"  The Latium Antiquum of Pliny
+and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest
+kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor--the Pelasgian.  What,
+then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language
+"spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe--before their
+separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the
+Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as
+flippantly as they now are.  It is admitted that, however inferior to
+the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of
+Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the
+same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees--cannot fail to see and
+to know--that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to
+have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of
+perfection and its cycles of degeneration.  And, if one had any
+intuition, he might have seen that what they call a "dead language"
+being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived,
+even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of
+immutable cyclic laws;  and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost
+to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have
+the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back--that of a
+universal language.  The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will
+be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its
+future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit
+will be resting in its periodical pralaya;  and the Attic will be
+followed later by the Latin of Virgil.  Something ought to have
+whispered to us that there was also a time--before the original Aryan
+settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the
+fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred
+Sanskrita Bhasha--when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed
+subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise
+and fall.  The reason for it is simply this:  classical Sanskrit was
+only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini.  Panini,
+Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it;  it has existed throughout
+cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.
+
+Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic
+nomads--fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns--knew well
+the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven
+"book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon
+them.'"  Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither
+read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period.  "No trace
+of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical
+literature before the days of Panini."  Very well, and now what was the
+period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished?
+One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient
+ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of
+the second century of the Christian era!  Only, after fixing Panini's
+period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other
+calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the
+Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a
+dilemma.  For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could
+not have been illiterate;  for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a
+canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller
+to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord
+Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other
+alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India;  and
+secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the
+laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and
+73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton.
+He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together
+(Strabo, xv. 53 and 67).  This would be late in the Sutra period, no
+doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning.  Can the learned
+gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period
+showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of
+his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so
+transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark.  One
+would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept
+the alternative theory--known to us Aryan students as a fact--that
+writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the
+Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote--many centuries before the
+epoch made illustrious by Panini.
+
+Attention has been asked above to the interesting fact that the god
+Orpheus, of "Thracia" (?) is called the "dark-skinned."  Has it escaped
+notice that he is "supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Abrhu, an epithet
+both of Indra and the Sun."*  And if he was "the inventor of letters,"
+and is "placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod," then what follows?
+That Indra taught writing to the Thracian Pelasgians under the guise of
+Orpheus,** but left his own spokesmen and vehicles, the Brahmans,
+illiterate until "the dawn of Christianity?"  Or, that the gentlemen of
+the West are better at intuitional chronology than conspicuous for
+impartial research?
+
+-------
+* "Chamber's Encyclopedia," vii. 127.
+
+** According to Herodotus the Mysteries were actually brought from India
+by Orpheus.
+-------
+
+Orpheus was--in Greece--the son of Apollo or Helios, the sun-god,
+according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or
+lyre of seven strings, i.e.--according to occult phraseology--the
+sevenfold mystery of the Initiation.  Now Indra is the ruler of the
+bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to
+the sky."  He is identified with Arjuna in the Samhita Satapatha
+Brahmana (although Prof. Weber denies the existence of any such person
+as Arjuna, yet there was indeed one), and Arjuna was the Chief of the
+Pandavas;*  and though Pandu the white passes for his father, he is yet
+considered the son of Indra.  As throughout India all ancient cyclopean
+structures are even now attributed to the Pandavas, so all similar
+structures in the West were anciently ascribed to the Pelasgians.
+Moreover, as shown well by Pococke--laughed at because too intuitional
+and too fair though, perchance less, philologically learned--the
+Pandavas were in Greece, where many traces of them can be shown.
+
+-------
+* Another proof of the fact that the Pandavas were, though Aryans, not
+Brahmans, and belonged to an Indian tribe that preceded the Brahmans,
+and were later on Brahmanized, and then out-casted and called Mlechhas,
+Yavanas (i.e., foreign to the Brahmans), is afforded in the following:
+Pandu has two wives; and "it is not Kunti, his lawful wife, but Madri,
+his most beloved wife," who is burnt with the old King when dead, as
+well remarked by Prof Max Muller, who seems astonished at it without
+comprehending the true reason.  As stated by Herodotus (v. 5), it was a
+custom amongst the Thracians to allow the most beloved of a man's wives
+to be sacrificed upon his tomb;  and Herodotus (iv. 17) asserts a
+similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the Greeks.
+("Hist. Sans. Lit." p. 48).  The Pandavas and the Kauravas are called
+esoterically cousins in the Epic poem because they were two distinct yet
+Aryan tribes, and represent two peoples, not simply two families.
+--------
+
+In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is taught the occult philosophy by Krishna
+(personification of the universal Divine Principle);  and the less
+mythological view of Orpheus presents him to us as "a divine bard or
+priest in the service of Zagreus .... founder of the Mysteries .... the
+inventor of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed
+to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the
+deity."  Are not these striking parallels;  and is it not significant
+that, in the cases of both Arjuna and Orpheus, the sublimer aspects of
+religion should have been imparted along with the occult methods of
+attaining it by masters of the mysteries?  Real Devanagari--non-phonetic
+characters--meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs
+used in the intercommunication between gods and initiated mortals.
+Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the
+Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or
+referring to, reading and writing.  It was the language of the gods.  If
+our Western critics can only understand what the Ancient Hindu writers
+meant by Rhutaliai, so often mentioned in their mystical writings, they
+will be in a position to ascertain the source from which the Hindus
+first derived their knowledge of writing.
+
+A secret language, common to all schools of occult science once
+prevailed throughout the world.  Hence Orpheus learnt "letters" in the
+course of his initiation.  He is identified with Indra; according to
+Herodotus he brought the art of writing from India; his complexion
+swarthier than that of the Thracians points to his Indo-Aryan
+nationality--supposing him to have been "a bard and priest," and not a
+god;  the Pelasgians are said to have been born in Thracia;  they are
+believed (in the West) to have first possessed the art of writing, and
+taught the Phoenicians;  from the latter all modern alphabets proceed.
+I submit, then, with all these coincidences and sequences, whether the
+balance of proof is on the side of the theory that the Aryans
+transmitted the art of writing to the people of the West;  or on the
+side which maintains that they, with their caste of scholarly Brahmans,
+their noble sacerdotal tongue, dating from high antiquity, their
+redundant and splendid literature, their acquaintance with the most
+wonderful and recondite potentialities of the human spirit, were
+illiterate until the era of Panini, the grammarian and last of the
+Rishis.  When the famous theorists of the Western colleges can show us a
+river running from its mouth back to its source in the feeble mountain
+spring, then may we be asked to believe in their theory of Aryan
+illiteracy.  The history of human intellectual development shows that
+humanity always passes through the stage of ideography or pictography
+before attaining that of cursive writing.  It therefore remains with the
+Western critics who oppose the antiquity of Aryan Scriptures to show us
+the pictographic proofs which support their position.  As these are
+notoriously absent, it appears they would have us believe that our
+ancestors passed immediately from illiteracy to the Devanagari
+characters of Panini's time.
+
+Let the Orientalists bear in mind the conclusions drawn from a careful
+study of the Mahabharata by Muir in his "Sanskrit Texts" (vol. I. pp.
+390,480 and 482).  It may be conclusively proven on the authority of the
+Mahabharata that the Yavanas (of whom India, as alleged, knew nothing
+before the days of Alexander!) belong to those tribes of Kshatriyas who,
+in consequence of their non-communication with, and in some cases
+rejection by, the Brahmins, had become from twice-born, "Vrishalas,"--
+i.e., outcasts (Mahabharata Anusasanaparvam, vv. 2103 F.):  "Sakah
+Yavana-Kambojas tastah kshattriya jatayah Vrishalatvam parigatah
+Brahmananam adarsana.  Dravidas cha Kalindas cha Pulindas chapy Usinarah
+Kalisarpa Mahishakas tastah kshattriya jatayah," &c. &c. The same
+reference may be found in verses 2158-9.  The Mahabharata shows the
+Yavanas descended from Turvasu--once upon a time Kshatriya, subsequently
+degraded into Vrishala.  Harivamsa shows when and how the Yavanas were
+excommunicated.  It may be inferred from the account therein contained
+of the expedition against Ayodhya by the Yavanas, and the subsequent
+proceedings of Sagara, that the Yavanas were, previous to the date of
+the expedition, Kshatriyas subject to the government of the powerful
+monarchs who reigned at Ayodhya.  But on account of their having
+rebelled against their sovereign, and attacked his capital, they were
+excommunicated by Sagara who successfully drove them out of Ayodhya, at
+the suggestion of Vasishtha who was the chief minister and guru of
+Sagara's father.  The only trouble in connecting the Pelasgians with,
+and tracing their origin to, the Kshatriyas of Rajputana, is created by
+the Orientalist who constructs a fanciful chronology, based on no proof,
+and showing only unfamiliarity with the world's real history, and with
+Indian history even within historical periods.
+
+The value of that chronology--which places virtually the "primitive
+Indo-Germanic-period" before the ancient Vedic period (!)--may, in
+conclusion, be illustrated by an example.  Rough as may be the
+calculations offered, it is impossible to go deeper into any subject of
+this class within the narrow limits prescribed, and without recourse to
+data not generally accessible.  In the words of Prof. Max Muller:--"The
+Code of Manu is almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which, as
+yet, has not been assailed by those who doubt the antiquity of
+everything Indian.  No historian has disputed its claim to that early
+date which had from the first been assigned to it by Sir William Jones"
+("Hist. Sans, Lit." p. 61).  And now, pray, what is this extremely
+"early date?"  "From 880 to 1200 B.C.," we are told. We will then, for
+the present purpose, accept this authoritative conclusion.  Several
+facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:--(1) Manu in
+his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once
+mentions Bengal;  the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days
+when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of
+Bengal.  It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his
+sacrificial horse.  [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika
+Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.]  (2) In the Ayun a list of the
+Hindu kings of Bengal is given.  Though the date of the first king who
+reigned over Banga cannot be ascertained, owing to the great gaps
+between the various dynasties;  it is yet known that Bengal ceased to be
+an independent Hindu kingdom from 1203 after Christ.  Now if,
+disregarding these gaps, which are wide and many, we make up the sum of
+only those chronological periods of the reign of the several dynasties
+that are preserved by history, we find the following:--
+
+24 Kshatriya families of kings reigned for a period of 2,418 years
+9 Kaista kings    "        "       "         "           250   "
+11 Of the Adisur families "        "          "          714   "
+10 Of the Bhopal family   "        "          "          689   "
+10 Of the Pala dynasty (from 855 to 1040 A.D.) "   "    185    "
+10 The Vaidya Rajahs reigned for a period of   "   "    137    "
+                                                   --------
+                                         Years . . . . 4,393   "
+
+If we deduct from this sum 1,203, we have 3,190 years B.C. of successive
+reigns.  If it can be shown on the unimpeachable evidence of the
+Sanskrit texts that some of the reigns happened simultaneously, and the
+line cannot therefore be shown as successive (as was already tried),
+well and good.  Against an arbitrary chronology set up with a
+predetermined purpose and theory in view, there will remain but little
+to be said.  But if this attempt at reconciliation of figures and the
+surrounding circumstances are maintained simply upon "critical, internal
+evidence," then, in the presence of these 3,190 years of an unbroken
+line of powerful and mighty Hindu kings, the Orientalists will have to
+show a very good reason why the authors of the Code of Manu seem
+entirely ignorant even of the existence of Bengal--if its date has to be
+accepted as not earlier than 1280 B.C.!  A scientific rule which is good
+enough to apply to the case of Panini ought to be valid in other
+chronological speculations. Or, perhaps, this is one of those poor rules
+which will not "work both ways?"
+
+--A Chela
+
+
+
+
+THEOSOPHICAL
+
+
+What is Theosophy?
+
+
+According to lexicographers, the term theosophia is composed of two
+Greek words--theos "god," and sophas "wise."  So far, correct.  But the
+explanations that follow are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy.
+Webster defines it most originally as "a supposed intercourse with
+God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman
+knowledge by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some
+ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German
+fire-philosophers."
+
+This, to say the least, is a poor and flippant explanation.  To
+attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus,
+Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional misrepresentation, or
+ignorance of the philosophy and motives of the greatest geniuses of the
+later Alexandrian School.  To impute to those, whom their contemporaries
+as well as posterity styled "theodidaktoi," god-taught, a purpose to
+develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by "physical
+processes," is to describe them as materialists.  As to the concluding
+fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them upon some of the
+most eminent leaders of modern science;  those in whose mouths the Rev.
+James Martineau places the following boast:  "Matter is all we want;
+give us atoms alone, and we will explain the universe."
+
+Vaughan offers a far better, more philosophical definition.  "A
+Theosophist," he says, "is one who gives you a theory of God or the
+works of God, which has not revelation, but inspiration of his own for
+its basis."  In this view every great thinker and philosopher,
+especially every founder of a new religion, school of philosophy, or
+sect, is necessarily a Theosophist.  Hence, Theosophy and Theosophists
+have existed ever since the first glimmering of nascent thought made man
+seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own independent
+opinions.
+
+There were Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that
+the Christian writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic
+Theosophical system to the early part of the third century of their era.
+Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of
+the Ptolemies;  and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant called
+Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic, and signifying a priest consecrated to
+Amun, the god of Wisdom.  But history shows its revival by Ammonius
+Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School.  He and his disciples
+called themselves "Philaletheians"--lovers of the truth;  while others
+termed them the "Analogists," on account of their method of interpreting
+all sacred legends, symbolical myths, and mysteries, by a rule of
+analogy or correspondence so that events which had occurred in the
+external world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of
+the human soul.  It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all
+sects, peoples, and nations under one common faith--a belief in one
+Supreme, Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power, governing the universe by
+immutable and eternal laws.  His object was to prove a primitive system
+of Theosophy, which, at the beginning, was essentially alike in all
+countries:  to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and quarrels,
+and unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common mother;
+to purify the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured, from
+all dross of human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure
+philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or
+Zoroastrian systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical School
+along with all the philosophies of Greece.  Hence also, that
+pre-eminently Buddhistic and Indian feature among the ancient
+Theosophists of Alexandria, of due reverence for parents and aged
+persons, a fraternal affection for the whole human race, and a
+compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals.  While seeking to
+establish a system of moral discipline which enforced upon people the
+duty to live according to the laws of their respective countries, to
+exalt their minds by the research and contemplation of the one Absolute
+Truth;  his chief object, in order, as he believed, to achieve all
+others, was to extract from the various religious teachings, as from a
+many-chorded instrument, one full and harmonious melody, which would
+find response in every truth-loving heart.
+
+Theosophy is, then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine
+once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization.  This
+"Wisdom" all the old writings show us as an emanation of the Divine
+Principle;  and the clear comprehension of it is typified in such names
+as the Indian Buddh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the
+Hermes of Greece;  in the appellations, also, of some goddesses--Metis,
+Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia;  and, finally, the Vedas, from the
+word "to know."  Under this designation, all the ancient philosophers of
+the East and West, the Hierophants of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryavart,
+the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all knowledge of things occult and
+essentially divine.  The Mercavah of the Hebrew Rabbis, the secular and
+popular series, were thus designated as only the vehicle, the outward
+shell, which contained the higher esoteric knowledges.  The Magi of
+Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and
+secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants had their
+apporiheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mysta became an
+Epopta--a Seer.
+
+The central idea of the Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme
+Essence, Unknown and Unknowable;  for "how could one know the knower?"
+as inquires Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.  Their system was characterized by
+three distinct features, the theory of the above-named Essence:  the
+doctrine of the human soul;  an emanation from the latter, hence of the
+same nature;  and its theurgy.  It is this last science which has led
+the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of materialistic
+science.  Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine
+powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of Nature, its
+votaries were first decisively termed magicians--a corruption of the
+word "Magh," signifying a wise or learned man. Sceptics of a century ago
+would have been as wide of the mark if they had laughed at the idea of a
+phonograph or telegraph.  The ridiculed and the "infidels" of one
+generation generally become the wise men and saints of the next.
+
+As regards the Divine Essence and the nature of the soul and spirit,
+modern Theosophy believes now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Dev
+of the Aryan nations was identical with the Iao of the Chaldeans, and
+even with the Jupiter of the less learned and philosophical among the
+Romans;  and it was just as identical with the Jahve of the Samaritans,
+the Tiu or "Tiusco" of the Northmen, the Duw of the Britons, and the
+Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute Essence, the One and All,
+whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldean Kabalistic, or the
+Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same
+result.  The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires
+into darkness and is itself Darkness (for human intellect), was made the
+basis of all things;  and we can find the idea in all its integrity in
+the philosophical systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza.  Therefore, whether a
+Theosophist agrees with the Kabala which, speaking of En-Soph, propounds
+the query; "Who, then, can comprehend It, since It is formless, and
+non-existent?" or, remembering that magnificent hymn from the Rig Veda
+(Hymn 129, Book x.), inquires:
+
+     "Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? Whether his will
+     created or was mute. He knows it--or perchance even He knows not."
+
+Or, again, he accepts the Vedantic conception of Brahma, who, in the
+Upanishads, is represented as "without life, without mind, pure,"
+unconscious, for Brahma is "Absolute Consciousness."  Or, even finally,
+siding with the Svabhavikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but
+"Svabhavat" (substance or nature) which exists by itself without any
+creator--he is the true follower of pure and absolute Theosophy.  That
+Theosophy which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take
+up the labours of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the
+One Substance--the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine
+Wisdom--incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed by any ancient or modern
+religious philosophy, with the exception of Judaism, including
+Christianity and Mohammedanism.  Every Theosophist, then, holding to a
+theory of the Deity "which has not revelation but an inspiration of his
+own for its basis," may accept any of the above definitions or belong to
+any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within the boundaries of
+Theosophy.  For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source
+of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or
+known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus
+giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy.  True
+Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing
+that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity
+neither wills nor creates;  but from the infinite effulgence everywhere
+going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and
+invisible things is but a ray containing in itself the generative and
+conceptive power, which, in its turn, produces that which the Greeks
+called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon, the archetypal
+man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or the Divine Male.
+Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis, or continued existence, and in
+transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes of the personal ego,
+which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles
+by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental, supreme
+spirit) and Jivatma (individual spirit) of the Vedantins.
+
+To fully define Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects.
+The interior world has not been hidden from all by impenetrable
+darkness.  By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia, or
+God-knowledge, which carries the mind from the world of form into that of
+formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled, in every age and every
+country, to perceive things in the interior or invisible world.  Hence,
+the "Samadhi," or Dhyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu ascetics;  the
+"Daimonlonphoti," or spiritual illumination of the Neo-Platonists;
+the "sidereal confabulation of soul," of the Rosicrucians or
+Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the
+modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though
+various as to manifestation.  The search after man's diviner "self," so
+often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a
+personal God, was the object of every mystic; and belief in its
+possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of humanity, each
+people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call "Noetic
+work" that which the Yogi and the Shrotriya term Vidya.  "By reflection,
+self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to
+the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty--that is, to the
+Vision of God.  This is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To unite one's
+soul to the Universal Soul," says Porphyry, "requires but a perfectly
+pure mind.  Through self contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of
+body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true
+knowledge and wonderful insight."  And Swami Dayanund Saraswati, who has
+read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough
+Vedic scholar, says in his "Veda Bhashya" (opasna prakaru ank. 9)--"To
+obtain Diksha (highest initiation) and Yog, one has to practise
+according to the rules..... The soul in the human body can perform the
+greatest wonders by knowing the Universal Spirit (or God) and
+acquainting itself with the properties and qualities (occult) of all the
+things in the universe.  A human being (a Dikshit or initiate) can thus
+acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances."  Finally,
+Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great
+naturalist, says, with brave candour:  "It is spirit that alone feels,
+and perceives, and thinks, that acquires knowledge, and reasons and
+aspires..... There not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted
+that the spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of
+sense, or can, perhaps, wholly or partially quit the body for a time and
+return to it again;  the spirit communicates with spirit easier than
+with matter."  We can now see how, after thousands of years have
+intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists* and our own highly
+civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of such an
+enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as
+well as upon the physical realms of Nature, over twenty millions of
+people today believe, under different form, in those same spiritual
+powers that were believed in by the Yogis and the Pythagoreans, nearly
+3,000 years ago.
+
+--------
+* The reality of the Yog-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman
+writers, who call the Yogis Indian Gymnosophists--by Strabo, Lucan,
+Plutarch, Cicero (Tusculum), Pliny (vii. 2), &c.
+--------
+
+Thus, while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving
+all the problems of life and death, when he had once obtained the power
+of acting independently of his body, through the Atman, "self," or
+"soul;"  and the old Greeks went in search of Atmu, the Hidden one, or
+the God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of the Thesmophorian
+mysteries;  so the spiritualists of today believe in the capacity of the
+spirits, or the souls of the disembodied persons, to communicate visibly
+and tangibly with those they loved on earth.  And all these, Aryan
+Yogis, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists, affirm that
+possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never embodied
+spirit--the real self--are not separated from either the Universal Soul
+or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their
+qualities, as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no
+limitation.  And that when this difference is once removed--according to
+the Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary
+liberation of the imprisoned soul, and according to spiritualists,
+through mediumship--such a union between embodied and disembodied
+spirits becomes possible.  Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogis, and,
+following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists,
+maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united to, or
+rather become as one with, God several times during the course of their
+lives.  This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the
+Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to
+be put aside as entirely chimerical.  In the case of the Theodidaktoi,
+the only controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of
+extreme mysticism, was its claim to include that which is simply
+ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous perception.  In the
+case of the Yogis, who maintained their ability to see Iswara "face to
+face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern logic of the
+followers of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy.  As to the
+similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of
+Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to
+"God-seeing" within these last hundred years--Jacob Bohme and
+Swedenborg--this pretension would and should have been philosophically
+and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are
+spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
+phenomenalism of spiritualism.
+
+The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and
+masters, or hierophants;  and their rules were copied from the ancient
+Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from
+India.  Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his
+higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and
+initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the
+demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or
+under-meaning.  "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi,
+the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus.  "He is
+not an atheist who denies the existence of the gods, whom the multitude
+worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the
+multitude."  In his turn, Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence
+pervading the whole world of Nature, what are styled the gods are simply
+the first principles."
+
+Plotinus, the pupil of the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us that the
+secret gnosis or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees-opinion,
+science, and illumination.  "The means or instrument of the first is
+sense, or perception;  of the second, dialectics;  of the third,
+intuition.  To the last, reason is subordinate;  it is absolute
+knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object
+known."  Theosophy is the exact science of psychology, so to say;  it
+stands in relation to natural, uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge
+of a Tyndall stands to that of a school-boy in physics.  It develops in
+man a direct beholding;  that which Schelling denominates "a realization
+of the identity of subject and object in the individual;"  so that under
+the influence and knowledge of hyponia man thinks divine thoughts, views
+all things as they really are, and, finally, "becomes recipient of the
+Soul of the World," to use one of the finest expressions of Emerson.
+"I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay
+on the Oversoul."  Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy
+cultivated every branch of sciences and arts.  It was thoroughly
+familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy
+or "ceremonial magic," so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the
+Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the Theosophists.  It is but
+Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other Eclectics, added to
+Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant of the true meaning of
+the esoteric divine symbols of Nature, man is apt to miscalculate the
+powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and mentally
+with the higher celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the
+theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the
+evil, dark powers which lurk around humanity, the undying, grim
+creations of human crimes and vices, and thus fall from theurgia (white
+magic) into goetia (or black magic, sorcery).  Yet, neither white nor
+black magic are what popular superstition understands by the terms.  The
+possibility of "raising spirits," according to the key of Solomon, is
+the height of superstition and ignorance.  Purity of deed and thought
+can alone raise us to an intercourse "with the gods" and attain for us
+the goal we desire.  Alchemy, believed by so many to have been a
+spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the
+teachings of the Theosophical School.
+
+It is a noticeable fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus,
+Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything
+to writing.  The reason for it is obvious.  Theosophy is a double-edged
+weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish. Like every ancient
+philosophy it has its votaries among the moderns;  but, until late in
+our own days, its disciples were few in numbers, and of the most various
+sects and opinions. "Entirely speculative, and founding no schools, they
+have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy;  and no doubt,
+when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give
+new directions to human thought," remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie,
+himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, "The
+Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia" (articles "Theosophical Society of New York,"
+and "Theosophy," p. 731).* Since the days of the fire-philosophers, they
+had never formed themselves into societies, for, tracked like wild
+beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist often
+amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant.
+
+----------
+* "The Royal Masonic Cycloptedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and
+Biography." Edited by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie IX. (Cryptonymus) Hon.
+Member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2, Scotland. New York J.
+W. Bouton, 706, Broadway. 1877.
+--------
+
+The statistics show that, during a period of 150 years, no less than
+90,000 men and women were burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft.  In
+Great Britain only, from A.D. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000
+persons were put to death for compact with the "Devil."  It was but late
+in the present century--in 1875--that some progressed mystics and
+spiritualists, unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of
+Spiritualism started by its votaries, and finding that they were far
+from covering the whole ground of the wide range of phenomena, formed at
+New York, America, an association which is now widely known as the
+Theosophical Society.
+
+(--H.P. Blavatsky)
+
+
+
+
+How a "Chela" Found his "Guru"
+
+[Being Extracts from a private letter to Damodar K. Mavalankar, Joint
+Recording Secretary of the Theosophical Society.]
+
+....When we met last at Bombay I told you what had happened to me at
+Tinnevelly.  My health having been disturbed by official work and worry,
+I applied for leave on medical certificate and it was duly granted.  One
+day in September last, while I was reading in my room, I was ordered by
+the audible voice of my blessed Guru, M---Maharsi, to leave all and
+proceed immediately to Bombay, whence I was to go in search of Madame
+Blavatsky wherever I could find her and follow her wherever she went.
+Without losing a moment, I closed up all my affairs and left the
+station.  For the tones of that voice are to me the divinest sound in
+Nature, its commands imperative.  I traveled in my ascetic robes.
+Arrived at Bombay, I found Madame Blavatsky gone, and learned through
+you that she had left a few days before;  that she was very ill;  and
+that, beyond the fact that she had left the place very suddenly with a
+Chela, you knew nothing of her whereabouts.  And now, I must tell you
+what happened to me after I had left you.
+
+Really not knowing whither I had best go, I took a through ticket to
+Calcutta;  but, on reaching Allahabad, I heard the same well-known
+voice directing me to go to Berhampore.  At Azimgunge, in the train, I
+met, most providentially I may say, with some Bengali gentlemen (I did
+not then know they were also Theosophists, since I had never seen any of
+them), who were also in search of Madame Blavatsky.  Some had traced her
+to Dinapore, but lost her track and went back to Berhampore.  They knew,
+they said, she was going to Tibet and wanted to throw themselves at the
+feet of the Mahatmas to permit them to accompany her.  At last, as I was
+told, they received from her a note, permitting them to come if they so
+desired it, but saying that she herself was prohibited from going to
+Tibet just now.  She was to remain, she said, in the vicinity of
+Darjiling and would see the Mahatma on the Sikkhim Territory, where they
+would not be allowed to follow her .... Brother Nobin K. Bannerji, the
+President of the Adhi Bhoutic Bhratru Theosophical Society, would not
+tell me where Madame Blavatsky was, or perhaps did not then know
+himself. Yet he and others had risked all in the hope of seeing the
+Mahatmas.  On the 23rd, at last he brought me from Calcutta to
+Chandernagore, where I found Madame Blavatsky, ready to start by train
+in five minutes.  A tall, dark-looking hairy Chela (not Chunder Cusho),
+but a Tibetan I suppose by his dress, whom I met after I had crossed the
+river Hugli with her in a boat, told me that I had come too late, that
+Madame Blavatsky had already seen the Mahatmas and that he had brought
+her back.  He would not listen to my supplications to take me with him,
+saying he had no other orders than what he had already executed--namely,
+to take her about twenty-five miles beyond a certain place he named to
+me, and that he was now going to see her safe to the station and return.
+The Bengali brother Theosophists had also traced and followed her,
+arriving at the station half an hour later.  They crossed the river from
+Chandernagore to a small railway station on the opposite side.  When the
+train arrived, she got into the carriage, upon entering which I found
+the Chela!  And, before even her own things could be placed in the van,
+the train, against all regulations and before the bell was rung, started
+off, leaving the Bengali gentlemen and her servant behind, only one of
+them and the wife and daughter of another--all Theosophists and
+candidates for Chelaship--having had time to get in.  I myself had
+barely the time to jump into the last carriage. All her things, with the
+exception of her box containing Theosophical correspondence, were left
+behind with her servant. Yet, even the persons that went by the same
+train with her did not reach Darjiling.  Babu Nobin Banerjee, with the
+servant, arrived five days later;  and those who had time to take their
+seats, were left five or six stations behind, owing to another
+unforeseen accident (?), reaching Darjiling also a few days later.  It
+required no great stretch of imagination to conclude that Madame
+Blavatsky was, perhaps, being again taken to the Mahatmas, who, for some
+good reasons best known to them, did not want us to be following and
+watching her.  Two of the Mahatmas, I had learned for a certainty, were
+in the neighbourhood of British territory;  and one of them was seen and
+recognized, by a person I need not name here, as a high Chutukla of
+Tibet.
+
+The first days of her arrival Madame Blavatsky was living at the house
+of a Bengali gentleman, a Theosophist, refusing to see any one, and
+preparing, as I thought, to go again somewhere on the borders of Tibet.
+To all our importunities we could get only this answer from her:  that
+we had no business to stick to and follow her, that she did not want us,
+and that she had no right to disturb the Mahatmas with all sorts of
+questions that concerned only the questioners, for they knew their own
+business best.  In despair, I determined, come what might, to cross the
+frontier, which is about a dozen miles from here, and find the Mahatmas
+or--DIE.  I never stopped to think that what I was going to undertake
+would be regarded as the rash act of a lunatic.  I had no permission, no
+"pass" from the Sikkhim Rajah, and was yet decided to penetrate into the
+heart of a semi-independent State where, if anything happened, the
+Anglo-Indian officials would not--if even they could--protect me, since
+I should have crossed over without their permission.  But I never even
+gave that a thought, but was bent upon one engrossing idea--to find and
+see my Guru.  Without breathing a word of my intentions to any one, one
+morning, namely, October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatma.  I had
+an umbrella and a pilgrim's staff for sole weapons, with a few rupees in
+my purse.  I wore the yellow garb and cap.  Whenever I was tired on the
+road, my costume easily procured for me for a small sum a pony to ride.
+The same afternoon I reached the banks of the Rungit River, which forms
+the boundary between British and Sikkhimese territories.  I tried to
+cross it by the aerial suspension bridge constructed of canes, but it
+swayed to and fro to such an extent that I, who have never known in my
+life what hardship was, could not stand it.  I crossed the river by the
+ferry-boat, and this even not without much danger and difficulty.  That
+whole afternoon I traveled on foot, penetrating further and further into
+the heart of Sikkhim, along a narrow footpath.  I cannot now say how
+many miles I traveled before dusk, but I am sure it was not less than
+twenty or twenty-five miles.  Throughout, I saw nothing but impenetrable
+jungles and forests on all sides of me, relieved at very long intervals
+by solitary huts belonging to the mountain population. At dusk I began
+to search around me for a place to rest in at night.  I met on the road,
+in the afternoon, a leopard and a wild cat;  and I am astonished now to
+think how I should have felt no fear then nor tried to run away.
+Throughout, some secret influence supported me.  Fear or anxiety never
+once entered my mind.  Perhaps in my heart there was room for no other
+feeling but an intense anxiety to find my Guru.  When it was just
+getting dark, I espied a solitary hut a few yards from the roadside.  To
+it I directed my steps in the hope of finding a lodging.  The rude door
+was locked.  The cabin was untenanted at the time.  I examined it on all
+sides and found an aperture on the western side.  It was small indeed,
+but sufficient for me to jump through.  It had a small shutter and a
+wooden bolt.  By a strange coincidence of circumstances the hillman had
+forgotten to fasten it on the inside when he locked the door.  Of
+course, after what has subsequently transpired, I now, through the eye
+of faith, see the protecting hand of my Guru everywhere around me.  Upon
+getting inside I found the room communicated, by a small doorway, with
+another apartment, the two occupying the whole space of this sylvan
+mansion.  I laid down, concentrating every thought upon my Guru as
+usual, and soon fell into a profound sleep.  Before I went to rest, I
+had secured the door of the other room and the single window.  It may
+have been between ten and eleven, or perhaps a little later, that I
+awoke and heard sounds of footsteps in the adjoining room.  I could
+plainly distinguish two or three people talking together in a dialect
+unknown to me. Now, I cannot recall the same without a shudder.  At any
+moment they might have entered from the other room and murdered me for
+my money.  Had they mistaken me for a burglar the same fate awaited me.
+These and similar thoughts crowded into my brain in an inconceivably
+short period.  But my heart did not palpitate with fear, nor did I for
+one moment think of the possibly tragical chances of the moment.  I know
+not what secret influence held me fast, but nothing could put me out or
+make me fear;  I was perfectly calm.  Although I lay awake staring into
+the darkness for upwards of two hours, and even paced the room softly
+and slowly without making any noise, to see if I could make my escape,
+in case of need, back to the forest by the same way I had effected my
+entrance into the hut--no fear, I repeat, or any such feeling ever
+entered my heart.  I recomposed myself to rest. After a sound sleep,
+undisturbed by any dream, I awoke at daybreak.  Then I hastily put on my
+boots, and cautiously got out of the hut through the same window.  I
+could hear the snoring of the owners of the hut in the other room.  But
+I lost no time, and gained the path to Sikkhim (the city) and held on my
+way with unflagging zeal.  From the inmost recesses of my heart I
+thanked my revered Guru for the protection he had vouchsafed me during
+the night.  What prevented the owners of the hut from penetrating to the
+second room?  What kept me in the same serene and calm spirit, as if I
+were in a room of my own house?  What could possibly make me sleep so
+soundly under such circumstances,--enormous, dark forests on all sides
+abounding in wild beasts, and a party of cut-throats--as most of the
+Sikkhimese are said to be--in the next room, with an easy and rude door
+between them and me?
+
+When it became quite light, I wended my way on through hills and dales.
+Riding or walking, the journey was not a pleasant one for any man not as
+deeply engrossed in thought as I was then myself, and quite oblivious to
+anything affecting the body.  I have cultivated the power of mental
+concentration to such a degree of late that, on many an occasion, I have
+been able to make myself quite unconscious of anything around me when my
+mind was wholly bent upon the one object of my life, as several of my
+friends will testify;  but never to such an extent as in this instance.
+
+It was, I think, between eight and nine A.M.  I was following the road
+to the town of Sikkhim, whence, I was assured by the people I met on the
+road, I could cross over to Tibet easily in my pilgrim's garb, when I
+suddenly saw a solitary horseman galloping towards me from the opposite
+direction.  From his tall stature and skill in horsemanship, I thought
+he was some military officer of the Sikkhim Rajah.  Now, I thought, I am
+caught!  He will ask me for my pass and what business I have in the
+independent territory of Sikkhim, and, perhaps, have me arrested and
+sent back, if not worse.  But, as he approached me, he reined up.  I
+looked at and recognized him instantly.... I was in the awful presence
+of him, of the same Mahatma, my own revered Guru, whom I had seen before
+in his astral body on the balcony of the Theosophical Headquarters.  It
+was he, the "Himalayan Brother" of the ever-memorable night of December
+last, who had so kindly dropped a letter in answer to one I had given
+but an hour or so before in a sealed envelope to Madame Blavatsky, whom
+I had never lost sight of for one moment during the interval.  The very
+same instant saw me prostrated on the ground at his feet.  I arose at
+his command, and, leisurely looking into his face, forgot myself
+entirely in the contemplation of the image I knew so well, having seen
+his portrait (the one in Colonel Olcott's possession) times out of
+number.  I knew not what to say:  joy and reverence tied my tongue.  The
+majesty of his countenance, which seemed to me to be the impersonation
+of power and thought, held me rapt in awe. I was at last face to face
+with "the Mahatma of the Himavat," and he was no myth, no "creation of
+the imagination of a medium," as some sceptics had suggested.  It was no
+dream of the night;  it was between nine and ten o'clock of the
+forenoon.  There was the sun shining and silently witnessing the scene
+from above.  I see him before me in flesh and blood, and he speaks to me
+in accents of kindness and gentleness.  What more could I want?  My
+excess of happiness made me dumb.  Nor was it until some time had
+elapsed that I was able to utter a few words, encouraged by his gentle
+tone and speech.  His complexion is not as fair as that of Mahatma
+Koothoomi;  but never have I seen a countenance so handsome, a stature
+so tall and so majestic.  As in his portrait, he wears a short black
+beard, and long black hair hanging down to his breast;  only his dress
+was different:  Instead of a white, loose robe he wore a yellow mantle
+lined with fur, and on his head, instead of the turban, a yellow Tibetan
+felt cap, as I have seen some Bhootanese wear in this country.  When the
+first moments of rapture and surprise were over, and I calmly
+comprehended the situation, I had a long talk with him.  He told me to
+go no further, for I should come to grief.  He said I should wait
+patiently if I wanted to become an accepted Chela; that many were those
+who offered themselves as candidates, but that only a very few were
+found worthy;  none were rejected, but all of them tried, and most found
+to fail signally, as for example---and---.  Some, instead of being
+accepted and pledged this year, were now thrown off for a year.  The
+Mahatma, I found, speaks very little English--or at least it so seemed
+to me--and spoke to me in my mother-tongue--Tamil.  He told me that if
+the Chohan permitted Madame Blavatsky to visit Parijong next year, then
+I could come with her.  The Bengali Theosophists who followed the
+"Upasika" (Madame Blavatsky) would see that she was right in trying to
+dissuade them from following her now.  I asked the blessed Mahatma
+whether I could tell what I saw and heard to others.  He replied in the
+affirmative, and that moreover I would do well to write to you and
+describe all.
+
+I must impress upon your mind the whole situation, and ask you to keep
+well in view that what I saw was not the mere "appearance" only, the
+astral body of the Mahatma, as we saw him at Bombay, but the living man,
+in his own physical body.  He was pleased to say when I offered my
+farewell namaskarams (prostration) that he approached the British
+territory to see the Upasika.  Before he left me, two more men came on
+horseback, his attendants I suppose, probably Chelas, for they were
+dressed like lama-gylungs, and both, like himself, with long hair
+streaming down their backs.  They followed the Mahatma, when he left, at
+a gentle trot.  For over an hour I stood gazing at the place that he had
+just quitted, and then I slowly retraced my steps.  Now it was that I
+found for the first time that my long boots had pinched my leg in
+several places, that I had eaten nothing since the day before, and that
+I was too weak to walk further.  My whole body was aching in every limb.
+At a little distance I saw petty traders with country ponies, carrying
+burdens.  I hired one of these animals.  In the afternoon I came to the
+Rungit River and crossed it.  A bath in its cool waters revived me.  I
+purchased some fruit in the only bazaar there and ate heartily. I took
+another horse immediately and reached Darjiling late in the evening.  I
+could neither eat, nor sit, nor stand.  Every part of my body was
+aching.  My absence had seemingly alarmed Madame Blavatsky.  She scolded
+me for my rash and mad attempt to try to go to Tibet after that fashion.
+When I entered the house I found with Madame Blavatsky, Bahu Parbati
+Churn Roy, Deputy Collector of Settlements and Superintendent of Dearah
+Survey, and his assistant, Babu Kanty Bhushan Sen, both members of our
+Society.  At their prayer and Madame Blavatsky's command, I recounted
+all that had happened to me, reserving of course my private conversation
+with the Mahatma.  They were all, to say the least, astounded.  After
+all, she will not go this year to Tibet; for which I am sure she does
+not care, since she has seen our Masters and thus gained her only
+object.  But we, unfortunate people! we lose our only chance of going
+and offering our worship to the "Himalayan Brothers," who, I know, will
+not soon cross over to British territory, if ever, again.
+
+And now that I have seen the Mahatma in the flesh, and heard his living
+voice, let no one dare say to me that the Brothers do not exist.  Come
+now whatever will, death has no fear for me, nor the vengeance of
+enemies;  for what I know, I know!
+
+--S. Ramaswamier, F.T.S.
+
+
+
+
+The Sages of the Himavat
+
+
+While on my tour with Col. Olcott several phenomena occurred, in his
+presence as well as in his absence, such as immediate answers to
+questions in my Master's handwriting, and over his signature, put by a
+number of our Fellows.  These occurrences took place before we reached
+Lahore, where we expected to meet in the body my Master.  There I was
+visited by him in the body, for three nights consecutively, for about
+three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and,
+in one case, even went to meet him outside the house.  To my knowledge
+there is no case on the Spiritualist records of a medium remaining
+perfectly conscious, and meeting, by previous arrangement, his
+spirit-visitor in the compound, re-entering the house with him, offering
+him a seat, and then holding a long converse with the "disembodied
+spirit" in a way to give him the impression that he is in personal
+contact with an embodied entity.  Moreover, him whom I saw in person at
+Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the
+Theosophical Society, and again, the same whom I had seen in visions and
+trances at his house, thousands of miles off, which I reached in my
+astral Ego by his direct help and protection.  In those instances, with
+my psychic powers hardly yet developed, I had always seen him as a rather
+hazy form, although his features were perfectly distinct and their
+remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul's eye and memory, while now
+at Lahore, Jummoo, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different.
+In the former cases, when making Pranam (salutation) my hands passed
+through his form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments
+and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the original of the
+portraits in Madame Blavatsky's possession and in Mr. Sinnett's, though
+far more imposing in his general appearance and bearing.  I shall not
+here dwell upon the fact of his having been corporeally seen by both
+Col. Olcott and Mr. Brown separately for two nights at Lahore, as they
+can do so better, each for himself, if they so choose.  At Jummoo again,
+where we proceeded from Lahore, Mr. Brown saw him on the evening of the
+third day of our arrival there, and from him received a letter in his
+familiar handwriting, not to speak of his visits to me almost every day.
+And what happened the next morning almost every one in Jummoo is aware
+of.  The fact is, that I had the good fortune of being sent for, and
+permitted to visit a sacred Ashrum, where I remained for a few days in
+the blessed company of several of the Mahatmas of Himavat and their
+disciples.  There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva and Col. Olcott's
+master, but several others of the fraternity, including one of the
+highest.  I regret the extremely personal nature of my visit to those
+thrice blessed regions prevents my saying more about it.  Suffice it
+that the place I was permitted to visit is in the Himalayas, not in any
+fanciful Summer Land, and that I saw him in my own sthula sarira
+(physical body) and found my Master identical with the form I had seen
+in the earlier days of my Chelaship.  Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not
+only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with
+some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above
+a merry remark and conversation at times.  Thus on the second day of my
+arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for
+over an hour with my Master.  Asked by him smilingly what it was that
+made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:--"How is it,
+Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their
+heads a notion that you were 'an elderly man,' and that they have even
+seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?"  To which he
+pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the
+reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the
+Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly
+Lama, who was his (my Master's) traveling companion at that time.  The
+said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led
+several persons to mistake the Lama for himself.  As to his being
+perceived clairvoyantly as an "elderly man," that could never be, he
+added, as real clairvoyance could lead no one into such mistaken
+notions;  and then he kindly reprimanded me for giving any importance to
+the age of a Guru, adding that appearances were often false, &c., and
+explaining other points.
+
+--------
+* See infra. Rajani Kanta Brahmachai's  "Interview with a Mahatma."
+--------
+
+These are all stern facts, and no third course is open to the reader.
+What I assert is either true or false.  In the former case, no
+Spiritualistic hypothesis can hold good, and it will have to be admitted
+that the Himalayan Brothers are living men, and neither disembodied
+spirits nor creations of the over-heated imagination of fanatics.  Of
+course I am fully aware that many will discredit my account;  but I
+write only for the benefit of those few who know me well enough to see
+in me neither a hallucinated medium, nor attribute to me any bad motive,
+and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the
+cause they have so nobly espoused.  As for the majority who laugh at and
+ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to
+understand, I hold them in very small account.  If these few lines will
+help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one
+right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and
+Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty.
+
+--Damodar K. Mavalankar
+
+
+
+
+The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist?
+
+
+"Ask and it shall be given unto you;  knock and it shall be opened,"
+this is an accurate representation of the position of the earnest
+inquirer as to the existence of the Mahatmas.  I know of none who took
+up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours
+with knowledge, certainty.  In spite of all this there are plenty of
+people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the
+thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a section of our own
+countrymen--the too Europeanized graduates of Universities--the
+existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust,
+to give it no harder name.  The position of the Europeans is easily
+intelligible, for these things are so far removed from their
+intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency is so great, that they
+are almost impervious to these new ideas.  But it is much more difficult
+to conceive why the people of India, who are born and brought up in an
+atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these things, should affect
+such scepticism.  It would have been more natural for them, on the other
+hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public
+with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose
+elements he has calculated, swims within his ken.  I myself was a
+thorough-going disbeliever only two years back.  In the first place I
+had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one
+who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was
+taught to have any respect--the "educated classes."  It was only in the
+month of October, 1882, that I really devoted any time and attention to
+this matter, and the result is that I have as little doubt with respect
+to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine own.  I now know that they
+exist.  But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all
+of an objective character.  Many things which are very satisfactory
+proofs to me would not be so to the reader.  On the other hand, I have
+no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence I now possess.
+Therefore I must do the best I can with the little I am permitted to
+give.  In the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as
+would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable of measuring its
+probative force.
+
+The evidence now laid before the public was collected by me during the
+months of October and November, 1882, and was at the time placed before
+some of the leading members of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett
+among others.  The account of Bro. Ramaswamier's interview with his Guru
+in Sikkhim being then ready for publication, there was no necessity, in
+their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light.  But since
+an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr.
+Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most absurdly "the hallucinations
+of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I think something might be gained
+by the publication of perfectly independent testimony of, perhaps,
+equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a different character.
+With these words of explanation as to the delay in its publication, I
+resign this paper to the criticism of our sceptical friends.  Let them
+calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence of the Tibetan pedlar at
+Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the independent testimony of
+the young Brahmachari at Dehradun.  Those who were present when the
+statements of these persons were taken, all occupy very respectable
+positions in life--some in fact belonging to the front ranks of Hindu
+Society, and several in no way connected with the Theosophical movement,
+but, on the contrary, quite unfriendly to it.  In those days I again say
+I was rather sceptical myself.  It is only since I collected the
+following evidence and received more than one proof of the actual
+existence of my venerated master, Mahatma Koothoomi, whose presence--
+quite independently of Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott or any "alleged"
+Chela--was made evident to me in a variety of ways, that I have given up
+the folly of doubting any longer.  Now I believe no more--I KNOW;  and
+knowing, I would help others to obtain the same knowledge.
+
+During my visit to Darjiling I lived in the same house with several
+Theosophists, all as ardent aspirants for the higher life, and most of
+them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan Mahatmas as I was myself
+at that time.  I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of
+the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and lived with them for years.
+They laughed at our perplexity.  One of them showed us an admirably
+executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an eminently holy person,
+and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi (now my revered master),
+to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated.  A few days after my
+arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook accidentally came to
+our house to sell his things.  Sundook was for years well-known in
+Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant trader in Tibetan
+knick-knacks, who visited the country every year in the exercise of his
+profession.  He came to the house several times during our stay there,
+and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity of bearing and pleasant
+manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen.  No man could discover in
+him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized
+savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans.  He
+might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too
+good to be one.  He came to the house while I was there.  On the first
+occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an
+employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter.  But we
+soon found out that the peculiar dialect of Hindi which he spoke was
+intelligible to some of us without any interpreter, and so there was
+none needed on subsequent occasions.  On the first day we put him some
+general questions about Tibet and the Gelugpa sect, to which he said he
+belonged, and his answers corroborated the statements of Bogle, Turnour
+and other travelers.  On the second day we asked him if he had heard of
+any persons in Tibet who possessed extraordinary powers besides the
+great lamas.  He said there were such men;  that they were not regular
+lamas, but far higher than they, and generally lived in the mountains
+beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of Lhassa.  These men, he said,
+produce many and very wonderful phenomena or "miracles," and some of
+their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in Tibet, cure the sick by
+giving them to eat the rice which they crush out of the paddy with their
+hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious idea.  Without saying one word,
+the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma Koothoomi was shown to him.
+He looked at it for a few seconds, and then, as though suddenly
+recognizing it, he made a profound reverence to the portrait, and said
+it was the likeness of a Chohan (Mahatma) whom he had seen.  Then he
+began rapidly to describe the Mahatma's dress and naked arms;  then
+suiting the action to the word, he took off his outer cloak, and baring
+his arms to the shoulder, made the nearest approach to the figure in the
+portrait, in the adjustment of his dress.
+
+He said he had seen the Mahatma in question accompanied by a numerous
+body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous year (beginning of
+October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two days' journey southward of
+Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make purchases for his
+trade.  On being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded
+surprise, "They are called Koothum-pa."  Being cross-examined and asked
+what he meant by "they," and whether he was naming one man or many, he
+replied that the Koothum-pas were many, but there was only one man or
+chief over them of that name;  the disciples being always called after
+the names of their guru.  Hence the name of the latter being Koot-hum,
+that of his disciples was "Koot-hum-pa."  Light was shed upon this
+explanation by a Tibetan dictionary, where we found that the word "pa"
+means "man;"  "Bod-pa" is a "man of Bod or Thibet," &c.  Similarly
+Koothum-pa means man or disciple of Koothoom or Koothoomi.  At Giansi,
+the pedlar said, the richest merchant of the place went to the Mahatma,
+who had stopped to rest in the midst of an extensive field, and asked
+him to bless him by coming to his house.  The Mahatma replied, he was
+better where he was, as he had to bless the whole world, and not any
+particular man.  The people, and among them our friend Sundook, took
+their offerings to the Mahatma, but he ordered them to be distributed
+among the poor.  Sundook was exhorted by the Mahatma to pursue his trade
+in such a way as to injure no one, and warned that such was the only
+right way to prosperity.  On being told that people in India refused to
+believe that there were such men as the Brothers in Tibet, Sundook
+offered to take any voluntary witness to that country, and convince us,
+through him, as to the genuineness of their existence, and remarked that
+if there were no such men in Tibet, he would like to know where they
+were to be found.  It being suggested to him that some people refused to
+believe that such men existed at all, he got very angry.  Tucking up the
+sleeve of his coat and shirt, and disclosing a strong muscular arm, he
+declared that he would fight any man who would suggest that he had said
+anything but the truth.
+
+On being shown a peculiar rosary of beads belonging to Madame Blavatsky,
+the pedlar said that such things could only be got by those to whom the
+Tesshu Lama presented them, as they could be got for no amount of money
+elsewhere.  When the Chela who was with us put on his sleeveless coat
+and asked him whether he recognized the latter's profession by his
+dress, the pedlar answered that he was a Gylung and then bowing down to
+him took the whole thing as a matter of course.  The witnesses in this
+case were Babu Nobin Krishna Bannerji, deputy magistrate, Berhampore,
+M.R. Ry. Ramaswamiyer Avergal, district registrar, Madura (Madras), the
+Goorkha gentleman spoken of before, all the family of the first-named
+gentleman, and the writer.
+
+Now for the other piece of corroborative evidence.  This time it came
+most accidentally into my possession.  A young Bengali Brahmachari, who
+had only a short time previous to our meeting returned from Tibet and
+who was residing then at Dehradun, in the North-Western Provinces of
+India, at the house of my grandfather-in-law, the venerable Babu
+Devendra Nath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj, gave most unexpectedly, in the
+presence of a number of respectable witnesses, the following account:--
+
+On the 15th of the Bengali month of Asar last (1882). being the 12th day
+of the waxing moon, he met some Tibetans, called the Koothoompas, and
+their guru in a field near Taklakhar, a place about a day's journey from
+the Lake of Manasarawara.  The guru and most of his disciples, who were
+called gylungs, wore sleeveless coats over under-garments of red.  The
+complexion of the guru was very fair, and his hair, which was not parted
+but combed back, streamed down his shoulders.  When the Brahmachani
+first saw the Mahatma he was reading in a book, which the Brahmachari
+was informed by one of the gylungs was the Rig Veda.
+
+The guru saluted him, and asked him where he was coming from.  On
+finding the latter had not had anything to eat, the guru commanded that
+he should be given some ground gram (Sattoo) and tea.  As the
+Brahmachari could not get any fire to cook food with, the guru asked
+for, and kindled a cake of dry cow-dung--the fuel used in that country
+as well as in this--by simply blowing upon it, and gave it to our
+Brahmachari.  The latter assured us that he had often witnessed the same
+phenomenon, produced by another guru or chohan, as they are called in
+Tibet, at Gauri, a place about a day's journey from the cave of Tarchin,
+on the northern side of Mount Kailas.  The keeper of a flock, who was
+suffering from rheumatic fever came to the guru, who gave him a few
+grains of rice, crushed out of paddy, which the guru had in his hand,
+and the sick man was cured then and there.
+
+Before he parted company with the Koothumpas and their guru, the
+Brahmachari found that they were going to attend a festival held on the
+banks of the Lake of Manasarawara, and that thence they intended to
+proceed to the Kailas mountains.
+
+The above statement was on several occasions repeated by the Brahmachari
+in the presence (among others) of Babu Dwijender Nath Tagore of
+Jorasanko, Calcutta;  Babu Cally Mohan Ghose of the Trigonometrical
+Surcey of India, Dehradun;  Babu Cally Cumar Chatterij of the same
+place;  Babu Gopi Mohan Ghosh of Dacca; Babu Priya Nath Sastri, clerk to
+Babu Devender Nath Tagore, and the writer.  Comments would here seem
+almost superfluous, and the facts might very well have been left to
+speak for themselves to a fair and intelligent jury.  But the averseness
+of people to enlarge their field of experience and the wilful
+misrepresentation of designing persons know no bounds.  The nature of
+the evidence here adduced is of an unexceptional character.  Both
+witnesses were met quite accidentally.  Even if it be granted, which we
+certainly do not for a moment grant, that the Tibetan pedlar, Sundook,
+had been interviewed by some interested person, and induced to tell an
+untruth, what can be conceived to have been the motive of the
+Brahmachari, one belonging to a religious body noted for their
+truthfulness, and having no idea as to the interest the writer took in
+such things, in inventing a romance, and how could he make it fit
+exactly with the statements of the Tibetan pedlar at the other end of
+the country?  Uneducated persons are no doubt liable to deceive
+themselves in many matters, but these statements dealt only with such
+disunited facts as fell within the range of the narrator's eyes and
+ears, and had nothing to do with his judgment or opinion.  Thus, when
+the pedlar's statement is coupled with that of the Dehradun Brahmachari,
+there is, indeed, no room left for any doubt as to the truthfulness of
+either.  It may here be mentioned that the statement of the Brahmachari
+was not the result of a series of leading questions, but formed part of
+the account he voluntarily gave of his travels during the year, and that
+he is almost entirely ignorant of the English language, and had, to the
+best of my knowledge, information and belief, never even so much as
+heard of the name of Theosophy.  Now, if any one refuses to accept the
+mutually corroborative but independent testimonies of the Tibetan pedlar
+of Darjiling and the Brahmachari of Dehradun on the ground that they
+support the genuineness of facts not ordinarily falling within the
+domain of one's experience, all I can say is that it is the very miracle
+of folly.  It is, on the other hand, most unshakably established upon
+the evidence of several of his Chelas, that the Mahatma Koothoomi is a
+living person like any of us, and that moreover he was seen by two
+persons on two different occasions.  This will, it is to be hoped,
+settle for ever the doubts of those who believe in the genuineness of
+occult phenomena, but put them down to the agency of "spirits."  Mark
+one circumstance.  It may be argued that during the pedlar's stay at
+Darjiling, Madame Blavatsky was also there, and, who knows, she might
+have bribed him (!!) into saying what he said.  But no such thing can be
+urged in the case of the Dehradun Brahmachari.  He knew neither the
+pedlar nor Madame Blavatsky, had never heard of Colonel Olcott, having
+just returned from his prolonged journey, and had no idea that I was a
+Fellow of the Society.  His testimony was entirely voluntary.  Some
+others, who admit that Mahatmas exist, but that there is no proof of
+their connection with the Theosophical Society, will be pleased to see
+that there is no a priori impossibility in those great souls taking an
+interest in such a benevolent Society as ours.  Consequently it is a
+gratuitous insult to a number of self-sacrificing men and women to
+reject their testimony without a fair hearing.
+
+I purposely leave aside all proofs which are already before the public.
+Each set of proofs is conclusive in itself, and the cumulative effect of
+all is simply irresistible.
+
+--Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+
+
+Interview with a Mahatma
+
+
+At the time I left home for the Himalayas in search of the Supreme
+Being, having adopted Brahmacharyashrama (religious mendicancy), I was
+quite ignorant of the fact that there was any such philosophical sect as
+the Theosophists existing in India, who believed in the existence of the
+Mahatmas or "superior persons."  This and other facts connected with my
+journey are perfectly correct as already published, and so need not be
+repeated or contradicted.  Now I beg to give a fuller account of my
+interview with the Mahatmas.
+
+Before and after I met the so-called Mahatma Koothum-pa, I had the good
+fortune of seeing in person several other Mahatmas of note, a detailed
+account of whom, I hope, should time allow, to write to you by-and-by.
+Here I wish to say something about Koothum-pa only.
+
+When I was on my way to Almora from Mansarowar and Kailas, one day I had
+nothing with me to eat.  I was quite at a loss how to get on without
+food.  There being no human habitation in that part of the country, I
+could expect no help, but pray to God, and take my way patiently on.
+Between Mansarowar and Taklakhal, by the side of a road, I observed a
+tent pitched and several Sadhus (holy men), called Chohans, sitting
+outside it who numbered about seventeen in all.  As to their dress, &c.,
+what Babu M.M. Chatterji says is quite correct.  When I went to them
+they entertained me very kindly, and saluted me by uttering, "Ram Ram."
+Returning their salutations, I sat down with them, and they entered upon
+conversation with me on different subjects, asking me first the place I
+was coming from and whither I was going.  There was a chief of them
+sitting inside the tent, and engaged in reading a book.  I inquired
+about his name and the book he was reading from, one of his Chelas, who
+answered me in rather a serious tone, saying that his name was Guru
+Koothum-pa, and the book he was reading was Rig Veda.  Long before, I
+had been told by some Pundits of Bengal that the Tibetan Lamas were
+well-acquainted with the Rig Veda.  This proved what they had told me.
+After a short time, when his reading was over, he called me in by one of
+his Chelas, and I went to him.  He, also bidding me "Ram Ram," received
+me very gently and courteously, and began to talk with me mildly in pure
+Hindi.  He addressed me in words such as follows:--"You should remain
+here for some time and see the fair at Mansarowar, which is to come off
+shortly. Here you will have plenty of time and suitable retreats for
+meditation, &c.  I will help you in whatever I can."  He spoke as above
+for some time, and I replied that what he said was right, and that I
+would gladly have stayed, but there was some reason which prevented me.
+He understood my object immediately, and then, having given me some
+private advice as to my spiritual progress, bade me farewell.  Before
+this he had come to know that I was hungry, and so wished me to take
+some food.  He ordered one of his Chelas to supply me with food, which
+he did immediately. In order to get hot water ready for my ablutions, he
+prepared fire by blowing into a cow-dung cake, which burst into flames
+at once.  This is a common practice among the Himalayan Lamas. It is
+also fully explained by M.M. Chatterji, and so need not be repeated.
+
+As long as I was there with the said Lama, he never persuaded me to
+accept Buddhism or any other religion, but only said, "Hinduism is the
+best religion;  you should believe in the Lord Mahadeva--he will do good
+to you.  You are still quite a young man--do not be enticed away by the
+necromancy of anybody." Having had a conversation with the Mahatma as
+described above for about three hours, I at last took leave and resumed
+my journey.
+
+I am neither a Theosophist nor a sectarian, but am the worshipper of the
+only Om.  As regards the Mahatma I personally saw, I dare say that he is
+a great Mahatma.  By the fulfilment of certain of his prophecies, I am
+quite convinced of his excellence.  Of all the Himalayan Mahatmas with
+whom I had an interview, I never met a better Hindi speaker than he.  As
+to his birth-place and the place of his residence, I did not ask him any
+question.  Neither can I say if he is the Mahatma of the Theosophists.
+As to the age of the Mahatma Koothum-pa, as I told Babu M. M. Chatterji
+and others, he was an elderly looking man.
+
+--Rajani Kant Brahmachari
+
+
+
+
+The Secret Doctrine
+
+
+Few experiences lying about the threshhold of occult studies are more
+perplexing and tormenting than those which have to do with the policy of
+the Brothers as to what shall, and what shall not, be revealed to the
+outer world.  In fact, it is only by students at the same time tenacious
+and patient--continuously anxious to get at the truths of occult
+philosophy, but cool enough to bide their time when obstacles come in
+the way--that what looks, at first sight, like a grudging and miserly
+policy in this matter on the part of our illustrious teachers can be
+endured.  Most men persist in judging all situations by the light of
+their own knowledge and conceptions, and certainly by reference to
+standards of right and wrong with which modern civilization is familiar
+a pungent indictment may be framed against the holders of philosophical
+truth.  They are regarded by their critics as keeping guard over their
+intellectual possessions, declaring, "We have won this knowledge with
+strenuous effort and at the cost of sacrifice and suffering;  we will
+not make a present of it to luxurious idlers who have done nothing to
+deserve it."  Most critics of the Theosophical Society and its
+publications have fastened on this obvious idea, and have denounced the
+policy of the Brothers as "selfish" and "unreasonable."
+
+It has been argued that, as regards occult powers, the necessity for
+keeping back all secrets which would enable unconscientious people to do
+mischief, might be granted, but that no corresponding motives could
+dictate the reservation of occult philosophical truth.
+
+I have lately come to perceive certain considerations on this subject
+which have generally been overlooked;  and it seems desirable to put
+them forward at once;  especially as a very considerable body of occult
+philosophical teaching is now before the world, and as those who
+appreciate its value best, will sometimes be inclined to protest all the
+more emphatically against the tardiness with which it has been served
+out, and the curious precautions with which its further development is
+even now surrounded.
+
+In a nutshell, the explanation of the timid policy displayed is that the
+Brothers are fully assured that the disclosure of that actual truth
+(which constitutes the secret doctrine) about the origin of the World
+and of Humanity--of the laws which govern their existence, and the
+destinies to which they are moving on--is calculated to have a very
+momentous effect on the welfare of mankind.  Great results ensue from
+small beginnings, and the seeds of knowledge now being sown in the world
+may ultimately bear prodigious harvest.  We, who are present merely at
+the sowing, may not realize the magnitude and importance of the impulse
+we are concerned in giving, but that impulse will roll on, and a few
+generations hence will be productive of tremendous consequences one way
+or the other.
+
+For occult philosophy is no shadowy system of speculation like any of
+the hundred philosophies with which the minds of men have been
+overwhelmed;  it is the positive Truth, and by the time enough of it is
+let out, it will be seen to be so by thousands of the greatest men who
+may then be living in the world.  What will be the consequence?  The
+first effect on the minds of all who come to understand it, is terribly
+iconoclastic.  It drives out before it everything else in the shape of
+religious belief.  It leaves no room for any conceptions belonging even
+to the groundwork or foundation of ordinary religious faith.  And what
+becomes then of all rules of right and wrong, of all sanctions for
+morality?  Most assuredly there are rules of right and wrong thrilling
+through every fibre of occult philosophy really higher than any which
+commonplace theologies can teach;  far more cogent sanctions for
+morality than can be derived at second-hand from the distorted doctrines
+of exoteric religions;  but a complete transfer of the sanction will be
+a process involving the greatest possible danger for mankind at the
+time.  Bigots of all denominations will laugh at the idea of such a
+transfer being seriously considered.  The orthodox Christian--confident
+in the thousand of churches overshadowing all western lands, of the
+enormous force engaged in the maintenance and propagation of the faith,
+with the Pope and the Protestant hierarchy in alliance for this broad
+purpose, with the countless clergy of all sects, and the fiery Salvation
+Army bringing up the rear--will think that the earth itself is more
+likely to crumble into ruin than the irresistible authority of Religion
+to be driven back.  They are all counting, however, without the progress
+of enlightenment. The most absurd religions die hard;  but when the
+intellectual classes definitively reject them, they die, with throes of
+terrible agony, may be, and, perhaps, like Samson in the Temple, but
+they cannot permanently outlive a conviction that they are false in the
+leading minds of the age.  Just what has been said of Christianity may
+be said of Mahomedanism and Brahminism. Little or no risk is run while
+occult literature aims merely at putting a reasonable construction on
+perverted tenets--in showing people that truth may lurk behind even the
+strangest theologic fictions.  And the lover of orthodoxy, in either of
+the cases instanced, may welcome the explanation with complacency.  For
+him also, as for the Christian, the faith which he professes--
+sanctioned by what looks like a considerable antiquity to the very
+limited vision of uninitiated historians, and supported by the
+attachment of millions grown old in its service and careful to educate
+their children in the convictions that have served their turn--is
+founded on a rock which has its base in the foundations of the world.
+Fragmentary teachings of occult philosophy seem at first to be no more
+than annotations on the canonical doctrine.  They may even embellish it
+with graceful interpretations of its symbolism, parts of which may have
+seemed to require apology, when ignorantly taken at the foot of the
+letter.  But this is merely the beginning of the attack.  If occult
+philosophy gets before the world with anything resembling completeness,
+it will so command the assent of earnest students that for them nothing
+else of that nature will remain standing. And the earnest students in
+such eases must multiply. They are multiplying now even, merely on the
+strength of the little that has been revealed.  True, as yet--for some
+time to come--the study will be, as it were, the whim of a few;  but
+"those who know," know among other things that, give it fair-play, and
+it must become the subject of enthusiasm with all advanced thinkers. And
+what is to happen when the world is divided into two camps--the whole
+forces of intellectuality and culture on the one side, those of
+ignorance and superstitious fanaticism on the other? With such a war as
+that impending, the adepts, who will be conscious that they prepared the
+lists and armed the combatants, will require some better justification
+for their policy before their own consciences than the reflection that,
+in the beginning, people accused them of selfishness, and of keeping a
+miserly guard over their knowledge, and so goaded them with this taunt
+that they were induced to set the ball rolling.
+
+There is no question, be it understood, as to the relative merits of the
+moral sanctions that are afforded by occult philosophy and those which
+are distilled from the worn-out materials of existing creeds.  If the
+world could conceivably be shunted at one coup from the one code of
+morals to the other, the world would be greatly the better for the
+change.  But the change cannot be made all at once, and the transition
+is most dangerous.  On the other hand, it is no less dangerous to take
+no steps in the direction of that transition.  For though existing
+religions may be a great power--the Pope ruling still over millions of
+consciences if not over towns and States, the name of the Prophet being
+still a word to conjure with in war, the forces of Brahmanical custom
+holding countless millions in willing subjection--in spite of all this,
+the old religions are sapped and past their prime.  They are in process
+of decay, for they are losing their hold on the educated minority;  it
+is still the case that in all countries the camps of orthodoxy include
+large numbers of men distinguished by intellect and culture, but one by
+one their numbers are diminishing.  Five-and-twenty years only, in
+Europe, have made a prodigious change.  Books are written now that pass
+almost as matters of course which would have been impossible no further
+back than that.  No further back, books thrilled society with surprise
+and excitement, which the intellectual world would now ignore as
+embodying the feeblest commonplaces.  The old creeds, in fact, are
+slowly losing their hold upon mankind--more slowly in the more
+deliberately moving East than Europe, but even here by degrees also--and
+a time will come, whether occult philosophy is given out to take their
+place or not, when they will no longer afford even such faulty sanctions
+for moral conduct and right as they have supplied in times gone by.
+Therefore it is plain that something must be given out to take their
+place, and hence the determinations of which this movement in which we
+are engaged is one of the undulations--these very words some of the
+foremost froth upon the advancing wave.
+
+But surely, when something which must be done is yet very dangerous in
+the doing, the persons who control the operations in progress may be
+excused for exercising the utmost caution. Readers of Theosophical
+literature will be aware how bitterly our adept Brothers have been
+criticized for choosing to take their own time and methods in the task
+of partially communicating their knowledge to the world.  Here in India
+these criticisms have been indignantly resented by the passionate
+loyalty to the Mahatmas that is so widely spread among Hindus--resented
+more by instinct than reason in some cases perhaps, though in others, no
+doubt, as a consequence of a full appreciation of all that is being now
+explained, and of other considerations beside.  But in Europe such
+criticisms will have seemed hard to answer.  The answer is really
+embodied, however imperfectly, in the views of the situation now set
+forth.  We ordinary mortals in the world work as men traveling by the
+light of a lantern in an unknown country. We see but a little way to the
+right and left, only a little way behind even.  But the adepts work as
+men traveling by daylight, with the further advantage of being able at
+will to get up in a balloon and survey vast expanses of lake and plain
+and forest.
+
+The choice of time and methods for communicating occult knowledge to the
+world necessarily includes the choice of intermediary agent.  Hence the
+double set of misconceptions in India and Europe, each adapted to the
+land of its origin.  In India, where knowledge of the Brothers'
+existence and reverence for their attributes is widely diffused, it is
+natural that persons who may be chosen for their serviceability rather
+than for their merits, as the recipients of their direct teaching,
+should be regarded with a feeling resembling jealousy.  In Europe, the
+difficulty of getting into any sort of relations with the fountain-head
+of Eastern philosophy is regarded as due to an exasperating
+exclusiveness on the part of the adepts in that philosophy, which
+renders it practically worth no man's while to devote himself to the
+task of soliciting their instruction.  But neither feeling is reasonable
+when considered in the light of the explanations now put forward.  The
+Brothers can consider none but public interests, in the largest sense of
+the words, in throwing out the first experimental flashes of occult
+revelation into the world. They can only employ agents on whom they can
+rely for doing the work as they may wish it done--or, at all events, in
+no manner which may be widely otherwise.  Or they can only protect the
+task on which they are concerned in another way.  They may consent
+sometimes to a very much more direct mode of instruction than that
+provided through intermediary agents for the world at large, in the
+cases of organized societies solemnly pledged to secrecy, for the time
+being at all events, in regard to the teaching to be conveyed to them.
+In reference to such societies, the Brothers need not be on the watch to
+see that the teaching is not worked up for the service of the world in a
+way they would consider, for any reasons of their own, likely to be
+injurious to final results or dangerous.  Different men will assimilate
+the philosophy to be unfolded in different ways:  for some it will be
+too iconoclastic altogether, and its further pursuit, after a certain
+point is reached, unwelcome.  Such persons, entering too hastily on the
+path of exploration, will be able to drop off from the undertaking
+whenever they like, if thoroughly pledged to secrecy in the first
+instance, without being a source of embarrassment afterwards, as regards
+the steady prosecution of the work in hand by other more resolute, or
+less sensitive, labourers.  It may be that in some such societies, if
+any should be formed in which occult philosophy may be secretly studied,
+some of the members will be as well fitted as, or better than, any other
+persons employed elsewhere to put the teachings in shape for
+publication, but in that case it is to be presumed that special
+qualifications will eventually make themselves apparent.  The meaning
+and good sense of the restrictions, provisionally imposed meanwhile,
+will be plain enough to any impartial person on reflection, even though
+their novelty and strangeness may be a little resented at the first
+glance.
+
+--Lay Chela
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL
+
+
+The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi
+
+
+It is stated in Matsya Puran, chapter cclxxii., that ten Moryas would
+reign over India, and would be succeeded by the Shoongas, and that Shata
+Dhanva will be the first of these ten Maureyas (or Moryas).
+
+In Vishnu Purana (Book IV. chapter iv.) it is stated that there was in
+the Soorya dynasty a king called Moru, who through the power of devotion
+(Yoga) is said to be still living in the village called Katapa, in the
+Himalayas (vide vol. iii. p. 197, by Wilson), and who, in a future age,
+will be the restorer of the Kshatriya race, in the Solar dynasty, that
+is, many thousands of years hence.  In another part of the same Purana
+(Book IV. chapter xxiv.) it is stated that, "upon the cessation of the
+race of Nanda, the Moryas* will possess the earth, for Kautilya will
+place Chandragupta on the throne."  Col. Tod considers Morya, or Maurya,
+a corruption of Mori, the name of a Rajput tribe.
+
+-------
+* The particulars of this legend are recorded in the Atthata katha of
+the Uttaraviharo priests.
+-------
+
+The Commentary on the Mahavanso thinks that the princes of the town Mori
+were thence called Mauryas.  Vachaspattya, a Sanskrit Encyclopaedia,
+places the village of Katapa on the northern side of the Himalayas--
+hence in Tibet.  The same is stated in chapter xii. (Skanda) of
+Bhagavat, vol. iii. p. 325.  The Vayu Purana seems to declare that Moru
+will re-establish the Kshatriyas in the nineteenth coming Yuga.  In
+chapter vi. Book III. of Vishnu Purana, a Rishi called Koothoomi is
+mentioned.  Will any of our Brothers tell us how our Mahatmas stand to
+these revered personages?
+
+--R. Ragoonath Row
+
+
+
+Editor's Note
+
+In the Buddhist Mahavanso, Chandagatto, or Chandragupta, Asoka's
+grandfather, is called a prince of the Moryan dynasty as he certainly
+was--or rather as they were, for there were several Chandraguptas.  This
+dynasty, as said in the same book, began with certain Kshatriyas
+(warriors) of the Sakya line closely related to Gautama Buddha, who
+crossing the Himavanto (Himalayas) "discovered a delightful location,
+well watered, and situated in the midst of a forest of lofty bo and
+other trees.  There they founded a town, which was called by its Sakya
+lords, Morya-Nagara."  Prof. Max Muller would see in this legend a
+made-up story for two reasons:  (1) A desire on the part of Buddhists to
+connect their king Asoka, "the beloved of gods," with Buddha, and thus
+nullify the slanders set up by the Brahmanical opponents of Buddhism to
+the effect that Asoka and Chandragupta were Sudras; and (2) because this
+document does not dovetail with his own theories and chronology based on
+the fanciful stories of the Greek-Megasthenes and others.  It was not
+the princes of Morya-Nagara who received their name from the Rajput
+tribe of Mori, but the latter that became so well known as being
+composed of the descendants of the Moryan sovereign of Morya-Nagara.
+Some light is thrown on the subsequent destiny of that dynasty in
+"Replies to an English F.T.S." (See ante.)  The name of Rishi Koothoomi
+is mentioned in more than one Purana, and his Code is among the eighteen
+Codes written by various Rishis, and preserved at Calcutta in the
+library of the Asiatic Society.  But we have not been told whether there
+is any connection between our Mahatma of that name and the Rishi, and we
+do not feel justified in speculating upon the subject.  All we know is,
+that both are Northern Brahmans, while the Moryas are Kshatriyas.  If
+any of our Brothers know more, or can discover anything relating to the
+subject in the Sacred Books, we shall hear of it with pleasure. The
+words:  "The Moryas will possess the earth, for Kautilya will place
+Chandragupta on the throne," have in our occult philosophy a dual
+meaning.  In one sense they relate to the days of early Buddhism, when a
+Chandragupta (Morya) was the king "of all the earth," i.e., of Brahmans,
+who believed themselves the highest and only representatives of humanity
+for whom earth was evolved. The second meaning is purely esoteric.
+Every adept or genuine Mahatma is said to "possess the earth," by the
+power of his occult knowledge.  Hence, a series of ten Moryas, all
+initiated adepts, would be regarded by the occultists, and referred to
+as "possessing all the earth," or all its knowledge.  The names of
+"Chandragupta" and "Kautilya" have also an esoteric significance. Let
+our Brother ponder over their Sanskrit meaning, and he will perhaps see
+what bearing the phrase--"for Kautilya will place Chandragupta upon the
+throne"--has upon the Moryas possessing the earth.  We would also remind
+our Brother that the word Itihasa, ordinarily translated as "history,"
+is defined by Sanskrit authorities to be the narrative of the lives of
+some August personages, conveying at the same time meanings of the
+highest moral and occult importance.
+
+
+
+
+The Theory of Cycles
+
+
+It is now some time since this theory--which was first propounded in the
+oldest religion of the world, Vedaism--has been gradually coming into
+prominence again.  It was taught by various Greek philosophers, and
+afterwards defended by the Theosophists of the Middle Ages, but came to
+be flatly denied by the wise men of the West, the world of negations.
+Contrary to the rule, it is the men of science themselves who have
+revived this theory. Statistics of events of the most varied nature are
+fast being collected and collated with the seriousness demanded by
+important scientific questions.  Statistics of wars and of the periods
+(or cycles) of the appearance of great men--at least those who have been
+recognized as such by their contemporaries;  statistics of the periods
+of development and progress of large commercial centres;  of the rise
+and fall of arts and sciences;  of cataclysms, such as earthquakes,
+epidemics;  periods of extraordinary cold and heat;  cycles of
+revolutions, and of the rise and fall of empires, &c.:  all these are
+subjected in turn to the analysis of the minutest mathematical
+calculations. Finally, even the occult significance of numbers in names
+of persons and cities, in events, and like matters, receives unwonted
+attention.  If, on the one hand, a great portion of the educated public
+is running into atheism and scepticism, on the other hand, we find an
+evident current of mysticism forcing its way into science.  It is the
+sign of an irrepressible need in humanity to assure itself that there is
+a power paramount over matter;  an occult and mysterious law which
+governs the world, and which we should rather study and closely watch,
+trying to adapt ourselves to it, than blindly deny, and dash ourselves
+vainly against the rock of destiny.  More than one thoughtful mind,
+while studying the fortunes and reverses of nations and great empires,
+has been struck by one identical feature in their history--namely, the
+inevitable recurrence of similar events, and after equal periods of
+time.  This relation between events is found to be substantially
+constant, though differences in the outward form of details no doubt
+occur.  Thus the belief of the ancients in their astrologers,
+soothsayers and prophets might have been warranted by the verification
+of many of their most important predictions, without these
+prognostications of future events implying of necessity anything very
+miraculous.  The soothsayers and augurs having occupied in days of the
+old civilizations the very same position now occupied by our historians,
+astronomers and meteorologists, there was nothing more wonderful in the
+fact of the former predicting the downfall of an empire or the loss of a
+battle, than in the latter predicting the return of a comet, a change of
+temperature, or perhaps the final conquest of Afghanistan.  Both studied
+exact sciences;  for, if the astronomer of today draws his observations
+from mathematical calculations, the astrologer of old also based his
+prognostication upon no less acute and mathematically correct
+observations of the ever-recurring cycles.  And, because the secret of
+this ancient science is now being lost, does that give any warrant for
+saying that it never existed, or that to believe in it, one must be
+ready to swallow "magic," "miracles" and the like?  "If, in view of the
+eminence to which modern science has reached, the claim to prophesy
+future events must be regarded as either child's play or a deliberate
+deception," says a writer in the Novoye Vremja, "then we can point at
+science which, in its turn, has now taken up and placed on record the
+question, whether there is or is not in the constant repetition of
+events a certain periodicity;  in other words, whether these events
+recur after a fixed and determined period of years with every nation;
+and if a periodicity there be, whether this periodicity is due to blind
+chance, or depends on the same natural laws which govern the phenomena
+of human life."  Undoubtedly the latter.  And the writer has the best
+mathematical proof of it in the timely appearance of such works as that
+of Dr. E. Zasse, and others. Several learned works treating upon this
+mystical subject have appeared of late, and to some of these works and
+calculations we shall presently refer.  A very suggestive work by a
+well-known German scientist, E. Zasse, appears in the Prussian Journal
+of Statistics, powerfully corroborating the ancient theory of cycles.
+These periods which bring around ever-recurring events, begin from the
+infinitesimally small--say of ten years--rotation, and reach to cycles
+which require 250, 500, 700, and 1000 years to effect their revolutions
+around themselves, and within one another.  All are contained within the
+Maha-Yug, the "Great Age" or Cycle of Manu's calculation, which itself
+revolves between two eternities--the "Pralayas" or Nights of Brahma.
+As, in the objective world of matter, or the system of effects, the
+minor constellations and planets gravitate each and all around the sun,
+so in the world of the subjective, or the system of causes, these
+innumerable cycles all gravitate between that which the finite intellect
+of the ordinary mortal regards as eternity, and the still finite, but
+more profound, intuition of the sage and philosopher views as but an
+eternity within THE ETERNITY.  "As above, so it is below," runs the old
+Hermetic maxim.  As an experiment in this direction, Dr. Zasse selected
+the statistical investigations of all the wars recorded in history, as a
+subject which lends itself more easily to scientific verification than
+any other.  To illustrate his subject in the simplest and most easily
+comprehensible manner, Dr. Zasse represents the periods of war and the
+periods of peace in the shape of small and large wave-lines running over
+the area of the Old World.  The idea is not a new one, for the image was
+used for similar illustrations by more than one ancient and medieval
+mystic, whether in words or pictures--by Henry Kunrath, for example.
+But it serves well its purpose, and gives us the facts we now want.
+Before he treats, however, of the cycles of wars, the author brings in
+the record of the rise and fall of the world's great empires, and shows
+the degree of activity they have played in the Universal History.  He
+points out the fact that if we divide the map of the Old World into six
+parts--into Eastern, Central, and Western Asia, Eastern and Western
+Europe, and Egypt--then we shall easily perceive that every 250 years an
+enormous wave passes over these areas, bringing to each in its turn the
+events it has brought to the one next preceding.  This wave we may call
+"the historical wave" of the 250 years' cycle.
+
+The first of these waves began in China 2000 years B.C., in the "golden
+age" of this empire, the age of philosophy, of discoveries, of reforms.
+"In 1750 B.C. the Mongolians of Central Asia establish a powerful
+empire.  In 1500, Egypt rises from its temporary degradation and extends
+its sway over many parts of Europe and Asia;  and about 1250, the
+historical wave reaches and crosses over to Eastern Europe, filling it
+with the spirit of the Argonautic Expedition, and dies out in 1000 B.C.
+at the Siege of Troy."
+
+The second historical wave appears about that time in Central Asia.
+"The Scythians leave her steppes, and inundate towards the year 750 B.C.
+the adjoining countries, directing themselves towards the south and
+west;  about the year 500, in Western Asia begins an epoch of splendour
+for ancient Persia;  and the wave moves on to the east of Europe, where,
+about 250 B.C., Greece reaches her highest state of culture and
+civilization--and further on to the west, where, at the birth of Christ,
+the Roman Empire finds itself at its apogee of power and greatness."
+
+Again, at this period we find the rising of a third historical wave at
+the far East.  After prolonged revolutions, about this time, China forms
+once more a powerful empire, and its arts, sciences and commerce
+flourish again.  Then 250 years later, we find the Huns appearing from
+the depths of Central Asia;  in the year 500 A.D., a new and powerful
+Persian kingdom is formed;  in 750--in Eastern Europe--the Byzantine
+empire;  and in the year 1000--on its western side--springs up the
+second Roman Power, the Empire of the Papacy, which soon reaches an
+extraordinary development of wealth and brilliancy.
+
+At the same time the fourth wave approaches from the Orient. China is
+again flourishing;  in 1250, the Mongolian wave from Central Asia has
+overflowed and covered an enormous area of land, including Russia.
+About 1500, in Western Asia the Ottoman Empire rises in all its might,
+and conquers the Balkan peninsula;  but at the same time, in Eastern
+Europe, Russia throws off the Tartar yoke;  and about 1750, during the
+reign of Empress Catherine, rises to an unexpected grandeur, and covers
+itself with glory. The wave ceaselessly moves further on to the West;
+and beginning with the middle of the past century, Europe is living over
+an epoch of revolutions and reforms, and, according to the author, "if
+it is permissible to prophesy, then about the year 2000, Western Europe
+will have lived through one of those periods of culture and progress so
+rare in history."  The Russian press taking the cue believes, that
+"towards those days the Eastern Question will be finally settled, the
+national dissensions of the European peoples will come to an end, and
+the dawn of the new millennium will witness the abolition of armies and
+an alliance between all the European empires." The signs of regeneration
+are also fast multiplying in Japan and China, as if pointing to the rise
+of a new historical wave in the extreme East.
+
+If from the cycle of two-and-a-half centuries we descend to that which
+leaves its impress every century, and, grouping together the events of
+ancient history, mark the development and rise of empires, then we shall
+find that, beginning from the year 700 B.C., the centennial wave pushes
+forward, bringing into prominence the following nations, each in its
+turn--the Assyrians, the Medes, the Babylonians, the Persians, the
+Greeks, the Macedonians, the Carthagenians, the Romans, and the Teutons.
+
+The striking periodicity of the wars in Europe is also noticed by Dr. E.
+Zasse.  Beginning with 1700 A.D., every ten years have been signalized
+by either a war or a revolution.  The periods of the strengthening and
+weakening of the warlike excitement of the European nations represent a
+wave strikingly regular in its periodicity, flowing incessantly, as if
+propelled onward by some fixed inscrutable law.  This same mysterious
+law seems also to connect these events with the astronomical wave or
+cycle, which governs the periodicity of solar spots.  The periods when
+the European powers have shown the most destructive energy are marked by
+a cycle of fifty years' duration.  It would be too long and tedious to
+enumerate them from the beginning of history.  We may, therefore, limit
+our study to the cycle beginning with the year 1712, when all the
+European nations were fighting each other in the Northern, and the
+Turkish wars, and the war for the throne of Spain.  About 1761, the
+"Seven Years' War";  in 1810, the wars of Napoleon I.  Towards 1861, the
+wave has been a little deflected from its regular course;  but, as if to
+compensate for it, or propelled, perhaps, with unusual force, the years
+directly preceding, as well as those which followed it, left in history
+the records of the most fierce and bloody wars--the Crimean War in the
+former, and the American Civil War in the latter period. The periodicity
+in the wars between Russia and Turkey appears peculiarly striking, and
+represents a very characteristic wave. At first the intervals between
+the cycles of thirty years' duration--1710, 1740, 1770 then these
+intervals diminish, and we have a cycle of twenty years--1790, 1810,
+1829-30;  then the intervals widen again--1853 and 1878.  But if we take
+note of the whole duration of the in-flowing tide of the war-like cycle,
+then we shall have at the centre of it--from 1768 to 1812--three wars of
+seven years' duration each, and at both ends, wars of two years.
+
+Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that, in view of facts, it
+becomes thoroughly impossible to deny the presence of a regular
+periodicity in the excitement of both mental and physical forces in the
+nations of the world.  He proves that in the history of all the peoples
+and empires of the Old World, the cycles marking the millenniums, the
+centennials as well as the minor ones of fifty and ten years' duration,
+are the most important, inasmuch as neither of them has ever yet failed
+to bring in its train some more or less marked event in the history of
+the nation swept over by these historical waves.
+
+The history of India is one which, of all histories, is the most vague
+and least satisfactory.  Yet were its consecutive great events noted
+down, and its annals well searched, the law of cycles would be found to
+have asserted itself here as plainly as in every other country in
+respect of its wars, famines, political exigencies, and other matters.
+
+In France, a meteorologist of Paris went to the trouble of compiling the
+statistics of the coldest seasons, and discovered that those years which
+had the figure 9 in them had been marked by the severest winters.  His
+figures run thus:--in 859 A.D., the northern part of the Adriatic Sea
+was frozen, and was covered for three months with ice.  In 1179, In the
+most moderate zones, the earth was covered with several feet of snow.
+In 1209, in France the depth of snow and the bitter cold caused such a
+scarcity of fodder that most of the cattle perished in that country.  In
+1249, the Baltic Sea between Russia, Norway and Sweden remained frozen
+for many months, and communication was kept up by sleighs. In 1339,
+there was such a terrific winter in England, that vast numbers of people
+died of starvation and exposure.  In 1409, the river Danube was frozen
+from its sources to its mouth in the Black Sea.
+
+In 1469, all the vineyards and orchards perished in consequence of the
+frost.  In 1609, in France, Switzerland and Upper Italy, people had to
+thaw their bread and provisions before they could use them.  In 1639,
+the Harbour of Marseilles was covered with ice to a great distance.  In
+1659, all the rivers in Italy were frozen.  In 1699, the winter in
+France and Italy proved the severest and longest of all.  The prices for
+articles of food were so much raised that half of the population died of
+starvation.  In 1709, the winter was no less terrible.  The ground was
+frozen in France, Italy and Switzerland to the depth of several feet;
+and the sea, south as well as north, was covered with one compact and
+thick crust of ice, many feet deep, and for a considerable distance in
+the usually open sea.  Numbers of wild beasts, driven out by the cold
+from their dens in the forests, sought refuge in villages and even
+cities;  and the birds fell dead to the ground by hundreds.  In 1729,
+1749 and 1769 (cycles of twenty years' duration), all the rivers and
+streams were ice-bound all over France for many weeks, and all the fruit
+trees perished.  In 1789, France was again visited by a very severe
+winter.  In Paris, the thermometer stood at nineteen degrees of frost.
+But the severest of all winters proved that of 1829.  For fifty-four
+consecutive days all the roads in France were covered, with snow several
+feet deep, and all the rivers were frozen.  Famine and misery reached
+their climax in the country in that year.  In 1839, there was again in
+France a most terrific and trying cold season.  And the winter of 1879
+has asserted its statistical rights, and proved true to the fatal
+influence of the figure 9.  The meteorologists of other countries are
+invited to follow suit, and make their investigations likewise, for the
+subject is certainly most fascinating as well as most instructive.
+
+Enough has been shown, however, to prove that neither the ideas of
+Pythagoras on the mysterious influence of numbers, nor the theories of
+the ancient world-religions and philosophies are as shallow and
+meaningless as some too forward thinkers would have had the world to
+believe.
+
+--H.P.B.
+
+
+
+
+SCIENTIFIC
+
+
+Odorigen and Jiva
+
+
+Professor Yaeger of Stuttgart has made a very interesting study of the
+sense of smell.  He starts from the fact well known in medical
+jurisprudence, that the blood of an animal when treated by sulphuric, or
+indeed by any other decomposing acid, smells like the animal itself to
+which it belongs.  This holds good even after the blood has been long
+dried.
+
+Let us state before all what is to be understood by the smell of a
+certain animal.  There is the pure, specific smell of the animal,
+inherent in its flesh, or, as we shall see hereafter, in certain
+portions of its flesh.  This smell is best perceived when the flesh is
+gently boiling in water.  The broth thereby obtained contains the
+specific taste and smell of the animal--I call it specific, because
+every species, nay every variety of species, has its own peculiar taste
+and smell.  Think of mutton broth, chicken broth, fish broth, &c. &c.  I
+shall call this smell, the specific scent of the animal.  I need not say
+that the scent of an animal is quite different from all such odours as
+are generated within its organism, along with its various secretions and
+excretions:  bile, gastric juice, sweat, &c.  These odours are again
+different in the different species and varieties of animals.  The
+cutaneous exhalation of the goat, the sheep, the donkey, widely differ
+from each other;  and a similar difference prevails with regard to all
+the other effluvia of these animals. In fact, as far as olfactory
+experience goes, we may say that the odour of each secretion and
+excretion of a certain species of animals is peculiar to itself, and
+characteristically different in the similar products of another species.
+
+By altering the food of an animal we may considerably alter all the
+above-mentioned odours, scents, as well as smells;  yet essentially they
+will always retain their specific odoriferous type.  All this is matter
+of strict experience.
+
+Strongly diffusive as all these odorous substances are, they permeate
+the whole organism, and each of them contributes its share to what in
+the aggregate constitutes the smell of the living animal.  It is
+altogether an excrementitious smell tempered by the scent of the animal.
+That excrementitious smell we shall henceforth simply call the smell, in
+contradistinction to the scent of the animal.
+
+To return after this not very pleasant, but nevertheless necessary
+digression, to our subject.  Professor Yaeger found that blood, treated
+by an acid, may emit the scent or the smell of the animal, according as
+the acid is weak or strong.  A strong acid, rapidly disintegrating the
+blood, brings out the animal's smell; a weak acid, the animal's scent.
+
+We see, then, that in every drop of blood of a certain species of
+animal, and we may as well say, in each of its blood corpuscles, and in
+the last instance, in each of its molecules, the respective animal
+species is fully represented, as to its odorant speciality, under both
+aspects of scent and smell.
+
+We have, then, on the one side, the fact before us that wherever we meet
+in the animal kingdom with difference of shape, form, and construction,
+so different as to constitute a class, a genus, or a family of its own,
+there we meet at the same time with a distinct and specific scent and
+smell.  On the other hand, we know that these specific odours are
+invariably interblended with the very life-blood of the animal.  And
+lastly, we know that these specific odours cannot be accounted for by
+any agents taken up in the shape of food from the outer world.  We are,
+then, driven to the conclusion that they are properties of the inner
+animal;  that they, in other words, pertain to the specific protoplasm
+of the animal concerned.
+
+And thus our conclusion attains almost certainty, when we remember that
+it stands the crucial test of experiment--that we need only decompose
+the blood in order to find there what we contend to be an essential
+ingredient of it.
+
+I must now say a few words in explanation of the term protoplasm.
+Protoplasm is a soft, gelatinous substance, transparent and homogeneous,
+easily seen in large plant-cells;  it may be compared to the white of an
+egg.  When at rest all sorts of vibratory, quivering and trembling
+movements can be observed within its mass.  It forms the living material
+in all vegetable and animal cells;  in fact, it is that component of the
+body which really does the vital work.  It is the formative agent of all
+living tissues.  Vital activity, in the broadest sense of the term,
+manifests itself in the development of the germ into the complete
+organism, repeating the type of its parents, and in the subsequent
+maintenance of that organism in its integrity and both these functions
+are exclusively carried on by the protoplasm.  Of course, there is a
+good deal of chemical and mechanical work done in the organism, but
+protoplasm is the formative agent of all the tissues and structures.
+
+Of tissues and structures already formed, we may fairly say that they
+have passed out of the realms of vitality, as they are destined to
+gradual disintegration and decay in the course of life;  it is they that
+are on the way of being cast out of the organism, when they have once
+run through the scale of retrograde metamorphosis;  and it is they that
+give rise to what we have called the smell of the animal.  What lives in
+them is the protoplasm.
+
+In the shape of food the outer world supplies the organism with all the
+materials necessary for the building up of the constantly wasting
+organic structures;  and, in the shape of heat, there comes from the
+outer world that other element necessary for structural changes,
+development and growth--the element of force. But the task of directing
+all the outward materials to the development and maintenance of the
+organism--in other words, the task of the director-general of the
+organic economy falls to the protoplasm.
+
+Now this wonderful substance, chemically and physically the same in the
+highest animal and in the lowest plant, has been all along the puzzle of
+the biologist.  How is it that in man protoplasm works out human
+structure;  in fowl, fowl structure, &c. &c., while the protoplasm
+itself appears to be everywhere the same? To Professor Yaeger belongs
+the great merit of having shown us that the protoplasms of the various
+species of plants and animals are not the same;  that each of them
+contains, moreover, imbedded in its molecules, odorant substances
+peculiar to the one species and not to the other.
+
+That, on the other hand, those odorous substances are by no means
+inactive bodies, may be inferred from their great volatility, known as
+it is in physical science that volatility is owing to a state of atomic
+activity.  Prevost has described two phenomena that are presented by
+odorous substances.  One is that, when placed on water, they begin to
+move;  and the other is, that a thin layer of water, extended on a
+perfectly clean glass plate, retracts when such an odorous substance as
+camphor is placed upon it.  Monsieur Ligeois has further shown that the
+particles of an odorous body, placed on water, undergo a rapid division,
+and that the movements of camphor, or of benzoic acid, are inhibited, or
+altogether arrested, if an odorous substance be brought into contact
+with the water in which they are moving.
+
+Seeing, then, that odorous substances, when coming in contact with
+liquid bodies, assume a peculiar motion, and impart at the same time
+motion to the liquid body, we may fairly conclude that the specific
+formative capacity of the protoplasm is owing, not to the protoplasm
+itself, since it is everywhere alike, but to the inherent, specific,
+odoriferous substances.
+
+I shall only add that Professor Yaeger's theory may be carried farther
+yet.  Each metal has also a certain taste and odour peculiar to itself;
+in other words, they are also endowed with odoriferous substances.  And
+this may help us to explain the fact that each metal, when crystallizing
+out of a liquid solution, invariably assumes a distinct geometrical
+form, by which it may be distinguished from any other.  Common salt, for
+instance, invariably crystallizes in cubes, alum in octohedra, and so
+on.
+
+Professor Yaeger's theory explains further to us that other great
+mystery of Nature--the transmission from parent to offspring of the
+morphological speciality.  This is another puzzle of the biologist.
+What is there in the embryonal germ that evolves out of the materials
+stored up therein a frame similar to the parents?  In other words, what
+is there that presides over the preservation of the species, working out
+the miniature duplicate of the parents' configuration and character?  It
+is the protoplasm, no doubt;  and the female ovum contains protoplasm in
+abundance.  But neither the physicist nor the chemist can detect any
+difference between the primordial germ, say of the fowl, and that of a
+female of the human race.
+
+In answer to this question--a question before which science stands
+perplexed--we need only remember what has been said before about the
+protoplasmic scent.  We have spoken before of the specific scent of the
+animal as a whole.  We know, however, that every organ and tissue in a
+given animal has again its peculiar scent and taste.  The scent and
+taste of the liver, spleen, brain, &c., are quite different in the same
+animal.
+
+And if our theory is correct, then it could not be otherwise. Each of
+these organs is differently constructed, and as variety of organic
+structure is supposed to be dependent upon variety of scent, there must
+necessarily be a specific cerebral scent, a specific splenetic scent, a
+specific hepatic scent, &c. &c.  What we call, then, the specific scent
+of the living animal must, therefore, be considered as the aggregate of
+all the different scents of its organs.
+
+When we see that a weak solution of sulphuric acid is capable of
+disengaging from the blood the scent of the animal, we shall then bear
+in mind that this odorous emanation contains particles of all the scents
+peculiar to each tissue and organ of the animal.  When we further say
+that each organ in a living animal draws by selective affinity from the
+blood those materials which are necessary for its sustenance, we must
+not forget that each organ draws at the same time by a similar selective
+affinity the specific odorous substances requisite for its constructive
+requirements.
+
+We have now only to suppose that the embryonal germ contains, like the
+blood itself, all the odorous substances pertaining to the various
+tissues and organs of the parent, and we shall understand which is the
+moving principle in the germ that evolves an offspring, shaped in the
+image and after the likeness of the parents.
+
+In plants it is the blossom which is entrusted with the function of
+reproduction, and the odorous emanations accompanying that process are
+well known.  There is strong reason to believe that something similar
+prevails in the case of animals, as may be seen from an examination of
+what embryologists call the aura seminalis.
+
+Let us now inquire what the effects are of odours generated in the outer
+world on animals.  The odorous impressions produced may be pleasant or
+unpleasant, pleasant to one and unpleasant to another animal.  What is
+it that constitutes this sensation of pleasure or displeasure?
+Professor Yaeger answers, It is harmony or disharmony which makes all
+the difference.  The olfactory organs of each animal are impregnated by
+its own specific scent. Whenever the odorous waves of a substance
+harmonize in their vibration with the odorous waves emanating from the
+animal;  in other words, whenever they fall in and agree with each
+other, an agreeable sensation is produced;  whenever the reverse takes
+places, the sensation is disagreeable.  In this way it is that the odour
+regulates the choice of the food on the part of the animal.  In a
+similar way the sympathies and antipathies between the various animals
+are regulated.  For every individual has not only its specific but also
+its individual scent.  The selection between the sexes, or what, in the
+case of the human race, is called love, has its mainspring in the
+odorous harmony subsisting in the two individuals concerned.
+
+This individual scent--a variation of the specific odorous type--alters
+(within the limits of its speciality) with age, with the particular mode
+of occupation, with the sex, with certain physiological conditions and
+functions during life, with the state of health, and last, but not
+least, with the state of our mind.
+
+It is to be remembered that every time protoplasm undergoes
+disintegration, specific odours are set free.  We have seen how
+sulphuric acid, or heat, when boiling or roasting meat, brings out the
+specific animal odour.  But it is an established fact in science, that
+every physical or mental operation is accompanied by disintegration of
+tissue;  consequently we are entitled to say that with every emotion
+odours are being disengaged.  It can be shown that the quality of those
+odours differ with the nature of the emotion.  The prescribed limits
+prevent further pursuit of the subject;  I shall, therefore, content
+myself by drawing some conclusions from Professor Yaeger's theory in the
+light of the Esoteric Doctrine.
+
+The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the
+theory just enunciated.  For since the construction and preservation of
+the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific
+scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of
+the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular
+organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to
+that particular organ.  We have been hitherto in the habit of holding
+the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease.  We have now
+come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall,
+therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid
+phenomena.  I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois,
+showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water,
+move;  and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be
+inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another
+odoriferous substance.  Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in
+particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours
+which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours.  In the case of
+hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid
+specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil,
+knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is
+altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent.
+
+Now comes the mesmeriser.  He approaches the sick with the strong
+determination to cure him.  This determination, or effort of the will,
+is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers,
+for his curative success.  Now an effort of the will is a mental
+operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration.  The
+effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by
+disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of
+organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific
+scents;  the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from
+his own body.  And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate
+from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well
+see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may
+effect a cure.  He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances
+in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing,
+as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does
+act on odorant matter.
+
+One remark more and I have done.  By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told
+that the living body is divided into two parts:
+
+1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most
+tangible form.
+
+2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and,
+when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately
+by others.
+
+Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings
+of science.  I need only remind you of what I have said before with
+regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its
+formative agent the protoplasm.  Formed structure is considered as
+material which has already passed out of the realms of life;  what lives
+in it is the protoplasm.  So far the esoteric conception fully agrees
+with the result of the latest investigations of modern science.
+
+But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle
+is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground,
+for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body
+itself.  It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the
+only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts.  But it
+dies with the cessation of life.  It is true it is capable of a sort of
+resuscitation.  For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or
+vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal
+world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy.  But for
+all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible;  it is
+assimilable--that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life,
+through its being taken up by a living body.  But such an eventual
+chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of
+indestructibility;  for we need only leave the dead animal or plant
+containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay--organs,
+tissues, and protoplasm altogether.
+
+To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital
+principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which,
+when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately
+by others.  The vital principle to the Esoteric Doctrine would then
+appear to be a sort of abstract force, not a force inherent in the
+living protoplasm--this is the scientific conception--but a force per
+se, independent altogether of the material with which it is connected.
+
+Now I must confess this is a doctrine which puzzles one greatly,
+although one may have no difficulty in accepting the spirit of man as an
+entity, for the phenomena of ratiocination are altogether so widely
+different from all physical phenomena that they can hardly be explained
+by any of the physical forces known to us.  The materialist, who tells
+us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of
+the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether
+so many outcomes of certain conditions of matter and nothing else, makes
+at best merely a subjective statement.  He cannot help acknowledging
+that spontaneity is not a quality of matter.  He is then driven to the
+contention that what we believe to be spontaneous in us, is, after all,
+an unconscious result of external impulses only.  His contention rests
+then on the basis of his own inner experience, or what he believes to be
+such. This contention of his is, however, disputed by many, who no less
+appeal to their own inner experience, or what they believe to be their
+experience.  It is then a question of inner experience of the one party
+versus inner experience of the other.  And such being the case, the
+scientific materialist is driven to admit that his theory, however
+correct it may be, rests, after all, on subjective experience, and can,
+as such, not claim the rank of positive knowledge.  There is then no
+difficulty in accepting the entity of the spirit in man, the
+materialistic assertion to the contrary notwithstanding.  But the vital
+force is exclusively concerned with the construction of matter.  Here we
+have a right to expect that physical and chemical forces should hold the
+whole ground of an explanation, if an explanation is possible at all.
+Now, physical and chemical forces are no entities;  they are invariably
+connected with matter.  In fact, they are so intimately connected with
+matter that they can never be dissevered from it altogether.  The energy
+of matter may be latent or patent, and, when patent, it may manifest
+itself in one form or the other, according to the condition of its
+surroundings;  it may manifest itself in the shape of light, heat,
+electricity, magnetism, or vitality;  but in one form or the other
+energy constantly inheres in matter.  The correlation of forces is now a
+well-established, scientific fact, and it is more than plausible that
+what is called the vital principle, or the vital force, forms a link in
+the chain of the other known physical forces, and is, therefore,
+transmutable into any of them;  granted even that there is such a thing
+as a distinct vital force.  The tendency of modern Biology is then to
+discard the notion of a vital entity altogether.  If vital force is to
+be indestructible, then so are also indestructible heat, light,
+electricity, &c.;  they are indestructible in this sense, that whenever
+their respective manifestation is suspended or arrested, they make their
+appearance in some other form of force;  and in this very same sense
+vital force may be looked upon as indestructible:  whenever vital
+manifestation is arrested, what had been acting as vital force is
+transformed into chemical, electrical forces, &c., taking its place.
+
+But the Esoteric Doctrine appears to teach something quite different
+from what I have just explained, and what is, as far as I understand, a
+fair representation of the scientific conception of the subject.  The
+Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is indestructible,
+and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted by
+others.  He then evidently holds that, what constitutes the vital
+principle is a principle or form of force per se, a form of force which
+can leave one set of atoms and go over as such to another set, without
+leaving any substitute force behind.  This, it must be said, is simply
+irreconcileable with the scientific view on the subject as hitherto
+understood.
+
+By the and of Professor Yaeger's theory this difficulty can be
+explained, I am happy to say, in a most satisfactory way.
+
+The seat of the vital principle, according to Professor Yaeger's theory,
+is not the protoplasm, but the odorant matter imbedded in it.  And such
+being the case, the vital principle, as far as it can be reached by the
+breaking up of its animated protoplasm, is really indestructible.  You
+destroy the protoplasm by burning it, by treating it with sulphuric
+acid, or any other decomposing agent--the odoriferous substances, far
+from being destroyed, become only so much the more manifest;  they
+escape the moment protoplasmic destruction or decomposition begins,
+carrying along with them the vital principle, or what has been acting as
+such in the protoplasm.  And as they are volatile, they must soon meet
+with other protoplasms congenial to their nature, and set up there the
+same kind of vital activity as they have done in their former habitat.
+They are, as the Esoteric Doctrine rightly teaches, indestructible, and
+when disconnected with one set of atoms, they immediately become
+attracted by others.
+
+--L. Salzer, M.D.
+
+
+
+
+
+Odorigen and Jiva (II.)
+
+
+There is a well-known Sanskrit treatise, where most of the deductions of
+Dr. Yaeger are anticipated and practically applied to sexual selection
+in the human species.  The subject of aura seminalis finds a pretty full
+treatment there.  The connection between what Dr. Yaeger calls
+"odorigen" and jiva or prana, as it is differently called in different
+systems of Indian philosophy, has been well traced.  But his remarks on
+this subject, able as they no doubt are, call for a few observations
+from the point of view of occult philosophy.  Jiva has been described by
+a trustworthy authority as a "form of force indestructible, and, when
+disconnected with one set of atoms, is immediately attracted by another
+set."  Dr. Salzer concludes from this that occult philosophy looks upon
+it as an abstract force or force per se. But surely this is bending too
+much to the Procrustean phraseology of modern science, and if not
+properly guarded will lead to some misapprehension.  Matter in occult
+philosophy means existence in the widest sense of that word.  However
+much the various forms of existence, such as physical, vital, mental,
+spiritual, &c., differ from each other, they are mutually related as
+being parts of the ONE UNIVERSAL EXISTENCE, the Parabrahma of the
+Vedantist.  Force is the inherent power or capacity of Parabrahma, or
+the "matter" of occultism, to assume different forms.  This power or
+capacity is not a separate entity, but is the thing itself in which it
+inheres, just as the three-angled character of a triangle is nothing
+separate from the triangle itself.  From this it will be abundantly
+clear that, accepting the nomenclature of occult science, one cannot
+speak of an abstract force without being guilty of a palpable absurdity.
+What is meant by Jiva being a "form of force," &c., is that it is matter
+in a state in which it exhibits certain phenomena, not produced by it in
+its sensuous state;  or, in other words, it is a property of matter in a
+particular state, corresponding with properties called, under ordinary
+circumstances, heat, electricity, &c., by modern science, but at the
+same time without any correlation to them.  It might here be objected
+that if Jiva was not a force per se, in the sense which modern science
+would attach to the phrase, then how can it survive unchanged the grand
+change called death, which the protoplasms it inheres in undergo? and
+even granting that Jiva is matter in a particular state, in what part of
+the body shall we locate it, in the teeth of the fact that the most
+careful examination has not been successful in detecting it?  Jiva, as
+has already been stated, is subtle supersensuous matter, permeating the
+entire physical structure of the living being, and when it is separated
+from such structure life is said to become extinct.  It is not
+reasonable therefore to expect it to be subject to detection by the
+surgeon's knife. A particular set of conditions is necessary for its
+connection with an animal structure, and when those conditions are
+disturbed, it is attracted by other bodies, presenting suitable
+conditions.  Dr. Yaegar's "odorigen" is not Jiva itself, but is one of
+the links which connects it with the physical body;  it seems to be
+matter standing between Sthula Sarira (gross body) and Jiva.
+
+--Dharanidar Kauthumi
+
+
+
+
+Introversion of Mental Vision
+
+
+Some interesting experiments have recently been tried by Mr. F.W.H.
+Myers and his colleagues of the Psychic Research Society of London,
+which, if properly examined, are capable of yielding highly important
+results.  With the details of these we are not at present concerned:  it
+will suffice for our purpose to state, for the benefit of readers
+unacquainted with the experiments, that in a very large majority of
+cases, too numerous to be the result of mere chance, it was found that
+the thought-reading sensitive obtained but an inverted mental picture of
+the object given him to read.  A piece of paper, containing the
+representation of an arrow, was held before a carefully blindfolded
+thought-reader, who was requested to mentally see the arrow as it was
+turned round.  In these circumstances it was found that when the
+arrow-head pointed to the right, it was read off as pointing to the
+left, and so on.  This led some to imagine that there was a mirage in
+the inner as well as on the outer plane of optical sensation.  But the
+real explanation of the phenomenon lies deeper.
+
+It is well known that an object as seen by us and its image on the
+retina of the eye, are not exactly the same in position, but quite the
+reverse.  How the image of an object on the retina is inverted in
+sensation, is a mystery which physical science is admittedly incapable
+of solving.  Western metaphysics, too, with regard to this point, hardly
+fares any better;  there are as many theories as there are
+metaphysicians.  The only philosopher who has obtained a glimpse of the
+truth is the idealist Berkeley, who says that a child does really see a
+thing inverted from our standpoint;  to touch its head it stretches out
+its hands in the same direction of its body as we do of ours to reach
+our feet. Repeated failures give experience and lead to the correction
+of the notions born of one sense by those derived through another; the
+sensations of distance and solidity are produced in the same way.
+
+The application of this knowledge to the above mentioned experiments of
+the Psychic Research Society will lead to very suggestive results.  If
+the trained adept is a person who has developed all his interior
+faculties, and is on the psychic plane in the full possession of his
+senses, the individual, who accidentally, that is, without occult
+training, gains the inner sight, is in the position of a helpless
+child--a sport of the freaks of one isolated inner sense.  Such was the
+case with the sensitives with whom Mr. Myers and his colleagues
+experimented. There are instances, however, when the correction of one
+sense by another takes place involuntarily and accurate results are
+brought out.  When the sensitive reads the thoughts in a man's mind,
+this correction is not required, for the will of the thinker shoots the
+thoughts, as it were, straight into the mind of the sensitive.  The
+introversion under notice will, moreover, be found to take place only in
+the instance of such images which cannot be corrected by the already
+acquired sense-experience of the sensitive.  A difficulty may here
+suggest itself with regard to the names of persons or the words thought
+of for the sensitive's reading.  But allowance must in such cases be
+made for the operation of the thinker's will, which forces the thought
+into the sensitive's mind, and thereby obviates introversion.  It is
+abundantly clear from this that the best way of studying these phenomena
+is when only one set of inner faculties, that of the sensitive, is in
+play.  This takes place always when the object the sensitive has to
+abnormally perceive is independent of the will of any other person, as
+in the case of its being represented on paper.
+
+Applying the same law to dreams, we can find the rationale of the
+popular superstition that facts are generally inverted in dreams. To
+dream of something good is generally taken to be the precursor of
+something evil.  In the exceptional cases in which dreams have been
+found to be prophetic, the dreamer was either affected by another's will
+or under the operation of some disturbing forces, which cannot be
+calculated except for each particular case.
+
+In this connection another very important psychic phenomenon may be
+noticed.  Instances are too numerous and too well authenticated to be
+amenable to dispute, in which an occurrence at a distance--for instance,
+the death of a person--has pictured itself to the mental vision of one
+interested in the occurrence. In such cases the double of the dying man
+appears even at a great distance, and becomes visible usually to his
+friend only, but instances are not rare when the double is seen by a
+number of persons.  The former case comes within the class of cases
+under consideration, as the concentrated thought of the dying man is
+clairvoyantly seen by the friend, and the incidents correctly reproduced
+by the operation of the dying man's will-energy, while the latter is the
+appearance of the genuine mayavirupa, and therefore not governed by the
+law under discussion.
+
+--Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+
+
+"Precipitation"
+
+
+Or all phenomena produced by occult agency in connection with our
+Society, none have been witnessed by a more extended circle of
+spectators, or more widely known and commented on through recent
+Theosophical publications, than the mysterious production of letters.
+The phenomenon itself has been so well described in the "Occult World"
+and elsewhere, that it would be useless to repeat the description here.
+Our present purpose is more connected with the process than the
+phenomenon of the mysterious formation of letters.  Mr. Sinnett sought
+for an explanation of the process, and elicited the following reply from
+the revered Mahatma, who corresponds with him:--"....Bear in mind these
+letters are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all
+mistakes corrected .... I have to think it over, to photograph every
+word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by
+precipitation.  As the fixing on chemically-prepared surfaces of the
+images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the
+focus of the object to be represented, for, otherwise--as often found
+in bad photographs--the legs of the sitter might appear out of all
+proportion with the head, and so on--so we here to first arrange our
+sentences, and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds,
+before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell
+you."
+
+Since the above was written, the Masters have been pleased to permit the
+veil to be drawn aside a little more, and the modus operandi can thus be
+explained now more fully to the outsider.
+
+Those having even a superficial knowledge of the science of mesmerism
+know how the thoughts of the mesmeriser, though silently formulated in
+his mind, are instantly transferred to that of the subject.  It is not
+necessary for the operator, if he is sufficiently powerful, to be
+present near the subject to produce the above result.  Some celebrated
+practitioners in this science are known to have been able to put their
+subjects to sleep even from a distance of several days' journey.  This
+known fact will serve us as a guide in comprehending the comparatively
+unknown subject now under discussion.  The work of writing the letters
+in question is carried on by a sort of psychic telegraphy;  the
+Mahatmas very rarely write their letters in the ordinary way.  An
+electro-magnetic connection, so to say, exists on the psychic plane
+between a Mahatma and his chelas, one of whom acts as his amanuensis.
+When the Master wants a letter to be written in this way, he very often
+draws the attention of the chela, whom he selects for the task, by
+causing an astral bell (heard by so many of our Fellows and others) to
+be rung near him, just as the despatching telegraph office signals to
+the receiving office before wiring the message.  The thoughts arising in
+the mind of the Mahatma are then clothed in words, pronounced mentally,
+and forced along currents in the astral light impinge on the brain of
+the pupil. Thence they are borne by the nerve-currents to the palms of
+his hands and the tips of his fingers, which rest on a piece of
+magnetically-prepared paper.  As the thought waves are thus impressed on
+the tissue, materials are drawn to it from the ocean of akas (permeating
+every atom of the sensuous universe) by an occult process, out of place
+here to describe, and permanent marks are left.
+
+From this it is abundantly clear that the success of such writing, as
+above described, depends chiefly upon two conditions:--(1) The force
+and clearness with which the thoughts are propelled;  and (2) the
+freedom of the receiving brain from disturbance of every description.
+The case with the ordinary electric telegraph is exactly the same.  If,
+for some reason or other, the battery supplying the electric power falls
+below the requisite strength on any telegraph line, or there is some
+derangement in the receiving apparatus, the message transmitted becomes
+either mutilated or otherwise imperfectly legible. Inaccuracies, in
+fact, do very often arise, as may be gathered from what the Mahatma says
+in the above extract.  "Bear in mind," says he, "that these letters are
+not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes
+corrected."  To turn to the sources of error in the precipitation.
+Remembering the circumstances under which blunders arise in telegrams,
+we see that if a Mahatma somehow becomes exhausted, or allows his
+thoughts to wander during the process, or fails to command the requisite
+intensity in the astral currents along which his thoughts are projected,
+or the distracted attention of the pupil produces disturbances in his
+brain and nerve-centres, the success of the process is very much
+interfered with.
+
+It is to be regretted that illustrations of the above general principles
+are not permitted to be published.  Enough, however, has been disclosed
+to give the public a clue to many apparent mysteries in regard to
+precipitated letters, and to draw all earnest and sincere inquirers
+strongly to the path of spiritual progress, which alone can lead to the
+comprehension of occult phenomena.
+
+--Anon.
+
+
+
+
+"How Shall We Sleep?"
+
+
+It appears that the opinion of Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose and of Baron Von
+Reichenbach are in direct conflict on the subject of this paper, the
+latter recommending the head of the sleeper to be northward, the former
+entirely condemning that position.
+
+It is my humble opinion that both writers are right, each from his own
+standpoint, as I shall try to show.  What is the reason that our
+position in sleep should be of any consequence?  Because our body must
+be in a position at harmony with the main magnetic currents of the
+earth;  but as these currents are not the same in all parts of the world
+the positions of the sleeper must, therefore, vary.
+
+There are three main magnetic currents on our earth--viz., in the
+northern hemisphere, from north pole towards the equator;  in the
+southern hemisphere, from south pole towards the equator;  these two
+currents meeting in the torrid zone continue their combined course from
+east to west.  So the position of the sleeper must vary according as he
+finds himself to the north or south of the torrid zone or within it.
+
+In the north frigid or temperate zone, he has to lie with his head
+northward;  in the southern, southward;  in the torrid zone, eastward--
+in order that the magnetic current may pass through him from head to
+foot without disturbance, as this is the natural position for
+magnetization.
+
+The following diagram may give a clearer view of the case, and thus help
+us to answer the second part of the question, whether and when we ought
+to lie on the right or the left side, on the stomach or on the back:--
+
+[[Diagram here]]
+
+The able writer of  "How Shall we Sleep?" shows, in his cross diagram,
+that he thinks the head to be entirely positive and both feet negative.
+I think that this is not the case, but that the right side of the head
+and the left foot are positive, and the left side of the head and the
+right foot negative, and similarly the right hand is negative and the
+left hand is positive.
+
+As the north pole is positive and the left side of the head negative,
+the natural position in sleep for those living within the northern zones
+would be on the right side, head northward; and it is obvious that in
+the southern zones the position must be exactly the reverse.  As to
+those who live under the tropics, lying on the stomach seems to me to be
+the most natural position, since the left, or negative side of the head,
+is turned to the north or positive current, and vice versa.
+
+For many years I and my family have been sleeping with our heads either
+to the north or the west (the right position in our hemisphere, in my
+opinion), and we had no occasion to regret it; for from that time
+forward the physician has become a rare visitor in our house.
+
+Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose says, in his interesting paper on "Medical
+Magnetism," that Mandulies (metallic cells) are worn to great advantage
+in India on diseased parts of the body.  The curative properties of
+these cells I have seen verified in authentic instances.  When, years
+ago (I believe about 1852), cholera was devastating some parts of
+Europe, it was remarked at Munich (Bavaria) that among the thousands of
+its victims there was not a single coppersmith.  Hence, it was
+recommended by the medical authorities of that town to wear disks of
+thin copperplate (of about 2 1/2 inch diameter) on a string, on the pit
+of the stomach, and they proved to be a powerful preventive of cholera.
+Again, in 1867, cholera visited Odessa.
+
+I and my whole family wore these copper disks;  and while all around
+there were numerous cases of cholera and dysentery, not one of us was
+attacked.  I propose that serious experiments should be made in this
+direction, and specially in those countries which are periodically
+devastated by that disease:  as India, for instance.  It is my
+conviction that one disk of copper on the stomach, and another of zinc
+on the spine, opposite the former, will be of still better service, the
+more so if the disks are joined by a thin copper chain.
+
+--Gustave Zorn
+
+
+In the first place it is necessary to say that the rules laid down by
+Garga, Markandeya and others on the above subject, refer to the
+inhabitants of the plains only, and not to dwellers on mountains.  The
+rule is that on retiring a man should first lie on his right side for
+the period of sixteen breathings, then turn on his left for double that
+time, and after that he can sleep in any position.  Further, that a man
+must not sleep on the ground, on silken or woollen cloth, under a
+solitary tree, where cross-roads meet, on mountains, or on the sky
+(whatever that may mean). Nor is he to sleep with damp clothes, wet
+feet, or in a naked state;  and, unless an initiate, should not sleep on
+Kusha grass or its varieties.  There are many more such rules.  I may
+here notice that in Sanskrit the right hand or side and south are
+signified by the same term.  So also the front and north have one and
+the same name.  The sun is the great and chief source of life and
+magnetism in the solar system.
+
+Hence to the world the east is positive as the source of light and
+magnetism.  For the same reason, to the northern hemisphere the south
+(the equator and not the north) is positive.  Under the laws of dynamics
+the resultant of these two forces will be a current in the directed from
+S.E. to N.W.  This, I think, is one of the real causes of the prevailing
+south-east wind.  At any rate, I do not think the north pole to be
+positive, as there would be no snow there in such a case.  The aurora
+cannot take place at the source of the currents, but at their close.
+Hence the source must be towards the equator or south.  The course of
+life, civilization, light, and almost everything seems to be from E. to
+W. or S.E. to N.W.  The penalty for sleeping with the head to the west
+is said to be anxiety of mind, while sleeping with the head to the north
+is considered fatal.  I beg to invite the attention of the Hindus to a
+similar penalty of death incurred by any but an initiate (Brahman)
+pronouncing the sacred Pranava (Om).  This does not prove that Pranava
+is really a mischievous bad word, but that, with incompetent men, it is
+fraught with danger.  So also, in the case of ordinary men of the
+plains, there may be unknown dangers which it would not be prudent for
+them to risk so long as they do not know how to meet them, or so long as
+they are not under the guidance of men who can protect them.  In short,
+ordinary men should move on in their beaten course, and these rules are
+for them only.
+
+As an instance of the infringement of the rule the following anecdote is
+given:--
+
+After Ganesha (Siva's son) was born, all the Devas (gods) came to
+congratulate the family and bless the child.  Sani or Saturn, was the
+last to come, and even then he came after he had been several times
+inquired after.  When he went to see the infant, it appeared headless!
+This at once created a sensation, and all the Devas were at their wits'
+end.  At last Saturn himself approached Mahadeva with folded hands and
+reminded him that it was due to his presence, and the child having been
+kept in a bed with its head to the north.  For such was the law.  Then
+the Devas consulted together and sent out messengers to find out who
+else was sleeping with the head to the north.  At last they discovered
+an elephant in that position.  Its head was immediately cut off and
+placed on the shoulders of Ganesha.  It need not be said that Ganesha
+became afterwards so learned and wise that if he had not had an
+elephant's head, a human head would never have been sufficient to hold
+all he knew.  This advantage he owed to the circumstance of his sleeping
+with head to the north, and the blessing of the Devas.  To the elephant,
+the same position but minus the blessing of the Devas proved absolute
+death.
+
+--Nobin K. Bannerji
+
+
+
+Reading Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose's paper on "Medical Magnetism" and having
+studied long ago Baron von Reichenbach's "Researches in Magnetism," I am
+sorely puzzled, inasmuch as these two authorities appear to clash with
+each other most completely--the one asserting "head to north never,
+under no circumstances," the other "head to north ever and under all
+circumstances."  I have pursued the advice of the latter, not knowing of
+the former for many years, but have not found the effect on my health
+which I had hoped for, and what is of more importance, I have not found
+a law of certain application to humanity and bringing health to all.  It
+seems to me on carefully reading this article that a most important
+point has been omitted or passed over--i.e., the position of the
+sleeper, whether on his face or on his back? This is most important, for
+a correct answer may go far to reconcile the two theories, which, be it
+remembered, claim both to be supported by experiment and by observation.
+I cannot conceive that a one-sided position is a natural one for man,
+and thus leave two alternatives.  Is the proper position in sleep lying
+on the back or on the stomach?  Not one word has been said as to the
+position in which experiments were tried on either side.
+
+Now the one thing which seems clear in all this is, that positive should
+be toward negative and negative toward positive.  Let us then draw a
+diagram and these positions will follow with these results--taking the
+north as positive and south as negative, east as negative and west as
+positive.
+
+Position I.--Lying on the Back.
+
+A. Head to East ............ Accord in all
+B. Head to North ..........  Discord--Head and feet
+                             Accord--Hands.
+C. Head to South ........... Accord--Head and feet.
+                             Discord--Hands.
+D. Head to West ............ Discord in all.
+
+---529
+
+
+[[Diagram here]]
+
+
+Position II.--Lying on Stomach
+
+A'. Head to East ........ Accord--in Head and feet
+                          Discord--in Hands
+B'. Head to North ....... Discord in all
+C'. Head to South ....... Accord in all
+D'. Head to West ........ Discord--Head and feet
+                          Accord--Hands
+
+Now, from this will come some light, I think on the apparently
+contradictory theories, if we could ascertain:  (1) Which position did
+the renowned Garga and Markandeya contemplate as the proper position for
+men to sleep in?  (2) In which position did those on whom Baron von
+Reichenbach experimented lie?
+
+This is a most important question for all who value the gift of health,
+as well as for those who would be wise.  In my sojourn in southern
+countries I have noticed that the natives of the lower classes at least
+always sleep on their stomachs, with their back turned to the sun, and
+all animals do the same, while sleeping on the back is most dangerous,
+at least in the sun.  Is not this a guide or hint as to the true
+position?
+
+Transmigration of the Life-Atoms
+
+It is said that "for three thousand years at least the 'mummy,' not
+withstanding all the chemical preparations, goes on throwing off to the
+last invisible atoms, which, from the hour of death, reentering the
+various vortices of being, go indeed through every variety of organized
+life-forms.  But it is not the soul, the fifth, least of all the sixth
+principle, but the life-atoms of the Jiva, the second principle.  At the
+end of the 3,000 years, sometimes more, and sometimes less, after
+endless transmigrations, all these atoms are once more drawn together,
+and are made to form the new outer clothing or the body of the same
+monad (the real soul) which they had already clothed two or three
+thousand years before.  Even in the worst case, that of the annihilation
+of the conscious personal principle, the monad or individual soul is
+ever the same, as are also the atoms of the lower principles, which,
+regenerated and renewed in this ever-flowing river of being, are
+magnetically drawn together owing to their affinity, and are once more
+reincarnated together."
+
+This little passage is a new instalment of occult teaching given to the
+public, and opens up a vast field for thought.  It suggests, in the
+first instance, that the exoteric doctrine of the transmigration of the
+soul through lower forms of existence--so generally believed in by the
+Hindus, though incorrect as regards the soul (fifth principle)--has some
+basis of truth when referred to the lower principles.
+
+It is stated further that the mummy goes on throwing off invisible
+atoms, which go through every variety of organized life-forms, and
+further on it is stated that it is the life-atoms of the Jiva, the
+second principle, that go through these transmigrations.
+
+According to the esoteric teaching, the Jiva "is a form of force
+indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming
+attracted immediately by others."
+
+What, then, is meant by the life-atoms, and their going through endless
+transmigrations?
+
+The invisible atoms of the mummy would mean the imperceptibly decaying
+atoms of the physical body, and the life-atoms of the Jiva would be
+quite distinct from the atoms of the mummy.  Is it meant to imply that
+both the invisible atoms of the physical body, as well as the atoms of
+the Jiva, after going through various life-forms, return again to
+re-form the physical body, and the Jiva of the entity that has reached
+the end of its Devachanic state and is ready to be reincarnated again?
+
+It is taught, again, that even in the worst case (the annihilation of
+the Personal Ego) the atoms of the lower principles are the same as in
+the previous birth.  Here, does the term "lower principles" include the
+Kama rupa also, or only the lower triad of body, Jiva, and Lingasarira?
+It seems the Kama rupa in that particular case cannot be included, for
+in the instance of the annihilation of the personal soul, the Kama rupa
+would be in the eighth sphere.
+
+Another question also suggests itself.  The fourth principle (Kama rupa)
+and the lower portion of the fifth, which cannot be assimilated by the
+sixth, wander about as shells, and in time disperse into the elements of
+which they are made.  Do the atoms of these principles also reunite,
+after going through various transmigrations, to constitute over again
+the fourth and the lower fifth of the next incarnation?
+
+--N.D.K.
+
+Note
+
+We would, to begin with, draw attention to the closing sentence of the
+passage quoted above:  "Such was the true occult theory of the
+Egyptians," the word "true" being used there in the sense of its being
+the doctrine they really believed in, as distinct from both the tenets
+fathered upon them by some Orientalists, and that which the modern
+occultists may be now teaching.  It does not stand to reason that,
+outside those occult truths that were known to, and revealed by, the
+great Hierophants during the final initiation, we should accept all that
+either the Egyptians or any other people may have regarded as true.  The
+Priests of Isis were the only true initiates, and their occult teachings
+were still more veiled than those of the Chaldeans.  There was the true
+doctrine of the Hierophants of the inner Temple;  then the half-veiled
+Hieratic tenets of the Priest of the outer Temple;  and, finally, the
+vulgar popular religion of the great body of the ignorant, who were
+allowed to reverence animals as divine.  As shown correctly by Sir
+Gardner Wilkinson, the initiated priests taught that "dissolution is
+only the cause of reproduction .... nothing perishes which has once
+existed, but things which appear to be destroyed only change their
+natures and pass into another form."  To the present case, however, the
+Egyptian doctrine of atoms coincides with our own occult teachings.  In
+the above remarks the words, "The life-atoms of the Jiva," are taken in
+a strictly literal sense.  Without any doubt Jiva or Prana is quite
+distinct from the atoms it animates.  The latter belong to the lowest or
+grossest state of matter--the objectively conditioned; the former, to a
+higher state--that state which the uninitiated, ignorant of its nature,
+would call the "objectively finite," but which, to avoid any future
+misunderstanding, we may, perhaps, be permitted to call the subjectively
+eternal, though, at the same time and in one sense, the subsistent
+existence, however paradoxical and unscientific the term may appear.*
+Life, the occultist says, is the eternal uncreated energy, and it alone
+represents in the infinite universe, that which the physicists have
+agreed to name the principle, or the law of continuity, though they
+apply it only to the endless development of the conditioned.
+
+But since modern science admits, through her most learned professors,
+that "energy has as much claim to be regarded as an objective reality as
+matter itself"** and as life, according to the occult doctrine, is the
+one energy acting, Proteus-like, under the most varied forms, the
+occultists have a certain right to use such phraseology.  Life is ever
+present in the atom or matter, whether organic or inorganic--a
+difference that the occultists do not accept.  Their doctrine is that
+life is as much present in the inorganic as in the organic matter:  when
+life-energy is active in the atom, that atom is organic;  when dormant
+or latent, then the atom is inorganic.
+
+--------
+* Though there is a distinct term for it in the language of the adepts,
+how can one translate it into a European language?  What name can be
+given to that which is objective yet immaterial in its finite
+manifestations, subjective yet substantive (though not in our sense of
+substance) in its eternal existence?  Having explained it the best we
+can, we leave the task of finding a more appropriate term for it to our
+learned English occultists.
+
+** "Unseen Universe."
+----------
+
+Therefore, the expression "life-atom," though apt in one sense to
+mislead the reader, is not incorrect after all, since occultists do not
+recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic, and know of no "dead
+atoms," whatever meaning science may give to the adjective.  The law of
+biogenesis, as ordinarily understood, is the result of the ignorance of
+the man of science of occult physics.  It is accepted because the man of
+science is unable to find the necessary means to awaken into activity
+the dormant life inherent in what he terms an inorganic atom;  hence the
+fallacy that a living thing can only be produced from a living thing, as
+though there ever was such a thing as dead matter in Nature!  At this
+rate, and to be consistent, a mule ought to be also classed with
+inorganic matter, since it is unable to reproduce itself and generate
+life.  We dwell so much upon the above as it meets at once all future
+opposition to the idea that a mummy, several thousand years old, can be
+throwing off atoms.  Nevertheless, the sentence would perhaps have
+gained in clearness if we had said, instead of the "life-atoms of jiva,"
+the atoms "animated by dormant Jiva or life-energy."  Again, the
+definition of Jiva quoted above, though quite correct on the whole,
+might be more fully, if not more clearly, expressed.  The "jiva," or
+life, principle, which animates man, beast, plant, and even a mineral,
+certainly is "a form of force indestructible," since this force is the
+one life, or anima mundi, the universal living soul, and that the
+various modes in which objective things appear to us in Nature in their
+atomic aggregations, such as minerals, plants, animals, &c., are all the
+different forms or states in which this force manifests itself.  Were it
+to become--we will not say absent, for this is impossible, since it is
+omnipresent--but for one single instant inactive, say in a stone, the
+particles of the latter would lose instantly their cohesive property,
+and disintegrate as suddenly, though the force would still remain in
+each of its particles, but in a dormant state.  Then the continuation of
+the definition, which states that when this indestructible force is
+"disconnected with one set of atoms, it becomes attracted immediately by
+others," does not imply that it abandons entirely the first set, but
+only that it transfers its vis viva, or living power--the energy of
+motion--to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next set
+as what is called kinetic energy, it does not follow that the first set
+is deprived of it altogether;  for it is still in it, as potential
+energy, or life latent.*  This is a cardinal and basic truth of
+occultism, on the perfect knowledge of which depends the production of
+every phenomenon.  Unless we admit this point, we should have to give up
+all the other truths of occultism.  Thus what is "meant by the life-atom
+going through endless transmigration" is simply this: we regard and
+call, in our occult phraseology, those atoms that are moved by kinetic
+energy as "life-atoms," while those that are for the time being passive,
+containing but imperceptible potential energy, we call "sleeping atoms;"
+regarding, at the same time, these two forms of energy as produced by
+one and the same force or life.
+
+-------
+* We feel constrained to make use of terms that have become technical in
+modern science--though they do not always fully express the idea to be
+conveyed--for want of better words.  It is useless to hope that the
+occult doctrine may be ever thoroughly understood, even the few tenets
+that can be safely given to the world at large, unless a glossary of
+such words is edited;  and, what is of a still greater importance, until
+the full and correct meaning of the terms therein taught is thoroughly
+mastered.
+---------
+
+Now to the Hindu doctrine of Metempsychosis.  It has a basis of truth;
+and, in fact, it is an axiomatic truth, but only in reference to human
+atoms and emanations, and that not only after a man's death, but during
+the whole period of his life.  The esoteric meaning of the Laws of Manu
+(sec. XII. 3, and XII. 54 and ), of the verses asserting that "every
+act, either mental, verbal or corporeal, bears good or evil fruit
+(Karma)," that "the various transmigrations of men (not souls) through
+the highest, middle and lowest stages, are produced by their actions,"
+and again that "a Brahman-killer enters the body of a dog, bear, ass,
+camel, goat, sheep, bird, &c.," bears no reference to the human Ego, but
+only to the atoms of his body, his lower triad and his fluidic
+emanations. It is all very well for the Brahmans to distort, in their
+own interest, the real meaning contained in these laws, but the words as
+quoted never meant what they were made to yield later on.  The Brahmans
+applied them selfishly to themselves, whereas by "Brahman," man's
+seventh principle, his immortal monad and the essence of the personal
+Ego were allegorically meant.  He who kills or extinguishes in himself
+the light of Parabrahm--i.e., severs his personal Ego from the Atman,
+and thus kills the future Devachanee, becomes a "Brahman killer."
+Instead of facilitating, through a virtuous life and spiritual
+aspirations, the union of the Buddhi and the Manas, he condemns, by his
+own evil acts, every atom of his lower principles to become attracted
+and drawn in virtue of the magnetic affinity, thus created by his
+passions, into the bodies of lower animals. This is the real meaning of
+the doctrine of Metempsychosis.  It is not that such amalgamation of
+human particles with animal or even vegetable atoms can carry in it any
+idea of personal punishment per se, for of course it does not.  But it
+is a cause, the effects of which may manifest themselves throughout
+succeeding re-births, unless the personality is annihilated. Otherwise,
+from cause to effect, every effect becoming in its turn a cause, they
+will run along the cycle of re-births, the once given impulse expending
+itself only at the threshold of Pralaya.  But of this anon.
+Notwithstanding their esoteric meaning, even the words of the grandest
+and noblest of all the adepts, Gautama Buddha, are misunderstood,
+distorted and ridiculed in the same way.  The Hina-yana, the lowest form
+of transmigration of the Buddhist, is as little comprehended as the
+Maha-yana, its highest form;  and, because Sakya Muni is shown to have
+once remarked to his Bhikkhus, while pointing out to them a broom, that
+"it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out" the
+Council-room, hence was re-born as a broom (!), therefore, the wisest of
+all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition.  Why not
+try and find out, before condemning, the true meaning of the figurative
+statement?  Why should we scoff before we understand?  Is or is not that
+which is called magnetic effluvium a something, a stuff, or a substance,
+invisible, and imponderable though it be?  If the learned authors of
+"The Unseen Universe" object to light, heat and electricity being
+regarded merely as imponderables, and show that each of these phenomena
+has as much claim to be recognized as an objective reality as matter
+itself, our right to regard the mesmeric or magnetic fluid which
+emanates from man to man, or even from man to what is termed an
+inanimate object, is far greater.  It is not enough to say that this
+fluid is a species of molecular energy like heat, for instance, though
+of much greater potency.  Heat is produced when ever kinetic energy is
+transformed into molecular energy, we are told, and it may be thrown out
+by any material composed of sleeping atoms, or inorganic matter as it is
+called;  whereas the magnetic fluid projected by a living human body is
+life itself.   Indeed it is "life-atoms" that a man in a blind passion
+throws off unconsciously, though he does it quite as effectively as a
+mesmeriser who transfers them from himself to any object consciously and
+under the guidance of his will.  Let any man give way to any intense
+feeling, such as anger, grief, &c., under or near a tree, or in direct
+contact with a stone, and after many thousands of years any tolerable
+psychometer will see the man, and perceive his feelings from one single
+fragment of that tree or stone that he had touched.  Hold any object in
+your hand, and it will become impregnated with your life-atoms, indrawn
+and outdrawn, changed and transferred in us at every instant of our
+lives.  Animal heat is but so many life atoms in molecular motion.  It
+requires no adept knowledge, but simply the natural gift of a good
+clairvoyant subject to see them passing to and fro, from man to objects
+and vice versa like a bluish lambent flame.  Why, then, should not a
+broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity of the
+building where the lazy novice lived, a shrub, perhaps, repeatedly
+touched by him while in a state of anger provoked by his laziness and
+distaste for his duty--why should not a quantity of his life-atoms have
+passed into the materials of the future besom, and therein have been
+recognized by Buddha, owing to his superhuman (not supernatural) powers?
+The processes of Nature are acts of incessant borrowing and giving back.
+The materialistic sceptic, however, will not take anything in any other
+way than in a literal, dead-letter sense.
+
+To conclude our too long answer, the "lower principles" mentioned before
+are the first, second and the third.  They cannot include the Kama rupa,
+for this "rupa" belongs to the middle, not the lower principles.  And,
+to our correspondent's further query, "Do the atoms of these (the fourth
+and the fifth) also re-form, after going through various
+transmigrations, to constitute over again the fourth and the lower fifth
+of the next incarnation?" we answer, "They do."  The reason why we have
+tried to explain the doctrine of the "life-atoms" at such length, is
+precisely in connection with this last question, and with the object of
+throwing out one more fertile hint.  We do not feel at liberty at
+present, however, to give any further details.
+
+--H.P. Blavatsky
+
+
+
+
+"OM," And Its Practical Significance
+
+
+I shall begin with a definition of Om, as given by the late Professor
+Theodore Goldstucker:--
+
+"Om is a Sanskrit word which, on account of the mystical notions that
+even at an early date of Hindu civilization were connected with it,
+acquired much importance in the development of Hindu religion.  Its
+original sense is that of emphatic or solemn affirmation or assent.
+Thus, when in the White Yajur Veda the sacrificer invites the gods to
+rejoice in his sacrifice, the goddess Savitri assents to his summons by
+saying, 'Om' (i.e., be it so);  proceed!"
+
+Or, when in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Prajapati, the father of gods,
+men and demons, asks the gods whether they have understood his
+instructions, he expresses his satisfaction with their affirmative reply
+in these words, "Om, you have fully comprehended it;"  and in the same
+Upanishad, Pravahana answers the question of Swetaketu, as to whether
+his father has instructed him, by uttering the word "Om"--i.e.,
+"forsooth (I am)."
+
+A portion of the Rig Veda called the Aitareya Brahmana, where,
+describing a religious ceremony at which verses from the Rig Veda, as
+well as songs called Gathas, were recited by the priest called Hotri,
+and responses given by another priest, the Adhwaryu, says:  Om is the
+response of the Adhwaryu to the Rig Veda verses (recited by the Hotri),
+and likewise tatha (i.e., thus) his response to the Gathas, for Om is
+(the term of assent) used by the gods, whereas tatha is (the term of
+assent) used by men (the Rig Veda verses being, to the orthodox Hindu,
+of divine and the Gathas of human authorship).
+
+In this, the original sense of the word, it is little doubtful that Om
+is but an older and contracted form of the common Sanskrit word evam
+("thus"), which, coming from the pronominal base "a," in some
+derivations changed to "e," may have at one time occurred in the form
+avam, when, by the elision of the vowel following a, for which there are
+numerous analogies in Sanskrit, vum would become aum, and hence,
+according to the ordinary phonetic laws of the language, Om.  This
+etymology of the word, however, seems to have been lost even at an early
+period of Sanskrit literature;  for another is met with in the ancient
+grammarians, enabling us to account for the mysticism which many
+religious and theological works of ancient and medieval India suppose to
+inhere in it.  According to this latter etymology, Om would come from a
+radical av;  by means of an affix man, when Om would be a curtailed form
+of avman or oman, and as av implies the notion of "protect, preserve,
+save," Om would be a term implying "protection or salvation," its
+mystical properties and its sanctity being inferred from its occurrence
+in the Vedic writings and in connection with sacrificial acts, such as
+are alluded to before.
+
+Hence Om became the auspicious word with which the spiritual teacher had
+to begin and the pupil to end each lesson of his reading of the Veda.
+
+"Let this syllable," the existing Prati-sakhya, or a grammar of the Rig
+Veda, enjoins, "be the head of the reading of the Veda; for alike to the
+teacher and the pupil it is the supreme Brahman, the gate of heaven."
+And Manu ordains:  "A Brahman at the beginning and end (of a lesson on
+the Veda) must always pronounce the syllable Om;  for unless Om precede,
+his learning will slip away from him;  and unless it follows, nothing
+will be long retained."
+
+At the time when another class of writings (the Puranas) were added to
+the inspired code of Hinduism, for a similar reason Om is their
+introductory word.
+
+That the mysterious power which, as the foregoing quotation from the
+law-book of Manu shows, was attributed to this word must have been the
+subject of early speculation, is obvious enough.  A reason assigned for
+it is given by Manu himself.  "Brahma," he says, "extracted from the
+three Vedas the letter a, the letter u, and the letter m (which combined
+result in Om), together with the (mysterious) words Bhuh (earth), Bhuva
+(sky), and Swah (heaven);" and in another verse:  "These three great
+immutable words, preceded by the syllable Om, and (the sacred Rig Veda
+verse called) Gayatri, consisting of three lines, must be considered as
+the mouth (or entrance) of Brahman (the Veda)," or, as the commentators
+observe, the means of attaining final emancipation; and "The syllable Om
+is the supreme Brahman.  (Three) regulated breathings, accompanied with
+the mental recitation of Om, the three mysterious words Bhuh, Bhuvah,
+Swah and the Gayatri, are the highest devotion."
+
+"All rites ordained in the Veda, such as burnt and other sacrifices,
+pass away, but the syllable Om must be considered as imperishable;  for
+it is (a symbol of) Brahman (the supreme spirit) himself, the Lord of
+Creation."  In these speculations Manu bears out, and is borne out by,
+several Upanishads.  In the Katha-Upanishad for instance, Yama, the god
+of death, in replying to a question of Nachiketas, says:  "The word
+which all the Vedas record, which all the modes of penance proclaim,
+desirous of which religious students perform their duties, this word I
+will briefly tell thee--it is Om.  This syllable means the (inferior)
+Brahman and the supreme (Brahman).  Whoever knows this syllable obtains
+whatever he wishes."  And in the Pras'na-Upanishad the saint Pippalada
+says to Satyakama:  "The supreme and the inferior Brahman are both the
+word Om;  hence the wise follow by this support the one or the other of
+the two.  If he meditates upon its one letter (a) only, he is quickly
+born on the earth;  is carried by the verses of the Rig Veda to the
+world of man;  and, if he is devoted there to austerity, the duties of a
+religious student and faith, he enjoys greatness.  But if he meditates
+in his mind on its two letters (a and u), he is elevated by the verses
+of the Yajur Veda to the intermediate region;  comes to the world of the
+moon and, having enjoyed there power, returns again (to the world of
+man).  If, however, he meditates on the supreme spirit by means of its
+three letters (a, u, and m) he is produced in light in the sun;  as the
+snake is liberated from its skin, so is he liberated from sin."
+According to the Mandukya-Upanishad the nature of the soul is
+summarized in the three letters a, u, and m in their isolated and
+combined form--a being Vaiswanara, or that form of Brahman which
+represents the soul in its waking condition;  a, Taijasa, or that form
+of Brahman which represents it in its dreaming state;  and m, Piajna, or
+that form of Brahman which represents it in its state of profound sleep
+(or that state in which it is temporarily united with the supreme
+spirit);  while a, u, m combined (i.e., Om), represent the fourth or
+highest condition of Brahman, "which is unaccountable, in which all
+manifestations have ceased, which is blissful and without duality.  Om
+therefore, is soul, and by this soul, he who knows it, enters into (the
+supreme) soul."  Passages like these may be considered as the key to the
+more enigmatic expressions used;  for instance, by the author of the
+Yoga philosophy where, in three short sentences, he says his (the
+supreme lord's) name is Pranava (i.e., Om);  its muttering (should be
+made) and reflection on its signification;  thence comes the knowledge
+of the transcendental spirit and the absence of the obstacles (such as
+sickness, languor, doubt, &c., which obstruct the mind of an ascetic).
+But they indicate, at the same time, the further course which
+superstition took in enlarging upon the mysticism of the doctrine of the
+Upanishads.  For, as soon as every letter of which the word Om consists
+was fancied to embody a separate idea, it is intelligible that other
+sectarian explanations were grafted on them to serve special purposes.
+Thus, while Sankara, the great theologian and commentator on the
+Upanishads, is still contented with an etymological punning by means of
+which he transforms a into an abbreviation of apti (pervading), since
+speech is pervaded by Vaiswanara;  u into an abbreviation of utkartha
+(superiority), since Taijasa is superior to Vaiswanara; and m into an
+abbreviation of miti (destruction), Vaiswanara and Taijasa, at the
+destruction and regeneration of the world, being, as it were, absorbed
+into Prajna--the Puranas make of a, a name of Vishnu;  of u, a name of
+his consort "Sri;"  and of m, a designation of their joint worshipper;
+or they see in a, u, m, the Triad--Brahm, Vishnu, and Siva;  the first
+being represented by a, the second by u, and the third by m--each sect,
+of course, identifying the combination of these letters, or Om with
+their supreme deity.  Thus, also, in the Bhagavadgita, which is devoted
+to the worship of Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna, though it is
+essentially a poem of philosophical tendencies based on the doctrine of
+the Yoga, Krishna in one passage says of himself that he is Om;  while
+in another passage he qualifies the latter as the supreme spirit.  A
+common designation of the word Om--for instance, in the last-named
+passages of the Bhagavadgita is the word Pranava, which comes from a
+so-called radical nu, "praise," with the prefix pra amongst other
+meanings implying emphasis, and, therefore, literally means "eulogium,
+emphatic praise." Although Om, in its original sense as a word of solemn
+or emphatic assent, is, properly speaking, restricted to the Vedic
+literature, it deserves notice that it is now-a-days often used by the
+natives of India in the sense of "yes," without, of course, any allusion
+to the mystic properties which are ascribed to it in the religious
+works.  Monier Williams gives the following account of the mystic
+syllable Om:  "When by means of repeating the syllable Om, which
+originally seems to have meant 'that' or 'yes,' they had arrived at a
+certain degree of mental tranquillity, the question arose what was meant
+by this Om, and to this various answers were given according as the mind
+was to be led up to higher and higher objects.  Thus, in one passage, we
+are told at first that Om is the beginning of the Veda, or as we have to
+deal with an Upanishad of the Shama Veda, the beginning of the Shama
+Veda;  so that he who meditates on Om may be supposed to be meditating
+on the whole of the Shama Veda.
+
+"Om is the essence of the Shama Veda which, being almost entirely taken
+from the Rig Veda, may itself be called the essence of the Rig Veda. The
+Rig Veda stands for all speech, the Shama Veda for all breath or life;
+so that Om may be conceived again as the symbol of all speech and all
+life.  Om thus becomes the name not only of all our mental and physical
+powers, but is especially that of the living principle of the pran or
+spirit.  This is explained by the parable in the second chapter, while
+in the third chapter that spirit within us is identified with the spirit
+in the sun.
+
+"He, therefore, who meditates on Om, meditates on the spirit in man as
+identical with the spirit in Nature or in the sun, and thus the lesson
+that is meant to be taught in the beginning of the Khandogya Upanishad
+is really this that none of the Vedas, with their sacrifices and
+ceremonies, could ever secure the salvation of the worshipers.  That is,
+the sacred works performed, according to the rules of the Vedas, are of
+no avail in the end, but meditation on Om, or that knowledge of what is
+meant by Om, alone can procure true salvation or true immortality.
+
+"Thus the pupil is led on step by step to what is the highest object of
+the Upanishads--namely, the recognition of the self in man as identical
+of the highest soul.
+
+"The lessons which are to lead up to that highest conception of the
+universe, both subjective and objective, are, no doubt, mixed up with
+much that is superstitious and absurd.  Still the main object is never
+lost sight of.  Thus, when we come to the eighth chapter, the
+discussion, though it begins with Om ends with the question of the
+origin of the world, and the final answer--namely, that Om means Akasa,
+ether, and that ether is the origin of all things."
+
+Dr. Lake considers electricity as the akas, or the fifth element of the
+Hindus.
+
+I shall now give my own opinion on the mystic syllable Om.
+
+Breath consists of an inspiration termed puraka, an interval termed
+kumbhaka, and an expiration called rechaka.  When the respiration is
+carried on by the right nostril, it is called the pingala;  when it is
+carried on by the two nostrils, it is named the susumna;  and when it is
+carried on by the left nostril, it is called ida.
+
+The right respiration is called the solar respiration, from its heating
+nature;  while the left respiration is termed the lunar respiration,
+from its cooling character.  The susumna respiration is called the
+shambhu-nadi.  During the intermediate respiration the human mind should
+be engaged in the contemplation of the supreme soul.
+
+The breath takes its origin from the "indiscreet" or unreflecting form,
+and the mind from the breath.  The organs of sense and action are under
+the control of the mind.  The Yogis restrain their mind by the
+suspension of breath.  Breath is the origin of all speech.  The word
+soham is pronounced by a deep inspiration followed by expiration carried
+on by the nostrils.... This word means, "God is in us."  There is
+another word called hangsha. This is pronounced by a deep expiration
+followed by inspiration. Its meaning is "I am in God."
+
+The inspiration is sakti, or strength.  The expiration is siva, or
+death.  The internal or Kumbhaka is a promoter of longevity. When the
+expiration is not followed by inspiration death ensues. A forcible
+expiration is always the sure and certain sign of approaching
+dissolution or death.  Both these words soham and hanysha cause the
+waste of the animal economy, as they permit the oxygen of the inspired
+air to enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood occur.
+
+According to Lavoissier, an adult Frenchman inhales daily 15,661 grains
+of oxygen from the atmosphere, at the rate of 10.87 grains nearly per
+minute.
+
+The word Om is pronounced by the inspiration of air through the mouth
+and the expiration of the same by the nostrils.
+
+When a man inspires through the mouth and expires through the nostrils,
+the oxygen of the inspired air does not enter the lungs where the
+pulmonary changes of the blood take place.  The monosyllable Om thus
+acts as a substitute for the suspension of the breath.
+
+The waste of the body is proportionate to the quantity of oxygen taken
+into the system by the respiration.  The waste of a man who breathes
+quickly is greater than that of one who breathes slowly. While
+tranquillity of mind produces slow breathing, and causes the retardation
+of the bodily waste, the tranquil respiration has a tendency to produce
+calmness of mind.  The Yogis attain to Nirvana by suspending or holding
+the breath.  The Vedantists obtain moksha, or emancipation of the soul,
+by holding the mind (mental abstraction).  Thus Om is the process of
+separating the soul from the body.  It is the product of the gasping
+breath which precedes the dissolution of our body.  The ancient Hindus
+utilized the gasping breath of the dying man by discovering the syllable
+Om.
+
+The syllable Om protects man from premature decay and death, preserves
+him from worldly temptations, and saves him from re-birth.  It causes
+the union of the human soul to the supreme soul.  Om has the property of
+shortening the length of respiration.
+
+Siva is made to say in a work on "Sharodaya" (an excellent treatise on
+respiration) that the normal length of the expiration is 9 inches.
+During meals and speaking the length of the expiration becomes 13.5
+inches.  In ordinary walking the expiration is lengthened to 18 inches.
+Running lengthens the expiration to 25.5 inches.
+
+In sexual intercourse the extent of respiration becomes 48.75 inches.
+During sleep the respiration becomes 75 inches long. As sleep causes a
+great waste of the body and invites disease, premature decay and death,
+the Yogi tries to abstain from it. He lives upon the following
+dietary:--rice, 6 ounces troy; milk, 12 ounces troy.  He consumes daily:
+carbon, 156.2 grains; nitrogen, 63.8 grains.
+
+Under this diet he is ever watchful, and spends his time in the
+contemplation of Om.  From the small quantity of nitrogen contained in
+his diet he is free from anger.  The Yogi next subdues his carnal desire
+or sexual appetite.  He diminishes day by day his food until it reaches
+the minimum quantity on which existence is maintained.  He passes his
+life in prayer and meditation.  He seeks retirement.  He lives in his
+little cell; his couch is the skin of tiger or stag;  he regards gold,
+silver, and all precious stones as rubbish.  He abstains from flesh,
+fish, and wine.  He never touches salt, and lives entirely on fruits and
+roots.  I saw a female mendicant who lived upon a seer of potatoes and a
+small quantity of tamarind pulp daily.  This woman reduced herself to a
+skeleton.  She led a pure, chaste life, and spent her time in the mental
+recitation of Om.  One seer of potatoes contains 3,600 grains of solid
+residue, which is exactly 7 1/2 ounces troy.
+
+The solid residue of one seer of potatoes consists of the following
+ultimate ingredients:--
+
+Carbon .............. 1587.6 grains
+Hydrogen ............  208.8    "
+Nitrogen .............  43.2    "
+Oxygen .............. 1580.4    "
+Salts .................180.0    "
+                        --------
+                      3600.0    "
+
+I saw a Brahman (Brahmachari) who consumed daily one seer of milk, and
+took no other food.
+
+Analysis of One Seer of Cow's Milk by Boussingault.
+
+Water ....................... 12,539.520 grains
+Carbon ......................  1,005.408     "
+Hydrogen ......................  164.736     "
+Nitrogen .......................  74.880     "
+Oxygen ......................... 525.456     "
+Salts ........................... 90.000     "
+                                  -----------
+                              14,400.000     "
+
+Now, one seer of cow's milk requires for combustion within the animal
+economy 3278.88 grains of oxygen.  The Brahmachari inhaled 2.27 grains
+of oxygen per minute.  This Brahmachari spent his life in the
+contemplation of Om, and led a life of continence. The French adult, who
+is a fair specimen of well-developed sensuality, inhaled from the
+atmosphere 10.87 grains of oxygen every minute of his existence.
+
+A retired, abstemious, and austere life is essentially necessary for the
+pronunciation of Om, which promotes the love of rigid virtue and a
+contempt of impermanent sensuality.  Siva says "He who is free from
+lust, anger, covetousness and ignorance is qualified to obtain
+salvation, or moksha," or the Nirvana of the Buddhists.  The solid
+residue of one seer of cow's milk is 1860.48 grains.  "In 1784 a student
+of physic at Edinburgh confined himself for a long space of time to a
+pint of milk and half a pound of white bread."
+
+The diet of this student contained 1487.5 grains of carbon and 80.1875
+grains of nitrogen.  This food required 4,305 grains of oxygen for the
+complete combustion of its elements.  He inspired 2.92 grains of oxygen
+per minute.  In this instance the intense mental culture diminished the
+quantity of oxygen inspired from the atmosphere.  The early Christian
+hermits, with a view to extinguish carnal desire and overcome sleep,
+lived upon a daily allowance of 12 ounces of bread and water.  They
+daily consumed 4063.084 grains of oxygen.  They inhaled oxygen at the
+rate of 2.8215 grains per minute.
+
+According to M. Andral, the great French physiologist, a French boy 10
+years old, before the sexual appetite is developed, exhales 1852.8
+grains of carbon in the twenty-four hours.  He who wishes to curb his
+lust should consume 1852.8 grains of carbon in his daily diet.
+
+Now, 6,500 grains of household bread contain 1852 grains of carbon,
+according to Dr. Edward Smith.  This quantity of bread is equal to 14
+ounces avoirdupois and 375 grains, but the early Christian hermits who
+lived upon 12 oz. of bread (avoirdupois) consumed daily 1496.25 grains
+of carbon.  This quantity of carbon was less than that which the French
+boy consumed daily by 356.55 grains.  The French boy consumed 1852.8
+grains of carbon in his diet, but the Hindu female mendicant, who led a
+life of continence, consumed in her daily ration of potatoes 1587.6
+grains of carbon.  Hence it is evident that the French boy consumed
+265.2 grains of carbon more than what was consumed by the female Hindu
+Yogi.  There lived in Brindavana a Sannyasi, who died at the age of 109
+years, and who subsisted for forty years upon the daily diet of four
+chuttacks of penda and four chuttacks of milk.  His diet contained 1,980
+grains of carbon and 90.72 grains of nitrogen.  Abstemiousness shortens
+the length of respiration, diminishes the waste of the body, promotes
+longevity, and engenders purity of heart.  Abstemiousness cures vertigo,
+cephalalgia, tendency to apoplexy, dyspnoea, gout, old ulcers, impetigo,
+scrofula, herpes, and various other maladies.
+
+Cornaro, an Italian nobleman, who was given up by all his physicians,
+regained health by living upon 12 ounces of bread and 15 ounces of
+water, and lived to a great age.
+
+He consumed less than an ounce of flesh-formers in his diet. According
+to Edward Smith 5401.2 grains of bread contain 1 ounce of flesh-formers.
+
+He who wishes to lead a life of chastity, honesty, meekness, and mercy,
+should consume daily one ounce of flesh-formers in his diet.  As an
+ounce of nitrogenous matter contains 70 grains of nitrogen, one should
+take such food as yields only 70 grains of azote.
+
+Murder, theft, robbery, cruelty, covetousness, lust, slander, anger,
+voluptuousness, revenge, lying, prostitution, and envy are sins which
+arise from a consumption of a large quantity of aliments containing a
+higher percentage of azote.
+
+He who intends to be free from every earthly thought, desire and passion
+should abstain from fish, flesh, woman, and wine, and live upon the most
+innocent food.
+
+The following table shows approximately the quantities of various
+aliments furnishing 70 grains of nitrogen:
+
+Wheat dried in vacuo ............ 3181.81 grains
+Oats ............................ 3181.81    "
+Barley .......................... 3465.34    "
+Indian corn ..................... 3500       "
+Rye dried ........................4117.64    "
+Rice dried .......................5036       "
+Milk dried .......................1750       "
+Peas dried .......................1666.6     "
+White haricots dried ..... .......1627.67    "
+Horse beans dried ................1272.72    "
+Cabbage dried ....................1891.89    "
+Carrots dried ....................2916.66    "
+Jerusalem artichokes .............4375       "
+Turnips dried ....................3181.81    "
+Bread ............................5401.2     "
+Locust beans .....................6110       "
+Figs .............................7172.13    "
+Cow's milk fresh .................1346.2     "
+
+Abstemiousness begets suspension of breath.  From the suspension of
+breath originates tranquillity of mind, which engenders supersensuous
+knowledge.  From supersensuous knowledge originates ecstasy which is the
+Samadhi of the ancient Hindu sages.
+
+Instead of walking and running, which lengthen the respiration, the
+devotees of Om should practice the two tranquil postures termed the
+padmasana and siddhasana, described in my mystic tract called "The Yoga
+Philosophy."  According to Siva the normal length of expiration is 9
+inches.  He says that one can subdue his lust and desire by shortening
+his expiration to 8.25 inches, whether by the inaudible pronunciation of
+Om or by the suspension of breath (Pranayama);  that one can enjoy
+ecstasy by diminishing the length of his expiration to 7.50 inches.
+
+One acquires the power of writing poetry by reducing his expiration to
+6.75 inches.
+
+When one can reduce his expiration to 6 inches long he acquires the
+power of foretelling future events.  When one reduces the length of his
+expiration to 5.25 inches he is blessed with the divine eye.  He sees
+what is occurring in the distant worlds.
+
+When the inaudible pronunciation of Om reduces the length of the
+expiration to 4.50 inches it enables its votary to travel to aerial
+regions.  When the length of expiration becomes 3.75 inches, the votary
+of Om travels in the twinkling of an eye through the whole world.
+
+When by the inaudible muttering of Om a man reduces his expiration to 3
+inches, he acquires ashta Siddhis or consummations (or superhuman
+powers).  When the expiration is reduced to 2.25 inches, the votary of
+Om can acquire the nine precious jewels of the world (Nava nidhi). Such
+a man can attract the wealth of the world to him.*
+
+--------
+* Supposing he had any care or use for it--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+When the expiration becomes 1.50 inches long from the above practice, he
+sees the celestial sphere where the Supreme Soul resides.  When the
+inaudible pronunciation of Om reduces the length of expiration to .75
+inch, the votary becomes deified and casts no shadow.
+
+     "Om Amitaya! measure not with words
+     The immeasurable;  nor sink the string of thought
+     Into the Fathomless! Who asks doth err;
+     Who answers errs. Say nought!"
+
+     "Om mani padma hum. Om the jewel in the lotus."
+
+By the muttering of the above formula the Great Buddha freed himself
+from selfishness, false faith, doubt, hatred, lust, self-praise, error,
+pride, and attained to Nirvana.
+
+     "And how man hath no fate except past deeds,
+     No Hell but what he makes, no Heaven too high
+     For those to reach whose passions sleeps subdued."
+
+According to Siva a man acquires Nirvana when his breathing becomes
+internal and does not come out of the nostrils.  When the breathing
+becomes internal--that is, when it is contained within the nostrils, the
+Yogi is free from fainting, hunger, thirst, languor, disease and death.
+He becomes a divine being, he feels not when he is brought into contact
+with fire;  no air can dry him, no water can putrefy him, no poisonous
+serpent can inflict a mortal wound.  His body exhales fragrant odours,
+and can bear the abstinence from air, food, and drink.
+
+When the breathing becomes internal, the Yogi is incapable of committing
+any sin in deed, thought, and speech, and thereby inherits the Kingdom
+of Heaven, which is open to sinless souls.
+
+--N.C. Paul
+
+
+-------------------
+
+Glossary
+
+
+     Ab-e-Hyat, Water of Life, supposed to give eternal youth.
+     Abhava, negation or non-being of individual objects; the
+substance, the abstract objectivity.
+     Adam Kadmon, the bi-sexual Sephira of the Kabalists.
+     Adept, one who, through the development of his spirit, has
+attained to transcendental knowledge and powers.
+     Adhibhautika, arising from external objects.
+     Adhidaivika, arising from the gods, or accidents.
+     Adhikamasansas, extra months.
+     Adhishthanum, basis a principle in which some other
+principle inheres.
+     Adhyatmika, arising out of the inner-self.
+     Advaiti, a follower of the school of Philosophy established
+by Sankaracharya.
+     Ahankara, personality;  egoism;  self identity;  the fifth
+principle.
+     Ahriman, the Evil Principle of the Universe;  so called by
+the Zoroastrians.
+     Ahum, the first three principles of septenary human
+constitution;  the gross living body of man according to the
+Avesta.
+     A'kasa, the subtle supersensuous matter which pervades all
+space.
+     Amulam Mulam (lit. "the rootless root");  Prakriti;  the
+material of the universe.
+     Anahatachakram, the heart, the seat of life.
+     A'nanda, bliss.
+     A'nanda-maya-kosha, the blissful;  the fifth sheath of the
+soul in the Vedantic system;  the sixth principle.
+     Anastasis, the continued existence of the soul.
+     Anima Mundi, the soul of the world.
+     Annamaya Kosha, the gross body;  the first sheath of the
+divine monad (Vedantic).
+     Antahkarana, the internal instrument, the soul, formed by
+the thinking principle and egoism.
+     Anumiti, inference.
+     Aparoksha, direct perception.
+     Apavarya, emancipation from repeated births.
+     Apporrheta, secret discourses in Egyptian and Grecian
+mysteries.
+     Arahats (lit."the worthy ones"), the initiated holy men of
+the Buddhist and Jain faiths.
+     Aranyakas, holy sages dwelling in forests.
+     Ardhanariswara, (lit. "the bisexual Lord");  the unpolarized
+state of cosmic energy;  the bi-sexual Sephira, Adam Kadmon.
+     Arka, sun.
+     Aryavarta, the ancient name of Northern India where the
+Brahmanical invaders first settled.
+     A'sana, the third stage of Hatha Yoga;  the posture for
+meditation.
+     Asat, the unreal, Prakriti.
+     A'shab and Laughan, ceremonies for casting out evil spirits,
+so called among the Kolarian tribes.
+     Ashta Siddhis, the eight consummations of Hatha Yoga.
+     Asoka (King), a celebrated conqueror, monarch of a large
+portion of India, who is called "the Constantine of Buddhism,"
+temp. circa 250 B.C.
+     Astral Light, subtle form of existence forming the basis of
+our material universe.
+     Asuramaya, an Atlantean astronomer, well known in Sanskrit
+writings.
+     Asuras, a class of elementals considered maleficent;
+demons.
+     Aswini, the divine charioteers mystically they correspond to
+Hermes, who is looked upon as his equal.  They represent the
+internal organ by which knowledge is conveyed from the soul to
+the body.
+     Atharva Veda, one of the four most ancient and revered books
+of the ancient Brahmans.
+     Atlantis, the continent that was submerged in the Southern
+and Pacific Oceans.
+     Atmabodha (lit. "self-knowledge"), the title of a Vedantic
+treatise by Sankaracharya.
+     Atman, &c Atma.
+     A'tma, the spirit;  the divine monad;  the seventh principle
+of the septenary human constitution.
+     A'ttavada, the sin of personality (Pali).
+     Aum, the sacred syllable in Sanskrit representing the
+Trinity
+     Avalokitesvara, manifested wisdom, or the Divine Spirit in
+man.
+     Avasthas, states, conditions, positions.
+     Avatar, the incarnation of an exalted being, so called among
+the Hindus.
+     Avesta, the sacred books of the Zoroastrians.
+     Avyakta, the unrevealed cause.
+
+     Baddha, bound or conditioned;  the state of an ordinary
+human being who has not attained Nirvana.
+     Bahihpragna, the present state of consciousness.
+     Baodhas, consciousness;  the fifth principle of man.
+     Barhaspatyamanam, a method of calculating time prevalent
+during the later Hindu period in North-eastern India.
+     Bhadrasena, a Buddhist king of Magadha.
+     Bhagats (or called Sokha and Sivnath by the Hindus), one who
+exorcises an evil spirit.
+     Bhagavad Gita (lit, the "Lord's Song"), an episode of the
+Maha-Bharata, the great epic poem of India.  It contains a
+dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna on Spiritual Philosophy.
+     Bhao, ceremony of divination among the Kolarian tribes of
+Central India.
+     Bhashya, commentary.
+     Bhon, religion of the aborigines of Tibet.
+     Bikshu, a religious mendicant and ascetic who suppresses all
+desire and is constantly occupied in devotion;  a Buddhist monk.
+     Boddhisatwas, Egos evolving towards Buddhahood.
+     Brahma, the Hindu Deity which personifies the active cosmic
+energy.
+     Brahmachari, a Bushman ascetic.
+     Brahmagnani, one possessed of complete illumination.
+     Brahman, the highest caste in India;  Brahman, the absolute
+of the Vedantins.
+     Brahmana period, one of the four periods into which the
+Vedic literature has been divided.
+     Brihadranyaka Upanishad, one of the sacred books of the
+Brahmins;  an Aranyaka is a treatise appended to the Vedas, and
+considered the subject of special study by those who have retired
+to the forest for purposes of religious meditation.
+     Buddha, the founder of Buddhism;  he was a royal prince, by
+name Siddhartha, son of Suddhodhana, king of the Sakyas, an Aryan
+tribe.
+     Buddhi, the spiritual Ego.
+     Buru Bonga, spirit of the hills worshiped by the Kolarian
+tribes of Central India.
+
+     Canarese, one of the Dravidian tongues, spoken in Southern
+India.
+     Chandragupta, one of the kings of Magadha, an ancient
+province of India.
+     Chandramanam, the method of calculating time by the
+movements of the moon.
+     Charaka, the most celebrated writer on medicine among the
+Hindus.
+     Chaturdasa Bhuvanam, the fourteen lokas or states.
+     Chela, a pupil of an adept in occultism;  a disciple.
+     Chichakti, the power which generates thought.
+     Chidagnikundum (lit. "the fireplace in the heart"), the seat
+of the force which extinguishes all individual desires.
+     Chidakasam, the field of consciousness.
+     Chinmatra, the germ of consciousness, abstract
+consciousness.
+     Chit, the abstract consciousness.
+  Chitta suddhi (Chitta, mind, and Suddi, purification),
+purification of the mind.
+     Chutuktu, the five chief Lamas of Tibet.
+
+     Daemon, the incorruptible part of man;  nous;  rational
+soul.
+     Daenam (lit. "knowledge"), the fourth principle in man,
+according to the Avesta.
+     Daimonlouphote, spiritual illumination.
+     Daityas, demons, Titans.
+     Dama, restraint of the senses.
+     Darasta, ceremonial magic practised among the Kolarian
+tribes of Central India.
+     Darha, ancestral spirits of the Kolarian tribes of Central
+India.
+     Deona or Mati, one who exercises evil spirits (Kolarian).
+     Deva, God;  beings of the subjective side of Nature.
+     Devachan, a blissful condition in the after-life;  heavenly
+existence.
+     Devanagari, the current Sanskrit alphabet.
+     Dharmasoka, one of the kings of Magadha.
+     Dhatu, the seven principal substances of the human body
+--chyle, flesh, blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen.
+     Dhyan, contemplation.  There are six stages of Dhyan,
+varying in the degrees of abstraction of the Ego from sensuous
+life.
+     Dhyan Chohans, Devas or Gods planetary spirits.
+     Dik, space.
+     Diksha, initiation.
+     Dosha, fault.
+     Dravidians, a group of tribes inhabiting Southern India.
+     Dravya, substance.
+     Dugpas, the "Red Caps," evil magicians, belonging to the
+left-hand path of occultism, so called in Tibet.
+     Dukkhu, pain.
+     Dwija Brahman, twice born;  the investiture with the sacred
+thread constitutes the second birth.
+
+     Elementals, generic name for all subjective beings other
+than disembodied human creatures.
+     Epopta, Greek for seer.
+
+     Fakir, a Mahomedan recluse or Yogi.
+     Fan, Bar-nang, space, eternal law.
+     Fohat, Tibetan for Sakti;  cosmic force or energizing power
+of the universe.
+     Fravashem, absolute spirit.
+
+     Gaudapada, a celebrated Brahmanical teacher, the author of
+commentaries on the Sankhya Karika, Mundukya Upanishad, &c.
+     Gayatri, the holiest verse of the Vedas.
+     Gehs, Parsi prayers.
+     Gelugpas, "Yellow Caps," the true Magi and their school, so
+called in Tibet.
+     Gnansaki, the power of true knowledge, one of the six
+forces.
+     Gujarathi, the vernacular dialect of Gujrat, a province of
+Western India.
+     Gunas, qualities, properties.
+     Gunava, endowed with qualities.
+     Guru, spiritual preceptor.
+
+     Ha, a magic syllable used in sacred formula;  represents the
+power of Akasa Sakti.
+     Hangsa, a mystic syllable standing for evolution, it
+literally means "I am he."
+     Hatha Yog, a system of physical training to obtain psychic
+powers, the chief feature of this system being the regulation of
+breath.
+     Hierophants, the High Priests.
+     Hina-yana, lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist.
+     Hiong-Thsang, the celebrated chinese traveler whose writings
+contain the most interesting account of India of the period.
+     Hwun, spirit;  the seventh principle in man (Chinese).
+
+     Ikhir Bongo, spirit of the deep of the Kolarian tribes.
+     Indriya, or Deha Sanyama, control over the senses.
+     "Isis" ("Isis Unveiled"), book written by Madame Blavatsky
+on the Esoteric Doctrine.
+     Iswara, Personal God, Lord, the Spirit in man, the Divine
+principle in its active nature or condition, one of the four
+states of Brahma.
+     Itchasakti, will power;  force of desire;  one of the six
+forces of Nature.
+     Itchcha, will.
+     Ivabhavat, the one substance.
+
+     Jagrata, waking.
+     Jagrata Avasta, the waking state;  one of the four aspects
+of Pranava.
+     Jains, a religious sect in India closely related to the
+Buddhists.
+     Jambudvipa, one of the main divisions of the world,
+including India, according to the ancient Brahminical system.
+     Janaka, King of Videha, a celebrated character in the Indian
+epic of Ramayana.  He was a great royal sage.
+     Janwas, gross form of matter.
+     Japa, mystical practice of the Yogi, consisting of the
+repetition of certain formula.
+     Jevishis, will;  Karma Rupa;  fourth principle.
+     Jiva or Karana Sarira, the second principle of man;  life.
+     Jivatma, the human spirit, seventh principle in the
+Microcosm.
+     Jnanam, knowledge.
+     Jnanendrayas, the five channels of knowledge.
+     Jyotisham Jyotih, the light of lights, the supreme spirit,
+so called in the Upanishads.
+
+     Kabala, ancient mystical Jewish books.
+     Kaliyuga, the last of the four ages in which the
+evolutionary period of man is divided.  It began 3,000 years B.C.
+     Kalpa, the period of cosmic activity;  a day of Brahma,
+4,320 million years.
+     Kama Loka, abode of desire, the first condition through
+which a human entity passes in its passage, after death, to
+Devachan.  It corresponds to purgatory.
+     Kama, lust, desire, volition;  the Hindu Cupid.
+     Kamarupa, the principle of desire in man;  the fourth
+principle.
+     Kapila, the founder of one of the six principal systems of
+Indian philosophy--viz., the Sankhya.
+     Karans, great festival of the Kolarian tribes in honour of
+the sun spirit.
+     Karana Sarira, the causal body;  Avidya;  ignorance;  that
+which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego.
+     Karma, the law of ethical causation;  the effect of an act
+for the attainment of an object of personal desire, merit and
+demerit.
+     Karman, action;  attributes of Linga Sarira.
+     Kartika, the Indian god of war, son or Siva and Parvati;  he
+is also the personification of the power of the Logos.
+     Kasi, another name for the sacred city of Benares.
+     Keherpas, aerial form;  third principle.
+     Khanda period, a period of Vedic literature.
+     Khi (lit, breath);  the spiritual ego;  the sixth principle
+in man (Chinese).
+     Kiratarjuniya of Bkaravi, a Sanskrit epic, celebrating the
+encounters of Arjuna, one of this heroes of the Maha-bharata with
+the god Siva, disguised as a forester.
+     Kols, one of the tribes in Central India.
+     Kriyasakti, the power of thought;  one of the six forces in
+Nature.
+     Kshatriya, the second of the four castes into which the
+Hindu nation was originally divided.
+     Kshetrajnesvara, embodied spirit, the conscious ego in its
+highest manifestation.
+     Kshetram, the great abyss of the Kabbala;  chaos;  Yoni,
+Prakriti;  space.
+     Kumbhaka, retention of breath, regulated according to the
+system of Hatha Yoga.
+     Kundalinisakti, the power of life;  one of the six forces of
+Nature.
+     Kwer Shans, Chinese for third principle;  the astral body.
+
+     Lama-gylongs, pupils of Lamas.
+     Lao-teze, a Chinese reformer.
+
+     Macrocosm, universe.
+     Magi, fire worshippers;  the great magicians or wisdom-
+philosophers of old.
+     Maha-Bharata, the celebrated Indian epic poem.
+     Mahabhashya, a commentary on the Grammar of Panini by
+Patanjali.
+     Mahabhautic, belonging to the macrocosmic principles.
+     Mahabhutas, gross elementary principles.
+     Mahaparinibbana Sutta, one of the most authoritative of the
+Buddhist sacred writings.
+     Maha Sunyata, space or eternal law;  the great emptiness.
+     Mahat, Buddhi;  the first product of root-nature and
+producer of Ahankara (egotism), and manas (thinking principle).
+     Mahatma, a great soul;  an adept in occultism of the highest
+order.
+     Mahavanso, a Buddhist historical work written by the Bhikshu
+Mohanama, the uncle of King Dhatusma.
+     Maha-Yug, the aggregate of four Yugas, or ages--4,320,000
+years--in the Brahmanical system.
+     Manas, the mind, the thinking principle;  the fifth
+principle in the septenary division.
+     Manas Sanyama, perfect concentration of the mind;  control
+over the mind.
+     Manomaya Kosha, third sheath of the divine monad, Vedantic
+equivalent for fourth and fifth principles.
+     Mantra period, one of the four periods into which Vedic
+literature has been divided.
+     Mantra Sastra, Brahmanical writings on the occult science of
+incantations.
+     Mantra Tantra Shastras, works on incantation and Magic.
+     Manu, the great Indian legislator.
+     Manvantara, the outbreathing of the creative principle;  the
+period of cosmic activity between two pralayas.
+     Maruts, the wind gods.
+     Mathadhipatis, heads of different religious institutions in
+India.
+     Matras, the quantity of a Sanskrit syllable.
+     Matrikasakti, the power of speech, one of six forces in
+Nature.
+     Matsya Puranas, one of the Puranas.
+     Maya, illusion, is the cosmic power which renders phenomenal
+existence possible.
+     Mayavic Upadhi, the covering of illusion, phenomenal
+appearance.
+     Mayavirupa, the "double;"  "doppelganger;"  "perisprit."
+     Mazdiasnian, Zoroastrian (lit. "worshiping God").
+     Microcosm, man.
+     Mobeds, Zoroastrian priests.
+     Monad, the spiritual soul, that which endures through all
+changes of objective existence.
+     Moneghar, the headman of a village.
+     Morya, one of time royal houses of Magadha;  also the name
+of a Rajpoot tribe.
+     Mukta, liberated;  released from conditional existence.
+     Mukti. See Mukta.
+     Mula-prakriti, undifferentiated cosmic matter;  the
+unmanifested cause and substance of all being.
+     Mumukshatwa, desire for liberation.
+
+     Nabhichakram, the seat of the principle of desire, near the
+umbilicus.
+     Najo, witch.
+     Nanda (King), one of the kings of Magadha.
+     Narayana, in mystic symbology it stands for the life
+principle.
+     Nava nidhi, the nine jewels, or consummation of spiritual
+development.
+     Neophyte, a candidate for initiation into the mysteries of
+adeptship.
+     Nephesh, one of the three souls, according to the Kabala;
+first three principles in the human septenary.
+     Neschamah, one of the three souls, according to the Kabala;
+seventh principle in the human septenary.
+     Nirguna, unbound;  without gunas or attributes;  the soul in
+its state of essential purity is so called.
+     Nirvana, beautitude, abstract spiritual existence,
+absorption into all.
+     Niyashes, Parsi prayers.
+     Noumena, the true essential nature of being, as
+distinguished from the illusive objects of sense.
+     Nous, spirit, mind;  Platonic term, reason.
+     Nyaya Philosophy, a system of Hindu logic founded by
+Gautuma.
+
+     Occultism, the study of the mysteries of Nature and the
+development of the psychic powers latent in man.
+     Okhema, vehicle;  Platonic term for body.
+
+     Padarthas, predicates of existing things, so called in the
+"Vaiseshikha," or atomic system of philosophy, founded by Kanad
+(Sanskrit).
+     Padma sana, a posture practised by some Indian mystics it
+consists in sitting with the legs crossed one over the other and
+the body straight.
+     Pahans, village priests.
+     Panchakosha, the five sheaths in which is enclosed the
+divine monad.
+     Panchikrita, developed into the five gross elements.
+     Parabrahm, the supreme principle in Nature;  the universal
+spirit.
+     Paramarthika, one of the three states of existence according
+to Vedanta;  the true, the only real one.
+     Paramatma, time Supreme Spirit, one of the six forces of
+Nature;  the great force.
+     Parasakti, intellectual apprehension of a truth.
+     Pataliputra, the ancient capital of the kingdom Magadha, in
+Eastern India, a city identified with the modern Patna.
+     Patanjali, the author of "Yoga Philosophy," one of the six
+orthodox systems of India and of the Mahabhashya.
+     Peling, the name given to Europeans in Tibet.
+     Phala, retribution;  fruit or results of causes.
+     Pho, animal soul.
+     Pisacham, fading remnants of human beings in the state of
+Kama Loka;  shells or elementaries.
+     Piyadasi, another name for Asoka (q.v.)
+     Plaster or Plantal,  Platonic term for the power which
+moulds the substances of the universe into suitable forms.
+     Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Guatemalans.
+     Poseidonis, the last island submerged of the continent of
+Atlantis.
+     Pracheta, the principle of water.
+     Pragna, consciousness.
+     Prajapatis, the constructors of the material universe.
+     Prakriti, undifferentiated matter;  the supreme principle
+regarded as the substance of the universe.
+     Pralaya, the period of cosmic rest.
+     Prameyas, things to be proved, objects of Pramana or proof.
+     Prana, the one life.
+     Pranamaya Kosha, the principle of life and its vehicle;  the
+second sheath of the Divine monad (Vedantic).
+     Pranatman, the eternal or germ thread on which are strung,
+like beads, the personal lives.  The same as Sutratma.
+     Pratibhasika, the apparent or illusory life.
+     Pratyaksha, perception.
+     Pretya-bhava, the state of an ego under the necessity of
+repeated births.
+     Punarjanmam, power of evolving objective manifestation;
+rebirth.
+     Puraka, in-breathing, regulated according to the system of
+Hatha Yoga.
+     Puranas (lit. "old writings").  A collection of symbolical
+Brahmanical writings.  They are eighteen in number, and are
+supposed to have been composed by Vyasa, the author of the
+Mahabharata.
+     Purusha, spirit.
+     Rajas, the quality of foulness;  passionate activity.
+     Rajarshi, a king-adept.
+     Raj Yoga, the true science of the development of psychic
+powers and union with the Supreme Spirit.
+     Rakshasas, evil spirits;  literally, raw-eaters.
+     Ramayana, an epic poem describing the life of Rama, a
+deified Indian hero.
+     Ram Mohun Roy, the well-known Indian Reformer, died 1833.
+     Rechaka, out-breathing, regulated according to the system of
+Hatha Yoga.
+     Rig Veda, the first of the Vedas.
+     Rishabham, the Zodiacal sign Taurus, the sacred syllable
+Aum.
+     Rishis (lit. "revealers"), holy sages.
+     Ruach, one of the souls, according to the Kabala;  second
+three principles in the human septenary.
+
+     Sabda, the Logos or Word.
+     Saketa, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of
+Ayodhya.
+     Sukshma sariram, the subtile body.
+     Sakti, the crown of the astral light;  the power of Nature.
+     Sakuntala, a Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa.
+     Samadhana, incapacity to diverge from the path of spiritual
+progress.
+     Sama, repression of mental perturbations.
+     Samadhi, state of ecstatic trance.
+     Samanya, community or commingling of qualities.
+     Samma-Sambuddha, perfect illumination.
+     Samvat, an Indian era which, is usually supposed to have
+commenced 57 B.C.
+     Sankaracharya, the great expositor of the monistic Vedanta
+Philosophy, which denies the personality of the Divine Principle,
+and affirms its unity with the spirit of man.
+     Sankhya Karika, a treatise containing the aphorisms of
+Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya system, one of the six schools
+of Hindu philosophy.
+     Sankhya Yog, the system of Yog as set forth by Sankhya
+philosophers.
+     Sannyasi, a Hindu, ascetic whose mind is steadfastly fixed
+upon the Supreme Truth.
+     Sarira, body.
+     Sat, the real, Purusha.
+     Sattwa, purity.
+     Satva, goodness.
+     Satya Loka, the abode of Truth, one of the subjective
+spheres in our solar system.
+     Shamanism, spirit worship;  the oldest religion of Mongolia.
+     Siddhasana, one of the postures enjoined by the system of
+Hatha Yoga.
+     Siddhi, abnormal power obtained by spiritual development.
+     Sing Bonga, sun spirit of the Kolarian tribes.
+     Siva, one of the Hindu gods, with Brahma and Vishnu, forming
+the Trimurti or Trinity;  the principle of destruction.
+     Sivite, a worshipper of Siva, the name of a sect among the
+Hindus.
+     Skandhas, the impermanent elements which constitute a man.
+     Slokas, stanzas (Sanskrit).
+     Smriti, legal and ceremonial writings of the Hindus.
+     Soham, mystic syllable representing involution;  lit. "that
+am I."
+     Soonium, a magical ceremony for the purpose of removing a
+sickness from one person to another.
+     Soorya, the sun.
+     Souramanam, a method of calculating time.
+     Space, Akasa;  Swabhavat (q.v.)
+  Sraddha, faith.
+     Sravana, receptivity, listening.
+     Sthula-Sariram, the gross physical body.
+     Sukshmopadhi,  fourth and fifth principles (Raja Yoga.)
+     Sunyata, space;  nothingness.
+     Suras, elementals of a beneficent order;  gods.
+     Surpa, winnower.
+     Suryasiddhanta, a Sanskrit treatise on astronomy.
+     Sushupti Avastha, deep sleep;  one of the four aspects of
+Pranava.
+     Sutra period, one of the periods into which Vedic literature
+has been divided.
+     Sutratman, (lit. "the thread spirit,") the immortal
+individuality upon which are strung our countless personalities.
+     Svabhavat, Akasa; undifferentiated primary matter;
+Prakriti.
+     Svapna, dreamy condition, clairvoyance.
+     Swami (lit. "a master"), the family idol.
+     Swapna Avastha, dreaming state;  one of the four aspects of
+Pranava.
+
+     Tama, indifference, dullness.
+     Tamas, ignorance, or darkness.
+     Tanha, thirst;  desire for life, that which produces re-birth.
+     Tanmatras, the subtile elements, the abstract counterpart of
+the five elements, earth, water, fire, air and ether, consisting
+of smell, taste, feeling, sight and sound.
+     Tantras, works on Magic.
+     Tantrika, ceremonies connected with the worship of the
+goddess Sakti, who typifies Force.
+     Taraka Yog, one of the Brahmanical systems for the
+development of psychic powers and attainment of spiritual
+knowledge.
+     Tatwa, eternally existing "that;"  the different principles
+in Nature.
+     Tatwams, the abstract principles of existence or categories,
+physical and metaphysical.
+     Telugu, a language spoken in Southern India.
+     Tesshu Lama, the head of the Tibetan Church.
+     The Laws of Upasanas, chapter in the Book iv. of Kui-te on
+the rules for aspirants for chelaship.
+     Theodidaktos (lit. "God taught "), a school of philosophers
+in Egypt.
+     Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion taught in all ages by the
+sages of the world.
+     Tikkun, Adam Kadmon, the ray from the Great Centre.
+     Titiksha, renunciation.
+     Toda, a mysterious tribe in India that practise black magic.
+     Tridandi, (tri, "three," danda, "chastisement"), name of
+BrahmanicaI thread.
+     Trimurti, the Indian Trinity--Brahma, Vishnu and Siva,
+Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.
+     Turiya Avastha, the state of Nirvana.
+     Tzong-ka-pa, celebrated Buddhist reformer of Tibet, who
+instituted the order of Gelugpa Lamas.
+
+     Universal Monas, the universal spirit.
+     Upadana Karnam, the material cause of an effect.
+     Upadhis, bases.
+     Upamiti, analogy.
+     Upanayana, investiture with the Brahmanical thread.
+     Upanishads, Brahmanical Scriptures appended to the Vedas,
+containing the esoteric doctrine of the Brahmans.
+     Upanita, one who is invested with the Brahmanical thread
+(lit. "brought to a spiritual teacher").
+     Uparati, absence of out-going desires.
+     Urvanem, spiritual ego;  sixth principle.
+     Ushtanas, vital force;  second principle.
+
+     Vach, speech;  the Logos;  the mystic Word.
+     Vaishyas,  cattle breeders artisans;  the third caste among
+the Hindus.
+     Vakya Sanyama, control over speech.
+     Varuna or Pracheta, the Neptune of India.
+     Vasishta, a great Indian sage, one of those to whom the Rig
+Veda was revealed in part.
+     Vata, air.
+     Vayu, the wind.
+     Vayu  Puranas, one of the Puranas.
+     Vedantists, followers of the Vedanta School of Philosophy,
+which is divided into two branches, monists and dualists.
+     Vedas, the most authoritative of the Hindu Scriptures.  The
+four oldest sacred books--Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva--revealed
+to the Rishis by Brahma.
+     Vedic, pertaining to the Vedas.
+     Vidya, secret knowledge.
+     Vija, the primitive germ which expands into the universe.
+     Vijnana-maya-kosha, the sheath of knowledge;  the fourth
+sheath of the divine monad;  the fifth principle in man
+(Vedanta).
+     Viraj, the material universe.
+     Vishnu, the second member of the Hindu trinity;  the
+principle of preservation.
+     Vishnuite or Vishuvite, a worshiper of Vishnu, the name of a
+sect among the Hindus.
+     Vrishalas, Outcasts.
+     Vyasa, the celebrated Rishi, who collected and arranged the
+Vedas in their present form.
+     Vyavaharika, objective existence;  practical.
+
+     Yajna Sutra, the name of the Brahmanical thread.
+     Yama, law, the god of death.
+     Yashts, the Parsi prayer-books.
+     Yasna, religious book of the Parsis.
+     Yasodhara, the wife of Buddha.
+     Yavanacharya, the name given to Pythagoras in the Indian
+books.
+     Yavanas, the generic name given by the Brahmanas to younger
+peoples.
+     Yoga Sutras, a treatise on Yoga philosophy by Patanjali.
+     Yog Vidya, the science of Yoga;  the practical method of
+uniting one's own spirit with the universal spirit.
+     Yogis, mystics, who develop themselves according to the
+system of Patanjali's "Yoga Philosophy."
+     Yudhishthira, the eldest of the five brothers, called
+Pandavas, whose exploits are celebrated in the great Sanskrit
+epic "Mahabharata."
+
+     Zend, the sacred language of ancient Persia.
+     Zhing, subtle matter;  Kama Rupa, or fourth principle
+(Chinese).
+     Zoroaster, the prophet of the Parsis.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14378 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14378 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14378)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Five Years Of Theosophy, by Various, Edited
+by George Robert Snow Mead
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Five Years Of Theosophy
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: December 18, 2004  [eBook #14378]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY***
+
+
+E-text prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg contributor
+
+
+
+FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY
+
+Mystical, Philosophical, Theosophical, Historical and Scientific Essays
+Selected from "The Theosophist"
+
+Edited by George Robert Snow Mead
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+Mystical
+
+The "Elixir of Life"
+Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish?
+Contemplation
+Chelas and Lay Chelas
+Ancient Opinions upon Psychic Bodies
+The Nilgiri Sannyasis
+Witchcraft on the Nilgiris
+Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes
+Mahatmas and Chelas
+The Brahmanical Thread
+Reading in a Sealed Envelope
+The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac
+The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis
+
+Philosophical
+
+True and False Personality
+Chastity
+Zorastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man
+Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man
+The Septenary Principle in Esotericism
+Personal and Impersonal God
+Prakriti and Parusha
+Morality and Pantheism
+Occult Study
+Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism"
+Sakya Muni's Place in History
+Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham
+Discrimination of Spirit and Not-Spirit
+Was Writing Known Before Panini?
+
+Theosophical
+
+What is Theosophy?
+How a "Chela" Found His "Guru"
+The Sages of the Himavat
+The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist?
+Interview With a Mahatma
+The Secret Doctrine
+
+Historical
+
+The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi
+The Theory of Cycles
+
+Scientific
+
+Odorigen and Jiva
+Introversion of Mental Vision
+"Precipitation"
+"How Shall We Sleep?"
+Transmigration of the Life Atoms
+"OM" and its Practical Significance
+
+
+
+
+
+FIVE YEARS OF THEOSOPHY
+
+
+Mystical
+
+
+
+The "Elixir of Life"
+       From a Chela's* Diary.  By G---M---, F.T.S.
+
+"And Enoch walked with the Elohim, and the Elohim took him."
+--Genesis
+
+Introduction
+
+[The curious information-for whatsoever else the world may think of it,
+it will doubtless be acknowledged to be that--contained in the article
+that follows, merits a few words of introduction. The details given in
+it on the subject of what has always been considered as one of the
+darkest and most strictly guarded of the mysteries of the initiation
+into occultism--from the days of the Rishis until those of the
+Theosophical Society--came to the knowledge of the author in a way that
+would seem to the ordinary run of Europeans strange and supernatural.
+He himself, however, we may assure the reader, is a most thorough
+disbeliever in the Supernatural, though he has learned too much to limit
+the capabilities of the natural as some do.  Further, he has to make the
+following confession of his own belief.  It will be apparent, from a
+careful perusal of the facts, that if the matter be really as stated
+therein, the author cannot himself be an adept of high grade, as the
+article in such a case would never have been written.  Nor does he
+pretend to be one.  He is, or rather was, for a few years an humble
+Chela. Hence, the converse must consequently be also true, that as
+regards the higher stages of the mystery he can have no personal
+experience, but speaks of it only as a close observer left to his own
+surmises--and no more.  He may, therefore, boldly state that during, and
+notwithstanding, his unfortunately rather too short stay with some
+adepts, he has by actual experiment and observation verified some of the
+less transcendental or incipient parts of the "Course."  And, though it
+will be impossible for him to give positive testimony as to what lies
+beyond, he may yet mention that all his own course of study, training
+and experience, long, severe and dangerous as it has often been, leads
+him to the conviction that everything is really as stated, save some
+details purposely veiled.  For causes which cannot be explained to the
+public, he himself may he unable or unwilling to use the secret he has
+gained access to.  Still he is permitted by one to whom all his
+reverential affection and gratitude are due--his last guru--to divulge
+for the benefit of Science and Man, and specially for the good of those
+who are courageous enough to personally make the experiment, the
+following astounding particulars of the occult methods for prolonging
+life to a period far beyond the common.--G.M.]
+
+---------
+* A. Chela is the pupil and disciple of an initiated Guru or
+Master.--Ed.
+---------
+
+
+Probably one of the first considerations which move the worldly-minded
+at present to solicit initiation into Theosophy is the belief, or hope,
+that, immediately on joining, some extraordinary advantage over the rest
+of mankind will be conferred upon the candidate.  Some even think that
+the ultimate result of their initiation will perhaps be exemption from
+that dissolution which is called the common lot of mankind.  The
+traditions of the "Elixir of Life," said to be in the possession of
+Kabalists and Alchemists, are still cherished by students of Medieval
+Occultism--in Europe.  The allegory of the Ab-e Hyat or Water of Life,
+is still credited as a fact by the degraded remnants of the Asiatic
+esoteric sects ignorant of the real GREAT SECRET. The "pungent and fiery
+Essence," by which Zanoni renewed his existence, still fires the
+imagination of modern visionaries as a possible scientific discovery of
+the future.
+
+Theosophically, though the fact is distinctly declared to be true, the
+above-named conceptions of the mode of procedure leading to the
+realization of the fact, are known to be false. The reader may or may
+not believe it;  but as a matter of fact, Theosophical Occultists claim
+to have communication with (living) Intelligences possessing an
+infinitely wider range of observation than is contemplated even by the
+loftiest aspirations of modern science, all the present "Adepts" of
+Europe and America--dabblers in the Kabala--notwithstanding.  But far
+even as those superior Intelligences have investigated (or, if
+preferred, are alleged to have investigated), and remotely as they may
+have searched by the help of inference and analogy, even They have
+failed to discover in the Infinity anything permanent but--SPACE.  ALL
+IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE.  Reflection, therefore, will easily suggest to the
+reader the further logical inference that in a Universe which is
+essentially impermanent in its conditions, nothing can confer
+permanency.  Therefore, no possible substance, even if drawn from the
+depths of Infinity;  no imaginable combination of drugs, whether of our
+earth or any other, though compounded by even the Highest Intelligence;
+no system of life or discipline though directed by the sternest
+determination and skill, could possibly produce Immutability.  For in
+the universe of solar systems, wherever and however investigated,
+Immutability necessitates "Non-Being" in the physical sense given it by
+the Theists-Non-Being which is nothing in the narrow conceptions of
+Western Religionists--a reductio ad absurdum.  This is a gratuitous
+insult even when applied to the pseudo-Christian or ecclesiastical
+Jehovite idea of God.
+
+Consequently, it will be seen that the common ideal conception of
+"Immortality" is not only essentially wrong, but a physical and
+metaphysical impossibility. The idea, whether cherished by Theosophists
+or non-Theosophists, by Christians or Spiritualists, by Materialists or
+Idealists, is a chimerical illusion.  But the actual prolongation of
+human life is possible for a time so long as to appear miraculous and
+incredible to those who regard our span of existence as necessarily
+limited to at most a couple of hundred years.  We may break, as it were,
+the shock of Death, and instead of dying, change a sudden plunge into
+darkness to a transition into a brighter light.  And this may be made so
+gradual that the passage from one state of existence to another shall
+have its friction minimized, so as to be practically imperceptible.
+This is a very different matter, and quite within the reach of Occult
+Science.  In this, as in all other cases, means properly directed will
+gain their ends, and causes produce effects. Of course, the only
+question is, what are these causes, and how, in their turn, are they to
+be produced.  To lift, as far as may be allowed, the veil from this
+aspect of Occultism, is the object of the present paper.
+
+We must premise by reminding the reader of two Theosophic doctrines,
+constantly inculcated in "Isis" and in other mystic works--namely, (a)
+that ultimately the Kosmos is One--one under infinite variations and
+manifestations, and (b) that the so-called man is a "compound being"--
+composite not only in the exoteric scientific sense of being a congeries
+of living so-called material Units, but also in the esoteric sense of
+being a succession of seven forms or parts of itself, interblended with
+each other.  To put it more clearly we might say that the more ethereal
+forms are but duplicates of the same aspect,--each finer one lying
+within the inter-atomic spaces of the next grosser.  We would have the
+reader understand that these are no subtleties, no "spiritualities" at
+all in the Christo-Spiritualistic sense.  In the actual man reflected in
+your mirror are really several men, or several parts of one composite
+man;  each the exact counterpart of the other, but the "atomic
+conditions" (for want of a better word) of each of which are so arranged
+that its atoms interpenetrate those of the next "grosser" form.  It does
+not, for our present purpose, matter how the Theosophists,
+Spiritualists, Buddhists, Kabalists, or Vedantists, count, separate,
+classify, arrange or name these, as that war of terms may be postponed
+to another occasion.  Neither does it matter what relation each of these
+men has to the various "elements" of the Kosmos of which he forms a
+part. This knowledge, though of vital importance in other respects, need
+not be explained or discussed now.  Nor does it much more concern us
+that the Scientists deny the existence of such an arrangement, because
+their instruments are inadequate to make their senses perceive it.  We
+will simply reply--"get better instruments and keener senses, and
+eventually you will."
+
+All we have to say is that if you are anxious to drink of the "Elixir of
+Life," and live a thousand years or so, you must take our word for the
+matter at present, and proceed on the assumption.  For esoteric science
+does not give the faintest possible hope that the desired end will ever
+be attained by any other way;  while modern, or so-called exact
+science--laughs at it.
+
+So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined--
+literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the
+mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next.  This
+"next" is not spiritual, but only a more ethereal form.  Having by a
+long training and preparation adapted it for a life in this atmosphere,
+during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off
+through a certain process (hints of which will be found further on) we
+have to prepare for this physiological transformation.
+
+How are we to do it?  In the first place we have the actual, visible,
+material body--Man, so called;  though, in fact, but his outer shell--to
+deal with. Let us bear in mind that science teaches us that in about
+every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent;  and
+this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of
+unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have
+had the slightest suspicion of the fact.
+
+We see, moreover, that in process of time any cut or lesion upon the
+body, however deep, has a tendency to repair the loss and reunite;  a
+piece of lost skin is very soon replaced by another. Hence, if a man,
+partially flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new
+skin, so our astral, vital body--the fourth of the seven (having
+attracted and assimilated to itself the second) and which is so much
+more ethereal than the physical one--may be made to harden its particles
+to the atmospheric changes.  The whole secret is to succeed in evolving
+it out, and separating it from the visible;  and while its generally
+invisible atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to
+gradually get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to
+make them die and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve
+and replace them.  We can say no more.  The Magdalene is not the only
+one who could be accused of having "seven spirits" in her, though men
+who have a lesser number of spirits (what a misnomer that word!) in
+them, are not few or exceptional;  they are the frequent failures of
+nature--the incomplete men and women.*
+
+-----------
+* This is not to be taken as meaning that such persons are thoroughly
+destitute of some one or several of the seven principles--a man born
+without an arm has still its ethereal counterpart;  but that they are so
+latent that they cannot be developed, and consequently are to be
+considered as non-existing.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+Each of these has in turn to survive the preceding and more dense one,
+and then die.  The exception is the sixth when absorbed into and blended
+with the seventh.  The "Phatu" * of the old Hindu physiologist had a
+dual meaning, the esoteric side of which corresponds with the Tibetan
+"Zung" (seven principles of the body).
+
+We Asiatics, have a proverb, probably handed down to us, and by the
+Hindus repeated ignorantly as to its esoteric meaning.  It has been
+known ever since the old Rishis mingled familiarly with the simple and
+noble people they taught and led on.  The Devas had whispered into every
+man's ear--Thou only--if thou wilt--art "immortal."  Combine with this
+the saying of a Western author that if any man could just realize for an
+instant, that he had to die some day, he would die that instant.  The
+Illuminated will perceive that between these two sayings, rightly
+understood, stands revealed the whole secret of Longevity.  We only die
+when our will ceases to be strong enough to make us live.  In the
+majority of cases, death comes when the torture and vital exhaustion
+accompanying a rapid change in our physical conditions becomes so
+intense as to weaken, for one single instant, our "clutch on life," or
+the tenacity of the will to exist.  Till then, however severe may be the
+disease, however sharp the pang, we are only sick or wounded, as the
+case may be.
+
+-----------
+* Dhatu--the seven principal substances of the human body--chyle, flesh,
+blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen.
+-----------
+
+This explains the cases of sudden deaths from joy, fright, pain, grief
+or such other causes.  The sense of a life-task consummated, of the
+worthlessness of one's existence, if strongly realized, produced death
+as surely as poison or a rifle-bullet. On the other hand, a stern
+determination to continue to live, has, in fact, carried many through
+the crises of the most severe diseases, in perfect safety.
+
+First, then, must be the determination--the Will--the conviction of
+certainty, to survive and continue.*  Without that, all else is useless.
+And to be efficient for the purpose, it must be, not only a passing
+resolution of the moment, a single fierce desire of short duration, but
+a settled and continued strain, as nearly as can be continued and
+concentrated without one single moment's relaxation.  In a word, the
+would-be "Immortal" must be on his watch night and day, guarding self
+against-himself.  To live--to live--to live--must be his unswerving
+resolve.  He must as little as possible allow himself to be turned aside
+from it.  It may be said that this is the most concentrated form of
+selfishness,--that it is utterly opposed to our Theosophic professions
+of benevolence, and disinterestedness, and regard for the good of
+humanity.  Well, viewed in a short-sighted way, it is so.  But to do
+good, as in everything else, a man must have time and materials to work
+with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers by
+which infinitely more good can be done than without them.
+
+----------
+* Col. Olcott has epigrammatically explained the creative or rather the
+re-creative power of the Will, in his "Buddhist Catechism."  He there
+shows--of course, speaking on behalf of the Southern Buddhists--that
+this Will to live, if not extinguished in the present life, leaps over
+the chasm of bodily death, and recombines the Skandhas, or groups of
+qualities that made up the individual into a new personality.  Man is,
+therefore, reborn as the result of his own unsatisfied yearning for
+objective existence.  Col. Olcott puts it in this way:
+
+Q.  123.  What is that, in man, which gives him the impression of
+having a permanent individuality?
+
+A.  Tanha, or the unsatisfied desire for existence.  The being having
+done that for which he must be rewarded or punished in future, and
+having Tanha, will have a rebirth through the influence of Karma.
+
+Q.  124.  ....What is it that is reborn?
+
+A.  A new aggregation of Skandhas, or individuality, caused by the last
+yearning of the dying person.
+
+Q.  128. To what cause must we attribute the differences in the
+combination of the Five Skandhas has which makes every individual
+different from every other individual?
+
+A.  To the Karma of the individual in the next preceding birth.
+
+Q.  129.  What is the force or energy that is at work, under the
+guidance of Karma, to produce the new being?
+
+A.  Tanha--the "Will to Live."
+----------
+
+When these are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive,
+for there comes a moment when further watch and exertion are no longer
+needed:--the moment when the turning-point is safely passed.  For the
+present as we deal with aspirants and not with advanced chelas, in the
+first stage a determined, dogged resolution, and an enlightened
+concentration of self on self, are all that is absolutely necessary.  It
+must not, however, be considered that the candidate is required to be
+unhuman or brutal in his negligence of others.  Such a recklessly
+selfish course would be as injurious to him as the contrary one of
+expending his vital energy on the gratification of his physical desires.
+All that is required from him is a purely negative attitude.  Until the
+turning-point is reached, he must not "lay out" his energy in lavish or
+fiery devotion to any cause, however noble, however "good," however
+elevated.*  Such, we can solemnly assure the reader, would bring its
+reward in many ways--perhaps in another life, perhaps in this world, but
+it would tend to shorten the existence it is desired to preserve, as
+surely as self-indulgence and profligacy.  That is why very few of the
+truly great men of the world (of course, the unprincipled adventurers
+who have applied great powers to bad uses are out of the question)--the
+martyrs, the heroes, the founders of religions, the liberators of
+nations, the leaders of reforms--ever became members of the long-lived
+"Brotherhood of Adepts" who were by some and for long years accused of
+selfishness.  (And that is also why the Yogis, and the Fakirs of modern
+India--most of whom are acting now but on the dead-letter tradition, are
+required if they would be considered living up to the principles of
+their profession--to appear entirely dead to every inward feeling or
+emotion.) Notwithstanding the purity of their hearts, the greatness of
+their aspirations, the disinterestedness of their self-sacrifice, they
+could not live for they had missed the hour.
+
+--------
+* On page 151 of Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World," the author's much abused,
+and still more doubted correspondent assures him that none yet of his
+"degree are like the stern hero of Bulwer's" Zanoni.... "the heartless
+morally dried up mummies some would fancy us to be" and adds that few of
+them "would care to play the part in life of a desiccated pansy between
+the leaves of a volume of solemn poetry."  But our adept omits saying
+that one or two degrees higher, and he will have to submit for a period
+of years to such a mummifying process unless, indeed, he would
+voluntarily give up a life-long labour and--Die.--Ed.
+----------
+
+They may at times have exercised powers which the world called
+miraculous;  they may have electrified man and subdued Nature by fiery
+and self-devoted Will;  they may have been possessed of a so-called
+superhuman intelligence;  they may have even had knowledge of, and
+communion with, members of our own occult Brotherhood;  but, having
+deliberately resolved to devote their vital energy to the welfare of
+others, rather than to themselves, they have surrendered life;  and,
+when perishing on the cross or the scaffold, or falling, sword in hand,
+upon the battle-field, or sinking exhausted after a successful
+consummation of the life-object, on death-beds in their chambers, they
+have all alike had to cry out at last:  "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!"
+
+So far so good.  But, given the will to live, however powerful, we have
+seen that, in the ordinary course of mundane life, the throes of
+dissolution cannot be checked.  The desperate, and again and again
+renewed struggle of the Kosmic elements to proceed with a career of
+change despite the will that is checking them, like a pair of runaway
+horses struggling against the determined driver holding them in, are so
+cumulatively powerful, that the utmost efforts of the untrained human
+will acting within an unprepared body become ultimately useless.  The
+highest intrepidity of the bravest soldier;  the interest desire of the
+yearning lover;  the hungry greed of the unsatisfied miser;  the most
+undoubting faith of the sternest fanatic;  the practiced insensibility
+to pain of the hardiest red Indian brave or half-trained Hindu Yogi;
+the most deliberate philosophy of the calmest thinker--all alike fail at
+last.  Indeed, sceptics will allege in opposition to the verities of
+this article that, as a matter of experience, it is often observed that
+the mildest and most irresolute of minds and the weakest of physical
+frames are often seen to resist "Death" longer than the powerful will of
+the high-spirited and obstinately-egotistic man, and the iron frame of
+the labourer, the warrior and the athlete.  In reality, however, the key
+to the secret of these apparently contradictory phenomena is the true
+conception of the very thing we have already said.  If the physical
+development of the gross "outer shell" proceeds on parallel lines and at
+an equal rate with that of the will, it stands to reason that no
+advantage for the purpose of overcoming it, is attained by the latter.
+The acquisition of improved breechloaders by one modern army confers no
+absolute superiority if the enemy also becomes possessed of them.
+Consequently it will be at once apparent, to those who think on the
+subject, that much of the training by which what is known as "a powerful
+and determined nature," perfects itself for its own purpose on the stage
+of the visible world, necessitating and being useless without a parallel
+development of the "gross" and so-called animal frame, is, in short,
+neutralized, for the purpose at present treated of, by the fact that its
+own action has armed the enemy with weapons equal to its own.  The force
+of the impulse to dissolution is rendered equal to the will to oppose
+it;  and being cumulative, subdues the will-power and triumphs at last.
+On the other hand, it may happen that an apparently weak and vacillating
+will-power residing in a weak and undeveloped physical frame, may be so
+reinforced by some unsatisfied desire--the Ichcha (wish)--as it is
+called by the Indian Occultists (for instance, a mother's heart-yearning
+to remain and support her fatherless children)--as to keep down and
+vanquish, for a short time, the physical throes of a body to which it
+has become temporarily superior.
+
+The whole rationale then, of the first condition of continued existence
+in this world, is (a) the development of a Will so powerful as to
+overcome the hereditary (in a Darwinian sense) tendencies of the atoms
+composing the "gross" and palpable animal frame, to hurry on at a
+particular period in a certain course of Kosmic change;  and (b) to so
+weaken the concrete action of that animal frame as to make it more
+amenable to the power of the Will.  To defeat an army, you must
+demoralize and throw it into disorder.
+
+To do this then, is the real object of all the rites, ceremonies, fasts,
+"prayers," meditations, initiations and procedures of self-discipline
+enjoined by various esoteric Eastern sects, from that course of pure and
+elevated aspiration which leads to the higher phases of Adeptism Real,
+down to the fearful and disgusting ordeals which the adherent of the
+"Left-hand-Road" has to pass through, all the time maintaining his
+equilibrium.  The procedures have their merits and their demerits, their
+separate uses and abuses, their essential and non-essential parts, their
+various veils, mummeries, and labyrinths.  But in all, the result aimed
+at is reached, if by different processes.  The Will is strengthened,
+encouraged and directed, and the elements opposing its action are
+demoralized.  Now, to any one who has thought out and connected the
+various evolution theories, as taken, not from any occult source, but
+from the ordinary scientific manual accessible to all--from the
+hypothesis of the latest variation in the habits of species--say, the
+acquisition of carnivorous habits by the New Zealand parrot, for
+instance--to the farthest glimpses backwards into Space and Eternity
+afforded by the "Fire Mist" doctrine, it will be apparent that they all
+rest on one basis. That basis is, that the impulse once given to a
+hypothetical Unit has a tendency to continue;  and consequently, that
+anything "done" by something at a certain time and certain place tends
+to repeat itself at other times and places.
+
+Such is the admitted rationale of heredity and atavism.  That the same
+things apply to our ordinary conduct is apparent from the notorious ease
+with which "habits,"--bad or good, as the case may be--are acquired, and
+it will not be questioned that this applies, as a rule, as much to the
+moral and intellectual, as to the physical world.
+
+Furthermore, History and Science teach us plainly that certain physical
+habits conduce to certain moral and intellectual results.  There never
+yet was a conquering nation of vegetarians. Even in the old Aryan times,
+we do not learn that the very Rishis, from whose lore and practice we
+gain the knowledge of Occultism, ever interdicted the Kshetriya
+(military) caste from hunting or a carnivorous diet.  Filling, as they
+did, a certain place in the body politic in the actual condition of the
+world, the Rishis as little thought of interfering with them, as of
+restraining the tigers of the jungle from their habits.  That did not
+affect what the Rishis did themselves.
+
+The aspirant to longevity then must be on his guard against two dangers.
+He must beware especially of impure and animal* thoughts. For Science
+shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved by nervous
+action expanding outwardly, must affect the molecular relations of the
+physical man.  The inner men,** however sublimated their organism may
+be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical, particles, and are
+still subject to the law that an "action" has a tendency to repeat
+itself;  a tendency to set up analogous action in the grosser "shell"
+they are in contact with, and concealed within.
+
+----------
+* In other words, the thought tends to provoke the deed.--G.M.
+
+** We use the word in the plural, reminding the reader that, according
+to our doctrine, man is septenary.--G.M.
+----------
+
+And, on the other hand, certain actions have a tendency to produce
+actual physical conditions unfavourable to pure thoughts, hence to the
+state required for developing the supremacy of the inner man.
+
+To return to the practical process.  A normally healthy mind, in a
+normally healthy body, is a good starting-point.  Though exceptionally
+powerful and self-devoted natures may sometimes recover the ground lost
+by mental degradation or physical misuse, by employing proper means,
+under the direction of unswerving resolution, yet often things may have
+gone so far that there is no longer stamina enough to sustain the
+conflict sufficiently long to perpetuate this life;  though what in
+Eastern parlance is called the "merit" of the effort will help to
+ameliorate conditions and improve matters in another.
+
+However this may be, the prescribed course of self-discipline commences
+here.  It may be stated briefly that its essence is a course of moral,
+mental, and physical development, carried on in parallel lines--one
+being useless without the other.  The physical man must be rendered more
+ethereal and sensitive;  the mental man more penetrating and profound;
+the moral man more self-denying and philosophical.  And it may be
+mentioned that all sense of restraint--even if self-imposed--is useless.
+Not only is all "goodness" that results from the compulsion of physical
+force, threats, or bribes (whether of a physical or so-called
+"spiritual" nature) absolutely useless to the person who exhibits it,
+its hypocrisy tending to poison the moral atmosphere of the world, but
+the desire to be "good" or "pure," to be efficacious must be
+spontaneous.  It must be a self-impulse from within, a real preference
+for something higher, not an abstention from vice because of fear of the
+law:  not a chastity enforced by the dread of Public Opinion;  not a
+benevolence exercised through love of praise or dread of consequences in
+a hypothetical Future Life.*
+
+----------
+* Col. Olcott clearly and succinctly explains the Buddhist doctrine of
+Merit or Karma, in his "Buddhist Catechism."
+(Question 83).--G.M.
+----------
+
+It will be seen now in connection with the doctrine of the tendency
+to the renewal of action, before discussed, that the course of
+self-discipline recommended as the only road to Longevity by Occultism
+is not a "visionary" theory dealing with vague "ideas," but actually a
+scientifically devised system of drill.  It is a system by which each
+particle of the several men composing the septenary individual receives
+an impulse, and a habit of doing what is necessary for certain purposes
+of its own free-will and with "pleasure."  Every one must be practiced
+and perfect in a thing to do it with pleasure.  This rule especially
+applies to the case of the development of Man.  "Virtue" may be very
+good in its way--it may lead to the grandest results. But to become
+efficacious it has to be practiced cheerfully not with reluctance or
+pain.  As a consequence of the above consideration the candidate for
+Longevity at the commencement of his career must begin to eschew his
+physical desires, not from any sentimental theory of right or wrong, but
+for the following good reason.  As, according to a well-known and now
+established scientific theory, his visible material frame is always
+renewing its particles;  he will, while abstaining from the
+gratification of his desires, reach the end of a certain period during
+which those particles which composed the man of vice, and which were
+given a bad predisposition, will have departed.  At the same time, the
+disuse of such functions will tend to obstruct the entry, in place of
+the old particles, of new particles having a tendency to repeat the said
+acts.  And while this is the particular result as regards certain
+"vices," the general result of an abstention from "gross" acts will be
+(by a modification of the well-known Darwinian law of atrophy by
+non-usage) to diminish what we may call the "relative" density and
+coherence of the outer shell (as a result of its less-used molecules);
+while the diminution in the quantity of its actual constituents will he
+"made up" (if tried by scales and weights) by the increased admission of
+more ethereal particles.
+
+What physical desires are to be abandoned and in what order? First and
+foremost, he must give up alcohol in all forms;  for while it supplies
+no nourishment, nor any direct pleasure (beyond such sweetness or
+fragrance as may be gained in the taste of wine, &c., to which alcohol,
+in itself, is non-essential) to even the grossest elements of the
+"physical" frame, it induces a violence of action, a rush so to speak,
+of life, the stress of which can only be sustained by very dull, gross,
+and dense elements, and which, by the operation of the well-known law of
+Re-action (in commercial phrase, "supply and demand") tends to summon
+them from the surrounding universe, and therefore directly counteracts
+the object we have in view.
+
+Next comes meat-eating, and for the very same reason, in a minor degree.
+It increases the rapidity of life, the energy of action, the violence of
+passions.  It may be good for a hero who has to fight and die, but not
+for a would-be sage who has to exist and....
+
+Next in order come the sexual desires;  for these, in addition to the
+great diversion of energy (vital force) into other channels, in many
+different ways, beyond the primary one (as, for instance, the waste of
+energy in expectation, jealousy, &c.), are direct attractions to a
+certain gross quality of the original matter of the Universe, simply
+because the most pleasurable physical sensations are only possible at
+that stage of density.  Alongside with and extending beyond all these
+and other gratifications of the senses (which include not only those
+things usually known as "vicious," but all those which, though
+ordinarily regarded as "innocent," have yet the disqualification of
+ministering to the pleasures of the body--the most harmless to others
+and the least "gross" being the criterion for those to be last abandoned
+in each case)--must be carried on the moral purification.
+
+Nor must it be imagined that "austerities" as commonly understood can,
+in the majority of cases, avail much to hasten the "etherealizing"
+process.  That is the rock on which many of the Eastern esoteric sects
+have foundered, and the reason why they have degenerated into degrading
+superstitions.  The Western monks and the Eastern Yogees, who think they
+will reach the apex of powers by concentrating their thought on their
+navel, or by standing on one leg, are practicing exercises which serve
+no other purpose than to strengthen the willpower, which is sometimes
+applied to the basest purposes.  These are examples of this one-sided
+and dwarf development.  It is no use to fast as long as you require
+food.  The ceasing of desire for food without impairment of health is
+the sign which indicates that it should be taken in lesser and ever
+decreasing quantities until the extreme limit compatible with life is
+reached.  A stage will be finally attained where only water will be
+required.
+
+Nor is it of any use for this particular purpose of longevity to abstain
+from immorality so long as you are craving for it in your heart;  and so
+on with all other unsatisfied inward cravings.  To get rid of the inward
+desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing without it is
+barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.
+
+So it must be with the moral purification of the heart.  The "basest"
+inclinations must go first--then the others.  First avarice, then fear,
+then envy, worldly pride, uncharitableness, hatred;  last of all
+ambition and curiosity must be abandoned successively.  The
+strengthening of the more ethereal and so-called "spiritual" parts of
+the man must go on at the same time. Reasoning from the known to the
+unknown, meditation must be practiced and encouraged.  Meditation is the
+inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to "go out towards the
+infinite," which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration,
+but which has now no synonym in the European languages, because the
+thing no longer exists in the West, and its name has been vulgarized to
+the make-believe shams known as prayer, glorification, and repentance.
+Through all stages of training the equilibrium of the consciousness--the
+assurance that all must be right in the Kosmos, and therefore with you a
+portion of it--must be retained. The process of life must not be hurried
+but retarded, if possible;  to do otherwise may do good to others--
+perhaps even to yourself in other spheres, but it will hasten your
+dissolution in this.
+
+Nor must the externals be neglected in this first stage. Remember that
+an adept, though "existing" so as to convey to ordinary minds the idea
+of his being immortal, is not also invulnerable to agencies from
+without.  The training to prolong life does not, in itself, secure one
+from accidents.  As far as any physical preparation goes, the sword may
+still cut, the disease enter, the poison disarrange.  This case is very
+clearly and beautifully put in "Zanoni," and it is correctly put and
+must be so, unless all "adeptism" is a baseless lie.  The adept may be
+more secure from ordinary dangers than the common mortal, but he is so
+by virtue of the superior knowledge, calmness, coolness and penetration
+which his lengthened existence and its necessary concomitants have
+enabled him to acquire;  not by virtue of any preservative power in the
+process itself.  He is secure as a man armed with a rifle is more secure
+than a naked baboon;  not secure in the sense in which the deva (god)
+was supposed to be securer than a man.
+
+If this is so in the case of the high adept, how much more necessary is
+it that the neophyte should be not only protected but that he himself
+should use all possible means to ensure for himself the necessary
+duration of life to complete the process of mastering the phenomena we
+call death!  It may be said, why do not the higher adepts protect him?
+Perhaps they do to some extent, but the child must learn to walk alone;
+to make him independent of his own efforts in respect to safety, would
+be destroying one element necessary to his development--the sense of
+responsibility.  What courage or conduct would be called for in a man
+sent to fight when armed with irresistible weapons and clothed in
+impenetrable armour?  Hence the neophyte should endeavour, as far as
+possible, to fulfill every true canon of sanitary law as laid down by
+modern scientists.  Pure air, pure water, pure food, gentle exercise,
+regular hours, pleasant occupations and surroundings, are all, if not
+indispensable, at least serviceable to his progress.  It is to secure
+these, at least as much as silence and solitude, that the Gods, Sages,
+Occultists of all ages have retired as much as possible to the quiet of
+the country, the cool cave, the depths of the forest, the expanse of the
+desert, or the heights of the mountains.  Is it not suggestive that the
+Gods have always loved the "high places";  and that in the present day
+the highest section of the Occult Brotherhood on earth inhabits the
+highest mountain plateaux of the earth?*
+
+---------
+* The stern prohibition to the Jews to serve "their gods upon the high
+mountains and upon the hills" is traced back to the unwillingness of
+their ancient elders to allow people in most cases unfit for adeptship
+to choose a life of celibacy and asceticism, or in other words, to
+pursue adeptship.  This prohibition had an esoteric meaning before it
+became the prohibition, incomprehensible in its dead-letter sense:  for
+it is not India alone whose sons accorded divine honours to the Wise
+Ones, but all nations regarded their adepts and initiates as divine.--
+G.M.
+---------
+
+Nor must the beginner disdain the assistance of medicine and good
+medical regimen.  He is still an ordinary mortal, and he requires the
+aid of an ordinary mortal.
+
+"Suppose, however, all the conditions required, or which will be
+understood as required (for the details and varieties of treatment
+requisite, are too numerous to be detailed here), are fulfilled, what is
+the next step?" the reader will ask.  Well if there have been no
+backslidings or remissness in the procedure indicated, the following
+physical results will follow:--
+
+First the neophyte will take more pleasure in things spiritual and pure.
+Gradually gross and material occupations will become not only uncraved
+for or forbidden, but simply and literally repulsive to him.  He will
+take more pleasure in the simple sensations of Nature--the sort of
+feeling one can remember to have experienced as a child.  He will feel
+more light-hearted, confident, happy.  Let him take care the sensation
+of renewed youth does not mislead, or he will yet risk a fall into his
+old baser life and even lower depths.  "Action and Re-action are equal."
+
+Now the desire for food will begin to cease.  Let it be left off
+gradually--no fasting is required.  Take what you feel you require.  The
+food craved for will be the most innocent and simple.  Fruit and milk
+will usually be the best.  Then as till now, you have been simplifying
+the quality of your food, gradually--very gradually--as you feel capable
+of it diminish the quantity.  You will ask:  "Can a man exist without
+food?"  No, but before you mock, consider the character of the process
+alluded to.  It is a notorious fact that many of the lowest and simplest
+organisms have no excretions.  The common guinea-worm is a very good
+instance.  It has rather a complicated organism, but it has no
+ejaculatory duct.  All it consumes--the poorest essences of the human
+body--is applied to its growth and propagation.  Living as it does in
+human tissue, it passes no digested food away.  The human neophyte, at a
+certain stage of his development, is in a somewhat analogous condition,
+with this difference or differences, that he does excrete, but it is
+through the pores of his skin, and by those too enter other etherealized
+particles of matter to contribute towards his support.*  Otherwise, all
+the food and drink is sufficient only to keep in equilibrium those
+"gross" parts of his physical body which still remain to repair their
+cuticle-waste through the medium of the blood.  Later on, the process of
+cell-development in his frame will undergo a change;  a change for the
+better, the opposite of that in disease for the worse--he will become
+all living and sensitive, and will derive nourishment from the Ether
+(Akas).  But that epoch for our neophyte is yet far distant.
+
+---------
+* He is in a state similar to the physical state of a fetus
+before birth into the world.--G.M.
+---------
+
+Probably, long before that period has arrived, other results, no less
+surprising than incredible to the uninitiated will have ensued to give
+our neophyte courage and consolation in his difficult task.  It would be
+but a truism to repeat what has been again alleged (in ignorance of its
+real rationale) by hundreds and hundreds of writers as to the happiness
+and content conferred by a life of innocence and purity.  But often at
+the very commencement of the process some real physical result,
+unexpected and unthought of by the neophyte, occurs.  Some lingering
+disease, hitherto deemed hopeless, may take a favourable turn; or he may
+develop healing mesmeric powers himself;  or some hitherto unknown
+sharpening of his senses may delight him.  The rationale of these things
+is, as we have said, neither miraculous nor difficult of comprehension.
+In the first place, the sudden change in the direction of the vital
+energy (which, whatever view we take of it and its origin, is
+acknowledged by all schools of philosophy as most recondite, and as the
+motive power) must produce results of some kind.  In the second,
+Theosophy shows, as we said before, that a man consists of several men
+pervading each other, and on this view (although it is very difficult to
+express the idea in language) it is but natural that the progressive
+etherealization of the densest and most gross of all should leave the
+others literally more at liberty.  A troop of horses may be blocked by a
+mob and have much difficulty in fighting its way through;  but if every
+one of the mob could be changed suddenly into a ghost, there would be
+little to retard it.  And as each interior entity is more rare, active,
+and volatile than the outer and as each has relation with different
+elements, spaces, and properties of the Kosmos which are treated of in
+other articles on Occultism, the mind of the reader may conceive--though
+the pen of the writer could not express it in a dozen volumes--the
+magnificent possibilities gradually unfolded to the neophyte.
+
+Many of the opportunities thus suggested may be taken advantage of by
+the neophyte for his own safety, amusement, and the good of those around
+him;  but the way in which he does this is one adapted to his fitness--a
+part of the ordeal he has to pass through, and misuse of these powers
+will certainly entail the loss of them as a natural result.  The Itchcha
+(or desire) evoked anew by the vistas they open up will retard or throw
+back his progress.
+
+But there is another portion of the Great Secret to which we must
+allude, and which is now, for the first, in a long series of ages,
+allowed to be given out to the world, as the hour for it is come.
+
+The educated reader need not be reminded again that one of the great
+discoveries which has immortalized the name of Darwin is the law that an
+organism has always a tendency to repeat, at an analogous period in its
+life, the action of its progenitors, the more surely and completely in
+proportion to their proximity in the scale of life.  One result of this
+is, that, in general, organized beings usually die at a period (on an
+average) the same as that of their progenitors.  It is true that there
+is a great difference between the actual ages at which individuals of
+any species die.  Disease, accidents and famine are the main agents in
+causing this.  But there is, in each species, a well-known limit within
+which the Race-life lies, and none are known to survive beyond it.  This
+applies to the human species as well as any other.  Now, supposing that
+every possible sanitary condition had been complied with, and every
+accident and disease avoided by a man of ordinary frame, in some
+particular case there would still, as is known to medical men, come a
+time when the particles of the body would feel the hereditary tendency
+to do that which leads inevitably to dissolution, and would obey it.  It
+must be obvious to any reflecting man that, if by any procedure this
+critical climacteric could be once thoroughly passed over, the
+subsequent danger of "Death" would be proportionally less as the years
+progressed.  Now this, which no ordinary and unprepared mind and body
+can do, is possible sometimes for the will and the frame of one who has
+been specially prepared.  There are fewer of the grosser particles
+present to feel the hereditary bias--there is the assistance of the
+reinforced "interior men" (whose normal duration is always greater even
+in natural death) to the visible outer shell, and there is the drilled
+and indomitable Will to direct and wield the whole.*
+
+-----------
+* In this connection we may as well show what modern science, and
+especially physiology has to say as to the power of the human will.
+"The force of will is a potent element in determining longevity.  This
+single point must be granted without argument, that of two men every way
+alike and similarly circumstanced, the one who has the greater courage
+and grit will be longer-lived. One does not need to practice medicine
+long to learn that men die who might just as well live if they resolved
+to live, and that myriads who are invalids could become strong if they
+had the native or acquired will to vow they would do so.  Those who have
+no other quality favourable to life, whose bodily organs are nearly
+all diseased, to whom each day is a day of pain, who are beset by
+life-shortening influences, yet do live by will alone."
+--Dr. George M. Beard.
+-------------
+
+From that time forward the course of the aspirant is clearer.  He has
+conquered "the Dweller of the Threshold"--the hereditary enemy of his
+race, and, though still exposed to ever-new dangers in his progress
+towards Nirvana, he is flushed with victory, and with new confidence and
+new powers to second it, can press onwards to perfection.
+
+For, it must be remembered, that nature everywhere acts by Law, and that
+the process of purification we have been describing in the visible
+material body, also takes place in those which are interior, and not
+visible to the scientist by modifications of the same process.  All is
+on the change, and the metamorphoses of the more ethereal bodies
+imitate, though in successively multiplied duration, the career of the
+grosser, gaining an increasing wider range of relations with the
+surrounding kosmos, till in Nirvana the most rarefied Individuality is
+merged at last into the INFINITE TOTALITY.
+
+From the above description of the process, it will be inferred why it is
+that "Adepts" are so seldom seen in ordinary life; for, pari passu, with
+the etherealization of their bodies and the development of their power,
+grows an increasing distaste, and a so-to-speak, "contempt" for the
+things of our ordinary mundane existence.  Like the fugitive who
+successively casts away in his flight those articles which incommode his
+progress, beginning with the heaviest, so the aspirant eluding "Death"
+abandons all on which the latter can take hold.  In the progress of
+Negation everything got rid of is a help.  As we said before, the adept
+does not become "immortal" as the word is ordinarily understood. By or
+about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is actually
+dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved himself of
+all or nearly all such material particles as would have necessitated in
+disruption the agony of dying.  He has been dying gradually during the
+whole period of his Initiation.  The catastrophe cannot happen twice
+over.  He has only spread over a number of years the mild process of
+dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a few hours.  The
+highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely unconscious of, the
+world;  he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless of its miseries, in
+so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense of DUTY never leaves
+him blind to its very existence.  For the new ethereal senses opening to
+wider spheres are to ours much in the relation of ours to the Infinitely
+Little.  New desires and enjoyments, new dangers and new hindrances
+arise, with new sensations and new perceptions;  and far away down in
+the mist--both literally and metaphorically--is our dirty little earth
+left below by those who have virtually "gone to join the gods."
+
+And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
+people to ask the Theosophist to "procure for them communication with
+the highest Adepts."  It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
+can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
+progress by meddling with mundane affairs.  The ordinary reader will
+say:  "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." .... But
+let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
+would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation.  And is the
+result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
+encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?
+
+A deep consideration of all that we have written, will also give the
+Theosophists an idea of what they demand when they ask to be put in the
+way of gaining practically "higher powers."  Well, there, as plainly as
+words can put it, is the PATH .... can they tread it?
+
+Nor must it be disguised that what to the ordinary mortal are unexpected
+dangers, temptations and enemies also beset the way of the neophyte.
+And that for no fanciful cause, but the simple reason that he is, in
+fact, acquiring new senses, has yet no practice in their use, and has
+never before seen the things he sees.  A man born blind suddenly endowed
+with vision would not at once master the meaning of perspective, but
+would, like a baby, imagine in one case, the moon to be within his
+reach, and, in the other, grasp a live coal with the most reckless
+confidence.
+
+And what, it may be asked, is to recompense this abnegation of all the
+pleasures of life, this cold surrender of all mundane interests, this
+stretching forward to an unknown goal which seems ever more
+unattainable?  For, unlike some of the anthropomorphic creeds, Occultism
+offers to its votaries no eternally permanent heaven of material
+pleasure, to be gained at once by one quick dash through the grave.  As
+has, in fact, often been the case many would be prepared willingly to
+die now for the sake of the paradise hereafter.  But Occultism gives no
+such prospect of cheaply and immediately gained infinitude of pleasure,
+wisdom and existence.  It only promises extensions of these, stretching
+in successive arches obscured by successive veils, in an unbroken series
+up the long vista which leads to NIRVANA.  And this too, qualified by
+the necessity that new powers entail new responsibilities, and that the
+capacity of increased pleasure entails the capacity of increased
+sensibility to pain.  To this, the only answer that can be given is
+two-fold:  (1st) the consciousness of Power is itself the most exquisite
+of pleasures, and is unceasingly gratified in the progress onwards with
+new means for its exercise and (2ndly) as has been already said--THIS is
+the only road by which there is the faintest scientific likelihood that
+"Death" can be avoided, perpetual memory secured, infinite wisdom
+attained, and hence an immense helping of mankind made possible, once
+that the adept has safely crossed the turning-point.  Physical as well
+as metaphysical logic requires and endorses the fact that only by
+gradual absorption into infinity can the Part become acquainted with the
+Whole, and that that which is now something can only feel, know, and
+enjoy EVERYTHING when lost in Absolute Totality in the vortex of that
+Unalterable Circle wherein our Knowledge becomes Ignorance, and the
+Everything itself is identified with the NOTHING.
+
+
+
+
+Is the Desire to "Live" Selfish?
+
+
+The passage "to live, to live, to live must be the unswerving resolve,"
+occurring in the article on the Elixir of Life, is often quoted by
+superficial and unsympathetic readers as an argument that the teachings
+of occultism are the most concentrated form of selfishness.  In order to
+determine whether the critics are right or wrong, the meaning of the
+word "selfishness" must first be ascertained.
+
+According to an established authority, selfishness is that "exclusive
+regard to one's own interest or happiness;  that supreme self-love or
+self-preference which leads a person to direct his purposes to the
+advancement of his own interest, power, or happiness, without regarding
+those of others."
+
+In short, an absolutely selfish individual is one who cares for himself
+and none else, or, in other words, one who is so strongly imbued with a
+sense of the importance of his own personality that to him it is the
+crown of all thoughts, desires, and aspirations, and beyond which lies
+the perfect blank.  Now, can an occultist be then said to be "selfish"
+when he desires to live in the sense in which that word is used by the
+writer of the article on the Elixir of Life?  It has been said over and
+over again that the ultimate end of every aspirant after occult
+knowledge is Nirvana or Mukti, when the individual, freed from all
+Mayavic Upadhi, becomes one with Paramatma, or the Son identifies
+himself with the Father in Christian phraseology.  For that purpose,
+every veil of illusion which creates a sense of personal isolation, a
+feeling of separateness from THE ALL, must be torn asunder, or, in other
+words, the aspirant must gradually discard all sense of selfishness with
+which we are all more or less affected.  A study of the Law of Kosmic
+Evolution teaches us that the higher the evolution, the more does it
+tend towards Unity.  In fact, Unity is the ultimate possibility of
+Nature, and those who through vanity and selfishness go against her
+purposes, cannot but incur the punishment of annihilation.  The
+occultist thus recognizes that unselfishness and a feeling of universal
+philanthropy are the inherent laws of our being, and all he does is to
+attempt to destroy the chains of selfishness forged upon us all by Maya.
+The struggle then between Good and Evil, God and Satan, Suras and
+Asuras, Devas and Daityas, which is mentioned in the sacred books of all
+the nations and races, symbolizes the battle between unselfish and
+selfish impulses, which takes place in a man, who tries to follow the
+higher purposes of Nature, until the lower animal tendencies, created by
+selfishness, are completely conquered, and the enemy thoroughly routed
+and annihilated.  It has also been often put forth in various
+Theosophical and other occult writings that the only difference between
+an ordinary man who works along with Nature during the course of Kosmic
+evolution and an occultist, is that the latter, by his superior
+knowledge, adopts such methods of training and discipline as will hurry
+on that process of evolution, and he thus reaches in a comparatively
+short time the apex which the ordinary individual will take perhaps
+billions of years to reach.  In short, in a few thousand years he
+approaches that type of evolution which ordinary humanity attains in the
+sixth or seventh Round of the Manvantara, i.e., cyclic progression.  It
+is evident that an average man cannot become a MAHATMA in one life, or
+rather in one incarnation.  Now those, who have studied the occult
+teachings concerning Devachan and our after-states, will remember that
+between two incarnations there is a considerable period of subjective
+existence.  The greater the number of such Devachanic periods, the
+greater is the number of years over which this evolution is extended.
+The chief aim of the occultist is therefore to so control himself as to
+be able to regulate his future states, and thereby gradually shorten the
+duration of his Devachanic existence between two incarnations.  In the
+course of his progress, there comes a time when, between one physical
+death and his next rebirth, there is no Devachan but a kind of spiritual
+sleep, the shock of death, having, so to say, stunned him into a state
+of unconsciousness from which he gradually recovers to find himself
+reborn, to continue his purpose.  The period of this sleep may vary from
+twenty-five to two hundred years, depending upon the degree of his
+advancement.  But even this period may be said to be a waste of time,
+and hence all his exertions are directed to shorten its duration so as
+to gradually come to a point when the passage from one state of
+existence into another is almost imperceptible.  This is his last
+incarnation, as it were, for the shock of death no more stuns him.  This
+is the idea the writer of the article on the Elixir of Life means to
+convey when he says:
+
+By or about the time when the Death-limit of his race is passed he is
+actually dead, in the ordinary sense, that is to say, he has relieved
+himself of all or nearly all such material particles as would have
+necessitated in disruption the agony of dying.  He has been dying
+gradually during the whole period of his Initiation.  The catastrophe
+cannot happen twice over, he has only spread over a number of years the
+mild process of dissolution which others endure from a brief moment to a
+few hours.  The highest Adept is, in fact, dead to, and absolutely
+unconscious of, the World;  he is oblivious of its pleasures, careless
+of its miseries, in so far as sentimentalism goes, for the stern sense
+of Duty never leaves him blind to its very existence....
+
+The process of the emission and attraction of atoms, which the occultist
+controls, has been discussed at length in that article and in other
+writings.  It is by these means that he gets rid gradually of all the
+old gross particles of his body, substituting for them finer and more
+ethereal ones, till at last the former sthula sarira is completely dead
+and disintegrated, and he lives in a body entirely of his own creation,
+suited to his work.  That body is essential to his purposes;  as the
+Elixir of Life says:--
+
+To do good, as in every thing else, a man most have time and materials
+to Work with, and this is a necessary means to the acquirement of powers
+by which infinitely more good can be done than without them.  When these
+are once mastered, the opportunities to use them will arrive....
+
+Giving the practical instructions for that purpose, the same paper
+continues:--
+
+The physical man must be rendered more ethereal and sensitive; the
+mental man more penetrating and profound;  the moral man more
+self-denying and philosophical.
+
+Losing sight of the above important considerations, the following
+passage is entirely misunderstood:--
+
+And from this account too, it will be perceptible how foolish it is for
+people to ask the Theosophist "to procure for them communication with
+the highest Adepts."  It is with the utmost difficulty that one or two
+can be induced, even by the throes of a world, to injure their own
+progress by meddling with mundane affairs.  The ordinary reader will
+say:  "This is not god-like. This is the acme of selfishness." ....But
+let him realize that a very high Adept, undertaking to reform the world,
+would necessarily have to once more submit to Incarnation.  And is the
+result of all that have gone before in that line sufficiently
+encouraging to prompt a renewal of the attempt?
+
+Now, in condemning the above passage as inculcating selfishness,
+superficial critics neglect many profound truths.  In the first place,
+they forget the other extracts already quoted which impose self-denial
+as a necessary condition of success, and which say that, with progress,
+new senses and new powers are acquired with which infinitely more good
+can be done than without them.  The more spiritual the Adept becomes the
+less can he meddle with mundane gross affairs and the more he has to
+confine himself to spiritual work.  It has been repeated, times out of
+number, that the work on the spiritual plane is as superior to the work
+on the intellectual plane as the latter is superior to that on the
+physical plane.  The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but
+only spiritually:  they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with
+worldly affairs.  But this applies only to very high Adepts.  There are
+various degrees of Adept-ship, and those of each degree work for
+humanity on the planes to which they may have risen.  It is only the
+chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree.
+And it is because the Adepts do care for the world that they make their
+chelas live in and work for it, as many of those who study the subject
+are aware.  Each cycle produces its own occultists capable of working
+for the humanity of the time on all the different planes;  but when the
+Adepts foresee that at a particular period humanity will he incapable of
+producing occultists for work on particular planes, for such occasions
+they do provide by either voluntarily giving up their further progress
+and waiting until humanity reaches that period, or by refusing to enter
+into Nirvana and submitting to re-incarnation so as to be ready for work
+when the time comes.  And although the world may not be aware of the
+fact, yet there are even now certain Adepts who have preferred to remain
+in statu quo and refuse to take the higher degrees, for the benefit of
+the future generations of humanity.  In short, as the Adepts work
+harmoniously, since unity is the fundamental law of their being, they
+have, as it were, made a division of labour, according to which each
+works on the plane appropriate to himself for the spiritual elevation of
+us all--and the process of longevity mentioned in the Elixir of Life is
+only the means to the end which, far from being selfish, is the most
+unselfish purpose for which a human being can labour.
+
+(--H.P. Blavatsky)
+
+
+
+
+Contemplation
+
+
+A general misconception on this subject seems to prevail.  One confines
+oneself for some time in a room, and passively gazes at one's nose, a
+spot on the wall, or, perhaps, a crystal, under the impression that such
+is the true form of contemplation enjoined by Raj Yoga.  Many fail to
+realize that true occultism requires a physical, mental, moral and
+spiritual development to run on parallel lines, and injure themselves,
+physically and spiritually, by practice of what they falsely believe to
+be Dhyan.  A few instances may be mentioned here with advantage, as a
+warning to over-zealous students.
+
+At Bareilly the writer met a member of the Theosophical Society from
+Farrukhabad, who narrated his experiences and shed bitter tears of
+repentance for his past follies--as he termed them.  It appears from his
+account that fifteen or twenty years ago having read about contemplation
+in the Bhagavad Gita, he undertook the practice of it, without a proper
+comprehension of its esoteric meaning and carried it on for several
+years.  At first he experienced a sense of pleasure, but simultaneously
+he found he was gradually losing self-control;  until after a few years
+he discovered, to his great bewilderment and sorrow, that he was no
+longer his own master.  He felt his heart actually growing heavy, as
+though a load had been placed on it.  He had no control over his
+sensations the communication between the brain and the heart had become
+as though interrupted.  As matters grew worse, in disgust he
+discontinued his "contemplation."  This happened as long as seven years
+ago;  and, although since then he has not felt worse, yet he could never
+regain his original healthy state of mind and body.
+
+Another case came under the writer's observation at Jubbulpore. The
+gentleman concerned, after reading Patanjali and such other works, began
+to sit for "contemplation."  After a short time he commenced seeing
+abnormal sights and hearing musical bells, but neither over these
+phenomena nor over his own sensations could he exercise any control.  He
+could not produce these results at will, nor could he stop them when
+they were occurring.  Numerous such examples may be cited.  While
+penning these lines, the writer has on his table two letters upon this
+subject, one from Moradabad and the other from Trichinopoly.  In short,
+all this mischief is due to a misunderstanding of the significance of
+contemplation as enjoined upon students by all the schools of Occult
+Philosophy.  With a view to afford a glimpse of the Reality through the
+dense veil that enshrouds the mysteries of this Science of Sciences, an
+article, the Elixir of Life, was written.  Unfortunately, in too many
+instances, the seed seems to have fallen upon barren ground.  Some of
+its readers pin their faith to the following clause in that paper:--
+Reasoning from the known to the unknown meditation must be practiced and
+encouraged.
+
+But, alas! their preconceptions have prevented them from comprehending
+what is meant by meditation.  They forget that the meditation spoken of
+"is the inexpressible yearning of the inner Man to 'go out towards the
+infinite,' which in the olden time was the real meaning of adoration"--
+as the next sentence shows.  A good deal of light would be thrown upon
+this subject if the reader were to turn to an earlier part of the same
+paper, and peruse attentively the following paragraphs:--
+
+So, then, we have arrived at the point where we have determined--
+literally, not metaphorically--to crack the outer shell known as the
+mortal coil or body, and hatch out of it, clothed in our next.  This
+'next' is not a spiritual, but only a more ethereal form.  Having by a
+long training and preparation adapted it for a life in the atmosphere,
+during which time we have gradually made the outward shell to die off
+through a certain process .... we have to prepare for this physiological
+transformation.
+
+How are we to do it?  In the first place we have the actual, visible,
+material body--Man, so called, though, in fact, but his outer shell--to
+deal with.  Let us bear in mind that Science teaches us that in about
+every seven years we change skin as effectually as any serpent;  and
+this so gradually and imperceptibly that, had not science after years of
+unremitting study and observation assured us of it, no one would have
+had the slightest suspicion of the fact.... Hence, if a man, partially
+flayed alive, may sometimes survive and be covered with a new skin, so
+our astral, vital body .... may be made to harden its particles to the
+atmospheric changes.  The whole secret is to succeed in evolving it out,
+and separating it from the visible; and while its generally invisible
+atoms proceed to concrete themselves into a compact mass, to gradually
+get rid of the old particles of our visible frame so as to make them die
+and disappear before the new set has had time to evolve and replace
+them.... We can say no more.
+
+A correct comprehension of the above scientific process will give a clue
+to the esoteric meaning of meditation or contemplation.  Science teaches
+us that man changes his physical body continually, and this change is so
+gradual that it is almost imperceptible.  Why then should the case be
+otherwise with the inner man?  The latter too is developing and changing
+atoms at every moment.  And the attraction of these new sets of atoms
+depends upon the Law of Affinity--the desires of the man drawing to his
+bodily tenement only such particles as are necessary to give them
+expression.
+
+For Science shows that thought is dynamic, and the thought-force evolved
+by nervous action expanding itself outwardly, must affect the molecular
+relations of the physical man.  The inner men, however sublimated their
+organism may be, are still composed of actual, not hypothetical,
+particles, and are still subject to the law that an "action" has a
+tendency to repeat itself;  a tendency to set up analogous action in the
+grosser "shell" they are in contact with, and concealed within.--"The
+Elixir of Life"
+
+What is it the aspirant of Yog Vidya strives after if not to gain Mukti
+by transferring himself gradually from the grosser to the next less
+gross body, until all the veils of Maya being successively removed his
+Atma becomes one with Paramatma?  Does he suppose that this grand result
+can be achieved by a two or four hours' contemplation?  For the
+remaining twenty or twenty-two hours that the devotee does not shut
+himself up in his room for meditation is the process of the emission of
+atoms and their replacement by others stopped?  If not, then how does he
+mean to attract all this time only those suited to his end? From the
+above remarks it is evident that just as the physical body requires
+incessant attention to prevent the entrance of a disease, so also the
+inner man requires an unremitting watch, so that no conscious or
+unconscious thought may attract atoms unsuited to its progress.  This is
+the real meaning of contemplation.  The prime factor in the guidance of
+the thought is Will.
+
+Without that, all else is useless.  And, to be efficient for the
+purpose, it must be, not only a passing resolution of the moment, a
+single fierce desire of short duration, but a settled and continued
+strain, as nearly as can be continued and concentrated without one
+single moment's remission.
+
+The student would do well to take note of the italicized clause in the
+above quotation.  He should also have it indelibly impressed upon his
+mind that:
+
+It is no use to fast as long as one requires food.... To get rid of the
+inward desire is the essential thing, and to mimic the real thing
+without it is barefaced hypocrisy and useless slavery.
+
+Without realizing the significance of this most important fact, any one
+who for a moment finds cause of disagreement with any one of his family,
+or has his vanity wounded, or for a sentimental flash of the moment, or
+for a selfish desire to utilize  the Divine power for gross purposes--at
+once rushes into contemplation and dashes himself to pieces on the rock
+dividing the known from the unknown.  Wallowing in the mire of
+exotericism, he knows not what it is to live in the world and yet be not
+of the world;  in other words, to guard self against self is an almost
+incomprehensible axiom for the profane.  The Hindu ought to know better
+from the life of Janaka, who, although a reigning monarch, was yet
+styled Rajarshi and is said to have attained Nirvana. Hearing of his
+widespread fame, a few sectarian bigots went to his court to test his
+Yoga-power.  As soon as they entered the court-room, the king having
+read their thoughts--a power which every chela attains at a certain
+stage--gave secret instructions to his officials to have a particular
+street in the city lined on both sides by dancing girls singing the must
+voluptuous songs.  He then had some gharas (pots) filled with water up
+to the brim so that the least shake would be likely to spill their
+contents.  The wiseacres, each with a full ghara (pot) on his head, were
+ordered to pass along the street, surrounded by soldiers with drawn
+swords to be used against them if even so much as a drop of water were
+allowed to run over.  The poor fellows having returned to the palace
+after successfully passing the test, were asked by the King-Adept what
+they had met with in the street they were made to go through.  With
+great indignation they replied that the threat of being cut to pieces
+had so much worked upon their minds that they thought of nothing but the
+water on their heads, and the intensity of their attention did not
+permit them to take cognizance of what was going on around them.  Then
+Janaka told them that on the same principle they could easily understand
+that, although being outwardly engaged in managing the affairs of his
+State, he could, at the same time, be an Occultist.  He too, while in
+the world, was not of the world.  In other words, his inward aspirations
+had been leading him on continually to the goal in which his whole inner
+self was concentrated.
+
+Raj Yoga encourages no sham, requires no physical postures.  It has to
+deal with the inner man whose sphere lies in the world of thought.  To
+have the highest ideal placed before oneself and strive incessantly to
+rise up to it, is the only true concentration recognized by Esoteric
+Philosophy which deals with the inner world of noumena, not the outer
+shell of phenomena.
+
+The first requisite for it is thorough purity of heart.  Well might the
+student of Occultism say with Zoroaster, that purity of thought, purity
+of word, and purity of deed,--these are the essentials of one who would
+rise above the ordinary level and join the "gods."  A cultivation of the
+feeling of unselfish philanthropy is the path which has to be traversed
+for that purpose.  For it is that alone which will lead to Universal
+Love, the realization of which constitutes the progress towards
+deliverance from the chains forged by Maya (illusion) around the Ego.
+No student will attain this at once, but as our Venerated Mahatma says
+in the "Occult World":--
+
+The greater the progress towards deliverance, the less this will be the
+case, until, to crown all, human and purely individual personal
+feelings, blood-ties and friendship, patriotism and race predilection,
+will all give way to become blended into one universal feeling, the only
+true and holy, the only unselfish and eternal one, Love, an Immense Love
+for Humanity as a whole.
+
+In short, the individual is blended with the ALL.
+
+Of course, contemplation, as usually understood, is not without its
+minor advantages.  It develops one set of physical faculties as
+gymnastics does the muscles.  For the purposes of physical mesmerism it
+is good enough;  but it can in no way help the development of the
+psychological faculties, as the thoughtful reader will perceive.  At the
+same time, even for ordinary purposes, the practice can never be too
+well guarded.  If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and
+lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by
+thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of
+mediumistic faculties in themselves.  As was repeatedly stated--the
+Adept and the Medium are the two Poles: while the former is intensely
+active and thus able to control the elemental forces, the latter is
+intensely passive and thus incurs the risk of falling a prey to the
+caprice and malice of mischievous embryos of human beings, and the
+elementaries.
+
+It will be evident from the above that true meditation consists in the
+"reasoning from the known to the unknown."  The "known" is the
+phenomenal world, cognizable by our five senses.  And all that we see in
+this manifested world are the effects, the causes of which are to be
+sought after in the noumenal, the unmanifested, the "unknown world:"
+this is to be accomplished by meditation, i.e., continued attention to
+the subject.  Occultism does not depend upon one method, but employs
+both the deductive and the inductive.  The student must first learn the
+general axioms, which have sufficiently been laid down in the Elixir of
+Life and other occult writings.  What the student has first to do is to
+comprehend these axioms and, by employing the deductive method, to
+proceed from universals to particulars.  He has then to reason from the
+"known to the unknown," and see if the inductive method of proceeding
+from particulars to universals supports those axioms.  This process
+forms the primary stage of true contemplation.  The student must first
+grasp the subject intellectually before he can hope to realize his
+aspirations. When this is accomplished, then comes the next stage of
+meditation, which is "the inexpressible yearning of the inner man to 'go
+out towards the infinite.'"  Before any such yearning can be properly
+directed, the goal must first be determined.  The higher stage, in fact,
+consists in practically realizing what the first steps have placed
+within one's comprehension.  In short, contemplation, in its true sense,
+is to recognize the truth of Eliphas Levi's saying:--
+
+To believe without knowing is weakness;  to believe, because one knows,
+is power.
+
+The Elixir of Life not only gives the preliminary steps in the ladder of
+contemplation but also tells the reader how to realize the higher
+stages.  It traces, by the process of contemplation as it were, the
+relation of man, "the known," the manifested, the phenomenon, to "the
+unknown," the unmanifested, the noumenon. It shows the student what
+ideal to contemplate and how to rise up to it.  It places before him the
+nature of the inner capacities of man and how to develop them.  To a
+superficial reader, this may, perhaps, appear as the acme of
+selfishness.  Reflection will, however, show the contrary to be the
+case.  For it teaches the student that to comprehend the noumenal, he
+must identify himself with Nature.  Instead of looking upon himself as
+an isolated being, he must learn to look upon himself as a part of the
+Integral Whole.  For, in the unmanifested world, it can be clearly
+perceived that all is controlled by the "Law of Affinity," the
+attraction of the one for the other.  There, all is Infinite Love,
+understood in its true sense.
+
+It may now not be out of place to recapitulate what has already been
+said.  The first thing to be done is to study the axioms of Occultism
+and work upon them by the deductive and the inductive methods, which is
+real contemplation.  To turn this to a useful purpose, what is
+theoretically comprehended must be practically realized.
+
+--Damodar K. Mavalaukar
+
+
+
+
+
+Chelas and Lay Chelas
+
+
+A "chela" is a person who has offered himself to a master as a pupil to
+learn practically the "hidden mysteries of Nature and the psychical
+powers latent in man."  The master who accepts him is called in India a
+Guru;  and the real Guru is always an adept in the Occult Science.  A
+man of profound knowledge, exoteric and esoteric, especially the latter;
+and one who has brought his carnal nature under the subjection of the
+WILL;  who has developed in himself both the power (Siddhi) to control
+the forces of Nature, and the capacity to probe her secrets by the help
+of the formerly latent but now active powers of his being--this is the
+real Guru.  To offer oneself as a candidate for Chelaship is easy
+enough, to develop into an adept the most difficult task any man could
+possibly undertake.  There are scores of "natural-born" poets,
+mathematicians, mechanics, statesmen, &c.  But a natural-born adept is
+something practically impossible.  For, though we do hear at very rare
+intervals of one who has an extraordinary innate capacity for the
+acquisition of occult knowledge and power, yet even he has to pass the
+self-same tests and probations, and go through the self-same training as
+any less endowed fellow aspirant.  In this matter it is most true that
+there is no royal road by which favourites may travel.
+
+For centuries the selection of Chelas--outside the hereditary group
+within the gon-pa (temple)--has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas
+themselves from among the class--in Tibet, a considerable one as to
+number--of natural mystics.  The only exceptions have been in the cases
+of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, Paracelsus, Pico di
+Mirandolo, Count St. Germain, &c., whose temperament affinity to this
+celestial science, more or less forced the distant Adepts to come into
+personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or
+large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social
+surroundings.  From Book IV. of Kui-te, Chapter on "The Laws of
+Upasanas," we learn that the qualifications expected in a Chela were:--
+
+1. Perfect physical health;
+
+2. Absolute mental and physical purity;
+
+3. Unselfishness of purpose;  universal charity;  pity for all
+animate beings;
+
+4. Truthfulness and unswerving faith in the law of Karma, independent of
+the intervention of any power in Nature:  a law whose course is not to
+be obstructed by any agency, not to be caused to deviate by prayer or
+propitiatory exoteric ceremonies;
+
+5. A courage undaunted in every emergency, even by peril to life;
+
+6. An intuitional perception of one's being the vehicle of the
+manifested Avalokiteswara or Divine Atma (Spirit);
+
+7. Calm indifference for, but a just appreciation of, everything that
+constitutes the objective and transitory world, in its relation with,
+and to, the invisible regions.
+
+Such, at the least, must have been the recommendations of one aspiring
+to perfect Chelaship.  With the sole exception of the first, which in
+rare and exceptional cases might have been modified, each one of these
+points has been invariably insisted upon, and all must have been more or
+less developed in the inner nature by the Chela's unhelped exertions,
+before he could be actually "put to the test."
+
+When the self-evolving ascetic--whether in, or outside the active
+world--has placed himself, according to his natural capacity, above,
+hence made himself master of his (1) Sarira--body;  (2) Indriya--senses;
+(3) Dosha--faults;  (4) Dukkha--pain;  and is ready to become one with
+his Manas--mind;  Buddhi--intellection, or spiritual intelligence;  and
+Atma--highest soul, i.e., spirit; when he is ready for this, and,
+further, to recognize in Atma the highest ruler in the world of
+perceptions, and in the will, the highest executive energy (power), then
+may he, under the time-honoured rules, be taken in hand by one of the
+Initiates.  He may then be shown the mysterious path at whose farther
+end is obtained the unerring discernment of Phala, or the fruits of
+causes produced, and given the means of reaching Apavarga--emancipation
+from the misery of repeated births, pretya-bhava, in whose determination
+the ignorant has no hand.
+
+But since the advent of the Theosophical Society, one of whose arduous
+tasks it is to re-awaken in the Aryan mind the dormant memory of the
+existence of this science and of those transcendent human capabilities,
+the rules of Chela selection have become slightly relaxed in one
+respect.  Many members of the Society who would not have been otherwise
+called to Chelaship became convinced by practical proof of the above
+points, and rightly enough thinking that if other men had hitherto
+reached the goal, they too, if inherently fitted, might reach it by
+following the same path, importunately pressed to be taken as
+candidates.  And as it would be an interference with Karma to deny them
+the chance of at least beginning, they were given it.  The results have
+been far from encouraging so far, and it is to show them the cause of
+their failure as much as to warn others against rushing heedlessly upon
+a similar fate, that the writing of the present article has been
+ordered.  The candidates in question, though plainly warned against it
+in advance, began wrong by selfishly looking to the future and losing
+sight of the past.  They forgot that they had done nothing to deserve
+the rare honour of selection, nothing which warranted their expecting
+such a privilege;  that they could boast of none of the above enumerated
+merits.  As men of the selfish, sensual world, whether married or
+single, merchants, civilian or military employees, or members of the
+learned professions, they had been to a school most calculated to
+assimilate them to the animal nature, least so to develop their
+spiritual potentialities.  Yet each and all had vanity enough to suppose
+that their case would be made an exception to the law of countless
+centuries, as though, indeed, in their person had been born to the world
+a new Avatar!  All expected to have hidden things taught, extraordinary
+powers given them, because--well, because they had joined the
+Theosophical Society.  Some had sincerely resolved to amend their lives,
+and give up their evil courses:  we must do them that justice, at all
+events.
+
+All were refused at first, Col. Olcott the President himself, to begin
+with:  and he was not formally accepted as a Chela until he had proved
+by more than a year's devoted labours and by a determination which
+brooked no denial, that he might safely be tested.  Then from all sides
+came complaints--from Hindus, who ought to have known better, as well as
+from Europeans who, of course, were not in a condition to know anything
+at all about the rules.  The cry was that unless at least a few
+Theosophists were given the chance to try, the Society could not endure.
+Every other noble and unselfish feature of our programme was ignored--a
+man's duty to his neighbour, to his country, his duty to help,
+enlighten, encourage and elevate those weaker and less favoured than he;
+all were trampled out of sight in the insane rush for adeptship.  The
+call for phenomena, phenomena, phenomena, resounded in every quarter,
+and the Founders were impeded in their real work and teased
+importunately to intercede with the Mahatmas, against whom the real
+grievance lay, though their poor agents had to take all the buffets.  At
+last, the word came from the higher authorities that a few of the most
+urgent candidates should be taken at their word.  The result of the
+experiment would perhaps show better than any amount of preaching what
+Chelaship meant, and what are the consequences of selfishness and
+temerity.  Each candidate was warned that be must wait for year in any
+event, before his fitness could be established, and that he must pass
+through a series of tests that would bring out all there was in him,
+whether bad or good.  They were nearly all married men, and hence were
+designated "Lay Chelas"--a term new in English, but having long had its
+equivalent in Asiatic tongues.  A Lay Chela is but a man of the world
+who affirms his desire to become wise in spiritual things.  Virtually,
+every member of the Theosophical Society who subscribes to the second of
+our three "Declared Objects" is such;  for though not of the number of
+true Chelas, he has yet the possibility of becoming one, for he has
+stepped across the boundary-line which separated him from the Mahatmas,
+and has brought himself, as it were, under their notice.  In joining the
+Society and binding himself to help along its work, he has pledged
+himself to act in some degree in concert with those Mahatmas, at whose
+behest the Society was organized, and under whose conditional protection
+it remains. The joining is then, the introduction;  all the rest depends
+entirely upon the member himself, and he need never expect the most
+distant approach to the "favour" of one of our Mahatmas or any other
+Mahatmas in the world--should the latter consent to become known--that
+has not been fully earned by personal merit. The Mahatmas are the
+servants, not the arbiters of the Law of Karma.
+
+Lay-Chelaship confers no privilege upon any one except that of working
+for merit under the observation of a Master.  And whether that Master be
+or be not seen by the Chela makes no difference whatever as to the
+result:  his good thought, words and deeds will bear their fruits, his
+evil ones, theirs.  To boast of Lay Chelaship or make a parade of it, is
+the surest way to reduce the relationship with the Guru to a mere empty
+name, for it would be prima facie evidence of vanity and unfitness for
+farther progress.  And for years we have been teaching everywhere the
+maxim "First deserve, then desire" intimacy with the Mahatmas.
+
+Now there is a terrible law operative in Nature, one which cannot be
+altered, and whose operation clears up the apparent mystery of the
+selection of certain "Chelas" who have turned out sorry specimens of
+morality, these few years past.  Does the reader recall the old proverb,
+"Let sleeping dogs lie?"  There is a world of occult meaning in it.  No
+man or woman knows his or her moral strength until it is tried.
+Thousands go through life very respectably, because they were never put
+to the test.  This is a truism doubtless, but it is most pertinent to
+the present case. One who undertakes to try for Chelaship by that very
+act rouses and lashes to desperation every sleeping passion of his
+animal nature.  For this is the commencement of a struggle for mastery
+in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken.  It is, once for all,
+"To be, or Not to be;"  to conquer, means Adept-ship: to fail, an
+ignoble Martyrdom;  for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity,
+selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is
+indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood.  The Chela
+is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his
+nature, but, in addition, the momentum of maleficent forces accumulated
+by the community and nation to which he belongs.  For he is an integral
+part of those aggregates, and what affects either the individual man or
+the group (town or nation), reacts the one upon the other.  And in this
+instance his struggle for goodness jars upon the whole body of badness
+in his environment, and draws its fury upon him. If he is content to go
+along with his neighbours and be almost as they are--perhaps a little
+better or somewhat worse than the average--no one may give him a
+thought.  But let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow
+mockery of social life, its hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity
+and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself up to a
+higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, bigotted, or malicious
+nature sends at him a current of opposing will-power.  If he is innately
+strong he shakes it off, as the powerful swimmer dashes through the
+current that would bear a weaker one away.  But in this moral battle, if
+the Chela has one single hidden blemish--do what he may, it shall and
+will be brought to light.  The varnish of conventionalities which
+"civilization" overlays us all with must come off to the last coat, and
+the inner self, naked and without the slightest veil to conceal its
+reality, is exposed. The habits of society which hold men to a certain
+degree under moral restraint, and compel them to pay tribute to virtue
+by seeming to be good whether they are so or not--these habits are apt
+to be all forgotten, these restraints to be all broken through under the
+strain of Chelaship.  He is now in an atmosphere of illusions--Maya.
+Vice puts on its most alluring face, and the tempting passions attract
+the inexperienced aspirant to the depths of psychic debasement.  This is
+not a case like that depicted by a great artist, where Satan is seen
+playing a game of chess with a man upon the stake of his soul, while the
+latter's good angel stands beside him to counsel and assist.  For the
+strife is in this instance between the Chela's will and his carnal
+nature, and Karma forbids that any angel or Guru should interfere until
+the result is known.  With the vividness of poetic fancy Bulwer Lytton
+has idealized it for us in his "Zanoni," a work which will ever be
+prized by the occultist while in his "Strange Story" he has with equal
+power shown the black side of occult research and its deadly perils.
+Chelaship was defined, the other day, by a Mahatma as a "psychic
+resolvent, which eats away all dross and leaves only the pure gold
+behind." If the candidate has the latent lust for money, or political
+chicanery, or materialistic scepticism, or vain display, or false
+speaking, or cruelty, or sensual gratification of any kind the germ is
+almost sure to sprout;  and so, on the other hand, as regards the noble
+qualities of human nature.  The real man comes out.  Is it not the
+height of folly, then, for any one to leave the smooth path of
+commonplace life to scale the crags of Chelaship without some reasonable
+feeling of certainty that he has the right stuff in him?  Well says the
+Bible:  "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall"--a text that
+would-be Chelas should consider well before they rush headlong into the
+fray!  It would have been well for some of our Lay Chelas if they had
+thought twice before defying the tests.  We call to mind several sad
+failures within a twelve-month.  One went wrong in the head, recanted
+noble sentiments uttered but a few weeks previously, and became a member
+of a religion he had just scornfully and unanswerably proven false.  A
+second became a defaulter and absconded with his employer's money--the
+latter also a Theosophist.  A third gave himself up to gross debauchery,
+and confessed it, with ineffectual sobs and tears, to his chosen Guru.
+A fourth got entangled with a person of the other sex and fell out with
+his dearest and truest friends.  A fifth showed signs of mental
+aberration and was brought into Court upon charges of discreditable
+conduct.  A sixth shot himself to escape the consequences of
+criminality, on the verge of detection!  And so we might go on and on.
+All these were apparently sincere searchers after truth, and passed in
+the world for respectable persons.  Externally, they were fairly
+eligible as candidates for Chelaship, as appearances go;  but "within
+all was rottenness and dead men's bones."  The world's varnish was so
+thick as to hide the absence of the true gold underneath;  and the
+"resolvent" doing its work, the candidate proved in each instance but a
+gilded figure of moral dross, from circumference to core.
+
+In what precedes we have, of course, dealt but with the failures among
+Lay Chelas;  there have been partial successes too, and these are
+passing gradually through the first stages of their probation.  Some are
+making themselves useful to the Society and to the world in general by
+good example and precept.  If they persist, well for them, well for us
+all:  the odds are fearfully against them, but still "there is no
+impossibility to him who Wills."  The difficulties in Chelaship will
+never be less until human nature changes and a new order is evolved.
+St. Paul (Rom. vii. 18,19) might have had a Chela in mind when he said
+"to will is present with me;  but how to perform that which is good I
+find not.  For the good I would I do not;  but the evil which I would
+not, that I do."  And in the wise Kiratarjuniyam of Bharavi it is
+written:--
+
+     The enemies which rise within the body,
+     Hard to be overcome--the evil passions--
+     Should manfully be fought; who conquers these
+     Is equal to the conqueror of worlds. (XI. 32.)
+
+(--H.P. Blavatsky)
+
+
+
+
+Ancient Opinions Upon Psychic Bodies
+
+
+It must be confessed that modern Spiritualism falls very short of the
+ideas formerly suggested by the sublime designation which it has
+assumed.  Chiefly intent upon recognizing and putting forward the
+phenomenal proofs of a future existence, it concerns itself little with
+speculations on the distinction between matter and spirit, and rather
+prides itself on having demolished Materialism without the aid of
+metaphysics.  Perhaps a Platonist might say that the recognition of a
+future existence is consistent with a very practical and even dogmatic
+materialism, but it is rather to be feared that such a materialism as
+this would not greatly disturb the spiritual or intellectual repose of
+our modern phenomenalists.*  Given the consciousness with its
+sensibilities safely housed in the psychic body which demonstrably
+survives the physical carcase, and we are like men saved from shipwreck,
+who are for the moment thankful and content, not giving thought whether
+they are landed on a hospitable shore, or on a barren rock, or on an
+island of cannibals.  It is not of course intended that this "hand to
+mouth" immortality is sufficient for the many thoughtful minds whose
+activity gives life and progress to the movement, but that it affords
+the relief which most people feel when in an age of doubt they make the
+discovery that they are undoubtedly to live again.  To the question "how
+are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come?" modern
+Spiritualism, with its empirical methods, is not adequate to reply.  Yet
+long before Paul suggested it, it had the attention of the most
+celebrated schools of philosophy, whose speculations on the subject,
+however little they may seem to be verified, ought not to be without
+interest to us, who, after all, are still in the infancy of a
+spiritualist revival.
+
+---------
+* "I am afraid," says Thomas Taylor in his Introduction to the Phaedo,
+"there are scarcely any at the present day who know that it is one thing
+for the soul to be separated from the body, and another for the body to
+be separated from the soul, and that the former is by no means a
+necessary consequence of the latter."
+-----------
+
+It would not be necessary to premise, but for the frequency with which
+the phrase occurs, that the "spiritual body" is a contradiction in
+terms.  The office of body is to relate spirit to an objective world.
+By Platonic writers it is usually termed okhema--"vehicle."  It is the
+medium of action, and also of sensibility.  In this philosophy the
+conception of Soul was not simply, as with us, the immaterial subject of
+consciousness.  How warily the interpreter has to tread here, every one
+knows who has dipped, even superficially, into the controversies among
+Platonists themselves.  All admit the distinction between the rational
+and the irrational part or principle, the latter including, first, the
+sensibility, and secondly, the Plastic, or that lower which in obedience
+to its sympathies enables the soul to attach itself to, and to organize
+into a suitable body those substances of the universe to which it is
+most congruous.  It is more difficult to determine whether Plato or his
+principal followers, recognized in the rational soul or nous a distinct
+and separable entity, that which is sometimes discriminated as "the
+Spirit."  Dr. Henry More, no mean authority, repudiates this
+interpretation.  "There can be nothing more monstrous," he says, "than
+to make two souls in man, the one sensitive, the other rational, really
+distinct from one another, and to give the name of Astral spirit to the
+former, when there is in man no Astral spirit beside the Plastic of the
+soul itself, which is always inseparable from that which is rational.
+Nor upon any other account can it be called Astral, but as it is liable
+to that corporeal temperament which proceeds from the stars, or rather
+from any material causes in general, as not being yet sufficiently
+united with the divine body--that vehicle of divine virtue or power."
+So he maintains that the Kabalistic three souls--Nephesh, Ruach,
+Neschamah--originate in a misunderstanding of the true Platonic
+doctrine, which is that of a threefold "vital congruity."  These
+correspond to the three degrees of bodily existence, or to the three
+"vehicles," the terrestrial, the aerial, and the ethereal.  The latter
+is the augoeides--the luciform vehicle of the purified soul whose
+irrational part has been brought under complete subjection to the
+rational.  The aerial is that in which the great majority of mankind
+find themselves at the dissolution of the terrestrial body, and in which
+the incomplete process of purification has to be undergone during long
+ages of preparation for the soul's return to its primitive, ethereal
+state.  For it must be remembered that the preexistence of souls is a
+distinguishing tenet of this philosophy as of the Kabala.  The soul has
+"sunk into matter." From its highest original state the revolt of its
+irrational nature has awakened and developed successively its "vital
+congruities" with the regions below, passing, by means of its "Plastic,"
+first into the aerial and afterwards into the terrestrial condition.
+Each of these regions teems also with an appropriate population which
+never passes, like the human soul, from one to the other--"gods,"
+"demons," and animals.*  As to duration, "the shortest of all is that of
+the terrestrial vehicle.  In the aerial, the soul may inhabit, as they
+define, many ages, and in the ethereal, for ever."
+
+---------
+* The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the
+elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have
+called the "Elementals."  They never become men.
+--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+Speaking of the second body, Henry More says "the soul's astral vehicle
+is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of
+the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a
+sword without tearing or scorching of it."  And again, "I shall make
+bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in
+the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high
+happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their
+quitting the terrestrial one;  that heavenly chariot necessarily
+carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is
+capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if
+the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the
+heavenly.  When by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not
+heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass
+of this caliginous air, as both Reason itself suggests, and the
+Platonists have unanimously determined." Thus also the most
+thorough-going, and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of
+the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction.
+Phaedo):--"After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul
+will after death return to pure and eternal natures;  but that the
+impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections,
+will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross
+vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.*  For while a
+propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a
+certain vehicle to herself;  either of an aerial nature, or composed
+from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is
+recently collected from surrounding air;  for according to the arcana of
+the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and
+immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene
+body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is
+an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more
+extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a
+long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being
+dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body;  while on the
+contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial
+regions with its ethereal vehicle alone."
+
+----------
+* This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan
+philosophies.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of
+its body.  "However the soul be in itself affected," says Porphyry
+(translated by Cudworth), "so does it always find a body suitable and
+agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul
+does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is,
+an ethereal one."  And the same author, "The soul is never quite naked
+of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable
+and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer
+one).  But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the
+spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go
+away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till
+the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a
+dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow."
+Here it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the
+two future vehicles--the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the
+aerial.  This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato's
+commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated
+to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a
+distinct entity, separable from the lower soul.  Philoponus, a Christian
+writer, says, "that the Rational Soul, as to its energie, is separable
+from all body, but the irrational part or life thereof is separable only
+from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath after
+death a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth--this I say is a
+true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us.... The irrational
+life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but
+remaineth after the soul's departure out of it, having for its vehicle
+and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of
+the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant
+part, to wit, Air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what
+is most predominant therein."--Cudworth, "Intell. Syst."  From the same
+source we extract the following:  "Wherefore these ancients say that
+impure souls after their departure out of this body wander here up and
+down for a certain space in their spirituous vaporous and airy body,
+appearing about sepulchres and haunting their former habitation.  For
+which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living
+well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet;  these
+Ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours being
+fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this
+life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passions.  They further
+add that there is something of the Plantal or Plastic life, also
+exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death;
+they being nourished too, though not after the same manner, as those
+gross earthy bodies of ours are here, but by vapours, and that not by
+parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they
+imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause they who are wise
+will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that
+so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within
+our proper body) may not be clogged and incrassed, but attenuated.  Over
+and above which, those Ancients made use of catharms, or purgations to
+the same end and purpose also.  For as this earthy body is washed by
+water so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours--some of
+these vapours being nutritive, others purgative.  Moreover, these
+Ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body that it was
+not organized, but did the whole of it in every part throughout exercise
+all functions of sense, the soul hearing, seeing and perceiving all
+sensibles by it everywhere.  For which cause Aristotle himself affirmeth
+in his Metaphysics that there is properly but one sense and one Sensory.
+He by this one sensory meaneth the spirit, or subtle airy body, in which
+the sensitive power doth all of it through the whole immediately
+apprehend all variety of sensibles.  And if it be demanded to how it
+comes to pass that this spirit becomes organized in sepulchres, and most
+commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals, to
+this those Ancients replied that their appearing so frequently in human
+form proceeded from their being incrassated with evil diet, and then, as
+it were, stamped upon with the form of this exterior ambient body in
+which they are, as crystal is formed and coloured like to those things
+which it is fastened in, or reflects the image of them.  And that their
+having sometimes other different forms proceedeth from the phantastic
+power of the soul itself, which can at pleasure transform the spirituous
+body into any shape.  For being airy, when it is condensed and fixed, it
+becometh visible, and again invisible and vanishing out of sight when it
+is expanded and rarified."  Proem in Arist. de Anima.  And Cudworth
+says, "Though spirits or ghosts had certain supple bodies which they
+could so far condense as to make them sometimes visible to men, yet is
+it reasonable enough to think that they could not constipate or fix them
+into such a firmness, grossness and solidity, as that of flesh and bone
+is to continue therein, or at least not without such difficulty and pain
+as would hinder them from attempting the same.  Notwithstanding which it
+is not denied that they may possibly sometimes make use of other solid
+bodies, moving and acting them, as in that famous story of Phlegons when
+the body vanished not as other ghosts use to do, but was left a dead
+carcase behind."
+
+In all these speculations the Anima Mundi plays a conspicuous part.  It
+is the source and principle of all animal souls, including the
+irrational soul of man.  But in man, who would otherwise be merely
+analogous to other terrestrial animals--this soul participates in a
+higher principle, which tends to raise and convert it to itself.  To
+comprehend the nature of this union or hypostasis it would be necessary
+to have mastered the whole of Plato's philosophy as comprised in the
+Parmenides and the Timaeus;  and he would dogmatize rashly who without
+this arduous preparation should claim Plato as the champion of an
+unconditional immortality.  Certainly in the Phaedo the dialogue
+popularly supposed to contain all Plato's teaching on the subject--the
+immortality allotted to the impure soul is of a very questionable
+character, and we should rather infer from the account there given that
+the human personality, at all events, is lost by successive immersions
+into "matter."  The following passage from Plutarch (quoted by Madame
+Blavatsky, "Isis Unveiled," vol. ii. p. 284) will at least demonstrate
+the antiquity of notions which have recently been mistaken for fanciful
+novelties.  "Every soul hath some portion of nous, reason, a man cannot
+be a man without it;  but as much of each soul as is mixed with flesh
+and appetite is changed, and through pain and pleasure becomes
+irrational.  Every soul doth not mix herself after one sort;  some
+plunge themselves into the body, and so in this life their whole frame
+is corrupted by appetite and passion;  others are mixed as to some part,
+but the purer part still remains without the body.  It is not drawn down
+into the body, but it swims above, and touches the extremest part of the
+man's head;  it is like a cord to hold up and direct the subsiding part
+of the soul, as long as it proves obedient and is not overcome by the
+appetites of the flesh.  The part that is plunged into the body is
+called soul.  But the incorruptible part is called the nous, and the
+vulgar think it is within them, as they likewise imagine the image
+reflected from a glass to be in that glass.  But the more intelligent,
+who know it to be without, call it a Daemon."  And in the same learned
+work ("Isis Unveiled ") we have two Christian authorities, Irenaeus and
+Origen, cited for like distinction between spirit and soul in such a
+manner as to show that the former must necessarily be regarded as
+separable from the latter.  In the distinction itself there is of course
+no novelty for the most moderately well-informed.  It is insisted upon
+in many modern works, among which may be mentioned Heard's "Trichotomy
+of Man" and Green's "Spiritual Philosophy";  the latter being an
+exposition of Coleridge's opinion on this and cognate subjects.  But the
+difficulty of regarding the two principles as separable in fact as well
+as in logic arises from the senses, if it is not the illusion of
+personal identity.  That we are particle, and that one part only is
+immortal, the non-metaphysical mind rejects with the indignation which
+is always encountered by a proposition that is at once distasteful and
+unintelligible.  Yet perhaps it is not a greater difficulty (if, indeed,
+it is not the very same) than that hard saying which troubled Nicodemus,
+and which has been the key-note of the mystical religious consciousness
+ever since.  This, however, is too extensive and deep a question to be
+treated in this paper, which has for its object chiefly to call
+attention to the distinctions introduced by ancient thought into the
+conception of body as the instrument or "vehicle" of soul.  That there
+is a correspondence between the spiritual condition of man and the
+medium of his objective activity every spiritualist will admit to be
+probable, and it may well be that some light is thrown on future states
+by the possibility or the manner of spirit communication with this one.
+
+--C. C. Massey
+
+
+
+
+The Nilgiri Sannyasis
+
+
+I was told that Sannyasis were sometimes met with on a mountain called
+Velly Mallai Hills, in the Coimbatore District, and trying to meet with
+one, I determined to ascend this mountain.  I traveled up its steep
+sides and arrived at an opening, narrow and low, into which I crept on
+all fours.  Going up some twenty yards I reached a cave, into the
+opening of which I thrust my head and shoulders.  I could see into it
+clearly, but felt a cold wind on my face, as if there was some opening
+or crevice--so I looked carefully, but could see nothing.  The room was
+about twelve feet square.  I did not go into it.  I saw arranged round
+its sides stones one cubit long, all placed upright.  I was much
+disappointed at there being no Sannyasi, and came back as I went,
+pushing myself backwards as there was no room to turn.  I was then told
+Sannyasis had been met with in the dense sholas (thickets), and as my
+work lay often in such places, I determined to prosecute my search, and
+did so diligently, without, however, any success.
+
+One day I contemplated a journey to Coimbatore on my own affairs, and
+was walking up the road trying to make a bargain with a handy man whom I
+desired to engage to carry me there;  but as we could not come to terms,
+I parted with him and turned into the Lovedale Road at 6 P.M.  I had not
+gone far when I met a man dressed like a Sannyasi, who stopped and spoke
+to me.  He observed a ring on my finger and asked me to give it to him.
+I said he was welcome to it, but inquired what he would give me in
+return, he said, "I don't care particularly about it;  I would rather
+have that flour and sugar in the bundle on your back."  "I will give you
+that with pleasure," I said, and took down my bundle and gave it to him.
+"Half is enough for me," he said;  but subsequently changing his mind
+added, "now let me see what is in your bundle," pointing to my other
+parcel.  "I can't give you that."  He said, "Why cannot you give me your
+swami (family idol)?"  I said, "It is my swami, I will not part with it;
+rather take my life."  On this he pressed me no more, but said, "Now you
+had better go home."  I said, "I will not leave you."  "Oh you must," he
+said, "you will die here of hunger."  "Never mind," I said, "I can but
+die once."  "You have no clothes to protect you from the wind and rain;
+you may meet with tigers," he said.  "I don't care," I replied.  "It is
+given to man once to die.  What does it signify how he dies?"  When I
+said this he took my hand and embraced me, and immediately I became
+unconscious.  When I returned to consciousness, I found myself with the
+Sannyasi in a place new to me on a hill, near a large rock and with a
+big shola near.  I saw in the shola right in front of us, that there was
+a pillar of fire, like a tree almost.  I asked the Sannyasi what was
+that like a high fire.  "Oh," he said, "most likely a tree ignited by
+some careless wood-cutters."
+
+"No," I said, "it is not like any common fire--there is no smoke, nor
+are there flames--and it's not lurid and red.  I want to go and see it."
+"No, you must not do so, you cannot go near that fire and escape alive."
+"Come with me then," I begged.  "No--I cannot," he said, "if you wish to
+approach it, you must go alone and at your own risk;  that tree is the
+tree of knowledge and from it flows the milk of life:  whoever drinks
+this never hungers again."  Thereupon I regarded the tree with awe.
+
+I next observed five Sannyasis approaching.  They came up and joined the
+one with me, entered into talk, and finally pulled out a hookah and
+began to smoke.  They asked me if I could smoke.  I said no.  One of
+them said to me, let us see the swami in your bundle (here gives a
+description of the same).  I said, "I cannot, I am not clean enough to
+do so."  "Why not perform your ablutions in yonder stream?" they said.
+"If you sprinkle water on your forehead that will suffice."  I went to
+wash my hands and feet, and laved my head, and showed it to them.  Next
+they disappeared.  "As it is very late, it is time you returned home,"
+said my first friend.  "No," I said, "now I have found you I will not
+leave you."  "No, no," he said, "you must go home.  You cannot leave the
+world yet;  you are a father and a husband, and you must not neglect
+your worldly duties.  Follow the footsteps of your late respected uncle;
+he did not neglect his worldly affairs, though he cared for the
+interests of his soul;  you must go, but I will meet you again when you
+get your fortnightly holiday."  On this he embraced me, and I again
+became unconscious. When I returned to myself, I found myself at the
+bottom of Col. Jones' Coffee Plantation above Coonor on a path.  Here
+the Sannyasi wished me farewell, and pointing to the high road below, he
+said, "Now you will know your way home;"  but I would not part from him.
+I said, "All this will appear a dream to me unless you will fix a day
+and promise to meet me here again."  "I promise," he said.  "No, promise
+me by an oath on the head of my idol."  Again he promised, and touched
+the head of my idol.  "Be here," he said, "this day fortnight."  When
+the day came I anxiously kept my engagement and went and sat on the
+stone on the path.  I waited a long time in vain.  At last I said to
+myself, "I am deceived, he is not coming, he has broken his oath"--and
+with grief I made a poojah.  Hardly had these thoughts passed my mind,
+than lo! he stood beside me.  "Ah, you doubt me," he said;  "why this
+grief."  I fell at his feet and confessed I had doubted him and begged
+his forgiveness.  He forgave and comforted me, and told me to keep in my
+good ways and he would always help me;  and he told me and advised me
+about all my private affairs without my telling him one word, and he
+also gave me some medicines for a sick friend which I had promised to
+ask for but had forgotten.  This medicine was given to my friend and he
+is perfectly well now.
+
+A verbatim translation of a Settlement Officer's statement to
+
+--E.H. Morgan
+
+
+
+
+Witchcraft on the Nilgiris
+
+
+Having lived many years (30) on the Nilgiris, employing the various
+tribes of the Hills on my estates, and speaking their languages, I have
+had many opportunities of observing their manners and customs and the
+frequent practice of Demonology and Witchcraft among them.  On the
+slopes of the Nilgiris live several semi-wild people:  1st, the
+"Curumbers," who frequently hire themselves out to neighbouring estates,
+and are first-rate fellers of forest;  2nd, the "Tain" ("Honey
+Curumbers"), who collect and live largely on honey and roots, and who do
+not come into civilized parts;  3rd, the "Mulu" Curumbers, who are rare
+on the slopes of the hills, but common in Wynaad lower down the plateau.
+These use bows and arrows, are fond of hunting, and have frequently been
+known to kill tigers, rushing in a body on their game and discharging
+their arrows at a short distance.  In their eagerness they frequently
+fall victims to this animal;  but they are supposed to possess a
+controlling power over all wild animals, especially elephants and
+tigers;  and the natives declare they have the power of assuming the
+forms of various beasts.  Their aid is constantly invoked both by the
+Curumbers first named, and by the natives generally, when wishing to be
+revenged on an enemy.
+
+Besides these varieties of Curumbers there are various other wild tribes
+I do not now mention, as they are not concerned in what I have to
+relate.
+
+I had on my estate near Ootacamund a gang of young Badagas, some 30
+young men, whom I had had in my service since they were children, and
+who had become most useful handy fellows.  From week to week I missed
+one or another of them, and on inquiry was told they had been sick and
+were dead!
+
+One market-day I met the Moneghar of the village to which my gang
+belonged and some of his men, returning home laden with their purchases.
+The moment he saw me he stopped, and coming up to me, said, "Mother, I
+am in great sorrow and trouble, tell me what I can do!"  "Why, what is
+wrong?" I asked.  "All my young men are dying, and I cannot help them,
+nor prevent it;  they are under a spell of the wicked Curumbers who are
+killing them, and I am powerless."  "Pray explain," I said;  "why do the
+Curumbers behave in this way, and what do they do to your people?"  "Oh,
+Madam, they are vile extortioners, always asking for money;  we have
+given and given till we have no more to give.  I told them we had no
+more money and then they said,--All right--as you please;  we shall see.
+Surely as they say this, we know what will follow--at night when we are
+all asleep, we wake up suddenly and see a Curumber standing in our
+midst, in the middle of the room occupied by the young men."  "Why do
+you not close and bolt your doors securely?" I interrupted.  "What is
+the use of bolts and bars to them? they come through stone walls.... Our
+doors were secure, but nothing can keep out a Curumber.  He points his
+finger at Mada, at Kurira, at Jogie--he utters no word, and as we look
+at him he vanishes!  In a few days these three young men sicken, a low
+fever consumes them, their stomachs swell, they die.  Eighteen young
+men, the flower of my village, have died thus this year.  These effects
+always follow the visit of a Curumber at night."  "Why not complain to
+the Government?" I said.  "Ah, no use, who will catch them?"  "Then give
+them the 200 rupees they ask this once on a solemn promise that they
+exact no more"  "I suppose we must find the money somewhere," he said,
+turning sorrowfully away.
+
+A Mr. K---is the owner of a coffee estate near this, and like many
+other planters employs Burghers.  On one occasion he went down the
+slopes of the hills after bison and other large game, taking some seven
+or eight Burghers with him as gun carriers (besides other things
+necessary in jungle-walking--axes to clear the way, knives and ropes,
+&c.).  He found and severely wounded a fine elephant with tusks.
+Wishing to secure these, he proposed following up his quarry, but could
+not induce his Burghers to go deeper and further into the forests;  they
+feared to meet the "Mula Curumbers" who lived thereabouts.  For long he
+argued in vain, at last by dint of threats and promises he induced them
+to proceed, and as they met no one, their fears were allayed and they
+grew bolder, when suddenly coming on the elephant lying dead (oh, horror
+to them!), the beast was surrounded by a party of Mulu Curumbers busily
+engaged in cutting out the tusks, one of which they had already
+disengaged!  The affrighted Burghers fell back, and nothing Mr. K---
+could do or say would induce them to approach the elephant, which the
+Curumbers stoutly declared was theirs.  They had killed him they said.
+They had very likely met him staggering under his wound and had finished
+him off.  Mr. K---was not likely to give up his game in this fashion.
+So walking threateningly to the Curumbers he compelled them to retire,
+and called to his Burghers at the same time.  The Curumbers only said,
+"Just you DARE to touch that elephant," and retired.  Mr. K---thereupon
+cut out the remaining tusk himself, and slinging both on a pole with no
+little trouble, made his men carry them. He took all the blame on
+himself, showed them that they did not touch them, and finally declared
+he would stay there all night rather than lose the tusks.  The idea of a
+night near the Mulu Curumbers was too much for the fears of the
+Burghers, and they finally took up the pole and tusks and walked home.
+From that day those men, all but one who probably carried the gun,
+sickened, walked about like spectres, doomed, pale and ghastly, and
+before the month was out all were dead men, with the one exception!
+
+A few months ago, at the village of Ebanaud, a few miles from this, a
+fearful tragedy was enacted.  The Moneghar or headman's child was sick
+unto death.  This, following on several recent deaths, was attributed to
+the evil influences of a village of Curumbers hard by.  The Burghers
+determined on the destruction of every soul of them.  They procured the
+assistance of a Toda, as they invariably do on such occasions, as
+without one the Curumbers are supposed to be invulnerable.  They
+proceeded to the Curumber village at night and set their huts on fire,
+and as the miserable inmates attempted to escape, flung them back into
+the flames or knocked them down with clubs.  In the confusion one old
+woman escaped unobserved into the adjacent bushes.  Next morning she
+gave notice to the authorities, and identified seven Burghers, among
+whom was the Moneghar or headman, and one Toda. As the murderers of her
+people they were all brought to trial in the Courts here,--except the
+headman, who died before he could be brought in--and were all sentenced
+and duly executed, that is, three Burghers and the Toda, who were proved
+principals in the murders.
+
+Two years ago an almost identical occurrence took place at Kotaghery,
+with exactly similar results, but without the punishment entailed having
+any deterrent effect.  They pleaded "justification," as witchcraft had
+been practiced on them.  But our Government ignores all occult dealings
+and will not believe in the dread power in the land.  They deal very
+differently with these matters in Russia, where, in a recent trial of a
+similar nature, the witchcraft was admitted as an extenuating
+circumstance and the culprits who had burnt a witch were all acquitted.
+All natives of whatever caste are well aware of these terrible powers
+and too often do they avail themselves of them--much oftener than any
+one has an idea of.  One day as I was riding along I came upon a strange
+and ghastly object--a basket containing the bloody head of a black
+sheep, a cocoanut, 10 rupees in money, some rice and flowers.  These
+smaller items I did not see, not caring to examine any closer;  but I
+was told by some natives that those articles were to be found in the
+basket. The basket was placed at the apex of a triangle formed by three
+fine threads tied to three small sticks, so placed that any one
+approaching from the roads on either side had to stumble over the
+threads and receive the full effects of the deadly "Soonium" as the
+natives call it.  On inquiry I learnt that it was usual to prepare such
+a "Soonium" when one lay sick unto death;  as throwing it on another was
+the only means of rescuing the sick one, and woe to the unfortunate who
+broke a thread by stumbling over it!
+
+--E.H. Morgan
+
+
+
+
+Shamanism and Witchcraft Amongst the Kolarian Tribes
+
+
+Having resided for some years amongst the Mimdas and Hos of Singbhoom,
+and Chutia Nagpur, my attention was drawn at times to customs differing
+a good deal in some ways, but having an evident affinity to those
+related of the Nilghiri "Curumbers" in Mrs. Morgan's article.  I do not
+mean to say that the practices I am about to mention are confined simply
+to the Kolarian tribes, as I am aware both Oraons (a Dravidian tribe),
+and the different Hindu castes living side by side with the Kols, count
+many noted wizards among their number;  but what little I have come to
+know of these curious customs, I have learnt among the Mimdas and Hos,
+some of the most celebrated practitioners among them being Christian
+converts.  The people themselves say, that these practices are peculiar
+to their race, and not learnt from the Hindu invaders of their plateau;
+but I am inclined to think that some, at least, of the operations have a
+strong savour of the Tantric black magic about them, though practiced by
+people who are often entirely ignorant of any Hindu language.
+
+These remarks must he supplemented by a short sketch of Kol ideas of
+worship.  They have nothing that I have either seen or heard of in the
+shape of an image, but their periodical offerings are made to a number
+of elemental spirits, and they assign a genie to every rock or tree in
+the country, whom they do not consider altogether malignant, but who, if
+not duly "fed" or propitiated, may become so.
+
+The Singbonga (lit., sun or light spirit) is the chief;  Buru Bonga
+(spirit of the hills), and the Ikhir Bonga (spirit of the deep), come
+next.  After these come the Darha, of which each family has its own, and
+they may be considered in the same light as Lares and Penates.  But
+every threshing, flour and oil mill, has its spirit, who must be duly
+fed, else evil result may be expected.  Their great festival (the Karam)
+is in honour of Singbonga and his assistants;  the opening words of the
+priests' speech on that occasion, sufficiently indicate that they
+consider Singbonga, the creator of men and things.  Munure Singbonga
+manokoa luekidkoa (In the beginning Singbonga made men).
+
+Each village has its Sarna or sacred grove, where the hereditary priest
+from time to time performs sacrifices, to keep things prosperous;  but
+this only relates to spirits actually connected with the village, the
+three greater spirits mentioned, being considered general, are only fed
+at intervals of three or more years, and always on a public road or
+other public place, and once every ten years a human being was (and as
+some will tell you is sacrificed to keep the whole community of spirits
+in good train.)  The Pahans, or village priests, are regular servants of
+the spirits, and the najo, deona and bhagats are people who in some way
+are supposed to obtain an influence or command over them.  The first and
+lowest grade of these adepts, called najos (which may be translated as
+practitioners of witchcraft pure and simple), are frequently women.
+They are accused, like the "Mula Curumbers," of demanding quantities of
+grain or loans of money, &c., from people, and when these demands are
+refused, they go away with a remark to the effect, "that you have lots
+of cattle and grain just now, but we'll see what they are like after a
+month or two."  Then probably the cattle of the bewitched person will
+get some disease, and several of them die, or some person of his family
+will become ill or get hurt in some unaccountable way. Till at last,
+thoroughly frightened, the afflicted person takes a little uncooked rice
+and goes to a deona or mati (as he is called in the different
+vernaculars of the province)--the grade immediately above najo in
+knowledge--and promising him a reward if he will assist him, requests
+his aid;  if the deona accedes to the request, the proceedings are as
+follows.  The deona taking the oil brought, lights a small lamp and
+seats himself beside it with the rice in a surpa (winnower) in his
+hands.  After looking intently at the lamp flame for a few minutes, he
+begins to sing a sort of chant of invocation in which all the spirits
+are named, and at the name of each spirit a few grains of rice are
+thrown into the lamp.  When the flame at any particular name gives a
+jump and flares up high, the spirit concerned in the mischief is
+indicated.  Then the deona takes a small portion of the rice wrapped up
+in a sal (Shorea robusta) leaf and proceeds to the nearest new white-ant
+nest from which he cuts the top off and lays the little bundle, half in
+and half out of the cavity. Having retired, he returns in about an hour
+to see if the rice is consumed, and according to the rapidity with which
+it is eaten he predicts the sacrifice which will appease the spirit.
+This ranges from a fowl to a buffalo, but whatever it may include, the
+pouring out of blood is an essential.  It must be noted, however, that
+the mati never tells who the najo is who has excited the malignity of
+the spirit.
+
+But the most important and lucrative part of a deona's business is the
+casting out of evil spirits, which operation is known variously as ashab
+and langhan.  The sign of obsession is generally some mental alienation
+accompanied (in bad cases) by a combined trembling and restlessness of
+limbs, or an unaccountable swelling up of the body.  Whatever the
+symptoms may be the mode of cure appears to be much the same.  On such
+symptoms declaring themselves, the deona is brought to the house and is
+in the presence of the sick man and his friends provided with some rice
+in a surpa, some oil, a little vermilion, and the deona produces from
+his own person a little powdered sulphur and an iron tube about four
+inches long and two tikli.*  Before the proceedings begin all the things
+mentioned are touched with vermilion, a small quantity of which is also
+mixed with the rice.  Three or four grains of rice and one of the tikli
+being put into the tube, a lamp is then lighted beside the sick man and
+the deona begins his chant, throwing grains of rice at each name, and
+when the flame flares up, a little of the powdered sulphur is thrown
+into the lamp and a little on the sick man, who thereupon becomes
+convulsed, is shaken all over and talks deliriously, the deona's chant
+growing louder all the while.  Suddenly the convulsions and the chant
+cease, and the deona carefully takes up a little of the sulphur off the
+man's body and puts into the tube, which he then seals with the second
+tikli.  The deona and one of the man's friends then leave the hut,
+taking the iron tube and rice with them, the spirit being now supposed
+out of the man and bottled up in the iron tube.  They hurry across
+country until they leave the hut some miles behind.  Then they go to the
+edge of some tank or river, to some place they know to be frequented by
+people for the purposes of bathing, &c., where, after some further
+ceremony, the iron is stuck into the ground and left there.  This is
+done with the benevolent intention that the spirit may transfer its
+attentions to the unfortunate person who may happen to touch it while
+bathing.  I am told the spirit in this case usually chooses a young and
+healthy person.  Should the deona think the spirit has not been able to
+suit itself with a new receptacle, he repairs to where a bazaar is
+taking place and there (after some ceremony) he mixes with the crowd,
+and taking a grain of the reddened rice jerks it with his forefinger and
+thumb in such a way that without attracting attention it falls on the
+person or clothes of some.  This is done several times to make certain.
+Then the deona declares he has done his work, and is usually treated to
+the best dinner the sick man's friends can afford.  It is said that the
+person to whom the spirit by either of these methods is transferred may
+not be affected for weeks or even months.  But some fine day while he is
+at his work, he will suddenly stop, wheel round two or three times on
+his heels and fall down more or less convulsed, from that time forward
+he will begin to be troubled in the same way as his dis-obsessed
+predecessor was.
+
+--------
+* Tikli is a circular piece of gilt paper which is stuck on between the
+eyebrows of the women of the Province as ornament.
+--------
+
+Having thus given some account of the deona, we now come to the bhagat,
+called by the Hindus sokha and sivnath.  This is the highest grade of
+all, and, as I ought to have mentioned before, the 'ilm (knowledge) of
+both the deona and bhagat grades is only to be learned by becoming a
+regular chela of a practitioner;  but I am given to understand that the
+final initiation is much hastened by a seasonable liberality on the part
+of the chela. During the initiation of the sokha certain ceremonies are
+performed at night by aid of a human corpse, this is one of the things
+which has led me to think that this part at least of these practices is
+connected with Tantric black magic.
+
+The bhagat performs two distinct functions:  (1st), a kind of divination
+called bhao (the same in Hindi), and (2nd), a kind of Shamanism called
+darasta in Hindi, and bharotan in Horokaji, which, however, is resorted
+to only on very grave occasions--as, for instance, when several families
+think they are bewitched at one time and by the same najo.
+
+The bhao is performed as follows:--The person having some query to
+propound, makes a small dish out of a sal leaf and puts in it a little
+uncooked rice and a few pice;  he then proceeds to the bhagat and lays
+before him the leaf and its contents, propounding at the same time his
+query.  The bhagat then directs him to go out and gather two golaichi
+(varieties of Posinia) flowers (such practitioners usually having a
+golaichi tree close to their abodes);  after the flowers are brought the
+bhagat seats himself with the rice close to the inquirer, and after some
+consideration selects one of the flowers, and holding it by the stalk at
+about a foot from his eyes in his left hand twirls it between his thumb
+and fingers, occasionally with his right hand dropping on it a grain or
+two of rice.*  In a few minutes his eyes close and he begins to talk--
+usually about things having nothing to do with the question in hand, but
+after a few minutes of this, he suddenly yells out an answer to the
+question, and without another word retires.  The inquirer takes his
+meaning as he can from the answer, which, I believe, is always
+ambiguous.
+
+---------
+* This is the process by which the bhagat mesmerizes himself.
+---------
+
+The bharotan as I have above remarked is only resorted to when a matter
+of grave import has to be inquired about;  the bhagat makes a high
+charge for a seance of this description.  We will fancy that three or
+four families in a village consider themselves bewitched by a najo, and
+they resolve to have recourse to a bhagat to find out who the witch is;
+with this view a day is fixed on, and two delegates are procured from
+each of five neighbouring villages, who accompany the afflicted people
+to the house of the bhagat, taking with them a dali or offering,
+consisting of vegetables, which on arrival is formally presented to him.
+Two delegates are posted at each of the four points of the compass, and
+the other two sent themselves with the afflicted parties to the right of
+the bhagat, who occupies the centre of the apartment with four or five
+chelas, a clear space being reserved on the left.  One chela then brings
+a small earthenware-pot full of lighted charcoal, which is set before
+the bhagat with a pile of mango wood chips and a ball composed of dhunia
+(resin of Shorea robusta), gur (treacle), and ghee (clarified butter),
+and possibly other ingredients.  The bhagat's sole attire consists of a
+scanty lenguti (waist-cloth), a necklace of the large wooden beads such
+as are usually worn by fakeers, and several garlands of golaichi flowers
+round his neck, his hair being unusually long and matted.  Beside him
+stuck in the ground is his staff.  One chela stands over the firepot
+with a bamboo-mat fan in his hand, another takes charge of the pile of
+chips, and a third of the ball of composition, and one or two others
+seat themselves behind the bhagat, with drums and other musical
+instruments in their hands.  All being in readiness, the afflicted ones
+are requested to state their grievance.  This they do, and pray the
+bhagat to call before him the najo, who has stirred up the spirits to
+afflict them, in order that he may be punished.  The bhagat then gives a
+sign to his chelas, those behind him raise a furious din with their
+instruments, the fire is fed with chips, and a bit of the composition is
+put on it from time to time, producing a volume of thick greyish-blue
+smoke; this is carefully fanned over, and towards the bhagat, who, when
+well wrapped in smoke, closes his eyes and quietly swaying his body
+begins a low chant.  The chant gradually becomes louder and the sway of
+his body more pronounced, until he works himself into a state of
+complete frenzy.  Then with his body actually quivering, and his head
+rapidly working about from side to side, he sings in a loud voice how a
+certain najo (whom he names) had asked money of those people and was
+refused, and how he stirred up certain spirits (whom he also names) to
+hurt them, how they killed so and so's bullocks, some one else's sheep,
+and caused another's child to fall ill.  Then he begins to call on the
+najo to come and answer for his doings, and in doing so rises to his
+feet--still commanding the najo to appear;  meanwhile he reels about;
+then falls on the ground and is quite still except for an occasional
+whine, and a muttered, "I see him!"  "He is coming!" This state may last
+for an hour or more till at last the bhagat sits up and announces the
+najo has come;  as he says so, a man, apparently mad with drink, rushes
+in and falls with his head towards the bhagat moaning and making a sort
+of snorting as if half stifled.  In this person the bewitched parties
+often recognize a neighbour and sometimes even a relation, but whoever
+he may be they have bound themselves to punish him.  The bhagat then
+speaks to him and tells him to confess, at the same time threatening
+him, in case of refusal, with his staff.  He then confesses in a
+half-stupefied manner, and his confession tallies with what the bhagat
+has told in his frenzy.  The najo is then dismissed and runs out of the
+house in the same hurry as he came in.  The delegates then hold a
+council at which the najo usually is sentenced to a fine--often heavy
+enough to ruin him--and expelled from his village.  Before the British
+rule the convicted najo seldom escaped with his life, and during the
+mutiny time, when no Englishmen were about, the Singbhoom Hos paid off a
+large number of old scores of this sort.  For record of which, see
+"Statistical Account of Bengal," vol. xvii. p. 52.
+
+In conclusion I have merely to add that I have derived this information
+from people who have been actually concerned in these occurrences, and
+among others a man belonging to a village of my own, who was convicted
+and expelled from the village with the loss of all his movable property,
+and one of his victims, a relation of his, sat by me when the above was
+being written.
+
+--E.D. Ewen
+
+
+
+
+Mahatmas and Chelas
+
+
+A Mahatma is an individual who, by special training and education, has
+evolved those higher faculties, and has attained that spiritual
+knowledge, which ordinary humanity will acquire after passing through
+numberless series of re-incarnations during the process of cosmic
+evolution, provided, of course, that they do not go, in the meanwhile,
+against the purposes of Nature and thus bring on their own annihilation.
+This process of the self-evolution of the MAHATMA extends over a number
+of "incarnations," although, comparatively speaking, they are very few.
+Now, what is it that incarnates?  The occult doctrine, so far as it is
+given out, shows that the first three principles die more or less with
+what is called the physical death.  The fourth principle, together with
+the lower portions of the fifth, in which reside the animal
+propensities, has Kama Loka for its abode, where it suffers the throes
+of disintegration in proportion to the intensity of those lower desires;
+while it is the higher Manas, the pure man, which is associated with the
+sixth and seventh principles, that goes into Devachan to enjoy there the
+effects of its good Karma, and then to be reincarnated as a higher
+personality.  Now an entity that is passing through the occult training
+in its successive births, gradually has less and less (in each
+incarnation) of that lower Manas until there arrives a time when its
+whole Manas, being of an entirely elevated character, is centred in the
+individuality, when such a person may be said to have become a MAHATMA.
+At the time of his physical death, all the lower four principles perish
+without any suffering, for these are, in fact, to him like a piece of
+wearing apparel which he puts on and off at will.  The real MAHATMA is
+then not his physical body but that higher Manas which is inseparably
+linked to the Atma and its vehicle (the sixth principle)--a union
+effected by him in a comparatively very short period by passing through
+the process of self-evolution laid down by Occult Philosophy.  When
+therefore, people express a desire to "see a MAHATMA," they really do
+not seem to understand what it is they ask for.  How can they, with
+their physical eyes, hope to see that which transcends that sight?  Is
+it the body--a mere shell or mask--they crave or hunt after?  And
+supposing they see the body of a MAHATMA, how can they know that behind
+that mask is concealed an exalted entity?  By what standard are they to
+judge whether the Maya before them reflects the image of a true MAHATMA
+or not?  And who will say that the physical is not a Maya? Higher things
+can be perceived only by a sense pertaining to those higher things;
+whoever therefore wants to see the real MAHATMA, must use his
+intellectual sight.  He must so elevate his Manas that its perception
+will be clear and all mists created by Maya be dispelled.  His vision
+will then be bright and he will see the MAHATMA wherever he may be, for,
+being merged into the sixth and the seventh principles, which know no
+distance, the MAHATMA may be said to be everywhere.  But, at the same
+time, just as we may be standing on a mountain top and have within our
+sight the whole plain, and yet not be cognizant of any particular tree
+or spot, because from that elevated position all below is nearly
+identical, and as our attention may be drawn to something which may be
+dissimilar to its surroundings--in the same manner, although the whole
+of humanity is within the mental vision of the MAHATMA, he cannot be
+expected to take special note of every human being, unless that being by
+his special acts draws particular attention to himself.  The highest
+interest of humanity, as a whole, is the MAHATMA's special concern, for
+he has identified himself with that Universal Soul which runs through
+Humanity;  and to draw his attention one must do so through that Soul.
+This perception of the Manas may be called "faith" which should not be
+confounded with blind belief.  "Blind faith" is an expression sometimes
+used to indicate belief without perception or understanding;  while the
+true perception of the Manas is that enlightened belief which is the
+real meaning of the word "faith."  This belief should at the same time
+be accompanied by knowledge, i.e., experience, for "true knowledge
+brings with it faith."  Faith is the perception of the Manas (the fifth
+principle), while knowledge, in the true sense of the term, is the
+capacity of the Intellect, i.e., it is spiritual perception. In short,
+the individuality of man, composed of his higher Manas, the sixth and
+the seventh principle, should work as a unity, and then only can it
+obtain "divine wisdom," for divine things can be sensed only by divine
+faculties.  Thus a chela should be actuated solely by a desire to
+understand the operations of the Law of Cosmic Evolution, so as to be
+able to work in conscious and harmonious accord with Nature.
+
+--Anon.
+
+
+
+
+The Brahmanical Thread
+
+
+I.  The general term for the investiture of this thread is Upanayana;
+and the invested is called Upanita, which signifies brought or drawn
+near (to one's Guru), i.e., the thread is the symbol of the wearer's
+condition.
+
+II.  One of the names of this thread is Yajna-Sutra.  Yajna means
+Brahma, or the Supreme Spirit, and Sutra the thread, or tie.
+Collectively, the compound word signifies that which ties a man to his
+spirit or god.  It consists of three yarns twisted into one thread, and
+three of such threads formed and knotted into a circle.  Every
+Theosophist knows what a circle signifies and it need not be repeated
+here.  He will easily understand the rest and the relation they have to
+mystic initiation.  The yarns signify the great principle of "three in
+one, and one in three," thus:--The first trinity consists of Atma which
+comprises the three attributes of Manas, Buddhi, and Ahankara (the mind,
+the intelligence, and the egotism).  The Manas again, has the three
+qualities of Satva, Raja, and Tama (goodness, foulness, and darkness).
+Buddhi has the three attributes of Pratyaksha, Upamiti and Anumiti
+(perception, analogy, and inference). Ahankara also has three
+attributes, viz., Jnata, Jneya, and Jnan (the knower, the known, and the
+knowledge).
+
+III.  Another name of the sacred thread is Tri-dandi.  Tri means three,
+and Danda, chastisement, correction, or conquest.  This reminds the
+holder of the three great "corrections" or conquests he has to
+accomplish.  These are:--(1) the Vakya Sanyama;*  (2) the Manas Sanyama;
+and (3) the Indriya (or Deha) Sanyama. Vakya is speech, Manas, mind, and
+Deha (literally, body) or Indriya, is the senses.  The three conquests
+therefore mean the control over one's speech, thought, and action.
+
+--------
+* Danda and Sanyama are synonymous terms.--A.S.
+---------
+
+This thread is also the reminder to the man of his secular duties,
+and its material varies, in consequence, according to the occupation
+of the wearer.  Thus, while the thread of the Brahmans is made of
+pure cotton, that of the Kshatriyas (the warriors) is composed of
+flax--the bow-string material;  and that of Vaishyas (the traders and
+cattle-breeders), of wool.  From this it is not to be inferred that caste
+was originally meant to be hereditary. In the ancient times, it depended
+on the qualities of the man. Irrespective of the caste of his parents, a
+man could, according to his merit or otherwise, raise or lower himself
+from one caste to another;  and instances are not wanting in which a man
+has elevated himself to the position of the highest Brahman (such as
+Vishvamitra Rishi, Parasara, Vyasa, Satyakam, and others) from the very
+lowest of the four castes.  The sayings of Yudhishthira on this subject,
+in reply to the questions of the great serpent, in the Arannya Parva of
+the Maha-Bharata, and of Manu, on the same point, are well known and
+need nothing more than bare reference.  Both Manu and Maha-Bharata--the
+fulcrums of Hinduism--distinctly affirm that a man can translate
+himself from one caste to another by his merit, irrespective of his
+parentage.
+
+The day is fast approaching when the so-called Brahmans will have to
+show cause, before the tribunal of the Aryan Rishis, why they should not
+be divested of the thread which they do not at all deserve, but are
+degrading by misuse.  Then alone will the people appreciate the
+privilege of wearing it.
+
+There are many examples of the highest distinctive insignia being worn
+by the unworthy.  The aristocracies of Europe and Asia teem with such.
+
+--A. Sarman
+
+
+
+
+Reading in a Sealed Envelope
+
+
+Some years ago, a Brahman astrologer named Vencata Narasimla Josi, a
+native of the village of Periasamudram in the Mysore Provinces, came to
+the little town in the Bellary District where I was then employed.  He
+was a good Sanskrit, Telugu and Canarese poet, and an excellent master
+of Vedic rituals;  knew the Hindu system of astronomy, and professed to
+be an astrologer.  Besides all this, he possessed the power of reading
+what was contained in any sealed envelope.  The process adopted for this
+purpose was simply this:--We wrote whatever we chose on a piece of
+paper; enclosed it in one, two or three envelopes, each properly gummed
+and sealed, and handed the cover to the astrologer.  He asked us to name
+a figure between 1 and 9, and on its being named, he retired with the
+envelope to some secluded place for some time; and then he returned with
+a paper full of figures, and another paper containing a copy of what was
+on the sealed paper--exactly, letter for letter and word for word.  I
+tried him often and many others did the same;  and we were all satisfied
+that he was invariably accurate, and that there was no deception
+whatsoever in the matter.
+
+About this time, one Mr. Theyagaraja Mudalyar, a supervisor in the
+Public Works Department, an English scholar and a good Sanskrit and
+Telugu poet, arrived at our place on his periodical tour of inspection.
+Having heard about the aforesaid astrologer, he wanted to test him in a
+manner, most satisfactory to himself. One morning handing to the
+astrologer a very indifferently gummed envelope, he said, "Here, Sir,
+take this letter home with you and come back to me with your copy in the
+afternoon."  This loose way of closing the envelope, and the permission
+given to the astrologer to take it home for several hours, surprised the
+Brahman, who said, "I don't want to go home.  Seal the cover better, and
+give me the use of some room here.  I shall be ready with my copy very
+soon."  "No," said the Mudalyar, "take it as it is, and come back
+whenever you like.  I have the means of finding out the deception, if
+any be practiced."
+
+So then the astrologer went with the envelope;  and returned to the
+Mudalyar's place in the afternoon.  Myself and about twenty others were
+present there by appointment.  The astrologer then carefully handed the
+cover to the Mudalyar, desiring him to see if it was all right.  "Don't
+mind that," the Mudalyar answered; "I can find out the trick, if there
+be any.  Produce your copy." The astrologer thereupon presented to the
+Mudalyar a paper on which four lines were written and stated that this
+was a copy of the paper enclosed in the Mudalyar's envelope.  Those four
+lines formed a portion of an antiquated poem.
+
+The Mudalyar read the paper once, then read it over again. Extreme
+satisfaction beamed over his countenance, and he sat mute for some
+seconds seemingly in utter astonishment.  But soon after, the expression
+of his face changing, he opened the envelope and threw the enclosure
+down, jocularly saying to the astrologer, "Here, Sir, is the original of
+which you have produced the copy."
+
+The paper lay upon the carpet, and was quite blank! not a word, nor a
+letter on its clean surface.
+
+This was a sad disappointment to all his admirers;  but to the
+astrologer himself, it was a real thunderbolt.  He picked up the paper
+pensively, examined it on both sides, then dashed it on the ground in a
+fury;  and suddenly arising, exclaimed, "My Vidya* is a delusion, and I
+am a liar!"
+
+---------
+* Secret knowledge, magic.
+---------
+
+The subsequent behaviour of the poor man made us fear lest this great
+disappointment should drive him to commit some desperate act.  In fact
+he seemed determined to drown himself in the well, saying that he was
+dishonoured.  While we were trying to console him, the Mudalyar came
+forward, caught hold of his hands, and besought him to sit down and
+calmly listen to his explanation, assuring him that he was not a liar,
+and that his copy was perfectly accurate.  But the astrologer would not
+be satisfied; he supposed that all this was said simply to console him;
+and cursed himself and his fate most horribly.  However, in a few
+minutes he became calmer and listened to the Mudalyar's explanation,
+which was in substance as follows The only way for the sceptic to
+account for this phenomenon, is to suppose that the astrologer opened
+the covers dexterously and read their contents.  "So," he said, "I wrote
+four lines of old poetry on the paper with nitrate of silver, which
+would be invisible until exposed to the light;  and this would have
+disclosed the astrologer's fraud, if he had tried to find out the
+contents of the enclosed paper, by opening the cover, however
+ingeniously. For, if he opened it and looked at the paper, he would have
+seen that it was blank, resealed the cover, and declared that the paper
+enveloped therein bore no writing whatever;  or if he had, by design or
+accident, exposed the paper to light, the writing would have become
+black;  and he would have produced a copy of it as if it were the result
+of his own Vidya;  but in either case and the writing remaining, his
+deception would have been clear, and it would have been patent to all
+that he did open the envelope.  But in the present case, the result
+proved conclusively that the cover was not opened at all."
+
+--P. Sreeneevas Row
+
+
+
+
+The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac
+
+
+The division of the Zodiac into different signs dates from immemorial
+antiquity.  It has acquired a world-wide celebrity and is to be found in
+the astrological systems of several nations. The invention of the Zodiac
+and its signs has been assigned to different nations by different
+antiquarians.  It is stated by some that, at first, there were only ten
+signs, that one of these signs was subsequently split up into two
+separate signs, and that a new sign was added to the number to render
+the esoteric significance of the division more profound, and at the same
+time to conceal it more perfectly from the uninitiated public.  It is
+very probable that the real philosophical conception of the division
+owes its origin to some particular nation, and the names given to the
+various signs might have been translated into the languages of other
+nations.  The principal object of this article, however, is not to
+decide which nation had the honour of inventing the signs in question,
+but to indicate to some extent the real philosophical meaning involved
+therein, and the way to discover the rest of the meaning which yet
+remains undisclosed. But from what is herein stated, an inference may
+fairly be drawn that, like so many other philosophical myths and
+allegories, the invention of the Zodiac and its signs owes its origin to
+ancient India.
+
+What then is its real origin, what is the philosophical conception which
+the Zodiac and its signs are intended to represent?  Do the various
+signs merely indicate the shape or configuration of the different
+constellations included in the divisions, or, are they simply masks
+designed to veil some hidden meaning?  The former supposition is
+altogether untenable for two reasons, viz.:--
+
+I.  The Hindus were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, as
+may he easily seen from their work on Astronomy, and from the almanacs
+published by Hindu astronomers.  Consequently they were fully aware of
+the fact that the constellations in the various Zodiacal divisions were
+not fixed.  They could not, therefore, have assigned particular shapes
+to these shifting groups of fixed stars with reference to the divisions
+of the Zodiac.  But the names indicating the Zodiacal signs have all
+along remained unaltered.  It is to be inferred, therefore, that the
+names given to the various signs have no connection whatever with the
+configurations of the constellations included in them.
+
+II. The names assigned to these signs by the ancient Sanskrit writers
+and their exoteric or literal meanings are as follows:--
+
+The Names of the Signs ....... Their Exoteric or Literal Meanings
+
+1. Mesha ........................... Ram, or Aries.
+2. Rishabha .......................Bull, or Taurus.
+3. Mithunam ................... Twins, or Gemini (male and female).
+4. Karkataka ...................... Crab, or Cancer.
+5. Simha .............................. Lion, or Leo.
+6. Kanya ............................. Virgin or Virgo.*
+7. Tula .......................... Balance, or Libra.
+8. Vrischika ..................... Scorpion, or Scorpio.
+9. Dhanus ....................... Archer, or Sagittarius.
+10. Makara ........... The Goat, or Capricornus (Crocodile, in Sanskrit).
+11. Kumbha .................. Water-bearer, or Aquarius.
+12. Meenam ................. Fishes, or Pisces.
+
+The figures of the constellations included in the signs at the time the
+division was first made do not at all resemble the shapes of the
+animals, reptiles and other objects denoted by the names given them.
+The truth of this assertion can be ascertained by examining the
+configurations of the various constellations. Unless the shape of the
+crocodile** or the crab is called up by the observer's imagination,
+there is very little chance of the stars themselves suggesting to his
+idea that figure, upon the blue canopy of the starry firmament.
+
+--------
+* Virgo-Scorpio, when none but the initiates knew there were twelve
+signs.  Virgo-Scorpio was then followed for the profane by Sagittarius.
+At the middle or junction-point where now stands Libra and at the sign
+now called Virgo, two mystical signs were inserted which remained
+unintelligible to the profane.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** This constellation was never called Crocodile by the ancient Western
+astronomers, who described it as a horned goat and called it so--
+Capricornus.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+If, then, the constellations have nothing to do with the origin of the
+names by which the Zodiacal divisions are indicated, we have to seek for
+some other source which might have given rise to these appellations.  It
+becomes my object to unravel a portion of the mystery connected with
+these Zodiacal signs, as also to disclose a portion of the sublime
+conception of the ancient Hindu philosophy which gave rise to them.  The
+signs of the Zodiac have more than one meaning.  From one point of view
+they represent the different stages of evolution up to the time the
+present material universe with the five elements came into phenomenal
+existence. As the author of "Isis Unveiled" has stated in the second
+volume of her admirable work, "The key should be turned seven times" to
+understand the whole philosophy underlying these signs.  But I shall
+wind it only once and give the contents of the first chapter of the
+History of Evolution.  It is very fortunate that the Sanskrit names
+assigned to the various divisions by Aryan philosophers contain within
+themselves the key to the solution of the problem.  Those of my readers
+who have studied to some extent the ancient "Mantra" and the "Tantra
+Sastras" * of India, would have seen that very often Sanskrit words are
+made to convey a certain hidden meaning by means of well-known
+pre-arranged methods and a tacit convention, while their literal
+significance is something quite different from the implied meaning.
+
+---------
+* Works on Incantation and Magic.
+---------
+
+The following are some of the rules which may help an inquirer in
+ferreting out the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature to
+be found in the old Aryan myths and allegories:
+
+1. Find out the synonyms of the word used which have other meanings.
+
+2. Find out the numerical value of the letters composing the word
+according to the methods given in ancient Tantrika works.
+
+3. Examine the ancient myths or allegories, if there are any, which have
+any special connection with the word in question.
+
+4. Permute the different syllables composing the word and examine the
+new combinations that will thus be formed and their meanings, &c. &c.
+
+I shall now apply some of the above given rules to the names of the
+twelve signs of the Zodiac.
+
+I. Mesha.--One of the synonyms of this word is Aja.  Now, Aja literally
+means that which has no birth, and is applied to the Eternal Brahma in
+certain portions of the Upanishads. So,  the first sign is intended to
+represent Parabrahma, the self-existent, eternal, self-sufficient cause
+of all.
+
+II. Rishabham.--This word is used in several places in the Upanishads
+and the Veda to mean Pranava (Aum).  Sankaracharya has so interpreted it
+in several portions of his commentary.*
+
+--------
+* Example, "Rishabhasya--Chandasam Rishabhasya Pradhanasya
+Pranavasya."
+--------
+
+III. Mithuna.--As the word plainly indicates, this sign is intended to
+represent the first androgyne, the Ardhanareeswara, the bisexual
+Sephira--Adam Kadmon.
+
+IV. Karkataka.--When the syllables are converted into the corresponding
+numbers, according to the general mode of transmutation so often alluded
+to in Mantra Shastra, the word in question will be represented by ////.
+This sign then is evidently intended to represent the sacred Tetragram;
+the Parabrahmadharaka;  the Pranava resolved into four separate entities
+corresponding to its four Matras;  the four Avasthas indicated by
+Jagrata (waking) Avastha, Swapna (dreaming) Avastha, Sushupti (deep
+sleep) Avastha, and Turiya (the last stage, i.e., Nirvana) Avastha (as
+yet in potentiality);  the four states of Brahma called Vaiswanara,
+Taijasa (or Hiranyagarbha), Pragna, and Iswara, and represented by
+Brahma, Vishna, Maheswara, and Sadasiva;  the four aspects of
+Parabrahma, as Sthula (gross), Sukshma (subtle), Vija (seed), and Sakshi
+(witness);  the four stages or conditions of the Sacred Word, named
+Para, Pasyanti, Madhyama and Vaikhari;  Nadam, Bindu, Sakti and Kala.
+This sign completes the first quaternary.
+
+V. Simha.--This word contains a world of occult meaning within itself;
+and it may not be prudent on my part to disclose the whole of its
+meaning now.  It will be sufficient for the present purpose to give a
+general indication of its significance.
+
+Two of its synonymous terms are Panchasyam and Hari, and its number in
+the order of the Zodiacal divisions (being the fifth sign) points
+clearly to the former synonym.  This synonym--Panchasyam--shows that
+the sign is intended to represent the five Brahmas--viz., Isanam,
+Aghoram, Tatpurusham, Vamadevam, and Sadyojatam:--the five Buddhas.  The
+second synonym shows it to be Narayana, the Jivatma or Pratyagatma.  The
+Sukarahasy Upanishad will show that the ancient Aryan philosophers
+looked upon Narayana as the Jivatma.* The Vaishnavites may not admit it.
+But as an Advaiti, I look upon Jivatma as identical with Paramatma in
+its real essence when stripped of its illusory attributes created by
+Agnanam or Avidya--ignorance.
+
+---------
+* In its lowest or most material state, as the life-principle which
+animates the material bodies of the animal and vegetable worlds, &c.
+--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+The Jivatma is correctly placed in the fifth sign counting from Mesham,
+as the fifth sign is the putrasthanam or the son's house according to
+the rules of Hindu Astrology.  The sign in question represents Jivatma--
+the son of Paramatma as it were.  (I may also add that it represents the
+real Christ, the anointed pure spirit, though many Christians may frown
+at this interpretation.)*  I will only add here that unless the nature
+of this sign is fully comprehended it will be impossible to understand
+the real order of the next three signs and their full significance.  The
+elements or entities that have merely a potential existence in this sign
+become distinct separate entities in the next three signs.  Their union
+into a single entity leads to the destruction of the phenomenal
+universe, and the recognition of the pure Spirit and their separation
+has the contrary effect.  It leads to material earth-bound existence and
+brings into view the picture gallery of Avidya (Ignorance) or Maya
+(Illusion).  If the real orthography of the name by which the sign in
+question is indicated is properly understood, it will readily be seen
+that the next three signs are not what they ought to be.
+
+--------
+* Nevertheless it is a true one.  The Jiv-atma in the Microcosm (man) is
+the same spiritual essence which animates the Macrocosm (universe), the
+differentiation, or specific difference between the two Jivatmas
+presenting itself but in the two states or conditions of the same and
+one Force.  Hence, "this son of Paramatma" is an eternal correlation of
+the Father-Cause. Purusha manifesting himself as Brahma of the "golden
+egg" and becoming Viradja--the universe.  We are "all born of Aditi from
+the water" (Hymns of the Maruts, X. 63, 2), and "Being was born from
+not-being" (Rig-Veda, Mandala I, Sukta 166).--Ed. Theos.
+-----------
+
+Kanya or Virgo and Vrischika or Scorpio should form one single sign, and
+Thula must follow the said sign if it is at all necessary to have a
+separate sign of that name.  But a separation between Kanya and
+Vrischika was effected by interposing the sign Tula between the two.
+The object of this separation will be understood on examining the
+meaning of the three signs.
+
+VI. Kanya.--Means a virgin and represents Sakti or Mahamaya.  The sign
+in question is the sixth Rasi or division, and indicates that there are
+six primary forces in Nature.  These forces have different sets of names
+in Sanskrit philosophy.  According to one system of nomenclature, they
+are called by the following names*:--(1) Parasakty;  (2) Gnanasakti;
+(3) Itchasakti (will-power); (4) Kriytisakti;  (5) Kundalinisakti;  and
+(6) Matrikasakti.  The six forces are in their unity represented by the
+Astral Light.**
+
+---------
+* Parasakti:--Literally the great or supreme force or power. It means
+and includes the powers of light and heat.
+
+Gnanasakti:--Literally the power of intellect or the power of real
+wisdom or knowledge.  It has two aspects.
+
+I. The following are some of its manifestations when placed under the
+influence or control of material conditions.
+
+(a) The power of the mind in interpreting our sensations;  (b) Its power
+in recalling past ideas (memory) and raising future expectation;  (c)
+Its power as exhibited in what are called by modern psychologists "the
+laws of association," which enables it to form persisting connections
+between various groups of sensations and possibilities of sensations,
+and thus generate the notion or idea of an external object;  (d) Its
+power in connecting our ideas together by the mysterious link of memory,
+and thus generating the notion of self or individuality.
+
+II. The following are some of its manifestations when liberated from the
+bonds of matter:--
+
+(a) Clairvoyance.  (b) Pyschometry.
+
+Itchasakti:--Literally the power of the will.  Its most ordinary
+manifestation is the generation of certain nerve currents which set in
+motion such muscles as are required for the accomplishment of the
+desired object.
+
+Kriyasakti:--The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce
+external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy.
+The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally if one's
+attention is deeply concentrated upon it.  Similarly an intense volition
+will be followed by the desired result.
+
+A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti and
+Kriyasakti.
+
+Kundalinisakti:--Literally the power or force which moves in a
+serpentine or curved path.  It is the universal life-principle which
+everywhere manifests itself in Nature.  This force includes in itself
+the two great forces of attraction and repulsion. Electricity and
+magnetism are but manifestations of it.  This is the power or force
+which brings about that "continuous adjustment of internal relations to
+external relations" which is the essence of life according to Herbert
+Spencer, and that "continuous adjustment of external relations to
+internal relations" which is the basis of transmigration of souls or
+punarjanmam (re-birth) according to the doctrines of the ancient Hindu
+philosophers.
+
+A Yogi must thoroughly subjugate this power or force before he can
+attain moksham.  This force is, in fact, the great serpent of the Bible.
+
+Matrikasakti:--Literally the force or power of letters or speech or
+music.  The whole of the ancient Mantra Shastra has this force or power
+in all its manifestations for its subject-matter.  The power of The Word
+which Jesus Christ speaks of is a manifestation of this Sakti.  The
+influence of its music is one of its ordinary manifestations.  The power
+of the mirific ineffable name is the crown of this Sakti.
+
+Modern science has but partly investigated the first, second and fifth
+of the forces or powers above named, but it is altogether in the dark as
+regards the remaining powers.
+
+** Even the very name of Kanya (Virgin) shows how all the ancient
+esoteric systems agreed in all their fundamental doctrines.  The
+Kabalists and the Hermetic philosophers call the Astral Light the
+"heavenly or celestial Virgin."  The Astral Light in its unity is the
+7th.  Hence the seven principles diffused in every unity or the 6 and
+one--two triangles and a crown.--Ed. Theos.
+-----------
+
+VII. Tula.--When represented by numbers according to the method above
+alluded to, this word will be converted into 36.  This sign, therefore,
+is evidently intended to represent the 36 Tatwams.  (The number of
+Tatwams is different according to the views of different philosophers
+but by Sakteyas generally and by several of the ancient Rishis, such as
+Agastya, Dvrasa and Parasurama, &c., the number of Tatwams has been
+stated to be 36). Jivatma differs from Paramatma, or to state the same
+thing in other words, "Baddha" differs from "Mukta" * in being encased
+as it were within these 36 Tatwams, while the other is free.  This sign
+prepares the way to earthly Adam to Nara.  As the emblem of Nara it is
+properly placed as the seventh sign.
+
+---------
+* As the Infinite differs from the Finite and the Unconditioned
+from the Conditioned.--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+VIII. Vrischika.--It is stated by ancient philosophers that the sun when
+located in this Rasi or sign is called by the name of Vishnu (see the
+12th Skandha of Bhagavata).  This sign is intended to represent Vishnu.
+Vishnu literally means that which is expanded--expanded as Viswam or
+Universe.  Properly speaking, Viswam itself is Vishnu (see
+Sankaracharya's commentary on Vishnusahasranamam).  I have already
+intimated that Vishnu represents the Swapnavastha or the Dreaming State.
+The sign in question properly signifies the universe in thought or the
+universe in the divine conception.
+
+It is properly placed as the sign opposite to Rishabham or Pranava.
+Analysis from Pranava downwards leads to the Universe of Thought, and
+synthesis from the latter upwards leads to Pranava (Aum).  We have now
+arrived at the ideal state of the universe previous to its coming into
+material existence.  The expansion of the Vija or primitive germ into
+the universe is only possible when the 36 "Tatwams" * are interposed
+between the Maya and Jivatma.  The dreaming state is induced through the
+instrumentality of these "Tatwams."  It is the existence of these
+Tatwams that brings Hamsa into existence.  The elimination of these
+Tatwams marks the beginning of the synthesis towards Pranava and Brahmam
+and converts Hamsa into Soham.  As it is intended to represent the
+different stages of evolution from Brahmam downwards to the material
+universe, the three signs Kanya, Tula, and Vrischika are placed in the
+order in which they now stand as three separate signs.
+
+IX. Dhanus (Sagittarius).--When represented in numbers the name is
+equivalent to 9, and the division in question is the 9th division
+counting from Mesha.  The sign, therefore, clearly indicates the 9
+Brahmas--the 9 Parajapatis who assisted the Demiurgus in constructing
+the material universe.
+
+X. Makara.--There is some difficulty in interpreting this word;
+nevertheless it contains within itself the clue to its correct
+interpretation.  The letter Ma is equivalent to number 5, and Kara means
+hand.  Now in Sanskrit Thribhujam means a triangle, bhujam or karam
+(both are synonymous) being understood to mean a side.  So, Makaram or
+Panchakaram means a Pentagon.**
+
+----------
+* 36 is three times 12, or 9 Tetraktis, or 12 Triads, the most sacred
+number in the Kabalistic and Pythagorean numerals.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** The five-pointed star or pentagram represented the five limbs of
+man.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+Now, Makaram is the tenth sign, and the term "Dasadisa" is generally
+used by Sanskrit writers to denote the faces or sides of the universe.
+The sign in question is intended to represent the faces of the universe,
+and indicates that the figure of the universe is bounded by Pentagons.
+If we take the pentagons as regular pentagons (on the presumption or
+supposition that the universe is symmetrically constructed) the figure
+of the material universe will, of course, be a Dodecahedron, the
+geometrical model imitated by the Demiurgus in constructing the material
+universe.  If Tula was subsequently invented, and if instead of the
+three signs "Kanya," "Tula," and "Vrischikam," there had existed
+formerly only one sign combining in itself Kanya and Vrischika, the sign
+now under consideration was the eighth sign under the old system, and it
+is a significant fact that Sanskrit writers generally speak also of
+"Ashtadisa" or eight faces bounding space.  It is quite possible that
+the number of disa might have been altered from 8 to 10 when the
+formerly existing Virgo-Scorpio was split up into three separate signs.
+
+Again, Kara may be taken to represent the projecting triangles of the
+five-pointed star.  This figure may also be called a kind of regular
+pentagon (see Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 143).  If this
+interpretation is accepted, the Rasi or sign in question represents the
+"microcosm."  But the "microcosm" or the world of thought is really
+represented by Vrischika.  From an objective point of view the
+"microcosm" is represented by the human body. Makaram may be taken to
+represent simultaneously both the microcosm and the macrocosm, as
+external objects of perception.
+
+In connection with this sign I shall state a few important facts which I
+beg to submit for the consideration of those who are interested in
+examining the ancient occult sciences of India.  It is generally held by
+the ancient philosophers that the macrocosm is similar to the microcosm
+in having a Sthula Sariram and a Suksma Sariram.   The visible universe
+is the Sthula Sariram of Viswam;  the ancient philosophers held that as
+a substratum for this visible universe, there is another universe--
+perhaps we may call it the universe of Astral Light--the real universe
+of Noumena, the soul as it were of this visible universe.  It is darkly
+hinted in certain passages of the Veda and the Upanishads that this
+hidden universe of Astral Light is to be represented by an Icosahedron.
+The connection between an Icosahedron and a Dodecahedron is something
+very peculiar and interesting, though the figures seem to be so very
+dissimilar to each other.  The connection may be understood by the
+under-mentioned geometrical construction.  Describe a Sphere about an
+Icosahedron;  let perpendiculars be drawn from the centre of the Sphere
+on its faces and produced to meet the surface of the Sphere.  Now, if
+the points of intersection be joined, a Dodecahedron is formed within
+the Sphere.  By a similar process an Icosahedron may be constructed from
+a Dodecahedron.  (See Todhunter's "Spherical Trigonometry," p. 141, art.
+193).  The figure constructed as above described will represent the
+universe of matter and the universe of Astral Light as they actually
+exist.  I shall not now, however, proceed to show how the universe of
+Astral Light may be considered under the symbol of an Icosahedron.  I
+shall only state that this conception of the Aryan philosophers is not
+to be looked upon as mere "theological twaddle" or as the outcome of
+wild fancy.  The real significance of the conception in question can, I
+believe, be explained by reference to the psychology and the physical
+science of the ancients.  But I must stop here and proceed to consider
+the meaning of the remaining two signs.
+
+XI. Kumbha (or Aquarius).--When represented by numbers, the word is
+equivalent to 14.  It can be easily perceived then that the division in
+question is intended to represent the "Chaturdasa Bhuvanam," or the 14
+lokas spoken of in Sanskrit writings.
+
+XII. Mina (or Pisces).--This word again is represented by 5 when written
+in numbers, and is evidently intended to convey the idea of
+Panchamahabhutams or the 5 elements.  The sign also suggests that water
+(not the ordinary water, but the universal solvent of the ancient
+alchemists) is the most important amongst the said elements.
+
+I have now finished the task which I have set to myself in this article.
+My purpose is not to explain the ancient theory of evolution itself, but
+to show the connection between that theory and the Zodiacal divisions.
+I have herein brought to light but a very small portion of the
+philosophy imbedded in these signs. The veil that was dexterously thrown
+over certain portions of the mystery connected with these signs by the
+ancient philosophers will never be lifted up for the amusement or
+edification of the uninitiated public.
+
+Now to summarize the facts stated in this article, the contents of the
+first chapter of the history of this universe are as follows:
+
+1.  The self-existent, eternal Brahmam.
+
+2.  Pranava (Aum).
+
+3.  The androgyne Brahma, or the bisexual Sephira-Adam Kadmon.
+
+4.  The Sacred Tetragram--the four matras of Pranava--the four
+    avasthas--the four states of Brahma--the Sacred Dharaka.
+
+5.  The five Brahmas--the five Buddhas representing in their totality
+    the Jivatma.
+
+6.  The Astral Light--the holy Virgin--the six forces in Nature.
+
+7.  The thirty-six Tatwams born of Avidya.
+
+8.  The universe in thought--the Swapna Avastha--the microcosm looked at
+    from a subjective point of view.
+
+9.  The nine Prajapatis--the assistants of the Demiurgus.*
+
+10.  The shape of the material universe in the mind of the Demiurgus--
+     the DODECAHEDRON.
+
+11.  The fourteen lokas.
+
+12.  The five elements.
+
+--------
+* The nine Kabalistic Sephiroths emanated from Sephira the 10th and the
+head Sephiroth are identical.  Three trinities or triads with their
+emanative principle form the Pythagorean mystic Decad, the sum of all
+which represents the whole Kosmos.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+The history of creation and of this world from its beginning up to the
+present time is composed of seven chapters.  The seventh chapter is not
+yet completed.
+
+--T. Subba Row
+Triplicane, Madras, September 14, 1881
+
+
+
+
+The Sishal and Bhukailas Yogis
+
+We are indebted to the kindness of the learned President of the Adi
+Brahmo Samaji for the following accounts of two Yogis, of whom one
+performed the extraordinary feats of raising his body by will power, and
+keeping it suspended in the air without visible support.  The Yoga
+posture for meditation or concentration of the mind upon spiritual
+things is called Asana.  There are various of these modes of sitting,
+such as Padmasan, &c. &c.  Babu Rajnarain Bose translated this narrative
+from a very old number of the Tatwabodhini Patrika, the Calcutta organ
+of the Brahmo Samaj. The writer was Babu Akkhaya Kumar Dalta, then
+editor of the Patrika, of whom Babu Rajnarain speaks in the following
+high terms--"A very truth-loving and painstaking man;  very fond of
+observing strict accuracy in the details of a description."
+
+Sishal Yogi
+
+A few years ago, a Deccan Yogi, named Sishal, was seen at Madras, by
+many Hindus and Englishmen, to raise his Asana, or seat, up into the
+air.  The picture of the Yogi, showing his mode of seating, and other
+particulars connected with him, may be found in the Saturday Magazine on
+page 28.
+
+His whole body seated in air, only his right hand lightly touched a deer
+skin, rolled up in the form of a tube, and attached to a brazen rod
+which was firmly stuck into a wooden board resting on four legs.  In
+this position the Yogi used to perform his japa (mystical meditation),
+with his eyes half shut.  At the time of his ascending to his aerial
+seat, and also when he descended from it, his disciples used to cover
+him with a blanket.  The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768 Sakabda,
+corresponding to March 1847.
+
+
+The Bhukailas Yogi
+
+The extraordinary character of the holy man who was brought to
+Bhukailas, in Kidderpore, about 14 years ago, may still be remembered by
+many.  In the month of Asar, 1754 Sakabda (1834 A.C.), he was brought to
+Bhukailas from Shirpur, where he was under the charge of Hari Singh, the
+durwan (porter) of Mr. Jones. He kept his eyes closed, and went without
+food and drink, for three consecutive days, after which a small quantity
+of milk was forcibly poured down his throat.  He never took any food
+that was not forced upon him.  He seemed always without external
+consciousness.  To remove this condition Dr. Graham applied ammonia to
+his nostrils;  but it only produced tremblings in the body, and did not
+break his Yoga state.  Three days passed before he could be made to
+speak.  He said that his name was Dulla Nabab, and when annoyed, he
+uttered a single word, from which it was inferred that he was a Punjabi.
+When he was laid up with gout Dr. Graham attended him, but he refused to
+take medicine, either in the form of powder or mixture.  He was cured of
+the disease only by the application of ointments and liniments
+prescribed by the doctor.  He died in the month of Chaitra 1755 Sakabda,
+of a choleric affection.*--The Tatwabodhini Patrika, Chaitra, 1768
+Sakabda, corresponding to March, 1847 A.C.
+
+--------
+* The above particulars of this holy man have been obtained on
+unexceptionable testimony.--Ed. T.B.P.
+--------------------
+
+
+PHILOSOPHICAL
+
+
+
+True and False Personality
+
+
+The title prefixed to the following observations may well have suggested
+a more metaphysical treatment of the subject than can be attempted on
+the present occasion.  The doctrine of the trinity, or trichotomy of
+man, which distinguishes soul from spirit, comes to us with such
+weighty, venerable, and even sacred authority, that we may well be
+content, for the moment, with confirmations that should be intelligible
+to all, forbearing the abstruser questions which have divided minds of
+the highest philosophical capacity.  We will not now inquire whether the
+difference is one of states or of entities;  whether the phenomenal or
+mind consciousness is merely the external condition of one indivisible
+Ego, or has its origin and nature in an altogether different principle;
+the Spirit, or immortal part of us, being of Divine birth, while the
+senses and understanding, with the consciousness--Ahankara--thereto
+appertaining, are from an Anima Mundi, or what in the Sankhya philosophy
+is called Prakriti.  My utmost expectations will have been exceeded if
+it should happen that any considerations here offered should throw even
+a faint suggestive light upon the bearings of this great problem.  It
+may be that the mere irreconcilability of all that is characteristic of
+the temporal Ego with the conditions of the superior life--if that can
+be made apparent--will incline you to regard the latter rather as the
+Redeemer, that has indeed to be born within us for our salvation and our
+immortality, than as the inmost, central, and inseparable principle of
+our phenomenal life.  It may be that by the light of such reflections
+the sense of identity will present no insuperable difficulty to the
+conception of its contingency, or to the recognition that the mere
+consciousness which fails to attach itself to a higher principle is no
+guarantee of an eternal individuality.
+
+It is only by a survey of individuality, regarded as the source of all
+our affections, thoughts, and actions, that we can realize its intrinsic
+worthlessness;  and only when we have brought ourselves to a real and
+felt acknowledgment of that fact, can we accept with full understanding
+those "hard sayings" of sacred authority which bid us "die to
+ourselves," and which proclaim the necessity of a veritable new birth.
+This mystic death and birth is the key-note of all profound religious
+teaching;  and that which distinguishes the ordinary religious mind from
+spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as
+merely figurative, or, indeed, to overlook them altogether.
+
+Of all the reproaches which modern Spiritualism, with the prospect it is
+thought to hold out of an individual temporal immortality, has had to
+encounter, there is none that we can less afford to neglect than that
+which represents it as an ideal essentially egotistical and borne.  True
+it is that our critics do us injustice through ignorance of the enlarged
+views as to the progress of the soul in which the speculations of
+individual Spiritualists coincide with many remarkable spirit teachings.
+These are, undoubtedly, a great advance upon popular theological
+opinions, while some of them go far to satisfy the claim of Spiritualism
+to be regarded as a religion.  Nevertheless, that slight estimate of
+individuality, as we know it, which in one view too easily allies itself
+to materialism, is also the attitude of spiritual idealism, and is
+seemingly at variance with the excessive value placed by Spiritualists
+on the discovery of our mere psychic survival.  The idealist may
+recognise this survival;  but, whether he does so or not, he occupies a
+post of vantage when he tells us that it is of no ultimate importance.
+For he, like the Spiritualist who proclaims his "proof palpable of
+immortality," is thinking of the mere temporal, self-regarding
+consciousness--its sensibilities, desires, gratifications, and
+affections--which are unimportant absolutely, that is to say, their
+importance is relative solely to the individual.  There is, indeed, no
+more characteristic outbirth of materialism than that which makes a
+teleological centre of the individual.  Ideas have become mere
+abstractions;  the only reality is the infinitely little.  Thus
+utilitarianism can see in the State only a collection of individuals
+whose "greatest happiness," mutually limited by nice adjustment to the
+requirements of "the greatest numbers," becomes the supreme end of
+government and law.  And it cannot, I think, be pretended that
+Spiritualists in general have advanced beyond this substitution of a
+relative for an absolute standard.  Their "glad tidings of great joy"
+are not truly religious.  They have regard to the perpetuation in time
+of that lower consciousness whose manifestations, delights, and activity
+are in time, and of time alone.  Their glorious message is not
+essentially different from that which we can conceive as brought to us
+by some great alchemist, who had discovered the secret of conferring
+upon us and upon our friends a mundane perpetuity of youth and health.
+Its highest religious claim is that it enlarges the horizon of our
+opportunities.  As such, then, let us hail it with gratitude and relief;
+but, on peril of our salvation, if I may not say of our immortality, let
+us not repose upon a prospect which is, at best, one of renewed labours,
+and trials, and efforts to be free even of that very life whose only
+value is opportunity.
+
+To estimate the value of individuality, we cannot do better than regard
+man in his several mundane relations, supposing that either of these
+might become the central, actuating focus of his being--his "ruling
+love," as Swedenborg would call it--displacing his mere egoism, or
+self-love, thrusting that more to the circumference, and identifying
+him, so to speak, with that circle of interests to which all his
+energies and affections relate. Outside this substituted Ego we are to
+suppose that he has no conscience, no desire, no will.  Just as the
+entirely selfish man views the whole of life, so far as it can really
+interest him solely in relation to his individual well-being, so our
+supposed man of a family, of a society, of a Church, or a State, has no
+eye for any truth or any interest more abstract or more individual than
+that of which he may be rightly termed the incarnation.  History shows
+approximations to this ideal man. Such a one, for instance, I conceive
+to have been Loyola;  such another, possibly, is Bismarck.  Now these
+men have ceased to be individuals in their own eyes, so far as concerns
+any value attaching to their own special individualities.  They are
+devotees.  A certain "conversion" has been effected, by which from mere
+individuals they have become "representative" men.  And we--the
+individuals--esteem them precisely in proportion to the remoteness from
+individualism of the spirit that actuates them. As the circle of
+interests to which they are "devoted" enlarges--that is to say, as the
+dross of individualism is purged away--we accord them indulgence,
+respect, admiration and love. From self to the family, from the family
+to the sect or society, from the sect or society to the Church (in no
+denominational sense) and State, there is the ascending scale and
+widening circle, the successive transitions which make the worth of an
+individual depend on the more or less complete subversion of his
+individuality by a more comprehensive soul or spirit.  The very modesty
+which suppresses, as far as possible, the personal pronoun in our
+addresses to others, testifies to our sense that we are hiding away some
+utterly insignificant and unworthy thing; a thing that has no business
+even to be, except in that utter privacy which is rather a sleep and a
+rest than living.  Well, but in the above instances, even those most
+remote from sordid individuality, we have fallen far short of that ideal
+in which the very conception of the partial, the atomic, is lost in the
+abstraction of universal being, transfigured in the glory of a Divine
+personality.  You are familiar with Swedenborg's distinction between
+discrete and continuous degrees. Hitherto we have seen how man--the
+individual--may rise continuously by throwing himself heart and soul
+into the living interests of the world, and lose his own limitations by
+adoption of a larger mundane spirit. But still he has but ascended
+nearer to his own mundane source, that soul of the world, or Prakriti,
+to which, if I must not too literally insist on it, I may still resort
+as a convenient figure.  To transcend it, he must advance by the
+discrete degree.  No simple "bettering" of the ordinary self, which
+leaves it alive, as the focus--the French word "foyer" is the more
+expressive--of his thoughts and actions;  not even that identification
+with higher interests in the world's plane just spoken of, is, or can
+progressively become, in the least adequate to the realization of his
+Divine ideal.  This "bettering" of our present nature, it alone being
+recognized as essential, albeit capable of "improvement," is a
+commonplace, and to use a now familiar term a "Philistine," conception.
+It is the substitution of the continuous for the discrete degree.  It is
+a compromise with our dear old familiar selves.  "And Saul and the
+people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of
+the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not
+utterly destroy them;  but everything that was vile and refuse, that
+they destroyed utterly."  We know how little acceptable that compromise
+was to the God of Israel;  and no illustration can be more apt than this
+narrative, which we may well, as we would fain, believe to be rather
+typical than historical.  Typical of that indiscriminate and radical
+sacrifice, or "vastation," of our lower nature, which is insisted upon
+as the one thing needful by all, or nearly all,* the great religions of
+the world.  No language could seem more purposely chosen to indicate
+that it is the individual nature itself, and not merely its accidental
+evils, that has to be abandoned and annihilated.  It is not denied that
+what was spared was good;  there is no suggestion of a universal
+infection of physical or moral evil;  it is simply that what is good and
+useful relatively to a lower state of being must perish with it if the
+latter is to make way for something better.  And the illustration is the
+more suitable in that the purpose of this paper is not ethical, but
+points to a metaphysical conclusion, though without any attempt at
+metaphysical exposition.  There is no question here of moral
+distinctions; they are neither denied nor affirmed.  According to the
+highest moral standard, 'A' may be a most virtuous and estimable person.
+According to the lowest, 'B' may be exactly the reverse.  The moral
+interval between the two is within what I have called, following
+Swedenborg, the "continuous degree."  And perhaps the distinction can be
+still better expressed by another reference to that Book which we
+theosophical students do not less regard, because we are disposed to
+protest against all exclusive pretensions of religious systems.
+
+--------
+* Of the higher religious teachings of Mohammedanism I know next to
+nothing, and therefore cannot say if it should be excepted from the
+statement.
+--------
+
+The good man who has, however, not yet attained his "son-ship of God" is
+"under the law"--that moral law which is educational and preparatory,
+"the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ," our own Divine spirit, or
+higher personality.  To conceive the difference between these two states
+is to apprehend exactly what is here meant by the false, temporal, and
+the true, eternal personality, and the sense in which the word
+personality is here intended to be understood.  We do not know whether,
+when that great change has come over us, when that great work* of our
+lives has been accomplished--here or hereafter--we shall or shall not
+retain a sense of identity with our past, and forever discarded selves.
+In philosophical parlance, the "matter" will have gone, and the very
+"form" will have been changed.  Our transcendental identity with the 'A'
+or 'B' that now is** must depend on that question, already disclaimed in
+this paper, whether the Divine spirit is our originally central
+essential being, or is an hypostasis. Now, being "under the law" implies
+that we do not act directly from our own will, but indirectly, that is,
+in willing obedience to another will.
+
+--------
+* The "great work," so often mentioned by the hermetic philosophers, and
+which is exactly typified by the operation of alchemy, the conversion of
+the base metals to gold, is now well understood to refer to the
+analogous spiritual conversion.  There is also good reason to believe
+that the material process was a real one.
+
+** "A person may have won his immortal life, and remained the same inner
+self he was on earth, through eternity;  but this does not imply
+necessarily that he must either remain the Mr. Smith or Brown he was on
+earth, or lose his individuality."--Isis Unveiled, vol. 1. p. 316.
+----------
+
+The will from which we should naturally act--our own will--is of course
+to be understood not as mere volition, but as our nature--our "ruling
+love," which makes such and such things agreeable to us, and others the
+reverse.  As "under the law," this nature is kept in suspension, and
+because it is suspended only as to its activity and manifestation, and
+by no means abrogated, is the law--the substitution of a foreign will--
+necessary for us.  Our own will or nature is still central;  that which
+we obey by effort and resistance to ourselves is more circumferential or
+hypostatic.  Constancy in this obedience and resistance tends to draw
+the circumferential will more and more to the centre, till there ensues
+that "explosion," as St. Martin called it, by which our natural will is
+for ever dispersed and annihilated by contact with the divine, and the
+latter henceforth becomes our very own. Thus has "the schoolmaster"
+brought us unto "Christ," and if by "Christ" we understand no
+historically divine individual, but the logos, word, or manifestation of
+God in us--then we have, I believe, the essential truth that was taught
+in the Vedanta, by Kapila, by Buddha, by Confucius, by Plato, and by
+Jesus.  There is another presentation of possibly the same truth, for a
+reference to which I am indebted to our brother J.W. Farquhar. It is
+from Swedenborg, in the "Apocalypse Explained," No. 57:--"Every man has
+an inferior or exterior mind, and a mind superior or interior.  These
+two minds are altogether distinct.  By the inferior mind man is in the
+natural world together with men there;  but by the superior mind he is
+in the spiritual world with the angels there.  These two minds are so
+distinct that man so long as he lives in the world does not know what is
+performing within himself in his superior mind;  but when he becomes a
+spirit, which is immediately after death, he does not know what is
+performing in his mind."  The consciousness of the "superior mind," as
+the result of mere separation from the earthly body, certainly does not
+suggest that sublime condition which implies separation from so much
+more than the outer garment of flesh, but otherwise the distinction
+between the two lives, or minds, seems to correspond with that now under
+consideration.
+
+What is it that strikes us especially about this substitution of the
+divine-human for the human-natural personality?  Is it not the loss of
+individualism?  (Individualism, pray observe, not individuality.)  There
+are certain sayings of Jesus which have probably offended many in their
+hearts, though they may not have dared to acknowledge such a feeling to
+themselves:  "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and those other
+disclaimers of special ties and relationships which mar the perfect
+sympathy of our reverence.  There is something awful and
+incomprehensible to us in this repudiation of individualism, even in its
+most amiable relations.  But it is in the Aryan philosophies that we see
+this negation of all that we associate with individual life most
+emphatically and explicitly insisted on.  It is, indeed, the
+impossibility of otherwise than thus negatively characterizing the soul
+that has attained Moksha (deliverance from bonds) which has caused the
+Hindu consummation to be regarded as the loss of individuality and
+conscious existence.  It is just because we cannot easily dissociate
+individuality from individualism that we turn from the sublime
+conception of primitive philosophy as from what concerns us as little as
+the ceaseless activity and germination in other brains of thought once
+thrown off and severed from the thinking source, which is the
+immortality promised by Mr. Frederick Harrison to the select specimens
+of humanity whose thoughts have any reproductive power.  It is not a
+mere preference of nothingness, or unconscious absorption, to limitation
+that inspires the intense yearning of the Hindu mind for Nirvana.  Even
+in the Upanishads there are many evidences of a contrary belief, while
+in the Sankhya the aphorisms of Kapila unmistakably vindicate the
+individuality of soul (spirit). Individual consciousness is maintained,
+perhaps infinitely intensified, but its "matter" is no longer personal.
+Only try to realize what "freedom from desire," the favourite phrase in
+which individualism is negated in these systems, implies.  Even in that
+form of devotion which consists in action, the soul is warned in the
+Bhagavad-Gita that it must be indifferent to results.
+
+Modern Spiritualism itself testifies to something of the same sort.
+Thus we are told by one of its most gifted and experienced champions,
+"Sometimes the evidence will come from an impersonal source, from some
+instructor who has passed through the plane on which individuality is
+demonstrable." (M.A. (Oxon.), "Spirit Identity," p. 7.)  Again, "And if
+he" (the investigator) "penetrates far enough, he will find himself in a
+region for which his present embodied state unfits him:  a region in
+which the very individuality is merged, and the highest and subtlest
+truths are not locked within one breast, but emanate from representative
+companies whose spheres of life are interblended." (Id., p. 15.)  By
+this "interblending" is of course meant only a perfect sympathy and
+community of thought;  and I should doubtless misrepresent the author
+quoted were I to claim an entire identity of the idea he wishes to
+convey, and that now under consideration.  Yet what, after all, is
+sympathy but the loosening of that hard "astringent" quality (to use
+Bohme's phrase) wherein individualism consists?  And just as in true
+sympathy, the partial suppression of individualism and of what is
+distinctive, we experience a superior delight and intensity of being, so
+it may be that in parting with all that shuts us up in the spiritual
+penthouse of an Ego--all, without exception or reserve--we may for the
+first time know what true life is, and what are its ineffable
+privileges.  Yet it is not on this ground that acceptance can be hoped
+for the conception of immortality here crudely and vaguely presented ill
+contrast to that bourgeois eternity of individualism and the family
+affections, which is probably the great charm of Spiritualism to the
+majority of its proselytes.  It is doubtful whether the things that "eye
+hath not seen, nor ear heard," have ever taken stronghold of the
+imagination, or reconciled it to the loss of all that is definitely
+associated with the Joy and movement of living.  Not as consummate bliss
+can the dweller on the lower plane presume to command that transcendent
+life.  At the utmost he can but echo the revelation that came to the
+troubled mind in "Sartor Resartus," "A man may do without happiness, and
+instead thereof find blessedness."  It is no sublimation of hope, but
+the necessities of thought that compel us to seek the condition of true
+being and immortality elsewhere than in the satisfactions of
+individualism.  True personality can only subsist in consciousness by
+participation of that of which we can only say that it is the very
+negation of individuality in any sense in which individuality can be
+conceived by us.  What is the content or "matter" of consciousness we
+cannot define, save by vaguely calling it ideal.  But we can say that in
+that region individual interests and concerns will find no place.  Nay,
+more, we can affirm that only then has the influx of the new life a free
+channel when the obstructions of individualism are already removed.
+Hence the necessity of the mystic death, which is as truly a death as
+that which restores our physical body to the elements.  "Neither I am,
+nor is aught mine, nor do I exist," a passage which has been well
+explained by a Hindu Theosophist (Peary Chand Mittra), as meaning "that
+when the spiritual state is arrived at, I and mine, which belong to the
+finite mind, cease, and the soul, living in the universum and
+participating in infinity with God, manifests its infinite state."  I
+cannot refrain from quoting the following passage from the same
+instructive writer:--
+
+Every human being has a soul which, while not separable from the brain
+or nerves, is mind or jivatma, or sentient soul, but when regenerated or
+spiritualized by yoga, it is free from bondage and manifests the divine
+essence.  It rises above all phenomenal states--joy, sorrow, grief,
+fear, hope, and in fact all states resulting in pain or pleasure, and
+becomes blissful, realizing immortality, infinitude and felicity of
+wisdom within itself. The sentient soul is nervous, sensational,
+emotional, phenomenal, and impressional.  It constitutes the natural
+life and is finite. The soul and the non-soul are thus the two
+landmarks.  What is non-soul is prakriti, or created.  It is not the lot
+of every one to know what soul is, and therefore millions live and die
+possessing minds cultivated in intellect and feeling, but not raised to
+the soul state.  In proportion as one's soul is emancipated from
+prakriti or sensuous bondage, in that proportion his approximation to
+the soul state is attained;  and it is this that constitutes disparities
+in the intellectual, moral, and religious culture of human beings and
+their consequent approximation to God.--Spiritual Stray Leaves,
+Calcutta, 1879.
+
+He also cites some words of Fichte, which prove that the like conclusion
+is reached in the philosophy of Western idealism: "The real spirit which
+comes to itself in human consciousness is to be regarded as an
+impersonal pneuma--universal reason, nay, as the spirit of God Himself;
+and the good of man's whole development, therefore, can be no other than
+to substitute the universal for the individual consciousness."
+
+That there may be, and are affirmed to be, intermediate stages, states,
+or discrete degrees, will, of course, be understood.  The aim of this
+paper has been to call attention to the abstract condition of the
+immortalized consciousness;  negatively it is true, but it is on this
+very account more suggestive of practical applications.  The connection
+of the Theosophical Society with the Spiritualist movement is so
+intimately sympathetic, that I hope one of these may he pointed out
+without offence.  It is that immortality cannot be phenomenally
+demonstrated.  What I have called psychic survival can be, and probably
+is.  But immortality is the attainment of a state, and that state the
+very negation of phenomenal existence.  Another consequence refers to
+the direction our culture should take.  We have to compose ourselves to
+death.  Nothing less.  We are each of us a complex of desires, passions,
+interests, modes of thinking and feeling, opinions, prejudices, judgment
+of others, likings and dislikings, affections, aims public and private.
+These things, and whatever else constitutes, the recognizable content of
+our present temporal individuality, are all in derogation of our ideal
+of impersonal being--saving consciousness, the manifestation of being.
+In some minute, imperfect, relative, and almost worthless sense we may
+do right in many of our judgments, and be amiable in many of our
+sympathies and affections.  We cannot be sure even of this.  Only people
+unhabituated to introspection and self-analysis are quite sure of it.
+These are ever those who are loudest in their censures, and most
+dogmatic in their opinionative utterances.  In some coarse, rude fashion
+they are useful, it may be indispensable, to the world's work, which is
+not ours, save in a transcendental sense and operation.  We have to
+strip ourselves of all that, and to seek perfect passionless
+tranquillity.  Then we may hope to die.  Meditation, if it be deep, and
+long, and frequent enough, will teach even our practical Western mind to
+understand the Hindu mind in its yearning for Nirvana.  One
+infinitesimal atom of the great conglomerate of humanity, who enjoys the
+temporal, sensual life, with its gratifications and excitements, as much
+as most, will testify with unaffected sincerity that he would rather be
+annihilated altogether than remain for ever what he knows himself to be,
+or even recognizably like it.  And he is a very average moral specimen.
+I have heard it said, "The world's life and business would come to an
+end, there would be an end to all its healthy activity, an end of
+commerce, arts, manufactures, social intercourse, government, law, and
+science, if we were all to devote ourselves to the practice of Yoga,
+which is pretty much what your ideal comes to."  And the criticism is
+perfectly just and true.  Only I believe it does not go quite far
+enough.  Not only the activities of the world, but the phenomenal world
+itself, which is upheld in consciousness, would disappear or take new,
+more interior, more living, and more significant forms, at least for
+humanity, if the consciousness of humanity was itself raised to a
+superior state.  Readers of St. Martin, and of that impressive book of
+the late James Hinton, "Man and his Dwelling-place," especially if they
+have also by chance been students of the idealistic philosophies, will
+not think this suggestion extravagant.  If all the world were Yogis, the
+world would have no need of those special activities, the ultimate end
+and purpose of which, by-the-by, our critic would find it not easy to
+define. And if only a few withdraw, the world can spare them.  Enough of
+that.
+
+Only let us not talk of this ideal of impersonal, universal being in
+individual consciousness as an unverified dream.  Our sense and
+impatience of limitations are the guarantees that they are not final and
+insuperable.  Whence is this power of standing outside myself, of
+recognizing the worthlessness of the pseudo--judgments, of the
+prejudices with their lurid colouring of passion, of the temporal
+interests, of the ephemeral appetites, of all the sensibilities of
+egoism, to which I nevertheless surrender myself so that they indeed
+seem myself?  Through and above this troubled atmosphere I see a being,
+pure, passionless, rightly measuring the proportions and relations of
+things, for whom there is, properly speaking, no present, with its
+phantasms, falsities, and half-truths;  who has nothing personal in the
+sense of being opposed to the whole of related personalities: who sees
+the truth rather than struggles logically towards it, and truth of which
+I can at present form no conception;  whose activities are unimpeded by
+intellectual doubt, un-perverted by moral depravity, and who is
+indifferent to results, because he has not to guide his conduct by
+calculation of them, or by any estimate of their value.  I look up to
+him with awe, because in being passionless he sometimes seems to me to
+be without love. Yet I know that this is not so;  only that his love is
+diffused by its range, and elevated in abstraction beyond my gaze and
+comprehension. And I see in this being my ideal, my higher, my only
+true, in a word, my immortal self.
+
+--C.C. Massey
+
+
+
+
+Chastity
+
+
+Ideal woman is the most beautiful work of the evolution of forms (in our
+days she is very often only a beautiful work of art).  A beautiful woman
+is the most attractive, charming, and lovely being that a man can
+imagine.  I never saw a male being who could lay any claims to manly
+vigour, strength or courage, who was not an admirer of woman.  Only a
+profligate, a coward or a sneak would hate women;  a hero and a man
+admires woman, and is admired by her.
+
+Women's love belongs to a complete man.  Then she smiles on him his
+human nature becomes aroused, his animal desires like little children
+begin to clamour for bread, they do not want to be starved, they want to
+satisfy their hunger.  His whole soul flies towards the lovely being,
+which attracts him with almost irresistible force, and if his higher
+principles, his divine spirit, is not powerful enough to restrain him,
+his soul follows the temptations of his physical body.  Once again the
+animal nature has subdued the divine.  Woman rejoices in her victory,
+and man is ashamed of his weakness;  and instead of being a
+representation of strength, he becomes an object of pity.
+
+To be truly powerful a man must retain his power and never for a moment
+lose it.  To lose it is to surrender his divine nature to his animal
+nature;  to restrain his desires and retain his power, is to assert his
+divine right, and to become more than a man--a god.
+
+Eliphas Levi says:  "To be an object of attraction for all women, you
+must desire none;"  and every one who has had a little experience of his
+own must know that he is right.  Woman wants what she cannot get, and
+what she can get she does not want. Perhaps it is to the man endowed
+with spiritual power, that the Bible refers, when it says:  "To him who
+has much, more shall be given, and from him who has little, that little
+shall be taken away."
+
+To become perfect it is not required that we should be born without any
+animal desires.  Such a person would not be much above an idiot;  he
+would be rightly despised and laughed at by every true man and woman;
+but we must obtain the power to control our desires, instead of being
+controlled by them;  and here lies the true philosophy of temptation.
+
+If a man has no higher aim in life than to eat and drink and propagate
+his species;  if all his aspirations and desires are centred in a wish
+of living a happy life in the bosom of his family;  there can be no
+wrong if he follows the dictates of his nature and is satisfied with his
+lot.  When he dies, his family will mourn, his friends will say he was a
+good fellow;  they will give him a first-class funeral, and they will
+perhaps write on his tombstone something like what I once saw in a
+certain churchyard:
+
+     Here is the grave of John McBride,
+     He lived, got married, and died.
+
+And that will be the end of Mr. John McBride, until in another
+incarnation he will wake up again perhaps as Mr. John Smith, or
+Ramchandra Row, or Patrick O'Flannegan, to find himself on much the same
+level as he was before.
+
+But if a man has higher aims and objects in life, if he wants to avoid
+an endless cycle of re-incarnations, if he wants to become a master of
+his destiny, then must he first become a master of himself.  How can he
+expect to be able to control the external forces of Nature, if he cannot
+control the few little natural forces that reside within his own
+insignificant body?
+
+To do this, it is not necessary that a man should run away from his wife
+and family, and leave them uncared for.  Such a man would commence his
+spiritual career with an act of injustice,--an act that like Banquo's
+ghost would always haunt him and hinder him in his further progress.  If
+a man has taken upon himself responsibilities, he is bound to fulfill
+them, and an act of cowardice would be a bad beginning for a work that
+requires courage.
+
+A celibate, who has no temptation and who has no one to care for but
+himself, has undoubtedly superior advantages for meditation and study.
+Being away from all irritating influences, he can lead what may be
+called a selfish life;  because he looks out only for his own spiritual
+interest;  but he has little opportunity to develop his will-power by
+resisting temptations of every kind.  But the man who is surrounded by
+the latter, and is every day and every hour under the necessity of
+exercising his will-power to resist their surging violence, will, if he
+rightly uses these powers, become strong;  he may not have as much
+opportunity for study as the celibate, being more engrossed in material
+cares;  but when he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation,
+his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession
+of the password, which is CONTINENCE.
+
+A slave cannot become a commander, until after he becomes free. A man
+who is subject to his own animal desires, cannot command the animal
+nature of others.  A muscle becomes developed by its use, an instinct or
+habit is strengthened in proportion as it is permitted to rule, a mental
+power becomes developed by practice, and the principle of will grows
+strong by exercise;  and this is the use of temptations.  To have strong
+passions and to overcome them, makes man a hero.  The sexual instinct is
+the strongest of all, and he who vanquishes it, becomes a god.
+
+The human soul admires a beautiful form, and is therefore an idolater.
+
+The human spirit adores a principle, and is the true worshiper.
+
+Marriage is the union of the male spirit with the female soul for the
+purpose of propagating the species;  but if in its place there is only a
+union of a male and a female body, then marriage becomes merely a brutal
+act, which lowers man and woman, not to the level of animals but below
+them;  because animals are restricted to certain seasons for the
+exercise of their procreative powers;  while man, being a reasonable
+being, has it in his power to use or abuse them at all times.
+
+But how many marriages do we find that are really spiritual and not
+based on beauty of form or other considerations?  How soon after the
+wedding-day do they become disgusted with each other? What is the cause
+of this?  A man and a woman may marry and their characters may differ
+widely.  They may have different tastes, different opinions and
+different inclinations.  All those differences may disappear, and will
+probably disappear;  because by living together they become accustomed
+to each other, and become equalized in time.  Each influences the other,
+and as a man may grow fond of a pet snake, whose presence at first
+horrified him, so a man may put up with a disagreeable partner and
+become fond of her in course of time.
+
+But if the man allows full liberty to his animal passions, and exercises
+his "legal rights" without restraint, these animal cravings which first
+called so piteously for gratification, will soon be gorged, and flying
+away laugh at the poor fool who nursed them in his breast.  The wife
+will come to know that her husband is a coward, because she sees him
+squirm under the lash of his animal passions;  and as woman loves
+strength and power, so in proportion as he loses his love, will she lose
+her confidence. He will look upon her as a burden, and she will look
+upon him in disgust as a brute.  Conjugal happiness will have departed,
+and misery, divorce or death will be the end.
+
+The remedy for all these evils is continence, and it has been our object
+to show its necessity, for it was the object of this article.
+
+--F. Hartmann
+
+
+
+
+Zoroastrianism on the Septenary Constitution of Man
+
+
+Many of the esoteric doctrines given out through the Theosophical
+Society reveal a spirit akin to that of the older religions of the East,
+especially the Vedic and the Zendic.  Leaving aside the former, I
+propose to point out by a few instances the close resemblance which the
+doctrines of the old Zendic Scriptures, as far as they are now
+preserved, bear to these recent teachings.
+
+Any ordinary Parsi, while reciting his daily Niyashes, Gehs and Yashts,
+provided he yields to the curiosity of looking into the meanings of what
+he recites, will, with a little exertion, perceive how the same ideas,
+only clothed in a more intelligible and comprehensive garb, are
+reflected in these teachings.  The description of the septenary
+constitution of man found in the 54th chapter of the Yasna, one of the
+most authoritative books of the Mazdiasnian religion, shows the identity
+of the doctrines of Avesta and the esoteric philosophy.  Indeed, as a
+Mazdiasnian, I felt quite ashamed that, having such undeniable and
+unmistakable evidence before their eyes, the Zoroastrians of the present
+day should not avail themselves of the opportunity offered of throwing
+light upon their now entirely misunderstood and misinterpreted
+Scriptures by the assistance and under the guidance of the Theosophical
+Society.  If Zend scholars and students of Avesta would only care to
+study and search for themselves, they would, perhaps, find to assist
+them, men who are in possession of the right and only key to the true
+esoteric wisdom;  men, who would be willing to guide and help them to
+reach the true and hidden meaning, and to supply them with the missing
+links that have resulted in such painful gaps as to leave the meaning
+meaningless, and to create in the mind of the perplexed student doubts
+that finally culminate in a thorough unbelief in his own religion.  Who
+knows but they may find some of their own co-religionists, who, aloof
+from the world, have to this day preserved the glorious truths of their
+once mighty religion, and who, hidden in the recesses of solitary
+mountains and unknown silent caves, are still in possession of;  and
+exercising, mighty powers, the heirloom of the ancient Magi.  Our
+Scriptures say that ancient Mobeds were Yogis, who had the power of
+making themselves simultaneously visible at different places, even
+though hundreds of miles apart, and also that they could heal the sick
+and work that which would now appear to us miraculous.  All this was
+considered facts but two or three centuries back, as no reader of old
+books (mostly Persian) is unacquainted with, or will disbelieve a priori
+unless his mind is irretrievably biassed by modern secular education.
+The story about the Mobed and Emperor Akbar and of the latter's
+conversion, is a well-known historical fact, requiring no proof.
+
+I will first of all quote side by side the two passages referring to the
+septenary nature of man as I find them in our Scriptures and the
+THEOSOPHIST--
+
+Sub-divisions of septenary        Sub-divisions of septenary
+man according to the              man according to Yasna
+Occultists.                       (chap.54, para. I).
+
+1. The Physical body, com-        1. Tanwas-i.e., body(the
+posed wholly of matter in its       self ) that consists of bones
+grossest and most tangible         -grossest form of matter.
+form.
+
+2. The Vital principle-(or Jiva)-  2. Ushtanas-Vital heat
+a form of force indestructible,        (or force).
+and when disconnected with
+one set of atoms, becoming
+attracted immediately by others.
+
+3. The Astral body (Linga-       3. Keherpas Aerial form,
+sharira) composed of highly          the airy mould, (Per. Kaleb).
+etherealized matter; in its
+habitual passive state, the
+perfect but very shadowy
+duplicate of the body; its
+activity, consolidation and
+form depending entirely on
+the Kama-rupa.
+
+4. The Astral shape (Kama-        4. Tevishis-Will, or where
+rupa or body of desire, a             sentient consciousness is
+principle defining the con-          formed, also fore-knowledge.
+figuration of--
+
+5. The animal or Physical          5. Baodhas (in Sanskrit,
+intelligence or Conscious-           Buddhi)-Body of physical
+ness or Ego, analogous to,            consciousness, perception by
+though proportionally higher          the senses or animal soul.
+in the senses or the animal
+degree than the reason,
+instinct, memory, imagination
+&c., existing in the higher
+animals.
+
+6. The Higher or Spiritual          6. Urawanem (Per. Rawan)
+intelligence or consciousness,        -Soul, that which gets its
+spiritual Ego, in which                or reward or punishment
+mainly resides the sense of            after death.
+consciousness in the perfect
+man, though the lower dimmer
+animal consciousness co-exists
+in No. 5.
+
+7. The Spirit-an emanation from       7. Frawashem or Farohar-
+the ABSOLUTE uncreated; eternal;      Spirit (the guiding energy
+a state rather than a being.          which is with every man,
+                                      is absolutely independent,
+                                      and, without mixing with
+                                      any worldly object, leads
+                                      man to good. The spark
+                                      of divinity in every being).
+
+
+The above is given in the Avesta as follows:--
+
+"We declare and positively make known this (that) we offer (our) entire
+property (which is) the body (the self consisting of) bones (tanwas),
+vital heat (ushtanas), aerial form (keherpas), knowledge (tevishis),
+consciousness (baodhas), soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem), to the
+prosperous, truth-coherent (and) pure Gathas (prayers)."
+
+The ordinary Gujarathi translation differs from Spiegel's, and this
+latter differs very slightly from what is here given.  Yet in the
+present translation there has been made no addition to, or omission
+from, the original wording of the Zend text.  The grammatical
+construction also has been preserved intact.  The only difference,
+therefore, between the current translations and the one here given is
+that ours is in accordance with the modern corrections of philological
+research which make it more intelligible, and the idea perfectly clear
+to the reader.
+
+The word translated "aerial form" has come down to us without undergoing
+any change in the meaning.  It is the modern Persian word kaleb, which
+means a mould, a shape into which a thing is cast, to take a certain
+form and features.  The next word is one about which there is a great
+difference of opinion.  It is by some called strength, durability, i.e.,
+that power which gives tenacity to and sustains the nerves.  Others
+explain it as that quality in a man of rank and position which makes him
+perceive the result of certain events (causes), and thus helps him in
+being prepared to meet them.  This meaning is suggestive, though we
+translate it as knowledge, or foreknowledge rather, with the greatest
+diffidence.  The eighth word is quite clear.  That inward feeling which
+tells a man that he knows this or that, that he has or can do certain
+things--is perception and consciousness. It is the inner conviction,
+knowledge and its possession.  The ninth word is again one which has
+retained its meaning and has been in use up to the present day.  The
+reader will at once recognize that it is the origin of the modern word
+Rawan.  It is (metaphorically) the king, the conscious motor or agent in
+man. It is that something which depends upon and is benefited or injured
+by the foregoing attributes.  We say depends upon, because its progress
+entirely consists in the development of those attributes.  If they are
+neglected, it becomes weak and degenerated, and disappears.  If they
+ascend on the moral and spiritual scale, it gains strength and vigour
+and becomes more blended than ever to the Divine essence--the seventh
+principle. But how does it become attracted toward its monad?  The tenth
+word answers the question.  This is the Divine essence in man. But this
+is only the irresponsible minister (this completes the metaphor).  The
+real master is the king, the spiritual soul.  It must have the
+willingness and power to see and follow the course pointed out by the
+pure spirit.  The vizir's business is only to represent a point of
+attraction, towards which the king should turn.  It is for the king to
+see and act accordingly for the glory of his own self.  The minister or
+spirit can neither compel nor constrain.  It inspires and electrifies
+into action;  but to benefit by the inspiration, to take advantage of
+it, is left to the option of the spiritual soul.
+
+If, then, the Avesta contains such a passage, it must fairly be admitted
+that its writers knew the whole doctrine concerning spiritual man.  We
+cannot suppose that the ancient Mazdiasnians, the Magi, wrote this short
+passage, without inferring from it, at the same time, that they were
+thoroughly conversant with the whole of the occult theory about man.
+And it looks very strange indeed, that modern Theosophists should now
+preach to us the very same doctrines that must have been known and
+taught thousands of years ago by the Mazdiasnians,--the passage is
+quoted from one of their oldest writings.  And since they propound the
+very same ideas, the meaning of which has well-nigh been lost even to
+our most learned Mobeds, they ought to be credited at least with some
+possession of a knowledge, the key to which has been revealed to them,
+and lost to us, and which opens the door to the meaning of those
+hitherto inexplicable sentences and doctrines in our old writings, about
+which we are still, and will go on, groping in the dark, unless we
+listen to what they have to tell us about them.
+
+To show that the above is not a solitary instance, but that the Avesta
+contains this idea in many other places, I will give another paragraph
+which contains the same doctrine, though in a more condensed form than
+the one just given.  Let the Parsi reader turn to Yasna, chapter 26, and
+read the sixth paragraph, which runs as follows:--
+
+We praise the life (ahum), knowledge (daenam), consciousness (baodhas),
+soul (urwanem), and spirit (frawashem) of the first in religion, the
+first teachers and hearers (learners), the holy men and holy women who
+were the protectors of purity here (in this world).
+
+Here the whole man is spoken of as composed of five parts, as under:--
+
+                                      1. The Physical Body.
+1. Ahum-Existence, Life.              2. The Vital Principle.
+It includes:                          3. The Astral Body.
+
+2. Daenam-Knowledge.                  4. The Astral shape or
+                                         body of desire.
+
+3. Baodhas-Consciousness.             5. The Animal or physical
+                                         intelligence or
+                                         consciousness or Ego.
+
+4. Urwanem-Soul.                      6. The Higher or Spiritual
+                                         intelligence or
+                                         consciousness, or
+                                         Spiritual Ego.
+
+5. Frawashem-Spirit.                  7. The Spirit.
+
+
+In this description the first triple group--viz., the bones (or the
+gross matter), the vital force which keeps them together, and the
+ethereal body, are included in one and called Existence, Life.  The
+second part stands for the fourth principle of the septenary man, as
+denoting the configuration of his knowledge or desires.*  Then the
+three, consciousness (or animal soul), (spiritual) soul, and the pure
+Spirit are the same as in the first quoted passage.  Why are these four
+mentioned as distinct from each other and not consolidated like the
+first part?  The sacred writings explain this by saying that on death
+the first of these five parts disappears and perishes sooner or later in
+the earth's atmosphere.  The gross elementary matter (the shell) has to
+run within the earth's attraction;  so the ahum separates from the
+higher portions and is lost.
+
+---------
+* Modern science also teaches that certain characteristics of features
+indicate the possession of certain qualities in a man. The whole science
+of physiognomy is founded on it.  One can predict the disposition of a
+man from his features,--i.e., the features develop in accordance with
+the idiosyncrasies, qualities and vices, knowledge or the ignorance of
+man.
+---------
+
+The second (i.e., the fourth of the septenary group) remains, but not
+with the spiritual soul.  It continues to hold its place in the vast
+storehouse of the universe.  And it is this second daenam which stands
+before the (spiritual) soul in the form of a beautiful maiden or an ugly
+hag.  That which brings this daenam within the sight of the (spiritual)
+soul is the third part (i.e., the fifth of the septenary group), the
+baodhas.  Or in other words, the (spiritual) soul has with it, or in it,
+the true consciousness by which it can view the experiences of its
+physical career.  So this consciousness, this power or faculty which
+brings the recollection, is always with, in other words, is a part and
+parcel of, the soul itself;  hence, its not mixing with any other part,
+and hence its existence after the physical death of man.*
+
+--A Parsi F.T.S.
+
+---------
+* Our Brother has but to look into the oldest sacred hooks of China--
+namely, the YI KING. or Book of Changes (translated by James Legge)
+written 1,200 B.C., to find that same Septenary division of man
+mentioned in that system of Divination.  Zhing, which is translated
+correctly enough "essence," is the more subtle and pure part of matter--
+the grosser form of the elementary ether;  Khi, or "spirit," is the
+breath, still material but purer than the zhing, and is made of the
+finer and more active form of ether.  In the hwun, or soul (animus) the
+Khi predominates and the zhing (or zing) in the pho or animal soul. At
+death the hwun (Or spiritual soul) wanders away, ascending, and the pho
+(the root of the Tibetan word Pho-hat) descends and is changed into a
+ghostly shade (the shell).  Dr. Medhurst thinks that "the Kwei Shans"
+(see "Theology of the Chinese," pp. 10-12) are "the expanding and
+contracting principles of human life!" "The Kwei Shans" are brought
+about by the dissolution of the human frame--and consist of the
+expanding and ascending Shan which rambles about in space, and of the
+contracted and shrivelled Kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity.
+Therefore, the Kwei is the physical body;  the Shan is the vital
+principle the Kwei Shan  the linga-sariram, or the vital soul;  Zhing
+the fourth principle or Kama Rupa, the essence of will;  pho, the animal
+soul;  Khi, the spiritual soul;  and Hwun the pure spirit--the seven
+principles of our occult doctrine!--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+
+
+
+Brahmanism on the Sevenfold Principle in Man
+
+
+It is now very difficult to say what was the real ancient Aryan
+doctrine.  If an inquirer were to attempt to answer it by an analysis
+and comparison of all the various systems of esotericism prevailing in
+India, he will soon be lost in a maze of obscurity and uncertainty.  No
+comparison between our real Brahmanical and the Tibetan esoteric
+doctrines will be possible unless one ascertains the teachings of that
+so-called "Aryan doctrine," and fully comprehends the whole range of the
+ancient Aryan philosophy.  Kapila's "Sankhya," Patanjali's "Yog
+philosophy," the different systems of "Saktaya" philosophy, the various
+Agamas and Tantras are but branches of it.  There is a doctrine, though,
+which is their real foundation, and which is sufficient to explain the
+secrets of these various systems of philosophy and harmonize their
+teachings.  It probably existed long before the Vedas were compiled, and
+it was studied by our ancient Rishis in connection with the Hindu
+scriptures.  It is attributed to one mysterious personage called
+Maha.*.....
+
+----------
+* The very title of the present chief of the esoteric Himalayan
+Brotherhood.--Ed. Theos.
+----------
+
+The Upanishads and such portions of the Vedas as are not chiefly devoted
+to the public ceremonials of the ancient Aryans are hardly intelligible
+without some knowledge of that doctrine. Even the real significance of
+the grand ceremonials referred to in the Vedas will not be perfectly
+apprehended without its light being throw  upon them.  The Vedas were
+perhaps compiled mainly for the use of the priests assisting at public
+ceremonies, but the grandest conclusions of our real secret doctrine are
+therein mentioned.  I am informed by persons competent to judge of the
+matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning--one expressed by
+the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the
+swara (intonation), which are, as it were the life of the Vedas.
+Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything
+to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines;  but the mysterious
+connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets.
+
+Now, it is extremely difficult to show whether the Tibetans derived
+their doctrine from the ancient Rishis of India, or the ancient
+Brahrnans learned their occult science from the adepts of Tibet;  or,
+again, whether the adepts of both countries professed originally the
+same doctrine and derived it from a common source.*  If you were to go
+to the Sramana Balagula, and question some of the Jain Pundits there
+about the authorship of the Vedas and the origin of the Brahmanical
+esoteric doctrine, they would probably tell you that the Vedas were
+composed by Rakshasas** or Daityas, and that the Brahmans had derived
+their secret knowledge from them.***
+
+---------
+* See Appendix, Note I.
+
+** A kind of demons-devil.
+
+*** And so would the Christian padris.  But they would never admit that
+their "fallen angels" were borrowed from the Rakshasas;  that their
+"devil" is the illegitimate son of Dewel, the Sinhalese female demon;
+or that the "war in heaven" of the Apocalypse--the foundation of the
+Christian dogma of the "Fallen Angels" was copied from the Hindu story
+about Siva hurling the Tarakasura who rebelled against the gods into
+Andhahkara, the abode of Darkness, according to Brahmanical Shastras.
+---------
+
+Do these assertions mean that the Vedas and the Brahmanical esoteric
+teachings had their origin in the lost Atlantis--the continent that once
+occupied a considerable portion of the expanse of the Southern and the
+Pacific oceans?  The assertion in "Isis Unveiled," that Sanskrit was the
+language of the inhabitants of the said continent, may induce one to
+suppose that the Vedas had probably their origin there, wherever else
+might be the birthplace of the Aryan esotericism.*  But the real
+esoteric doctrine, as well as the mystic allegorical philosophy of the
+Vedas, were derived from another source again, whatever that may be--
+perchance from the divine inhabitants (gods) of the sacred island which
+once existed in the sea that covered in days of old the sandy tract now
+called Gobi Desert.  However that may be, the knowledge of the occult
+powers of Nature possessed by the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis was
+learnt by the ancient adepts of India, and was appended by them to the
+esoteric doctrine taught by the residents of the sacred island.**  The
+Tibetan adepts, however, have not accepted this addition to their
+esoteric doctrine;  and it is in this respect that one should expect to
+find a difference between the two doctrines.***
+
+----------
+* Not necessarily. (See Appendix, Note II.) It is generally held by
+Occultists that Sanskrit has been spoken in Java and adjacent islands
+from remote antiquity.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** A locality which is spoken of to this day by the Tibetans, and called
+by them "Scham-bha-la," the Happy Land. (See Appendix, Note III.)
+
+*** To comprehend this passage fully, the reader must turn to vol. I.
+pp. 589-594 of  "Isis Unveiled."
+--------
+
+The Brahmanical occult doctrine probably contains everything that was
+taught about the powers of Nature and their laws, either in the
+mysterious island of the North or in the equally mysterious continent of
+the South.  And if you mean to compare the Aryan and the Tibetan
+doctrines as regards their teachings about the occult powers of Nature,
+you must beforehand examine all the classifications of these powers,
+their laws and manifestations, and the real connotations of the various
+names assigned to them in the Aryan doctrine.  Here are some of the
+classifications contained in the Brahmanical system:
+
+   I. As appertaining to Parabrahmam and existing in the MACROCOSM.
+
+  II. As appertaining to man and existing in the MICROCOSM.
+
+ III. For the purposes of d Taraka Yog or Pranava Yog.
+
+  IV. For the purposes of Sankhya Yog (where they are, as it were,
+      the inherent attributes of Prakriti).
+
+   V. For the purposes of Hata Yog.
+
+  VI. For the purposes of Koula Agama.
+
+ VII. For the purposes of Sakta Agama.
+
+VIII. For the purposes of Siva Aqama.
+
+  IX. For the purposes of Sreechakram (the Sreechakram referred
+      to in "Isis Unveiled" is not the real esoteric Sreechakram
+      of the ancient adepts of Aryavarta).*
+
+--------
+* Very true. But who would be allowed to give out the "real" esoteric
+one?--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+   X. In Atharvena Veda, &c.
+
+In all these classifications subdivisions have been multiplied
+indefinitely by conceiving new combinations of the Primary Powers in
+different proportions.  But I must now drop this subject, and proceed to
+consider the "Fragments of Occult Truth" (since embodied in "Esoteric
+Buddhism").
+
+I have carefully examined it, and find that the results arrived at (in
+the Buddhist doctrine) do not differ much from the conclusions of our
+Aryan philosophy, though our mode of stating the arguments may differ in
+form.  I shall now discuss the question from my own standpoint, though,
+following, for facility of comparison and convenience of discussion, the
+sequence of classification of the sevenfold entities or principles
+constituting man which is adopted in the "Fragments."  The questions
+raised for discussion are (1) whether the disembodied spirits of human
+beings (as they are called by Spiritualists) appear in the seance-rooms
+and elsewhere;  and (2) whether the manifestations taking place are
+produced wholly or partly through their agency.
+
+It is hardly possible to answer these two questions satisfactorily
+unless the meaning intended to be conveyed by the expression
+"disembodied spirits of human beings" be accurately defined. The words
+spiritualism and spirit are very misleading.  Unless English writers in
+general, and Spiritualists in particular, first ascertain clearly the
+connotation they mean to assign to the word spirit, there will be no end
+of confusion, and the real nature of these so-called spiritualistic
+phenomena and their modus occurrendi can never be clearly defined.
+Christian writers generally speak of only two entities in man--the body,
+and the soul or spirit (both seeming to mean the same thing to them).
+European philosophers generally speak of body and mind, and argue that
+soul or spirit cannot be anything else than mind. They are of opinion
+that any belief in lingasariram* is entirely unphilosophical.  These
+views are certainly incorrect, and are based on unwarranted assumptions
+as to the possibilities of Nature, and on an imperfect understanding of
+its laws.  I shall now examine (from the standpoint of the Brahmanical
+esoteric doctrine) the spiritual constitution of man, the various
+entities or principles existing in him, and ascertain whether either of
+those entities entering into his composition can appear on earth after
+his death, and if so, what it is that so appears.
+
+--------
+* The astral body, so called.
+--------
+
+Professor Tyndall in his excellent papers on what he calls the "Germ
+Theory," comes to the following conclusions as the result of a series of
+well-planned experiments:--Even in a very small volume of space there
+are myriads of protoplasmic germs floating in ether.  If, for instance,
+say water (clear water) is exposed to them, and if they fall into it,
+some form of life or other will be evolved out of them.  Now, what are
+the agencies for the bringing of this life into existence?  Evidently--
+
+I. The water, which is the field, so to say, for the growth
+of life.
+
+II. The protoplasmic germ, out of which life or a living organism
+is to be evolved or developed. And lastly--
+
+III. The power, energy, force, or tendency which springs into activity
+at the touch or combination of the protoplasmic germ and the water, and
+which evolves or develops life and its natural attributes.
+
+Similarly, there are three primary causes which bring the human being
+into existence.  I shall call them, for the purpose of discussion, by
+the following names
+
+(1) Parabrahmam, the Universal Spirit.
+
+(2) Sakti, the crown of the astral light, combining in itself all the
+powers of Nature.
+
+(3) Prakriti, which in its original or primary shape is represented by
+Akasa.  (Really every form of matter is finally reducible to Akasa.)*
+
+It is ordinarily stated that Prakriti or Akasa is the Kshetram, or the
+basis which corresponds to water in the example we have taken Brahmam
+the germ, and Sakti, the power or energy that comes into existence at
+their union or contact.**
+
+--------
+* The Tibetan esoteric Buddhist doctrine teaches that Prakriti is cosmic
+matter, out of which all visible forms are produced;  and Akasa, that
+same cosmic matter, but still more subjective--its spirit, as it were.
+Prakriti being the body or substance, and Akasa Sakti its soul or
+energy.
+
+** Or, in other words, "Prakriti, Swabhavat, or Akasa, is SPACE, as the
+Tibetans have it;  Space filled with whatsoever substance or no
+substance at all--i.e., with substance so imperceptible as to be only
+metaphysically conceivable.  Brahman, then, would be the germ thrown
+into the soil of that field, and Sakti, that mysterious energy or force
+which develops it, and which is called by the Buddhist Arahat of Tibet,
+FOHAT.  That which we call form (rupa) is not different from that which
+we call space (sunyata)....  Space is not different from form.  Form is
+the same as space;  space is the same as form.  And so with the other
+skandhas, whether vedana, or sanjna, or sanskara, or vijnana, they are
+each the same as their opposite." .... (Book of Sin-king, or the "Heart
+Sutra." Chinese translation of the "Maha-Prajna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra,"
+chapter on the "Avalokiteshwara," or the manifested Buddha.)  So that
+the Aryan and Tibetan or Arhat doctrines agree perfectly in substance,
+differing but in names given and the way of putting it.
+---------
+
+But this is not the view which the Upanishads take of the question.
+According to them, Brahamam* is the Kshetram or basis, Akasa or
+Prakriti, the germ or seed, and Sakti, the power evolved by their union
+or contact.  And this is the real scientific, philosophical mode of
+stating the case.
+
+--------
+* See Appendix, Note IV.
+--------
+
+Now, according to the adepts of ancient Aryavarta, seven principles are
+evolved out of these three primary entities. Algebra teaches us that the
+number of combinations of n things, taken one at a time, two at a time,
+three at a time, and so forth = 2(n)-1.
+
+Applying this formula to the present case, the number of entities
+evolved from different combinations of these three primary causes
+amounts to 2(3)-1 = 8-1 = 7.
+
+As a general rule, whenever seven entities are mentioned in the ancient
+occult science of India, in any connection whatsoever, you must suppose
+that those seven entities came into existence from three primary
+entities;  and that these three entities, again, are evolved out of a
+single entity or MONAD.  To take a familiar example, the seven coloured
+rays in the solar ray are evolved out of three primary coloured rays;
+and the three primary colours coexist with the four secondary colours in
+the solar rays.  Similarly, the three primary entities which brought man
+into existence co-exist in him with the four secondary entities which
+arose from different combinations of the three primary entities.
+
+Now these seven entities, which in their totality constitute man, are as
+follows.  I shall enumerate them in the order adopted in the
+"Fragments," as far as the two orders (the Brahmanical and the Tibetan)
+coincide:--
+
+                                 Corresponding names in
+                                  Esoteric Buddhism.
+
+I. Prakriti.                      Sthulasariram
+(Physical Body).
+
+II. The entity evolved
+out of the combination            Sukshmasariram or Lingasariram
+of Prakriti and Sakti.             (Astral Body).
+
+III. Sakti.                       Kamarupa (the Perispirit).
+
+IV. The entity evolved out
+of the combination of             Jiva (Life-Soul).
+Brahmam, Sakti and
+Prakriti.
+
+V. The entity evolved out
+of the combination of             Physical Intelligence (or
+Brahmam and Prakriti.              animal soul).
+
+
+
+VI. The entity evolved
+out of the combination of         Spiritual Intelligence (or Soul).
+Brahmam and Sakti.
+
+VII. Brahmam.                     The emanation from the ABSOLUTE,
+                                   &c. (or pure spirit.)
+
+Before proceeding to examine these nature of these seven entities, a few
+general explanations are indispensably necessary.
+
+I. The secondary principles arising out of the combination of primary
+principles are quite different in their nature from the entities out of
+whose combination they came into existence.  The combinations in
+question are not of the nature of mere mechanical juxtapositions, as it
+were.  They do not even correspond to chemical combinations.
+Consequently no valid inferences as regards the nature of the
+combinations in question can be drawn by analogy from the nature
+[variety?] of these combinations.
+
+II. The general proposition, that when once a cause is removed its
+effect vanishes, is not universally applicable.  Take, for instance, the
+following example:--If you once communicate a certain amount of momentum
+to a ball, velocity of a particular degree in a particular direction is
+the result.  Now, the cause of this motion ceases to exist when the
+instantaneous sudden impact or blow which conveyed the momentum is
+completed;  but according to Newton's first law of motion, the ball will
+continue to move on for ever and ever, with undiminished velocity in the
+same direction, unless the said motion is altered, diminished,
+neutralized, or counteracted by extraneous causes.  Thus, if the ball
+stop, it will not be on account of the absence of the cause of its
+motion, but in consequence of the existence of extraneous causes which
+produce the said result.
+
+Again, take the instance of subjective phenomena.
+
+Now the presence of this ink-bottle before me is producing in me, or in
+my mind, a mental representation of its form, volume, colour and so
+forth.
+
+The bottle in question may be removed, but still its mental picture may
+continue to exist.  Here, again, you see, the effect survives the cause.
+Moreover, the effect may at any subsequent time be called into conscious
+existence, whether the original cause be present or not.
+
+Now, in the ease of the filth principle above mentioned-the entity that
+came into existence by the combination of Brahmam and Prakriti--if the
+general proposition (in the "Fragments of Occult Truth") is correct,
+this principle, which corresponds to the physical intelligence, must
+cease to exist whenever the Brahmam or the seventh Principle should
+cease to exist for the particular individual;  but the fact is certainly
+otherwise.  The general proposition under consideration is adduced in
+the "Fragments" in support of the assertion that whenever the seventh
+principle ceases to exist for any particular individual, the sixth
+principle also ceases to exist for him.  The assertion is undoubtedly
+true, though the mode of stating it and the reasons assigned for it, are
+to my mind objectionable.
+
+It is said that in cases where tendencies of a man's mind are entirely
+material, and all spiritual aspirations and thoughts were altogether
+absent from his mind, the seventh principle leaves him either before or
+at the time of death, and the sixth principle disappears with it.  Here,
+the very proposition that the tendencies of the particular individual's
+mind are entirely material, involves the assertion that there is no
+spiritual intelligence or spiritual Ego in him, it should then have been
+said that, whenever spiritual intelligence ceases to exist in any
+particular individual, the seventh principle ceases to exist for that
+particular individual for all purposes.  Of course, it does not fly off
+anywhere.  There can never be any thing like a change of position in the
+case of Brahmam.*  The assertion merely means that when there is no
+recognition whatever of Brahmam, or spirit, or spiritual life, or
+spiritual consciousness, the seventh principle has ceased to exercise
+any influence or control over the individual's destinies.
+
+--------
+* True--from the standpoint of Aryan Exotericism and the Upanishads, not
+quite so in the case of the Arahat or Tibetan esoteric doctrine;  and it
+is only on this one solitary point that the two teachings disagree, as
+far as we know.  The difference is very trifling, though, resting as it
+does solely upon the two various methods of viewing the one and the same
+thing from two different aspects.  (See Appendix, Note IV.)
+--------
+
+I shall now state what is meant (in the Aryan doctrine) by the seven
+principles above enumerated.
+
+I. Prakriti.  This is the basis of Sthulasariram, and represents it in
+the above-mentioned classification.
+
+II. Prakriti and Sakti.  This is the Lingasariram, or astral body.
+
+III. Sukti.  This principle corresponds to your Kamarupa. This power or
+force is placed by ancient occultists in the Nabhichakram.  This power
+can gather akasa or prakriti, and mould it into any desired shape.  It
+has very great sympathy with the fifth principle, and can be made to act
+by its influence or control.
+
+IV. Brahmam and Sakti, and Prakriti.  This again corresponds to your
+second principle, Jiva.
+
+This power represents the universal life-principle which exists in
+Nature.  Its seat is the Anahatachakram (heart).  It is a force or power
+which constitutes what is called Jiva, or life. It is, as you say,
+indestructible, and its activity is merely transferred at the time of
+death to another set of atoms, to form another organism.
+
+V. Brahma and Prakriti.  This, in our Aryan philosophy, corresponds to
+your fifth principle, called the physical intelligence.  According to
+our philosophers, this is the entity in which what is called mind has
+its seat or basis.  This is the most difficult principle of all to
+explain, and the present discussion entirely turns upon the view we take
+of it.
+
+Now, what is mind?  It is a mysterious something, which is considered to
+be the seat of consciousness--of sensations, emotions, volitions, and
+thoughts.  Psychological analysis shows it to be apparently a congeries
+of mental states, and possibilities of mental states, connected by what
+is called memory, and considered to have a distinct existence apart from
+any of its particular states or ideas.  Now in what entity has this
+mysterious something its potential or actual existence? Memory and
+expectation, which form, as it were, the real foundation of what is
+called individuality, or Ahankaram, must have their seat of existence
+somewhere.  Modern psychologists of Europe generally say that the
+material substance of brain is the seat of mind;  and that past
+subjective experiences, which can he recalled by memory, and which in
+their totality constitute what is called individuality, exist therein in
+the shape of certain unintelligible mysterious impressions and changes
+in the nerves and nerve-centres of the cerebral hemispheres.
+Consequently, they say, the mind--the individual mind--is destroyed when
+the body is destroyed;  so there is no possible existence after death.
+
+But there are a few facts among those admitted by these philosophers
+which are sufficient for us to demolish their theory.  In every portion
+of the human body a constant change goes on without intermission.  Every
+tissue, every muscular fibre and nerve-tube, and every ganglionic centre
+in the brain, is undergoing an incessant change.  In the course of a
+man's lifetime there may be a series of complete tranformations of the
+substance of his brain.  Nevertheless, the memory of his past mental
+states remains unaltered.  There may be additions of new subjective
+experiences and some mental states may be altogether forgotten, but no
+individual mental state is altered.  The person's sense of personal
+identity remains the same throughout these constant alterations in the
+brain substance.*  It is able to survive all these changes, and it can
+survive also the complete destruction of the material substance of the
+brain.
+
+--------
+* This is also sound Buddhist philosophy, the transformation in
+question being known as the change of the skandhas.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+This individuality arising from mental consciousness has its seat of
+existence, according to our philosophers, in an occult power or force,
+which keeps a registry, as it were, of all our mental impressions.  The
+power itself is indestructible, though by the operation of certain
+antagonistic causes its impressions may in course of time be effaced, in
+part or wholly.
+
+I may mention in this connection that our philosophers have
+associated seven occult powers with the seven principles or entities
+above-mentioned.  These seven occult powers in the microcosm correspond
+with, or are the counterparts of, the occult powers in the macrocosm.
+The mental and spiritual consciousness of the individual becomes the
+general consciousness of Brahmam, when the barrier of individuality is
+wholly removed, and when the seven powers in the microcosm are placed
+en rapport with the seven powers in the macrocosm.
+
+There is nothing very strange in a power, or force, or sakti, carrying
+with it impressions of sensations, ideas, thoughts, or other subjective
+experiences.  It is now a well-known fact, that an electric or magnetic
+current can convey in some mysterious manner impressions of sound or
+speech, with all their individual peculiarities;  similarly, I can
+convey my thoughts to you by a transmission of energy or power.
+
+Now, this fifth principle represents in our philosophy the mind, or, to
+speak more correctly, the power or force above described, the
+impressions of the mental states therein, and the notion of
+self-identity or Ahankaram generated by their collective operation.
+This principle is called merely physical intelligence in the
+"Fragments."  I do not know what is really meant by this expression.  It
+may be taken to mean that intelligence which exists in a very low state
+of development in the lower animals. Mind may exist in different stages
+of development, from the very lowest forms of organic life, where the
+signs of its existence or operation can hardly be distinctly realized,
+up to man, in whom it reaches its highest state of development.
+
+In fact, from the first appearance of life* up to Tureeya Avastha, or
+the state of Nirvana, the progress is, as it were, continuous.
+
+--------
+* In the Aryan doctrine, which blends Brahmam, Sakti, and Prakriti in
+one, it is the fourth principle then, in the Buddhist esotericisms the
+second in combination with the first.
+--------
+
+We ascend from that principle up to the seventh by almost imperceptible
+gradations.  But four stages are recognized in the progress where the
+change is of a peculiar kind, and is such as to arrest an observer's
+attention.  These four stages are as follows:--
+
+(1) Where life (fourth principle) makes its appearance.
+
+(2) Where the existence of mind becomes perceptible in conjunction with
+life.
+
+(3) Where the highest state of mental abstraction ends, and spiritual
+consciousness commences.
+
+(4) Where spiritual consciousness disappears, leaving the seventh
+principle in a complete state of Nirvana, or nakedness.
+
+According to our philosophers, the fifth principle under consideration
+is intended to represent the mind in every possible state of
+development, from the second stage up to the third stage.
+
+IV. Brahmam and Sakti.  This principle corresponds to your "spiritual
+intelligence."  It is, in fact, Buddhi (I use the word Buddhi not in the
+ordinary sense, but in the sense in which it is used by our ancient
+philosophers);  in other words, it is the seat of Bodha or Atmabodha.
+One who has Atmabodha in its completeness is a Buddha.  Buddhists know
+very well what this term signifies.  This principle is described in the
+"Fragments" as  an entity coming into existence by the combination of
+Brahmam and Prakriti.   I do not again know in what particular sense the
+word Prakriti is used in this connection.  According to our philosophers
+it is an entity arising from the union of Brahmam and Sakti.  I have
+already explained the connotation attached by our philosophers to the
+words Prakriti and Sakti.
+
+I stated that Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa.*
+
+If Akasa be considered to be Sakti or power** then my statement as
+regards the ultimate state of Prakriti is likely to give rise to
+confusion and misapprehension unless I explain the distinction between
+Akasa and Sakti.  Akasa is not, properly speaking, the crown of the
+astral light, nor does it by itself constitute any of the six primary
+forces.  But, generally speaking, whenever any phenomenal result is
+produced, Sakti acts in conjunction with Akasa.  And, moreover, Akasa
+serves as a basis or Adhishthanum for the transmission of force currents
+and for the formation or generation of force or power correlations.***
+
+--------
+* According to the Buddhists, in Akasa lies that eternal, potential
+energy whose function it is to evolve all visible things out of
+itself.--Ed. Theos.
+
+** It was never so considered, as we have shown it.  But as the
+"Fragments" are written in English, a language lacking such an abundance
+of metaphysical terms to express ever minute change of form, substance
+and state as are found in the Sanskrit, it was deemed useless to confuse
+the Western reader, untrained in the methods of Eastern expression, more
+than is necessary, with a too nice distinctions of proper technical
+terms.  As "Prakriti in its primary state is Akasa," and Sakti "is an
+attribute AKASA," it becomes evident that for the uninitiated it is all
+one.  Indeed, to speak of the "union of Brahmam and Prakriti" instead of
+"Brahmam and Sakti" is no worse than for a theist to write that "That
+man has come into existence by the combination of spirit and matter,"
+whereas, his word, framed in an orthodox shape, ought to read "man is a
+living soul was created by the power (or breath) of God over matter."
+
+*** That is to say, the Aryan Akasa is another word for Buddhist SPACE
+(in its metaphysical meaning).--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+In Mantrasastra the letter Ha represents Akasa, and you will find that
+this syllable enters into most of the sacred formula intended to be used
+in producing phenomenal results.  But by itself it does not represent
+any Sakti.  You may, if you please, call Sakti an attribute of Akasa.
+
+I do not think that, as regards the nature of this principle, there can
+in reality exist any difference of opinion between the Buddhist and
+Brahmanical philosophers.
+
+Buddhist and Brahmanical initiates know very well that mysterious
+circular mirror composed of two hemispheres which reflects as it were
+the rays emanating from the "burning bush" and the blazing star--the
+spiritual sun Shining in CHIDAKASAM.
+
+The spiritual impressions constituting this principle have their
+existence in an occult power associated with the entity in question.
+The successive incarnations of Buddha, in fact, mean the successive
+transfers of this mysterious power, or the impressions thereof.  The
+transfer is only possible when the Mahatma* who transfers it has
+completely identified himself with his seventh principle, has
+annihilated his Ahankaram, and reduced it to ashes in CHIDAGNIKUNDUM,
+and has succeeded in making his thoughts correspond with the eternal
+laws of Nature and in becoming a co-worker with Nature.  Or, to put the
+same thing in other words, when he has attained the state of Nirvana,
+the condition of final negation, negation of individual, or separate
+existence.**
+
+---------
+* The highest adept.
+
+* In the words of Agatha in the "Maha-pari-Nirvana Sutra,"
+     "We reach a condition of rest
+     Beyond the limit of any human knowledge"
+--Ed. Theos.
+---------
+
+VII. Atma.--The emanation from the absolute, corresponding to the
+seventh principle.  As regards this entity there exists positively no
+real difference of opinion between the Tibetan Buddhist adepts and our
+ancient Rishis.
+
+We must now consider which of these entities can appear after the
+individual's death in seance-rooms and produce the so-called
+spiritualistic phenomena.
+
+Now, the assertion of the Spiritualists, that the "disembodied spirits"
+of particular human beings appear in seance-rooms, necessarily implies
+that the entity that so appears bears the stamp of some particular
+personality.
+
+So, we have to ascertain beforehand in what entity or entities
+personality has its seat of existence.  Apparently it exists in the
+person's particular formation of body, and in his subjective experiences
+(called his mind in their totality).  On the death of the individual his
+body is destroyed;  his lingasariram being decomposed, the power
+associated with it becomes mingled in the current of the corresponding
+power in the macrocosm. Similarly, the third and fourth principles are
+mingled with their corresponding powers.  These entities may again enter
+into the composition of other organisms.  As these entities bear no
+impression of personality, the Spiritualists have no right to say that
+the disembodied spirit of the human being has appeared in the
+seance-room whenever any of these entities may appear there. In fact,
+they have no means of ascertaining that they belonged to any particular
+individual.
+
+Therefore, we must only consider whether any of the last three entities
+appear in seance-rooms to amuse or to instruct Spiritualists.  Let us
+take three particular examples of individuals, and see what becomes of
+these three principles after death.
+
+I. One in whom spiritual attachments have greater force than terrestrial
+attachments.
+
+II. One in whom spiritual aspirations do exist, but are merely of
+secondary importance to him, his terrestrial interests occupying the
+greater share of his attention.
+
+III. One in whom there exists no spiritual aspirations whatsoever, one
+whose spiritual Ego is dead or non-existent to his apprehension.
+
+We need not consider the case of a complete adept in this connection.
+In the first two cases, according to our supposition, spiritual and
+mental experiences exist together;  when spiritual consciousness exists,
+the existence of the seventh principle being recognized, it maintains
+its connection with the fifth and sixth principles.  But the existence
+of terrestrial attachments creates the necessity of Punarjanmam
+(re-birth), the latter signifying the evolution of a new set of
+objective and subjective experiences, constituting a new combination of
+surrounding circumstances, or, in other words, a new world.  The period
+between death and the next subsequent birth is occupied with the
+preparation required for the evolution of these new experiences.  During
+the period of incubation, as you call it, the spirit will never of its
+own accord appear in this world, nor can it so appear.
+
+There is a great law in this universe which consists in the reduction of
+subjective experiences to objective phenomena, and the evolution of the
+former from the latter.  This is otherwise called "cyclic necessity."
+Man is subjected to this law if he do not check and counterbalance the
+usual destiny or fate, and he can only escape its control by subduing
+all his terrestrial attachments completely.  The new combination of
+circumstances under which he will then be placed may be better or worse
+than the terrestrial conditions under which he lived;  but in his
+progress to a new world, you may be sure he will never turn around to
+have a look at his spiritualistic friends.
+
+In the third of the above three cases there is, by our supposition, no
+recognition of spiritual consciousness or of spirits;  so they are
+non-existing so far as he is concerned.  The case is similar to that of
+an organ or faculty which remains unused for a long time.  It then
+practically ceases to exist.
+
+These entities, as it were, remain his, or in his possession, when they
+are stamped with the stamp of recognition.  When such is not the case,
+the whole of his individuality is centred in his fifth principle.  And
+after death this fifth principle is the only representative of the
+individual in question.
+
+By itself it cannot evolve for itself a new set of objective
+experiences, or, to say the same thing in other words, it has no
+punarjanmam.  It is such an entity that can appear in seance-rooms;  but
+it is absurd to call it a disembodied spirit.* It is merely a power or
+force retaining the impressions of the thoughts or ideas of the
+individual into whose composition it originally entered.  It sometimes
+summons to its aid the Kamarupa power, and creates for itself some
+particular ethereal form (not necessarily human).
+
+--------
+* It is especially on this point that the Aryan and Arahat doctrines
+quite agree.  The teaching and argument that follow are in every respect
+those of the Buddhist Himalayan Brotherhood.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+Its tendencies of action will be similar to those of the individual's
+mind when he was living.  This entity maintains its existence so long as
+the impressions on the power associated with the fifth principle remain
+intact.  In course of time they are effaced, and the power in question
+is then mixed up in the current of its corresponding power in the
+MACROCOSM, as the river loses itself in the sea.  Entities like these
+may afford signs of there having been considerable intellectual power in
+the individuals to which they belonged;  because very high intellectual
+power may co-exist with utter absence of spiritual consciousness.  But
+from this circumstance it cannot be argued that either the spirits or
+the spiritual Egos of deceased individuals appear in seance-rooms.
+
+There are some people in India who have thoroughly studied the nature of
+such entities (called Pisacham).  I do not know much about them
+experimentally, as I have never meddled with this disgusting,
+profitless, and dangerous branch of investigation.
+
+The Spiritualists do not know what they are really doing.  Their
+investigations are likely to result in course of time either in wicked
+sorcery or in the utter spiritual ruin of thousands of men and women.*
+
+--------
+* We share entirely in this idea.--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+The views I have herein expressed have been often illustrated by our
+ancient writers by comparing the course of a man's life or existence to
+the orbital motion of a planet round the sun. Centripetal force is
+spiritual attraction, and centrifugal terrestrial attraction.  As the
+centripetal force increases in magnitude in comparison with the
+centrifugal force, the planet approaches the sun--the individual reaches
+a higher plane of existence.  If, on the other hand, the centrifugal
+force becomes greater than the centripetal force, the planet is removed
+to a greater distance from the sun, and moves in a new orbit at that
+distance--the individual comes to a lower level of existence. These are
+illustrated in the first two instances I have noticed above.
+
+We have only to consider the two extreme cases.
+
+When the planet in its approach to the sun passes over the line where
+the centripetal and centrifugal force completely neutralize each other,
+and is only acted on by the centripetal force, it rushes towards the sun
+with a gradually increasing velocity, and is finally mixed up with the
+mass of the sun's body. This is the case of a complete adept.
+
+Again, when the planet in its retreat from the sun reaches a point where
+the centrifugal force becomes all-powerful, it flies off in a tangential
+direction from its orbit, and goes into the depths of void space.  When
+it ceases to be under the control of the sun, it gradually gives up its
+generative heat, and the creative energy that it originally derived from
+the sun, and remains a cold mass of material particles wandering through
+space until the mass is completely decomposed into atoms.  This cold
+mass is compared to the fifth principle under the conditions above
+noticed, and the heat, light, and energy that left it are compared to
+the sixth and seventh principles.
+
+Either after assuming a new orbit or in its course of deviation from the
+old orbit to the new, the planet can never go back to any point in its
+old orbit, as the various orbits lying in different planes never
+intersect each other.
+
+This figurative representation correctly explains the ancient
+Brahmanical theory on the subject.  It is merely a branch of what is
+called the Great Law of the Universe by the ancient mystics.
+
+--T. Subba Row
+
+
+
+Appendix
+
+
+Note I.
+
+In this connection it will be well to draw the reader's attention to the
+fact that the country called "Si-dzang" by the Chinese, and Tibet by
+Western geographers, is mentioned in the oldest books preserved in the
+province of Fo-kien (the headquarters of the aborigines of China) as the
+great seat of occult learning in the archaic ages.  According to these
+records, it was inhabited by the "Teachers of Light," the "Sons of
+Wisdom" and the "Brothers of the Sun."  The Emperor Yu the "Great" (2207
+B.C.), a pious mystic, is credited with having obtained his occult
+wisdom and the system of theocracy established by him--for he was the
+first one to unite in China ecclesiastical power with temporal
+authority--from Si-dzang.  That system was the same as with the old
+Egyptians and the Chaldees;  that which we know to have existed in the
+Brahmanical period in India, and to exist now in Tibet--namely, all the
+learning, power, the temporal as well as the secret wisdom were
+concentrated within the hierarchy of the priests and limited to their
+caste.  Who were the aborigines of Tibet is a question which no
+ethnographer is able to answer correctly at present.  They practice the
+Bhon religion, their sect is a pre-and anti-Buddhistic one, and they
+are to be found mostly in the province of Kam.  That is all that is
+known of them.  But even that would justify the supposition that they
+are the greatly degenerated descendants of mighty and wise forefathers.
+Their ethnical type shows that they are not pure Turanians, and their
+rites--now those of sorcery, incantations, and Nature-worship--remind
+one far more of the popular rites of the Babylonians, as found in the
+records preserved on the excavated cylinders, than of the religious
+practices of the Chinese sect of Tao-sse (a religion based upon pure
+reason and spirituality), as alleged by some.  Generally, little or no
+difference is made, even by the Kyelang missionaries, who mix greatly
+with these people on the borders of British Lahoul and ought to know
+better, between the Bhons and the two rival Buddhist sects, the Yellow
+Caps and the Red Caps.  The latter of these have opposed the reform of
+Tzong-ka-pa from the first, and have always adhered to old Buddhism, so
+greatly mixed up now with the practices of the Bhons.  Were our
+Orientalists to know more of them, and compare the ancient Babylonian
+Bel or Baal worship with the rites of the Bhons, they would find an
+undeniable connection between the two.  To begin an argument here,
+proving the origin of the aborigines of Tibet as connected with one of
+the three great races which superseded each other in Babylonia, whether
+we call them the Akkadians (a name invented by F. Lenormant), or the
+primitive Turanians, Chaldees, and Assyrians, is out of the question.
+Be it as it may, there is reason to call the trans-Himalayan esoteric
+doctrine Chaldeo-Tibetan.  And when we remember that the Vedas came,
+agreeably to all traditions, from the Mansarawara Lake in Tibet, and the
+Brahmins themselves from the far North, we are justified in looking on
+the esoteric doctrines of every people who once had or still has it, as
+having proceeded from one and the same source;  and to thus call it the
+"Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan" doctrine, or Universal Wisdom-Religion. "Seek
+for the Lost Word among the hierophants of Tartary, China, and Tibet,"
+was the advice of Swedenborg the seer.
+
+Note II.
+
+Not necessarily, we say.  The Vedas, Brahmanism, and along with these,
+Sanskrit, were importations into what we now regard as India.  They were
+never indigenous to its soil.  There was a time when the ancient nations
+of the West included under the generic name of India many of the
+countries of Asia now classified under other names.  There was an Upper,
+a Lower, and a Western India, even during the comparatively late period
+of Alexander;  and Persia (Iran) is called Western India in some ancient
+classics. The countries now named Tibet, Mongolia, and Great Tartary
+were considered by them as forming part of India.  When we say,
+therefore, that India has civilized the world, and was the Alma Mater of
+the civilizations, arts, and sciences of all other nations (Babylonia,
+and perhaps even Egypt, included), we mean archaic, pre-historic India,
+India of the time when the great Gobi was a sea, and the lost "Atlantis"
+formed part of an unbroken continent which began at the Himalayas and
+ran down over Southern India, Ceylon, and Java, to far-away Tasmania.
+
+Note III.
+
+To ascertain such disputed questions, one has to look into and study
+well the Chinese sacred and historical records--a people whose era
+begins nearly 4,600 years back (2697 B.C.).  A people so accurate, and
+by whom some of the most important inventions of modern Europe and its
+so much boasted modern science were anticipated--such as the compass,
+gunpowder, porcelain, paper, printing, &c.--known and practiced
+thousands of years before these were rediscovered by the Europeans,
+ought to receive some trust for their records.  And from Lao-tze down to
+Hiouen-Thsang their literature is filled with allusions and references
+to that island and the wisdom of the Himalayan adepts.  In the "Catena
+of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese," by the Rev. Samuel Beal, there
+is a chapter "On the TIAN-TA'I School of Buddhism" (pp. 244-258) which
+our opponents ought to read.  Translating the rules of that most
+celebrated and holy school and sect in China founded by Chin-che-K'hae,
+called Che-chay (the Wise One), in the year 575 of our era, when coming
+to the sentence which reads "That which relates to the one garment
+(seamless) worn by the GREAT TEACHERS OF THE SNOWY MOUNTAINS, the school
+of the Haimavatas" (p. 256), the European translator places after the
+last sentence a sign of interrogation, as well he may.  The statistics
+of the school of the "Haimavatas," or of our Himalayan Brotherhood, are
+not to be found in the general census records of India.  Further, Mr.
+Beal translates a rule relating to "the great professors of the higher
+order who live in mountain depths remote from men," the Aranyakas, or
+hermits.
+
+So, with respect to the traditions concerning this island, and apart
+from the (to them) historical records of this preserved in the Chinese
+and Tibetan sacred books, the legend is alive to this day among the
+people of Tibet.  The fair island is no more, but the country where it
+once bloomed remains there still, and the spot is well known to some of
+the "great teachers of the Snowy Mountains," however much convulsed and
+changed its topography by the awful cataclysm.  Every seventh year these
+teachers are believed to assemble in SCHAM-BHA-LA, the "Happy Land."
+According to the general belief it is situated in the north-west of
+Tibet.  Some place it within the unexplored central regions,
+inaccessible even to the fearless nomadic tribes;  others hem it in
+between the range of the Gangdisri Mountains and the northern edge of
+the Gobi desert, south and north, and the more populated regions of
+Khoondooz and Kashmir, of the Gya-Pheling (British India), and China,
+west and east, which affords to the curious mind a pretty large latitude
+to locate it in.  Others still place it between Namur Nur and the
+Kuen-Lun Mountains, but one and all firmly believe in Scham-bha-la, and
+speak of it as a fertile fairy-like land once an island, now an oasis of
+incomparable beauty, the place of meeting of the inheritors of the
+esoteric wisdom of the god-like inhabitants of the legendary island.
+
+In connection with the archaic legend of the Asian Sea and the Atlantic
+Continent, is it not profitable to note a fact known to all modern
+geologists-that the Himalayan slopes afford geological proof that the
+substance of those lofty peaks was once a part of an ocean floor?
+
+Note IV.
+
+We have already pointed out that, in our opinion, the whole difference
+between Buddhistic and Vedantic philosophies was that the former was a
+kind of Rationalistic Vedantism, while the latter might be regarded as
+transcendental Buddhism.  If the Aryan esotericism applies the term
+jivatma to the seventh principle--the pure and per se unconscious
+spirit--it is because the Vedanta, postulating three kinds of
+existence--(1) the paramarthika (the true, the only real one), (2) the
+vyavaharika (the practical), and (3) the pratibhasika (the apparent or
+illusory life)--makes the first life or jiva, the only truly existent
+one.  Brahma, or the ONE'S SELF, is its only representative in the
+universe, as it is the universal Life in toto, while the other two are
+but its "phenomenal appearances," imagined and created by ignorance, and
+complete illusions suggested to us by our blind senses.  The Buddhists,
+on the other hand, deny either subjective or objective reality even to
+that one Self-Existence.  Buddha declares that there is neither Creator
+nor an Absolute Being.  Buddhist rationalism was ever too alive to the
+insuperable difficulty of admitting one absolute consciousness, as in
+the words of Flint, "wherever there is consciousness there is relation,
+and wherever there is relation there is dualism."  The ONE LIFE is
+either "MUKTA" (absolute and unconditioned), and can have no relation to
+anything nor to any one;  or it is "BADDHA" (bound and conditioned), and
+then it cannot be called the absolute;  the limitation, moreover,
+necessitating another deity as powerful as the first to account for all
+the evil in this world.  Hence, the Arahat secret doctrine on cosmogony
+admits but of one absolute, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated
+UNCONSCIOUSNESS (so to translate) of an element (the word being used for
+want of a better term) absolutely independent of everything else in the
+universe;  a something ever present or ubiquitous, a Presence which ever
+was, is, and will be, whether there is a God, gods, or none, whether
+there is a universe, or no universe, existing during the eternal cycles
+of Maha Yugs, during the Pralayas as during the periods of Manvantara,
+and this is SPACE, the field for the operation of the eternal Forces and
+natural Law, the basis (as Mr. Subba Row rightly calls it) upon which
+take place the eternal intercorrelations of Akasa-Prakriti;  guided by
+the unconscious regular pulsations of Sakti, the breath or power of a
+conscious deity, the theists would say;  the eternal energy of an
+eternal, unconscious Law, say the Buddhists.  Space, then, or "Fan,
+Bar-nang" (Maha Sunyata) or, as it is called by Lao-tze, the "Emptiness,"
+is the nature of the Buddhist Absolute.  (See Confucius' "Praise of the
+Abyss.")  The word jiva, then, could never be applied by the Arahats to
+the Seventh Principle, since it is only through its correlation or
+contact with matter that Fo-hat (the Buddhist active energy) can
+develop active conscious life;  and that to the question "how can
+unconsciousness generate consciousness?" the answer would be:  "Was the
+seed which generated a Bacon or a Newton self-conscious?"
+
+Note V.
+
+To our European readers, deceived by the phonetic similarity, it must
+not be thought that the name "Brahman" is identical in this connection
+with Brahma or Iswara, the personal God.  The Upanishads--the Vedanta
+Scriptures--mention no such God, and one would vainly seek in them any
+allusions to a conscious deity. The Brahman, or Parabrahm, the absolute
+of the Vedantins, is neuter and unconscious, and has no connection with
+the masculine Brahma of the Hindu Triad, or Trimurti.  Some Orientalists
+rightly believe the name derived from the verb "Brih," to grow or
+increase, and to be in this sense the universal expansive force of
+Nature, the vivifying and spiritual principle or power spread throughout
+the universe, and which, in its collectivity, is the one Absoluteness,
+the one Life and the only Reality.
+
+--H.P. Blavatsky
+
+
+
+
+Septenary Division in Different Indian Systems
+
+
+We give below in a tabular form the classifications, adopted by
+Buddhist and by Vedantic teachers, of the principles in man:--
+
+Classification in      Vedantic         Classification in
+Esoteric Buddhism    Classification      Taraka Raja Yoga
+
+(1.) Sthula sarira      Annamaya kosa       Sthulopadhi
+
+(2.) Prana
+                        Pranamaya kosa
+(3.)The Vehicle
+       of Prana
+
+(4.) Kama rupa
+   (a) Volitions        Manomaya kosa
+(5.) Mind/& feelings &c.                    Sukshmopadhi
+   (b) Vignanam         Vignanamayakosa
+
+(6.) Spiritual Soul     Anandamayakosa      Karanopadhi
+
+(7.) Atma               Atma                Atma
+
+From the foregoing table it will be seen that the third principle in the
+Buddhist classification is not separately mentioned in the Vedantic
+division as it is merely the vehicle of prana.  It will also be seen
+that the fourth principle is included in the third kosa (sheath), as the
+said principle is but the vehicle of will-power, which is but an energy
+of the mind.  It must also be noticed that the Vignanamayakosa is
+considered to be distinct from the Manomayakosa, as a division is made
+after death between the lower part of the mind, as it were, which has a
+closer affinity with the fourth principle than with the sixth and its
+higher part, which attaches itself to the latter, and which is, in fact,
+the basis for the higher spiritual individuality of man.
+
+We may also here point out to our readers that the classification
+mentioned in the last column is for all practical purposes connected
+with Raja Yoga, the best and simplest.  Though there are seven
+principles in man, there are but three distinct Upadhis (bases), in each
+of which his Atma may work independently of the rest.  These three
+Upadhis can be separated by an adept without killing himself.  He cannot
+separate the seven principles from each other without destroying his
+constitution.
+
+--T.S.
+
+
+
+
+The Septenary Principle in Esotericism
+
+
+Since the exposition of the Arhat esoteric doctrine was begun, many who
+had not acquainted themselves with the occult basis of Hindu philosophy
+have imagined that the two were in conflict. Some of the more bigoted
+have openly charged the Occultists of the Theosophical Society with
+propagating rank Buddhistic heresy; and have even gone to the length of
+affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic
+propaganda.  We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans
+that our septenary divisions of Nature and everything in it, including
+man, are arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of
+the East.  It is now proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas,
+the Upanishads, the Law-Books of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and
+show that they too support our position.  Even in their crude
+exotericism their affirmation of the sevenfold division is apparent.
+Passage after passage may be cited in proof.  And not only can the
+mysterious number be found traced on every page of the oldest Aryan
+Sacred Scriptures, but in the oldest books of Zoroastrianism as well;
+in the rescued cylindrical tile records of old Babylonia and Chaldea, in
+the "Book of the Dead" and the Ritualism of ancient Egypt, and even in
+the Mosaic books--without mentioning the secret Jewish works, such as
+the Kabala.
+
+The limited space at command forces us to allow a few brief quotations
+to stand as landmarks and not even attempt long explanations.  It is no
+exaggeration to say that upon each of the few hints now given in the
+cited Slokas a thick volume might be written.
+
+From the well-known hymn To Time, in the Atharva-Veda (xix. 53):
+
+     "Time, like a brilliant steed with seven rays,
+     Full of fecundity, bears all things onward.
+
+     "Time, like a seven-wheeled, seven-naved car moves on,
+     His rolling wheels are all the worlds, his axle
+     Is immortality...."
+
+--down to Manu, "the first and the seventh man," the Vedas, the
+Upanishads, and all the later systems of philosophy teem with allusions
+to this number.  Who was Manu, the son of Swayambhuva? The secret
+doctrine tells us that this Manu was no man, but the representation of
+the first human races evolved with the help of the Dhyan-Chohans (Devas)
+at the beginning of the first Round. But we are told in his Laws (Book
+I. 80) that there are fourteen Manus for every Kalpa or "interval from
+creation to creation" (read interval from one minor "Pralaya" to
+another) and that "in the present divine age there have been as yet
+seven Manus." Those who know that there are seven Rounds, of which we
+have passed three, and are now in the fourth;  and who are taught that
+there are seven dawns and seven twilights, or fourteen Manvantaras;
+that at the beginning of every Round and at the end, and on and between
+the planets, there is "an awakening to illusive life," and "an awakening
+to real life," and that, moreover, there are "root-Manus," and what we
+have to clumsily translate as the "seed-Manus"--the seeds for the human
+races of the forthcoming Round (a mystery divulged but to those who have
+passed the 3rd degree in initiation);  those who have learned all that,
+will be better prepared to understand the meaning of the following.  We
+are told in the Sacred Hindu Scriptures that "the first Manu produced
+six other Manus (seven primary Manus in all), and these produced in
+their turn each seven other Manus" (Bhrigu I. 61-63),* the production of
+the latter standing in the occult treatises as 7 x 7.  Thus it becomes
+clear that Manu--the last one, the progenitor of our Fourth Round
+Humanity--must be the seventh, since we are on our fourth Round, and
+that there is a root-Manu on globe A and a seed-Manu on globe G.  Just
+as each planetary Round commences with the appearance of a "Root-Manu"
+(Dhyan-Chohan) and closes with a "Seed-Manu," so a root-and a seed-Manu
+appear respectively at the beginning and the termination of the human
+period on any particular planet.
+
+-------
+* The fact that Manu himself is made to declare that he was created by
+Viraj and then produced the ten Prajapatis, who again produced seven
+Menus, who in their turn gave birth to seven other Manus (Manu, I.
+33-36), relates to other still earlier mysteries, and is at the same
+time a blind with regard to the doctrine of the Septenary chain.
+---------
+
+It will be easily seen from the foregoing statement that a Manu-antaric
+period means, as the term implies, the time between the appearance of
+two Manus or Dhyan-Chohans:  and hence a minor Manu-antara is the
+duration of the seven races on any particular planet, and a major
+Manu-antara is the period of one human round along the planetary chain.
+Moreover, that, as it is said that each of the seven Manus creates 7 x 7
+Manus, and that there are 49 root-races on the seven planets during each
+Round, then every root-race has its Manu.  The present seventh Manu is
+called "Vaivasvata," and stands in the exoteric texts for that Manu who
+represents in India the Babylonian Xisusthrus and the Jewish Noah.  But
+in the esoteric books we are told that Manu Vaivasvata, the progenitor
+of our fifth race--who saved it from the flood that nearly exterminated
+the fourth (Atlantean)--is not the seventh Manu, mentioned in the
+nomenclature of the Root, or primitive Manus, but one of the 49
+"emanated from this 'root'--Manu."
+
+For clearer comprehension we here give the names of the 14 Manus in
+their respective order and relation to each Round:--
+
+1st      1st (Root) Manu on Planet      A.-Swayambhuva
+Round.   1st (Seed) Manu on Planet      G.-Swarochi
+                                           (or)Swarotisha
+
+2nd      2nd (R.)     M.    on Planet   A.-Uttama
+Round    2nd (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Thamasa
+
+3rd      3rd (R.)     M.     "    "     A.-Raivata
+Round    3rd (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Chackchuska
+
+4th      4th (R.)     M.     "    "     A.-Vaivasvata (our progenitor)
+Round    4th (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Savarni
+
+5th      5th (R.)     M.     "    "     A.-Daksha Savarni
+Round    5th (S.)     M.     "    "     G.-Brahma Savarni
+
+6th      6th (R.)     M.  on    Planet  A.-Dharma Savarni
+Round    6th  (S.)    M.  "      "      G.-Rudra Savarni
+
+7th      7th  (R.)    M.  "      "      A.-Rouchya
+Round    7th  (S.)    M.  "      "      G.-Bhoutya
+
+Vaivasvata thus, though seventh in the order given, is the primitive
+Root-Manu of our fourth Human Wave (the reader must always remember that
+Manu is not a man but collective humanity), while our Vaivasvata was but
+one of the seven Minor Manus who are made to preside over the seven
+races of this our planet.  Each of these has to become the witness of
+one of the periodical and ever-recurring cataclysms (by fire and water
+in turn) that close the cycle of every root-race.  And it is this
+Vaivasvata--the Hindu ideal embodiment called respectively Xisusthrus,
+Deukalion, Noah, and by other names--who is the allegorical man who
+rescued our race when nearly the whole population of one hemisphere
+perished by water, while the other hemisphere was awakening from its
+temporary obscuration.
+
+The number seven stands prominently conspicuous in even a cursory
+comparison of the 11th Tablet of the Izdhubar Legends of the Chaldean
+account of the Deluge and the so-called Mosaic books. In both the number
+seven plays a most prominent part.  The clean beasts are taken by
+sevens, the fowls by sevens also;  in seven days, it is promised Noah,
+to rain upon the earth;  thus he stays "yet other seven days," and again
+seven days;  while in the Chaldean. account of the Deluge, on the
+seventh day the rain abated.  On the seventh day the dove is sent out;
+by sevens, Xisusthrus takes "jugs of wine" for the altar, &c.  Why such
+coincidence?  And yet we are told by, and bound to believe in, the
+European Orientalists, when passing judgment alike upon the Babylonian
+and Aryan chronology they call them "extravagant and fanciful!"
+Nevertheless, while they give us no explanation of, nor have they ever
+noticed, as far as we know, the strange identity in the totals of the
+Semitic, Chaldean, and Aryan Hindu chronology, the students of Occult
+Philosophy find the following fact extremely suggestive.  While the
+period of the reign of the 10 Babylonian antediluvian kings is given as
+432,000 years,* the duration of the postdiluvian Kali-yug is also given
+as 432,000, while the four ages or the divine Maha-yug, yield in their
+totality 4,320,000 years.  Why should they, if fanciful and
+"extravagant," give the identical figures, when neither the Aryans nor
+the Babylonians have surely borrowed anything from each other!  We
+invite the attention of our occultists to the three figures given--4
+standing for the perfect square, 3 for the triad (the seven universal
+and the seven individual principles), and 2 the symbol of our
+illusionary world, a figure ignored and rejected by Pythagoras.
+
+--------
+* See "Babylonia," by George Smith, p. 36.  Here again, as with the
+Manus and 10 Prajapatis and the 10 Sephiroths in the Book of Numbers--
+they dwindle down to seven!
+--------
+
+It is in the Upanishads and the Vedanta though, that we have to look for
+the best corroborations of the occult teachings.  In the mystical
+doctrine the Rahasya, or the Upanishads--"the only Veda of all
+thoughtful Hindus in the present day," as Monier Williams is made to
+confess, every word, as its very name implies,* has a secret meaning
+underlying it.  This meaning can be fully realized only by him who has a
+full knowledge of Prana, the ONE LIFE, "the nave to which are attached
+the seven spokes of the Universal Wheel." (Hymn to Prana, Atharva-Veda,
+XI. 4.)
+
+Even European Orientalists agree that all the systems in India assign to
+the human body:  (a) an exterior or gross body (sthula-sarira);  (b) an
+inner or shadowy body (sukshma), or linga-sarira (the vehicle), the two
+cemented with--(c), life (jiv or Karana sarira, "causal body").**  These
+the occult system or esotericism divides into seven, farther adding to
+these--kama, manas, buddhi and atman.  The Nyaya philosophy when
+treating of Prameyas (by which the objects and subjects of Praman are to
+be correctly understood) includes among the 12 the seven "root
+principles" (see IXth Sutra), which are 1, soul (atman), and 2 its
+superior spirit Jivatman;  3, body (sarira);  4, senses (indriya);  5,
+activity or will (pravritti);  6, mind (manas);  7, Intellection
+(Buddhi).  The seven Padarthas (inquiries or predicates of existing
+things) of Kanada in the Vaiseshikas, refer in the occult doctrine to
+the seven qualities or attributes of the seven principles.  Thus:  1,
+substance (dravya) refers to body or sthula-sarira;  2, quality or
+property (guna) to the life principle, jiv;  3, action or act (karman)
+to the Linga, sarira; 4, Community or commingling of properties
+(Samanya) to Kamarupa; 5, personality or conscious individuality
+(Visesha) to Manas;  6, co-inherence or perpetual intimate relation
+(Samuvuya) to Buddhi, the inseparable vehicle of Atman;  7,
+non-existence or non-being in the sense of, and as separate from,
+objectivity or substance (abhava)--to the highest monad or Atman.
+
+-------
+* Upa-ni-shad means, according to Brahminical authority, "to conquer
+ignorance by revealing the secret spiritual knowledge." According to
+Monier Williams, the title is derived from the root sad with the
+prepositions upa and ni, and implies "something mystical that underlies
+or is beneath the surface."
+
+** This Karana-sarira is often mistaken by the uninitiated for
+Linga-sarira, and since it is described as the inner rudimentary or
+latent embryo of the body, confounded with it.  But the Occultists
+regard it as the life (body) or Jiv, which disappears at death;  is
+withdrawn--leaving the 1st and 3rd principles to disintegrate and
+return to their elements.
+----------
+
+Thus, whether we view the ONE as the Vedic Purusha or Brahman (neuter)
+the "all-expanding essence;"  or as the universal spirit, the "light of
+lights" (jyotisham jyotih) the TOTAL independent of all relation, of the
+Upanishads;  or as the Paramatman of the Vedanta;  or again as Kanada's
+Adrishta, "the unseen Force," or divine atom;  or as Prakriti, the
+"eternally existing essence," of Kapila--we find in all these impersonal
+universal Principles the latent capability of evolving out of themselves
+"six rays" (the evolver being the seventh).  The third aphorism of the
+Sankhya-Karika, which says of Prakriti that it is the "root and
+substance of all things," and no production, but itself a producer of
+"seven things, which produced by it, become also producers," has a
+purely occult meaning.
+
+What are the "producers" evoluted from this universal root-principle,
+Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated primeval cosmic matter, which evolves
+out of itself consciousness and mind, and is generally called "Prakriti"
+and amulam mulam, "the rootless root," and Aryakta, the "unevolved
+evolver," &c.?  This primordial tattwa or "eternally existing 'that,'"
+the unknown essence, is said to produce as a first producer, 1, Buddhi--
+"intellect"--whether we apply the latter to the 6th macrocosmic or
+microcosmic principle.  This first produced produces in its turn (or is
+the source of) Ahankara, "self-consciousness" and manas "mind."  The
+reader will please always remember that the Mahat or great source of
+these two internal faculties, "Buddhi" per se, can have neither
+self-consciousness nor mind;  viz., the 6th principle in man can preserve
+an essence of personal self-consciousness or "personal individuality" only
+by absorbing within itself its own waters, which have run through that
+finite faculty;  for Ahankara, that is the perception of "I," or the
+sense of one's personal individuality, justly represented by the term
+"Ego-ism," belongs to the second, or rather the third, production out of
+the seven, viz., to the 5th principle, or Manas.  It is the latter which
+draws "as the web issues from the spider" along the thread of Prakriti,
+the "root principle," the four following subtle elementary principles or
+particles--Tanmatras, out of which "third class," the Mahabhutas or the
+gross elementary principles, or rather sarira and rupas, are evolved--
+the kama, linga, Jiva and sthula-sarira.  The three gunas of
+"Prakriti"--the Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas (purity, passionate activity,
+and ignorance or darkness)--spun into a triple-stranded cord or "rope,"
+pass through the seven, or rather six, human principles.
+
+It depends on the 5th--Manas or Ahankara, the "I"--to thin the guna,
+"rope," into one thread--the sattwa;  and thus by becoming one with the
+"unevolved evolver," win immortality or eternal conscious existence.
+Otherwise it will be again resolved into its Mahabhautic essence;  so
+long as the triple-stranded rope is left unstranded, the spirit (the
+divine monad) is bound by the presence of the gunas in the principles
+"like an animal" (purusha pasu).  The spirit, atman or jivatman (the 7th
+and 6th principles), whether of the macro-or microcosm, though bound by
+these gunas during the objective manifestation of universe or man, is
+yet nirguna--i.e., entirely free from them.  Out of the three producers
+or evolvers, Prakriti, Buddhi and Ahankara, it is but the latter that
+can be caught (when man is concerned) and destroyed when personal.  The
+"divine monad" is aguna (devoid of qualities), while Prakriti, once that
+from passive Mula-prakriti it has become avyakta (an active evolver) is
+gunavat--endowed with qualities.  With the latter, Purusha or Atman can
+have nought to do (of course being unable to perceive it in its
+gunuvatic state);  with the former--or Mula-prakriti or undifferentiated
+cosmic essence--it has, since it is one with it and identical.
+
+The Atma Bodha, or "knowledge of soul," a tract written by the great
+Sankaracharya, speaks distinctly of the seven principles in man (see
+14th verse).  They are called therein the five sheaths (panchakosa) in
+which is enclosed the divine monad--the Atman, and Buddhi, the 7th and
+6th principles, or the individuated soul when made distinct (through
+avidya, maya and the gunas) from the supreme soul--Parabrahm.  The 1st
+sheath, called Ananda-maya--the "illusion of supreme bliss"--is the
+manas or fifth principle of the occultists, when united with Buddhi;
+the 2nd sheath is Vjnana-maya-kosa, the case or "envelope of
+self-delusion," the manas when self-deluded into the belief of the
+personal "I," or ego, with its vehicle.  The 3rd, the Mano-maya sheath,
+composed of "illusionary mind" associated with the organs of action and
+will, is the Kamarupa and Linga-sarira combined, producing an illusive
+"I" or Mayavi-rupa.  The 4th sheath is called Prana-maya, "illusionary
+life," our second life principle or jiv, wherein resides life, the
+"breathing" sheath.  The 5th kosa is called Anna-maya, or the sheath
+supported by food--our gross material body.  All these sheaths produce
+other smaller sheaths, or six attributes or qualities each, the seventh
+being always the root sheath;  and the Atman or spirit passing through
+all these subtle ethereal bodies like a thread, is called the
+"thread-soul" or sutratman.
+
+We may conclude with the above demonstration.  Verily the Esoteric
+doctrine may well be called in its turn the "thread-doctrine," since,
+like Sutratman or Pranatman, it passes through and strings together all
+the ancient philosophical religious systems, and, what is more,
+reconciles and explains them.  For though seeming so unlike externally,
+they have but one foundation, and of that the extent, depth, breadth and
+nature are known to those who have become, like the "Wise Men of the
+East," adepts in Occult Science.
+
+--H.P. Blavatsky
+
+
+
+
+Personal and Impersonal God
+
+
+At the outset I shall request my readers (such of them at least as are
+not acquainted with the Cosmological theories of the Idealistic thinkers
+of Europe) to examine John Stuart Mill's Cosmological speculations as
+contained in his examination of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy,
+before attempting to understand the Adwaita doctrine;  and I beg to
+inform them beforehand that in explaining the main principles of the
+said doctrine, I am going to use, as far as it is convenient to do so,
+the phraseology adopted by English psychologists of the Idealistic
+school of thought.  In dealing with the phenomena of our present plane
+of existence John Stuart Mill ultimately came to the conclusion that
+matter, or the so-called external phenomena, are but the creation of our
+mind;  they are the mere appearances of a particular phase of our
+subjective self, and of our thoughts, volitions, sensations and emotions
+which in their totality constitute the basis of that Ego.  Matter then
+is the permanent possibility of sensations, and the so-called Laws of
+matter are, properly speaking, the Laws which govern the succession and
+coexistence of our states of consciousness.  Mill further holds that
+properly speaking there is no noumenal Ego.  The very idea of a mind
+existing separately as an entity, distinct from the states of
+consciousness which are supposed to inhere in it, is in his opinion
+illusory, as the idea of an external object, which is supposed to be
+perceived by our senses.
+
+Thus the ideas of mind and matter, of subject and object, of the Ego and
+external world, are really evolved from the aggregation of our mental
+states which are the only realities so far as we are concerned.
+
+The chain of our mental states or states of consciousness is "a
+double-headed monster," according to Professor Bain, which has two
+distinct aspects, one objective and the other subjective. Mr. Mill has
+paused here, confessing that psychological analysis did not go any
+further; the mysterious link which connects together the train of our
+states of consciousness and gives rise to our Ahankaram in this
+condition of existence, still remains an incomprehensible mystery to
+Western psychologists, though its existence is but dimly perceived in
+the subjective phenomena of memory and expectation.
+
+On the other hand, the great physicists of Europe are gradually coming
+to the conclusion* that mind is the product of matter, or that it is one
+of the attributes of matter in some of its conditions.  It would appear,
+therefore, from the speculations of Western psychologists that matter is
+evolved from mind and that mind is evolved from matter.  These two
+propositions are apparently irreconcilable.
+
+--------
+* See Tyndall's Belfast Address.--S.R.
+--------
+
+Mill and Tyndall have admitted that Western science is yet unable to go
+deeper into the question.  Nor is it likely to solve the mystery
+hereafter, unless it calls Eastern occult science to its aid and takes a
+more comprehensive view of the capabilities of the real subjective self
+of man and the various aspects of the great objective universe.  The
+great Adwaitee philosophers of ancient Aryavarta have examined the
+relationship between subject and object in every condition of existence
+in this solar system in which this differentiation is presented.  Just
+as a human being is composed of seven principles, differentiated matter
+in the solar system exists in seven different conditions.  These
+different states of matter do not all come within the range of our
+present objective consciousness.  But they can be objectively perceived
+by the spiritual Ego in man.  To the liberated spiritual monad of man,
+or to the Dhyan Chohans, every thing that is material in every condition
+of matter is an object of perception.  Further, Pragna or the capacity
+of perception exists in seven different aspects corresponding to the
+seven conditions of matter.  Strictly speaking, there are but six states
+of matter, the so-called seventh state being the aspect of cosmic matter
+in its original undifferentiated condition.  Similarly there are six
+states of differentiated Pragna, the seventh state being a condition of
+perfect unconsciousness.  By differentiated Pragna, I mean the condition
+in which Pragna is split up into various states of consciousness.  Thus
+we have six states of consciousness, either objective or subjective for
+the time being, as the case may be, and a perfect state of
+unconsciousness, which is the beginning and the end of all conceivable
+states of consciousness, corresponding to the states of differentiated
+matter and its original undifferentiated basis which is the beginning
+and the end of all cosmic evolutions.  It will be easily seen that the
+existence of consciousness is necessary for the differentiation between
+subject and object.  Hence these two phases are presented in six
+different conditions, and in the last state there being no consciousness
+as above stated, the differentiation in question ceases to exist.  The
+number of these various conditions is different in different systems of
+philosophy.  But whatever may be the number of divisions, they all lie
+between perfect unconsciousness at one end of the line and our present
+state of consciousness or Bahipragna at the other end.  To understand
+the real nature of these different states of consciousness, I shall
+request my readers to compare the consciousness of the ordinary man with
+the consciousness of the astral man, and again compare the latter with
+the consciousness of the spiritual Ego in man.  In these three
+conditions the objective universe is not the same.  But the difference
+between the Ego and the non-Ego is common to all these conditions.
+Consequently, admitting the correctness of Mill's reasoning as regards
+the subject and object of our present plane of consciousness, the great
+Adwaitee thinkers of India have extended the same reasoning to other
+states of consciousness, and came to the conclusion that the various
+conditions of the Ego and the non-Ego were but the appearances of one
+and the same entity--the ultimate state of unconsciousness.  This entity
+is neither matter nor spirit;  it is neither Ego nor non-Ego;  and it is
+neither object nor subject.  In the language of Hindu philosophers it is
+the original and eternal combination of Purusha and Prakriti.  As the
+Adwaitees hold that an external object is merely the product of our
+mental states, Prakriti is nothing more than illusion, and Purush is the
+only reality;  it is the one existence which remains eternal in this
+universe of Ideas.  This entity then is the Parabrahmam of the
+Adwaitees.  Even if there were to be a personal God with anything like a
+material Upadhi (physical basis of whatever form), from the standpoint
+of an Adwaitee there will be as much reason to doubt his noumenal
+existence as there would be in the case of any other object.  In their
+opinion, a conscious God cannot be the origin of the universe, as his
+Ego would be the effect of a previous cause, if the word conscious
+conveys but its ordinary meaning.  They cannot admit that the grand
+total of all the states of consciousness in the universe is their deity,
+as these states are constantly changing and as cosmic idealism ceases
+during Pralaya.  There is only one permanent condition in the universe
+which is the state of perfect unconsciousness, bare Chidakasam (field of
+consciousness) in fact.
+
+When my readers once realize the fact that this grand universe is in
+reality but a huge aggregation of various states of consciousness, they
+will not be surprised to find that the ultimate state of unconsciousness
+is considered as Parabrahmam by the Adwaitees.
+
+The idea of a God, Deity, Iswar, or an impersonal God (if consciousness
+is one of his attributes) involves the idea of Ego or non-Ego in some
+shape or other, and as every conceivable Ego or non-Ego is evolved from
+this primitive element (I use this word for want of a better one) the
+existence of an extra-cosmic god possessing such attributes prior to
+this condition is absolutely inconceivable.  Though I have been speaking
+of this element as the condition of unconsciousness, it is, properly
+speaking, the Chidakasam or Chinmatra of the Hindu philosophers which
+contains within itself the potentiality of every condition of "Pragna,"
+and which results as consciousness on the one hand and the objective
+universe on the other, by the operation of its latent Chichakti (the
+power which generates thought).
+
+Before proceeding to discuss the nature of Parabrahmam.  It is to be
+stated that in the opinion of Adwaitees, the Upanishads and the
+Brahmasutras fully support their views on the subject. It is distinctly
+affirmed in the Upanishads that Parabrahmam, which is but the bare
+potentiality of Pragna,* is not an aspect of Pragna or Ego in any shape,
+and that it has neither life nor consciousness.  The reader will be able
+to ascertain that such is really the case on examining the Mundaka and
+Mandukya Upanishads.  The language used here and there in the Upanishads
+is apt to mislead one into the belief that such language points to the
+existence of a conscious Iswar.  But the necessity for such language
+will perhaps be rendered clear from the following considerations.
+
+--------
+* The power or the capacity that gives rise to perception.
+--------
+
+From a close examination of Mill's cosmological theory the difficulty
+will be clearly seen referred to above, of satisfactorily accounting for
+the generation of conscious states in any human being from the
+standpoint of the said theory.  It is generally stated that sensations
+arise in us from the action of the external objects around us:  they are
+the effects of impressions made on our senses by the objective world in
+which we exist.  This is simple enough to an ordinary mind, however
+difficult it may be to account for the transformation of a cerebral
+nerve-current into a state of consciousness.
+
+But from the standpoint of Mill's theory we have no proof of the
+existence of any external object;  even the objective existence of our
+own senses is not a matter of certainty to us.  How, then, are we to
+account for and explain the origin of our mental states, if they are the
+only entities existing in this world?  No explanation is really given by
+saying that one mental state gives rise to another mental state, to a
+certain extent at all events, under the operation of the so-called
+psychological "Laws of Association."  Western psychology honestly admits
+that its analysis has not gone any further.  It may be inferred,
+however, from the said theory that there would be no reason for saying
+that a material Upadhi (basis) is necessary for the existence of mind or
+states of consciousness.
+
+As is already indicated, the Aryan psychologists have traced this
+current of mental states to its source--the eternal Chinmatra existing
+everywhere.  When the time for evolution comes this germ of Pragna
+unfolds itself and results ultimately as Cosmic ideation.  Cosmic ideas
+are the conceptions of all the conditions of existence in the Cosmos
+existing in what may be called the universal mind (the demiurgic mind of
+the Western Kabalists).
+
+This Chinmatra exists as it were at every geometrical point of the
+infinite Chidakasam.  This principle then has two general aspects.
+Considered as something objective it is the eternal Asath--Mulaprakriti
+or Undifferentiated Cosmic matter.  From a subjective point of view it
+may be looked upon in two ways.  It is Chidakasam when considered as the
+field of Cosmic ideation; and it is Chinmatra when considered as the
+germ of Cosmic ideation.  These three aspects constitute the highest
+Trinity of the Aryan Adwaitee philosophers.  It will be readily seen
+that the last-mentioned aspect of the principle in question is far more
+important to us than the other two aspects;  for, when looked upon in
+this aspect the principle under consideration seems to embody within
+itself the great Law of Cosmic Evolution. And therefore the Adwaitee
+philosophers have chiefly considered it in this light, and explained
+their cosmogony from a subjective point of view.  In doing so, however,
+they cannot avoid the necessity of speaking of a universal mind (and
+this is Brahma, the Creator) and its ideation.  But it ought not to be
+inferred therefrom that this universal mind necessarily belongs to an
+Omnipresent living conscious Creator, simply because in ordinary
+parlance a mind is always spoken of in connection with a particular
+living being.  It cannot be contended that a material Uphadi is
+indispensable for the existence of mind or mental states when the
+objective universe itself is, so far as we are concerned, the result of
+our states of consciousness. Expressions implying the existence of a
+conscious Iswar which are to be found here and there in the Upanishads
+should not therefore be literally construed.
+
+It now remains to be seen how Adwaitees account for the origin of mental
+states in a particular individual.  Apparently the mind of a particular
+human being is not the universal mind.  Nevertheless Cosmic ideation is
+the real source of the states of consciousness in every individual.
+Cosmic ideation exists everywhere;  but when placed under restrictions
+by a material Upadhi it results as the consciousness of the individual
+inhering in such Upadhi. Strictly speaking, an Adwaitee will not admit
+the objective existence of this material Upadhi.  From his standpoint it
+is Maya or illusion which exists as a necessary condition of Pragna. But
+to avoid confusion, I shall use the ordinary language;  and to enable my
+readers to grasp my meaning clearly the following simile may be adopted.
+Suppose a bright light is placed in the centre with a curtain around it.
+The nature of the light that penetrates through the curtain and becomes
+visible to a person standing outside depends upon the nature of the
+curtain.  If several such curtains are thus successively placed around
+the light, it will have to penetrate through all of them;  and a person
+standing outside will only perceive as much light as is not intercepted
+by all the curtains.  The central light becomes dimmer and dimmer as
+curtain after curtain is placed before the observer;  and as curtain
+after curtain is removed the light becomes brighter and brighter until
+it reaches its natural brilliancy.  Similarly, universal mind or Cosmic
+ideation becomes more and more limited and modified by the various
+Upadhis of which a human being is composed;  and when the action or
+influence of these various Upadhis is successively controlled, the mind
+of the individual human being is placed en rapport with the universal
+mind and his ideation is lost in Cosmic ideation.
+
+As I have already said, these Upadhis are strictly speaking the
+conditions of the gradual development or evolution of Bahipragna--or
+consciousness in the present plane of our existence--from the original
+and eternal Chinmatra, which is the seventh principle in man, and the
+Parabrahmam of the Adwaitees.
+
+This then is the purport of the Adwaitee philosophy on the subject under
+consideration, and it is, in my humble opinion, in harmony with the
+Arhat doctrine relating to the same subject. The latter doctrine
+postulates the existence of Cosmic matter in an undifferentiated
+condition throughout the infinite expanse of space.  Space and time are
+but its aspects, and Purush, the seventh principle of the universe, has
+its latent life in this ocean of Cosmic matter.  The doctrine in
+question explains Cosmogony from an objective point of view.
+
+When the period of activity arrives, portions of the whole differentiate
+according to the latent law.  When this differentiation has commenced,
+the concealed wisdom or latent Chichakti acts in the universal mind, and
+Cosmic energy or Fohat forms the manifested universe in accordance with
+the conceptions generated in the universal mind out of the
+differentiated principles of Cosmic matter.  This manifested universe
+constitutes a solar system. When the period of Pralaya comes, the
+process of differentiation stops and Cosmic ideation ceases to exist;
+and at the time of Brahmapralaya or Mahapralaya the particles of matter
+lose all differentiation, and the matter that exists in the solar system
+returns to its original undifferentiated condition. The latent design
+exists in the one unborn eternal atom, the centre which exists
+everywhere and nowhere;  and this is the one life that exists
+everywhere.  Now, it will be easily seen that the undifferentiated
+Cosmic matter, Purush, and the ONE LIFE of the Arhat philosophers, are
+the Mulaprakriti, Chidakasam, and Chinmatra of the Adwaitee
+philosophers.  As regards Cosmogony, the Arhat standpoint is objective,
+and the Adwaitee standpoint is subjective.  The Arhat Cosmogony accounts
+for the evolution of the manifested solar system from undifferentiated
+Cosmic matter, and Adwaitee Cosmogony accounts for the evolution of
+Bahipragna from the original Chinmatra.  As the different conditions of
+differentiated C osmic matter are but the different aspects of the
+various conditions of Pragna, the Adwaitee Cosmogony is but the
+complement of the Arhat Cosmogony.  The eternal principle is precisely
+the same in both the systems, and they agree in denying the existence of
+an extra-Cosmic God.
+
+The Arhats call themselves Atheists, and they are justified in doing so
+if theism inculcates the existence of a conscious God governing the
+universe by his will-power.  Under such circumstance the Adwaitee will
+come under the same denomination. Atheism and theism are words of
+doubtful import, and until their meaning is definitely ascertained it
+would be better not to use them in connection with any system of
+philosophy.
+
+--T. Subba Row
+
+
+
+
+Prakriti and Parusha
+
+
+Prakriti may be looked upon either as Maya when considered as the Upadhi
+of Parabrahmam or as Avidya when considered as the Upadhi of Jivatma
+(7th principle in man).*  Avidya is ignorance or illusion arising from
+Maya. The term Maya, though sometimes used as a synonym for Avidya, is,
+properly speaking, applicable to Prakriti only.  There is no difference
+between Prakriti, Maya and Sakti;  and the ancient Hindu philosophers
+made no distinction whatsoever between Matter and Force.  In support of
+these assertions I may refer the learned hermit to "Swetaswatara
+Upanishad" and its commentary by Sankaracharya.  In case we adopt the
+fourfold division of the Adwaitee philosophers, it will be clearly seen
+that Jagrata,* Swapna* and Sushupti Avasthas* are the results of Avidya,
+and that Vyswanara,* Hiranyagarbha* and Sutratma* are the manifestations
+of Parabrahmam in Maya or Prakriti.  In drawing a distinction between
+Avidya and Prakriti, I am merely following the authority of all the
+great Adwaitee philosophers of Aryavarta.  It will be sufficient for me
+to refer to the first chapter of the celebrated Vidantic treatise, the
+Panchadasi.
+
+----------
+* Upadhi--vehicle.
+
+Jagrata--waking state, or a condition of external perception.
+
+Swapna--dreamy state, or a condition of clairvoyance in the astral
+plane.
+
+Sushupti--a state of extasis;  and Avastas--states or conditions of
+Pragna.
+
+Vyswanara--the magnetic fire that pervades the manifested solar system--
+the root objective aspect of the ONE LIFE.
+
+Hiranyagarbha--the one life as manifested in the plane of astral Light.
+
+Sutratma--the Eternal germ of the manifested universe existing in the
+field of Mulaprakriti.
+---------
+
+In truth, Prakriti and Purusha are but the two aspects of the same ONE
+REALITY.  As our great Sankaracharya truly observes at the close of his
+commentary on the 23rd Sutra of the first chapter of the Brahma sutras,
+"Parabrahmam is Karta (Purush), as there is no other Adhishtatha,* and
+Parabrahmam is Prakriti, there being no other Upadanam."  This sentence
+clearly indicates the relation between "the One Life" and "the One
+Element" of the Arha-philosophers.  This will elucidate the meaning of
+the statement so often quoted by Adwaitees--"Sarvam Khalvitham Brahma"
+** and also of what is meant by saying that Brahmam is the Upadanakarnam
+(material cause) of the Universe.
+
+--T Subba Row
+
+---------
+* Adishtatha--that which inheres in another principle--the active agent
+working in Prakriti.
+
+** Everything in the universe is Brahma.
+---------
+
+
+
+
+Morality and Pantheism
+
+
+Questions have been raised in several quarters as to the inefficiency of
+Pantheism (which term is intended to include Esoteric Buddhism, Adwaitee
+Vedantism, and other similar religious systems) to supply a sound basis
+of morality.
+
+The philosophical assimilation of meum and teum, it is urged, must of
+necessity be followed by their practical confusion, resulting in the
+sanction of cruelty, robbery, &c.  This line of argument points,
+however, most unmistakably to the co-existence of the objection with an
+all but utter ignorance of the systems objected to, in the critic's
+mind, as we shall show by-and-by. The ultimate sanction of morality, as
+is well known, is derived from a desire for the attainment of happiness
+and escape from misery.  But schools differ in their estimate of
+happiness. Exoteric religions base their morality on the hope of reward
+and fear of punishment at the hands of an Omnipotent Ruler of the
+Universe by following the rules he has at his pleasure laid down for the
+obedience of his helpless subjects;  in some cases, however, religions
+of later growth have made morality to depend on the sentiment of
+gratitude to that Ruler for benefits received.  The worthlessness, not
+to speak of the mischievousness, of such systems of morality is almost
+self-evident.  As a type of morality founded on hope and fear, we shall
+take an instance from the Christian Bible:  "He that giveth to the poor
+lendeth to the Lord."  The duty of supporting the poor is here made to
+depend upon prudential motives of laying by for a time when the "giver
+to the poor" will be incapable of taking care of himself.  But the
+Mahabharata says that "He that desireth a return for his good deeds
+loseth all merit;  he is like a merchant bartering his goods."  The true
+springs of morality lose their elasticity under the pressure of such
+criminal selfishness;  all pure and unselfish natures will fly away from
+it in disgust.
+
+To avoid such consequences attempts have been made by some recent
+reformers of religion to establish morality upon the sentiment of
+gratitude to the Lord.  But it requires no deep consideration to find
+that, in their endeavours to shift the basis of morality, these
+reformers have rendered morality entirely baseless.  A man has to do
+what is represented to be a thing "dear unto the Lord" out of gratitude
+for the many blessings He has heaped upon him. But as a matter of fact
+he finds that the Lord has heaped upon him curses as well as blessings.
+A helpless orphan is expected to be grateful to him for having removed
+the props of his life, his parents, because he is told in consolation
+that such a calamity is but apparently an evil, but in reality the
+All-Merciful has underneath it hidden the greatest possible good. With
+equal reason might a preacher of the Avenging Ahriman exhort men to
+believe that under the apparent blessings of the "Merciful" Father there
+lurks the serpent of evil.
+
+The modern Utilitarians, though the range of their vision is so narrow,
+have sterner logic in their teachings.  That which tends to a man's
+happiness is good, and must be followed, and the contrary shunned as
+evil.  So far so good.  But the practical application of the doctrine is
+fraught with mischief.  Cribbed, cabined, and confined, by rank
+Materialism, within the short space between birth and death, the
+Utilitarians' scheme of happiness is merely a deformed torso, which
+cannot certainly be considered as the fair goddess of our devotion.
+
+The only scientific basis of morality is to be sought for in the
+soul-consoling doctrines of Lord Buddha or Sri Sankaracharya. The
+starting-point of the "pantheistic" (we use the word for want of a better
+one) system of morality is a clear perception of the unity of the one
+energy operating in the manifested Cosmos, the grand result which it is
+incessantly striving to produce, and the affinity of the immortal human
+spirit and its latent powers with that energy, and its capacity to
+cooperate with the one life in achieving its mighty object.
+
+Now knowledge or jnanam is divided into two classes by Adwaitee
+philosophers--Paroksha and Aparoksha.  The former kind of knowledge
+consists in intellectual assent to a stated proposition, the latter in
+the actual realization of it.  The object which a Buddhist or Adwaitee
+Yogi sets before himself is the realization of the oneness of existence,
+and the practice of morality is the most powerful means to that end, as
+we proceed to show.  The principal obstacle to the realization of this
+oneness is the inborn habit of man of always placing himself at the
+centre of the Universe.  Whatever a man might act, think, or feel, the
+irrepressible personality is sure to be the central figure.  This, as
+will appear on reflection, is that which prevents every individual from
+filling his proper sphere in existence, where he only is exactly in
+place and no other individual is.  The realization of this harmony is
+the practical or objective aspect of the GRAND PROBLEM.  And the
+practice of morality is the effort to find out this sphere;  morality,
+indeed, is the Ariadne's clue in the Cretan labyrinth in which man is
+placed.  From the study of the sacred philosophy preached by Lord Buddha
+or Sri Sankara, paroksha knowledge (or shall we say belief?), in the
+unity of existence is derived, but without the practice of morality that
+knowledge cannot be converted into the highest kind of knowledge, or
+aproksha jnanam, and thus lead to the attainment of mukti.  It availeth
+naught to intellectually grasp the notion of your being everything and
+Brahma, if it is not realized in practical acts of life.  To confuse
+meum and teum in the vulgar sense is but to destroy the harmony of
+existence by a false assertion of "I," and is as foolish as the anxiety
+to nourish the legs at the expense of the arms.  You cannot be one with
+all, unless all your acts, thoughts, and feelings synchronize with the
+onward march of Nature.  What is meant by the Brahmajnani being beyond
+the reach of Karma, can be fully realized only by a man who has found
+out his exact position in harmony with the One Life in Nature;  that man
+sees how a Brahmajnani can act only in unison with Nature, and never in
+discord with it:  to use the phraseology of ancient writers on
+Occultism, a Brahmajnani is a real "co-worker with Nature."  Not only
+European Sanskritists, but also exoteric Yogis, fall into the grievous
+mistake of supposing that, in the opinion of our sacred writers, a human
+being can escape the operation of the law of Karma by adopting a
+condition of masterly inactivity, entirely losing sight of the fact that
+even a rigid abstinence from physical acts does not produce inactivity
+on the higher astral and spiritual planes.  Sri Sankara has very
+conclusively proved, in his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, that such
+a supposition is nothing short of a delusion.  The great teacher shows
+there that forcibly repressing the physical body from working does not
+free one from vasana or vritti--the inherent inclination of the mind to
+work.  There is a tendency, in every department of Nature, for an act to
+repeat itself;  the Karma acquired in the last preceding birth is always
+trying to forge fresh links in the chain, and thereby lead to continued
+material existence;--and this tendency can only be counteracted by
+unselfishly performing all the duties appertaining to the sphere in
+which a person is born;  such a course alone can produce chitta suddhi,
+(purification of the mind), without which the capacity of perceiving
+spiritual truths can never be acquired.
+
+A few words must here be said about the physical inactivity of the Yogi
+or the Mahatma.  Inactivity of the physical body (sthula sarira) does
+not indicate a condition of inactivity either on the astral or the
+spiritual plane of action.  The human spirit is in its highest state of
+activity in samadhi, (highest trance) and not, as is generally supposed,
+in a dormant, quiescent condition. And, moreover, it will be easily
+seen, by any one who examines the nature of occult dynamics, that a
+given amount of energy expended on the spiritual or astral plane is
+productive of far greater results than the same amount expended on the
+physical objective plane of existence.  When an Adept has placed himself
+en rapport with the universal mind he becomes a real power in Nature.
+Even on the objective plane of existence the difference between brain
+and muscular energy, in their capacity of producing widespread and
+far-reaching results, can he very easily perceived.  The amount of
+physical energy expended by the discoverer of the steam-engine might not
+have been more than that expended by a hardworking day-labourer.  But
+the practical results of the labourer's work can never be compared with
+the results achieved by the discovery of the steam-engine. Similarly,
+the ultimate effects of spiritual energy are infinitely greater than
+those of intellectual energy.
+
+From the above considerations it is abundantly clear that the initiatory
+training of a true Vedantin Raj Yogi must be the nourishing of a
+sleepless and ardent desire of doing all in his power for the good of
+mankind on the ordinary physical plane, his activity being transferred,
+however, to the higher astral and spiritual planes as his development
+proceeds.  In course of time, as the Truth becomes realized, the
+situation is rendered quite clear to the Yogi, and he is placed beyond
+the criticism of any ordinary man.  The Mahanirvan Tantra says:--
+
+     Charanti trigunatite ko vidhir ko ishedhava.
+
+"For one, walking beyond the three gunas--Satva (feeling of
+gratification), Rajas (passional activity) and Tamas (inertness)--what
+injunction or what restriction is there?"--in the consideration of men,
+walled in on all sides by the objective plane of existence.  This does
+not mean that a Mahatma can or will ever neglect the laws of morality,
+but that he, having unified his individual nature with Great Nature
+herself, is constitutionally incapable of violating any one of the laws
+of nature, and no man can constitute himself a judge of the conduct of
+the Great one without knowing the laws of all the planes of Nature's
+activity.  (As honest men are  honest without the least consideration of
+the) criminal law, so a Mahatma is moral without reference to the laws
+of morality.
+
+These are, however, sublime topics:  we shall before conclusion notice
+some other considerations which lead the ordinary "pantheist" to the
+true foundation of morality.  Happiness has been defined by John Stuart
+Mill as the state of absence of opposition.  Manu gives the definition
+in more forcible terms:
+
+     Sarvam paravasam duhkham
+     Sarva matmavasam sukham
+     Idam jnayo samasena
+     Lakshanam sukhaduhkhayo.
+
+"Every kind of subjugation to another is pain, and subjugation to one's
+self is happiness:  in brief, this is to be known as the characteristic
+marks of the two."  Now, it is universally admitted that the whole
+system of Nature is moving in a particular direction, and this
+direction, we are taught, is determined by the composition of two
+forces--namely, the one acting from that pole of existence ordinarily
+called "matter" towards the other pole called "spirit," and the other in
+the opposite direction.  The very fact that Nature is moving shows that
+these two forces are not equal in magnitude.  The plane on which the
+activity of the first force predominates is called in occult treatises
+the "ascending arc," and the corresponding plane of the activity of the
+other force is styled the "descending arc."  A little reflection will
+show that the work of evolution begins on the descending arc and works
+its way upwards through the ascending arc.  From this it follows that
+the force directed towards spirit is the one which must, though not
+without hard struggle, ultimately prevail.  This is the great directing
+energy of Nature, and, although disturbed by the operation of the
+antagonistic force, it is this that gives the law to her;  the other is
+merely its negative aspect, for convenience regarded as a separate
+agent.  If an individual attempts to move in a direction other than that
+in which Nature is moving, that individual is sure to be crushed, sooner
+or later, by the enormous pressure of the opposing force.  We need not
+say that such a result would be the very reverse of pleasurable.  The
+only way, therefore, in which happiness might be attained is by merging
+one's nature in great Mother Nature, and following the direction in
+which she herself is moving:  this again can only be accomplished by
+assimilating men's individual conduct with the triumphant force of
+Nature, the other force being always overcome with terrific
+catastrophes.  The effort to assimilate the individual with the
+universal law is popularly known as the practice of morality.  Obedience
+to this universal law, after ascertaining it, is true religion, which
+has been defined by Lord Buddha "as the realization of the True."
+
+An example will serve to illustrate the position.  Can a practical
+pantheist, or, in other words, an occultist, utter a falsehood?  Now, it
+will be readily admitted that life manifests itself by the power of
+acquiring sensation, temporary dormancy of that power being suspended
+animation.  If a man receives a particular series of sensations and
+pretends they are other than they really are, the result is that he
+exercises his will-power in opposition to a law of Nature on which, as
+we have shown, life depends, and thereby becomes suicide on a minor
+scale.  Space prevents further discussion, but all the ten deadly sins
+mentioned by Manu and Buddha can be satisfactorily dealt with in the
+light sought to be focused here.
+
+--Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+
+
+Occult Study
+
+
+The practical bearing of occult teaching on ordinary life is very
+variously interpreted by different students of the subject.  For many
+Western readers of recent books on the esoteric doctrine, it even seems
+doubtful whether the teaching has any bearing on practical life at all.
+The proposal which it is supposed sometimes to convey, that all earnest
+inquirers should put themselves under the severe ascetic regimen
+followed by its regular Oriental disciples, is felt to embody a strain
+on the habits of modern civilization which only a few enthusiasts will
+be prepared to encounter.  The mere intellectual charm of an intricate
+philosophy may indeed be enough to recommend the study to some minds,
+but a scheme of teaching that offers itself as a substitute for
+religious faith of the usual kind will be expected to yield some
+tangible results in regard to the future spiritual well-being of those
+who adopt it.  Has occult philosophy nothing to give except to those who
+are in a position and willing to make a sacrifice in its behalf of all
+other objects in life?  In that case it would indeed be useless to bring
+it out into the world. In reality the esoteric doctrine affords an
+almost infinite variety of opportunities for spiritual development, and
+no greater mistake could be made in connection with the present movement
+than to suppose the teaching of the Adepts merely addressed to persons
+capable of heroic self-devotion.  Assuredly it does not discourage
+efforts in the direction of the highest achievement of occult progress,
+if any Western occultists may feel disposed to make them;  but it is
+important for us all to keep clearly in view the lower range of
+possibilities connected with humbler aspirations.
+
+I believe it to be absolutely true that even the slightest attention
+seriously paid to the instructions now emanating from the Indian Adepts
+will generate results within the spiritual principles of those who
+render it--causes capable of producing appreciable consequences in a
+future state of existence.  Any one who has sufficiently examined the
+doctrine of Devachan will readily follow the idea, for the nature of the
+spiritual existence which in the ordinary course of things must succeed
+each physical life, provides for the very considerable expansion of any
+aspirations towards real knowledge that may be set going on earth.  I
+will recur to this point directly, when I have made clearer the general
+drift of the argument I am trying to unfold. At the one end of the scale
+of possibilities connected with occult study lies the supreme
+development of Adeptship;  an achievement which means that the person
+reaching it has so violently stimulated his spiritual growth within a
+short period, as to have anticipated processes on which Nature, in her
+own deliberate way, would have spent a great procession of ages.  At the
+other end of the scale lies the small result to which I have just
+alluded--a result which may rather be said to establish a tendency in
+the direction of spiritual achievement than to embody such achievement.
+But between these two widely different results there is no hard and fast
+line that can be drawn at any place to make a distinct separation in the
+character of the consequences ensuing from devotion to occult pursuits.
+As the darkness of blackest night gives way by imperceptible degrees to
+the illumination of the brightest sunrise, so the spiritual consequences
+of emerging from the apathy either of pure materialism or of dull
+acquiescence in unreasonable dogmas, brighten by imperceptible degrees
+from the faintest traces of Devachanic improvement into the full blaze
+of the highest perfection human nature can attain.  Without assuming
+that the course of Nature which prescribes for each human Ego successive
+physical lives and successive periods of spiritual refreshment--without
+supposing that this course is altered by such moderate devotion to
+occult study as is compatible with the ordinary conditions of European
+life, it will nevertheless be seen how vast the consequences may
+ultimately be of impressing on that career of evolution a distinct
+tendency in the direction of supreme enlightenment, of that result which
+is described as the union of the individual soul with universal spirit.
+
+The explanations of the esoteric doctrine which have been publicly
+given, have shown that humanity in the mass has now attained a stage in
+the great evolutionary cycle from which it has the opportunity of
+growing upward towards final perfection. In the mass it is, of course,
+unlikely that it will travel that road:  final perfection is not a gift
+to be bestowed upon all, but to be worked for by those who desire it.
+It may be put within the theoretical reach of all;  there may be no
+human creature living at this moment, of whom it can be said that the
+highest possibilities of Nature are impossible of attainment, but it
+does not follow by any means that every individual will attain the
+highest possibilities.  Regarding each individual as one of the seeds of
+a great flower which throws out thousands of seeds, it is manifest that
+only a few, relatively to the great number, will become fully developed
+flowers in their turn.  No unjust neglect awaits the majority.  For each
+and every one the consequences of the remote future will be precisely
+proportioned to the aptitudes he develops, but only those can reach the
+goal who, with persistent effort carried out through a long series of
+lives, differentiate themselves in a marked degree from the general
+multitude.  Now, that persistent effort must have a beginning, and
+granted the beginning, the persistence is not improbable.  Within our
+own observation of ordinary life, good habits, even though they may not
+be so readily formed as bad ones, are not difficult to maintain in
+proportion to the difficulty of their commencement.  For a moment it may
+be asked how this may be applied to a succession of lives separate from
+each other by a total oblivion of their details;  but it really applies
+as directly to the succession of lives as to the succession of days
+within one life, which are separated from each other by as many nights.
+The certain operation of those affinities in the individual Ego which
+are collectively described in the esoteric doctrine by the word Karma,
+must operate to pick up the old habits of character and thought, as life
+after life comes round, with the same certainty that the thread of
+memory in a living brain recovers, day after day, the impressions of
+those that have gone before.  Whether a moral habit is thus deliberately
+engendered by an occult student in order that it may propagate itself
+through future ages, or whether it merely arises from unintelligent
+aspirations towards good, which happily for mankind are more widely
+spread than occult study as yet, the way it works in each case is the
+same.  The unintelligent aspiration towards goodness propagates itself
+and leads to good lives in the future;  the intelligent aspiration
+propagates itself in the same way plus the propagation of intelligence;
+and this distinction shows the gulf of difference which may exist
+between the growth of a human soul which merely drifts along the stream
+of time, and that of one which is consciously steered by an intelligent
+purpose throughout.  The human Ego which acquires the habit of seeking
+for knowledge becomes invested, life after life, with the qualifications
+which ensure the success of such a search, until the final success,
+achieved at some critical period of its existence, carries it right up
+into the company of those perfected Egos which are the fully developed
+flowers only expected, according to our first metaphor, from a few of
+the thousand seeds.  Now, it is clear that a slight impulse in a given
+direction, even on the physical plane does not produce the same effect
+as a stronger one;  so, exactly in this matter of engendering habits
+required to persist in their operation through a succession of lives, it
+is quite obvious that the strong impulse of a very ardent aspiration
+towards knowledge will be more likely than a weaker one to triumph over
+the so called accidents of Nature.
+
+This consideration brings us to the question of those habits in life
+which are more immediately associated in the popular views of the matter
+with the pursuit of occult science.  It will be quite plain that the
+generation within his own nature by an occult student of affinities in
+the direction of spiritual progress, is a matter which has little if
+anything to do with the outer circumstances of his daily life.  It
+cannot be dissociated from what may be called the outer circumstances of
+his moral life, for an occult student, whose moral nature is consciously
+ignoble, and who combines the pursuit of knowledge with the practice of
+wrong, becomes by that condition of things a student of sorcery rather
+than of true occultism--a candidate for satanic evolution instead of
+perfection.  But at the same time the physical habits of life may be
+quite the reverse of ascetic, while all the while the thinking processes
+of the intellectual life are developing affinities which cannot fail in
+the results just seen to produce large ulterior consequences.  Some
+misconception is very apt to arise here from the way in which frequent
+reference is made to the ascetic habits of those who purpose to become
+the regular chelas of Oriental Adepts.  It is supposed that what is
+practiced by the Master is necessarily recommended for all his pupils.
+Now this is far from being the case as regards the miscellaneous pupils
+who are gathering round the occult teachers lately become known to
+public report. Certainly even in reference to their miscellaneous pupils
+the Adepts would not discountenance asceticism.  As we saw just now,
+there is no hard line drawn across the scale on which are defined the
+varying consequences of occult study in all its varying degrees of
+intensity--so with ascetic practice, from the slightest habits of
+self-denial, which may engender a preference for spiritual over material
+gratification, up to the very largest developments of asceticism
+required as a passport to chelaship, no such practices can be quite
+without their consequences in the all-embracing records of Karma.  But,
+broadly speaking, asceticism belongs to that species of effort which
+aims at personal chelaship, and that which contemplates the patient
+development of spiritual growth along the slow track of natural
+evolution claims no more, broadly speaking, than intellectual
+application.  All that is asserted in regard to the opening now offered
+to those who have taken notice of the present opportunity, is, that they
+may now give their own evolution an impulse which they may not again
+have an opportunity of giving it with the same advantage to themselves
+if the present opportunity is thrown aside.  True, it is most unlikely
+that any one advancing through Nature, life after life, under the
+direction of a fairly creditable Karma, will go on always without
+meeting sooner or later with the ideas that occult study implants.  So
+that the occultist does not threaten those who turn aside from his
+teachings with any consequences that must necessarily be disastrous.
+
+He only says that those who listen to them must necessarily derive
+advantage from so doing in exact proportion to the zeal with which they
+undertake the study and the purity of motive with which they promote it
+in others.
+
+Nor must it be supposed that those which have here been described as the
+lower range of possibilities in connection with occult study, are a mere
+fringe upon the higher possibilities, to be regarded as a relatively
+poor compensation accorded to those who do not feel equal to offering
+themselves for probation as regular chelas.  It would be a grave
+misconception of the purpose with which the present stream of occult
+teaching has been poured into the world, if we were to think it a
+universal incitement to that course of action.  It may be hazardous for
+any of us who are not initiates to speak with entire confidence of the
+intention of the Adepts, but all the external facts concerned with the
+growth and development of the Theosophical Society, show its purpose to
+be more directly related to the cultivation of spiritual aspirations
+over a wide area, than to the excitement of these with supreme intensity
+in individuals.  There are considerations, indeed, which may almost be
+said to debar the Adepts from ever doing anything to encourage persons
+in whom this supreme intensity of excitement is possible, to take the
+very serious step of offering themselves as chelas.  Directly that by
+doing this a man renders himself a candidate for something more than the
+maximum advantages that can flow to him through the operation of natural
+laws--directly that in this way he claims to anticipate the most
+favourable course of Nature and to approach high perfection by violent
+and artificial processes, he at once puts himself in presence of many
+dangers which would never beset him if he contented himself with a
+favourable natural growth.  It appears to be always a matter of grave
+consideration with the Adepts whether they will take the responsibility
+of encouraging any person who may not have it in him to succeed, to
+expose himself to these dangers.  For any one who is determined to face
+them and is permitted to do so, the considerations put forward above in
+regard to the optional character of personal physical training fall to
+the ground.  Those ascetic practices which a candidate for nothing more
+than the best natural evolution may undertake if he chooses, with the
+view of emphasizing his spiritual Karma to the utmost, become a sine qua
+non in regard to the very first step of his progress.  But with such
+progress the present explanation is not specially concerned.  Its
+purpose has been to show the beneficial effects which may flow to
+ordinary people living ordinary lives, from even that moderate devotion
+to occult philosophy which is compatible with such ordinary lives, and
+to guard against the very erroneous belief that occult science is a
+pursuit in which it is not worth while to engage, unless Adeptship is
+held out to the student as its ultimate result.
+
+--Lay Chela
+
+
+
+
+Some Inquiries Suggested by Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism"
+
+
+The object of the following paper is to submit certain questions which
+have occurred to some English readers of "Esoteric Buddhism."  We have
+had the great advantage of hearing Mr. Sinnett himself explain many
+points which perplexed us;  and it is with his sanction that we now
+venture to ask that such light as is permissible may be thrown upon some
+difficulties which, so far as we can discover, remain as yet unsolved.
+We have refrained from asking questions on subjects on which we
+understand that the Adepts forbid inquiry, and we respectfully hope
+that, as we approach the subject with a genuine wish to arrive at all
+the truth possible to us, our perplexities may be thought worthy of an
+authorized solution.
+
+We begin, then, with some obvious scientific difficulties.
+
+1.  Is the Nebular Theory, as generally held, denied by the Adepts?  It
+seems hard to conceive of the alternate evolution from the sun's central
+mass of planets, some of them visible and heavy, others invisible,--and
+apparently without weight, as they have no influence on the movements of
+the visible planets.
+
+2.  And, further, the time necessary for the manvantara even of one
+planetary chain, much more of all seven, seems largely to exceed the
+probable time during which the sun can retain heat, if it is merely a
+cooling mass, which derives no important accession of heat from without.
+Is some other view as regards the maintenance of the sun's heat held by
+the Adepts?
+
+3.  The different races which succeed each other on the earth are said
+to be separated by catastrophes, among which continental subsidences
+occupy a prominent place.  Is it meant that these subsidences are so
+sudden and unforeseen as to sweep away great nations in an hour?  Or, if
+not, how is it that no appreciable trace is left of such high
+civilizations as are described in the past?  Is it supposed that our
+present European civilization, with its offshoots all over the globe,
+can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration which leaves life
+still existing on the earth?  Are our existing arts and languages doomed
+to perish? or was it only the earlier races who were thus profoundly
+disjoined from one another?
+
+4.  The moon is said to be the scene of a life even more immersed in
+matter than the life on earth.  Are there then material organizations
+living there?  If so, how do they dispense with air and water, and how
+is it that our telescopes discern no trace of their works?  We should
+much like a fuller account of the Adepts' view of the moon, as so much
+is already known of her material conditions that further knowledge could
+be more easily adjusted than in the case (for instance) of planets
+wholly invisible.
+
+5.  Is the expression "a mineral monad" authorized by the Adepts? If so,
+what relation does the monad bear to the atom, or the molecule, of
+ordinary scientific hypothesis?  And does each mineral monad eventually
+become a vegetable monad, and then at last a human being?  Turning now
+to some historical difficulties, we would ask as follows:--
+
+6. Is there not some confusion in the letter quoted on p. 62 of
+"Esoteric Buddhism," where "the old Greeks and Romans" are said to have
+been Atlanteans?  The Greeks and Romans were surely Aryans, like the
+Adepts and ourselves:  their language being, as one may say,
+intermediate between Sanscrit and modern European dialects.
+
+7.  Buddha's birth is placed (on p. 141) in the year 643 B.C.. Is this
+date given by the Adepts as undoubtedly correct?  Have they any view as
+to the new inscriptions of Asoka (as given by General A. Cunningham,
+"Corpus Inscriptionum Indicanum," vol. I. pp. 20-23), on the strength of
+which Buddha's Nirvana is placed by Barth ("Religions of India," p.
+106), &c., about 476 B.C., and his birth therefore at about 556 B.C.?
+It would be exceedingly interesting if the Adepts would give a sketch
+however brief of the history of India in those centuries with authentic
+dates.
+
+8. Sankaracharya's date is variously given by Orientalists, but always
+after Christ.  Barth, for instance, places him about 788 A.D.  In
+"Esoteric Buddhism" he is made to succeed Buddha almost immediately (p.
+149).  Can this discrepancy be explained?  Has not Sankaracharya been
+usually classed as Vishnuite in his teaching?  And similarly has not
+Gaudapada been accounted a Sivite?  and placed much later than "Esoteric
+Buddhism" (p.147) places him?  We would willingly pursue this line of
+inquiry, but think it best to wait and see to what extent the Adepts may
+be willing to clear up some of the problems in Indian religious history
+on which, as it would seem, they must surely possess knowledge which
+might be communicated to lay students without indiscretion.
+
+We pass on to some points beyond the ordinary range of science or
+history on which we should be very glad to hear more, if possible.
+
+9. We should like to understand more clearly the nature of the
+subjective intercourse with beloved souls enjoyed in Devachan. Say, for
+instance, that I die and leave on earth some young children.  Are these
+children present to my consciousness in Devachan still as children?  Do
+I imagine that they have died when I died? or do I merely imagine them
+as adult without knowing their life-history? or do I miss them from
+Devachan until they do actually die, and then hear from them their
+life-history as it has proceeded between my death and theirs?
+
+10.  We do not quite understand the amount of reminiscence attained at
+various points in the soul's progress.  Do the Adepts, who, we presume,
+are equivalent to sixth rounders, recollect their previous incarnations?
+Do all souls which live on into the sixth round attain this power of
+remembrance? or does the Devachan, at the end of each round bring a
+recollection of all the Devachans, or of all the incarnations, which
+have formed a part of that particular round?  And does reminiscence
+carry with it the power of so arranging future incarnations as still to
+remain in company with some chosen soul or group of souls?
+
+We have many more questions to ask, but we scruple to intrude further.
+And I will conclude here by repeating the remark with which we are most
+often met when we speak of the Adepts to English friends.  We find that
+our friends do not often ask for so-called miracles or marvels to prove
+the genuineness of the Adepts' powers.  But they ask why the Adepts will
+not give some proof--not necessarily that they are far beyond us, but
+that their knowledge does at least equal our own in the familiar and
+definite tracks which Western science has worn for itself.  A few
+pregnant remarks on Chemistry,--the announcement of a new electrical
+law, capable of experimental verification--some such communication as
+this (our interlocutors say), would arrest attention, command respect,
+and give a weight and prestige to the higher teaching which, so long as
+it remains in a region wholly unverifiable, it can scarcely acquire.
+
+We gratefully recognize the very acceptable choice which the Adepts have
+made in selecting Mr. Sinnett as the intermediary between us and them.
+They could hardly have chosen any one more congenial to our Western
+minds:--whether we consider the clearness of his written style, the
+urbanity of his verbal expositions, or the earnest sincerity of his
+convictions.  Since they have thus far met our peculiar needs with such
+considerate judgment, we cannot but hope that they may find themselves
+able yet further to adapt their modes of teaching to the requirements of
+Occidental thought.
+
+--An English F.T.S.
+London, July 1883.
+
+
+
+Reply to an English F.T.S
+
+
+Answers
+
+It was not in contemplation, at the outset of the work begun in
+Fragments, to deal as fully with the scientific problems of cosmic
+evolution as now seems expected.  A distinct promise was made, as Mr.
+Sinnett is well aware, to acquaint the readers with the outlines of
+Esoteric doctrines and--no more.  A good deal would be given, much more
+kept back.
+
+This seeming unwillingness to share with the world some of Nature's
+secrets that may have come into the possession of the few, arises from
+causes quite different from the one generally assigned.  It is not
+SELFISHNESS erecting a Chinese wall between occult science and those who
+would know more of it, without making any distinction between the simply
+curious profane, and the earnest, ardent seeker after truth.  Wrong and
+unjust are those who think so;  who attribute to indifference for other
+people's welfare a policy necessitated, on the contrary, by a far-seeing
+universal philanthropy;  who accuse the custodians of lofty physical and
+spiritual though long rejected truths, of holding them high above the
+people's heads.  In truth, the inability to reach them lies entirely
+with the seekers.  Indeed, the chief reason among many others for such a
+reticence, at any rate, with regard to secrets pertaining to physical
+sciences--is to be sought elsewhere.*  It rests entirely on the
+impossibility of imparting that the nature of which is at the present
+stage of the world's development, beyond the comprehension of the
+would-be learners, however intellectual and however scientifically
+trained may be the latter.  This tremendous difficulty is now explained
+to the few, who, besides having read "Esoteric Buddhism," have studied
+and understood the several occult axioms approached in it.  It is safe
+to say that it will not be even vaguely realized by the general reader,
+but will offer the pretext for sheer abuse.  Nay, it has already.
+
+-------
+* Needless to remind AN ENGLISH F.T.S. that what is said here, applies
+only to secrets the nature of which when revealed will not be turned
+into a weapon against humanity in general, or its units--men.  Secrets
+of such class could not be given to any one but a regular chela of many
+years' standing and during his successive initiations;  mankind as a
+whole has first to come of age, to reach its majority, which will happen
+but toward the beginning of its sixth race--before such mysteries can be
+safely revealed to it.  The vril is not altogether a fiction, as some
+chelas and even "lay" chelas know.
+---------
+
+It is simply that the gradual development of man's seven principles and
+physical senses has to be coincident and on parallel lines with Rounds
+and Root-races.  Our fifth race has so far developed but its five
+senses.  Now, if the Kama or Will-principle of the "Fourth-rounders" has
+already reached that stage of its evolution when the automatic acts, the
+unmotivated instincts and impulses of its childhood and youth, instead
+of following external stimuli, will have become acts of will framed
+constantly in conjunction with the mind (Manas), thus making of every
+man on earth of that race a free agent, a fully responsible being--the
+Kama of our hardly adult fifth race is only slowly approaching it.  As
+to the sixth sense of this, our race, it has hardly sprouted above the
+soil of its materiality.  It is highly unreasonable, therefore, to
+expect for the men of the fifth to sense the nature and essence of that
+which will be fully sensed and perceived but by the sixth--let alone the
+seventh race--i.e., to enjoy the legitimate outgrowth of the evolution
+and endowments of the future races with only the help of our present
+limited senses.  The exceptions to this quasi-universal rule have been
+hitherto found only in some rare cases of constitutional, abnormally
+precocious individual evolutions;  or, in such, where by early training
+and special methods, reaching the stage of the fifth rounders, some men
+in addition to the natural gift of the latter have fully developed (by
+certain occult methods) their sixth, and in still rarer cases their
+seventh, sense.  As an instance of the former class may be cited the
+Seeress of Prevorst;  a creature born out of time, a rare precocious
+growth, ill adapted to the uncongenial atmosphere that surrounded her,
+hence a martyr ever ailing and sickly.  As an example of the other, the
+Count St. Germain may be mentioned.  Apace with the anthropological and
+physiological development of man runs his spiritual evolution.  To the
+latter, purely intellectual growth is often more an impediment than a
+help.  An instance:  radiant stuff--"the fourth state of matter"--has
+been hardly discovered, and no one--the eminent discoverer himself not
+excepted--has yet any idea of its full importance, its possibilities,
+its connection with physical phenomena, or even its bearing upon the
+most puzzling scientific problems.  How then can any "Adept" attempt to
+prove the fallacy of much that is predicated in the nebular and solar
+theories when the only means by which he could successfully prove his
+position is an appeal to, and the exhibition of, that sixth sense--
+consciousness which the physicist cannot postulate?  Is not this plain?
+
+Thus, the obstacle is not that the "Adepts" would "forbid inquiry," but
+rather the personal, present limitations of the senses of the average,
+and even of the scientific man.  To undertake the explanation of that
+which at the outset would be rejected as a physical impossibility, the
+outcome of hallucination, is unwise and even harmful, because premature.
+It is in consequence of such difficulties that the psychic production of
+physical phenomena--save in exceptional cases--is strictly forbidden.
+
+And now, "Adepts" are asked to meddle with astronomy--a science which,
+of all the branches of human knowledge has yielded the most accurate
+information, afforded the most mathematically correct data, and of the
+achievements in which the men of science feel the most justly proud!  It
+is true that on the whole astronomy has achieved triumphs more brilliant
+than those of most other sciences.  But if it has done much in the
+direction of satisfying man's straining and thirsting mind and his
+noble aspirations for knowledge, physical as to its most important
+particulars, it has ever laughed at man's puny efforts to wrest the
+great secrets of Infinitude by the help of only mechanical apparatus.
+While the spectroscope has shown the probable similarity of terrestrial
+and sidereal substance, the chemical actions peculiar to the variously
+progressed orbs of space have not been detected, nor proven to be
+identical with those observed on our own planet.  In this particular,
+Esoteric Psychology may be useful.  But who of the men of science would
+consent to confront it with their own handiwork? Who of them would
+recognise the superiority and greater trustworthiness of the Adept's
+knowledge over their own hypotheses, since in their case they can claim
+the mathematical correctness of their deductive reasonings based on the
+alleged unerring precision of the modern instruments;  while the Adepts
+can claim but their knowledge of the ultimate nature of the materials
+they have worked with for ages, resulting in the phenomena produced.
+However much it may he urged that a deductive argument, besides being an
+incomplete syllogistic form, may often be in conflict with fact;  that
+their major propositions may not always be correct, although the
+predicates of their conclusions seem correctly drawn--spectrum analysis
+will not be acknowledged as inferior to purely spiritual research.  Nor,
+before developing his sixth sense, will the man of science concede the
+error of his theories as to the solar spectrum, unless he abjure, to
+some degree at least, his marked weakness for conditional and
+disjunctive syllogisms ending in eternal dilemmas.  At present the
+"Adepts" do not see any help for it.  Were these invisible and unknown
+profanes to interfere with--not to say openly contradict--the dicta of
+the Royal Society, contempt and ridicule, followed by charges of crass
+ignorance of the first elementary principles of modern science would be
+their only reward;  while those who would lend an ear to their
+"vagaries," would be characterized immediately as types of the "mild
+lunatics" of the age.  Unless, indeed, the whole of that August body
+should be initiated into the great Mysteries at once, and without any
+further ado or the preliminary and usual preparations or training, the
+F.R.S.'s could be miraculously endowed with the required sixth sense,
+the Adepts fear the task would be profitless.  The latter have given
+quite enough, little though it may seem, for the purposes of a first
+trial.  The sequence of martyrs to the great universal truths has never
+been once broken;  and the long list of known and unknown sufferers,
+headed with the name of Galileo, now closes with that of Zollner. Is the
+world of science aware of the real cause of Zollner's premature death?
+When the fourth dimension of space becomes a scientific reality like the
+fourth state of matter, he may have a statue raised to him by grateful
+posterity.  But this will neither recall him to life, nor will it
+obliterate the days and months of mental agony that harassed the soul of
+this intuitional, far-seeing, modest genius, made even after his death
+to receive the donkey's kick of misrepresentation and to be publicly
+charged with lunacy.
+
+Hitherto, astronomy could grope between light and darkness only with the
+help of the uncertain guidance offered it by analogy. It has reduced to
+fact and mathematical precision the physical motion and the paths of the
+heavenly bodies, and--no more.  So far, it has been unable to discover
+with any approach to certainty the physical constitution of either sun,
+stars, or even cometary matter.  Of the latter, it seems to know no more
+than was taught 5,000 years ago by the official astronomers of old
+Chaldea and Egypt--namely, that it is vaporous, since it transmits the
+rays of stars and planets without any sensible obstruction.  But let the
+modern chemist be asked to tell one whether this matter is in any way
+connected with, or akin to, that of any of the gases he is acquainted
+with;  or again, to any of the solid elements of his chemistry.  The
+probable answer received will be very little calculated to solve the
+world's perplexity;  since, all hypotheses to the contrary
+notwithstanding, cometary matter does not appear to possess even the
+common law of adhesion or of chemical affinity.  The reason for it is
+very simple.  And the truth ought long ago to have dawned upon the
+experimentalists, since our little world (though so repeatedly visited
+by the hairy and bearded travelers, enveloped in the evanescent veil of
+their tails, and otherwise brought in contact with that matter) has
+neither been smothered by an addition of nitrogen gas, nor deluged by an
+excess of hydrogen, nor yet perceptibly affected by a surplus of oxygen.
+The essence of cometary matter must be--and the "Adepts" say is--totally
+different from any of the chemical or physical characteristics with
+which the greatest chemists and physicists of the earth are familiar--
+all recent hypotheses to the contrary notwithstanding.  It is to be
+feared that before the real nature of the elder progeny of Mula Prakriti
+is detected, Mr. Crookes will have to discover matter of the fifth or
+extra radiant state;  et seq.
+
+Thus, while the astronomer has achieved marvels in the elucidation of
+the visible relations of the orbs of space, he has learnt nothing of
+their inner constitution.  His science has led him no farther towards a
+reading of that inner mystery than has that of the geologist, who can
+tell us only of the earth's superficial layers, and that of the
+physiologist, who has until now been able to deal only with man's outer
+shell, or Sthula Sarira.  Occultists have asserted, and go on asserting
+daily, the fallacy of judging the essence by its outward manifestations,
+the ultimate nature of the life-principle by the circulation of the
+blood, mind by the gray matter of the brain, and the physical
+constitution of sun, stars and comets by our terrestrial chemistry and
+the matter of our own planet.  Verily and indeed, no microscopes,
+spectroscopes, telescopes, photometers, or other physical apparatuses
+can ever be focused on either the macro-or micro-cosmical highest
+principles, nor will the mayavirupa of either yield its mystery to
+physical inquiry.  The methods of spiritual research and psychological
+observation are the only efficient agencies to employ.  We have to
+proceed by analogy in everything to be sure.  Yet the candid men of
+science must very soon find out that it is not sufficient to examine a
+few stars--a handful of sand, as it were, from the margin of the
+shoreless, cosmic ocean--to conclude that these stars are the same as
+all other stars--our earth included;  that, because they have attained a
+certain very great telescopic power, and gauged an area enclosed in the
+smallest of spaces when compared with what remains, they have,
+therefore, concurrently perfected the survey of all that exists within
+even that limited space.  For, in truth, they have done nothing of the
+kind.  They have had only a superficial glance at that which is made
+visible to them under the present conditions, with the limited power of
+their vision.  And even though it were helped by telescopes of a
+hundred-fold stronger power than that of Lord Rosse, or the new Lick
+Observatory, the case would not alter.  No physical instrument will ever
+help astronomy to scan distances of the immensity of which that of
+Sirius, situated at the trifle of 130,125,000,000,000 miles away from
+the outer boundary of the spherical area, or even that of (a) Capella,
+with its extra trifle of 295,355,000,000,000* miles still farther away,
+can give them, as they themselves are well aware, the faintest idea.
+For, though an Adept is unable to cross bodily (i.e., in his astral
+shape) the limits of the solar system,  yet he knows that, far
+stretching beyond the telescopic power of detection, there are systems
+upon systems, the smallest of which would, when compared with the system
+of Sirius, make the latter seem like an atom of dust imbedded in the
+great Shamo desert.  The eye of the astronomer, who thinks he also knows
+of the existence of such systems, has never rested upon them, has never
+caught of them, even that spectral glimpse, fanciful and hazy as the
+incoherent vision in a slumbering mind that he has occasionally had of
+other systems, and yet he verily believes he has gauged INFINITUDE! And
+yet these immeasurably distant worlds are brought as clear and near to
+the spiritual eye of the astral astronomer as a neighbouring bed of
+daisies may be to the eye of the botanist.
+
+--------
+* The figures are given from the mathematical calculations of exoteric
+Western astronomy.  Esoteric astronomy may prove them false some day.
+--------
+
+Thus, the "Adepts" of the present generation, though unable to help the
+profane astronomer by explaining the ultimate essence, or even the
+material constitution, of star and planet, since European science,
+knowing nothing as yet of the existence of such substances, or more
+properly of their various states or conditions, has neither proper terms
+for, nor can form any adequate idea of them by any description, they
+may, perchance, be able to prove what this matter is not--and this is
+more than sufficient for all present purposes.  The next best thing to
+learning what is true is to ascertain what is not true.
+
+Having thus anticipated a few general objections, and traced a limit to
+expectations, since there is no need of drawing any veil of mystery
+before "An English F.T.S.," his few questions may be partially answered.
+The negative character of the replies draws a sufficiently strong line
+of demarcation between the views of the Adepts and those of Western
+science to afford some useful hints at least.
+
+Question 1.--Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory?
+
+Answer:--No;  they do not deny its general propositions, nor the
+approximative truths of the scientific hypotheses.  They only deny the
+completeness of the present, as well as the entire error of the many
+so-called "exploded" old theories, which, during the last century, have
+followed each other in such rapid succession. For instance:  while
+denying, with Laplace, Herschel and others, that the variable patches of
+light perceived on the nebulous background of the galaxy ever belonged
+to remote worlds in the process of formation;  and agreeing with modern
+science that they proceed from no aggregation of formless matter, but
+belong simply to clusters of "stars" already formed;  they yet add that
+many of such clusters, that pass in the opinion of the astro-physicists
+for stars and worlds already evoluted, are in fact but collections of
+the various materials made ready for future worlds.  Like bricks already
+baked, of various qualities, shapes and colour, that are no longer
+formless clay but have become fit units of a future wall, each of them
+having a fixed and distinctly assigned space to occupy in some
+forthcoming building, are these seemingly adult worlds.  The astronomer
+has no means of recognizing their relative adolescence, except perhaps
+by making a distinction between the star clusters with the usual orbital
+motion and mutual gravitation, and those termed, we believe, irregular
+star-clusters of very capricious and changeful appearances.  Thrown
+together as though at random, and seemingly in utter violation of the
+law of symmetry, they defy observation: such, for instance, are 5 M.
+Lyrae, 5 2 M. Cephei, Dumb-Bell, and some others.  Before an emphatic
+contradiction of what precedes is attempted, and ridicule offered
+perchance, it would not be amiss to ascertain the nature and character
+of those other so-called "temporary" stars, whose periodicity, though
+never actually proven, is yet allowed to pass unquestioned.  What are
+these stars which, appearing suddenly in matchless magnificence and
+splendour, disappear as mysteriously as unexpectedly, without leaving a
+single trace behind?  Whence do they appear?  Whither are they engulfed?
+In the great cosmic deep--we say.  The bright "brick" is caught by the
+hand of the mason--directed by that Universal Architect which destroys
+but to rebuild.  It has found its place in the cosmic structure and will
+perform its mission to its last Manvantaric hour.
+
+Another point most emphatically denied by the "Adepts" is, that there
+exist in the whole range of visible heavens any spaces void of starry
+worlds.  There are stars, worlds and systems within as without the
+systems made visible to man, and even within our own atmosphere, for all
+the physicist knows.  The "Adept" affirms in this connection that
+orthodox, or so-called official science, uses very often the word
+"infinitude" without attaching to it any adequate importance;  rather as
+a flower of speech than a term implying an awful, a most mysterious
+Reality.  When an astronomer is found in his Reports "gauging
+infinitude," even the most intuitional of his class is but too often apt
+to forget that he is gauging only the superficies of a small area and
+its visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the
+cubic contents of some known quantity.  This is the direct result of the
+present conception of a three-dimensional space.  The turn of a
+four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever
+continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible
+and invisible space--in its septenary completeness.  "The Infinite and
+the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the
+human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as the transmuted
+"properties of the nature of things--of two subjective negatives
+converted into objective affirmatives," as Sir W. Hamilton puts it, is
+to know nothing of the infinite operations of human liberated spirit, or
+of its attributes, the first of which is its ability to pass beyond the
+region of our terrestrial experience of matter and space.  As an
+absolute vacuum is an impossibility below, so is it a like impossibility
+above. But our molecules, the infinitesimals of the vacuum "below," are
+replaced by the giant-atom of the Infinitude "above."  When
+demonstrated, the four-dimensional conception of space may lead to the
+invention of new instruments to explore the extremely dense matter that
+surrounds us as a ball of pitch might surround--say, a fly, but which,
+in our extreme ignorance of all its properties save those we find it
+exercising on our earth, we yet call the clear, the serene, and the
+transparent atmosphere.  This is no psychology, but simply occult
+physics, which can never confound "substance" with "centres of Force,"
+to use the terminology of a Western science which is ignorant of Maya.
+In less than a century, besides telescopes, microscopes, micrographs and
+telephones, the Royal Society will have to offer a premium for such an
+etheroscope.
+
+It is also necessary in connection with the question under reply that
+"An English F.T.S." should know that the "Adepts" of the Good Law reject
+gravity as at present explained.  They deny that the so-called "impact
+theory" is the only one that is tenable in the gravitation hypothesis.
+They say, that if all efforts made by the physicists to connect it with
+ether, in order to explain electric and magnetic distance-action have
+hitherto proved complete failures, it is again due to the race ignorance
+of the ultimate states of matter in Nature, and, foremost of all, of the
+real nature of the solar stuff.  Believing but in the law of mutual
+magneto-electric attraction and repulsion, they agree with those who
+have come to the conclusion that "Universal gravitation is a weak
+force," utterly incapable of accounting for even one small portion of
+the phenomena of motion.  In the same connection they are forced to
+suggest that science may he wrong in her indiscriminate postulation of
+centrifugal force, which is neither a universal nor a consistent law.
+To cite but one instance this force is powerless to account for the
+spheroidal oblateness of certain planets.  For if the bulge of planetary
+equators and the shortening of their polar axes is to be attributed to
+centrifugal force, instead of being simply the result of the powerful
+influence of solar electro-magnetic attraction, "balanced by concentric
+rectification of each planet's own gravitation achieved by rotation on
+its axis," to use an astronomer's phraseology (neither very clear nor
+correct, yet serving our purpose to show the many flaws in the system),
+why should there be such difficulty in answering the objection that the
+differences in the equatorial rotation and density of various planets
+are directly in opposition to this theory?  How long shall we see even
+great mathematicians bolstering up fallacies to supply an evident
+hiatus!  The "Adepts" have never claimed superior or any knowledge of
+Western astronomy and other sciences.  Yet turning even to the most
+elementary textbooks used in the schools of India, they find that the
+centrifugal theory of Western birth is unable to cover all the ground.
+That, unaided, it can neither account for every spheroid oblate, nor
+explain away such evident difficulties as are presented by the relative
+density of some planets.  How indeed can any calculation of centrifugal
+force explain to us, for instance, why Mercury, whose rotation is, we
+are told, only "about one-third that of the Earth, and its density only
+about one-fourth greater than the Earth," should have a polar
+compression more than ten times greater than the latter?  And again, why
+Jupiter, whose equatorial rotation is said to be "twenty-seven times
+greater, and its density only about one-fifth that of the Earth," should
+have its polar compression seventeen times greater than that of the
+Earth?  Or, why Saturn, with an equatorial velocity fifty-five times
+greater than Mercury for centrifugal force to contend with, should have
+its polar compression only three times greater than Mercury's?  To crown
+the above contradictions, we are asked to believe in the Central Forces
+as taught by modern science, even when told that the equatorial matter
+of the sun, with more than four times the centrifugal velocity of the
+earth's equatorial surface and only about one-fourth part of the
+gravitation of the equatorial matter, has not manifested any tendency to
+bulge out at the solar equator, nor shown the least flattening at the
+poles of the solar axis.  In other and clearer words, the sun, with only
+one-fourth of our earth's density for the centrifugal force to work
+upon, has no polar compression at all!  We find this objection made by
+more than one astronomer, yet never explained away satisfactorily so far
+as the "Adepts" are aware.
+
+Therefore do they say that the great men of science of the West, knowing
+nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter, centrifugal and
+centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the physical
+constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to speak
+so confidently as they do about the "central mass of the sun" whirling
+out into space planets, comets, and whatnot.  Our humble opinion being
+wanted, we maintain:  that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the
+soul of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar
+system, as the "Universal Life-giver," the ONE LIFE gives and receives
+it in the Infinitude and Eternity;  that the Solar System is as much the
+Microcosm of the One Macrocosm, as man is the former when compared with
+his own little solar cosmos.
+
+What are the proofs of science?  The solar spots (a misnomer, like much
+of the rest)?  But these do not prove the solidity of the "central
+mass," any more than the storm-clouds prove the solid mass of the
+atmosphere behind them.  Is it the non-coextensiveness of the sun's
+body with its apparent luminous dimensions, the said "body" appearing
+"a solid mass, a dark sphere of matter confined within a fiery
+prison-house, a robe of fiercest flames?"  We say that there is indeed a
+"prisoner" behind, but that having never yet been seen by any physical,
+mortal eye, what he allows to be seen of him is merely a gigantic
+reflection, an illusive phantasma of "solar appendages of some sort," as
+Mr. Proctor honestly calls it.  Before saying anything further, we will
+consider the next interrogatory.
+
+
+
+Question II.--Is the Sun merely a cooling mass?
+
+Such is the accepted theory of modern science:  it is not what the
+"Adepts" teach.  The former says--the sun "derives no important
+accession of heat from without:"--the latter answer--"the sun needs it
+not."  He is quite as self dependent as he is self-luminous;  and for
+the maintenance of his heat requires no help, no foreign accession of
+vital energy;  for he is the heart of his system, a heart that will not
+cease its throbbing until its hour of rest shall come.  Were the sun "a
+cooling mass," our great life-giver would have indeed grown dim with age
+by this time, and found some trouble to keep his watch-fires burning for
+the future races to accomplish their cycles, and the planetary chains to
+achieve their rounds.  There would remain no hope for evoluting
+humanity;  except perhaps in what passes for science in the astronomical
+textbooks of Missionary Schools--namely, that "the sun has an orbital
+journey of a hundred millions of years before him, and the system yet
+but seven thousand years old!" (Prize Book, "Astronomy for General
+Readers.")
+
+The "Adepts," who are thus forced to demolish before they can
+reconstruct, deny most emphatically (a) that the sun is in combustion,
+in any ordinary sense of the word;  or (b) that he is incandescent, or
+even burning, though he is glowing;  or (c) that his luminosity has
+already begun to weaken and his power of combustion may be exhausted
+within a given and conceivable time; or even (d) that his chemical and
+physical constitution contains any of the elements of terrestrial
+chemistry in any of the states that either chemist or physicist is
+acquainted with.  With reference to the latter, they add that, properly
+speaking, though the body of the sun--a body that was never yet
+reflected by telescope or spectroscope that man invented--cannot be said
+to be constituted of those terrestrial elements with the state of which
+the chemist is familiar, yet that these elements are all present in the
+sun's outward robes, and a host more of elements unknown so far to
+science.  There seems little need, indeed, to have waited so long for
+the lines belonging to these respective elements to correspond with dark
+lines of the solar spectrum to know that no element present on our earth
+could ever be possibly found wanting in the sun;  although, on the other
+hand, there are many others in the sun which have either not reached or
+not as yet been discovered on our globe.  Some may be missing in certain
+stars and heavenly bodies still in the process of formation;  or,
+properly speaking, though present in them, these elements on account of
+their undeveloped state may not respond as yet to the usual scientific
+tests.  But how can the earth possess that which the sun has never had?
+The "Adepts" affirm as a fact that the true Sun--an invisible orb of
+which the known one is the shell, mask, or clothing--has in him the
+spirit of every element that exists in the solar system;  and his
+"Chromosphere," as Mr. Lockyer named it, has the same, only in a far
+more developed condition, though still in a state unknown on earth;  our
+planet having to await its further growth and development before any of
+its elements can be reduced to the condition they are in within that
+chromosphere.  Nor can the substance producing the coloured light in the
+latter be properly called solid, liquid, or even "gaseous," as now
+supposed, for it is neither.  Thousands of years before Leverrier and
+Padri Secchi, the old Aryans sung of Surya .... "hiding behind his
+Yogi,* robes his head that no one could see;"  the ascetic's dress
+being, as all know, dyed expressly into a red-yellow hue, a colouring
+matter with pinkish patches on it, rudely representing the vital
+principle in man's blood--the symbol of the vital principle in the sun,
+or what is now called chromosphere.  The "rose-coloured region!"  How
+little astronomers will ever know of its real nature, even though
+hundreds of eclipses furnish them with the indisputable evidence of its
+presence.  The sun is so thickly surrounded by a shell of this "red
+matter," that it is useless for them to speculate with only the help of
+their physical instruments, upon the nature of that which they can never
+see or detect with mortal eye behind that brilliant, radiant zone of
+matter.
+
+---------
+* There is an interesting story in the Puranas relating to this subject.
+The Devas, it would appear, asked the great Rishi Vasishta to bring the
+sun into Satya Loka.  The Rishi requested the Sun-god to do so.  The
+Sun-god replied that all the worlds would be destroyed if he were to
+leave his place.  The Rishi then offered to place his red-coloured cloth
+(Kashay Vastram) in the place of the sun's disk, and did so.  The
+visible body of the sun is this robe of Vasishta, it would seem.
+---------
+
+If the "Adepts" are asked:  "What then, in your views, is the nature of
+our sun and what is there beyond that cosmic veil?"--they answer:
+beyond rotates and beats the heart and head of our system; externally is
+spread its robe, the nature of which is not matter, whether solid,
+liquid, or gaseous, such as you are acquainted with, but vital
+electricity, condensed and made visible.*
+
+---------
+* If the "English F.T.S." would take the trouble of consulting p. 11 of
+the "Magia Adamica" of Eugenius Philalethes, his learned compatriot, he
+would find therein the difference between a visible and an invisible
+planet is clearly hinted at as it was safe to do at a time when the iron
+claw of orthodoxy had the power as well as disposition to tear the flesh
+from heretic bones.  "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which
+is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen
+without art.  To make this element visible is the greatest secret in
+magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is
+a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the
+elements are visible but one, namely, the earth:  and when thou hast
+attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth
+in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God
+himself, and how he is visible, how invisible,"  The italics are the
+author's, it being the custom of the Alchemists to emphasize those words
+which had a double meaning in their code.  Here "God himself" visible
+and invisible, relates to their lapis philosophorum--Nature's seventh
+principle.
+----------
+
+And if the statement is objected to on the grounds that were the
+luminosity of the sun due to any other cause than combustion and flame,
+no physical law of which Western science has any knowledge could account
+for the existence of such intensely high temperature of the sun without
+combustion;  that such a temperature, besides burning with its light and
+flame every visible thing in our universe, would show its luminosity of
+a homogeneous and uniform intensity throughout, which it does not; that
+undulations and disturbances in the photosphere, the growing of the
+"protuberances," and a fierce raging of elements in combustion have been
+observed in the sun, with their tongues of fire and spots exhibiting
+every appearance of cyclonic motion, and "solar storms," &c. &c.;  to
+this the only answer that can be given is the following:  the
+appearances are all there, yet it is not combustion.  Undoubtedly were
+the "robes," the dazzling drapery which now envelopes the whole of the
+sun's globe, withdrawn, or even "the shining atmosphere which permits us
+to see the sun" (as Sir William Herschel thought) removed so as to allow
+one trifling rent, our whole universe would be reduced to ashes.
+Jupiter Fulminator revealing himself to his beloved would incinerate her
+instantly.  But it can never be.  The protecting shell is of a thickness
+and at a distance from the universal HEART that call hardly be ever
+calculated by your mathematicians. And how can they hope to see the
+sun's inner body once that the existence of that "chromosphere" is
+ascertained, though its actual density may be still unknown, when one of
+the greatest, if not the greatest, of their authorities--Sir W.
+Herschel--says the following:  "The sun, also, has its atmosphere, and
+if some of the fluids which enter into its composition should be of a
+shining brilliancy, while others are merely transparent, any temporary
+cause which may remove the lucid fluid will permit us to see the body of
+the sun through the transparent ones."  The underlined words, written
+nearly eighty years ago, embody the wrong hypothesis that the body of
+the sun might be seen under such circumstances, whereas it is only the
+far-away layers of "the lucid fluid" that would be perceived.  And what
+the great astronomer adds invalidates entirely the first portion of his
+assumption:  "If an observer were placed on the moon, he would see the
+solid body of our earth only in those places where the transparent
+fluids of the atmosphere would permit him.  In others, the opaque
+vapours would reflect the light of the sun without permitting his view
+to penetrate to the surface of our globe."  Thus, if the atmosphere of
+our earth, which in its relation to the "atmosphere" (?) of the sun is
+like the tenderest skin of a fruit compared with the thickest husk of a
+cocoa-nut, would prevent the eye of an observer standing on the moon
+from penetrating everywhere "to the surface of our globe," how can an
+astronomer ever expect his sight to penetrate to the sun's surface, from
+our earth and at a distance of from 85 to 95 million miles,* whereas,
+the moon, we are told, is only about 238,000 miles!
+
+--------
+* Verily, "absolute accuracy in the solution of this problem (of
+distances between the heavenly bodies and the earth) is simply out of
+the question."
+----------
+
+The proportionately larger size of the sun does not bring it any the
+more within the scope of our physical vision.  Truly remarks Sir W.
+Herschel that the sun "has been called a globe of fire, perhaps
+metaphorically!"  It has been supposed that the dark spots were solid
+bodies revolving near the sun's surface.  "They have been conjectured to
+be the smoke of volcanoes the scum floating upon an ocean of fluid
+matter.... They have been taken for clouds .... explained to be opaque
+masses swimming in the fluid matter of the sun...."  When all his
+anthropomorphic conceptions are put aside, Sir John Herschel, whose
+intuition was still greater than his great learning, alone of all
+astronomers comes near the truth--far nearer than any of those modern
+astronomers who, while admiring his gigantic learning, smile at his
+"imaginative and fanciful theories."  His only mistake, now shared by
+most astronomers, was that he regarded the "opaque body" occasionally
+observed through the curtain of the "luminous envelope" as the sun
+itself.  When saying in the course of his speculations upon the Nasmyth
+willow-leaf theory--"the definite shape of these objects, their exact
+similarity one to another.... all these characters seem quite repugnant
+to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid
+nature"--his spiritual intuition served him better than his remarkable
+knowledge of physical science.  When he adds:  "Nothing remains but to
+consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes.... having some
+sort of solidity.... Be they what they may, they are evidently the
+immediate sources of the solar light and heat"--he utters a grander
+physical truth than was ever uttered by any living astronomer.  And
+when, furthermore, we find him postulating--"looked at in this point of
+view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of some peculiar and
+amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to speak of such
+organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we do know that
+vital action is competent to develop at once heat, and light, and
+electricity," Sir John Herschel gives out a theory approximating an
+occult truth more than any of the profane ever did with regard to solar
+physics.  These "wonderful objects" are not, as a modern astronomer
+interprets Sir J. Herschel's words, "solar inhabitants, whose fiery
+constitution enables them to illuminate, warm and electricize the whole
+solar system," but simply the reservoirs of solar vital energy, the
+vital electricity that feeds the whole system in which it lives, and
+breathes, and has its being.  The sun is, as we say, the storehouse of
+our little cosmos, self-generating its vital fluid, and ever receiving a
+much as it gives out.  Were the astronomers to be asked--what definite
+and positive fact exists at the root of their solar theory--what
+knowledge they have of solar combustion and atmosphere--they might,
+perchance, feel embarrassed when confronted with all their present
+theories.  For it is sufficient to make a resume of what the solar
+physicists do not know, to gain conviction that they are as far as ever
+from a definite knowledge of the constitution and ultimate nature of the
+heavenly bodies.  We may, perhaps, be permitted to enumerate:--
+
+Beginning with, as Mr. Proctor wisely calls it, "the wildest assumption
+possible," that there is, in accordance with the law of analogy, some
+general resemblance between the materials in, and the processes at work
+upon, the sun, and those materials with which terrestrial chemistry and
+physics are familiar, what is that sum of results achieved by
+spectroscopic and other analyses of the surface and the inner
+constitution of the sun, which warrants any one in establishing the
+axiom of the sun's combustion and gradual extinction?  They have no
+means, as they themselves daily confess, of experimenting upon, hence of
+determining, the sun's physical condition;  for (a) they are ignorant of
+the atmospheric limits;  (b) even though it were proved that matter,
+such as they know of, is continuously falling upon the sun, being
+ignorant of its real velocity and the nature of the material it falls
+upon, they are unable "to discuss of the effect of motions wholly
+surpassing in velocity .... enormously exceeding even the inconceivable
+velocity of many meteors;"  (c) confessedly--they "have no means of
+learning whence that part of the light comes which gives the continuous
+spectrum".... hence no means of determining how great a depth of the
+solar substance is concerned in sending out that light.  This light "may
+come from the surface layers only;"  and, "it may be but a shell" ....
+(truly!);  and finally, (d) they have yet to learn "how far combustion,
+properly so-called, can take place within the sun's mass;"  and "whether
+these processes, which we (they) recognize as combustion, are the only
+processes of combustion which can actually take place there."
+Therefore, Mr. Proctor for one comes to the happy and prudent idea after
+all "that what had been supposed the most marked characteristic of
+incandescent solid and liquid bodies, is thus shown to be a possible
+characteristic of the light of the glowing gas."  Thus, the whole basis
+of their reasoning having been shaken (by Frankland's objection), they,
+the astronomers, may yet arrive at accepting the occult theory, viz.,
+that they have to look to the 6th state of matter, for divulging to them
+the true nature of their photospheres, chromospheres, appendages,
+prominences, projections and horns. Indeed, when one finds one of the
+authorities of the age in physical science--Professor Tyndall--saying
+that "no earthly substance with which we are acquainted, no
+substance which the fall of meteors has landed on the earth--would
+be at all competent to maintain the sun's combustion;"  and
+again:--".... multiplying all our powers by millions of millions, we do
+not reach the sun's expenditure.  And still, notwithstanding this
+enormous drain in the lapse of human history, we are unable to detect a
+diminution of his store ...."--after reading this, to see the men of
+science still maintaining their theory of "a hot globe cooling," one may
+be excused for feeling surprised at such inconsistency.  Verily is that
+great physicist right in viewing the sun itself as "a speck in infinite
+extension--a mere drop in the Universal sea;"  and saying that, "to
+Nature nothing can be added;  from Nature nothing can be taken away; the
+sum of her energy is constant, and the utmost man can do in the pursuit
+of physical truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is to
+shift the constituents of the never-varying total.  The law of
+conservation rigidly excludes both creation and annihilation .... the
+flux of power is eternally the same."  Mr. Tyndall speaks here as
+though he were an Occultist.  Yet, the memento mori--"the sun is
+cooling .... it is dying!" of the Western Trappists of Science resounds
+as loud as it ever did.
+
+No, we say;  no, while there is one man left on the globe, the sun will
+not be extinguished.  Before the hour of the "Solar Pralaya" strikes on
+the watch-tower of Eternity, all the other worlds of our system will be
+gliding in their spectral shells along the silent paths of Infinite
+Space.  Before it strikes, Atlas, the mighty Titan, the son of Asia and
+the nursling of Aether, will have dropped his heavy manvantaric burden
+and--died; the Pleiades, the bright seven Sisters, will have upon
+awakening hiding Sterope to grieve with them--to die themselves for
+their father's loss.  And, Hercules, moving off his left leg, will have
+to shift his place in heavens and erect his own funeral pile. Then only,
+surrounded by the fiery element breaking through the thickening gloom of
+the Pralayan twilight, will Hercules, expiring amidst a general
+conflagration, bring on likewise the death of our sun:  he will have
+unveiled by moving off the "CENTRAL SUN"--the mysterious, the
+ever-hidden centre of attraction of our sun and system.  Fables?  Mere
+poetical fiction?  Yet, when one knows that the most exact sciences, the
+greatest mathematical and astronomical truths went forth into the world
+among the hoi polloi from the circle of initiated priests, the
+Hierophants of the sanctum sanctorum of the old temples, under the guise
+of religious fables, it may not be amiss to search for universal truths
+even under the patches of fiction's harlequinade.  This fable about the
+Pleiades, the seven Sisters, Atlas, and Hercules exists identical in
+subject, though under other names, in the sacred Hindu books, and has
+likewise the same occult meaning.  But then like the Ramayana "borrowed
+from the Greek Iliad" and the Bhagavat-Gita and Krishna plagiarized from
+the Gospel--in the opinion of the great Sanskritist, Prof. Weber, the
+Aryans may have also borrowed the Pleiades and their Hercules from the
+same source!  When the Brahmins can be shown by the Christian
+Orientalists to be the direct descendants of the Teutonic Crusaders,
+then only, perchance, will the cycle of proofs be completed, and the
+historical truths of the West vindicated!
+
+
+
+Question III.--Are the great nations to be swept away in an hour?
+
+
+No such absurdity was ever postulated.  The cataclysm that annihilated
+the choicest sub-races of the Fourth race, or the Atlanteans, was slowly
+preparing its work for ages;  as any one can read in "Esoteric Buddhism"
+(page 54).  "Poseidonis," so called, belongs to historical times, though
+its fate begins to be realized and suspected only now.  What was said is
+still asserted:  every root-race is separated by a catastrophe, a
+cataclysm--the basis and historical foundation of the fables woven later
+on into the religious fabric of every people, whether civilized or
+savage, under the names of "deluges," "showers of fire," and such like.
+
+That no "appreciable trace is left of such high civilization" is due to
+several reasons.  One of these may be traced chiefly to the inability,
+and partially to the unwillingness (or shall we say congenital spiritual
+blindness of this our age!) of the modern archeologist to distinguish
+between excavations and ruins 50,000 and 4,000 years old, and to assign
+to many a grand archaic ruin its proper age and place in prehistoric
+times.  For the latter the archeologist is not responsible--for what
+criterion, what sign has he to lead him to infer the true date of an
+excavated building bearing no inscription;  and what warrant has the
+public that the antiquary and specialist has not made an error of some
+20,000 years?  A fair proof of this we have in the scientific and
+historic labeling of the Cyclopean architecture. Traditional archeology
+bearing directly upon the monumental is rejected.  Oral literature,
+popular legends, ballads and rites, are all stifled in one word--
+superstition;  and popular antiquities have become "fables" and
+"folk-lore."  The ruder style of Cyclopean masonry, the walls of Tyrius,
+mentioned by Homer, are placed at the farthest end--the dawn of
+pre-Roman history;  the walls of Epirus and Mycenae--at the nearest.  The
+latter are commonly believed the work of the Pelasgi and probably of
+about 1,000 years before the Western era.  As to the former, they were
+hedged in and driven forward by the Noachian deluge till very lately--
+Archbishop Usher's learned scheme, computing that earth and man "were
+created 4,004 B.C.," having been not only popular but actually forced
+upon the educated classes until Mr. Darwin's triumphs.  Had it not been
+for the efforts of a few Alexandrian and other mystics, Platonists, and
+heathen philosophers, Europe would have never laid her hands even on
+those few Greek and Roman classics she now possesses.  And, as among the
+few that escaped the dire fate not all by any means were trustworthy--
+hence, perhaps, the secret of their preservation--Western scholars got
+early into the habit of rejecting all heathen testimony, whenever truth
+clashed with the dicta of their churches.  Then, again, the modern
+Archeologists, Orientalists and Historians, are all Europeans;  and they
+are all Christians, whether nominally or otherwise.  However it may be,
+most of them seem to dislike to allow any relic of archaism to antedate
+the supposed antiquity of the Jewish records.  This is a ditch into
+which most have slipped.
+
+The traces of ancient civilizations exist, and they are many. Yet, it is
+humbly suggested, that so long as there are reverend gentlemen mixed up
+unchecked in archaeological and Asiatic societies;  and Christian
+bishops to write the supposed histories and religions of non-Christian
+nations, and to preside over the meetings of Orientalists--so long will
+Archaism and its remains be made subservient in every branch to ancient
+Judaism and modern Christianity.
+
+So far, archeology knows nothing of the sites of other and far older
+civilizations, except the few it has stumbled upon, and to which it has
+assigned their respective ages, mostly under the guidance of biblical
+chronology.  Whether the West had any right to impose upon Universal
+History the untrustworthy chronology of a small and unknown Jewish tribe
+and reject, at the same time, every datum as every other tradition
+furnished by the classical writers of non-Jewish and non-Christian
+nations, is questionable. At any rate, had it accepted as willingly data
+coming from other sources, it might have assured itself by this time,
+that not only in Italy and other parts of Europe, but even on sites not
+very far from those it is accustomed to regard as the hotbed of ancient
+relics--Babylonia and Assyria--there are other sites where it could
+profitably excavate.  The immense "Salt Valley" of Dasht-Beyad by
+Khorasson covers the most ancient civilizations of the world;  while the
+Shamo desert has had time to change from sea to land, and from fertile
+land to a dead desert, since the day when the first civilization of the
+Fifth Race left its now invisible, and perhaps for ever hidden, "traces"
+under its beds of sand.
+
+Times have changed, are changing.  Proofs of the old civilizations and
+the archaic wisdom are accumulating.  Though soldier-bigots and priestly
+schemers have burnt books and converted old libraries to base uses;
+though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious
+records;  though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made
+bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if
+spared, would have solved many a riddle of history;  though Omar lit the
+fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of
+the Serapeum;  though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and
+Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian invaders of Ceylon
+"heaped into piles as high as the tops of the cocoanut trees" the ollas
+of the Buddhists, and set them ablaze to light their victory--thus
+obliterating from the world's knowledge early Buddhist annals and
+treatises of great importance:  though this hateful and senseless
+Vandalism has disgraced the career of most fighting nations--still,
+despite everything, there are extant abundant proofs of the history of
+mankind, and bits and scraps come to light from time to time by what
+science has often called "most curious coincidences."  Europe has no
+very trustworthy history of her own vicissitudes and mutations, her
+successive races and their doings.  What with their savage wars, the
+barbaric habits of the historic Goths, Huns, Franks, and other warrior
+nations, and the interested literary Vandalism of the shaveling priests
+who for centuries sat upon its intellectual life like a nightmare, an
+antiquity could not exist for Europe.  And, having no Past to record
+themselves, the European critics, historians and archeologists have not
+scrupled to deny one to others--whenever the concession excited a
+sacrifice of biblical prestige.
+
+No "traces of old civilizations" we are told!  And what about the
+Pelasgi--the direct forefathers of the Hellenes, according to Herodotus?
+What about the Etruscans--the race mysterious and wonderful, if any, for
+the historian, and whose origin is the most insoluble of problems?  That
+which is known of them only shows that could something more be known, a
+whole series of prehistoric civilizations might be discovered.  A people
+described as are the Pelasgi--a highly intellectual, receptive, active
+people, chiefly occupied with agriculture, warlike when necessary,
+though preferring peace;  a people who built canals as no one else,
+subterranean water-works, dams, walls, and Cyclopean buildings of the
+most astounding strength;  who are even suspected of having been the
+inventors of the so-called Cadmean or Phoenician writing characters from
+which all European alphabets are derived--who were they?  Could they be
+shown by any possible means as the descendants of the biblical Peleg
+(Gen. x. 25) their high civilization would have been thereby
+demonstrated, though their antiquity would still have to be dwarfed to
+2247 "B.C.."  And who were the Etruscans?
+
+Shall the Easterns like the Westerns be made to believe that between the
+high civilizations of the pre-Roman (and we say--prehistoric) Tursenoi
+of the Greeks, with their twelve great cities known to history;  their
+Cyclopean buildings, their plastic and pictorial arts, and the time when
+they were a nomadic tribe "first descended into Italy from their
+northern latitudes"--only a few centuries elapsed?  Shall it be still
+urged that the Phoenicians with their Tyre 2750 "B.C." (a chronology,
+accepted by Western history), their commerce, fleet, learning, arts, and
+civilization, were only a few centuries before the building of Tyre but
+"a small tribe of Semitic fishermen"?  Or, that the Trojan war could not
+have been earlier than 1184 B.C., and thus Magna Graecia must be fixed
+somewhere between the eighth and the ninth Century "B.C.," and by no
+means thousands of years before, as was claimed by Plato and Aristotle,
+Homer and the Cyclic Poems, derived from, and based upon, other records
+millenniums older?  If the Christian historian, hampered by his
+chronology, and the freethinker by lack of necessary data, feel bound to
+stigmatize every non-Christian or non-Western chronology as "obviously
+fanciful," "purely mythical," and "not worthy of a moment's
+consideration," how shall one, wholly dependent upon Western guides get
+at the truth?  And if these incompetent builders of Universal History
+can persuade their public to accept as authoritative their chronological
+and ethnological reveries, why should the Eastern student, who has
+access to quite different--and we make bold to say, more trustworthy--
+materials, be expected to join in the blind belief of those who defend
+Western historical infallibility?  He believes--on the strength of the
+documentary evidence, left by Yavanacharya (Pythagoras) 607 "B.C." in
+India, and that of his own national "temple records," that instead of
+giving hundreds we may safely give thousands of years to the foundation
+of Cumaea and Magna Graecia, of which it was the pioneer settlement.
+That the civilization of the latter had already become effete when
+Pythagoras, the great pupil of Aryan Masters went to Crotone.  And,
+having no biblical bias to overcome, he feels persuaded that, if it took
+the Celtic and Gaelic tribes Britannicae Insulae, with the ready-made
+civilizations of Rome before their eyes, and acquaintance with that of
+the Phoenicians whose trade with them began a thousand years before the
+Christian era;  and to crown all with the definite help later of the
+Normans and Saxons--two thousand years before they could build their
+medieval cities, not even remotely comparable with those of the Romans;
+and it took them two thousand five hundred years to get half as
+civilized;  then, that instead of that hypothetical period, benevolently
+styled the childhood of the race, being within easy reach of the
+Apostles and the early Fathers, it must be relegated to an enormously
+earlier time.  Surely if it took the barbarians of Western Europe so
+many centuries to develop a language and create empires, then the
+nomadic tribes of the "mythical" periods ought in common fairness--since
+they never came under the fructifying energy of that Christian influence
+to which we are asked to ascribe all the scientific enlightenment of
+this age--about ten thousand years to build their Tyres and their Veii,
+their Sidons and Carthagenes. As other Troys lie under the surface of
+the topmost one in the Troad;  and other and higher civilizations were
+exhumed by Mariette Bey under the stratum of sand from which the
+archeological collections of Lepsius, Abbott, and the British Museum
+were taken;  and six Hindu "Delhis," superposed and hidden away out of
+sight, formed the pedestal upon which the Mogul conqueror built the
+gorgeous capital whose ruins still attest the splendour of his Delhi;
+so when the fury of critical bigotry has quite subsided, and Western men
+are prepared to write history in the interest of truth alone, will the
+proofs be found of the cyclic law of civilization.  Modern Florence
+lifts her beautiful form above the tomb of Etruscan Florentia, which in
+her turn rose upon the hidden vestiges of anterior towns.  And so also
+Arezzo, Perugia, Lucca, and many other European sites now occupied by
+modern towns and cities, are based upon the relics of archaic
+civilizations whose period covers ages incomputable, and whose names
+Echo has forgotten to even whisper through "the corridors of Time."
+
+When the Western historian has finally and Unanswerably proven who were
+the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious
+Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with
+writing--as proved by their inscriptions--than the Phoenicians, then
+only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data
+and dogmas.  Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no
+appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are described in
+the Past?"
+
+"Is it supposed that the present European civilization with its
+offshoots .... can be destroyed by any inundation or conflagration?"
+More easily than was many another civilization. Europe has neither the
+titanic and Cyclopean masonry of the ancients, nor even its parchments,
+to preserve the records of its "existing arts and languages."  Its
+civilization is too recent, too rapidly growing, to leave any positively
+indestructible relics of either its architecture, arts or sciences.
+What is there in the whole Europe that could be regarded as even
+approximately indestructible, without mentioning the debacle of the
+geological upheaval that follows generally such cataclysms? Is it its
+ephemeral Crystal Palaces, its theatres, railways, modern fragile
+furniture:  or its electric telegraphs, phonographs, telephones, and
+micrographs?  While each of the former is at the mercy of fire and
+cyclone, the last enumerated marvels of modern science can be destroyed
+by a child breaking them to atoms.  When we know of the destruction of
+the "Seven World's Wonders," of Thebes, Tyre, the Labyrinth, and the
+Egyptian pyramids and temples and giant palaces, as we now see slowly
+crumbling into the dust of the deserts, being reduced to atoms by the
+hand of Time--lighter and far more merciful than any cataclysm--the
+question seems to us rather the outcome of modern pride than of stern
+reasoning.  Is it your daily newspapers and periodicals, rags of a few
+days;  your fragile books bearing the records of all your grand
+civilization, withal liable to become annihilated after a few meals are
+made on them by the white ants, that are regarded as invulnerable?  And
+why should European civilization escape the common lot?  It is from the
+lower classes, the units of the great masses who form the majorities in
+nations, that survivors will escape in greater numbers;  and these know
+nothing of the arts, sciences, or languages except their own, and those
+very imperfectly.  The arts and sciences are like the phoenix of old:
+they die but to revive.  And when the question found on page 58 of
+"Esoteric Buddhism" concerning "the curious rush of human progress
+within the last two thousand years," was first propounded, Mr. Sinnett's
+correspondent might have made his answer more complete by saying:  "This
+rush, this progress, and the abnormal rapidity with which one discovery
+follows the other, ought to be a sign to human intuition that what you
+look upon in the light of 'discoveries' are merely rediscoveries, which,
+following the law of gradual progress, you make more perfect, yet in
+enunciating, you are not the first to explain them."  We learn more
+easily that which we have heard about, or learnt in childhood.  If, as
+averred, the Western nations have separated themselves from the great
+Aryan stock, it becomes evident that the races that first peopled Europe
+were inferior to the root-race which had the Vedas and the pre-historic
+Rishis.  That which your far-distant forefathers had heard in the
+secrecy of the temples was not lost. It reached their posterity, which
+is now simply improving upon details.
+
+
+
+Question IV.--Is the Moon immersed in matter?
+
+
+No "Adept," so far as the writers know, has ever given to "Lay Chela"
+his "views of the moon," for publication.  With Selenography, modern
+science is far better acquainted than any humble Asiatic ascetic may
+ever hope to become.  It is to be feared the speculations on pp. 104 and
+105 of "Esoteric Buddhism," besides being hazy, are somewhat premature.
+Therefore, it may be as well to pass on to--
+
+
+
+Question V.--About the mineral monad.
+
+
+Any English expression that correctly translates the idea given is
+"authorized by the Adepts."  Why not?  The term "monad" applies to the
+latent life in the mineral as much as it does to the life in the
+vegetable and the animal.  The monogenist may take exception to the term
+and especially to the idea while the polygenist, unless he be a
+corporealist, may not.  As to the other class of scientists, they would
+take objection to the idea even of a human monad, and call it
+"unscientific."  What relation does the monad bear to the atom?  None
+whatever to the atom or molecule as in the scientific conception at
+present.  It can neither be compared with the microscopic organism
+classed once among polygastric infusoria, and now regarded as vegetable
+and ranked among algae;  nor is it quite the monas of the Peripatetics.
+Physically or constitutionally the mineral monad differs, of course,
+from that of the human monad, which is neither physical, nor can its
+constitution be rendered by chemical symbols and elements.  In short,
+the mineral monad is one--the higher animal and human monads are
+countless. Otherwise, how could one account for and explain
+mathematically the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four
+kingdoms?  The "monad" is the combination of the last two Principles in
+man, the 6th and the 7th, and, properly speaking, the term "human monad"
+applies only to the Spiritual Soul, not to its highest spiritual
+vivifying Principle.  But since divorced from the latter the Spiritual
+Soul could have no existence, no being, it has thus been called.  The
+composition (if such a word, which would shock an Asiatic, seems
+necessary to help European conception) of Buddhi or the 6th principle is
+made up of the essence of what you would call matter (or perchance a
+centre of Spiritual Force) in its 6th and 7th condition or state;  the
+animating ATMAN being part of the ONE LIFE or Parabrahm.  Now the
+Monadic Essence (if such a term be permitted) in the mineral, vegetable
+and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the
+lowest elemental up to the Deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of
+progression.
+
+It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity
+trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and
+after an incalculable series of transmigrations flowering into a human
+being;  in short, that the monad of a Humboldt dates back to the monad
+of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a mineral monad, the
+correcter phraseology in physical science which differentiates every
+atom, would of course have been to call it the Monad manifesting in that
+form of Prakriti called the mineral kingdom.  Each atom or molecule of
+ordinary scientific hypotheses is not a particle of something, animated
+by a psychic something, destined to blossom as a man after aeons.  But
+it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy which itself has
+not yet become individualized:  a sequential manifestation of the one
+Universal Monas.  The ocean does not divide into its potential and
+constituent drops until the sweep of the life-impulse reaches the
+evolutionary stage of man-birth.  The tendency towards segregation into
+individual monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to
+the point.  The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Cosmos,
+in the pantheistic sense;  and the Occultists while accepting this
+thought for convenience' sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the
+evolution of the Concrete from the Abstract by terms of which the
+"Mineral Monad" is one.  The term merely means that the tidal wave of
+spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit.  The
+"Monadic Essence" begins to imperceptibly differentiate in the vegetable
+kingdom. As the monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by
+Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their
+degrees of differentiation which constitutes properly the monad--not the
+atomic aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through
+which thrill the lower and higher degrees of intelligence.
+
+And though, as shown by those plants that are known as sensitives, there
+are a few among them that may be regarded as possessing that conscious
+perception which is called by Leibnitz apperception, while the rest are
+endowed but with that internal activity which may be called vegetable
+nerve-sensation (to call it perception would be wrong), yet even the
+vegetable monad is still the Monad in its second degree of awakening
+sensation. Leibnitz came several times very near the truth, but defined
+the monadic evolution incorrectly and often greatly blundered.  There
+are seven kingdoms.  The first group comprises three degrees of
+elementals, or nascent centres of forces--from the first stage of the
+differentiation of Mulaprakriti to its third degree--i.e., from full
+unconsciousness to semi-perception;  the second or higher group embraces
+the kingdoms from vegetable to man;  the mineral kingdom thus forming
+the central or turning-point in the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"--
+considered as an Evoluting Energy.  Three stages in the elemental side;
+the mineral kingdom;  three stages in the objective physical side--these
+are the seven links of the evolutionary chain.  A descent of spirit into
+matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution;  a re-ascent from
+the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo
+ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to
+Nirvana--the vanishing point of differentiated matter.  Perhaps a simple
+diagram will aid us:--
+
+[[Diagram here]]
+
+The line A D represents the gradual obscuration of spirit as it passes
+into concrete matter;  the point D indicates the evolutionary position
+of the mineral kingdom from its incipient (d) to its ultimate concretion
+(a);  c, b, a, on the left-hand side of the figure, are the three stages
+of elemental evolution; i.e., the three successive stages passed by the
+spiritual impulse (through the elementals--of which little is permitted
+to be said) before they are imprisoned in the most concrete form of
+matter; and a, b, c, on the right-hand side, are the three stages of
+organic life, vegetable, animal, human.  What is total obscuration of
+spirit is complete perfection of its polar antithesis--matter;  and this
+idea is conveyed in the lines A D and D A.  The arrows show the line of
+travel of the evolutionary impulse in entering its vortex and expanding
+again into the subjectivity of the ABSOLUTE. The central thickest line,
+d d, is the Mineral Kingdom.
+
+The monogenists have had their day.  Even believers in a personal god,
+like Professor Agassiz, teach now that, "There is a manifest progress in
+the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. The progress
+consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the
+vertebrates especially, in the increasing resemblance to man.  Man is
+the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first
+appearance of the first Palaeozoic fishes" ("Principles of Zoology," pp.
+205-6).  The mineral "monad" is not an individuality latent, but an
+all-pervading Force which has for its Present vehicle matter in its
+lowest and most concrete terrestrial state;  in man the monad is fully
+developed, potential, and either passive or absolutely active, according
+to its vehicle, the five lower and more physical human principles.  In
+the Deva kingdom it is fully liberated and in its highest state--but one
+degree lower than the ONE Universal Life.*
+
+----------
+* The above diagram represents a logical section of the scheme of
+evolution, and not the evolutionary history of a unit of consciousness.
+----------
+
+
+
+Question VIII.--Sri Sankaracharya's Date
+
+
+It is always difficult to determine with precision the date of any
+particular event in the ancient history of India;  and this difficulty
+is considerably enhanced by the speculations of European Orientalists,
+whose labours in this direction have but tended to thicken the confusion
+already existing in popular legends and traditions, which were often
+altered or modified to suit the necessities of sectarian controversy.
+The causes that have produced this result will be fully ascertained on
+examining the assumptions on which these speculations are based.  The
+writings of many of these Orientalists are often characterized by an
+imperfect knowledge of Indian literature, philosophy and religion, and
+of Hindu traditions, and a contemptuous disregard for the opinions of
+Hindu writers and pundits.  Very often, facts and dates are taken by
+these writers from the writings of their predecessors or contemporaries
+on the assumption that they are correct without any further
+investigation by themselves.  Even when a writer gives a date with an
+expression of doubt as to its accuracy, his follower frequently quotes
+the same date as if it were absolutely correct.  One wrong date is made
+to depend upon another wrong date, and one bad inference is often
+deduced from another inference equally unwarranted and illogical.  And
+consequently, if the correctness of any particular date given by these
+writers is to be ascertained, the whole structure of Indian Chronology
+constructed by them will have to be carefully examined.  It will be
+convenient to enumerate some of the assumptions above referred to before
+proceeding to examine their opinions concerning the date of
+Sankaracharya.
+
+I. Many of these writers are not altogether free from the prejudices
+engendered by the pernicious doctrine, deduced from the Bible, whether
+rightly or wrongly, that this world is only six thousand years old.  We
+do not mean to say that any one of these writers would now seriously
+think of defending the said doctrine.  Nevertheless, it had exercised a
+considerable influence on the minds of Christian writers when they began
+to investigate the claims of Asiatic Chronology.  If an antiquity of
+five or six thousand years is assigned to any particular event connected
+with the ancient history of Egypt, India or China, it is certain to be
+rejected at once by these writers without any inquiry whatever regarding
+the truth of the statement.
+
+II. They are extremely unwilling to admit that any portion of the Veda
+can be traced to a period anterior to the date of the Pentateuch, even
+when the arguments brought forward to establish the priority of the
+Vedas are such as would be convincing to the mind of an impartial
+investigator untainted by Christian prejudices.  The maximum limit of
+Indian antiquity is, therefore, fixed for them by the Old Testament;
+and it is virtually assumed by them that a period between the date of
+the Old Testament on the one side, and the present time on the other,
+should necessarily be assigned to every book in the whole range of Vedic
+and Sanskrit literature, and to almost every event of Indian history.
+
+III. It is often assumed without reason that every passage in the Vedas
+containing philosophical or metaphysical ideas must be looked upon as a
+subsequent interpolation, and that every book treating of a
+philosophical subject must be considered as having been written after
+the time of Buddha or after the commencement of the Christian era.
+Civilization, philosophy and scientific investigation had their origin,
+in the opinion of these writers, within the six or seven centuries
+preceding the Christian era, and mankind slowly emerged, for the first
+time, from "the depths of animal brutality" within the last four or five
+thousand years.
+
+IV. It is also assumed that Buddhism was brought into existence by
+Gautama Buddha.  The previous existence of Buddhism, Jainism and Arhat
+philosophy is rejected as an absurd and ridiculous invention of the
+Buddhists and others, who attempted thereby to assign a very high
+antiquity to their own religion.  In consequence of this erroneous
+impression every Hindu book referring to the doctrines of Buddhists is
+declared to have been written subsequent to the time of Gautama Buddha.
+For instance, Mr. Weber is of opinion that Vyasa, the author of the
+Brahma Sutras, wrote them in the fifth century after Christ.  This is
+indeed a startling revelation to the majority of Hindus.
+
+V. Whenever several works treating of various subjects are attributed to
+one and the same author by Hindu writings or traditions, it is often
+assumed, and apparently without any reason whatever in the majority of
+cases, that the said works should be considered as the productions of
+different writers.  By this process of reasoning they have discovered
+two Badarayanas (Vyasas), two Patanjalis, and three Vararuchis.  We do
+not mean to say that in every case identity of name is equivalent to
+identity of personality.  But we cannot but protest against such
+assumptions when they are made without any evidence to support them,
+merely for the purpose of supporting a foregone conclusion or
+establishing a favourite hypothesis.
+
+VI. An attempt is often made by these writers to establish the
+chronological order of the events of ancient Indian history by means of
+the various stages in the growth or development of the Sanskrit language
+and Indian literature.  The time required for this growth is often
+estimated in the same manner in which a geologist endeavours to fix the
+time required for the gradual development of the various strata
+composing the earth's crust. But we fail to perceive anything like a
+proper method in making these calculations.  It will be wrong to assume
+that the growth of one language will require the same time as that of
+another within the same limits.  The peculiar characteristics of the
+nation to whom the language belongs must be carefully taken into
+consideration in attempting to make any such calculation.  The history
+of the said nation is equally important.  Any one who examines Max
+Muller's estimate of the so-called Sutra, Brahmana, Mantra and Khanda
+periods, will be able to perceive that no attention has been paid to
+these considerations.  The time allotted to the growth of these four
+"strata" of Vedic literature is purely arbitrary.
+
+We have enumerated these defects in the writings of European
+Orientalists for the purpose of showing to our readers that it is not
+always safe to rely upon the conclusions arrived at by these writers
+regarding the dates of ancient Indian history.
+
+In examining the various quotations and traditions selected by European
+Orientalists for the purpose of fixing Sankaracharya's date, special
+care must be taken to see whether the person referred to was the very
+first Sankaracharya who established the Adwaitee doctrine, or one of his
+followers who became the Adhipathis (heads) of the various Mathams
+(temples) established by him and his successors.  Many of the Adwaitee
+Mathadhipatis who succeeded him (especially of the Sringeri Matham) were
+men of considerable renown and were well known throughout India during
+their time.  They are often referred to under the general name of
+Sankaracharya.  Consequently, any reference made to any one of these
+Mathadhipatis is apt to be mistaken for a reference to the first
+Sankaracharya himself.
+
+Mr. Barth, whose opinion regarding Sankara's date is quoted by "An
+English F.T.S." against the date assigned to that teacher in Mr.
+Sinnett's book on Esoteric Buddhism, does not appear to have carefully
+examined the subject himself.  He assigns no reasons for the date given,
+and does not even allude to the existence of other authorities and
+traditions which conflict with the date adopted by him.  The date which
+he assigns to Sankara appears in an unimportant foot-note on page 89 of
+his book on "The Religions of India," which reads thus:  "Sankaracharya
+is generally placed in the eighth century;  perhaps we must accept the
+ninth rather. The best accredited tradition represents him as born on
+the 10th of the month 'Madhava' in 788 A.D.  Other traditions, it is
+true, place him in the second and fifth centuries.  The author of the
+Dabistan, on the other hand, brings him as far down as the commencement
+of the fourteenth."  Mr. Barth is clearly wrong in saying that Sankara
+is generally placed in the eight century. There are as many traditions
+for placing him in some century before the Christian era as for placing
+him in some century after the said era, and it will also be seen from
+what follows that in fact evidence preponderates in favour of the former
+statement. It cannot be contended that the generality of Orientalists
+have any definite opinions of their own on the subject under
+consideration.  Max Muller does not appear to have ever directed his
+attention to this subject.  Monier Williams merely copies the date given
+by Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Weber seems to rely upon the same authority
+without troubling himself with any further inquiry about the matter.
+Mr. Wilson is probably the only Orientalist who investigated the subject
+with some care and attention;  and he frankly confesses that the exact
+period at which "he (Sankara) flourished can by no means be determined"
+(p. 201 of vol. I. of his "Essays on the Religion of the Hindoos").
+Under such circumstances the foot-note above quoted is certainly very
+misleading.  Mr. Barth does not inform his readers where he obtained the
+tradition referred to, and what reasons he has for supposing that it
+refers to the first Sankaracharya, and that it is "the best accredited
+tradition."  When the matter is still open to discussion, Mr. Barth
+should not have adopted any particular date if he is not prepared to
+support it and establish it by proper arguments.  The other traditions
+alluded to are not intended, of course, to strengthen the authority of
+the tradition relied upon.  But the wording of the foot-note in question
+seems to show that all the authorities and traditions relating to the
+subject are comprised therein, when in fact the most important of them
+are left out of consideration, as will be shown hereafter. No arguments
+are to be found in support of the date assigned to Sankara in the other
+portions of Mr. Barth's book, but there are a few isolated passages
+which may be taken either as inferences from the statement in question
+or arguments in its support, which it will be necessary to examine in
+this connection.
+
+Mr. Barth has discovered some connection between the appearance of
+Sankara in India and the commencement of the persecution of the
+Buddhists, which he seems to place in the seventh and eighth centuries.
+In page 89 of his book he speaks of "the great reaction on the offensive
+against Buddhism which was begun in the Deccan in the seventh and eighth
+centuries by the schools of Kumarila and Sankara;"  and in page 135 he
+states that the "disciples of Kumarila and Sankara, organized into
+military bands, constituted themselves the rabid defenders of
+orthodoxy." The force of these statements is, however, considerably
+weakened by the author's observations on pages 89 and 134, regarding the
+absence of any traces of Buddhist persecution by Sankara in the
+authentic documents hitherto examined, and the absurdity of legends
+which represent him as exterminating Buddhists from the Himalaya to Cape
+Comorin.
+
+The association of Sankara with Kumarila in the passages above cited is
+highly ridiculous.  It is well known to almost every Hindu that the
+followers of Purva Mimamsa (Kumarila commented on the Sutras) were the
+greatest and the bitterest opponents of Sankara and his doctrine, and
+Mr. Barth seems to be altogether ignorant of the nature of Kumarila's
+views and Purva Mimamsa, and the scope and aim of Sankara's Vedantic
+philosophy.  It is impossible to say what evidence the author has for
+asserting that the great reaction against the Buddhists commenced in the
+seventh and eighth centuries, and that Sankara was instrumental in
+originating it.  There are some passages in his book which tend to show
+that this date cannot be considered as quite correct.  In page 135 he
+says that Buddhist persecution began even in the time of Asoka.
+
+Such being the case, it is indeed very surprising that the orthodox
+Hindus should have kept quiet for nearly ten centuries without
+retaliating on their enemies.  The political ascendency gained by the
+Buddhists during the reign of Asoka did not last very long;  and the
+Hindus had the support of very powerful kings before and after the
+commencement of the Christian era. Moreover, the author says, in p. 132
+of his book, that Buddhism was in a state of decay in the seventh
+century.  It is hardly to be expected that the reaction against the
+Buddhists would commence when their religion was already in a state of
+decay.  No great religious teacher or reformer would waste his time and
+energy in demolishing a religion already in ruins.  But what evidence is
+there to show that Sankara was ever engaged in this task?  If the main
+object of his preaching was to evoke a reaction against Buddhism, he
+would no doubt have left us some writings specially intended to
+criticize its doctrines and expose its defects.  On the other hand, he
+does not even allude to Buddhism in his independent works.
+
+Though he was a voluminous writer, with the exception of a few remarks
+on the theory advocated by some Buddhists regarding the nature of
+perception, contained in his Commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, there is
+not a single passage in the whole range of his writings regarding the
+Buddhists or their doctrines;  and the insertion of even these few
+remarks in his Commentary was rendered necessary by the allusions
+contained in the Sutras which he was interpreting.  As, in our humble
+opinion, these Brahma-Sutras were composed by Vyasa himself (and not by
+an imaginary Vyasa of the fifth century after Christ, evolved by Mr.
+Weber's fancy), the allusions therein contained relate to the Buddhism
+which existed to the date of Gautama Buddha.  From these few remarks it
+will be clear to our readers that Sankaracharya had nothing to do with
+Buddhist persecution.  We may here quote a few passages from Mr.
+Wilson's Preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary in
+support of our remarks.  He writes as follows regarding Sankara's
+connection with the persecution of the Buddhists:--"Although the popular
+belief attributes the origin of the Bauddha persecution to
+Sankaracharya, yet in this case we have some reason to distrust its
+accuracy.  Opposed to it we have the mild character of the reformer, who
+is described as uniformly gentle and tolerant;  and, speaking from my
+own limited reading in Vedanta works, and the more satisfactory
+testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, which he permits me to adduce, it does not
+appear that any traces of his being instrumental to any persecution are
+to be found in his own writings, all which are extant, and the object of
+which is by no means the correction of the Bauddha or any other schism,
+but the refutation of all other doctrines besides his own, and the
+reformation or re-establishment of the fourth religious order."  Further
+on he observes that "it is a popular error to ascribe to him the work of
+persecution;  he does not appear at all occupied in that odious task,
+nor is he engaged in particular controversy with any of the Bauddhas."
+
+From the foregoing observations it will be seen that Sankara's date
+cannot be determined by the time of the commencement of the Buddhist
+persecution, even if it were possible to ascertain the said period.
+
+Mr. Barth seems to have discovered some connection between the
+philosophical systems of Sankara, Ramanuja and Anandathirtha, and the
+Arabian merchants who came to India in the first centuries of the
+Hejira, and he is no doubt fully entitled to any credit that may be
+given him for the originality of his discovery.  This mysterious and
+occult connection between Adwaita philosophy and Arabian commerce is
+pointed out in p. 212 of his book, and it may have some bearing on the
+present question, if it is anything more than a figment of his fancy.
+The only reason given by him in support of his theory is, however, in my
+humble opinion, worthless.  The Hindus had a Prominent example of a
+grand religious movement under the guidance of a single teacher in the
+life of Buddha, and it was not necessary for them to imitate the
+adventures of the Arabian prophet.  There is but one other passage in
+Mr. Barth's book which has some reference to Sankara's date.  In page
+207 he writes as follows:--"The Siva, for instance, who is invoked at
+the commencement of the drama of Sakuntala, who is at once God, priest
+and offering, and whose body is the universe, is a Vedantic idea.  This
+testimony appears to be forgotten when it is maintained, as is sometimes
+done, that the whole sectarian Vedantism commences with Sankara."  But
+this testimony appears to be equally forgotten when it is maintained, as
+is sometimes done by Orientalists like Mr. Barth, that Sankara lived in
+some century after the author of Sakuntala.
+
+From the foregoing remarks it will be apparent that Mr. Barth's opinion
+regarding Sankara's date is very unsatisfactory.  As Mr. Wilson seems to
+have examined the subject with some care and attention, we must now
+advert to his opinion and see how far it is based on proper evidence.
+In attempting to fix Amara Sinha's date (which attempt ultimately ended
+in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara
+lived.  Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in
+his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary.  We shall
+now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with
+the subject under consideration and comment upon them.  Mr. Wilson
+writes as follows:--
+
+"The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other
+remarkable incident amongst the Hindus.  The Kadali (it ought to be
+Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his
+system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since;  some accounts
+place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third
+or fourth century after;  a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in
+Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama
+Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at
+Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore
+Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that
+still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of
+the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and
+common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old.  The Bhoja Prabandha
+enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that
+prince;  his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries.
+The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to
+reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been
+born three times;  first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago,
+again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in
+Tuluva, no more than 600 years since;  the latter assertion being
+intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that
+was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious
+controversy.  The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared
+in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era.  Dr. Taylor
+thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from
+the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of
+about 1,000 years.  This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy,
+a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his
+doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a
+calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara
+Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the
+seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time
+agreeing with the statements made to Dr. Buchanan in his journey through
+Sankara's native country, Malabar, and in union with the assertion of
+the Kerala Utpatti, a work giving art historical and statistical account
+of the same province, and which, according to Mr. Duncan's citation of
+it, mentions the regulations of the castes of Malabar by this
+philosopher to have been effected about 1,000 years before 1798.  At the
+same time, it must be observed, that a manuscript translation of the
+same work in Colonel Mackenzie's possession, states Sankaracharya to
+have been born about the middle of the fifth century, or between
+thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago, differing in this respect from
+Mr. Duncan's statement--a difference of the less importance, as the
+manuscript in question, either from defects in the original or
+translation, presents many palpable errors, and cannot consequently be
+depended upon.  The weight of authority therefore is altogether in
+favour of an antiquity of about ten centuries, and I am disposed to
+adopt this estimate of Sankara's date, and to place him in the end of
+the eighth and beginning of the ninth century of the Christian era."
+
+We will add a few more authorities to Mr. Wilson's list before
+proceeding to comment on the foregoing passage.
+
+In a work called "The Biographical Sketches of Eminent Hindu Authors,"
+published at Bombay in 1860 by Janardan Ramchenderjee, it is stated that
+Sankara lived 2,500 years ago, and that, in the opinion of some people,
+2,200 years ago.  The records of the Combaconum Matham give a list of
+nearly 66 Mathadhipatis from Sankara down to the present time, and show
+that he lived more than 2,000 years ago.
+
+The Kudali Matham referred to by Mr. Wilson, which is a branch of the
+Sringeri Matham, gives the same date as the latter Matham, their
+traditions being identical.  Their calculation can safely be relied upon
+as far as it is supported by the dates given on the places of Samadhi
+(something like a tomb) of the successive Gurus of the Sringeri Matham;
+and it leads us to the commencement of the Christian era.
+
+No definite information is given by Mr. Wilson regarding the nature,
+origin, or reliability of the accounts which place Sankara in the third
+or fourth century of the Christian era or at its commencement;  nor does
+it clearly appear that the history of the kings of Konga referred to
+unmistakably alludes to the very first Sancharacharya.  These traditions
+are evidently opposed to the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Wilson, and it
+does not appear on what grounds their testimony is discredited by him.
+Mr. Wilson is clearly wrong in stating that an antiquity of 1,600 years
+is attributed to Sankara by the Sringeri Matham.  We have already
+referred to the account of the Sringeri Matham, and it is precisely
+similar to the account given by the Kudali Brahmins. We have ascertained
+that it is so from the agent of the Sringeri Matham at Madras, who has
+recently published the list of teachers preserved at the said Matham
+with the dates assigned to them. And further, we are unable to see which
+"common tradition" makes Sankara "about 1,200 years old."  As far as our
+knowledge goes there is no such common tradition in India.  The majority
+of people in Southern India have, up to this time, been relying on the
+Sringeri account, and in Northern India there seems to be no common
+tradition.  We have but a mass of contradictory accounts.
+
+It is indeed surprising that an Orientalist of Mr. Wilson's pretensions
+should confound the poet named Sankara and mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha
+with the great Adwaitee teacher.  No Hindu would ever commit such a
+ridiculous mistake.  We are astonished to find some of these European
+Orientalists quoting now and then some of the statements contained in
+such books as Bhoja Prabandha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Raja-tarangini and
+Panchatantra, as if they were historical works.  In some other part of
+his preface Mr. Wilson himself says that this Bhoja Prabandha is
+altogether untrustworthy, as some of the statements contained therein
+did not harmonize with his theory about Amarasimha's date;  but now he
+misquotes its statements for the purpose of supporting his conclusion
+regarding Sankara's date.  Surely, consistency is not one of the
+prominent characteristics of the writings of the majority of European
+Orientalists.  The person mentioned in Bhoja Prabandha is always spoken
+of under the name of Sankara Kavi (poet), and he is nowhere called
+Sankaracharya (teacher), and the Adwaitee teacher is never mentioned in
+any Hindu work under the appellation of Sankara Kavi.
+
+It is unnecessary for us to say anything about the Madhwa traditions or
+the opinion of the Vaishnava Brahmins of Madurah regarding Sankara's
+date.  It is, in our humble opinion, hopeless to expect anything but
+falsehood regarding Sankara's history and his philosophy from the
+Madhwas and the Vaishnavas.  They are always very anxious to show to the
+world at large that their doctrines existed before the time of Sankara,
+and that the Adwaitee doctrine was a deviation from their preexisting
+orthodox Hinduism.  And consequently they have assigned to him an
+antiquity of less than 1,500 years.
+
+It does not appear why Dr. Taylor thinks that he can allow Sankara about
+900 years, or on what grounds Mr. Colebrooke is inclined to give him an
+antiquity of about 1,000 years.  No reliance can be placed on such
+statements before the reasons assigned therefore are thoroughly sifted.
+
+Fortunately, Mr. Wilson gives us the reason for Ram Mohun Roy's opinion.
+We are inclined to believe that Ram Mohun Roy's calculation was made
+with reference to the Sringeri list of Teachers or Gurus, as that was
+the only list published up to this time;  and as no other Matham, except
+perhaps the Cumbaconum Matham, has a list of Gurus coming up to the
+present time in uninterrupted succession.  There is no necessity for
+depending upon his calculation (which from its very nature cannot be
+anything more than mere guesswork) when the old list preserved at
+Sringeri contains the dates assigned to the various teachers.  As these
+dates have not been published up to the present time, and as Ram Mohun
+Roy had merely a string of names before him, he was obliged to ascertain
+Sankara's date by assigning a certain number of years on the average to
+every teacher.  Consequently, his opinion is of no importance whatever
+when we have the statement of the Sringeri Matham which, as we have
+already said, places Sankara some centuries before the Christian era.
+The same remarks will apply to the calculation in question even if it
+were made on the basis of the number of teachers contained in the list
+preserved in the Cumbaconum Matham.
+
+Very little importance can be attached to the oral evidence adduced by
+some unknown persons before Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar;
+and we have only to consider the inferences that may be drawn from the
+accounts contained in Kerala Utpatti.  The various manuscript copies of
+this work seem to differ in the date they assign to Sankaracharya;  even
+if the ease were otherwise, we cannot place any reliance upon this work,
+for the following among other reasons:--
+
+I. It is a well-known fact that the customs of Malabar are very
+peculiar.  Their defenders have been, consequently, pointing to some
+great Rishi or some great philosopher of ancient India as their
+legislator.  Some of them affirm (probably the majority) that Parasurama
+brought into existence some of these customs and left a special Smriti
+for the guidance of the people of Malabar; others say that it was
+Sankaracharya who sanctioned these peculiar customs.  It is not very
+difficult to perceive why these two persons were selected by them.
+According to the Hindu Puranas, Parasurama lived in Malabar for some
+time, and according to Hindu traditions Sankara was born in that
+country.  But it is extremely doubtful whether either of them had
+anything to do with the peculiar customs of the said country.  There is
+no allusion whatever to any of these customs in Sankara's works.  He
+seems to have devoted his whole attention to religious reform, and it is
+very improbable that he should have ever directed his attention to the
+local customs of Malabar.  While attempting to revive the philosophy of
+the ancient Rishis, it is not likely that he should have sanctioned the
+customs of Malabar, which are at variance with the rules laid down in
+the Smritis of those very Rishis; and as far as our knowledge goes, he
+left no written regulations regarding to the castes of Malabar.
+
+II. The statements contained in Kerala Utpatti are opposed to the
+account of Sankara's life given in almost all the Sankara Vijayams
+(Biographies of Sankara) examined up to this time--viz., Vidyaranya's
+Sankara Vijayam, Chitsukhachary's Sankara Vijayavilasam, Brihat Sankara
+Vijayam, &c.  According to the account contained in these works, Sankara
+left Malabar in his eighth year, and returned to his native village when
+his mother was on her death-bed, and on that occasion he remained there
+only for a few days.  It is difficult to see at what period of his
+lifetime he was engaged in making regulations for the castes of Malabar.
+
+III. The work under consideration represents Malabar as the seat of
+Bhattapada's triumphs over the Buddhists, and says that this teacher
+established himself in Malabar and expelled the Buddhists from that
+country.  This statement alone will be sufficient to show to our readers
+the fictitious character of the account contained in this book.
+According to every other Hindu work, this great teacher of Purva Mimamsa
+was born in Northern India; almost all his famous disciples and
+followers were living in that part of the country, and according to
+Vidyaranya's account he died at Allahabad.
+
+For the foregoing reasons we cannot place any reliance upon this account
+of Malabar.
+
+From an examination of the traditions and other accounts referred to
+above, Mr. Wilson comes to the conclusion that Sankaracharya lived in
+the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century of the
+Christian era.  The accounts of the Sringeri, Kudali and Cumbaconum
+Mathams, and the traditions current in the Bombay Presidency, as shown
+in the biographical sketches published at Bombay, place Sankara in some
+century before the Christian era.  On the other hand, Kerala Utpatti,
+the information obtained by Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar,
+and the opinions expressed by Dr. Taylor and Mr. Colebrooke, concur in
+assigning to him an antiquity of about 1,000 years.  The remaining
+traditions referred to by Mr. Wilson are as much opposed to his opinion
+as to the conclusion that Sankara lived before Christ.  We shall now
+leave it to our readers to say whether, under such circumstances, Mr.
+Wilson is justified in asserting that "the weight of authority is
+altogether in favour" of his theory.
+
+We have already referred to the writings of almost all the European
+Orientalists who expressed an opinion upon the subject under discussion;
+and we need hardly say that Sankara's date is yet to be ascertained.
+
+We are obliged to comment at length on the opinions of European
+Orientalists regarding Sankara's date, as there will be no probability
+of any attention being paid to the opinion of Indian and Tibetan
+initiates when it is generally believed that the question has been
+finally settled by European Sanskritists.  The Adepts referred to by "An
+English F.T.S." are certainly in a position to clear up some of the
+problems in Indian religious history.  But there is very little chance
+of their opinions being accepted by the general public under present
+circumstances, unless they are supported by such evidence as is within
+the reach of the outside world.  As it is not always possible to procure
+such evidence, there is very little use in publishing the information
+which is in their possession until the public are willing to recognize
+and admit the antiquity and trustworthiness of their traditions, the
+extent of their powers, and the vastness of their knowledge.  In the
+absence of such proof as is above indicated, there is every likelihood
+of their opinions being rejected as absurd and untenable;  their motives
+will no doubt be questioned, and some people may be tempted to deny even
+the fact of their existence.  It is often asked by Hindus as well as by
+English men why these Adepts are so very unwilling to publish some
+portion at least of the information they possess regarding the truths of
+physical science.  But, in doing so, they do not seem to perceive the
+difference between the method by which they obtain their knowledge and
+the process of modern scientific investigation by which the facts of
+Nature are ascertained and its laws are discovered.  Unless an Adept can
+prove his conclusions by the same kind of reasoning as is adopted by the
+modern scientist they remain undemonstrated to the outside world. It is
+of course impossible for him to develop in a considerable number of
+human beings such faculties as would enable them to perceive their
+truth;  and it is not always practicable to establish them by the
+ordinary scientific method unless all the facts and laws on which his
+demonstration is to be based have already been ascertained by modern
+science.  No Adept can be expected to anticipate the discoveries of the
+next four or five centuries, and prove some grand scientific truth to
+the entire satisfaction of the educated public after having discovered
+every fact and law of Nature required for the said purpose by such
+process of reasoning as would be accepted by them.  They have to
+encounter similar difficulties in giving any information regarding the
+events of the ancient history of India.
+
+However, before giving the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by the
+Indian and Tibetan initiates, we shall indicate a few circumstances by
+which his date may be approximately determined. It is our humble opinion
+that the Sankara Vijayams hitherto published can be relied upon as far
+as they are consistent with each other regarding the general outlines of
+Sankara's life.  We cannot, however, place any reliance whatever upon
+Anandagiri's Sankara Vijaya published at Calcutta.  The Calcutta edition
+not only differs in some very material points from the manuscript copies
+of the same work found in Southern India, but is opposed to every other
+Sankara Vijayam hitherto examined.  It is quite clear from its style and
+some of the statements contained therein, that it was not the production
+of Anandagiri, one of the four chief disciples of Sankara and the
+commentator on his Upanishad Bhashyam.  For instance, it represents
+Sankara as the author of a certain verse which is to be found in
+Vidyaranya's Adhikaranaratnamala, written in the fourteenth century.  It
+represents Sankara as giving orders to two of his disciples to preach
+the Visishtadwaitee and the Dwaitee doctrines, which are directly
+opposed to his own doctrine.  The book under consideration says that
+Sankara went to conquer Mandanamisra in debate, followed by
+Sureswaracharya, though Mandanamisra assumed the latter name at the time
+of initiation.  It is unnecessary for us here to point out all the
+blunders and absurdities of this book.  It will be sufficient to say
+that in our opinion it was not written by Anandagiri, and that it was
+the introduction of an unknown author who does not appear to have been
+even tolerably well acquainted with the history of the Adwaitee
+doctrine. Vidyaranya's (otherwise Sayanachary, the great commentator of
+the Vedas) Sankara Vijaya is decidedly the most reliable source of
+information as regards the main features of Sankara's biography. Its
+authorship has been universally accepted, and the information contained
+therein was derived by its author, as may be seen from his own
+statements, from certain old biographies of Sankara existing at the time
+of its composition.  Taking into consideration the author's vast
+knowledge and information, and the opportunities he had for collecting
+materials for his work when he was the head of the Sringeri Matham,
+there is every reason to believe that he had embodied in his work the
+most reliable information he could obtain.  Mr. Wilson, however, says
+that the book in question is "much too poetical and legendary" to be
+acknowledged as a great authority.  We admit that the style is highly
+poetical, but we deny that the work is legendary.  Mr. Wilson is not
+justified in characterizing it as such on account of its description of
+some of the wonderful phenomena shown by Sankara.  Probably the learned
+Orientalist would not be inclined to consider the Biblical account of
+Christ in the same light.  It is not the peculiar privilege of
+Christianity to have a miracle-worker for its first propagator.  In the
+following observations we shall take such facts as are required from
+this work.
+
+It is generally believed that a person named Govinda Yogi was Sankara's
+Guru, but it is not generally known that this Yogi was in fact
+Patanjali--the great author of the Mahabhashya and the Yoga Sutras--
+under a new name.  A tradition current in Southern India represents him
+as one of the Chelas of Patanjali;  but it is very doubtful if this
+tradition has anything like a proper foundation.  But it is quite clear
+from the 94th, 95th, 96th, and 97th verses of the 5th chapter of
+Vidyaranya's Sankara Vijayam that Govinda Yogi and Patanjali were
+identical.  According to the immemorial custom observed amongst
+initiates, Patanjali assumed the name of Govinda Yogi at the time of his
+initiation by Goudapada.  It cannot be contended that Vidyaranya
+represented Patanjali as Sankara's Guru merely for the purpose of
+assigning some importance to Sankara and his teaching.  Sankara is
+looked upon as a far greater man than Patanjali by the Adwaitees, and
+nothing can be added to Sankara's reputation by Vidyaranya's assertion.
+Moreover, Patanjali's views are not altogether identical with Sankara's
+views;  it may be seen from Sankara's writings that he attached no
+importance whatever to the practices of Hatha Yog regarding which
+Patanjali composed his Yoga Sutras. Under such circumstances, if
+Vidyaranya had the option of selecting a Guru for Sankara, he would no
+doubt have represented Vyasa himself (who is supposed to be still
+living) as his Guru. We see no reason therefore to doubt the correctness
+of the statement under examination.  Therefore, as Sankara was
+Patanjali's Chela, and as Goudapada was his Guru, his date will enable
+us to fix the dates of Sankara and Goudapada.  We may here point out to
+our readers a mistake that appears in p. 148 of Mr. Sinnett's book on
+Esoteric Buddhism as regards the latter personage.  He is there
+represented as Sankara's Guru;  Mr. Sinnett was informed, we believe,
+that he was Sankara's Paramaguru, and not having properly understood the
+meaning of this expression, Mr. Sinnett wrote that he was Sankara's
+Guru.
+
+It is generally admitted by Orientalists that Patanjali lived before the
+commencement of the Christian era.  Mr. Barth places him in the second
+century before the Christian era, accepting Goldstucker's opinion, and
+Monier Williams does the same thing. Weber, who seems to have carefully
+examined the opinions of all the other Orientalists who have written
+upon the subject, comes to the conclusion that "we must for the present
+rest satisfied with placing the date of the composition of the Bhashya
+between B.C. 140 and A.D. 60, a result which considering the wretched
+state of the chronology of Indian Liturgy generally is, despite its
+indefiniteness, of no mean importance."  And yet even this date rests
+upon inferences drawn from one or two unimportant expressions contained
+in Patanjali's Mahabhashya.  It is always dangerous to draw such
+inferences, and especially so when it is known that, according to the
+tradition current amongst Hindu grammarians, some portions of
+Mahabhashya were lost, the gaps being filled up by subsequent writers.
+Even supposing that we should consider the expression quoted as written
+by Patanjali himself, there is nothing in those expressions which would
+enable us to fix the writer's date.  For instance, the connection
+between the expression "Arunad Yavanah Saketam" and the expedition of
+Menander against Ayodhya between B.C. 144 and 120, relied upon by
+Goldstucker is merely imaginary.  There is nothing in the expression to
+show that the allusion contained therein points necessarily to
+Menander's expedition.  We believe that Patanjali is referring to the
+expedition of Yavanas against Ayodhya during the lifetime of Sagara's
+father described in Harivamsa.  This expedition occurred long before
+Rama's time, and there is nothing to connect it with Menander.
+Goldstucker's inference is based upon the assumption that there was no
+other Yavana expedition against Ayodhya known to Patanjali, and it will
+be easily seen from Harivamsa (written by Vyasa) that the said
+assumption is unwarranted.  Consequently the whole theory constructed by
+Goldstucker on this weak foundation falls to the ground.  No valid
+inferences can be drawn from the mere names of kings contained in
+Mahabhashya, even if they are traced to Patanjali himself, as there
+would be several kings in the same dynasty bearing the same name.  From
+the foregoing remarks it will be clear that we cannot fix, as Weber has
+done, B.C. 140 as the maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to
+Patanjali. It is now necessary to see whether any other such limit has
+been ascertained by Orientalists.  As Panini's date still remains
+undetermined, the limit cannot be fixed with reference to his date.  But
+it is assumed by some Orientalists that Panini must have lived at some
+time subsequent to Alexander's invasion, from the fact that Panini
+explains in his Grammar the formation of the word Yavanani.  We are very
+sorry that European Orientalists have taken the pains to construct
+theories upon this basis without ascertaining the meaning assigned to
+the word Yavana, and the time when the Hindus first became acquainted
+with the Greeks.  It is unreasonable to assume without proof that this
+acquaintance commenced at the time of Alexander's invasion.  On the
+other hand, there are very good reasons for believing that the Greeks
+were known to the Hindus long before this event.  Pythagoras visited
+India, according to the traditions current amongst Indian initiates, and
+he is alluded to in Indian astrological works under the name of
+Yavanacharya.  Moreover, it is not quite certain that the word Yavana
+was strictly confined to the Greeks by the ancient Hindu writers.
+Probably it was originally applied to the Egyptians and the Ethiopians;
+it was probably extended first to the Alexandrian Greeks, and
+subsequently to the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians.  Besides the Yavana
+invasion of Ayodhya described in Harivamsa, there was another subsequent
+expedition to India by Kala Yavana (Black Yavana) during Krishna's
+lifetime described in the same work.  This expedition was probably
+undertaken by the Ethiopians.  Anyhow, there are no reasons whatever, as
+far as we can see, for asserting that Hindu writers began to use the
+word Yavana after Alexander's invasion.  We can attach no importance
+whatever to any inferences that may be drawn regarding the dates of
+Panini and Katyayana (both of them lived before Patanjali) from the
+statements contained in Katha Sarit Sayara, which is nothing more than a
+mere collection of fables. It is now seen by Orientalists that no proper
+conclusions can be drawn regarding the dates of Panini and Katyayana
+from the statements made by Hiuan Thsang, and we need not therefore say
+anything here regarding the said statements.  Consequently the dates of
+Panini and Katyayana still remain undetermined by European Orientalists.
+Goldstucker is probably correct in his conclusion that Panini lived
+before Buddha, and the Buddhists' accounts agree with the traditions of
+the initiates in asserting that Katyayana was a contemporary of Buddha.
+From the fact that Patanjali must have composed his Mahabhashyam after
+the composition of Panini's Sutras and Katyayana's Vartika, we can only
+infer that it was written after Buddha's birth.  But there are a few
+considerations which may help us in coming to the conclusion that
+Patanjali must have lived about the year 500 B.C.;  Max Muller fixed the
+Sutra period between 500 B.C. and 600 B.C.  We agree with him in
+supposing that the period probably ended with B.C. 500, though it is
+uncertain how far it extended into the depths of Indian antiquity.
+Patanjali was the author of the Yoga Sutras, and this fact has not been
+doubted by any Hindu writer up to this time.  Mr. Weber thinks, however,
+that the author of the Yoga Sutras might be a different man from the
+author of the Mahabhashya, though he does not venture to assign any
+reason for his supposition.  We very much doubt if any European
+Orientalist can ever find out the connection between the first Anhika of
+the Mahabhashya and the real secrets of Hatha Yoga contained in the Yoga
+Sutras.  No one but an initiate can understand the full significance of
+the said Anhika;  and the "eternity of the Logos" or Sabda is one of the
+principal doctrines of the Gymnosophists of India, who were generally
+Hatha Yogis.  In the opinion of Hindu writers and pundits Patanjali was
+the author of three works, viz., Mahabhashya, Yoga Sutras, and a book on
+Medicine and Anatomy;  and there is not the slightest reason for
+questioning the correctness of this opinion.  We must, therefore, place
+Patanjali in the Sutra period, and this conclusion is confirmed by the
+traditions of the Indian initiates.  As Sankaracharya was a contemporary
+of Patanjali (being his Chela) he must have lived about the same time.
+We have thus shown that there are no reasons for placing Sankara in the
+eighth or ninth century after Christ, as some of the European
+Orientalists have done.  We have further shown that Sankara was
+Patanjali's Chela, and that his date should be ascertained with
+reference to Patanjali's date.  We have also shown that neither the year
+B.C. 140 nor the date of Alexander's invasion can be accepted as the
+maximum limit of antiquity that can be assigned to him, and we have
+lastly pointed out a few circumstances which will justify us in
+expressing an opinion that Patanjali and his Chela Sankara belonged to
+the Sutra period.  We may, perhaps, now venture to place before the
+public the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and Indian
+initiates.  According to the historical information in their possession
+he was born in the year B.C. 510 (fifty-one years and two months after
+the date of Buddha's Nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence
+in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at
+Conjeveram, Sringeri, Jaggurnath, Benares, Cashmere, and various other
+places visited by Sankara, are properly deciphered. Sankara built
+Conjeveram, which is considered as one of the most ancient towns in
+Southern India;  and it may be possible to ascertain the time of its
+construction if proper inquiries are made.  But even the evidence now
+brought before the public supports the opinion of the Initiates above
+indicated.  As Goudapada was Sankaracharya's Guru's guru, his date
+entirely depends on Sankara's date;  and there is every reason to
+suppose that he lived before Buddha.
+
+
+
+Question VI.--"Historical Difficulty"--Why?
+
+
+It is asked whether there may not be "some confusion" in the letter
+quoted on p. 62 of "Esoteric Buddhism" regarding "old Greeks and Romans
+said to have been Atlanteans."  The answer is--None whatever.  The word
+"Atlantean" was a generic name.  The objection to have it applied to the
+old Greeks and Romans on the ground that they were Aryans, "their
+language being intermediate between Sanskrit and modern European
+dialects," is worthless. With equal reason might a future 6th Race
+scholar, who had never heard of the (possible) submergence of a portion
+of European Turkey, object to Turks from the Bosphorus being referred to
+as a remnant of the Europeans.  "The Turks are surely Semites," he might
+say 12,000 years hence, and "their language is intermediate between
+Arabic and our modern 6th Race dialects." *
+
+--------
+* This is not to be construed to mean that 12,000 years hence there will
+be yet any man of the 6th Race, or that the 5th will be submerged.  The
+figures are given simply for the sake of a better comparison with the
+present objection in the case of the Greeks and Atlantis.
+---------
+
+The "historical difficulty" arises from a certain authoritative
+statement made by Orientalists on philological grounds. Professor Max
+Muller has brilliantly demonstrated that Sanskrit was the "elder
+sister"--by no means the mother--of all the modern languages.  As to
+that "mother," it is conjectured by himself and colleagues to be a "now
+extinct tongue, spoken probably by the nascent Aryan race."  When asked
+what was this language, the Western voice answers: "Who can tell?"
+When, "during what geological periods did this nascent race flourish?"
+the same impressive voice replies:  "In prehistoric ages, the duration
+of which no one can now determine."  Yet it must have been Sanskrit,
+however barbarous and unpolished, since "the ancestors of the Greeks,
+the Italians, Slavonians, Germans and Kelts" were living within "the
+same precincts" with that nascent race, and the testimony borne by
+language has enabled the philologist to trace the "language of the gods"
+in the speech of every Aryan nation. Meanwhile it is affirmed by these
+same Orientalists that classical Sanskrit has its origin at the very
+threshold of the Christian era;  while Vedic Sanskrit is allowed an
+antiquity of hardly 3,000 years (if so much) before that time.
+
+Now, Atlantis, on the statement of the "Adepts," sank over 9,000 years
+before the Christian era.*  How then can one maintain that the "old
+Greeks and Romans" were Atlanteans?  How can that be, since both nations
+are Aryans, and the genesis of their languages is Sanskrit?  Moreover,
+the Western scholars know that the Greek and Latin languages were formed
+within historical periods, the Greeks and Latins themselves having no
+existence as nations 11,000 B.C..  Surely they who advance such a
+proposition do not realize how very unscientific is their statement!
+
+----------
+* The position recently taken up by Mr. Gerald Massey in Light that the
+story of Atlantis is not a geological event but an ancient astronomical
+myth, is rather imprudent.  Mr. Massey, notwithstanding his rare
+intuitional faculties and great learning, is one of those writers in
+whom the intensity of research bent into one direction has biased his
+otherwise clear understanding.  Because Hercules is now a constellation
+it does not follow that there never was a hero of this name.  Because
+the Noachian Universal Deluge is now proved a fiction based upon
+geological and geographical ignorance, it does not, therefore, appear
+that there were not many local deluges in prehistoric ages.  The
+ancients connected every terrestrial event with the celestial bodies.
+They traced the history of their great deified heroes and memorialized
+it in stellar configurations as often as they personified pure myths,
+anthropomorphizing objects in Nature.  One has to learn the difference
+between the two modes before attempting to classify them under one
+nomenclature.  An earthquake has just engulfed over 80,000 people
+(87,903) in Sunda Straits.  These were mostly Malays, savages with whom
+but few had relations, and the dire event will be soon forgotten.  Had a
+portion of Great Britain been thus swept away instead, the whole world
+would have been in commotion, and yet, a few thousand years hence, even
+such an event would have passed out of man's memory; and a future Gerald
+Massey might be found speculating upon the astronomical character and
+signification of the Isles of Wight, Jersey, or Man, arguing, perhaps,
+that this latter island had not contained a real living race of men but
+"belonged to astronomical mythology," was a "Man submerged in celestial
+waters."  If the legend of the lost Atlantis is only "like those of
+Airyana-Vaejo and Jambu-dvipa," it is terrestrial enough, and therefore
+"the mythological origin of the Deluge legend" is so far an open
+question.  We claim that it is not "indubitably demonstrated," however
+clever the theoretical demonstration.
+---------
+
+Such are the criticisms passed, such the "historical difficulty." The
+culprits arraigned are fully alive to their perilous situation;
+nevertheless, they maintain the statement.  The only thing which may
+perhaps here be objected to is, that the names of the two nations are
+incorrectly used.  It may be argued that to refer to the remote
+ancestors and their descendants equally as "Greeks and Romans," is an
+anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic
+Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true.
+But, besides the very plausible excuse that the names used were embodied
+in a private letter, written as usual in great haste, and which was
+hardly worthy of the honour of being quoted verbatim with all its
+imperfections, there may perhaps exist still weightier objections to
+calling the said people by any other name.  One misnomer is as good as
+another;  and to refer to old Greeks and Romans in a private letter as
+the old Hellenes from Hellas or Magna Graecia, and the Latins as from
+Latium, would have been, besides looking pedantic, just as incorrect as
+the use of the appellation noted, though it may have sounded, perchance,
+more "historical."  The truth is that, like the ancestors of nearly all
+the Indo-Europeans (or shall we say Indo-Germanic Japhetidae?), the
+Greek and Roman sub-races mentioned have to be traced much farther back.
+Their origin must be carried far into the mists of that "prehistoric"
+period, that mythical age which inspires the modern historian with such
+a feeling of squeamishness that anything creeping out of its abysmal
+depths is sure to be instantly dismissed as a deceptive phantom, the
+mythos of an idle tale, or a later fable unworthy of serious notice.
+The Atlantean "old Greeks" could not be designated even as the
+Autochthones--a convenient term used to dispose of the origin of any
+people whose ancestry cannot be traced, and which, at any rate with the
+Hellenes, meant certainly more than simply "soil-born," or primitive
+aborigines;  and yet the so-called fable of Deukalion and Pyrrha is
+surely no more incredible or marvelous than that of Adam and Eve--a
+fable that hardly a hundred years ago no one would have dared or even
+thought to question.  And in its esoteric significance the Greek
+tradition is possibly more truly historical than many a so-called
+historical event during the period of the Olympiades, though both Hesiod
+and Homer may have failed to record the former in their epics.  Nor
+could the Romans be referred to as the Umbro-Sabbellians, nor even as
+the Itali. Peradventure, had the historians learnt something more than
+they have of the Italian "Autochthones"--the Iapygians--one might have
+given the "old Romans" the latter name.  But then there would be again
+that other difficulty:  history knows that the Latin invaders drove
+before them, and finally cooped up, this mysterious and miserable race
+among the clefts of the Calabrian rocks, thus showing the absence of any
+race affinity between the two.  Moreover, Western archeologists keep to
+their own counsel, and will accept of no other but their own
+conjectures.  And since they have failed to make anything out of the
+undecipherable inscriptions in an unknown tongue and mysterious
+characters on the Iapygian monuments, and so for years have pronounced
+them unguessable, he who would presume to meddle where the doctors
+muddle would be likely to be reminded of the Arab proverb about
+proffered advice.  Thus, it seems hardly possible to designate "the old
+Greeks and Romans" by their legitimate, true name, so as to at once
+satisfy the "historians" and keep on the fair side of truth and fact.
+However, since in the Replies that precede Science had to be repeatedly
+shocked by most unscientific propositions, and that before this series
+is closed many a difficulty, philological and archeological as well as
+historical, will have to be unavoidably created--it may be just as wise
+to uncover the occult batteries at once and have it over with.
+
+Well, then, the "Adepts" deny most emphatically to Western science any
+knowledge whatever of the growth and development of the Indo-Aryan race
+which, "at the very dawn of history," they have espied in its
+"patriarchal simplicity" on the banks of the Oxus.  Before our
+proposition concerning "the old Greeks and Romans" can be repudiated or
+even controverted, Western Orientalists will have to know more than they
+do about the antiquity of that race and the Aryan language;  and they
+will have to account for those numberless gaps in history which no
+hypotheses of theirs seem able to fill up.  Notwithstanding their
+present profound ignorance with regard to the early ancestry of the
+Indo-European nations, and though no historian has yet ventured to
+assign even a remotely approximate date to the separation of the Aryan
+nations and the origins of the Sanskrit language, they hardly show the
+modesty that might, under these circumstances, be expected from them.
+Placing as they do that great separation of the races at the first "dawn
+of traditional history," with the Vedic age as "the background of the
+whole Indian world" (of which confessedly they know nothing), they will,
+nevertheless, calmly assign a modern date to any of the Rik-vedic oldest
+songs, on its "internal evidence;"  and in doing this, they show as
+little hesitation as Mr. Fergusson when ascribing a post-Christian age
+to the most ancient rockcut temple in India, merely on its "external
+form."  As for their unseemly quarrels, mutual recriminations, and
+personalities over questions of scholarship, the less said the better.
+
+"The evidence of language is irrefragable," as the great Oxford
+Sanskritist says.  To which he is answered--"provided it does not clash
+with historical facts and ethnology."  It may be--no doubt it is, as far
+as his knowledge goes--"the only evidence worth listening to with regard
+to ante-historical periods;"  but when something of these alleged
+"prehistorical periods" comes to be known, and when what we think we
+know of certain supposed prehistoric nations is found diametrically
+opposed to his "evidence of language," the "Adepts" may be, perhaps,
+permitted to keep to their own views and opinions, even though they
+differ with those of the greatest living philologist.  The study of
+language is but a part--though, we admit, a fundamental part--of true
+philology.  To be complete, the latter has, as correctly argued by
+Bockt, to be almost synonymous with history.  We gladly concede the
+right to the Western philologist, who has to work in the total absence
+of any historical data, to rely upon comparative grammar, and take the
+identification of roots lying at the foundation of words of those
+languages he is familiar with, or may know of, and put it forward as the
+result of his study, and the only available evidence.  But we would like
+to see the same right conceded by him to the student of other races;
+even though these be inferior to the European races, in the opinion of
+the paramount West:  for it is barely possible that, proceeding on other
+lines, and having reduced his knowledge to a system which precludes
+hypothesis and simple affirmation, the Eastern student has preserved a
+perfectly authentic record (for him) of those periods which his opponent
+regards as ante-historical.  The bare fact that, while Western men of
+science are referred to as "scholars" and scholiasts--native
+Sanskritists and archeologists are often spoken of as "Calcutta" and
+"Indian sciolists"--affords no proof of their real inferiority, but
+rather of the wisdom of the Chinese proverb that "self-conceit is rarely
+companion to politeness."
+
+The "Adept" therefore has little, if anything, to do with difficulties
+presented by Western history.  To his knowledge--based on documentary
+records from which, as said, hypothesis is excluded, and as regards
+which even psychology is called to play a very secondary part--the
+history of his and other nations extends immeasurably beyond that hardly
+discernible point that stands on the far-away horizon of the Western
+world as a landmark of the commencement of its history.  Records made
+throughout a series of ages, based on astronomical chronology and
+zodiacal calculations, cannot err.  (This new "difficulty"--
+palaeographical, t his time--that may be possibly suggested by the
+mention of the Zodiac in India and Central Asia before the Christian
+era, is disposed of in a subsequent article.)
+
+Hence, the main question at issue is to decide which--the Orientalist or
+the "Oriental"--is most likely to err.  The "English F.T.S." has choice
+of two sources of information, two groups of teachers.  One group is
+composed of Western historians with their suite of learned Ethnologists,
+Philologists, Anthropologists, Archeologists and Orientalists in
+general.  The other consists of unknown Asiatics belonging to a race
+which, notwithstanding Mr. Max Muller's assertion that the same "blood
+is running in the veins (of the English soldier) and in the veins of the
+dark Bengalese," is generally regarded by many a cultured Western as
+"inferior."  A handful of men can hardly hope to be listened to,
+specially when their history, religion, language, origin and sciences,
+having been seized upon by the conqueror, are now disfigured and
+mutilated beyond recognition, and who have lived to see the Western
+scholar claim a monopoly beyond appeal or protest of deciding the
+correct meaning, chronological date, and historical value of the
+monumental and palaeographic relics of his motherland.  It has little,
+if ever, entered the mind of the Western public that their scholars
+have, until very lately, worked in a narrow pathway obstructed with the
+ruins of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic Past;  that they have been cramped
+on all sides by limitations of "revealed" events coming from God, "with
+whom a thousand years are but as one day," and who have thus felt bound
+to cram millenniums into centuries and hundreds into units, giving at
+the utmost an age of 1,000 to what is 10,000 years old.  All this to
+save the threatened authority of their religion and their own
+respectability and good name in cultured society.  And even that, when
+free themselves from preconceptions, they have had to protect the honour
+of the Jewish divine chronology assailed by stubborn facts;  and thus
+have become (often unconsciously) the slaves of an artificial history
+made to fit into the narrow frame of a dogmatic religion.  No proper
+thought has been given to this purely psychological but very significant
+trifle.  Yet we all know how, rather than admit any relation between
+Sanskrit and the Gothic, Keltic, Greek, Latin and old Persian, facts
+have been tampered with, old texts purloined from libraries, and
+philological discoveries vehemently denied.  And we have also heard from
+our retreats, how Dugald Stewart and his colleagues, upon seeing that
+the discovery would also involve ethnological affinities, and damage the
+prestige of those sires of the world races--Shem, Ham and Japhet--denied
+in the face of fact that "Sanskrit had ever been a living, spoken
+language," supporting the theory that "it was an invention of the
+Brahmins, who had constructed their Sanskrit on the model of the Greek
+and Latin."  And again we know, holding the proof of the same, how the
+majority of Orientalists are prone to go out of their way to prevent any
+Indian antiquity (whether MSS. or inscribed monument, whether art or
+science) from being declared pre-Christian.  As the origin and history
+of the Gentile world is made to move in the narrow circuit of a few
+centuries "B.C.," within that fecund epoch when mother earth,
+recuperated from her arduous labours of the Stone age, begat, it seems
+without transition, so many highly civilized nations and false
+pretenses, so the enchanted circle of Indian archeology lies between the
+(to them unknown) year of the Samvat era, and the tenth century of the
+Western chronology.
+
+Having to dispose of an "historical difficulty" of such a serious
+character, the defendants charged with it can but repeat what they have
+already stated;  all depends upon the past history and antiquity allowed
+to the Indo-Aryan nation.  The first step to take is to ascertain how
+much History herself knows of that almost prehistoric period when the
+soil of Europe had not been trodden yet by the primitive Aryan tribes.
+From the latest Encyclopedia down to Professor Max Muller and other
+Orientalists, we gather what follows;  they acknowledge that at some
+immensely remote period, before the Aryan nations got divided from the
+parent stock (with the germs of Indo-Germanic languages in them); and
+before they rushed asunder to scatter over Europe and Asia in search of
+new homes, there stood a "single barbaric (?) people as physical and
+political representative of the nascent Aryan race." This people spoke
+"a now extinct Aryan language," from which by a series of modifications
+(surely requiring more thousands of years than our difficulty-makers are
+willing to concede) there arose gradually all the subsequent languages
+now spoken by the Caucasian races.
+
+That is about all Western history knows of its genesis.  Like Ravana's
+brother, Kumbhakarna,--the Hindu Rip van Winkle--it slept for a long
+series of ages a dreamless, heavy sleep.  And when at last it awoke to
+consciousness, it was but to find the "nascent Aryan race" grown into
+scores of nations, peoples and races, most of them effete and crippled
+with age, many irretrievably extinct, while the true origin of the
+younger ones it was utterly unable to account for.  So much for the
+"youngest brother."  As for "the eldest brother, the Hindu," who,
+Professor Max Muller tells us, "was the last to leave the central home
+of the Aryan family," and whose history this eminent philologist has now
+kindly undertaken to impart to him,--he, the Hindu, claims that while
+his Indo-European relative was soundly sleeping under the protecting
+shadow of Noah's ark, he kept watch and did not miss seeing one event
+from his high Himalayan fastnesses;  and that he has recorded the
+history thereof, in a language which, though as incomprehensible as the
+Iapygian inscriptions to the Indo-European immigrant, is quite clear to
+the writers.  For this crime he now stands condemned as a falsifier of
+the records of his forefathers.  A place has been hitherto purposely
+left open for India "to be filled up when the pure metal of history
+should have been extracted from the ore of Brahmanic exaggeration and
+superstition."  Unable, however, to meet this programme, the Orientalist
+has since persuaded himself that there was nothing in that "ore" but
+dross.  He did more.  He applied himself to contrast Brahmanic
+"superstition" and "exaggeration" with Mosaic revelation and its
+chronology.  The Veda was confronted with Genesis.  Its absurd claims to
+antiquity were forthwith dwarfed to their proper dimensions by the 4,004
+years B.C. measure of the world's age;  and the Brahmanic "superstition
+and fables" about the longevity of the Aryan Rishis, were belittled and
+exposed by the sober historical evidence furnished in "The genealogy and
+age of the Patriarchs from Adam to Noah," whose respective days were 930
+and 950 years;  without mentioning Methuselah, who died at the premature
+age of nine hundred and sixty-nine.
+
+In view of such experience, the Hindu has a certain right to decline the
+offers made to correct his annals by Western history and chronology.  On
+the contrary, he would respectfully advise the Western scholar, before
+he denies point-blank any statement made by the Asiatics with reference
+to what is prehistoric ages to Europeans, to show that the latter have
+themselves anything like trustworthy data as regards their own racial
+history.  And that settled, he may have the leisure and capacity to help
+his ethnic neighbours to prune their genealogical trees.  Our Rajputs,
+among others, have perfectly trustworthy family records of an unbroken
+lineal descent through 2,000 years "B.C." and more, as proved by Colonel
+Tod;  records which are accepted by the British Government in its
+official dealings with them.  It is not enough to have studied stray
+fragments of Sanskrit literature--even though their number should amount
+to 10,000 texts, as boasted of--allowed to fall into foreign hands, to
+speak so confidently of the "Aryan first settlers in India," and assert
+that, "left to themselves, in a world of their own, without a past and
+without a future (!) before them, they had nothing but themselves to
+ponder upon," and therefore could know absolutely nothing of other
+nations.  To comprehend correctly and make out the inner meaning of most
+of them, one has to read these texts with the help of the esoteric
+light, and after having mastered the language of the Brahmanic Secret
+Code--branded generally as "theological twaddle."  Nor is it
+sufficient--if one would judge correctly of what the archaic Aryans did
+or did not know;  whether or not they cultivated the social and
+political virtues;  cared or not for history--to claim proficiency in
+both Vedic and classical Sanskrit, as well as in Prakrit and Arya
+Bhasha.  To comprehend the esoteric meaning of ancient Brahmanical
+literature, one has, as just remarked, to be in possession of the key to
+the Brahmanical Code.  To master the conventional terms used in the
+Puranas, the Aranyakas and Upanishads is a science in itself, and one
+far more difficult than even the study of the 3,996 aphoristical rules
+of Panini, or his algebraical symbols.  Very true, most of the Brahmans
+themselves have now forgotten the correct interpretations of their
+sacred texts.  Yet they know enough of the dual meaning in their
+scriptures to be justified in feeling amused at the strenuous efforts of
+the European Orientalist to protect the supremacy of his own national
+records and the dignity of his science by interpreting the Hindu
+hieratic text after a peremptory fashion quite unique.  Disrespectful
+though it may seem, we call on the philologist to prove in some more
+convincing manner than usual, that he is better qualified than even the
+average Hindu Sanskrit pundit to judge of the antiquity of the "language
+of the gods;"  that he has been really in a position to trace unerringly
+along the lines of countless generations the course of the "now extinct
+Aryan tongue" in its many and various transformations in the West, and
+its primitive evolution into first the Vedic, and then the classical
+Sanskrit in the East, and that from the moment when the mother-stream
+began deviating into its new ethnographical beds, he has followed it up.
+Finally that, while he, the Orientalist, can, owing to speculative
+interpretations of what he thinks he has learnt from fragments of
+Sanskrit literature, judge of the nature of all that he knows nothing
+about--i.e., to speculate upon the past history of a great nation he has
+lost sight of from its "nascent state," and caught up again but at the
+period of its last degeneration--the native student never knew, nor can
+ever know, anything of that history.  Until the Orientalist has proved
+all this, he can be accorded but small justification for assuming that
+air of authority and supreme contempt which is found in almost every
+work upon India and its Past.  Having no knowledge himself whatever of
+those incalculable ages that lie between the Aryan Brahman in Central
+Asia, and the Brahman at the threshold of Buddhism, he has no right to
+maintain that the initiated Indo-Aryan can never know as much of them
+as the foreigner.  Those periods being an utter blank to him, he is
+little qualified to declare that the Aryan, having had no political
+history "of his own...." his only sphere was "religion and
+philosophy.... in solitude and contemplation."  A happy thought
+suggested, no doubt, by the active life, incessant wars, triumphs, and
+defeats portrayed in the oldest songs of the Rik-Veda.  Nor can he with
+the smallest show of logic affirm that "India had no place in the
+political history of the world," or that "there are no synchronisms
+between the history of the Brahmans and that of other nations before the
+date of the origin of Buddhism in India;"  for he knows no more of the
+prehistoric history of those "other nations" than of that of the
+Brahman.  All his inferences, conjectures and systematic arrangements of
+hypotheses begin very little earlier than 200 "B.C.," if even so much,
+on anything like really historical grounds.  He has to prove all this
+before he can command our attention.  Otherwise, however "irrefragable
+the evidence of language," the presence of Sanskrit roots in all the
+European languages will be insufficient to prove, either that (a) before
+the Aryan invaders descended toward the seven rivers they had never left
+their northern regions;  or (b) why the "eldest brother, the Hindu,"
+should have been "the last to leave the central home of the Aryan
+family."  To the philologist such a supposition may seem "quite
+natural."  Yet the Brahman is no less justified in his ever-growing
+suspicion that there may be at the bottom some occult reason for such a
+programme.  That in the interest of his theory the Orientalist was
+forced to make "the eldest brother" tarry so suspiciously long on the
+Oxus, or wherever "the youngest" may have placed him in his "nascent
+state" after the latter "saw his brothers all depart towards the setting
+sun."  We find reasons to believe that the chief motive for alleging
+such a procrastination is the necessity to bring the race closer to the
+Christian era.  To show the "brother" inactive and unconcerned, "with
+nothing but himself to ponder on," lest his antiquity and "fables of
+empty idolatry," and perhaps his traditions of other people's doings,
+should interfere with the chronology by which it is determined to try
+him.  The suspicion is strengthened when one finds in the book from
+which we have been so largely quoting--a work of a purely scientific and
+philological character--such frequent remarks and even prophecies as:
+"History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual
+education before, in the fulness of time, it could be admitted to the
+truths of Christianity."  Or, again "The ancient religions of the world
+were but the milk of Nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by
+the bread of life;"  and such broad sentiments expressed as that "there
+is some truth in Buddhism, as there is in every one of the false
+religions of the world, but...." *
+
+-----------
+* Max Muller's "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature."
+-----------
+
+The atmosphere of Cambridge and Oxford seems decidedly unpropitious to
+the recognition of either Indian antiquity, or the merit of the
+philosophies sprung from its soil!*
+
+---------
+* And how one-sided and biased most of the Western Orientalists are may
+be seen by reading carefully "The History of Indian Literature," by
+Albrecht Weber--a Sanskrit scholiast classed with the highest
+authorities.  The incessant harping upon the one special string of
+Christianity, and the ill-concealed efforts to pass it off as the
+keynote of all other religions, is painfully pre-eminent in his work.
+Christian influences are shown to have affected not only the growth of
+Buddhism and Krishna worship, but even that of the Siva-cult and its
+legends;  it is openly stated that "it is not at all a far-fetched
+hypothesis that they have reference to scattered Christian
+missionaries!"  The eminent Orientalist evidently forgets that,
+notwithstanding his efforts, none of the Vedic, Sutra or Buddhist
+periods can be possibly crammed into this Christian period--their
+universal tank of all ancient creeds, and of which some Orientalists
+would fain make a poor-house for all decayed archaic religions and
+philosophy. Even Tibet, in his opinion, has not escaped "Western
+influence." Let us hope to the contrary.  It can be proved that Buddhist
+missionaries were as numerous in Palestine, Alexandria, Persia, and even
+Greece, two centuries before the Christian era, as the Padris are now in
+Asia.  That the Gnostic doctrines (as he is obliged to confess) are
+permeated with Buddhism.  Basilides, Valentinian, Bardesanes, and
+especially Manes were simply heretical Buddhists, "the formula of
+abjuration of these doctrines in the case of the latter, specifying
+expressly Buddha (Bodda) by name."
+----------
+
+
+
+Leaflets from Esoteric History
+
+
+The foregoing--a long, yet necessary digression--will show that the
+Asiatic scholar is justified in generally withholding what he may know.
+That it is not merely on historical facts that hangs the "historical
+difficulty" at issue;  but rather on its degree of interference with
+time-honoured, long-established conjectures, often raised to the
+eminence of an unapproachable historical axiom.  That no statement
+coming from our quarters can ever hope to be given consideration so long
+as it has to be supported on the ruins of reigning hobbies, whether of
+an alleged historical or religious character.  Yet pleasant it is, after
+the brainless assaults to which occult sciences have hitherto been
+subjected--assaults in which abuse has been substituted for argument,
+and flat denial for calm inquiry--to find that there remain in the West
+some men who will come into the field like philosophers, and soberly and
+fairly discuss the claims of our hoary doctrines to the respect due to a
+truth and the dignity demanded for a science.  Those alone whose sole
+desire is to ascertain the truth, not to maintain foregone conclusions,
+have a right to expect undisguised facts.  Reverting to our subject, so
+far as allowable, we will now, for the sake of that minority, give them.
+
+The records of the Occultists make no difference between the "Atlantean"
+ancestors of the old Greeks and Romans.  Partially corroborated and in
+turn contradicted by licensed or recognized history, their records teach
+that of the ancient Latini of classic legend called Itali;  of that
+people, in short, which, crossing the Apennines (as their Judo-Aryan
+brothers--let this be known--had crossed before them the Hindoo-Koosh)
+entered from the north the peninsula--there survived at a period long
+before the days of Romulus but the name, and a nascent language.
+Profane history informs us that the Latins of the "mythical era" got so
+Hellenized amidst the rich colonies of Magna Grecia that there remained
+nothing in them of their primitive Latin nationality. It is the Latins
+proper, it says, those pre-Roman Italians who by settling in Latium had
+from the first kept themselves free from the Greek influence, who were
+the ancestors of the Romans. Contradicting exoteric history, the Occult
+records affirm that if, owing to circumstances too long and complicated
+to be related here, the settlers of Latium preserved their primitive
+nationality a little longer than their brothers who had first entered
+the peninsula with them after leaving the East (which was not their
+original home), they lost it very soon, for other reasons.  Free from
+the Samnites during the first period, they did not remain free from
+other invaders.  While the Western historian puts together the
+mutilated, incomplete records of various nations and people, and makes
+them into a clever mosaic according to the best and most probable plan
+and rejects entirely traditional fables, the Occultist pays not the
+slightest attention to the vain self-glorification of alleged conquerors
+or their lithic inscriptions.  Nor does he follow the stray bits of
+so-called historical information, often concocted by interested parties
+and found scattered hither and thither in the fragments of classical
+writers, whose original texts themselves have not seldom been tampered
+with.  The Occultist follows the ethnological affinities and their
+divergences in the various nationalities, races and sub-races, in a more
+easy way;  and he is guided in this as surely as the student who
+examines a geographical map.  As the latter can easily trace by their
+differently coloured outlines the boundaries of the many countries and
+their possessions;  their geographical superficies and their separations
+by seas, rivers and mountains;  so the Occultist can by following the
+(to him) well distinguishable and defined auric shades and gradations of
+colour in the inner-man unerringly pronounce to which of the several
+distinct human families, as also to what special group, and even small
+sub-group of the latter, belongs any particular people, tribe, or man.
+This will appear hazy and incomprehensible to the many who know nothing
+of ethnic varieties of nerve-aura, and disbelieve in any "inner-man"
+theory, scientific but to the few.  The whole question hangs upon the
+reality or unreality of the existence of this inner-man whom
+clairvoyance has discovered, and whose odyle or nerve-emanations Von
+Reichenbach proves.  If one admits such a presence and realizes
+intuitionally that being closer related to the one invisible Reality,
+the inner type must be still more pronounced than the outer physical
+type, then it will be a matter of little, if any, difficulty to conceive
+our meaning.  For, indeed, if even the respective physical
+idiosyncrasies and special characteristics of any given person make his
+nationality usually distinguishable by the physical eye of the ordinary
+observer--let alone the experienced ethnologist:  the Englishman being
+commonly recognizable at a glance from the Frenchman, the German from
+the Italian, not to speak of the typical differences between human
+root-families* in their anthropological division--there seems little
+difficulty in conceiving that the same, though far more pronounced,
+difference of type and characteristics should exist between the inner
+races that inhabit these "fleshly tabernacles."  Besides this easily
+discernible psychological and astral differences, there are the
+documentary records in their unbroken series of chronological tables and
+the history of the gradual branching off of races and sub-races from the
+three geological primeval Races, the work of the Initiates of all the
+archaic and ancient temples up to date, collected in our "Book of
+Numbers," and other volumes.
+
+---------
+* Properly speaking, these ought to be called "Geological Races," so as
+to be easily distinguished from their subsequent evolutions--the
+root-races.  The Occult doctrine has nothing to do with the Biblical
+division of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and admires, without accepting it, the
+latest Huxleyan physiological division of the human races into their
+quintuple groups of Australioids, Negroids, Mongoloids, Xanthechroics,
+and the fifth variety of Melanochroics.  Yet it says that the triple
+division of the blundering Jews is closer to the truth, it knows but of
+three entirely distinct primeval races whose evolution, formation and
+development went pari passu and on parallel lines with the evolution,
+formation, and development of three geological strata; namely, the
+BLACK, the RED-YELLOW, and the BROWN-WHITE RACES.
+---------
+
+Hence, and on this double testimony (which the Westerns are quite
+welcome to reject if so pleased) it is affirmed that, owing to the great
+amalgamation of various sub-races, such as the Iapygian, Etruscan,
+Pelasgic, and later--the strong admixture of the Hellenic and
+Kelto-Gaulic element in the veins of the primitive Itali of
+Latium--there remained in the tribes gathered by Romulus on the banks of
+the Tiber about as much Latinism as there is now in the Romanic people
+of Wallachia.  Of course if the historical foundation of the fable of
+the twins of the Vestal Silvia is entirely rejected, together with that
+of the foundation of Alba Longa by the son of Aeneas, then it stands to
+reason that the whole of the statements made must be likewise a modern
+invention built upon the utterly worthless fables of the "legendary
+mythical age."  For those who now give these statements, however, there
+is more of actual truth in such fables than there is in the alleged
+historical Regal period of the earliest Romans.  It is to be deplored
+that the present statement should clash with the authoritative
+conclusion of Mommsen and others.  Yet, stating but that which to the
+"Adepts" is fact, it must be understood at once that all (but the
+fanciful chronological date for the foundation of Rome-April, 753
+"B.C.") that is given in old traditions in relation to the Paemerium,
+and the triple alliance of the Ramnians, Luceres and Tities, of the
+so-called Romuleian legend, is indeed far nearer truth than what
+external history accepts as facts during the Punic and Macedonian wars
+up to, through, and down the Roman Empire to its fall.  The founders of
+Rome were decidedly a mongrel people, made up of various scraps and
+remnants of the many primitive tribes;  only a few really Latin
+families, the descendants of the distinct sub-race that came along with
+the Umbro-Sabellians from the East remaining.  And, while the latter
+preserved their distinct colour down to the Middle Ages through the
+Sabine element, left unmixed in its mountainous regions, the blood of
+the true Roman was Hellenic blood from its beginning.  The famous Latin
+league is no fable, but history.  The succession of kings descended from
+the Trojan Aeneas is a fact;  and the idea that Romulus is to be
+regarded as simply the symbolical representative of a people, as Aeolus,
+Dorius, and Ion were once, instead of a living man, is as unwarranted as
+it is arbitrary.  It could only have been entertained by a class of
+historiographers bent upon condoning their sin in supporting the dogma
+that Shem, Ham and Japhet were the historical once living ancestors of
+mankind, by making a burnt-offering of every really historical but
+non-Jewish tradition, legend, or record which might presume to a place
+on the same level with these three privileged archaic mariners, instead
+of humbly groveling at their feet as "absurd myths" and old wives' tales
+and superstitions.
+
+It will thus appear that the objectionable statements on pp. 56 and 62
+of "Esoteric Buddhism," which are alleged to create an "historical
+difficulty," were not made by Mr. Sinnett's correspondent to bolster a
+western theory, but in loyalty to historical facts.  Whether they can or
+cannot be accepted in those particular localities where criticism seems
+based upon mere conjecture (though honoured with the name of scientific
+hypothesis), is something which concerns the present writers as little
+as any casual traveler's unfavourable comments upon the time-scarred
+visage of the Sphinx can affect the designer of that sublime symbol.
+The sentences, "the Greeks and Romans were small sub-races of our own
+Caucasian stock" (p. 6), and they were "the remnants of the Atlanteans
+(the modern belong to the fifth race)" (p. 62), show the real meaning on
+their face.  By the old Greeks, "remnants of the Atlanteans" the
+eponymous ancestors (as they are called by Europeans) of the Aeolians,
+Dorians and Ionians, are meant.  By the connection together of the old
+Greeks and Romans without distinction, was meant that the primitive
+Latins were swallowed by Magna Graecia.  And by "the modern" belonging
+"to the fifth race"--both these small branchlets from whose veins had
+been strained out the last drop of the Atlantean blood--it was implied
+that the Mongoloid 4th race blood had already been eliminated.
+Occultists make a distinction between the races intermediate between any
+two root-races:  the Westerns do not. The "old Romans" were Hellenes in
+a new ethnological disguise; and the still older Greeks the real blood
+ancestors of the future Romans.  In direct relation to this, attention
+is drawn to the following fact--one of the many in close historical
+bearing upon the "mythical" age to which Atlantis belongs.  It is a
+fable and may be charged to the account of historical difficulties.  It
+is well calculated, however, to throw all the old ethnological and
+genealogical divisions into confusion.
+
+Asking the reader to bear in mind that Atlantis, like modern Europe,
+comprised many nations and many dialects (issues from the three primeval
+root-languages of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Races), we may return to
+Poseidonis, its last surviving remnant of 12,000 years ago.  As the
+chief element in the languages of the 5th race is the Aryan-Sanskrit of
+the "Brown-white" geological stock or race, so the predominating element
+in Atlantis was a language which has now survived but in the dialects of
+some American Red-Indian tribes, and in the Chinese speech of the
+inland Chinamen, the mountainous tribes of Kivang-ze--a language which
+was an admixture of the agglutinate and the monosyllabic, as it would be
+called by modern philologists.  It was, in short, the language of the
+"Red-yellow" second or middle geological stock (we maintain the term
+"geological").  A strong percentage of the Mongoloid or 4th Root-race
+was, of course, to be found in the Aryans of the 5th.  But this did not
+prevent in the least the presence at the same time of unalloyed, pure
+Aryan races in it.  A number of small islands scattered around
+Poseidonis had been vacated, in consequence of earthquakes, long before
+the final catastrophe, which has alone remained in the memory of men--
+thanks to some written records.  Tradition says that one of the small
+tribes (the Aeolians) who had become islanders after emigrating from far
+northern countries, had to leave their home again for fear of a deluge.
+If, in spite of the Orientalists and the conjecture of M.F. Lenormant--
+who invented a name for a people whose shadowy outline he dimly
+perceived in the faraway Past as preceding the Babylonians--we say that
+this Aryan race that came from Central Asia, the cradle of the 5th race
+Humanity, belonged to the "Akkadian" tribes, there will be a new
+historico-ethnological difficulty created.  Yet it is maintained that
+these "Akkads" were no more a "Turanian" race than any of the modern
+British people are the mythical ten tribes of Israel, so conspicuously
+present in the Bible, and absent from history.  With such remarkable
+pacta conventa between modern exact (?) and ancient Occult sciences, we
+may proceed with the fable.  Belonging virtually, through their original
+connection with the Aryan, Central Asian stock, to the 5th race, the old
+Aeolians yet were Atlanteans, not only in virtue of their long residence
+in the now submerged continent, covering some thousands of years, but by
+the free intermingling of blood, by intermarriage with them.  Perhaps in
+this connection Mr. Huxley's disposition to account for his Melanochroi
+(the Greeks being included under this classification or type)--as
+themselves "the result of crossing between the Xanthochroi and the
+Australioids," among whom he places the Southern India lower classes and
+the Egyptians to some extent--is not far off from fact.  Anyhow the
+Aeolians of Atlantis were Aryans on the whole, as much as the Basques--
+Dr. Pritchard's Allophylians--are now southern Europeans, although
+originally belonging to the South Indian Dravidian stock (their
+progenitors having never been the aborigines of Europe prior to the
+first Aryan emigration, as supposed).  Frightened by the frequent
+earthquakes and the visible approach of the cataclysm, this tribe is
+said to have filled a flotilla of arks, to have sailed from beyond the
+Pillars of Hercules, and, sailing along the coasts, after several years
+of travel to have landed on the shores of the Aegean Sea in the land of
+Pyrrha (now Thessaly), to which they gave the name of Aeolia.  Thence
+they proceeded on business with the gods to Mount Olympus.  It may be
+stated here, at the risk of creating a "geographical difficulty," that
+in that mythical age Greece, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia, and many other
+islands of the Mediterranean, were simply the far-away possessions, or
+colonies, of Atlantis.  Hence, the "fable" proceeds to state that all
+along the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy the Aeolians often halted,
+and the memory of their "magical feats" still survives among the
+descendants of the old Massilians, of the tribes of the later
+Carthago-Nova, and the seaports of Etruria and Syracuse.  And here
+again it would not be a bad idea, perchance, even at this late hour, for
+the archeologists to trace, with the permission of the anthropological
+societies, the origin of the various autochthones through their
+folk-lore and fables, as they may prove both more suggestive and
+reliable than their "undecipherable" monuments.  History catches a misty
+glimpse of these particular autochthones thousands of years only after
+they had been settled in old Greece--namely, at the moment when the
+Epireans cross the Pindus bent on expelling the black magicians from
+their home to Boeotia.  But history never listened to the popular
+legends which speak of the "accursed sorcerers" who departed, leaving as
+an inheritance behind them more than one secret of their infernal arts,
+the fame of which crossing the ages has now passed into history--or,
+classical Greek and Roman fable, if so preferred.  To this day a popular
+tradition narrates how the ancient forefathers of the Thessalonians, so
+renowned for their magicians, had come from behind the Pillars, asking
+for help and refuge from the great Zeus, and imploring the father of the
+gods to save them from the deluge.  But the "Father" expelled them from
+the Olympus, allowing their tribe to settle only at the foot of the
+mountain, in the valleys, and by the shores of the Aegean Sea.
+
+Such is the oldest fable of the ancient Thessalonians.  And now, what
+was the language spoken by the Atlantean Aeolians?  History cannot
+answer us.  Nevertheless, the reader has only to be reminded of some of
+the accepted and a few of the as yet unknown facts, to cause the light
+to enter any intuitional brain.  It is now proved that man was
+universally conceived in antiquity as born of the earth.  Such is now
+the profane explanation of the term autochthones.  In nearly every
+vulgarized popular fable, from the Sanskrit Arya "born of the earth," or
+Lord of the Soil in one sense;  the Erechtheus of the archaic Greeks,
+worshiped in the earliest days of the Akropolis and shown by Homer as
+"he whom the earth bore" ( Il. ii. 548);  down to Adam fashioned of "red
+earth," the genetical story has a deep occult meaning, and an indirect
+connection with the origin of man and of the subsequent races.  Thus,
+the fables of Helen, the son of Pyrrha the red--the oldest name of
+Thessaly;  and of Mannus, the reputed ancestor of the Germans, himself
+the son of Tuisco, "the red son of the earth," have not only a direct
+bearing upon our Atlantis fable, but they explain moreover the division
+of mankind into geological groups as made by the Occultists.  It is only
+this, their division, that is able to explain to Western teachers the
+apparently strange, if not absurd, coincidence of the Semitic Adam--a
+divinely revealed personage--being connected with red earth, in company
+with the Aryan Pyrrha, Tuisco, &c.--the mythical heroes of "foolish"
+fables.  Nor will that division made by the Eastern Occultists, who call
+the 5th race people "the Brown-white," and the 4th race the
+"Red-yellow," Root-races--connecting them with geological strata--appear
+at all fantastic to those who understood verse iii. 34-9 of the Veda and
+its occult meaning, and another verse in which the Dasyus are called
+"Yellow."  Hatvi Dasyun pra aryam varanam avat is said of Indra who, by
+killing the Dasyus, protected the colour of the Aryans; and again, Indra
+"unveiled the light for the Aryas and the Dasyus was left on the left
+hand" (ii. III 18).  Let the student of Occultism bear in mind that the
+Greek Noah, Deukalion, the husband of Pyrrha, was the reputed son of
+Prometheus who robbed Heaven of its fire (i.e., of secret Wisdom "of the
+right hand," or occult knowledge);  that Prometheus is the brother of
+Atlas; that he is also the son of Asia and of the Titan Iapetus--the
+antetype from which the Jews borrowed their Japhet for the exigencies of
+their own popular legend to mask its kabalistic, Chaldean meaning;  and
+that he is also the antetype of Deukalion. Prometheus is the creator of
+man out of earth and water,* who after stealing fire from Olympus--a
+mountain in Greece--is chained on a mount in the far-off Caucasus.  From
+Olympus to Mount Kazbek there is a considerable distance.  The
+Occultists say that while the 4th race was generated and developed on
+the Atlantean continent--our Antipodes in a certain sense--the 5th was
+generated and developed in Asia.  (The ancient Greek geographer Strabo,
+for one, calls by the name of Ariana, the land of the Aryas, the whole
+country between the Indian Ocean in the south, the Hindu Kush and
+Parapamisis in the north, the Indus on the east, and the Caspian Gates,
+Karamania and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, on the west.)  The fable of
+Prometheus relates to the extinction of the civilized portions of the
+4th race, whom Zeus, in order to create a new race, would destroy
+entirely, and Prometheus (who had the sacred fire of knowledge) saved
+partially "for future seed."  But the origin of the fable antecedes the
+destruction of Poseidonis by more than seventy thousand years, however
+incredible it may seem.  The seven great continents of the world, spoken
+of in the Vishnu Purana (B. II., cap. 2) include Atlantis, though, of
+course, under another name.  Ila and Ira are synonymous Sanskrit terms
+(see Amarakosha), and both mean earth or native soil;  and Ilavrita is a
+portion of Ila, the central point of India (Jambudvipa), the latter
+being itself the centre of the seven great continents before the
+submersion of the great continent of Atlantis, of which Poseidonis was
+but an insignificant remnant.  And now, while every Brahmin will
+understand the meaning, we may help the Europeans with a few more
+explanations.
+
+--------
+* Behold Moses saying that it requires earth and water to make a living
+man.
+--------
+
+If, in that generally tabooed work, "Isis Unveiled," the "English
+F.T.S." turns to page 589, vol. I., he may find therein narrated another
+old Eastern legend.  An island .... (where now the Gobi desert lies) was
+inhabited by the last remnants of the race that preceded ours:  a
+handful of  "Adepts"--the "Sons of God," now referred to as the Brahman
+Pitris;  called by another yet synonymous name in the Chaldean Kabala.
+"Isis Unveiled" may appear very puzzling and contradictory to those who
+know nothing of Occult Sciences.  To the Occultist it is correct, and
+while perhaps left purposely sinning (for it was the first cautious
+attempt to let into the West a faint streak of Eastern esoteric light),
+it reveals more facts than were ever given before its appearance.  Let
+any one read these pages and he may comprehend. The "six such races" in
+Manu refer to the sub-races of the fourth race (p. 590).  In addition to
+this the reader must turn to the paper on "The Septenary Principle in
+Esotericism" (p. 187 ante), study the list of the "Manus" of our fourth
+Round (p. 254), and between this and "Isis" light may, perchance, be
+focused.  On pages 590-6 of the work mentioned above, he will find that
+Atlantis is mentioned in the "Secret Books of the East" (as yet virgin
+of Western spoliating hand) under another name in the sacred hieratic or
+sacerdotal language.  And then it will be shown to him that Atlantis was
+not merely the name of one island but that of a whole continent, of
+whose isles and islets many have to this day survived.  The remotest
+ancestors of some of the inhabitants of the now miserable fisherman's
+hovel "Aclo" (once Atlan), near the gulf of Uraha, were allied at one
+time as closely with the old Greeks and Romans as they were with the
+"true inland China-man," mentioned on p. 57 Of "Esoteric Buddhism."
+Until the appearance of a map, published at Basle in 1522, wherein the
+name of America appears for the first time, the latter was believed to
+be part of India;  and strange to him who does not follow the mysterious
+working of the human mind and its unconscious approximations to hidden
+truths--even the aborigines of the new continent, the Red-skinned
+tribes, the "Mongoloids" of Mr. Huxley, were named Indians.  Names now
+attributed to chance: elastic word that!  Strange coincidence, indeed,
+to him who does not know--science refusing yet to sanction the wild
+hypothesis--that there was a time when the Indian peninsula was at one
+end of the line, and South America at the other, connected by a belt of
+islands and continents.  The India of the prehistoric ages was not only
+within the region at the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, but there was
+even in the days of history, and within its memory, an upper, a lower,
+and a western India:  and still earlier it was doubly connected with the
+two Americas.  The lands of the ancestors of those whom Ammianus
+Marcellinus calls the "Brahmans of Upper India" stretched from Kashmir
+far into the (now) deserts of Schamo.  A pedestrian from the north might
+then have reached--hardly wetting his feet--the Alaskan Peninsula,
+through Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and
+Aleutian Islands;  while another traveler, furnished with a canoe and
+starting from the south, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the
+Polynesian Islands and trudged into any part of the continent of South
+America.  On pp. 592-3 of "Isis," vol. I., the Thevetatas--the evil,
+mischievous gods that have survived in the Etruscan Pantheon--are
+mentioned, along with the "sons of God" or Brahman Pitris.  The
+Involute, the hidden or shrouded gods, the Consentes, Complices, and
+Novensiles, are all disguised relics of the Atlanteans;  while the
+Etruscan arts of soothsaying their Disciplina revealed by Tages comes
+direct and in undisguised form from the Atlantean king Thevetat, the
+"invisible" Dragon, whose name survives to this day among the Siamese
+and Burmese, as also, in the Jataka allegorical stories of the Buddhists
+as the opposing power under the name of Devadat. And Tages was the son
+of Thevetat, before he became the grandson of the Etruscan
+Jupiter-Tinia.  Have the Western Orientalists tried to find out the
+connection between all these Dragons and Serpents;  between the "powers
+of Evil" in the cycles of epic legends, the Persian and the Indian, the
+Greek and the Jewish; between the contests of Indra and the giant;  the
+Aryan Nagas and the Iranian Aji Dahaka;  the Guatemalian Dragon and the
+Serpent of Genesis--&c. &c. &c.?  Professor Max Muller discredits the
+connection.  So be it.  But the fourth race of men, "men" whose sight
+was unlimited and who knew all things at once, the hidden as the
+unrevealed, is mentioned in the Popol-Vuh, the sacred books of the
+Guatemalians;  and the Babylonian Xisuthrus, the far later Jewish Noah,
+the Hindu Vaivaswata, and the Greek Deukalion, are all identical with
+the great Father of the Thlinkithians, of Popol-Vuh who, like the rest
+of these allegorical (not mythical) Patriarchs, escaped in his turn and
+in his days, in a large boat at the time of the last great Deluge--the
+submersion of Atlantis.
+
+To have been an Indo-Aryan, Vaivaswata had not, of necessity, to meet
+with his Saviour (Vishnu, under the form of a fish) within the precincts
+of the present India, or even anywhere on the Asian continent;  nor is
+it necessary to concede that he was the seventh great Manu himself (see
+catalogue of the Manus, in the paper on "The Septenary Principle in
+Esotericism" cited above), but simply that the Hindu Noah belonged to
+the clan of Vaivaswata and typifies the fifth race.  Now the last of the
+Atlantean islands perished some 11,000 years ago;  and the fifth race
+headed by the Aryans began its evolution, to the certain knowledge of
+the "Adepts" nearer one million than 900,000 years ago.  But the
+historian and the anthropologist with their utmost stretch of liberality
+are unable to give more than from twenty to one hundred thousand years
+for all our human evolution.  Hence we put it to them as a fair
+question:  at what point during their own conjectural lakh of years do
+they fix the root-germ of the ancestral line of the "old Greeks and
+Romans?"  Who were they? What is known or even "conjectured" about their
+territorial habitat after the division of the Aryan nations?  And where
+were the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races?  It is not enough
+for purposes of refutation of other peoples' statements to say that the
+latter lived separate from the former, and then come to a full stop--a
+fresh hiatus in the ethnological history of mankind.  Since Asia is
+sometimes called the Cradle of Humanity, and it is an ascertained fact
+that Central Asia was likewise the cradle of the Semitic and Turanian
+races (for thus it is taught in Genesis), and we find the Turans
+agreeably to the theory evolved by the Assyriologists preceding the
+Babylonian Semitists, where, at what spot of the globe, did these
+Semito-Turanian nations break away from the parent stock, and what has
+become of the latter?  It cannot be the small Jewish tribe of
+Patriarchs; and unless it can be shown that the garden of Eden was also
+on the Oxus or the Euphrates, fenced off from the soil inhabited by the
+children of Cain, philologists who undertake to fill in the gaps in
+Universal History with their made-up conjectures, may be regarded as
+ignorant of this detail as those they would enlighten.
+
+Logically, if the ancestors of these various groups had been at that
+remote period massed together, then the self-same roots of a parent
+common stock would have been equally traceable in their perfected
+languages as they are in those of the Judo-Europeans.  And so, since
+whichever way one turns, one is met with the same troubled sea of
+speculation, margined by the treacherous quicksands of hypothesis, and
+every horizon bounded by inferential landmarks inscribed with imaginary
+dates.  Again, the "Adepts" ask why should any one be awed into
+accepting as final criterion that which passes for science of high
+authority in Europe?  For all this is known to the Asiatic scholar--in
+every case save the purely mathematical and physical sciences--as little
+better than a secret league for mutual support, and, perhaps,
+admiration.  He bows with profound respect before the Royal Societies of
+Physicists, Chemists, and, to a degree, even of Naturalists.  He refuses
+to pay the slightest attention to the merely speculative and conjectural
+so-called "sciences" of the modern Physiologist, Ethnologist,
+Philologist, &c., and the mob of self-styling Oedipuses to whom it is
+not given to unriddle the Sphynx of Nature, and who therefore throttle
+her.
+
+With an eye to the above, as also with a certain prevision of the
+future, the defendants in the cases under examination believe that the
+"historical difficulty" with reference to the non-historical statement,
+necessitated more than a simple reaffirmation of the fact.  They knew
+that with no better claims to a hearing than may be accorded by the
+confidence of a few, and in view of the decided antagonism of the many,
+it would never do for them to say "we maintain" while Western professors
+maintained to the contrary.  For a body of, so to say, unlicensed
+preachers and students of unauthorized and unrecognized sciences to
+offer to fight an August body of universally recognized oracles, would
+be an unprecedented piece of impertinence.  Hence their respective
+claims had to be examined on however small a scale to begin with (in
+this as in all other cases) on other than psychological grounds.  The
+"Adepts" in Occult Arts had better keep silence when confronted with the
+"A.C.S.'s"--Adepts in Conjectural Sciences--unless they could show,
+partially at least, how weak is the authority of the latter and on what
+foundations of shifting sands their scientific dicta are often built.
+They may thus make it a thinkable conjecture that the former may be
+right after all.  Absolute silence, moreover, as at present advised,
+would have been fatal.  Besides risking to be construed into inability
+to answer, it might have given rise to new complaints among the faithful
+few, and lead to fresh charges of selfishness against the writers.
+Therefore have the "Adepts" agreed to smooth in part at least a few of
+the most glaring difficulties and showing a highway to avoid them in
+future by studying the non-historical but actual, instead of the
+historical but mythical, portions of Universal History.  And this they
+have achieved, they believe (at any rate with a few of their querists),
+by simply showing, or rather reminding them, that since no historical
+fact can stand as such against the "assumption" of the "Adepts"--
+historians being confessedly ignorant of pre-Roman and Greek origins
+beyond the ghostly shadows of the Etruscans and Pelasgians--no real
+historical difficulty can be possibly involved in their statement.  From
+objectors outside the Society, the writers neither demand nor do they
+expect mercy. The "Adept" has no favours to ask at the hands of
+conjectural science, nor does he exact from any member of the "London
+Lodge" blind faith:  it being his cardinal maxim that faith should only
+follow inquiry.  The "Adept" is more than content to be allowed to
+remain silent, keeping what he may know to himself, unless worthy
+seekers wish to share it.  He has so done for ages, and can do so for a
+little longer.  Moreover, he would rather not "arrest attention" or
+"command respect" at present.  Thus he leaves his audience to first
+verify his statements in every case by the brilliant though rather
+wavering light of modern science:  after which his facts may be either
+accepted or rejected, at the option of the willing student.  In short,
+the "Adept"--if one indeed--has to remain utterly unconcerned with, and
+unmoved by, the issue.  He imparts that which it is lawful for him to
+give out, and deals but with facts.
+
+The philological and archeological "difficulties" next demand attention.
+
+
+
+
+Philological and Archeological "Difficulties"
+
+
+Two questions are blended into one.  Having shown the reasons why the
+Asiatic student is prompted to decline the guidance of Western History,
+it remains to explain his contumacious obstinacy in the same direction
+with regard to philology and archeology. While expressing the sincerest
+admiration for the clever modern methods of reading the past histories
+of nations now mostly extinct, and following the progress and evolution
+of their respective languages, now dead, the student of Eastern
+occultism, and even the profane Hindu scholar acquainted with his
+national literature, can hardly be made to share the confidence felt by
+Western philologists in these conglutinative methods, when practically
+applied to his own country and Sanskrit literature. Three facts, at
+least, out of many are well calculated to undermine his faith in these
+Western methods:--
+
+1. Of some dozens of eminent Orientalists, no two agree, even in their
+verbatim translation of Sanskrit texts.  Nor is there more harmony shown
+in their interpretation of the possible meaning of doubtful passages.
+
+2. Though Numismatics is a less conjectural branch of science, and when
+starting from well-established basic dates, so to say, an exact one
+(since it can hardly fail to yield correct chronological data, in our
+case, namely, Indian antiquities); archeologists have hitherto failed to
+obtain any such position. On their own confession, they are hardly
+justified in accepting the Samvat and Salivahana eras as their guiding
+lights, the real initial points of both being beyond the power of the
+European Orientalists to verify;  yet all the same, the respective dates
+"of 57 B.C. and 78 A.D." are accepted implicitly, and fanciful ages
+thereupon ascribed to archeological remains.
+
+3. The greatest authorities upon Indian archeology and architecture--
+General Cunningham and Mr. Fergusson--represent in their conclusions the
+two opposite poles.  The province of archeology is to provide
+trustworthy canons of criticism, and not, it should seem, to perplex or
+puzzle.  The Western critic is invited to point to one single relic of
+the past in India, whether written record or inscribed or uninscribed
+monument, the age of which is not disputed.  No sooner has one
+archeologist determined a date--say the first century--than another
+tries to pull it forward to the 10th or perhaps the 14th century of the
+Christian era.  While General Cunningham ascribes the construction of
+the present Buddha Gaya temple to the 1st century after Christ--the
+opinion of Mr. Fergusson is that its external form belongs to the 14th
+century;  and so the unfortunate outsider is as wise as ever.  Noticing
+this discrepancy in a "Report on the Archeological Survey of India"
+(vol. viii. p. 60), the conscientious and capable Buddha-Gaya Chief
+Engineer, Mr. J.D. Beglar, observes that "notwithstanding his
+(Fergusson's) high authority, this opinion must be unhesitatingly set
+aside," and forthwith assigns the building under notice to the 6th
+century.  While the conjectures of one archeologist are termed by
+another "hopelessly wrong," the identifications of Buddhist relics by
+this other are in their turn denounced as "quite untenable."  And so in
+the case of every relic of whatever age.
+
+When the "recognized" authorities agree--among themselves at least--then
+will it be time to show them collectively in the wrong.  Until then,
+since their respective conjectures can lay no claim to the character of
+history, the "Adepts" have neither the leisure nor the disposition to
+leave weightier business to combat empty speculations, in number as many
+as there are pretended authorities.  Let the blind lead the blind, if
+they will not accept the light.*
+
+--------
+* However, it will be shown elsewhere that General Cunningham's latest
+conclusions about the date of Buddha's death are not all supported by
+the inscriptions newly discovered.--T. Subba Row.
+---------
+
+As in the "historical," so in this new "archeological difficulty,"
+namely, the apparent anachronism as to the date of our Lord's birth, the
+point at issue is again concerned with the "old Greeks and Romans."
+Less ancient than our Atlantean friends, they seem more dangerous
+inasmuch as they have become the direct allies of philologists in our
+dispute over Buddhist annals.  We are notified by Prof. Max Muller, by
+sympathy the most fair of Sanskritists as well as the most learned--and
+with whom, for a wonder, most of his rivals are found siding in this
+particular question--that "everything in Indian chronology depends on
+the date of Chandragupta,"--the Greek Sandracottus. "Either of these
+dates (in the Chinese and Ceylonese chronology) is impossible, because
+it does not agree with the chronology of Greece." ("Hist. of the Sans.
+Lit.," p. 275.)  It is then by the clear light of this new Alexandrian
+Pharos shed, upon a few synchronisms casually furnished by the Greek and
+Roman classical writers, that the "extraordinary" statements of the
+"Adepts" have now to be cautiously examined.  For Western Orientalists
+the historical existence of Buddhism begins with Asoka, though, even
+with the help of Greek spectacles, they are unable to see beyond
+Chandragupta.  Therefore, "before that time Buddhist chronology is
+traditional and full of absurdities."  Furthermore, nothing is said in
+the Brahmanas of the Bauddhas--ergo, there were none before
+"Sandracottus," nor have the Buddhists or Brahmans any right to a
+history of their own, save the one evoluted by the Western mind.  As
+though the Muse of History had turned her back while events were gliding
+by, the "historian" confesses his inability to close the immense lacunae
+between the Indo-Aryan supposed immigration en masse across the Hindoo
+Kush, and the reign of Asoka.  Having nothing more solid, he uses
+contradictory inferences and speculations.  But the Asiatic occultists,
+whose forefathers had her tablets in their keeping, and even some
+learned native Pundits--believe they can.  The claim, however, is
+pronounced unworthy of attention.  Of the late Smriti (traditional
+history) which, for those who know how to interpret its allegories, is
+full of unimpeachable historical records, an Ariadne's thread through
+the tortuous labyrinth of the Past--has come to be unanimously regarded
+as a tissue of exaggerations, monstrous fables, "clumsy forgeries of the
+first centuries A.D." It is now openly declared as worthless not only
+for exact chronological but even for general historical purposes.  Thus
+by dint of arbitrary condemnations, based on absurd interpretations (too
+often the direct outcome of sectarian prejudice), the Orientalist has
+raised himself to the eminence of a philological mantic.  His learned
+vagaries are fast superseding, even in the minds of many a Europeanized
+Hindu, the important historical facts that lie concealed under the
+exoteric phraseology of the Puranas and other Smritic literature.  At
+the outset, therefore, the Eastern Initiate declares the evidence of
+those Orientalists who, abusing their unmerited authority, play ducks
+and drakes with his most sacred relics, ruled out of court;  and before
+giving his facts he would suggest to the learned European Sanskritist
+and archeologist that, in the matter of chronology, the difference in
+the sum of their series of conjectural historical events, proves them to
+be mistaken from A to Z.  They know that one single wrong figure in an
+arithmetical progression will always throw the whole calculation into
+inextricable confusion:  the multiplication yielding, generally, in such
+a case, instead of the correct sum something entirely unexpected. A fair
+proof of this may, perhaps, be found in something already alluded to--
+namely, the adoption of the dates of certain Hindu eras as the basis of
+their chronological assumptions.  In assigning a date to text or
+monument they have, of course, to be guided by one of the pre-Christian
+Indian eras, whether inferentially, or otherwise.  And yet--in one case,
+at least--they complain repeatedly that they are utterly ignorant as to
+the correct starting-point of the most important of these.  The positive
+date of Vikramaditya, for instance, whose reign forms the starting point
+of the Samvat era, is in reality unknown to them.  With some,
+Vikramaditya flourished "B.C." 56;  with others, 86;  with others again,
+in the 6th century of the Christian era;  while Mr. Fergusson will not
+allow the Samvat era any beginning before the "10th century A.D."  In
+short, and in the words of Dr. Weber,* they "have absolutely no
+authentic evidence to show whether the era of Vikramaditya dates from
+the year of his birth, from some achievement, or from the year of his
+death, or whether, in fine, it may not have been simply introduced by
+him for astronomical reasons."  There were several Vikramadityas and
+Vikramas in Indian history, for it is not a name, but an honorary title,
+as the Orientalists have now come to learn.  How then can any
+chronological deduction from such a shifting premise be anything but
+untrustworthy, especially when, as in the instance of the Samvat, the
+basic date is made to travel along, at the personal fancy of
+Orientalists, between the 1st and the 10th century?
+
+-----------
+* "The History of Indian Literature," Trubner's Series, 1882, p. 202.
+-----------
+
+Thus it appears to be pretty well proved that in ascribing chronological
+dates to Indian antiquities, Anglo-Indian as well as European
+archeologists are often guilty of the most ridiculous anachronisms.
+That, in fine, they have been hitherto furnishing History with an
+arithmetical mean, while ignorant, in nearly every case, of its first
+term!  Nevertheless, the Asiatic student is invited to verify and
+correct his dates by the flickering light of this chronological
+will-o-the-wisp.  Nay, nay.  Surely "An English F.T.S." would never
+expect us in matters demanding the minutest exactness to trust to such
+Western beacons!  And he will, perhaps, permit us to hold to our own
+views, since we know that our dates are neither conjectural nor liable
+to modifications.  Where even such veteran archeologists as General
+Cunningham do not seem above suspicion, and are openly denounced by
+their colleagues, palaeography seems to hardly deserve the name of exact
+science.  This busy antiquarian has been repeatedly denounced by Prof.
+Weber and others for his indiscriminate acceptance of that Samvat era.
+Nor have the other Orientalists been more lenient;  especially those
+who, perchance under the inspiration of early sympathies for biblical
+chronology, prefer in matters connected with Indian dates to give head
+to their own emotional but unscientific intuitions.  Some would have us
+believe that the Samvat era "is not demonstrable for times anteceding
+the Christian era at all."  Kern makes efforts to prove that the Indian
+astronomers began to employ this era "only after the year of grace
+1000."  Prof. Weber, referring sarcastically to General Cunningham,
+observes that "others, on the contrary, have no hesitation in at once
+referring, wherever possible, every Samvat or Samvatsare-dated
+inscription to the Samvat era."  Thus, e.g., Cunningham (in his "Arch.
+Survey of India," iii. 31, 39) directly assigns an inscription dated
+Samvat 5 to the year "B.C. 52," &c., and winds up the statement with the
+following plaint:  "For the present, therefore, unfortunately, where
+there is nothing else (but that unknown era) to guide us, it must
+generally remain an open question, which era we have to do with in a
+particular inscription, and what date consequently the inscription
+bears." *
+
+--------
+* Op. cit., p. 203.
+--------
+
+The confession is significant.  It is pleasant to find such a ring of
+sincerity in a European Orientalist, though it does seem quite ominous
+for Indian archeology.  The initiated Brahmans know the positive dates
+of their eras and remain therefore unconcerned.  What the "Adepts" have
+once said, they maintain; and no new discoveries or modified conjectures
+of accepted authorities can exert any pressure upon their data.  Even if
+Western archeologists or numismatists took it into their heads to change
+the date of our Lord and Glorified Deliverer from the 7th century "B.C."
+to the 7th century "A.D.," we would but the more admire such a
+remarkable gift for knocking about dates and eras, as though they were
+so many lawn-tennis balls.
+
+Meanwhile, to all sincere and inquiring Theosophists, we will say
+plainly, it is useless for any one to speculate about the date of our
+Lord Sanggyas's birth, while rejecting a priori all the Brahmanical,
+Ceylonese, Chinese, and Tibetan dates.  The pretext that these do not
+agree with the chronology of a handful of Greeks who visited the country
+300 years after the event in question, is too fallacious and bold.
+Greece was never concerned with Buddhism, and besides the fact that the
+classics furnish their few synchronistic dates simply upon the hearsay
+of their respective authors--a few Greeks, who themselves lived
+centuries before the writers quoted--their chronology is itself too
+defective, and their historical records, when it was a question of
+national triumphs, too bombastic and often too diametrically opposed to
+fact, to inspire with confidence any one less prejudiced than the
+average European Orientalist.  To seek to establish the true dates in
+Indian history by connecting its events with the mythical "invasion,"
+while confessing that "one would look in vain in the literature of the
+Brahmans or Buddhists for any allusion to Alexander's conquest, and
+although it is impossible to identify any of the historical events
+related by Alexander's companions with the historical tradition of
+India," amounts to something more than a mere exhibition of incompetence
+in this direction:  were not Prof. Max Muller the party concerned--we
+might say that it appears almost like predetermined dishonesty.
+
+These are harsh words to say, and calculated no doubt to shock many a
+European mind trained to look up to what is termed "scientific
+authority" with a feeling akin to that of the savage for his family
+fetich.  They are well deserved, nevertheless, as a few examples will
+show.  To such intellects as Prof. Weber's--whom we take as the leader
+of the German Orientalists of the type of Christophiles--certainly the
+word "obtuseness" cannot be applied.  Upon seeing how chronology is
+deliberately and maliciously perverted in favour of "Greek influence,"
+Christian interests and his own predetermined theories--another, and
+even a stronger term should be applied.  What expression is too severe
+to signify one's feelings upon reading such an unwitting confession of
+disingenuous scholarship as Weber repeatedly makes ("Hist. Ind. Lit.")
+when urging the necessity of admitting that a passage "has been touched
+up by later interpellation," or forcing fanciful chronological places
+for texts admittedly very ancient--"as otherwise the dates would be
+brought down too far or too near!"  And this is the keynote of his
+entire policy:  fiat hypothesis, ruat caelum!  On the other hand Prof.
+Max Muller, enthusiastic Indophile as he seems, crams centuries into his
+chronological thimble without the smallest apparent compunction....
+
+These two Orientalists are instances, because they are accepted beacons
+of philology and Indian paleography.  Our national monuments are dated
+and our ancestral history perverted to suit their opinions;  the
+pernicious evil has ensued, that as a result History is now recording
+for the misguidance of posterity the false annals and distorted facts
+which, upon their evidence, will be accepted without appeal as the
+outcome of the fairest and ablest critical analysis.  While Prof. Max
+Muller will hear of no other than a Greek criterion for Indian
+chronology, Prof. Weber (op. cit.) finds Greek influence--his universal
+solvent--in the development of India's religion, philosophy, literature,
+astronomy, medicine, architecture, &c.  To support this fallacy the most
+tortuous sophistry, the most absurd etymological deductions are resorted
+to.  If one fact more than another has been set at rest by comparative
+mythology, it is that their fundamental religious ideas, and most of
+their gods, were derived by the Greeks from religions flourishing in the
+north-west of India, the cradle of the main Hellenic stock.  This is now
+entirely disregarded, because a disturbing element in the harmony of the
+critical spheres.  And though nothing is more reasonable than the
+inference that the Grecian astronomical terms were inherited equally
+from the parent stock, Prof. Weber would have us believe that "it was
+Greek influence that just infused a real life into Indian astronomy" (p.
+251).  In fine, the hoary ancestors of the Hindus borrowed their
+astronomical terminology and learnt the art of star gazing and even
+their zodiac from the Hellenic infant!  This proof engenders another:
+the relative antiquity of the astronomical texts shall be henceforth
+determined upon the presence or absence in them of asterisms and
+zodiacal signs, the former being undisguisedly Greek in their names, the
+latter are "designated by their Sanskrit names which are translated from
+the Greek" (p. 255).  Thus "Manu's law being unacquainted with the
+planets," is considered as more ancient than Yajnavalkya's Code, which
+"inculcates their worship," and so on.  But there is still another and a
+better test found out by the Sanskritists for determining with
+"infallible accuracy" the age of the texts, apart from asterisms and
+zodiacal signs any casual mention in them of the name "Yavana," taken in
+every instance to designate the "Greeks."  This, apart "from an internal
+chronology based on the character of the works themselves, and on the
+quotations, &c., therein contained, is the only one possible," we are
+told.  As a result the absurd statement that "the Indian astronomers
+regularly speak of the Yavanas as their teachers" (p. 252).  Ergo, their
+teachers were Greeks.  For with Weber and others "Yavana" and "Greek"
+are convertible terms.
+
+But it so happens that Yavanacharya was the Indian title of a single
+Greek--Pythagoras;  as Sankaracharya was the title of a single Hindu
+philosopher;  and the ancient Aryan astronomical writers cited his
+opinions to criticize and compare them with the teachings of their own
+astronomical science, long before him perfected and derived from their
+ancestors.  The honorific title of Acharya (master) was applied to him
+as to every other learned astronomer or mystic;  and it certainly did
+not mean that Pythagoras or any other Greek "Master" was necessarily the
+master of the Brahmans.  The word "Yavana" was a generic term employed
+ages before the "Greeks of Alexander" projected "their influence" upon
+Jambudvipa, to designate people of a younger race, the word meaning
+Yuvan "young," or younger.  They knew of Yavanas of the north, west,
+south and east;  and the Greek strangers received this appellation as
+the Persians, Indo-Scythians and others had before them.  An exact
+parallel is afforded in our present day. To the Tibetans every foreigner
+whatsoever is known as a Peling; the Chinese designate Europeans as
+"red-haired devils;"  and the Mussalmans call every one outside of Islam
+a Kuffir.  The Webers of the future, following the example now set them,
+may perhaps, after 10,000 years, affirm, upon the authority of scraps of
+Moslem literature then extant, that the Bible was written, and the
+English, French, Russians and Germans who possessed and translated or
+"invented" it, lived in Kaffiristan shortly before their era under
+"Moslem influence."  Because the Yuga Purana of the Gargi Sanhita speaks
+of an expedition of the Yavanas "as far as Pataliputra," therefore,
+either the Macedonians or the Seleuciae had conquered all India!  But
+our Western critic is ignorant, of course, of the fact that Ayodhya or
+Saketa of Rama was for two millenniums repelling inroads of various
+Mongolian and other Turanian tribes, besides the Indo-Scythians, from
+beyond Nepaul and the Himalayas.  Prof. Weber seems finally himself
+frightened at the Yavana spectre he has raised, for he
+queries:--"Whether by the Yavanas it is really the Greeks who are meant
+or possibly merely their Indo-Scythian or other successors, to whom the
+name was afterwards transferred."  This wholesome doubt ought to have
+modified his dogmatic tone in many other such cases.
+
+But, drive out prejudice with a pitch fork it will ever return. The
+eminent scholar, though staggered by his own glimpse of the truth,
+returns to the charge with new vigour.  We are startled by the fresh
+discovery that Asuramaya:*  the earliest astronomer, mentioned
+repeatedly in the Indian epics, "is identical with 'Ptolemaios' of the
+Greeks."  The reason for it given is, that "this latter name, as we see
+from the inscriptions of Piyadasi, became in Indian 'Turamaya,' out of
+which the name 'Asuramaya' might very easily grow;  and since, by the
+later tradition, this 'Maya' is distinctly assigned to Romaka-pura in
+the West."  Had the "Piyadasi inscription" been found on the site of
+ancient Babylonia, one might suspect the word "Turamaya" as derived from
+"Turanomaya," or rather mania.  Since, however, the Piyadasi
+inscriptions belong distinctly to India, and the title was borne but by
+two kings--Chandragupta and Dharmasoka--what has "'Ptolemaios' of the
+Greeks" to do with "Turamaya" or the latter with "Asuramaya," except,
+indeed, to use it as a fresh pretext to drag the Indian astronomer under
+the stupefying "Greek influence" of the Upas Tree of Western Philology?
+Then we learn that, because "Panini once mentions the Yavanas, i.e.,
+.... Greeks, and explains the formation of the word 'Yavanani,' to
+which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi, 'writing,' must be
+supplied," therefore the word signifies "the writing of the Yavanas" of
+the Greeks and none other.  Would the German philologists (who have so
+long and so fruitlessly attempted to explain this word) be very much
+surprised if told that they are yet as far as possible from the truth?
+That--Yavanani does not mean "Greek writing" at all, but any foreign
+writing whatsoever? That the absence of the word "writing" in the old
+texts, except in connection with the names of foreigners, does not in
+the least imply that none but Greek writing was known to them, or that
+they had none of their own, being ignorant of the art of reading and
+writing until the days of Panini? (theory of Prof. Max Muller). For
+Devanagari is as old as the Vedas, and held so sacred that the Brahmans,
+first under penalty of death, and later on of eternal ostracism, were
+not even allowed to mention it to profane ears, much less to make known
+the existence of their secret temple libraries.  So that by the word
+Yavanani, "to which, according to the Varttika, the word lipi,
+'writing,' must he supplied," the writing of foreigners in general,
+whether Phoenician, Roman, or Greek, is always meant.  As to the
+preposterous hypothesis of Prof. Max Muller that writing "was not used
+for literary purposes in India" before Panini's time (again upon Greek
+authority) that matter has been disposed of elsewhere.
+
+---------
+* Dr. Weber is not probably aware of the fact that this distinguished
+astronomer's name was simply Maya;  the prefix "Asura" was often added
+to it by ancient Hindu writers to show that he was a Rakshasa.  In the
+opinion of the Brahmans he was an "Atlantean" and one of the greatest
+astronomers and occultists of the lost Atlantis.
+---------
+
+Equally unknown are those certain other and most important facts, fable
+though they seem.  First, that the Aryan "Great War," the Mahabharata,
+and the Trojan War of Homer--both mythical as to personal biographies
+and fabulous supernumeraries, yet perfectly historical in the main--
+belong to the same cycle of events.  For the occurrences of many
+centuries, among them the separation of sundry peoples and races,
+erroneously traced to Central Asia alone, were in these immortal epics
+compressed within the scope of single dramas made to occupy but a few
+years.  Secondly, that in this immense antiquity the forefathers of the
+Aryan Greeks and the Aryan Brahmans were as closely united and
+intermixed as are now the Aryans and the so-called Dravidians.  Thirdly,
+that before the days of the historical Rama, from whom in unbroken
+genealogical descent the Oodeypore sovereigns trace their lineage,
+Rajpootana was as full of direct post-Atlantean "Greeks," as the
+post-Trojan, subjacent Cumaea and other settlements of pre-Magna Graecia
+were of the fast Hellenizing sires of the modern Rajpoot.  One
+acquainted with the real meaning of the ancient epics cannot refrain
+from asking himself whether these intuitional Orientalists prefer being
+called deceivers or deceived, and in charity give them the benefit of
+the doubt.*
+
+---------
+* Further on, Prof. Weber indulges in the following piece of
+chronological sleight of hand.  In his arduous endeavour "to determine
+accurately" the place in history of "the Romantic Legend of Sakya
+Buddha" (translation by Beale), he thinks "the special points of
+relation here found to Christian legends are very striking.  The
+question which party was the borrower Deals properly leaves
+undetermined.  Yet in all likelihood (!!) we have here simply a similar
+case to that of the appropriation of Christian legend by this worshipers
+of Krishna" (p. 300).  Now it is this that every Hindu and Buddhist has
+the right to brand as "dishonesty," whether conscious or unconscious.
+Legends originate earlier than history and die out upon being sifted.
+Neither of the fabulous events in connection with Buddha's birth, taken
+exoterically, necessitated a great genius to narrate them, nor was the
+intellectual capacity of the Hindus ever proved so inferior to that of
+the Jewish and Greek mob that they should borrow from them even fables
+inspired by religion.  How their fables, evolved between the second and
+third centuries after Buddha's death, when the fever of proselytism and
+the adoration of his memory were at their height, could be borrowed and
+then appropriated from the Christian legends written during the first
+century of the Western era, can only be explained by a German
+Orientalist.  Mr. T.W. Rhys Davids (Jataka Book) shows the contrary to
+have been true.  It may be remarked in this connection that, while the
+first "miracles" of both Krishna and Christ are said to have happened at
+a Mathura, the latter city exists to this day in India--the antiquity of
+its name being fully proved--while the Mathura, or Matures in Egypt, of
+the "Gospel of Infancy," where Jesus is alleged to have produced his
+first miracle, was sought to be identified, centuries ago, by the stump
+of an old tree in thee desert, and is represented by an empty spot!
+----------
+
+What can be thought of Prof. Weber's endeavour when, "to determine more
+accurately the position of Ramayana (called by him the 'artificial
+epic') in literary history," he ends with an assumption that "it rests
+upon an acquaintance with the Trojan cycle of legend .... the conclusion
+there arrived at is that the date of its composition is to be placed at
+the commencement of the Christian era in an epoch when the operation of
+the Greek influence upon India had already set in!" (p. 194.)  The case
+is hopeless.  If the "internal chronology" and external fitness of
+things, we may add presented in the triple Indian epic, did not open the
+eyes of the hypercritical professors to the many historical facts
+enshrined in their striking allegories;  if the significant mention of
+"black Yavanas," and "white Yavanas," indicating totally different
+peoples, could so completely escape their notice;*  and the enumeration
+of a host of tribes, nations, races, clans, under their separate
+Sanskrit designations in the Mahbharata, had not stimulated them to try
+to trace their ethnic evolution and identify them with their now living
+European descendants, there is little to hope from their scholarship
+except a mosaic of learned guesswork.  The latter scientific mode of
+critical analysis may yet end some day in a consensus of opinion that
+Buddhism is due wholesale to the "Life of Barlaam and Josaphat," written
+by St. John of Damascus;  or that our religion was plagiarized from that
+famous Roman Catholic legend of the eighth century in which our Lord
+Gautama is made to figure as a Christian Saint, better still, that the
+Vedas were written at Athens under the auspices of St. George, the
+tutelary successor of Theseus.
+
+---------
+* See Twelfth Book of Mahabharata, Krishnas fight with Kalayavana.
+---------
+
+For fear that anything might be lacking to prove the complete obsession
+of Jambudvipa by the demon of  "Greek influence," Dr. Weber vindictively
+casts a last insult into the face of India by remarking that if
+"European Western steeples owe their origin to an imitation of the
+Buddhist topes* .... on the other hand in the most ancient Hindu
+edifices the presence of Greek influence is unmistakable" (p. 274).
+Well may Dr. Rajendralala Mitra "hold out particularly against the idea
+of any Greek influence whatever on the development of Indian
+architecture."  If his ancestral literature must be attributed to "Greek
+influence," the temples, at least, might have been spared.  One can
+understand how the Egyptian Hall in London reflects the influence of the
+ruined temples on the Nile;  but it is a more difficult feat, even for a
+German professor, to prove the archaic structure of old Aryavarta a
+foreshadowing of the genius of the late lamented Sir Christopher Wren!
+The outcome of this paleographic spoliation is that there is not a
+tittle left for India to call her own. Even medicine is due to the same
+Hellenic influence.  We are told--this once by Roth--that "only a
+comparison of the principles of Indian with those of Greek medicine can
+enable us to judge of the origin, age and value of the former;" .... and
+"a propos of Charaka's injunctions as to the duties of the physician to
+his patient," adds Dr. Weber, "he cites some remarkably coincident
+expressions from the Oath of the Asklepiads."  It is then settled.
+India is Hellenized from head to foot, and even had no physic until the
+Greek doctors came.
+
+----------
+* Of Hindu Lingams, rather.
+----------
+
+
+
+
+Sakya Muni's Place in History
+
+
+No Orientalist, save perhaps, the same wise, not to say deep, Prof.
+Weber, opposes more vehemently than Prof. Max Muller Hindu and Buddhist
+chronology.  Evidently if an Indophile he is not a Buddhophile, and
+General Cunningham, however independent otherwise in his archeological
+researches, agrees with him more than would seem strictly prudent in
+view of possible future discoveries.*  We have then to refute in our
+turn this great Oxford professor's speculations.
+
+---------
+* Notwithstanding Prof. M. Muller's regrettable efforts to invalidate
+every Buddhist evidence, he seems to have ill-succeeded in proving his
+case, if we can judge from the openly expressed opinion of his own
+German confreres.  In the portion headed "Tradition as to Buddha's Age"
+(pp. 283-288) in his "Hist. of Ind. Lit.," Prof. Weber very aptly
+remarks, "Nothing like positive certainty, therefore, is for the present
+attainable. Nor have the subsequent discussions of this topic by Max
+Muller (1859) ('Hist. A.S.L.' p. 264 ff), by Westergaard (1860), 'Ueber
+Buddha's Todesjahr,' and by 'Kern Over de Jaartelling der Zuidel
+Buddhisten' so far yielded any definite results."  Nor are they likely
+to.
+---------
+
+To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also
+finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect
+accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir
+Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their
+chronology.  With him, it is always "Alexander's invasion" and
+"Conquest," and "the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes," while
+even the faintest record of such "conquest" is conspicuously absent from
+Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are
+mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of
+the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the
+Macedonian is yet called the "Conqueror of India."  In other words,
+while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great
+note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary
+or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration.  Until rubbed
+against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down,
+in the words of Professor Weber, as "of course mere empty boasting."
+Oh, rare Western sense of justice! *
+
+----------
+* No Philaryan would pretend for a moment on the strength of the
+Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the
+other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual "vassal" of
+Chandragupta.  They did not even pay tribute, but only a kind of
+quit-rent annually for lands ceded in the north:  as the grant-tablets
+could show.  But the inscription, however misinterpreted, shows most
+clearly that Alexander was never the conqueror of India.
+---------
+
+Occult records show differently.  They say--challenging proof to the
+contrary--that Alexander never penetrated into India farther than
+Taxila;  which is not even quite the modern Attock.  The murmuring of
+the Macedonian's troops began at the same place, and not as given out,
+on the banks of the Hyphasis.  For having never gone to the Hydaspes or
+Jhelum, he could not have been on the Sutlej.  Nor did Alexander ever
+found satrapies or plant any Greek colonies in the Punjab.  The only
+colonies he left behind him that the Brahmans ever knew of, amounted to
+a few dozens of disabled soldiers, scattered hither and thither on the
+frontiers; who with their native raped wives settled around the deserts
+of Karmania and Drangaria--the then natural boundaries of India. And
+unless history regards as colonists the many thousands of dead men and
+those who settled for ever under the hot sands of Gedrosia, there were
+no other, save in the fertile imagination of the Greek historians.  The
+boasted "invasion of India" was confined to the regions between Karmania
+and Attock, east and west;  and Beloochistan and the Hindu Kush, south
+and north: countries which were all India for the Greek of those days.
+His building a fleet on the Hydaspes is a fiction;  and his "victorious
+march through the fighting armies of India," another. However, it is not
+with the "world conqueror" that we have now to deal, but rather with the
+supposed accuracy and even casual veracity of his captains and
+countrymen, whose hazy reminiscences on the testimony of the classical
+writers have now been raised to unimpeachable evidence in everything
+that may affect the chronology of early Buddhism and India.
+
+Foremost among the evidence of classical writers, that of Flavius
+Arrianus is brought forward against the Buddhist and Chinese
+chronologies.  No one should impeach the personal testimony of this
+conscientious author had he been himself an eye-witness instead of
+Megasthenes.  But when a man comes to know that he wrote his accounts
+upon the now lost works of Aristobulus and Ptolemy;  and that the latter
+described their data from texts prepared by authors who had never set
+their eyes upon one line written by either Megasthenes or Nearchus
+himself;  and that knowing so much one is informed by Western historians
+that among the works of Arrian, Book VII. of the "Anabasis of
+Alexander," is "the chief authority on the subject of the Indian
+invasion--a book unfortunately with a gap in its twelfth chapter"--one
+may well conceive upon what a broken reed Western authority leans for
+its Indian chronology.  Arrian lived over 600 years after Buddha's
+death;  Strabo, 500 (55 "B.C.");  Diodorus Siculus--quite a trustworthy
+compiler!--about the first century; Plutarch over 700 anno Buddhae, and
+Quintus Curtius over 1,000 years!  And when, to crown this army of
+witnesses against the Buddhist annals, the reader is informed by our
+Olympian critics that the works of the last-named author--than whom no
+more blundering (geographically, chronologically, and historically)
+writer ever lived--form along with the Greek history of Arrian the most
+valuable source of information respecting the military career of
+Alexander the Great--then the only wonder is that the great conqueror
+was not made by his biographers to have--Leonidas-like--defended the
+Thermopylean passes in the Hindu Kush against the invasion of the first
+Vedic Brahmins "from the Oxus." Withal the Buddhist dates are either
+rejected or only accepted pro tempore.  Well may the Hindu resent the
+preference shown to the testimony of Greeks--of whom some, at least, are
+better remembered in Indian history as the importers into Jambudvipa of
+every Greek and Roman vice known and unknown to their day--against his
+own national records and history.  "Greek influence" was felt, indeed,
+in India, in this, and only in this, one particular.  Greek damsels
+mentioned as an article of great traffic for India--Persian and Greek
+Yavanis--were the fore-mothers of the modern nautch-girls, who had till
+then remained pure virgins of the inner temples.  Alliances with the
+Autiochuses and the Seleucus Nicators bore no better fruit than the
+rotten apple of Sodom.  Pataliputra, as prophesied by Gautama Buddha,
+found its fate in the waters of the Ganges, having been twice before
+nearly destroyed, again like Sodom, by the fire of heaven.
+
+Reverting to the main subject, the "contradictions" between the
+Ceylonese and Chino-Tibetan chronologies actually prove nothing. If the
+Chinese annalists of Saul in accepting the prophecy of our Lord that "a
+thousand years after He had reached Nirvana, His doctrines would reach
+the north" fell into the mistake of applying it to China, whereas Tibet
+was meant, the error was corrected after the eleventh century of the
+Tzina era in most of the temple chronologies.  Besides which, it may now
+refer to other events relating to Buddhism, of which Europe knows
+nothing, China or Tzina dates its present name only from the year 296 of
+the Buddhist era* (vulgar chronology having assumed it from the first
+Hoang of the Tzin dynasty):  therefore the Tathagata could not have
+indicated it by this name in his well-known prophecy. If misunderstood
+even by several of the Buddhist commentators, it is yet preserved in its
+true sense by his own immediate Arhats. The Glorified One meant the
+country that stretches far off from the Lake Mansorowara;  far beyond
+that region of the Himavat, where dwelt from time immemorial the great
+"teachers of the Snowy Range."  These were the great Sraman-acharyas who
+preceded Him, and were His teachers, their humble successors trying to
+this day to perpetuate their and His doctrines.  The prophecy came out
+true to the very day, and it is corroborated both by the mathematical
+and historical chronology of Tibet--quite as accurate as that of the
+Chinese.  Arhat Kasyapa, of the dynasty of Moryas, founded by one of the
+Chandraguptas near Ptaliputra, left the convent of Panch-Kukkutarama, in
+consequence of a vision of our Lord, for missionary purpose in the year
+683 of the Tzin era (436 Western era) and had reached the great Lake of
+Bod-Yul in the same year.  It is at that period that expired the
+millennium prophesied.
+
+--------
+* The reference to Chinahunah (Chinese and Huns) in the Vishma
+Parva of the Mahabharata is evidently a later interpolation, as
+it does not occur in the old MSS. existing in Southern India.
+--------
+
+The Arhat carrying with him the fifth statue of Sakya Muni out of the
+seven gold statues made after his bodily death by order of the first
+Council, planted it in the soil on that very spot where seven years
+later was built the first GUNPA (monastery), where the earliest Buddhist
+lamas dwelt.  And though the conversion of the whole country did not
+take place before the beginning of the seventh century (Western era),
+the good law had, nevertheless, reached the North at the time
+prophesied, and no earlier.  For, the first of the golden statues had
+been plundered from Bhikshu Sali Suka by the Hiong-un robbers and
+melted, during the days of Dharmasoka, who had sent missionaries beyond
+Nepaul.  The second had a like fate, at Ghar-zha, even before it had
+reached the boundaries of Bod-Yul.  The third was rescued from a
+barbarous tribe of Bhons by a Chinese military chief who had pursued
+them into the deserts of Schamo about 423 Buddhist era (120 "B.C.") The
+fourth was sunk in the third century of the Christian era, together
+with the ship that carried it from Magadha toward the hills of
+Ghangs-chhen-dzo-nga (Chitagong).  The fifth arriving in the nick of
+time reached its destination with Arhat Kasyapa.  So did the last two.*
+
+---------
+* No doubt, since the history of these seven statues is not in the hands
+of the Orientalists, it will be treated as a "groundless fable."
+Nevertheless such is their origin and history.  They date from the first
+Synod, that of Rajagriha, held in the season of war following the death
+of Buddha, i.e., one year after his death.  Were this Rajagriha Council
+held 100 years after, as maintained by some, it could not have been
+presided over by Mahakasyapa, the friend and brother Arhat of Sakyamuni,
+as he would have been 200 years old.  The second Council or Synod, that
+of Vaisali, was held 120, not 100 or 110 years as some would have it,
+after the Nirvana, for the latter took place at a time a little over 20
+years before the physical death of Tathagata.  It was held at the great
+Saptapana cave (Mahavansa's Sattapanni), near the Mount Baibhar (the
+Webhara of the Pali Manuscripts), that was in Rajagriha, the old capital
+of Magadha. Memoirs exist, containing the record of his daily life, made
+by the nephew of king Ajatasatru, a favourite Bikshu of the Mahacharya.
+These texts have ever been in the possession of the superiors of the
+first Lamasery built by Arhat Kasyapa in Bod-Yul, most of whose Chohans
+were the descendants of the dynasty of the Moryas, there being up to
+this day three of the members of this once royal family living in India.
+The old text in question is a document written in Anudruta Magadha
+characters.  (We deny that these or any other characters--whether
+Devanagari, Pali, or Dravidian--ever used in India, are variations of,
+or derivatives from, the Phoenician.)  To revert to the texts it is
+therein stated that the Sattapanni cave, then called "Sarasvati" and
+"Bamboo-cave," got its latter name in this wise.  When our Lord first
+sat in it for Dhyana, it was a large six-chambered natural cave, 50 to
+60 feet wide by 33 deep.   One day, while teaching the mendicants
+outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant,
+showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be
+easily detached, but the seventh leaf--directly connected with the stem.
+"Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and
+there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant.  What are
+the seven?  The seven branches of complete knowledge.  What are the six?
+The six organs of sense.  What are the five?  The five elements of
+illusive being.  And the ONE which is also ten?  He is a true Buddha who
+develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the
+one--'the silent voice' (meaning Avolokiteswara).  After that, causing
+the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself
+into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was
+septenary, and had seven stages of development.  From that time it was
+called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave.  After the first Synod was
+held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king,
+and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments."  These in
+after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial
+because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and
+then disposed of as explained.  Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the
+authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave
+received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct.
+In the "Archeological Survey of India," we find that Gen. Cunningham
+identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same
+Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave.  At
+the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing
+the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave,
+and he is right.  For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves
+mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations--both
+having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very
+time of their leaving India--to have their sites so easily forgotten.
+---------
+
+On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open
+their annals with the following event:--
+
+They claim according to their native chronology that Vijaya, the son of
+Sinhabahu, the sovereign of Lala, a small kingdom or Raj on the Gandaki
+river in Magadha, was exiled by his father for acts of turbulence and
+immorality.  Sent adrift on the ocean with his companions after having
+their heads shaved, Buddhist-Bhikshu fashion, as a sign of penitence, he
+was carried to the shores of Lanka.  Once landed, he and his companions
+conquered and easily took possession of an island inhabited by
+uncivilized tribes, generically called the Yakshas.  This--at whatever
+epoch and year it may have happened--is an historical fact, and the
+Ceylonese records, independent of Buddhist chronology, give it out as
+having taken place 382 years before Dushtagamani (i.e., in 543 before
+the Christian era).  Now, the Buddhist Sacred Annals record certain
+words of our Lord pronounced by Him shortly before His death.  In
+Mahavansa He is made to have addressed them to Sakra, in the midst of a
+great assembly of Devatas (Dhyan Chohans), and while already "in the
+exalted unchangeable Nirvana, seated on the throne on which Nirvana is
+achieved."  In our texts Tathagata addresses them to his assembled
+Arhats and Bhikkhuts a few days before his final liberation:--"One
+Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, king of the land of Lala, together with
+700 attendants, has just landed on Lanka.  Lord of Dhyan Buddhas
+(Devas)! my doctrine will be established on Lanka.  Protect him and
+Lanka!"  This is the sentence pronounced which, as proved later, was a
+prophecy.  The now familiar phenomenon of clairvoyant prevision, amply
+furnishing a natural explanation of the prophetic utterance without any
+unscientific theory of miracle, the laugh of certain Orientalists seems
+uncalled for. Such parallels of poetico-religious embellishments as
+found in Mahavansa exist in the written records of every religion--as
+much in Christianity as anywhere else.  An unbiased mind would first
+endeavour to reach the correct and very superficially hidden meaning
+before throwing ridicule and contemptuous discredit upon them.
+Moreover, the Tibetans possess a more sober record of this prophecy in
+the Notes, already alluded to, reverentially taken down by King
+Ajatasatru's nephew.  They are, as said above, in the possession of the
+Lamas of the convent built by Arhat Kasyapa--the Moryas and their
+descendants being of a more direct descent than the Rajput Gautamas, the
+Chiefs of Nagara--the village identified with Kapilavastu--are the best
+entitled of all to their possession.  And we know they are historical to
+a word. For the Esoteric Buddhist they yet vibrate in space;  and these
+prophetic words, together with the true picture of the Sugata who
+pronounced them, are present in the aura of every atom of His relics.
+This, we hasten to say, is no proof but for the psychologist.  But there
+is other and historical evidence: the cumulative testimony of our
+religious chronicles.  The philologist has not seen these;  but this is
+no proof of their non-existence.
+
+The mistake of the Southern Buddhists lies in dating the Nirvana of
+Sanggyas Pan-chhen from the actual day of his death, whereas, as above
+stated, He had reached it over twenty years previous to his
+disincarnation.  Chronologically, the Southerners are right, both in
+dating His death in 543 "B.C.," and one of the great Councils at 100
+years after the latter event.  But the Tibetan Chohans, who possess all
+the documents relating to the last twenty-four years of His external and
+internal life--of which no philologist knows anything--can show that
+there is no real discrepancy between the Tibetan and the Ceylonese
+chronologies as stated by the Western Orientalists.*  For the profane,
+the Exalted One was born in the sixty-eighth year of the Burmese
+Eeatzana era, established by Eeatzana (Anjana), King of Dewaha; for the
+initiated--in the forty-eighth year of that era, on a Friday of the
+waxing moon, of May.  And it was in 563 before the Christian chronology
+that Tathagata reached his full Nirvana, dying, as correctly stated by
+Mahavana--in 543, on the very day when Vijaya landed with his companions
+in Ceylon--as prophesied by Loka-ratha, our Buddha.
+
+---------
+* Bishop Bigandet, after examining all the Burmese authorities
+accessible to him, frankly confesses that "the history of Buddha offers
+an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings
+during a period of nearly twenty-three years." (Vol. I. p. 260.)
+---------
+
+Professor Max Muller seems to greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his
+chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the
+eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented
+claim.  "We are asked to believe"--he writes--"that the Ceylonese
+historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon in the
+year 543 in accordance with their sacred chronology!" (i.e., Buddha's
+prophecy), "while we (the philologists) are not told, however, through
+what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to
+the exact date of Buddha's death."  Two points may be noticed in these
+sarcastic phrases:  (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord;
+and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one
+of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused
+in history of "perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the
+sake of synchronisms."  With reference to charge one, he may be asked
+why our Sakyasinha's prophecies should not be as much entitled to his
+respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours--were we to ever write
+the true history of the "Galilean" Arhat.  With regard to charge two,
+the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all
+Christian chronologists are themselves living in.  Their inability to
+vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity,
+and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death--
+even before their own people--is far greater than is ours to demonstrate
+the year of Buddha to other nations.  Their utter failure to establish
+on any other but traditional evidence the, to them, historically
+unproved, if probable, fact of his existence at all--ought to engender a
+fairer spirit.  When Christian historians can, upon undeniable
+historical authority, justify biblical and ecclesiastical chronology,
+then, perchance, they may be better equipped than at present for the
+congenial work of rending heathen chronologies into shreds.
+
+The "channel" the Ceylonese received their information through, was two
+Bikshus who had left Magadha to follow their disgraced brethren into
+exile.  The capacity of Siddhartha Buddha's Arhats for transmitting
+intelligence by psychic currents may, perhaps, be conceded without any
+great stretch of imagination to have been equal to, if not greater than,
+that of the prophet Elijah, who is credited with the power of having
+known from any distance all that happened in the king's bed chamber.  No
+Orientalist has the right to reject the testimony of other people's
+Scriptures, while professing belief in the far more contradictory and
+entangled evidence of his own upon the self-same theory of proof.  If
+Professor Muller is a sceptic at heart, then let him fearlessly declare
+himself;  only a sceptic who impartially acts the iconoclast has the
+right to assume such a tone of contempt towards any non-Christian
+religion.  And for the instruction of the impartial inquirer only, shall
+it be thought worth while to collate the evidence afforded by
+historical--not psychological--data.  Meanwhile, by analyzing some
+objections and exposing the dangerous logic of our critic, we may give
+the theosophists a few more facts connected with the subject under
+discussion.
+
+Now that we have seen Professor Max Muller's opinions in general about
+this, so to say, the Prologue to the Buddhist Drama with Vijaya as the
+hero--what has he to say as to the details of its plot?  What weapon
+does he use to weaken this foundation-stone of a chronology upon which
+are built and on which depend all other Buddhist dates?  What is the
+fulcrum for the critical lever he uses against the Asiatic records?
+Three of his main points may be stated seriatim with answers appended.
+He begins by premising that--
+
+1st.--"If the starting-point of the Northern Buddhist chronology turns
+out to be merely hypothetical, based as it is on a prophecy of Buddha,
+it will be difficult to avoid the same conclusion with regard to the
+date assigned to Buddha's death by the Buddhists of Ceylon and of
+Burmah" (p. 266).  "The Mahavansa begins with relating three miraculous
+visits which Buddha paid to Ceylon." Vijaya, the name of the founder of
+the first dynasty (in Ceylon), means conquest, "and, therefore, such a
+person most likely never existed" (p. 268).  This he believes
+invalidates the whole Buddhist chronology.
+
+To which the following pendant may be offered:--
+
+William I., King of England, is commonly called the Conqueror; he was,
+moreover, the illegitimate son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, surnamed le
+Diable.  An opera, we hear, was invented on this subject, and full of
+miraculous events, called "Robert the Devil," showing its traditional
+character.  Therefore shall we be also justified in saying that Edward
+the Confessor, Saxons and all, up to the time of the union of the houses
+of York and Lancaster under Henry VII.--the new historical period in
+English history--are all "fabulous tradition" and "such a person as
+William the Conqueror most likely never existed?"
+
+2nd.--In the Chinese chronology--continues the dissecting critic
+--"the list of the thirty-three Buddhist patriarchs .... is of a
+doubtful character.  For Western history the exact Ceylonese
+chronology begins with 161 B.C."  Extending beyond that date there
+exists but "a traditional native chronology.  Therefore .... what goes
+before .... is but fabulous tradition."
+
+The chronology of the Apostles and their existence has never been proved
+historically.  The history of the Papacy is confessedly "obscure."
+Ennodius of Pavia (fifth century) was the first one to address the Roman
+Bishop (Symmochus), who comes fifty-first in the Apostolic succession,
+as "Pope."  Thus, if we were to write the history of Christianity, and
+indulge in remarks upon its chronology, we might say that since there
+were no antecedent Popes, and since the Apostolic line began with
+Symmochus (498 A.D.), all Christian records beginning with the Nativity
+and up to the sixth century are therefore "fabulous traditions," and all
+Christian chronology is "purely hypothetical."
+
+3rd.--Two discrepant dates in Buddhist chronology are scornfully pointed
+out by the Oxford Professor.  If the landing of Vijaya, in Lanka--he
+says--on the same day that Buddha reached Nirvana (died) is in
+fulfilment of Buddha's prophecy, then "if Buddha was a true prophet, the
+Ceylonese argue quite rightly that he must have died in the year of the
+conquest, or 543 B.C." (p. 270).  On the other hand, the Chinese have a
+Buddhist chronology of their own;  and it does not agree with the
+Ceylonese.  "The lifetime of Buddha from 1029 to 950 rests on his own
+prophecy that a millennium would elapse from his death to the conversion
+of China.  If, therefore, Buddha was a true prophet, he must have lived
+about 1000 B.C." (p. 266).  But the date does not agree with the
+Ceylonese chronology--ergo, Buddha was a false prophet. As to that other
+"the first and most important link" in the Ceylonese as well as in the
+Chinese chronology, "it is extremely weak." .... In the Ceylonese "a
+miraculous genealogy had to be provided for Vijaya," and, "a prophecy
+was therefore invented" (p. 269).
+
+On these same lines of argument it may be argued that:
+
+Since no genealogy of Jesus, "exact or inexact," is found in any of the
+world's records save those entitled the Gospels of SS. Mathew (I--1-17),
+and Luke (iii. 23--38);  and, since these radically disagree--although
+this personage is the most conspicuous in Western history, and the
+nicest accuracy might have been expected in his case;  therefore,
+agreeably with Professor Max Muller's sarcastic logic, if Jesus "was a
+true prophet," he must have descended from David through Joseph
+(Matthew's Gospel);  and "if he was a true prophet," again, then the
+Christians "argue quite rightly that he must have" descended from David
+through Mary (Luke's Gospel).  Furthermore, since the two genealogies
+are obviously discrepant and prophecies were, in this instance, truly
+"invented" by the post-apostolic theologians [or, if preferred, old
+prophecies of Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets, irrelevant to
+Jesus, were adapted to suit his case--as recent English commentators (in
+Holy Orders), the Bible revisers, now concede];  and since, moreover--
+always following the Professor's argument, in the cases of Buddhist and
+Brahmanical chronologies--Biblical chronology and genealogy are found to
+be "traditional and full of absurdities .... every attempt to bring them
+into harmony having proved a failure." (p. 266):  have we or have we not
+a certain right to retort, that if Gautama Buddha is shown on these
+lines a false prophet, then Jesus must be likewise "a false prophet?"
+And if Jesus was a true prophet despite existing confusion of
+authorities, why on the same lines may not Buddha have been one?
+Discredit the Buddhist prophecies and the Christian ones must go along
+with them.
+
+The utterances of the ancient pythoness now but provoke the scientific
+smile:  but no tripod ever mounted by the prophetess of old was so shaky
+as the chronological trinity of points upon which this Orientalist
+stands to deliver his oracles.  Moreover, his arguments are
+double-edged, as shown.  If the citadel of Buddhism can be undermined
+by Professor Max Muller's critical engineering, then pari passu that of
+Christianity must crumble in the same ruins.  Or have the Christians
+alone the monopoly of absurd religious "inventions" and the right of
+being jealous of any infringement of their patent rights?
+
+To conclude, we say, that the year of Buddha's death is correctly stated
+by Mr. Sinnett, "Esoteric Buddhism" having to give its chronological
+dates according to esoteric reckoning.  And this reckoning would alone,
+if explained, make away with every objection urged, from Professor Max
+Muller's "Sanskrit Literature" down to the latest "evidence"--the proofs
+in the "Reports of the Archeological Survey of India."  The Ceylonese
+era, as given in Mahavansa, is correct in everything, withholding but
+the above given fact of Nirvana, the great mystery of Samma-Sambuddha
+and Abhidina remaining to this day unknown to the outsider;  and though
+certainly known to Bikshu Mahanama--King Dhatusena's uncle--it could not
+be explained in a work like the Mahavansa.  Moreover, the Singhalese
+chronology agrees in every particular with the Burmese chronology.
+Independent of the religious era dating from Buddha's death, called
+"Nirvanic Era," there existed, as now shown by Bishop Bigandet ("Life of
+Guadama"), two historical eras.  One lasted 1362 years, its last year
+corresponding with 1156 of the Christian era:  the other, broken in two
+small eras, the last, succeeding immediately the other, exists to the
+present day.  The beginning of the first, which lasted 562 years,
+coincides with the year 79 A.D. and the Indian Saka era.  Consequently,
+the learned Bishop, who surely can never be suspected of partiality to
+Buddhism, accepts the year 543 of Buddha's Nirvana.  So do Mr. Tumour,
+Professor Lassen, and others.
+
+The alleged discrepancies between the fourteen various dates of Nirvana
+collected by Csoma Corosi, do not relate to the Nyr-Nyang in the least.
+They are calculations concerning the Nirvana of the precursors, the
+Boddhisatwas and previous incarnations of Sanggyas that the Hungarian
+found in various works and wrongly applied to the last Buddha.
+Europeans must not forget that this enthusiast acted under protest of
+the Lamas during the time of his stay with them:  and that, moreover, he
+had learned more about the doctrines of the heretical Dugpas than of the
+orthodox Gelugpas.  The statement of this "great authority (!) on
+Tibetan Buddhism," as he is called, to the effect that Gautama had three
+wives whom he names--and then contradicts himself by showing ("Tibetan
+Grammar," p. 162, see note) that the first two wives "are one and the
+same," shows how little he can be regarded as an "authority."  He had
+not even learned that "Gopa, Yasodhara and Utpala Varna" are the three
+names for three mystical powers.  So with the "discrepancies" of the
+dates.  Out of the sixty-four mentioned by him but two relate to Sakya
+Muni--namely, the years 576 and 546--and these two err in their
+transcription;  for when corrected they must stand 564 and 543.  As for
+the rest they concern the seven ku-sum, or triple form of the Nirvanic
+state and their respective duration, and relate to doctrines of which
+Orientalists know absolutely nothing.
+
+Consequently from the Northern Buddhists, who, as confessed by Professor
+Weber, "alone possess these (Buddhist) Scriptures complete," and have
+"preserved more authentic information regarding the circumstances of
+their redaction"--the Orientalists have up to this time learned next to
+nothing.  The Tibetans say that Tathagata became a full Buddha--i.e.,
+reached absolute Nirvana--in 2544 of the Kali era (according to
+Souramana), and thus lived indeed but eighty years, as no Nirvanee of
+the seventh degree can be reckoned among the living (i.e., existing)
+men.  It is no better than loose conjecture to argue that it would have
+entered as little into the thoughts of the Brahmans to note the day of
+Buddha's birth "as the Romans or even the Jews (would have) thought of
+preserving the date of the birth of Jesus before he had become the
+founder of a religion." (Max Muller's "Hist. S. L.")  For, while the
+Jews had been from the first rejecting the claim of Messiah-ship set up
+by the Chelas of the Jewish prophet and were not expecting their Messiah
+at that time, the Brahmans (the initiates, at any rate) knew of the
+coming of him whom they regarded as an incarnation of Divine wisdom, and
+therefore were well aware of the astrological date of his birth.  If, in
+after times, in their impotent rage they destroyed every accessible
+vestige of the birth, life and death of Him, who in his boundless mercy
+to all creatures had revealed their carefully concealed mysteries and
+doctrines in order to check the ecclesiastical torrent of ever-growing
+superstitions, yet there had been a time when he was met by them as an
+Avatar. And, though they destroyed, others preserved.
+
+The thousand and one speculations and the torturing of exoteric texts by
+Archeologist or Paleographer will ill repay the time lost in their
+study.
+
+The Indian annals specify King Ajatasatru as a contemporary of Buddha,
+and another Ajatasatru helped to prepare the council 100 years after his
+death.  These princes were sovereigns of Magadha and have naught to do
+with Ajatasatru of the Brihad-Aranyaka and the Kaushitaki-Upanishad, who
+was a sovereign of the Kasis; though Bhadrasena, "the son of Ajatasatru"
+cursed by Aruni, may have more to do with his namesake the "heir of
+Chandragupta" than is generally known, Professor Max Miller objects to
+two Asokas. He rejects Kalasoka and accepts but Dharmasoka--in
+accordance with "Greek" and in utter conflict with Buddhist chronology.
+He knows not--or perhaps prefers to ignore--that besides the two Asokas
+there were several personages named Chandragupta and Chandramasa.
+Plutarch is set aside as conflicting with the more welcome theory, and
+the evidence of Justin alone is accepted. There was Kalasoka, called by
+some Chandramasa and by others Chandragupta, whose son Nanda was
+succeeded by his cousin the Chandragupta of Seleucus, and under whom the
+Council of Vaisali took place "supported by King Nanda" as correctly
+stated by Taranatha.  (None of them were Sudras, and this is a pure
+invention of the Brahmans.)  Then there was the last of the
+Chandraguptas who assumed the name of Vikrama;  he commenced the new era
+called the Vikramaditya or Samvat and began the new dynasty at
+Pataliputra, 318 (B.C.)--according to some European "authorities;" after
+him his son Bindusara or Bhadrasena--also Chandragupta, who was followed
+by Dharmasoka Chandragupta.  And there were two Piyadasis--the
+"Sandracottus" Chandragupta and Asoka.  And if controverted, the
+Orientalists will have to account for this strange inconsistency.  If
+Asoka was the only "Piyadasi" and the builder of the monuments, and
+maker of the rock-inscriptions of this name;  and if his inauguration
+occurred as conjectured by Professor Max Muller about 259 B.C., in other
+words, if he reigned sixty or seventy years later than any of the Greek
+kings named on the Piyadasian monuments, what had he to do with their
+vassalage or non-vassalage, or how was he concerned with them at all?
+Their dealings had been with his grandfather some seventy years
+earlier--if he became a Buddhist only after ten years occupancy of the
+throne.  And finally, three well-known Bhadrasenas can be proved, whose
+names spelt loosely and phonetically, according to each writer's dialect
+and nationality, now yield a variety of names, from Bindusara,
+Bimbisara, and Vindusara, down to Bhadrasena and Bhadrasara, as he is
+called in the Vayu Purana.  These are all synonymous.  However easy, at
+first sight, it may seem to be to brush out of history a real personage,
+it becomes more difficult to prove the non-existence of Kalasoka by
+calling him "false," while the second Asoka is termed "the real," in the
+face of the evidence of the Puranas, written by the bitterest enemies of
+the Buddhists, the Brahmans of the period.  The Vayu and Matsya Puranas
+mention both in their lists of their reigning sovereigns of the Nanda
+and the Morya dynasties.  And, though they connect Chandragupta with a
+Sudra Nanda, they do not deny existence to Kalasoka, for the sake of
+invalidating Buddhist chronology.  However falsified the now extant
+texts of both the Vaya and Matsya Puranas, even accepted as they at
+present stand "in their true meaning," which Professor Max Muller
+(notwithstanding his confidence) fails to seize, they are not "at
+variance with Buddhist chronology before Chandragupta."  Not, at any
+rate, when the real Chandragupta instead of the false Sandrocottus of
+the Greeks is recognized and introduced.  Quite independently of the
+Buddhist version, there exists the historical fact recorded in the
+Brahmanical as well as in the Burmese and Tibetan versions, that in the
+year 63 of Buddha, Susinago of Benares was chosen king by the people of
+Pataliputra, who made away with Ajatasatru's dynasty.  Susinago removed
+the capital of Magadha from Rajagriha to Vaisali, while his successor
+Kalasoka removed it in his turn to Pataliputra.  It was during the reign
+of the latter that the prophecy of Buddha concerning Patalibat or
+Pataliputra--a small village during His time--was realized.  (See
+Mahaparinibbana Sutta).
+
+It will be easy enough, when the time comes, to answer all denying
+Orientalists and face them with proof and document in hand.  They speak
+of the extravagant, wild exaggerations of the Buddhists and Brahmans.
+The latter answer:  "The wildest theorists of all are they who, to evade
+a self-evident fact, assume moral, anti-national impossibilities,
+entirely opposed to the most conspicuous traits of the Brahmanical
+Indian character--namely, borrowing from, or imitating in anything,
+other nations. From their comments on Rig Veda, down to the annals of
+Ceylon, from Panini to Matouan-lin, every page of their learned scholia
+appears, to one acquainted with the subject, like a monstrous jumble of
+unwarranted and insane speculations.  Therefore, notwithstanding Greek
+chronology and Chandragupta--whose date is represented as 'the
+sheet-anchor of Indian chronology' that 'nothing will ever shake'--it is
+to be feared that as regards India, the chronological ship of the
+Sanskritists has already broken from her moorings and gone adrift with
+all her precious freight of conjectures and hypotheses.  She is drifting
+into danger.  We are at the end of a cycle--geological and other--and at
+the beginning of another.  Cataclysm is to follow cataclysm. The pent-up
+forces are bursting out in many quarters;  and not only will men be
+swallowed up or slain by thousands, 'new' land appear and 'old' subside,
+volcanic eruptions and tidal waves appal;  but secrets of an unsuspected
+past will be uncovered to the dismay of Western theorists and the
+humiliation of an imperious science.  This drifting ship, if watched,
+may be seen to ground upon the upheaved vestiges of ancient
+civilizations, and fall to pieces.  We are not emulous of the prophet's
+honours: but still, let this stand as a prophecy."
+
+
+
+
+Inscriptions Discovered by General A. Cunningham
+
+
+We have carefully examined the new inscription discovered by General A.
+Cunningham on the strength of which the date assigned to Buddha's death
+by Buddhist writers has been declared to be incorrect;  and we are of
+opinion that the said inscription confirms the truth of the Buddhist
+traditions instead of proving them to be erroneous.  The above-mentioned
+archeologist writes as follows regarding the inscription under
+consideration in the first volume of his reports:--"The most interesting
+inscription (at Gaya) is a long and perfect one dated in the era of the
+Nirvana or death of Buddha.  I read the date as follows:--Bhagavati
+Parinirvritte Samvat 1819 Karttike badi I Budhi--that is, 'in the year
+1819 of the Emancipation of Bhagavata on Wednesday, the first day of the
+waning moon of Kartik.'  If the era here used is the same as that of the
+Buddhists of Ceylon and Burmah, which began in 543 B.C., the date of
+this inscription will be 1819--543 = A.D. 1276.  The style of the
+letters is in keeping with this date, but is quite incompatible with
+that derivable from the Chinese date of the era.  The Chinese place the
+death of Buddha upwards of 1000 years before Christ, so that according
+to them the date of this inscription would be about A.D. 800, a period
+much too early for the style of character used in the inscription.  But
+as the day of the week is here fortunately added, the date can be
+verified by calculation. According to my calculation, the date of the
+inscription corresponds with Wednesday, the 17th of September, AD. 1342.
+This would place the Nirvana of Buddha in 477 B.C., which is the very
+year that was first proposed by myself as the most probable date of that
+event.  This corrected date has since been adopted by Professor Max
+Muller."
+
+The reasons assigned by some Orientalists for considering this so-called
+"corrected date" as the real date of Buddha's death have already been
+noticed and criticized in the preceding paper; and now we have only to
+consider whether the inscription in question disproves the old date.
+
+Major-General Cunningham evidently seems to take it for granted, as far
+as his present calculation is concerned, that the number of days in a
+year is counted in the Magadha country and by Buddhist writers in
+general on the same basis on which the number of days in a current
+English year is counted;  and this wrong assumption has vitiated his
+calculation and led him to a wrong conclusion.  Three different methods
+of calculation were in use in India at the time when Buddha lived, and
+they are still in use in different parts of the country.  These methods
+are known as Souramanam, Chandrarmanam and Barhaspatyamanam.  According
+to the Hindu works on astronomy a Souramanam year consists of 365 days
+15 ghadias and 31 vighadias;  a Chandramanam year has 360 days, and a
+year on the basis of Barhaspatyamanam has 361 days and 11 ghadias
+nearly.  Such being the case, General Cunningham ought to have taken the
+trouble of ascertaining before he made his calculation the particular
+manam (measure) employed by the writers of Magadha and Ceylon in giving
+the date of Buddha's death and the manam used in calculating the years
+of the Buddhist era mentioned in the inscription above quoted.  Instead
+of placing himself in the position of the writer of the said inscription
+and making the required calculation from that standpoint, he made the
+calculation on the same basis of which an English gentleman of the
+nineteenth century would calculate time according to his own calendar.
+
+If the calculation were correctly made, it would have shown him that the
+inscription in question is perfectly consistent with the statement that
+Buddha died in the year 543 B.C. according to Barhaspatyamanam (the only
+manam used in Magadha and by Pali writers in general).  The correctness
+of this assertion will be clearly seen on examining the following
+calculation.
+
+543 years according to Barhaspatyamanam are equivalent to 536 years and
+8 months (nearly) according to Souramanam.
+
+Similarly, 1819 years according to the former manam are equivalent to
+1798 years (nearly) according to the latter manarn.
+
+As the Christian era commenced on the 3102nd year of Kaliyuga (according
+to Souramanam), Buddha died in the year 2565 of Kaliyuga and the
+inscription was written in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga (according to
+Souramanam).  And now the question is whether according to the Hindu
+almanack, the first day of the waning moon of Kartik coincided with a
+Wednesday.
+
+According to Suryasiddhanta the number of days from the beginning of
+Kaliyuga up to midnight on the 15th day of increasing moon of Aswina is
+1,593,072, the number of Adhikamasansas (extra months) during the
+interval being 1608 and the number of Kshayathithis 25,323.
+
+If we divide this number by 7 the remainder would be 5.  As Kaliyuga
+commenced with Friday, the period of time above defined closed with
+Tuesday, as according to Suryasiddhanta a weekday is counted from
+midnight to midnight.
+
+It is to be noticed that in places where Barhaspatyamanam is in use
+Krishnapaksham (or the fortnight of waning moon) commences first and is
+followed by Suklapaksham (period of waxing moon).
+
+Consequently, the next day after the 15th day of the waxing moon of
+Aswina will be the 1st day of the waning moon of Kartika to those who
+are guided by the Barhaspatyamanam calendar.  And therefore the latter
+date, which is the date mentioned in the inscription, was Wednesday in
+the year 4362 of Kaliyuga.
+
+The geocentric longitude of the sun at the time of his meridian passage
+on the said date being 174 deg. 20' 16" and the moon's longitude being
+70 deg 51' 42" (according to Suryasiddhanta) it can be easily seen that
+at Gaya there was Padyamitithi (first day of waning moon) for nearly 7
+ghadias and 50 vighadias from the time of sunrise.
+
+It is clear from the foregoing calculation that "Kartik I Badi"
+coincided with Wednesday in the year 4362 of Kaliyuga or the year 1261
+of the Christian era, and that from the standpoint of the person who
+wrote the inscription the said year was the 1819th year of the Buddhist
+era.  And consequently this new inscription confirms the correctness of
+the date assigned to Buddha's death by Buddhist writers.  It would have
+been better if Major-General Cunningham had carefully examined the basis
+of his calculation before proclaiming to the world at large that the
+Buddhist accounts were untrustworthy.
+
+
+
+
+Discrimination of Spirit and Not Spirit
+
+(Translated from the original Sanskrit of Sankara Acharya.)
+
+by Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+[An apology is scarcely needed for undertaking a translation of Sankara
+Acharya's celebrated Synopsis of Vedantism entitled "Atmanatma Vivekah."
+This little treatise, within a small compass, fully sets forth the scope
+and purpose of the Vedanta philosophy.  It has been a matter of no
+little wonder, considering the authorship of this pamphlet and its own
+intrinsic merits, that a translation of it has not already been executed
+by some competent scholar.  The present translation, though pretending
+to no scholarship, is dutifully literal, excepting, however, the
+omission of a few lines relating to the etymology of the words Sarira
+and Deha, and one or two other things which, though interesting in
+themselves, have no direct bearing on the main subject of treatment.
+--T.R.]
+
+Nothing is Spirit which can be the object of consciousness.  To one
+possessed of right discrimination, the Spirit is the subject of
+knowledge.  This right discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is set
+forth in millions of treatises.
+
+This discrimination of Spirit and Not-spirit is given below:
+
+Q.  Whence comes pain to the Spirit?
+
+A.  By reason of its taking a body. It is said in the Sruti: * "Not in
+this (state of existence) is there cessation of pleasure and pain of a
+living thing possessed of a body."
+
+Q.  By what is produced this taking of a body?
+
+A.  By Karma.**
+
+Q.  Why does it become so by Karma?
+
+A.  By desire and the rest (i.e., the passions).
+
+Q.  By what are desire and the rest produced?
+
+A.  By egotism.
+
+Q.  By what again is egotism produced?
+
+A.  By want of right discrimination.
+
+Q.  By what is this want of right discrimination produced?
+
+A.  By ignorance.
+
+Q.  Is ignorance produced by anything?
+
+A.  No, by nothing.  Ignorance is without beginning and ineffable by
+reason of its being the intermingling of the real (sat) and the unreal
+(asat.)***  It is a something embodying the three qualities**** and is
+said to be opposed to Wisdom, inasmuch as it produces the concept "I am
+ignorant."  The Sruti says, "(Ignorance) is the power of the Deity and
+is enshrouded by its own qualities." *****
+
+----------
+* Chandogya Upanishad.
+
+** This word it is impossible to translate.  It means the doing of a
+thing for the attainment of an object of worldly desire.
+
+*** This word, as used in Vedantic works, is generally misunderstood. It
+does not mean the negation of everything;  it means "that which does not
+exhibit the truth," the "illusory."
+
+**** Satva (goodness), Rajas (foulness), and Tamas (darkness) are the
+three qualities;  pleasure, pain and indifference considered as
+objective principles.
+
+***** Chandogya Upanishad.
+--------
+
+The origin of pain can thus be traced to ignorance and it will not cease
+until ignorance is entirely dispelled, which will be only when the
+identity of the Self with Brahma (the Universal Spirit) is fully
+realized.*  Anticipating the contention that the eternal acts (i.e.,
+those enjoined by the Vedas) are proper, and would therefore lead to the
+destruction of ignorance, it is said that ignorance cannot be dispelled
+by Karma (religious exercises).
+
+--------
+* This portion has been condensed from the original.
+--------
+
+Q.  Why is it so?
+
+A.  By reason of the absence of logical opposition between ignorance and
+act.  Therefore it is clear that Ignorance can only be removed by
+Wisdom.
+
+Q.  How can this Wisdom be acquired?
+
+A.  By discussion--by discussing the nature of Spirit and Non-Spirit.
+
+Q.  Who are worthy of engaging in such discussion?
+
+A.  Those who have acquired the four qualifications.
+
+Q.  What are the four qualifications?
+
+A.  (1) True discrimination of permanent and impermanent things. (2)
+Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions both here
+and hereafter.  (3) Possession of Sama and the other five qualities.
+(4) An intense desire of becoming liberated (from conditional
+existence).
+
+(1.)  Q.  What is the right discrimination of permanent and impermanent
+things?
+
+A.  Certainty as to the Material Universe being false and illusive, and
+Brahman being the only reality.
+
+(2.)  Indifference to the enjoyment of the fruits of one's actions in
+this world is to have the same amount of disinclination for the
+enjoyment of worldly objects of desire (such as garland of flowers,
+sandal-wood paste, women and the like) beyond those absolutely necessary
+for the preservation of life, as one has for vomited food, &c.  The same
+amount of disinclination to enjoyment in the society of  Rambha, Urvasi,
+and other celestial nymphs in the higher spheres of life beginning with
+Svarga loka and ending with Brahma loka.*
+
+--------
+* These include the whole range of Rupa loka (the world of forms)
+in Buddhistic esoteric philosophy.
+--------
+
+(3)  Q.  What are the six qualities beginning with Sama?
+
+A.  Sama, dama, uparati, titiksha, samadhana and sraddha.
+
+Sama is the repression of the inward sense called Manas--i.e., not
+allowing it to engage in any other thing but Sravana (listening to what
+the sages say about the Spirit), Manana (reflecting on it), Nididhyasana
+(meditating on the same).  Dama is the repression of the external
+senses.
+
+Q.  What are the external senses?
+
+A.  The five organs of perception and the five bodily organs for the
+performance of external acts.  Restraining these from all other things
+but sravana and the rest, is dama.
+
+Uparati is the abstaining on principle from engaging in any of the acts
+and ceremonies enjoined by the shastras.  Otherwise, it is the state of
+the mind which is always engaged in Sravana and the rest, without ever
+diverging from them.
+
+Titiksha (literally the desire to leave) is the bearing with
+indifference all opposites (such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold,
+&c.)  Otherwise, it is the showing of forbearance to a person one is
+capable of punishing.
+
+Whenever a mind, engaged in Sravana and the rest, wanders to any worldly
+object of desire, and, finding it worthless, returns to the performance
+of the three exercises--such returning is called samadhana.
+
+Sraddha is an intensely strong faith in the utterances of one's guru and
+of the Vedanta philosophy.
+
+(4.)  An intense desire for liberation is called mumukshatva.
+
+Those who possess these four qualifications, are worthy of engaging in
+discussions as to the nature of Spirit and Not-Spirit, and, like
+Brahmacharins, they have no other duty (but such discussion).  It is
+not, however, at all improper for householders to engage in such
+discussions;  but, on the contrary, such a course is highly meritorious.
+For it is said--Whoever, with due reverence, engages in the discussion
+of subjects treated of in Vedanta philosophy and does proper service to
+his guru, reaps happy fruits.  Discussion as to the nature of Spirit and
+Not-Spirit is therefore a duty.
+
+Q.  What is Spirit?
+
+A.  It is that principle which enters into the composition of man and is
+not included in the three bodies, and which is distinct from the five
+sheaths (Koshas), being sat (existence),* chit (consciousness),** and
+ananda (bliss),*** and witness of the three states.
+
+--------
+* This stands for Purusha.
+
+** This stands for Prakriti, cosmic matter, irrespective of the state we
+perceive it to be in.
+
+*** Bliss is Maya or Sakti, it is the creative energy producing changes
+of state in Prakriti. Says the Sruti (Taittiriya Upanishad):  "Verily
+from Bliss are all these bhutas (elements) born, and being born by it
+they live, and they return and enter into Bliss."
+--------
+
+Q.  What are the three bodies?
+
+A.  The gross (sthula), the subtile (sukshma), and the causal (karana).
+
+Q.  What is the gross body?
+
+A.  That which is the effect of the Mahabhutas (primordial subtile
+elements) differentiated into the five gross ones (Panchikrita),* is
+born of Karma and subject to the six changes beginning with birth.**  It
+is said:--
+
+What is produced by the (subtile) elements differentiated into the five
+gross ones, is acquired by Karma, and is the measure of pleasure and
+pain, is called the body (sarira) par excellence.
+
+Q.  What is the subtile body?
+
+A.  It is the effect of the elements not differentiated into five and
+having seventeen characteristic marks (lingas).
+
+Q.  What are the seventeen?
+
+A.  The five channels of knowledge (Jnanendriyas), the five organs of
+action, the five vital airs, beginning with prana, and manas and buddhi.
+
+-------
+* The five subtile elements thus produce the gross ones--each of
+the five is divided into eight parts, four of those parts and one
+part of each of the others enter into combination, and the result
+is the gross element corresponding with the subtile element,
+whose parts predominate in the composition.
+
+** These six changes are--birth, death, existence in time, growth,
+decay, and undergoing change of substance (parinam) as milk is changed
+into whey.
+--------
+
+Q.  What are the Jnandendriyas?
+
+A.  [Spiritual] Ear, skin, eye, tongue and nose.
+
+Q.  What is the ear?
+
+A.  That channel of knowledge which transcends the [physical] ear, is
+limited by the auricular orifice, on which the akas depends, and which
+is capable of taking cognisance of sound.
+
+Q.  The skin?
+
+A.  That which transcends the skin, on which the skin depends, and which
+extends from head to foot, and has the power of perceiving heat and
+cold.
+
+Q.  The eye?
+
+A.  That which transcends the ocular orb, on which the orb depends,
+which is situated to the front of the black iris and has the power of
+cognising forms.
+
+Q.  The tongue?
+
+A.  That which transcends the tongue, and can perceive taste.
+
+Q.  The nose?
+
+A.  That which transcends the nose, and has the power of smelling.
+
+Q.  What are the organs of action?
+
+A.  The organ of speech (vach), hands, feet, &c.
+
+Q.  What is vach?
+
+A.  That which transcends speech, in which speech resides, and which is
+located in eight different centres* and has the power of speech.
+
+--------
+* The secret commentaries say seven;  for it does not separate the lips
+into the "upper" and "nether" lips.  And, it adds to the seven centres
+the seven passages in the head connected with, and affected by, vach--
+namely, the mouth, the two eyes, the two nostrils and the two ears.
+"The left ear, eye and nostril being the messengers of the right side of
+the head;  the right ear, eye and nostril, those of the left side."  Now
+this is purely scientific.  The latest discoveries and conclusions of
+modern physiology have shown that the power or the faculty of human
+speech is located in the third frontal cavity of the left hemisphere of
+the brain.  On the other hand, it is a well known fact that the nerve
+tissues inter-cross each other (decussate) in the brain in such a way
+that the motions of our left extremities are governed by the right
+hemisphere, while the motions of our right limbs are subject to the left
+hemisphere of the brain.
+---------
+
+Q.  What are the eight centres?
+
+A.  Breast, throat, head, upper and nether lips, palate ligature
+(fraenum), binding the tongue to the lower jaw and tongue.
+
+Q.  What is the organ of the hands?
+
+A.  That which transcends the hands, on which the palms depend, and
+which has the power of giving and taking.... (The other organs are
+similarly described.)
+
+Q.  What is the antahkarana? *
+
+A.  Manas, buddhi, chitta and ahankara form it.  The seat of the manas
+is the root of the throat, of buddhi the face, of chitta the umbilicus,
+and of ahankara the breast.  The functions of these four components of
+antahkarana are respectively doubt, certainty, retention and egotism.
+
+Q.  How are the five vital airs,** beginning with prana, named?
+
+--------
+* A flood of light will be thrown on the text by the note of a learned
+occultist, who says:--"Antahkarana is the path of communication between
+soul and body, entirely disconnected with the former, existing with,
+belonging to, and dying with the body." This path is well traced in the
+text.
+
+** These vitals airs and sub-airs are forces which harmonize the
+interior man with his surroundings, by adjusting the relations of the
+body to external objects.  They are the five allotropic modifications of
+life.
+-------
+
+A.  Prana, apana, vyana, udana and samana. Their locations are said to
+be:--of prana the breast, of apana the fundamentum, of samana the
+umbilicus, of udana the throat, and vyana is spread all over the body.
+Functions of these are:--prana goes out, apana descends, udana ascends,
+samana reduces the food eaten into an undistinguishable state, and vyana
+circulates all over the body.  Of these five vital airs there are five
+sub-airs--namely, naga, kurma, krikara, devadatta and dhananjaya.
+Functions of these are:--eructations produced by naga, kurma opens the
+eye, dhananjaya assimilates food, devadatta causes yawning, and krikara
+produces appetite--this is said by those versed in Yoga.
+
+The presiding powers (or macrocosmic analogues) of the five channels of
+knowledge and the others are dik (akas) and the rest. Dik, vata (air),
+arka (sun), pracheta (water), Aswini, bahni (fire), Indra, Upendra,
+Mrityu (death), Chandra (moon), Brahma, Rudra, and Kshetrajnesvara,*
+which is the great Creator and cause of everything.  These are the
+presiding powers of ear, and the others in the order in which they
+occur.
+
+All these taken together form the linga sarira.**  It is also said in
+the Shastras:--
+
+The five vital airs, manas, buddhi, and the ten organs form the subtile
+body, which arises from the subtile elements, undifferentiated into the
+five gross ones, and which is the means of the perception of pleasure
+and pain.
+
+Q.  What is the Karana sarira?
+
+---------
+* The principle of intellect (Buddhi) in the macrocosm.  For further
+explanation of this term, see Sankara's commentaries on the Brahma
+Sutras.
+
+** Linga means that which conveys meaning, characteristic mark.
+--------
+
+A.  It is ignorance [of different monads] (avidya), which is the cause
+of the other two bodies, and which is without beginning [in the present
+manvantara],* ineffable, reflection [of Brahma] and productive of the
+concept of non-identity between self and Brahma.  It is also said:--
+
+"Without a beginning, ineffable avidya is called the upadhi (vehicle)--
+karana (cause).  Know the Spirit to be truly different from the three
+upadhis--i.e., bodies."
+
+Q.  What is Not-Spirit?
+
+A.  It is the three bodies [described above], which are impermanent,
+inanimate (jada), essentially painful and subject to congregation and
+segregation.
+
+--------
+* It must not be supposed that avidya is here confounded with prakriti.
+What is meant by avidya being without beginning, is that it forms no
+link in the Karmic chain leading to succession of births and deaths, it
+is evolved by a law embodied in prakriti itself.  Avidya is ignorance or
+matter as related to distinct monads, whereas the ignorance mentioned
+before is cosmic ignorance, or maya-Avidya begins and ends with this
+manvantara. Maya is eternal.  The Vedanta philosophy of the school of
+Sankara regards the universe as consisting of one substance, Brahman
+(the one ego, the highest abstraction of subjectivity from our
+standpoint), having an infinity of attributes, or modes of manifestation
+from which it is only logically separable.  These attributes or modes in
+their collectivity form Prakriti (the abstract objectivity).  It is
+evident that Brahman per se does not admit of any description other than
+"I am that I am."  Whereas Prakriti is composed of an infinite number of
+differentiations of itself.  In the universe, therefore, the only
+principle which is indifferentiable is this "I am that I am" and the
+manifold modes of manifestation can only exist in reference to it.  The
+eternal ignorance consists in this, that as there is but one
+substantive, but numberless adjectives, each adjective is capable of
+designating the All.  Viewed in time the most permanent object or mood
+of the great knower at any moment represents the knower, and in a sense
+binds it with limitations. In fact, time itself is one of these infinite
+moods, and so is space.  The only progress in Nature is the realization
+of moods unrealized before.
+--------
+
+Q.  What is impermanent?
+
+A.  That which does not exist in one and the same state in the three
+divisions of time [namely, present, past and future.]
+
+Q.  What is inanimate (jada)?
+
+A.  That which cannot distinguish between the objects of its own
+cognition and the objects of the cognition of others....
+
+Q.  What are the three states (mentioned above as those of which the
+Spirit is witness)?
+
+A.  Wakefulness (jagrata), dreaming (svapna), and the state of dreamless
+slumber (sushupti).
+
+Q.  What is the state of wakefulness?
+
+A.  That in which objects are known through the avenue of [physical]
+senses.
+
+Q.  Of  dreaming?
+
+A.  That in which objects are perceived by reason of desires resulting
+from impressions produced during wakefulness.
+
+Q.  What is the state of dreamless slumber?
+
+A.  That in which there is an utter absence of the perception of
+objects.
+
+The indwelling of the notion of "I" in the gross body during wakefulness
+is visva (world of objects),* in subtile body during dreaming is taijas
+(magnetic fire), and in the causal body during dreamless slumber is
+prajna (One Life).
+
+Q.  What are the five sheaths?
+
+A.  Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vjjnanamaya, and Anandamaya.
+
+Annamaya is related to anna** (food), Pranamaya of prana (life),
+Manomaya of manas, Vijnanamaya of vijnana (finite perception),
+Anandamaya of ananda (illusive bliss).
+
+-------
+* That is to say, by mistaking the gross body for self, the
+consciousness of external objects is produced.
+
+** This word also means the earth in Sanskrit.
+-------
+
+Q.  What is the Annamaya sheath?
+
+A.  The gross body.
+
+Q.  Why?
+
+A.  The food eaten by father and mother is transformed into semen and
+blood, the combination of which is transformed into the shape of a body.
+It wraps up like a sheath and hence so called.  It is the transformation
+of food and wraps up the spirit like a sheath--it shows the spirit
+which is infinite as finite, which is without the six changes, beginning
+with birth as subject to those changes, which is without the three kinds
+of pain* as liable to them.  It conceals the spirit as the sheath
+conceals the sword, the husk the grain, or the womb the fetus.
+
+Q.  What is the next sheath?
+
+A.  The combination of the five organs of action, and the five vital
+airs form the Pranamaya sheath.
+
+By the manifestation of prana, the spirit which is speechless appears as
+the speaker, which is never the giver as the giver, which never moves as
+in motion, which is devoid of hunger and thirst as hungry and thirsty.
+
+Q.  What is the third sheath?
+
+A.  It is the five (subtile) organs of sense (jnanendriya) and manas.
+
+--------
+* The three kinds of pain are:--
+
+Adhibhautika, i.e., from external objects, e.g., from thieves,
+wild animals, &c.
+
+Adhidaivika, i.e., from elements, e.g., thunder, &c.
+
+Adhyatmika, i.e., from within one's self, e.g., head-ache, &c.
+See Sankhya Karika, Gaudapada's commentary on the opening Sloka.
+-------
+
+By the manifestation of this sheath (vikara) the spirit which is devoid
+of doubt appears as doubting, devoid of grief and delusion as grieved
+and deluded, devoid of sight as seeing.
+
+Q.  What is the Vijnanamaya sheath?
+
+A.  [The essence of] the five organs of sense form this sheath in
+combination with buddhi.
+
+Q.  Why is this sheath called the jiva (personal ego), which by reason
+of its thinking itself the actor, enjoyer, &c., goes to the other loka
+and comes back to this?*
+
+A.  It wraps up and shows the spirit which never acts as the actor,
+which never cognises as conscious, which has no concept of certainty as
+being certain, which is never evil or inanimate as being both.
+
+Q.  What is the Anandamaya sheath?
+
+A.  It is the antahkarana, wherein ignorance predominates, and which
+produces gratification, enjoyment, &c.  It wraps up and shows the
+spirit, which is void of desire, enjoyment and fruition, as having them,
+which has no conditioned happiness as being possessed thereof.
+
+Q.  Why is the spirit said to be different from the three bodies?
+
+A.  That which is truth cannot be untruth, knowledge ignorance, bliss
+misery, or vice versa.
+
+Q.  Why is it called the witness of the three states?
+
+A.  Being the master of the three states, it is the knowledge of the
+three states, as existing in the present, past and future.**
+
+-------
+* That is to say, flits from birth to birth.
+
+** It is the stable basis upon which the three states arise and
+disappear.
+-------
+
+
+Q.  How is the spirit different from the five sheaths?
+
+A.  This is being illustrated by an example:--"This is my cow," "this is
+my calf," "this is my son or daughter," "this is my wife," "this is my
+anandamaya sheath," and so on*--the spirit can never be connected with
+these concepts;  it is different from and witness of them all.  For it
+is said in the Upanishad--[The spirit is] "naught of sound, of touch, of
+form, or colour, of taste, or of smell;  it is everlasting, having no
+beginning or end, superior [in order of subjectivity] to Prakriti
+(differentiated matter);  whoever correctly understands it as such
+attains mukti (liberation)."  The spirit has also been called (above)
+sat, chit, and ananda.
+
+Q.  What is meant by its being sat (presence)?
+
+A.  Existing unchanged in the three divisions of time and uninfluenced
+by anything else.
+
+Q.  What by being chit (consciousness)?
+
+A.  Manifesting itself without depending upon anything else, and
+containing the germ of everything in itself.
+
+Q.  What by being ananda (bliss)?
+
+A.  The ne plus ultra of bliss.
+
+Whoever knows without doubt and apprehension of its being otherwise, the
+self as being one with Brahma or spirit, which is eternal, non-dual and
+unconditioned, attains moksha (liberation from conditioned existence.)
+
+--------
+* The "heresy of individuality," or attavada of the Buddhists.
+--------
+
+
+
+
+Was Writing Known Before Panini?
+
+
+I am entrusted with the task of putting together some facts which would
+support the view that the art of writing was known in India before the
+time of our grammarian--the Siva-taught Panini. Professor Max Muller has
+maintained the contrary opinion ever since 1856, and has the approbation
+of other illustrious Western scholars.  Stated briefly, their position
+is that the entire absence of any mention of "writing, reading, paper,
+or pen" in the Vedas, or during the whole of the Brahmana period, and
+the almost, if not quite, as complete silence as to them throughout the
+Sutra period, "lead us to suppose that even then [the Sutra period],
+though the art of writing began to be known, the whole literature of
+India was preserved by oral tradition only." ("Hist. Sans. Lit.," p.
+501.)  To support this theory, he expands the mnemonic faculty of our
+respected ancestors to such a phenomenal degree that, like the bull's
+hide of Queen Dido, it is made to embrace the whole ground needed for
+the proposed city of refuge, to which discomfited savants may flee when
+hard pressed. Considering that Professor Weber--a gentleman who, we
+observe, likes to distil the essence of Aryan aeons down into an attar
+of no greater volume than the capacity of the Biblical period--admits
+that Europe now possesses 10,000 of our Sanscrit texts; and considering
+that we have, or have had, many other tens of thousands which the
+parsimony of Karma has hitherto withheld from the museums and libraries
+of Europe, what a memory must have been theirs!
+
+Under correction, I venture to assume that Panini, who was ranked among
+the Rishis, was the greatest known grammarian in India, than whom there
+is no higher in history, whether ancient or modern;  further, that
+contemporary scholars agree that the Sanskrit is the most perfect of
+languages.  Therefore, when Prof. Muller affirms that "there is not a
+single word in Panini's terminology which presupposes the existence of
+writing" (op. cit. 507), we become a little shaken in our loyal
+deference to Western opinion.  For it is very hard to conceive how one
+so pre-eminently great as Panini should have been incapable of inventing
+characters to preserve his grammatical system--supposing that none had
+previously existed--if his genius was equal to the invention of
+classical Sanskrit.  The mention of the word Grantha, the equivalent for
+a written or bound book in the later literature of India--though applied
+by Panini (in B. I. 3, 75) to the Veda;  (in B. iv. 3, 87) to any work;
+(in B. iv. 3, 116) to the work of any individual author;  and (in B. iv.
+3, 79) to any work that is studied, do not stagger Prof. Muller at all.
+Grantha he takes to mean simply a composition, and this may be handed
+down to posterity by oral communication.  Hence, we must believe that
+Panini was illiterate;  but yet composed the most elaborate and
+scientific system of grammar ever known;  recorded its 3,996 rules only
+upon the molecular quicksands of his "cerebral cineritious matter," and
+handed them over to his disciples by atmospheric vibration, i.e., oral
+teaching!  Of course, nothing could be clearer;  it commends itself to
+the simplest intellect as a thing most probable!  And in the presence of
+such a perfect hypothesis, it seems a pity that its author should (op.
+cit. 523) confess that "it is possible" that he "may have overlooked
+some words in the Brahmanas and Sutras, which would prove the existence
+of written books previous to Panini." That looks like the military
+strategy of our old warriors, who delivered their attack boldly, but
+nevertheless tried to keep their rear open for retreat if compelled.
+The precaution was necessary:  written books did exist many centuries
+before the age in which this radiant sun of Aryan thought rose to shine
+upon his age.  They existed, but the Orientalist may search in vain for
+the proof amid the exoteric words in our earlier literature.  As the
+Egyptian hierophants had their private code of hieratic symbols, and
+even the founder of Christianity spoke to the vulgar in parables whose
+mystical meaning was known only to the chosen few, so the Brahmans had
+from the first (and still have) a mystical terminology couched behind
+ordinary expressions, arranged in certain sequences and mutual
+relations, which none but the initiate would observe.  That few living
+Brahmans possess this key but proves that, as in other archaic religious
+and philosophical systems, the soul of Hinduism has fled (to its primal
+imparters--the initiates), and only the decrepit body remains with a
+spiritually degenerate posterity.*
+
+-------
+* Not only are the Upanishads a secret doctrine, but in dozens of other
+works as, for instance, in the Aitareya Aranyaka, it is plainly
+expressed that they contain secret doctrines, that are not to be
+imparted to any one but a Dwija (twice-born, initiated) Brahman.
+--------
+
+I fully perceive the difficulty of satisfying European philologists of a
+fact which, upon my own statement, they are debarred from verifying.  We
+know that from the present mental condition of our Brahmans.  But I hope
+to be able to group together a few admitted circumstances which will
+aid, at least, to show the Western theory untenable, if not to make a
+base upon which to rest our claim for the antiquity of Sanskrit writing.
+Three good reasons may be adduced in support of the claim--though they
+will be regarded as circumstantial evidence by our opponents.
+
+I.--It can be shown that writing was known in Phoenicia from the date of
+the acquaintance of Western history with her first settlements;  and
+this may be dated, according to European figures, 2760 B.C., the age of
+the Tyrian settlement.
+
+II.--Our opponents confess to ignorance of the source whence the
+Phoenicians themselves got their alphabet.
+
+III.--It can be proved that before the final division and classification
+of languages, there existed two languages in every nation:  (a) the
+profane or popular language of the masses;  (b) the sacerdotal or secret
+language of the initiates of the temples and mysteries--the latter being
+one and universal.  Or, in other, words, every great people had, like
+the Egyptians, its Demotic and its Hieratic writing and language, which
+had resulted first in a pictorial writing or the hieroglyphics, and
+later on in a phonetic alphabet.  Now it requires a stretch of
+prejudice, indeed, to assert upon no evidence whatever that the Brahman
+Aryans--mystics and metaphysicians above everything--were the only ones
+who had never had any knowledge of either the sacerdotal language or the
+characters in which it was recorded. To contradict this gratuitous
+assumption, we can furnish a whole array of proofs.  It can be
+demonstrated that the Aryans no more borrowed their writing from the
+Hellenes, or from the Phoenicians, than they were indebted to the
+influence of the former for all their arts and sciences.  (Even if we
+accept Mr. Cunningham's "Indo-Grecian Period," for it lasted only from
+250-57 B.C., as he states it.)  The direct progenitor of the Vedic
+Sanskrit was the sacerdotal language (which has a distinct name among
+the initiates).  The Vach--its alter ego or the "mystic self," the
+sacerdotal speech of the initiated Brahman--became in time the mystery
+language of the inner temple, studied by the initiates of Egypt and
+Chaldea;  of the Phoenicians and the Etruscans;  of the Pelasgi and
+Palanquans;  in short, of the whole globe.  The appellation DEVANAGARI
+is the synonym of, and identical with, the Hermetic and Hieratic
+NETER-KHARI (divine speech) of the Egyptians.
+
+As the discussion divides naturally into two parts as to treatment--
+though a general synthesis must be the final result--we will proceed to
+examine the first part--namely, the charge that the Sanskrit alphabet is
+derived from the Phoenicians.  When a Western philologer asserts that
+writing did not exist before a certain period, we assume that he has
+some approximate certitude as to its real invention.  But so far is this
+from the truth, that admittedly no one knows whence the Phoenicians
+learned the characters, now alleged (by Gesenius first) to be the source
+from which modern alphabets were directly derived.  De Rouge's
+investigations make it extremely probable that "they were borrowed, or
+rather adapted from certain archaic hieroglyphics of Egypt:"  a theory
+which the Prisse Papyrus, "the oldest in existence," strongly supports
+by its "striking similarities with the Phoenician characters."  But the
+same authority traces it back one step farther.  He says that the
+ascription (by the myth-makers) of the art of writing to Thoth, or to
+Kadmos, "only denotes their belief in its being brought from the East
+(Kedem), or being perhaps primeval."  There is not even a certainty
+whether, primevally or archaically, "there were several original
+alphabetical systems, or whether one is to be assumed as having given
+rise to the various modes of writing in use."  So, if conjecture has the
+field, it is no great disloyalty to declare one's rebellion against the
+eminent Western gentlemen who are learnedly guessing at the origin of
+things.  Some affirm that the Phoenicians derived their so-called
+Kadmean or Phoenician writing-characters from the Pelasgians, held also
+to have been the inventors, or at least the improvers, of the so-called
+Kadmean characters.  But, at the same time, this is not proven, they
+confess, and they only know that the latter were in possession of the
+art of writing "before the dawn of history." Let us see what is known of
+both Phoenicians and Pelasgians.
+
+If we inquire who were the Phoenicians, we learn as follows:--From
+having been regarded as Hamites on Bible testimony, they suddenly became
+Semites--on geographical and philological evidence(?).  Their origin
+begins, it is said, on the shores of the Erythrian Sea;  and that sea
+extended from the eastern shores of Egypt to the western shores of
+India.  The Phoenicians were the most maritime nation in the world.
+That they knew perfectly the art of writing no one would deny.  The
+historical period of Sidon begins 1500 B.C.  And it is well ascertained
+that in 1250 Sanchoniathon had already compiled from annals and State
+documents, which filled the archives of every Phoenician city, the full
+records of their religion.  Sanchoniathon wrote in the Phoenician
+language, and was mis-translated later on into Greek by Philo of Byblus,
+and annihilated bodily--as to his works--except one small fragment
+preserved by Eusebius, the literary Siva, the Destroyer of nearly all
+heathen documents that fell in his way.  To see the direct bearing of
+the alleged superior knowledge of the Phoenicians upon the alleged
+ignorance of the Aryan Brahmans, one has but to turn to "European
+Universal History," meagre though its details and possible knowledge,
+yet I suppose no one would contradict the historical facts given.  Some
+fragments of Dius, the Phoenician who wrote the history of Tyre, are
+preserved in Josephus;  and Tyre's activity begins 1100 B.C., in the
+earlier part of the third period of Phoenician history, so called.  And
+in that period, as we are told, they had already reached the height of
+their power;  their ships covered all seas, their commerce embraced the
+whole earth, and their colonies flourished far and near.  Even on
+Biblical testimony they are known to have come to the Indies by the Red
+Sea, while trading on Solomon's account about a millennium before the
+Western era. These data no man of science can deny.  Leaving entirely
+aside the thousand-and-one documentary proofs that could be given on the
+evidence of our most ancient texts on Occult Sciences, of inscribed
+tablets, &c., those historical events that are accepted by the Western
+world are alone here given.  Turning to the Mahabharata, the date of
+which--on the sole authority of the fancy lore drawn from the inner
+consciousness of German scholars, who perceive in the great epic poem
+proofs of its modern fabrication in the words "Yavana" and others--has
+been changed from 3300 years to the first centuries after Christ (!!),
+we find:  (1) ample evidence that the ancient Hindus had navigated
+(before the establishment of the caste system) the open seas to the
+regions of the Arctic Ocean and held communication with Europe;  and (2)
+that the Pandus had acquired universal dominion and taught the
+sacrificial mysteries to other races (see Mahabharata, book xiv,).  With
+such proofs of international communication, and more than proved
+relations between the Indian Aryans and the Phoenicians, Egyptians and
+other literate people, it is rather startling to be told that our
+forefathers of the Brahmanic period knew nothing of writing.
+
+Admitting, for the argument only, that the Phoenician were the sole
+custodians of the glorious art of writing, and that as merchants they
+traded with India, what commodity, I ask, could they have offered to a
+people led by the Brahmans so precious and marketable as this art of
+arts, by whose help the priceless lore of the Rishis might be preserved
+against the accidents of imperfect oral transmission?  And even if the
+Aryans learned from Phoenicians how to write--to every educated Hindu an
+absurdity--they must have possessed the art 2,000 or at least 1,000
+years earlier than the period supposed by Western critics.  Negative
+proof, perhaps?  Granted:  yet no more so than their own, and most
+suggestive.
+
+And now we may turn to the Pelasgians.  Notwithstanding the rebuke of
+Niebuhr, who, speaking of the historian in general, shows him as hating
+"the spurious philology, out of which the pretences to knowledge on the
+subject of such extinct people arise," the origin of the Pelasgians is
+conjectured to have been from--(a) swarthy Asiatics (Pellasici) or from
+some (b) mariners--from the Greek Pelagos, the sea;  or again to be
+sought for in the (c) Biblical Peleg!  The only divinity of their
+Pantheon well known to Western history is Orpheus, also the "swarthy,"
+the "dark-skinned;"  represented for the Pelasgians by Xoanon, their
+"Divine Image."  Now if the Pelasgians were Asiatics, they must have
+been Turanians, Semites or Aryans.  That they could not have been either
+of the two first, and must have been the last named, is shown on
+Herodotus' testimony, who declared them the forefathers of the Greeks--
+though they spoke, as he says, "a most barbarous language."  Further,
+unerring philology shows that the vast number of roots common both to
+Greek and Latin, are easily explained by the assumption of a common
+Pelasgic linguistic and ethnical stock in both nationalities.  But then
+how about the Sanskrit roots traced in the Greek and Latin languages?
+The same roots must have been present in the Pelasgian tongues?  We who
+place the origin of the Pelasgian far beyond the Biblical ditch of
+historic chronology, have reasons to believe that the "barbarous
+language" mentioned by Herodotus was simply "the primitive and now
+extinct Aryan tongue" that preceded the Vedic Sanskrit.  Who could they
+be, these Pelasgians?  They are described generally on the meagre data
+in hand as a highly intellectual, receptive, active and simple people,
+chiefly occupied with agriculture;  warlike when necessary, though
+preferring peace.  We are told that they built canals, subterranean
+water-works, dams, and walls of astounding strength and most excellent
+construction.  And their religion and worship originally consisted in a
+mystic service of those natural powers--the sun, wind, water, and air
+(our Surya, Maruts, Varuna, and Vayu), whose influence is visible in the
+growth of the fruits of the earth;  moreover, some of their tribes were
+ruled by priests, while others stood under the patriarchal rule of the
+head of the clan or family.  All this reminds one of the nomads, the
+Brahmanic Aryas of old under the sway of their Rishis, to whom were
+subject every distinct family or clan.  While the Pelasgians were
+acquainted with the art of writing, and had thus "a vast element of
+culture in their possession before the dawn of history," we are told (by
+the same philologists) that our ancestors knew of no writing until the
+dawn of Christianity!
+
+Thus the Pelasgianic language, that "most barbarous language" spoken by
+this mysterious people, what was it but Aryan;  or rather, which of the
+Aryan languages could it have been? Certainly it must have been a
+language with the same and even stronger Sanskrit roots in it than the
+Greek.  Let us bear in mind that the Aeolic was neither the language of
+Aeschylus, nor the Attic, nor even the old speech of Homer.  As the
+Oscan of the "barbarous" Sabines was not quite the Italian of Dante nor
+even the Latin of Virgil.  Or has the Indo-Aryan to come to the sad
+conclusion that the average Western Orientalist will rather incur the
+blame of ignorance when detected than admit the antiquity of the Vedic
+Sanskrit and the immense period which separated this comparatively rough
+and unpolished language, compared with the classical Sanskrit, and the
+palmy days of the "extinct Aryan tongue?"  The Latium Antiquum of Pliny
+and the Aeolic of the Autochthones of Greece present the closest
+kinship, we are told. They had a common ancestor--the Pelasgian.  What,
+then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language
+"spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe--before their
+separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the
+Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as
+flippantly as they now are.  It is admitted that, however inferior to
+the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of
+Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the
+same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees--cannot fail to see and
+to know--that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to
+have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of
+perfection and its cycles of degeneration.  And, if one had any
+intuition, he might have seen that what they call a "dead language"
+being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived,
+even as a "dead" tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of
+immutable cyclic laws;  and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost
+to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have
+the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back--that of a
+universal language.  The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will
+be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its
+future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit
+will be resting in its periodical pralaya;  and the Attic will be
+followed later by the Latin of Virgil.  Something ought to have
+whispered to us that there was also a time--before the original Aryan
+settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the
+fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred
+Sanskrita Bhasha--when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed
+subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise
+and fall.  The reason for it is simply this:  classical Sanskrit was
+only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini.  Panini,
+Katyayana or Patanjali did not create it;  it has existed throughout
+cycles, and will pass through other cycles still.
+
+Professor Max Miller is willing to admit that a tribe of Semitic
+nomads--fourteen centuries before the year 1 of the Westerns--knew well
+the art of writing, and had their historically and scientifically proven
+"book of the covenant and the tables 'with the writing of God upon
+them.'"  Yet the same authority tells us that the Aryans could neither
+read nor write until the very close of the Brahmanic period.  "No trace
+of writing can be discovered (by the philologists) in the Brahmanical
+literature before the days of Panini."  Very well, and now what was the
+period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished?
+One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient
+ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of
+the second century of the Christian era!  Only, after fixing Panini's
+period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other
+calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the
+Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a
+dilemma.  For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could
+not have been illiterate;  for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a
+canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller
+to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord
+Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other
+alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India;  and
+secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the
+laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv. 66 and
+73) yet Nearchus describes the Indian art of making paper from cotton.
+He adds that the Indians wrote letters on cotton twisted together
+(Strabo, xv. 53 and 67).  This would be late in the Sutra period, no
+doubt, according to Professor Miller's reasoning.  Can the learned
+gentleman cite any record within that comparatively recent period
+showing the name of the inventor of that cotton-paper, and the date of
+his discovery? Surely so important a fact as that, a novelty so
+transcendently memorable, would not have passed without remark.  One
+would seem compelled, in the absence of any such chronicle, to accept
+the alternative theory--known to us Aryan students as a fact--that
+writing and writing materials were, as above remarked, known to the
+Brahmans in an antiquity inconceivably remote--many centuries before the
+epoch made illustrious by Panini.
+
+Attention has been asked above to the interesting fact that the god
+Orpheus, of "Thracia" (?) is called the "dark-skinned."  Has it escaped
+notice that he is "supposed to be the Vedic Ribhu or Abrhu, an epithet
+both of Indra and the Sun."*  And if he was "the inventor of letters,"
+and is "placed anterior to both Homer and Hesiod," then what follows?
+That Indra taught writing to the Thracian Pelasgians under the guise of
+Orpheus,** but left his own spokesmen and vehicles, the Brahmans,
+illiterate until "the dawn of Christianity?"  Or, that the gentlemen of
+the West are better at intuitional chronology than conspicuous for
+impartial research?
+
+-------
+* "Chamber's Encyclopedia," vii. 127.
+
+** According to Herodotus the Mysteries were actually brought from India
+by Orpheus.
+-------
+
+Orpheus was--in Greece--the son of Apollo or Helios, the sun-god,
+according to corrected mythology, and from him received the phorminx or
+lyre of seven strings, i.e.--according to occult phraseology--the
+sevenfold mystery of the Initiation.  Now Indra is the ruler of the
+bright firmament, the disperser of clouds, "the restorer of the sun to
+the sky."  He is identified with Arjuna in the Samhita Satapatha
+Brahmana (although Prof. Weber denies the existence of any such person
+as Arjuna, yet there was indeed one), and Arjuna was the Chief of the
+Pandavas;*  and though Pandu the white passes for his father, he is yet
+considered the son of Indra.  As throughout India all ancient cyclopean
+structures are even now attributed to the Pandavas, so all similar
+structures in the West were anciently ascribed to the Pelasgians.
+Moreover, as shown well by Pococke--laughed at because too intuitional
+and too fair though, perchance less, philologically learned--the
+Pandavas were in Greece, where many traces of them can be shown.
+
+-------
+* Another proof of the fact that the Pandavas were, though Aryans, not
+Brahmans, and belonged to an Indian tribe that preceded the Brahmans,
+and were later on Brahmanized, and then out-casted and called Mlechhas,
+Yavanas (i.e., foreign to the Brahmans), is afforded in the following:
+Pandu has two wives; and "it is not Kunti, his lawful wife, but Madri,
+his most beloved wife," who is burnt with the old King when dead, as
+well remarked by Prof Max Muller, who seems astonished at it without
+comprehending the true reason.  As stated by Herodotus (v. 5), it was a
+custom amongst the Thracians to allow the most beloved of a man's wives
+to be sacrificed upon his tomb;  and Herodotus (iv. 17) asserts a
+similar fact of the Scythians, and Pausanias (iv. 2) of the Greeks.
+("Hist. Sans. Lit." p. 48).  The Pandavas and the Kauravas are called
+esoterically cousins in the Epic poem because they were two distinct yet
+Aryan tribes, and represent two peoples, not simply two families.
+--------
+
+In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is taught the occult philosophy by Krishna
+(personification of the universal Divine Principle);  and the less
+mythological view of Orpheus presents him to us as "a divine bard or
+priest in the service of Zagreus .... founder of the Mysteries .... the
+inventor of everything, in fact, that was supposed to have contributed
+to the civilization and initiation into a more humane worship of the
+deity."  Are not these striking parallels;  and is it not significant
+that, in the cases of both Arjuna and Orpheus, the sublimer aspects of
+religion should have been imparted along with the occult methods of
+attaining it by masters of the mysteries?  Real Devanagari--non-phonetic
+characters--meant formerly the outward symbols, so to say, the signs
+used in the intercommunication between gods and initiated mortals.
+Hence their great sacredness and the silence maintained throughout the
+Vedic and the Brahmanical periods about any object concerned with, or
+referring to, reading and writing.  It was the language of the gods.  If
+our Western critics can only understand what the Ancient Hindu writers
+meant by Rhutaliai, so often mentioned in their mystical writings, they
+will be in a position to ascertain the source from which the Hindus
+first derived their knowledge of writing.
+
+A secret language, common to all schools of occult science once
+prevailed throughout the world.  Hence Orpheus learnt "letters" in the
+course of his initiation.  He is identified with Indra; according to
+Herodotus he brought the art of writing from India; his complexion
+swarthier than that of the Thracians points to his Indo-Aryan
+nationality--supposing him to have been "a bard and priest," and not a
+god;  the Pelasgians are said to have been born in Thracia;  they are
+believed (in the West) to have first possessed the art of writing, and
+taught the Phoenicians;  from the latter all modern alphabets proceed.
+I submit, then, with all these coincidences and sequences, whether the
+balance of proof is on the side of the theory that the Aryans
+transmitted the art of writing to the people of the West;  or on the
+side which maintains that they, with their caste of scholarly Brahmans,
+their noble sacerdotal tongue, dating from high antiquity, their
+redundant and splendid literature, their acquaintance with the most
+wonderful and recondite potentialities of the human spirit, were
+illiterate until the era of Panini, the grammarian and last of the
+Rishis.  When the famous theorists of the Western colleges can show us a
+river running from its mouth back to its source in the feeble mountain
+spring, then may we be asked to believe in their theory of Aryan
+illiteracy.  The history of human intellectual development shows that
+humanity always passes through the stage of ideography or pictography
+before attaining that of cursive writing.  It therefore remains with the
+Western critics who oppose the antiquity of Aryan Scriptures to show us
+the pictographic proofs which support their position.  As these are
+notoriously absent, it appears they would have us believe that our
+ancestors passed immediately from illiteracy to the Devanagari
+characters of Panini's time.
+
+Let the Orientalists bear in mind the conclusions drawn from a careful
+study of the Mahabharata by Muir in his "Sanskrit Texts" (vol. I. pp.
+390,480 and 482).  It may be conclusively proven on the authority of the
+Mahabharata that the Yavanas (of whom India, as alleged, knew nothing
+before the days of Alexander!) belong to those tribes of Kshatriyas who,
+in consequence of their non-communication with, and in some cases
+rejection by, the Brahmins, had become from twice-born, "Vrishalas,"--
+i.e., outcasts (Mahabharata Anusasanaparvam, vv. 2103 F.):  "Sakah
+Yavana-Kambojas tastah kshattriya jatayah Vrishalatvam parigatah
+Brahmananam adarsana.  Dravidas cha Kalindas cha Pulindas chapy Usinarah
+Kalisarpa Mahishakas tastah kshattriya jatayah," &c. &c. The same
+reference may be found in verses 2158-9.  The Mahabharata shows the
+Yavanas descended from Turvasu--once upon a time Kshatriya, subsequently
+degraded into Vrishala.  Harivamsa shows when and how the Yavanas were
+excommunicated.  It may be inferred from the account therein contained
+of the expedition against Ayodhya by the Yavanas, and the subsequent
+proceedings of Sagara, that the Yavanas were, previous to the date of
+the expedition, Kshatriyas subject to the government of the powerful
+monarchs who reigned at Ayodhya.  But on account of their having
+rebelled against their sovereign, and attacked his capital, they were
+excommunicated by Sagara who successfully drove them out of Ayodhya, at
+the suggestion of Vasishtha who was the chief minister and guru of
+Sagara's father.  The only trouble in connecting the Pelasgians with,
+and tracing their origin to, the Kshatriyas of Rajputana, is created by
+the Orientalist who constructs a fanciful chronology, based on no proof,
+and showing only unfamiliarity with the world's real history, and with
+Indian history even within historical periods.
+
+The value of that chronology--which places virtually the "primitive
+Indo-Germanic-period" before the ancient Vedic period (!)--may, in
+conclusion, be illustrated by an example.  Rough as may be the
+calculations offered, it is impossible to go deeper into any subject of
+this class within the narrow limits prescribed, and without recourse to
+data not generally accessible.  In the words of Prof. Max Muller:--"The
+Code of Manu is almost the only work in Sanskrit literature which, as
+yet, has not been assailed by those who doubt the antiquity of
+everything Indian.  No historian has disputed its claim to that early
+date which had from the first been assigned to it by Sir William Jones"
+("Hist. Sans, Lit." p. 61).  And now, pray, what is this extremely
+"early date?"  "From 880 to 1200 B.C.," we are told. We will then, for
+the present purpose, accept this authoritative conclusion.  Several
+facts, easily verifiable, have to be first of all noticed:--(1) Manu in
+his many enumerations of Indian races, kingdoms and places, never once
+mentions Bengal;  the Aryan Brahmans had not yet reached, in the days
+when his Code was compiled, the banks of the Ganges nor the plains of
+Bengal.  It was Arjuna who went first to Banga (Bengal) with his
+sacrificial horse.  [Yavanas are mentioned in Rajdharma Anasasanika
+Parva as part of the tribes peopling it.]  (2) In the Ayun a list of the
+Hindu kings of Bengal is given.  Though the date of the first king who
+reigned over Banga cannot be ascertained, owing to the great gaps
+between the various dynasties;  it is yet known that Bengal ceased to be
+an independent Hindu kingdom from 1203 after Christ.  Now if,
+disregarding these gaps, which are wide and many, we make up the sum of
+only those chronological periods of the reign of the several dynasties
+that are preserved by history, we find the following:--
+
+24 Kshatriya families of kings reigned for a period of 2,418 years
+9 Kaista kings    "        "       "         "           250   "
+11 Of the Adisur families "        "          "          714   "
+10 Of the Bhopal family   "        "          "          689   "
+10 Of the Pala dynasty (from 855 to 1040 A.D.) "   "    185    "
+10 The Vaidya Rajahs reigned for a period of   "   "    137    "
+                                                   --------
+                                         Years . . . . 4,393   "
+
+If we deduct from this sum 1,203, we have 3,190 years B.C. of successive
+reigns.  If it can be shown on the unimpeachable evidence of the
+Sanskrit texts that some of the reigns happened simultaneously, and the
+line cannot therefore be shown as successive (as was already tried),
+well and good.  Against an arbitrary chronology set up with a
+predetermined purpose and theory in view, there will remain but little
+to be said.  But if this attempt at reconciliation of figures and the
+surrounding circumstances are maintained simply upon "critical, internal
+evidence," then, in the presence of these 3,190 years of an unbroken
+line of powerful and mighty Hindu kings, the Orientalists will have to
+show a very good reason why the authors of the Code of Manu seem
+entirely ignorant even of the existence of Bengal--if its date has to be
+accepted as not earlier than 1280 B.C.!  A scientific rule which is good
+enough to apply to the case of Panini ought to be valid in other
+chronological speculations. Or, perhaps, this is one of those poor rules
+which will not "work both ways?"
+
+--A Chela
+
+
+
+
+THEOSOPHICAL
+
+
+What is Theosophy?
+
+
+According to lexicographers, the term theosophia is composed of two
+Greek words--theos "god," and sophas "wise."  So far, correct.  But the
+explanations that follow are far from giving a clear idea of Theosophy.
+Webster defines it most originally as "a supposed intercourse with
+God and superior spirits, and consequent attainment of superhuman
+knowledge by physical processes, as by the theurgic operations of some
+ancient Platonists, or by the chemical processes of the German
+fire-philosophers."
+
+This, to say the least, is a poor and flippant explanation.  To
+attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus,
+Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional misrepresentation, or
+ignorance of the philosophy and motives of the greatest geniuses of the
+later Alexandrian School.  To impute to those, whom their contemporaries
+as well as posterity styled "theodidaktoi," god-taught, a purpose to
+develop their psychological, spiritual perceptions by "physical
+processes," is to describe them as materialists.  As to the concluding
+fling at the fire-philosophers, it rebounds from them upon some of the
+most eminent leaders of modern science;  those in whose mouths the Rev.
+James Martineau places the following boast:  "Matter is all we want;
+give us atoms alone, and we will explain the universe."
+
+Vaughan offers a far better, more philosophical definition.  "A
+Theosophist," he says, "is one who gives you a theory of God or the
+works of God, which has not revelation, but inspiration of his own for
+its basis."  In this view every great thinker and philosopher,
+especially every founder of a new religion, school of philosophy, or
+sect, is necessarily a Theosophist.  Hence, Theosophy and Theosophists
+have existed ever since the first glimmering of nascent thought made man
+seek instinctively for the means of expressing his own independent
+opinions.
+
+There were Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that
+the Christian writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic
+Theosophical system to the early part of the third century of their era.
+Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of
+the Ptolemies;  and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant called
+Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic, and signifying a priest consecrated to
+Amun, the god of Wisdom.  But history shows its revival by Ammonius
+Saccas, the founder of the Neo-Platonic School.  He and his disciples
+called themselves "Philaletheians"--lovers of the truth;  while others
+termed them the "Analogists," on account of their method of interpreting
+all sacred legends, symbolical myths, and mysteries, by a rule of
+analogy or correspondence so that events which had occurred in the
+external world were regarded as expressing operations and experiences of
+the human soul.  It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all
+sects, peoples, and nations under one common faith--a belief in one
+Supreme, Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power, governing the universe by
+immutable and eternal laws.  His object was to prove a primitive system
+of Theosophy, which, at the beginning, was essentially alike in all
+countries:  to induce all men to lay aside their strifes and quarrels,
+and unite in purpose and thought as the children of one common mother;
+to purify the ancient religions, by degrees corrupted and obscured, from
+all dross of human element, by uniting and expounding them upon pure
+philosophical principles. Hence, the Buddhistic, Vedantic and Magian, or
+Zoroastrian systems were taught in the Eclectic Theosophical School
+along with all the philosophies of Greece.  Hence also, that
+pre-eminently Buddhistic and Indian feature among the ancient
+Theosophists of Alexandria, of due reverence for parents and aged
+persons, a fraternal affection for the whole human race, and a
+compassionate feeling for even the dumb animals.  While seeking to
+establish a system of moral discipline which enforced upon people the
+duty to live according to the laws of their respective countries, to
+exalt their minds by the research and contemplation of the one Absolute
+Truth;  his chief object, in order, as he believed, to achieve all
+others, was to extract from the various religious teachings, as from a
+many-chorded instrument, one full and harmonious melody, which would
+find response in every truth-loving heart.
+
+Theosophy is, then, the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine
+once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization.  This
+"Wisdom" all the old writings show us as an emanation of the Divine
+Principle;  and the clear comprehension of it is typified in such names
+as the Indian Buddh, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the
+Hermes of Greece;  in the appellations, also, of some goddesses--Metis,
+Neitha, Athena, the Gnostic Sophia;  and, finally, the Vedas, from the
+word "to know."  Under this designation, all the ancient philosophers of
+the East and West, the Hierophants of old Egypt, the Rishis of Aryavart,
+the Theodidaktoi of Greece, included all knowledge of things occult and
+essentially divine.  The Mercavah of the Hebrew Rabbis, the secular and
+popular series, were thus designated as only the vehicle, the outward
+shell, which contained the higher esoteric knowledges.  The Magi of
+Zoroaster received instruction and were initiated in the caves and
+secret lodges of Bactria; the Egyptian and Grecian hierophants had their
+apporiheta, or secret discourses, during which the Mysta became an
+Epopta--a Seer.
+
+The central idea of the Eclectic Theosophy was that of a single Supreme
+Essence, Unknown and Unknowable;  for "how could one know the knower?"
+as inquires Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.  Their system was characterized by
+three distinct features, the theory of the above-named Essence:  the
+doctrine of the human soul;  an emanation from the latter, hence of the
+same nature;  and its theurgy.  It is this last science which has led
+the Neo-Platonists to be so misrepresented in our era of materialistic
+science.  Theurgy being essentially the art of applying the divine
+powers of man to the subordination of the blind forces of Nature, its
+votaries were first decisively termed magicians--a corruption of the
+word "Magh," signifying a wise or learned man. Sceptics of a century ago
+would have been as wide of the mark if they had laughed at the idea of a
+phonograph or telegraph.  The ridiculed and the "infidels" of one
+generation generally become the wise men and saints of the next.
+
+As regards the Divine Essence and the nature of the soul and spirit,
+modern Theosophy believes now as ancient Theosophy did. The popular Dev
+of the Aryan nations was identical with the Iao of the Chaldeans, and
+even with the Jupiter of the less learned and philosophical among the
+Romans;  and it was just as identical with the Jahve of the Samaritans,
+the Tiu or "Tiusco" of the Northmen, the Duw of the Britons, and the
+Zeus of the Thracians. As to the Absolute Essence, the One and All,
+whether we accept the Greek Pythagorean, the Chaldean Kabalistic, or the
+Aryan philosophy in regard to it, it will all lead to one and the same
+result.  The Primeval Monad of the Pythagorean system, which retires
+into darkness and is itself Darkness (for human intellect), was made the
+basis of all things;  and we can find the idea in all its integrity in
+the philosophical systems of Leibnitz and Spinoza.  Therefore, whether a
+Theosophist agrees with the Kabala which, speaking of En-Soph, propounds
+the query; "Who, then, can comprehend It, since It is formless, and
+non-existent?" or, remembering that magnificent hymn from the Rig Veda
+(Hymn 129, Book x.), inquires:
+
+     "Who knows from whence this great creation sprang? Whether his will
+     created or was mute. He knows it--or perchance even He knows not."
+
+Or, again, he accepts the Vedantic conception of Brahma, who, in the
+Upanishads, is represented as "without life, without mind, pure,"
+unconscious, for Brahma is "Absolute Consciousness."  Or, even finally,
+siding with the Svabhavikas of Nepaul, maintains that nothing exists but
+"Svabhavat" (substance or nature) which exists by itself without any
+creator--he is the true follower of pure and absolute Theosophy.  That
+Theosophy which prompted such men as Hegel, Fichte and Spinoza to take
+up the labours of the old Grecian philosophers and speculate upon the
+One Substance--the Deity, the Divine All proceeding from the Divine
+Wisdom--incomprehensible, unknown and unnamed by any ancient or modern
+religious philosophy, with the exception of Judaism, including
+Christianity and Mohammedanism.  Every Theosophist, then, holding to a
+theory of the Deity "which has not revelation but an inspiration of his
+own for its basis," may accept any of the above definitions or belong to
+any of these religions, and yet remain strictly within the boundaries of
+Theosophy.  For the latter is belief in the Deity as the ALL, the source
+of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or
+known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus
+giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy.  True
+Theosophy shrinks from brutal materialization; it prefers believing
+that, from eternity retired within itself, the Spirit of the Deity
+neither wills nor creates;  but from the infinite effulgence everywhere
+going forth from the Great Centre, that which produces all visible and
+invisible things is but a ray containing in itself the generative and
+conceptive power, which, in its turn, produces that which the Greeks
+called Macrocosm, the Kabalists Tikkun or Adam Kadmon, the archetypal
+man, and the Aryans Purusha, the manifested Brahm, or the Divine Male.
+Theosophy believes also in the Anastasis, or continued existence, and in
+transmigration (evolution) or a series of changes of the personal ego,
+which can be defended and explained on strict philosophical principles
+by making a distinction between Paramatma (transcendental, supreme
+spirit) and Jivatma (individual spirit) of the Vedantins.
+
+To fully define Theosophy, we must consider it under all its aspects.
+The interior world has not been hidden from all by impenetrable
+darkness.  By that higher intuition acquired by Theosophia, or
+God-knowledge, which carries the mind from the world of form into that of
+formless spirit, man has been sometimes enabled, in every age and every
+country, to perceive things in the interior or invisible world.  Hence,
+the "Samadhi," or Dhyan Yog Samadhi, of the Hindu ascetics;  the
+"Daimonlonphoti," or spiritual illumination of the Neo-Platonists;
+the "sidereal confabulation of soul," of the Rosicrucians or
+Fire-philosophers; and, even the ecstatic trance of mystics and of the
+modern mesmerists and spiritualists, are identical in nature, though
+various as to manifestation.  The search after man's diviner "self," so
+often and so erroneously interpreted as individual communion with a
+personal God, was the object of every mystic; and belief in its
+possibility seems to have been coeval with the genesis of humanity, each
+people giving it another name. Thus Plato and Plotinus call "Noetic
+work" that which the Yogi and the Shrotriya term Vidya.  "By reflection,
+self-knowledge and intellectual discipline, the soul can be raised to
+the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty--that is, to the
+Vision of God.  This is the epopteia," said the Greeks. "To unite one's
+soul to the Universal Soul," says Porphyry, "requires but a perfectly
+pure mind.  Through self contemplation, perfect chastity, and purity of
+body, we may approach nearer to It, and receive, in that state, true
+knowledge and wonderful insight."  And Swami Dayanund Saraswati, who has
+read neither Porphyry nor other Greek authors, but who is a thorough
+Vedic scholar, says in his "Veda Bhashya" (opasna prakaru ank. 9)--"To
+obtain Diksha (highest initiation) and Yog, one has to practise
+according to the rules..... The soul in the human body can perform the
+greatest wonders by knowing the Universal Spirit (or God) and
+acquainting itself with the properties and qualities (occult) of all the
+things in the universe.  A human being (a Dikshit or initiate) can thus
+acquire a power of seeing and hearing at great distances."  Finally,
+Alfred R. Wallace, F.R.S., a spiritualist and yet a confessedly great
+naturalist, says, with brave candour:  "It is spirit that alone feels,
+and perceives, and thinks, that acquires knowledge, and reasons and
+aspires..... There not unfrequently occur individuals so constituted
+that the spirit can perceive independently of the corporeal organs of
+sense, or can, perhaps, wholly or partially quit the body for a time and
+return to it again;  the spirit communicates with spirit easier than
+with matter."  We can now see how, after thousands of years have
+intervened between the age of the Gymnosophists* and our own highly
+civilized era, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, just because of such an
+enlightenment which pours its radiant light upon the psychological as
+well as upon the physical realms of Nature, over twenty millions of
+people today believe, under different form, in those same spiritual
+powers that were believed in by the Yogis and the Pythagoreans, nearly
+3,000 years ago.
+
+--------
+* The reality of the Yog-power was affirmed by many Greek and Roman
+writers, who call the Yogis Indian Gymnosophists--by Strabo, Lucan,
+Plutarch, Cicero (Tusculum), Pliny (vii. 2), &c.
+--------
+
+Thus, while the Aryan mystic claimed for himself the power of solving
+all the problems of life and death, when he had once obtained the power
+of acting independently of his body, through the Atman, "self," or
+"soul;"  and the old Greeks went in search of Atmu, the Hidden one, or
+the God-Soul of man, with the symbolical mirror of the Thesmophorian
+mysteries;  so the spiritualists of today believe in the capacity of the
+spirits, or the souls of the disembodied persons, to communicate visibly
+and tangibly with those they loved on earth.  And all these, Aryan
+Yogis, Greek philosophers, and modern spiritualists, affirm that
+possibility on the ground that the embodied soul and its never embodied
+spirit--the real self--are not separated from either the Universal Soul
+or other spirits by space, but merely by the differentiation of their
+qualities, as in the boundless expanse of the universe there can be no
+limitation.  And that when this difference is once removed--according to
+the Greeks and Aryans by abstract contemplation, producing the temporary
+liberation of the imprisoned soul, and according to spiritualists,
+through mediumship--such a union between embodied and disembodied
+spirits becomes possible.  Thus was it that Patanjali's Yogis, and,
+following in their steps, Plotinus, Porphyry and other Neo-Platonists,
+maintained that in their hours of ecstasy, they had been united to, or
+rather become as one with, God several times during the course of their
+lives.  This idea, erroneous as it may seem in its application to the
+Universal Spirit, was, and is, claimed by too many great philosophers to
+be put aside as entirely chimerical.  In the case of the Theodidaktoi,
+the only controvertible point, the dark spot on this philosophy of
+extreme mysticism, was its claim to include that which is simply
+ecstatic illumination, under the head of sensuous perception.  In the
+case of the Yogis, who maintained their ability to see Iswara "face to
+face," this claim was successfully overthrown by the stern logic of the
+followers of Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy.  As to the
+similar assumption made for their Greek followers, for a long array of
+Christian ecstatics, and, finally, for the last two claimants to
+"God-seeing" within these last hundred years--Jacob Bohme and
+Swedenborg--this pretension would and should have been philosophically
+and logically questioned, if a few of our great men of science, who are
+spiritualists, had had more interest in the philosophy than in the mere
+phenomenalism of spiritualism.
+
+The Alexandrian Theosophists were divided into neophytes, initiates and
+masters, or hierophants;  and their rules were copied from the ancient
+Mysteries of Orpheus, who, according to Herodotus, brought them from
+India.  Ammonius obligated his disciples by oath not to divulge his
+higher doctrines, except to those who were proved thoroughly worthy and
+initiated, and who had learned to regard the gods, the angels, and the
+demons of other peoples, according to the esoteric hyponia, or
+under-meaning.  "The gods exist, but they are not what the hoi polloi,
+the uneducated multitude, suppose them to be," says Epicurus.  "He is
+not an atheist who denies the existence of the gods, whom the multitude
+worship, but he is such who fastens on these gods the opinions of the
+multitude."  In his turn, Aristotle declares that of the "Divine Essence
+pervading the whole world of Nature, what are styled the gods are simply
+the first principles."
+
+Plotinus, the pupil of the "God-taught" Ammonius, tells us that the
+secret gnosis or the knowledge of Theosophy, has three degrees-opinion,
+science, and illumination.  "The means or instrument of the first is
+sense, or perception;  of the second, dialectics;  of the third,
+intuition.  To the last, reason is subordinate;  it is absolute
+knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object
+known."  Theosophy is the exact science of psychology, so to say;  it
+stands in relation to natural, uncultivated mediumship, as the knowledge
+of a Tyndall stands to that of a school-boy in physics.  It develops in
+man a direct beholding;  that which Schelling denominates "a realization
+of the identity of subject and object in the individual;"  so that under
+the influence and knowledge of hyponia man thinks divine thoughts, views
+all things as they really are, and, finally, "becomes recipient of the
+Soul of the World," to use one of the finest expressions of Emerson.
+"I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect," he says in his superb "Essay
+on the Oversoul."  Besides this psychological, or soul state, Theosophy
+cultivated every branch of sciences and arts.  It was thoroughly
+familiar with what is now commonly known as mesmerism. Practical theurgy
+or "ceremonial magic," so often resorted to in their exorcisms by the
+Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the Theosophists.  It is but
+Jamblichus alone who, transcending the other Eclectics, added to
+Theosophy the doctrine of Theurgy. When ignorant of the true meaning of
+the esoteric divine symbols of Nature, man is apt to miscalculate the
+powers of his soul, and, instead of communing spiritually and mentally
+with the higher celestial beings, the good spirits (the gods of the
+theurgists of the Platonic school), he will unconsciously call forth the
+evil, dark powers which lurk around humanity, the undying, grim
+creations of human crimes and vices, and thus fall from theurgia (white
+magic) into goetia (or black magic, sorcery).  Yet, neither white nor
+black magic are what popular superstition understands by the terms.  The
+possibility of "raising spirits," according to the key of Solomon, is
+the height of superstition and ignorance.  Purity of deed and thought
+can alone raise us to an intercourse "with the gods" and attain for us
+the goal we desire.  Alchemy, believed by so many to have been a
+spiritual philosophy as well as a physical science, belonged to the
+teachings of the Theosophical School.
+
+It is a noticeable fact that neither Zoroaster, Buddha, Orpheus,
+Pythagoras, Confucius, Socrates, nor Ammonius Saccas, committed anything
+to writing.  The reason for it is obvious.  Theosophy is a double-edged
+weapon and unfit for the ignorant or the selfish. Like every ancient
+philosophy it has its votaries among the moderns;  but, until late in
+our own days, its disciples were few in numbers, and of the most various
+sects and opinions. "Entirely speculative, and founding no schools, they
+have still exercised a silent influence upon philosophy;  and no doubt,
+when the time arrives, many ideas thus silently propounded may yet give
+new directions to human thought," remarks Mr. Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie,
+himself a mystic and a Theosophist, in his large and valuable work, "The
+Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia" (articles "Theosophical Society of New York,"
+and "Theosophy," p. 731).* Since the days of the fire-philosophers, they
+had never formed themselves into societies, for, tracked like wild
+beasts by the Christian clergy, to be known as a Theosophist often
+amounted, hardly a century ago, to a death-warrant.
+
+----------
+* "The Royal Masonic Cycloptedia of History, Rites, Symbolism, and
+Biography." Edited by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie IX. (Cryptonymus) Hon.
+Member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, No. 2, Scotland. New York J.
+W. Bouton, 706, Broadway. 1877.
+--------
+
+The statistics show that, during a period of 150 years, no less than
+90,000 men and women were burned in Europe for alleged witchcraft.  In
+Great Britain only, from A.D. 1640 to 1660, but twenty years, 3,000
+persons were put to death for compact with the "Devil."  It was but late
+in the present century--in 1875--that some progressed mystics and
+spiritualists, unsatisfied with the theories and explanations of
+Spiritualism started by its votaries, and finding that they were far
+from covering the whole ground of the wide range of phenomena, formed at
+New York, America, an association which is now widely known as the
+Theosophical Society.
+
+(--H.P. Blavatsky)
+
+
+
+
+How a "Chela" Found his "Guru"
+
+[Being Extracts from a private letter to Damodar K. Mavalankar, Joint
+Recording Secretary of the Theosophical Society.]
+
+....When we met last at Bombay I told you what had happened to me at
+Tinnevelly.  My health having been disturbed by official work and worry,
+I applied for leave on medical certificate and it was duly granted.  One
+day in September last, while I was reading in my room, I was ordered by
+the audible voice of my blessed Guru, M---Maharsi, to leave all and
+proceed immediately to Bombay, whence I was to go in search of Madame
+Blavatsky wherever I could find her and follow her wherever she went.
+Without losing a moment, I closed up all my affairs and left the
+station.  For the tones of that voice are to me the divinest sound in
+Nature, its commands imperative.  I traveled in my ascetic robes.
+Arrived at Bombay, I found Madame Blavatsky gone, and learned through
+you that she had left a few days before;  that she was very ill;  and
+that, beyond the fact that she had left the place very suddenly with a
+Chela, you knew nothing of her whereabouts.  And now, I must tell you
+what happened to me after I had left you.
+
+Really not knowing whither I had best go, I took a through ticket to
+Calcutta;  but, on reaching Allahabad, I heard the same well-known
+voice directing me to go to Berhampore.  At Azimgunge, in the train, I
+met, most providentially I may say, with some Bengali gentlemen (I did
+not then know they were also Theosophists, since I had never seen any of
+them), who were also in search of Madame Blavatsky.  Some had traced her
+to Dinapore, but lost her track and went back to Berhampore.  They knew,
+they said, she was going to Tibet and wanted to throw themselves at the
+feet of the Mahatmas to permit them to accompany her.  At last, as I was
+told, they received from her a note, permitting them to come if they so
+desired it, but saying that she herself was prohibited from going to
+Tibet just now.  She was to remain, she said, in the vicinity of
+Darjiling and would see the Mahatma on the Sikkhim Territory, where they
+would not be allowed to follow her .... Brother Nobin K. Bannerji, the
+President of the Adhi Bhoutic Bhratru Theosophical Society, would not
+tell me where Madame Blavatsky was, or perhaps did not then know
+himself. Yet he and others had risked all in the hope of seeing the
+Mahatmas.  On the 23rd, at last he brought me from Calcutta to
+Chandernagore, where I found Madame Blavatsky, ready to start by train
+in five minutes.  A tall, dark-looking hairy Chela (not Chunder Cusho),
+but a Tibetan I suppose by his dress, whom I met after I had crossed the
+river Hugli with her in a boat, told me that I had come too late, that
+Madame Blavatsky had already seen the Mahatmas and that he had brought
+her back.  He would not listen to my supplications to take me with him,
+saying he had no other orders than what he had already executed--namely,
+to take her about twenty-five miles beyond a certain place he named to
+me, and that he was now going to see her safe to the station and return.
+The Bengali brother Theosophists had also traced and followed her,
+arriving at the station half an hour later.  They crossed the river from
+Chandernagore to a small railway station on the opposite side.  When the
+train arrived, she got into the carriage, upon entering which I found
+the Chela!  And, before even her own things could be placed in the van,
+the train, against all regulations and before the bell was rung, started
+off, leaving the Bengali gentlemen and her servant behind, only one of
+them and the wife and daughter of another--all Theosophists and
+candidates for Chelaship--having had time to get in.  I myself had
+barely the time to jump into the last carriage. All her things, with the
+exception of her box containing Theosophical correspondence, were left
+behind with her servant. Yet, even the persons that went by the same
+train with her did not reach Darjiling.  Babu Nobin Banerjee, with the
+servant, arrived five days later;  and those who had time to take their
+seats, were left five or six stations behind, owing to another
+unforeseen accident (?), reaching Darjiling also a few days later.  It
+required no great stretch of imagination to conclude that Madame
+Blavatsky was, perhaps, being again taken to the Mahatmas, who, for some
+good reasons best known to them, did not want us to be following and
+watching her.  Two of the Mahatmas, I had learned for a certainty, were
+in the neighbourhood of British territory;  and one of them was seen and
+recognized, by a person I need not name here, as a high Chutukla of
+Tibet.
+
+The first days of her arrival Madame Blavatsky was living at the house
+of a Bengali gentleman, a Theosophist, refusing to see any one, and
+preparing, as I thought, to go again somewhere on the borders of Tibet.
+To all our importunities we could get only this answer from her:  that
+we had no business to stick to and follow her, that she did not want us,
+and that she had no right to disturb the Mahatmas with all sorts of
+questions that concerned only the questioners, for they knew their own
+business best.  In despair, I determined, come what might, to cross the
+frontier, which is about a dozen miles from here, and find the Mahatmas
+or--DIE.  I never stopped to think that what I was going to undertake
+would be regarded as the rash act of a lunatic.  I had no permission, no
+"pass" from the Sikkhim Rajah, and was yet decided to penetrate into the
+heart of a semi-independent State where, if anything happened, the
+Anglo-Indian officials would not--if even they could--protect me, since
+I should have crossed over without their permission.  But I never even
+gave that a thought, but was bent upon one engrossing idea--to find and
+see my Guru.  Without breathing a word of my intentions to any one, one
+morning, namely, October 5, I set out in search of the Mahatma.  I had
+an umbrella and a pilgrim's staff for sole weapons, with a few rupees in
+my purse.  I wore the yellow garb and cap.  Whenever I was tired on the
+road, my costume easily procured for me for a small sum a pony to ride.
+The same afternoon I reached the banks of the Rungit River, which forms
+the boundary between British and Sikkhimese territories.  I tried to
+cross it by the aerial suspension bridge constructed of canes, but it
+swayed to and fro to such an extent that I, who have never known in my
+life what hardship was, could not stand it.  I crossed the river by the
+ferry-boat, and this even not without much danger and difficulty.  That
+whole afternoon I traveled on foot, penetrating further and further into
+the heart of Sikkhim, along a narrow footpath.  I cannot now say how
+many miles I traveled before dusk, but I am sure it was not less than
+twenty or twenty-five miles.  Throughout, I saw nothing but impenetrable
+jungles and forests on all sides of me, relieved at very long intervals
+by solitary huts belonging to the mountain population. At dusk I began
+to search around me for a place to rest in at night.  I met on the road,
+in the afternoon, a leopard and a wild cat;  and I am astonished now to
+think how I should have felt no fear then nor tried to run away.
+Throughout, some secret influence supported me.  Fear or anxiety never
+once entered my mind.  Perhaps in my heart there was room for no other
+feeling but an intense anxiety to find my Guru.  When it was just
+getting dark, I espied a solitary hut a few yards from the roadside.  To
+it I directed my steps in the hope of finding a lodging.  The rude door
+was locked.  The cabin was untenanted at the time.  I examined it on all
+sides and found an aperture on the western side.  It was small indeed,
+but sufficient for me to jump through.  It had a small shutter and a
+wooden bolt.  By a strange coincidence of circumstances the hillman had
+forgotten to fasten it on the inside when he locked the door.  Of
+course, after what has subsequently transpired, I now, through the eye
+of faith, see the protecting hand of my Guru everywhere around me.  Upon
+getting inside I found the room communicated, by a small doorway, with
+another apartment, the two occupying the whole space of this sylvan
+mansion.  I laid down, concentrating every thought upon my Guru as
+usual, and soon fell into a profound sleep.  Before I went to rest, I
+had secured the door of the other room and the single window.  It may
+have been between ten and eleven, or perhaps a little later, that I
+awoke and heard sounds of footsteps in the adjoining room.  I could
+plainly distinguish two or three people talking together in a dialect
+unknown to me. Now, I cannot recall the same without a shudder.  At any
+moment they might have entered from the other room and murdered me for
+my money.  Had they mistaken me for a burglar the same fate awaited me.
+These and similar thoughts crowded into my brain in an inconceivably
+short period.  But my heart did not palpitate with fear, nor did I for
+one moment think of the possibly tragical chances of the moment.  I know
+not what secret influence held me fast, but nothing could put me out or
+make me fear;  I was perfectly calm.  Although I lay awake staring into
+the darkness for upwards of two hours, and even paced the room softly
+and slowly without making any noise, to see if I could make my escape,
+in case of need, back to the forest by the same way I had effected my
+entrance into the hut--no fear, I repeat, or any such feeling ever
+entered my heart.  I recomposed myself to rest. After a sound sleep,
+undisturbed by any dream, I awoke at daybreak.  Then I hastily put on my
+boots, and cautiously got out of the hut through the same window.  I
+could hear the snoring of the owners of the hut in the other room.  But
+I lost no time, and gained the path to Sikkhim (the city) and held on my
+way with unflagging zeal.  From the inmost recesses of my heart I
+thanked my revered Guru for the protection he had vouchsafed me during
+the night.  What prevented the owners of the hut from penetrating to the
+second room?  What kept me in the same serene and calm spirit, as if I
+were in a room of my own house?  What could possibly make me sleep so
+soundly under such circumstances,--enormous, dark forests on all sides
+abounding in wild beasts, and a party of cut-throats--as most of the
+Sikkhimese are said to be--in the next room, with an easy and rude door
+between them and me?
+
+When it became quite light, I wended my way on through hills and dales.
+Riding or walking, the journey was not a pleasant one for any man not as
+deeply engrossed in thought as I was then myself, and quite oblivious to
+anything affecting the body.  I have cultivated the power of mental
+concentration to such a degree of late that, on many an occasion, I have
+been able to make myself quite unconscious of anything around me when my
+mind was wholly bent upon the one object of my life, as several of my
+friends will testify;  but never to such an extent as in this instance.
+
+It was, I think, between eight and nine A.M.  I was following the road
+to the town of Sikkhim, whence, I was assured by the people I met on the
+road, I could cross over to Tibet easily in my pilgrim's garb, when I
+suddenly saw a solitary horseman galloping towards me from the opposite
+direction.  From his tall stature and skill in horsemanship, I thought
+he was some military officer of the Sikkhim Rajah.  Now, I thought, I am
+caught!  He will ask me for my pass and what business I have in the
+independent territory of Sikkhim, and, perhaps, have me arrested and
+sent back, if not worse.  But, as he approached me, he reined up.  I
+looked at and recognized him instantly.... I was in the awful presence
+of him, of the same Mahatma, my own revered Guru, whom I had seen before
+in his astral body on the balcony of the Theosophical Headquarters.  It
+was he, the "Himalayan Brother" of the ever-memorable night of December
+last, who had so kindly dropped a letter in answer to one I had given
+but an hour or so before in a sealed envelope to Madame Blavatsky, whom
+I had never lost sight of for one moment during the interval.  The very
+same instant saw me prostrated on the ground at his feet.  I arose at
+his command, and, leisurely looking into his face, forgot myself
+entirely in the contemplation of the image I knew so well, having seen
+his portrait (the one in Colonel Olcott's possession) times out of
+number.  I knew not what to say:  joy and reverence tied my tongue.  The
+majesty of his countenance, which seemed to me to be the impersonation
+of power and thought, held me rapt in awe. I was at last face to face
+with "the Mahatma of the Himavat," and he was no myth, no "creation of
+the imagination of a medium," as some sceptics had suggested.  It was no
+dream of the night;  it was between nine and ten o'clock of the
+forenoon.  There was the sun shining and silently witnessing the scene
+from above.  I see him before me in flesh and blood, and he speaks to me
+in accents of kindness and gentleness.  What more could I want?  My
+excess of happiness made me dumb.  Nor was it until some time had
+elapsed that I was able to utter a few words, encouraged by his gentle
+tone and speech.  His complexion is not as fair as that of Mahatma
+Koothoomi;  but never have I seen a countenance so handsome, a stature
+so tall and so majestic.  As in his portrait, he wears a short black
+beard, and long black hair hanging down to his breast;  only his dress
+was different:  Instead of a white, loose robe he wore a yellow mantle
+lined with fur, and on his head, instead of the turban, a yellow Tibetan
+felt cap, as I have seen some Bhootanese wear in this country.  When the
+first moments of rapture and surprise were over, and I calmly
+comprehended the situation, I had a long talk with him.  He told me to
+go no further, for I should come to grief.  He said I should wait
+patiently if I wanted to become an accepted Chela; that many were those
+who offered themselves as candidates, but that only a very few were
+found worthy;  none were rejected, but all of them tried, and most found
+to fail signally, as for example---and---.  Some, instead of being
+accepted and pledged this year, were now thrown off for a year.  The
+Mahatma, I found, speaks very little English--or at least it so seemed
+to me--and spoke to me in my mother-tongue--Tamil.  He told me that if
+the Chohan permitted Madame Blavatsky to visit Parijong next year, then
+I could come with her.  The Bengali Theosophists who followed the
+"Upasika" (Madame Blavatsky) would see that she was right in trying to
+dissuade them from following her now.  I asked the blessed Mahatma
+whether I could tell what I saw and heard to others.  He replied in the
+affirmative, and that moreover I would do well to write to you and
+describe all.
+
+I must impress upon your mind the whole situation, and ask you to keep
+well in view that what I saw was not the mere "appearance" only, the
+astral body of the Mahatma, as we saw him at Bombay, but the living man,
+in his own physical body.  He was pleased to say when I offered my
+farewell namaskarams (prostration) that he approached the British
+territory to see the Upasika.  Before he left me, two more men came on
+horseback, his attendants I suppose, probably Chelas, for they were
+dressed like lama-gylungs, and both, like himself, with long hair
+streaming down their backs.  They followed the Mahatma, when he left, at
+a gentle trot.  For over an hour I stood gazing at the place that he had
+just quitted, and then I slowly retraced my steps.  Now it was that I
+found for the first time that my long boots had pinched my leg in
+several places, that I had eaten nothing since the day before, and that
+I was too weak to walk further.  My whole body was aching in every limb.
+At a little distance I saw petty traders with country ponies, carrying
+burdens.  I hired one of these animals.  In the afternoon I came to the
+Rungit River and crossed it.  A bath in its cool waters revived me.  I
+purchased some fruit in the only bazaar there and ate heartily. I took
+another horse immediately and reached Darjiling late in the evening.  I
+could neither eat, nor sit, nor stand.  Every part of my body was
+aching.  My absence had seemingly alarmed Madame Blavatsky.  She scolded
+me for my rash and mad attempt to try to go to Tibet after that fashion.
+When I entered the house I found with Madame Blavatsky, Bahu Parbati
+Churn Roy, Deputy Collector of Settlements and Superintendent of Dearah
+Survey, and his assistant, Babu Kanty Bhushan Sen, both members of our
+Society.  At their prayer and Madame Blavatsky's command, I recounted
+all that had happened to me, reserving of course my private conversation
+with the Mahatma.  They were all, to say the least, astounded.  After
+all, she will not go this year to Tibet; for which I am sure she does
+not care, since she has seen our Masters and thus gained her only
+object.  But we, unfortunate people! we lose our only chance of going
+and offering our worship to the "Himalayan Brothers," who, I know, will
+not soon cross over to British territory, if ever, again.
+
+And now that I have seen the Mahatma in the flesh, and heard his living
+voice, let no one dare say to me that the Brothers do not exist.  Come
+now whatever will, death has no fear for me, nor the vengeance of
+enemies;  for what I know, I know!
+
+--S. Ramaswamier, F.T.S.
+
+
+
+
+The Sages of the Himavat
+
+
+While on my tour with Col. Olcott several phenomena occurred, in his
+presence as well as in his absence, such as immediate answers to
+questions in my Master's handwriting, and over his signature, put by a
+number of our Fellows.  These occurrences took place before we reached
+Lahore, where we expected to meet in the body my Master.  There I was
+visited by him in the body, for three nights consecutively, for about
+three hours every time, while I myself retained full consciousness, and,
+in one case, even went to meet him outside the house.  To my knowledge
+there is no case on the Spiritualist records of a medium remaining
+perfectly conscious, and meeting, by previous arrangement, his
+spirit-visitor in the compound, re-entering the house with him, offering
+him a seat, and then holding a long converse with the "disembodied
+spirit" in a way to give him the impression that he is in personal
+contact with an embodied entity.  Moreover, him whom I saw in person at
+Lahore was the same I had seen in astral form at the Headquarters of the
+Theosophical Society, and again, the same whom I had seen in visions and
+trances at his house, thousands of miles off, which I reached in my
+astral Ego by his direct help and protection.  In those instances, with
+my psychic powers hardly yet developed, I had always seen him as a rather
+hazy form, although his features were perfectly distinct and their
+remembrance was profoundly graven on my soul's eye and memory, while now
+at Lahore, Jummoo, and elsewhere, the impression was utterly different.
+In the former cases, when making Pranam (salutation) my hands passed
+through his form, while on the latter occasions they met solid garments
+and flesh. Here I saw a living man before me, the original of the
+portraits in Madame Blavatsky's possession and in Mr. Sinnett's, though
+far more imposing in his general appearance and bearing.  I shall not
+here dwell upon the fact of his having been corporeally seen by both
+Col. Olcott and Mr. Brown separately for two nights at Lahore, as they
+can do so better, each for himself, if they so choose.  At Jummoo again,
+where we proceeded from Lahore, Mr. Brown saw him on the evening of the
+third day of our arrival there, and from him received a letter in his
+familiar handwriting, not to speak of his visits to me almost every day.
+And what happened the next morning almost every one in Jummoo is aware
+of.  The fact is, that I had the good fortune of being sent for, and
+permitted to visit a sacred Ashrum, where I remained for a few days in
+the blessed company of several of the Mahatmas of Himavat and their
+disciples.  There I met not only my beloved Gurudeva and Col. Olcott's
+master, but several others of the fraternity, including one of the
+highest.  I regret the extremely personal nature of my visit to those
+thrice blessed regions prevents my saying more about it.  Suffice it
+that the place I was permitted to visit is in the Himalayas, not in any
+fanciful Summer Land, and that I saw him in my own sthula sarira
+(physical body) and found my Master identical with the form I had seen
+in the earlier days of my Chelaship.  Thus, I saw my beloved Guru not
+only as a living man, but actually as a young one in comparison with
+some other Sadhus of the blessed company, only far kinder, and not above
+a merry remark and conversation at times.  Thus on the second day of my
+arrival, after the meal hour, I was permitted to hold an intercourse for
+over an hour with my Master.  Asked by him smilingly what it was that
+made me look at him so perplexed, I asked in my turn:--"How is it,
+Master, that some of the members of our Society have taken into their
+heads a notion that you were 'an elderly man,' and that they have even
+seen you clairvoyantly looking an old man past sixty?"  To which he
+pleasantly smiled and said that this latest misconception was due to the
+reports of a certain Brahmachari, a pupil of a Vedantic Swami in the
+Punjab,* who had met last year in Tibet the chief of a sect, an elderly
+Lama, who was his (my Master's) traveling companion at that time.  The
+said Brahmachari, having spoken of the encounter in India, had led
+several persons to mistake the Lama for himself.  As to his being
+perceived clairvoyantly as an "elderly man," that could never be, he
+added, as real clairvoyance could lead no one into such mistaken
+notions;  and then he kindly reprimanded me for giving any importance to
+the age of a Guru, adding that appearances were often false, &c., and
+explaining other points.
+
+--------
+* See infra. Rajani Kanta Brahmachai's  "Interview with a Mahatma."
+--------
+
+These are all stern facts, and no third course is open to the reader.
+What I assert is either true or false.  In the former case, no
+Spiritualistic hypothesis can hold good, and it will have to be admitted
+that the Himalayan Brothers are living men, and neither disembodied
+spirits nor creations of the over-heated imagination of fanatics.  Of
+course I am fully aware that many will discredit my account;  but I
+write only for the benefit of those few who know me well enough to see
+in me neither a hallucinated medium, nor attribute to me any bad motive,
+and who have ever been true and loyal to their convictions and to the
+cause they have so nobly espoused.  As for the majority who laugh at and
+ridicule what they have neither the inclination nor the capacity to
+understand, I hold them in very small account.  If these few lines will
+help to stimulate even one of my brother-Fellows in the Society, or one
+right-thinking man outside of it, to promote the cause of Truth and
+Humanity, I shall consider that I have properly performed my duty.
+
+--Damodar K. Mavalankar
+
+
+
+
+The Himalayan Brothers--Do They Exist?
+
+
+"Ask and it shall be given unto you;  knock and it shall be opened,"
+this is an accurate representation of the position of the earnest
+inquirer as to the existence of the Mahatmas.  I know of none who took
+up this inquiry in right earnest and were not rewarded for their labours
+with knowledge, certainty.  In spite of all this there are plenty of
+people who carp and cavil but will not take the trouble of proving the
+thing for themselves. Both by Europeans and a section of our own
+countrymen--the too Europeanized graduates of Universities--the
+existence of the Mahatmas is looked upon with incredulity and distrust,
+to give it no harder name.  The position of the Europeans is easily
+intelligible, for these things are so far removed from their
+intellectual horizon, and their self-sufficiency is so great, that they
+are almost impervious to these new ideas.  But it is much more difficult
+to conceive why the people of India, who are born and brought up in an
+atmosphere redolent with the traditions of these things, should affect
+such scepticism.  It would have been more natural for them, on the other
+hand, to hail such proofs as those I am now laying before the public
+with the same satisfaction as an astronomer feels when a new star, whose
+elements he has calculated, swims within his ken.  I myself was a
+thorough-going disbeliever only two years back.  In the first place I
+had never witnessed any occult phenomena myself, nor did I find any one
+who had done so in that small ring of our countrymen for whom only I was
+taught to have any respect--the "educated classes."  It was only in the
+month of October, 1882, that I really devoted any time and attention to
+this matter, and the result is that I have as little doubt with respect
+to the existence of the Mahatmas as of mine own.  I now know that they
+exist.  But for a long time the proofs that I had received were not all
+of an objective character.  Many things which are very satisfactory
+proofs to me would not be so to the reader.  On the other hand, I have
+no right to speak of the unimpeachable evidence I now possess.
+Therefore I must do the best I can with the little I am permitted to
+give.  In the present paper I have brought forward such evidence as
+would be perfectly satisfactory to all capable of measuring its
+probative force.
+
+The evidence now laid before the public was collected by me during the
+months of October and November, 1882, and was at the time placed before
+some of the leading members of the Theosophical Society, Mr. Sinnett
+among others.  The account of Bro. Ramaswamier's interview with his Guru
+in Sikkhim being then ready for publication, there was no necessity, in
+their opinion, for the present paper being brought to light.  But since
+an attempt has been made in some quarters to minimize the effect of Mr.
+Ramaswamier's evidence by calling it most absurdly "the hallucinations
+of a half-frozen strolling Registrar," I think something might be gained
+by the publication of perfectly independent testimony of, perhaps,
+equal, if not greater, value, though of quite a different character.
+With these words of explanation as to the delay in its publication, I
+resign this paper to the criticism of our sceptical friends.  Let them
+calmly consider and pronounce upon the evidence of the Tibetan pedlar at
+Darjiling, supported and strengthened by the independent testimony of
+the young Brahmachari at Dehradun.  Those who were present when the
+statements of these persons were taken, all occupy very respectable
+positions in life--some in fact belonging to the front ranks of Hindu
+Society, and several in no way connected with the Theosophical movement,
+but, on the contrary, quite unfriendly to it.  In those days I again say
+I was rather sceptical myself.  It is only since I collected the
+following evidence and received more than one proof of the actual
+existence of my venerated master, Mahatma Koothoomi, whose presence--
+quite independently of Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott or any "alleged"
+Chela--was made evident to me in a variety of ways, that I have given up
+the folly of doubting any longer.  Now I believe no more--I KNOW;  and
+knowing, I would help others to obtain the same knowledge.
+
+During my visit to Darjiling I lived in the same house with several
+Theosophists, all as ardent aspirants for the higher life, and most of
+them as doubtful with regard to the Himalayan Mahatmas as I was myself
+at that time.  I met at Darjiling persons who claimed to be Chelas of
+the Himalayan Brothers and to have seen and lived with them for years.
+They laughed at our perplexity.  One of them showed us an admirably
+executed portrait of a man who appeared to be an eminently holy person,
+and who, I was told, was the Mahatma Koothoomi (now my revered master),
+to whom Mr. Sinnett's "Occult World" is dedicated.  A few days after my
+arrival, a Tibetan pedlar of the name of Sundook accidentally came to
+our house to sell his things.  Sundook was for years well-known in
+Darjiling and the neighbourhood as an itinerant trader in Tibetan
+knick-knacks, who visited the country every year in the exercise of his
+profession.  He came to the house several times during our stay there,
+and seemed to us, from his simplicity, dignity of bearing and pleasant
+manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen.  No man could discover in
+him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized
+savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans.  He
+might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too
+good to be one.  He came to the house while I was there.  On the first
+occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an
+employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter.  But we
+soon found out that the peculiar dialect of Hindi which he spoke was
+intelligible to some of us without any interpreter, and so there was
+none needed on subsequent occasions.  On the first day we put him some
+general questions about Tibet and the Gelugpa sect, to which he said he
+belonged, and his answers corroborated the statements of Bogle, Turnour
+and other travelers.  On the second day we asked him if he had heard of
+any persons in Tibet who possessed extraordinary powers besides the
+great lamas.  He said there were such men;  that they were not regular
+lamas, but far higher than they, and generally lived in the mountains
+beyond Tchigatze and also near the city of Lhassa.  These men, he said,
+produce many and very wonderful phenomena or "miracles," and some of
+their Chelas, or Lotoos, as they are called in Tibet, cure the sick by
+giving them to eat the rice which they crush out of the paddy with their
+hands, &c. Then one of us had a glorious idea.  Without saying one word,
+the above-mentioned portrait of the Mahatma Koothoomi was shown to him.
+He looked at it for a few seconds, and then, as though suddenly
+recognizing it, he made a profound reverence to the portrait, and said
+it was the likeness of a Chohan (Mahatma) whom he had seen.  Then he
+began rapidly to describe the Mahatma's dress and naked arms;  then
+suiting the action to the word, he took off his outer cloak, and baring
+his arms to the shoulder, made the nearest approach to the figure in the
+portrait, in the adjustment of his dress.
+
+He said he had seen the Mahatma in question accompanied by a numerous
+body of Gylungs, about that time of the previous year (beginning of
+October 1881) at a place called Giansi, two days' journey southward of
+Tchigatze, whither the narrator dad gone to make purchases for his
+trade.  On being asked the name of the Mahatma, he said to our unbounded
+surprise, "They are called Koothum-pa."  Being cross-examined and asked
+what he meant by "they," and whether he was naming one man or many, he
+replied that the Koothum-pas were many, but there was only one man or
+chief over them of that name;  the disciples being always called after
+the names of their guru.  Hence the name of the latter being Koot-hum,
+that of his disciples was "Koot-hum-pa."  Light was shed upon this
+explanation by a Tibetan dictionary, where we found that the word "pa"
+means "man;"  "Bod-pa" is a "man of Bod or Thibet," &c.  Similarly
+Koothum-pa means man or disciple of Koothoom or Koothoomi.  At Giansi,
+the pedlar said, the richest merchant of the place went to the Mahatma,
+who had stopped to rest in the midst of an extensive field, and asked
+him to bless him by coming to his house.  The Mahatma replied, he was
+better where he was, as he had to bless the whole world, and not any
+particular man.  The people, and among them our friend Sundook, took
+their offerings to the Mahatma, but he ordered them to be distributed
+among the poor.  Sundook was exhorted by the Mahatma to pursue his trade
+in such a way as to injure no one, and warned that such was the only
+right way to prosperity.  On being told that people in India refused to
+believe that there were such men as the Brothers in Tibet, Sundook
+offered to take any voluntary witness to that country, and convince us,
+through him, as to the genuineness of their existence, and remarked that
+if there were no such men in Tibet, he would like to know where they
+were to be found.  It being suggested to him that some people refused to
+believe that such men existed at all, he got very angry.  Tucking up the
+sleeve of his coat and shirt, and disclosing a strong muscular arm, he
+declared that he would fight any man who would suggest that he had said
+anything but the truth.
+
+On being shown a peculiar rosary of beads belonging to Madame Blavatsky,
+the pedlar said that such things could only be got by those to whom the
+Tesshu Lama presented them, as they could be got for no amount of money
+elsewhere.  When the Chela who was with us put on his sleeveless coat
+and asked him whether he recognized the latter's profession by his
+dress, the pedlar answered that he was a Gylung and then bowing down to
+him took the whole thing as a matter of course.  The witnesses in this
+case were Babu Nobin Krishna Bannerji, deputy magistrate, Berhampore,
+M.R. Ry. Ramaswamiyer Avergal, district registrar, Madura (Madras), the
+Goorkha gentleman spoken of before, all the family of the first-named
+gentleman, and the writer.
+
+Now for the other piece of corroborative evidence.  This time it came
+most accidentally into my possession.  A young Bengali Brahmachari, who
+had only a short time previous to our meeting returned from Tibet and
+who was residing then at Dehradun, in the North-Western Provinces of
+India, at the house of my grandfather-in-law, the venerable Babu
+Devendra Nath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj, gave most unexpectedly, in the
+presence of a number of respectable witnesses, the following account:--
+
+On the 15th of the Bengali month of Asar last (1882). being the 12th day
+of the waxing moon, he met some Tibetans, called the Koothoompas, and
+their guru in a field near Taklakhar, a place about a day's journey from
+the Lake of Manasarawara.  The guru and most of his disciples, who were
+called gylungs, wore sleeveless coats over under-garments of red.  The
+complexion of the guru was very fair, and his hair, which was not parted
+but combed back, streamed down his shoulders.  When the Brahmachani
+first saw the Mahatma he was reading in a book, which the Brahmachari
+was informed by one of the gylungs was the Rig Veda.
+
+The guru saluted him, and asked him where he was coming from.  On
+finding the latter had not had anything to eat, the guru commanded that
+he should be given some ground gram (Sattoo) and tea.  As the
+Brahmachari could not get any fire to cook food with, the guru asked
+for, and kindled a cake of dry cow-dung--the fuel used in that country
+as well as in this--by simply blowing upon it, and gave it to our
+Brahmachari.  The latter assured us that he had often witnessed the same
+phenomenon, produced by another guru or chohan, as they are called in
+Tibet, at Gauri, a place about a day's journey from the cave of Tarchin,
+on the northern side of Mount Kailas.  The keeper of a flock, who was
+suffering from rheumatic fever came to the guru, who gave him a few
+grains of rice, crushed out of paddy, which the guru had in his hand,
+and the sick man was cured then and there.
+
+Before he parted company with the Koothumpas and their guru, the
+Brahmachari found that they were going to attend a festival held on the
+banks of the Lake of Manasarawara, and that thence they intended to
+proceed to the Kailas mountains.
+
+The above statement was on several occasions repeated by the Brahmachari
+in the presence (among others) of Babu Dwijender Nath Tagore of
+Jorasanko, Calcutta;  Babu Cally Mohan Ghose of the Trigonometrical
+Surcey of India, Dehradun;  Babu Cally Cumar Chatterij of the same
+place;  Babu Gopi Mohan Ghosh of Dacca; Babu Priya Nath Sastri, clerk to
+Babu Devender Nath Tagore, and the writer.  Comments would here seem
+almost superfluous, and the facts might very well have been left to
+speak for themselves to a fair and intelligent jury.  But the averseness
+of people to enlarge their field of experience and the wilful
+misrepresentation of designing persons know no bounds.  The nature of
+the evidence here adduced is of an unexceptional character.  Both
+witnesses were met quite accidentally.  Even if it be granted, which we
+certainly do not for a moment grant, that the Tibetan pedlar, Sundook,
+had been interviewed by some interested person, and induced to tell an
+untruth, what can be conceived to have been the motive of the
+Brahmachari, one belonging to a religious body noted for their
+truthfulness, and having no idea as to the interest the writer took in
+such things, in inventing a romance, and how could he make it fit
+exactly with the statements of the Tibetan pedlar at the other end of
+the country?  Uneducated persons are no doubt liable to deceive
+themselves in many matters, but these statements dealt only with such
+disunited facts as fell within the range of the narrator's eyes and
+ears, and had nothing to do with his judgment or opinion.  Thus, when
+the pedlar's statement is coupled with that of the Dehradun Brahmachari,
+there is, indeed, no room left for any doubt as to the truthfulness of
+either.  It may here be mentioned that the statement of the Brahmachari
+was not the result of a series of leading questions, but formed part of
+the account he voluntarily gave of his travels during the year, and that
+he is almost entirely ignorant of the English language, and had, to the
+best of my knowledge, information and belief, never even so much as
+heard of the name of Theosophy.  Now, if any one refuses to accept the
+mutually corroborative but independent testimonies of the Tibetan pedlar
+of Darjiling and the Brahmachari of Dehradun on the ground that they
+support the genuineness of facts not ordinarily falling within the
+domain of one's experience, all I can say is that it is the very miracle
+of folly.  It is, on the other hand, most unshakably established upon
+the evidence of several of his Chelas, that the Mahatma Koothoomi is a
+living person like any of us, and that moreover he was seen by two
+persons on two different occasions.  This will, it is to be hoped,
+settle for ever the doubts of those who believe in the genuineness of
+occult phenomena, but put them down to the agency of "spirits."  Mark
+one circumstance.  It may be argued that during the pedlar's stay at
+Darjiling, Madame Blavatsky was also there, and, who knows, she might
+have bribed him (!!) into saying what he said.  But no such thing can be
+urged in the case of the Dehradun Brahmachari.  He knew neither the
+pedlar nor Madame Blavatsky, had never heard of Colonel Olcott, having
+just returned from his prolonged journey, and had no idea that I was a
+Fellow of the Society.  His testimony was entirely voluntary.  Some
+others, who admit that Mahatmas exist, but that there is no proof of
+their connection with the Theosophical Society, will be pleased to see
+that there is no a priori impossibility in those great souls taking an
+interest in such a benevolent Society as ours.  Consequently it is a
+gratuitous insult to a number of self-sacrificing men and women to
+reject their testimony without a fair hearing.
+
+I purposely leave aside all proofs which are already before the public.
+Each set of proofs is conclusive in itself, and the cumulative effect of
+all is simply irresistible.
+
+--Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+
+
+Interview with a Mahatma
+
+
+At the time I left home for the Himalayas in search of the Supreme
+Being, having adopted Brahmacharyashrama (religious mendicancy), I was
+quite ignorant of the fact that there was any such philosophical sect as
+the Theosophists existing in India, who believed in the existence of the
+Mahatmas or "superior persons."  This and other facts connected with my
+journey are perfectly correct as already published, and so need not be
+repeated or contradicted.  Now I beg to give a fuller account of my
+interview with the Mahatmas.
+
+Before and after I met the so-called Mahatma Koothum-pa, I had the good
+fortune of seeing in person several other Mahatmas of note, a detailed
+account of whom, I hope, should time allow, to write to you by-and-by.
+Here I wish to say something about Koothum-pa only.
+
+When I was on my way to Almora from Mansarowar and Kailas, one day I had
+nothing with me to eat.  I was quite at a loss how to get on without
+food.  There being no human habitation in that part of the country, I
+could expect no help, but pray to God, and take my way patiently on.
+Between Mansarowar and Taklakhal, by the side of a road, I observed a
+tent pitched and several Sadhus (holy men), called Chohans, sitting
+outside it who numbered about seventeen in all.  As to their dress, &c.,
+what Babu M.M. Chatterji says is quite correct.  When I went to them
+they entertained me very kindly, and saluted me by uttering, "Ram Ram."
+Returning their salutations, I sat down with them, and they entered upon
+conversation with me on different subjects, asking me first the place I
+was coming from and whither I was going.  There was a chief of them
+sitting inside the tent, and engaged in reading a book.  I inquired
+about his name and the book he was reading from, one of his Chelas, who
+answered me in rather a serious tone, saying that his name was Guru
+Koothum-pa, and the book he was reading was Rig Veda.  Long before, I
+had been told by some Pundits of Bengal that the Tibetan Lamas were
+well-acquainted with the Rig Veda.  This proved what they had told me.
+After a short time, when his reading was over, he called me in by one of
+his Chelas, and I went to him.  He, also bidding me "Ram Ram," received
+me very gently and courteously, and began to talk with me mildly in pure
+Hindi.  He addressed me in words such as follows:--"You should remain
+here for some time and see the fair at Mansarowar, which is to come off
+shortly. Here you will have plenty of time and suitable retreats for
+meditation, &c.  I will help you in whatever I can."  He spoke as above
+for some time, and I replied that what he said was right, and that I
+would gladly have stayed, but there was some reason which prevented me.
+He understood my object immediately, and then, having given me some
+private advice as to my spiritual progress, bade me farewell.  Before
+this he had come to know that I was hungry, and so wished me to take
+some food.  He ordered one of his Chelas to supply me with food, which
+he did immediately. In order to get hot water ready for my ablutions, he
+prepared fire by blowing into a cow-dung cake, which burst into flames
+at once.  This is a common practice among the Himalayan Lamas. It is
+also fully explained by M.M. Chatterji, and so need not be repeated.
+
+As long as I was there with the said Lama, he never persuaded me to
+accept Buddhism or any other religion, but only said, "Hinduism is the
+best religion;  you should believe in the Lord Mahadeva--he will do good
+to you.  You are still quite a young man--do not be enticed away by the
+necromancy of anybody." Having had a conversation with the Mahatma as
+described above for about three hours, I at last took leave and resumed
+my journey.
+
+I am neither a Theosophist nor a sectarian, but am the worshipper of the
+only Om.  As regards the Mahatma I personally saw, I dare say that he is
+a great Mahatma.  By the fulfilment of certain of his prophecies, I am
+quite convinced of his excellence.  Of all the Himalayan Mahatmas with
+whom I had an interview, I never met a better Hindi speaker than he.  As
+to his birth-place and the place of his residence, I did not ask him any
+question.  Neither can I say if he is the Mahatma of the Theosophists.
+As to the age of the Mahatma Koothum-pa, as I told Babu M. M. Chatterji
+and others, he was an elderly looking man.
+
+--Rajani Kant Brahmachari
+
+
+
+
+The Secret Doctrine
+
+
+Few experiences lying about the threshhold of occult studies are more
+perplexing and tormenting than those which have to do with the policy of
+the Brothers as to what shall, and what shall not, be revealed to the
+outer world.  In fact, it is only by students at the same time tenacious
+and patient--continuously anxious to get at the truths of occult
+philosophy, but cool enough to bide their time when obstacles come in
+the way--that what looks, at first sight, like a grudging and miserly
+policy in this matter on the part of our illustrious teachers can be
+endured.  Most men persist in judging all situations by the light of
+their own knowledge and conceptions, and certainly by reference to
+standards of right and wrong with which modern civilization is familiar
+a pungent indictment may be framed against the holders of philosophical
+truth.  They are regarded by their critics as keeping guard over their
+intellectual possessions, declaring, "We have won this knowledge with
+strenuous effort and at the cost of sacrifice and suffering;  we will
+not make a present of it to luxurious idlers who have done nothing to
+deserve it."  Most critics of the Theosophical Society and its
+publications have fastened on this obvious idea, and have denounced the
+policy of the Brothers as "selfish" and "unreasonable."
+
+It has been argued that, as regards occult powers, the necessity for
+keeping back all secrets which would enable unconscientious people to do
+mischief, might be granted, but that no corresponding motives could
+dictate the reservation of occult philosophical truth.
+
+I have lately come to perceive certain considerations on this subject
+which have generally been overlooked;  and it seems desirable to put
+them forward at once;  especially as a very considerable body of occult
+philosophical teaching is now before the world, and as those who
+appreciate its value best, will sometimes be inclined to protest all the
+more emphatically against the tardiness with which it has been served
+out, and the curious precautions with which its further development is
+even now surrounded.
+
+In a nutshell, the explanation of the timid policy displayed is that the
+Brothers are fully assured that the disclosure of that actual truth
+(which constitutes the secret doctrine) about the origin of the World
+and of Humanity--of the laws which govern their existence, and the
+destinies to which they are moving on--is calculated to have a very
+momentous effect on the welfare of mankind.  Great results ensue from
+small beginnings, and the seeds of knowledge now being sown in the world
+may ultimately bear prodigious harvest.  We, who are present merely at
+the sowing, may not realize the magnitude and importance of the impulse
+we are concerned in giving, but that impulse will roll on, and a few
+generations hence will be productive of tremendous consequences one way
+or the other.
+
+For occult philosophy is no shadowy system of speculation like any of
+the hundred philosophies with which the minds of men have been
+overwhelmed;  it is the positive Truth, and by the time enough of it is
+let out, it will be seen to be so by thousands of the greatest men who
+may then be living in the world.  What will be the consequence?  The
+first effect on the minds of all who come to understand it, is terribly
+iconoclastic.  It drives out before it everything else in the shape of
+religious belief.  It leaves no room for any conceptions belonging even
+to the groundwork or foundation of ordinary religious faith.  And what
+becomes then of all rules of right and wrong, of all sanctions for
+morality?  Most assuredly there are rules of right and wrong thrilling
+through every fibre of occult philosophy really higher than any which
+commonplace theologies can teach;  far more cogent sanctions for
+morality than can be derived at second-hand from the distorted doctrines
+of exoteric religions;  but a complete transfer of the sanction will be
+a process involving the greatest possible danger for mankind at the
+time.  Bigots of all denominations will laugh at the idea of such a
+transfer being seriously considered.  The orthodox Christian--confident
+in the thousand of churches overshadowing all western lands, of the
+enormous force engaged in the maintenance and propagation of the faith,
+with the Pope and the Protestant hierarchy in alliance for this broad
+purpose, with the countless clergy of all sects, and the fiery Salvation
+Army bringing up the rear--will think that the earth itself is more
+likely to crumble into ruin than the irresistible authority of Religion
+to be driven back.  They are all counting, however, without the progress
+of enlightenment. The most absurd religions die hard;  but when the
+intellectual classes definitively reject them, they die, with throes of
+terrible agony, may be, and, perhaps, like Samson in the Temple, but
+they cannot permanently outlive a conviction that they are false in the
+leading minds of the age.  Just what has been said of Christianity may
+be said of Mahomedanism and Brahminism. Little or no risk is run while
+occult literature aims merely at putting a reasonable construction on
+perverted tenets--in showing people that truth may lurk behind even the
+strangest theologic fictions.  And the lover of orthodoxy, in either of
+the cases instanced, may welcome the explanation with complacency.  For
+him also, as for the Christian, the faith which he professes--
+sanctioned by what looks like a considerable antiquity to the very
+limited vision of uninitiated historians, and supported by the
+attachment of millions grown old in its service and careful to educate
+their children in the convictions that have served their turn--is
+founded on a rock which has its base in the foundations of the world.
+Fragmentary teachings of occult philosophy seem at first to be no more
+than annotations on the canonical doctrine.  They may even embellish it
+with graceful interpretations of its symbolism, parts of which may have
+seemed to require apology, when ignorantly taken at the foot of the
+letter.  But this is merely the beginning of the attack.  If occult
+philosophy gets before the world with anything resembling completeness,
+it will so command the assent of earnest students that for them nothing
+else of that nature will remain standing. And the earnest students in
+such eases must multiply. They are multiplying now even, merely on the
+strength of the little that has been revealed.  True, as yet--for some
+time to come--the study will be, as it were, the whim of a few;  but
+"those who know," know among other things that, give it fair-play, and
+it must become the subject of enthusiasm with all advanced thinkers. And
+what is to happen when the world is divided into two camps--the whole
+forces of intellectuality and culture on the one side, those of
+ignorance and superstitious fanaticism on the other? With such a war as
+that impending, the adepts, who will be conscious that they prepared the
+lists and armed the combatants, will require some better justification
+for their policy before their own consciences than the reflection that,
+in the beginning, people accused them of selfishness, and of keeping a
+miserly guard over their knowledge, and so goaded them with this taunt
+that they were induced to set the ball rolling.
+
+There is no question, be it understood, as to the relative merits of the
+moral sanctions that are afforded by occult philosophy and those which
+are distilled from the worn-out materials of existing creeds.  If the
+world could conceivably be shunted at one coup from the one code of
+morals to the other, the world would be greatly the better for the
+change.  But the change cannot be made all at once, and the transition
+is most dangerous.  On the other hand, it is no less dangerous to take
+no steps in the direction of that transition.  For though existing
+religions may be a great power--the Pope ruling still over millions of
+consciences if not over towns and States, the name of the Prophet being
+still a word to conjure with in war, the forces of Brahmanical custom
+holding countless millions in willing subjection--in spite of all this,
+the old religions are sapped and past their prime.  They are in process
+of decay, for they are losing their hold on the educated minority;  it
+is still the case that in all countries the camps of orthodoxy include
+large numbers of men distinguished by intellect and culture, but one by
+one their numbers are diminishing.  Five-and-twenty years only, in
+Europe, have made a prodigious change.  Books are written now that pass
+almost as matters of course which would have been impossible no further
+back than that.  No further back, books thrilled society with surprise
+and excitement, which the intellectual world would now ignore as
+embodying the feeblest commonplaces.  The old creeds, in fact, are
+slowly losing their hold upon mankind--more slowly in the more
+deliberately moving East than Europe, but even here by degrees also--and
+a time will come, whether occult philosophy is given out to take their
+place or not, when they will no longer afford even such faulty sanctions
+for moral conduct and right as they have supplied in times gone by.
+Therefore it is plain that something must be given out to take their
+place, and hence the determinations of which this movement in which we
+are engaged is one of the undulations--these very words some of the
+foremost froth upon the advancing wave.
+
+But surely, when something which must be done is yet very dangerous in
+the doing, the persons who control the operations in progress may be
+excused for exercising the utmost caution. Readers of Theosophical
+literature will be aware how bitterly our adept Brothers have been
+criticized for choosing to take their own time and methods in the task
+of partially communicating their knowledge to the world.  Here in India
+these criticisms have been indignantly resented by the passionate
+loyalty to the Mahatmas that is so widely spread among Hindus--resented
+more by instinct than reason in some cases perhaps, though in others, no
+doubt, as a consequence of a full appreciation of all that is being now
+explained, and of other considerations beside.  But in Europe such
+criticisms will have seemed hard to answer.  The answer is really
+embodied, however imperfectly, in the views of the situation now set
+forth.  We ordinary mortals in the world work as men traveling by the
+light of a lantern in an unknown country. We see but a little way to the
+right and left, only a little way behind even.  But the adepts work as
+men traveling by daylight, with the further advantage of being able at
+will to get up in a balloon and survey vast expanses of lake and plain
+and forest.
+
+The choice of time and methods for communicating occult knowledge to the
+world necessarily includes the choice of intermediary agent.  Hence the
+double set of misconceptions in India and Europe, each adapted to the
+land of its origin.  In India, where knowledge of the Brothers'
+existence and reverence for their attributes is widely diffused, it is
+natural that persons who may be chosen for their serviceability rather
+than for their merits, as the recipients of their direct teaching,
+should be regarded with a feeling resembling jealousy.  In Europe, the
+difficulty of getting into any sort of relations with the fountain-head
+of Eastern philosophy is regarded as due to an exasperating
+exclusiveness on the part of the adepts in that philosophy, which
+renders it practically worth no man's while to devote himself to the
+task of soliciting their instruction.  But neither feeling is reasonable
+when considered in the light of the explanations now put forward.  The
+Brothers can consider none but public interests, in the largest sense of
+the words, in throwing out the first experimental flashes of occult
+revelation into the world. They can only employ agents on whom they can
+rely for doing the work as they may wish it done--or, at all events, in
+no manner which may be widely otherwise.  Or they can only protect the
+task on which they are concerned in another way.  They may consent
+sometimes to a very much more direct mode of instruction than that
+provided through intermediary agents for the world at large, in the
+cases of organized societies solemnly pledged to secrecy, for the time
+being at all events, in regard to the teaching to be conveyed to them.
+In reference to such societies, the Brothers need not be on the watch to
+see that the teaching is not worked up for the service of the world in a
+way they would consider, for any reasons of their own, likely to be
+injurious to final results or dangerous.  Different men will assimilate
+the philosophy to be unfolded in different ways:  for some it will be
+too iconoclastic altogether, and its further pursuit, after a certain
+point is reached, unwelcome.  Such persons, entering too hastily on the
+path of exploration, will be able to drop off from the undertaking
+whenever they like, if thoroughly pledged to secrecy in the first
+instance, without being a source of embarrassment afterwards, as regards
+the steady prosecution of the work in hand by other more resolute, or
+less sensitive, labourers.  It may be that in some such societies, if
+any should be formed in which occult philosophy may be secretly studied,
+some of the members will be as well fitted as, or better than, any other
+persons employed elsewhere to put the teachings in shape for
+publication, but in that case it is to be presumed that special
+qualifications will eventually make themselves apparent.  The meaning
+and good sense of the restrictions, provisionally imposed meanwhile,
+will be plain enough to any impartial person on reflection, even though
+their novelty and strangeness may be a little resented at the first
+glance.
+
+--Lay Chela
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL
+
+
+The Puranas on the Dynasty of the Moryas and on Koothoomi
+
+
+It is stated in Matsya Puran, chapter cclxxii., that ten Moryas would
+reign over India, and would be succeeded by the Shoongas, and that Shata
+Dhanva will be the first of these ten Maureyas (or Moryas).
+
+In Vishnu Purana (Book IV. chapter iv.) it is stated that there was in
+the Soorya dynasty a king called Moru, who through the power of devotion
+(Yoga) is said to be still living in the village called Katapa, in the
+Himalayas (vide vol. iii. p. 197, by Wilson), and who, in a future age,
+will be the restorer of the Kshatriya race, in the Solar dynasty, that
+is, many thousands of years hence.  In another part of the same Purana
+(Book IV. chapter xxiv.) it is stated that, "upon the cessation of the
+race of Nanda, the Moryas* will possess the earth, for Kautilya will
+place Chandragupta on the throne."  Col. Tod considers Morya, or Maurya,
+a corruption of Mori, the name of a Rajput tribe.
+
+-------
+* The particulars of this legend are recorded in the Atthata katha of
+the Uttaraviharo priests.
+-------
+
+The Commentary on the Mahavanso thinks that the princes of the town Mori
+were thence called Mauryas.  Vachaspattya, a Sanskrit Encyclopaedia,
+places the village of Katapa on the northern side of the Himalayas--
+hence in Tibet.  The same is stated in chapter xii. (Skanda) of
+Bhagavat, vol. iii. p. 325.  The Vayu Purana seems to declare that Moru
+will re-establish the Kshatriyas in the nineteenth coming Yuga.  In
+chapter vi. Book III. of Vishnu Purana, a Rishi called Koothoomi is
+mentioned.  Will any of our Brothers tell us how our Mahatmas stand to
+these revered personages?
+
+--R. Ragoonath Row
+
+
+
+Editor's Note
+
+In the Buddhist Mahavanso, Chandagatto, or Chandragupta, Asoka's
+grandfather, is called a prince of the Moryan dynasty as he certainly
+was--or rather as they were, for there were several Chandraguptas.  This
+dynasty, as said in the same book, began with certain Kshatriyas
+(warriors) of the Sakya line closely related to Gautama Buddha, who
+crossing the Himavanto (Himalayas) "discovered a delightful location,
+well watered, and situated in the midst of a forest of lofty bo and
+other trees.  There they founded a town, which was called by its Sakya
+lords, Morya-Nagara."  Prof. Max Muller would see in this legend a
+made-up story for two reasons:  (1) A desire on the part of Buddhists to
+connect their king Asoka, "the beloved of gods," with Buddha, and thus
+nullify the slanders set up by the Brahmanical opponents of Buddhism to
+the effect that Asoka and Chandragupta were Sudras; and (2) because this
+document does not dovetail with his own theories and chronology based on
+the fanciful stories of the Greek-Megasthenes and others.  It was not
+the princes of Morya-Nagara who received their name from the Rajput
+tribe of Mori, but the latter that became so well known as being
+composed of the descendants of the Moryan sovereign of Morya-Nagara.
+Some light is thrown on the subsequent destiny of that dynasty in
+"Replies to an English F.T.S." (See ante.)  The name of Rishi Koothoomi
+is mentioned in more than one Purana, and his Code is among the eighteen
+Codes written by various Rishis, and preserved at Calcutta in the
+library of the Asiatic Society.  But we have not been told whether there
+is any connection between our Mahatma of that name and the Rishi, and we
+do not feel justified in speculating upon the subject.  All we know is,
+that both are Northern Brahmans, while the Moryas are Kshatriyas.  If
+any of our Brothers know more, or can discover anything relating to the
+subject in the Sacred Books, we shall hear of it with pleasure. The
+words:  "The Moryas will possess the earth, for Kautilya will place
+Chandragupta on the throne," have in our occult philosophy a dual
+meaning.  In one sense they relate to the days of early Buddhism, when a
+Chandragupta (Morya) was the king "of all the earth," i.e., of Brahmans,
+who believed themselves the highest and only representatives of humanity
+for whom earth was evolved. The second meaning is purely esoteric.
+Every adept or genuine Mahatma is said to "possess the earth," by the
+power of his occult knowledge.  Hence, a series of ten Moryas, all
+initiated adepts, would be regarded by the occultists, and referred to
+as "possessing all the earth," or all its knowledge.  The names of
+"Chandragupta" and "Kautilya" have also an esoteric significance. Let
+our Brother ponder over their Sanskrit meaning, and he will perhaps see
+what bearing the phrase--"for Kautilya will place Chandragupta upon the
+throne"--has upon the Moryas possessing the earth.  We would also remind
+our Brother that the word Itihasa, ordinarily translated as "history,"
+is defined by Sanskrit authorities to be the narrative of the lives of
+some August personages, conveying at the same time meanings of the
+highest moral and occult importance.
+
+
+
+
+The Theory of Cycles
+
+
+It is now some time since this theory--which was first propounded in the
+oldest religion of the world, Vedaism--has been gradually coming into
+prominence again.  It was taught by various Greek philosophers, and
+afterwards defended by the Theosophists of the Middle Ages, but came to
+be flatly denied by the wise men of the West, the world of negations.
+Contrary to the rule, it is the men of science themselves who have
+revived this theory. Statistics of events of the most varied nature are
+fast being collected and collated with the seriousness demanded by
+important scientific questions.  Statistics of wars and of the periods
+(or cycles) of the appearance of great men--at least those who have been
+recognized as such by their contemporaries;  statistics of the periods
+of development and progress of large commercial centres;  of the rise
+and fall of arts and sciences;  of cataclysms, such as earthquakes,
+epidemics;  periods of extraordinary cold and heat;  cycles of
+revolutions, and of the rise and fall of empires, &c.:  all these are
+subjected in turn to the analysis of the minutest mathematical
+calculations. Finally, even the occult significance of numbers in names
+of persons and cities, in events, and like matters, receives unwonted
+attention.  If, on the one hand, a great portion of the educated public
+is running into atheism and scepticism, on the other hand, we find an
+evident current of mysticism forcing its way into science.  It is the
+sign of an irrepressible need in humanity to assure itself that there is
+a power paramount over matter;  an occult and mysterious law which
+governs the world, and which we should rather study and closely watch,
+trying to adapt ourselves to it, than blindly deny, and dash ourselves
+vainly against the rock of destiny.  More than one thoughtful mind,
+while studying the fortunes and reverses of nations and great empires,
+has been struck by one identical feature in their history--namely, the
+inevitable recurrence of similar events, and after equal periods of
+time.  This relation between events is found to be substantially
+constant, though differences in the outward form of details no doubt
+occur.  Thus the belief of the ancients in their astrologers,
+soothsayers and prophets might have been warranted by the verification
+of many of their most important predictions, without these
+prognostications of future events implying of necessity anything very
+miraculous.  The soothsayers and augurs having occupied in days of the
+old civilizations the very same position now occupied by our historians,
+astronomers and meteorologists, there was nothing more wonderful in the
+fact of the former predicting the downfall of an empire or the loss of a
+battle, than in the latter predicting the return of a comet, a change of
+temperature, or perhaps the final conquest of Afghanistan.  Both studied
+exact sciences;  for, if the astronomer of today draws his observations
+from mathematical calculations, the astrologer of old also based his
+prognostication upon no less acute and mathematically correct
+observations of the ever-recurring cycles.  And, because the secret of
+this ancient science is now being lost, does that give any warrant for
+saying that it never existed, or that to believe in it, one must be
+ready to swallow "magic," "miracles" and the like?  "If, in view of the
+eminence to which modern science has reached, the claim to prophesy
+future events must be regarded as either child's play or a deliberate
+deception," says a writer in the Novoye Vremja, "then we can point at
+science which, in its turn, has now taken up and placed on record the
+question, whether there is or is not in the constant repetition of
+events a certain periodicity;  in other words, whether these events
+recur after a fixed and determined period of years with every nation;
+and if a periodicity there be, whether this periodicity is due to blind
+chance, or depends on the same natural laws which govern the phenomena
+of human life."  Undoubtedly the latter.  And the writer has the best
+mathematical proof of it in the timely appearance of such works as that
+of Dr. E. Zasse, and others. Several learned works treating upon this
+mystical subject have appeared of late, and to some of these works and
+calculations we shall presently refer.  A very suggestive work by a
+well-known German scientist, E. Zasse, appears in the Prussian Journal
+of Statistics, powerfully corroborating the ancient theory of cycles.
+These periods which bring around ever-recurring events, begin from the
+infinitesimally small--say of ten years--rotation, and reach to cycles
+which require 250, 500, 700, and 1000 years to effect their revolutions
+around themselves, and within one another.  All are contained within the
+Maha-Yug, the "Great Age" or Cycle of Manu's calculation, which itself
+revolves between two eternities--the "Pralayas" or Nights of Brahma.
+As, in the objective world of matter, or the system of effects, the
+minor constellations and planets gravitate each and all around the sun,
+so in the world of the subjective, or the system of causes, these
+innumerable cycles all gravitate between that which the finite intellect
+of the ordinary mortal regards as eternity, and the still finite, but
+more profound, intuition of the sage and philosopher views as but an
+eternity within THE ETERNITY.  "As above, so it is below," runs the old
+Hermetic maxim.  As an experiment in this direction, Dr. Zasse selected
+the statistical investigations of all the wars recorded in history, as a
+subject which lends itself more easily to scientific verification than
+any other.  To illustrate his subject in the simplest and most easily
+comprehensible manner, Dr. Zasse represents the periods of war and the
+periods of peace in the shape of small and large wave-lines running over
+the area of the Old World.  The idea is not a new one, for the image was
+used for similar illustrations by more than one ancient and medieval
+mystic, whether in words or pictures--by Henry Kunrath, for example.
+But it serves well its purpose, and gives us the facts we now want.
+Before he treats, however, of the cycles of wars, the author brings in
+the record of the rise and fall of the world's great empires, and shows
+the degree of activity they have played in the Universal History.  He
+points out the fact that if we divide the map of the Old World into six
+parts--into Eastern, Central, and Western Asia, Eastern and Western
+Europe, and Egypt--then we shall easily perceive that every 250 years an
+enormous wave passes over these areas, bringing to each in its turn the
+events it has brought to the one next preceding.  This wave we may call
+"the historical wave" of the 250 years' cycle.
+
+The first of these waves began in China 2000 years B.C., in the "golden
+age" of this empire, the age of philosophy, of discoveries, of reforms.
+"In 1750 B.C. the Mongolians of Central Asia establish a powerful
+empire.  In 1500, Egypt rises from its temporary degradation and extends
+its sway over many parts of Europe and Asia;  and about 1250, the
+historical wave reaches and crosses over to Eastern Europe, filling it
+with the spirit of the Argonautic Expedition, and dies out in 1000 B.C.
+at the Siege of Troy."
+
+The second historical wave appears about that time in Central Asia.
+"The Scythians leave her steppes, and inundate towards the year 750 B.C.
+the adjoining countries, directing themselves towards the south and
+west;  about the year 500, in Western Asia begins an epoch of splendour
+for ancient Persia;  and the wave moves on to the east of Europe, where,
+about 250 B.C., Greece reaches her highest state of culture and
+civilization--and further on to the west, where, at the birth of Christ,
+the Roman Empire finds itself at its apogee of power and greatness."
+
+Again, at this period we find the rising of a third historical wave at
+the far East.  After prolonged revolutions, about this time, China forms
+once more a powerful empire, and its arts, sciences and commerce
+flourish again.  Then 250 years later, we find the Huns appearing from
+the depths of Central Asia;  in the year 500 A.D., a new and powerful
+Persian kingdom is formed;  in 750--in Eastern Europe--the Byzantine
+empire;  and in the year 1000--on its western side--springs up the
+second Roman Power, the Empire of the Papacy, which soon reaches an
+extraordinary development of wealth and brilliancy.
+
+At the same time the fourth wave approaches from the Orient. China is
+again flourishing;  in 1250, the Mongolian wave from Central Asia has
+overflowed and covered an enormous area of land, including Russia.
+About 1500, in Western Asia the Ottoman Empire rises in all its might,
+and conquers the Balkan peninsula;  but at the same time, in Eastern
+Europe, Russia throws off the Tartar yoke;  and about 1750, during the
+reign of Empress Catherine, rises to an unexpected grandeur, and covers
+itself with glory. The wave ceaselessly moves further on to the West;
+and beginning with the middle of the past century, Europe is living over
+an epoch of revolutions and reforms, and, according to the author, "if
+it is permissible to prophesy, then about the year 2000, Western Europe
+will have lived through one of those periods of culture and progress so
+rare in history."  The Russian press taking the cue believes, that
+"towards those days the Eastern Question will be finally settled, the
+national dissensions of the European peoples will come to an end, and
+the dawn of the new millennium will witness the abolition of armies and
+an alliance between all the European empires." The signs of regeneration
+are also fast multiplying in Japan and China, as if pointing to the rise
+of a new historical wave in the extreme East.
+
+If from the cycle of two-and-a-half centuries we descend to that which
+leaves its impress every century, and, grouping together the events of
+ancient history, mark the development and rise of empires, then we shall
+find that, beginning from the year 700 B.C., the centennial wave pushes
+forward, bringing into prominence the following nations, each in its
+turn--the Assyrians, the Medes, the Babylonians, the Persians, the
+Greeks, the Macedonians, the Carthagenians, the Romans, and the Teutons.
+
+The striking periodicity of the wars in Europe is also noticed by Dr. E.
+Zasse.  Beginning with 1700 A.D., every ten years have been signalized
+by either a war or a revolution.  The periods of the strengthening and
+weakening of the warlike excitement of the European nations represent a
+wave strikingly regular in its periodicity, flowing incessantly, as if
+propelled onward by some fixed inscrutable law.  This same mysterious
+law seems also to connect these events with the astronomical wave or
+cycle, which governs the periodicity of solar spots.  The periods when
+the European powers have shown the most destructive energy are marked by
+a cycle of fifty years' duration.  It would be too long and tedious to
+enumerate them from the beginning of history.  We may, therefore, limit
+our study to the cycle beginning with the year 1712, when all the
+European nations were fighting each other in the Northern, and the
+Turkish wars, and the war for the throne of Spain.  About 1761, the
+"Seven Years' War";  in 1810, the wars of Napoleon I.  Towards 1861, the
+wave has been a little deflected from its regular course;  but, as if to
+compensate for it, or propelled, perhaps, with unusual force, the years
+directly preceding, as well as those which followed it, left in history
+the records of the most fierce and bloody wars--the Crimean War in the
+former, and the American Civil War in the latter period. The periodicity
+in the wars between Russia and Turkey appears peculiarly striking, and
+represents a very characteristic wave. At first the intervals between
+the cycles of thirty years' duration--1710, 1740, 1770 then these
+intervals diminish, and we have a cycle of twenty years--1790, 1810,
+1829-30;  then the intervals widen again--1853 and 1878.  But if we take
+note of the whole duration of the in-flowing tide of the war-like cycle,
+then we shall have at the centre of it--from 1768 to 1812--three wars of
+seven years' duration each, and at both ends, wars of two years.
+
+Finally, the author comes to the conclusion that, in view of facts, it
+becomes thoroughly impossible to deny the presence of a regular
+periodicity in the excitement of both mental and physical forces in the
+nations of the world.  He proves that in the history of all the peoples
+and empires of the Old World, the cycles marking the millenniums, the
+centennials as well as the minor ones of fifty and ten years' duration,
+are the most important, inasmuch as neither of them has ever yet failed
+to bring in its train some more or less marked event in the history of
+the nation swept over by these historical waves.
+
+The history of India is one which, of all histories, is the most vague
+and least satisfactory.  Yet were its consecutive great events noted
+down, and its annals well searched, the law of cycles would be found to
+have asserted itself here as plainly as in every other country in
+respect of its wars, famines, political exigencies, and other matters.
+
+In France, a meteorologist of Paris went to the trouble of compiling the
+statistics of the coldest seasons, and discovered that those years which
+had the figure 9 in them had been marked by the severest winters.  His
+figures run thus:--in 859 A.D., the northern part of the Adriatic Sea
+was frozen, and was covered for three months with ice.  In 1179, In the
+most moderate zones, the earth was covered with several feet of snow.
+In 1209, in France the depth of snow and the bitter cold caused such a
+scarcity of fodder that most of the cattle perished in that country.  In
+1249, the Baltic Sea between Russia, Norway and Sweden remained frozen
+for many months, and communication was kept up by sleighs. In 1339,
+there was such a terrific winter in England, that vast numbers of people
+died of starvation and exposure.  In 1409, the river Danube was frozen
+from its sources to its mouth in the Black Sea.
+
+In 1469, all the vineyards and orchards perished in consequence of the
+frost.  In 1609, in France, Switzerland and Upper Italy, people had to
+thaw their bread and provisions before they could use them.  In 1639,
+the Harbour of Marseilles was covered with ice to a great distance.  In
+1659, all the rivers in Italy were frozen.  In 1699, the winter in
+France and Italy proved the severest and longest of all.  The prices for
+articles of food were so much raised that half of the population died of
+starvation.  In 1709, the winter was no less terrible.  The ground was
+frozen in France, Italy and Switzerland to the depth of several feet;
+and the sea, south as well as north, was covered with one compact and
+thick crust of ice, many feet deep, and for a considerable distance in
+the usually open sea.  Numbers of wild beasts, driven out by the cold
+from their dens in the forests, sought refuge in villages and even
+cities;  and the birds fell dead to the ground by hundreds.  In 1729,
+1749 and 1769 (cycles of twenty years' duration), all the rivers and
+streams were ice-bound all over France for many weeks, and all the fruit
+trees perished.  In 1789, France was again visited by a very severe
+winter.  In Paris, the thermometer stood at nineteen degrees of frost.
+But the severest of all winters proved that of 1829.  For fifty-four
+consecutive days all the roads in France were covered, with snow several
+feet deep, and all the rivers were frozen.  Famine and misery reached
+their climax in the country in that year.  In 1839, there was again in
+France a most terrific and trying cold season.  And the winter of 1879
+has asserted its statistical rights, and proved true to the fatal
+influence of the figure 9.  The meteorologists of other countries are
+invited to follow suit, and make their investigations likewise, for the
+subject is certainly most fascinating as well as most instructive.
+
+Enough has been shown, however, to prove that neither the ideas of
+Pythagoras on the mysterious influence of numbers, nor the theories of
+the ancient world-religions and philosophies are as shallow and
+meaningless as some too forward thinkers would have had the world to
+believe.
+
+--H.P.B.
+
+
+
+
+SCIENTIFIC
+
+
+Odorigen and Jiva
+
+
+Professor Yaeger of Stuttgart has made a very interesting study of the
+sense of smell.  He starts from the fact well known in medical
+jurisprudence, that the blood of an animal when treated by sulphuric, or
+indeed by any other decomposing acid, smells like the animal itself to
+which it belongs.  This holds good even after the blood has been long
+dried.
+
+Let us state before all what is to be understood by the smell of a
+certain animal.  There is the pure, specific smell of the animal,
+inherent in its flesh, or, as we shall see hereafter, in certain
+portions of its flesh.  This smell is best perceived when the flesh is
+gently boiling in water.  The broth thereby obtained contains the
+specific taste and smell of the animal--I call it specific, because
+every species, nay every variety of species, has its own peculiar taste
+and smell.  Think of mutton broth, chicken broth, fish broth, &c. &c.  I
+shall call this smell, the specific scent of the animal.  I need not say
+that the scent of an animal is quite different from all such odours as
+are generated within its organism, along with its various secretions and
+excretions:  bile, gastric juice, sweat, &c.  These odours are again
+different in the different species and varieties of animals.  The
+cutaneous exhalation of the goat, the sheep, the donkey, widely differ
+from each other;  and a similar difference prevails with regard to all
+the other effluvia of these animals. In fact, as far as olfactory
+experience goes, we may say that the odour of each secretion and
+excretion of a certain species of animals is peculiar to itself, and
+characteristically different in the similar products of another species.
+
+By altering the food of an animal we may considerably alter all the
+above-mentioned odours, scents, as well as smells;  yet essentially they
+will always retain their specific odoriferous type.  All this is matter
+of strict experience.
+
+Strongly diffusive as all these odorous substances are, they permeate
+the whole organism, and each of them contributes its share to what in
+the aggregate constitutes the smell of the living animal.  It is
+altogether an excrementitious smell tempered by the scent of the animal.
+That excrementitious smell we shall henceforth simply call the smell, in
+contradistinction to the scent of the animal.
+
+To return after this not very pleasant, but nevertheless necessary
+digression, to our subject.  Professor Yaeger found that blood, treated
+by an acid, may emit the scent or the smell of the animal, according as
+the acid is weak or strong.  A strong acid, rapidly disintegrating the
+blood, brings out the animal's smell; a weak acid, the animal's scent.
+
+We see, then, that in every drop of blood of a certain species of
+animal, and we may as well say, in each of its blood corpuscles, and in
+the last instance, in each of its molecules, the respective animal
+species is fully represented, as to its odorant speciality, under both
+aspects of scent and smell.
+
+We have, then, on the one side, the fact before us that wherever we meet
+in the animal kingdom with difference of shape, form, and construction,
+so different as to constitute a class, a genus, or a family of its own,
+there we meet at the same time with a distinct and specific scent and
+smell.  On the other hand, we know that these specific odours are
+invariably interblended with the very life-blood of the animal.  And
+lastly, we know that these specific odours cannot be accounted for by
+any agents taken up in the shape of food from the outer world.  We are,
+then, driven to the conclusion that they are properties of the inner
+animal;  that they, in other words, pertain to the specific protoplasm
+of the animal concerned.
+
+And thus our conclusion attains almost certainty, when we remember that
+it stands the crucial test of experiment--that we need only decompose
+the blood in order to find there what we contend to be an essential
+ingredient of it.
+
+I must now say a few words in explanation of the term protoplasm.
+Protoplasm is a soft, gelatinous substance, transparent and homogeneous,
+easily seen in large plant-cells;  it may be compared to the white of an
+egg.  When at rest all sorts of vibratory, quivering and trembling
+movements can be observed within its mass.  It forms the living material
+in all vegetable and animal cells;  in fact, it is that component of the
+body which really does the vital work.  It is the formative agent of all
+living tissues.  Vital activity, in the broadest sense of the term,
+manifests itself in the development of the germ into the complete
+organism, repeating the type of its parents, and in the subsequent
+maintenance of that organism in its integrity and both these functions
+are exclusively carried on by the protoplasm.  Of course, there is a
+good deal of chemical and mechanical work done in the organism, but
+protoplasm is the formative agent of all the tissues and structures.
+
+Of tissues and structures already formed, we may fairly say that they
+have passed out of the realms of vitality, as they are destined to
+gradual disintegration and decay in the course of life;  it is they that
+are on the way of being cast out of the organism, when they have once
+run through the scale of retrograde metamorphosis;  and it is they that
+give rise to what we have called the smell of the animal.  What lives in
+them is the protoplasm.
+
+In the shape of food the outer world supplies the organism with all the
+materials necessary for the building up of the constantly wasting
+organic structures;  and, in the shape of heat, there comes from the
+outer world that other element necessary for structural changes,
+development and growth--the element of force. But the task of directing
+all the outward materials to the development and maintenance of the
+organism--in other words, the task of the director-general of the
+organic economy falls to the protoplasm.
+
+Now this wonderful substance, chemically and physically the same in the
+highest animal and in the lowest plant, has been all along the puzzle of
+the biologist.  How is it that in man protoplasm works out human
+structure;  in fowl, fowl structure, &c. &c., while the protoplasm
+itself appears to be everywhere the same? To Professor Yaeger belongs
+the great merit of having shown us that the protoplasms of the various
+species of plants and animals are not the same;  that each of them
+contains, moreover, imbedded in its molecules, odorant substances
+peculiar to the one species and not to the other.
+
+That, on the other hand, those odorous substances are by no means
+inactive bodies, may be inferred from their great volatility, known as
+it is in physical science that volatility is owing to a state of atomic
+activity.  Prevost has described two phenomena that are presented by
+odorous substances.  One is that, when placed on water, they begin to
+move;  and the other is, that a thin layer of water, extended on a
+perfectly clean glass plate, retracts when such an odorous substance as
+camphor is placed upon it.  Monsieur Ligeois has further shown that the
+particles of an odorous body, placed on water, undergo a rapid division,
+and that the movements of camphor, or of benzoic acid, are inhibited, or
+altogether arrested, if an odorous substance be brought into contact
+with the water in which they are moving.
+
+Seeing, then, that odorous substances, when coming in contact with
+liquid bodies, assume a peculiar motion, and impart at the same time
+motion to the liquid body, we may fairly conclude that the specific
+formative capacity of the protoplasm is owing, not to the protoplasm
+itself, since it is everywhere alike, but to the inherent, specific,
+odoriferous substances.
+
+I shall only add that Professor Yaeger's theory may be carried farther
+yet.  Each metal has also a certain taste and odour peculiar to itself;
+in other words, they are also endowed with odoriferous substances.  And
+this may help us to explain the fact that each metal, when crystallizing
+out of a liquid solution, invariably assumes a distinct geometrical
+form, by which it may be distinguished from any other.  Common salt, for
+instance, invariably crystallizes in cubes, alum in octohedra, and so
+on.
+
+Professor Yaeger's theory explains further to us that other great
+mystery of Nature--the transmission from parent to offspring of the
+morphological speciality.  This is another puzzle of the biologist.
+What is there in the embryonal germ that evolves out of the materials
+stored up therein a frame similar to the parents?  In other words, what
+is there that presides over the preservation of the species, working out
+the miniature duplicate of the parents' configuration and character?  It
+is the protoplasm, no doubt;  and the female ovum contains protoplasm in
+abundance.  But neither the physicist nor the chemist can detect any
+difference between the primordial germ, say of the fowl, and that of a
+female of the human race.
+
+In answer to this question--a question before which science stands
+perplexed--we need only remember what has been said before about the
+protoplasmic scent.  We have spoken before of the specific scent of the
+animal as a whole.  We know, however, that every organ and tissue in a
+given animal has again its peculiar scent and taste.  The scent and
+taste of the liver, spleen, brain, &c., are quite different in the same
+animal.
+
+And if our theory is correct, then it could not be otherwise. Each of
+these organs is differently constructed, and as variety of organic
+structure is supposed to be dependent upon variety of scent, there must
+necessarily be a specific cerebral scent, a specific splenetic scent, a
+specific hepatic scent, &c. &c.  What we call, then, the specific scent
+of the living animal must, therefore, be considered as the aggregate of
+all the different scents of its organs.
+
+When we see that a weak solution of sulphuric acid is capable of
+disengaging from the blood the scent of the animal, we shall then bear
+in mind that this odorous emanation contains particles of all the scents
+peculiar to each tissue and organ of the animal.  When we further say
+that each organ in a living animal draws by selective affinity from the
+blood those materials which are necessary for its sustenance, we must
+not forget that each organ draws at the same time by a similar selective
+affinity the specific odorous substances requisite for its constructive
+requirements.
+
+We have now only to suppose that the embryonal germ contains, like the
+blood itself, all the odorous substances pertaining to the various
+tissues and organs of the parent, and we shall understand which is the
+moving principle in the germ that evolves an offspring, shaped in the
+image and after the likeness of the parents.
+
+In plants it is the blossom which is entrusted with the function of
+reproduction, and the odorous emanations accompanying that process are
+well known.  There is strong reason to believe that something similar
+prevails in the case of animals, as may be seen from an examination of
+what embryologists call the aura seminalis.
+
+Let us now inquire what the effects are of odours generated in the outer
+world on animals.  The odorous impressions produced may be pleasant or
+unpleasant, pleasant to one and unpleasant to another animal.  What is
+it that constitutes this sensation of pleasure or displeasure?
+Professor Yaeger answers, It is harmony or disharmony which makes all
+the difference.  The olfactory organs of each animal are impregnated by
+its own specific scent. Whenever the odorous waves of a substance
+harmonize in their vibration with the odorous waves emanating from the
+animal;  in other words, whenever they fall in and agree with each
+other, an agreeable sensation is produced;  whenever the reverse takes
+places, the sensation is disagreeable.  In this way it is that the odour
+regulates the choice of the food on the part of the animal.  In a
+similar way the sympathies and antipathies between the various animals
+are regulated.  For every individual has not only its specific but also
+its individual scent.  The selection between the sexes, or what, in the
+case of the human race, is called love, has its mainspring in the
+odorous harmony subsisting in the two individuals concerned.
+
+This individual scent--a variation of the specific odorous type--alters
+(within the limits of its speciality) with age, with the particular mode
+of occupation, with the sex, with certain physiological conditions and
+functions during life, with the state of health, and last, but not
+least, with the state of our mind.
+
+It is to be remembered that every time protoplasm undergoes
+disintegration, specific odours are set free.  We have seen how
+sulphuric acid, or heat, when boiling or roasting meat, brings out the
+specific animal odour.  But it is an established fact in science, that
+every physical or mental operation is accompanied by disintegration of
+tissue;  consequently we are entitled to say that with every emotion
+odours are being disengaged.  It can be shown that the quality of those
+odours differ with the nature of the emotion.  The prescribed limits
+prevent further pursuit of the subject;  I shall, therefore, content
+myself by drawing some conclusions from Professor Yaeger's theory in the
+light of the Esoteric Doctrine.
+
+The phenomena of mesmeric cures find their full explanation in the
+theory just enunciated.  For since the construction and preservation of
+the organism, and of every organ in particular, is owing to specific
+scents, we may fairly look upon disease in general as a disturbance of
+the specific scent of the organism, and upon disease of a particular
+organ of the body, as a disturbance of the specific scent pertaining to
+that particular organ.  We have been hitherto in the habit of holding
+the protoplasm responsible for all phenomena of disease.  We have now
+come to learn that what acts in the protoplasm are the scents; we shall,
+therefore, have to look to them as the ultimate cause of morbid
+phenomena.  I have mentioned before the experiment of Mons. Ligeois,
+showing that odoriferous substances, when brought in contact with water,
+move;  and that the motion of one odoriferous substance may be
+inhibited, or arrested altogether, by the presence of another
+odoriferous substance.  Epidemic diseases, and the zymotic diseases in
+particular, have, then, most likely their origin in some local odours
+which inhibit the action of our specific organic odours.  In the case of
+hereditary diseases, it is most likely the transmission of morbid
+specific odours from parent to offspring that is the cause of the evil,
+knowing, as we do, that in disease the natural specific odour is
+altered, and must, therefore, have been altered in the diseased parent.
+
+Now comes the mesmeriser.  He approaches the sick with the strong
+determination to cure him.  This determination, or effort of the will,
+is absolutely necessary, according to the agreement of all mesmerisers,
+for his curative success.  Now an effort of the will is a mental
+operation, and is, therefore, accompanied by tissue disintegration.  The
+effort being purely mental, we may say it is accompanied by
+disintegration of cerebral and nervous tissue. But disintegration of
+organic tissue means, as we have seen before, disengagement of specific
+scents;  the mesmeriser emits, then, during his operation, scents from
+his own body.  And as the patient's sufferings are supposed to originate
+from a deficiency or alteration of his own specific scent, we can well
+see how the mesmeriser, by his mesmeric or odoriferous emanations, may
+effect a cure.  He may supply the want of certain odoriferous substances
+in the patient, or he may correct others by his own emanations, knowing,
+as we do, from the experiment of Mons. Ligeois, that odorant matter does
+act on odorant matter.
+
+One remark more and I have done.  By the Esoteric Doctrine we are told
+that the living body is divided into two parts:
+
+1. The physical body, composed wholly of matter in its grossest and most
+tangible form.
+
+2. The vital principle (or Jiva), a form of force indestructible, and,
+when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming attracted immediately
+by others.
+
+Now this division, generally speaking, fully agrees with the teachings
+of science.  I need only remind you of what I have said before with
+regard to the formed tissues and structures of the body and its
+formative agent the protoplasm.  Formed structure is considered as
+material which has already passed out of the realms of life;  what lives
+in it is the protoplasm.  So far the esoteric conception fully agrees
+with the result of the latest investigations of modern science.
+
+But when we are told by the Esoteric Doctrine that the vital principle
+is indestructible, we feel we move on occult, incomprehensible ground,
+for we know that protoplasm is, after all, as destructible as the body
+itself.  It lives as long as life lasts, and, it may be said, it is the
+only material in the body that does live as long as life lasts.  But it
+dies with the cessation of life.  It is true it is capable of a sort of
+resuscitation.  For that very dead protoplasm, be it animal or
+vegetable, serves again as our food, and as the food of all the animal
+world, and thus helps to repair our constantly wasting economy.  But for
+all that it could hardly be said to be indestructible;  it is
+assimilable--that is to say, capable of re-entering the domain of life,
+through its being taken up by a living body.  But such an eventual
+chance does by no means confer upon it the attribute of
+indestructibility;  for we need only leave the dead animal or plant
+containing the protoplasm alone, and it will rot and decay--organs,
+tissues, and protoplasm altogether.
+
+To our further perplexity the Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital
+principle is not only indestructible, but it is a form of force, which,
+when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted immediately
+by others.  The vital principle to the Esoteric Doctrine would then
+appear to be a sort of abstract force, not a force inherent in the
+living protoplasm--this is the scientific conception--but a force per
+se, independent altogether of the material with which it is connected.
+
+Now I must confess this is a doctrine which puzzles one greatly,
+although one may have no difficulty in accepting the spirit of man as an
+entity, for the phenomena of ratiocination are altogether so widely
+different from all physical phenomena that they can hardly be explained
+by any of the physical forces known to us.  The materialist, who tells
+us that consciousness, sensation, thought, and the spontaneous power of
+the will, so peculiar to man and to the higher animals, are altogether
+so many outcomes of certain conditions of matter and nothing else, makes
+at best merely a subjective statement.  He cannot help acknowledging
+that spontaneity is not a quality of matter.  He is then driven to the
+contention that what we believe to be spontaneous in us, is, after all,
+an unconscious result of external impulses only.  His contention rests
+then on the basis of his own inner experience, or what he believes to be
+such. This contention of his is, however, disputed by many, who no less
+appeal to their own inner experience, or what they believe to be their
+experience.  It is then a question of inner experience of the one party
+versus inner experience of the other.  And such being the case, the
+scientific materialist is driven to admit that his theory, however
+correct it may be, rests, after all, on subjective experience, and can,
+as such, not claim the rank of positive knowledge.  There is then no
+difficulty in accepting the entity of the spirit in man, the
+materialistic assertion to the contrary notwithstanding.  But the vital
+force is exclusively concerned with the construction of matter.  Here we
+have a right to expect that physical and chemical forces should hold the
+whole ground of an explanation, if an explanation is possible at all.
+Now, physical and chemical forces are no entities;  they are invariably
+connected with matter.  In fact, they are so intimately connected with
+matter that they can never be dissevered from it altogether.  The energy
+of matter may be latent or patent, and, when patent, it may manifest
+itself in one form or the other, according to the condition of its
+surroundings;  it may manifest itself in the shape of light, heat,
+electricity, magnetism, or vitality;  but in one form or the other
+energy constantly inheres in matter.  The correlation of forces is now a
+well-established, scientific fact, and it is more than plausible that
+what is called the vital principle, or the vital force, forms a link in
+the chain of the other known physical forces, and is, therefore,
+transmutable into any of them;  granted even that there is such a thing
+as a distinct vital force.  The tendency of modern Biology is then to
+discard the notion of a vital entity altogether.  If vital force is to
+be indestructible, then so are also indestructible heat, light,
+electricity, &c.;  they are indestructible in this sense, that whenever
+their respective manifestation is suspended or arrested, they make their
+appearance in some other form of force;  and in this very same sense
+vital force may be looked upon as indestructible:  whenever vital
+manifestation is arrested, what had been acting as vital force is
+transformed into chemical, electrical forces, &c., taking its place.
+
+But the Esoteric Doctrine appears to teach something quite different
+from what I have just explained, and what is, as far as I understand, a
+fair representation of the scientific conception of the subject.  The
+Esoteric Doctrine tells us that the vital principle is indestructible,
+and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becomes attracted by
+others.  He then evidently holds that, what constitutes the vital
+principle is a principle or form of force per se, a form of force which
+can leave one set of atoms and go over as such to another set, without
+leaving any substitute force behind.  This, it must be said, is simply
+irreconcileable with the scientific view on the subject as hitherto
+understood.
+
+By the and of Professor Yaeger's theory this difficulty can be
+explained, I am happy to say, in a most satisfactory way.
+
+The seat of the vital principle, according to Professor Yaeger's theory,
+is not the protoplasm, but the odorant matter imbedded in it.  And such
+being the case, the vital principle, as far as it can be reached by the
+breaking up of its animated protoplasm, is really indestructible.  You
+destroy the protoplasm by burning it, by treating it with sulphuric
+acid, or any other decomposing agent--the odoriferous substances, far
+from being destroyed, become only so much the more manifest;  they
+escape the moment protoplasmic destruction or decomposition begins,
+carrying along with them the vital principle, or what has been acting as
+such in the protoplasm.  And as they are volatile, they must soon meet
+with other protoplasms congenial to their nature, and set up there the
+same kind of vital activity as they have done in their former habitat.
+They are, as the Esoteric Doctrine rightly teaches, indestructible, and
+when disconnected with one set of atoms, they immediately become
+attracted by others.
+
+--L. Salzer, M.D.
+
+
+
+
+
+Odorigen and Jiva (II.)
+
+
+There is a well-known Sanskrit treatise, where most of the deductions of
+Dr. Yaeger are anticipated and practically applied to sexual selection
+in the human species.  The subject of aura seminalis finds a pretty full
+treatment there.  The connection between what Dr. Yaeger calls
+"odorigen" and jiva or prana, as it is differently called in different
+systems of Indian philosophy, has been well traced.  But his remarks on
+this subject, able as they no doubt are, call for a few observations
+from the point of view of occult philosophy.  Jiva has been described by
+a trustworthy authority as a "form of force indestructible, and, when
+disconnected with one set of atoms, is immediately attracted by another
+set."  Dr. Salzer concludes from this that occult philosophy looks upon
+it as an abstract force or force per se. But surely this is bending too
+much to the Procrustean phraseology of modern science, and if not
+properly guarded will lead to some misapprehension.  Matter in occult
+philosophy means existence in the widest sense of that word.  However
+much the various forms of existence, such as physical, vital, mental,
+spiritual, &c., differ from each other, they are mutually related as
+being parts of the ONE UNIVERSAL EXISTENCE, the Parabrahma of the
+Vedantist.  Force is the inherent power or capacity of Parabrahma, or
+the "matter" of occultism, to assume different forms.  This power or
+capacity is not a separate entity, but is the thing itself in which it
+inheres, just as the three-angled character of a triangle is nothing
+separate from the triangle itself.  From this it will be abundantly
+clear that, accepting the nomenclature of occult science, one cannot
+speak of an abstract force without being guilty of a palpable absurdity.
+What is meant by Jiva being a "form of force," &c., is that it is matter
+in a state in which it exhibits certain phenomena, not produced by it in
+its sensuous state;  or, in other words, it is a property of matter in a
+particular state, corresponding with properties called, under ordinary
+circumstances, heat, electricity, &c., by modern science, but at the
+same time without any correlation to them.  It might here be objected
+that if Jiva was not a force per se, in the sense which modern science
+would attach to the phrase, then how can it survive unchanged the grand
+change called death, which the protoplasms it inheres in undergo? and
+even granting that Jiva is matter in a particular state, in what part of
+the body shall we locate it, in the teeth of the fact that the most
+careful examination has not been successful in detecting it?  Jiva, as
+has already been stated, is subtle supersensuous matter, permeating the
+entire physical structure of the living being, and when it is separated
+from such structure life is said to become extinct.  It is not
+reasonable therefore to expect it to be subject to detection by the
+surgeon's knife. A particular set of conditions is necessary for its
+connection with an animal structure, and when those conditions are
+disturbed, it is attracted by other bodies, presenting suitable
+conditions.  Dr. Yaegar's "odorigen" is not Jiva itself, but is one of
+the links which connects it with the physical body;  it seems to be
+matter standing between Sthula Sarira (gross body) and Jiva.
+
+--Dharanidar Kauthumi
+
+
+
+
+Introversion of Mental Vision
+
+
+Some interesting experiments have recently been tried by Mr. F.W.H.
+Myers and his colleagues of the Psychic Research Society of London,
+which, if properly examined, are capable of yielding highly important
+results.  With the details of these we are not at present concerned:  it
+will suffice for our purpose to state, for the benefit of readers
+unacquainted with the experiments, that in a very large majority of
+cases, too numerous to be the result of mere chance, it was found that
+the thought-reading sensitive obtained but an inverted mental picture of
+the object given him to read.  A piece of paper, containing the
+representation of an arrow, was held before a carefully blindfolded
+thought-reader, who was requested to mentally see the arrow as it was
+turned round.  In these circumstances it was found that when the
+arrow-head pointed to the right, it was read off as pointing to the
+left, and so on.  This led some to imagine that there was a mirage in
+the inner as well as on the outer plane of optical sensation.  But the
+real explanation of the phenomenon lies deeper.
+
+It is well known that an object as seen by us and its image on the
+retina of the eye, are not exactly the same in position, but quite the
+reverse.  How the image of an object on the retina is inverted in
+sensation, is a mystery which physical science is admittedly incapable
+of solving.  Western metaphysics, too, with regard to this point, hardly
+fares any better;  there are as many theories as there are
+metaphysicians.  The only philosopher who has obtained a glimpse of the
+truth is the idealist Berkeley, who says that a child does really see a
+thing inverted from our standpoint;  to touch its head it stretches out
+its hands in the same direction of its body as we do of ours to reach
+our feet. Repeated failures give experience and lead to the correction
+of the notions born of one sense by those derived through another; the
+sensations of distance and solidity are produced in the same way.
+
+The application of this knowledge to the above mentioned experiments of
+the Psychic Research Society will lead to very suggestive results.  If
+the trained adept is a person who has developed all his interior
+faculties, and is on the psychic plane in the full possession of his
+senses, the individual, who accidentally, that is, without occult
+training, gains the inner sight, is in the position of a helpless
+child--a sport of the freaks of one isolated inner sense.  Such was the
+case with the sensitives with whom Mr. Myers and his colleagues
+experimented. There are instances, however, when the correction of one
+sense by another takes place involuntarily and accurate results are
+brought out.  When the sensitive reads the thoughts in a man's mind,
+this correction is not required, for the will of the thinker shoots the
+thoughts, as it were, straight into the mind of the sensitive.  The
+introversion under notice will, moreover, be found to take place only in
+the instance of such images which cannot be corrected by the already
+acquired sense-experience of the sensitive.  A difficulty may here
+suggest itself with regard to the names of persons or the words thought
+of for the sensitive's reading.  But allowance must in such cases be
+made for the operation of the thinker's will, which forces the thought
+into the sensitive's mind, and thereby obviates introversion.  It is
+abundantly clear from this that the best way of studying these phenomena
+is when only one set of inner faculties, that of the sensitive, is in
+play.  This takes place always when the object the sensitive has to
+abnormally perceive is independent of the will of any other person, as
+in the case of its being represented on paper.
+
+Applying the same law to dreams, we can find the rationale of the
+popular superstition that facts are generally inverted in dreams. To
+dream of something good is generally taken to be the precursor of
+something evil.  In the exceptional cases in which dreams have been
+found to be prophetic, the dreamer was either affected by another's will
+or under the operation of some disturbing forces, which cannot be
+calculated except for each particular case.
+
+In this connection another very important psychic phenomenon may be
+noticed.  Instances are too numerous and too well authenticated to be
+amenable to dispute, in which an occurrence at a distance--for instance,
+the death of a person--has pictured itself to the mental vision of one
+interested in the occurrence. In such cases the double of the dying man
+appears even at a great distance, and becomes visible usually to his
+friend only, but instances are not rare when the double is seen by a
+number of persons.  The former case comes within the class of cases
+under consideration, as the concentrated thought of the dying man is
+clairvoyantly seen by the friend, and the incidents correctly reproduced
+by the operation of the dying man's will-energy, while the latter is the
+appearance of the genuine mayavirupa, and therefore not governed by the
+law under discussion.
+
+--Mohini M. Chatterji
+
+
+
+
+"Precipitation"
+
+
+Or all phenomena produced by occult agency in connection with our
+Society, none have been witnessed by a more extended circle of
+spectators, or more widely known and commented on through recent
+Theosophical publications, than the mysterious production of letters.
+The phenomenon itself has been so well described in the "Occult World"
+and elsewhere, that it would be useless to repeat the description here.
+Our present purpose is more connected with the process than the
+phenomenon of the mysterious formation of letters.  Mr. Sinnett sought
+for an explanation of the process, and elicited the following reply from
+the revered Mahatma, who corresponds with him:--"....Bear in mind these
+letters are not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all
+mistakes corrected .... I have to think it over, to photograph every
+word and sentence carefully in my brain, before it can be repeated by
+precipitation.  As the fixing on chemically-prepared surfaces of the
+images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the
+focus of the object to be represented, for, otherwise--as often found
+in bad photographs--the legs of the sitter might appear out of all
+proportion with the head, and so on--so we here to first arrange our
+sentences, and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds,
+before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can tell
+you."
+
+Since the above was written, the Masters have been pleased to permit the
+veil to be drawn aside a little more, and the modus operandi can thus be
+explained now more fully to the outsider.
+
+Those having even a superficial knowledge of the science of mesmerism
+know how the thoughts of the mesmeriser, though silently formulated in
+his mind, are instantly transferred to that of the subject.  It is not
+necessary for the operator, if he is sufficiently powerful, to be
+present near the subject to produce the above result.  Some celebrated
+practitioners in this science are known to have been able to put their
+subjects to sleep even from a distance of several days' journey.  This
+known fact will serve us as a guide in comprehending the comparatively
+unknown subject now under discussion.  The work of writing the letters
+in question is carried on by a sort of psychic telegraphy;  the
+Mahatmas very rarely write their letters in the ordinary way.  An
+electro-magnetic connection, so to say, exists on the psychic plane
+between a Mahatma and his chelas, one of whom acts as his amanuensis.
+When the Master wants a letter to be written in this way, he very often
+draws the attention of the chela, whom he selects for the task, by
+causing an astral bell (heard by so many of our Fellows and others) to
+be rung near him, just as the despatching telegraph office signals to
+the receiving office before wiring the message.  The thoughts arising in
+the mind of the Mahatma are then clothed in words, pronounced mentally,
+and forced along currents in the astral light impinge on the brain of
+the pupil. Thence they are borne by the nerve-currents to the palms of
+his hands and the tips of his fingers, which rest on a piece of
+magnetically-prepared paper.  As the thought waves are thus impressed on
+the tissue, materials are drawn to it from the ocean of akas (permeating
+every atom of the sensuous universe) by an occult process, out of place
+here to describe, and permanent marks are left.
+
+From this it is abundantly clear that the success of such writing, as
+above described, depends chiefly upon two conditions:--(1) The force
+and clearness with which the thoughts are propelled;  and (2) the
+freedom of the receiving brain from disturbance of every description.
+The case with the ordinary electric telegraph is exactly the same.  If,
+for some reason or other, the battery supplying the electric power falls
+below the requisite strength on any telegraph line, or there is some
+derangement in the receiving apparatus, the message transmitted becomes
+either mutilated or otherwise imperfectly legible. Inaccuracies, in
+fact, do very often arise, as may be gathered from what the Mahatma says
+in the above extract.  "Bear in mind," says he, "that these letters are
+not written, but impressed, or precipitated, and then all mistakes
+corrected."  To turn to the sources of error in the precipitation.
+Remembering the circumstances under which blunders arise in telegrams,
+we see that if a Mahatma somehow becomes exhausted, or allows his
+thoughts to wander during the process, or fails to command the requisite
+intensity in the astral currents along which his thoughts are projected,
+or the distracted attention of the pupil produces disturbances in his
+brain and nerve-centres, the success of the process is very much
+interfered with.
+
+It is to be regretted that illustrations of the above general principles
+are not permitted to be published.  Enough, however, has been disclosed
+to give the public a clue to many apparent mysteries in regard to
+precipitated letters, and to draw all earnest and sincere inquirers
+strongly to the path of spiritual progress, which alone can lead to the
+comprehension of occult phenomena.
+
+--Anon.
+
+
+
+
+"How Shall We Sleep?"
+
+
+It appears that the opinion of Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose and of Baron Von
+Reichenbach are in direct conflict on the subject of this paper, the
+latter recommending the head of the sleeper to be northward, the former
+entirely condemning that position.
+
+It is my humble opinion that both writers are right, each from his own
+standpoint, as I shall try to show.  What is the reason that our
+position in sleep should be of any consequence?  Because our body must
+be in a position at harmony with the main magnetic currents of the
+earth;  but as these currents are not the same in all parts of the world
+the positions of the sleeper must, therefore, vary.
+
+There are three main magnetic currents on our earth--viz., in the
+northern hemisphere, from north pole towards the equator;  in the
+southern hemisphere, from south pole towards the equator;  these two
+currents meeting in the torrid zone continue their combined course from
+east to west.  So the position of the sleeper must vary according as he
+finds himself to the north or south of the torrid zone or within it.
+
+In the north frigid or temperate zone, he has to lie with his head
+northward;  in the southern, southward;  in the torrid zone, eastward--
+in order that the magnetic current may pass through him from head to
+foot without disturbance, as this is the natural position for
+magnetization.
+
+The following diagram may give a clearer view of the case, and thus help
+us to answer the second part of the question, whether and when we ought
+to lie on the right or the left side, on the stomach or on the back:--
+
+[[Diagram here]]
+
+The able writer of  "How Shall we Sleep?" shows, in his cross diagram,
+that he thinks the head to be entirely positive and both feet negative.
+I think that this is not the case, but that the right side of the head
+and the left foot are positive, and the left side of the head and the
+right foot negative, and similarly the right hand is negative and the
+left hand is positive.
+
+As the north pole is positive and the left side of the head negative,
+the natural position in sleep for those living within the northern zones
+would be on the right side, head northward; and it is obvious that in
+the southern zones the position must be exactly the reverse.  As to
+those who live under the tropics, lying on the stomach seems to me to be
+the most natural position, since the left, or negative side of the head,
+is turned to the north or positive current, and vice versa.
+
+For many years I and my family have been sleeping with our heads either
+to the north or the west (the right position in our hemisphere, in my
+opinion), and we had no occasion to regret it; for from that time
+forward the physician has become a rare visitor in our house.
+
+Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose says, in his interesting paper on "Medical
+Magnetism," that Mandulies (metallic cells) are worn to great advantage
+in India on diseased parts of the body.  The curative properties of
+these cells I have seen verified in authentic instances.  When, years
+ago (I believe about 1852), cholera was devastating some parts of
+Europe, it was remarked at Munich (Bavaria) that among the thousands of
+its victims there was not a single coppersmith.  Hence, it was
+recommended by the medical authorities of that town to wear disks of
+thin copperplate (of about 2 1/2 inch diameter) on a string, on the pit
+of the stomach, and they proved to be a powerful preventive of cholera.
+Again, in 1867, cholera visited Odessa.
+
+I and my whole family wore these copper disks;  and while all around
+there were numerous cases of cholera and dysentery, not one of us was
+attacked.  I propose that serious experiments should be made in this
+direction, and specially in those countries which are periodically
+devastated by that disease:  as India, for instance.  It is my
+conviction that one disk of copper on the stomach, and another of zinc
+on the spine, opposite the former, will be of still better service, the
+more so if the disks are joined by a thin copper chain.
+
+--Gustave Zorn
+
+
+In the first place it is necessary to say that the rules laid down by
+Garga, Markandeya and others on the above subject, refer to the
+inhabitants of the plains only, and not to dwellers on mountains.  The
+rule is that on retiring a man should first lie on his right side for
+the period of sixteen breathings, then turn on his left for double that
+time, and after that he can sleep in any position.  Further, that a man
+must not sleep on the ground, on silken or woollen cloth, under a
+solitary tree, where cross-roads meet, on mountains, or on the sky
+(whatever that may mean). Nor is he to sleep with damp clothes, wet
+feet, or in a naked state;  and, unless an initiate, should not sleep on
+Kusha grass or its varieties.  There are many more such rules.  I may
+here notice that in Sanskrit the right hand or side and south are
+signified by the same term.  So also the front and north have one and
+the same name.  The sun is the great and chief source of life and
+magnetism in the solar system.
+
+Hence to the world the east is positive as the source of light and
+magnetism.  For the same reason, to the northern hemisphere the south
+(the equator and not the north) is positive.  Under the laws of dynamics
+the resultant of these two forces will be a current in the directed from
+S.E. to N.W.  This, I think, is one of the real causes of the prevailing
+south-east wind.  At any rate, I do not think the north pole to be
+positive, as there would be no snow there in such a case.  The aurora
+cannot take place at the source of the currents, but at their close.
+Hence the source must be towards the equator or south.  The course of
+life, civilization, light, and almost everything seems to be from E. to
+W. or S.E. to N.W.  The penalty for sleeping with the head to the west
+is said to be anxiety of mind, while sleeping with the head to the north
+is considered fatal.  I beg to invite the attention of the Hindus to a
+similar penalty of death incurred by any but an initiate (Brahman)
+pronouncing the sacred Pranava (Om).  This does not prove that Pranava
+is really a mischievous bad word, but that, with incompetent men, it is
+fraught with danger.  So also, in the case of ordinary men of the
+plains, there may be unknown dangers which it would not be prudent for
+them to risk so long as they do not know how to meet them, or so long as
+they are not under the guidance of men who can protect them.  In short,
+ordinary men should move on in their beaten course, and these rules are
+for them only.
+
+As an instance of the infringement of the rule the following anecdote is
+given:--
+
+After Ganesha (Siva's son) was born, all the Devas (gods) came to
+congratulate the family and bless the child.  Sani or Saturn, was the
+last to come, and even then he came after he had been several times
+inquired after.  When he went to see the infant, it appeared headless!
+This at once created a sensation, and all the Devas were at their wits'
+end.  At last Saturn himself approached Mahadeva with folded hands and
+reminded him that it was due to his presence, and the child having been
+kept in a bed with its head to the north.  For such was the law.  Then
+the Devas consulted together and sent out messengers to find out who
+else was sleeping with the head to the north.  At last they discovered
+an elephant in that position.  Its head was immediately cut off and
+placed on the shoulders of Ganesha.  It need not be said that Ganesha
+became afterwards so learned and wise that if he had not had an
+elephant's head, a human head would never have been sufficient to hold
+all he knew.  This advantage he owed to the circumstance of his sleeping
+with head to the north, and the blessing of the Devas.  To the elephant,
+the same position but minus the blessing of the Devas proved absolute
+death.
+
+--Nobin K. Bannerji
+
+
+
+Reading Mr. Seeta Nath Ghose's paper on "Medical Magnetism" and having
+studied long ago Baron von Reichenbach's "Researches in Magnetism," I am
+sorely puzzled, inasmuch as these two authorities appear to clash with
+each other most completely--the one asserting "head to north never,
+under no circumstances," the other "head to north ever and under all
+circumstances."  I have pursued the advice of the latter, not knowing of
+the former for many years, but have not found the effect on my health
+which I had hoped for, and what is of more importance, I have not found
+a law of certain application to humanity and bringing health to all.  It
+seems to me on carefully reading this article that a most important
+point has been omitted or passed over--i.e., the position of the
+sleeper, whether on his face or on his back? This is most important, for
+a correct answer may go far to reconcile the two theories, which, be it
+remembered, claim both to be supported by experiment and by observation.
+I cannot conceive that a one-sided position is a natural one for man,
+and thus leave two alternatives.  Is the proper position in sleep lying
+on the back or on the stomach?  Not one word has been said as to the
+position in which experiments were tried on either side.
+
+Now the one thing which seems clear in all this is, that positive should
+be toward negative and negative toward positive.  Let us then draw a
+diagram and these positions will follow with these results--taking the
+north as positive and south as negative, east as negative and west as
+positive.
+
+Position I.--Lying on the Back.
+
+A. Head to East ............ Accord in all
+B. Head to North ..........  Discord--Head and feet
+                             Accord--Hands.
+C. Head to South ........... Accord--Head and feet.
+                             Discord--Hands.
+D. Head to West ............ Discord in all.
+
+---529
+
+
+[[Diagram here]]
+
+
+Position II.--Lying on Stomach
+
+A'. Head to East ........ Accord--in Head and feet
+                          Discord--in Hands
+B'. Head to North ....... Discord in all
+C'. Head to South ....... Accord in all
+D'. Head to West ........ Discord--Head and feet
+                          Accord--Hands
+
+Now, from this will come some light, I think on the apparently
+contradictory theories, if we could ascertain:  (1) Which position did
+the renowned Garga and Markandeya contemplate as the proper position for
+men to sleep in?  (2) In which position did those on whom Baron von
+Reichenbach experimented lie?
+
+This is a most important question for all who value the gift of health,
+as well as for those who would be wise.  In my sojourn in southern
+countries I have noticed that the natives of the lower classes at least
+always sleep on their stomachs, with their back turned to the sun, and
+all animals do the same, while sleeping on the back is most dangerous,
+at least in the sun.  Is not this a guide or hint as to the true
+position?
+
+Transmigration of the Life-Atoms
+
+It is said that "for three thousand years at least the 'mummy,' not
+withstanding all the chemical preparations, goes on throwing off to the
+last invisible atoms, which, from the hour of death, reentering the
+various vortices of being, go indeed through every variety of organized
+life-forms.  But it is not the soul, the fifth, least of all the sixth
+principle, but the life-atoms of the Jiva, the second principle.  At the
+end of the 3,000 years, sometimes more, and sometimes less, after
+endless transmigrations, all these atoms are once more drawn together,
+and are made to form the new outer clothing or the body of the same
+monad (the real soul) which they had already clothed two or three
+thousand years before.  Even in the worst case, that of the annihilation
+of the conscious personal principle, the monad or individual soul is
+ever the same, as are also the atoms of the lower principles, which,
+regenerated and renewed in this ever-flowing river of being, are
+magnetically drawn together owing to their affinity, and are once more
+reincarnated together."
+
+This little passage is a new instalment of occult teaching given to the
+public, and opens up a vast field for thought.  It suggests, in the
+first instance, that the exoteric doctrine of the transmigration of the
+soul through lower forms of existence--so generally believed in by the
+Hindus, though incorrect as regards the soul (fifth principle)--has some
+basis of truth when referred to the lower principles.
+
+It is stated further that the mummy goes on throwing off invisible
+atoms, which go through every variety of organized life-forms, and
+further on it is stated that it is the life-atoms of the Jiva, the
+second principle, that go through these transmigrations.
+
+According to the esoteric teaching, the Jiva "is a form of force
+indestructible, and, when disconnected with one set of atoms, becoming
+attracted immediately by others."
+
+What, then, is meant by the life-atoms, and their going through endless
+transmigrations?
+
+The invisible atoms of the mummy would mean the imperceptibly decaying
+atoms of the physical body, and the life-atoms of the Jiva would be
+quite distinct from the atoms of the mummy.  Is it meant to imply that
+both the invisible atoms of the physical body, as well as the atoms of
+the Jiva, after going through various life-forms, return again to
+re-form the physical body, and the Jiva of the entity that has reached
+the end of its Devachanic state and is ready to be reincarnated again?
+
+It is taught, again, that even in the worst case (the annihilation of
+the Personal Ego) the atoms of the lower principles are the same as in
+the previous birth.  Here, does the term "lower principles" include the
+Kama rupa also, or only the lower triad of body, Jiva, and Lingasarira?
+It seems the Kama rupa in that particular case cannot be included, for
+in the instance of the annihilation of the personal soul, the Kama rupa
+would be in the eighth sphere.
+
+Another question also suggests itself.  The fourth principle (Kama rupa)
+and the lower portion of the fifth, which cannot be assimilated by the
+sixth, wander about as shells, and in time disperse into the elements of
+which they are made.  Do the atoms of these principles also reunite,
+after going through various transmigrations, to constitute over again
+the fourth and the lower fifth of the next incarnation?
+
+--N.D.K.
+
+Note
+
+We would, to begin with, draw attention to the closing sentence of the
+passage quoted above:  "Such was the true occult theory of the
+Egyptians," the word "true" being used there in the sense of its being
+the doctrine they really believed in, as distinct from both the tenets
+fathered upon them by some Orientalists, and that which the modern
+occultists may be now teaching.  It does not stand to reason that,
+outside those occult truths that were known to, and revealed by, the
+great Hierophants during the final initiation, we should accept all that
+either the Egyptians or any other people may have regarded as true.  The
+Priests of Isis were the only true initiates, and their occult teachings
+were still more veiled than those of the Chaldeans.  There was the true
+doctrine of the Hierophants of the inner Temple;  then the half-veiled
+Hieratic tenets of the Priest of the outer Temple;  and, finally, the
+vulgar popular religion of the great body of the ignorant, who were
+allowed to reverence animals as divine.  As shown correctly by Sir
+Gardner Wilkinson, the initiated priests taught that "dissolution is
+only the cause of reproduction .... nothing perishes which has once
+existed, but things which appear to be destroyed only change their
+natures and pass into another form."  To the present case, however, the
+Egyptian doctrine of atoms coincides with our own occult teachings.  In
+the above remarks the words, "The life-atoms of the Jiva," are taken in
+a strictly literal sense.  Without any doubt Jiva or Prana is quite
+distinct from the atoms it animates.  The latter belong to the lowest or
+grossest state of matter--the objectively conditioned; the former, to a
+higher state--that state which the uninitiated, ignorant of its nature,
+would call the "objectively finite," but which, to avoid any future
+misunderstanding, we may, perhaps, be permitted to call the subjectively
+eternal, though, at the same time and in one sense, the subsistent
+existence, however paradoxical and unscientific the term may appear.*
+Life, the occultist says, is the eternal uncreated energy, and it alone
+represents in the infinite universe, that which the physicists have
+agreed to name the principle, or the law of continuity, though they
+apply it only to the endless development of the conditioned.
+
+But since modern science admits, through her most learned professors,
+that "energy has as much claim to be regarded as an objective reality as
+matter itself"** and as life, according to the occult doctrine, is the
+one energy acting, Proteus-like, under the most varied forms, the
+occultists have a certain right to use such phraseology.  Life is ever
+present in the atom or matter, whether organic or inorganic--a
+difference that the occultists do not accept.  Their doctrine is that
+life is as much present in the inorganic as in the organic matter:  when
+life-energy is active in the atom, that atom is organic;  when dormant
+or latent, then the atom is inorganic.
+
+--------
+* Though there is a distinct term for it in the language of the adepts,
+how can one translate it into a European language?  What name can be
+given to that which is objective yet immaterial in its finite
+manifestations, subjective yet substantive (though not in our sense of
+substance) in its eternal existence?  Having explained it the best we
+can, we leave the task of finding a more appropriate term for it to our
+learned English occultists.
+
+** "Unseen Universe."
+----------
+
+Therefore, the expression "life-atom," though apt in one sense to
+mislead the reader, is not incorrect after all, since occultists do not
+recognize that anything in Nature can be inorganic, and know of no "dead
+atoms," whatever meaning science may give to the adjective.  The law of
+biogenesis, as ordinarily understood, is the result of the ignorance of
+the man of science of occult physics.  It is accepted because the man of
+science is unable to find the necessary means to awaken into activity
+the dormant life inherent in what he terms an inorganic atom;  hence the
+fallacy that a living thing can only be produced from a living thing, as
+though there ever was such a thing as dead matter in Nature!  At this
+rate, and to be consistent, a mule ought to be also classed with
+inorganic matter, since it is unable to reproduce itself and generate
+life.  We dwell so much upon the above as it meets at once all future
+opposition to the idea that a mummy, several thousand years old, can be
+throwing off atoms.  Nevertheless, the sentence would perhaps have
+gained in clearness if we had said, instead of the "life-atoms of jiva,"
+the atoms "animated by dormant Jiva or life-energy."  Again, the
+definition of Jiva quoted above, though quite correct on the whole,
+might be more fully, if not more clearly, expressed.  The "jiva," or
+life, principle, which animates man, beast, plant, and even a mineral,
+certainly is "a form of force indestructible," since this force is the
+one life, or anima mundi, the universal living soul, and that the
+various modes in which objective things appear to us in Nature in their
+atomic aggregations, such as minerals, plants, animals, &c., are all the
+different forms or states in which this force manifests itself.  Were it
+to become--we will not say absent, for this is impossible, since it is
+omnipresent--but for one single instant inactive, say in a stone, the
+particles of the latter would lose instantly their cohesive property,
+and disintegrate as suddenly, though the force would still remain in
+each of its particles, but in a dormant state.  Then the continuation of
+the definition, which states that when this indestructible force is
+"disconnected with one set of atoms, it becomes attracted immediately by
+others," does not imply that it abandons entirely the first set, but
+only that it transfers its vis viva, or living power--the energy of
+motion--to another set. But because it manifests itself in the next set
+as what is called kinetic energy, it does not follow that the first set
+is deprived of it altogether;  for it is still in it, as potential
+energy, or life latent.*  This is a cardinal and basic truth of
+occultism, on the perfect knowledge of which depends the production of
+every phenomenon.  Unless we admit this point, we should have to give up
+all the other truths of occultism.  Thus what is "meant by the life-atom
+going through endless transmigration" is simply this: we regard and
+call, in our occult phraseology, those atoms that are moved by kinetic
+energy as "life-atoms," while those that are for the time being passive,
+containing but imperceptible potential energy, we call "sleeping atoms;"
+regarding, at the same time, these two forms of energy as produced by
+one and the same force or life.
+
+-------
+* We feel constrained to make use of terms that have become technical in
+modern science--though they do not always fully express the idea to be
+conveyed--for want of better words.  It is useless to hope that the
+occult doctrine may be ever thoroughly understood, even the few tenets
+that can be safely given to the world at large, unless a glossary of
+such words is edited;  and, what is of a still greater importance, until
+the full and correct meaning of the terms therein taught is thoroughly
+mastered.
+---------
+
+Now to the Hindu doctrine of Metempsychosis.  It has a basis of truth;
+and, in fact, it is an axiomatic truth, but only in reference to human
+atoms and emanations, and that not only after a man's death, but during
+the whole period of his life.  The esoteric meaning of the Laws of Manu
+(sec. XII. 3, and XII. 54 and ), of the verses asserting that "every
+act, either mental, verbal or corporeal, bears good or evil fruit
+(Karma)," that "the various transmigrations of men (not souls) through
+the highest, middle and lowest stages, are produced by their actions,"
+and again that "a Brahman-killer enters the body of a dog, bear, ass,
+camel, goat, sheep, bird, &c.," bears no reference to the human Ego, but
+only to the atoms of his body, his lower triad and his fluidic
+emanations. It is all very well for the Brahmans to distort, in their
+own interest, the real meaning contained in these laws, but the words as
+quoted never meant what they were made to yield later on.  The Brahmans
+applied them selfishly to themselves, whereas by "Brahman," man's
+seventh principle, his immortal monad and the essence of the personal
+Ego were allegorically meant.  He who kills or extinguishes in himself
+the light of Parabrahm--i.e., severs his personal Ego from the Atman,
+and thus kills the future Devachanee, becomes a "Brahman killer."
+Instead of facilitating, through a virtuous life and spiritual
+aspirations, the union of the Buddhi and the Manas, he condemns, by his
+own evil acts, every atom of his lower principles to become attracted
+and drawn in virtue of the magnetic affinity, thus created by his
+passions, into the bodies of lower animals. This is the real meaning of
+the doctrine of Metempsychosis.  It is not that such amalgamation of
+human particles with animal or even vegetable atoms can carry in it any
+idea of personal punishment per se, for of course it does not.  But it
+is a cause, the effects of which may manifest themselves throughout
+succeeding re-births, unless the personality is annihilated. Otherwise,
+from cause to effect, every effect becoming in its turn a cause, they
+will run along the cycle of re-births, the once given impulse expending
+itself only at the threshold of Pralaya.  But of this anon.
+Notwithstanding their esoteric meaning, even the words of the grandest
+and noblest of all the adepts, Gautama Buddha, are misunderstood,
+distorted and ridiculed in the same way.  The Hina-yana, the lowest form
+of transmigration of the Buddhist, is as little comprehended as the
+Maha-yana, its highest form;  and, because Sakya Muni is shown to have
+once remarked to his Bhikkhus, while pointing out to them a broom, that
+"it had formerly been a novice who neglected to sweep out" the
+Council-room, hence was re-born as a broom (!), therefore, the wisest of
+all the world's sages stands accused of idiotic superstition.  Why not
+try and find out, before condemning, the true meaning of the figurative
+statement?  Why should we scoff before we understand?  Is or is not that
+which is called magnetic effluvium a something, a stuff, or a substance,
+invisible, and imponderable though it be?  If the learned authors of
+"The Unseen Universe" object to light, heat and electricity being
+regarded merely as imponderables, and show that each of these phenomena
+has as much claim to be recognized as an objective reality as matter
+itself, our right to regard the mesmeric or magnetic fluid which
+emanates from man to man, or even from man to what is termed an
+inanimate object, is far greater.  It is not enough to say that this
+fluid is a species of molecular energy like heat, for instance, though
+of much greater potency.  Heat is produced when ever kinetic energy is
+transformed into molecular energy, we are told, and it may be thrown out
+by any material composed of sleeping atoms, or inorganic matter as it is
+called;  whereas the magnetic fluid projected by a living human body is
+life itself.   Indeed it is "life-atoms" that a man in a blind passion
+throws off unconsciously, though he does it quite as effectively as a
+mesmeriser who transfers them from himself to any object consciously and
+under the guidance of his will.  Let any man give way to any intense
+feeling, such as anger, grief, &c., under or near a tree, or in direct
+contact with a stone, and after many thousands of years any tolerable
+psychometer will see the man, and perceive his feelings from one single
+fragment of that tree or stone that he had touched.  Hold any object in
+your hand, and it will become impregnated with your life-atoms, indrawn
+and outdrawn, changed and transferred in us at every instant of our
+lives.  Animal heat is but so many life atoms in molecular motion.  It
+requires no adept knowledge, but simply the natural gift of a good
+clairvoyant subject to see them passing to and fro, from man to objects
+and vice versa like a bluish lambent flame.  Why, then, should not a
+broom, made of a shrub, which grew most likely in the vicinity of the
+building where the lazy novice lived, a shrub, perhaps, repeatedly
+touched by him while in a state of anger provoked by his laziness and
+distaste for his duty--why should not a quantity of his life-atoms have
+passed into the materials of the future besom, and therein have been
+recognized by Buddha, owing to his superhuman (not supernatural) powers?
+The processes of Nature are acts of incessant borrowing and giving back.
+The materialistic sceptic, however, will not take anything in any other
+way than in a literal, dead-letter sense.
+
+To conclude our too long answer, the "lower principles" mentioned before
+are the first, second and the third.  They cannot include the Kama rupa,
+for this "rupa" belongs to the middle, not the lower principles.  And,
+to our correspondent's further query, "Do the atoms of these (the fourth
+and the fifth) also re-form, after going through various
+transmigrations, to constitute over again the fourth and the lower fifth
+of the next incarnation?" we answer, "They do."  The reason why we have
+tried to explain the doctrine of the "life-atoms" at such length, is
+precisely in connection with this last question, and with the object of
+throwing out one more fertile hint.  We do not feel at liberty at
+present, however, to give any further details.
+
+--H.P. Blavatsky
+
+
+
+
+"OM," And Its Practical Significance
+
+
+I shall begin with a definition of Om, as given by the late Professor
+Theodore Goldstucker:--
+
+"Om is a Sanskrit word which, on account of the mystical notions that
+even at an early date of Hindu civilization were connected with it,
+acquired much importance in the development of Hindu religion.  Its
+original sense is that of emphatic or solemn affirmation or assent.
+Thus, when in the White Yajur Veda the sacrificer invites the gods to
+rejoice in his sacrifice, the goddess Savitri assents to his summons by
+saying, 'Om' (i.e., be it so);  proceed!"
+
+Or, when in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Prajapati, the father of gods,
+men and demons, asks the gods whether they have understood his
+instructions, he expresses his satisfaction with their affirmative reply
+in these words, "Om, you have fully comprehended it;"  and in the same
+Upanishad, Pravahana answers the question of Swetaketu, as to whether
+his father has instructed him, by uttering the word "Om"--i.e.,
+"forsooth (I am)."
+
+A portion of the Rig Veda called the Aitareya Brahmana, where,
+describing a religious ceremony at which verses from the Rig Veda, as
+well as songs called Gathas, were recited by the priest called Hotri,
+and responses given by another priest, the Adhwaryu, says:  Om is the
+response of the Adhwaryu to the Rig Veda verses (recited by the Hotri),
+and likewise tatha (i.e., thus) his response to the Gathas, for Om is
+(the term of assent) used by the gods, whereas tatha is (the term of
+assent) used by men (the Rig Veda verses being, to the orthodox Hindu,
+of divine and the Gathas of human authorship).
+
+In this, the original sense of the word, it is little doubtful that Om
+is but an older and contracted form of the common Sanskrit word evam
+("thus"), which, coming from the pronominal base "a," in some
+derivations changed to "e," may have at one time occurred in the form
+avam, when, by the elision of the vowel following a, for which there are
+numerous analogies in Sanskrit, vum would become aum, and hence,
+according to the ordinary phonetic laws of the language, Om.  This
+etymology of the word, however, seems to have been lost even at an early
+period of Sanskrit literature;  for another is met with in the ancient
+grammarians, enabling us to account for the mysticism which many
+religious and theological works of ancient and medieval India suppose to
+inhere in it.  According to this latter etymology, Om would come from a
+radical av;  by means of an affix man, when Om would be a curtailed form
+of avman or oman, and as av implies the notion of "protect, preserve,
+save," Om would be a term implying "protection or salvation," its
+mystical properties and its sanctity being inferred from its occurrence
+in the Vedic writings and in connection with sacrificial acts, such as
+are alluded to before.
+
+Hence Om became the auspicious word with which the spiritual teacher had
+to begin and the pupil to end each lesson of his reading of the Veda.
+
+"Let this syllable," the existing Prati-sakhya, or a grammar of the Rig
+Veda, enjoins, "be the head of the reading of the Veda; for alike to the
+teacher and the pupil it is the supreme Brahman, the gate of heaven."
+And Manu ordains:  "A Brahman at the beginning and end (of a lesson on
+the Veda) must always pronounce the syllable Om;  for unless Om precede,
+his learning will slip away from him;  and unless it follows, nothing
+will be long retained."
+
+At the time when another class of writings (the Puranas) were added to
+the inspired code of Hinduism, for a similar reason Om is their
+introductory word.
+
+That the mysterious power which, as the foregoing quotation from the
+law-book of Manu shows, was attributed to this word must have been the
+subject of early speculation, is obvious enough.  A reason assigned for
+it is given by Manu himself.  "Brahma," he says, "extracted from the
+three Vedas the letter a, the letter u, and the letter m (which combined
+result in Om), together with the (mysterious) words Bhuh (earth), Bhuva
+(sky), and Swah (heaven);" and in another verse:  "These three great
+immutable words, preceded by the syllable Om, and (the sacred Rig Veda
+verse called) Gayatri, consisting of three lines, must be considered as
+the mouth (or entrance) of Brahman (the Veda)," or, as the commentators
+observe, the means of attaining final emancipation; and "The syllable Om
+is the supreme Brahman.  (Three) regulated breathings, accompanied with
+the mental recitation of Om, the three mysterious words Bhuh, Bhuvah,
+Swah and the Gayatri, are the highest devotion."
+
+"All rites ordained in the Veda, such as burnt and other sacrifices,
+pass away, but the syllable Om must be considered as imperishable;  for
+it is (a symbol of) Brahman (the supreme spirit) himself, the Lord of
+Creation."  In these speculations Manu bears out, and is borne out by,
+several Upanishads.  In the Katha-Upanishad for instance, Yama, the god
+of death, in replying to a question of Nachiketas, says:  "The word
+which all the Vedas record, which all the modes of penance proclaim,
+desirous of which religious students perform their duties, this word I
+will briefly tell thee--it is Om.  This syllable means the (inferior)
+Brahman and the supreme (Brahman).  Whoever knows this syllable obtains
+whatever he wishes."  And in the Pras'na-Upanishad the saint Pippalada
+says to Satyakama:  "The supreme and the inferior Brahman are both the
+word Om;  hence the wise follow by this support the one or the other of
+the two.  If he meditates upon its one letter (a) only, he is quickly
+born on the earth;  is carried by the verses of the Rig Veda to the
+world of man;  and, if he is devoted there to austerity, the duties of a
+religious student and faith, he enjoys greatness.  But if he meditates
+in his mind on its two letters (a and u), he is elevated by the verses
+of the Yajur Veda to the intermediate region;  comes to the world of the
+moon and, having enjoyed there power, returns again (to the world of
+man).  If, however, he meditates on the supreme spirit by means of its
+three letters (a, u, and m) he is produced in light in the sun;  as the
+snake is liberated from its skin, so is he liberated from sin."
+According to the Mandukya-Upanishad the nature of the soul is
+summarized in the three letters a, u, and m in their isolated and
+combined form--a being Vaiswanara, or that form of Brahman which
+represents the soul in its waking condition;  a, Taijasa, or that form
+of Brahman which represents it in its dreaming state;  and m, Piajna, or
+that form of Brahman which represents it in its state of profound sleep
+(or that state in which it is temporarily united with the supreme
+spirit);  while a, u, m combined (i.e., Om), represent the fourth or
+highest condition of Brahman, "which is unaccountable, in which all
+manifestations have ceased, which is blissful and without duality.  Om
+therefore, is soul, and by this soul, he who knows it, enters into (the
+supreme) soul."  Passages like these may be considered as the key to the
+more enigmatic expressions used;  for instance, by the author of the
+Yoga philosophy where, in three short sentences, he says his (the
+supreme lord's) name is Pranava (i.e., Om);  its muttering (should be
+made) and reflection on its signification;  thence comes the knowledge
+of the transcendental spirit and the absence of the obstacles (such as
+sickness, languor, doubt, &c., which obstruct the mind of an ascetic).
+But they indicate, at the same time, the further course which
+superstition took in enlarging upon the mysticism of the doctrine of the
+Upanishads.  For, as soon as every letter of which the word Om consists
+was fancied to embody a separate idea, it is intelligible that other
+sectarian explanations were grafted on them to serve special purposes.
+Thus, while Sankara, the great theologian and commentator on the
+Upanishads, is still contented with an etymological punning by means of
+which he transforms a into an abbreviation of apti (pervading), since
+speech is pervaded by Vaiswanara;  u into an abbreviation of utkartha
+(superiority), since Taijasa is superior to Vaiswanara; and m into an
+abbreviation of miti (destruction), Vaiswanara and Taijasa, at the
+destruction and regeneration of the world, being, as it were, absorbed
+into Prajna--the Puranas make of a, a name of Vishnu;  of u, a name of
+his consort "Sri;"  and of m, a designation of their joint worshipper;
+or they see in a, u, m, the Triad--Brahm, Vishnu, and Siva;  the first
+being represented by a, the second by u, and the third by m--each sect,
+of course, identifying the combination of these letters, or Om with
+their supreme deity.  Thus, also, in the Bhagavadgita, which is devoted
+to the worship of Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna, though it is
+essentially a poem of philosophical tendencies based on the doctrine of
+the Yoga, Krishna in one passage says of himself that he is Om;  while
+in another passage he qualifies the latter as the supreme spirit.  A
+common designation of the word Om--for instance, in the last-named
+passages of the Bhagavadgita is the word Pranava, which comes from a
+so-called radical nu, "praise," with the prefix pra amongst other
+meanings implying emphasis, and, therefore, literally means "eulogium,
+emphatic praise." Although Om, in its original sense as a word of solemn
+or emphatic assent, is, properly speaking, restricted to the Vedic
+literature, it deserves notice that it is now-a-days often used by the
+natives of India in the sense of "yes," without, of course, any allusion
+to the mystic properties which are ascribed to it in the religious
+works.  Monier Williams gives the following account of the mystic
+syllable Om:  "When by means of repeating the syllable Om, which
+originally seems to have meant 'that' or 'yes,' they had arrived at a
+certain degree of mental tranquillity, the question arose what was meant
+by this Om, and to this various answers were given according as the mind
+was to be led up to higher and higher objects.  Thus, in one passage, we
+are told at first that Om is the beginning of the Veda, or as we have to
+deal with an Upanishad of the Shama Veda, the beginning of the Shama
+Veda;  so that he who meditates on Om may be supposed to be meditating
+on the whole of the Shama Veda.
+
+"Om is the essence of the Shama Veda which, being almost entirely taken
+from the Rig Veda, may itself be called the essence of the Rig Veda. The
+Rig Veda stands for all speech, the Shama Veda for all breath or life;
+so that Om may be conceived again as the symbol of all speech and all
+life.  Om thus becomes the name not only of all our mental and physical
+powers, but is especially that of the living principle of the pran or
+spirit.  This is explained by the parable in the second chapter, while
+in the third chapter that spirit within us is identified with the spirit
+in the sun.
+
+"He, therefore, who meditates on Om, meditates on the spirit in man as
+identical with the spirit in Nature or in the sun, and thus the lesson
+that is meant to be taught in the beginning of the Khandogya Upanishad
+is really this that none of the Vedas, with their sacrifices and
+ceremonies, could ever secure the salvation of the worshipers.  That is,
+the sacred works performed, according to the rules of the Vedas, are of
+no avail in the end, but meditation on Om, or that knowledge of what is
+meant by Om, alone can procure true salvation or true immortality.
+
+"Thus the pupil is led on step by step to what is the highest object of
+the Upanishads--namely, the recognition of the self in man as identical
+of the highest soul.
+
+"The lessons which are to lead up to that highest conception of the
+universe, both subjective and objective, are, no doubt, mixed up with
+much that is superstitious and absurd.  Still the main object is never
+lost sight of.  Thus, when we come to the eighth chapter, the
+discussion, though it begins with Om ends with the question of the
+origin of the world, and the final answer--namely, that Om means Akasa,
+ether, and that ether is the origin of all things."
+
+Dr. Lake considers electricity as the akas, or the fifth element of the
+Hindus.
+
+I shall now give my own opinion on the mystic syllable Om.
+
+Breath consists of an inspiration termed puraka, an interval termed
+kumbhaka, and an expiration called rechaka.  When the respiration is
+carried on by the right nostril, it is called the pingala;  when it is
+carried on by the two nostrils, it is named the susumna;  and when it is
+carried on by the left nostril, it is called ida.
+
+The right respiration is called the solar respiration, from its heating
+nature;  while the left respiration is termed the lunar respiration,
+from its cooling character.  The susumna respiration is called the
+shambhu-nadi.  During the intermediate respiration the human mind should
+be engaged in the contemplation of the supreme soul.
+
+The breath takes its origin from the "indiscreet" or unreflecting form,
+and the mind from the breath.  The organs of sense and action are under
+the control of the mind.  The Yogis restrain their mind by the
+suspension of breath.  Breath is the origin of all speech.  The word
+soham is pronounced by a deep inspiration followed by expiration carried
+on by the nostrils.... This word means, "God is in us."  There is
+another word called hangsha. This is pronounced by a deep expiration
+followed by inspiration. Its meaning is "I am in God."
+
+The inspiration is sakti, or strength.  The expiration is siva, or
+death.  The internal or Kumbhaka is a promoter of longevity. When the
+expiration is not followed by inspiration death ensues. A forcible
+expiration is always the sure and certain sign of approaching
+dissolution or death.  Both these words soham and hanysha cause the
+waste of the animal economy, as they permit the oxygen of the inspired
+air to enter the lungs where the pulmonary changes of the blood occur.
+
+According to Lavoissier, an adult Frenchman inhales daily 15,661 grains
+of oxygen from the atmosphere, at the rate of 10.87 grains nearly per
+minute.
+
+The word Om is pronounced by the inspiration of air through the mouth
+and the expiration of the same by the nostrils.
+
+When a man inspires through the mouth and expires through the nostrils,
+the oxygen of the inspired air does not enter the lungs where the
+pulmonary changes of the blood take place.  The monosyllable Om thus
+acts as a substitute for the suspension of the breath.
+
+The waste of the body is proportionate to the quantity of oxygen taken
+into the system by the respiration.  The waste of a man who breathes
+quickly is greater than that of one who breathes slowly. While
+tranquillity of mind produces slow breathing, and causes the retardation
+of the bodily waste, the tranquil respiration has a tendency to produce
+calmness of mind.  The Yogis attain to Nirvana by suspending or holding
+the breath.  The Vedantists obtain moksha, or emancipation of the soul,
+by holding the mind (mental abstraction).  Thus Om is the process of
+separating the soul from the body.  It is the product of the gasping
+breath which precedes the dissolution of our body.  The ancient Hindus
+utilized the gasping breath of the dying man by discovering the syllable
+Om.
+
+The syllable Om protects man from premature decay and death, preserves
+him from worldly temptations, and saves him from re-birth.  It causes
+the union of the human soul to the supreme soul.  Om has the property of
+shortening the length of respiration.
+
+Siva is made to say in a work on "Sharodaya" (an excellent treatise on
+respiration) that the normal length of the expiration is 9 inches.
+During meals and speaking the length of the expiration becomes 13.5
+inches.  In ordinary walking the expiration is lengthened to 18 inches.
+Running lengthens the expiration to 25.5 inches.
+
+In sexual intercourse the extent of respiration becomes 48.75 inches.
+During sleep the respiration becomes 75 inches long. As sleep causes a
+great waste of the body and invites disease, premature decay and death,
+the Yogi tries to abstain from it. He lives upon the following
+dietary:--rice, 6 ounces troy; milk, 12 ounces troy.  He consumes daily:
+carbon, 156.2 grains; nitrogen, 63.8 grains.
+
+Under this diet he is ever watchful, and spends his time in the
+contemplation of Om.  From the small quantity of nitrogen contained in
+his diet he is free from anger.  The Yogi next subdues his carnal desire
+or sexual appetite.  He diminishes day by day his food until it reaches
+the minimum quantity on which existence is maintained.  He passes his
+life in prayer and meditation.  He seeks retirement.  He lives in his
+little cell; his couch is the skin of tiger or stag;  he regards gold,
+silver, and all precious stones as rubbish.  He abstains from flesh,
+fish, and wine.  He never touches salt, and lives entirely on fruits and
+roots.  I saw a female mendicant who lived upon a seer of potatoes and a
+small quantity of tamarind pulp daily.  This woman reduced herself to a
+skeleton.  She led a pure, chaste life, and spent her time in the mental
+recitation of Om.  One seer of potatoes contains 3,600 grains of solid
+residue, which is exactly 7 1/2 ounces troy.
+
+The solid residue of one seer of potatoes consists of the following
+ultimate ingredients:--
+
+Carbon .............. 1587.6 grains
+Hydrogen ............  208.8    "
+Nitrogen .............  43.2    "
+Oxygen .............. 1580.4    "
+Salts .................180.0    "
+                        --------
+                      3600.0    "
+
+I saw a Brahman (Brahmachari) who consumed daily one seer of milk, and
+took no other food.
+
+Analysis of One Seer of Cow's Milk by Boussingault.
+
+Water ....................... 12,539.520 grains
+Carbon ......................  1,005.408     "
+Hydrogen ......................  164.736     "
+Nitrogen .......................  74.880     "
+Oxygen ......................... 525.456     "
+Salts ........................... 90.000     "
+                                  -----------
+                              14,400.000     "
+
+Now, one seer of cow's milk requires for combustion within the animal
+economy 3278.88 grains of oxygen.  The Brahmachari inhaled 2.27 grains
+of oxygen per minute.  This Brahmachari spent his life in the
+contemplation of Om, and led a life of continence. The French adult, who
+is a fair specimen of well-developed sensuality, inhaled from the
+atmosphere 10.87 grains of oxygen every minute of his existence.
+
+A retired, abstemious, and austere life is essentially necessary for the
+pronunciation of Om, which promotes the love of rigid virtue and a
+contempt of impermanent sensuality.  Siva says "He who is free from
+lust, anger, covetousness and ignorance is qualified to obtain
+salvation, or moksha," or the Nirvana of the Buddhists.  The solid
+residue of one seer of cow's milk is 1860.48 grains.  "In 1784 a student
+of physic at Edinburgh confined himself for a long space of time to a
+pint of milk and half a pound of white bread."
+
+The diet of this student contained 1487.5 grains of carbon and 80.1875
+grains of nitrogen.  This food required 4,305 grains of oxygen for the
+complete combustion of its elements.  He inspired 2.92 grains of oxygen
+per minute.  In this instance the intense mental culture diminished the
+quantity of oxygen inspired from the atmosphere.  The early Christian
+hermits, with a view to extinguish carnal desire and overcome sleep,
+lived upon a daily allowance of 12 ounces of bread and water.  They
+daily consumed 4063.084 grains of oxygen.  They inhaled oxygen at the
+rate of 2.8215 grains per minute.
+
+According to M. Andral, the great French physiologist, a French boy 10
+years old, before the sexual appetite is developed, exhales 1852.8
+grains of carbon in the twenty-four hours.  He who wishes to curb his
+lust should consume 1852.8 grains of carbon in his daily diet.
+
+Now, 6,500 grains of household bread contain 1852 grains of carbon,
+according to Dr. Edward Smith.  This quantity of bread is equal to 14
+ounces avoirdupois and 375 grains, but the early Christian hermits who
+lived upon 12 oz. of bread (avoirdupois) consumed daily 1496.25 grains
+of carbon.  This quantity of carbon was less than that which the French
+boy consumed daily by 356.55 grains.  The French boy consumed 1852.8
+grains of carbon in his diet, but the Hindu female mendicant, who led a
+life of continence, consumed in her daily ration of potatoes 1587.6
+grains of carbon.  Hence it is evident that the French boy consumed
+265.2 grains of carbon more than what was consumed by the female Hindu
+Yogi.  There lived in Brindavana a Sannyasi, who died at the age of 109
+years, and who subsisted for forty years upon the daily diet of four
+chuttacks of penda and four chuttacks of milk.  His diet contained 1,980
+grains of carbon and 90.72 grains of nitrogen.  Abstemiousness shortens
+the length of respiration, diminishes the waste of the body, promotes
+longevity, and engenders purity of heart.  Abstemiousness cures vertigo,
+cephalalgia, tendency to apoplexy, dyspnoea, gout, old ulcers, impetigo,
+scrofula, herpes, and various other maladies.
+
+Cornaro, an Italian nobleman, who was given up by all his physicians,
+regained health by living upon 12 ounces of bread and 15 ounces of
+water, and lived to a great age.
+
+He consumed less than an ounce of flesh-formers in his diet. According
+to Edward Smith 5401.2 grains of bread contain 1 ounce of flesh-formers.
+
+He who wishes to lead a life of chastity, honesty, meekness, and mercy,
+should consume daily one ounce of flesh-formers in his diet.  As an
+ounce of nitrogenous matter contains 70 grains of nitrogen, one should
+take such food as yields only 70 grains of azote.
+
+Murder, theft, robbery, cruelty, covetousness, lust, slander, anger,
+voluptuousness, revenge, lying, prostitution, and envy are sins which
+arise from a consumption of a large quantity of aliments containing a
+higher percentage of azote.
+
+He who intends to be free from every earthly thought, desire and passion
+should abstain from fish, flesh, woman, and wine, and live upon the most
+innocent food.
+
+The following table shows approximately the quantities of various
+aliments furnishing 70 grains of nitrogen:
+
+Wheat dried in vacuo ............ 3181.81 grains
+Oats ............................ 3181.81    "
+Barley .......................... 3465.34    "
+Indian corn ..................... 3500       "
+Rye dried ........................4117.64    "
+Rice dried .......................5036       "
+Milk dried .......................1750       "
+Peas dried .......................1666.6     "
+White haricots dried ..... .......1627.67    "
+Horse beans dried ................1272.72    "
+Cabbage dried ....................1891.89    "
+Carrots dried ....................2916.66    "
+Jerusalem artichokes .............4375       "
+Turnips dried ....................3181.81    "
+Bread ............................5401.2     "
+Locust beans .....................6110       "
+Figs .............................7172.13    "
+Cow's milk fresh .................1346.2     "
+
+Abstemiousness begets suspension of breath.  From the suspension of
+breath originates tranquillity of mind, which engenders supersensuous
+knowledge.  From supersensuous knowledge originates ecstasy which is the
+Samadhi of the ancient Hindu sages.
+
+Instead of walking and running, which lengthen the respiration, the
+devotees of Om should practice the two tranquil postures termed the
+padmasana and siddhasana, described in my mystic tract called "The Yoga
+Philosophy."  According to Siva the normal length of expiration is 9
+inches.  He says that one can subdue his lust and desire by shortening
+his expiration to 8.25 inches, whether by the inaudible pronunciation of
+Om or by the suspension of breath (Pranayama);  that one can enjoy
+ecstasy by diminishing the length of his expiration to 7.50 inches.
+
+One acquires the power of writing poetry by reducing his expiration to
+6.75 inches.
+
+When one can reduce his expiration to 6 inches long he acquires the
+power of foretelling future events.  When one reduces the length of his
+expiration to 5.25 inches he is blessed with the divine eye.  He sees
+what is occurring in the distant worlds.
+
+When the inaudible pronunciation of Om reduces the length of the
+expiration to 4.50 inches it enables its votary to travel to aerial
+regions.  When the length of expiration becomes 3.75 inches, the votary
+of Om travels in the twinkling of an eye through the whole world.
+
+When by the inaudible muttering of Om a man reduces his expiration to 3
+inches, he acquires ashta Siddhis or consummations (or superhuman
+powers).  When the expiration is reduced to 2.25 inches, the votary of
+Om can acquire the nine precious jewels of the world (Nava nidhi). Such
+a man can attract the wealth of the world to him.*
+
+--------
+* Supposing he had any care or use for it--Ed. Theos.
+--------
+
+When the expiration becomes 1.50 inches long from the above practice, he
+sees the celestial sphere where the Supreme Soul resides.  When the
+inaudible pronunciation of Om reduces the length of expiration to .75
+inch, the votary becomes deified and casts no shadow.
+
+     "Om Amitaya! measure not with words
+     The immeasurable;  nor sink the string of thought
+     Into the Fathomless! Who asks doth err;
+     Who answers errs. Say nought!"
+
+     "Om mani padma hum. Om the jewel in the lotus."
+
+By the muttering of the above formula the Great Buddha freed himself
+from selfishness, false faith, doubt, hatred, lust, self-praise, error,
+pride, and attained to Nirvana.
+
+     "And how man hath no fate except past deeds,
+     No Hell but what he makes, no Heaven too high
+     For those to reach whose passions sleeps subdued."
+
+According to Siva a man acquires Nirvana when his breathing becomes
+internal and does not come out of the nostrils.  When the breathing
+becomes internal--that is, when it is contained within the nostrils, the
+Yogi is free from fainting, hunger, thirst, languor, disease and death.
+He becomes a divine being, he feels not when he is brought into contact
+with fire;  no air can dry him, no water can putrefy him, no poisonous
+serpent can inflict a mortal wound.  His body exhales fragrant odours,
+and can bear the abstinence from air, food, and drink.
+
+When the breathing becomes internal, the Yogi is incapable of committing
+any sin in deed, thought, and speech, and thereby inherits the Kingdom
+of Heaven, which is open to sinless souls.
+
+--N.C. Paul
+
+
+-------------------
+
+Glossary
+
+
+     Ab-e-Hyat, Water of Life, supposed to give eternal youth.
+     Abhava, negation or non-being of individual objects; the
+substance, the abstract objectivity.
+     Adam Kadmon, the bi-sexual Sephira of the Kabalists.
+     Adept, one who, through the development of his spirit, has
+attained to transcendental knowledge and powers.
+     Adhibhautika, arising from external objects.
+     Adhidaivika, arising from the gods, or accidents.
+     Adhikamasansas, extra months.
+     Adhishthanum, basis a principle in which some other
+principle inheres.
+     Adhyatmika, arising out of the inner-self.
+     Advaiti, a follower of the school of Philosophy established
+by Sankaracharya.
+     Ahankara, personality;  egoism;  self identity;  the fifth
+principle.
+     Ahriman, the Evil Principle of the Universe;  so called by
+the Zoroastrians.
+     Ahum, the first three principles of septenary human
+constitution;  the gross living body of man according to the
+Avesta.
+     A'kasa, the subtle supersensuous matter which pervades all
+space.
+     Amulam Mulam (lit. "the rootless root");  Prakriti;  the
+material of the universe.
+     Anahatachakram, the heart, the seat of life.
+     A'nanda, bliss.
+     A'nanda-maya-kosha, the blissful;  the fifth sheath of the
+soul in the Vedantic system;  the sixth principle.
+     Anastasis, the continued existence of the soul.
+     Anima Mundi, the soul of the world.
+     Annamaya Kosha, the gross body;  the first sheath of the
+divine monad (Vedantic).
+     Antahkarana, the internal instrument, the soul, formed by
+the thinking principle and egoism.
+     Anumiti, inference.
+     Aparoksha, direct perception.
+     Apavarya, emancipation from repeated births.
+     Apporrheta, secret discourses in Egyptian and Grecian
+mysteries.
+     Arahats (lit."the worthy ones"), the initiated holy men of
+the Buddhist and Jain faiths.
+     Aranyakas, holy sages dwelling in forests.
+     Ardhanariswara, (lit. "the bisexual Lord");  the unpolarized
+state of cosmic energy;  the bi-sexual Sephira, Adam Kadmon.
+     Arka, sun.
+     Aryavarta, the ancient name of Northern India where the
+Brahmanical invaders first settled.
+     A'sana, the third stage of Hatha Yoga;  the posture for
+meditation.
+     Asat, the unreal, Prakriti.
+     A'shab and Laughan, ceremonies for casting out evil spirits,
+so called among the Kolarian tribes.
+     Ashta Siddhis, the eight consummations of Hatha Yoga.
+     Asoka (King), a celebrated conqueror, monarch of a large
+portion of India, who is called "the Constantine of Buddhism,"
+temp. circa 250 B.C.
+     Astral Light, subtle form of existence forming the basis of
+our material universe.
+     Asuramaya, an Atlantean astronomer, well known in Sanskrit
+writings.
+     Asuras, a class of elementals considered maleficent;
+demons.
+     Aswini, the divine charioteers mystically they correspond to
+Hermes, who is looked upon as his equal.  They represent the
+internal organ by which knowledge is conveyed from the soul to
+the body.
+     Atharva Veda, one of the four most ancient and revered books
+of the ancient Brahmans.
+     Atlantis, the continent that was submerged in the Southern
+and Pacific Oceans.
+     Atmabodha (lit. "self-knowledge"), the title of a Vedantic
+treatise by Sankaracharya.
+     Atman, &c Atma.
+     A'tma, the spirit;  the divine monad;  the seventh principle
+of the septenary human constitution.
+     A'ttavada, the sin of personality (Pali).
+     Aum, the sacred syllable in Sanskrit representing the
+Trinity
+     Avalokitesvara, manifested wisdom, or the Divine Spirit in
+man.
+     Avasthas, states, conditions, positions.
+     Avatar, the incarnation of an exalted being, so called among
+the Hindus.
+     Avesta, the sacred books of the Zoroastrians.
+     Avyakta, the unrevealed cause.
+
+     Baddha, bound or conditioned;  the state of an ordinary
+human being who has not attained Nirvana.
+     Bahihpragna, the present state of consciousness.
+     Baodhas, consciousness;  the fifth principle of man.
+     Barhaspatyamanam, a method of calculating time prevalent
+during the later Hindu period in North-eastern India.
+     Bhadrasena, a Buddhist king of Magadha.
+     Bhagats (or called Sokha and Sivnath by the Hindus), one who
+exorcises an evil spirit.
+     Bhagavad Gita (lit, the "Lord's Song"), an episode of the
+Maha-Bharata, the great epic poem of India.  It contains a
+dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna on Spiritual Philosophy.
+     Bhao, ceremony of divination among the Kolarian tribes of
+Central India.
+     Bhashya, commentary.
+     Bhon, religion of the aborigines of Tibet.
+     Bikshu, a religious mendicant and ascetic who suppresses all
+desire and is constantly occupied in devotion;  a Buddhist monk.
+     Boddhisatwas, Egos evolving towards Buddhahood.
+     Brahma, the Hindu Deity which personifies the active cosmic
+energy.
+     Brahmachari, a Bushman ascetic.
+     Brahmagnani, one possessed of complete illumination.
+     Brahman, the highest caste in India;  Brahman, the absolute
+of the Vedantins.
+     Brahmana period, one of the four periods into which the
+Vedic literature has been divided.
+     Brihadranyaka Upanishad, one of the sacred books of the
+Brahmins;  an Aranyaka is a treatise appended to the Vedas, and
+considered the subject of special study by those who have retired
+to the forest for purposes of religious meditation.
+     Buddha, the founder of Buddhism;  he was a royal prince, by
+name Siddhartha, son of Suddhodhana, king of the Sakyas, an Aryan
+tribe.
+     Buddhi, the spiritual Ego.
+     Buru Bonga, spirit of the hills worshiped by the Kolarian
+tribes of Central India.
+
+     Canarese, one of the Dravidian tongues, spoken in Southern
+India.
+     Chandragupta, one of the kings of Magadha, an ancient
+province of India.
+     Chandramanam, the method of calculating time by the
+movements of the moon.
+     Charaka, the most celebrated writer on medicine among the
+Hindus.
+     Chaturdasa Bhuvanam, the fourteen lokas or states.
+     Chela, a pupil of an adept in occultism;  a disciple.
+     Chichakti, the power which generates thought.
+     Chidagnikundum (lit. "the fireplace in the heart"), the seat
+of the force which extinguishes all individual desires.
+     Chidakasam, the field of consciousness.
+     Chinmatra, the germ of consciousness, abstract
+consciousness.
+     Chit, the abstract consciousness.
+  Chitta suddhi (Chitta, mind, and Suddi, purification),
+purification of the mind.
+     Chutuktu, the five chief Lamas of Tibet.
+
+     Daemon, the incorruptible part of man;  nous;  rational
+soul.
+     Daenam (lit. "knowledge"), the fourth principle in man,
+according to the Avesta.
+     Daimonlouphote, spiritual illumination.
+     Daityas, demons, Titans.
+     Dama, restraint of the senses.
+     Darasta, ceremonial magic practised among the Kolarian
+tribes of Central India.
+     Darha, ancestral spirits of the Kolarian tribes of Central
+India.
+     Deona or Mati, one who exercises evil spirits (Kolarian).
+     Deva, God;  beings of the subjective side of Nature.
+     Devachan, a blissful condition in the after-life;  heavenly
+existence.
+     Devanagari, the current Sanskrit alphabet.
+     Dharmasoka, one of the kings of Magadha.
+     Dhatu, the seven principal substances of the human body
+--chyle, flesh, blood, fat, bones, marrow, semen.
+     Dhyan, contemplation.  There are six stages of Dhyan,
+varying in the degrees of abstraction of the Ego from sensuous
+life.
+     Dhyan Chohans, Devas or Gods planetary spirits.
+     Dik, space.
+     Diksha, initiation.
+     Dosha, fault.
+     Dravidians, a group of tribes inhabiting Southern India.
+     Dravya, substance.
+     Dugpas, the "Red Caps," evil magicians, belonging to the
+left-hand path of occultism, so called in Tibet.
+     Dukkhu, pain.
+     Dwija Brahman, twice born;  the investiture with the sacred
+thread constitutes the second birth.
+
+     Elementals, generic name for all subjective beings other
+than disembodied human creatures.
+     Epopta, Greek for seer.
+
+     Fakir, a Mahomedan recluse or Yogi.
+     Fan, Bar-nang, space, eternal law.
+     Fohat, Tibetan for Sakti;  cosmic force or energizing power
+of the universe.
+     Fravashem, absolute spirit.
+
+     Gaudapada, a celebrated Brahmanical teacher, the author of
+commentaries on the Sankhya Karika, Mundukya Upanishad, &c.
+     Gayatri, the holiest verse of the Vedas.
+     Gehs, Parsi prayers.
+     Gelugpas, "Yellow Caps," the true Magi and their school, so
+called in Tibet.
+     Gnansaki, the power of true knowledge, one of the six
+forces.
+     Gujarathi, the vernacular dialect of Gujrat, a province of
+Western India.
+     Gunas, qualities, properties.
+     Gunava, endowed with qualities.
+     Guru, spiritual preceptor.
+
+     Ha, a magic syllable used in sacred formula;  represents the
+power of Akasa Sakti.
+     Hangsa, a mystic syllable standing for evolution, it
+literally means "I am he."
+     Hatha Yog, a system of physical training to obtain psychic
+powers, the chief feature of this system being the regulation of
+breath.
+     Hierophants, the High Priests.
+     Hina-yana, lowest form of transmigration of the Buddhist.
+     Hiong-Thsang, the celebrated chinese traveler whose writings
+contain the most interesting account of India of the period.
+     Hwun, spirit;  the seventh principle in man (Chinese).
+
+     Ikhir Bongo, spirit of the deep of the Kolarian tribes.
+     Indriya, or Deha Sanyama, control over the senses.
+     "Isis" ("Isis Unveiled"), book written by Madame Blavatsky
+on the Esoteric Doctrine.
+     Iswara, Personal God, Lord, the Spirit in man, the Divine
+principle in its active nature or condition, one of the four
+states of Brahma.
+     Itchasakti, will power;  force of desire;  one of the six
+forces of Nature.
+     Itchcha, will.
+     Ivabhavat, the one substance.
+
+     Jagrata, waking.
+     Jagrata Avasta, the waking state;  one of the four aspects
+of Pranava.
+     Jains, a religious sect in India closely related to the
+Buddhists.
+     Jambudvipa, one of the main divisions of the world,
+including India, according to the ancient Brahminical system.
+     Janaka, King of Videha, a celebrated character in the Indian
+epic of Ramayana.  He was a great royal sage.
+     Janwas, gross form of matter.
+     Japa, mystical practice of the Yogi, consisting of the
+repetition of certain formula.
+     Jevishis, will;  Karma Rupa;  fourth principle.
+     Jiva or Karana Sarira, the second principle of man;  life.
+     Jivatma, the human spirit, seventh principle in the
+Microcosm.
+     Jnanam, knowledge.
+     Jnanendrayas, the five channels of knowledge.
+     Jyotisham Jyotih, the light of lights, the supreme spirit,
+so called in the Upanishads.
+
+     Kabala, ancient mystical Jewish books.
+     Kaliyuga, the last of the four ages in which the
+evolutionary period of man is divided.  It began 3,000 years B.C.
+     Kalpa, the period of cosmic activity;  a day of Brahma,
+4,320 million years.
+     Kama Loka, abode of desire, the first condition through
+which a human entity passes in its passage, after death, to
+Devachan.  It corresponds to purgatory.
+     Kama, lust, desire, volition;  the Hindu Cupid.
+     Kamarupa, the principle of desire in man;  the fourth
+principle.
+     Kapila, the founder of one of the six principal systems of
+Indian philosophy--viz., the Sankhya.
+     Karans, great festival of the Kolarian tribes in honour of
+the sun spirit.
+     Karana Sarira, the causal body;  Avidya;  ignorance;  that
+which is the cause of the evolution of a human ego.
+     Karma, the law of ethical causation;  the effect of an act
+for the attainment of an object of personal desire, merit and
+demerit.
+     Karman, action;  attributes of Linga Sarira.
+     Kartika, the Indian god of war, son or Siva and Parvati;  he
+is also the personification of the power of the Logos.
+     Kasi, another name for the sacred city of Benares.
+     Keherpas, aerial form;  third principle.
+     Khanda period, a period of Vedic literature.
+     Khi (lit, breath);  the spiritual ego;  the sixth principle
+in man (Chinese).
+     Kiratarjuniya of Bkaravi, a Sanskrit epic, celebrating the
+encounters of Arjuna, one of this heroes of the Maha-bharata with
+the god Siva, disguised as a forester.
+     Kols, one of the tribes in Central India.
+     Kriyasakti, the power of thought;  one of the six forces in
+Nature.
+     Kshatriya, the second of the four castes into which the
+Hindu nation was originally divided.
+     Kshetrajnesvara, embodied spirit, the conscious ego in its
+highest manifestation.
+     Kshetram, the great abyss of the Kabbala;  chaos;  Yoni,
+Prakriti;  space.
+     Kumbhaka, retention of breath, regulated according to the
+system of Hatha Yoga.
+     Kundalinisakti, the power of life;  one of the six forces of
+Nature.
+     Kwer Shans, Chinese for third principle;  the astral body.
+
+     Lama-gylongs, pupils of Lamas.
+     Lao-teze, a Chinese reformer.
+
+     Macrocosm, universe.
+     Magi, fire worshippers;  the great magicians or wisdom-
+philosophers of old.
+     Maha-Bharata, the celebrated Indian epic poem.
+     Mahabhashya, a commentary on the Grammar of Panini by
+Patanjali.
+     Mahabhautic, belonging to the macrocosmic principles.
+     Mahabhutas, gross elementary principles.
+     Mahaparinibbana Sutta, one of the most authoritative of the
+Buddhist sacred writings.
+     Maha Sunyata, space or eternal law;  the great emptiness.
+     Mahat, Buddhi;  the first product of root-nature and
+producer of Ahankara (egotism), and manas (thinking principle).
+     Mahatma, a great soul;  an adept in occultism of the highest
+order.
+     Mahavanso, a Buddhist historical work written by the Bhikshu
+Mohanama, the uncle of King Dhatusma.
+     Maha-Yug, the aggregate of four Yugas, or ages--4,320,000
+years--in the Brahmanical system.
+     Manas, the mind, the thinking principle;  the fifth
+principle in the septenary division.
+     Manas Sanyama, perfect concentration of the mind;  control
+over the mind.
+     Manomaya Kosha, third sheath of the divine monad, Vedantic
+equivalent for fourth and fifth principles.
+     Mantra period, one of the four periods into which Vedic
+literature has been divided.
+     Mantra Sastra, Brahmanical writings on the occult science of
+incantations.
+     Mantra Tantra Shastras, works on incantation and Magic.
+     Manu, the great Indian legislator.
+     Manvantara, the outbreathing of the creative principle;  the
+period of cosmic activity between two pralayas.
+     Maruts, the wind gods.
+     Mathadhipatis, heads of different religious institutions in
+India.
+     Matras, the quantity of a Sanskrit syllable.
+     Matrikasakti, the power of speech, one of six forces in
+Nature.
+     Matsya Puranas, one of the Puranas.
+     Maya, illusion, is the cosmic power which renders phenomenal
+existence possible.
+     Mayavic Upadhi, the covering of illusion, phenomenal
+appearance.
+     Mayavirupa, the "double;"  "doppelganger;"  "perisprit."
+     Mazdiasnian, Zoroastrian (lit. "worshiping God").
+     Microcosm, man.
+     Mobeds, Zoroastrian priests.
+     Monad, the spiritual soul, that which endures through all
+changes of objective existence.
+     Moneghar, the headman of a village.
+     Morya, one of time royal houses of Magadha;  also the name
+of a Rajpoot tribe.
+     Mukta, liberated;  released from conditional existence.
+     Mukti. See Mukta.
+     Mula-prakriti, undifferentiated cosmic matter;  the
+unmanifested cause and substance of all being.
+     Mumukshatwa, desire for liberation.
+
+     Nabhichakram, the seat of the principle of desire, near the
+umbilicus.
+     Najo, witch.
+     Nanda (King), one of the kings of Magadha.
+     Narayana, in mystic symbology it stands for the life
+principle.
+     Nava nidhi, the nine jewels, or consummation of spiritual
+development.
+     Neophyte, a candidate for initiation into the mysteries of
+adeptship.
+     Nephesh, one of the three souls, according to the Kabala;
+first three principles in the human septenary.
+     Neschamah, one of the three souls, according to the Kabala;
+seventh principle in the human septenary.
+     Nirguna, unbound;  without gunas or attributes;  the soul in
+its state of essential purity is so called.
+     Nirvana, beautitude, abstract spiritual existence,
+absorption into all.
+     Niyashes, Parsi prayers.
+     Noumena, the true essential nature of being, as
+distinguished from the illusive objects of sense.
+     Nous, spirit, mind;  Platonic term, reason.
+     Nyaya Philosophy, a system of Hindu logic founded by
+Gautuma.
+
+     Occultism, the study of the mysteries of Nature and the
+development of the psychic powers latent in man.
+     Okhema, vehicle;  Platonic term for body.
+
+     Padarthas, predicates of existing things, so called in the
+"Vaiseshikha," or atomic system of philosophy, founded by Kanad
+(Sanskrit).
+     Padma sana, a posture practised by some Indian mystics it
+consists in sitting with the legs crossed one over the other and
+the body straight.
+     Pahans, village priests.
+     Panchakosha, the five sheaths in which is enclosed the
+divine monad.
+     Panchikrita, developed into the five gross elements.
+     Parabrahm, the supreme principle in Nature;  the universal
+spirit.
+     Paramarthika, one of the three states of existence according
+to Vedanta;  the true, the only real one.
+     Paramatma, time Supreme Spirit, one of the six forces of
+Nature;  the great force.
+     Parasakti, intellectual apprehension of a truth.
+     Pataliputra, the ancient capital of the kingdom Magadha, in
+Eastern India, a city identified with the modern Patna.
+     Patanjali, the author of "Yoga Philosophy," one of the six
+orthodox systems of India and of the Mahabhashya.
+     Peling, the name given to Europeans in Tibet.
+     Phala, retribution;  fruit or results of causes.
+     Pho, animal soul.
+     Pisacham, fading remnants of human beings in the state of
+Kama Loka;  shells or elementaries.
+     Piyadasi, another name for Asoka (q.v.)
+     Plaster or Plantal,  Platonic term for the power which
+moulds the substances of the universe into suitable forms.
+     Popol-Vuh, the sacred book of the Guatemalans.
+     Poseidonis, the last island submerged of the continent of
+Atlantis.
+     Pracheta, the principle of water.
+     Pragna, consciousness.
+     Prajapatis, the constructors of the material universe.
+     Prakriti, undifferentiated matter;  the supreme principle
+regarded as the substance of the universe.
+     Pralaya, the period of cosmic rest.
+     Prameyas, things to be proved, objects of Pramana or proof.
+     Prana, the one life.
+     Pranamaya Kosha, the principle of life and its vehicle;  the
+second sheath of the Divine monad (Vedantic).
+     Pranatman, the eternal or germ thread on which are strung,
+like beads, the personal lives.  The same as Sutratma.
+     Pratibhasika, the apparent or illusory life.
+     Pratyaksha, perception.
+     Pretya-bhava, the state of an ego under the necessity of
+repeated births.
+     Punarjanmam, power of evolving objective manifestation;
+rebirth.
+     Puraka, in-breathing, regulated according to the system of
+Hatha Yoga.
+     Puranas (lit. "old writings").  A collection of symbolical
+Brahmanical writings.  They are eighteen in number, and are
+supposed to have been composed by Vyasa, the author of the
+Mahabharata.
+     Purusha, spirit.
+     Rajas, the quality of foulness;  passionate activity.
+     Rajarshi, a king-adept.
+     Raj Yoga, the true science of the development of psychic
+powers and union with the Supreme Spirit.
+     Rakshasas, evil spirits;  literally, raw-eaters.
+     Ramayana, an epic poem describing the life of Rama, a
+deified Indian hero.
+     Ram Mohun Roy, the well-known Indian Reformer, died 1833.
+     Rechaka, out-breathing, regulated according to the system of
+Hatha Yoga.
+     Rig Veda, the first of the Vedas.
+     Rishabham, the Zodiacal sign Taurus, the sacred syllable
+Aum.
+     Rishis (lit. "revealers"), holy sages.
+     Ruach, one of the souls, according to the Kabala;  second
+three principles in the human septenary.
+
+     Sabda, the Logos or Word.
+     Saketa, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of
+Ayodhya.
+     Sukshma sariram, the subtile body.
+     Sakti, the crown of the astral light;  the power of Nature.
+     Sakuntala, a Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa.
+     Samadhana, incapacity to diverge from the path of spiritual
+progress.
+     Sama, repression of mental perturbations.
+     Samadhi, state of ecstatic trance.
+     Samanya, community or commingling of qualities.
+     Samma-Sambuddha, perfect illumination.
+     Samvat, an Indian era which, is usually supposed to have
+commenced 57 B.C.
+     Sankaracharya, the great expositor of the monistic Vedanta
+Philosophy, which denies the personality of the Divine Principle,
+and affirms its unity with the spirit of man.
+     Sankhya Karika, a treatise containing the aphorisms of
+Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya system, one of the six schools
+of Hindu philosophy.
+     Sankhya Yog, the system of Yog as set forth by Sankhya
+philosophers.
+     Sannyasi, a Hindu, ascetic whose mind is steadfastly fixed
+upon the Supreme Truth.
+     Sarira, body.
+     Sat, the real, Purusha.
+     Sattwa, purity.
+     Satva, goodness.
+     Satya Loka, the abode of Truth, one of the subjective
+spheres in our solar system.
+     Shamanism, spirit worship;  the oldest religion of Mongolia.
+     Siddhasana, one of the postures enjoined by the system of
+Hatha Yoga.
+     Siddhi, abnormal power obtained by spiritual development.
+     Sing Bonga, sun spirit of the Kolarian tribes.
+     Siva, one of the Hindu gods, with Brahma and Vishnu, forming
+the Trimurti or Trinity;  the principle of destruction.
+     Sivite, a worshipper of Siva, the name of a sect among the
+Hindus.
+     Skandhas, the impermanent elements which constitute a man.
+     Slokas, stanzas (Sanskrit).
+     Smriti, legal and ceremonial writings of the Hindus.
+     Soham, mystic syllable representing involution;  lit. "that
+am I."
+     Soonium, a magical ceremony for the purpose of removing a
+sickness from one person to another.
+     Soorya, the sun.
+     Souramanam, a method of calculating time.
+     Space, Akasa;  Swabhavat (q.v.)
+  Sraddha, faith.
+     Sravana, receptivity, listening.
+     Sthula-Sariram, the gross physical body.
+     Sukshmopadhi,  fourth and fifth principles (Raja Yoga.)
+     Sunyata, space;  nothingness.
+     Suras, elementals of a beneficent order;  gods.
+     Surpa, winnower.
+     Suryasiddhanta, a Sanskrit treatise on astronomy.
+     Sushupti Avastha, deep sleep;  one of the four aspects of
+Pranava.
+     Sutra period, one of the periods into which Vedic literature
+has been divided.
+     Sutratman, (lit. "the thread spirit,") the immortal
+individuality upon which are strung our countless personalities.
+     Svabhavat, Akasa; undifferentiated primary matter;
+Prakriti.
+     Svapna, dreamy condition, clairvoyance.
+     Swami (lit. "a master"), the family idol.
+     Swapna Avastha, dreaming state;  one of the four aspects of
+Pranava.
+
+     Tama, indifference, dullness.
+     Tamas, ignorance, or darkness.
+     Tanha, thirst;  desire for life, that which produces re-birth.
+     Tanmatras, the subtile elements, the abstract counterpart of
+the five elements, earth, water, fire, air and ether, consisting
+of smell, taste, feeling, sight and sound.
+     Tantras, works on Magic.
+     Tantrika, ceremonies connected with the worship of the
+goddess Sakti, who typifies Force.
+     Taraka Yog, one of the Brahmanical systems for the
+development of psychic powers and attainment of spiritual
+knowledge.
+     Tatwa, eternally existing "that;"  the different principles
+in Nature.
+     Tatwams, the abstract principles of existence or categories,
+physical and metaphysical.
+     Telugu, a language spoken in Southern India.
+     Tesshu Lama, the head of the Tibetan Church.
+     The Laws of Upasanas, chapter in the Book iv. of Kui-te on
+the rules for aspirants for chelaship.
+     Theodidaktos (lit. "God taught "), a school of philosophers
+in Egypt.
+     Theosophy, the Wisdom-Religion taught in all ages by the
+sages of the world.
+     Tikkun, Adam Kadmon, the ray from the Great Centre.
+     Titiksha, renunciation.
+     Toda, a mysterious tribe in India that practise black magic.
+     Tridandi, (tri, "three," danda, "chastisement"), name of
+BrahmanicaI thread.
+     Trimurti, the Indian Trinity--Brahma, Vishnu and Siva,
+Creator, Preserver and Destroyer.
+     Turiya Avastha, the state of Nirvana.
+     Tzong-ka-pa, celebrated Buddhist reformer of Tibet, who
+instituted the order of Gelugpa Lamas.
+
+     Universal Monas, the universal spirit.
+     Upadana Karnam, the material cause of an effect.
+     Upadhis, bases.
+     Upamiti, analogy.
+     Upanayana, investiture with the Brahmanical thread.
+     Upanishads, Brahmanical Scriptures appended to the Vedas,
+containing the esoteric doctrine of the Brahmans.
+     Upanita, one who is invested with the Brahmanical thread
+(lit. "brought to a spiritual teacher").
+     Uparati, absence of out-going desires.
+     Urvanem, spiritual ego;  sixth principle.
+     Ushtanas, vital force;  second principle.
+
+     Vach, speech;  the Logos;  the mystic Word.
+     Vaishyas,  cattle breeders artisans;  the third caste among
+the Hindus.
+     Vakya Sanyama, control over speech.
+     Varuna or Pracheta, the Neptune of India.
+     Vasishta, a great Indian sage, one of those to whom the Rig
+Veda was revealed in part.
+     Vata, air.
+     Vayu, the wind.
+     Vayu  Puranas, one of the Puranas.
+     Vedantists, followers of the Vedanta School of Philosophy,
+which is divided into two branches, monists and dualists.
+     Vedas, the most authoritative of the Hindu Scriptures.  The
+four oldest sacred books--Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva--revealed
+to the Rishis by Brahma.
+     Vedic, pertaining to the Vedas.
+     Vidya, secret knowledge.
+     Vija, the primitive germ which expands into the universe.
+     Vijnana-maya-kosha, the sheath of knowledge;  the fourth
+sheath of the divine monad;  the fifth principle in man
+(Vedanta).
+     Viraj, the material universe.
+     Vishnu, the second member of the Hindu trinity;  the
+principle of preservation.
+     Vishnuite or Vishuvite, a worshiper of Vishnu, the name of a
+sect among the Hindus.
+     Vrishalas, Outcasts.
+     Vyasa, the celebrated Rishi, who collected and arranged the
+Vedas in their present form.
+     Vyavaharika, objective existence;  practical.
+
+     Yajna Sutra, the name of the Brahmanical thread.
+     Yama, law, the god of death.
+     Yashts, the Parsi prayer-books.
+     Yasna, religious book of the Parsis.
+     Yasodhara, the wife of Buddha.
+     Yavanacharya, the name given to Pythagoras in the Indian
+books.
+     Yavanas, the generic name given by the Brahmanas to younger
+peoples.
+     Yoga Sutras, a treatise on Yoga philosophy by Patanjali.
+     Yog Vidya, the science of Yoga;  the practical method of
+uniting one's own spirit with the universal spirit.
+     Yogis, mystics, who develop themselves according to the
+system of Patanjali's "Yoga Philosophy."
+     Yudhishthira, the eldest of the five brothers, called
+Pandavas, whose exploits are celebrated in the great Sanskrit
+epic "Mahabharata."
+
+     Zend, the sacred language of ancient Persia.
+     Zhing, subtle matter;  Kama Rupa, or fourth principle
+(Chinese).
+     Zoroaster, the prophet of the Parsis.
+
+
+
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